Copyright
2004. All Rights Reserved
From late 2005 through 2007, the planets Neptune and Saturn
will form an opposition to each other.1 This particular alignment
will be the most important alignment of the latter half of this decade, informing
the cultural dynamics as we head into the more turbulent, chaotic potentials of
the next decade. This essay will aspire to illuminate the many archetypal
motifs associated with this alignment—both its problematic and constructive
possibilities.
Astrology is the study of human complexity, of the multiple
paradoxes interwoven into the fabric of our being. One of the great
contributions of astrology is its ability to wed symbolism to the various
dichotomies of the individual and collective psyche. Of all the contradictory
and clashing symbols of astrology, the pairing of Saturn and Neptune suggest
life’s greatest paradoxes. The dualisms suggested by the Saturn and Neptune
pairing are immense both in sheer profundity but also in the magnitude of the
questions they invoke. The Saturn-Neptune problem catalyzes the most sublime
artistic expressions, the most inspired religious responses, the most
disturbing and troubling philosophical enigmas. When Saturn and Neptune are
forced to confront each other, we are forced with the eternal mysteries: “Why
is there something rather than nothing? Why is this world so divorced from
goodness and truth and fraught with misery, pain, and imperfection? In what way
can we best repair the rift between our higher selves and our humanly faults?
How can we best redeem ourselves?” The paradoxes suggested by the
Saturn-Neptune combination do not give answers, only strivings, searches, and
questing.The expressions the
combination engender are as puzzling as the fundamental dualism inherent in the
symbolism: absurd yet ennobling, grim and angst-ridden yet redeeming,
nihilistic yet profoundly spiritual, nightmarish yet poetically beautiful.
We can understand the enigma of the combination by briefly
delineating the nature of the symbols. Saturn represents the concrete, the
tangible, and the sensible; it is what we see with our own eyes and what we
take at face value. Neptune is the converse. Neptune is the ethereal, the
spiritual, the unseen, and the imagined; Neptune is accessed not by the senses
but by the faculty of imagination. Saturn concerns the pragmatic necessities
and details of the day-to-day—the “here and now” details and particulars of
human life. Neptune represents that timeless, the eternal, and the boundless
infinite. Saturn concerns the defeating and limiting qualities of life, and the
responses it invokes are the actions of the world-wary pragmatist. Neptune
concerns the possibilities inherent in the imagination, transcendent, and
otherworldly and call upon the poet, the artist, and the mystic. Saturn
primarily concerns facts, figures and face value; Neptune, by contrast,
concerns the ambiguous nature of symbols—at once literal and yet participating
and connotative of something else. Saturn is the real-life condition of our
mortality and sense of difficulty, hardship, and frustration of life. Neptune
makes the problems of the condition of the astrological Saturn sublime,
that is, Neptune creates a cosmic, high ideal out of the defeating quality of
Saturn.
All religious symbols exemplify the astrological Neptune. As
religious symbols cannot be rigidly defined and allude to otherworldly
dimensions, they elucidate the fundamental characteristics of the astrological
Neptune. Perhaps the great religious symbol that explicates the Saturn-Neptune
dilemma is the symbol of the cross of Christianity. The crucifix is more than
simply a sign of a literal event in world history but a symbol that contains
within it the fundamental dualism of our nature. The cross denotes the wedding
of our spiritual selves in the world of flesh and matter, the fusing of the
boundless nature of spirit and soul into the limited world of body and material
reality. Regardless of the historical veracity of the Christ event, pain and
suffering of Christ is something that we all relate to, and therein is the
power of the Christ myth. Not only is the cross indicative of the
Saturn-Neptune complex but so to is the nature of the account of the
crucifixion. In the ninth hour of his crucifixion, Christ is believed to have
stated, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me." In the final
moments before his bodily death, Christ lapses into a loss of faith, the
anguish of his condition producing a deep sense of alienation from the power of
God. Thus, Saturn-Neptune configurations force a sense of deep and profound
spiritual alienation, a sense of overwhelming religious abandonment whereby the
human condition is analogous to being dumped into a world of irredeemable woe,
frustration, limitation, and hardship.
