Alchemical Tree of Life
Transcript of Radio Show: 2022 Forecast – Part 2 - Neptune, Our Spiritual Crisis
(If you wish to listen to the show instead, here is the link on BlogTalk or Apple Podcasts)
Today we will continue our look at 2022 with a special emphasis on the influence of Neptune in the coming year, both generally and with special attention to its message for the USA. Neptune has been moving through Pisces since 2011 and will not move into the first sign of Aries until 2026.
But before we look at Neptune on its own, I want to point out an interesting correspondence between Pluto’s transit through Capricorn and the transit of Neptune through Pisces. What we will find is that in every other passage of Pluto through Capricorn, Neptune will be passing through either Virgo or the opposite sign of Pisces for much of that period. And this correlation has been true for literally thousands of years.
Pluto/Neptune Cycles
Astronomically, this is due to the ratio of their respective orbital durations. The relationship cycle of these two planets, from Conjunction to Conjunction is about 491 years, and it is one of the “Master Cycle” indicators for Mundane Astrology. Interestingly, Pluto completes a circuit in roughly 245 years, while Neptune’s orbit is roughly 164 years. This means that 3 revolutions of Neptune around the Sun equals about 491 years, and 2 revolutions of Pluto equals about 491 years.
For our purposes, what this ratio of their relationship or of their harmonic resonance means is that when Neptune goes one and one-half times around the Sun it will equal just one orbital revolution for Pluto. And that is why each time Pluto is going through Capricorn, Neptune spends part of that time either moving through Virgo or through Pisces. I find this correspondence in their relationship very interesting and informative.
Pluto in Capricorn – Neptune in Virgo or Pisces
As I have noted many times, the passage of Pluto in Capricorn heralds the end of an institutional order and the birth of a new one. But given its relationship with Neptune, which is that Neptune is passing through Virgo or Pisces while Pluto is in Capricorn, we should expect that the nature of each Pluto shift or transition would be different or alternate in some meaningful way each time. If we look at this influence of Neptune blended with Pluto, it can help us to better understand what is similar yet different about our time in the 2000’s to the formative one for the USA in the 1770’s.
Given that the present-day passage of Pluto in Capricorn has Neptune in Pisces, our current period of institutional breakdown and re-ordering corresponds with that of the 1500’s more than the Capricorn/Virgo pattern at the founding of the USA. The question for us is how we might understand and so distinguish and define these differences?
With Pluto as the Avatar of the Power of Alchemy or the shaper of Spirit-Matter, and the wielder of the Will, and Neptune as the Avatar of our Fields of Dream and Imagination or the vessel of our Hopes or Fears, the type or kind of re-shaping and re-forming in these two different passages of Pluto in Capricorn can be discerned by the very different influences emanating through Neptune in Virgo versus Pisces.
Neptune in Virgo or Pisces
What I believe we can see is that the protean transformations of the Neptune in Pisces period, gives birth to a re-dreaming of the dream; and this in a fashion sets up or leads to the next Pluto in Capricorn with Neptune in Virgo, where that period brings this dream into the reshaping and reordering of life for that period. So, we would see that the 1500’s “re-dreaming of dreams” created the conditions for the 1700’s, and the USA being a “New Order for the Centuries”.
I find it is critically and interesting to note, that at the mid-point in Neptune’s cycle from that alignment, we see that 1770’s dream and reality-making facing its greatest test when Neptune went through Pisces in the 1850’s and 1860’s during the USA Civil War.
What this means to me is that with Neptune’s return to Pisces while Pluto is in Capricorn now, we are being challenged to reform or fashion anew the reality-form we made in the 1770’s, and we will do this by being inspired, as were those dreamers of the 1500’s, by a new vision of who or what we can be.
Pluto/Neptune in the 1500’s
In the period of the 1500’s, with Pluto in Capricorn and Neptune in Pisces, the entire European ordering of life was turned upside down. From the Divine Right of Kings and the Ordering of Faith hierarchically arranged from Pope to Priest to the people, in what became known as the Reformation, turned that social order and way of meaning completely around. Faith became personal, it emanated from the personal experience of the “Word of God”, as the bible was now available in the common tongue. Faith became Individual, and no longer mediated by the priesthood and Pope. And over time the growing sense emerged that humans should order their lives around the sanctity of the individual conscience, and this informed and shaped the need to organize our institutions towards self-rule and democracy.
