Related to these developments are the many rapid advances made in pharmacology, virology, microbiology, and immunology. A plethora of new drug treatments for physical and mental illnesses, from immune-system diseases such as AIDS to mood disorders such as depression, emerged during the period of this alignment. Especially notable have been the social ramifications of pharmacological experimentation and its many products such as Prozac, Zoloft, Viagra, and Botox that have been widely embraced in contemporary society. We see reflected in these technological innovations a characteristic family of Uranus-Neptune qualities that are variously consciousness-altering, psychologically liberating, and concerned with affecting either external image or what is subjectively apparent (“cosmetic psychopharmacology”), and that dissolve the boundary between reality and illusion. The enormous number of individuals, children and adolescents as well as adults, who during the 1990s were prescribed psychoactive drugs for such psychological conditions as hyperactivity or depression and whose experience of reality was significantly defined by chemical technologies is strongly suggestive of the Uranus-Neptune archetypal complex. So also is the explosive use of steroids, human growth hormone, beta-blockers, and other performance-enhancing drugs in athletic and other activities in those years. In a diachronic pattern, a similar wave of pharmaceutical breakthroughs and social consequences took place in the 1950s during the immediately preceding Uranus-Neptune square with the development of the polio vaccine and antibiotics, and also of tranquillizers and antipsychotic drugs, such as Thorazine, which have played a large role in medicine and psychiatry ever since.
We can also recognize the familiar motifs of the Uranus-Neptune complex in this same area at the theoretical level, where neurochemistry and brain research have essentially dissolved the boundary and distinction between the brain’s ever-changing “natural” biochemical condition and “drugs,” many varieties of which the brain itself produces. A similar theoretical state is evident in the field of genetic research, where the subtle interplay between genetic and environmental factors in shaping human behavior, health, and disease is now recognized to be so complex in its recursive interaction as to defy any reductive causal understanding. The manner in which any specific gene will express itself in a given individual will be affected by the action of other genes, chemicals in the cell, various biographical circumstances, and the prenatal environment. Not only has the nature vs. nurture dichotomy been dissolved in this complex interplay but the role of human volition and activity is recognized as a further crucial factor that can unpredictably affect the outcome of the already fluid genetic-environmental interaction. The Uranus-Neptune archetypal motifs are thus visible across the range of themes cited: the technical breakthroughs in fields such as neurochemistry and genetics, the intellectual awakenings that dissolve previously assumed boundaries and distinctions, the new recognition of the mutual interpenetration of contributing causal factors, the fundamental indeterminacy of such fluidly interactive complexity, and the unpredictable role of autonomous human intervention in shaping the ultimate outcome of this fluid multicausal interaction.
The Arts
We see an equally striking contrast and archetypal shift between the two eras in the arts. Again, as we explored in the Uranus-Pluto chapters, the popular music of the 1960s was driven by an unprecedented elemental force. On the one hand, it was Promethean in its insistent impulse towards liberation, creative freedom, improvisation, protest, and rebellion, as well as in its technological empowerment through electricity. On the other hand, the music was emphatically Dionysian in its erotic and rhythmic power, with themes of sexual freedom, political revolution, and sympathy for the demonic, instinctual, and shadow elements of the human psyche. While such themes and impulses have continued since that decade, from indie rock to hip-hop, the Uranus-Neptune conjunction of the later 1980s and 1990s distinctively coincided with such archetypally appropriate musical developments as the emergence of world music, bringing a fusion of and creative interplay between multiple musical genres from different continents and cultural traditions, and the rise of electronica, electronic trance, and New Age music. Especially characteristic of the Uranus-Neptune complex has been the emergence of a pervasive postmodern “sampler” culture in which DJs employ digital mixing technologies to produce an improvisatory collage of musical genres such as hip-hop, techno, ambient, minimalism, chants, and world music, interspliced with samples from various past recordings and genres. Practitioners speak of developing a multimedia art form involving the creative mixing of any sound, image, or text from the entire collective memory of humankind.
