Outer planets transform personal and collective psyche and catalyze corresponding outer worldly changes as they transit the signs of our zodiac. Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto revolutionized, reformed, and transformed 20th Century Sagittarius. Psycho-social paradigms of politics, commerce, and religion shifted radically and dramatically.
Uranus transited Sagittarius from 1981-1988. Politics became accessible to females. Sandra D. O’Connor became the first Woman elected to the Supreme Court. Geraldine Ferraro was the first woman nominated by the Democratic Party for Vice President. Benazir Bhutto became the first female prime minister of a Muslim country in Pakistan’s first free election since 1977.
Uranus brings sudden and unexpected upheaval and disaster. The space shuttle Challenger exploded on takeoff in 1986, while millions watched in horror on their TV screens. Ronald Reagan created “Star Wars”, an absurd and overly expensive national defense idea. Greenpeace’s flagship, Rainbow Warrior, was bombed while protesting France’s nuclear testing. George Bush Sr. was the first sitting Vice President elected as president since 1836. IBM introduced personal PCs. AT&T’s communication monopoly ended via Anti-Trust and Department of Justice in 1974.
Sagittarius rules publishing and religion. In 1989, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini sentenced Salman Rushdie to death after publishing The Satanic Verses. Rushdie’s tales of good and evil incited riots in India and book burnings in England. His literary success fueled an ocean of fear and stirred teeming cauldrons of Islamic hatred!
Neptune transited Sagittarius from 1970 to 1984. The idealism of the 60’s transformed to pessimism with a marked lack of trust in national institutions. The war in Vietnam united masses of skeptical angry protestors, ready for confrontation. The Arab oil embargo created a major energy crisis in 1973 that ‘taught’ US not to take energy for granted. We believe gas is expensive, and yet ownership of energy sources, uses, and abuses drive western gas prices artificially lower than they should be. Raising gas prices is essential to increasing profits and catalyzing openings of controversial pipelines that endanger our environment; however, no matter how expensive fossil fuels become; they’re cheap compared to the costs of long range consequences of their misuse for our world and souls!
Neptune rules false prophets, delusion, deception, and victimization. Richard Nixon was the first President to announce his resignation in 1974. New York was the first city to be bailed out of bankruptcy by the federal government in 1975. A religious paradigm shifted when the Catholic Church elected its first non-Italian pope in four centuries. Mother Theresa accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in the name of the poor. In 1979, Televangelist Jerry Falwell founded the ‘Moral Majority’, which became the ‘Immoral Majority’ sometime prior to January 20th 2001.
Neptune can be imaginary, illusionary, and visionary. Neptune rules chemicals and drugs. The first test-tube baby was conceived out of a womb in Leo in 1978. Genetic engineering generated new horrors for theologians, religious fundamentalists, and ideological extremists. Environmental activists protested industries that created “Acid Rain”. The ‘Three Mile Island’ fiasco derailed several major nuclear energy projects in 1979. The World Health Organization announced an end to smallpox. Crack cocaine became popular. A deadly sexual epidemic was officially named AIDS in 1981. Fear of eventual pandemic spread.
Pluto transited Sagittarius from 1995 to 2008, transforming politics, big business, and religion. Political extremism, corporate greed, religious fanaticism, white supremacy, 2nd amendment rights, fundamentalism, and strategic terrorism flourished and thrived in fertile soil. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing law student. The Middle East peace process was disrupted. Great Britain finally let go of Hong Kong. President Clinton resumed diplomatic relations with communist Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands of Black Men flocked to Washington to march for freedom. It was the first time in 40 years Republicans controlled congress. Y2K was not end time.
Author’s Note: The NYT Millennium issue queried various metaphysical prognosticators with good reputations what will happen when 1999 becomes 2000. They published half a dozen predictions. Mine was that on January 2nd, we wake up, brush our teeth, and go to work!
