“Long distance runner, what you standing there for?”
—The Grateful Dead
Though the Sun is now in Scorpio, there is some unusual activity going on over in Libra and one sign back in Virgo. The current astrology weaves together these three signs beautifully, which is useful.
Let’s start with Libra, or rather, the Aries-Libra axis. The lunar nodes are currently positioned across the first degrees of those signs. The nodes move slowly, and have taken 18 months to make it across this most important axis of the zodiac. They move in reverse, so they start at the end of a sign and then retrograde back to the beginning.
Now they are aligned with this thing called the Aries Point; the South Node is in the first degree of Aries (called the Aries Point), and the North Node is in the first degree of Libra.
This aligns the personal-as-political or individual-as-cultural property that both the Aries Point and the nodes often display. Both elements have a way of increasing the scale of events and ideas.
You might say that it puts our whole mini-era of history into a kind of resonator, which makes it easier to hear what we’re saying to ourselves and to one another. In other words, to hear the message that we are sending to ourselves and to one another, all that’s necessary is to listen—and this is especially easy now, since the message is so clear.
Listening, of course, is an issue. Most people either don’t have the time or don’t care. Yet there is vital information coming through. If you start to get the same message coming through many channels, you know that your own mind is talking to you.
Later this month the nodes arrive in Virgo-Pisces, which will give us an extended phase of emphasis on that sign polarity. There’s plenty else going on in that vicinity as well.
As you may be aware, back in August, Jupiter ingressed Virgo for a one-year visit. Venus and Mars have been in a series of conjunctions through the year. The first one was in Aries, and then there was another in Leo. As of early November, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter are in Virgo, making a series of conjunctions.
In late October, Mars conjoined Jupiter, followed by Venus. Next, on November 2, Venus and Mars align for the third and last time of the year.
That’s a lot of conjunctions in Virgo within a short time, involving planets that are real to us, planets we don’t need telescopes to see or any special theory to feel. That alone is interesting, particularly when you remember that there have been two prior Venus-Mars conjunctions recently; this is all part of a developing story. Of course, that’s the nature of astrology: the perpetual work in progress.
This set of conjunctions is evoking astrological history—or said another way, it’s talking to many, many natal charts. For example, Pluto was in Virgo from 1957 through 1972 (minus a little time on each far end of that range); Uranus was in Virgo from 1962 through 1968. The result was something called the Uranus-Pluto conjunction. There were three exact contacts, from 1965 through mid-1966.
If you’re wondering how The Beatles went from “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” to “I am The Walrus” in such a short time, think: Uranus-Pluto.
As an exact astrology event, the conjunctions were short-lived, spanning just nine months. But they were the concentrated epicenter of an energy wave that resounded in all directions, and with which we are still living today.
By today I mean in contemporary times, though because there is so much unusual activity in Virgo right now, the Uranus and Pluto placements in the charts of millions of people are now being activated. This is called a transit—what happens if you’re born with a planet in a particular place, and then at some future time, something comes along and makes an aspect to it. For the past couple of months and into the present, the charts of all people and all events from the 1960s are taking multiple transits.
The 1960s were an unusual time. It wasn’t exactly a unique era—the Uranus-Pluto cycle tends to stir the pot, and there have been several similar eras throughout the centuries. Yet that particular conjunction happening in its own way, at that time, created something really wild.
Richard Tarnas, in his monograph Prometheus the Awakener, described “the rebellion against established structures of all kinds, the intense intellectual adventurousness of the era, the radical consciousness and transformation, the titanic technological advances into the space age [and] the general atmosphere of revolution on all fronts.” He correctly notes the stunning, simultaneous advances in every technological, artistic and intellectual field, along with truly unusual social conditions.
There was also a counter-revolution, which took the form of the political murders of Malcolm X, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
As I described in the article series Born in the Sixties, those who lived through this era got to express this astrology for a phase of time. Those who were born with this astrology take it with them through their whole lives.
Regarding how this theory has played out, there’s probably a book in that. Certainly in the realm of technology it had sweeping manifestations. Though Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were from the prior wave of births (what we now call the Baby Boomers or people with Pluto in Leo), the first generation of software engineers who designed the Internet were of Uranus-Pluto in Virgo vintage. There was a certain idealism there, which for a while was driven by more than money.
Malicious social engineering of various kinds has been aimed at every aspect of the progress society made in the 1960s. I recognize that not everyone considers what happened in those years to be progress; to some extent that’s a matter of viewpoint. Regardless, most of the gains made either were unraveled, destroyed, reversed, or co-opted.
