2025 / 2026 – The Cycle of Reckoning

In this essay, I analyze the Saturn-Neptune conjunction within the context of critical historical alignments and planetary crossings of the Aries Point as well as notable symbolic features of the cycle in western history. I also consider this alignment within the complexity of US imperialism and the current state of the US domestic crises. I discuss the US involvement in the genocide in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, hypercaptialism, cultural narcissism, and reflect on the symbolic meaning of the 2024 election heading into the exactitude of Saturn-Neptune near the US Sibly Imum Coeli (IC). I interpret this cycle as a critical moment of national disillusionment, awakening, examination, and reimagining of the American mythos prompted by challenging domestic issues and international crises.

I have a downloadable PDF version of this essay here.

Introduction

Saturn and Neptune are getting close to their rare conjunction on a significant degree of the tropical zodiac known as the Aries Point (AP). The AP is technically the spring equinox where the Sun’s arrival every year in the northern hemisphere initiates the start of spring. Saturn and Neptune will make their exact alignment in February 2026, but they will come very close in 2025. Their conjunctions occur roughly every 35 years, but the occurrence on the AP is a rare astrological event that symbolically reflects an important collective transition and turning point, especially for the United States (US) due to the Saturn-Neptune alignment’s contacts to angles and planetary positions in the U.S. Sibly horoscope.

As I focused on in my previous essay on this topic, astrologer and historian Richard Tarnas described the Saturn-Neptune cycle as similar to that of the Saturn-Pluto cycle (that we have recently emerged from due to its conjunction that peaked in early 2020). According to Tarnas, there is often a similar “darkening of the collective consciousness” and “an unmistakable Saturnian atmosphere” during peaks of this cycle (most notably during the conjunctions, squares, and oppositions).[1] However, it is infused with the symbolism of Neptune rather than Pluto. My previous essay linked above explores the Saturn and Neptune archetypes in more depth. As Tarnas argued, disillusioning, disenchanting, and sometimes tragic historical events cluster around these periods in addition to moments in which issues around spiritual faith and morality are deeply examined.[2]

In contrast to Tarnas, mundane astrologer André Barbault (1921-2019) argued that the Saturn-Neptune cycle correlated with political insurrections related to communistic and socialist movements in the 19th and 20th centuries (and populist uprisings more broadly). In my research, Tarnas and Barbault tracked differing but relevant themes related to the Saturn-Neptune cycle. Barbault also made a prediction for the 2026 Saturn-Neptune conjunction that I will unpack at the end of this essay.

From my previous analysis of this cycle and Tarnas’ research on the Saturn-Neptune cycle, it appears we are heading into a challenging collective period, at least throughout the duration of this cycle’s peak into 2027. However, I want to discuss what is known as the “Cyclic Index” as it relates to periods of global stability and instability.

The Cyclic Index

The Cyclic Index was developed and expanded upon by French astrologers in the mid-twentieth century following the failure of European astrologers to foresee and predict the outbreak of World War I. In the mid-1940s, French astrologer Henri-Joseph Gouchon (1898-1978) developed a method for determining periods of international crisis. He did this by taking pairs of the five outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto) and measuring the total sum of their angular separations for each year starting from the spring equinox (in the northern hemisphere). He plotted this data on a graph to track decades of time. Low points on the graph seem to correlate with periods of international crisis usually due to the outbreak of war, disease, or economic recession

Astrologer Charles Harvey (1940-2000) argued that what Gouchon discovered was a means of astrologically measuring Plato’s Great Year. Harvey’s articulation of this view is a good description of what the graph appears to reveal. According to Harvey,

“Here was a direct means of assessing how close the planets are at any given time to their primordial conjunction, or minimum of elongation, a time….which Plato related to confusion, chaos, death, and dissolution; or by contrast to what extent the planets are moving away from conjunction, initiating a period of optimism, growth and reconstruction.”[3]

According to Harvey, the clustering of the outer planets at low points in the Cyclic Index reveal challenging and entropic collective periods while the higher points, alongside a dissipation of those alignments, show more positive and constructive periods. This observation does track alongside the Cyclic Index, though I would connect its relation to Plato’s Great Year as more synchronistic rather than literal. Plato did not specifically give details of how The Great Year technically operated and there have been several speculations about what it referred to. However, the general idea that Plato asserts in Timaeus was that “time really is the wanderings of these bodies.”[4] According to Plato, the flow of time and history was deeply linked to the movements of the planetary bodies.

The alignments of the outer planets in the zodiac during these low points in the Cyclic Index and thus their relation to tumultuous historical periods touches on a main feature of the Platonic worldview. It is interesting to note that the periodic conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn and their cyclic alignments through the triplicities of the zodiac were perceived as a nearly thousand-year cycle by Medieval Persian astrologers who likely drew upon this ancient concept and aligned it with Judaic and Islamic ideology and apocalypticism. Jupiter and Saturn were after all the outermost planets with the longest cycles known until the 18th century.

Gouchon’s graph was discovered by Barbault around 1965 and he gave it the name now in use. It is sometimes referred to as the Barbault graph. Barbault used the Cyclic Index alongside his theoretical methodology he referred to as “cyclical cosmology.” It was a key factor in many of his broadly accurate predictions such as his speculations for 2020 in which he alluded to concerns of a pandemic (among other possibilities) as well the transfer of world power from the US to China (if not by the 2020-2023 period, then he argued by the 2032 Saturn-Uranus conjunction). This decline in American imperialist hegemony was also interestingly speculated around a similar timeframe by academic historians studying contemporary geopolitical trends such as Alfred McCoy which I will discuss briefly at the end of this essay. Of the 2020-2023 conjunctions, Barbault warned that it,

“….promises to be like a new constellation of general imbalance in society. Exactly what will happen is uncertain but the risk is generalized chaos.”

Alongside the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic and the accompanying authoritarianism and social division, there were other destabilizing events such as Brexit (the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union) and the Black Lives Matter protests and riots in the US (that broke out in national cities in response to the publicized death of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis). There was also the still largely unexplained and unprecedented rise in excess mortality that occurred globally between 2020-2022, deaths that were not entirely due to acute COVID-19 infections. Excess mortality is the percentage of deaths within a population that occur beyond what is expected each year. This data is collected by health and life insurance companies as well as various world governments. However, research conducted by Swiss Re Institute reveals that excess mortality has persisted ever since the pandemic and is projected to continue for some time, potentially for another decade.

The years 2020-2022 corresponded with an extremely low point in the Cyclic Index, lower even than what correlated with end of World War II in the mid-1940s. According to the Cyclic Index, the world is moving upward out of this low point but will not return to a higher, more stable and constructive period until around 2028, in which there is another drop from 2030-2039 (though it is far more stable than the 2020-2022 period). The cyclic index suggests that the Saturn-Neptune alignment is a transition into a trend of more international stability and suggests this alignment will not be as internationally challenging as the 2020-2023 period of Saturn-Jupiter-Pluto.

However, the Saturn-Neptune alignment still peaks at a low point relative to previous years, lower than the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis. Global destabilizing events are still possible. Also, it is important to note that the Cyclic Index appears to reveal periods of international stability and instability more broadly and thus, difficult periods are possible for more specific regions of the world in relation to the Saturn-Neptune conjunction. Since Saturn and Neptune make challenging aspects to the US Sibly chart, this may be a hard time for the US in many ways, even if its challenges are not as exclusively connected with more international trends and crises like the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic was.

Astrologer Alexander Kolesnikov provides an interactive Gouchon/Barbault graph (as well as Ganeau graphs that he discussed in his article providing more background on the graphs here). These graphs provide more contextual insight when analyzed alongside major world transit alignments.

