Introduction to K of C Astrological Aspects 4

Pluto is archetypally associated with BPM III: Synergism with the Mother, Propulsion Through the Birth Canal, the Death-Rebirth Struggle (Grof, 1975). Now that we have been introduced to the archetypal players, let us look at their interplay in various combinations at the turn of the Twentieth Century. ∆RC[inPl]

As the Twentieth Century Turns—Astrologically ∆RC[in4]

The turn of the Twentieth Century was a truly remarkable time culturally speaking, as we will soon see. Astrologically speaking, it was a very amazing time as well. In the decades surrounding the turn of the Twentieth Century, the transpersonal planets were aspecting themselves, and powerful energies were at play. From 1880 to 1905 Neptune and Pluto were conjunct. These two planets are archetypally associated with spirit and nature respectively, and Tarnas (2006) relates that this conjunction

coincided with a profound reconfiguration of the perceived relationship between nature and spirit in the western sensibility, visible in the ideas, movements, and figures who emerged or were born at that time—from Nietzsche to Teilhard, theosophy to depth psychology, the encounter with the unconscious to the world parliament of religions. (p. 450)

The Neptune-Pluto cycle, as Tarnas calls it, is the longest of all the planetary cycles and is approximately 500 years long. Thus this configuration, a conjunction between these two planets, Neptune and Pluto, only occurs once in 500 years, with the opposition occurring 250 years after each conjunction. Since these two planets move so slowly, the transits last about 25- 30 years. According to Tarnas (2006):

Major Neptune-Pluto cyclical alignments appear to have coincided with especially profound transformations of cultural vision and the collective experience of reality, often taking place deep below the surface of the collective consciousness. We can recognize some of its characteristic themes in the great crucible of metaphysical destruction and regeneration that Western culture passed through … the subterranean dissolution of conventional Christian belief and Enlightenment assumptions, the powerful upsurge of “the unconscious” in many senses, the global interpenetration of the world’s religious and cultural traditions, and the emergence in Western culture of a range of long-suppressed and long-developing cultural phenomena and archetypal impulses that would lead to the intensely dynamic world of the twentieth century. (pp. 417-418)

At the turn of the Twentieth Century, not only were we treated to this very rare once in 500-year conjunction, but at the time, Uranus was opposite both Neptune and Pluto, and the Uranus-Neptune opposition lasted from 1899 to 1918, while the Uranus-Pluto opposition lasted from 1896 to 1907. Tarnas notes that Uranus and Neptune were in close alignment exclusively from 1908-1918. At various times, Saturn periodically joined the dance, such as in 1898-1899 when Saturn was opposite Pluto and again in 1907-1908 when Saturn was square Pluto, which added its own special inflection to these shorter windows of time.

We will now consider three of these different archetypal complexes formed by the different planetary alignments—Uranus-Pluto, Neptune-Uranus, and Saturn-Pluto because these planetary archetypal complexes will be highlighted in the cultural pieces that we will later be exploring in this part of the dissertation: Mary Poppins (Stevenson, 1964), Disneyland and Chicago (Marshall, 2002), respectively. As we consider these archetypal combinations, I will briefly allude to the metabletic associations, giving a few paradigmatic examples of their reflection in culture, which we will see at greater length in the following "Setting the Stage Section." We will also see how these archetypal combinations play out in depth psychology.

Uranus-Pluto—Revolutionary Transformation

The Uranus-Pluto opposition took place during 1896-1907. This alignment only occurs once a century and lasts from 10 to 12 years. The Uranus-Pluto cycle is one of the longest cycles and its duration is somewhat variable, due to Pluto’s erratic orbit. Tarnas (2006) explains:

The planet Uranus appears to be correlated with events and biographical phenomena suggestive of an archetypal principle whose essential character is Promethean: emancipatory, rebellious, progressive and innovative, awakening, disruptive and destabilizing, unpredictable, serving to catalyze new beginnings and sudden unexpected change. The planet Pluto, by contrast, is associated with an archetypal principle whose character is Dionysian: elemental, instinctual, powerfully compelling, extreme in its intensity, arising from the depths, both libidinal and destructive, overwhelming and transformative, ever-evolving. On the collective level, the archetypal principle associated with Pluto is regarded as possessing a prodigious, titanic dimension, empowering, intensifying, and compelling whatever it touches on a massive scale. (p. 142)

