Containment and Protest Under Saturn in Aquarius

protest

Join Lynn Bell and Laurence Hillman for an engaging conversation about the current times as they focus on containment, protest, Saturn in Aquarius, the Aquarius/Leo polarity and the sovereign archetype, the nodal axis in Gemini/Sagittarius and more.

Containment and Protest Under Saturn in Aquarius transcript

Tony Howard: I’d like to invite you to read the deeply inspiring and illuminating book Tell Me Who You Are by Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi. The authors reveal the lines that separate us based on race or other perceived differences and how telling our stories and listening deeply to the stories of others are the first and most crucial steps we can take towards negotiating racial inequity in our culture. Featuring interviews with over 150 Americans accompanied by their photograph and interspersed with laser-focused explanations of key concepts, the book also offers a deep examination of the seeds of racism and strategies for effecting change.

I studied race and social change movements in college, and I still learned so much from these moving first-hand accounts, in addition to the clear and succinct explanations of race dynamics in this country. As we contemplate this moment in history, this is a must-have book, also available as an audio book read by the authors, and I highly encourage you to check it out.

Today I’m joined by Lynn Bell and Laurence Hillman. Thanks so much for joining me in to both of you.

Laurence Hillman: Thank you.

Lynn Bell: Hi, Tony. Thank you.

TH: And today we’re gonna continue a conversation that the two of you started back in March, when we were looking at into the pandemic and the astrology of the times, and just continue our conversation about what’s unfolding in the collective right now.

LB: Right. Well, you’d have to have your eyes sewn shut not to see what’s going on in the collective right now.

TH: There are couple of things that are noticeable.

LB: Yes, a few people in the streets.

TH: Yes. Yeah, which is wonderful. It’s wonderful to see people’s activism, of course, the catalyst for that, not as wonderful.

LB: And seeing people bring a spotlight, shining it on a building with the words “I can’t breathe” projected onto a wall is, I mean, it’s so perfect from an astrological point of view, of course, we have Saturn and an air sign, which is all about, air is all about how does energy flow? How do ideas flow? How do conversations flow? How does communication and understanding flow between people, between different groups in society? And ‘I can’t breathe’ is both individual and collective.

LH: Right. And the COVID is a breathing ailment and that people are… The whole notion of masks and that we were… First we were masked for COVID and then we were unmasked for demonstrations, but then again masked for tear gas, which also is a way of stopping the breathing in some way or giving tremendous pain for breathing, so there is the barriers, I’ve been thinking a lot about barriers that masks bring and barriers that are coming down, again with the deconstruction of Saturn through Pluto, which is all year long, and the unmasking of open racism in the President, and which we’ve already known about, but in the ways that or even go beyond what we already knew.

And there is a masks and barriers everywhere, people crossing barriers, not paying attention to curfews, which is another sort of Saturnist time. But then there is no violence, but then there is violence, it’s just this putting up and coming down of barriers, this play with barriers and masks and containment and being locked up and then coming back out. I find it really, really interesting.

LB: I agree with you, Laurence, and this whole, this thing between containment, which is very Cancerian, and coming out in a way that lacks freedom, which is the whole idea of Aquarius, this whole notion, again, how do we keep our inner integrity and outer integrity in interacting with other people. In France, there’s also been demonstrations because as it happens, a report was released showing that a young man died in 2016 from police violence, and so there were 20,000 people in the streets here on Monday protesting. And clearly, they’re feeling the connection with what’s going on elsewhere in the world and they have the same signs, “I can’t breathe.”

LH: Yes, it’s gorgeous. And thanks for pointing that out and for telling us what’s happening in other parts of the world. And there is a connectivity and a globality, a globalness, I guess, is the word for these moments at this time, for these movements that is so unique and really is different to the ’60s riots or even to 2001, the internet has changed the world so powerfully and everybody having a video camera in their hand has made, has given the individual person who is now a reporter in that sense, so much more power.

The Aquarian age is coming to fruition in that sense that we’re all connected in this way, and we’re all in this together, and the conversation has become global immediately, so not just global warming and global pandemics and global, but also global reporting and global information. So it’s wonderful. That’s Aquarius right there.

LB: Right, and the idea that you just can’t keep certain groups of people out of the loop, they won’t understand, they won’t figure it out. I think, that’s what I feel very hopeful about what’s happening is that people are… People know, but everybody just keeps things going and people are saying, “We see what’s happening here.”

LH: That reminds me, Lynn, of the deconstruction of the pyramid of power, of the ways that people are trod upon by those higher ups, whoever is higher than the next person standing on them, and in the end, you have this one, the monotheistic kind of leader, and the mono leader of anything. It’s the model for me, the age of Pisces that we’re leaving. If it’s one God or one pope or one CEO or one general…

There’s always this model of one person at the top in charge, usually male, and even if the person was put there by the masses, the model is still the same. There is a top-down model of hierarchy, and that I find is the story that’s changing, and that’s what I find so very interesting with this deconstruction of Saturn and structures like that, hierarchies.