Pushing Boundaries: The Aries Point

The last conjunction of Saturn-Neptune occurred in 1989 in early tropical Capricorn, alongside the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the USSR, most prominently memorialized by the fall of the Berlin Wall. Several planets, including Neptune and Uranus, were crossing the AP in the mid to late-1980s. Though that Saturn-Neptune alignment did not exact in aspect to the AP, both planets stimulated it throughout the late 1980s before their conjunction. However, Uranus was crossing the AP axis and completing an opposition with Jupiter.

What makes the conjunction of Saturn-Neptune in 2026 more significant is that it exacts on the AP at 00 degrees of tropical Aries and occurs at a low point within the Cyclic Index (though, as discussed, the graph suggests this alignment carries us out and into more global stability). As mentioned, the AP is the vernal equinox in the northern hemisphere, where the Sun’s crossing correlates with the shift to spring (in northern latitudes) and autumn (in southern latitudes). It has acquired significance in modern astrology through the influence of Uranian astrology of the 1930s and 40s.

In natal horoscopes, the AP has been perceived as a point of contact between the individual and the larger social world. In some instances, astrologers such as Robert Hand and Noel Tyl referred to it as a potential indicator of fame in a personal horoscope[5]. Kathy Rose argued that the AP carried the symbolism of bringing about a culmination or blossoming of something into visibility or a broader view. Astrologer and journalist Eric Francis argued that the AP reminds us that “the personal is political,” and that AP events have widespread global and political consequences that seep into all of our lives.

In my research about the AP on both a mundane and personal level, I have extrapolated the symbolism of “boundary-pushing.” Outer planet alignments and crossings of the AP appear to correlate with the emergence of profound boundary-pushing cultural and political movements and technological and scientific breakthroughs, some “good” and others “bad,” but also many with a mix of nuance contingent on who or what they impact. After crossing these boundaries, there seems to be no going back for civilization.

Some examples include the discovery of nuclear fission, the development of the atomic bomb and nuclear energy, the evolution of computing technology, the internet, Artificial Intelligence (AI), rocket technology, and space travel. Boundary-pushing cultural movements like the many late 1960s civil rights battles, the LSD-fueled counter-cultural revolution, and even the Moon landing via Apollo 11 that correlated with major alignments opposing the AP are other notable examples.

The AP is conceived as an axis involving the first (usually two) degrees of cardinal signs and the last degrees of mutable signs [Figure 4]. In the tropical zodiac, this would include the transitional degrees from Pisces-Aries, Gemini-Cancer, Virgo-Libra, and Sagittarius-Capricorn. In my research, I have found that the AP appears relevant, at least in terms of mundane significance, within a ten-degree range, a window between 25 mutable and 5 cardinal.

The political and ideological shift that transitioned the Western world out of the Middle Ages and into the Enlightenment has symbolic connections to the AP as well. A Jupiter-Saturn conjunction crossed the AP in 1643 at the start of the English Civil War [Figure 7]. Astrologer William Lilly depicted this conjunction (in hindsight) in the frontispiece engraving of his most prolific work, Christian Astrology, published in 1687 [Figures 5 & 6].

 Following the exactitude of the 1643 Jupiter-Saturn conjunction, and over two decades before the publication of Christian Astrology, Lilly published a pamphlet in 1644 titled England’s Prophetical Merlin that made several predictions regarding the alignment and its implications for the then-current monarchical line, specifically speculating about its ultimate subversion.[6] Lilly, however, was most interested in the conjunction’s exactitude in tropical Pisces due to the belief amongst Medieval astrologers that Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions in Pisces correlated with events like the “Great Flood” or the births of Christ and Mohammad.[7] Lilly also appears to have perceived it as an apocalyptic omen reflective of the 17th century Chrisitan worldview.

The English Civil War was a major turning point in the Western political landscape (that would have consequences for much of the world). England was then a rising imperial power, but the standard mode of “divine right” of kingship (aka absolutism) was being actively challenged. The boundary of absolute monarchical power that persisted throughout Medieval Europe was getting pushback in the form of a series of conflicts and events that led to the beheading of King Charles I and the temporary suspension of the monarchy. The monarchy was later restored with Charles II but modified as a constitutional monarchy. This was the beginning of a turn, both ideologically and politically, toward democracy and the secular state in the West that would culminate in the French and American Revolutionary Wars.

The American Revolution began under the building conjunction of Saturn and Neptune (and Jupiter-Uranus) on April 19, 1775 with the battles of Lexington and Concord. The revolution would officially end with the next Jupiter-Saturn conjunction that crossed the AP axis (from Sagittarius to Capricorn) in 1782 alongside the lengthy negotiations that resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Paris of 1783, the formal agreement between the English colonies and British monarch that America could consider itself a sovereign country. There is more to these Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions, such as their grand mutations both at the start of the English Civil War and the end of the American Revolution (their shift from one triplicity, or element, to the next and the end of one 260-year cycle in a particular zodiacal element and the start of another).

There has not been a Saturn-Neptune conjunction exactly on the AP, at 00 degrees of Aries, in the past two thousand years. The closest occurred in the 6th and 9th centuries. In 555 CE, exacting at nearly 7 degrees of Aries but moving in orb across the AP between 554 and 555, a Saturn-Neptune conjunction correlated with the end of the Gothic War. 555 CE was the aftermath of the death, devastation, and financial ruin the war wrought on Italy, and it was ultimately a failed attempt by Emperor Justinian I (482-565 CE) to reinstate the Roman Empire’s territorial dominance (after its collapse in 476 CE alongside a Saturn-Pluto conjunction). Like a theme that Tarnas noted in relation to Saturn-Neptune cycles, the ultimate result of the Gothic War was a “death of a dream” in restoring the Roman Empire to its former glory.

The next closest Saturn-Neptune AP conjunction occurred in 878 CE in late Pisces. It correlated in Europe with the death of Charles the Bald (823-877 CE) in 877, one of several fraternal, monarchical rulers of the Carolingian Empire. Charles the Bald’s death led to the further fragmentation of the Empire, paving the way for the feudal era in Western Europe, and it set the foundation for what would become the modern states of Germany, France, and Italy. The Carolingian Empire gradually dissolved over the ensuing decade. Additionally, the Battle of Edington that year was a significant defeat and setback for the Vikings and their attempts to dominate England, and it was pivotal to England’s eventual unification under the ideological dominance of Christianity.

In both examples, we see major shifts and attempted shifts in the dynamic of power, rooted in a grand vision or ideological orientation. In true AP fashion, as reflective of the Aries archetype, there is a conflict between competing visions, battles over which reality will have supremacy. In the Battle of Edington example, the Viking worldview was the antithesis of the Christian-backed monarchs they sought to usurp with their pagan and pantheistic theology.

This may be another feature unique to Saturn-Neptune AP alignments, a critical turning point within a conflict over a vision of reality between factions vying for power. The Danish King, Guthrum (c. 835-890 CE), who led the Viking army, was forced to surrender and was eventually baptized as part of a peace agreement. The Anglo-Saxon victory, led by Alfred the Great (c. 847-899 CE), was also pivotal in the eventual acculturation of the Vikings via Christianization.

The last most recent Saturn-Neptune quadrature axial alignment that hit the AP axis was the square of the mid-1940s. This was the height of World War II, the race to produce the first atomic bombs, the concentration camps in Europe, and the horrific genocide of millions of Jews and other targeted minority groups who conflicted with the Nazi’s totalitarian and supremacist vision for the world. The Nazi pursuit of world domination was, like any such puritanical pursuit, a highly ideological one based on conceptions of a supposed superior human race that was perceived more fit to steer the world toward a technological utopia.

