Daniel Heydon

Astrologer - Numerologist - Author

Rediscovering the Outer Planets

A Five Part Series by Daniel Heydon

Introduction

"The eternal truths cannot be transmitted mechanically:  in every epoch they must be born anew from the human  psyche.  "

                 - Carl Jung   Civilization in Transition

Our textbook definitions of the outer planets are certainly valid. Astrologers everywhere will concur that Neptune is indeed the planet of deception, idealism, confusion, drugs, compassion, and psychic awareness. Uranus too lives up to its name as the planet of rebellion and individuality, and evidence is mounting that early descriptions of  Pluto's link to gangsterism, depth psychology, totalitarianism, terrorism and the like was in no way an exaggeration of its effects. Though most of us interpret the death and rebirth aspect of Pluto as metaphoric, most would still agree that Pluto transits often signal the end of one phase of existence and the beginning of another.

However, if you were to ask an astrologer what actually was going on in the world at the time of each of these planet's discovery, he or she would no doubt would tell you that coinciding with the discoveries of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, the new principles of democracy, socialism, and totalitarianism entered the world. In connection with Uranus, the French and American revolutions would be cited, and some references also would be made to electricity and the Industrial Revolution. With respect to Neptune, references no doubt would be made to the discovery of anesthesia and The Communist Manifesto. And, finally, with Pluto, you would no doubt be told that Hitler, Hiroshima, and the Holocaust relate to its discovery.

All of the above information is correct and, indeed, the above is pretty much what you'll find in the way of historical background linked to the discovery of the outer planets in your typical astrology textbook. So it must come as a surprise to some readers to hear me speak of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto as the planets of culture, for there are no specific references to cultural developments in our texts in connection with the discovery of the outer planets.

Maybe, in an out of print text of 1860, there's a reference to the fact that Millais exhibited the first of his paintings with socialist themes in the year of Neptune's discovery; or that tyranny was very much on the mind of both the populace and the playwright, when, in 1781, von Schiller's The Robbers was first staged. And then again maybe not. Obviously, a play and a painting could easily be overlooked by the astrologer of yesteryear, especially, in the light of the earth shaking developments that took place in the political arena then. Yet, Millais' painting is equally representative of the significance of Neptune's discovery as is Marx and Engel's The Communist Manifesto. And von Schiller's The Robbers is no less important than the steps that Watts took in 1781 to make his steam engine practical to an understanding of the significance of Uranus' discovery.

The above facts may still seem trivial to some readers. Yet, when we come to Pluto's discovery, we have no choice but to look to some place other than history for insights into what 'death and rebirth' means. After all, in 1930, Christ did not once more rise again from the dead; and though we have plenty examples of gangland murders then, where are we to find an example of the 'rebirth' principle of Pluto in the historical events of 1930?

Indeed, skeptics of astrology might decree astrology a bogus subject for its insistence that death and rebirth are linked with Pluto, except for the fact that death and rebirth is the main theme of Faulkner's The Sound and The Fury which was first published in 1929, shortly before Pluto's was first sighted in January 1930. But when we learn that Faulkner also wrote two other books dealing with the same subject, Light in August (1932), and As I Lay Dying (1930), we see that the publication of this trio of novels must be ranked as one of the major developments that occurred at the time of Pluto's discovery.

Indeed, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are the planets of culture and though I'm making this statement today, the following pages should demonstrate to the reader that Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto were the planets of culture right from the moment of their discovery, (and indeed, you'll find examples of their influence in cultural events in the years before their discovery).

I call this series of articles "Re-discovering the Outer Planets". Could it be that astrologers overlooked important events that occurred at the time of the outer planets' discovery? I believe so. Much of what's written in the following pages will be new to astrologers; yet will be supportive of what we already know of the outer planets' significance.

For example, all students of astrology know that Neptune is the planet of compassion. But I think our knowledge that the first use of anesthesia in 1846, for the purpose of alleviating a person's suffering, is made richer when we consider these other developments that occurred in the very same year. The Virgin Mary, universal symbol of compassion, was said to have made an appearance on earth four days prior to Neptune's discovery; Dostoevsky received public recognition for his compassionate treatment of the downtrodden in Poor Folk ; and the first ever hospital for the training of nurses opened in Kaiserwerth, Germany. Through the use of the symbol Neptune we see interrelatedness between art, science, and religion that would be missed without a scrutiny of cultural developments.

But if astrology is going to regain its position as an instrumentality of transcendence than we must once again get in touch with its symbolic nature and recognize the fact that an astrological symbol can manifest simultaneously in the arts, sciences and religion. Astrology still remains our best bet for restoring the Pythagorean view of the cosmos in which the interpenetration of the arts, science and religion in our culture and daily life events will be once again achieved. Having taken that step, then humankind can undergo that journey to that New Age consciousness, which thinkers from Christ to Rudyhar have foreseen.

Does The Discovery Of The Outer

Planets Invalidate The Astrology Of

The Ancients?

URANUS

 by Daniel Heydon  (Published in Dell Horoscope August, 1982)

     When a new planet is discovered accompanied by a new principle and related events on earth. The astrologer doesn't arbitrarily choose facts to go along withwhat he thinks the planets should mean, though he does include in his estimation the mythological symbolism associated with the planet's name.

Saturn in astrology rules the status quo and Uranus rules change, which seems to make sense when we consider Saturn was known as the outermost planet since   time immemorial. The discovery of Uranus in 1781 signaled a revolution in the planetary hierarchy. However, we shouldn't be confused by the fact that in mythology it was Saturn (or Cronus) who took Uranus' place as head of the gods, whereas in terms of the planets, it was the  other way around. Myths aren't to be interpreted literally but, nevertheless, are  still symbolically helpful. The conflict between the gods Saturn and Uranus for heavenly rulership is what should interest us, for everything that Saturn represents in astrology has been challenged since thediscovery of Uranus.

Uranus is aptly named the planet of rebellion, for synchronous with its discovery were the American and French revolutions. As a result of those wars, a new principle of liberty, freedom, and justice for all was introduced to humanity. In 1783, the hostilities in America's War of Independence ended; in 1789, with the French Revolution, came the end of a social order that had its roots in feudalism.

The question is often asked of astrologers whether horoscopes delineated before the discovery of a new planet are accurate. The answer is "Yes." Before the discovery of Uranus, Saturn was the ruling planet associated with Aquarius, thesign of friends and group activities. In the 13th century, a person did not have friends from all walks of life as we do today under Uranus' rule of Aquarius. Under the feudal system that was prevalent from the 9th to the 14th centuries, society was strictly divided into the classes of nobility, clergy, and peasantry. There was no social mobility.

With the rise of towns and increased commerce, guilds came into exis­tence; but these associations of craftsmen were business-oriented and reflective of meanings inherent in  Saturn. There was only a limited number of guilds allowed in a community. If you had finished your ap­prenticeship under a master (or owner of a shop), you could not go off on your own and start your own guild. Instead, you be­came known as a journeyman and con­tinued working under the master. There was little room for advancement in those days, and guilds were often a closed soci­ety tending to hereditary membership. They weren't abolished until 1791 in France, 1835 in England, 1915 in Russia. 

Uranus' discovery signaled the rise of the "bourgeoisie and capitalist classes in France   —today known as the middle class. The proletariat also made its first appear­ance in the  social milieu; and under Ura­nus' rule, conflicts soon emerged between the middle and  lower classes. The rigid Saturnian structure of the old class system was broken down by Uranus. Today, Saturn represents the establishment; Uranus is still associated with groups which seek liberation, such as the Women's Liberation movement. 

Presently, friendships extend beyond class barriers, though some people still adhere to Saturn's corulership of Aquarius and number among their acquaintances busi­ness associates and those who can help them get ahead in the world. So modem astrology is correct to include both Saturn and Uranus as co-rulers of the sign of friendship and group activities.

THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION              The seeds of these revolutionary wars which brought widespread political and social changes to humanity were sown during the Age of Enlightenment in the writings of Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, and others. The question arises whether or not these enlightened men were influenced by Uranus and the other outer planets before they were in fact discovered. The answer is "Yes." The meanings of the outer planets are often reflected in the creative efforts of poets, artists, philosophers, scientists, and novelists centuries before the planets are actually discovered or their impact is felt on a mass level. For example, the Age of Enlightenment that occurred during the 17th and 18th centuries is clearly shown astrologically by a series of meetings of Uranus and Neptune in the mutable signs during that period.

