Ready for a new evolutionary cycle of human consciousness?
Neptune emphasizes this critical juncture
“Scratch that, this is not a moment, it's the movement”
~ Lyrics from My Shot from the musical Hamilton
The Sabian Symbols provide a philosophical framework for the unfoldment of a cycle of evolution of human consciousness. In a sense, it expands the zodiacal journey through the twelve signs, as archetypes, from Aries to Pisces in all directions and dimensions.
Pardon me for oversimplifying the Sabian Symbols so crudely, but a basic sketch will help us understand the significance of Neptune positioning back and forth from the end of the Zodiac to the beginning, spending a nearly two year span (May 2024 - March 2026) over these two degrees, 29° Pisces and 0° Aries, thereby emphasizing the relationship between the end of an evolutionary cycle and the beginning of another.
Of course, the positions of other planets have significance, but I am focusing on Neptune as it correlates to consciousness and the “meaning of life/why are we here” type questions. Neptune also rules illusions and delusions, as well as other unseen things having great impact.
In An Astrological Mandala: The Cycle of Transformation and its 360 Symbolic Phases, Dane Rudhyar reminds us that the evolution of individual consciousness is a microcosm of the macrocosm. One Neptunian illusion may be to believe that if we focus on where other people are in their journey - what “they” are doing wrong - the collective will evolve. However, the microcosm and the macrocosm evolve simultaneously. In essence, their is no “they”.
And more so than at any other time in history, we have abundant access to view and judge others via our smart phones. It is tempting, perhaps even addictive (another Neptunian word) to look out there, at what other people are doing or not doing.
While the workings of the Universe are a mystery, I have to trust that if enough individuals place creative energy into working on their own evolution of consciousness, a natural consequence is that cumulative creative power will enable the wheel to turn to another cycle.
One of the core ideas about the Sabian Symbols that Dane Rudhyar raises is that one’s can energy can be consumed either with the assumption that a purposeful power is at play in the universe or with the assumption that individual forces are operating in an automatic fashion.
In the West, Rudhyar posits, we have taken the latter assumption, and live under certain forces but without an assumption of an overarching power of purpose. Perhaps we are finding that to live under these forces (economics, hierarchal structure, logic over storytelling, technology, medicine based on data alone, etc.) means we have given up our power.
If we can look away long enough from the Pandora’s box of endless opportunities to squander our attention (= energy = time), perhaps we may move to a place in the cycle from which to harmonize with the whole. The alternative is to allow the forces we assume control us to continue their automatic manner of operation, under which logically it follows that we, as Rudhyar states “…consider human beings merely as products of such an automatic operation of meaninglessness and purposeless forces of nature”.
The symbols I raise for consideration:
29°/30° Pisces
A majestic rock formation resembling a face is idealized by a boy who takes it as his ideal of greatness, and as he grows up, begins to look like it.
Keynote: The power of clearly visualized ideals to mold the life of the visualizer.
[You can read my recent analysis of Neptune at this position here]
0°/1° Aries
A woman just risen from the sea. A seal is embracing her.
Keynote: Emergence of new forms and of the potentiality of consciousness.
Rudhyar’s interpretation is that the woman represents a form of existence still close to unconscious depths (Piscean waters) and held by past karma (the seal), but with a nascent will to be. This is not the archetypal Aries warrior of self-assertion, rather the ghosts of the past may leave a residual insecurity or fear that generates resistance to emerge from the sea in full.
In his interpretation of 0°/1° Aries, he sets the framework that:
Every release of potentiality contains this two-fold possibility. It inevitably opens up two paths: one leads to “perfection” in consciousness, the other to “disintegration” - the return to the undifferentiated state (the state of humus, manure, cosmic dust - i.e. to the symbolic “great Waters of space” to chaos).
And in the interpretation of 29°/30° Pisces:
Within the end of the cycle the seed of a new beginning exists in potency - unless the entire cycle has proven to be a failure.
So, even at the very end of the cycle, there is a two-fold possibility.
He makes an analogy to the power within all seeds to direct and produce the future state of being.
It is this analogy that must have rung a bell when I received the image symbol for this week:
An acorn falls from an Oak tree and settles on the ground.
And the words:
The individual as part of the whole.
Individual and collective wisdom.
Nature's wisdom as a model.
In the Jeffrey Wolf Green paradigm of Evolutionary Astrology, we talk about resistance to the evolution of an individual’s consciousness, as there are seemingly no end of external and internal conditions which raise resistance. A Pluto transit often throws the individual back in on themselves until there is no option but to transform from that resistant state.
Throughout life, maybe even on a daily basis, we encounter those two-fold possibilities described in the 360 Sabian symbols. But are we aware of the automatic forces which lie beneath everything we do (think back to Neptune representing things which are unseen yet have great impact)?
In Buddhism, this consistent awareness that there exist changing possibilities, while maintaining a wise foundation from which to respond, is often called being “awake”. Neptune winked at me as I wrote this, as he is the master of lulling us to sleep.
I would love to hear your thoughts… do you feel we are awake or asleep at the wheel?
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Care to learn more astrology?
I am excited to host the second monthly live (& recorded) Ask Me Anything & Community Gathering on the topic Astrological Moon signs: taking care of yourself on Saturday, April 12th 9:30 AM PDT (that’s next Saturday) for paid subscribers ($5/mo or $50/yr). I am honored and happy to open my heart and share on the topics I write about in a different way.
Both awake and asleep at the same time, it seems to me--awake to some things some of the time, then asleep again. I remember thinking "I knew this once," when I realized I'd just repeated a lesson. Perhaps it helps to think of Aries not as that "archetypal warrior" but as a beginner who "doesn't know any better,", open to new lessons, new moments of waking?