LB: Well, I hope you’re right. I think you can also see the model of the one true king opposes Aquarius, of course, Leo. There is that idea of one person is chosen to be the leader, and so you have that dialogue between the one and the many. What it feels to me sometimes at the moment is that the collective is groping blindly through events, and there’s this huge amount of emotion, huge amount of tension that no one really understands, like we’ve been swallowed by some snake, and we’re in the belly and we’re all looking…

There’s so much that can be directed at this moment, so much that can be directed perhaps by bad actors or by people with the right intentions… It’s as if there’s an energy building that’s waiting, waiting to be channeled, and if it can be channeled properly, the whole thing begins to change and morph and reform.

LH: Let’s pick up that, that’s a great point. Let’s pick up the point about the Aquarius and Leo dyad. Because of course, we’re coming out of the Pisces/Virgo dyad, which we didn’t do so well over the last 2,000 years or so, and separating where the fight over science and belief, if you wanna simplify, the two sides, is still raging in parts of Kansas where intelligent design is taught in schools. So there’s that debate… Is still ongoing, but in the new dyad, I think there’s something about we don’t really have an image for conscious people, people who have awakened their inner sovereign or their inner royal self into a group setting, because we don’t have any stories that bring us more than one royal figure at a time, there really aren’t any. If there’s more than one king or queen for that matter then they’re either fighting or exchanging children.

LH: So a notion of what I have called in the past a society of kings, is a way of blending the two in a way of a story that we don’t really have. And to me, that requires awakening of the individual and consciousness of individuals, so it’s that self work that we’re all doing in therapy and finding ourselves in creative projects, and the “me me me” kind of world.

But unless we take that out into society and share with others in a network and bring our best selves to the party, to the ball room, then we’re just staying on one side of the dyad, and then you have the worshipping of celebrity and these kind of things that are the negative sides of Leo, so I’m hoping that there’s some kind of a new story that includes this notion of a collective that is made up of conscious individuals.

LB: Well, the United States was a new story. And George Washington is actually part of the bloodlines of the British royalty. Did you know that?

LH: Yeah, sort of, sort of. Yeah.

LB: Yeah, ’cause every once in a while you have these sites that pop up.  And people asked him to be king and he said no. So we have had a model, and the model of the group has also popped up in Siena in the 13th century when people were elected for two years to a governing group, and then would give over that position after two years to others so that no one would be hungry or want power all the time, or absolutely they would leave it to the next group of people.

And I certainly, many years ago, I visited the Findhorn Foundation, and I remember doing… They were… Their chart has a massive group of planets in Aquarius, and they had something called Core Group, which would meditate together and take decisions together and discuss, and that’s how the community was run. So there are models for that one.

LH: Right. No, absolutely. And I think what that requires is personal work. Because it does require that if we’re gonna step into a group of leaders then… Or into the ball room, if you want, then we have to have done our own work, there’s that… I love the statement by Thurgood Marshal, “Ask not what the world needs of you, ask what brings you alive because what the world needs is more alive people.” That’s a paraphrase.

And so that’s… It pretty much says what I’ve been trying to say, is that we need to find our own passion, not just run out and try to do something because the world needs doing, but we can contribute when we contribute from that we can really make a difference when we come from the place that is truly us, and so to really do that inner work is important, which is why I’m so excited about the lock down because it allows people to, or the self, the self, containing whatever it’s called, in a nicer way than lock down.

But it’s a lock down, when people are in themselves and forced into themselves, there is an opportunity to find out who am I really, and what am I really going to be able to contribute to the world from my true personal astrological chart or psychological evaluation, whatever we wanna use to get a sense of that. That’s what the world means to me.

LB: Well, it’s that combination of the inner and outer that we’ve been trying to think about for a long time, I think.

Yeah, and what you were saying, again, that idea of the king, the life force. Again, another way of talking about Leo, of how alive are we, how much do we own our own life, how much do we step into our own life, as opposed to into a role that someone else has given us.

LH: Right, and just to be clear for those who aren’t astrologically-savvy, when we say the inner king, we’re not talking about a male person, we are talking about an archetype, and so I also use the word sovereign because it’s not gendered, it’s the sovereign part of us, everybody has an inner king and everyone has an inner queen in astrological thinking.

And speaking of story, you mentioned lovely how this story is kind of changing, I’m thinking here of… ‘Cause I think people are very worried about how their stories are collapsing and how we no longer understand what’s going on in context of what the stories that we’ve told each other, so maybe we can add something from the astrological perspective to this. And as a beginning of that conversation, maybe we can use Joanna Macy’s model of there essentially are just three stories in the world.

The first story says business as usual, those are the people saying this is a V and we’ll come right back out of it and it’s just a bump in the road. It was a bad dream, and it’ll all be over, don’t worry, we have control of this, that’s the one model. And don’t worry, we’ll continue with global warming, we’ll do all those things that we’ve been done, that’s bad. And that’s one model. A lot of people believe that.

The second story is the story of the great unraveling, which essentially says, Look, it’s all over, we’re already way past, the world cannot be saved, we just have to figure out how to best survive in a world that has changed forever. The world has gotten too warm, the environment is already broken, the disparity is… Those are survivalists, Extinction Rebellion, things like that, these are… That’s another model.

