Like the scientists, mystical thinkers honor Einstein as extraordinary; but from a somewhat different point of view. For us, the wispy-haired old fellow with the unforgettable eyes exudes a wisdom that trumps intellectual smarts.

In fact he was prodigious on both scores: that of mental acuity (Aquarius) and spiritual understanding (Pisces)¹. I can’t think of another scientist whose face has been reproduced on postcards, lapel buttons and tote bags. Though Western culture tends to reserve the word “genius” for people gifted in conceptual thinking, those of us who hung posters of Einstein on our dorm room walls did so for other reasons. I, for one, was enchanted by the rumor that he didn’t wear socks.

It’s a good time to consider why we are so drawn to Einstein. Right now in particular, humanity is hungry for his embodiment of both knowledge and knowing: a combination symbolized in astrology by Neptune in Aquarius, the key player in the Super Conjunction that dominates the skies this calendar year.²

Neptune and Chiron have been retrograde since late May, drilling their relentless lessons into the obdurate mass mind. Chiron is trying to teach us how to use our pain to achieve true humanness. Jupiter, whose role in the transit will peak again in December 09, is pushing us beyond our provincialisms, stretching our grasp of what’s going on in the wide world beyond our normal frames of reference. And Neptune, star of the show, is blurring the boundaries between the ego-defined self and the rest of Creation.

Just as we might hang a mandala on the wall right now to focus upon during meditation, we could gaze at a picture of dear old Albert. His eyes reflect the mysteries the universe is inviting us to understand.

The Aquarius cluster is welcoming us into the world-altering 2012 years, during which our identification with certain groups over others will mean more than it ever has. Consider that we are doing nothing less than determining the planet’s future. The Aquarian transit is asking us to choose our allies accordingly. Who will best bear the standard for humanity’s forward movement?

The next few years will blow our conventional assumptions about leadership out of the water. Leadership is signified in astrology by the cardinal signs, all four of which will be part of the great configurations in the sky. It will be a time of asking who we want our leaders to be, and what we’ll do with them once we’ve chosen them. It won’t be enough to show up at the ballot box and then go home and go back to sleep.

Pluto in Capricorn, which opposed the Solstice New Moon last month, is the first member of the Cardinal Cross to establish itself. The planet of breakdown in the sign of authority has already gotten to work, aiming its wrecking ball at the mightiest and sturdiest of national governments.

This is not to say that the planet “caused” this state of affairs; Pluto does not create decay; it merely reveals it. All over the world patriarchal systems are crumbling under their own weight. Among the big players are China
(Pluto square Sun), whose corrupt old boys’ network is cracking with the strain of world attention (focused upon, for example, its relationship to Tibet, human rights, pollution and out-of-control urbanization); England (Pluto conjunct Sun), whose ruling party is coming apart at the seams; and the USA (Pluto opposed to Sun).

Many traditions besides Western astrology have called attention to the age we’re in right now, characterizing it as a time when false leaders would be exposed. In the Kali Yuga, which translates as The Dark Time (in this usage the word kali means discord and strife), the Hindu scriptures declare that in our era leaders would become a danger to the world.³

Aquarius is the only one of the twelve signs that singles out the human species: it symbolizes those qualities that separate us from other creatures. What this transit is doing is begging questions about the essential nature of human society; such as, What is the point is of having these extraordinary minds, unique in the animal kingdon? What benefits does planet Earth draw from what we call civilization? What makes a human group civilized, and what makes it uncivilized?

This is the question underneath all the others in the debate about torture.

Growing up in the USA, most of us were conditioned to believe that our country not only did not torture its enemies, but would never do so; could never do so. This made us special. So integral a part of the national self-image was this belief that, only a generation ago, most Americans would have found it unimaginable that they would one day be debating the issue. One didn’t debate the unthinkable. But as soon as Pluto (taboos) started opposing the Sun cluster (self-definition) in the USA chart , that’s exactly what we started to do.

