The Outer Planets and the Anima Mundi

Two days ago we entered a new phase in the main transit affecting the world, the square from Uranus to Pluto. Pluto was effectively standing still for a week or two, and then on Saturday he started to go backwards from 7 Capricorn, as Uranus continued to move forwards in early Aries. By early August they will be within a degree of an exact square to each other.

Pluto is the basic energy, the life-force, that keeps the planet going, and Uranus is disrupting this and taking it off in new directions. Pluto rules the economy (because it is so basic to our ability to live), and with Uranus challenging Pluto, it is hard to have continuity and steady development, which is what you need for a thriving economy. The last 3 Uranus-Pluto squares – the present day, the 1930s, and the mid-1870s – were all associated with long recessions, or depressions, depending on what you want to call them.

To see clearly, we need to get it out of our heads that a recession is inevitably ‘bad’. Of course, for many individuals there will be economic hardship. But confidence and mood are big factors not just in how we experience a recession, but also in how long it lasts. And that mood is strongly influenced by the idea that an economy needs to be growing (note: NOT long-term sustainable, or developing) to be healthy. So as soon as economic indicators come in saying that e.g. the economy shrank by .1% for the last 2 quarters, then we are told we are in a ‘recession’, which is ‘bad’, and you start getting a feedback loop, based on confidence, that makes everything worse.

However, if e.g. sustainability is your criterion for the economy, then a downturn does not necessarily affect your basic measure of economic health: it may even heighten sustainability, and everyone might breathe a sigh of relief that resources are being used in a more balanced way, and there will be enough left for future generations. It would be an entirely different mindset that has a healthy feeling relationship with the planet, based on reciprocity. Another criterion for a healthy economy could be 'sufficiency'.

From the point of view of Uranus and Pluto, human affairs are not ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Their only concern is that humanity is always moving on to the next stage, and when you get a hard aspect between these 2 planets – every 35 years or so – then we are collectively pushed into a new era. The old era has reached a natural point of decay, whether we recognise it or not. You can see this process happening like clockwork, if you look back at the last 3 hard aspects: the present day square, the 60s conjunction, and the square of the early 30s.

The big question is that, since Uranus-Pluto change is in principle evolutionary, is there then necessarily some kind of collective progress going on? It is, I think, a comforting belief that gives meaning to suffering and the sense of participation in a sort of divine plan.

But I don’t think the facts bear it out. Humanity does not learn on a collective level for very long – why should it, for each generation naturally wants to learn for itself? – and our relationship with the planet is now f?@*ed (no other word will do) in a vast and unprecedented way. Our consciousness has changed, but the main actual progress has been technological.

That said, Uranus and Pluto ARE evolutionary: put another way, life has a natural urge to advance, to become more complex and responsive. You see it with the development of species. And you see it on an individual level with people as they learn (by no means always) from experience and become more uniquely themselves, a species of one.

But humanity collectively is more problematic. The physical evolution of our species may or may not be happening, but that is not the issue. (It may however be that in some respects our brains are atrophying, in that we no longer need to respond so creatively to our immediate environment.) The issue is collective human consciousness. If you say it necessarily evolves over time, then you take individual choice away, because that is the nature of conscious evolution. Uranus and Pluto are only evolutionary if that is what we want. We can’t avoid their cycles of decay and renewal, life has to keep changing. And on a collective level, good choices will sometimes (all too rarely) be made. And whose consequences last for a limited period.

So we can say, with the current Uranus-Pluto square, that change and renewal are coming about. But you can’t second-guess the choices we will collectively make. During the last square, Germany and Japan made certain choices that led to WWII. Those countries moved towards becoming less conscious.

All that said, the sum of human history remains meaningful, in fact the whole history of life on earth is meaningful. It has all had its impact on the anima mundi, the world soul, an idea that goes back to Plato: Therefore, we may consequently state that: this world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence ... a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related. (Plato: the Timaeus.) The modern version of this is the Gaia Hypothesis. It’s not something you can ‘prove’, only feel. In a sense, the Anima Mundi is Neptune.

(By the way, some readers make the mistake that because I occasionally quote people like Plato, I must be learned. I'm not. My knowledge is very sketchy, and if you sit me down with a book that's at all academic, I switch off. I haven't got a clue, for example, what 'The Timaeus' is!)

With Uranus-Pluto, we know that big change is happening, and we can also describe the type of change. Pluto is the basic force of life that will, if we want it to, move us onto a more conscious level collectively. And Uranus is the great Disrupter and Progresser and Awakener that moves it all along, that facilitates the often sudden shift from one stage to the next, like a young bird cracking its shell.