Conjunctions between Uranus and Nep­tune occur every 171 years; the sign in which the conjunction occurs influences thematically the whole period, though re­lated developments also occur at the time of oppositions and squares between these planets. In addition, the squares, conjunc­tions, and oppositions of Neptune and Ura­nus to the place of the conjunction are also important to note.
In 1650, Uranus and Neptune met by conjunction at 15°03' Sagittarius. A revo­lutionary epoch was begun the year before with the beheading of Charles I of England by the Puritans and the proclamation of a Republican Commonwealth. What is in­teresting is the link that exists between the American Revolution and the conjunc­tion of 1650. Many of the American patriots had a planet in their charts at the 15th de­gree of mutable signs'. George Washing­ton's Neptune at 14°44' Gemini was ex­actly opposite the Uranus-Neptune con­junction at 15 03' Sagittarius. Some of the other notables who shared a planetary placement within close orb of the 15th de­gree of the mutables were John Paul Jones, Alexander Hamilton, George III, James Madison, and Lafayette.
What is of even greater significance is the fact that the Sun in the chart of the Constitution of the United States which guarantees the human rights that these patriots fought for is located at 14°06' Pi­sces; and the ascendant which Dane Rudhyar gives for the chart of the Declara­tion of Independence is 13°10' Sagittarius, conjunct the Uranus-Neptune conjunction that occurred in 1650.
The issues that divided the colonies from the mother country are more clearly shown by the opposition in 1735 of Uranus in Gemini and Neptune in Sagittarius. The right of freedom (Uranus) of speech (Gemini) is certainly a third-house mat­ter, and freedom (Uranus) of the press (Sagittarius) is a ninth-house concern.The revolt against taxation without rep­resentation has its philosophical roots in the then-popular belief in natural law (Sagittarius).
It was believed by philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) that men by nature were rational (Gemini) and good (Sagit­tarius) and that they brought with them into political society the same rights they had enjoyed in earlier stages of society, among them freedom of worship (Sagit­tarius) and a right to a voice in their own government. Natural law teaches that these laws (Sagittarius) are fundamental to human nature and are discoverable by reason (Gemini) without reference to specific legislative enactments, which are man-made.
Other indications of the influence of Gemini at work during the American Rev­olution include Paul Revere's midnight ride through nearby locales (third house) to give warning of the imminent arrival of the British, and Patrick Henry's skilled oratory (third house), as witnessed in his famous speech: "Give me liberty, or give me death." Curiously enough, we remem­ber John Hancock today for his signature (third house).
These three men were born at the time of the opposition, as was Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet, Common Sense (1776), was a factor in convincing Americans of the right to revolt. Other revolutionaries with a natal planet aspecting the Uranus-Neptune opposition were Benjamin Frank­lin, James Monroe, and John Adams. It is not surprising to learn that the year 1776 saw Neptune at 22° Virgo making a square aspect to this opposition and that the charts for both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution have planetary points in common with the conjunction of 1650 and the opposition of 1735.
There are deeper implications to the Uranus-Neptune opposition of 1735 which reveal a picture of human nature that is a composite of meanings inherent in both Gemini and Sagittarius and are also reflective of intellectual thought de­rived from many different thinkers of the period from 1650 to 1735. From Locke and Rousseau, we obtain a belief in the natural goodness of man (Sagittarius) coupled with a faith in rationality (Gemini). As these ideas are further molded by Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, the right to revolt for a democratic ideal becomes evi­dent. A belief that moral good (Sagittar­ius) will come through scientific progress (Uranus) is wed to this ideal by other thinkers until we arrive at the basis of to­day's modern philosophy (Sagittarius) of liberalism (Uranus).
Behind the philosophy of liberalism are Newton's mechanics, Locke's empiricism, Rousseau's popular sovereignty, the Puri­tan ethic, and Jefferson's democracy—all culminating in a Declaration of Indepen­dence that declares freedom (Uranus) is an inherent right of the individual (Ura­nus) and a legitimate basis for a govern­ment by the people (Aquarius) and for the people (Aquarius). Here we have a con­cept of the collective that is rooted in in­dividuality; and this is the meaning of Uranus, especially as reflected in the sign it rules, Aquarius.
Though we see evidence of the workings of the outer planets in the writings of Paine, Rousseau, and other thinkers of the Enlightenment, we have the birth of a new principle of freedom coinciding with the discovery of Uranus. A planet is never dis­covered until humanity has evolved to the point where it is ready to embrace the principles that the planet represents.
JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID AND FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER
Though Uranus is primarily associated with democracy and scientific inventions, its symbolism was also evident in the paintings of the French artist Jacques-Louis David, who is considered the father of modern art, with his groundbreaking Oath of the Horatti (1784), Death of Socrates (1787), and The Lictors Bringing to Brutus the Bodies of his Sons (1789). These paintings reflected the revolutionary political climate of the times; as did Germany's Friedrich von Schiller, in his then popular play The Robbers (1781), with its themes of liberty and protests against tyranny. The Robbers was first published in the very year of Uranus' discovery. Thus we see that the symbolism of Uranus at the time of its discovery was evident in science, politics, literature, and art.

SATURN, MECHANISM, AND THE DISCOVERY OF URANUS                   Though 1650 saw the death of Descartes, his mechanistic philosophy continued to live after him and dominated scientific discovery during the period from the Ura­nus-Neptune conjunction to the discovery of Uranus. In 1687, Isaac Newton invented calculus and combined mechanics and as­tronomy into a single system to describe the workings of the universe.The aphorism "As above, so below" seemed once more to apply to human af­fairs. The heavens were thought to be empty space in which material bodies moved in strict accordance with rigid mechanical laws; on earth, technological innovations made the factory system of large-scale machine production wide­spread in its use.

Five years after the conjunction of 1650, Christian Huygens, a Dutch mathematician and physicist, improved the telescope and discovered a satellite of Saturn and that planet's rings. Once again, there seemed to be a correlation between planetary discoveries and events on earth. A year later (1656), the same man invented the pendu­lum clock, which made the owning of a clock practicable for the ordinary person. Prior to the 17th century, clocks were weighty, cumbersome devices and most often were found only in cathedrals and public squares. The invention of the pen­dulum clock became a stimulus to clock-making. Soon after, the grandfather and banjo clocks came into existence. Saturn in traditional astrology is "Time," and the clock is what we use to measure time. In a society that was switching from an agrar­ian to an industrial base, the clock and the city are two appropriate symbols of a world whose outermost planet was known to be Saturn.
Though we have seen evidence of Ura­nus and Neptune working in uncon­scious ways in the writers of the Enlight­enment, the average person was still living very much under the influence of Saturn, even though a scientific cosmology had re­placed a Christian one.
However, the same Christian Huygens was the earliest person to propose a scien­tific theory about the nature of light, which in traditional astrology is ruled by Ura­nus. His wave theory, which is known as Huygen's principle, says that every point on a wave front of light is itself a source of new waves of light.
But Isaac Newton in 1704 came up with an alternate concept known as the cor­puscular theory. He believed that light is composed of tiny particles instead of waves, and he combined his corpuscular theory with his laws of mechanics. Because of Newton's enormous reputation and the fact that he was able to demonstrate some truths about optical phenomena with his system, his view was favored, even though it was partially incorrect
For over 200 years, the true nature of light was kept in the dark until after the discovery of the quantum theory in 1900, which states, among other things, that light has a dual nature of both particles and waves. When light is transmitted, its wave nature predominates; when light is ab­sorbed, its particle nature is emphasized. Thus, both Huygen's and Newton's theories about the nature of light are correct under certain conditions.
What is of interest to the student of as­trology is that a Saturnian view of light prevailed during the period when Saturn was thought to be the outermost planet. It wasn't until after the discovery of Uranus that the earlier wave theory was revived by Thomas Young, whose experiments on the diffraction (1801) and interference (1809) of light finally vindicated Huygen's principle 150 years later.
For the rest of the 19th century, the wave nature of light dominated scientific experimentation and was favored over Newton's theory. This accreditation of the Uranian aspect of the transmission of light, which was first postulated in 1690, did not come until after the discovery of Uranus. (Note how the glyph of Aquarius re­sembles waves of light.)
The same can be said of Harvey's work in medicine on the nature of the circula­tion of blood. In 1628, he published his book on the circulatory system; but it wasn't until 1827 that his theories were substantiated. In traditional astrology, Leo rules the heart, Aquarius rules the circulatory system, and Uranus rules the sign Aquarius.
TIME, SPACE AND LIGHT                                                                                                       
After the discovery of Uranus, the world  witnessed a speedup of scientific dis­coveries. It should be pointed out that the full nature of a planet's meaning is not re­vealed in its entirety at the moment of dis­covery, but rather unfolds gradually as time goes by. For example, Uranus has a special affinity with light and electricity. After Huygen's wave theory was revived by Thomas Young in 1801, subsequent ex­periments over the course of the years expanded our scientific knowledge of the nature of electricity.
In the experiments of Maxwell in 1873, electricity and magnetism, which once were thought to be separate, are linked and related to the speed of light. Later research has shown the electric (Uranus) basis for the magnetic properties of matter (Sat­urn) exists right down to the level of the atom. With the discovery of the electron in the late 19th century, we have been spun into an electronic age in the 20th century.
Here we see proof that Uranus in the guise of an electronic revolution has superseded Saturn and its mechanistic reign. A world that was once thought to be com­posed of matter is now seen to consist of force fields as a result of Einstein's research into the nature of relativity. Time and space, which were once thought to be absolutes in Newtonian philosophy, are now interconnected in a complicated rela­tionship, with time existing as the fourth dimension.
The three-dimensional world of Saturn still exists; and from that perspective, our laws pertaining to gravitation and planet­ary motions still work, but within the con­text of a greater reality which is Uranian in nature and contains a dimension beyond the realm of the five tangible senses ruled by Saturn.
It is of this world which philosopher Immanuel Kant speaks of in his Critique of Pure Reason, published in 1781, the year of Uranus' discovery. Kant writes of the transcendental elements of thought which cannot be directly per­ceived through experience but which still add to our empirically derived knowledge. In Kant's vocabulary, transcendent ele­ments include time and space. Transcen­dent objects which cannot be known through the evidence of the senses are called noumena (such as the existence of God), and those that can be known are called phenomena. The full implications of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason are just beginning to be comprehended, yet such is the nature of the Uranian thinker that he is often thought ahead of his times.
It is symbolically apt that Uranus had to enter Saturn's domain, the sign Capri­corn, in 1905, for our traditional concepts of time and space to be shattered. Again, a Uranus-Neptune opposition is in the picture. Einstein didn't know that Uranus was in Capricorn, the sign of time, and Neptune in Cancer, the sign of space, when he announced his theory of relativity.
Because symbols have multiple mean­ings, they can simultaneously manifest in different ways. For example, in the same year that Einstein announced his relativity theory, Freud came out with his Oedipus complex. Uranus and Neptune often refer to unconscious elements in the human personality, and it is this aspect of planetary symbolism that is captured in this Freud­ian approach to the human psyche.
The relevance of myth once more takes its place alongside scientific discovery. In Greek mythology, it was Saturn (Cronus) who castrated Uranus and then took over as head of the gods. Now that Uranus and Saturn have reversed places in life, we learn from Freud of a theory that is a reflection of Uranus (the planet of castra­tion) in Capricorn (sign of the father) in opposition to Neptune (planet of fantasy) in Cancer (sign of the mother).
What does the theory of relativity have to do with the oedipus complex, I will leave that to someone else to explain. But in both these theories, we see traditional Saturnian concepts challenged by Uranus. The father in post- Freudian times is no longer the role model for the choice of oc­cupation, and space and time are no longer seen as separate independent entities. Sat­urn cause and effect gives way to Uranian simultaneity. Saturn clock time now co­exists with Uranian relativity. Coincidence or not, there are four elements in the Uranus-Neptune opposition from Capri­corn to Cancer; and space-time is a four- dimensional continuum in Einstein's groundbreaking theory.
His equation e=mc2 speaks of a new relationship between Saturn and Uranus, or matter and light, the visible and the invisible. Since Uranus and Neptune met again by conjunction in 1993 in the sign Capricorn, maybe we will now begin to understand the metaphysical implications of relativity and how they will affect the visible and invisible aspects of lives of in­dividuals. Perhaps in time  we can raise our consciousness to the speed of light (Uranus) and transcend(Neptune) ma­terial law (Saturn).1
1 For an in-depth discussion of the spiritual implications of the theory of relativity, see The Gospel of Relativity by Walter Starcke, Harper & Row, New York, 1973.
 

