CIIS Public Programs Podcast

TRANSCRIPT

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[Cheerful theme music begins] 

This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. 

Archetypal astrology is an approach influenced by Jungian and transpersonal psychology that studies the connection between the changing positions of the planets in the solar system and archetypal patterns in human experience and history. The evidence of consistent correlations between planetary alignments and world events, as seen through the lens of archetypal astrology, can provide us with an invaluable larger context for our time.  

In this episode, CIIS Professor Emeritus and cultural historian Richard Tarnas provides an in-depth overview of what's happening with the planets now, helping us become more conscious of the deep unconscious, less like puppets and more like co-creative participants in relation to the archetypal powers within and around us to better understand the profound drama currently facing the Earth community.  

This episode was recorded during a live online event on February 8th, 2024. You can also watch it on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube channel. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs just like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 

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Richard Tarnas: Greetings. Hello, everybody. Once again, here we are, the beginning of a new year and another continuing drama that we are all participating in. And I used to do these archetypal state of the world weather reports back in Namaste Hall for quite a few years at CIIS. Certainly, I remember back in 2001 after 9-11, but I started this particular series, as some of you may remember, in the spring of 2020 when we were in the depths of the, I mean, the full lockdown had happened with the COVID pandemic. And the world transits were so relevant to understanding what was happening at that point that, and it was so helpful to know about them, to see the larger picture, to get the deeper implications and so forth, but I just felt it would be worth to share with you then for those interested.  

And then I again gave talks like this in 2021 and 2022. I didn't do one last year. That was my final semester teaching after 30 years here at CIIS. I think I was teaching a course that was kind of an archetypal history of Western civilization and it was demanding, and I really wanted to give my all to it. And so, I didn't take a break from it to do an annual weather report with you, but here I am this year.  

And so, as I don't have to tell you, the state of the world could hardly be more volatile right now and uncertain and so much is in the balance, deepening on so many diverse factors and people and decisions that are in play right now, it's been a pretty relentless several years and here we are once again where it's not really letting up. And perhaps it won't let up in terms of our larger global situations.  

We obviously are all aware in this community of the tremendous climate crisis, the global ecological situation. If we human beings could resolve our social political, economic issues and justice issues and so forth and come into a decently compassionate relationship with each other and the rest of the world, that would be one really big step. And at the same time, we've got a whole Earth community that we are also affecting and our relationship to it and the quality of our mind and our hearts relationship to that larger Earth community, all the species of life, all the land and waters and air that are part of our precious Earth are deeply influenced by us, this one species. And in many ways, this particular part of the species that is identified with modernity and everything that comes with that.  

So, in terms of what we can illuminate with what we have today available to us, I mean, all of us mortal human beings see through a glass darkly. Yet, we do have a particular glass, an archetypal telescope that does give us insights, it gives us remarkable glimpses into the deeper forces and fields that are constellated right now and the timing of their unfolding. And this is a great gift. It's a gift, I think, of the cosmos. It's one of those things that actually the fact that the cosmos is both physical and spiritual and symbolic all the way through all the way down. And the fact that its symbolic manifestations are such that to a certain extraordinary extent, they are intelligible to us human beings. That's an ongoing reality that I know I personally experience as being a kind of affirmation despite all the despite our crises, despite everything that we can doubt about the human experiment and our place in the cosmos and on this Earth. 

Nevertheless, there's something about the universe's relationship to us and our relationship to the universe in which a symbolic communication, a language, the language of the soul of the world, the anima mundi is something that is shared between the macrocosm and the human microcosm. And that's a kind of affirmation of the existence of our species and even of our evolution, taking the form it has so that we are capable of symbolic discernment of archetypal recognition and so forth. And that this is connected in an extraordinarily consistent and vivid way with the movements of the planets and the earth around the sun, how the moving geometry of the solar system within which we're embedded is also indicative of a deeper archetypal reality of the unfolding dynamics. And so that's what I'm going to be sharing with you tonight. It's not a talk for specialists. It's for people who have a general interest and openness to this perspective. And while I'm going to be looking at the world situation and the collective psyche, some of what I want to say here this evening might be helpful on a more personal level. And I'll address that towards the early part of my remarks here.  

So, one thing to keep in mind is there are so many astrological factors always ongoing. And the planets and the sun and the moon are always present and expressing their being. And the archetypal dynamics are therefore extraordinarily complex and multiple. I'm basically going to be sharing with you what the most important factors that have my attention now and, in the months, and years ahead. Based on now 45 years, almost a half a century ago, I was just thinking about this the other day. This work, this research emerged out of, well, in a way, both a place and a relationship.  