And the third one is the great turning. This is her words, Joanna Macy’s words. And the great turning says that this is a moment in time where everything is shifting into something new, it’s a new level of consciousness and new, to me, a new era, Aquarian age. I buy into the third story, if we’re gonna take those three ways, you think, Lynn, what do you think astrology can say from even the archetypal Age of Aquarius perspective?

LB: Well, I hope you’re right. I have great hope in human consciousness and the ability for something new to come. I’m not sure Extinction Rebellion is survivalists. So I’m not…

LH: No, no, no, no, they’re not the same, what they have in common is that they both believe that it’s kind of over.

LB: Yeah, they both believe that it’s gonna… It couldn’t be kind of over. And if you don’t do something now, what you’re doing now is just to survive, you’re right. But there are also, along with that, there are alternative models that become urgent alternative models, I suppose.

I would love to think that the wave, as I was saying, the wave that’s directing this inchoate collective mass, that all came together, all of the planets since May 25th, this big, so many people out… So many people saying no, and I think there’s been a lot of fear about being cut off, being locked down, as you said, being confined, there’s been a lot of fear that they wanna wear down our will, there is… This is preparation for something else. I mean, how many times have you heard this?

They’re just getting us used to obedience. So that clearly… Clearly, people are saying outrage is bigger than obedience and fear. And I think all of us feel the life force in the protests and the power of taking back the streets, sometimes at great cost, and that came with destruction, that came with a kind of, we have nothing to lose, let’s burn this, even though there are many alternative narratives about that as well, about people infiltrating and creating destruction and…

think we can’t have this conversation without bringing up racism and white privilege, which is just such a big part of the existing power structure. So to me, again, with the deconstruction, a lot of that sort of that model of white male privilege and power is to me tied up in sort of the Saturnine structure of the father, the fatherly symbol of father knows best and that kind of a model.

And white men, I think, are in general, on some level, terrified, because this is… They can smell or see, they can see the writing on the wall and smell the end of their privilege in many ways, and the world is changing around them in ways that they don’t understand or accept or like or know how to relate to.

And so what happens there? And I say white men, and I’m a white man, but I say them because I don’t feel I’m one of those white men. Because what’s lacking is an understanding and a comprehension of the, of what they’re not getting about what’s changing the world. And that is essentially what I call the a rising of the feminine. That is everything that’s not white and not male.

And that means there is a, and it’s sort of like if I am a white man in that situation, I kinda have two choices: I can go out and fight it and I can grab flyers out of kids’ hands, like I saw a nasty video this morning of a guy doing on a bike, an angry white man in his 50s. So I can do that, because I just, I have so much anger about what’s happening and I’m gonna take it out of wherever I can, scream and yell and shout and do something violent.

Which is a felony, by the way, they’re now looking for him. Or I could do something else. I could, if I can’t beat them, join them. What does that mean? It means simply learning how to live with your whole brain. What a revolutionary idea. And learning how to use some of your, what I call the yin function, the right brain capacity to get in touch with your feelings and imagination and emotions and sensitivity and beauty and all those things that are not for white guys.

LB: Which is hard to… Imagination, sensitivity, and the image of the White House as an armed fortress, with people with guns covering every square inch of it and helicopters flying over low.

LH: Exactly. Exactly.

LB: This is… There’s a… You know… Talk about imagination.

LH: Exactly.

LB: That is, it’s mind-boggling.

LH: It’s lacking imagination like when… Because it’s so predictable, it’s so, “Yes, seen that before. Nothing new here. This is all… ” It’s linear, this happens and that’s the response. This happens, that response. That’s a left brain, classic left brain.

LB: I don’t know if we have seen it before in the United States.

LH: Well, we’ve seen it in movies.

LB: We’ve seen it in many dictatorial countries.

LH: Right. Yeah, that too. Right. Right.

LB: We know that archetype. You’re right, we know that archetypal situation, of the animal, the porcupine bristling all its spines and yeah, we know that, but the others, do we know the others?

LH: Well, I think that starts with the question, it starts, if I were an angry white man with a gun and I would say this is my only option because, well, I’ve got to fight the enemy because that’s the model that I live in, then I would just say, I would invite them to see is there another option?

There are people who are getting and who are waking up, and who are recognizing this is something that could be added and not something that needs to be taken away, that it is a growth. And it’s accessing parts of themselves that are incredibly stunted or denied or whatever else.

And when that happens, there is a, to me that’s part of the imaginal way out of this, that is not… We also can’t throw all those people out of the country, that’s not the solution either, and we also can’t just tell them to go back under the rock where they, many of them came from.

But what we can do is we can say, we can figure out ways with art and with beauty and with experiences that are transformative because they are so bodily and felt, that once you’ve had an experience that takes you to another, once you’ve had a deep right brain experience, then it’s very difficult to deny it, most people get that when they fall in love or when something very powerful and emotional happens that they can’t control with the logic, and that’s what we need, because…

LB: There is also another issue, Laurence, which it’s, I agree with you about right brain experience. But I have a friend who has an association for peacemaking in the world and who’s worked in, and is now very involved with neurobiologists to decode the traumatic response, and it’s kind of appropriate we’re talking about this with an exact Sun-Mars square today. Sun-Mars being about danger, survival, threat. The full moon today activating that Sun-Mars square perfectly in about two hours, right?

