Neptune in the USA Chart, the transit of Neptune and the shaping of Politics and Party Evolution in the USA
(If you wish to listen to the show instead, here is the link on BlogTalk or Apple Podcasts)
In my fifth show of 2024, I want to return to another theme I have addressed over the past many years which is the importance of Neptune in the chart of the USA, and how Neptune’s transits to the USA chart distinguish, define, and connect the shifts in politics and political parties in the USA.
Of course, the real development and evolution of political parties is forged by humans, by our shifting lifeways, cultures, and economic lives. But just as we are guided and shaped individually by the “dance of the planets”, these “timekeepers” of our solar system can provide insights as to the nature and timing of the shifts in our political organizations too.
Firstly, we must remember that Neptune’s influence is very important in the USA chart. The placement of Neptune in the chart of the USA is quite prominent as it is at the very highest point, at the top of the chart, in the 9th house of Understanding. Neptune in a Mundane chart is the vessel for the dreams of a nation. A principal founding myth of the United States is the sense of being a quintessentially exceptional nation, a “first of its kind”. The national seal of the USA declares that it is a Novus ordo seclorum (a "New order of the ages").
Unlike previous nation states, the USA came into being as a covenant nation, with the goal of uniting and holding together disparate peoples from around the world, and that which would bind us together was not our race, or culture or creed; no, we would pledge our allegiance to an idea, to an Ideal. That for the first time we would be a nation where the Law itself would be King, and we would create a social order for those who are seeking to live a freer life, and that we would be a shining example of Freedom and Tolerance, in a community of Fellowship. The USA would be a new society, formed by a belief in one another’s self-fulfillment as being made possible through one another, and by our self-government, wherein we would care for one another; and we affirmed in our Declaration of Independence, that “We Mutually Pledge To Each Other Our Lives, Our Fortunes, And Our Sacred Honor”, and that we would strive to create a space of freedom and justice for one and for all.
The record of the political organizations or parties in the USA has been defined by historians into (so far) seven distinct periods: The First Party System from 1792 to 1824, Second Party System from 1828 to 1854, Third Party System from 1854 to 1896, Fourth Party System from 1896 to 1932, Fifth Party System from 1932 to 1980, Sixth Party System from 1980 to 2016, and the Seventh Party System from 2016 to (who knows).
A political order will be informed and shaped by the dreams of a people, and these dreams and their evolution can be seen to be held and shaped by Neptune’s orbit. What we will find is that as Neptune circles around the solar system every 160 years or so, it will make significant alignments with elements in the USA chart that correspond to these shifts in the political culture and shape the political party structure of the USA. The shifts in political alignments can be understood and timed by the divisions of this cycle, whether a complete cycle of about 160 years, or of about 80 years or about 40 years. In an earlier show in 2021, I also noted how the two preeminent parties that emerged in the USA, the Democrat and Republican Parties, have significant Neptune placements too, and we saw that their evolution is deeply affected by Neptune’s orbit as well.
An interesting side note to all of this is the fact that the founders believed (and desired) that the USA would not have party or partisan politics at all. But as we can certainly see in our history, and most certainly in our present-day divisions, oh my goodness, were they mistaken!!
The early party developments in the USA were shaped by a divide and disagreements over the balance between a stronger or weaker Federal government, framed as Federalism versus State Rights, and this theme has certainly been differentially experienced in some form as a constant dynamic throughout the party systems in the USA. Let’s begin after the initial party system and with the second party order of the 1820’s.
1820’s to 1850’s, Second Party System
By the 1820’s and lasting into the 1850’s the primary party division was in the USA was between the early Democratic party and the Whig Party. The Democrats stood for individual rights and state rights and the primacy of the Presidency (executive branch) over the other branches of government and were against the banking industry and specifically opposed to a central bank US bank, high tariffs, and also opposed to programs that favored industry at the expense of farmers. They were the party of the so-called common man.
The Whigs stood for the supremacy of Congress over the Executive branch, and they supported policies of modernization and economic protectionism for developing American industries by tariffs and other measures. They were the party of industry, business and banking.