When we remember the core meaning of Pluto aspects, it is easier to make sense of the crossroads at which the USA finds itself. Such transits constitute a profound threat to an entity’s self of self. Historically, the American public’s conviction that their country would never engage in torture both established a point of moral pride and underlay a geopolitical sense of entitlement. That is, so long as they believed their system to be superior – morally, politically, economically — to every other, Americans felt justified in acting like kings of the world. But this fundamental belief has been shattered.

Against the backdrop of the Pluto opposition, the Super Conjunction began to form. Neptune started to cloud issues once deemed utterly clear. Over the last three years, the closer Chiron (wounding) got to Neptune, the more distressingly blurred societal certitudes became. During Chiron’s opposition to transiting Saturn, torture hit the headlines: when the Abu Ghraib photos were released on 2/15/06, visible proof arose to disprove the lie (Neptune) at the country’s righteous core (Jupiter). A blood-curdling visual icon was introduced into the vocabulary of the American imagination, dealing the deadliest blow yet to the country’s sense of self.

For the American conscience, the publication of those photos marked the end of the era of deniability. By the time Jupiter (ethics) ingressed into Aquarius in January of 2009 the issue had become the centerpiece of America’s moral meltdown.⁵ Anti-war activists had long argued that the Bush regime tortured its captives in order to coerce false testimony that linked Saddam Hussein to the September 11th attacks — testimony that would have provided an alibi for the invasion of Iraq and handily avoided the Nuremberg definition of a war crime. This scenario is no longer merely the opinion of a fringe minority. That which had remained unadmitted by the majority of the population has broken through the crust of collective awareness.

American schoolchildren reading their history books may find themselves making comparisons that would never have crossed their parents’ minds. Such as, how was the CIA’s treatment of Saddam Hussein’s chauffeur any different from the treatment meted out by the royal interrogators of Tudor London, who routinely postponed hanging their victims in hopes of getting them to implicate others while strapped to the rack?

The torture issue is the most visceral of several violations to America’s self-image that have corresponded with Pluto opposition to the US Venus-Jupiter conjunction, signature of the country’s values. The old assertion that We are good and our enemies are evil has started to ring hollow, and as a consequence the simplistic tropes of American foreign policy are no longer going to fly. Now, when Washington tries to justify its imperial moves with the old saw that the USA epitomizes all that is right and true, it will strain the public’s credulity like never before.

It has taken a dramatic economic downturn to expose the American populace to the runaway corruption (Pluto) inherent in the government-business hybrid that runs their country. The downturn is a mass trauma, as Pluto teachings always are.

Thousands upon thousands of small economic injustices, together with a handful of enormous high-profile injustices, are painting a picture whose contrast is stark enough to shake up the multitudes. Americans are seeing their favorite mom-and-pop stores go out of business after serving their neighborhoods for decades; while bloated, bailed-out bankers are not only still in business but getting richer than ever by hoarding their TARP funds. Citizens who never before considered themselves “political” are fuming. Their sense of decency has been flouted.

In this climate a wide swath of Americans are realizing things about their country that the larger world has known for a long time. Such as the fact that a larger proportion of the American population lives in destitution and in prison than is true in any other industrialized nation, even as the country maintains its status as the wealthiest and most militarily powerful on Earth. It is a slap in the face to the average American-Dreamer to consider, for example, that income disparities in his country are equivalent to those in the Third World. But such realities can no longer be refuted.

These transits are about rupturing complacency, a profoundly effective cosmic teaching tool. With Uranus, the Great Awakener, moving into its square with Pluto next year, the American consciousness will receive a succession of rousing blows.

As individuals, our wisest move would be to purposefully wake ourselves up before the transits are forced to do it for us. Our goal should be to deliver — metaphorically or, better yet, ritualistically — a bracing splash of cold water to our faces every morning, as a reminder to stay alert to the world moment.

The election of Barack Obama provided a powerful example of the country’s craving to change from the inside out, which is the only kind of change that will satisfy Pluto. Obama rose upon the crest of this deep craving in the collective soul.

