After finishing the series on the current triangle alignment between Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, I had a bunch of notes left over that I hadn’t used because I always overprepare! These cover how the outermost planets work on an archetypal level and how we can use this energy to transform our consciousness if we choose to engage with it consciously.
First, a quote from The Archetypal Universe by Renn Butler from the section on planetary triads covering Uranus-Neptune-Pluto combinations. He lists various possibilities for how these energies combine in positive and negative ways which can be applied on a personal and collective level. It will be interesting to watch how this unfolds during the mini triangle alignment of 2024–28.
Positive combinations of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto:
- “A mystical glorification of freedom and democracy, critical attitudes toward religious or political abuse of power, profound idealism and faith.
- A sense that collective emancipation is not possible unless individuals do their own inner work, the awareness that all extreme ideological positions are simply subsets of human psychology.
- A determined pursuit of holotropic states, feelings of spiritual surrender, successful integration of the higher and lower or light and dark elements in the psyche, blessed Dionysian liberation.
- An ability to go all the way ‘down and through’ the psychological underworlds, descent into the perinatal underworld followed by blessed reawakening into the realm of Absolute Consciousness, successful elimination of the outworn elements of one’s psyche, sacred pyro-catharsis.
- Blessed win-win solutions, transcendence of duality, a sense of human history as leading inexorably to an omega point of collective awakening, human progress as cosmically ordained.
- The awareness of living in times of great cultural blending and churning, convergence of the classical and romantic impulses.
- The Great Axial Age, the Tang Dynasty, the Renaissance, transpersonal psychology.
- The interplay of Dionysian, Promethean, and Apollonian forms of ecstasy.”
Negative combinations of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto:
- “Tendencies toward ideological extremism and fanaticism, obsessive rebellion or eccentricity, a glorification of indulgence and hedonism.
- A diffusion of evolutionary potentials in misguided or ineffective political pursuits, religious sectarianism.
- Submersion in extreme fantasies or delusions, confusion between the hylotropic and holotropic realms of reality, a narcissistic fascination with the psyche but without proper training or support, premature exposure to intense unconscious contents, the possibility of going off track in the psychedelic quest due to a lack of human bonding and supervision during sessions.”
This is a bit heavy on the jargon. As far as I’m aware, ‘holotropic’ refers to the breathing technique created by Stanislav Grof and relates to a movement towards wholeness, while ‘hylo’ relates to matter as opposed to spirit. These terms refer to different modes of consciousness where hylotropic is everyday consensus reality and holotropic is non-ordinary states of consciousness such as experienced in meditation, and so on.
I also have an issue with the belief in progress expressed in this phrase:
“a sense of human history as leading inexorably to an omega point of collective awakening, human progress as cosmically ordained.”
The myth of progress was largely a product of the rewriting of history that happened during the so-called Enlightenment. However, he doesn’t define what he means by progress – what exactly is progressing? It appears to refer to human consciousness and spiritual awakening but that presupposes people were less awakened in the past, something we can’t possibly know.
It also suggests that things are getting better. But the ‘awakening’ that appears to be happening around the world right now may not be what it seems. It could be a mirage created by the internet and social media distorted through the lens of Neptune in Pisces. Tweeting about awakening and posting memes isn’t the same as actually being awake. The necessary shadow work almost certainly hasn’t been done.
As we saw in the previous post, the outermost planets represent parts of the collective consciousness that transcend the personal level of experience. Uranus was discovered in the 18th century which opened our minds to the Universal Mind, while Neptune was discovered in the 19th century, opening us to an awareness of Unconditional Love.
Pluto was discovered in the 20th century and this unleashed the deep instinctual forces of the unconscious that we’d been repressing and denying for centuries. The result wasn’t pretty and we’ve been dealing with the consequences since.
Now we’re in desperate need for some shadow work and integration but are fixated on the shiny technological distractions of Uranus and the self-deceptive and illusory fantasies of Neptune. We need to complete the process of development as described by Dane Rudhyar in New Mansions for the New Man: A Spiritual Interpretation of Astrology in the Light of Universal Symbolism.
In this book, Rudhyar explains that Uranus begins this process of transformation by opening your consciousness to a wider, Cosmic perspective. This reveals a larger identity beyond the personal self that is limited by the boundary of Saturn. But to complete this transformation you also need the processes symbolised by Neptune and Pluto.