The place was Esalen Institute in Big Sur, and a relationship was Stan Grof and I working together for all these years, to right up to the present moment amazingly. And it was 50 years ago, today's what February 8. So exactly like four weeks from now, like March 3. That's the 50, that's the half century since Stan and I first met the first night I got to Esalen and our friendship began, our collaboration. So much I've learned from him and so much I have appreciated about I mean, many of you here tonight may have been part of our the many, many classes that we taught at CIIS in several different locations over the years going back to 1993- 

94 that school year. And so that's the story of the work that I've done. That's where this research began.  

And at this point, there's such a large database, as it were, a body of evidence that has helped me and those with whom I work closest in the archetypal astrology, archetypal cosmology community, research community, these are the most significant, the most helpful categories of astrological phenomena, astronomical phenomena that we have found over the years. So that's what I'm going to share with you tonight, the ones that are really in that I see as especially relevant to understanding our time.  

As I've done in the past, it's always important to just a few background principles we all need to keep in mind. The planets don't work as if they're not affecting us in a kind of linear causal mechanistic way as if they're simply material objects that influence the earth like gravity or electromagnetic radiation, something like that. It's rather, I think, much better understood in the kinds of terms that Plotinus, the great neoplatonic philosopher from antiquity or Jung, both have described a phenomenon which Jung named synchronicity, which is basically that it's not so much that in this case that the planets are causing in a efficient causality kind of way what's happening in the Earth, rather, there is an ongoing correlation, an ongoing synchronous connection, correspondence between the movements of the planets and the movements of the archetypal dynamics of human experience.  

And as Plotinus puts it, everything is interconnected, all things breathe together, and everything is symbolically meaningful. That's why one can tune into intuitively if one has those capacities and cultivated them or it comes as a gift, but the intuitive capacities can work through many, many different modes of divination and so forth. But this is a form of esoteric understanding that is not dependent on clairvoyance or psychic capacities, but more simply the well-developed or well-cultivated symbolic sense, which is something that you get from reading good poetry or watching, experiencing great art and so forth. It's an education in symbolic discernment and that capacity when it's wedded to our astronomical knowledge, kind of humanities and sciences synthesis, it can give us many, many different insights that would otherwise not be available to us.  

So secondly, it's not a deterministic system, it's not fatalistic, and this has to do with the very nature of archetypes. And archetypes are powerful, they're numinous, they shape and inform things from both the interior psyche and the outer world. They can be seen as gods and goddesses as the ancients experienced them. They can be seen as platonic archetypal principles, transcendent cosmic principles that inform the whole cosmos and are at the foundation of reality itself. They can be seen as Jungian archetypes in a more psychological sense and Freudian instincts and so forth. They're all relevant to our understanding, except it's important when we take in the psychological side of it that we always remember that they transcend the human. Archetypal powers seem to be more cosmic, more the cosmic or cosmo theistic, grounded in the cosmos and the more than human world, as well as speaking to the human world. And they can be, and it's the very nature of archetypes that they can be enacted in many different ways that are all faithful to the core essence of that principle and at the same time, open to multiple enactments. And this is where human responsibility and human freedom, our agency plays a crucial role in the expression of these archetypes in our lives.  

So, astrology, as we're describing it here, it's not, they're not, astrology is not concretely predictive, it's archetypally predictive. And therefore, the more consciousness we bring to the table, the more self-awareness, the more courage, the more intelligence and imagination, then the more freedom and skillfulness that we can have to participate in the archetypal forces coming through us and around us.  

One last thing, and that is we're looking, the evidence is basically founded on research that has shown one where many, when we're looking at world transits in particular, but this is also true for personal transits, that there will be many phenomena that happen within a particular time that all bear the imprint, the features of that, of a particular archetype or archetypal combination. And so the correlations we're looking at are synchronic in that sense, but they're also diachronic because these are always part of larger cycles, and when the cycles come around to like a new conjunction of two planets, then you get a cyclical expression, activation of the same archetypal powers, but in a way that is related to the new time, the new cycle, related to the new time, the new situation, and everything that's happened in between, but at the same time bears an intelligible relationship to what happened the previous time and the previous time before that. And this is very important for any kind of rigorous research to be able to track these things because otherwise the astrologer has too easy a tendency to say, well this means that because you've got this planet and that sign and that house and according to their particular house system and zodiacal choices and then all sorts of other schools of astrology and so forth, because you have this then we can expect that.  

