Most recently, in the case of the Saturn-Pluto opposition of the 2000–04 period, on the basis of past correlations I felt I could justifiably anticipate another period of conservative or reactionary empowerment, historical crisis and contraction, and a widespread increase of divisiveness, hostility, and mass violence in the world. The possibility certainly loomed as well of another wave of terrorist activity, just as had taken place during the preceding Saturn-Pluto quadrature alignments in the present cycle in 1981–84 and 1992–94. As I discussed earlier, astrologers knew that the Saturn-Pluto opposition would first reach exactitude in August 2001 and move into an especially challenging grand cross configuration with the Sun and Moon in September. But when the events of September 11 took place, my response was probably similar to the vast majority of astrological researchers throughout the world: We immediately knew what planetary alignment was relevant, and what archetypal complex had just been tragically and devastatingly constellated. But astrological comprehension of the specifics of the event, though virtually immediate, was archetypal and retrospective, not concretely predictive.2
In the vast majority of cases in which I have considered the likely coinciding events for future alignments, whether in my personal life, the lives of other individuals, or the life of the human community, I have been surprised—both by the many ways in which the relevant archetypal complexes actually manifested themselves beyond what I imagined, and by the ways in which they did not manifest themselves as I might have thought or feared. Instead, in countless instances, I received a new lesson in the infinite creativity of the cosmos as it unpredictably unfolded its processes and events in extraordinarily consistent archetypally patterned correlation with the ongoing planetary movements.
I am therefore far more interested in using the archetypal astrological lens for better understanding the present and the past than for predicting the future. It is indeed a powerful lens, with a range that now encompasses the trans-Saturnian planets, and a depth that now more fully registers the complex multidimensional character of the archetypal principles involved. We have, in a sense, been given a powerful archetypal telescope for a vast archetypal cosmos at the same moment that we have developed extraordinarily powerful space telescopes for apprehending the vast physical cosmos. Both kinds of instruments are immensely expanding our universe, each in its own way. But though such instruments permit an unprecedented understanding of the present and the past, their value for understanding the future is considerably more limited and subtle. The very nature of this form of archetypal understanding in relation to the concrete particulars of life requires a knowledge of both the concrete particulars and the relevant planetary alignments for the two categories to be mutually explicated. The particular is illuminated by the archetypal at the same moment that the archetypal is embodied in the particular. Before that moment, the archetypal is a structural potentiality, a wave form of probabilities, a vessel of possibility awaiting realization.
Not only does knowing the archetypal illuminate the particular (archetypal?particular), but conversely, knowing the particular can shine new light on the archetypal (particular?archetypal), as when our examination of specific historical and cultural events and figures gives us a deeper understanding of the archetypal principles they embody and exemplify. We gain new understanding of Prometheus and Dionysus by recognizing the precise nature of their presence and interaction in the 1960s. We comprehend the Saturn-Pluto complex better when we have studied the particularities of its expression in the lives and work of Kafka, Melville, Marx, Calvin, and Augustine, or in Frida Kahlo’s paintings, or Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial, or Shakespeare’s tragedies, or the Inquisition, or the events of September 11, or their aftermath. Each concrete particular gives new insight into how a given archetypal complex can manifest. Each event or figure or work of art deepens our grasp of the ways of those gods in the planetary pantheon. By contrast, knowing the planetary alignment but not the particular embodiment provides only a general kind of information at a very high level of abstraction—the archetypal wave form before it has been concretely embodied, particularized, inflected, and creatively enacted. In general, therefore, the insights that archetypal astrology makes possible retrospectively into the dynamic patterns of human experience can be precise, nuanced, and consistently far more revealing than the always problematic and often inept attempts at concrete prediction of a literalistic future-oriented astrology.
The same contrast is true with respect to statistical tests of predictive astrology. While such research is no doubt valuable in the short term for stimulating scientific dialogue about astrology, even the most statistically significant positive results, such as the Mars effect and other correlations of the Gauquelin experiments, have yielded few useful insights for better understanding the complexities of human experience. They have provided a source of endless controversy for skeptics and scientists discomfited by the existence of anomalous data so starkly incompatible with their cosmological beliefs. Yet compared with the archetypal approach to astrological analysis, the methodology of statistical research appears to be fundamentally inadequate for examining the actual scope and intricacy of astrological correlations, hampered as it is by simplistic epistemological assumptions inherent to that mode of investigation. Such tests are both incapable of registering archetypal multivalence and blind to the necessity of full participatory engagement in the act of cognition. What is true of synchronicities in general is true as well of astrological correlations: The evaluation of such coincidences depends deeply on the sensitive perception of context, nuance, and multiple levels of meaning. The suggestive patterning and subtle precision of detail characteristic of such phenomena notoriously escapes the net of quantitative experiments and objectivistic assessments. The task is better suited to a Sherlock Holmes than a Scotland Yard.