Over time the growing disparity of an industrializing North centered upon “Free Labor”, and the slave-holding economy controlled by large plantation owners in the South became more and more difficult to reconcile. The USA was being shaped by two models of creating value, two visions of America and those divisions became more and more of an existential threat to the national union itself. In fact, the Whig party’s attempt to deal with the issue led to its demise and the rise of a new party, the Republican Party in 1854.
1854 to 1890, Third Party System
For our purposes, what we need to examine is what was happening at this time with Neptune in the USA chart? You may remember my numerous observations for the past many years of Neptune being in the same sign now, from 2011 to 2026, as it was from 1848 to 1862, each period being a time when Neptune was, and is now once again in its own sign of Pisces.
In fact, it was exactly from 1851 to 1854 that Neptune squared the USA Uranus, and then squared the USA ascendant. And when did that happen in our own time? The exact same Neptune square to Uranus and the ascendant occurred from 2015 to 2018, and just as the early period brought a new Party System, our period is the beginning of what some historians are now calling the Seventh Party System.
Remember, it is one of the purposes of Neptune to dissolve the boundaries between reality forms so that they may combine, transform and become something else. With the ascendant ruling Identity or Presence, and Uranus ruling Individuality and Freedom, the USA was experiencing a most significant shift in its very presence or identity, and of its experience of freedom in the 1850’s. The dream of Freedom, that not some but all men should be free, and that any human could not be someone else’s property, well that was the point of the Civil War exactly.
Now in our time today, something like that, holding themes of that earlier period, has been happening once more between 2015 and 2018. And just as in the 1800’s, the vessels of holding the dreams and aspirations of the people of the USA, the political instruments which wield the power to affirm or deny those dreams were changed then as they are changing now. It is like an echo of what came before, but the underlying truth is there for all to see.
Again, the question the USA faces is this: are all humans equal, deserving of equal appreciation and opportunity, or will we break apart into our blood and soil tribes, and see some humans as less than us? Let us come back to our transition later and consider the other shifts of the political party system first.
So, beginning in 1854 and lasting until the next shift in the 1890’s, the Republican party became and remained the dominant party of the USA, and was, as it named itself, “the Grand Old Party”. It was formed as a coalition of businessmen, shop owners, skilled craftsmen, clerks, and professionals, coming as it did out of the Old Whig party and adding to that coalition many newly enfranchised African Americans. It was the vehicle for a restatement of the USA, the instrument for Lincoln’s restoration and renewal of the dream of America.
The Democratic Party became a minority and oppositional party. It was a mostly conservative and agrarian coalition, with southern democrats establishing a system of repression in the Jim Crow south to deny black self-determination. The Democratic party continued to be fundamentally a State’s Rights coalition but based upon the opposition to enlargement of civil rights. In addition, western farmers and conservative elements in the northern states helped to broaden the Democrats ability to at times hold the Senate or House.
But during the 1870’s and 1880’s, the nation was rapidly becoming an industrial power, and dreams and the challenges of the people were changing too. In the 1890’s this change in the character of the USA led to a shift in the political organizations and solutions to meet the dreams of the nation, and it was this evolution of the socio-political order that brought about the Fourth Party System, from 1896 to 1932.
1896 to 1932, Fourth Party System
But where was Neptune during this shift from the Third to the Fourth Party System during 1893 to 1896, and what did that signify? Neptune in this period was moving into the 7th house of the USA chart and it was making a square to itself too. Interestingly, we will find the exact same condition, but reversed, with Neptune entering the 1st house and squaring itself was in place during the shift from the Fifth to the Sixth Party system from 1976 to 1980. In both periods, with Neptune squaring itself, it was a time for people of the USA to question the nature of their dreams, because their circumstances had changed.
What was the shift in the late 1890’s? The GOP consolidated its hold over the political system, effectively maintaining preeminence almost without interruption until FDR’s election in 1932. The social and political issues were driven by the consequences of industrialization and financial accumulation leading to programs and laws to reform the political and economic systems, hence the term for this period, certainly in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s as “the progressive era”, with reforms of the labor system, a Federal Income Tax, the direct election of senators and eventually suffrage for women.
But with Neptune moving into the 7th house, which rules international relationships in a Nation’s chart, it also marked the period of the USA’s delusion that it could and should spread and share its vision of democracy by imposing it, by becoming an expansionary colonial power, and it seized the Spanish holdings in the Spanish America War, including Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, claiming to be bringing “democracy” to these other lands.