With Uranus and Pluto now both moving into the square (from opposite directions), the speed of change will be intensified over the coming months. The necessary sense of crisis and instability that accompanies Uranus-Pluto will intensify.

We have already seen this instability and sense of crisis growing over the last couple of years – as Uranus and Pluto have come within range of each other – economically, politically and environmentally. Economically, we are a long way from being out of the woods, even though we continue to take hope from the latest sets of figures.

The debt problems seem intractable. Politically, there is the intensification of polarisation that you see under Uranus-Pluto both across the Middle and Near East and in the US.

We can expect a highly polarised US Presidential Election campaign next year – and probably polarisation within the candidate selection race as well, particularly in the Republican Party, involving its right wing ‘Tea Party’ movement.

Sarah Palin’s star, however, will no longer be rising, as transiting Neptune, which gives charismatic appeal, has now finished conjoining her Sun, Mars, Saturn in Aquarius; and Uranus-Pluto will next year have finished with her Venus (popularity). It would seem that her period of appeal will therefore be over. Prediction: she will declare her candidacy, and be knocked out after Uranus makes his final conjunction to her Venus, Prog Mars starts to separate from natal Venus and Prog Moon from natal Neptune. Not so Mr Obama, where Neptune will have moved on from squaring his MC to an applying square to his Moon. So his election-winning charismatic appeal will still be there, for better or for worse. He will also be experiencing a Progressed Full Moon (applying), which suggests a peak in his life.

The crisis that doesn’t seem to interest voters much is the environment and our profligate use of her resources. I think the Pluto Discovery chart, which has Pluto at 17 Cancer, warns us of the Power (Pluto) of Nature (Cancer), which can be for us or against us. The first Pluto Opposition is in 5 years time, while Uranus-Pluto is still operative. So I expect this crisis to intensify.

In a way it is the Spectre at the Feast. It is the issue behind all others that we still effectively ignore. But you can’t separate the earth from human consciousness. It is the ground of our consciousness. The increase in natural disasters from oil spills to flooding to earthquakes in recent years is like something we are repressing coming out at the edges. Somewhere we KNOW, and it seems so huge and it threatens us so much that we don’t want to know, and the more we try to keep it down, the more it will express itself as an autonomous, destructive personality. We have effectively treated nature as an enemy in our use of her, so that is how we think of her, and the natural disasters kind of ‘prove’ this.

The earth herself is the collective unconscious in its widest sense. She stores the imprint of the whole history of life. We are not separate from that, we are integral to the animus mundi. And there are profound patterns to life that we will never know: how can one small human consciousness ever know more than one small part of life? We sense this, and experience it as a profound mystery, the unknowability of life.

The problems we have created with the environment are incredibly difficult to solve, for we cannot easily conceive how 7 billion people could live in a sustainable way on the planet, even if countries co-operated, which they won’t. Neptune in Pisces represents the new dream of how we could do that; but it also represents the loss of the old dream, the sense of hopelessness even, that needs to come first. I think that sense of hopelessness is already there in the collective unconscious, but we are not admitting to it. Acknowledged, it is a good thing, it is soulful (Neptune). Alternative energy sources and ways of life remain the dream of a few.

The nuclear problem in Japan, occurring just as Neptune was about to enter Pisces, is synchronous. Nuclear energy still represents the dream of unlimited energy supplies, and while we have that dream, it is hard for an attitude of sustainable use of resources to come about.

Even if nuclear power isn’t terrible environmentally – I don’t think there is a clear answer here, and I don’t think dogmatism against nuclear power helps – it still represents an attitude of taking as much as we can from Nature without giving back.

So we get a total picture from the outer planets here: Uranus-Pluto describing an intensifying sense of crisis around the environment as Pluto moves towards its ‘natal’ opposition; and Neptune’s Ingress into Pisces representing a loss of faith in the stand-alone power of Science (Neptune in Aquarius); a collective sense of loss of vision and even despair as Neptune further establishes itself in Pisces; but also the distinct possibility of a new, more holistic vision as Neptune moves towards the end of Pisces and on into Aries in 12-15 years time. This will be the time when Pluto moves into Aquarius, when the shadow of Science will have to be faced.

Let's get really cosmic: the North Node is currently conjunct the Galactic Centre. This happens every 19 years or so. But it has happened at the same time as a Uranus Ingress and a Neptune Ingress, and at this turning point in human affairs. (By the way, I subscribe to the idea that 2012, if it is indeed significant, happened in 2010 at the lunar eclipse on the winter solstice.) We are starting to discover earth-sized planets, and therefore the possibility of life, around other stars. It seems like a matter of time. It is as if what is happening here now has wider significance, that consciousness with its cleverness and potential for self-centredness always eventually reaches the sort of impasse we are in now. It is our Battlestar Galactica moment. The Anima Via Lactea is watching.

