Why Aren't We There Yet?

Some ten years ago on this blog I mentioned a book titled "The Night Sky" (The Science and Anthropology of the Stars and Planets) by Richard Grossinger, Doctor of Anthropology. The book was originally published in 1981.

Chapter 22 touches upon astrology. It was a relief to realise that, although Dr. Grossinger doesn't exactly "endorse" astrology, he doesn't try to discredit it either. He puts it into context. He has such a pretty turn of phrase too! Look:

"Astrology is patient and long-standing. It tries to coordinate large dynamic blocks of time, space, and personality. It is an attempt to say the impossible, a system for measuring the immeasurable. If it fails, it fails in the biggest task of all: to define the simultaneity of life, thought, creation, and space time. It is better to attempt such a measurement than to pretend it could have no relevance at all."

After explaining the two zodiacs, sidereal and tropical (or, in his terms Constellation Astrology and Zodiac Astrology) he writes:

"The zodiac stays within Earth history and tries to hold onto its meanings, but the sky rushes ahead into new time. Eventually, though, the Earth "adjusts" to its actual place in the heavens, and the two astrologies pull together. The continuous pattern of pulling away and pulling together produces a moire pattern of effects, so that the truth of any situation lies somewhere between the two, depending on how true a given culture or era of history is to its absolute meaning in an objective perspective in the stars."

Dr. Grossinger's final words on astrology:

"Astrology is our rune on the hollow surface of infinity, or we are the shadow play of astrology upon the dream of cosmic night".

In the penultimate chapter of "The Night Sky", Dr.Grossinger wanders into the realm of pop culture, the chapter's title: "The Pop Star Cult of the Fifties and Sixties".

What he describes was also the start of a culture of youth which, before that point in history hadn't existed. He's also talking about early Baby Boomers. He writes about growing up with the legacy of World War 2:the atom bomb. Being a War Baby myself I understand where he was coming from. He describes the development of what he calls a star-cult.
Some excerpts:

"The sirens warned us of another holocaust for which the atom bomb was the emblem. For all the times they accidentally went off, we still survived into the sixties...the nuclear war we seemed to have evaded, against the odds, was happening to us anyway, as radiation leaked into the rivers and the air, and Joan Baez sang "What have they done to the rain?"

This was the dark Plutonian half of the era, when a star cult began...... ......There was a star-cult because we needed a star-cult, and a star- cult alone would do. We were born into a tremendous heat and a prophecy. We knew that we were going to be something different because the world had become absurd. The passion we felt went beyond anything we could feel the passion for, so we transformed each other into angels and messengers, and we listened to the inter-stellar debris...

When the heavens cried out for their "stars above" and tens of thousands of jukeboxes and radios wailed variants of the word "love", didn't we understand that our whole civilization was praying for the return of the gods, the return of those powers within us that had brought us into being?

Yes, it is love which brings us here and love which gives us life. Yes, we stand, every man and every woman, within the stars. Who else has survived the incredible galactic and atomic violence to be here for a day of song?

Bobby Darin called his "Dream Lover" from a faraway world; a zodiac figure, like Paul Anka's Venus...Frankie Laine "gambled for love in the moonlight", Elvis went to Heartbreak Hotel, as remote as the house of Cepheus. There he dreamed of "a warmer sun" in a world long past his own brief life. The melodies and the dances were otherworldly and exotic...

Baseball cards changed to tarot cards, and they fell like meteors across an older sky. "Do you believe in magic?" the Lovin' Spoonful asked at a cusp of changing times. The Beatles visited India, and they returned with a cosmic instrument. Jimi Hendrix arrived with his songs of the outer Solar System...other visionaries flocked to the deserts to watch the ancient ceremonies of the Native Americans...So the new tribes gathered at Woodstock. It was no costume party. The stars were coming to claim their own, as they had with the Sufis and Cherokees for millennia. If the magic was in the music, the music was in us.

