Transcript of Radio Show: The Great Mutation - Saturn and Jupiter
(If you wish to listen to the show instead, here is the link on BlogTalk or Apple Podcasts)
In my last three shows I spoke about the outermost planets, Pluto, Neptune, and Uranus, which I like to call the Triad of Spirit. They are the Avatars, for us here on Earth, for the uppermost principles of the Divine. In order they represent the Will of God, The Love of God, and the Mind of God. They hold for us the truth about the path to our spiritual unfoldment, wherein we strive to develop ever more Centered Wills, Unconditional Love and Freer Minds.
I examined their role in their intersecting cycles and interdependent influences for our current period and compared that to similar moments in history. For today, I will continue this explanation of mundane planetary influences by examining the cycle of relationship of the next two planets (moving closer to Earth), Saturn and Jupiter.
Saturn and Jupiter
Saturn is the Avatar of Reality and is generally known as the planet of limitation and caution. In Mundane Astrology, Saturn is the ruler of Institutions (family, community, business, and government). It rules Civil Society, Law Enforcement, Chief Executives, Corporations, Real Estate, and Public Buildings. Saturn is the planet of Realism.
Jupiter is the Avatar of Truth, and as Saturn’s counterpart it is generally known as the planet of expansion and optimism. In Mundane Astrology, Jupiter rules the realms of Truth and Wisdom, (Metaphysical, Religious, Philosophical and Scientific); it rules the Legal System, Churches, Universities, Publishing. Jupiter is the planet of Idealism.
Jupiter provides the meanings to Saturn’s reality structures; Saturn provides the vehicles for the realization of Jupiter’s Truths. They are always held together; like all planetary pairs, they modulate and shape one another, and we can see this dynamic interplay in their cycle of relationship with one another.
The orbit of Saturn is about 29 years, spending about two and one-half years in a sign. The orbit of Jupiter is about 12 years, spending about one year in a sign. Their synodic period, moving from one Jupiter conjunction with Saturn to the next is about 20 years. Since they rule two opposite principles, “Growth” versus “Limitation”, these conjunctions every 20 years have been carefully noted by Mundane Astrology.
Jupiter/Saturn Conjunctions
What we find is that at each Conjunction there is some change, often a reversal of trends from the previous 20-year period in the culture, economy and political nature of a community or culture. What happens is that the Jupiter force expands along a certain pathway of meaning until it encounters the hard limitations of Saturn realities. Astrologers call this ending and beginning of their cycle at the conjunction a Mutation.
After three conjunctions or 60 years, their position will be roughly 9 degrees further along in that sign. That means in 40 conjunctions, (40 x 9 equaling 360 degrees), they complete a cycle through the Zodiac. Those 40 conjunctions x 20 years adds up to 800 years. What we observe, is that for roughly 200 years their alignments will occur in the same element (Fire, Earth, Air or Water), and we call these series of conjunctions in the same element the Lesser Mutations. But every 200 years or so their conjunction will move into the next element for the next 200 years, and Astrologers call that a Great Mutation. That is what is happening this December 2020.
The last time Jupiter and Saturn shifted like this was 1840, when they moved from the element of Fire to Earth. This time they will begin their 200-year cycle in Air starting with Aquarius. (There are those who say that this is one more indicator that we are moving into the oft mentioned “Age of Aquarius”, and there are other cycles and signs that point to this too).
Looking to the USA, we can observe the history of their Earth Conjunctions since 1840, and it can help us understand and delineate the character and meaning of each 20-year period. They reveal a pattern of unfolding energy-forms that bring us to the great turning point we are now approaching. We would expect that throughout this 200-year Earthy period the root character of these Jupiter-Saturn seeds would be dominated by considerations of the physical world, on matters of wealth and production, and socially and spiritually on questions of how material values are understood and manifested.
Jupiter/Saturn Conjunctions and the USA
If we divide these periods according to the US Presidents presiding at the start of each period, we will find the following:
1840-1860 (Harrison) This was a period of great expansion for the USA, principally accomplished by the seizure from Mexico of much of the western parts of the United States in the Mexican War, which added Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Spiritually and Materially, it was also the period leading up to the most consequential crisis for the United States, the Civil War, as this period was characterized by the rising existential struggle over the question of whether new states would enter as Free or Slave, with the slave-holding states dominating the Federal government and the Supreme court.
1860-1880 (Lincoln) Begins with the Civil War which leads to the defeat of the Confederate South, the elimination of Slavery and an end to the political and economic dominance of the Southern states. But the attempt at Reconstruction in the South “fails”, and the true emancipation, and political and economic equality of the former slaves was denied for the next 100 years.
1880-1900 (Garfield) Witnessed the “end of the frontier”, as the repeated series of seizures of land, broken treaties, and removal of native peoples for many hundreds of years was finished at the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. This period also saw the rise of Industrial Capitalism and of great Monopolies giving this period its title of “The Gilded Age” or the “Age of Robber Barons”. It was also the beginning of the USA’s own colonial expansion by the seizure of Hawaii, and the Spanish territories in the Caribbean and Philippines in the Spanish-American War.