So we’re right in the middle of this reactive, and it’s not just a failure of imagination, it’s also a reactivation of all the body memory, the traumatic memory, the neurological memory about being small or weak. And I wanna say about what all men, have gone through about being humiliated for not being big or tough or strong or whatever.

Okay, so all of those things that people carry, that we all carry. Because women carry them too. Women carry a physical threat or a trauma, or danger from their childhood experiences, it can be very small. But men carry it in a way. All men. Black men much more than white men, minority men, much more. This whole idea that the world is dangerous and you have to find a way to survive.

And unless you can address that, you can’t just give somebody… You can give someone a poem and bring them to an incredible understanding, but you also have to address the trauma running through the system.

LH: Oh, absolutely. And I’m calling for wide systemic change, I’m just talking about what… How do we make that systemic change, and it is… And that, it starts to me with consciousness, but I’m giving this just as a core idea, the notion that we can grow something in the different directions rather than trying to eradicate, which is in itself a left brain model to eradicate or to kill off the old way.

And I don’t wanna say we can grow our way out of this problem, but I say what we can do is raise consciousness, which is an idea of growth of consciousness. And consciousness to me is raised by elevating the gifts that come from challenging the lack of imagination, challenging the lack of co-existing, of all the words that belong to right brain capacity.

LB: And I see what you’re saying, the lack of imagination is that you can only see the other person as the enemy.

And there is another astrological factor I’d like to talk about, because even in… Because the nodal axis has just slipped into Gemini and Sagittarius and if you use True Node, it was a month ago, and if you use Mean Node it was a few days ago. I think, the North Node is now in Gemini, and will be for 18 months, about. And Gemini is about to be able to see two possibilities simultaneously. It’s like to… Being able to see two truths, and to resist the temptation of one truth, which is part of, “I know, I’ve seen it. This is the way it is.” That part of Sagittarius, which is so wonderful.

But at the same time can be a trap in the wrong situation, because there’s no room for what the other person sees or does. And so that binary vision that Gemini brings means all of us also have to hold the frightened… Those who are frightened and worried about surviving on all ends of the spectrum. We have to be able to hold them and to see these multiple points of view, that’s what you were talking about.

LH: Right. And multiplicity is a form of complexity, and complexity is a right brain capacity. So that’s, again, to me where the feminine is so incredible, or the right brain, the yin, whatever we wanna call it, the lunar, is so incredibly important, because that’s the capacity that we need now.

Which includes you know the ability to deal with emergence and with complexity as we’re experiencing it, and all these things that we haven’t really been exposed to before, because it is much more complex than it’s ever been. We have these multiple layers of complexity, we have COVID, and demonstrations, and an awakening to raise consciousness as perhaps never before.

LB: And the institutional violence. Growing, growing. Threatening. So there’s a lot of ingredients in the mix, yeah.

LH: And… Yeah, and also there is awakening that’s going on. And people are getting it in ways, because the blatant racism of the president is probably unprecedented in this way. And you know, whereas before presidents knew how to say the right thing so that their racism may not have been so obvious, it is much easier to get a clear picture of… And much it’s much easier to start a movement through that kind of aggression of open supported racism. I think that helps their movement. Because otherwise people could say, “Well, look, you know,” there’s none of that… There’s no, so to speak, white-washing here.

LB: Right, and of course, we’re talking 20th century and 21st century consciousness, not 19th century, where there were probably people even more blatant, even more… We forget how far we’ve come. And in a way we’re backsliding right now, like being pulled back into the saurian tail of Saturn-Pluto on some levels. But it’s a little bit like a being pulled back to give us the spring to step away from it, hopefully.

LH: I had a sense, though, I had such a… There’s something about when things are… When an image is really unfitting of the time, and just feels so out of place, and just no longer fits. I don’t know if it’s my own sort of disconnect from the image, but I found Trump standing with the Bible was such a great metaphor for the end of the Age of Pisces, which is you know very much connected with the biblical era, if you want.

And there was such a disconnect, it was so non-genuine. And just so incredibly obviously fake, that one would have to be pretty delusional to look at that and say, “Yes, yes, there it is. You know, there is a good image.” No, it was just… The awkwardness, the weirdness, the stupidity of the moment.

So I’m also starting to see, again, looking for changes that going back into the extreme of the darkness from Pluto, as you’re saying, with police brutality, but also the deconstruction of police. They’re calling for defunding of the police, I’ve never heard that in my life. Apparently, that’s not new, but for me, that’s a new concept.

That I think is a really, really important conversation. Why are we buying riot gear, instead of putting that money into something else? Why are we focusing on the violence instead of on… I mean, on the looting instead of on the subtle violence of microaggressions and racism every day?

And somehow this end of Pisces image is very powerful that… You know, seeing a shift. I also happen to look at the chart of the murderer, and he was born on the last day of Pisces. I just thought that was really interesting, 29 degrees, Pisces. And there’s something to me about the end of that, and the beginning of something new, just as a symbol. I don’t know if that means anything, but it certainly got my attention.

