CHAPTER THREE
Cycles of Relationship - 4

The Uranus-Pluto Cycle
Because through 1965 and 1966 Uranus and Pluto were three times conjunct in the zodiacal sign, Virgo, this cycle takes on just now a very crucial meaning. Much of what is unfolding in the world as these pages are written some four years later can be related quite significantly to events which began a rather drastic process of social and ideological change, the ultimate consequences of which we can only guess at.
      It is interesting to note that California (and also the city of Los Angeles) are technically "ruled" by Virgo. Because of this, there had been a strong expectation of telluric catastrophes, major earthquakes, etc. at the time of these Uranus-Pluto conjunctions. What happened actually, though less spectacular, may prove to be just as important. The revolt of students in the Berkeley campus of the University of California in 1964 was the spark that ignited a long series of similar events all over the world; and the Negro riots in Watts (the Los Angeles black "ghetto") also became a model for many such riots.
      Uranus and Pluto were also in conjunction in 1850-51.³ The Industrial Revolution was then beginning to change the conditions of existence of entire classes of people. Even the colonial fever which led European nations to invade Africa and Asia brought white and colored races together. But this "bringing together" (i. e. conjunction) occurred in a spirit of conquest and greed, and under conditions of often extreme brutality — which of course was bound to result eventually in violent revolt.
      In 1850-51 Saturn was also in conjunction with Uranus and Pluto; but in 1965-66 Saturn was in opposition to the Uranus-Pluto conjunction. In 1850 the privileged classes, represented by Saturn, were able to use for their own aggrandizement the new powers generated by the Industrial Revolution. The conjunction occurred at the very end of the pioneering sign, Aries — with Saturn bringing the energy generated by this Uranus-Pluto conjunction to the very first degree of Taurus, sign of productivity. The aristocrats and wealthy merchants of last century sought and achieved a vast increase in human productivity — which in turn led to a proliferation of human beings. This time, Saturn in Pisces having opposed the conjunction of Uranus and Pluto in Virgo, humanity can no longer tolerate the possession of the resources and of the processes related to this conjunction by only a small minority — not even by the white race, enjoying enormous abundance while the colored races in Asia, Africa and South America remain under-developed (in our sense of the word "development") and mostly under-nourished.
      The Uranus-Pluto conjunction in the critical sign, Virgo — which seems to refer so well to our college-bred intelligenzia, whether young or old — is now confronting the Saturnian classes which hold still dominant power and constitute the now so sharply and vehemently criticized "Establishment." And this confrontation is taking a very drastic aspect, a thoroughly world-wide revolutionary aspect.
      A conjunction of Uranus and Pluto is essentially a mind-transforming "influence." It refers to a situation which demands a very basic and thorough change of mind. Until 1930 Pluto of course was not publicly known to mankind. Its power was more related to the collective unconscious than to any conscious will to change. But now consciousness is focusing deeply compulsive drives through ideologies, opinions, slogans which can move the multitudes — and modern media of communications involve the whole of humanity in such apparently insignificant events as a protest of college students in Berkeley or Columbia University.
      Uranus and Pluto symbolize in a rather fascinating manner the atomic bombs or reactors using uranium or plutonium. They represent even more broadly our whole technologically-controlled society, our computerized business and (soon) education, our T. V. determined political Elections, In every field of human activity and individual responses, these technological procedures, and the mentality which both gave them birth and has been spreading everywhere as the result of this technology, have produced a radical transformation of human values and ways of life.
      In Greek mythology Ouranos was the primordial power that rules over the vast expanses of space. Pluto, at a later phase of development, became the symbolic ruler of the depths of existence. In astrology today Uranus is the great power of transformation which has its beginning in a descent of creative energy from spiritual heights of being; while Pluto is the power of the Underground and, the generic Unconscious, the subterranean energy which brings all superficial constructs and all man-made institutions to the atomized condition of dust or humus, yet which performs this catabolic task as a prelude to a new kind of integration and potential rebirth.
      A conjunction of Uranus and Pluto is therefore a kind of union of height and depth. Uranian creativity allied with Plutonian revolutionary disintegrative force becomes a ruthless and relentless force. Today it symbolizes the growing power of those elements in our society which have judged our technological and White-dominated society worthless, and condemned it to chaos — a chaos believed to be a necessary condition for the emergence of a truly new mentality and society. This is what many of the rebellious youth in Paris, in May 1968, proclaimed; and indeed what so many people in our nation more or less vocally (and most often quite confusedly) claim — whether they be student activists or Negroes intent on exercising by all possible means "Black Power." And the confrontation with the Saturnian Establishment and its police-force or army goes on, and may well grow far stronger and widespread, even if controlled for a while by the frightened mood of a still overwhelmingly large majority seeking to retain at any price their security, their gains and their suburban comfort; which means inevitably a kind of more or less overt military dictatorship or "Fascism."
      The massing of seven planets in Virgo at the New Moon of August 23, 1968, plus the solar eclipse of September 22nd on the last degree of Virgo — and other astrological indications of a more transitory nature — add their very powerful testimony to those already mentioned. They suggest that large-scale events and crucial changes may well be in the making. Our twentieth century began under a near opposition of Uranus to Pluto. Indeed Neptune and Pluto, emerging from their 1891 conjunction, were pitted in Gemini against all other planets in Sagittarius; and the New Moon of December 2, 1899 had seven planets in this last zodiacal sign, with Jupiter just about to enter it.
      We are living indeed in a "schizophrenic" century — a "Civil War of Man"; and the opposition of Saturn to the conjunction of Uranus and Pluto has simply been bringing to the fore more vividly than ever the confrontation between two types of mentality, between the haves and the have-nots, between generations. Perhaps as Uranus and Pluto form again an opposition during the twenty-first century, the issue will be even more definitely settled, and what remains of the old world will give way before the rise of a New Age, the Aquarian Age.
      In order to understand what is meant by such a new Age, we have now to study the vast cycle of the Precession of the Equinoxes, and to consider the rhythmic, cyclic processes which affect not only human civilization, but the entire planet, Earth — and especially the earth's biosphere, within which all living beings are born, struggle for self-maintenance and self-expansion, and die, reabsorbed into the Plutonian physical and psychological humus which will once more be food for new generations.

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3. The Uranus-Pluto cycle seems to be quite uneven. There was a conjunction in November, 1710, at about Virgo 2º — a time filled with all kinds of wars, but which was to see soon the start in London of the great movement, Free Masonry (1717). The spring 1598 saw another one at about Aries 19º; this was the close of the Elizabethan Age, and the year of the famous Edict of Nantes which ended the wars of religion in France.