The Saturn-Neptune complex symbolizes the cross we
all bear collectively in our material incarnation. Unlike the simple
frustrations and gravity of our daily tasks, the Saturn-Neptune configuration
renders our simple, insignificant daily hardships into a quest for a return to
a condition of righteousness, truth, peace, and bliss. Thus, Saturn-Neptune
alignments force us to transform the relatively banal and prosaic concerns of
work and career into veritable religious quests, whereby our daily efforts are
more likened to a climbing of Jacob’s ladder.
When Saturn and Neptune form hard aspect with each other,
they must contend with each other. Although there are several possibilities in
terms of their archetypal expression—as history has shown—there is no
possibility to ignore the symbolism of one planet at the expense of the other.
When Saturn and Neptune form major collective alignments in the sky, they are
forced into disturbing cohabitation. Thus, during these times, the businessman
with only an eye toward resume bullet points and money is forced to contend
with the poet musing on the cosmic unknowns and enchanted beauty, as the mystic
and artist is compelled to apply critical rigor and definition to their
religious musings and impressionistic strokes.
The Algebra of Saturn-Neptune:
In order to understand the complex relationship of the
Saturn-Neptune pairing, we have to enter into the terrain before understanding
its more intricate expressions. We must reduce the high degree of complexity of
each archetypal symbol into its bare essentials. That is, it is necessary to
reduce the qualities of each planet into something like an algebra before
proceeding into more rich and nuanced territory.
When Saturn and Neptune form an alignment with each other,
they activate the other’s expression in a particular way. In other words, each
archetype will actualize the other planet’s core manifestations in a
particular, specific manner. To concretize this, Saturn will energize and
stimulate Neptune’s archetypal characteristics but in a specific manner and
vice versa.
The following is a short list of the manner in which Saturn
actualizes another archetype into being:
·
Renders the other planetary symbol in a problematic,
difficult way.
·
Forces one to take the other archetype seriously and
with grave importance. Creates a critical sobriety and judgment around the
other archetype.
·
Creates a quality of absence; Saturn inflects the other
archetypal energy in a negative cast.
·
Constrains but at the same time concretizes and
focalizes.
·
Strips away the vitality and energy of the other
archetypal force and renders a lack of the essential qualities of the other
archetype.
·
Injects the other archetype with a reflective
profundity.
The following is a short list of the manner in which Neptune
actualizes another archetype into being:
·
Brings out the more poetic, numinous, and higher
meanings of the other archetype.
·
Renders the other archetype as diffuse, amorphous and
lacking in solidity.
·
Floods with a high degree of the imaginal and of
subjectivity.
·
Rarefies and idealizes the other archetype; takes the
competing archetype out of the mundane and prosaic.
·
Infuses the other archetype with various ethereal
potentialities: memories, the unseen, the otherworldly, the mythic, the
timeless, and the surreal.
Now, given the manner in which each planet actualizes the
other planet into manifestation, we can treat the Saturn-Neptune complex
as a singular body:
·
Collective focus on the imaginal: The Saturn-Neptune complex turns the world’s
attention to the imaginal and artistic but in a dark, expressionistic or gothic
manner.
·
The rift between the transcendent and the earthly is
engaged: The Saturn-Neptune complex makes the split between this world and
some heavenly or transcendent ideal a matter of serious focus.
·
A sense of collective loss and morning: The
complex renders a loss of ideals. A disillusionment and disenchantment occurs
whereby there is a collective surrendering of something that was the object of
faith and hope.
·
Distortion of reality: The configuration creates
a collective confusion between what is substantive and true versus
dreamlike and lacking concreteness. Reality is rendered surreal and the
imaginal and dreamlike takes on greater substance.
·
An emphasis on dark collective subjectivity: an
inner moodiness, free-form collective anxiety, fear and foreboding, weltschmerz
of the anima mundi.
·
Deep skepticism toward socio-political structures:
A heavy and deep process whereby societies criticize typical political process.
The typical mode of political process whereby acceptance in false promises,
rhetoric, empty policies is dissolved.
·
A test and forging of our spiritual nature: A
profound engagement of authentic spirituality. Events and experiences are
enacted which test and forge a deep sense of true spiritual realization.
With a simple understanding of the Saturn-Neptune complex as
outlined above, it is now possible to delve more deeply into the potentials and
possibilities of this planetary configuration.
