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Today we will continue our overview of 2023 by turning to the most important shift for the year ahead (and for many years into the future), which is the entrance of Pluto into the sign of Aquarius. As you know, I find it quite impossible to consider one planet moving through one sign to be sufficient to understand any period in history, or certainly give us clarity for our current events. Just like in a dance performance, for instance like a ballet, where you may at times focus upon one or another dancer, and then upon a couple dancing, you really cannot appreciate the choreographer’s meaning and message without pulling back, and looking at the whole ballet, with all the dancers moving in shifting patterns of relationships and meanings with one another. (That is one reason I like to call our planetary companions’ movements around the solar system, a “Dance of the Planets”).
I think it is most important to our understanding as to “the why and the what” that we are experiencing here on Earth, is for us to examine the cycle of relationship of the three outer planets which form the long-term historical drivers of spiritual energy in our system. Their movements with one another forming what we call a synodic cycle, (from a conjunction to an opposition with one another, and then back to the next conjunction), form the integral or essential heartbeat of our spiritual journey through the stars.
Triad of Spirit, Pluto-Neptune-Uranus
What we need to remember is what each planet holds as an Avatar, and then to consider what the combination of one with another would create. I like to describe the three outer planets as forming the Triad of Spirit, and that by Pluto we strive towards Self-Mastery from a “Centered Will”; by Neptune we are supported to hold reality and one another in “Unconditional Love”; and by Uranus we are helped to become a unique Spark of the Divine by moving into ever “Freer Minds”. On the Universal level, Pluto as the Avatar of Divine Will creates and forms the Spaces or Containers for any being or group of beings, and Neptune as the Avatar of Unconditional Love holds the experience and root energy-form of each monad as part of the One Life of the Spirit, as part of the One host or Community of Light and Love, and Uranus as the Avatar of Freer Mind shapes the awareness of any being or group towards every greater Individuality, to the realization that each and every instance of the One is special and unique.
Pluto
For our purposes today, let us consider the roles of Pluto and Neptune as they work together. Pluto is the Shaper of Forms; Neptune the Energy-Substance of those forms. Our Universe which is the story of the One, is formed and powered by what we know as Chemistry (physically) or Alchemy (spiritually), and this Fountain Source or Primal Energy for Creation ceaselessly unfolds as the prime mover or the Self-Becoming energy that forges the innumerable combinations and transformations of the hierarchy of Energy-Forms of the One Spirit.
From the One came all the many ones, who then began to forge unions to create every greater ones, and it is these ones who fill and form the spaces of space which form and are the body of the One. To do this, the Alchemical nature of Spirit forges the containers of spirit, within which each one is bounded and held separate from other ones. Then, through the Alchemical mystery of combination, by the Spiritual Will as chemistry/alchemy, atoms combine with atoms to form larger atoms, molecules with greater molecules, organisms with larger organisms, on up to the planets, stars, and galaxies. What drives Creation is the Protean Power that is Alchemy, which is the magic and the mystery of combination. This secret to Creation, the majesties, and the mysteries that we call Birth, Death, and Rebirth, is held by the Sign of Scorpio, and also for us in our Solar System by the Planet Pluto.
Neptune
Neptune is the avatar of the Universal energy-form that holds the entirety of creation as it is. There is but One Life, there is but One Spirit, and there is but One Mind, and it holds the whole of Creation as ONE, (the many ones held as One). This Universal and Omnipresent Energy-form is the Love of the One which we know as Unconditional or Universal Divine Love. Through this Energy-Form, all the Spaces of Space are filled, as the Universe is a Pleroma, a fullness not an emptiness, so that ultimately the boundaries between the hierarchies and ranges of all energy-forms are transcended and held together as one, and it is this experience which is the true seed for your experience of compassion and empathy between one another and really between all life-forms, and truly for the whole of Creation.
So, we could say that Neptune’s message is almost the “opposite” or counterpoint to that of Pluto as the Lord of Will and Boundaries. Or perhaps it is better to say that this reminds us of the paradoxical nature of a true spiritual understanding of and living a life guided by spirituality. While it is certain that we must be respectfully “separate from one another”, we must at the same time see through all our various separations, boundaries, and borders between one another and know that they are necessary, but they are also at the root an Illusion, for everything and everyone is connected, interpenetrated by, and shaped by all others. There is but One Spirit, and Neptune is the Avatar of exactly this, the Holy Spirit. We must therefore also live with this wisdom and act towards one another by holding to this complementary spiritual truth, that we are all in essence one with one another. A great and Ancient Teaching that should guide is that “We are all related”, so that if we bring harm to anyone at all, we will cause equal harm to our own true self too.
What we need to do, at least for our purposes today, is to not only consider what this movement of Pluto into Aquarius means, but to also consider what stage or cycle moment Pluto is going through in its most significant cycle of relationship, which is with Neptune. As I have noted before, their roughly 490-year cycle is quite interesting, as Pluto will go around the Solar System in about 248 years and Neptune in about 165 years, meaning that from one of their conjunctions to the next, Pluto will go around the Zodiac twice and Neptune three times.
