Minerva by Abbott_Handerson_Thayer-1929
Astrological Musings — Order and Disorder – Individuality versus Communality, and our Moral Crisis
(If you wish to listen to the show instead, here is the link on BlogTalk or Apple Podcasts)
I thought it would be helpful to pull back again and to assume a “big picture” view of this moment in human history. As many of you know, I like to focus upon the long-wave or the principal drivers of our spiritual journey by understanding the placements, patterns and meanings that are formed by the three outer planets, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.
As I have noted in numerous shows and postings, our present-day circumstances carry the echoes of earlier historical periods, most notably the early to mid-1500’s and the late-1700’s. In both of those eras, a similar series of placements and alignments were happening that are very much like our own period. And both of those periods, like our own, were remarkable as to how they represented the ending of both a spiritual-cultural and political-economic ordering.
But always remember that the planets only hold the Energy-Forms that inspire, inform, and guide our journey on Earth, but the actual content of what is formed, of what happened and will happen, that reality is made by us, by the complex of energy-forms we humans weave upon this Earth, forged by the living spirit of we human actors, so what we are faced with, both our dangers and our opportunities, this was made by our ancestors and by you and me today. The challenges we face today, we made, and therein lies our true hope, for we can be the ones to make it better, we can make a better future if we try.
Triad of Spirit
The three outer planets must always be considered or held together as one. That is because they hold and form the hierarchy of energy-forms of what I call the Triad of Spirit. It is these three outer planets that hold as one the principle behind the power of Spirit, which is the “Power of Becoming” held in each monad of spirit. This is the essential nature of everything, of what is known as Swabhāva, which is that every energy-form or particle of creation is formed by “the self that is becoming”. Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are for us the avatars of the “Three as One”, which we know as the Mind, Love and Will of the One.
Uranus is the Avatar and vehicle of Mind or Individuality for us, the alchemical agent or Energy-Form that holds one of the essential root forms or qualities of spirit, which is that everything and everyone is part of the Mind of the One. This means that every single part of Creation is Alive and Conscious. From the dimmest forms of awareness to the most sublime contemplations of the hierarchies of the “shining ones”, the quality of Mind is the foundation for one essential quality of Spirit, that each particle of Spirit is formed as an Individuality, each one of us is a unique spark of the Divine.
Neptune is the Avatar and vehicle of Divine Love for us, the alchemical agent or Energy-Form which is the primal or root form of spirit which we experience as the unconditional love of the One. The whole of Creation is formed of the One, the body of the One is Creation, ranging from the most material of substances to the most sublime and ethereal of Energy-Forms, everything and everyone is formed through and by Divine Love. Through Neptune we are held together by our mutual attractions with and for one another, bringing us the gifts of love, empathy, and compassion. The essential quality of Neptune is the counterbalance to that of Individuality and Uranus, it is the equally powerful essential quality of Spirit, which is Communality, which is that each one of us is held in ever greater circles of family, community, and fellowship too, with our ultimate reality is that we are all held together as one in the One.
Pluto is the Avatar and vehicle of the Will for us, which is the Alchemical agent or Energy-Form that forges the experience for any being as “a one”, separate in their own sacred space. Each particle of Creation, and each and every being, is formed from a spark of the Divine, by its Monad, and it is by the will that it is formed as separate from any other particle or being and held in the sacred space in which it exists and over which it presides. As beings become ever more self-aware, like we in our human kingdom of life, the experience of the will leads us to our spiritual awakening, which is that we are to learn to use this gift of the spirit for ever greater self-control or self-mastery, so that the will is turned back upon oneself rather than being used to trespass, or to dominate and control or violate the space of another. Instead, we are here to join together in shared sacred spaces, our relationships, that we have created in order to love, work, and live with one another.
The Three-in-One
Our dynamic and protean lives formed by spiritual growth and evolution, held within the Space of the Will by Pluto is propelled by the interplay and dynamically shifting balance between Neptune and Uranus, with one being the drive to Oneness by Love for Communality, versus the drive to Individuality by Mind for Independence. In our human-made worlds of family, tribe, community, and nation states, the balance between the communalizing and individualizing forces within our monadic natures creates our journey through the various lifeways, cultures, and civilizations as we walk the path of spiritual awakening for humanity on this Earth.
Individual vs. Community
For us humans, this tension between the Individual and their Community has waxed and waned within any grouping, culture, and civilization as well as between them. For example, when we look at the various forms of lifestyle or life ways, like the Hunter/Gatherer, of the Farmer/Craftsperson or in our society for example of Rural/Suburban/Urban, we will see differing mixtures and balances of the relationship between how much freedom an individual may experience, and how much limitation of their freedom they do accept in order to live with others and in their communities.
It is most certainly true that we would not be human without one another. We are a social species, and without family, companionship, and community we would not be able to live at all. Some form of community is essential for all human beings, for their shared sense of belonging to something larger and more encompassing, and because that very community provides the care one needs in the earliest years of life, and over the lifespan creates the context of meanings, values and beliefs which form each individual in that community. As I like to say, we are more of a “we than an I”.