1932 to 1976, Fifth Party System
The next major shift in the Political Party System, the Fifth Party System, emerged out of the wreckage caused by the failure of unrestrained/unregulated capitalism in the 1920’s, which brought about the disaster of the Great Depression, and what emerged from this was a fundamental reset of the political order and the party system.
This would prove to be one of the major realignments of the party system, as big as the 1850’s had been, and as we will see, as consequential as our own time too. The Democratic Party became the party of so-called “big government”, based on the belief and practice that the government of the people should work to bring about change in cooperation with the private sector, forging an alliance between workers, corporations and the government in order to restore economic growth and to promote the general welfare of the people. The composition of the parties was transformed, with black voters moving into the Democratic party, and white, southern and conservative voters moving into the Republican party, especially after the push for broader civil rights in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Both parties had more liberal and more conservative members, and as a result there were periods of agreement by moderates in each party which permitted the passage of very significant laws and changes to the political and economic order during this period.
But as a reaction to the economic malaise brought on by the unfunded Vietnam War, and the turmoil and social changes that followed upon civil rights and women’s movements, the parties became more and more polarized over the vision for the future of the USA.
But again, what we need to know is what was Neptune doing to inaugurate this Firth Party System in the 1930’s, and then see what signaled its end. Neptune in the 1930’s was halfway between where it was in the 1850’s to where it would return in 2015 to 2017, it was in the sign of Virgo (not Pisces) but squaring Uranus and squaring the ascendant once again. Yes, it seems to me from these three examples, the 1850’s, the 1930’s and the present day, that the larger, more consequential shifts of the political order and of the party system seem tied to or influenced by Neptune in this alignment with the USA chart, when Neptune is either in Virgo or Pisces, and squaring the planet Uranus in the 7th house. Why might this be so?
I would argue that the principal reason could be from Neptune forming this square to Uranus. Why would that matter? Well, for one, Uranus is the ruler of the USA Moon in Aquarius, and the Moon in a nation’s chart rules “the people,” the ordinary citizens who make up what we call the common people. And with Neptune bringing its dissolving, transforming, illuminating and delusional influence to bear on the very planet of Individuality and Freedom, well it would certainly create a time when those notions and realities of what it means to be free, what it means to be an individual in the USA cultural/political order would be transformed and made into something else during each such passage of Neptune to Uranus.
But even more for the USA, the planet Uranus is in the 7th house, the house of relationships or the realm which principally rules the relationships that the USA has with the rest of the world. But the 7th house is also an indicator of the “people as a whole”, or the social consciousness of the people. With Uranus here, one of the abiding factors shaping the social consciousness for the USA is our myth and experience of individuality and freedom. So, when we have the planet of “Communality” or the simple truth that we are all made and held by our communities, and following from that is the necessity to sacrifice some of our independence and freedom to one another, well that would mean when Neptune is squaring the planet of Individuality and Independence, that this can lead to some wonderful discoveries and epiphanies about these two truths, about Individuality and Communality, of how they truly are integral to one another, and can only exist in a balanced and mutual interdependence upon one another. But we have also seen how they can become twisted or broken from one another so that Neptune’s influence may lead to misguided or delusional experiences of being submerged into a herd identity, or into the opposite extreme of the so-called “lone wolf” or exceptional individual claiming to be above the ordinary, and above the law, the very law we agreed to shape and guide our lives, and so protect the individual and the community too.
1980 to 2016, Sixth Party System
The end of the New Deal Fifth Party System order and the movement into an increasingly more acrimonious and polarized form of politics was firmly realized by 1980. Where was Neptune then? Not surprisingly, it was exactly positioned opposite to where it had been in the late 1890’s, in the USA 1st house instead of the 7th house, and once again squaring its own position in the USA chart.
What had happened in the USA that brought about this shift in the party system? Throughout the USA a large nationwide majority of rural and working-class whites became the base of the Republican Party, while the Democratic Party was increasingly made up of a coalition of black Americans, Latinos, and mostly white urban progressives. Where previously, the college-educated voters had been drawn to the Republican party, having a higher educational attainment was increasingly a defining feature of Democratic support. These shifts, taken together formed the Sixth Party System that began with Regan’s Presidency of the 1980’s.