And I think really what astrology as a community of astrologers is basically moving towards taking on the same level of scholarly and research rigor that we expect of all graduate students and fellow our colleagues as professors and so forth, where it's based on correlations that aren't just read from a textbook or something that one has a personal impression of, but it's based on a great deal of data that tracks back diachronically across the centuries as well as synchronically all converging many at the same time across in different nations or whatever cultures at the same time, but all bearing the same quality. In addition, there's a cumulative dimension to this where everything that happens during a particular transit is coming in a larger context that it's building on, it's informed by and then when that comes into expression then that becomes the foundation along with everything that has already happened for the future.  

So, it's cumulative and it's evolving. There's an evolutionary quality to it and I think the evolution that there are deeper archetypal patterns at work through the entire historical, not just in terms of relative to particular planetary cycles, but also a kind of larger evolutionary telos or deeper meaningful unfolding is taking place that has certain intelligible patterns to it. A larger narrative is unfolding, and I'll address that towards the end today. Okay, so I think that covers everything that I most wanted to say by way of intro.  

So, there's two major conjunctions among the outer planets that are happening right now or will be soon. In fact, each of these is really kind of more on have not yet gotten to their fullness. These two world transits are the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction and the Saturn-Neptune conjunction. I think these are, before I talk about the world, the ramifications for the world as a whole geopolitically and so forth, it's very useful to know about on a personal level with these particular transits.  

So, the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction, it's probably the most fun among the outer planetary combinations and archetypally has sort of the greatest buoyance. Now, this one first came into orb. We work with the conjunctions, work like 12 to 15 degrees seems to be operative for world transit conjunctions of the outer planets. And it first came, the conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus first came into orb, as we call it last summer. And it will go, and it always lasts about 14 months, basically right till next this coming summer through into the coming summer. But this was an unusual arc. I've described and shown you in the past with diagrams of a kind of bell-shaped curve of increasing intensity, frequency of correlations and archetypal phenomena, and then gradually declining as it moves farther away and out of orb. This one's been not like a kind of symmetrical bell curve because it came into orb last summer and it got, I don't know what, within about 10 degrees or so. But then went retrograde and it's only now coming into February and March that it's really coming into a tighter orb. And then it will be really cooking in April and May of this year, still in orb June and July.  

But what this means is that while there's been certain things that we've been visible over the last nine months or so, or a little less than that, seven months, but the major impact in terms of correlating with a really tight orb and moving into exact alignment is still to come. And it's all kind of clustered here this spring. And so I wanted to start with this one because all of you out there who have been thinking about starting a project or you're involved in some kind of creative project already, this is an extraordinarily fruitful transit for, world transit for, it kind of seems to be, increase the level of both creativity, innovation, breakthroughs, and also historically is the most remarkable among all transiting influences, among all the planetary cycles. Every 14 years, those planets come into conjunction and halfway in between, they come into opposition, which is like the full moon moment of the cycle. And then the completion of the cycle and beginning of a new one with the conjunction, which we're in now.  

It is dazzling, the quality of the correlations over the centuries. I mean, those of you who are interested, and some of you may have read Cosmos and Psyche, there's 70, 80 pages of the of just extraordinary milestones, cultural milestones, artistic breakthroughs, scientific breakthroughs, technological, but also spiritual, psychological, quantum leaps, peak experiences and so forth. And interestingly, the original peak experience as it was named by Abraham Meslow, that it was based on two peak experiences he personally had, both under the Jupiter-Uranus alignment, and same thing with, like I say, quantum leap, but the history of quantum physics is remarkably connected to from its beginnings with Max Planck in 1900 to the big breakthroughs in the 20s when Jupiter and Uranus were conjunct again, 1927, 28. Bohr does the principle of complementarity. Heisenberg does the principle of indeterminacy, uncertainty principle. And anyway, those also correlated with the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction. If you have a project happening, you're thinking of writing a book, you're thinking, or it could be your dissertation or whatever, I mean, use this period, these next few years, there just tends to be more kind of liberation of the creative impulse available. Moreover, it's also a very good time for, let's say you've been working for a long time and things are just about ready, this is a very good time for launching into the public world.  

So, if you were to read the many, many correlations of the artistic breakthroughs, the scientific breakthroughs, the historical successful political, social rebellions and awakenings that have happened from the Bastille to Woodstock or the moon landing or the fall of the Berlin Wall in Velvet Revolution or in personal artistic lives, Beethoven writing his first great Beethovenian symphony, the Eroica under Jupiter-Uranus conjunction. Joni Mitchell brings out her first albums, et cetera. It's just remarkable how many artistically and scientifically culturally significant creative milestones coincide with this cycle. It's a joy to trace, to track, you know, how consistent it is and how it works across many fields. But I want to emphasize that it also, some of these things are visible historically more readily in the moment or soon after, but in many cases, they're what I call like hidden births. They take place without a it's it may be like it might be when a big creative project begins, you know, James Joyce starts to write Ulysses. Yes, he publishes Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man under the conjunction, but then he starts to write Ulysses at that time and it initiates a whole another quality. Oh, what, the Harry Potter series begins publication in 1997 under the conjunction, but a lot of artists are starting things or scientists or technological breakthroughs are doing it quietly like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in their garage in Palo Alto starting their work under the Jupiter Uranus alignment of 75-76 in the garage in Palo Alto. Nobody knows what's going to at that time, what's going to come from it. So, it's a hidden birth.  

