Here too could be mentioned problematic reactions, side effects, and abuses of drugs of all kinds, prescription and otherwise, and increased public awareness of these problems, often as a result of new data that disclose a dark reality hidden behind a carefully manipulated image, as in the corporate abuse of testing protocols and the suppression of negative data. This motif was evident in the first year of the Saturn-Neptune opposition in 2004–05 in such phenomena as the methamphetamine epidemic (in a diachronic pattern with the crack cocaine epidemic of the preceding conjunction and heroin epidemics during this and earlier alignments); the wave of drug scandals among professional athletes involving the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs; and the concurrent wave of pharmaceutical companies that were forced to withdraw from the market or issue warnings for once-celebrated drugs (e.g., Vioxx, Plavix, Bextra, Celebrex) because of newly revealed negative side effects and dangers linked to their use.
The Saturn-Neptune theme of poisoning, pollution, toxic chemical effects, and subtle poisoning of the public mind or political environment can take a remarkable variety of forms—the literal, as in the dioxin poisoning of the Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko, and the less literal but equally toxic, as in cynical and deliberately deceptive Machiavellian political advertising like that of the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” on behalf of the Bush presidential campaign, both themes clearly in evidence precisely in coincidence with the first months of the Saturn-Neptune opposition in 2004. (Machiavelli himself was born with Saturn and Neptune in close opposition.) The original “Willie Horton” advertisement that provided a model for this form of political deception was produced in coincidence with the last Saturn-Neptune conjunction in 1988, on behalf of the presidential campaign of the elder Bush. In both 1988 and 2004 (Saturn-Neptune conjunction and opposition, respectively), the widely disseminated deceptive advertisements with their dark, fear-inducing images played a critical role in the defeat of the opposing presidential candidate.
Not only deception but also self-deception is a characteristic expression of this complex when negatively constellated. A state of delusion about one’s actual condition in the world is carefully maintained by filtering out and denying all information that might cast question on the validity of one’s rigidly protected belief system, thereby creating a closed feedback loop. Such tendencies can range from an individual state of mental illness requiring professional treatment to a more pervasive collective delusion in which, for example, a nation’s leadership encapsulates itself in an impenetrable bubble of denial and self-reinforcing belief, often tinged with religious themes and self-idealizing fantasies, that is starkly at odds with its concrete consequences and the reality perceived by the rest of the world. Avoidance of critical self-reflection conspires with support from naïve or opportunistic followers to prevent, at least for a time, the intrusion of realities that would disturb the elaborately defended illusion.
Yet the same archetypal complex also tends to constellate a strong impulse to unmask deception, to reveal the illusion, to cut through the denial, to confront the dark reality behind the surface image. “Credibility gaps” arise. A sharper eye for shadow tends to develop in the collective cultural vision, resulting in a more acute sense of irony (sometimes bitter irony, as with Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain, both born with Saturn and Neptune in hard aspect), with increased tendencies towards ironic distancing and intensified skepticism about political rhetoric, conventional wisdom, naïveté, hypocrisy, and deceit. The sharply increased public recognition in 2004–05 of the Bush administration’s systematic deception in beginning the Iraq War, its false claims concerning Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” and terrorist links to September 11, which paralleled concurrent revelations and skepticism about athletes and drugs, the pharmaceutical industry, journalists’ hoaxes in major news media, and the Bush administration’s deceptive editing of scientific reports about global warming and other environmental matters, is highly characteristic of the Saturn-Neptune pattern of truth and illusion, deception and unmasking deception.
Underlying and uniting many of the above tendencies is the central theme of disenchantment and disillusionment— in both the negative and positive senses and encompassing the entire range of their meanings. These include not only loss of faith, discouragement, social alienation, and sense of existential meaninglessness but also the empowerment that can emerge from confronting an illusion, shedding a faith that is no longer viable, waking as if from a dream, lucidly recognizing the consensus madness, demystifying the received version of reality—as in the collective disillusionment with communism that rapidly spread through the peoples of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union during the Saturn-Neptune conjunction of 1987–91, in the triple conjunction with Uranus. A subtle dissolving of oppressive structures can take place on many levels, affecting structures of belief as well as of institutions.
