Are We Reliving the Civil War or the Revolution?

A quick look at the most significant astrological patterns in American history and how they apply to us now and in the immediate future.

The Significant Patterns

United States history is entangled by the following astrological patterns:

• Pluto’s declination

• Uranus in Taurus and Gemini

• Neptune in Pisces and Aries

• Neptune in Virgo and Libra

Pluto’s declination describes the flow of American history from a collection of 13 colonies in rebellion against the British Crown, to the pre-eminent military, technological, economic, and cultural superpower on the planet, to its current less-than-stellar situation in 2021.

Uranus in Taurus describes a period of exceptional unrest and uncertainty where competing cultural or political sides come into increasingly intense conflict and separation. Once Uranus moves into Gemini, that conflict breaks out in war.

Neptune during the Uranus in Taurus/Gemini time indicates two things:

• The underlying reason for the conflict

• The attitude that drives the post-conflict period

Neptune in Virgo is generally about resources and who controls those resources.

Neptune in Pisces is about conflicting belief systems and cultures.

Neptune in Libra suggests an intention to establish some sort of harmony or balance to both the winning and losing side.

Neptune in Aries suggests a tendency of the winning side to impose its culture or belief system on the losing side.

The Key Periods

These are the three key periods in American history that changed the country from one thing into another:

• The Revolutionary period (1765 – 1783)

• The Civil War period (1850 – 1876)

• The Great Depression/World War Two period (1928 – 1949)

Before the Revolution there were 13 independent colonies. After the war there was a single nation.

Before the Civil War the country was rural, its regions largely isolated from each other, and it allowed slavery. After the war it was a country that banned slavery, was woven together by the twin technologies of railroads and telegraph, and was on a path to become more industrial and urban.

Before World War Two the country maintained a small military and had distinctly isolationist sentiments. After the war the United States was the greatest military, technological, economic, and cultural power on the planet.

The Uranus Factor

The central pattern in all three periods is Uranus in Taurus then in Gemini; and the central crisis – irrespective of the details – is the conflict between change and retention (the status quo).

In the Revolutionary War period, the Patriots were the side of change. Britain and colonial Loyalists were the side of retention.

In the Civil War period, the North – led by the abolitionist movement – was the side of change. The South was the side of retention.

In the Depression/WW2 period, there were two related conflicts. In one, labor was the side of change and Capitalism was the side of retention. In the second, fascist governments were the side of change and the democratic empires (England, France) were the side of retention.

The Neptune Factor

The Neptune in Virgo/Libra pattern is part of both the Revolutionary and Depression/WW2 periods.

For the Revolutionary period, Neptune in Virgo represents the primary motivation for the Revolution – control of the Colonies’ financial and natural resources. After the war, Neptune in Libra represents the young nation’s efforts to gain its balance and stand on its own two feet.

For the Depression/WW2 period, Neptune in Virgo suggests the underlying causes of the war: economic collapse (money IS a resource) and the political motivation to acquire the resources of other countries. After the war, Neptune in Libra represents the efforts of the winning side to restore the losing sides to a sense of stability and security that also benefited the winners.

The Neptune in Pisces/Aries pattern is part of the Civil War period. Neptune in Pisces shows that the conflict was driven by deeply held unshakeable beliefs. Radical northerners (abolitionists) wanted slavery gone at any cost, sometimes even violence (John Brown). Southerners, feeling more and more cornered, concocted fantastic rationalizations to justify slavery and threatened secession. After the war, with Neptune in Aries, the federal government – with the best intentions – tried to ram social and political equality for the freed slaves down the throats of their former masters under the banner of Reconstruction. That didn’t work out so well.

The Importance of Pluto’s Declination

In both the Revolutionary and Depression/WW2 periods, Pluto’s declination was at or beyond one of the boundaries. During the Revolution, it was at the southern boundary (-23˚27’). During the Depression/WW2 period is was at or beyond the northern boundary (23˚27’).

During the Civil War, Pluto’s declination flipped from the southern to northern hemispheres – a change of polarity from negative to positive.

The reason Pluto’s declination is so significant to the history of the United States is due to the declinations of the planets in the United States’ natal chart.