The conviction that statistical research should constitute the final arbiter of all positive knowledge of the world rests on the no longer tenable assumption that the world can ultimately be known only as a detached object to be mechanistically tested and measured, rather than as a multidimensional, complexly unfolding relational field to be participated in with all our human faculties. It was just this presumption that the world could finally be mastered by calculation that Weber defined as the essence of disenchantment. Statistics can clearly be invaluable in some areas of research, as in testing the efficacy of a specific drug for a particular medical purpose. But astrology represents a far more complex reality; it presents an epistemological challenge that transcends the competence of quantitative testing. Several decades of statistical experiments of astrology, though perhaps performing a helpful service by disturbing the status quo of scientific assumptions, have in the end provided little in the way of profound historical, cultural, or psychological insight. Given the mismatch between the mode of investigation and the phenomena investigated, that situation is unlikely to change.
Yet all this still leaves open the question of archetypal astrological analysis of future planetary alignments. We live in an exceptionally precarious era in the history of the world, when the problems of the Earth community are both deepening and accelerating. In such circumstances, we are naturally inclined to consult every source of information and insight that could possibly increase our self-understanding and the effectiveness of our present strategies. In this context and with this motivation, knowledge of the major future alignments of the outer planets and their corresponding archetypal principles and complexes could indeed prove helpful, like knowing the weather reports before setting out to surf in large waves with winds coming from multiple directions. Our challenge, therefore, is to maintain a constant vigilance to avoid the many traps endemic to this kind of analysis—above all, the projection of fears or wishes, the drawing of definite conclusions on the basis of limited data, and the urge to control life rather than participate in it.
One other point about the value and limitation of this kind of survey is perhaps appropriate here. Every individual ha
s his or her own birth chart with its particular set of planetary configurations and ongoing personal transits, with a unique unfolding drama that is specific to that person alone. Generalizations about historical epochs and the larger cycles of the planets must always be balanced against the infinitely varied particularities of individual lives. Nevertheless, we can also recognize that the drama of the individual life always takes place within the larger drama of the human community, just as our personal psyche and personal unconscious are always embedded within the collective psyche and collective unconscious. With these qualifications and caveats, then, the major world transit alignments of the outer-planet cycles are, I believe, the principal data we now possess for understanding the archetypal dynamics of the coming years. The extent to which we are aware of those dynamics, and participate consciously and courageously in their unfolding, could play a pivotal role in the future we are about to create.
Observations on Future Planetary Alignments
As I was completing work on this book, the most recent axial alignments of three of the four planetary cycles we have surveyed in this book simultaneously came to an end: the twenty-three-month Jupiter-Uranus opposition, the nearly four-year Saturn-Pluto opposition, and the twenty-year Uranus-Neptune conjunction. All three cycles reached the final 20° point in the course of the year 2004. This fortuitous circumstance has allowed us in the preceding chapters to look back upon and survey the cultural phenomena and archetypal correlations for most of the duration of all three alignment periods just ending.
Yet as I have emphasized, alignments are not off-and-on light switches. The historical trends and cultural impulses that were set in motion and flourished during these several alignments will no doubt continue to unfold in the coming months and years, often bringing to public consciousness significant archetypally relevant developments that are currently unknown or seemingly peripheral. The observed archetypal patterns consistently display an essential wavelike indeterminacy—both in their specific timing and in the unpredictable diversity of their concrete expression—that bears close resemblance to the observations of quantum physics.
Moreover, the events of the last stages of any axial alignment of the outer planets during the penumbral period between the 15° and 20° point of separation can often be recognized as representing the cumulative result of that alignment’s archetypal developments. The Promethean and Dionysian spirit of the Uranus-Pluto conjunction of the 1960s, for example, was in general far more evident at its end in the 1972–74 period than at its beginning in 1958–60. This sunset phenomenon seems to be especially pronounced when a long alignment of two outer planets is joined in its final phases by a third planet, as in the present case of Jupiter’s joining the currently ending Uranus-Neptune conjunction to form a broad, shorter-lasting three-planet configuration (Jupiter opposite Neptune and Uranus in closely overlapping succession), extending from the summer of 2002 through the summer of 2004.3
The many cultural phenomena and experiential themes reflective of the long Uranus-Neptune conjunction now coming to an end have so saturated our collective experience during the past two decades that it is difficult to perceive this era from outside its archetypal domain. It is like a vast all-permeating sea in which we have been deeply immersed for many years: the pervasive postmodern milieu of interpenetrating pluralism and ceaseless change, free-floating consciousness and epistemological uncertainty, the accelerated cultural and technological innovation, the heightened mystical-esoteric-mythic impulses, the utopian tendencies, the elevated idealism and religiosity, the dissolving of many kinds of boundaries, the multiple globalizing influences, the ubiquity of communication technologies such as cell phones and the Internet, the constant universal interconnectivity, the mass entrancement by the corporate media and political image-makers, the technologically mediated maya-like experience of the collective consciousness, the widespread concern with multiple paradigms, virtual realities, nonordinary states of consciousness, new cosmic vistas, the fluid shifts and manipulations of reality and experience produced by computers, pharmaceuticals, and biotechnology. Yet because we have been living in it, rather than looking back on it as a cultural epoch that we can examine only through the historical record, perhaps we can in this instance also recognize more directly and clearly the extent to which the relevant archetypal impulses and qualities of the zeitgeist still continue to unfold at the end of the conjunction, and we can observe more precisely the nature of their continuing presence in the future well after the alignment is over.