Fashion; building an altar to Neptune

Neptune governs what is fashionable, and he changes sign every 14 years or so. Next year he moves from Aquarius to Pisces, so fashions will change, and are probably starting to do so already. Well, fashions are always changing, or they wouldn’t be called fashions. It’s more the underlying character of what is fashionable that will be changing.

“For the fashion of this world passeth away.” (Corinthians Chapter 7)

So in the last couple of years there has begun to be protest against the fashion for anorexic catwalkers. Aquarius can be disembodied and sci-fi, so not only have we had women held up as icons who are virtually ill from malnourishment, but the Japanese have even managed to create a robot dressed up as a woman that walks and talks. You could say that Chiron in Aquarius over the last few years has brought the matter of anorexic models to a head.

While the ideal is to be thin, the actuality is increasingly the opposite, an epidemic of obesity that has been flagged up as Neptune approaches Pisces. So we may have the opposite problem for some years yet, as Pisces knows no boundaries, but at least, I hope, women will be allowed to have a shape again.


Aquarius is associated with electronics and networking, so he is the sign above all others that governs the internet. Putting this together with Aquarius’ odd relationship to the body, and we have kids whose main source of sex education is the online porn industry.

Teenage girls are now under pressure to remove their pubic hair: the boys find it off-putting after what they’ve seen on the internet. Admittedly the Romans weren’t too keen either on pubic hair, but that was more to do with their ideas on hygiene. This is different. Its origins are pornographic display. To my mind, there are also paedophilic undertones, in the same way that holding up boy-shaped girls (ie the catwalk) as an ideal also has this flavour. At the same time we demonise paedophiles, they are the modern equivalent of the Jews in medieval Europe.

There is another fashion which has been around for some time, which is for women to dye their hair bleach blonde. It used to be just young women who did this, but now it is all ages, and to start with I used to find it hideous and undignified when an elderly woman did this. (I’m not protesting against dyeing, which can look good, it is the bleach blonde effect). It is so common now that I’ve got used to it. I think it is again Neptune in Aquarius – which has been going on for 12 years – because it is an attempt to deny ageing.

Bleach blonde has always had the connotations of sexy and brainless (as in ‘I had a blonde moment’). After several decades of the social advances brought about by feminism, it’s as if many women decided, after all, to choose sex over brains. OK, I’m being a bit hard here, as it’s in many cases not true, but there is still a symbolism going on.

I’m still trying to get my head around Neptune transits, because I’m not very Neptunian, but for the last 4 years I’ve had Neptune conjunct Sun and now it’s approaching my DESC and I still seem to be in a swamp with no way forward. Someone just lent me ‘Making the Gods work for you’ by Caroline Casey and here was a bit that I liked:

BUILDING AN ALTAR TO THE GOD WHO’S BEEN OPPRESSING YOU

The Odyssey provides a Neptunian initiation tale. After fighting the Trojan War, Ulysses’ single goal is to reach home. But because Ulysses has angered Neptune by blinding the one-eyed Cyclops, one of Neptune’s children, the sea god sends disorientating winds and extravagant, weird, exotic adventures to distract Ulysses and blow him off course. Who can’t relate?

Finally, Ulysses consults Tiresias, the blind Underworld prophet, a kind of Pluto figure, who says: “You have angered Neptune. Here’s the ritual you must perform. Take an oar, a symbol of the sea, and walk it inland. When you get to a place where no-one has ever seen the sea, there you must build a temple to the god who has been oppressing you.”

So Ulysses does this, walking inland until somebody asks him if the oar is a piece of windmill, so he knows he has found the right place. He builds a temple to Neptune, the god who has been oppressing him, and it works. In an act of reversal magic, Neptune becomes his ally and sends him sweet winds. Ulysses sails for home, where he reclaims his kingdom.

Our task is to reflect upon what it might mean to build a temple to the god who has been oppressing us. What kind of oar do we take inland? The Neptunian part of us says that to liberate ourselves, we must carry our vision inland to where nobody has ever heard of it before, and give our gift there. It is easy to hang out in a homogenous neighbourhood; go somewhere new.

Neptune and the Zeitgeist

Being the outermost planet, Pluto is generally used as the strongest significator of the age we live in. And his recent move from Sagittarius to Capricorn has seemed to justify this.