Also reflective of this archetypal field has been the widespread occurrence during this conjunction of various “technospiritual” ritual musical events (Uranus as the technological, Neptune as the spiritual). This was notably exemplified by the extraordinary phenomenon of raves, in which every weekend in large cities, wilderness areas, and beaches throughout the world, beginning in 1988 and extending through the 1990s and beyond, millions of youths participated in mass dance events using Ecstasy and music to enter ecstatic unitive states that dissolved interpersonal boundaries and elicited experiences of self-transcendence and spiritual euphoria.19 Regarded by many as a crucible of youth spirituality during the 1990s, raves were seen as having “transmuted the role that organised religion once had to lift us onto the sacramental and supramental plane.”
During those same years occurred the equally extraordinary phenomenon of the Grateful Dead’s concert tours. Though they originated in the 1960s, it was in coincidence with the Uranus-Neptune conjunction from the mid-1980s until Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995 that they essentially became mass rituals of transformation attended faithfully by hundreds of thousands in large venues throughout the world. The widespread popularity of the band Phish, so similar to the Dead in the spirit of its countercultural idealism, cult following, and improvisatory concert rituals, exactly spanned the entire Uranus-Neptune conjunction period. The annual Burning Man Festival that arose during this same period displayed the same combination of archetypal motifs relevant to the Uranus-Neptune gestalt: collective ritual transformation, unconstrained experiment and creativity, the technological and the spiritual combined with rebellion and eccentricity, ubiquitous use of psychoactive drugs and sacred visionary plants, a cultivation of the nonordinary in both consciousness and free self-expression, and the formation of a temporary utopian community that encouraged both extreme creative individualism and unitive states of collective merging.
Similarly reflective of the same impulse, though with a very different inflection, was the rapid spread of electronically amplified “praise and worship” music and Christian rock in large ritual services and evangelical music tours in which thousands of young Christians participated. These technologically enhanced events characteristically ended with the appearance of the words “Sacred Revolution” on giant video screens, another suggestion of the Uranus-Neptune complex. Here too can be mentioned the spread during this time of cyberchurches, interactive virtual religious ministries and communities; and rave masses, free-spirited liturgies accompanied by rock and trance music introduced by Anglicans in England in the early 1990s and brought to the United States soon after by the dissident Catholic priest Matthew Fox.
Equally suggestive of the Uranus-Neptune archetypal complex was the sudden rise of popular interest in the sacred music of other cultures and eras, such as Indian kirtans and Gregorian chant, and their creative assimilation into modern musical idioms. We can recognize here a distinct diachronic pattern of major creative periods in the history of sacred music in coincidence with Uranus-Neptune cyclical alignments: the wave of religious masterworks by the great polyphonic composers Palestrina and Tallis during the Uranus-Neptune opposition of 1556–74, coincident with the era of Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross; by Bach and Handel during the following Uranus-Neptune opposition of 1728– 46 coincident with the era of the Great Awakening (Mass in B Minor, Saint Matthew Passion, Messiah); and by B
eethoven and Schubert during the following conjunction of 1814–29 coincident with the age of Romanticism (Missa solemnis, the spiritually idealistic Ninth Symphony, Ave Maria, the six masses), to name a few iconic examples.
A continuation of this diachronic pattern can be discerned in major works of sacred and spiritually profound music in the twentieth century, where again specific qualities reflective of the Uranus-Neptune archetypal complex—numinosity, a mystical spirit, the evocation of religious wonder—were vividly embodied in compositions during each of the quadrature alignment periods. The relevant works of Alexander Scriabin (the mystical trilogy of 1905–11, The Divine Poem, The Poem of Ecstasy, and Prometheus), of Charles Ives (the Fourth Symphony of 1909–16), and of Ralph Vaughan Williams (the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis of 1910), were all composed during the most recent Uranus-Neptune opposition. The spiritually resonant slow movements of Mahler’s Fourth and Fifth Symphonies composed during these years could also be cited. The most recent square alignment of the 1950s coincided with Alan Hovhaness’s Mysterious Mountain, and the conjunction period of the later 1980s and 1990s brought a wave of sacred works by John Tavener (Resurrection, Hymns of Paradise) and Arvo Pärt (Te Deum, The Beatitudes), and works with explicitly spiritual themes such as Philip Glass’s compositions for the films Anima Mundi and Kundun.