Does The Discovery Of The

Outer Planets Invalidate The

Astrology Of The Ancients?

NEPTUNE


 

On September 19,1846, four days before the

discovery of Neptune, a weeping Virgin Mary

appeared to two little boys in La Salette, France.

She was dressed in bursts of light and wore

slippers edged in roses. She spoke of her suffering

because the villagers frequently cursed in the

name of the Lord and few people bothered to

reserve the Sabbath for prayer. She warned of

an impending famine.

By Daniel Heydon

(Published in Dell Horoscope September, 1982)

The seeds that did not take to the earth in the harvest of 1846-47 soon became the seeds of discontent. Revolutions broke out in 1848 throughout Europe in protest over food shortages and political oppres­sion the multitudes had to endure.
At La Salette, a few days after the Lady's visitation, a man proposed to break off a piece of rock from where Our Lady had purportedly sat and, to his surprise, dis­covered a spring of water where there had been none before. Water was drawn from the spring and brought back in a bottle to a seriously ill woman in town. Each day she sipped from the water; nine days later, she was completely cured. This was the first of twenty-three miraculous healings reported by those who drank from the holy water of La Salette during the first year after the Virgin's visitation.1 

Symbolically, it is appropriate that the Mother of Christ should be seen at the time when Neptune, the planet associated with the water sign Pisces, should be dis­covered. In mythology, Neptune, or Posei­don, is the god of the sea; and the word Mary is derived from the Latin mare, meaning sea. Water is the source from which all life comes, which was always true in the history of symbolism, but scientif­ically was verified with the discovery of protoplasm in 1846, the year of Neptune's discovery in the solar system.

H. von Mohl's identification of proto­plasm, the fundamental material of which all living things are composed, ushered in a period when science would be concerned with the origins of life and the basic con­stituents of matter. The link between man and Pisces, sign of the fishes is literally shown by Haeckel's study of embryonic development. He proved that at certain stages, the embryos of fish, birds, and mammals are very similar.- With Darwin's theory of evolution (1859) and the later discovery of photosynthesis, the interde­pendence of man, plants, fish, and animals was established. Neptune dissolves the boundaries that separate and shows the unity that exists in diversity.

Yet nature has its transcendental aspects as well. These were investigated by Thoreau, who in 1845 built himself a small cabin by the shores of Walden Pond in Massachusetts. He spent two years con­templating nature, growing vegetables, and living a life in accordance with the prin­ciples of Neptune and Pisces, both of which have an affinity with the twelfth house of a horoscope, which rules solitude, privacy, and the inner life.3

Despite Thoreau's recognition of the spiritual dimensions of ecology, scien­tific investigation of comparative anatomy and the interdependence of all living things laid the way to a materialistic view of life. The theory of evolution ran counter to the Genesis theory of creation; its chief apologists, Herbert Spencer and Thomas Huxley, were both self-declared agnostics. The word agnosticism was coined in 1869 by Huxley, who believed that the existence of God cannot be logically proved or dis­proved and that human ethics lie outside the scope of the materialistic processes of evolution.
With the discovery of Neptune, the plan­et associated with heaven and the afterlife, nirvana was to be found in the here and now, and science became a secular ideology whose fruits would lead to a better life for all. The dialectical materialism of commu­nism had its roots in Marx' and Engel's The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848, two years after the discovery of Nep­tune. With Marxism, heaven was to be achieved by the revolution of the proletar­iat against the capitalists as the means to an ultimate classless society. Neptune un­der the guise of Marxism promised a Utopia for the propertyless laborer created by the Industrial Revolution. The poor would in­herit the earth.