That vision ended, at least symbolically, alongside the horrific detonation of the first atomic weapons on a human population in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August of 1945 as the US’s retaliation against the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Saturn was moving out of its square with Neptune, but Neptune was joined in opposition to the AP by Chiron and Jupiter [Figure 13]. World War II was a significant turning point in the balance of world power, and it too involved the dramatic death and dissolution of a dream.

Reality Shifts and Checks

In addition to the “death of a dream,” other themes that Tarnas noted in relation to the Saturn-Neptune cycle include “collective disillusionment,” “loss of faith,” or the collective processing of the harsh truth or tragic reality, reflecting the “darkening of the collective consciousness” that he argued was like that of Saturn-Pluto cycles. We can see many examples of this. Yet, it also depends on which side you’re perceiving the situation. The Battle of Edington was defeating for the Vikings but not the Anglo-Saxons. The USSR’s collapse was not as disillusioning for those who opposed the interests of the Soviet Union. Soviet leaders, and the failed vision of a new communist utopia were the most tarnished. Gay and lesbian minorities and those blacklisted by the US government during the McCarthy era suffered far more than most other Americans during the second Red Scare paranoia that overtook the country in the 1950s alongside a Saturn-Neptune conjunction (that I discuss in more detail in my 2023 article here).

Many democratic voters in 2016 were grief-stricken and disillusioned by Donald Trump’s presidential win, while his supporters were enthusiastic about the perceived realization of the “Make America Great Again” ideal. There was a hyperbolic perception that overtook both Trump supporters and detractors, from the extreme caricature of Trump as a Russian-backed fascist dictator (comparable to Adolf Hitler) to the messianic political hero that would save America from the clutches of the deep state. Following the first attempted assassination of Trump in June 2024, many of his Christian supporters took to social media to depict Trump’s survival as a miraculous intervention from God, despite injuries inflicted on other rally attendees and even the death of a man shielding his family from bullets. As I also discussed in my previous article, Tarnas noted extreme cultural divides that flare up alongside Saturn-Neptune cycles, and this was very much a feature of the 2016 campaign and appears to have emerged yet again leading up to the 2024 presidential race.

Collective paranoia and moral panic are also correlates of the Saturn-Neptune cycle that I have observed in my research. The Salem Witch Trials, the puritanical fervor and paranoia that overtook the North American colonies in the early 1690s, peaked under a Saturn-Neptune square. Prior to the McCarthy era, the first American Red Scare occurred under the Saturn-Neptune conjunction alongside the Russian Revolution and the first wave of widespread paranoia within the United States that communists were attempting to infiltrate and overthrow the nation.

The McMartin preschool trials from January 1987 through July 1990 culminated alongside the previous Saturn-Neptune conjunction in Capricorn. Accusations that children attending McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California were involved in satanic ritual abuse spawned a moral panic throughout the US about a ring of satanists, witches, and pedophiles operating through a network of underground tunnels. The trial’s final verdict that no evidence existed to support the claims disillusioned many who had come to believe in the grand conspiracy ignited with the initial accusations in 1983.

Saturn-Neptune cycles often do correlate with public revelations related to concealed corruption and abuse of power, shattering an illusory façade and altering the public’s perception and trust. Tarnas discussed this correlation in relation to incidents in which negative pharmaceutical data was hidden and released such as with the Vioxx scandal (I discuss this theme at some length in my previous essay). As Tarnas described it, there can be the surfacing of “new data that disclose a dark reality hidden behind a carefully manipulated image….”[8] The #MeToo movement was started in 2006 under a Saturn-Neptune opposition by activist Tarana Burke who used the social media platform Myspace to raise awareness about sexual abuse of women of color. Throughout 2015-2017 under the Saturn-Neptune square, the #MeToo movement gained enormous traction following sexual abuse accusations against film producer Harvey Weinstein. In 2017, the use of the hashtag became widespread to publicly reveal incidents of predatory sexual abuse among high-profile men.

The year 2006 when #MeToo was launched, financier Jeffrey Epstein faced his first public accusations, criminal charges, and arrest associated initially with unlawful sex with a minor. Those charges expanded in 2019 to federal sex trafficking charges. Epstein died in 2019 in a federal jail cell in New York that year in what was concluded to be a suicide. The Epstein case sparked speculations and investigation into a vast sex trafficking conspiracy involving minors and wealthy elites. His suicide has been speculated to have been a murder covered up to protect a ring of powerful elites involved, reflecting the Neptunian archetypes association with obfuscation, deception, and revelation. Interestingly, under the current Saturn-Neptune conjunction, similar revelations have emerged such as accusations of rape, assault, and sex trafficking involving rapper and record producer Sean Combs (P. Diddy). Most recently, sex trafficking and abuse accusations against the former CEO of clothing company Abercrombie & Fitch, Mike Jefferies (and two others), involving numerous young male models, have surfaced. More such incidents are very likely to come forward over the next two years especially, revealing a shadowy underbelly in relation to various cultural institutions and corporations.

Barbault correlated the Saturn-Neptune cycle with “popular insurrections fueled by ideological beliefs.”[9] The start of the American Revolution under a Saturn-Neptune conjunction is one already noted example, and it ignited the battle for the budding American Dream. Barbault also noted major turning points in communist movements and ideologies, such as the birth of Marxism in 1847 and the European Revolution of 1848. Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels’ infamous declaration from the introduction of The Communist Manifesto that the specter of communism was haunting Europe, evoked communism as an embodiment of the Neptunian archetype, as something intangible yet permeating itself within society, invoking paranoia amongst the ruling class. Yet, as I have discussed so far, considering Neptune’s notoriously obfuscating nature, such insurrections, grand conspiracies, and accompanying paranoia are not always based on a realistic assessment of the threat. With Neptune, there can be a simultaneous and paradoxical emergence of truth and delusion.

As referenced above, the last stage of the current Saturn-Neptune cycle occurred in 2014-2017. The 2016 US election occurred under this time band, and numerous obfuscating and disillusioning elements emerged, like those noted by Tarnas about the 2004 election of George W. Bush. Both the disillusionment of Bush’s re-election in the wake of the disastrous and costly 2003 invasion of Iraq and a controversy over the election results were dominant features.

As I have just mentioned and also note in my 2023 article on the Saturn-Neptune cycle, Hillary Clinton’s loss and Trump’s victory in that election were incredibly shocking and disillusioning for liberal and democratic voters who, reinforced by the hubristic confidence of polls and political experts, believed Clinton was guaranteed to win and become the first female US president. As I had articulated, “the glass ceiling dissolved rather than shattered.” Following that election, a similar paranoia over a Russian conspiracy again overtook political factions within the nation, emboldened by the mainstream media and Clinton’s rhetoric, which was used to rationally explain Trump’s victory, popularity, and rise to power.

The FBI’s extensive and nearly two-year investigation into the “Russiagate” conspiracy eventually found it had no basis. Neither Trump himself nor members of his family or campaign had any links to Russia. Trump was not, after all, a puppet for the Russian government. Like with past Saturn-Neptune cycles, there was an imagined conspiracy about a hidden and dangerous insurrection, this time involving the President himself and the Russian government.

Yet, Trump’s populist movement, like that of Bernie Sanders, who ran as a democratic socialist and challenged the establishment of the Democratic Party, was more illuminating about Trump’s popularity, and it pointed to a Democratic Party that is increasingly perceived among American voters as deeply entrenched with corrupt corporate and political interests.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has in fact taken numerous actions to oppose even the rise of leftist populism and leftist third-party coalitions. Former DNC chair Donna Brazile and US senator (and former 2016 presidential candidate) Elizabeth Warner both admitted that the DNC had unfairly taken measures to block Sander’s path beyond the 2016 primaries, a harsh reality for Sander’s supporters revealing that leftist populism had no way forward within the Democratic party establishment. In both 2016 and again in 2020 (when Sanders ran a second time), the leftist populist movement experienced a shattered dream and disillusionment on multiple levels. Many US voters on both the political left and right had become disenchanted with the US political establishment and the American Dream.