1900-1920 (McKinley) The USA emerged onto the world stage as a rising power economically and politically, especially with its critical entrance into WW I. But the unfettered capitalism of the Gilded Age had also led to the Progressive Reform movement, with attempts to rein in the excess power of the Monied class by reforms in the civil society and government regulations, leading to a national income tax and a more robust regulatory structure.
1920-1940 (Harding) The end of World War I, Suffrage with the vote for Women and then Prohibition, were the final acts of the reform era, which led to the Roaring Twenties and a bubble of wild speculation that ended with the Great Depression starting in 1929. Roosevelt attempted with the New Deal to build a more sustainable economy, and the USA began to move towards a more equitable distribution of wealth. But many agree it is WW II that restores the economic industrial engine of the United States, which becomes the “Arsenal of Democracy” leading the Allies against the Axis powers.
1940-1960 (Roosevelt) The Battles of WW II and its conclusion leads to the Marshall Plan for re-building Europe and the emergence of the Cold War, with the divide between the East and the West, between Capitalist versus Communist countries. The USA is the dominant world power leading the West against the USSR.
1960-1980 (Kennedy) The Cold War reaches its climax in the Nuclear Arms race, and the United States enters the disastrous Vietnam War. Meanwhile domestically, the Civil Rights movement leads to a backlash and the Democratic South turns Republican. The Economic imbalances generated by the Vietnam War and Johnson’s Great Society leads in the late 1970’s to what becomes known as Stagflation and grinding economic malaise.
1980-2000 (Reagan) The Reagan Revolution takes on the growth of the so-called “welfare state” by slashing taxes and programs, a reversal of Roosevelt’s New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society. The more or less equitable distribution in the growth of wealth in the USA from 1940 is halted, and so once again the rise of the great inequality between the haves and have nots begins. Reagan claimed that “Government is the Problem” and the Republican party and neo-liberal movement pushes an agenda of cutting taxes while promising more revenue, (from what they claimed would be a robust growth in the economy), but the elder George Bush calls the move “Voodoo Economics”. Later, Clinton as a centrist democratic moves the country further down this path of growing inequality, which was masked for a time by a general rise in economic growth brought about by the end of the “Cold War”. The rise in wealth is increasingly distributed to the top 10%.
2000-2020 (Bush) The Bush presidency is shocked by 9/11, as the forces unleashed by the end of the Cold War and Russia’s War in Afghanistan comes home to the United States. The War against Terror begins, (and has not ended), as the Federal Reserve keeps interest rates low to support the increasingly unequal growth of wealth in the economy. This artificially low interest rate structure sows the seeds for the Mortgage crisis in 2006 and 2007 leading to the Second Great Depression starting in 2008. Obama stabilizes the economy, but the economic imbalances remain and lead to a further splintering of the country between the haves and the have nots. With neither Democrats nor Republicans addressing the unsustainable imbalance of wealth in the country, Trump is elected as a populist, with promises to fight as an outsider and iconoclast. But he enacts another typical tax cut that rewards the wealthy, while further eroding the social safety net. The abysmal state of that safety net is fully revealed by the disastrous response to the Pandemic of 2020.
The Future
2020-2040 (Biden)
We do not know what lies ahead of us now, but we do know there is a new era emerging. With the December Jupiter/Saturn Great Mutation Conjunction ushering in a 200-year period, and the Energy-Form that will be at the root of this new era will be guided by Air not Earth. What might this mean?
Previous Age of Air
The previous Age of Air was from 1226 to 1425 and marked the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in Europe. Among the signature events: The translation from Arabic versions into Latin of Greek works of art and philosophy, seeding a rebirth of classical understanding and intellectual growth; new democratic assemblies form in Switzerland and England; the advent of Humanism with the study of classical literature as a living tradition; the invention of movable type in Korea, and printing presses in Europe among many other discoveries and inventions. The movement towards reason and critical thinking established the foundation for the Renaissance and the later age of Enlightenment.
Paradigm for Past 200 Years
The last 200 years have been shaped as an Age of Earth conjunctions, and it certainly has become apparent that over this period the governing paradigm and goal was to have “More of More Things”. The accumulation of wealth and possessions became the driving purpose of life. The more things you had (and consumed), the happier you would be. But it turns out that this is just not true, not at all.
The presiding cultural ideologies and even variants of many religions of this period have not been guided by concerns for the highest moral good or the well-being of other humans (or other life-forms, or for the planet in general). Most of the thought-energy-forms in our cultural, political, and spiritual spheres have been shaped and bound to the only value that has but one dimension, the Value of Quantity.