It is worth noting that in its later stages, as the Uranus-Neptune conjunction reached the 15° point of separation in 2001, many of the characteristic Uranus-Neptune themes and tendencies were radically challenged by the events that coincided with the Saturn-Pluto opposition’s reaching exact alignment—the September 11 attacks, the response and subsequent actions of the Bush administration, the Iraq war, the sharp increase in terrorist activity and counterterrorist repression. In particular, the enormity of the trauma caused by the events of September 11, the tremendous impact of the mass death and suffering, seemed to many to signify “the end of postmodern relativism,” the forced emergence of a new moral decisiveness and epistemological realism, and the sobering close of an era of narcissistic escapism and naïveté—all characteristic Saturn-Pluto motifs. Compared with the long period of the 1990s that preceded these events, an emphatically different mood now pervaded the collective consciousness, with a new sense of the dangers of global interconnectedness, porous boundaries, and relaxed pluralism, as well as of heightened religiosity—all themes suggestive of the shadow side of the Uranus-Neptune complex as seen through a Saturn-Pluto lens. In turn, these realizations and the new collective mood brought forth an aggressive divisiveness and rigidity into the spirit of the time: the rapid establishment of armored boundaries, highly restrictive legislation and government policies, a moral certitude tending towards absolutism, a simplistic polarization between good and evil, and a new realpolitik ruthlessness in political and military activity—again, all characteristic themes of the Saturn-Pluto archetypal complex.
As time passed, however, during the last phases of the Uranus-Neptune conjunction from 2001 to 2004 as it moved beyond 15° towards the final 20° point, it became apparent that the characteristic themes of the Uranus-Neptune archetypal complex in effect merged with those of the concurrently activated Saturn-Pluto complex, each assimilating the other in mutual interpenetration. The resulting fusion was visible in the widespread emergence of a more grounded idealism, a joining of spiritual aspiration with political realism expressed through well-organized nonviolent efforts to oppose oppressive and belligerent government policies. A new moral gravitas was combined with emancipatory hope in an often courageous encounter with destructive historical forces and entrenched political power. Problematically, the fusion of these same two archetypal complexes was evident during the 2001–04 period in the heightened state of religious and ideological enthrallment in the service of reactionary violence and oppressive impulses on both sides of various world conflicts, the Orwellian manipulation of deceptive rhetoric, symbols, and images to sway public opinion, and a state of collective mesmerization facilitated by the media that for some time effectively neutralized efforts to bring greater critical awareness to the global situation.
As we now examine the major planetary alignments of the immediate future, restricting ourselves first to the specific cycles and alignments we have surveyed in this book, we can begin with the Uranus-Pluto cycle, the first cycle we examined. Following the most recent conjunction of 1960–72, the next Uranus-Pluto alignment, a square, will be within 10° orb from 2007 to 2020. It is just now entering this alignment, moving inside the penumbral 15° range from 2004 to 2006.
The next Saturn-Pluto alignment, a square, will occur mainly during the years 2009–11. It first reaches the penumbral 15° range in September 2008 and 10° in November.
The next Jupiter-Uranus conjunction will be within 15° orb from March
2010 to April 2011. (Add one month at each end for penumbral 20° orb.)
Much further into the future, the next Uranus-Neptune square alignment will occur in the years 2035–45, first reaching 15° penumbral orb beginning in 2032.
To these alignments from the four familiar outer-planet cycles should be added upcoming alignments for outer-planet cycles we have not yet examined:
Saturn opposite Neptune, 15° orb, takes place from November 2004 to August 2008 (first moving into 20° orb in August 2004).
Saturn opposite Uranus, 15° orb, will occur from September 2007 to July 2012 (first moving into 20° orb in October 2006).
Jupiter conjunct Pluto, 15° orb, will occur from January 2007 to October 2008. (For 20° orb in Jupiter alignments, add one month at each end.)
Jupiter conjunct Neptune, 15° orb, will occur from February 2009 to March 2010.
Jupiter opposite Saturn, 15° orb, will occur from March 2010 to March 2012.
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