The Matrix, Saturn-Neptune, and Gnosticism Released in 1999, The Matrix entered popular
consciousness during the most recent hard aspect between Saturn and Neptune.
Although The Matrix expressed several planetary archetypes in an
extraordinary way, the main thematic scaffolding of the story—the predominate
storyline of the film—was highly indicative of the Saturn-Neptune gestalt.2 The film centers around a computer hacker,
Neo, and his quest to search for answers about the truth of the reality that
is presented to him. Plagued by a haunting sense that the world around him is false,
unreal, and inauthentic, Neo spends an inordinate amount of time searching for
answers that will satiate his vague yet irrepressible impression that he’s
living in a world that cannot be true. He finds answers. Through a series of successive steps, Neo wakes up to
the truth of his condition: he was living in a dream world, a nightmarish
computer simulation meant to control human beings.
The Saturn-Neptune themes in The Matrix are
all-pervasive throughout the film. In the beginning of the film, we learn that
Neo’s quest for finding truth is not the result of a cookie trail of objective
facts, but more a journey guided by impressions, the imagination, and hunches.
That is, Neo’s belief that he is living in a dream world is not the result of
tangible evidence, but more the consequence of an inner, gnawing sense. In
astrology, Neptune is symbolic of subjective moods, streams of the imagination,
impressions, and the ebb and flow of consciousness. In the case of Neo, the
archetypal Neptune as accessed through his imagination was trying to tell him
something of importance—that the world of the senses is not the true world. In
astrological terms, Saturn is indicative of the hard, solid, and tangible
world. Through the figure of Neo, we see the fundamental dichotomy and problem
of the Saturn-Neptune gestalt: the world of our subjectivity clashes with the
reality of our senses, thus, what is the truth?
Beyond creating the fundamental storyline in The Matrix
and the major dilemma for the character of Neo, the Saturn-Neptune complex is
suggested in other ways in the film. For Neo, this sense that the real world is
illusory or false is neither something he can easily dismiss, nor is it an
enigma that he superficially glosses over. This enigma drives his actions,
haunts his dreams, and preoccupies his waking consciousness. The problem, as
Neo’s mentor Morpheus suggests, is the “splinter in the mind” that drives Neo
to near madness. Here we see the deeper manifestations of the Saturn-Neptune
configuration. The difficulty of the dilemma is rendered through the extreme
paradox of Saturn and Neptune. As noted above, Saturn drives one to take
seriously the complex that it is involved within. Thus, for Neo, taking
“lightly” the dichotomy between the ideal world as it is imagined, and the
false world of the concrete is not an option—it is a life task. Similarly,
those born under major Saturn-Neptune alignments have similar concerns and
preoccupations as Neo. Like Neo, those born under Saturn-Neptune alignments
have much greater concern about the rift and split between their subjective
experiences of the world as it should be and the world as it is.
Moreover, the Saturn-Neptune complex typically drives those born under its
configuration into a deep process of disenchantment with the world.
Neo’s process of becoming “unplugged” from the artifice of his condition was as
difficult as it was courageous. Nauseating, disorienting, and maddening, Neo
learns the anguishing truth that he was indeed the manipulated product of a
dreamlike simulation. Neo receives the satisfaction of knowing that his inner
intuition—his gyroscope, if you will—was finely tuned and accurate, but the
path toward truth is not a pleasant, utopian journey in the slightest.
Besides the extraordinary special effects and ultra-violence
of the film, The Matrix’s popularity rests more on its reliance on this
timeless dilemma between the real and unreal. The subject of philosophical and
religious speculation for ages, the dichotomy between the divine, transcendent
and the inferior realm of known reality probably received its greatest
articulation in philosophy through Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” In religion,
the dilemma received one of its greatest articulations through Gnosticism. Like
many religions, Gnosticism addresses the shortcomings, evils, and suffering of
the world. However, Gnosticism gives this ageless problem an interesting
treatment. Unlike in Christianity, which, in a sense, suggests that humanity is
responsible for the suffering and anguish of its own condition, Gnosticism is
not nearly as self-condemning. Rather, Gnosticism suggests that an evil entity
has rendered the world the mistake that it is. Moreover, salvation and
redemption in Gnosticism is particularly an inner, private experience—the
truth, as accessed through secret knowledge, will set one free.
