Collective energies such as
Uranus
and Neptune remind us of Humanity’s primal
connection to, and need for the Cosmos.
Indeed, to “get” Uranus and Neptune—called by Dane Rudhyar the “twin
poles between which all existential wholes oscillate, each alternatively waxing
and waning in strength.”[1]—is
to begin building our lives around the Cosmos, to consciously play with the
dynamics of the Collective (Neptune) and the Individual (Uranus), of Yin and
Yang, of Spirit and Matter.
Not surprisingly, the natural cycle
of this pair is related to life on a grand level—the “unfoldment of
civilizations,” according to Baigent, Campion and Harvey. The current
transiting cycle between these two began in February 1993 at 19+Capricorn (see outer
wheel, Biwheel #1) and is said by these authors to portend “the foundations for
the emergence of a major new model for world socio-economic development.”[2] An
in-depth interpretation is beyond the scope of this article, but a brief glance
at a biwheel of this chart and the U.S. Sibly chart (Biwheel #1 below) reinforces what we’ve been living these past 23+
years—that conservative-leaning economic globalization has been the new “model”
unfolding:
Biwheel #1: (inner wheel) U.S.
Sibly chart, July 4, 1776, 5:10 p.m. LMT., Philadelphia, PA; (outer
wheel) Uranus-Neptune cycle, February 2, 1993, 12:46:43 p.m. ST,
Washington, DC.
1993 Jupiter conjuncts (within
8’) the USA Saturn, exalted in the 10th, expanding the reach
of US influence and power by downplaying regulation and sound economic
structures (Saturn) for the sake of growth (Jupiter).
1993 Sun (Aquarius) inconjoins Sibly
Sun (Cancer), linking the 3rd house of the media—importantly
social media—with the Sibly 8th
house (our propensity to go outside of our own boundaries for resources).
Interchart T-Square: 1993 North
Node (Sagittarius) opposes Sibly Mars; this axis squares Sibly Neptune at the
Sibly MC. This stressful mutable configuration indicates a “date with
destiny” that continues to challenge the illusions (Neptune) we have about
ourselves. If Election 2016 taught us anything, it’s that there’s deep
nostalgia afloat for the so-called “American Dream” (Neptune).
Instead of a return to the “Dream,”
however, since 1993 we’ve seen a series of military adventures (Mars)
that have done little to support the American gut feeling that we are somehow “exceptional”—that
we’re the ideological “shining City upon a Hill,” for better or worse—(1993
Jupiter
was also square 1993 Neptune).
This void evokes an emotional
longing that can easily be leveraged by political agendas—we saw it in 2008,
with Barack Obama’s “Yes We Can” theme (Election Jupiter conjunct 1993 Uranus-Neptune),
and in Election 2016, with Pluto conjunct 1993 Uranus-Neptune.
Obama’s “audacity of hope” (Jupiter) has morphed into a darker
focus on power-over (Pluto). If we can’t “Make America
Great Again” by being diplomatic, generous and conciliatory, we’ll try “winning by any means.”
Clearly, the 1993 Node-Sibly Mars-Neptune t-square
also foreshadowed the rise of the “Post-Truth” world we’ve been hearing
so much about since at least 2005, the year Stephen
Colbert coined the term “truthiness”—“The
quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than the
facts.” The will to alter or distort the facts on the ground to achieve an aim
makes perfect sense with this mutable Mars-Neptune aspect.
Importantly, this t-square merely previewed the
distortions to come as Uranus and Neptune moved into mutual reception
(inhabiting each others’ signs of rulership) in 2003. This happened with Uranus’s ingress into Pisces
in March, 2003—just in time for the deceptions that led us into the Iraq War.
This
Pisces
ingress chart is very interesting: among other historical issues, it helps us
put the current election into a broader context as well.
Chart #1: Uranus MR Neptune 2003 (Uranus Pisces ingress), March
10, 2003, 4:15:52 p.m. ST, Washington, D.C. Tropical Equal Houses, True Node.
Neptune
rules: Leo ASC disposed by Sun in Pisces and the T-square it forms with Moon-Saturn
(Gemini) opposite Pluto (Sagittarius). Neptune is certainly the “King-maker” here—it accounts for the world’s
infatuation with Britain’s growing royal family, but also (more troublingly),
the rise and fall of strong-man dictators and terrorism since this time (see
this link for a
sobering list that fits this time period). Time will tell, but it’s perhaps a
chilling note that this ASC is closely conjoined by Trump’s
powerful Mars (chart not shown).