We can recognize this archetypal pattern as well in the cinema. Films in the 1960s were notable for an unprecedented freedom in portraying sexuality and violence, and their content focused on such Uranus-Pluto motifs as political and social revolution (The Battle of Algiers, Z, Medium Cool, Adalen 31, Godard’s many films), countercultural rebellion (Easy Rider, Alice’s Restaurant, Woodstock), space exploration (2001: A Space Odyssey), the criminal underworld (Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather, The French Connection), eroticism (La Dolce Vita, Blowup, Last Tango in Paris), and the unleashed id (Fellini Satyricon, If, A Clockwork Orange).
By contrast, the creative breakthroughs in films of the 1990s were especially evident in the immensely expanded capacity to create special effects, computer animation, and other technologies producing maya-like virtual realities and multidimensional fantasias in a wide range of genres. As in form, so in content. The most widely viewed and characteristic films of the Uranus-Neptune period, while continuing the subject matter opened up in the 1960s, increasingly treated a plethora of distinctly more Neptunian subjects: myth, legend, and fantasy (The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Harry Potter series), virtual realities (The Matrix trilogy, The Truman Show, Pleasantville), dreams, visions, magical realism (Field of Dreams, The Secret of Roan Inish, Amélie, Chocolat, Talk to Her, Forrest Gump, Big Fish, American Beauty, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon), religious and biblical subjects (The Mission, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Passion of the Christ), the Shakespeare renaissance (Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Othello, Henry V, Prospero’s Book, Shakespeare in Love), the animation renaissance (Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Toy Story, Chicken Run, Shrek, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles), ocean and sea narratives (Titanic, Whale Rider, The Perfect Storm, Master and Commander), diverse spiritual themes (Seven Years in Tibet, Kundun, Baraka, Babette’s Feast, Life Is Beautiful, Dead Man Walking, The Shawshank Redemption), life after death (What Dreams May Come, Ghost, The Sixth Sense, The Others), unexpected shifts of reality and consciousness (Memento, Mulholland Drive, Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, A Beautiful Mind, Vanilla Sky, Artificial Intelligence: A.I., Minority Report, Contact, Big, Groundhog Day, Alice in Wonderland).20
To these could be added the innumerable films of this period that engaged other characteristically Neptunian subjects such as God and divine beings of various kinds, spirits, angels, aliens, hallucinations, time travel, past lives, multiple identities and multiple realities, and the exploration of other dimensions of existence. One of the most frequent motifs in this era’s films, which represented both a new technological capacity and a new metaphysical fluidity, was the “morphing” of various entities, characters, and entire environments from one form to another in an unexpected and often highly creative manner.
A comparable pattern of archetypal contrast between the two decades is discernible in the theater during the two eras. The 1960s brought many plays clearly reflective of the Uranus-Pluto archetypal field, such as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Marat/Sade, Hair, and O Calcutta!, the Off Broadway revolution associated with Edward Albee and Sam Shepard, and the radically experimental Living Theatre of Julian Beck and Judith Malina. These developments can be contrasted with, for example, the paradigmatic drama of the 1990s, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, with its many visions and angelic intercessions, posthumous visitations, religious overtones, and spiritual epiphanies, and with its fantasia of imaginal ambiguities and unexpected sudden shifts among multiple fluidly intersecting realities. Yet here again we can recognize how the latter work entirely depended on and developed out of the revolutionary experiments of the 1960s. Angels in America brought the new Uranus-Neptune motifs into a threatrical tradition that had already been liberated from the constraints of established conventional structures and themes during the preceding Uranus-Pluto era.