LB: And I understand that you’re talking about the end of the Piscean age as one of those big things that’s up for grabs, you know, like is it 2021, is it 2150, is it… But clearly, that as in the 1960s, in ’62, when we had that incredible line-up of seven planets in Aquarius, in February 4th, 1962, that’s when the Age of Aquarius began to be spoken about.

So we have it being called up, whatever was called up at that time, in the early ’60s, which you can hear the powerful voices of civil rights leaders at that time. You can hear the power of people standing up to injustice in many ways. So we’re definitely getting another… An echo of that time coming through now. And it’s a time… I mentioned Findhorn earlier, which was founded during… Around that time period.

So you have this whole idea that there are things that came into being that seemed to not last. You know, I think at any given time, certain images of the world rise up. So in the ’60s and early ’70s, you know, those wonderful images of the flowers and the guns in San Francisco, remember, that are so archetypal and then unthinkable now, right?

But they’re nonetheless there, they’re nonetheless there. They can become the ones that are really viable and really central in our way of imagining the world. Those are the archetypes, they’re archetypal possibilities that we need to call back in. You say that Trump’s image seems so wrong, but for him, it seems so right.

I read that they were happy with the effect they had. And you know, the people on that side are seeing those things in a different way that we are. And so they’re conjuring up another archetypal possibility, which is one that we think is, “You’ve gotta be kidding.” But it doesn’t mean it isn’t equally powerful for a large number of people who are seeing it.

LH: No, I hear you. And again, that’s why we’re at the… As the song goes, this is the dawning of it. And as Ray Grasse has said, you know, when is it dawn, is it when we see the first rays of the sun or when it’s above the horizon? So I believe… I don’t believe we’re in the Age of Aquarius, and I don’t believe we’re in the Age of Pisces.

I believe we’re on the threshold, and this is maybe a couple hundred years to do the shift. But certain things that are going on are clearly dying and are clearly Piscean, and certain things that are happening are clearly Aquarian, and do not belong in the Pisces age, such as the internet, and connect people in ways that weren’t before. So I’m looking for the symbols that show me that as things emerge and then again shrink, because we’re on the threshold kind of a… We’re in a demilitarized zone or a very militarized zone in between, right?

And so it’s an interesting and confusing time because people have a hard time not having a clear story, and that’s part of what I said before about the stories. And we’re looking for new stories to tell ourselves.

LB: And the old stories are trying to seize power in the world. Some of the old stories are trying to grab us. And some of those would be… I’d be really happy with some of the older outcomes and could be really unhappy with others of them. And I don’t know if people are aware they have choice. And that’s one of the things that’s so hopeful about the demonstration is there’s this notion of, “Whatever it takes, I will… People will know… The world will know how I feel about this.”

LH: Right. That’s the wakening of the sovereign to me in the person, and that’s really a great thing that individuals are being called to go out and step out. And I may not totally agree with you about the positive image of Trump with the Bible. I mean, I understand what you’re saying, and I’m sure that that’s how everybody would spin it in the White House. But I’m pretty good at reading body language, and I can tell you that was not…

I mean, he’s a psycho, so he doesn’t really even feel what’s going on. But there’s something about his… About that thing that was so staged, and so somebody told him, this is the right thing to do, because we know he’s never read the Bible. You know, I was hoping somebody would switch that book out for Mein Kampf in Photoshop, that would be more appropriate.

So my point is that images mean a lot. And clearly the image of a man being suffocated in public means a lot. And images are powerful. And you’re absolutely right, and it’s still baffling to me how, you know, 45 or whatever the percentages of American support him. And I think, again, they don’t really support him, I think they support what the privilege that he provides them.

So that’s the story, you know, that’s the image. And they’re, “Well, yeah, he’s not the most perfect person, but… ” You know, there’s that. And there’s a lot of privilege to be white in this country, and that is one of the reasons that he gets supported. There’s not a lot of other explanations that make a lot of sense to me, because it certainly… You know, everything else one would really have to easily question, but that one, yes, it’s true, if you’re white, you have a privilege. And so if somebody’s gonna tell you that they’re just gonna keep that for you, then you know, of course…

LB: Yeah. I was not disagreeing with you with the artificiality of… And for me, that’s how I experience it. But I am just imagining that other people are seeing it differently, and they’re also seeing images taken by different photographers and published on different websites and in different magazines. And every once in a while, I’ve come across people who are publishing… You know, we used to have images of presidents looking extremely dignified with the symbol of the flag.

There’s the thing, I’ve almost never seen an image of our current leader in those images, but they do exist. They do exist, they’re just not in the publications we’re looking at. And I think that’s very… That’s what I mean by binary vision loss, is that we have to see what the other person is seeing. Because… Yeah, I mean, so it’s not just…

LH: And it’s my own denial too that I just don’t wanna believe that that exists. And I have to be honest about it, that it’s just so disturbing to me.

LB: And of course, you know, ’cause otherwise we’re saying, “We’re seeing clearly, and if only you can have this consciousness experience, you’ll see like we do.”

And you know, there’s something wrong with that kind of…

LH: Of course.