So I'm mainly wanting to encourage all of us to that particular wind that's blowing can be very, very supportive of our personal creative work and also our quest for greater understanding, freedom, expanding our horizons in various ways, expanding our consciousness. Could be through travel, it could be through sacred medicine journeys, it could be through reading a book or experiencing a new idea that is just really personally liberating becomes a kind of milestone in one's own unfolding. All these ways are possible with the Jupiter Uranus conjunction. So, you know, I think it's a great opportunity to be able to be able to explore all of these ways that are possible with the Jupiter Uranus conjunction. So, it's a field that we are in right now that you don't want to sleep through. You know, there's a lot of other things happening in the world that aren't so easy, but this one is one of the most important ones. And it's a kind of if you think of Uranus is related to that Promethean impulse of innovation, the rebel, the trickster, the liberator, the bringing new light to humanity, etc. The fire that Prometheus brings to liberate humanity has many different forms. This is sort of like Prometheus crown king, Jupiter elevates, expands, whatever it touches, grants success to it, gives it a buoyancy, perhaps a cultural magnitude. And at the same time, what I what I also want to emphasize, though, is that every archetypal combination has its shadow. And that's true for Jupiter and Uranus as well. The shadow of Jupiter's expansion, elevation is one where it could involve inflation, overexpansion, a kind of inflated confidence or pride or some form of excess.  

And so, there's a need to really bring in discernment with every transit that we go through. It's not just that so that James Hillman was very good on how the archetypes Yes, they are the great enriching the sources of meaning that enrich and elevate our lives that that inform our, our psychic existence, our imagination and so forth. And they shape our experience in so many ways. But they are also they each archetype is a is a god or goddess that rules its cosmos. And it can this is human has and Jung was very good on this too, it can take possession of one and it can misleadingly lead one into certain directions. So, for example, Dylan, who's born with the Jupiter Uranus conjunction himself, that's his like unbelievably sustained creativity as Saturn there too. So, it's very sustained right into old age. And I say that advisedly since I'm, I'm a septuagenarian, and he's, he's an octogenarian. But Dylan's continuing creativity is a kind of wonder to behold. But he so he had this one sentence, some of you some of you may remember from I think it's, well, it's from the album, bringing it all back home. And where he says, the highways made for gamblers better use your sense. Take what you have learned from coincidence.  

There's a kind of a indication of a recommendation that we pay attention to synchronicities coincidences, take what you have gathered from coincidence. It's the universe's telling us something, it's an invitation to understanding a deeper meaning. But that sort of honoring of the gambler, Uranus, Prometheus, it's a trickster, it's a gambler, it takes chances, it and Jupiter, both gives success, and it also can give the impression or illusion of, of success by giving one kind of like fool's gold or the shiny apple the to use the term from Tracy Chapman, who just did that very moving return on stage for the Grammys the other night, singing Fast Car so well with the with a country singer. Anyway, the shiny the shiny, the shiny apple, the flash in the pan, the superficial, seeming seemingly successful, but really shallow, ungrounded, inflated, liable to be liable to be deflated, because anything that is inflated too much is going to get deflated. And that's where Saturn comes in, of course, and then we have a whole different situation.  

So we, Jupiter Uranus can be a bit dangerous. I mean, if, if you're going to Las Vegas, as I suppose a few people are this weekend with the Super Bowl, it's a, yeah, you'd limit, limit, limit your, your sense of great success that you can have just so like maybe use $100 or something and see where it goes, but people can get carried away with it. And some of the really extraordinary scandals of businesspeople or, you know, entrepreneurs or all sorts of other people who just kind of expand way too fast or inflate through their persona, their, their, their, their, their, their public presentation and, but the substance isn't there. The foundations haven't been built, the hard work hasn't been accomplished so that there'd be, so that any Jupiterian success can endure. And so that's something to keep in mind. But just in general, it's a, it's a, it's a very special combination that you want to, it's a good time to begin or to search for forward or to bring forth into the public any creative projects that you've been gestating. Those of you who are working on dissertations and so forth. I mean, most of this is a very creative community that I'm speaking to tonight. And the world as a whole needs what this community has to share with it. And do the hard work that will allow it to, and what you do to endure. Also, to be able to be communicated to people in a way that they can take in. That's a very important thing.  

