It’s not unusual for your own experience to give you the notion that there is more going on than meets the eye. Indeed, it is a distinguishing human trait to feel that the intuitive and spiritual transcend the merely empirical (which only acknowledges tangible proof).
Unfortunately, just as the victors of aggression write history, those who believe that reality is only empirical tend to dominate the power structures of our material world.
But the empiricists who often rule the roost in manifestations of dominant paradigms do not always prevail. There are times when those distinguished by their humane nature may well win the day. If there is anything to astrological indications, you are living in such a time. It is, like a previous time very much similar, represented by the powerful presence of Neptune in its Pisces roost.
Taking into account the transitional years when its annual retrograde took it back and forth between signs, Neptune was last in Pisces from 1848 to 1862. That was when a group of people now often referred to as transcendentalists became influential in social discourse. Prominent among them was Henry David Thoreau.
In 1849 (the first full year of Neptune continuously in Pisces) Thoreau published a treatise that introduced the world to his advocacy of civil disobedience. It was an outrageous and revolutionary idea at the time, consigned to the impractical. Yet, in the 20th Century (long after the writings of Thoreau’s detractors were forgotten), both Mahatma Gandhi and the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr drew upon Thoreau’s work to bring empires of the eminently empirical dominant paradigm to heel — without firing a shot.
Now Neptune is back in Pisces again. More specifically, Neptune in Pisces is today symbolically confronted for the first time in a long time by emblematically empirical Saturn, precisely 90 degrees away in Sagittarius. This angular relationship between Saturn and Neptune is known by astrologers as a ‘square aspect’ which, among other things, represents tension confronting you and the world.
Saturn square Neptune can plausibly be interpreted to imply that confrontation is, in fact, taking place within you. The aspect clearly indicates that you will play a part in determining whether Thoreau’s notions — or any notion conceiving of and dedicated to human beings transcending the empirical and actually being humane — can long endure.
For Neptune (as with every planet, sign, house and aspect in astrology) has two sides. Very much like human beings, the most encouraging side of Neptune is transcendent, and the most discouraging side is utterly and irredeemably dissolute.
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So which will it be? Will our era preserve and employ the world-changing notions of Thoreau? Will the timeless and boundless poetry of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson continue to inspire?
Will the firmly grounded, yet decidedly transcendent, faith that Ralph Waldo Emerson had in our kind be sustained?
Or will profits derived from slavery and war finally determine the shape of our world? Will racism and intolerance continue to justify genocide? Will inhumanity be excused as inevitable, and refugees find no refuge?
These are among the questions manifesting with Saturn square Neptune. Such are the tensions and confrontations you cannot evade. The answers to those inquiries and the resolutions to those conflicts can only come from within each of us, individually, to determine the fate of all of us collectively.
And on this day when the United States ostensibly celebrates the deliverance of a group of European refugees up against starvation and the elements in a new land, you can answer. You can act to transcend the human condition. You can resolve to do your part to redeem all of us from the excuses and justifications which have allowed the discouragingly indifferent and malicious side of humanity to so long dominate life on Earth.
Finally, may tomorrow be about more than profit and empirical values. For transcendence is only a choice away.
Offered In Service
What a soulful offering you provide us today Len. Like the transcendentalists, you provide a spiritual view of what being human could be like if we were conscious enough to choose it. In the Sabian Symbol for yesterday’s full moon degree, HOLLY AND MISTLETOE REAWAKEN OLD MEMORIES OF CHRISTMAS, Dane Rudhyar sees this: “old memories of childhood and its naïve faith sometimes make their way into the consciousness. They are aroused by what remains of the ancestral images that once had great vitality and power (mistletoe was sacred to the Druids).”
As Saturn and Neptune make their squares (their cycle began in 1989) opportunities to see these views of possible transcendence of human nature will present themselves. Its Sabian Symbol makes this Gemini Full Moon seem one of those opportunities. A day or so ago, PBS (Public Broadcasting System) aired on TV a program called Pilgrims: American Experience. Watching this, one could not help but think of the Syrian (and other countries) refugees trying to escape the devastating situations of their origin, and realize that our own (American) ancestors were no different.
PBS has also just aired a series of programs about the British in India at the time of Gandhi, not at all like the earlier romanticized versions where the British atrocities are barely mentioned. Are these not examples of Neptune (film) in Pisces square Saturn (authority) in Sagittarius? More and more we human beings are getting glimpses of how fear and greed can suffocate the soul’s humane nature. Little by little we make inroads into restoring that “vitality and power” buried in our “collective unconscious”, or as Rudhyar says, that “longing for the pre-intellectual state of consciousness” that this full moon in Gemini so accurately symbolizes.
We have been in a period of intense pressure on our feelings, designed (me thinks) to restore and evolve human nature. Thanksgiving can still be a time of appreciating what one has rather than what one can get at a great price if one is quick and determined. News of more people shunning the advertisers bait to come out and spend is encouraging.
The present Saturn-Neptune cycle had a sextile between Uranus in Capricorn and Venus-conjunct-North Node in Pisces in it’s inception chart (3/3/89) that suggests values (Venus) will undergo evolutionary (Uranus) change during this period. That sextile forms a Yod to the U.S. Sibly chart’s North Node in Leo at the point of the Yod.