LB: You know, how would you feel if somebody said that to you, I wouldn’t like it.

LH: Right, except we also can’t… There is something as… There is something about just saying that all opinions are equal, that’s not true. I do not believe in that.

LB: I agree, I agree.

LH: There’s such a thing as a higher moral authority.

LB: I agree, I agree.

LH: And I don’t believe that one can make an argument with anything that’s coming out of that administration that has in any way, shape or form a higher moral authority. So that… That we have to be careful about. ‘Cause that’s also what Trump does, you know, both sides were bad or whatever. You can’t do that. That’s not acceptable either. There is an absolute here. And I think, one can say that, one can argue about the methods, one can argue about these things, but one can’t put… We may be binary, but we still can know what’s right and wrong on the deepest level of… You know, of ethics and moral rights.

LB: And at the same time, I think that’s absolutely true, people feel that something is very wrong here, such… People look at those images of the guns on the Washington Monument, the guns from the White House, they’re like, wrong, wrong. Does not… That for me is even more shocking than the Bible story, that image with the Bible, but I can see that they’re also working archetypally with people who see the world differently.

And that… There’s a battle. How… You know, if you’ve ever watched a film by Leni Riefenstahl, isn’t that right, Tony? They’re, the films that she made for the Third Reich are utterly brilliant, utterly brilliant, enthralling, thrilling propaganda. Luckily, we don’t have anybody doing that at the moment, it’s like, they’re bumbling of it. But they’re… How did people fall into acquiescence with all of that? So we have to remember.

LH: No, you are very, very right and that’s a very important warning that the power of the image and the power of and again, they do know that, because that was a photo op, is the power of the image. And they’re just not very good at it, luckily, like don’t stand in front of a burned out church, not a very good image, you know.

Whoever is making the decisions, they’re all amateurs, it’s obvious that these are all, you know, it’s like he’s scraping the bottom of the barrel because nobody else in their right mind wants to… Thank God and so, who’s going to say, “Yes, I’d love to work for you, Trump,” nobody’s going to do that unless they are pretty morally defunct in many ways.

LB: Having somebody like Mattis stand up and say this is really wrong, and then having one… If it’s only one Republican Senator stand up and say, “He’s right, I agree with what he said,” is, there’s the breach, right? It’s tiny, it’s a really tiny little breach, and up to now, every breach has been immediately bubble, bubble-wrapped.

But it may not happen here because not only do we have this full Moon with Mars square. Yeah, I think the moment can go either way, Mars is, again, in this very tight square to the luminaries, but it’s coming to the conjunction of Neptune, so is that Mars offered to the sacred or it… Does it fall into ideology? We don’t know which all of those are, and there’s more possibilities than that with the astrology of the time, of course. And then we’re leading into the eclipse on the solstice.

LH: And we could also say that that’s an invitation to each one of us to co-create the image of what happens with that Mars, that our own images and our own imagination actually feeds the reality, and that we therefore can take responsibility for the images that we create and that we choose to project, because we are all co-creating reality, stuff that dreams are made of, as Shakespeare said, that is the reality.

So we have a choice, and this is an opportunity to rethink… I love to reconjure up the image, thank you for doing that, of the flower and the gun, I just think that’s a really great image to carry right now. Because those guns are out there, we gotta do something with them, let’s use them as flower vases, what a great idea.

TH: I’d like to invite you to read the deeply inspiring and illuminating book Tell Me Who You Are by Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi. The authors reveal the lines that separate us based on race or other perceived differences and how telling our stories and listening deeply to the stories of others are the first and most crucial steps we can take towards negotiating racial inequity in our culture. Featuring interviews with over 150 Americans accompanied by their photograph and interspersed with laser-focused explanations of key concepts, the book also offers a deep examination of the seeds of racism and strategies for effecting change. I studied race and social change movements in college, and I still learned so much from these moving first-hand accounts, in addition to the clear and succinct explanations of race dynamics in this country. As we contemplate this moment in history, this is a must-have book, also available as an audio book read by the authors, and I highly encourage you to check it out. And now, back to the podcast.

TH: I thought we might ponder an image together to wrap things up today. There was an image you guys brought up just a few moments ago of Mattis, an elder statesman, we could say, archetypally calling out the current leader and how in the collective, there was this idea like we’ve been waiting for him to finally say what he really thinks, and then he finally did.

And then there was this other image that came up, images that came up yesterday in the news of old white men being pushed down by police, these men were apparently part of protesting groups, although in the images, there aren’t a lot of other people around. And in one case, the man having his head cracked open and another case, a man with a cane being knocked over and into a bike rack by the police, and these images coming up while Saturn is in Aquarius, and all images of old men and Saturn, and I wonder if you guys could ruminate on that a little bit for us.

LH: There’s anger, there’s anger against the father. If we’re angry at Trump, we’re angry against the… David Gergen wrote a great piece on the end of the father, the president as the father figure, and that George Washington was called the father of the country and Lincoln for referred to as the father by his soldiers and so forth.