And so, I think that's a very, very important thing that they can take in. That takes, that's a labor. It's a discipline. It's a kind of self-transcendence that has to happen in the course of doing that. But now's the time. It's a very good period to carry forward. I mean, all of you are going to have personal transits of all different kinds that I can't know about because it's, they're just specific to you. And you could have all sorts of other artistic or other intellectual creativity transits happening, including Uranus might be conjoining your Jupiter over the next three years or something like that. So, but I'm just mentioning the world transit that seems to have a collective impact. You know, just even in the world of popular culture, there, it tends to come through with like big wow events, you know. I think, like, for example, when it was starting las summer, I think, I think coming of the release of Barbie, for example, and Oppenheimer at the same time and “Barbenheimer”, etc. That, that was an example of that kind of Jupiter-Uranus, you know, people coming back into the theaters and then all the kind of wonderful celebration of what, what Barbie was represented and the creativity that was, was in it as a, as a film. And Oppenheimer, you know, at a whole ‘nother level. Taylor Swift's huge mega tour, you know, that's very, very typical. And she's got that Jupiter-Uranus natally right on her moon, as I recall.  

All the huge excitement, by the way, around, around Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's romance. It's so kind of appropriate that there is a Venus-Mars conjunction all this month. And how front and center that, you know, it's kind of the coming together of the, of the warrior archetype and the goddess of beauty and love, the arts and so forth. It's the artist and the athlete. It's a kind of heros camos or sacred marriage, you know, or romance, in this case, of its own. And that Venus-Mars conjunction in the sky really, really fits perfectly for that just how that's been constellated right now. Also, you have just all the ways in which I was thinking, it's the Venus-Mars conjunction happens to be conjoined with Pluto in a triple conjunction. And Pluto has so much to do with politics and power struggle. And very interesting how that relationship seems to have also activated, particularly the far right in the United States in a kind of humorous, if it weren't so crazy, way. So, okay, I'm realizing I need to move forward. You can see each of these are so rich that I have to kind of pull myself away and go to the next one. Okay, so there's a Saturn-Neptune conjunction. That's the other big conjunction that's happening. And it's just hovering. It's kind of out of orb now or just coming into like 20 degrees and then 15. But they're both in the same tropical sign, Pisces, which is very kind of Neptunian in quality already.  

So, there's already signs of it evident. And Saturn, of course, is so different than Jupiter. It's that which limits structures, gives solidity and stability. But it also challenges and causes problems that are holds back, rigidifies. And it has very much to do with this kind of it has very much to do with this concrete world, while Neptune has so much to do with the with the spiritual and imaginative world and the invisible world. That which is transcendent, which is symbolic and subtle and tangible. Saturn is into, you know, kind of clear boundaries and solid foundations. Neptune is much more porous and timeless and immaterial and infinite and interpenetrating and so forth. But you put the Saturn-Neptune conjunction coming together is a very, very complex one. And it, okay, I should mention now, this one is coming really it this year, it's starting to come in this summer more strongly. But it's not it's still not going to go. It's really going to reach its intense period in 2025, next year and the year after 2025 and 2026. And then it leaves the orb 15 degrees in around April of 2027 in that spring.  

So, it's really more the next couple of years after 2024. But it is in the field right now. And people who are sensitive to these things can pick it up can see the signs of it. That sense of anxiety tends to get increased during Saturn-Neptune period. Suddenly, I mean, the problematic side of it, which can be hard, is it can be psychologically and spiritually challenging. It can be a kind of dark night of the soul, and it can increase anxiety about the future, etc. Which God knows we have plenty of reasons for anxiety. But it also can trigger because of Neptune's relationship to the ideal and the transcendent and Saturn's relationship to the hard factual realities that we have to deal with. That dialectic can cause a fair amount of tension that can result one of the ways it can come through is a certain sense of discouragement about how far we are from the ideal. Or there can be a kind of fatigue, or like I've seen like democracy fatigue is one headline that I saw not too long ago that that fits this. Or this sense of being that there isn't that there isn't that there's no grounds for hope, a real disillusionment of a sense of being demoralized.  