A Moral Order
To forge and maintain these communities, this dynamic and integral balance of our Individual and Communal natures leads to a constellation of meaning, a sense of what is right and good in our conduct with one another, forming our moral compass of how we should live for ourselves and for others too.
This Moral Order, and the balance of Individuality and Communality waxes and wanes within any system, and over the arc of history for any system. As the beliefs behind the order evolve, and the structures of relationships evolve with them, there are periods of more general agreement and acceptance for the group, community, or culture with this moral order.
But in times of crisis or change as we most certainly face today, these commonly accepted norms of conduct, of what is moral and right, of the balance of individuality and communality, may bend and break down as different individuals, members and groups pull apart to form their own particular sub-group or groups. It may lead to periods of great confusion and conflict, especially when a divide occurs within a group or nation, and the resolution to a restored moral order may only be secured through some great conflict, as in our very own Civil War in the 1860’s.
1500’s, 1700’s and Now
As I have noted many times before and since 2008, we are witnesses to the “end of an age” leading to the birth of a new one. We are going through the breaking down of an old Moral Order, and the necessity of building a new one. Principally I have attributed the timing of this transformation to the passage of Pluto through Capricorn as the end of the age, and then its move into Aquarius as the struggle to establish a new order, which is what we are now experiencing from 2024 until 2044. If we look at the major shifts in previous periods in history, we will see that there are significant insights for our time as well.
1500’s
Over 500 years ago, the passage of Pluto in Capricorn was from 1516 to 1532, and the subsequent struggle to create a New Order with Pluto in Aquarius was from 1532 to 1553. In Europe, historians date this period to the end of late Middle Ages and feudalism, and to the so-called rise or expansion of Western civilization. With the fall of the one Catholic order after Martin Luther’s theses, the breaking of the paradigm of a divine immutable order of the universe fueled by scientific discoveries, this led to a great disruption in the ordering of the moral, economic, cultural, and political orders in Europe. The attempt by the Catholic Kingdoms to maintain their power led to devastating wars between them and those who broke away to form Protestant realms. The old order, with its feudal system based on landed power and the one Catholic Church was giving way to the rise of absolute monarchs accompanied by a new economic order empowering a growing mercantile class. But I believe that perhaps one of the most tragic Plutonian experiences of death and rebirth in this period, was the Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Incan empires in North and South America.
1700’s
The most recent passage of Pluto in Capricorn was from 1762 to 1778, and the subsequent struggle to create a New Order with Pluto in Aquarius from 1778 to 1798. Historians characterize this period as age of Enlightenment and the age Revolutions, with the rise of the scientific method of inquiry, the rise of liberal ideology, and with it the American colonies engaging in our Revolutionary War against the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the overthrow of the Monarchy in the French Revolution. The world was turned upside down again, the old moral order questioned and thrown down and the liberal order that spread from this time became a norm for many peoples.
Though both these Plutonic periods of transformation represented the end of an age and the start of a new one, the Neptunian influence for each period was quite different. And I believe this will help us to understand which period is more like our own and what that might mean for us.
Pluto in Capricorn and Aquarius – Neptune in Virgo/Libra or Pisces/Aries
On its own, Pluto in Capricorn is the end of an age, and Pluto in Aquarius heralds the birth of a new institutional order. But when we weave into that experience the influence of Neptune, we can see how different each Pluto passage will be. Given the ratio of their orbital periods, it turns out that Neptune will be passing through either Virgo or Pisces, and then move onto Libra or Aries whenever Pluto is in Capricorn and then moves into Aquarius.
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 by the passages of Pluto in Capricorn/Aquarius can be discerned by the very different influences emanating through Neptune moving through Virgo then Libra versus Neptune moving through Pisces then Aries.
Neptune in Pisces-Aries or Virgo-Libra
What I believe we will see is that the protean transformations of the Neptune in Pisces period, gives birth to a re-dreaming of the dream, leading to a very bold restatement of a new Moral Order or Identity as the new Age emerges when Neptune goes through Aries. This is what occurred in the 1500’s and is similar to what we are experiencing today. Let’s compare the placements of Pluto and Neptune in the 1500’s to that of the 1700’s.
Pluto/Neptune in the 1500’s
In the period of the 1500’s, with Pluto in Capricorn and then Aquarius, and Neptune in Pisces and then Aries, the entire European ordering of life was turned upside down. The moral structure of the social order was defined by faith, from the Divine Right of Kings and with the ordering of belief hierarchically arranged from Pope to Priest to the people. This world was smashed by the Reformation, which 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 a 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 and then Libra 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, and then in the Libra period we move from this with a renewed sense of self into the attempt to forge a new space of relationship for our mutual benefit.