In the 2024 presidential election, the Democratic candidate, current Vice President Kamala Harris, was instantly nominated and given Democratic party donors and delegates despite never receiving a single primary vote (from US voters) due to President Joe Biden’s late withdrawal from the race and immediate endorsement of Harris. Before this, the DNC had refused to host debates between other candidates running against Biden for the democratic party ticket, such as Marianne Williamson or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Additionally the DNC has utilized various legal maneuvers to block ballot access for the Green Party’s presidential candidate Jill Stein in swing states like Wisconsin. The same was done to Kennedy when he was attempting to run as a third-party candidate in New York. Ironically, the Democratic party that claimed to be defending democracy from fascism has demonstrated, on more than one occasion, an outright rejection of a fair and open democratic process. This is another factor in the rise of not only populist political movements but also the popularity of third-party candidates.

However, the biggest driver of populism in the US has much to do with an economic system that has perpetuated egregious upward wealth transfer, inequality, and corporate socialism. Yet, these factors are frequently obfuscated by political elites and legacy media with grand and unsubstantiated conspiracies of “Russian interference” or other cultural scapegoats. In the context of the Saturn-Neptune alignments, critical turning points in these obfuscating conspiracies appear to emerge and gain traction.

The American Dream Dissolved

Hypercapitalism, also known as neoliberalism, is an economic, political, and widespread cultural influence leading to the privatization of nature and the privatized control and capture of numerous public and political institutions. It is rooted in a vision of a market-driven society that took hold of world governments in the late 20th century. It is capitalism fully installed within culture and worldview. Hypercapitalism is an evolution of “trickle-down” economics which, according to anthropologist David Harvey, draws from the core “assumption that individual freedoms are guaranteed by freedom of the market.”[10] The core delusional ideal of hypercapitalism being that the wealth generated by unrestrained capitalist enterprise will create a plethora of jobs and economic growth that will trickle down and benefit all.

From the hypercapitalist ideal, corporations and non-government organizations (NGOs) are perceived as more efficient for ensuring freedom, driving innovation, and overall satisfying public needs. However, this is not entirely how things have gone, since the state becomes heavily tasked with bolstering and protecting those interests through corporate bailouts, subsidies, or militarized police forces (to protect private capital interests).[11] Ensuring the “freedom of the market” actually results in government and taxpaying citizens helping to keep it afloat and, at times, restricting their own interests. As it turns out, under hypercapitalism, corporations end up more incentivized to hoard their wealth and cut costs as much as possible through offshoring their production for cheaper labor or choosing to prioritize their highest paid executives and shareholders rather than trickle their wealth down to their lowest paid workers.

Hypercapitalism also has pervasive cultural and psychological impacts. According to philosopher Byung-Chul Han, who has expanded upon the cultural transformation due to neoliberalism first articulated by Michel Foucault, the working class has been transmuted into entrepreneurs of themselves who willingly consent to surveillance and control. Think of how surveillance-prone SmartPhones or the latest data-accumulating apps are enthusiastically consumed and utilized. From the conception of Han’s psychopolitics thesis, the neoliberal order has come to dominate its citizens not by brute force but by installing itself and its economized worldview on an unconscious level. Domination is desired rather than overtly enforced. As Han argued,

“Today, everyone is an auto-exploiting labourer in his or her own enterprise. People are now master and slave in one. Even class struggle has transformed into an inner struggle against oneself.”[12]

As Han argued, the entrepreneurial drive of the 21st century reflects the neoliberal worldview’s inherent coercive nature, where maximum self-exploitation and an unconscious, interiorized conflict result. The pervasive need for constant productivity and consumption reflects the ultimate endpoint of hypercapitalism: the ceaseless flow of capital and its accumulation. This endpoint has become so pervasive (politically, economically, culturally, and as Han argued, psychologically), it has overcome numerous political, cultural, bodily, and psychic boundaries.

As some recent examples, with ever-rising living costs and inflation, working class citizens are often coerced into various “gig economies” to supplement their insufficient jobs or, while attempting to pursue their dreams, feel coerced to exploit their cars via ride share services, delivering food for corporate food chains, or their bodies on OnlyFans. The latter example reveals how a boundless hypercapitalist system will eventually assimilate and monetize everything, exploiting an individual’s most private and intimate resources.

Hypercapitalism also has much to do with the rise of populism worldwide and the many obfuscating narratives that seek to divert and divide society not just in the US but in many Western countries. The enormous wealth gap (in 2024, the top 10 percent of income earners in the US now own 67 percent of the nation’s wealth) and the corporate and privatized capture of many public institutions have led to a precarious situation where US taxpayers are endlessly spending billions for wars, weapons sales to foreign governments, and subsidizing corporate stock buybacks and bailouts. This top-heavy wealth accumulation reveals the true lie that was always inherent to the trickle-down fantasy.

Elected politicians continuously claim that no money exists for vital domestic needs like universal income, healthcare, childcare, or higher education, alleviating the housing crisis, homeless crises, and the incredible rise of living costs, improving failing infrastructure, or fixing a broken and inefficient immigration process. Neither the Republican nor Democratic platforms ever seem to address these issues ultimately and yet always have enough political leverage and government cash to invest in more wars or corporate giveaways.

The extensive lobbying of numerous politicians by weapons manufacturers or pharmaceutical corporations partly explains much of this. Politicians’ investments in such industries and the revolving doors between government and high-level corporate positions are also problematic, especially as they impact the regulatory sector. The ability of corporate and other wealthy donors to pour millions into election campaigns means that politicians and their eventual policy decisions are easily influenced by the wealthiest donors.

The 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling (that occurred under a Saturn-Pluto square on the AP axis) blocked the ability of the government to ban these practices, like the use of super PACs, from funding election campaigns. As one recent example, billionaires like Elon Musk and Miriam Adelson have donated collectively over $100 million to the 2024 Trump campaign. Adelson, who is an Israeli citizen and supporter of the annexation of the west bank (and further subjugation of the Palestinian people) is a major reason Trump is so supportive of Israeli national interests. Considering the enormous economic barriers to funding any political campaign, candidates are coerced into spending more time talking directly to (and appeasing) billionaires than the working-class citizens they’re supposed to represent. Billionaires don’t just give millions from their coffers and expect nothing in return.

Hypercapitalism is thus aptly described as socialism for the rich. The state ends up more occupied with the interests of the wealthiest citizens resulting in privatized everything, from a pandemic response to the dictions of US foreign policy. Very real human crises and catastrophes are inevitably exploited for profit gain and enriching shareholders somewhere. This is always the bottom line within this US hypercapitalistic system, and it creates numerous problems for many parts of the world where US imperialism creates havoc and political instability via its proxy war involvements, political coups, and the pursuit of spreading its market-driven vision for the world.

The pervasive political and cultural rise of hypercapitalism occurred in the 1980s under the US Ronald Reagan administration (and the UK Thatcher administration). This correlated with a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction that opposed the AP in 1981, exacting in early tropical Libra. There was also a Saturn-Pluto conjunction that peaked shortly after in 1982-83 and thus drew parallels with 2020 in terms of a major shift in world power at the height of a crisis. The SARS-Cov-2 pandemic was, of course, different from the 1980s ending of the Cold War and the rise of HIV and the AIDS epidemic. Still, it brought about a similar decisive moment and “darkening of the collective consciousness” described by Tarnas, as well as an “aura of apocalyptic doom” as I phrased it in a 2016 article. This period was also a low point on the Cyclic Index comparable to 2020.