Now I have to say, even that quality demoralization and disillusionment can be and have its very positive effect. And I mentioned something because when it has coincided with periods of wars, including both World War One, World War Two, when the Saturn Neptune came in, in the like the 1916 to 19 period, or again, that was one conjunction. Again, it came in during the like 1943 to 5, 43 43 to 5 period. Both of those were the last years of the of the world wars. And there is a kind of feeling like we're in a quagmire or it's or it's not going to like there's a kind of exhaustion that can lead towards the ending of the war. That was very true in World War One. It was also true in Vietnam under the Saturn Neptune opposition of the early 70s, 71 to 73. Also with the Iraq War, 2004 to seven when again Saturn came into that was the opposition, as I recall. And these are all periods where I mean, with World War Two, there was a very long just I mean, all the nightmarish qualities of those last few years. I don't have to bring up of World War Two, but it did end in a way that where there was a kind of clear victory with all morally ambiguous as it was. But these other examples had had this quality of a kind of battle fatigue that finally overtook those people who were in charge of the war and the kind of with withdrawal from wartime. And, you know, we've got two major wars that are in the front of all of our consciousness right now in Israel, Palestine, and in Ukraine. And it'll be interesting to see how that unfolds.  

But in general, I want to just talk about how in the on the positive side, the conjunction of Saturn and Neptune is very good for increasing our capacity for focused consciousness, and for calm concentration, a kind of nuanced subtlety of awareness, deeper insight, psychological reflections very much in hand, excuse me, enhanced by the Saturn Neptune conjunction. It's extremely good for spiritual practice for meditation for prayer for following a spiritual tradition, an ancient spiritual tradition. And we think of somebody like the Dalai Lama, who has Saturn Neptune very potent in his chart, the opposition is right on his moon. And he, you know, clearly has gone through great you know, losses of the ideal, like the losses of the spiritual world that he had that that of Tibet. And his engagement with the suffering of humanity, and at the same time, his calling for the importance of meditation of, of adhering to a spiritual practice, cultivating compassion, cultivating the kind of virtues of the Bodhisattva, hard work at Saturn in service of the spiritual, which is Neptune, or, or of the poetic of the imaginative of the ideals in our lives. Also, bringing the ideals into concrete actualization, that's so important. See, that's Neptune, in a way, it's bringing heaven to earth, Neptune to Saturn, Saturn ruling the concrete, pragmatic realities of our lives, economic, social, political structures, and so forth. And Neptune being our ideals, our aspirations, which are so real. They shape our lives, they're not just figments, but it is or the they don't have to be just figments. And at the same time, it's, it takes something to bring those into a concrete expression. I think of somebody like Martin Luther King, you know, we had the Saturn, trying Neptune in a grand train with Jupiter, and how his whole life was like, bringing that ideal, I have a dream, and then bringing it to against create suffering and dark nights of the soul and weeping and, and, and sustaining that. So, you know, things like, like yoga, perhaps even, you know, living more monastically might, might be, or a serious engagement with, with spiritual teachings of any kind of mystical devotion. Also, a focus on healing and health, both mental and physical, you see, many people who work in the healing professions as therapists, as, as physicians and so forth, hospice work, have Saturn Neptune aspects, the care for the suffering and those in need. 

The flip side of that is that people under the Saturn Neptune alignment, which, as I say, is, well, it's just kind of getting underway later this year, this summer, it's more, I'm kind of preparing you for like 25, 26. It can be something that it tends to be a time where more people feel the need, or the, and the willingness to go into psychotherapy, to work on themselves psychologically. They feel that this, it's now, now time. And so that's very, very typical under Saturn Neptune periods. Another thing that is quite helpful with this aspect is, well, again, it's bivalent. So, you've got, see, Neptune is not just our spiritual ideals and all these positive things. It's also our, Neptune is our delusions and our illusions. And it's, it can be spin and propaganda and, and myths in the kind of rationalist point of view that if it's not factual, it's just this is the myth of the Flat Earth or whatever. And that's, in that case, Saturn brings in a very sort of healthy challenge to the illusion and to the, to the misinformation or disinformation to the, that's so even something like disenchantment, which is, you know, so much of what the CIIS community is about. And really, this whole talk is based on an enchanted view of the, of the cosmos, that it's the cosmos is ensouled. And this, and the sense of the disenchantment of the world that has been part of modernity is rightly seen as very problematic. But remember that one can enchant in, in a positive way, but one can enchant with a, with a spell that puts one in a kind of delusional world. That's very convincing. And people who have Saturn Neptune aspects often have a desire to kind of meet, face that and show the illusion for what it is.  