We can observe a similar pattern in a specific genre such as dramas about the criminal underworld and the Mafia. The Godfather films of the 1960s’ Uranus-Pluto conjunction represented a creative eruption of the Plutonic underworld, and also a diachronic development from the Uranus-Pluto square of the 1930s and the earlier wave of classic gangster films such as Public Enemy and Scarface. This emergence of the underworld into the collective psyche was both sustained and transformed with the dominant television drama at the turn of the millennium, The Sopranos. In this widely viewed and influential series, the various Uranus-Pluto motifs continued unabated from The Godfather epoch—the artistic revelation of the criminal underworld, shocking violence, illicit sexuality, the unleashed instincts, dark motivations, the distinctive mobster ethos and language, the incessant power struggles and ever-lurking danger of death. But in the new archetypal context of the Uranus-Neptune period, the underworld boss was undergoing unpredictable shifts of consciousness, confusing dreams with waking realities, reflecting inwardly on his motivations, and seeing a psychiatrist—taking antidepressant drugs, experiencing drug-side-effect visions and hallucinations, interpreting dreams and projections, recovering childhood memories. All these were explored with a postmodern complexity of narrative technique, multiple viewpoints, and rapidly shifting images, camera-angles, and juxtapositions. The characters themselves frequently watch and allude to films of the earlier Uranus-Pluto epochs like The Godfather and Public Enemy, which produces a characteristically Uranus-Neptune field of cinematic cross-references, mirrorings, and postmodern “intertextuality.” Much like the persona of the Sopranos’ protagonist, the boundaries of the gangster genre itself have been dissolved: the series’ gangster persona constantly merges in unpredictable ways with other genres and identities—psychological drama, comedy, family drama, narrative of spiritual discovery—which subverts expectations and opens up a new multidimensional fluidity of artistic experience.
Technological innovation (Uranus) in the service of image and illusion (Neptune) is especially reflective of the Uranus-Neptune archetypal complex, and the major advances in this domain are closely associated with the unfolding alignments of this planetary cycle. Photography emerged during the Uranus-Neptune conjunction of the 1820s with the work of Niepce and Daguerre. Motion pictures rapidly emerged as a major cultural phenomenon and art form during the following opposition of the 1899–1918 period. The immediately following square alignment of the 1950s coincided with the rapid dissemination and public embrace of television, which brought with it all of its characteristic Uranus-Neptune elements, both positive and problematic. The generation of children born with this square (1950–60) was the fir
st to grow up with television as a principal shaping influence on its consciousness and mode of experiencing the world. It was also during this alignment that Marshall McLuhan—who was born in 1911 during the preceding Uranus-Neptune opposition, in close alignment with his Sun—first developed his influential theories on technology as an extension of the human nervous system, the transformative impact of the television medium on the cultural consciousness, and the emergence of a “global village” unified and shaped by electronic information technologies (hence McLuhan’s prophetic role as “father of cyberspace”).
Finally, at the completion of this Uranus-Neptune cycle that began with the 1820s conjunction and the birth of photography, the conjunction of the later 1980s and 1990s coincided with the explosion of television and multimedia technologies: hundreds of cable stations accessible worldwide through satellite and high-speed fiber-optic connections (instantly selected or dismissed with a remote control device), videos and DVDs of potentially every film ever made, high-definition television, TiVos, camcorders, cell phone cameras, the digitalization of images and other forms of cultural expression, and numerous other technological advances whose rapid dissemination took place during the period of this conjunction. Also relevant to this archetypal complex are the many cultural, social, and psychological consequences of this revolution. The globalization of culture, the democratizing effect on the creation and dissemination of information, and the often catalyzing influence that television and computers have had on revolutionary social and political developments (the Eastern European revolutions of 1989, China throughout the 1990s) are all related to these technological advances. Equally reflective of the Uranus-Neptune field has been the decisive dominance of the television media in shaping the collective imagination during this era, the supplanting of the print media by the televised image, and the development of a hyperkinetic mode of visual and aural communication through rapidly shifting juxtapositions of image and sound. An especially problematic consequence of these advances has been the widespread emergence of a form of consciousness that is predominantly concerned with entertainment and consumption, and is at once passive and ceaselessly restless—hyperstimulated, fragmented, decontextualized, and ahistorical—with concrete consequences as diverse as attention deficit disorder and U.S. foreign policy.
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