In Psychopolitics, Han pointed to both the literal and symbolic birth of neoliberalism and “a new kind of control society” as occurring in 1984. The year was the title of George Orwell’s infamous dystopian novel about a pervasive surveillance state and authoritarian society. As Han discussed, Apple’s infamous commercial for its Macintosh personal computer product, which aired on January 24, 1984, during the Super Bowl, attempted to brand its product as a tool of liberation and antidote to Orwell’s dire future vision. The commercial was set in a dystopian factory. Robotic-like workers are marching in synch into a dark, vapid room to sit in front of a giant video screen displaying a talking head, presumably Big Brother, shouting the following speech:

“Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology—where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests purveying contradictory thoughts. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death, and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!”[13]

As Big Brother’s speech echoes through the building, a woman is shown running with a sledgehammer in both hands. She’s shown as strong, athletic, highly bronzed, and wearing a bright white tank top and red shorts. She’s pursued by militarized police adorned with riot gear as she rushes toward the room. When she arrives, she hurls the sledgehammer into the air toward the screen. Just as Big Brother shouts: “We shall prevail!” the sledgehammer shatters the screen as it explodes with a flash of bright, white light. The workers are awakened from their trance while a voice announces: “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.”

As Han argued, the antithesis occurred, as not only did the internet and personal computing era birth a novel control society, but one that far surpassed Orwell’s imagination. Though, an irony of Apple’s prophetic statement was that it unwittingly predicted just that, an Orwellian vision quite unlike what Orwell himself depicted. The unconscious installment of the control system, according to Han, birthed a society in which external authoritarian oppression was replaced by the internal and voluntary oppression of the masses.[14] As Han argued, “Neoliberal psychopolitics is SmartPolitics: it seeks to please and fulfil, not to repress.”[15]The compulsion of endless consumption operates under the guise of freedom and liberation. Such a tactic fits perfectly within the ultimate delusion of the American Dream, the boundless material acquisition promised through one’s incessant focus on productivity, self-optimization, and consumption.

January 24th 1984 featured an impressive conjunction of the most idealistic planetary archetypes: Venus, Jupiter, and Neptune on the AP axis in Capricorn. Astrologically speaking, you couldn’t get a more powerful symbol of extreme idealism, romanticism, and delusion, especially related to the earthy, industrious, and achievement seeking qualities of Capricorn. The sign’s planetary ruler, Saturn, in its shadow expression is the archetypal Big Brother, the true cultural authoritarian of the astrological pantheon. January 24, 1984 was also the day before Reagan’s State of Union Address in which he directed NASA to begin the construction of the international space station, conceiving space, in true neoliberal idealism, as a new frontier of boundless scientific and economic expansion.

Over two decades later, in the years 2008-2009, during the height of the Global Financial Crisis, the dwarf planet Pluto, the antithesis of idealism and delusion and the archetype of uncomfortable truths and the eruption of the unconscious, crossed that same degree of the Capricorn AP axis, bringing forth the harsh reality and consequences of the hypercapitalistic leviathan set forth in the previous era. Big banks and reckless Wall Street executives, blinded by delusions of massive and boundless capital gain, had set the world economy on a disastrous downward spiral that would result in millions of Americans losing their homes, jobs, and forever tarnishing the American Dream of homeownership (and wounding the American entrepreneurial spirit).

Through the enormous bailouts, American taxpayers ended up rewarding the very banks who precipitated the crisis, and only some low-level executives would be prosecuted for the crimes. Neoliberalism, fully and systemically installed, made sure the system protected and preserved the top-tier wealth hoarders, and the public footed the bill. While movements like Occupy Wall Street mobilized large public outcry, little has changed since. The year 2020 precipitated the largest upward wealth transfer in hypercapitalist history through the passage of the CARES Act, furthering widening the US wealth gap and upward wealth transfer.

Filmmaker Adam Curtis’ long but extensively researched documentary, The Century of the Self, is an accessible and engaging cultural background for much of the shift that occurred in the early 1980s and how it impacted US politics and the branding and marketing practice of politicians. Just like any other freedom granted by end-stage capitalism, choosing a president in the hypercapitalist era reflects what Foucault argued was the economization of culture and individuals and is much like choosing the same product between two competing corporate brands (and with all the accompanying capitalist-fueled tribalism). Curtis’ most recent film, released in 2016 (alongside the Saturn-Neptune square), Hypernormalization, is also lucid, prophetic, and thought-provoking about the rise of populism both in Europe and the US, and the critical foreign policy decisions made over past decades that have led to an elite political establishment that seeks to control and confuse public perception through the algorithmic power of the internet.

As Curtis argued, decades ago, the political elite shifted toward an attempt to establish a global society hyper focused on averting chaos and unpredictability by generating a technocratic system seeking to predict and control the future. Disenchanted by a now static and unchanging political system, broader society has retreated into cyberspace, a more simplified, fake world that mirrors back a cartoon version of the self. Since these digital echo chambers seek to eliminate anything that conflicts with individual biases and preconceptions, they provide a safe space from the perceived chaos and uncertainty of the world.

The retreat into illusory digital worlds also reinforces the notion that the American Dream is no longer an attainable goal for most Americans. The real world, one perceived as chaotic, unstable, and filled with economic barriers, becomes far less appealing. As a recent poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal revealed, financial security, a comfortable retirement, and homeownership were considered the most critical aspects of the American Dream. Yet, less than half of respondents believed such things were as accessible as they once were. Since 2016, the belief that the American Dream is still possible with hard work has significantly declined, with half of respondents in 2024 claiming that while it once held true, the dream seems to be rapidly dissipating.

Dissipation of Free Speech and Free Will

Recent destabilizing events such as the Occupy Wall Street movement, Arab Spring Uprisings, Brexit, Trump’s rise to political power, the Canadian trucker protests, and the Free Palestine movement are some ways the internet and social media have destabilized globalist attempts at societal control and are incredibly threatening to political elites. These resistance movements also reflect the growing rise in frustration among the poor and working class and a shift in interest in populist political movements.

Since 2016, there has been the rapid emergence of what journalist Michael Shellenberger has called the “censorship industrial complex” that took root in that same year due to the Obama administration’s passage of the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act. This act emerged amidst the climate of disinformation fears that perceived the threat of foreign electoral meddling as a danger to democracy and domestic stability. However, evidence for foreign interference significantly impacting public perception and voting behaviors has been lacking, with a 2023 study revealing that no meaningful connection existed in the 2016 election. Yet, this rhetoric is continuously used by political elites and legacy media pundits, especially to discredit populist political opposition and third-party candidates.

Shellenberger was one of several journalists given limited access to a trove of emails known as the “Twitter Files” after Musk purchased Twitter (now called X) in 2023. The emails revealed serious free speech violations where the government pressured social media companies to censor specific information and deplatform targeted individuals. Testifying before The House Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government in March 2023, Shellenberger argued that the current war on disinformation via the censorship industrial complex has evolved far beyond its stated intentions and utilizes,

“established methods of psychological manipulation, some developed by the U.S. Military during the Global War on Terror, with highly sophisticated tools from computer science, including artificial intelligence. The complex’s leaders are driven by the fear that the internet and social media platforms empower populist, alternative, and fringe personalities and views, which they regard as destabilizing. Federal government officials, agencies, and contractors have gone from fighting ISIS recruiters and Russian bots to censoring and deplatforming ordinary Americans and disfavored public figures.”[16]

As Shellenberger outlined, the program’s evolution to counter foreign propaganda and election interference evolved to censoring any digital content, even domestic, perceived as threatening to government aims and interests. Hence the emerging designation of “malinformation,” that the US Government Accountability Office defined as “Largely accurate information that is based on reality, but may be presented out of context to inflict harm on a person, organization, or country.” Malinformation is anything actually true, but determined to lack appropriate context or perceived as potentially harmful by the government.