Pluto/Neptune in the 1770’s
When Neptune was in Virgo in the 1770’s, the dreams of that Plutonian ending of an age and reordering were focused through the critiquing, defining, and refining lens of Virgo. That is because when Neptune is in Virgo, we are asked to reimagine how we order our world, how we find our order of life within ourselves, in how we manage our lives, and how we form our institutions to meet our needs. And I would argue that with Neptune in Pisces, like in the 1500’s, and as it is now for us today, we experience the wonder and confusion of redreaming our very dreams, we are forced to go beyond our old paradigms of faith and fear so that we can find a new faith to guide our lives and refashion our institutions.
Where are we today?
Where we find ourselves today is in another shift in what I call our “Bubbles of Belief”, and we have come to a time when the very notion of what is true, or a fact is not so very clear. Rather than the mediation of Truth and Fact being determined and filtered by hierarchies of authority in the various realms of Science, Economics, Culture or Politics, we find that our shaping by the individualistic paradigm that was founded in the 1500’s has led to our moment where by the magic of interconnectivity to immense databases of information, each person can fashion and formulate their own version of reality from a veritable cornucopia of data that they have gathered from innumerable sources, but which, of course, vary greatly in their reliability. Without some means to sort fact from fiction, or truth from lies, we are at the mercy of the storms whipped up by those who profit from outrage and fear. Unfortunately, what we have created is a veritable chaotic cacophony of truths and half-truths, revelations and falsehoods, wisdom, and nonsense. How did this happen, and what does it mean for our future?
Bubble of Belief, Circles of Reality
As I have previously noted, we humans exist in what we have fashioned for ourselves, what I call our “Bubbles of Belief” which form our “Circles of Reality”. The role of Neptune is central to this experience because it holds the forms of reality, because it frames the lenses that we see as our reality. The Greater Reality behind it all, which will be known as and will be someday understood and experienced to be, is simply and profoundly called “the One”.
Why? Because the Foundation Source of Spiritual Truth is this: All of Creation is the Body, Heart, Mind and Spirit of the One. But to experience the One, for even a brief instant, would produce for most ordinary persons a shock that would shatter their being; it would quite simply be an encounter with what would appear to be pure Chaos! The One is beyond our comprehension, beyond our limited frameworks of principles, ideas, laws, or concepts. But this One is the Ultimate Reality. To us, as we look out into immensity of all of Creation it is truly chaotic; for those who have reached a higher consciousness it is truly sublime.
Neptune - Avatar of Meaning and Dreaming
Neptune forms our patterns of Consciousness and our means of Perception. It is the Avatar that will lead to our greater understanding. It is our Spiritual Source for Imagination, and the power of our Dreaming into Reality of whatever we imagine will become. Yet, here lies the great danger too, because by Neptune we can experience the exhilaration, the intoxication, of being “touched by the Gods”, so that we can imagine and dream the most wonderful forms of being, but we may equally stumble into illusions and nightmares too.
So, this would seem rather paradoxical; how could it be that the very instrument responsible for our journey in awakening, this Divine gift of our power of Imagination and Dreaming, how can this also be the same instrument or source of our delusions and confusion too?
Neptune holds the gift of Clairvoyance or Clear-Seeing, and Astrologers will often call the way of Neptune is that it operates as a “Universal Solvent”. It dissolves the boundaries and borders between thoughts and things, between dimensions and realms, and so enables us to see truth of the ultimate connection of everything and everyone, which is why it is also called the Avatar of Compassion and Unconditional Love.
The Challenge of Awakening
But here we face the challenge of journey in awakening, the opportunity and danger we face in moving from one Circle of Belief and into another. When we are undergoing any opportunity to let go of our former assumptions and limited perceptions with the assistance of Neptune, we may encounter the risk that we will become too untethered from a reasonable reality, by a Circle of Belief that served to keep us centered upon some essential truths within ourselves, and that equally formed our common understandings between one another.
Here we encounter the “razor’s edge” on our journey of awakening, the bright shining line between love and fear, between Illumination and Madness. When letting go of former certainties, and becoming untethered from an old Bubble of Belief, one may lose the common understanding shared with others as to the nature of reality. By this an individual or group or even an entire people or nation, may become enamored and entranced by energy-forms that are unfamiliar, yet seemingly offer the promise of a greater truth, of a special knowing.
Illumination or Intoxication
This experience of a special vision can be quite wonderful, and perhaps it is does hold a greater measure of the light of truth and even of wisdom, and so it might be that a lesser or greater awakening is at hand. But it is equally possible, and this is sadly found in far too many periods in human history, that those certainties of a greater truth imparted by those captivating visions, are really refractions and shadows formed by unhealthy desires and self-formed fears, forged in hearts that have turned from the light of love, creating illusionary notions of what is good and true. This peril of delusion and separation is most especially true when the siren song of Neptune’s revelation is not anchored in one’s heart by love, and so it may instead become shaped and twisted by fear. As always, the fault lies not in the stars, or in Neptune, but in our spiritual development as to our fortunes and fate.