Jupiter
(Leo) opposes Neptune-Venus (Aquarius); Uranus in Pisces disposes Neptune;
Jupiter disposes Pluto in Sagittarius. Unfortunately, this aspect does nothing to dial back the “strong-man”
agenda pushed by this chart, which is even further empowered by disposing
planet Uranus in the 7th house of enemies. The period from
2003 to the present has been marked by repeated military involvement in the
Middle East. This period coincided with the radical (Aquarius) privatizing of
the U.S. military, as well, meaning billions upon billions of dollars (Venus)
have found their way into corporate hands in the process, making war an even
more blatant “bottom line” affair. Jupiter promotes territorial
expansion, and opposite Neptune, ideological purposes enable
that quest.
Curiously,
Obama put the brakes on military interventions with his controversial refusal
to put “boots on the ground” in Syria, but Trump how shown signs of reversing
that position, along with the Iran nuclear pact. Already, Putin is putting out
signals that he will be asking the Trump administration for “help
bombing Syria.” Suffice to say here, some prominent foreign
policy experts see any Trump moves to use ISIS as an excuse for cooperating
with Russia in Syria as being very dangerous. We’ll certainly be seeing more
about this after January, if not before.
Throughout
this post-2003 period, Russia, led by strongman Vladimir Putin (natal Libra Saturn-Neptune
conjunction, sextile Leo Pluto and square Cancer
Uranus—see my October 2, 2015 post here)
has been patiently reinstating itself as a military superpower by acquiring
territories (i.e., Crimea) and threatening to do the same in the Baltic
nations. In fact, Putin’s rise to power closely correlates with the entire 1993
Uranus-Neptune
cycle to this point—see the above-referenced article
for more detail.
As
for Putin’s tactics, disinformation and Internet hacking (both highly Neptunian—well-suited
to a former head of the KGB) often open the doors, but heavy-handed military
intervention seems to follow close behind. It’s hard to say what Russia’s
relationship is with Wikileaks, but both
entities specialize in Neptunian techniques, and they often appear to work in
tandem. “Truthiness” has been an international affair.
It’s official: this is a Post-Truth era
So
Colbert’s “truthiness” has now taken hold as “Post-Truth”,
the Oxford Dictionaries 2016 Word of
the Year and an apt description of our entire post-1993 era. Oxford
based its decision on the almost viral use of this term during the UK Brexit
referendum and the U.S. Election 2016, but as we’ve seen, a “post-truth”
reality been sneaking up on us for years already. Post-Truth is defined by Oxford as:
“relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective
facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion
and personal belief.”
The Washington
Post clarifies, with a bit of sarcasm (which seems pretty fitting):
“In this case, the ‘post-‘ prefix doesn't mean ‘after’ so
much as it implies an atmosphere in which a notion is irrelevant —
but then again, who says you have to take our word for it anymore?
Throughout a grueling
presidential campaign in which accusations of lies and alternate realities
flowed freely, in every direction, hundreds of fact checks were published about
statements from both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Dozens of media outlets
found that Trump's relationship with the truth was, well, complicated.
“We
concede all politicians lie,” conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin wrote in September.
“Nevertheless, Donald Trump is in a class by himself.”
If Election 2016 was a “Post-Truth”
phenomenon, it is in large part due to the rise of social media since the Uranus-Neptune
mutual reception took hold. Facebook was
an early manifestation (founded in 2004); fast-forward to 2016 and its CEO Mark
Zuckerberg has
had to admit that his creation influenced the election with an epidemic of
unrestrained “fake news.” Trump benefited greatly from the fakery, and he ran the first campaign to use social
media outlet Twitter (founded in 2006)
to similar disturbing effect. According to NPR,
he’s not about to give it up:
An unprecedented feature of Donald Trump's successful
campaign for president was his personal use of Twitter and it has continued as
Trump meets with advisers and potential members of his cabinet. If this
continues into Trump's presidency, the method will be new, but the approach
will be in line with a long tradition of presidents going around the so-called
filter of the press.
Of course, the “filter” the
mainstream press applies to news events involves fact checking—the Saturnian
mandate of this First Amendment-based institution, an important player in any
democracy’s “checks and balances” on government power. When used
honestly, social media can play an important role in that balance of power, without
distorting the facts—it certainly enables citizens to organize around a cause,
wherever they are.
However, when social media is
allowed to become a vehicle for lies, fear-mongering and hateful divisiveness, the
purveyors cross lines that produce real damage. The job of fact-checkers was
exceedingly difficult—and important—throughout the election, and remains so. No,
Trump,
you can’t take credit for saving Ford Motor Co. jobs in Kentucky when they were
never actually threatened. Hopefully, when CEO Bill Ford Jr. called the
president-elect again to say as much, he mentioned the reality that Barack Obama’s 2009 intervention actually did save jobs (thousands of them).