THE VIRGIN MARY AND MARXISM

With Neptune as the outermost planet  in mankind's consciousness during the period from 1846 to 1930, the world witnessed the spread of atheistic doctrines as well as a growing interest in the cult of Mary. That the Virgin was to take a more active interest in human affairs was made clear in 1830, when she appeared to a mystic nun, Catherine Laboure, in Paris, France. During her visitations with Cath­erine, she revealed herself as the Mediatrix of all graces. Prayers to Mary are like a hot line to God. She is the intermediary between God and humankind.
As she first appeared to Catherine, her feet rested on a white globe upon the head of a green serpent. In her hands was a golden ball with a cross on it, which the Virgin said symbolized the world and each of its inhabitants. On six of her fingers were rings composed of precious stones, some of which emitted light, while others were dark.
Mary herself explained that the rays of light were symbols of the grace which she sheds on those who ask for it, whereas the gems from which no light radiated were the grace for which the souls forget to ask. Mary in this aspect was to be known as the Virgin of the Globe, and she requested that a statue be made picturing her as she ap­peared to Catherine.
She also gave directions for a medal to be made called the Medal of the Immacu­late Conception. She promised to bestow her blessings to those who wore the medal regardless of their religion. In time, this medal became known as the Miraculous Medal because of the numerous benefits that those who wore it later reported they had received.
What is of special interest to the student of astrology is Mary's request that twelve stars be engraved on the medal. According to Catherine, who was later made a saint by the Church, the stars are a clear refer­ence to the text in the Apocalypse 12:1— "A woman clothed in the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars."
Apocalyptic imagery is appropriate for the Virgin, whose appearance on earth seem to coincide with times of world crises. It is more than a mere coincidence that in most dictionaries or encyclopedias, the en­try after "Marxism" is "Mary." In our ref­erence books, Mary and Marxism exist right next to each other. If 1917 saw the dream of Marxism come true with the creation of a communist state with the Russian Revolution, it also marked Mary's appearance at Fatima in Portugal, where she predicted World War II and the dangers of communism. In her appearance, she said:
When you shall see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign from God that the chastisement of the world for its many transgressions is at hand through war, famine, persecution of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart and the Communion of reparations on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heard, Russia will be converted and there will be peace. If not, she will spread her errors throughout the entire world, provoking wars and per­secution of the Church. The good will suf­fer martyrdom; the Holy Father will suf­fer much; different nations will be annihi­lated. But in the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph,. The Holy Father will conse­crate Russia to me, and it will be converted and some time of peace will be granted to humanity.4
One of the children to whom the Virgin appeared at Fatima asked for a miracle so that skeptics would believe in the reality of her apparitions. On October 13, 1917, with approximately 70,000 people gathered at Fatima in pouring rain, the "woman clothed in the sun" appeared around noon as she promised. After conversing with the children, rays of light extended from her hands in the direction of the sun; this was followed by an awesome display of celestial fireworks never before witnessed by earth's inhabitants.
According to the people there, the sun began spinning on its axis, sending multi­colored rays of light in all directions. Then, like an eyeball torn from its socket, the sun seemed to plunge headlong towards earth. It suddenly stopped and returned to its rightful place in the heavens, only to turn into a ball of fire before returning to nor­mal. Some twenty-four days later, the Bol­sheviks came to power in Russia.
The events at Fatima elude human com­prehension, yet serve to remind hu­manity that all cannot be explained by log­ical, scientific means. The same can be said of the Virgin's appearance to Bernadette at Lourdes in 1858, some twelve years after Neptune's discovery. Here, as at La Salette, she caused a spring of healing waters to appear. To this day, thousands of pilgrims make their way to Lourdes and leave be­hind them a trail of discarded crutches and burning candles to venerate the interces­sion of the Virgin on humanity's behalf.
To Bernadette she declared herself to be the Immaculate Conception. This statement popularized the then recent proclamation in 1854 of Pope Pius IX that Mary was con­ceived and born without original sin. Both the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and Darwin's theory of evolution can be linked to the Uranus-Pluto conjunction in Aries in 1850-51. Aries is the sign of Adam, the first man; and Pluto in Aries describes both the fall of Adam and his descendants from divine grace and the Garden of Eden (Neptune), as well as the redemption of mankind through the resurrected Christ.
The Virgin of the Globe who appeared to Catherine with her foot on the serpent's head is the second Eve, who cooperates with Christ in the redemption of mankind, the woman referred to in Genesis 3:15 by God when he said to Satan: "I will put en­mities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel. 5 (Pisces is the sign of the feet.) To­day the Virgin still remains what is per­haps the real missing link in the Darwinian theory—that is, the connection between the human and the divine.

SIN AND REDEMPTION

Problems of sin and redemption made their appearance in a modern guise in the pages of world literature at the time of Neptune's discovery. While the majority of mankind was celebrating the primacy of reason and materialism in human affairs, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Feodor Dostoevsky were preoccupied with the struggle be­tween good and evil in the human soul.

The irrational elements of the human experience which had been repressed with the glorification of reason now resurfaced in the macabre corners of the human heart as revealed by Poe. His introspective he­roes dwell in the twelfth house of the horo­scope. Veritable madmen, they reaffirmed the existence of evil at a time when shallow reformers optimistically dismissed man's capacity for the same. In 1841, he invented the detective story with his Murders in the Rue Morgue—a genre in keeping with the twelfth house, which rules prisons in both the figurative and literal sense.

Hawthorne wrote what many call the first psychological novel with his Scarlet Letter, published in 1850. Exile and ostra­cism from the community are twelfth-house themes which are dealt with in the story of Hester Prynne, who is forced to wear a scarlet letter on her breast as the symbol of her adulterous sin. Revenge and the guilty conscience also make their pres­ence felt in this allegorical romance

Nature in its cosmic aspect is encoun­tered by the obsessed Captain Ahab in Melville's Moby Dick (1851). Themes of death and rebirth by water appear in this novel which reveals the sea as the arche­typal unconscious which man must pass through on his way to wholeness or self-annihilation. Good and evil are always co-passengers in his novels and tales about the sea. Just as we must respect nature in its demonic aspects, so too must we be aware of evil as it exists in human nature—or we make the mistake of his Billy Budd, whose "innocence" blinds him to the dangers that exist around him.

It is to Dostoevsky we look for a reconcil­iation between the growth of Marxism and the visitations of the Virgin in the nineteenth century. His first book, Poor Folk, was published in 1846, the year of Neptune's discovery; it is reminiscent of many other books published at this time in its compassionate concern for the plight of the poor and the underprivileged (for ex­ample, the writings of Charles Dickens).6 His House of the Dead (1862) anticipates the later writing of Solzhenitsyn with its depiction of the horrors of prison life in a penal colony in Siberia.
Like the Virgin Mary, Dostoevsky held out hope that the Russian nation would be converted to a religious way of life. In his soul, he believed that his native land was destined to be the spiritual leader of the world; he sought in his own writings to pave the way. Whereas the Virgin offers solace to a suffering humanity, in Dostoevsky and the above-mentioned writers, we have a por­traiture of what it is like to be a sinner, to undergo guilt feelings, neurotic sufferings, and despair.  
His Crime and Punishment (1866) is a novel about, sin, remorse, and redemption through sacrifice (Neptune).The Virgin often pleads with mankind to make sacrifices, to repent and seek for­giveness. It is as if Dostoevsky heard her prayers; and, like Christ, he has forgive­ness (Neptune) in his heart for those who blindly lose their way. At the same time; he feels compassion for the sufferings of even the most unregenerate sinner.
With the discovery of Neptune, the prin­ciple of compassion became a human attri­bute and was no longer a quality which we solely equate with a Christ or a Virgin Mary. The ability of these writers to iden­tify with the sufferings of others is not de­pendent on which religious sect these men adhere to, but rather on a belief that gen­uine compassion can only exist with aware­ness of man's capacity for both good and evil, as well as belief in a higher power.
From Dostoevsky we learn of the shadow side of scientific accomplishment. His Notes from the Underground (1864) and A Raw Youth (1875) point out the failure of science to provide a purpose for living be­yond the mere fulfillment of economic ne­cessities. (Neptune often provides an anti­dote for the excesses of Uranus.) In his The Possessed (1871-72), he finds fault with the left-wing reformers of his time. In this novel, suicide—which was kept out of sight in literature's own twelfth house during the 17th and 18th centuries—makes a dramatic appearance here as the book's intellectual heroes self-destruct without a belief in a higher purpose in life.
It should be noted that suicide is also dealt with by Hawthorne in his Blithedale Romance (1852) and by Melville in his Pierre (1852). Along with Dostoevsky s The Possessed, these are among the first writers to deal with this aspect of the twelfth house since the 16th century.7
The absence of a belief in the spiritual too often leaves a void in which its anti­thesis, evil, makes an appearance, as wit­ness Dostoevsky's Antichrist, the Grand In­quisitor in his The Brothers Karamazov Here Dostoevsky shows the negative side of the interplay between Uranus and Nep­tune. In this book, Christ returns to earth and unobtrusively goes about his business healing people. He is arrested by the Grand Inquisitor and placed in jail, where the Antichrist explains to him the reasons he should never have returned to the planet.
The Inquisitor says that Christ made a mis­take in giving man freedom (Uranus), for the burden of deciding for himself what is good or evil is simply too much. This is the burden, which Adam brought on himself when he ate from the Tree of Knowledge and committed the original sin. Neptune is the Garden of Eden and also relates to prenatal life in the womb (wit­ness the growth in the study of embryology with Neptune's discovery). It is the period of time before self-awareness (Aries).

As psychologist Rollo May points out in Man's Search for Himself, the eating of the apple brought with it guilt feelings and anxiety and "the learning of right and wrong represents the birth of the psycho­logical and spiritual person."8 With the discovery of Neptune in the 19th century, anxiety and guilt once again literally be­come the heritage of every one of Adam's descendants. At the same time, man still has the burden of deciding for himself what is right and wrong.

But Neptune's reemergence into man's consciousness also brought with it the promise of a new Eden in the guise of the promises of socialism, Marxism, and even organized religion to have the collective abrogate the individual's responsibility to take care of himself and to make his own decisions, including those which affect his spiritual fate. The Inquisitor, as the totali­tarian master (Pluto), tells Christ that man would rather have bread and peace than the agony of being himself.

Unity in the guise of Neptune can lead to mass conformity and a passive depen­dence (Neptune) on an authority who ful­fills material needs (Saturn), while deny­ing freedom of choice (Uranus). Dostoev­sky is often noted for his psychological in­sights; yet he is a psychologist of the soul, of humans in conflict with both the divine and human aspects of their nature.

(Be sure to read Part 2 of this dissertation on Neptune )

(1 For a detailed account of the Virgin's ap­pearances on earth, see A Woman Clothed with the Sun, edited by John J. Delaney, Image Books, Garden City, New York, 1960. Subsequent references to Mary's visitations in this article are based on this book.

