Morality and Imagination

It’s easy to lose our bearings, with outrageous news stories coming at us hourly, as if shot from a gun. Let’s take a moment to regain our astrological balance.

We’re in a grey area right now, between the Age of Pisces, now dying, and the Age of Aquarius, famously dawning. Against this backdrop, the Capricorn stellium of 2020 is around the corner.

As we careen towards that great drama, the global soul is struggling to integrate the big transit of 2019: the square between Jupiter (morality) and Neptune (imagination), now separating.

Greta Thunberg is the anti-Trump… She sees the universe as moral; he believes that it is rotten. She believes in the concepts of right and wrong, and he is a nihilist. – Journalist Masha Gessen

Belief and Faith

Jupiter is the part of us that wants to believe in something, to live in integrity.

Neptune, too, is idealistic, but not ideological. It has a vague sense that once, somewhere, somehow, things were better, purer, more perfect: a vision that derives not from reason but from spiritual intuition.

The square between these two planets, although destabilizing, is a lesson in moral maturity. Each of us, in our own way, has been forced to eke out a worldview (Sagittarius) universal enough, cosmic enough (Pisces) to do justice to the immensity of what we know to be happening.

And we do all know. Regardless of how well or poorly informed each of us is about the specifics, we all know what is happening to the Earth — no less than the tens of thousands of other endangered species know. We know it down to the water of our cells.

2019 has been about taking this existential knowledge (Neptune) and formulating it into an ethical outlook (Jupiter). We’ve been developing our own personal religion, one that fits these 21^st-Century conditions.

This is all wrong. – Greta Thunberg

Grief and vision

The overwhelming nature of our experience right now is no accident: the cosmos is using overwhelm as a teaching device.

Neptune, deeply emotional, has been flooding into the otherwise mental realm of Jupiter. The transit creates a whole body/ mind/ spirit experience. Grief about the way things are has been swirling around in a poignant mix with visions about what could be. Angst and hope, both, have been escalating.

In every other headline, we see the dark side of Neptune (lying, paranoia, escapism, mob mentality), as well as the dark side of Jupiter (righteousness and arrogance, religious or tribal).

But Neptune also expresses as imagination and vision, which Jupiter, at its best, can translate into conscious goals.

The only possible thing to do is to go in an imaginative direction. Imagination at scale is our only recourse. — Eco-engineer Jonathan Ledgard

What kind of imagination would be required to tackle ecological catastrophe? For a start, the kind young people have.

On-the-spectrum folks are known for their undistractability. A useful feature, in the context of a global crisis up against mass denial.

The kind of imagination that Greta Thunberg displayed when, in response to being called “mentally ill” by rightwing pundits, she described her Asperger’s with a winking fantasy reference. She said it was her superpower.

How Dare We?

The sign Sagittarius has enflamed Jupiter (right and wrong), reminding us how powerful righteous anger can be, when informed by consciousness.

Thunberg’s speech at the U.N. was alive with this fire. Her voice was a mixture of raw despair, anger and disgust. She was a walking, talking embodiment of the Furies, devas of retributive justice.

The attacks [on Thunberg] reveal the hollowness — intellectual and moral — of the climate-denying right. — Bill McKibben

Every time Greta speaks, she makes the case against hypocrisy (Gessen).

Reclaiming morality

For all of us, Neptune is liberating the concept of morality, widening its meaning to encompass this planetary emergency.

For several decades now, in the American media the term “moral” has been monopolized by rightwing Christians, squeezed into a ridiculously narrow, politicized context. We are now seeing it applied in a truer, broader, more imaginative sense.

This year’s transit has compelled us to know what the Earth is going through – and to know it on a couple of different levels at once: to be awash in its magnitude (Neptune) and to arrive at a moral framework for understanding it (Jupiter).

By insisting on acting as if [the world is moral, we are] willing a better future into being. — Masha Gessen

Jupiter is a lynch pin of Thunberg’s chart. The transiting square has been provoking her natal Pluto (rooting out rot) all year.