The Matrix is thoroughly infused with the ideas of
Gnosticism. Like in Gnosticism, the world of The Matrix is the result of
malevolent forces. In The Matrix, machines harvest humans for their
energy source, keeping them captive for the sake of energy they provide. Moreover, like the Gnostics of the first
millennium after Christ, the heroes of The Matrix are a sort of
underground, secret society that have found each other through following their
own inner guidance. With their reliance upon inner wisdom and their crusade of
acknowledging the truth from illusion, the early Gnostics and the rebels of The
Matrix are united around common themes, motifs that are highly reflective
of the Saturn-Neptune complex. With Saturn and Neptune alignments, Neptune
tends to create a mythic importance surrounding Saturnian themes, giving the
mundane and commonplace nature of Saturn a near-religious importance. Thus, for
Gnosticism and The Matrix, the “bad” of the world (and the Saturnian
complex of our condition)—our imperfection, our inauthenticity, our
immortality, and our pain—is made a mythic structure to overcome and redeem in
some fashion.
Collective Mourning and The Loss of the Dream
During Saturn-Neptune alignments, instances of loss
and tragedy manifest that compel humanity to focus on the rift between
the ideal and the reality of our situation. Like in the preceding exploration
of The Matrix and Gnosticism, during collective Neptune and Saturn
alignments, the issue of the division between our heavenly aspirations and the
downfall of our human condition become front and central issues. However,
unlike for the heroes of The Matrix and the early Gnostics, this
division between the ideal and the real is not made transparent through the
urging of inner knowledge but through specific circumstances that engage loss,
tragedy, and their resultant mourning.
Saturn symbolizes not only impediments toward the
manifestation of another archetype but Saturn also creates a sense of endings,
terminations, and conclusions relative to the symbolism of the contrasting
planetary archetype. When discussing expressions of the Saturn-Neptune gestalt,
one has to acknowledge that events and experiences transpire that give a sense
of endings around Neptune’s core and fundamental symbolism. Thus, with Saturn
and Neptune, we often need to witness the loss of a dream, the surrender of
some collective ideal.
To illuminate this process we can demonstrate its
development through American history. In twentieth century American history,
the two presidents who arguably represented collective ideals, aspirations, and
inspirations more than any other leaders were Franklin Roosevelt and John F.
Kennedy. America relied upon Roosevelt’s unwavering faith during two of
America’s darkest hours, the Great Depression and World War Two. More than his
policies and certainly greater than his ability to critically comprehend the
economic situation at hand, Roosevelt’s conviction that the United States could
endure a dark hour of economic depression was more of a revitalizing factor
than his strategies or programs. In a similar fashion to Roosevelt’s legacy,
John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier was as important for its near-spiritual
confidence and assurance it instilled in the American people as its actual
realization of specific, concrete agendas.
Interestingly, both John Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt were
born under Saturn-Neptune conjunctions (Roosevelt was born under the
conjunction of 1882 and Kennedy under the subsequent conjunction of 1917) and
both died under Saturn square Neptune alignments. Both presidents’ passing were
more than the death of individual presidents, but their demise was symbolic of
an end to an era of optimism and hope in the evolution of United States’
history. The death of FDR represented the end of an era of progressive idealism
that would give way to an age of strained international relations characterized
by McCarthyism and the beginning of the Cold War. Kennedy’s assassination
symbolized the end of Camelot, the closest analogue America would enjoy of
royalty. Kennedy’s America was a shimmering, bright, and ideal symbol of true
change and advancement. The extinguishment of the brief candle that was
Kennedy’s regime signaled the end of America’s brief romantic flirtation with a
regal sovereign.
In both presidents’ legacy and life, we see the
possibilities of the Saturn-Neptune complex enacted. In their own personal
lives, Kennedy and Roosevelt faced what for lack of a better term might be
called spiritual trial, or a crisis of faith. Roosevelt’s crippling polio (or
what many contemporary researchers are now calling Guillain-Barre syndrome),
contracted at the early age of 39, did not deter the future president but
created a resiliency and moral fiber that would be needed to assist America in
a time of scarcity and turmoil. John F. Kennedy also suffered from early
physical setbacks; jaundice, osteoporosis, and colitis beset the president at a young age. It can be
assumed in both cases that the early testing and limiting they incurred
encouraged both men to develop a greater-than-usual fortitude and strength in
difficult personal situations. Thus, the physical challenges forged a faith in
darkness that allowed them the ability to become resiliant to collective
difficulties as president.