2.Haeckel is also known for his study of invertebrate marine organisms—another Piscean pursuit.

3. Thoreau's essay "Civil Disobedience" was mankind's introduction to the Neptunian principle of passive resistance  which later influenced Ghandi in India and Martin Luther King's nonviolent civil-rights movement. Neptune always has had a connection with the negro race and the abolition of slavery.

4 op. cit. A Woman Clothed with the Sun, pp. 194-195.

5.  ibid, p. 82.

6. This brief synopsis of Dostoevsky's writ­ings is partly derived from The New Co­lumbia Encyclopedia, Columbia Univer­sity Press, New York and London, 1975.

7 For a discussion of suicide in modern lit­erature, see R.W.B. Lewis' The Picaresque Saint, J.B Lippencott Co. Philadelphia and New York, 1955. In his chapter on Albert Camus, he notes the contribution of Melville, Hawthorne, and Dostoevsky towards an understanding of this subject.

8. Man's Search for Himself, Rollo May, Signet Books, New York, 1967, p. 157. I am endebted to this author for his in­sights on the meaning of the Garden of Eden and his discussion of Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor.

Does The Discovery Of The Outer Planets Invalidate The Astrology Of The Ancients?

NEPTUNE 

Part 2

                                                        By Daniel Heydon

                                                                           (Published in Dell Horoscope  October, 1982)

The visitations of the Virgin during the 19th century might cause some skeptics to exclaim that Neptune is indeed the planet of impressionability and deception. To the religious believer, Mary has a long history of making appearances on Earth. That her appearances are occurring more frequently is only a sign that mankind is more needful than ever of her intercession. More startling for both believer and skeptic alike are the reported communications with the spirits of deceased persons who were not especially religious that occurred around the time of Neptune's discovery.

Eighteen forty-eight saw the beginnings of the movement known as spiritual­ism, which had its heydey during the 1850's, a time during which mediumship became widespread. It all started on March 3I, 1848, in Rochester, New York, when two young girls of the Fox family heard mysterious rappings in their home. Ac­cording to them, the strange noises came from the spirit of a peddler who told them he had been murdered by the house's pre­vious owner and occupant.  

If asked questions, such as the age of one of the sisters, the spirit would rap out the correct answer. Soon after, throughout the eastern seaboard, families would gather around the dining room table to see if they, too, could experience contact with the spirit world. The result of their ex­perimentations was that an epidemic of rappings began to be heard in homes across the country.

Other examples of psychic phenomena were  reported  around  the  same time. Poltergeists wreaked havoc on the occu­pants of a house in Stratford, Connecticut, in 1850. In the same period, the medium Daniel Home was observed on several occasions to rise perpendicularly in the air and float horizontally above the heads of the   people assembled   at his séances. Though   saints, such   as   Francis   and Teresa, have been known to levitate, it's a rare occasion when a secular person is known to have this kind of power.

Once, the poets Robert and Elizabeth Browning were present at a Home's seance, and they were both touched by invisible hands. According to Elizabeth Barrett Browning in a letter written to her sister: "At the request of the medium, the spiritual hand took from the table a garland which lay there and placed it upon my head. The particular hand which did thiswas of the largest human size, as white as snow and very beautiful.  It was as near to me as this hand I write with, and I saw it  distinctly.'' 1  Elizabeth felt that no spirit  belonging to her was present then.

On another occasion at a sitting with Home, the people there saw and heard a guitar being played by apparently invisible hands. This was not an isolated phenomenon, for in October of 1849, at the Koones' family farm, a whole celestial orchestra of floating instruments gave a concert for the people there, but no one could recognize any of the tunes. 

During the 1850's, many mediums while  in trance spontaneously created and recited  original  poems in perfect meter, though seldom were these outpourings of the first rank. Often, historical personages spoke through the voice of a medium. Some intellectuals quickly became dis­illusioned with spiritualism when reported-celebrated persons of the past spoke of trivial things. For example, George Wash­ington would appear and recite an orig­inal poem but would be silent on the sub­ject of government and politics. Francis Bacon was a frequent visitor, too, but he said nothing to equal his work on earth before his death.

According to19th century witnesses,  not all spirits are spiritual. Often a spiritfrom the other side would fake the identity of a famous person and was not particularly adept at dissembling. Because spiritualism was in demand, it became a thriving business for many people.   Among  the mediums of the period some were proven to be fraudulent and others were victims of playful spirits who seemed to delight in putting on a hoax. It  would  seem  that  though  spiritualism gave evidence that the human personality survives beyond death, many of the spirits were just like ordinary folks alive, with personality quirks, idiosyncrasies, and quite human faults and good  points. In the mid-19th century, Neptune gained its reputation as being a planet associated with the vague, the confusing, the impres­sionable, and the sometimes deceitful.
Psychic phenomena were not seriously investigated again until 1882 with the creation of the London Society for Psychical Research by the philosopher-psychologist William James. However, not all  of the psychical manifestations at the time  of Neptune's discovery can be neatly dismissed as nonsense. Examples of medical  clairvoyance are as remarkable as the later work of Edgar Cayce. Some early investigators of psychic phenomena kept very accurate records of their findings, though their subject matter remains as mysterious today as it was then.
For example, in 1848, Alphonse Cahagnet published a book in French, which was translated into English in 1851 and pub­lished under the title The Celestial Tele­graph. Among other subjects, he gives a thoroughly documented account of the clairvoyant powers of a young woman, Adele Magnot.  Cahagnet presents more than forty cases in which Adele describes the physical characteristics and personal attributes of men and women as they were when alive on earth who were total strangers to her.
With the discovery of .Neptune, the veil between the physical and spiritual worlds was in part lifted. The medium (Neptune) takes his place alongside that of the priest (Jupiter) as an intermediary be­tween the visible and the invisible. Even if we remain skeptical about psychic phenomena, we are still left with the fact that with the discovery of the planet asso­ciated with the nonmaterial and the psy­chic, a widespread interest developed in these subjects.
 

     NEPTUNE AND SLAVERY

in 1843, Isabella Truth, a freed Negro slave working as a domestic in New York City believed she heard heavenly voices calling her to speak out for women's rights and the abolition of slavery. She left her job and changed her name to Sojourner Truth. Then she went about her mission preaching the causes she es­poused throughout the north.

Concern about the plight of the Negro in America was one of the many humani­tarian issues that came into focus around the time of Neptune's discovery. In 1847, The Free Soil Party was formed in the United States with the demand that slav­ery not be allowed in the newly acquired territories gained from Mexico after our country's victory in the Mexican-Amer­ican War (1846-48).
 That same year, Henry Ward Beecher became minister of the Plymouth Congre­gational Church in Brooklyn, New York. There he spoke out on the issues of slav­ery, evolution, and women's rights. His sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852. This book was a major stimulus in the development of a genuine compassion for the Negro slave, and over 300,000 copies of the book were sold in one year.
Also, in 1847, the African colony Li­beria, became an independent nation. The word Liberia means "place of freedom." During the period 1822-1865, some 15,000 freed slaves settled there. Though it took more than the discovery of Neptune to bring Uranian civil rights for the Negro in America, the antislavery issue escalated into a major concern in America during the period 1846 to the Civil War.
Neptune often completes the unfinished business of Uranus. The Industrial Revolution that gained momentum with the discovery of Uranus left in its path overcrowded cities with slum conditions and an impoverished working class in  Europe. The excesses of Uranian individ­ualism led inevitably to the rise of Nep­tunian socialism and a concern for the plight of the underprivileged.

ORPHANS, CONVICTS, AND PRISON REFORM     

 With the discovery of Neptune, the planet associated with compassion, the world took a special interest in the victims of industrialization as well as other cast-off souls, such as orphans, criminals, the physically ill, and the mentally disturbed. (These matters are all twelfth-house con­cerns which come under the rulership of Neptune and the sign Pisces).
With the discovery of Neptune, the prac­tice began where governmental agencies became involved in the prevention of dis­ease. In 1848, the Public Health Act began sanitary legislation in England. Subse­quent legislation was passed dealing with slum clearance and minimum housing standards. In 1841, Dorothea Dix, after visiting a jail in East Cambridge, Massa­chusetts, began a campaign to end the practice of indiscriminately mixing the in­sane with criminals. Her personal crusade resulted in the founding of state hospitals for the insane in many states.
In 1856, the first foundling hospital in the United States was established in Bal­timore, Maryland. In 1846, Mary Carpen­ter, a British educator, opened a school for poor children; in 1852, she founded a juve­nile reformatory. Her crusade for reformatory and industrial schools paved the way for the passage of The Juvenile Offenders Act in1857.