So, I mean, a lot of the great theorists have disenchantment in the ways that we might be like Weber and Freud and Foucault, you know, had Saturn Neptune aspects, Virginia Woolf, you know, very sort of skeptical understanding in certain ways. And at the same time, we can see how valuable a service it is when it shows us how we may be there could even be valid Neptunian realities that we're seeing, but we may be also projecting certain things from our own psychological needs and so forth. If you just think about how some of the great masters of pulling back or political spin, or disinformation, somebody like, like Jonathan Swift, or, or the Daily Show, John Stewart, who was born with it, and how he consistently year after year was bringing that, okay, here's what the politicians saying, here's what the corporate propaganda saying, and here's the reality. And, and so that sense of irony and skepticism that can play such a helpful role in the in the in a society. And it's quite appropriate that after several years of not being quite a few years, John Stewart is starting. He's coming back to the Daily Show, I think, once every week starting next Monday, as I recall.  

So, there you got he's getting into that Saturn, Neptune field and his that's very typical that a person who's born with that aspect tends to really shine under it. The way I mentioned with like with Taylor Swift, you know, this year. So, I think that's all I'll say about that. Because I want to just say a few words here about Yeah, the US is going through two very big planetary transits, one called the Pluto return and the other called the Uranus return. The Pluto returns very rare, it only happens every 248 years. So, this is the very first one the US has had, we don't have a pattern to look at in the past. You can see it with like the Roman Empire, which went through two of them and had quite a bit of it was very clear the plutonic dynastic power struggles that happened quite violent in that case, and also the and the other sides of the plutonic, which I'll get into in a second. Both times, including the second time, which marked the end of the Western Roman Empire, were quite significant historically.  

So, then the Uranus return, it's also happening for the United States. This is our third one. And the first one happened, you know, it's an 84-year cycle, the first one happened, you know, 1776, right up to the first one happened in the Civil War. And both that kind of tremendous, both rebellion and change and, and forging of a new birth of freedom, as Abraham Lincoln put it, and the and the and the freeing of enslaved people. That was, you know, a huge, huge, I mean, basically, it kind of revised the Constitution, it moved it in in a fundamental direction towards greater democratization and fulfillment of its ideals. And then the next Uranus return happened in the course of World War Two and the emergence of the US as a world as a world superpower. So those are those are two huge Uranus cycles. And we're now, we're just beginning the Uranus cycle.  

So, the Uranus return rather, so the Pluto return we've been in for a while. It's a big, big transit. If you think about how long Saturn returns last in our personal lives, everybody gets it. The first one between age 28 and 30. And it's pretty much for most people that whole period from 28 through 30, right up to the 31st birthday. So that whole period of three years tends to be deeply reflective of the Saturn archetype and Saturn return the the I won't go into all the ways or else I won't get to my- the big points I want to make. But many of you know about the Saturn return and it you could see it's not something that just comes on like a light switch for you know, a day or a month or something like that. It's the ending of a huge cycle. And the orb within which one sees the Saturn return expressing itself is very clearly bigger than most than most personal transits it is from the beginning of it to the end. It's more like about 20 degrees before exact. You see when around when you turn 28. Sometimes people start even when they're 27 depending on where Saturn was when you're born. But generally, it's 28 to 30. And it's basically about a 20-degree orb.  

Now if we account for the now, if we extend that to the big Pluto and Uranus cycles. And here in the case of the US that you can see like Pluto, we're basically in the middle of we're right, we're it's climaxing right now. I mean, it's peaking, it's been really tight. It is overall been going on for about 10, a little more than a decade and it will has a decade to go. But we're right at the center of it now. So that's a big bell curve. Now why am I saying something about the US? Yes, many of us here are North Americans, but and citizens of the US. But many of you aren't I know that some are listening in England and elsewhere, Canada, Australia. And that's the thing about the US is I for better or ill and often the latter. The US has a tremendous impact on the world, especially since the last Uranus return. And it has an outsized influence and the things that happen with our political situation has an enormous ripple effect or domino effect as it goes out into the into the world. And we just see it right now so vividly happening with the Ukraine, for example, and NATO and Israel, etc. It's a big deal. So that's why I'm addressing these national transits.  

And so, it kind of affects the zeitgeist of the whole world in the same way that if you're in a in an intimate relationship with somebody you live with somebody who's going through a powerful transit, you know, you it's part of your field too. And there's attending to requires attending to. So, it's I think we're, we're looking at a period here where there can be I mean, really, the whole Trump phenomenon is so plutonic. It's kind of like Hades. I think I mentioned a few years ago, it's like Hades opened up his jaws and pulled in Persephone into the into the maws of the underworld. Yeah, kind of like a like a mafia type of underworld. Truly, very typical of that side of the other plutonic. But just more generally, it can be like the decay or destruction of existing conditions, beliefs and structures, and which and it requires a really deep transformation and a renewal of life that comes out of that decay and destruction. I mean, we all feel that about I mean, clearly, the US is at a crossroads, such as it has not faced other than in the Civil War, really, which is also when actually the first Pluto hard aspect to itself happened, and the lead up to that too. Also, the typical is the power struggles with dominating individuals, plutonic individuals or institutions, clash of wills, encounter with destructive energies, either inside us or outside us. Also, inside the nation, as well as outside the nation, geopolitically, it's part of the field. It's part of the field.  

