CHAPTER THREE
Cycles of Relationship - 3

Uranus-Neptune Cycles
The cycles of relationship of Uranus and Neptune are very significant, because these two planets are in many ways complementary. Uranus is essentially the planet of individualism, referring to the hidden genius in every man and to its inspirational revelation. Neptune, on the contrary, is the symbol of collectivism and of the pressure of the collectivity upon the individual. The conjunction of the two planets occur at about 171-year intervals, and advance regularly, it seems, in the Zodiac.
      Sepharial has a good deal to say on these conjunctions and refers particularly to the one which occurred in 1650, falling in Sagittarius 16th and 17th degrees, in exact opposition to the Ascendant of the city of London. This was the time of Cromwell's dictatorship, and on 1666 the famous great fire destroyed a vast portion of the city. It fell also on what may well be the Ascendant of the United States. Sepharial gives to the conjunction a rather destructive meaning: "disruption of old and effete institutions and laws, revision of codes and desposition of governments, new social methods through stress and insurrection," the latter timed particularly by the coming of Mars and Saturn to the places of conjunction or opposition to this Uranus-Neptune conjunction.
      The period around 1650 marked indeed the very end of the medieval political system almost everywhere on earth; from Japan and India (where the Mogol dynasty began to crumble) to France, where the Fronde marked the last attempt by the nobility to oppose the absolute power of the king, Louis XIV, then dominated by Mazarin. The old Russia began to collapse and Peter the Great started (after 1689) to build modern Russia. Holland freed herself from Spain. And the American colonies after a series of upheavals, began to feel their growing power (New York became English on August 27, 1664). During the 171-year period which followed 1650, the Classical Era of European culture reached its apex, crystallized rapidly and broke down during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era.
      When Uranus and Neptune came again in conjunction in 1821, Napoleon I died, and the period of the Industrial Revolution and the era of railroads and of new labor-saving machines began. This was also the definite starting point of the Romantic movement. Liberals struggled in Europe against the despotic governments which followed Napoleon's debacle, and in South and Central America, new republics emerged from the domination of Spain and Portugal. In the United States, the Missouri Compromise (1820) marked the seed beginning of the Civil War, and in 1823, the Monroe Doctrine established the ideal of Pan-Americanism.
      The Uranus-Neptune conjunction of 1821 occurred in March in the third degree of Capricorn. Two more conjunctions (1993 and 2164) will also take place in Capricorn. In most cases, however, only two conjunctions seem to occur in one zodiacal sign. This could be taken to mean a special insistence on Capricorn — a strong Saturnian zone. Political crystallizations are indeed especially powerful as humanity is seeking to fight rather senselessly against the inevitable organization of all its members into a global society. Uranus and Neptune stress the wider horizons of a world made "one world" by the discoveries of science and the tremendous increase in human interchanges. Three times their conjunctions are seeking to open up the fortified walls of nationalism, to eradicate the folly of power-politics in an electronic, atomic civilization and to inspire men who, like Capricornian President Wilson, seek to find ways of globally structuring the new world of mankind.
      The third conjunction of 2163 falls a century after the time I have suggested for the beginning of the Aquarian Age; and at the very end of Capricorn. It will probably sound the final death-knell for the old world of European nationalism, seed of the Piscean Age. This does not mean that national cultures will not remain as organic entities within the larger global pattern. Nations or geographical regions in which people of the same language are gathered most likely will retain their relatively autonomous character as units of social management, but minus the separative political concept of "absolute sovereignty" — the modern equivalent of the "divine rights of kings," against which men like Paine and Jefferson fought stubbornly.
      We have just passed through a sextile of Uranus and Neptune which precedes the 1994 conjunction. This will no doubt be a very significant one, for it ends a series of other conjunctions in Capricorn, with six planets occupying repeatedly that sign for a couple of years. The period actually begins with a conjunction of Saturn, Uranus and Mars around the first degree of Capricorn in the spring 1988, then proceeds with a conjunction of Saturn and Neptune in 1989. In February 1990, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Mars, Venus and Mercury are in Capricorn opposed by Jupiter. We might well say that the sextile of Uranus and Neptune which precedes such a massing of planets can be seen as a warning, or even as a prelude to social and spiritual challenges — and possibly telluric disturbances — which are expectable.
      It seems that these conjunctions of Uranus and Neptune provide us with a very valuable indication of the process by which larger ideas flow into the mind of Man. They indicate the time for the clearing away of Saturnian crystallizations. Then as the collective mentality of human beings becomes more open to the spiritual downflow, the "seeds" deposited into that collective mind at the time of the conjunction of Neptune and Pluto are able to produce a really new "vegetation" — new institutions, new ways of life. The fact that the soon to come conjunction of Uranus and Neptune occurs at the time when Pluto is found "within the orbit of Neptune" (fecundating it, as it were) should be very significant.
      I should add that most likely the two or three generations of great thinkers which precede the conjunctions have a part to play quite different from those which follow it. The former are iconoclasts and pioneers (cf. for instance, the men of the Elizabethean Age like Francis Bacon, and those of the Revolutionary Period like Thomas Paine); while the latter are more like seers who envision new worlds and new human ideals (for instance, the scientists and mystics of the Classical Period, and the great humanitarians, socialists and religious leaders of the 1830 to 1850 period). We are now ready to witness, and are witnessing, the appearance of men whose task it is to challenge the old Christian-European culture — first destroyers (in science and politics), then prophetic pioneers. By the time the century ends, a new influx of minds will come to bring us real visions of the new Aquarian world.
      The number which characterizes the Uranus-Neptune cycle is significant, as 171 equals 9 times 19 — and these two numbers, 19 and 9, are the "sacred numbers" of the Bahai Movement, whose new calendar (established by the Bab about a century ago) features a division of the year into 19 months (plus four holidays before the Spring Equinox) and a cycle of 19 years (roughly corresponding to a period of the Moon Nodes).