There’s been no statement
acknowledging the mistake from Trump, but now, in his latest Tweetstorm, he
wants the cast of Hamilton to
apologize for exercising their First Amendment rights with VP-elect Mike Pence.
How many far-more-destructive pronouncements on Twitter has Trump apologized for?
Conflicts of interest
In another “Post-Truth”
manifestation, Trump quickly reversed campaign promises that there would be no conflicts of interest between his
businesses and the presidency; no need to rehash the story here, but let’s just
say that Japan’s prime minister Shinzo
Abe might as well have been meeting with Trump, Inc. when he met with
Trump, daughter Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner.
Saturn has been square a
powerful Pisces Neptune pretty much throughout the election; with Saturn
a bit debilitated in Sagittarius, it’s no wonder that the
erosion of borders (including the border between truth and fiction) has been a
constant concern. Neptune washes away structured, rules- and data-based logic (Saturn)
with emotion, ideological (often religion-based) sentiment and sensory
perception. If a conflict of interest “feels
right,” it must “be right?”
Colbert
captured this distinction beautifully in 2005 when he framed “truthiness” as a
battle between brain-based “facts” and gut-based “truth,” saying ”…anyone can
read the news to you; I promise to feel the news at you.”
When contradictions arise between
fact-based reporting and those who make it up as they go along, Neptune
has a long list of tactics for batting them away: denial, dismissal, doublespeak,
euphemisms, distortion, ambiguity, conspiracy thinking, and the very twisted
phenomenon of gaslighting.
Needless to say, Pluto contributes to the last two tactics, which can be psychologically
very abusive, unhinging their victims from a confident sense of self and their
connection to the world.
Saying one thing and doing another—hypocrisy—fits
here as well, as do many other passive aggressive techniques (Mars-Neptune).
Sorry, Potter…
While the hope of “dreaming” our
desires into reality has an important place in human psychology (the positive
side of Neptune), unless accompanied by the required effort (Saturn),
imagining something does not make it physically so. Harry Potter may be a
whiz with his magic wand, but we Muggles are more earthbound. It’s true that
the Saturn-Neptune
cycle gives us opportunities to “manifest the dream,” but the manifestation
part of it takes Saturnian effort on someone’s
part.
Children celebrating Christmas wake
up to find gifts have “magically appeared” under the holiday tree, but parents
(Saturn)
know that there was nothing magical about it.
Another Neptunian pitfall takes
over when we consider lies and illusions simply the flip-side of truths in some
alternate reality (or website), or we begin accepting that objective and
subjective realities are somehow reversible. Lying about another person out of self-interested
mean-spiritedness is slander; that
and defaming a person’s reputation for one’s own personal gain fall under our libel laws: it sure seems that Neptune
has undermined our Saturnian laws in this regard.
Trump, in fact, claimed during the
campaign that he would like to see stronger libel laws applied to the press.
Only, he’s gone to the “flip-side:” his ire is always raised when the press questions his version of reality and
insists upon fact-checking! Access to the facts, fact-checking and
challenging the Trump administration to answer questions completely and factually
will be serious ongoing issues. Neptune will erode our First
Amendment if we don't stay focused and attentive. Expect distractions!
The so-called epidemic of “Fake
News” this past election—which Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg
finally seems to be taking seriously, now that the election is over—violated
all this and more by twisting our perceptions and undermining our ability to
sort fact from fiction. This violates
the intent of the First Amendment, as well, which doesn’t (and shouldn’t)
protect slander and libel.
These deliberate distortions are
the pathological tools that eventually destroy organisms of all types, even
societies: just as the inability to differentiate between helpful and
threatening bacteria disables biological immune systems, a similar threat to
incoming information weakens a society; in both cases, defensive systems
breakdown. These are all Neptunian processes, empowered
greatly by the ongoing Uranus-Neptune cycle.
Since the current Saturn-Neptune
square first formed in November 2015, the Neptunian Internet has steadily
undermined mainstream media’s efforts at journalistic integrity (Saturn),
with millions of people now claiming they get their news from social media. As a highly useful technology, the Internet
is ruled by Uranus, but it’s proven to be quite susceptible to Neptune’s
viral momentum and at times, almost “lynch mob” mentality.
What passes for news is another
story, however, but all is not lost: despite Neptune’s tendency to blur
and erode the boundaries between them, there are bright lines between truth and fiction that social planet Saturn
goes to great pains to protect.
This protection is a matter of
survival for societies—especially democratic ones in which the people hold
their leaders to a constitutional standard. Earthy Saturn is far more
focused on the wellbeing of societies than other-worldly Neptune is. Neptune
is the deluge/epidemic/invasive species that swallows and dissolves everything
in its path, if there are no Saturnian structures and limits to contain
it.