Sex scandals rocked the Catholic Church. The House of Representatives impeached and later acquitted Bill Clinton for lying about his sexploits. Two students killed themselves after murdering twelve students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado. The Unabomber was caught and sentenced to life in prison. Oklahoma City bombing established large-scale American terrorism on our soil. On 9/11, government power transformed, giving leaders permission to supersede human rights and civil liberties. Political machines preempted war without world consent. Lairs of corporate foxes tended the hen houses while packs of political wolves herded the sheep. Sacred cows birthed golden calves.
Saturn began its journey through Sagittarius on December 23, 2014, after twenty-eight years of visiting eleven other signs and houses. Astrologers predicted Saturn would wield a sobering influence on society as it transited from Sagittarius to Capricorn. Saturn’s process is about embracing responsibility and choosing structure, discipline, and focus. Saturn rules bureaucracy, big business, and established institutions including transportation, communications, food, housing, healthcare, law, politics, and religion. Father Time asks us to be here and now.
Sagittarius rules transportation. Sagittarians love prestige and luxury and choose power and status. They leave racing to Aries and showing off to Leo. The lords of cars must shift the paradigm of profit before people. Industry must become more spiritual in its outlook and truthful in its actions. Guzzling fossil fuels is unsustainable. Do we truly need hundreds of horses galloping under our hoods?
Perpetuating an illusion that overly expensive powerful gas guzzling cars are glamorous, maintains a delusion that it’s OK to deplete our planet’s natural resources and poison our environment. Car companies pretend their products are healthy! One responsibility of transportation is rethinking the future of transportation, like creating led light, clean energy, inexpensive communications, and global good health. Raising mass consciousness is profitable for humanity and our planet.
As our planet warms, cools, floods, quakes, droughts, burns, and is blown by giant winds, fossil fuel prices remain artificially repressed, while legislation prevents sustainably minded competitors from building sound structures on solid foundations. We must cut our energy umbilical cords and think globally while acting locally. Fuel efficient, non-polluting, practical, and economical mass transportation is essential to creating a healthy world and economy. Energy, Transportation, and Communications must be transformed concurrently.
We go wherever and whenever we want in the comfort and safety of our cars. Hidden costs are usurious, insidious and deceitful. We guzzle gas, fight oil wars, deplete, squander, and waste finite resources, and poison our mother’s body, circulatory, and respiratory systems. Too much carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and other toxic waste hover everywhere in space and time and by degree. Smoke, smog, and other human waste poison our oceans, reservoirs, rivers, streams, and tributaries. Pestilential pollution sticks to the walls of our veins and coagulates in our arteries like cholesterol on its way to a coronary. Our highways and roads are like varicose veins feeding bloated glands that nourish the cancerous sores we call cities. We must shift our usurious false paradigms, and steer ourselves from death and destruction toward a hopeful future characterized by clear intent, healthy values, critical thinking, honest feelings, right use of willpower, good physical health, honest relationships, and freedom to explore our creativity, philosophy, purpose, dreams, fears, and spirituality.
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The human race has become a race against bad shit happening. Why do we wander across barren deserts and toxic wastelands? Greed and avarice are symptoms of poisonous partisan political philosophies, flawed fundamentalist religious doctrines, extremist social ideologies, and too many erratic personalities. Too many unhealthy psyches are running around with too many guns and second amendment rights. Why do we aimlessly worship sacred cows and hopelessly pray to golden calves? Trading money for values and substituting religion for spirituality has never worked. Lies are fueling humanity’s race toward bad shit happening. Loving is one answer, but beware loving too much or your frightened neighbors will nail you to a cross and make a martyr out of you.
Hermes teaches us that our destiny is in our hands. “The lips of wisdom are closed, except to the ears of understanding”. Jupiter transited Sagittarius this past year, unveiling the greed of capitalism and revealing the real present and future costs of climate change. Why must we lose what we value to value what we had? We must choose healthy values and accept full responsibility for being our healthiest selves while creating a healthier world for all.
Why don’t we see the forest from the trees? How can we be healthier in more sustainable ways? Uranus transits Taurus May 14, 2018 ~ Nov 7, 2025. I pray for a rebirth of practical good sense, accepting responsibility, choosing courage, strength, grace, and wisdom, and embracing truth, nobility, dignity, integrity, ethics, and virtue.