Uranus shatters the old structure, Neptune dissolves whatever is left and provides the womb for the new identity to grow and then Pluto seeds the new identity and completes the transformation through death and rebirth. But this isn’t guaranteed:
“Whoever fails to withstand the transforming power of Uranus must become disintegrated by Neptune. For such a one, Pluto is the awesome lord of death. But he who passes the Uranian tests and enters into the Neptunian Sea of Light need not fear Pluto, even through the final ordeal of the Temptation; for Pluto will guide him to the gates of rebirth and of immortality.”
This is a challenging process because we rarely receive Uranian visions without distorting them in some way or misinterpreting what we see. The information we receive is coloured by unconscious emotional complexes and fears and hopes which all need to be sorted out, overcome, healed, released, reintegrated, or whatever is necessary in order to become a whole and authentic individual – in other words, the process of individuation.
This is the work of a lifetime and will take many, many transits of the outer planets of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Over the next several years, the mini triangle configuration will transit your chart and give you the perfect opportunity to really dig into this process and transform yourself completely. If you do the work.
The key to handling the mini triangle involves engaging consciously with the energy of Neptune at the midpoint. This won’t be easy because Neptune represents both universal compassion and chaos, the dissolution of boundaries and the loss of distinctions and differences. And it’s important not to get these mixed up.
The difference between compassion and chaos is in whether the energy is regressive or transcendent – psychosis or bliss. Neptune is illusion, delusions, and self-deception, so it’s incredibly difficult to work with consciously because it’s almost impossible to know whether you’re deluding yourself. It’s a hall of mirrors. Dane Rudhyar again:
“Subtle indeed is the discrimination one must develop in order not to confuse theprogressiveecstasy of conscious selfhood, illumined by a greater Consciousness of which one is an organic, individuated part — and theregressiveglamor found by the weary, disillusioned, perhaps unconsciously defeated soul, when it loses its identity in the mirage of ‘cosmic consciousness’.”
Remember that the goal isn’t to ‘kill the ego’ or destroy the self, but to transcend your identification with that limited perspective and recognise the interconnected nature of reality. You are one part of a whole that’s interrelated and interdependent and no one part can exist without the rest. From this arises compassion and love because you see that all are part of one being.
In this realisation, you remain yourself. You don’t disappear or dissolve into nothing or turn to mush as you unite with the All. But if you get pulled in the other direction, into chaos, you regress into the womb of nonbeing and dissolution into addiction, psychosis and insanity. And you don’t want to go there.
Once you’ve overcome your identification with the ego and recognised your connection to all beings, you’re ready to take the next step: rebirth into a new level of conscious experience. According to Rudhyar, this is initiated by Pluto who contains the mystery of life and death and seeds rebirth through the process of transformation:
“But it is only after the subtle, dissolving and compassionate action of Neptune has operated that the path which Uranus opened can lead to the Glory of the Father. Rebirth must first be dreamt of, envisioned by seers and poets, before it can be actualized and experienced in substance; and Neptunian love needs to water the soil before the Plutonian seeds may take root.”
In other words, the seed needs to be incarnated into matter. The vision (Uranus) needs to be embodied and birthed through humanity and that involves a process of self-sacrifice and surrender (Neptune), as well as shadow work and depth psychology (Pluto) which allows you to be transformed and reborn.
This represents the birth of Christ Consciousness or Buddha nature within the individual and may be the highest manifestation of Neptune in Aries. It’s also the true meaning of the so-called Age of Aquarius as described by Jung in Aion:
“The present age must come to terms drastically with the facts as they are, with the absolute opposition that is not only tearing the world asunder politically but has planted a schism in the human heart. We need to find our way back to the original, living spirit which, because of its ambivalence, is also a mediator and uniter of opposites…”
He goes on:
“If, as seems probable, the aeon of the fishes is ruled by the archetypal motif of the hostile brothers, then the approach of the next Platonic month, namely Aquarius, will constellate the problem of the union of opposites. It will then no longer be possible to write off evil as the mere privation of good; its real existence will have to be recognised. This problem can be solved neither by philosophy, nor by economics, nor by politics, but only by the individual human being, via his experience of the living spirit…”
This is why we’re not going to have a collective spiritual awakening. It can only happen within the heart of each individual – that means YOU!
To explore this idea further we can take a deep dive into how our consciousness evolved with the discovery of the trans-Saturnian planets. So in the next post, I’ll share my notes on that…
In the meantime, you can read all the mini triangle posts here
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