 Orphans and convicts abound in the lit­erature of Charles Dickens in such works as Oliver Twist (1838), Little Dorrit (1857), and Great Expectations (1860-1861). Dickens was a master of sentimentality and compassion.3 His Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol (1843) still brings Nep­tunian tears in the eyes of the world every Christmas. Fellow novelist Charles Reade  described the cruelties of prison discipline in It's Never to Late to Mend (1856); Dostoyevsky did the same in Russia with The House of the Dead (1862), a record of his experiences in a penal colony.

With Jupiter as the ruler of Sagittarius (travel) and Pisces (incarceration) be­fore Neptune's discovery, a common mode of punishment was exile to a distant land, often to spend a life of hard labor. This practice which dates back to the Greeks and Romans continued to as late as 1951, with the exception of the Soviets, who still exiled people.to Siberia. The British sent certain types of prisoners to America until 1776 and to Australia until 1853. Devil's Island in the Caribbean is perhaps the most celebrated of the penal colonies; it was founded in 1852. The Dreyfus case in France in the 1890's brought to light the sordidness of prison life there .
Prior to the discovery of Neptune, prison life was viewed as a way of punishment. With Neptune in the picture, the function of imprisonment is to bring about the rehabilitation of the prisoner so that he may return to society. Convict labor gives way to vocational training. In the 20th century, the psychiatrist often testifies to the crim­inal's sanity; some criminologists believe that such factors as poverty and being born in a minority group are influences that cause antisocial behavior. In any case, the prevailing view is that criminals are victims of emotional disorders who must be treated rather than coerced and punished into better behavior.

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE AND THE TELEGRAPH

Neptune is said to rule gases, the loss of consciousness, and compassion (an unlikely combination) until we realize that in 1846, the year of Neptune's discov­ery, William Morton at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston demonstrated the effectiveness of ether as an anesthetic to eliminate pain during surgery. In 1847, chloroform was first used as an anesthetic. (A related development which shows that Neptune is the ruler of gases occurred in 1850 when the Kinetic Theory of Gases was formulated.)
With the discovery of anesthesia and Louis Pasteur's experiments with bac­teria, which led to the germ theory of disease (1861), modem medicine was born. Also contributing to the understanding of disease was the work of Rudolf Virchow in cellular pathology; he founded the Archw fur patholigische Anatomic und Physiologie und fur kliniische Medizin in 1847. The father of cytology, Theodor Schwann, demonstrated that the cell is the basis of animal and plant tissue. His influ­ential "Microscopical Researches... in the Structure and Growth of Animals and Plants" was translated from the German a few months after Neptune's discovery.
In ancient times, it was believed that good and evil spirits affected the course of disease. With Jupiter then the sole ruler of the twelfth house, the sick were usually cared for in temples and houses of wor­ship. There was no real hospital for the training of nurses until 1846, when one was established at Kaiserwerth, Germany, at the time of Neptune's discovery. It was there that Florence Nightingale, the foun­der of modern nursing, received her train­ing. In 1860, she founded the Nightingale School and Home at St Thomas Hospital in London, the first school designed pri­marily to educate nurses rather than to provide nursing services for hospitals. In 1854, she organized a unit of thirty-eight nurses for service in the Crimean War.

 Reports of the heroics of Nightingale's coterie over the newly discovered telegraph by Samuel Morse in 1844 made her a legend by the end of the war. Daily, the horrors of war, particularly the treat­ment of the wounded, were relayed by William Howard Russell, the first war correspondent, via telegraph to the Times of London. For the first time in history, an aroused public became aware of what war was really like. Pity and indignation led to cries for a more humane treatment of the sick. Nightingale was the first wom­an to be given the British Order of Merit (1907). After her death, The Crimean Monument at Waterloo Place in London was erected in her honor (1915).

As Marshall McLuhan states in his Un­derstanding Media, "the electric [Uranus] gives powerful voices to the weak and suf­fering" [Neptune].4 He further says that instant information gives immediate par­ticipation in the experience of others; in other words, it creates empathy. The rel­evance of McLuhan's insights about how "the medium is the message" was brought borne with the Vietnam War as pre­sented on TV's nightly news. Editorial comment on the right of America's in­volvement seemed superficial since mil­lions of people saw the wounded and the homeless on their screens every night. It goes without saying that one was moved to care about one's fellowman, regardless of race, color, creed, right or wrong.

KIERKEGAARD AND THE CONCEPT OF ANXIETY

The psychologist Rollo May in The Meaning of Anxiety tells us that anx­iety as we know it today did not emerge as an individual problem until the mid-19th century 5 (i.e. until Neptune's discovery).  In ancient times, primitive man experienced anxiety when his physi­cal well-being was threatened by wild ani­mals. (If some students of astrology scoff at the fact that the ancients attributed to the twelfth house and the sign Pisces large animals, their skepticism will be alleviated with a reading of May's book.)
In the Middle Ages, the promise of sal­vation by religion under Jupiter's benefi­cent rulership of the twelfth house did much to obviate anxiety. People then were afraid of sorcerers and magic, but a belief in God and the hope (Jupiter) of heaven did much to allay a fear of the unknown (Neptune). If one paid attention to the rules and regulations of the church, one need not fear eternal damnation. Besides, there was also the Sacrament of Confes­sion through which one received God's forgiveness and simultaneously could deal with guilt feelings. Sometimes anxiety did  not make itself felt until the moment of death, and the church's archives are full of deathbed repentances.

Before going further, we should dis­tinguish between fear and anxiety. Fear is a realistic response to actual danger and is Saturnian by nature. With anxiety, we enter Neptune's realm, for often the true source of distress is unknown to the indi­vidual. When we are plagued with vague fears without any specific threats coming from the outside, that is anxiety. Since psychology did not exist as an in­dependent study until the late 19th cen­tury, we have to look at the writings of philosophers and religious thinkers for insights into psychological problems.(Ju­piter, the planet associated with religion and philosophy, was the sole ruler of the  twelfth house of the unconscious prior to Neptune's discovery in 1846.)

According to May, the philosophers of the 17th century believed that reason could solve all problems. Isolation, which is a twelfth-house concern, was not a prob­lem for the person of the 17th century. It was thought then that "the liberation or reason in every person would lead to a realization of a universal humanity and to a system of harmony between individuals and society." 6 If a person listened to his reason, be would ultimately be in accord with others who followed their reason. That the laws of the external universe as well as the physical body could be dis­cerned by reason left the 17th century man with little to worry about In time, every­thing would become known through rea­son and mathematical laws.

May goes on to note the difference be­tween the 17th century and the 19th cen­tury man regarding anxiety: "With respect to the psychological life of the individual, the nineteenth century is broadly charac­terized by a separation of 'reason' and 'emotions,' with voluntaristic effort (will) enthroned as the method of casting the decision between the two—which resulted generally in a denial of emotions." The seventeenth-century belief in the rational control of the emotions had now become the habit of repressing the emotions. 7

The stage was set for Kierkegaard to write The Concept of Anxiety in 1844 and for man to learn more about his hid­den motivations and repressions as sig­naled by the discovery of Neptune in 1846.

Kierkegaard was the first writer ever to identify and to discuss the concept of anx­iety. Unlike many modern individuals who believe that if they experience anxiety, something must be wrong with them, Kierkegaard believed that it's perfectly normal—in fact, necessary—to experience anxiety, for it is part of the creative pro­cess of becoming a self.
Kierkegaard's discussion of anxiety re­lates Uranian freedom with Neptunian anxiety. To realize one's potentialities in­volves change (Uranus) and to face the unknown brings with it anxiety (Nep­tune). The child in learning to walk ex­periences anxiety because he has not done this before. This kind of anxiety for Kierkegaard is normal anxiety. The more creative a person is, the more anxiety he is going to experience.
For Kierkegaard, "confidence [Jupiter} is not the removal of doubt (and anxiety) [Neptune) but rather the attitude that we can move ahead despite doubt and anx­iety." 8 In other words, "this capacity for freedom brings with it anxiety." 9  To con­front the possibilities of life always in­volves anxiety, but not to confront them leads to neurotic anxiety "which results from the individual's failure to move ahead in situations of normal anxiety." 10
Saturn, too, enters the picture. To move towards the future to realize untapped potentials always involves a break with the past (Saturn) and accompanying guilt feelings (Saturn) in the process. But not to take a chance on growing can also lead to guilt feelings towards the self.  A belief in fate (Saturn) is sometimes used to avoid the anxiety and guilt feelings that go along with creativity. In the end, one atones for his break with the status quo by the creative act itself, which transforms the past by incorporating it into the future.

 Anxiety is a signal from within that a problem is going on, but as long as this occurs, it means a solution is possible. Kierkegaard believes that anxiety (Nep­tune) is a greater teacher than reality (Saturn), for one can always try to escape (Neptune) reality (Saturn) by avoiding problems. Attempts to run away from anx­iety are literally self-defeating, for it is like an inner voice, which if listened to, can lead to growth and self-realization.

 With Kierkegaard, the twelfth house is no longer simply the territory of madmen and those who are shut away from the world either by themselves or society. Rather, it is the source of inner richness that helps us realize our creativity.