As many independent journalists investigating these issues have argued, this designation justifies the censorship of information that challenges numerous mainstream and government viewpoints and positions. Within the context of the hypercapitalistic capture of public institutions, including those within the government, government interests often extend to those of many corporations and their shareholders, revealing a censorship apparatus that can be utilized to protect corporate monopolies and their private interests.

As Shellenberger argued, the evolution of the censorship industrial complex arose out of the global surveillance program built under the guise of combating global threats of terrorism. The immense extent of this program was revealed via the numerous leaked documents by the former employee of an NSA contractor, Edward Snowden in 2013. The global spying on potential foreign threats and enemies evolved into a massive domestic surveillance program, through the Patriot Act (passed in reaction to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001), that began collecting and storing the private data of numerous American citizens via cell phone data and private emails.

This leviathan government-corporate war on disinformation, as argued by journalist Jacob Seigal, is now seeking to gain total control over the internet. This is an outspoken aim of many political elites such as Hillary Clinton who, in an October 2024 interview with CNN, discussed the need to take drastic measures to moderate online content such as repealing Section 230 which gave social media platforms legal immunity against illegal activities conducted via their platform by its users. Its repeal would force social media companies to more heavily monitor and censor user content. As Clinton argued,

“Whether it’s Facebook or Twitter, or X, or Instagram, or TikTok, whatever they are, if they don’t moderate and monitor the content we lose total control and it’s not just the social and psychological effects it’s real harm, it’s child porn and threats of violence, things that are terribly dangerous.”

Clinton’s key admission was the aspect of losing “total control,” revealing the true intention behind her message. While Clinton utilized the fear of the internet amplifying criminal behaviors to justify more aggressive censorship tactics on the part of social media companies, within the broader context of the politically destabilizing power of social media, her concern with limiting online free speech has more to do with the threat of populism and civil disobedience fueled by unmitigated free speech. As discussed, Clinton’s electoral loss in 2016 was quickly explained via “disinformation” spread by Russia, a claim that has less basis than Clinton attempts to portray it.

The fear of foreign electoral interference justified the very construction of the censorship industrial complex itself. Recent attempts by the US government to ban TikTok in early 2024 alongside the national rise of university protests opposing the genocide in Gaza is another example of what the threat of online free speech is really about. TikTok became a primary platform for activists involved in the Free Palestine movement for spreading their message, organizing, and revealing the militant crackdowns on university campuses.

The government and social media collaborative censorship problem also extends beyond what was revealed by the Twitter Files. For example, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently admitted to the US House Judiciary Committee to have received and complied with several government requests to his company in 2021 to censor specific COVID-19-related posts. Zuckerberg additionally admitted to blocking the circulation of articles related to the Hunter Biden laptop story just before the 2020 presidential election, which was falsely claimed, without any evidence, to be Russian disinformation. Evidence has also emerged revealing that CIA contractors also sought to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story, suggesting that multiple entities both within and contracted by the government are involved in this effort.

These are only a few examples of an extensive censorship apparatus now augmented by advancing AI technology aimed at the control and distortion of public perception for political or economic purposes. The implications of these revelations are an ever-evolving situation that could quickly surpass any journalist or whistleblower’s attempts to understand and reveal its true complexity. Han argued that the predictive power generated by what he referred to as “Big Data,” makes it possible to calculate and control the future. For Han, this meant the ultimate end of free will:

“Digital psychopolitics transforms the negativity of freely made decisions into the positivity of factual states….Indeed, persons are being positivized into things, which can be quantified, measured and steered. Needless to say, no thing can be free. But at the same time, things are more transparent than persons. Big Data has announced the end of the person who possesses free will.”[17]

According to Han, the manipulation of individuals by these emerging technologies of power, and thus the eradication of personal and collective free will, is the inevitable result. The algorithmic-powered promptings of targeted advertisements on various social media platforms are only one aspect of this widespread predictive power and social manipulation on the part of businesses and corporations. Han saw the SmartPhone as the ultimate “devotional object” of the digital age, comparable to a rosary, a means of self-monitoring and control.[18] How social media platforms such as Facebook or X have become venues for the generation of rampant groupthink and conformity, especially during crises like the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, demonstrates the disturbing accuracy of Han’s warning.

If political elites succeed in gaining further control of the internet, then such conformity will be much easier to establish. The very broad free speech rights protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution were wisely conceived as a means of preventing the authoritarian control of information that is vital to democracy and a free and open society. If alternative views, opinions, and critique of those in power are silenced, then dissent and organized political opposition to rising authoritarianism can be more easily managed and mitigated. Ultimately, collective perception will be more rapidly controlled leading to the very opposite of what political elites and the censorship industrial complex claim to be concerned with: more misinformation and a less informed population. The misinformation threat points to a clear example of Freudian reaction-formation among the elite political class who claim to be fighting against the very thing they’re creating.

The Genocide in the Room

The 2024 US presidential election devolved into a choice between two brands of state-sponsored genocide. Since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, that resulted in the death of 1,139 people (of which 695 were Israeli civilians), there have been over 42,000 Palestinians killed due to Israel’s violent retaliation against Gaza and the occupied West Bank. As of this writing, there are 95,787 injuries, 10,000 missing, and 16,500 dead children. This immense death, destruction, and generational trauma has not stopped since late 2023. The horrific 2023 attack on Israel does not justify the slaughter and starvation of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian people, many of whom are children and babies.

Those in Gaza and the occupied West Bank are trapped, have nowhere to escape, and no means to defend themselves. Critical infrastructure, including vital emergency medical care, has been nearly eradicated. Those who survive the bombings and other attacks are now subject to starvation and untreatable disease. A study recently published by Brown University Watson Institute’s Cost of War project, found that an estimated 62,413 people have died from starvation and 5,000 from chronic disease due to lack of access to medical care. These deaths are in addition to the over 42,000 killed from direct violence. These numbers also do not include casualties in neighboring countries impacted by the crisis such as Lebanon or Yemen.

Additionally, solely focusing on October 7th obfuscates the decades long displacement and authoritarian oppression of the Palestinian people and other ethnic groups in the region due directly from the founding of the Israeli state. The US government and several US corporate media outlets have been involved in generating a false conception of the Israeli government as a victim of radical terrorists, justified in its endless bombing of Gaza and the occupied West Bank to eliminate Hamas. Criticism of the Zionist ideology and the Israeli government’s hawkish response to October 7th have been labeled as antisemitism, despite numerous Jewish organizations opposing the genocide and Israeli citizens protesting their own government. From President Biden lying about a debunked story of 40 beheaded babies, to the false claims of mass rape on October 7th, numerous influential media figures and politicians in the US have been disseminating disinformation to distort the Israeli government’s decades-long genocidal and colonialist pursuits in the region.

The US is a major supplier of weapons and military aid to Israel. According to the Cost of War project, since October 7th, the US has spent $22.76 billion on military aid to Israel (which it claims is a conservative estimate). The flow of money continues unrestricted under the current Biden administration. The genocide is supported on the left by Democratic elites financially entrenched with lobbyists for the Israeli government (and beholden to neoconservatives and the military industrial complex), and on the right by those same factions and Christian Zionists who perceive the conflict as a critical step in the fulfillment of their delusional interpretation of biblical prophecy. Yet, as with any war backed by the US and western imperial powers, it is fueled by capitalistic interests in which the flow of blood and money go hand in hand.