Over the arc of the past 200 years it would seem to an outside observer that the only good was endless, materialistic production in service to an unquenchable consumption of things. More of more was supposed to make you happier. But the more people had, the more they wanted. Whole ecosystems and environments, and whole species were and have been sacrificed for the pursuit of wealth and power. It was not “Life” that mattered; what mattered was the so-called “good life” as humans pursued ever more material pleasures.
The Price
What has been the price? We have ended with a neo-liberal economic system, wherein the purpose of life is driven by the freedom to pursue this one-dimensional value of quantity at the expense of everything else, where only more of more material things mattered. And the price of all these things? This amassing of quantities has come at the cost of stealing from the future of our descendants. We have been thieves, and we are to this very day stealing their future still. With regards to those who come after us, we will have left them so much less than we had. We drank their water, we breathed their air, we ate their food, and we are leaving them a broken world where they will struggle to survive; it will be a world that be will unrecognizable to you or to me, and it will be a world that is more and more unlivable for most of humanity and many other species.
I do not mean to say that this “Age of Earth” had to have turned out this way, that is not true at all. The Energy-Forms presiding in any period may manifest in a whole array of beliefs and actions, and that will lead to a range of possible outcomes. There were many other influencers in the arc of our journey that led to this crisis; and innumerable choices were made by humans in this period, (and indeed in the prior periods of Great Mutation Epochs, like the proceeding period of Fire from 1663 to 1842, and of Water from 1425 to 1663). All of these contributed to the shaping of human desires, capabilities and actions that produced the existential threat of Climate Change that we face now.
The good news is we created this; it was not because of an asteroid striking the Earth, it was not the result of world-wide volcanic eruptions. These past Extinction Events came from so-called “natural” or “external” causes. The good news is we made this crisis; the good news, now that we know, is that we can choose to change. We can still make a different future if we act now.
Energy-Forms and Power
What we must do is face reality, to see what we have made; we need to understand what we have done and decide what we need to do. Slowly at first, but increasingly from the 1840’s onwards, we made a world-wide civilization that is built upon the power of energy-forms that had been locked away for millions of years in coal, and oil and gas. We thought we were so clever, so intelligent and crafty. We released stupendous amounts of energy to amass wealth and power; but we did not fully account for the true costs for the life-forms on this planet.
Through a lack of understanding (and humility) we changed the delicate balance of energy-forms and life-forms on this planet. And we did this in what amounts to a geological second. What might have changed over tens of thousands of years we did in mere decades. We are the creators of this New Earth where whole species and ecosystems are vanishing year after year; we have moved our world from a benign and livable planet to what many are calling a “hot-house” Earth. The increasingly dramatic Climate Change effects (and make no mistake the 2020 Pandemic is another unintended but direct example of this), have been the result of our creating material wealth through the destruction of the web of life on this planet. There is no way to balance our gain with this terrible loss; the spiritual balance sheet for humanity is very much in the negative at this point in history.
Will this be our legacy? Will we be the first ones who are not honored but instead are cursed by our children’s children? Will we be remembered for our selfishness and greed?
How
How did this happen? Because we humans came to believe that we are separate and apart from all other life-forms on this planet; we made them into the “other”, less than us, and so destroyed the balance of life on this planet. And then, we also separated ourselves from one another, we divided humans into “us and them” by race, ethnicity, creed, and culture; and so, we continue to destroy one another too.
Why
Why did this happen? Because we forgot the first Truth: You are here to love one another; and so, you are equally here to love life and protect this precious planet and the many lives that depend upon it now and for the generations to come. For it is certainly true that your lives depend upon one another and on these other life-forms too. We are supposed to take care of one another and this planet; to love and preserve lives, not to destroy them.
What I hope for, what I believe, is that this Age of Air, (along with other planetary shifts), will bring us into a “Great Awakening”, (in fact, I believe that is what we are experiencing now). I believe we will turn from destruction to preservation; we will turn from selfishness to selflessness; we will turn from taking to giving; we will turn from greed to love. I believe we will because we must.
Sacrifice
We must honor those and love those who will come after us by choosing to sacrifice for one another and for all life on this planet now. This Age of Air can and hopefully will usher in a new global consciousness founded upon a New Principle: that the first Fundamental and Presiding Value of Spirit is Love and the most important consideration for all our actions shall be to take care of one another and to preserve and protect All Life on this planet, our Earth, our Beautiful Home.
We are here to walk in beauty; we are here to be surrounded by beauty; we are here to love and be loved. Let us live as we were meant to live, surrounded by beauty, and living by love.
It is not too late; but there is no time to wait.
We will be the ones remembered for their sacrifice; we will be the ones who faced with the selfish option to live for now and for ourselves, that we chose instead to preserve, to protect and make possible a better world for those who come after us.
Let this be our moment; let this be our sacred covenant with one another and our descendants.
Let us be the ones they remember for our sacrifice, courage, and love,
Let it be so; let us make it so.