It was left to Freud to deal in detail with the hang-ups associated with the twelfth house, yet in the first man to write about this hidden side of the self, we have one of our best guides to a constructive real­ization of hidden twelfth-house possibil­ities. The twelfth house with Kierkegaard becomes a buried treasure rather than a haven of neuroses.

Finally, in Kierkegaard, both the Jupiterian and Neptunian aspects of the twelfth house are neatly blended. The individual who dares to confront normal anxiety (Neptune) and goes on to the future de­spite inner doubt in the process is, in the words of May, "educated to faith [Jupiter] and inner certitude."11 At that point, the individual, in the words of Kierkegaard, has the "courage to renounce anxiety without any anxiety [Neptune], which only faith [Jupiter] is capable of—not that it annihilates anxiety, but remaining ever young, it is continually developing itself out of the death throe of anxiety."12

FOOTNOTES

1.The Heyday of Spiritualism by Slater Brown, Hawthorn Books, New York, 1970, p. 233. This and all other references to spiritualism are from this book.

2. It should be noted that Dickens was not solely concerned with twelfth-house subjects, but that his work is Neptunian in other ways besides. In 1850, Herbert Spencer invented sociology. In the writ­ings of Dickens and his contemporary, Balzac in France, we get a complete por­traiture of the different types of people who make up a society. With Dickens, Balzac, and Dostoyevsky, the cities of London, Paris, and St Petersburg are the real heroes.

 3. Louis Pasteur also did other scientific experiments which are Piscean in na­ture. His work on wine, vinegar, and beer, all of which come under the do­main of Pisces, resulted in the process of pasteurization. Liquor and drugs are of­ten used for Neptunian escapes from reality. With Neptune's discovery, the state of Maine was the first state to adopt a prohibition law in 1851. Also barbituric acid, which forms the basis of barbituates, was discovered in 1864.

 4. Understanding Media by Marshall Mc-Luhan, New American Library, Signet Books, New York, 1964, p. 223. "The Meaning of Anxiety by Rollo May, Pocket Books, New York, 1979, p. 19.

 5.ibid, p. 22.

 6. ibid,p.29.  

 7.ibid, p. 25.

8.ibid, p. 32.

 9.bid, p. 33.

 10 ibid, p. 43.

 11. ibid., From The Concept of Anxiety by Rollo May

 12.Soren Kierkegaard, as quoted by Rolio May on pp. 43-44.

Does The Discovery Of The Outer Planets Invalidate The Astrology Of The Ancients?   

                          PLUTO

By Daniel Heydon

                                               (Published in Dell Horoscope  Noveember, 1982)
 

Since Pluto was first sighted on

January 21,1930, the world has witnessed

the horrors of Hiroshima, Hitler, and

Dachau—end the rise of modern-day

terrorism. We need not rewrite the

history of World War H in these pages

to give evidence that Pluto is indeed

a planet whose movements at tunes coincide

 with mass destruction and death.

 

 Death has always been with us, but it is only since the unleashing of the de­structive power of the atom at Hiroshima in 1945 that humanity has contemplated the possible extinction of the planet Earth itself—a horrifying thought indeed. 
 
With Pluto in Scorpio in 1500, Heironymus Bosch painted "The Last Judgment" (a triptych) and people then feared the end was near. In that painting, the sky was slashed apart and fire dropped from the air on burning cities—perhaps an early un­conscious rendition by an artist of the mushroom cloud that later rained fiery destruction on Hiroshima. In 1500, the world did not literally come to an end. Pluto's transit then signaled the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of an age of exploration. This year marked the beginning of the transition from a Christian to a secular civilization.1
 
With Pluto’s entrance into Scorpio in 1984, our thoughts again returned to apocalypse. Many wondered if George Orwell's novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, would prove prophetic in its description of the dehumanization of man in a mechanistic and totalitarian so­ciety. Or did Pluto in Scorpio signal the end of civilization as we know it and the beginning of planetization, as thinkers such as astrologer Dane Rudhyar and culture-historian William Irwin Thompson hope­fully foresaw?
 
As Thompson writes, "Teilhard de Chardin first observed the planetization of na­tions in the 1940's, in his essay on the atom bomb. He noted that the more the nations built armaments to separate themselves and maintain their sovereign independence, the more the very armaments forced them to come together in a new international system. And so the planetization of nations is the emergence of a new world order. The opposite of planetization is simply thermo­nuclear war."2
 
Pluto often operates through paradox. Associated with the sign Scorpio—saint and sinner, black and white—Pluto con­fronts us with extremes. For example, the atom bomb is the symbol of both our power and powerlessness and is central to any discussion of Pluto, as the following astro­logical facts will confirm.
 
Pluto was first seen on January 21, 1930, at 18° Cancer 18'. When Saturn by transit reached this degree—to be precise, 18° Cancer 14'—on August 6,1945, at 8:15 A.M. J.T., the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. When transiting Uranus by di­rect motion arrived at 18° Cancer 19' on October 3,1952, Britain's first atomic bomb tests were made in Australia,; when Uranus by retrograde motion returned to 18° Can­cer 28' on November 6, 1952, the United States exploded its first hydrogen bomb. (Also in the same year, President Harry Truman laid the keel of the first atomic submarine, Nautilus.)

 

The eighteenth degree of the cardinal signs is often involved with nuclear developments. The birth of the Atomic Age began with the splitting of the atom at 3:25 P.M., December 2, 1942, at the University of Chicago. The degree of the midheaven of that chart is 18° Capricorn 09. Signifi­cantly, physicist Enrico Fermi, who split the atom, also had a Midheaven of 18° Cap­ricorn 43'. The destruction at Hiroshima was a fulfillment of potentialities inherent in the chart for the splitting of the atom.
 
The dangers of radioactive fallout was reinforced in the public's consciousness by the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island on March 28,1979, with Pluto at 18° Libra 09' and then again with Ground Zero week, which began on April 18,1982, with Saturn at 18° Libra 13'. As of April 11, 1982, forty books on nuclear issues were scheduled for publication during 1982, the most cele­brated of these being Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth.
 
Clamor over nuclear disarma­ment occurred with Saturn's station at 19° Libra during 1982: then, it squared Pluto's posi­tion at the time of discovery and Saturn's position in the chart for Hiroshima. Sym­bolically apt are Rudhyar's key words for 19° Libra, "Group Protest." 3
 
ORTEGA AND THE REVOLT OF THE MASSES
 
We have to ask ourselves, "How did the liberal dream of progress through scientific development lead to the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?" In the same year as Pluto's discovery, Spanish philos­opher Jose Ortega y Gasset in The Revolt of the Masses notes the divorce between science and culture, science and morality
 
Whereas an Einstein had to study Kant before he could arrive at his own theories, the average scientist is knowledgeable in his own field but, more often than not, ig­norant of matters that lie outside his spe­cialty. The increase in specialization in science has led to an emphasis on tech­nique and an ignorance of cultural values.
 
Ortega goes so far as to say "that the actual scientific man is the prototype of the mass-man. Not by chance, not through the individual failings of each particular man of science, but because science itself—the root of our civilization—automatically con­verts him into mass-man, makes of him a primitive, a modern barbarian." 4
 
In most areas of life, the average scientist shares the same materialistic standard of the mass-man, which is a desire for the products of science, such as automobiles, without an appreciation for the philosophic principles that lay behind civilization. Ortega is not criticizing the creative scien­tist, but rather the technicians of a science wed to industry.
 
The marriage of science and capitalism has helped create the mass-man, who is spoiled in Ortega's eyes, for he is born in a world, which caters to his taste for material ease. The average or mass-man is content to utilize the products of scientific, civiliza­tion without feeling the need to develop his own creative potentials.
 
Also contributing to the phenomenon of the mass-man is the accelerated growth of population that occurred during the 19th century. Ortega notes that from 1200 to 1800 AD., the population of Europe was fairly constant, numbering around one hundred eighty million, but tripled in the next century. The sheer number of people who seemed to come from nowhere were suddenly everywhere. This sudden growth of the masses resulted in the glorification of collective values over individual ones.
 
Since the discovery of Pluto, we have witnessed the rise of the mass-man to a dominant position in our civilization, whose economy depends on satisfying his needs. Scientific technology wed to capitalist goals has helped create a rebirth of barbarism in the emergence of the mass-man.
 
 

FASCISM

 Ortega's book was published shortly after the onset of the Great Depression which followed the stock-market crash of 1929. The decade that followed the discov­ery of Pluto witnessed the consolidation of power by Fascist leaders in Italy, Spain, and Germany. These totalitarian governments were supported by the masses and had a philos­ophy of government that glorified the state and assigned to it control over every aspect of national life. The emphasis on "the will" and a doctrine of the survival of the fittest place Plutonian values to the forefront, yet we should note how the arrival of Fascism was a natural outgrowth of a world caught in the throes of a Neptunian crisis, exem­plified by confusion and hopelessness.