Yet another important form this motif can take is the dichotomy between materialistic reductionism (Saturn) and imaginative vision (Neptune), between matter and spirit, and between cosmic disenchantment and an ensouled universe. Here the characteristic Saturn-Neptune issue of judging what is truth and what is illusion becomes especially relevant, as each side views the other as captured by an illusion. The possibility that modern disenchantment, in Weber’s sense, is itself at a deeper level a form of delusional enchantment, a self-enclosed state of alienated consciousness that has systematically filtered out the spiritual dimensions of existence, offers yet a further amplification of these characteristic Saturn-Neptune themes. Weber himself, the great theorist of disenchantment, was born during the Saturn-Neptune opposition of 1864, and he articulated the concept of disenchantment in his lecture “Science as a Vocation” during the Saturn-Neptune conjunction in 1919.
To briefly summarize, the dichotomy between the Neptunian imaginative-spiritual-religious axis and the Saturnian literalist-skeptical-scientific axis that is characteristic of eras and individuals informed by this complex can be seen as taking three distinct forms. First, one finds a strong tendency towards metaphysical skepticism: an impulse to doubt the existence of transcendent or spiritual realities, and to regard the imagination as primarily a source of subjective distortion. Metaphysical, spiritual, mystical, and imaginative dimensions of existence are firmly negated in favor of a sober critical rationalism in engagement with the concrete empirical world. This negation often takes the form of a strong impulse to demystify religious belief as a principal cause of both oppression and illusion in human life. Here we see such figures born with Saturn-Neptune aspects as David Hume, the paradigmatic skeptic in the history of philosophy and acute critic of religion (On Miracles, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion); Bertrand Russell, who played the same role in twentieth-century philosophy (Why I Am Not a Christian); and Freud, who understood all religion as the psychological residue of childhood needs and projections of parental omnipotence (The Future of an Illusion).
The second form this dichotomy can take reflects an exactly contrary tendency, in which a firm commitment to the superiority of the poetic and spiritual imagination directly opposes the distorting constraints of conventional perception and scientific materialism. Here William Blake, born with Saturn and Neptune in close opposition, can stand as a paradigmatic figure:
If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.
May God us keep
From single vision and Newton’s sleep!
In every cry of every Man,
In every infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.
Poetry fetter’d Fetters the Human Race.
Nations are Destroy’d or Flourish in proportion as
Their Poetry Painting and Music are Destroy’d or Flourish.
Art Degraded Imagination Denied
; War Governed the Nations.
An equally frequent expression of the Saturn-Neptune polarity takes the form of a kind of Romantic existentialism in which spiritual and imaginative aspirations are confronted with the reality of a tragic or disenchanted world, with a resulting sense of melancholic loss, longing, and disillusionment. Here the aesthetic preference is characteristically for elegies, adagios, nocturnes, requiems, pietas, laments, or the blues, reflecting the poignant encounter of the poetic and spiritually sensitive temperament with the tragic, oppressive, and sorrowful aspects of existence (as expressed, for example, in Samuel Barber’s quintessential Adagio for Strings, both the composer and the composition born during Saturn-Neptune alignments; or Both Sides Now or Blue by Joni Mitchell, likewise born with Saturn-Neptune; or Dylan’s Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, composed during a Saturn-Neptune personal transit). The pervading atmosphere is one of poignancy and pathos, world-weariness and spiritual resignation, unquenchable yearning of the soul; or a state of profound unknowing, melancholic ambiguity, an impasse between two incommensurable universes—inner and outer, subjective and objective, poetic sensibility and tough-minded logic, the aspiring soul and the hard facts of life.
