Sunday, November 20, 2011

Uranus, Pluto and the Promethean Surge



"So, you say you want a revolution?"... John Lennon

Pluto entered Capricorn back at the beginning of '08 and will remain in that sign until it finally transitions into Aquarius in late 2024. Simultaneously, structures which have no integral purpose at their core began crumbling in 2008 and will continue to do so for at least the next twenty years, but we're witnessing it most intensely early in this decade because of the influence of Uranus in Aries. As Uranus moved from Pisces into Aries in mid 2010 and began squaring Pluto, growing popular unrest and an assertive revolutionary spirit demanding change has electrified the collective psyche in relation to these decaying structures.

Here are the forces at play:

1. Pluto reveals the buried shadow aspect of whatever it touches, bringing a laser-like atomic intensity that inevitably affects deep transformation. Pluto in Capricorn applies that energy to the fundamental underlying infrastructure, government, capital, authoritarian dictatorships etc.

2. Uranus electrifies, stimulates, and awakens with Eureka lightning bolt-like shocking revelation. Uranus in Aries demands freedom assertively, emphasizing the rights of the individual against any imposed authority. It sparks a wildfire in the mind, inspiring the catalytic birth of a new cycle.

3. Squares create tension that builds to a point of crisis, offering dynamic opportunities for growth. Capricorn is square to Aries in the zodiac.

Synthesize the above three principles and you get what we've been experiencing this past year. Witness in synchronicity with this cycle for example, the Arab Spring and subsequent popular revolutions throughout North Africa and the Middle East, the Tea (totaller) Party movement, the Occupy movement, the European economic zone teetering on the brink of insolvency, etc.

Uranus and Pluto will continue to remain connected in a tight square formation through the first half of 2015, so hold onto your hats. There will be plenty of fireworks for the next few years. Authoritarian regimes that curtail personal freedoms as well as economic institutions such as the world bank, IMF etc. that have unrealistic underlying economic models based on sustained growth rather than organic cycles and endless exploitation of resources are directly at odds with the emerging paradigm. The center will not hold for such institutions and it may not be pretty for anything or anyone identified with the old paradigm as it continues to unravel. The breath of life that has sustained these old forms has expired.

Complicating the energetic pattern of Pluto and Uranus, over the past year Saturn in Libra has also been connecting to both of them. Libra is opposite Aries and square to Capricorn, so Saturn in Libra intensifed but also stabilized the energetic dynamic between Uranus and Pluto into a T-Square. Saturn brings focus, necessary limitation and discipline to whatever it touches, also lending graveness and responsibility to the situation. Saturn says Get Real and pares it down to the bone. Saturn in Libra brings resolution of karma, creating fairness and equality, ie. the haves vs. the have-nots, an impetus toward the restoration of natural law, also focusing on relationships (Libra), honing them into essential structures that truly serve a fundamental purpose (Saturn) and are capable of sustained equilibrium.

Completing the picture, In 2011, during late June and July the Sun transited through Cancer. Every year or so, the inner inner planets do so as well, and the moon moves through Cancer for 2 1/2 days every month. Mercury was in Cancer this June, Venus in July and Mars in August and September.

Cancer is opposite Capricorn and square to both Libra and Aries. Together, Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn form the Cardinal signs. Cardinal signs are initiatory and mark the beginning of cycles, The equinoxes and solstices fall at the beginning of the cardinal signs. Every time one of these celestial bodies moved through Cancer earlier this year it set off the Uranus-Pluto-Saturn T-square and unfolded it into a Cardinal Cross, bringing the energies of those three planets into an even more stabilized cross pattern of direct manifestation.

While Saturn is stil transiting Libra until next October, it moved out of aspect to Uranus and Pluto earlier this year. Saturn in Libra was acting like the brakes in this energetic dynamic, lending some concrete objectivity and an awareness of the others perspective. Now the foot is off the brakes, the petal is to the metal and I predict that this urgent cry for change will continue to accelerate toward more assertively punctuated crisis points over the next few years.

Zooming out a bit, the current Uranus-Pluto cycle started with the Uranus Pluto conjunction in Virgo of 1965-66. Planetary cycles are similar to the lunar cycle. What we envision on the new moon becomes a crisis in action on the first quarter, fully manifest at the full moon and assimilated into consciousness at the last quarter. We are now in the first quarter phase of the Uranus-Pluto cycle that will develop into the Uranus-Pluto opposition in Virgo-Pisces of 2045 to 2048.

The Uranus-Pluto conjunction of the mid sixties coincided with the cry for civil rights, anti-war protests and the beginning of the counterculture revolution. Virgo is an earthy mutable sign, so some other pronounced themes of this configuration were disillusionment with the artificiality of modernism, and utopian ideals of a perfect world, the back to the land movement and frugal hippies.

Now that Uranus and Pluto have moved into a square formation in Cardinal signs, the impetus for iconoclastic transformation that was seeded then is coming forth even more dynamically. The dreams of those of us that grew up in the sixties took root in communes and health food coops. We then birthed children who for the first time in recent US history, have a lower expected standard of living than our own. The collective response from many of us and our children to the plutocracy's blatantly unequal distribution of wealth and resources and the resulting lack of economic opportunities and purposeful career paths within society is erupting as the revolutionary crisis of the 2010's. The 99% is cathartic and pissed off and they're not going to take it any more.

The collapse of the housing bubble and its associated collateralized debt vehicles hit people at the core of their personal emotional security. How many of us have lost our homes as a result of buying into a system that promotes greed, and excess, riding that bubble to the top? We collectively allowed a blatantly irresponsible misuse of the financial markets, creating completely artificial derivative investment scams with no intrinsic value. As Pluto in Capricorn unveils these shadows of the mechanisms of capitalist exploitation, the masses have recognized that they have given away their power and are re-asserting it individually. How willingly will the entrenched power structures relinquish it? Usually not so easily, therefore revolution, on whatever scale it takes for people to reclaim personal sovereignty.

At this stage the process is largely cathartic. It remains to be seen how much of this energy will translate into actual profound structural transformation. Once the old forms are destroyed and the smoke clears, how successfully are we able to craft new ones that embody something fundamentally different and more relevant to the emerging zeitgeist? Remember that painful decade in Iraq? What lessons will we have actually learned? The changes and transformations that do take hold now, or lack thereof, will greatly determine what our quality of life, our relationship to the planet, the oceans and each other are like when this cycle becomes fully externalized in the mid 2040s and from thereon through most of the rest of this century as this Uranus Pluto cycle runs itself out.

Enjoy the ride.