Uranus, Sun, Jupiter, Venus, and Mars are all in a rolling parallel either close to or over the northern boundary while simultaneously being contra-parallel to Pluto beyond the southern boundary. That is a great deal of potential energy at the north end flowing back and forth with Pluto at the other end.

Those natal planets and any aspects they make are tremendously charged and when the declination of a transiting planet fires them up the results can be dramatic – and no transit is more powerful than Pluto’s transiting declination along the boundaries.

Pluto along a boundary was not the situation during the Civil War, but it did transition from the southern hemisphere to the northern hemisphere – a transition that changed the direction of the country’s energies from internally directed to externally directed. This is not true in all cases but it is true for the United States.

Modern Times (2011 – 2039)

The reason the three referenced periods and their planetary patterns matter is because we are in the thick of an identical pattern now: Uranus is in Taurus, Neptune is in Pisces, and Pluto is skidding along the southern boundary.

Everyone is aware of the intractable divisions in America right now - how immune both sides are to information that contravenes their beliefs, and how social media has inflamed those divisions.

Everyone is aware, at some level, that the United States ain’t what it used to be, which is why “Make America Great Again” resonates with so many. The signs have been everywhere.

The election of Donald Trump was a giant dousing of ice water waking the entire nation up to the reality of just how divided the country had become. The Covid pandemic has been a second shock of cold water exposing just how bad everything had become.

Like a herpes simplex virus, some ills have re-emerged that America thought had been minimized, even eliminated: racism, white nationalism, nativism.

Military adventures in the Middle East and Africa have failed to live up to America’s burly self-image.

Technology has made it possible to ship traditional manufacturing jobs overseas, leaving many men unemployed and feeling irrelevant - easy prey for political hucksters and con men with reassuring solutions to restore that relevance.

Neptune in Pisces has given us alternative facts, fake news, Q-Anon, and a deep uncertainty about everything. The old normal has been replaced by what? Nobody knows and everyone is searching for the signs of a hopeful future.

Covid shut down the economy and locked us all into our homes and, in a way, our own heads.

Everything has become political and everything seems existential where both sides believe – if they win, we die.

None of this is going to change anytime soon – and this is where things get tricky.

There are three things to consider:

• Change is not always progressive. It doesn’t always move forward. Change is simply this: Today is not the same as yesterday – and never will be.
  

• What we value and how we view things is eventually obsolete. Today Boomers and Gen-X run the show, Millennials are the young Turks, and Gen-Z are the student agitators. By 2026, Gen-X and Millennials will run the show, Gen-Z will be the young Turks, and a yet-to-be-named generation will be the young student agitators. Each of those generations has a different reality/belief system and set of values that apply and contribute to the zeitgeist.
  

• Astrology is a poor tool for predicting the global environment in spite of best efforts by mundane astrologers. To be fair, there is no good tool. Like any complex system, Gaia and its human population present just too many variables. Yet that global environment effectively dictates our realities, our value systems, and which – if any – of our needs must take priority.

Looking Ahead

People on the Left were optimistic that the 2020 election of Joe Biden would restore normalcy and competence to government. They have been disappointed. Many (not all) astrologers saw the Jupiter/Saturn conjunction/parallel as a harbinger of more enlightened and sensible times. They, too, have been disappointed. Any optimism on either side about the 2022 and 2024 elections will also face disappointments and a lack of resolution.

The 2026 election will occur under a new regime: Uranus in Gemini, Neptune in Aries, Pluto in Aquarius. This change will reflect the change in the generations in power. It will also be a far more dangerous time given the violent history of Uranus in Gemini.

We’d like to think we can predict the nature of that violence – small scale, sporadic, domestic or widespread, chronic, and global. But we can’t, simply because we cannot predict the actual nature of the global environment beyond blanket statements that amount, in essence, to shades of good or bad. We don’t know what the actual issues of the day will be.

The year 2026 seems like a long time to wait for a new normal but it’s only a changing of the astrological guard. We won’t have a clearer sense of what the United States will be and where it’s going to until the 2040s when Pluto’s declination finally starts moving away from the southern boundary.

Right now, we’re in the same place we were during the earliest days of the Revolution. In those early days the Patriots weren’t sure if they could win a republic and, if they did, could they keep it. Right now, we have a republic. The next 20 years will show whether or not we can keep it.