The Celestial Quartet of the Summer of 2009

by Shelley Jordan

This summer's celestial background music resounds with an unusually long, drawn out configuration involving four heavenly bodies: Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune, all in Aquarius, forming a semisextile to Uranus in Pisces. The planetary voices in this celestial Greek chorus sing of the fraternity of humanity that lies at one end of the Aquarian spectrum. Just as loudly, the tragic, shadow side of Aquarius reverberates in counterpoint at the other extreme. It must be remembered that all astrological symbols (like the Tibetan gods) have their peaceful as well as their wrathful characteristics. The demonic side of Aquarius can be seen in the depersonalization and coldness of the frozen human heart.

This wide range of responses to the Aquarian human condition is currently meeting up with Pisces’ own extremes of empathy and duplicity. No more clearly is this being played out than in the current conflicts over public health care in America. The configuration's Chironian influence conveys the notion of health and healing, while Jupiter flaunts the moral and ethical issues, also exaggerating the entire scenario, as Jupiter is prone to do. Neptune brings the idea of trendiness, fashion and public tastes into the picture, as well as the issue of compassion for the epidemic of human suffering which is a very real problem in today's America, as it is no less in the entire world.

This idea of collective suffering, whether from layoffs, poverty, victims of the war in Iraq, or the sick, is underlined by Uranus's position in Pisces. Among the issues that have been in the public eye, to the degree that the press is allowed to discuss them, have been torture, loss, same sex marriage, health care and the faintly whispered official apology for slavery emitted by the Senate over the summer, all problems that demand a righteous outcry of compassion on the part of the American populace.

With so many Americans in a state of declining health, with the majority on some form of prescription medication (Neptune and Pisces), the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies only profit from our suffering, and like the American public, increasingly fatten up (Jupiter). Why can't the people (Aquarius) see that President Obama's agenda of health care for everyone is a gift of compassion? The delusions associated with Neptune and Uranus in Pisces seem to be swaying the citizens most vulnerable to fear mongering and coercion. The use of antidepressant medication in the U.S. doubled from 1996 to 2005, according to a study in the Archives of General Psychiatry. More than 10 percent of the population were sedated with these drugs by 2005. Imagine what the numbers must be now, 4 years later. Considering how difficult it is to get off these highly addictive drugs, the number of people on anti-depressants can only be growing.

Compassion is the key to today's conflicts, even compassion for those souls who deceive certain easily swayed sectors of the American public. These manipulators are the Sarah Palins of our world. Palin, who has a Sun-Mars-Saturn conjunction in Aquarius, has been in Neptune’s spotlight since her alarmingly quick rise into the public arena in 2008, when Neptune began traveling over her Aquarian planets. An incarnation of mindlessness and mediocrity as glamorous ideals, she is an example of the worst side of the Aquarian hive mentality.

Every sign contains a continuum of archetypal experiences. Aquarius, at one end of its spectrum, describes the individual making his or her way in society without the loss of independent thought and action. On the other end of the Aquarian continuum is the herd itself - the social pressure cooker of the hive that imposes ideas, opinions and sanctions onto an unthinking public. “What will people say?” bellows the Aquarian shadow.

Palin is the poster child for the clichéd rhetoric of the right. If something terrible happens to President Obama (and I pray that he and his family remain safe), part of the blame for any harm will fall on the shoulders of Palin and her crowd of lying demagogues. They are the mouthpiece for the opinion machine of Big Business. The religious right, one expression of the hive, are no more than puppets for these cruel and greedy abusers.

How can we rise above the contagious deception and mental viruses being passed around today? What do we do with this time given to us? At their highest levels, Aquarius and Pisces represent the ideals of humanity - kindness and compassion for others, even for those whom we will never know. The big business self interest that is driving today's conflicts over health care are operating out of greed, yes, but also self-destructive ignorance. With open eyes and heart, one can see that health care is a fundamental human right. By denying that right, a nation that presumes to wave the banner of human rights for the rest of the world becomes morally bankrupt.

America was undeniably built on slavery, and the racism that justified using human beings as objects for financial gain is identical to the self justified greed that excludes not only the poor from health care, but many citizens who simply can't afford the enormous cost of medical care. If greed demolishes the social fabric of America, as it is threatening to do, who will big business have left to prey on? They are blindly destroying their own food source. Cruel, yes, but also ignorant.

Uranus is the planet of revolution. It was discovered in 1781 at the height of the Enlightenment. Its appearance heralded industrialization, the American and French revolutions and the march of democracy. The birth pangs of the human rights movement coincided with Uranus's debut into our cosmology. One century later, Neptune made its appearance, as did Freud's discovery of the unconscious and the power of dreams, photography, film and sound recordings that preserved the images and voices of our predecessors. Humanity and the individuals that comprise it took on new meaning in those two pivotal centuries. Uranus and Neptune's emergence into our awareness symbolized this evolutionary leap.

Today's skirmishes over health care are part of a new wave of Uranian revolution that continues the humanization of our world. Just as slavery is morally renounced today (though it is not obsolete), one day the idea of denying health care to the sick and vulnerable will also be morally abhorrent.

The cycles of Uranus and Neptune represent tidal currents of evolution of our humanity. Only apparent to our eyes since the 18th and 19th centuries respectively, these planets emit pulses that release the waves of compassion and heightened awareness that have fueled democracy and the human rights movement.

We have only experienced one conjunction of Uranus and Neptune since both planets revealed themselves. This occurred in 1993 in Capricorn, heralding the rise of the global and egalitarian Internet. With this development came unprecedented possibilities for the once silent voices of humanity to be heard. Empathy for the human condition will not remain suppressed for too much longer.
By their nature, people are capable of love, invention and overcoming cruelty. During the summer of 2009, with its celestial Greek chorus of Aquarius and Pisces planets forcing our eyes and ears on the suffering of so many, we can hope that our innate capacity for good and concern for our fellow travelers will surmount the viral pressures of the hive bosses to ignore our brothers and sisters in need.