But we can also
see the Saturn-Neptune complex manifest in the collective response to their
deaths. As so much faith and hope had been invested in the ideals these men
symbolized, their demise meant the ending of major dreams and aspirations of
the American people. Just as these presidents were challenged by setbacks in
their early life, so too were the American people called to struggle with
significant deterrents to their ideals and hopes. The deaths of FDR and Kennedy
were times that called upon America to strengthen their resolve in faith
through Saturn’s most notorioius experiential quality—lack.
Saturn and Neptune:
Romanticism and Existentialism as Bipolar Responses
At first glance, philosophical existentialism and
Romanticism have very little in common. Upon superficial examination, what
unites these two attitudes is a heavy emphasis upon subjective and interior states of mind and an
assumption that truth cannot be found in dry, analytical, or objective facts
but in the examination of the human condition. Beyond these core similarities,
it would appear that these approaches to life are completely dissimilar.
However, from an astrological standpoint, we can treat these differing
positions as being different stances to the Saturn-Neptune dilemma.
Romanticism flourished on both sides of the Atlantic
in the nineteenth century partially in reaction to the rise of science and the
Enlightenment but also as stance and attitude in its own right. Characterized
by heightened sensitivity to inspiration, the ineffable, and emotion,
Romanticism was both a lifestyle and an approach to life as it was a definitive
movement in the arts and history of thought.
For the Romantic, the soul’s condition was valued over and above the
growing reliance upon objective certainty, contemplation on transcendent
meaning took precedence over pragmatic knowledge, and the translation of one’s
feeling response into inspired thought and art was the greatest possible
achievement.
We can see in Romanticism one way of expressing and
managing the eternal dilemma of the Saturn-Neptune equation. As a core
principle, the Saturn-Neptune gestalt makes the divide between some
transcendent other and the mundane and commonplace that which needs to be
attended to in a serious and significant fashion. The Romantic reaction to this
predicament is an to attempt to express and harness this divide and all of its
concomitant challenges through some form of heightened, sublimated awareness,
action or achievement: poetic melancholy, exquisitely sentimental music,
serious meditation on the profundity of meaning in life, inspired and
revelatory expression of the divine.
We can witness the Romantic reaction and this expression
to the Saturn-Neptune combination not only in Romanticism proper but in various
other distinct artistic movements and periods: the brooding sense of foreboding
in the landscapes of Mannerism, the exaggerated and distorted sense of the
surreal and dystopic in German Expressionism, the haunting disquietude in the
Gothic novel, and the druggy anxiety and tension in the contemporary music
genres of “Illbient” and “Trip Hop” (with Massive Attack, Portishead, and DJ
Shadow as being prime exemplars). Saturn,
in the Romantic equation, makes the attempt at artistic recovery of the
transcendent serious, single-minded, heavy, and darkly morose. Neptune’s
addition in the combination is quite obvious to elucidate: the archetype brings
in the sense of the enchanted, the sublime, the mystical, the imaginative and
otherworldly. The combination, although difficult, gives definition to what we
most often call gorgeous and beautiful—the meeting place of the utterly sublime
and the painful lack thereof.
Existentialism, upon cursory appraisal, appears to
have nothing to do with the transcendent, spiritual, or otherworldly. With its
assumption that only the loneliness and alienation of existence can be the
truth of the human condition, existentialism appears to suggest that any sense
of spiritual salvation, redemption, and transcendent truth is but a mere
palliative in a cruel, harsh, tragic and often absurd world. Although it is
true that the brutal, bare facts of the nakedness and vulnerability of the
human condition are emphasized in existentialism, the philosophical position
still stands in dialectical tension with spiritual, metaphysical, and
transcendent factors. That is, existentialism derives its strength as a
critique from the negation of the spiritual and transcendent.