When the astral prophecy of the sixties made it to Broadway with the nude dancers of Hair, the message to the stars could not have been clearer: "You twinkle above us, we twinkle below" and in 1980, in a movie called "Fame", thirty years after the beginning of the cult, the chorus sang "Someday we'll all be stars". The magicians and astral priests promised likewise...By the late sixties the star music had disintegrated into acid rock, atomic residue, and things were to get crazier..."

I wonder, still, ten more years later, if it is yet time for a new star-cult, more appropriate to this ever more digital age? Nuclear weapons still threaten, the environment is in even graver danger, now.

Annual music festivals survive, Glastonbury festival in the UK is still going strong. The Bonnaroo in Tennessee, Woodstock and others - merely left overs from that old star-cult Dr. Grossinger wrote about. Aren't we ready yet for something new - something slightly different and more appropriate to 2018?

I like to think that it was Neptune's reign in Scorpio, from the mid-1950s on, that kick-started the star-cult Dr. Grossinger recalled. Neptune's stay in Airy Aquarius was perhaps a tad too intellectual to spawn its own star-cult. In 2013 Neptune entered its own domain of Watery dreamy Pisces. That's when I'd have expected a new version of star-cult to burst upon the scene, different in many ways from the old one, but retaining some common factors. I haven't yet been able to identify it! Neptune is around halfway through Pisces.
Why aren't we there yet?

TRANSITORY ADVENTURES with Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Saturn.

There's a story I told back in 2007 which I reckon is worth repeating. If I ever have fleeting doubts about the validity of basic astrological principles I only have to recall these events to dispel such qualms. My (true) story describes the way transits of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, along with a Saturn Return, directly affected my life. Re-reading this, for editing purposes, I experienced a weird feeling that it's not about me, but about somebody else. It was definitely me though - me pre-transitory evolution!


Background: My natal Sun is at 6.46 Aquarius, natal Jupiter at 6.03 Pisces. Uranus transited Aquarius from mid-1995 to late 2003. Uranus' transit of Pisces commenced March 2003. I received a very identifiable "multiple-whammy" from these transits. My second Saturn return happened within that time span, as well as a transit of Pluto to natal Venus, and Neptune's transit of natal Sun. At the time of consequent adventures I was unaware of any planetary transits. With hindsight, I'm glad of that ignorance.

The story begins on 21 April 1996,on a Sunday evening around 9.20 pm, in a big city in the north of England. Uranus on this date was a little past 4* Aquarius, 2* from my natal Sun. Another astrological ingredient not yet mentioned: a partial solar eclipse had occured on 17/18 April at, I think, 28 Aries. My natal Moon is at 24.40 Aries. Transiting Mars was at 21 Aries.

My long-time partner watched TV in the living room as I prepared to take a bath. A fire, which had started, unknown to us, in an adjoining empty building spread close to our second floor apartment. I heard a strange crackling noise, went to the kitchen to investigate. Flames licked the window. We realised what had happened, grabbed coats (I was only semi-clad), thankfully I grabbed my handbag (purse) as well. We hurried down two flights of stairs, as fire engines drew up outside. As we reached the ground an explosion occurred above, probably from gas boilers in the building. We stood with two other tenants, all thankful to be alive, and watched everything we owned, in our home for the past 23 years, disappear in an horrendous fire. The whole block of buildings later had to be demolished. We still had our car, parked in a nearby garage, the few clothes on our backs and my handbag containing credit card and a little cash.

That was the start of a difficult phase. Three days later my partner, probably still affected by shock, fell in the street and damaged his hand so badly that he needed plastic surgery and was admitted to hospital. I remained in a bed and breakfast place.

My workfriends and my mother were a great help to us, both with contributions, and moral support. Our insurance helped a lot too, as did the result of legal proceedings against the owner of the adjoining building - but not until some years later.

Within a month or so we found another apartment, which proved not ideal. We had one break-in during the year we lived there (those burglars were unlucky, we owned next to nothing!) Then, early spring 1997, as Uranus exactly conjoined my natal Sun, we moved into a rented house in a nice area. The whole episode had come to seem like a nightmare turned adventure.