Throughout many periods in human history, panics and manias, conspiracies and divisions have erupted. But the periods when Neptune is moving through Pisces, as it is now from 2011 to 2026 or like in 1848 to 1862, are particularly strong in this protean capacity to dissolve the boundaries between reality and illusion.
We have moved from a world in the 1500’s where the ordering of Truth versus Fiction was determined by and mediated through a descending hierarchy of authority, from Pope to King to Commoner, and instead we have created a world where every person is a pope or king, their own maker of fact, reason, and truth.
Unfortunately, the necessary level of spiritual development that is required to wield such godlike powers, where one would see a people or humanity guided by Wisdom and acting with Humility, well that is surely lacking in most if not all the various sectors and realms of our society now, from the uppermost and powerful down to the powerless.
Spiritual Crisis of Today – Chaos of all Realities
We live in disconnected Bubbles of Belief; we do not share the same assumptions about our world, about how we can discern what is right and what is wrong, or how we are to understand and treat one another. We are lost in the Ocean of Neptune, in the Chaos of all realities, and so for many souls there is no reality whatsoever, there is only confusion and despair. We are having what is known as an Epistemological Crisis, a crisis of how we know what we know, of how we can determine fact from fiction, or the truth from all the half-truths and lies; we find ourselves in a great Spiritual Crisis.
What can you do?
What can we do; what can you do? As always (and forever), I will gently advise one and all that the Truth has been known from the beginning of our journey in awakening, because it forms the very fabric of the Universe, as it is equally the very spiritual substance of you and me too, of course.
What we need to do individually, and then when we gather as friends, neighbors, colleagues and loved ones, is to return to the sources of truth found in all the great teachings, because we need to be guided by the Wisdom of the Wise Ones, our elder brothers and sisters, whose shining examples of Love and Compassion has shown us “the way” throughout the ages.
You cannot find your way by yourself, and so you must on the one hand look to the examples of those who left these treasures of truth for you, both in how to know the truth as well as the Truths themselves. And you most certainly cannot create your own understanding of your world because you are shaped and formed by all with who you have direct and indirect contact. You must choose wisely where you look for answers and avoid those individuals and groups whose certainties have created the very extremes between the dark and the light that make for our peril now.
As I said many times, and most recently in June of 2021:
The way of Truth has always been the Path of Love. For all those who follow the path of the Ancient Wisdom, and equally the many who understand and follow the great teachers whose messages are the “Heart Doctrine” of all religious traditions, we must begin and remain upon the Shining Path of Unconditional Love.
This will often be exceedingly difficult, seemingly impossible, when we encounter the cold meanness, and the dark hatred that seems to splash across our computer screens or onto our streets every day. But we must remain centered and true to the one path of the Masters. No matter who is before you, no matter how much what they do or say is disturbing or even repugnant to you, you must remember this and hold yourself to the path of Spirit and the clear Light of Truth. Whatever you do, and whomever you encounter, you must follow your Higher Self and:
“Love One Another”
Love is the way; it is the only way. It is the Way of Peace and Understanding. This is the Truth of Neptune, for Neptune is the Way of Unconditional Love. It is the Light at the Core of you and of all Creation.
So, what I would advise each and every one of us today is this, to remember this:
The Light of Truth is within you, and you can obtain and secure it by an Open and Questioning Mind, that is held from excesses by Unconditional Love, and together with your Reason and Compassion, you remain centered in your higher spiritual nature by your Centered Will.
Democracy
Self-government, what we call Democracy, requires that each member of that society to be guided with reason, held by love, and unbent by the passions and fears of those whose reason and love has been broken or forsaken. Whenever you encounter those who are narrow of mind and heart, you must understand that they are acting from a space of fear, and the only way to reach them is by your Reason, Love and Will.
Remember the teachings, and follow the Masters, so that you remain on the path where you are Wise and Gentle and Steadfast. Remember the oath you took long ago and stay true to your Destiny. Remember the Great Invocation and say:
From the point of light within the Mind of God
Let Light stream forth into our minds
Let LIGHT descend on Earth.
From the point of love within the Heart of God
Let Love stream forth into our hearts
May LOVE increase on Earth.
From the center where the Will of God is known
Let purpose guide our wills
The PURPOSE which the masters know and serve.
From the center which we call Humanity
Let the Plan of Love and Light work out
And may it seal the door
where evil dwells.
Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth.