There’s anger on both sides against the father archetype which to me, again, is more Pluto-Saturn. Being angry at Trump who’s no longer acting like a father. So that’s angry, because why aren’t you acting like a father, because you’re supposed to. But just the father archetype is dying, but also pushing over old white men. Again, white men run most things in this country, and have the most power. That’s easy to show and prove in corporations and churches, in military, and so forth. And so them being pushed over by the police and knocked down and their heads cracked open is just to me a decay, a breaking down of that symbol. But also Mattis breaking his silence is the same thing, it’s just… To me it fits right into the Pluto-Saturn story.

LB: It’s funny, I have a friend who’s written about Trump as a puer, but even as a Dionysian figure. You know, as someone who just wants it to all go chaotic, like the dark… So he’s not… He’s never had the father archetype, even with his son. Remember, his son didn’t come with him to Washington?

This idea of the father is one thing, but I saw the video of one of the men who was knocked down. And he was actually a very tall, older man with white hair, bigger than the… Taller than the police officer. And the police officer… He was talking to the police officer, he was in his face, and the police officer pushed him, gave him a gentle shove. And you saw, as elderly people do, they don’t have the same ability to get their center of gravity back. He tottered, fell, his head hit the ground, and the other police came marching forward. And he turned back and his colleagues pushed him forward, and they didn’t even stop… You could see the blood coming out of the guy’s head, he didn’t even stop to… And somebody else… Then medics came up.

So it wasn’t so much as taking the father out, it’s like the wisdom of the Saturn archetype, the wisdom of age. Those people who have lived through different times and different moral values have something to say, and they expect to be respected. And we don’t care about any of that, none of that is… So I wouldn’t look at it as the symbol of the father being taken out, I’d look at it as a symbol of the other potential of Saturn, that Saturn is always gonna be there.

And Saturn with Jupiter needs to be vivified. It needs to be brought back to life. It needs to have something new breathed into him. That this is almost like looking at this… Looking at, you old guys, thwack, COVID, it’s old people dying, right? And that’s the other piece of the Saturn, is that most of the deaths have been over 80.

So on some level, even though people aren’t saying it out loud, well, this is good, right? They’re old. And so it has to do with a society that respects its own history, its own experience, its own wisdom. And there is of course none of that right now.

LH: Right, yeah. When I say father, I sort of didn’t mean the literal, of course. I’m looking at the archetypal idea of maturity, leadership, and wisdom, especially. Which is exactly what you’re pointing out, a very good point, that’s what’s being literally pushed away.

LH: I would disagree that was a gentle shove, that was a pretty violent shove to me, ’cause he went back about six or eight feet before he stumbled. So that wasn’t light. But yes, it was nasty and in anyway just a remarkable moment. Is there anything else astrological we should talk about just at the end here that is happening this year, ’cause people do look to us as astrologers. Is there something to add, you know, planetary-wise?

TH: Maybe you could just say something about what you think about the… You know, we’ve had this little taste of Saturn and Aquarius. And then Saturn goes back into Capricorn basically at the beginning of July for pretty much the rest of the year until almost the end of December. And during that time, we’ll see Saturn in the 29th degree for some period of time. And maybe you could just say some thoughts about what you think is closing up with that cycle and with the shift that’s coming after?

LB: Well, one of the things that strikes me about the time of Saturn going into Aquarius, is this idea that so many people on the planet experience the same thing at the same time. And we were all aware of that, that idea of our interconnection, and we talked about that a little bit last time.

So we’ve had this taste of interconnection, which for me is very much part of Saturn and Aquarius. And then Saturn and Capricorn is in a way going back down the ladder, you know, into a more individual survival consciousness, I think. How is this gonna work for me? Are the systems gonna be standing? How do I look out… The individual trauma of this time on many levels.

And again, this idea between which we’re gonna choose, a very old past version of things, or a new that we began to feel almost imperceptibly during this two months or so visit of Saturn, and how long is it? 22… Two and a half months, I think.

TH: Yeah, in my mind, it’s about three months, so that sounds about right. Yeah.

LH: And I think the really good point there is that it really is still about Pluto and Saturn, these are just… And Pluto-Capricorn, Pluto-Saturn conjunction. We’re still looking at that. It’s just moving in and out, but it’s still about Pluto and Saturn as a story. And that that story is not over yet. And a lot of people, as I wrote in my essay, you know, a lot of people are trying to skip the fourth act and trying to go from the third to the fifth act in the Shakespeare play.

And there’s a reason for the fourth act, and for darkness, and for being lost, and for being confused, and for seeing no future, and hopeless and psychological strain, and being in the dark forest. There’s a reason… You know, we miss the play if we just go from act three to five. And let’s encourage the continued introspection, as hard as that may be.

And I think we’re just not getting it because just as people are, okay, we’re all free again, now suddenly we can’t go out because there’s a curfew, so it’s like we keep getting locked up for some reason, it’s like Pluto and Saturn saying, oh, you think you’re free now? Watch this!

LB: Right, we… Yeah, we opened the restaurant and it got smashed up, and so now we closed it again and…

LH: Exactly. So what is it that we’re not getting as a collective, why are we so incredibly insistent upon not doing that deep dive, and of course, I get all the financial and all of those, I get all of that, but there’s something deeper that we’re not getting, which is why we keep getting back into this thing as well, because the introspection is also part of race, you know, getting even to our own racism is part of that introspection and that’s just taking it to an even deeper level. So we can’t separate the two moments, they’re all Pluto-Saturn, they’re all about our own limitations about the other.

