Backbone > Planet Waves
From Then to Here

One of the commonly-perceived great failures of the 1960s was the sexual revolution. What we think of as the sexual revolution emerged from the marketing of the birth control pill, which for the first time in (known) history, created a means by which women could dependably have sex without getting pregnant. Yet at the same time, this included the idea that men did not necessarily have to take responsibility for their sexual actions. And, in related news, many have pointed out that the pill and its subsequent social uprising did little to deepen the intimate bonds between men and women on emotional levels.

In the gay community, the sexual revolution is associated with tens of thousands of men who practiced Free Love, many of whom wound up getting killed in the process.

We could see these as examples of failures of a social movement, but also as failures of relationship. And we could see them as situations emerging from an inherently self-centered world view, where personal satisfaction was held as more important than community health. That doesn’t sound very Sixties to me.

The same accusation has been made about the draft. Young men, one version of the story goes, refused to go to war not because they felt that the war was wrong, but rather because they didn’t want to get killed. Yet the anti-Vietnam War movement was dressed up in moral terms, which can be viewed as a ruse for a deeper selfish interest. There are, of course, other ways to analyze history, but this is one of the more cynical views.

The cynical view is supported by the fact that most of the people who were politically active in the Sixties are now living pretty much the same uninvolved lives that their parents did, and are far more concerned about the stock market than about political progress. Where are these people who were supposedly so deeply opposed to Vietnam, now that we have been mercilessly bombing the daylights out of Afghanistan and are planning to do the same thing to Iraq? Well, if you figure that they have no personal stake in stopping this war, we can see why they wouldn’t bother. If their kids are opposed to attacking Afghanistan, or afraid of the draft, let them stop it.

When we look at this astrologically, we can see the seeming contradictions clearly. The generation of the anti-war protesters was made up of a constituency of people born with Pluto-in-Leo. Pluto in any given sign can bestow as many of the attributes of that sign as does the Sun or Moon, only it affects millions of people over a full generation or more. And it does so in a Plutonian way: with obsession, and a subconscious drive, and what you might call evolutionary urgency. Pluto in Leo people have a reputation for being able to take care of themselves. But, bless them, not much else. And man, these people get divorced like they had a subscription.

When the Sixties came around, the planetary emphasis had shifted to Virgo and, increasingly, to Pisces as well. Together, these two signs have a very different feeling, and different social themes, than does Leo. First of all, they take us beyond personal reality. Virgo’s first keyword is service, that is, service to others. This sign, and its associated sixth house, includes themes such as healing, teaching, and good old unglorified mundane work, most of which subjects derive from Virgo’s earliest known theme, servants.

Pisces is a region of consciousness that we think of as cosmic, mystical, and inherently spiritual. It has many properties that take us, in thought and experience, beyond this world, beyond normal awareness. These include fantasy, dreams, alcohol, and drugs, but also meditation, direct experience of the numinous, and creative processes such as making film and theatre. Pisces has visionary gifts and a strong theme of service because Pisces, most astrologers feel, can tune into the big picture and the higher spiritual purposes of humanity.

What happened in the Sixties is that a whole lot of people with very strong, even obsessive, Leonine tendencies found themselves living in the midst of an era where higher priorities and collective needs were coming into focus. Rare conjunctions were activating the Virgo-Pisces axis: Uranus conjunct Pluto in Virgo, and Saturn conjunct Chiron in Pisces. These four planets combined the themes of revolution and the quest for freedom (Uranus), evolutionary necessity and exploring deeper causes (Pluto), devotion to healing and service (Chiron), and awareness of responsibility and interacting directly with the power structure (Saturn).

The Pluto-in-Leo generation picked up on this energy, and expressed it in its own way. It is unlikely that any other generation would have had the stamina to stand up to the power structures in the way that this particular generation did. And they had many truly significant achievements, among them being the first generation of men to refuse to go to war. But when the powerful Virgo-Pisces relationship passed, there seemed to be little follow-through.

What happened in the Sixties defined the issues and established the need for deeper relationships between people, and between people and their culture. Today, we have inherited a legacy that we need to cultivate, nurture, and develop, but that legacy has its roots in an era when people were not afraid to take up their self-conscious existence and demand change. We could learn a lot from them. Yet now it’s up to us to create and develop the sustainable relationships that will allow the following movements to grow and thrive. They include:
The Organic Movement. Organic food and organic farming are part of the same thing but are really two different social fronts. A population of people is beginning to understand the need for cleaner food, and another for cleaner agriculture. And there has been significant, successful movement against GM (genetically modified) foods in the UK. The phrase back to the Earth and the notion of ecology (which means the study of home), which were so popular in the Sixties, are now manifesting as solid business ventures and as a new generation of family farms and an environmental movement that is based on an actual relationship to the Earth, not just ideas about the Earth. And there is a concrete idea of grassroots action and the need for structure if we’re going to have sustained success.

Goddess Religion. We no longer just need to be against the patriarchy. The Goddess is returning in all her diversity, as reverence for nature, as Ammachi, as the Tantrika or Sacred Whore, as the amazing popularity of Wiccan faith and tradition, or as astrologers including feminine archetypes in their chart readings. Most of the women I know, and many of the men, are involved in some form of spiritual devotion that directly honors the feminine spirit of creation and the Earth, and honors women as priestesses, drummers, and the Wise. This is about a direct relationship to Goddess rather than a conceptual one.

The Holistic Movement. Thus was it not ever that you could buy homeopathic remedies in supermarkets, get foot reflexology in a hospital, or visit an acupuncturist without wandering down Mott Street. The holistic and human potential movements of the 1970s came through a door that was blown off in the 1960s: that door was the notion that there is no alternative to conventional ideas. It is up to a generation of practitioners, most of whom have Pluto in Virgo, to develop their mastery of their art forms, to build the reputation of the work they do so that they can have more credibility in society, and to develop a basis of mutual respect with their clients.

New Relationship Models. The difficult questions of relationship that needed to be asked in the midst of the Sixties sexual revolution are being asked today, in movements devoted to polyamory (responsible nonmonogamy), bisexuality, and new experiments in intentional community. They involve efforts at making families and love affairs more egalitarian and trusting, and more reflective of real human needs, including the needs of children. Equality, honesty, and working on one’s issues are the basis of polyamory and most other new relationship models. In my view, the polyamorous community is asking the questions that most monogamous people need to be asking as well, and this is one example of how the sexual revolution continues in a much more responsible, if smaller, form than it began.

All of these examples are based on redefining relationships. They represent a need for grassroots action, and a sober view of things. When all the “organizers” are stoned…things either happen, or you have another packet of chocolate biscuits.

They represent expressions of sustained commitment to ourselves, to one another, and to an ideal that first emerged well over a generation ago, and have miraculously survived everything from Nancy Reagan to the American Medical Association, and are now alive in our hands. Power to the people, man.

—Thanks to Elle McKenzy, David Arner, and Denice Taylor

Eric Francis is a professional astrologer.
His homepage is www.EricFrancis.com.