The assassinations of Malcolm X, King, the Kennedy brothers, and others, including John Lennon a bit later, sent a terrifying message that one immediately risked one’s life to take leadership for progressive causes, or to speak out at all. It’s no wonder that we don’t have vocal progressive or liberal leaders in our era and have not had them for a long time. It’s not that people are not interested; there’s just so progressive you can be, without being afraid you’ll get shot, or having it actually happen.
It’s worth recognizing just how threatened the power structures were by what happened in the 1960s. I count the beginning of the Sixties to be the assassination of JFK in 1963, and the end to be the resignation of Richard M. Nixon in 1974.
The very next year, a newly formed entity called the Trilateral Commission published a report called “The Crisis of Democracy.”
Yes, the Trilateral Commission actually exists, and it has an address and a published list of members. One of the first things it did after its founding by David Rockefeller in 1973 was to publish a report designed to help national and corporate leaders get a grip on the uprisings of the immediately previous era. The report is part history, part analysis, and part strategy proposal—and it remains the only major publication of the commission to date.
Describing public uprising and involvement in society as a “crisis of democracy” is not friendly to the idea of public participation. Despite its position, the report offers a truly interesting analysis. Here is a sample:
“The late sixties have been a major turning point. The amount of underlying change was dramatically revealed in the political turmoil of the period, which forced a sort of moral showdown over a certain form of traditional authority. Its importance has been mistaken inasmuch as the revolt seemed to be aiming at political goals. What was at stake appears now to be moral much more than political authority—churches, schools, and cultural organizations more than political and even economic institutions.”
The Trilateral authors recognized two meaningful things—one, this was not about the government but rather about progress through all institutions; and two, that the drive was moral rather than political. I would call that dangerous to those clinging to the status quo, or acting in clearly immoral ways.
This will give you an idea of the antipathy they were expressing toward those who had the nerve to dissent: “At the present time, significant challenge comes from the intellectuals and related groups who assert their disgust with the corruption, materialism, and inefficiency of democracy and with the subservience of democratic government to ‘monopoly capitalism.'”
When you consider this was written 40 years ago it seems all the more incredible. Another thing the authors recognized is that a level of personal social freedom allowed for this freedom to rebel.
They describe “an explosion of human interaction and correlatively a tremendous increase of social pressure. The social texture of human life has become and is becoming more and more complex and its management more difficult. Dispersion, fragmentation, and simple ranking have been replaced by concentration, interdependence, and a complex texture.”
They conclude with this thought: “Because of the basic importance of the contemporary complex social texture, its management has a crucial importance, which raises the problem of social control over the individual.”
Remember this phrase, “the problem of social control over the individual.” If you’re wondering where the progress of the 1960s went, please consider that it was consciously erased by this meta-corporate, meta-governmental philosophy. Standing up against the war was replaced by standing up for Coca-Cola in that silly “I’d like to teach the world to sing” advert.
The Trilateral Commission is nothing more or less than an organization of government and corporate policy makers—who have the power to achieve something like massive, sweeping, free-trade agreements that subvert domestic national authority and which created a new era of slavery.
Yet it’s chilling that they reduce this power down to the problem of social control over the individual.
Since this report was published, many policies have been put into place that obstruct and confuse individual will—for example, abstinence-only sexual indoctrination. That is the still-extant school program, begun under President Reagan, designed to ruin sex for young people before they even know what it is.
So now, in these days, a lot of astrology is passing through mid-Virgo, lighting up the Uranus and Pluto placements of everyone born in the 1960s era, particularly those in the peak years of 1964 through 1967, whose placements are in the middle of that sign. At the same time, everyone in this era is close to the time of their Chiron return in Pisces, a topic I plan to come back to soon.
This is your latest chance to feel what you’re made of. This is your chance to tune into your moment of incarnation and to consider the world that you chose to enter, or happened to show up in, perhaps with some conscious, useful purpose for being here.
Your inherent, organic patterning, contained in your astrology, is deeper than any fabricated social concept or control device. To get to that level of original intention, you really must feel yourself and tune into your point of origin. Listen for those vibes.
They are speaking to you now—in an era when the world needs every awake person who can open up their eyes and greet the chaos and potential of our moment. Are you willing? You seem to be paying attention. What are you doing with what you know? The world is waiting for you. We are all eagerly anticipating your participation.
This article appears in November 2015.