Existentialism both negates and subsumes the spiritual and transcendent; in
astrological language, Saturn is the factor that denies the Neptunian sense of
the imaginal and ideal, but Neptune also is included within the Saturnian. That
is to say, Neptune gives existentialism its powerful emphasis on dark feeling
and subjective factors. Neptune gives the alienation and suffering of the human
condition in existentialism its sense of almost mythological importance. As the
writer Camus eloquently concludes, there is sacredness in absurdity.
Unlike the message of the popular The Power of
Now, with its emphasis on happiness and contentment while remaining in the
here and now, existentialism’s core sentiment maybe more accurately stated in
the nausea of the now—the sense of life as being a cruel penitentiary
with the only certainty being an entropic increase in despair, the tragic,
dread, and suffering. The redemptive quality of existentialism, however, can be
seen in its adherents’ noble efforts to lead a life of authenticity despite
life’s ever-increasing sense of the absurd and tragic. In the language of The
Matrix, when faced with the red and blue pill, the existentialist will
unhesitatingly choose the red pill, the pathway to disenchantment and truth. And
like for The Matrix’s Neo, the truth may set him free but the truth is
not pretty. Neo finds the truth of his condition is the “desert of the real”—
that his reality is a barren, desolate, ugly situation, but it is authentic. In
the existentialists’ valorous attempts at stripping bear illusion from reality,
we see yet another facet of how Saturn works on Neptune. Although Neptune may
symbolize higher truths and possibilities, the planet in astrology also
suggests illusion—the veils of comforting fog that keep us from feeling pain
and the sting of truth. As Saturn enervates and strips as an archetypal
influence, it negates the soothing delusional enchantments and illusions of
Neptune, creating a dark, dried up wasteland out of which was once a plentiful oasis,
albeit an artificial and non-nourishing one.
Perhaps the great existential figure was Antonius
Bloch, Ingmar Bergman’s knight errant in the masterpiece, The Seventh Seal.
Here we see the dignified attempt at living with the Saturn-Neptune condition in
an all too human fashion. In Bloch, we observe the man who is caught in a
vicious chess game of paradoxes and imponderables and who has no option but to
play out the pieces of his circumstance. Neither being able to rid himself of
the spiritual nor able to eliminate the tragic despair of life around him,
Bloch can only proceed in a state of angst-ridden dialectal tension. As Bloch
confesses, “Why cannot I kill the god within me? Why does he go on living in a
painful, humiliating way? I want to tear him out of my heart, but he remains a
mocking reality.” Bloch’s sentiment perfectly captures the existential “no
exit” of the Saturn-Neptune dilemma. No answers are found, no escape is
permitted, but Bloch is, in a sense, tragically redeemed by the living of a decent
life given the absurdity of it all.
Saturn-Pluto versus Saturn-Neptune:
“Existential Heavyweights”
The Saturn-Pluto and Saturn-Neptune
configurations share much in common, but it is necessary to delineate some of
the fundamental differences between the two pairings. Both combinations are
similar in their expression of profundity, heaviness, seriousness, and drama.
Times that are informed by major Saturn-Pluto and Saturn-Neptune alignments
engage the great conflicts, struggles, and dilemmas of evolution, challenging
and testing the collective spirit to rise to new levels of strength, fortitude,
and rigor. Like a shadow that is cast over the world, Saturn-Neptune and
Saturn-Pluto alignments plunge the collective into times informed by scarcity,
lack of light, and major obstacles toward fulfillment. Similarly, those who are
born with major Saturn-Pluto or Saturn-Neptune alignments have to engage
fundamental, profound dramas of the collective in a personalized way. Both
Saturn-Pluto and Saturn-Neptune aspects put the “super” in “superego.” Thus,
for individuals with these aspects, there can be both the need to aspire to
situations and challenges greater than typical human dilemmas, but also the
need to contend with energy that can be overly oppressive, too demanding, and
too punitive in scope.
Saturn-Pluto alignments typically
correspond to times when profound darkness or what we might call “evil” arises
in the world—the great enfoldment of the battle between light and dark—two
sides of the Saturn-Pluto equation. Thus, “evil” (and I mean this more as a
description than anything necessarily ontologically real) forces an equal and
opposite reaction of strength, moral fortitude, and superior righteousness.
During Saturn-Pluto alignments, good does not result from the rise of evil, but
more accurately, they both constellate each other in a complex Gordian knot of
epic proportions.