Saturn-Neptune periods tend to be among the most psychologically and spiritually demanding of times as well as the most likely to call forth genuine nobility of spirit and profundity of vision. They can engender a darker cast to the imagination yet also a more realistic spirituality. In perhaps its most admirable form, the Saturn-Neptune complex appears to be associated with the courage to face a hard and often tragic reality without illusion and still remain true to the ideals and dreams of a better world. Instead of provoking despair or passivity, the painful gap between the ideal and the real inspires one to undertake whatever sustained labor is necessary to transform the resistant structures of the world (political, economic, religious, philosophical) in service of one’s highest spiritual intuitions.
Robert Kennedy, born with the Saturn-Neptune square directly on his natal Sun, came to reflect just this expression of the archetypal complex. Grief-stricken in the wake of his brother’s assassination in 1963 (when Saturn and Neptune were again in square alignment), Kennedy suffered a virtually paralyzing spiritual and emotional crisis in the following months and years as he struggled to assimilate the tragedy, and to confront the shattered image of the good God inherited from his childhood Catholic faith. Transformed by this crucible of suffering, and helped by long meditations on the works of poets such as the elegist Alfred Tennyson (born with the Saturn-Neptune conjunction), Kennedy gradually returned to public life with those distinctive ideals and attitudes with which he is now most identified, and which reflected an inner resolution of the archetypal dialectic associated with the Saturn-Neptune complex: a deeper spiritual faith mediated by the encounter with death and suffering, hope that transcends tragedy, compassionate action on behalf of the poor and the oppressed, a commitment to a life of service and sacrifice on behalf of the larger human community, and faith in the possibility of a better world—as in his frequent quoting of Tennyson’s “Come my friends, ‘tis not too late to seek a newer world.”
Finally, a paradigmatic figure in this regard was Abraham Lincoln, born in 1809 with the Saturn-Neptune conjunction. His lifelong sufferings from intense depression and grief, the many tragic deaths and losses that marked his life, his spiritual struggle with the finality of death, his skepticism about orthodox religious beliefs, his deep sense of resignation, and his pronounced capacity for irony all vividly reflect this archetypal combination. So also does his commitment to the compassionate care of the oppressed, the wounded, the widowed and orphaned, his consecration of the dead, his forgiveness of the enemy, his spiritual tentativeness and humility. Lincoln was, essentially and poignantly, a “man of sorrow and reconciliation” (sorrow as an expression of Saturn, reconciliation as an expression of Neptune). Above all, we can recognize this archetypal synthesis in Lincoln’s capacity to perceive in the suffering and death of so many—including himself—all sacrificed on the altar of a higher ideal, the mysterious workings of a spiritual purpose acting in and through the mortal struggles of human history.
This is close to the heart of the Saturn-Neptune complex and its potential coniunctio oppositorum: the recognition of spirit in matter, of the universal in the particular, of the archetypal in the concrete, the redemptive shining through of the eternal soul within the mortal body of the empirical world. As iconically reflected in Michelangelo’s Pietà (1499), Saturn-Neptune transits tend to coincide with periods of profound spiritual loss and contraction, in the many senses suggested above, but also periods of profound spiritual forging, soul-making, the redemptive embodiment of spirit, reflecting the struggle and higher synthesis of incarnation.
No alignment, such as the Saturn-Neptune opposition just discussed, takes place in a vacuum as the only relevant factor in understanding the archetypal dynamics of a specific period of time. As we have seen throughout this survey, at any given moment multiple planetary alignments are in orb, overlapping each other, with a corresponding interaction of multiple archetypal forces simultaneously in play. Often these different archetypal combinations are sharply divergent in character, influencing the cultural atmosphere in highly distinct ways, and sometimes interpenetrating with extraordinary unexpected consequences. For example, the qualities associated with the Uranus-Pluto alignment that has recently begun its approach could scarcely be more different in character from the Saturn-Neptune opposition. Only a “complexity theory” adequate to such intricately complicated archetypal interactions and multiple influences would be of use in assessing the unfolding continuum of history. Needless to say, a fundamental recognition of indeterminacy and unpredictability is the bedrock of the entire perspective articulated here.