Neptune/Pluto Conjunctions as a Series
As they dance with one another, we have found that their series of conjunctions, which are like New Moons where a new spiritual seed is planted, is that these seedings/plantings will move forward through the zodiac by about 6 degrees each time they meet up roughly every 500 years. For the last two conjunctions, they have met in Gemini, both in 1398 and for our current cycle in 1891, and they will do so again in 2384, and twice more after that. Prior to this, Pluto and Neptune aligned with one another in the sign of Taurus. That shift to Taurus conjunctions started in 1071 BCE, which was a very significant shift in human history, as is our current series of Gemini seedings that began in 1398. What this also means more broadly is that every 2500 years we humans experience a series of seedings of Neptune and Pluto in one Sign before moving onto the next, forming a complete cycle in about 30,000 years!
Taurus Series of Conjunctions
The series of conjunctions from 1071 BCE to 1398 CE were focused through the meaning and message of Taurus, which concerns the nature of our human experience of Value, of what is worthy, of what is beautiful, of what makes for and what creates value for us. Great civilizations were formed during this period, ranging from Persia, to Babylon, to Greece and Rome, and the Han in China, and the Mayan and Olmec in the Western hemisphere.
Gemini Series of Conjunctions
The series in Gemini that began in 1398, and that was reinitialized for us in 1891, holds as a focus what has been a spiritual quickening for humans, transforming our minds and our intellect, powerfully shaping our intelligence and means of networking and communications.
We can see that what began at the first Gemini phase of 1398 within 500 years led to a worldwide spread of cultures, communications and interconnectivity that spanned (for the first time as far as we know) all around the Earth by the late 1800’s. The second impulse of 1891 has unfolded until the present day with a veritable explosion of science, technology, and communications that in no small degree has shaped how we humans think and relate to one another. This transformation has changed and continues to change our very understanding of what it means to be human, and it has most certainly transformed and disrupted the experiences of most other life-forms on the Earth.
Sextile Phase for Neptune/Pluto
What we also need to understand is that as Neptune and Pluto continue on their 490-year cycle, they will come to significant moments in their cycle of relationship, which are formed by their angular separations from one another, what we Astrologers call aspects. Another way to understand where we are now, and how what happened in the past may inform our understanding as to what is before us now, is that for quite some time now, beginning in the 1950’s, and continuing off and on through our very own period now, is that Neptune and Pluto have been forming a 60-degree separation or Sextile aspect. That aspect is a time of concretization and consolidation, of materializing or quickening of whatever began at the conjunction, which in our period was 1891.
Let us compare our moment now to what was happening during the previous Sextile for the 1398 conjunction. Just like in our period, and this is due to the unusual nature of the orbit of Pluto, that it is very elliptical and goes through some signs more quickly or slowly than others, (three times longer in Taurus than in the opposite Sign of Scorpio, 36 years versus 12 years), there was a rather long waxing Sextile phase during this earlier period too.
Sextile from 1461 to 1540
This extended sextile for this Neptune/Pluto cycle came in two phases, from 1461 to 1480, where Pluto was in Leo and Neptune in Libra and later when they were in Sagittarius and Libra. And then another phase from 1536 to 1540 with Neptune in Aries and Pluto in Aquarius. So, all in all there was a Sextile aspect for about 80 years. This was what has been termed in Europe as the period of the High Renaissance leading to, (as we would expect of Pluto as the holder of the Power of Alchemy), the Death and Rebirth of the European order which culminated in the Reformation. During this period, just like our own, there was a veritable rush of ideas, a quickening of creativity and intellect, and social and economic change.
The Breaking of the European Catholic Order between the Sacred Realms and the Secular Order led to many wars on that continent and also to conquests and colonization around the world. The most consequential and destructive for our part of the world was the Spanish destruction of the Aztec, and the Mayan and Incan civilizations from the 1520s-30s. We can see how this sextile brought relentless change and development in technology, ideas, and beliefs, but also very great suffering for millions of souls as well.
Sextile from 1950 to 2032
We have been experiencing this same or similar influence in our modern era after the 1891 Conjunction of Neptune with Pluto. For us, the quickening/manifesting stage of the Sextile has been in effect from 1950 to 1956, with Neptune in Libra and Pluto in Leo, just as in the previous cycle, and then again from 1976 to 1986, as before with Neptune in Sagittarius and Pluto in Libra, and then Neptune in Capricorn and Pluto in Scorpio. And we will experience it exactly one more time from 2026 to 2032, and again like in the 1500’s with Neptune in Aries and Pluto in Aquarius (which Pluto will begin to enter this year). That means we will have had this very consequential alignment of Neptune and Pluto for over 82 years, just like in the 14 and 1500’s.