It is not just that we got a new president. Indeed, policy-wise, not much is new at all . It is the template of leadership that is different now. As I have written elsewhere , as a singular leader Obama is less significant than as a rallying icon. It is for this evolutionary role that history will remember him, and it is this perspective that will serve us best as we observe his ongoing vicissitudes.⁶

The Saturn-Uranus opposition that ushered Obama in last November offers us clues about this new template. It told us that people’s expectations of government (Saturn) were radically changing (Uranus); a situation that is both healthy and deeply destabilizing. Meanwhile, the status quo is holding tight to its stale old ideas; as exemplified by the Republican Party’s endless invocations of the virtues of Ronald Reagan. But Uranus is shattering the old clichés, as the transit has shattered the GOP.

The frenzied culture wars we are seeing at the moment mask a desperate yearning on the part of many to believe in the old lies. With the Super conjunction on top of the Sibley Moon, the force of unconscious Neptune (hypnosis; self-deception) is immensely strong in the USA right now.

When the planet was stationary in late May, a small event took place that spoke volumes about the mythmaking that underlies our political stagecraft. California Republicans passed a bill to get rid of a statue in the Capitol Rotunda of Thomas Starr King — a Unitarian abolitionist who was known as “the orator who saved the nation” – and replace it with one of Ronald Reagan, a mediocre actor-turned-corporate shill-turned-Teflon president.

That the right wing would choose this guy to canonize is astoundingly ironic, given the catastrophic results all over the world right now of his notorious “trickle-down economics”. And the fact that the GOP would substitute a statue of old Bonzo for that of a spiritual giant like Thomas Starr King betrays a lack of historical and moral perspective of bewildering proportions.

Since this transit cycle began, the pace of developments on Earth has been fast and furious for the world and for each of us individually; and it’s only natural to feel overwhelmed. Those who don’t shut themselves down by means of the ubiquitous escape mechanisms available cannot help but feel inundated by the intensity pulsing in the atmosphere.

This is why the Goddess invented the retrograde cycle. It’s time to review and take stock. Four planets are retrograde now: Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. We are supposed to be waxing introspective, the better to allow the meaning of current events to sink in.

To absorb the deepest levels of meaning that we can from the months ahead, we’ll need to keep our wits sharp and our hearts open.

Our guide in this is the Aquarius conjunction, which has arrived right on cue to help us to make sense of these times. Jupiter is reminding us to stay informed; Neptune and Chiron are reminding us to stay connected to our souls.

And we are not alone. Each of us is surrounded by groups and individuals who are perfectly situated to model knowledge and knowing, and to support us in our work. Brilliant young thinkers, wise elders and finger-on-the-pulse visionaries are everywhere. We just have to notice them.

We will know them by the energy that comes out of their eyes, as we know Einstein.

1 His chart features a midheaven Sun in Pisces (ruled by Neptune) and an Aquarius Jupiter opposite the planetary ruler of Aquarius (Uranus).

2 Recent writings about the conjunction include the Skywatches from February , April May , and June 2009.

3 Leadership lessons will be taught on a personal level as well as a group level. Readers should check their charts for planets occupying the first few degrees of Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn; and/or make note of the houses these degrees fall in. This will show us the parts of ourselves where we may be inspired to demonstrate initiative with family, in one-to-one relationships, or on a societal stage.

4 Some scholars say the yuga that’s now ending started in 3102 BC (very near the date of the beginning of the Mayan Calendar: around 3100 BC). The Kali Yuga also predicted unseasonable weather conditions, and the estrangement of human beings from the gods.

5 The change of US presidents has not lessened America’s quandary. Congress has backpedaled on its vow to close Guantanamo. Its prisoners have been identified by federal lawyers as being “not persons,” thus torturing them is supposedly legal. And after blasting military commissions as “an enormous failure” on the campaign trail, Obama has revived them; a move Amnesty International has called “a disastrous misstep”. The president’s national intelligence director, Adm. Dennis Blair, has declared he believes that torture works; another senior official has been accused of covering up the torture of an American nun in Guatemala; still another is an apologist for the late war criminal Pinochet.

6 Obama, who originally ‘unequivocally’ opposed that notorious $87 billion war appropriation, later supported four separate war appropriations to the tune of $300 billion. He voted against a proposal to remove most of the combat troops from Iraq by this month, and supported the GOP resolution to keep military funding flowing there. He’s now saying that up to 50,000 will be left in Iraq indefinitely.