Tarnas notes that there are two different dynamics in evidence, Pluto acting on Uranus, and conversely Uranus acting on Pluto, and the interplay between the two. With Pluto acting on Uranus, we can see what could be called the intensification on a massive scale (Pluto) of technology (Uranus) or the empowerment (Pluto) of revolutionary breakthroughs (Uranus) and awakenings. The turn of the Twentieth Century was a time of tremendous scientific discovery and revolutions in science. Quantum physics upset the Newtonian apple cart, and depth psychology landed yet another blow to the ego, after it had been initially decentered by Copernicus and Darwin. The seeds of future revolutions were sewn as well; the woman’s suffrage movement and the civil rights began to attract attention. Other rebellions occurred, too, at this time, from the Boxer Rebellion to the forming of various rebellious political parties.

“Epochal breakthroughs” in technology occurred, such as the discovery of radioactivity and the electron, the invention of the automobile, Zeppelin, and the airplane. The number of automobiles in America rose a thousand-fold from 25 in 1896 to 25,000 in 1905, and vast oil deposits were discovered in Texas and oil exploration began in the Middle East in 1901 (Tarnas, 2006, p. 182). The converse side of the dynamic can also be seen here: technological breakthroughs (Uranus) unleashing the elemental power of nature (Pluto). Einstein’s equations, along with the discovery of radioactivity and the electron led to the power of the atom being unleashed in the early 1930s, and as Tarnas notes:

Prophetically, in 1903 during the preceding Uranus-Pluto opposition, the physicist Ernest Rutherford made the “playful suggestion that, could a proper detonator be found, it was just conceivable that a wave of atomic disintegration might be started through matter, which would indeed make this old world vanish in smoke.” (p. 193)

The Uranus-Pluto dynamic can be expressed this way: on one hand we have the “Prometheus principle of revolutionary awakenings being empowered by the Plutonic (Pluto-->Uranus),” and on the other we have “suddenly awakening the collective psyche and scientific mind to new dimensions of the Dionysian-Plutonic forces of nature, evolutionary processes, and instinctual drives (Uranus-->Pluto)” [emphasis added] (Tarnas, 2006, pp.179-180).

Tarnas (2006) describes this as “sudden awakenings and emancipation of the erotic dimension of life,” and notes that Freud’s work at the time was a prime example of this, because Freud stunned the Victorian world with his notions of sexuality:

An especially paradigmatic expression of the theme of Dionysian awakening in both the intellectual and the psychological domains was Freud's seminal articulation of the instinctual unconscious during just these years of 1896 to 1907 . . . . This period encompassed Freud's writing of both The Interpretation of Dreams (from 1896 to 1900) and Three Contributions to the Theory of Sexuality (1905), the initial rise of the psychoanalytic movement as Freud was joined by Abraham, Adler, Jung, Rank, Ferenczi, and the rest of the early pioneers (1900-1907), and not least, the host of Freud's discoveries at this time—the Oedipus complex, the sexual etiology of neurosis, the erotogenic zones, the existence of infant sexuality, the resistance of the conscious ego to the unconscious instincts, the return of the repressed, and many related concepts and insights. In all of these, the theme of Promethean liberation of the Dionysian can be discerned on many levels. In terms of intellectual history, Freud's achievement can be recognized as the rationalist Enlightenment's entrance into the Plutonic underworld of the instinctual unconscious, the revelation of the “broiling cauldron of the instincts.” It represented an epochal Promethean awakening to—as well as of—the Dionysian Id. On the cultural level, the same theme was visible in the enduring social consequences of Freud's work, both in its liberation of the scientific study of sexuality from the long established cultural taboos against which he himself had to contend, and with its pivotal role in the radical transformation of modern attitudes towards sexuality generally. On the psychodynamic level, the theme was visible in psychoanalysis's recognition of the principle of catharsis and abreaction, the therapeutic imperative to release repressed instinctually-charged memories to free the psyche and body from neurotic fixations, bringing the suppressed unconscious energies to conscious awareness and expression. (p. 175)