But what about Neptune? Most of the time, Pluto is further out than Neptune. But because Pluto’s orbit is so elliptical, there are periods such as the present when Pluto is, or was until recently, within the orbit of Neptune. You can check this through the ephemeris. The further out a planet is, the more slowly it moves. If you compare the distance through the signs travelled by Neptune and Pluto between say 1st Jan 1981 and 1st Jan 1985, you will see that Neptune moved about 8 degrees in that time, and Pluto moved 10 degrees. So Neptune was the outermost planet in that period.

Currently there doesn’t seem to be much in it. There has been a loose sextile between the 2 planets that has lasted since the late 1940s. This has occurred as Pluto increased his speed from Leo through to Sag, as he always does. He is currently slowing down again, and drifting further from the Sun.

So for the last 60 years, we would be justified in saying that Neptune has been just as strong a significator of the Age, and more so at times, than Pluto. Pluto is more noticeable at present because he has just changed signs, but Neptune will also change signs in 2 years.

One astrologer said to me that Pluto being within the orbit of Neptune means that transformation (Pluto) comes within the bounds of the imagination (Neptune). This has certainly been a new emphasis within astrology during this period.

For a start, astrology has become more Neptunian. Traditionally, astrology is associated with Uranus: insights from another dimension, and primarily an intellectual craft. But in recent decades we have learned to feel our way into the symbols and let them speak to us; we have started treating the planets as gods. Also, astrology has become a transformational craft as insights from psychology have been brought on board. So we could say that in astrology, at least, transformation has been brought within the bounds of the imagination.

Pluto is now slowing down, and we are at the end of this 60 year period where Neptune and Pluto have been moving at comparable speeds.

But it is interesting to look back and characterise the times according to Neptune, and treat this planet as an equally strong indicator of the zeitgeist as Pluto has been.

So, for example, Neptune was in Capricorn from 1984 to 1998. Recent decades have been characterised by a growth in globalisation, in terms of both trade (Capricorn) and culture (Neptune), and this configuration also describes the dissolution (Neptune) of national boundaries (Capricorn) involved. As Pluto has entered Capricorn recently, so there are signs that this globalisation may be going into reverse, economically at any rate, as countries move to protect themselves in difficult times.

More recently, since 1998, we have had Neptune in Aquarius, but it has been Pluto in Sagittarius, from 1995 to 2008, that has really grabbed the astrological headlines: Pluto in Sag describes the continued globalisation that has occurred, the rise of fundamentalism and the war on terror, and the sustained global economic boom, culminating in a huge bubble and its consequences. All that is pretty hard to ignore, but I think we have to take the influence of Neptune in Aquarius as equally significant.

In a way Neptune in Aquarius began back in the early 90s through Neptune’s conjunction with Uranus, the ruler of Aquarius. As that ended, so Neptune moved into Aquarius. Neptune in Aquarius is also a strong indicator of globalisation, but more in the sense of nations working together for common social and political goals, rather than the trade emphasis of Neptune in Capricorn. In the European Union, we had the Treaty of Maastricht in the early 90s, which was a huge step towards closer integration. As Neptune moves towards the end of Aquarius, so there are signs that the attempts at union are starting to unravel: firstly in the rejection of a Constitution by a number of countries; and secondly through the division between rich and poor countries that the economic crisis is opening up.

The international criminal court was agreed by treaty in 1998, as Neptune entered Aquarius, and brought into existence in 2002.

Perhaps the over-riding event of Neptune in Aquarius has been the internet, and the cultural impetus and further globalisation developing through that. The internet began at the tail-end of the Uranus-Neptune conjunction, and just as Neptune was about to enter Aquarius. The importance of the internet is widely understood; but if we put Neptune on a level with Pluto, then the internet’s influence and potential perhaps become even more significant. Instant electronic communication (Aquarius) with no boundaries (Neptune) - one more piece of technology, but still in its infancy, and with a transformative effect that is still too early to see.

Behind our understanding of the world lies mythology. It’s all about stories. Christianity was – is – a bunch of stories about the universe. Not a very good bunch, in my opinion, and what’s worse they get taken literally. Science is also a bunch of stories about the universe. Quite a good bunch in my opinion. Like Darwinian Evolution - a good 1/2 story. Like Christianity, however, their listeners think they give the whole picture and tend to take them literally. But we need these stories to give us a sense of the universe we live in.

Jupiter is stories. But I’d say Neptune is the ground, the metaphysical womb from which they come, particularly the big, mythological stories. So the sign that Neptune is in would indicate the stories, images and symbols that lie behind our understanding of the world. These come first, and the world we live in becomes an expression of those stories.