Astrologically, with Neptune in the 1st house, the dissolving/transforming effects were to be seen in the very “Presence” of the USA, of how it would see itself and project itself into the world. The dream of America and the national myth of America, like Reagan’s theme of “Morning in America”, became the basis for a resurgence of a particular muscular and interventionist role the world. Domestically, the Republican gospel, now firmly steeped in the rise of the neo-liberal agenda, began a many decades long project to disable and dismantle the programs and institutions of the New Deal order, to attempt to return the USA to the early 1900’s, of making the business of America to be just about making more money, as in “Greed is Good”, which required the constant chipping away or removal of regulations that had forged balance growth, and had produced the tremendous rise of the general welfare of the people from the late 1930’s until the 1970’s.
But during this period the focus of the Republican party shifted, and there was ever more emphasis on cultural conservatism, with opposition to abortion, and gay marriage and transgender rights. Instead of being for free trade the party became more and more opposed to economic globalization and also to immigration from non-European countries. Disagreements over positions and policies with the Democratic party became more and more polarized, and the need to preserve or create real programs and solutions to the problems of the people were stymied and denied.
But the removal of the economic and financial safeguards put into place after the Great Depression of the 1930’s inevitably led to the conspicuous decoupling of economic reality and financial conduct, and so in 2008, the USA plunged itself, and the rest of the world, into what we really should call the Second Great Depression.
The struggle to recover from that self-made disaster shattered whatever had remained of the cooperative necessity incumbent on both parties, both Democratic and Republican, and without good faith in one another and with their voting members, the belief in the possibility of the USA government working consistently and together for the common good became more and more a fantasy. Politics became a cold war, then a hotter war, with character assassinations and gotchas, and moral cowardice wrapped in the mantle of moral conviction defining the political and even cultural order.
The loss of faith in one another, and in the institutions of the American life, the radically different beliefs about what the USA stood for certainly seemed to echo a similar time in the USA when two very different Ideals of humanity faced off before. Just as in the 1850’s, and now again in 2015 to 2017, Neptune was once again forming a square to the USA ascendant, while also squaring Uranus in the 7th house.
Back in the 1850’s, the Republican Party was the vehicle for the elimination of the institution of slavery, and that noble cause became their signature achievement. But now in the 2000 teens, we are witnessing a very different Republican Party indeed.
2016 to when, “Seventh Party System”
We are today in a more surreal condition perhaps than any other time in our history. Historians do not yet agree if there is indeed a Seventh Party System in place. Principally that is because what we have in the Republican Party is not like anything we might recognize as a party at all. As I stated earlier, the question the USA faces today is again the same as in the 1850’s, which is are all humans equal, deserving of equal appreciation and opportunity, or will we break apart as we have been doing for some time now, into tribal groupings based on creed or race or personalities, where we look not to the law but to some strong leader to defend us against whomever is “the other”, and to see some humans as less than us?
No party has ever been nor will ever be perfect, for we are all, individually and collectively, “works in progress”. But never in our history has a party turned away from the “rule of law”, threatening to use the law to favor some and persecute others.
I personally do not think we have begun a Seventh Party System, and that we are in this strange, one would say very Neptunian and transitional space where the future hangs in the balance. One party has abandoned the very substance of what it means to be a party, which is to have a platform, to have positions, and policies and plans that will meet the hopes and dreams of the American people as a whole.
Instead, there is an organization where membership means that one must bend the knee to the will of one man and his needs, to assuage his fears and persecute his so-called enemies, a non-democratic authoritarian vehicle for ending the rule of law and substituting the will and whim of their leader.
I do not believe that it is merely a simple majority, but rather a vast majority of the people of the USA do not want to live under this form of misrule. The planets cannot tell us what we are to do, nor can they force us to choose. What they can do, and what we must do, is to look at ourselves and our communities, and our government and ask ourselves, what is the dream for the USA now, and how might we be able to get there together.
The question before us now is this, will we remain a people who bow to no king or strongman but continue to preserve and live under this gift of self-government, to the rule of law that protects us from tyranny, and to live in a republic that was made by the love and sacrifice of those who came before us.