More changes were to come, however. That summer of 1997, Uranus started its retrograde movement. My mother was diagnosed with terminal illness. This happened very rapidly and unexpectedly, and affected me deeply. My second Saturn return was exact in April 1997. Mum seemed fine when she visited us at Easter, by mid-August she died. She left me a bungalow on the coast where she and my Dad had spent a good part of their retirement. On the day Mum died retrograde Uranus, was at 5.59 Aquarius, one degree from my natal Sun, 8th house.

I was nearing retirement. We didn't want to live on the coast, but after trying unsuccessfully to sell the bungalow, we decided we'd have to move there after all. In March 1999 we moved home, as Mars hovered at 13 Scorpio, Moon's North node in my chart opposing natal Uranus conjunct South node. Transiting Uranus had moved on now and lay 7* away from natal Sun, but Neptune was inching slowly towards it.

Next stage: Uranus into Pisces, Neptune into Aquarius, Pluto in the wings.

Soon after moving to the bungalow on the coast, my partner's health began to fail, both mentally and physically. He was much older than me, we'd been together for more than 30 years. From 2000, until he died in the first weeks of 2003, I looked after him, heart breaking, knowing that I'd lose him painfully and slowly. Throughout this time, transiting Pluto was approaching my natal Venus at 19.59 Sagittarius, 6th house.

To help things along (or not) Neptune conjoined my natal Sun exactly from September to December 2001, and wasn't far away for months after that. Looking back, I can see that Neptune acted somewhat like an anaesthetic, or a kind of drug which, along with the computer I'd just bought helped me through what was, without doubt, the worst period of my life. I'm pretty sure that from time to time I acted as if I were under some kind of intoxication - which I see now purely astrological.

That first home computer of mine arrived along with Neptune in Aquarius. Because I was tied to the house, caring for my partner and unable to go very far for very long, the computer became something of a life-raft. I made a few on-line friends via message boards, and instant message programs. Bless and double-bless 'em, for along with Neptune's intoxication, they kept me afloat through those bad times. I doubt that I could have coped and retained sanity without the computer.

Uranus didn't leave Aquarius until late 2003 and before Pluto left its conjunction with my natal Venus another adventure awaited me.

Still reeling from the loss of my partner, I met my (now) husband. At first he was an e-mail penfriend, then we met in person during my short holiday in the USA. He later came over to the UK, spent time there, and we eventually married. I sold the bungalow, went through the rigmarole of visa and immigration hoop-la, arrived in Oklahoma, USA late in 2004. Events seem rapid with hindsight, but at the time it didn't feel that way. Life seemed to be proceeding in slow motion.

Uranus conjoined my natal Jupiter at 6.03 Pisces in February 2005, around the time we bought a house in Oklahoma, having moved from my husband's previous home here. With a new computer, some astrology software and a boxful of secondhand astrology text books, much study and experimenting ensued.

With reference to this blog, around the time that Jupiter (publishing planet) danced around the vertex in my chart (my natal Mars conjoins this sensitive point), other astrology bloggers were kind enough to notice me; later Elsa added this blog to Astrology News (now Astro Dispatch).

Summing up: the transit of Uranus through Aquarius was a little like a tornado passing through a small town. When that planet first entered Aquarius I had a Mother, a long-standing partner, a home of many years, and a job. When Uranus left, none of those remained. Amidst the chaos, Uranus, ruler of technology, deposited something for me to hold on to: the computer, which became my life raft, eventually guiding me across the Atlantic to a new way of being - and accidentally, or incidentally, to blogging.

What shouts "astrology at work" to me in all of this is the timing, and the way events dovetail with transits. Skeptics might respond that there are "ordinary" reasons for these events. Maybe so, but there are no ordinary reasons for such exact timing.

I feel that I must add, in case a passing reader feels nervous about an impending transit, that I'm pretty sure Uranus transits to natal Sun do not usually result in the amount of havoc I experienced. These adventures were the result of multiple astrological events affecting my own individual chart and personal circumstances, in a way peculiar to me. It has been my experience that astrology never acts in exactly the same way twice.