The 80s and 90s were the peak of relativism and deconstructionism, particularly in the academic world. That is, we came to realise more fully that there are many truths, none of them absolute, and that ‘objectivity’ is very hard to achieve, as we are all arguing from a particular set of assumptions and cultural conditionings. This is very different to a traditional mind-set, whether Christian or Muslim or even Scientific, which assumes it has the absolute truth, and judges other viewpoints according to that light. Of course, we can then get absolute about relativism, and many people did.

But I think that Neptune in Capricorn – the dissolution (Neptune) of the traditional mind-set (Capricorn) – describes well what happened. Neptune was actually outside of Pluto during much of this period, appropriately making the point that it is mythologies that come first, and that that is what accepted religions and philosophies are: mythologies, not facts. (This period was also a peak in feminist activism, and again we have the dissolution (Neptune) of rigid male authority (Capricorn)).

This process prepared us well for Neptune in its next sign of Aquarius and the cultural diversity of the internet.

So Neptune in Capricorn, the Uranus-Neptune conjunction and Neptune in Aquarius have created a great open-mindedness among people. I imagine that people must have experienced something like this in the old empires, before the rise of modern nationalism, where you had people of all sorts of nationalities and religions living side by side in the big cities.

But it is not easy to live like this without a certain inner security and sophistication. It is a threat to simpler minds, and that is why we have had a concurrent rise in religious fundamentalism worldwide (wow, I sound like a real elitist here, but I’m prepared to be when it comes to fundamentalists!) This was Pluto in Sagittarius, pulling in the opposite direction to Neptune in Capricorn/Aquarius. And now Pluto in Capricorn, where we are starting to see religious fundamentalism go mainstream, particularly in the Middle East. (Guess what - I don't like the 'Rev' Rick Warren! Puffed up, smug, authoritarian, anti-gay creationist...)

I don’t think that Islamic fundamentalism is just a response to ‘western cultural imperialism’, for we have seen a similar rise in religious fundamentalism in the USA. It is certainly a response to cultural values that have arisen in the west, but I think they are part of an organic process that has a lot to do with science, and modern science has its roots in a more civilised Islamic world hundreds of years ago. So up yours Osama!

In 2 years time, Neptune will enter Pisces and a new mythological age will begin. At present we have a coming together of different mythologies from around the world, as well as conflict between them and a retreat into fundamentalism. Neptune in Pisces looks to me like a continuation of the process of globalisation of mythologies: not just having them side by side, but more of a blending, and a recognition that all mythologies have the same source - spontaneously arising out of the depths of the Mind in response to a world for which we need explanations as well as a sense of enchantment.

It is Mind, in a sense, that comes first, as the Buddhists would say. This is why science can never achieve the objectivity it aspires to and pretends to. It is just another myth, good in some ways, but a very partial one.

The chart for Neptune’s entry into Pisces is very nice.


Click to Enlarge

Not only is Neptune conjunct Venus and Chiron (‘healing mythologies’), but there is also a New Moon in Aries involving Jupiter. If anything is about a new start, a new vision, it is a New Moon in Aries, and Jupiter emphasises that and brings self-belief, good fortune and….. stories! Uranus conjunct Mars in early Aries and square to Pluto adds exceptional dynamism to this chart. 6 planets in Aries!

The world as we know it is being destroyed as Pluto (destruction and regeneration) begins his journey through Capricorn (tradition), and as disruptive and liberating Uranus approaches a square with Pluto. That process of destruction has only just begun, so much so that we are collectively still attempting to recreate the old through fiscal stimuli, renewed commitments to free trade etc.

This economic destruction is just Pluto’s entry point, and the coming square with Uranus will affect us on all levels. In 2 years time it will perhaps be clearer that the past is the past and that it is time for a new way of looking at the world, a new myth to replace the old one of endless economic expansion and technological progress – a form of progress that we mistook for progress in human consciousness itself. Pluto in Capricorn, as well as being a retreat into tradition, is also likely to take further a process of destruction of tradition that has been going on for hundreds of years in the west.

On another note, Neptune indicates fashion. We are passing through a period where cat-walk models, and therefore our idea of womanhood, have become an expression of Aquarius at its worst - a disembodied ideal. It's worse than that, because it seems like an attempt to keep women physically adolescent or even child-like, while at the same time we have moved into a time of greater awareness of, but also demonisation of, paedophiles. Yet these fashion gurus want us to find these anaemic sticks sexually attractive. It's sick! It's been said that a lot of the main fashion designers are gay men who naturally prefer a boy-shape. It's probably also got something to do with the shadow side of feminism, in which women feel they have to compete with men on men's terms, and that means no curves!

Neptune is on home territory in Pisces. Pisces also doesn't have a problem with eating plenty - no boundaries - when they remember to eat! So it may be fashionable to be a proper woman again - or a mermaid!