I have for many years been stating that what we have been experiencing with Pluto in Capricorn from 2008 to 2023 makes our period like that of the 1500’s, in that it represents the “end of an age”, and that in some form we are having our own experience that is much like our ancestors, which was of the old order framed by the Pope and the King, between realms Sectarian and Secular, of governments and economies and cultures, of a type of human and what it means to be human, transforming into what we understand now as our modern-age of nation states, with a proliferation of technology and intensification of networking and communications, and truly making us just as it did them into a different kind of human.
But for us today, what our ancestors forged as an Institutional Order, and Economy, and Government and a Way of Life in order to meet their challenges and secure their needs, the very solutions that they created and invented to solve their problems and fulfil their dreams, those very solutions have ended up in many ways being the source of the very challenges we face today. Just as the passage of Pluto through Capricorn was to be a time for the Death of many Institutions of the world, it has also been, in fact it must be, the beginning of the birth of new means of meeting our needs, of new creations, but also for preserving and supporting a rich and diverse hierarchy of earth ecosystems; we need a new Order and/or rebirth in our Institutions and our way of life, of how we live with our world in order to preserve and protect all life on this Earth. Many of us look around and see a world in peril, of life leaving the planet, of our world becoming less vibrant and diminished, and of our own lives and our dreams for the future being circumscribed and bound by apprehensions and fears.
The Second Age of Gemini
We are moving through the quickening of the second age of Gemini. In the first age and into this second age of Gemini, what many call the Industrial and Post-Industrial Ages, humans wielded their scientific knowledge and technical means to bend and shape the Earth and her life-forms to meet our needs, which resulted in a massive Growth in Material Productivity for human Goods and Services and created for a type of relative Plenty for many. But it equally set in motion fundamental changes in the balance of energy and life-forms on this planet which has brought us today to a veritable globe circling war of destruction and devastation for most other life-forms on this planet. Here in this Second Age of Gemini, we are moved into a time that will require maximum adaptability to the global changes that our previous way of life has forged, and that challenge certainly seems to be growing exponentially, and it seems to be overwhelming for many of us.
The approaches and solutions of the first wave of the Gemini conjunctions of Pluto and Neptune led to what became the first truly global or Modern World. This second Gemini seeding wave beginning in 1898 is now moving towards the last critical series of Neptune/Pluto sextiles. Beginning this year with the start of Pluto’s journey through Aquarius and becoming ever more powerful as Neptune moves into Aries in 2026 and into the 2030’s, we will meet the heart of what will forge our futures, our destiny and legacy to those who will follow us.
Pluto in Capricorn versus Pluto in Aquarius
The passage of Pluto through Capricorn heralded the end of an Institutional Age. What is the message of Pluto in Aquarius, what does it offer and what are we entering into now from 2024 to 2044? For Mundane or Worldly Astrology, Aquarius rules “Fellowship” or “Community”, the nature and substance of what are known as our so-called voluntary associations with one another, what you and I would experience as the world beyond our families, that larger human social experience that we know as Friendship.
As you know, I like to say we are made of one another, and that all with whom we journey have in some way become part of us and we have become part of them. We share our dreams and doubts, our hopes, and our fears, and we gather together to help one another, to be and become for one another our dreams come true.
Rebirth of Dreams
Aquarius is our Dream; of the world we wish to preserve and the world we hope to create. Pluto moving through Aquarius will herald the breaking down of our old dreams for our futures and the birth and remaking of a New World Dream. As much as Pluto in Capricorn was the breaking down of the Institutional Order that was created to preserve and support our dreams, Pluto in Aquarius will bring us to the necessity to change the very content or Substance of our Dreams themselves.
The dream that drove the first Age of Gemini was that through our ingenuity and craftiness, through our science and technology, we would bend and form the rest of this Earth to meet our ever-expanding need for things, for the basics of food, clothing, shelter, and for an ever-increasing range of desires. But unfortunately, this ever-increasing growth of wants and desires was met without consideration for the effects and consequences that our means of securing those wants created. We were very smart, we were very crafty, but we certainly lacked Wisdom and Humility. But forces greater than ours are reminding us that we are not the masters of the Earth.
Now we must consider what should be at the heart of our dreams for this Age. Is it to be more of more; are we so enamored of having more, of consuming more, that we are held captive by this value of quantity only, of this material measure of the good life, so that to have more of more is what it means to be human. Or will we dream of a different purpose and meaning for our lives?
I do not think we will, ultimately, have a choice. We will have to humbly and wisely and gracefully accept our need to turn are dreams from the Illusionary Right to do what we wish with the Earth and forge a Way of Life built upon our Responsibilities to one another and to all life-forms with whom we share this world. We must center our dreams upon healing, preserving, and protecting all the life and lives on this planet, on our home, on our mother, on this beautiful Earth with whom we travel through the stars.