TH: What do you say to invite people to participate in the fourth act, Laurence?

LH: It’s a good question. I think it is accepting the fact that it is the fourth act, to start by that, it’s accepting where you are and not trying to be elsewhere. And talking about it and speaking to it, and… Anything that’s right brain is going to help. So in other words, music, art, day-dreaming, painting a picture of yourself 20 years from now, wondering. Not having answers as something being valuable, what kids call negative capability, sitting still and allowing something to actually emerge without thinking that you need to figure it out, it’s not about figuring it out, but it’s about day-dreaming into it, those kinds of approaches, anything that is a beautification of the world, anything, putting a flower on your neighbor’s doorstep… It has a lot of value in that process.

It is working from the heart, it is working with the imagination. It is being unclear, valuing the fact that the things that aren’t clear are actually how things shape, like something coming out of the fog, and valuing that and being curious about what is emerging rather than needing to have it written down right now and clear. Making lists and crossing them out every day is a great way to do that. That was wrong. That was wrong. That was wrong. It can go the negative way, don’t want this. Don’t want that. And then see, well, what do you want? As what might emerge.

So it’s a process, essentially. I said, the other day, it’s like, the whole, like humankind is collectively in therapy, it’s not a comfortable place. We don’t like to ask ourselves why are we here and what is the meaning of life and what if I die, and all these big questions, but we’re all asking ourselves those questions now.

And now we have to go even deeper and look at our own racism and look at our own bigotry and our own preconceived ideas about things. That’s heavy stuff, and yes, there’s a lot of trauma with that and people are gonna be in a difficult place, and there are things like tele health and tele mental health and things now that people…

LB: And that’s another example of the binary vision, the more than binary vision I was talking about, that North Node in Gemini, which is to be able to see the world. I think one of the things I’ve appreciated is there was a college professor talking about being stopped by police and the terror, he went, ’cause there was a black man in the neighborhood, you fit the description, they said, and it was a really wonderful… Well, a very terrifying personal narrative, where you’re actually in the other person’s experience and understanding what might be happening.

This is, I think, what we also need to change, okay, not just our own experience, yeah, but also to be able to… And it’s almost impossible, it’s almost impossible for me to know what your experience is, Laurence, what’s it like to grow up with someone insanely famous and brilliant.

What it’s like for Tony growing up? What’s it like for me growing up in Chicago? How do you actually understand and take in the experience of the other in a complete, in a way where you actually touch it with your mind and your heart, and that allows your imagination to be based on a true experience of the other.

LH: Exactly, and that to me, that’s a right brain capacity, that’s something you learn how to do in the fourth act, because when you’re running through act one, two, and three and closing up and celebrating or having a funeral in act five, then you are too busy. And when you’re not busy, then you can start to really…

It takes imagination and a creative capacity to be able to imagine myself into someone else’s shoes, even though that’s always gonna have limitations, ’cause I really can’t, but I can at least be open to the conversation, and the biggest skill there is listening, is just listening, and that’s something we can do when we’re not too busy and when we’re locked up is we can just listen to other people’s stories. There’s tremendous power in that. And that’s transformative.

TH: That’s interesting, Laurence, and thanks so much for joining us today. But I was just gonna say, that’s interesting, Laurence, because in this last week, that’s what a lot of us have been asked to do who are participating in social media, is to listen to black voices in this case, in this example. So to listen to the other… We have heard your white voices enough. Like, listen to our voices, right? Listen to someone different this time, right, and just be quiet, white people, just be quiet and listen.

LB: And also sound is air… The ability to hear, it’s literally sound waves moving through space that reach us, so that’s also part of the Aquarian wave coming to us is what are we able to hear.

TH: Well, thanks so much for joining us today for this podcast, you two, and we hope to have the two of you back again for another insightful and engaging conversation. Thanks for taking us into all that depth in the way that you two do so well, so thanks so much for your gifts.

TH: Thanks for tuning in to today’s episode. Check out our calendar of upcoming events at astrologyuniversity.com for our next webinars, which include Demetra George’s newest presentation on asteroid goddesses 2020 second wave, where she traces the women’s movement from the first wave through the second and third waves, right up through the Me Too movement, highlighting the asteroids at play in the charts of key figures and events in the movement.

TH: And if you’re ready to take a deeper dive into learning astrology, consider joining us in August for our new cohort of four-year program students. Our program is designed to help you become confident and competent reading charts, taught from the ground up with the structure and support you might be missing in your self-studies. Get access to some of the best astrology teachers of our time as you learn this powerful and transformative art. For more info, email [email protected].

TH: If you’re a Native American or African-American student interested in astrology, also be sure to ask us about our special full-ride scholarship available to five new qualifying students starting in July. In addition, we provide a limited number of financial need-based scholarships on a first come, first served basis. Scholarship applications for both types of scholarship open up in July of 2020. Email now to be the first to be notified when the application period opens up for the fall semester, and I hope to see some of you in class very soon.

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