Two people in politics have connections to that U.S. North Node; Bernie Sanders (natal Pluto) and Elizabeth Warren (natal Pallas) who both exemplify the “adjustment” (requirement of the Yod point planet) that needs to take place in the U.S. regarding Saturn-Neptune cycle outcomes. Their popularity speaks to the growing number of people hungry for this kind of change. I take heart in the transiting Sun’s position at the end of the Democratic Convention next July, conjunct the U.S. North Node in Leo. Peace and love to all this Thanksgiving day.
be
Indigenous studies are now mandatory at two universities in Canada, voted in this past March 26 at the U of Winnepeg as a result of brutal discrimination and brutality against the indigenous people. We know several professors there, and today my husband (a Sagittarius) decided to contact a local university to inquire about teaching Ojibway. He was asked years ago and never pursued it, for a variety of reasons. He now teaches it on line, along with the other professors, so why not? The students are mostly native people who didn’t have the opportunity to learn their own language. Those type of classes might hold the answer to the problems the black community is having as well, handled with dignity. Per Blain Bovee, Gemini 4 Mistletoe and Holly are more to do with belonging, “Holly and sustaining than parasitic. The challenge, in daily affairs, is to appreciate the deeper dimensions of being alive and deeper roots of belonging. The groups, tribes and social cliques that populate mistletoe cling to the mighty oak, an attachment that is more a transmission than needy, more your daily concerns, may not be the main story.” Don’t we all just want to get along? The higher meaning of both Neptune and Sagittarius says yes. Yes – another favorite sentence presented itself to me today, an indigenous author who went to 9th grade, and ended up publishing 13 novels because he was asked to tell stories. He said it is easy to say no, maybe, can’t, not now, and so on. But yes? Yes is spiritual. It requires your entire being, body and spirit, to say yes.
Words of wisdom for today Len, “transcendence is only a choice away”. Perhaps my choice is to listen for enlightenment to reveal itself, but choice all the same. Patty and Be, I’m glad to hear you here today, I feel at home for Thanks-Giving.
Thanks for the good words Len. I recognize this is a waning Square, since Saturn is catching up to Neptune, and recall that such an aspect is the opportunity to separate the wheat from the chaff, to harvest the learning of the cycle while releasing what no longer serves. With Saturn and Neptune at play this is a big learning and a big releasing, perhaps the particular is that Saturn must let go in the face of the slower-moving and more potent structure dissolving power of Neptune, sinking into the ocean, the universal solvent.
Thank you Len for always bringing us to think higher than ourselves!
Transcendentalism: that which is knowable through intuition. I suggest that this movement has been upon us for a while, probably since the time that Neptune entered Pisces, but maybe now that Saturn is Square Sag, it will be more action oriented in our external politics? Perhaps? A movement in leadership is called “emotional intelligence” and knowing our Emotional Quotient (EQ) as well as that of your employees is just as important as knowing your Myers-Briggs Factors. In fact, of the four Myers-Briggs categories one assesses how a person judges and perceives the world and from this Category is assigned the letter “J” or “P”.
Education blossomed during the last transcendental movement; the mind expanded, the tenets of religion were being challenged, for example Treatises against Calvinism, as well as, challenges waged against government by Thoreau’s Treatise on civil disobedience. And of course the wrestling with the concept of slavery in the US (enough to fight a civil war) and the remnants of serfdom in Europe were also dismantling, especially in Russia.
But there was also the poetry. This one is from Emily Dickinson illustrates the emotion without the rational basis to support why a soul chooses. Scholars have interpreted the words in this small poem to mean many things: from society to religion, on a grand scale, or perhaps, she was speaking of a more personal experience of heart over mind. The poem is called: The Soul Selects her Own Society
The Soul selects her own Society — Then — shuts the Door — To her divine Majority — Present no more — Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing — At her low Gate — Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling Upon her Mat — I’ve known her — from an ample nation — Choose One — Then — close the Valves of her attention — Like Stone —
So the beauty I think about the transcendental movement is that there were people who moved the soul to feel and there were people who also moved the nation and world to act, such as Abraham Lincoln. We know that Lincoln was first an attorney and is oft quoted when President but he also said some remarkable things early in his career that spoke to the character of the man, which I think is what may ring true for this time. Perhaps we just need to look for them? This is one of my favorite quotes about Lincoln, likely because it is good advice for Lawyers:
Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.
My point here is that Abraham Lincoln was also of the Transcendental movement.
Do we have indicators today of a new Transcendental Movement? I look for inspiration by our new US Poet Laureate and have excerpted a poem for reflection:
Let Me Tell You What a Poem Brings
for Charles Fishman BY America’s Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera.
Before you go further,
let me tell you what a poem brings,
first, you must know the secret, there is no poem
to speak of, it is a way to attain a life without boundaries,
yes, it is that easy, a poem, imagine me telling you this,
instead of going day by day against the razors, well,
the judgments, all the tick-tock bronze, a leather jacket
sizing you up, the fashion mall, for example, from
the outside you think you are being entertained,
when you enter, things change, you get caught by surprise,
your mouth goes sour, you get thirsty, your legs grow cold
standing still in the middle of a storm, a poem, of course,
is always open for business too, except, as you can see,
it isn’t exactly business that pulls your spirit into
the alarming waters, there you can bathe, you can play,
you can even join in on the gossip—the mist, that is,
the mist becomes central to your existence.