Rather than the struggles over Faith and Belief as in the 1500’s, the struggles in the 1700’s were over the Ideals about political and economic rights, it was about principles, rights, and the rule of law. I believe we might want to approach every Virgo/Libra time of a Pluto transformation as the result of, maybe the refinement and completion of what began in the previous Pisces/Aries period that came before. That is in the Pisces/Aries phase would be the primary period of radical change, as we experience the dissolving of an old order and the beginning of a completely new order, and that this leads to the refinement or adjustment and restatement of the new moral order in the Virgo/Libra phase.
Our Time
If that is so, what can we understand about our own period, and by comparing our period with the 1500’s rather than the 1700’s? What I believe that means is that we are experiencing a shift that is much more fundamental, much more radical, requiring us to make a much bigger shift in our beliefs and in our moral order. The paradigm that has more or less been the dominant ordering of meaning since the 1500’s, which overthrew and led to the fall of a more faith-based culture and morality and the rise of a system where science and reason became the new faith, that moral universe is certainly changing if not ending.
Just as our ancestors in the 1500’s faced a radical epistemological crisis, a crisis of how they knew and how they understood what is true about their world, so do we now too. As has been quite evident to most of us, and certainly since Neptune entered Pisces in 2010, our agreements about what is fact versus fiction, what is true versus false have become very difficult to discern for even the most reasonable as well as the most intuitive among us.
And when the foundations for knowing what is right or wrong, of discerning truth from falsehood fail you, when you cannot know for certain about so many things, when doubt overwhelms hope, it is then that you find yourself in a world where your moral foundations and practices are bending, failing, and falling, and you find yourself in a world where seemingly anything is possible, and nothing is true.
How can you know right from wrong, truth from fiction? Rather than the mediation of truth and fact being adjudicated by some trusted hierarchy of authorities, whether that be in the realms of Faith, Science, Culture or Politics, we find ourselves captured by our individualistic paradigm that emerged in the 1500’s. Because of this “individualistic dilemma”, which is now fueled and accelerated by the digital alchemy of our interconnectivity to immense databases of data and information, (but unfortunately for the most part not of Wisdom or Humility), we find that many people believe that they can fashion and formulate their own version of reality from a self-curated menu of data and points of view, which they have gathered from self-selected sources, and the vast majority of these so-called facts have not been rigorously tested and vetted by knowledgeable and trusted sources.
And without the means to sort facts from fictions, the truth from half-truths and 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 chaotic cacophony of truths and half-truths, of revelations and delusions, of wisdom and nonsense.
What can you do?
What can we do; what can you do?
We must begin with the heart of Creation, which is that the entirety of the Universe is the One. Truth is not to be found over here or over there; Truth is eternal and omnipresent, and it is what forms every particle of Creation, including the stars and planets and you and me. The Truth is within us as much as we are held in a veritable ocean of truth that is the cosmos itself. And it is this immutable reality that makes truth knowable.
What this means is that whether you go inwards to listen to the quiet, still voice of your higher intuitive self, or you choose to go outwardly to observe and learn from realms ranging from the most ethereal to the most substantial, you will come to truth. You may (or should) turn to those who came before you, to the seers and teachers throughout the ages, who left pearls of wisdom and truth to guide your steps, and you equally should look to those who live by this light as they preserve these gifts by their conduct and service here today.
But for yourself, as in every life, you must hone your own spiritual intuition and understanding by doing what we have done since the dawn of our awakening, you must share what you have observed and understood with others; and, most importantly, you must equally let them share what they have discovered with you. You cannot find the way by yourself because you are made of one another, and you need one another to lift the veil of misunderstanding, to hone your discernment by tempering your understanding in the crucible of sharing, contrasting, and renewing.
You must remain where you truly are, within your own spiritual temple, for it is by your Triad of Spirit that you will stay on the royal middle path of Truth.
So, by Uranus use your higher mind to free yourself from more limited perspectives so that you may perceive the individuality, complexity, and diversity in all the realms of life that form the cosmos.
By Neptune, open your heart to “the greater understanding”, as you feel what your mind cannot yet perceive, so that your love remains centered in the Unconditional love by which all things are made.
By Pluto, remain centered in your will, so that you may maintain your integrity and self-control, like the diamond body of spirit that shines in your spark of the Divine.
As I have said before, 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 firmly centered in your higher spiritual nature by your Centered Will.
I know that is a restatement of what I say all the time, but I think it deserves repeating given the time we are in right now. I know it is a very troubling time, with troubles far and wide and near at hand, and all of us are trying to find our way through this to make the right choice or a better choice, to turn away from fear and turn towards kindness and love.
You know that what we do and how we treat others matters, and we realize that those individuals who are troubled, who are perhaps bringing about harm to themselves and to others, that most of that is because of fear. People who are not in control of themselves, because they are not being guided by their higher nature, it is because of this that they cause harm.
If we can approach one another with understanding and openness, without judgment, but with understanding and compassion, we might be able to melt that fear away. We can hope to open one another's hearts, so that we can have these deep conversations and connections which may hopefully build and create the new moral order that we all are here to make happen for one another.