During Saturn-Neptune alignments, as
alluded to above, feelings of spiritual alienation, abandonment, and judgment
force a strengthening of a need to overcome the rift between the transcendent
and the reality of our world. Again, as in the Saturn-Pluto constellation, this
sense of spiritual malaise or loss of the ideal does not precede its reaction
to it, rather, they create each other out of a necessary dialectical tension.
Whereas Saturn-Pluto alignments pack a
powerful, forceful dilemma of good versus evil, the manifestations of
Saturn-Neptune alignments imperceptibly descend upon reality like a dark,
estranging fog. Whereas Saturn-Pluto alignments involve the mass involvement of
political power structures in either a tense standoff or destructive conflicts,
Saturn-Neptune alignments create a disturbance in the interiors of the
collective psyche, a malaise of disquietude and disenchantment.
Saturn-Pluto and Saturn-Neptune
alignments have their religious side. Characteristics of these alignments can
be seen in the critical, punitive side of the God in monotheistic religions.
Saturn-Pluto combinations compel the manifestation of (and I’m employing these
terms in a non-evaluative way) licentiousness, decadence, moral corruptibility,
and the demonic. Thus, the reaction to and repression of these phenomena
receive a power and force from the arrival and energy of the instinctual, the
aggressive, and the wicked. This can be observed in the puritanical reaction of
both Catholicism and Christianity to what for lack of a better descriptor might
be packaged under the umbrella term of “original sin.” Thus, the guilt, shame,
criticality, neurosis, and chastisement of the instinctual realm of Pluto come
from the overemphasis and overpowering of the Saturnine function. Here we see
the fire and brimstone attacks of monotheistic religions—as powerful and
vitriolic as they can be—coming from the super-heightened force placed upon the
archetypal Saturn.
Saturn-Neptune alignments also manifest
in the critical, chastising side of the monotheistic conception of God, but in
an altogether different quality than the Saturn-Pluto complex. The Saturn-Neptune
religious response is seen in the world-renouncing, cloistered ascetic—a sort
of anemic, self-flagellating character that is aimed at purifying the bodily
and worldly so as to arrive at a state of essence. Whereas the Saturn-Pluto
judgmental reaction is involved with and informed by the bodily, the
instinctual, and the desire-nature, the Saturn-Neptune reaction is engaged
through dealing with the supersensible, the unseen, and the imaginal. Thus, in
the Saturn-Neptune complex, we can see that one strategy to overcome the
enormous divide between the heavenly and the worldly is a noble, valiant
attempt aimed at trying to eliminate the worldly altogether—an attempt that is
neither successful nor particularly healthy.
The Beauty and Pitfalls of “Our Better Angels”
Lincoln, born with a Saturn-Neptune conjunction, called for
a divided nation to be in contact with its “better angels.” Perhaps no phrase
quite captures the complexity and nuance of the Saturn-Neptune equation than
Lincoln’s pronouncement. Ironically, although the Saturn-Neptune complex is
notorious for its tragic and bitter sense of psycho-spiritual imprisonment, it
is a gateway and invitation toward greatness. Saturn-Neptune footprints can be
seen in the most beautiful motifs in music, the most inspired passages of
poetry, the most sublime brush strokes, and the most gorgeous shots in film.
And yet. And yet, the Saturn-Neptune complex is simply a
complex among many, a dimension of human experience that affords a wealth of
possibilities. However, due to its paradoxes, it is easy to get trapped in its
energy. Not unlike a dog chasing its tail, a person swept away in this complex
may be overwhelmed by the energy. Perhaps the best pathway in dealing with
Saturn-Neptune conundrums and paradoxes is not through apathetic detachment but
a sort of suspension that balances engagement with observance. Again, borrowing
from The Matrix, when dealing with the Saturn-Neptune complex, it is
perhaps best to “go down the rabbit hole” and to see the “desert of the real”
for what it truly is, but making this life theme one’s sole preoccupation
destroys the potentials and possibilities of other aspects of life.
(1) Given an
approximate 15 degree orb of influence
(2) Jeffrey
Kishner’s essay, “The Matrix as Birth Process” addresses other
archetypes as seen in The Matrix.
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