With that caveat in mind, let us look a little further forward at the upcoming alignments. If we can judge by past experience, the most significant and potentially dramatic configuration on the horizon is the convergence of three planetary cycles that will produce a close T-square alignment of Saturn, Uranus, and Pluto during the period 2008–11. The last time that these three planets were simultaneously in hard aspect was from 1964 to early 1968, when Saturn opposed the longer Uranus-Pluto conjunction of the 1960s and when both revolutionary and reactionary impulses were intensely constellated and complexly interpenetrating in the collective psyche. This was the period of greatest polarized tensions and convulsions during that tumultuous decade, when there was a rapid acceleration of cultural change and stressful development. The preceding hard-aspect configuration in the twentieth century involving these three planets was the T-square that occurred between 1929 and 1933, at the beginning of the long Uranus-Pluto square that extended through the 1930s. We examined several other such periods in earlier centuries.
Historically, as we have seen, the archetypal dynamics during eras in which these three planets were in such a configuration have been especially powerful, challenging, and transformative. The forces involved seem to demand, as well as bring forth the possibility of, a deepened capacity for the creative resolution of intensely opposing forces—the old and the new, the past and the future, order and change, tradition and innovation, stability and freedom. A general atmosphere of power struggle is typical. Underlying tensions between established social authority and newly empowered countercultural impulses tend to be exacerbated. So also the generational tensions between old and young and the political tensions between conservative and progressive. A quality of accelerated maturation is usually notable in the collective psyche. Entrenched assumptions and expectations confront the unpredictable and the disruptive. Whether the result is a destructive encounter between forces of revolutionary change and forces of rigid reaction or a pragmatic synthesis of creative innovation and resolute discipline in recognition of irrevocable new realities depends on factors beyond what can be seen astrologically. Such periods have generally been marked by critical events and cultural phenomena that both climax a
nd catalyze longer-term processes. International tensions and geopolitical divisions can intensify, so that radically new approaches are required to resolve long-standing antagonisms and conflicting values. Issues surrounding the unforeseen consequences of technological development tend to rise to public consciousness. In the current global situation, it appears likely that large-scale ecological as well as political and social structures will be affected during this period, with an increased urgency to resolve problems involving the allocation and preservation of the world’s natural resources.
Yet much will depend on what steps are taken during these next years, and what kind of awareness—both collective and individual—is brought to bear on the challenges now facing the human community. As I have emphasized throughout this book, an extremely wide range of archetypally relevant “scenarios,” as the futurists say, is possible for any such alignment, reflecting different potential inflections of whatever archetypal forces are at play. These different scenarios and inflections in turn reflect that irreducible multivalent indeterminacy that resides in the very nature of archetypes. Some may view the observed consistency of correlation between patterns of human experience and planetary movements as evidence that history has, in some essential way, already been determined in its basic outlines, if not in every detail. Such a conclusion, I believe, reflects simplistic assumptions about causality and determinism lingering from the modern (and premodern) mind-set. It may also reflect deep psychological tendencies, collective as well as personal, rooted in unconscious feelings of helplessness and victimization. Rather than reinforcing a sense that one is bound by a definite fate, however, knowledge of upcoming world transits, like the knowledge of one’s personal transits and natal chart, can open the possibility of a more informed and creative response to the archetypal forces at work at any given time. Numerous unpredictable factors are at work in co-constituting the events to come: the long-developing and still shifting and pliable historical trends, the spontaneous social and political responses to newly emerging conditions, the state of the collective moral conscience, the extent to which the constellated energies are unconsciously and blindly acted out or consciously engaged and assimilated—and no doubt many other trans-empirical factors beyond our ken, such as perhaps karma and grace.
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