Neither the Republican nor Democratic presidential candidates, former President Donald Trump, nor current Vice President Kamala Harris, have vowed to cut off arms supplies to Israel. Harris has claimed to be focused on a “ceasefire deal” but has consistently pledged support for Israel’s “right to defend itself,” a paradoxical position given that Israel’s “right to defend itself” is entirely antithetical to a ceasefire deal. Billions of dollars in military aid sent to Israel is in full support of genocide. Not surprisingly, Harris has received endorsements from war-hawk neoconservatives such as former US Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the primary architects of the Invasion of Iraq, an endorsement Harris claimed she was honored by. That Harris is yet another rising political elite is not surprising given that she rose through the political ranks through extremely wealthy connections she established in San Francisco.

Harris has received numerous and generous donations to her senate and presidential campaigns from donors to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a major lobby for the Israeli government. Harris’ Vice President pick, governor of Wisconsin Tim Walz, blatantly (and perhaps mistakenly) admitted during the October 2024 Vice Presidential Debate that “the expansion of Israel and its proxies is an absolute necessity for the United States.” The expansion of Israel means the eradication of the Palestinian people and the further colonization of surrounding regions. Walz’s statement means that genocide under a Harris/Walz administration will be an “absolute necessity.”

Trump has never criticized Israel’s stance nor ever called for a ceasefire. Since his presidential term, Trump has been hostile and apathetic to the Palestinian people. His administration’s proposed “peace deal” plan for the region entirely favored the Israeli government’s agenda of controlling the majority of the region’s territory while continuing the subjugation of the Palestinian people. In a speech given to the US congress in July 2024, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, overtly praised Trump for his support of the Israeli government during his administration. Despite the Biden administration’s massive financial and military support given to Israel since October 7th, during the July 2024 presidential debate between Trump and Biden, Trump went as far as to claim that Biden’s support for Israel wasn’t enough and he should let Israel “finish the job.” Adelson’s recent $100 million donation to Trump’s campaign, as mentioned, also further secures his protection of the Israeli government’s interests.

In relation to the plight of those in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, the only difference between the top presidential candidates is that Trump is transparent and outspoken about his position while Harris and Walz veil their allegiance to Israel’s genocidal agenda with obfuscating political rhetoric. The death and destruction within Gaza and the occupied West Bank are already a reflection of the Saturn-Neptune symbolism emerging into consciousness. It is a horrific and devastating tragedy that continues unabated. It will result in further tensions and radicalization within the region that will have negative future consequences for Israel and its allies. Yet, its role in the 2024 election is a critical symbolic reflection of the current state of US imperialism and its highly problematic domestic situation.

The genocide points to the blatant and immense moral corruption of the US Empire, a corruption that is nothing new, but has become so glaringly obvious that only pure ignorance, cultish devotion to a political party, or outright narcissism could make one not notice or care. The choice between two brands of state-sponsored genocide demonstrates how truly spiritually, ethically, and morally vacuous the US truly is and has become. The apathy and narcissism of the top presidential candidates and the numerous representatives in both the House and Senate deeply reflects the shadow of US empire and a harsh truth that US citizens must eventually confront.

Truthfully, those who ambitiously seek such political power are often the most vacuous among the human species. Such ambitious and power-hungry individuals compulsively need to fill an inner void. That void is appeased through numerous external achievements, no matter what those achievements are, whose money they take to achieve them, or who they exploit in the process of their getting.

The hypercapitalistic culture, and even the American Dream itself, were created and perpetuated by an inherent narcissism and psychopathy within Western civilization. More broadly, such narcissism draws from the materialist worldview’s devaluation of the subjective, intuitive, symbolic, nurturing, communal, and creative dimensions of the human experience. If the surface, material, and rational are all that matters, then fundamentalism comes to dominate. The “holy land” is no longer a metaphor of an inward spiritual condition but something to be externally sought and claimed.

In the 2000 preface of Requiem for a Dream, a novel published by Herbert Selby Jr. in 1978 under a building Saturn-Neptune square (while Neptune aligned with the US Sibly Ascendent), Selby wrote that,

“I believe that to pursue the American Dream is not only futile but self-destructive because ultimately it destroys everything and everyone involved with it. By definition it must, because it nurtures everything except those things that are important: integrity, ethics, truth, our very heart and soul. Why? The reason is simple: because Life/life is about giving, not getting.”

Selby’s novel followed the lives of several individuals who tragically succumb to despair, failure, and addiction in pursuit of their own conceptions of the American Dream. In his 2000 preface, alongside the release of the film adaptation, Selby touched on a core component of the shadow of the American vision, one that understandably (within the specific context of Western history) catalyzed a political system to offset the dangers of consolidated power, collective tyranny, and authoritarian oppression. As the roots of neoliberalism arose within the political philosophy of the Enlightenment that sought to supplant absolutism with ideals of economic and civil freedom, it also embraced the ideal that through honest effort and merit (rather than “divine right” or genetic inheritance) anyone could achieve material wealth. Yet, of course, that ideal never initially applied to African slaves, their descendants, Native Americans, or women. It was an ideal constructed and perpetuated by and for white men. The failure to foresee that the inevitable consolidation of wealth in the hands of a small minority would result in the very same tyranny and inequality posed by monarchs, represents a blind spot inherent to placing economic expansion at the core of the American Dream.

As Selby argued, the American Dream, when taken to its extreme rational endpoint, devalues a core component of human evolution, that we are communal beings wired for connection, sharing, and belonging. Yet also, the external pursuit of happiness also fails to acknowledge what modern psychotherapy, ancient shamanism, and millennia old mystery religions have found to be true, that happiness is not exclusively found in external pursuits. It is more a cultural sentiment than a core American value that “heart and soul” are somehow the source of what’s truly important. Yet, the achievement and power obsessed American culture incentivizes turning away from those aspects of human nature, toward getting rather than giving. There is not a single billionaire that got to where they are through a cultivation of heart and soul, and least of all giving. The bottom line within the American Dream was always boundless consumption and exploitation.

As many experts on narcissism argue, such as psychologist Dr. Ramani Durvasula, the word goes beyond a clinical and diagnostic designation and describes a personality and cultural pattern that has become increasingly dominant in the West and especially in the US.[19] In 1979, under the same Saturn-Neptune square that Selby wrote Requiem for a Dream, Christopher Lasch foresaw this concerning cultural pattern emerging that he described in The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. According to Lasch, cultural narcissism is cultivated through an obsession with consumerism, self-enhancement, and “all-or-nothing success,” overshadowing values like community building, family, tradition, and shared morality. The breakdown of these core human values and their displacement with fleeting gratifications has resulted in a society without a meaningful collective purpose and a dissipation of substantive aspirations. People expect less fulfillment and meaning from anything they pursue in life. Numerous experiences are reduced to fleeting moments of vacuous consumption.

While narcissism is often understood as a grandiose, egoistic, superficial, and combative personality style, it is rooted in a vacuous inner condition. As Dr. Durvasula argued, a hallmark of narcissism is pathological insecurity which is the “core of the main paradox of narcissism.”[20] External achievements and successes are needed to appease this insecurity and subdue that inner vacuousness. This also explains why narcissism is often found at the top echelons of society, in those who achieve high positions in politics, business, medicine, entertainment, or academia. We live in a society that generously awards high achievement at the expense of those core human values that shaped human evolution. Humans did not survive the ice age through charisma, competitiveness, and self-interest.

This vacuousness is reflected at the heart of the modern conception of the American Dream, its core values, and in the broader political landscape. When Trump’s granddaughter, Kai Trump, spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention of her grandfather, she solely emphasized her grandfather’s interest in her ambition, high honor roll status, and success at playing golf. She made a joke about Trump attempting to “get inside” her head to beat her at golf whenever they played against one another. As she expressed of her grandfather, “He always encourages me to push myself to be the most successful person I can be.”