 As psychologist Rollo May says in The Meaning of Anxiety: "Fascism was a com­plex socioeconomic phenomenon, but cer­tainly on its psychological side it could not be understood without reference to anx­iety. Of particular importance are these phases of anxiety—namely, the feelings of isolation, insignificance, and powerlessness of the individual."(5) May also notes that anxiety [Neptune] creates hostility" (6) [Pluto] and that fascism "is born and gains its power in periods of widespread anxiety [Neptune]. (7)
 
The com­bined influence of the disillusionment felt in the wake of World  War I and the poverty that accompanied the Depression of 1929 left a void in which totalitarianism took hold. Note also how Franklin Roosevelt came to power in the United States and inaugurated his New Deal, created govern­ment jobs for the masses, and was quite a popular president with them because of the hope his leadership offered.
 
SEX: THE LINK BETWEEN WILHELM REICH AND D. H. LAWRENCE
We get a confirmation of Ortega's view that the emergence of the masses brought about a rebirth of primitivism and barbarism in the writings of  psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, whose The Mass Psychol­ogy of Fascism was published in Germany in 1933. He says, "It is generally clear today that 'fascism' is not the act of a Hitler or a Mussolini, but that it is the expression of the irrational structure of mass man."(8) To Reich, all individuals have some elements of Fascist feelings in their makeup and these feelings stem from repressed primary biological needs, which have been sup­pressed for thousands of years by Church and State.

 In Reich, the need for sadistic power be­comes linked with repressed sexuality. At the core of his beliefs is the feeling that the orgasm is a link between man and the cos­mos, in that natural sexual release also re­leases a primal energy, which he called the orgone. This same energy, which he be­lieved permeated the universe, is at the core of artistic accomplishments.

 Reich later developed the orgone box, a device he claimed would restore energy. Even though the Food and Drug Adminis­tration declared his orgone box fraudulent in the 1950's, Reich's theory bears a strange sympatico to ideas voiced by the contro­versial English writer D. H. Lawrence.
 
It is no accident that D. H. Lawrence died on March 2, 1930, eleven days before the discovery of Pluto was officially announced to the world on March 13, 1930, for the Plutonic themes of sex, death, and rebirth are the subject matter of his collected works. Interestingly enough, his natal Pluto is at 3° Gemini 16' and he died at age forty-five when transiting Pluto made a semi-square to his natal Pluto. It is almost as if Lawrence had to hang on to life until the discovery of the planet which would insure him that the mass of humanity would un­derstand his message, even if they weren't acquainted with his writings.
 
The false selves that we acquire through living in a mechanized and impersonal civilization can be stripped away in an honest sexual relationship. Through sex one could become alive to the individuality of self and others, as well as be in tune with the cosmos. For Lawrence, sex provided the individual with a way to be simul­taneously unique and universal, yet sepa­rate from the common herd as represented by the mass-man.
 
This is one of the core meanings of Pluto. Yet, as described by Lawrence himself in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, he fell short of capturing in words what is essentially a primal experience. His readers got caught up in the graphics of his descriptions as keys to a better sexual technique than as a doorway to the experience of self, others, and the cosmos.
 

THE BLUE ANGEL, ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, AND ORGANIZED CRIME  

 Despite the sexual revolution of recent decades, in the seventy-seven years since Pluto's discovery, man is still wrestling with problems of sex and violence. Reich's feeling that there is a bit of the sadist in all of us, which is linked to sexual repression, seems to make sense when we look at the gangster-moll films of the 1930's.

Woman as femme fatale made her ap­pearance in Josef von Sternberg's classic film, "The Blue Angel" (1930) starring Marlene Dietrich. The Plutonic phoenix, which rises from the ashes, makes a strange appearance as Rath's dead canary and the feathers on Lola's post-card portrait.

The power of obsessive love to destroy is depicted in this story of a schoolteacher who becomes infatuated with a cabaret dancer. He gives up his career for her and ends up as a destroyed man, while she con­tinues life with her latest lover. As Lola, Dietrich sings, "Men cluster to me like moths around the flame, and if their wings burn, I know I'm not to blame."

The first serious depiction of crime as it actually was in America appeared in 1930 with Edward G. Robinson in Little Cae­sar. The same year, Arthur Conan Doyle died and Dashiell Hammett became heir apparent to Doyle with The Maltese Falcon. Hammett invented a new genre of detective story, featuring a hard-nosed private eye, Sam Spade—a far cry from the deductive reasoning and gentility of Sherlock Holmes.

In real life, Pluto, Lord of Hades, be­comes the real God of the Underworld, for the 1930's saw the beginnings of organized crime with the partnership of Lucky Lu­ciano (an alleged mafioso) and Louis Buchaler, who created an interstate crim­inal organization known as the Syndicate. Prior to the Syndicate, gangs fought among themselves in the prohibition days. Again, we see a connection between Neptune and Pluto. Prohibition (Neptune) gave rise to organized crime (Pluto).

The Syndicate was an invisible govern­ment which apportioned territories and profits. To make sure its rules were fol­lowed, it hired a band of professional kill­ers who performed over one hundred mur­ders in a ten-year period (1930-1940). The band was known as Murder Inc.; it was formed in 1930, the same year that Alfred Hitchcock's film Murder was released. Also in that year, the Lindbergh baby was born; the boy was kidnapped and murdered two years later. This resulted in legislation against kidnapping, though it did not pre­vent its recurrence.

 DEATH, REBIRTH, AND FAULKNER'S LIGHT IN AUGUST

Though the discovery of Pluto signaled the return of the daimonic to con­sciousness, the first examples of its work­ings on the human stage was of an unregenerate humanity. With the Lord of Hades in the guise of Pluto, the new ruler of the planetary hierarchy, it would seem that hu­manity was once more in need of a redemptor to take on the sins of the world, which seemed more numerous than ever some nineteen hundred plus years after the death of Christ.

 It is in literature where we see our first workings of Pluto as the planet of Death and Resurrection. The phoenix which rises from the ashes and is reborn has its Chris­tian corollary in the example of Christ, who was crucified, descended into hell, and on the third day rose into heaven. Both Auden and Graham Greene published their first works in 1930; in subsequent years, they wrote about death and resurrection.
 
We have to take a special look, though, at the early works of William Faulkner. His masterpiece, The Sound and the Fury, was published in 1929, the year before Pluto's discovery. The action in this book takes place on an Easter weekend, begin­ning with Good Friday and ending with Easter Sunday. However, the reader quite familiar with religious themes may become lost in this tale of darkness where there are only flickers of light.
 
Faulkner's Christ figure is a thirty-three-year-old idiot, Benjy, who babbles incoherently. One truly has to ask what is going on here, for the violence, sexuality, and isolation of the characters echo that of real-life man around the same time of Plu­to's discovery. Again, in Light in August (1932) Faulkner confronts us with another Christ figure in the character of Joe Christ­mas, who is also thirty-three, the same age as when Christ died. Like the idiot in The Sound and the Fury, Joe Christmas experi­ences castration.
 
A birth, a death, and a resurrection are depicted in this book, but these events do not happen to a single character but are divided among three separate characters. Joe Christmas, the Christ figure, dies; a woman he never meets gives birth to a child; and a third character, Hightower, tries to help Joe Christmas out but fails. However, he does help the woman who gives birth to a child. It is he who experi­ences rebirth and ends his isolation from his fellowman.
 
What is implied here is that death/rebirth is a process in which more than one person is involved. It is achieved through a sense of community, a quality which Hightower develops and uses for his resur­rection. But resurrected to what? To a common humanity, to qualities most ordi­nary humans in life, who are not damaged, have as their birthright?
 
Faulkner's message perhaps does not be­come clear, but a look at his writings for an insight into the meaning of Pluto does succeed. We are all the Christ—or, at least, we have been put in that position with the discovery of the outer planets. The people asked in Faulkner's works to undergo the Christ-trip have the same consciousness as those mass-men, whose qualities were enumerated by Reich and Ortega. Their mission in life is to find themselves—and perhaps in the perilous route to rediscover the roots of their humanity, they will stum­ble on their divinity.
FOOTNOTES
 

.  For a more detailed discussion of the relevance of Bosch to now, see William Irwin Thompson's Darkness and  Scat­tered Light, Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1978, p74.

2  ibid., p. 82

 3  Dane Rudhyar, An Astrological Mandala,Vintage Books, New York, 1974, p. 185

 4  Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of theMasses, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1932, p. 109

 5 Rollo May, The Meaning of Anxiety, Pocket Books, 1979, New York, p. 172

 6 ibid., p. 172

 7 ibid., p. 11

 8.  Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Farrar, Straus & Goroux, New York, 1970, p. xx

 

 

                

 


 




 

 

 

 

 







 

 

 

 

 

Copyright 2009 Daniel Heydon. All rights reserved.

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