As co-ruler of Aquarius, Saturn sees
eye-to-eye with Uranus in many areas, so Saturn’s role in navigating the
current Uranus-Neptune cycle—especially in reining in the most damaging
manifestations of that duo’s mutual reception—is key.
The threat of dissolution could be real
We’re seeing very troubling
instances of an out-of-balance Neptune today: a political
administration that denies the reality of climate change (despite
copious evidence) and dismisses it as a “Chinese conspiracy” can mean literal death and destruction. Dissolving
our connection to scientific fact is like succumbing to a collective dementia, the invasive undermining of a
society’s “neural networks.” At stake are the society’s ability to reason and
to distinguish between internal (wishful, escapist or simply self-interested
thinking), and external reality (measured by scientists from hundreds of fields).
Once this undermining process takes
hold, it feeds upon itself (the same dynamic that also gives Neptune rulership over
epidemics) and results could be devastating.
Cosmic dance partners
We’ve seen how the 2003-10 Uranus-Neptune
mutual reception complicated and intensified Neptune’s tendency toward
mind-bending irrationality, but what do we make of Pisces and
Aquarius (naturally semi-sextile, a tense aspect, akin to the
inconjunct) providing the “twin poles” of that Individual/Collective duality
represented in all this? As we’ve seen
above, such frustrating energies are at the heart of this cycle of history for
the U.S. (if not the globe), and they will undoubtedly continue to fuel “interesting”
times ahead.
When the sparks fly between the
Great Awakener (Uranus) and the Great Unifier, (Neptune), what Rudhyar calls
“We consciousness” is born. If Aquarius co-ruler Saturn and Pisces
co-ruler Jupiter (the social planets) are channeled productively in a
given situation, the interplay between the Individual and Collective levels can
ultimately benefit societies. Making sure that happens is another, challenging
story.
In their dynamic “dance,” Uranus
and Neptune showcase both their glowing, hopeful qualities, and
their darker potentials as well; through history, they have inspired periods of
soaring artistic expression such as the Renaissance in Europe, and the most pernicious wars and
authoritarian regimes (many examples). Together, they traffic in sudden, broad
civilization-level change that seems to come out of nowhere until, with the
benefit of hindsight, we see that the
signs of that change were there for decades.
That quiet, elusive change in
societies and civilizations is similar to a fetus developing in the Neptunian
waters of the womb, where it gestates unseen (before the onset of ultrasound)
for months on end. Collective entities experience repeated periods of
development that go largely unnoticed until Uranus shakes things up
with some major change.
Neptune’s role in such
change is always to quietly prepare the ground over a long period of time,
level the structures that might successfully resist that change, render key
differences that separate us (or that we feel identify us) irrelevant, and relieve us of our illusions—of grandeur,
entitlement, “exceptionalism,” and of immortality. Entities such as civilizations
and societies evolve along the same natural life cycles we individuals do, and
yes, they have the same “feet of clay.”
When civilizations erode beyond
recognition, there is inevitably a death/transformation crisis and a rebirth
around a new set of collective values and ideas that new inhabitants choose
to embody. People drive these rebirths by channeling the energies of social planets Jupiter
and Saturn into rebuilding social institutions and guiding
principles. The outer planets (Uranus, Neptune and
Pluto) provide the developmental matrix,
but the social planets drive what kind of society will evolve within that
matrix. Decisions of this magnitude are being made in our name as we speak--as they say, we need to "stay woke" and be prepared to respond.
Final thoughts
So, we’ve seen that dramatic change
can sneak up on us: Neptune has a way of smothering Uranus’s drive for radical change, but when the ground is ready, bam! The nature of the radical
change we’ve seen this year, however, also reflects how we've deployed the energies of Jupiter and Saturn since 1993. We're still the very early days of Uranus-Neptune’s 172-year
cycle, so it's a good time to remember that what we put into this cosmic system is what we get out!
Jupiter and
Saturn enter Capricorn in the next couple years, joining
transiting Pluto (Capricorn) on its final return into its Sibly position
in 2022. Transiting Neptune (Pisces) will oppose Sibly Neptune (Virgo) at
that same time and will be within orb for about a year after. These will be
consequential times for American society on many levels (see Oct.
10th, 13th
and 16th
posts here for more), and the choices we make between now and then will tell
the story. Stay tuned!
Raye
Robertson is a practicing astrologer, writer and former university English
instructor. A graduate of the Faculty of Astrological Studies (U.K.), Raye
focuses on mundane, collective-oriented astrology, with a particular interest
in current affairs, culture and media, the astrology of generations, and public
concerns such as education and health. Several of her articles on these topics
have been featured in The Mountain Astrologer and other publications over the
years. Raye can be contacted by comment here, or
at: robertsonraye@gmail.com.
© Raye Robertson 2016. All
rights reserved.
