Based on 'Obrazvaetvient' by Michael Kyrstek (2008)
As World War II was drawing to its destructive close, a celestial formulation took shape. Neptune and Pluto moved into sextile. They’d been dicing about with this aspect for a few years, but as the 1940s wore on, the sextile came into 3-degree orb and it stayed in that three degree orb (give or take a month or two here and there) until the mid/late 1990s.
This roughly corresponds to a period of time when the world realized that we really are all in this life together. Though there were competitions and cold wars and famines, diseases and despots, there was an overarching understanding realization that life is better for everyone when everyone has a better life.
That ‘grasp’ of the need to change things which was motivated by the willingness – even the ability to grasp the pain or suffering or confusion of others, that was Neptune sextile Pluto. The connecting, the understanding of another’s situation in our heart and soul, that was the Neptune part of the thing. And the conviction that we could change things – and that we grow the interpersonal fabric of support, supportiveness and productivity from helping others…that was the Pluto part of it all.
Pluto’s metaphysical management of situations where we join or don’t join with others is never about them, no matter what we like to think. The axis of polarity testing through which we learn those lessons and thus are transformed on the Pluto level is Taurus/Scorpio, a duo which when all else is said and done is very basic. We can call it survival, and it is survival. But it’s also all about the respect we gain for ourselves when we stand for what we could do – those ‘better angels’ of our nature - not just what we can do.
Neptune’s influence being Pisces/Virgo, Neptune always depends on and pits us against a more evolved…some would say ‘more mature’ sense of being. That’s easier to understand simply by thinking about Virgo versus Taurus.
Taurus is the second sign of the zodiac. It corresponds (on an innate level) to the years between two-and-a-half and five years old, this is about our basic ‘grasp’ on life, and knowing we are secure in this world.
Virgo is the sixth sign of the zodiac, corresponding more to the age of about twelve-and-a-half to fifteen or so. Virgo is about taking on the task…most of all, the task of being ourselves.
With a sextile being a sign of interaction and possibility, it’s little wonder that the fifty or so years of Neptune sextile Pluto had the world in a very dynamic, progressive, ‘we can do this!’ mode.
It’s also not surprising that once this transiting sextile (which has a maximum orb of 3 degrees) began to dissolve during the mid-1990s, things began to feel less positive and more problematic. Or maybe you see it as less fruitful and more threatening. Even less productive and more coercive.
There are (obviously) several generations whose natal charts include this Neptune sextile Pluto dynamic. All but the very first of the Pluto in Leo Baby Boomers have Neptune sextile Pluto in their birth charts, with Pluto in Virgo (the Yuppies) and Pluto in Libra (Gen X) also being part of this collective.
Once we get to Pluto in Scorpio (a generation so stealth they seem to have avoided a nickname) that’s where things begin to get in to flux – particularly towards the end of this group. Pluto left Scorpio and entered Sagittarius in 1996, beginning the social network-worthy generation which is increasingly being referred to as the Millennials.
The Millennials don’t have Neptune sextile Pluto in their chart. On one side, this reflects in the Millennial entrepreneurial bent. On another, it marks this generation as lacking expectations about the world being the ‘good’ place the Pluto/Neptune natal sextile people always hope to prove the world is.
Neptune’s symbolic marshaling of the Pisces/Virgo axis as ‘outcome ruler’ of Pisces has marked literally billions of lives with a ‘can do’ altruism which though crushed when it meets up with disappointment also weathers that disappointment to try, try again.
That isn’t about the world…that’s about us. It’s our willingness to try which is the Neptunian/Piscean hallmark, and no matter when you’re born it’s always balanced off against our ability to deal with or tolerate reality. The best of us are constructive: we accept reality and go from there.
In the years since the mid-1990s Neptune-Pluto ‘parting of the sextile ways’ we have also seen the growth of marked separations in society. We have seen Neptunian illusions overtake some lives, manifesting with a harshness of judgment as to the way things should be or how people should live at a level which seems very ‘un-Neptunian.’ We have seen the very structure of society’s values evolve and transform very strongly, if in ways which were often not universal and not geared to be universally accessible.
Thus we arrive at 2013, in the thick of a time where governments don’t seem to have any real connection to their citizenry and when the gap between ‘have’ and ‘have not,’ however you measure it, whether in wealth or access to health care or food or opportunity to climb the social ladder…a financial system which seems out to serve nothing but the finances of the financial people.
The challenges feel harder than ever with the stakes being higher than ever.
For the billions alive with charts emblazoned with Neptune sextile Pluto, there’s a dichotomy between the inner ‘knowing’ of what life should be and the outward scramble to (Pluto) survive. And that dichotomy drives us in the direction of the many pluses and minuses of Neptune – the indulgences, the fantasies, the intoxications, the abandonment of reality in spirit or spiritual form, the emotional imbalances and mental health issues…however, whatever…it’s here.
The ills which the positivity of Neptune sextile Pluto covered up for so long are upon us. So out come the scandals and the many issues which force us to deal with reality.
Does this mean we should all become cynics?
No. It means we have to learn to tolerate the ambivalence of reality, and from there to do the best we can, because to do less than that is not the world’s ‘fault’ but a lack of our own respect and regard for who we are.
From around 1995 through around mid-2021, Pluto and Neptune will fly separate. That’s about twenty-five years worth of seeing reality for what it is and falling prey to our lesser angels…and even our mortal demons.
After that, with some in-and-out orbital and retrograde skips and gaps, Neptune and Pluto will come back into sextile. That will be just about the time that those born early in the separation are reaching their modern adulthood, which astrology now associates with the first Saturn return at age 29.
Yes, we the astrologers of the world know: in a long-ago day and age, people only lived about thirty years. Now we’re routinely living three times as long.
But that’s Saturn - a different blog. In the meantime, we return to the nebulous and dauntingly inspiring world of Neptune and Pluto and face the need to accept – (Neptune) – that realities are likely to get bad enough that we, the human race – recognize that our vulnerabilities, be we in the position of strength or weakness, increase proportionately as compassion decreases.
What it means that the generation born as Pluto and Neptune went out of sextile (the Millennials) will be coming to their adulthood as Pluto and Neptune renew their association is a clue to us all – a clue about human life. We are not born to simply grow up and ‘become’ something.
We are born to evolve, going in and out of universal focus, eternally learning and forgetting that what we have in common is the fact that our divergent uniqueness is the very stuff of…indeed the very strength of unity which starts within our Self and becomes our congruence with the world.
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