The Uranus-Pluto dynamic will be further explored in the Mary Poppins (Stevenson, 1964) chapter, which is especially fitting, since Mary Poppins debuted in 1964 [link to chart], during the Uranus-Pluto conjunction, and imaginally looks back to the turn of the Twentieth Century. This turn of the century time was a favorite of Disney's and Main Street USA and many Disney movies are set at this time. Now that we have seen how Uranus plays with Pluto, let us see how Uranus acts when it is aligned with Neptune.

Uranus-Neptune—Illuminating Imagination

The Uranus-Neptune opposition lasted from 1899-1918. This cycle is 172 years in length. Conjunctions occur only once every 172 years with oppositions occurring around 86 years later, and squares occurring 43 years after a conjunction or opposition. Oppositions and conjunctions between Uranus and Neptune are within the 15° range for between fourteen to nineteen years. Tarnas (2006) notes that these cycles, because they involve Neptune, are less precise and are more intangible in nature. The Uranus-Neptune combination is associated with Uranian qualities of accelerated change, sudden awakening, liberation, creative innovation, and disruption and rebellion, but in relation to themes associated with Neptune: the arts, the imagination, the mythic, and the spiritual:

The periods of Uranus-Neptune alignments were characterized not so much by massive political or similarly concrete external changes but rather by pervasive transformations of a culture’s underlying vision: widespread spiritual awakenings, the birth of new religious movements, cultural renaissances, the emergence of new philosophical perspectives especially of an idealist character, sudden shifts in a culture’s cosmological and metaphysical vision, rapid collective changes in psychological understanding and interior sensibility, certain forms of scientific paradigm shifts, new utopian social visions and movements, and epochal shifts in a culture’s artistic imagination. (Tarnas, 2006, p. 356)

During these times, there is a desire to discover a deeper unitive consciousness, and also a tendency towards the idealistic and utopian. The sudden unexpected changes (Uranus) bring about rapid dissolution (Neptune) of previously established structures, and this can be problematic, leading as Tarnas (2006) notes, to confusion and disorientation and thus “a greater than usual susceptibility to mass entrancements of various kinds” (Neptune) (p. 356). Other Uranus-Neptune themes are major leaps in scientific imagination and

characteristic Uranus-Neptune themes of dissolving established perspectives and structures of reality, often in a manner that is confusing and disorienting, that introduces a plurality of simultaneous or overlapping realities and perspectives, and that brings into question fundamental assumptions about subjectivity and objectivity, the relative and the absolute, time and space, substance and process. (p. 360)

At the turn of the Twentieth Century, the birth of both amusement parks, and film occurred. [link to Walt Disney chart] Both of these show a linking of technology and illusion—Uranus and Neptune—technology in service to the imagination. Tarnas (2006) notes that in addition to artists like Picasso and Joyce, who were revolutionary and created new art forms and new modes of expression,

motion pictures required technological advances for the production, projection, and dissemination (Uranus) of their maya-like images (Neptune). Their cultural influence from that period onwards was, on the one hand, emancipatory, innovative, and disruptive of established modes of expression and social relations (Uranus), and simultaneously, on the other hand, hypnotic, often escapist, and dissolving conventional structures of identity and reality (Neptune). (p. 364)

Along these same lines, but about 450 years earlier during the Uranus-Neptune opposition of 1564, Shakespeare’s imaginative genius brought forth a new world view, which has dramatically shaped our own. Tarnas (2006) explains that Shakespeare’s work expressed these same qualities of awakening to different realities and it had deep spiritual implications and evoked “the basic Shakespearean recognition that more realities exist in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by our local sciences and philosophies” (p. 385). Tarnas goes on to describe one of the major themes that we have already seen in the "Cosmic Game" chapter:

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