There can be also a kind of unconscious attraction towards dangerous situations or environments that are marked by life and death, urgency, crises of survival, where sort of like the shamanic descent into the underworld is literalized in a certain way. So, and I think, in addition, you have a greater sense of empowerment, strengthening of the will, personal renewal, sense of one's life being moved and transformed by deep evolutionary energies. We really need to draw on that. I've kind of been in the process of trying to understand the power of the energies. We really need to draw on that. I've quoted from in the past, the beautiful passages from Joanna Macy about the importance of realizing that our efforts on behalf of the Earth community are rooted in something that's as old as the Earth, you know, 4.6 billion years, or the cosmos of 14 billion years. We can be drawing on those deeper, powerful evolutionary energies. Also, the draw towards becoming closer to the forces of nature. Really felt that with the terrific windstorms that we had here in rain this weekend and going out in between rain, but while the wind was so terrific and we had no power here, I'm so glad, knock on wood, that the power stayed on right now. But just walking through the winds and the intensity of it, it's, well, very, it was very fulfilling. That's very plutonic.  

Pluto also has so much to do with the shadow and the human shadow and to illuminate the dark aspects of a personality within the human psyche, to face the shadow without being overwhelmed by them. The US is having to face its shadow as never before. I mean, even like, remember when Obama became president, elected, and then that night, you know, where he's in Chicago and he walks out with his beautiful family out into the stage there and, you know, with his, their dark skin just shining in such beauty and the red, white, and blue behind. And, you know, I remember a French political columnist said, the US has taken the moral torch, has seized the moral torch, and we here in France and elsewhere need to pay attention to that. That sense of such like a great moral advance had been made and yet right at that moment, the shadow is, begins its reaction and plotting its overthrow. It's like a, yeah, it has great dramatic qualities at work here. But facing the shadow, as all of us psychologists know, is absolutely crucial to any kind of true psycho-spiritual growth. And that's also true for a nation to grow beyond its illusions and like the persona that we like to see ourselves as embodying of being the land of the free and equality and justice and so forth and how far we have to go and how dark has been the shadows of our not living up to those ideals.  

Finally, that Pluto return, it gives us, it can really gives us deep insight into the mysteries of death and rebirth. And so that too is up for us and can be very transformative. I'll just finish now by saying that the Uranus return, which brings in that Promethean energy and I mean, it's the fact that they're happening together. Now the Uranus return is a shorter, it's more like about 10 years shorter compared with the Pluto return because Uranus moves much faster than Pluto. But so, we're roughly, we're right now at the beginning of a roughly decade-long transit. It'll be exact around 2027, 2028, but it's just coming into play right now and then we'll be kind of moving beyond the 20-degree mark in the early 2030s.  

But the 2020s has been dominated by the Pluto return already and now the Uranus return is kicking in, which brings in a more potentially liberating quality but also sudden changes and rebellions and civil disturbances and so forth that could be dicey. But it is not impossible that if the better angels of our nature are able to rise to the occasion and somehow the center holds in these next crucial months and years, I'm enough of an idealist to think that the US has had very positive influences on the world apart from its shadow, which has been immense, apart from its, yeah I won't go into all of it, but it also has had an inspiring benevolent effect. It's not for nothing that so many people want to come and be here and it's not impossible that in the course of these next few years there could be a genuine rebirth and a genuine liberation into a new moral order that has in which we can participate in both a greater geopolitical domain of compassion and also relating to the entire biosphere and how much hard work and stamina and creativity is going to be necessary because so much has been set in motion already, the momentum is so powerful and the stakes are very high.  

Okay, so I think we are more than out of time. I hope that something that I shared with you this evening has been useful to you. I think I may just end on a, this beautiful passage that is one of my daughter Becca Tarnas’ favorites from Lord of the Rings. And it's so relevant to our time I've mentioned it a few years ago, which when Frodo and Gandalf are discussing the rise of darkly threatening forces and the empowerment of evil that's just threatening the peaceful life of the, of the Shire, and Frodo says, I wish it need not have happened in, in my time. Gandalf replies, So do I. And so do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that has given us. And that's, that's certainly relevant I think to where we all are today. Okay, thank you very much. I hope. I hope this has been useful in one way or another for you. Take care. 

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live. 
 
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