Her speech was an attempt to garner sympathy for and humanize Trump after the failed assassination attempt, but it inadvertently revealed the narcissistic values that underlie the achievement obsessed hypercapitalist culture. The obsession with external achievement at the expense of other values is what drives narcissism on an individual and collective level. Only showing interest in a child’s achievements and exclusively pushing them “to be the most successful” people they can be is our collective pathway to the further corrosion of empathy, community, integrity, ethics, and morality.

The state-sponsored genocide of the Palestinian people reveals that in the 2024 election there is no longer a “lesser evil” to choose from. How much lower can a society descend when it is actively supporting and consenting to the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people for the sake of profit, power, and a delusional, psychopathic-driven consumption of land. The 2024 election also points to the vacuous core of the American Dream, and it reveals the deep void that the narcissistic elite have gradually pulled the country and the world into. The genocide is being perpetuated by numerous politicians who are seeking “all or nothing success” at the expense of integrity, truth, heart, and soul, values that clearly have no place within the political cult at the helm in Washington, DC.

Further, if the perpetuation of the American Dream as boundless capital flow and accumulation is contingent on the perpetuation of weapons sales, foreign proxy wars, and ecological destruction, it prompts a serious moral and ethical crisis. The accumulation of enormous wealth and resources while those impacted by US foreign policy struggle to feed themselves or that perpetuates the exploitation of the environment, is an unsustainable and inhumane vision to begin with. US imperialism and its destructive foreign policy decisions over recent decades have literally created and shaped the third world. Thus, over 80 percent of the world population can barely meet basic survival needs. In the context of globalization and the extent of US imperialism, it is time for a critical reimagining of the American Dream and its underlying goals.

Back to the Aries Point

Willpower is an Aries theme. The sign deals archetypally with the assertion of will on many levels. It is the primal truth of eat or be eaten, choose or have someone choose for you. The pushing boundaries AP theme expectedly fits with the Aries archetype. Boundaries must be pushed to enact change in our lives or on a societal level. Those with power will not give it up without a challenge. As Frederick Douglass argued, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will.” Historically, unchecked and overreaching power has always been inevitably pushed back against, sometimes aggressively so, as with the English Civil War, French Revolution, or the civil rights battles of the 1950s and 60s.

Aggression and violence are some of the less ideal manifestations of the Aries archetype. When the peaceful assertion of the collective will fail to yield results, and when oppressive conditions persist unerring, anger and frustration will inevitably ensue. This is how Barbault described the insurrectional dimension of the Saturn-Neptune cycle:

“But when hunger brings the wolf out of the forest, human need increases the collective demands of a frustrated population which has no hope.”[21]

A hopeless population, especially in the US, is a fitting description for where we currently stand, especially in relation to enacting change through the formal electoral process. It is the manifestation of what Lasche foresaw in 1978, a society that has succumbed to diminished expectations. The political disenchantment of many, evident in the rising popularity of third-party and populist political movements, partly demonstrates this truth. For those Americans who do not yet see and understand this, there is some heavy disillusionment coming that will reflect the painful shadow of Saturn-Neptune.

Saturn and Neptune will align with the IC and oppose the Midheaven (MC) of the US Sibley chart and will square the US Sibley Venus-Jupiter conjunction in Cancer, a prominent alignment in the US horoscope due to Jupiter’s rulership of the Ascendent. Sagittarius and its ruler Jupiter, exalted in Cancer and empowered by its alignment with Venus, points to the archetypal “boundless horizon” that infused itself into the American Dream. The Venus-Jupiter conjunction in the US Sibley chart is a prominent symbol of the US’s destined wealth and debt accumulation, especially tied to foreign allies (via the planet’s placements in the seventh and eighth houses of the chart). This challenge from Saturn-Neptune to the US wealth/debt symbol suggests a severe economic problem that will come into focus over the following two years.

Pluto’s opposition to the Venus-Jupiter conjunction (and square to the US Sibley IC/MC axis) in 2008-2009 correlated with the Global Financial Crisis. A Saturn-Jupiter opposition and t-square with Uranus to the US Sibley Venus-Jupiter correlated with the onset of the Great Depression in 1930. Angular stimulation to the US Sibley chart by world transit alignments has shown illuminating in other ways. Uranus’ crossing of the US Sibley IC (and square to Pluto and the US Sibley Venus-Jupiter) correlated with the Occupy Wall Street movement of September-November 2011, which as discussed, was a reaction to the massive government bailouts given to banks complicit in the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009 (which itself occurred when Pluto crossed the AP axis and squared the US Sibly MC/IC and opposed Venus-Jupiter).

The crossings of Jupiter, Uranus, and Pluto over the US Sibley MC correlated with the boundary-pushing cultural and political instability of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Pluto’s crossing the US Sibly Ascendent and opposition to Saturn on the Descendent correlated with the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The American Civil War of 1861-1865 occurred during a Saturn-Neptune opposition (that made a t-square with transiting Uranus) that aligned with the US Sibley MC/IC. Neptune was, like in 2025-2026, crossing the US Sibly IC axis.

With Saturn-Neptune hitting the IC/MC axis of the US Sibly chart, this suggests that much of the Saturn-Neptune symbolism will involve the domestic front as the IC is connected symbolically to domestic issues. The Occupy Wall Street movement was a prime example of this, sparking encampments and protests in numerous national cities. The IC (and fourth house cusp) in mundane astrology reflects issues around land and land ownership within a country.

With the US Sibly IC aligned with the AP, this speaks symbolically to the US’s potential of pushing the boundaries of land ownership and territorial dominance not just within the North American continent, but with other foreign territories. The US is a country founded on settler colonialism and the massive theft of indigenous land. The inevitable westward expansion of US territory and the displacement of Native Americans via the ideal of “Manifest Destiny” reflects this boundary pushing dimension to the US AP fourth house cusp.

One of the core aspects of the American Dream was the feasibility of land and home ownership. Today, the dream of accessible homeownership, especially in and around major US cities, is becoming far less within reach among many US citizens. More than half of the US population struggles to pay rent and cover necessities. Homeownership in the US also never fully recovered from the 2007-2009 Global Financial Crisis that proceeded two AP solar eclipses on the US Sibly MC/IC axis in 2006 and 2007. As also mentioned, this was the period of Pluto crossing the AP axis into Capricorn and its opposition to the US Sibly Venus-Jupiter (and square to the MC/IC axis). Similarly, a solar eclipse will occur on the AP and align with the US Sibly MC in 2025 alongside the building Saturn-Neptune conjunction on the IC.

The fourth house, from a psychological and evolutionary astrological perspective, relates to the “soul” of the chart, the deeper and intimate dimensions of life. It points to issues around the home front, kinship, and what astrologer Steven Forrest referred to as “attunement to the inner self.” According to Forrest, fourth house transits are often obscure periods of life that relate to cycles of “self-administered psychoanalysis” and a “process of recreating a myth of ourselves….”[22]According to Howard Sasportas, with Neptune crossing the IC into the fourth house, it reflects a time “to pause and take stock of our lives.”[23] From this perspective, the Saturn-Neptune cycle on the US Sibly IC represents a critical period for the seeding of a new myth, perhaps a reconceptualization of the American Dream itself. This is a time to awaken and deeply assess the values the country has come to operate under. Perhaps this more inward turning reflected by the Saturn-Neptune alignment in the US Sibly fourth house reflects also a constructive potential as Tarnas had described it:

“In perhaps its most admirable form, the Saturn-Neptune complex appears to be associated with the courage to face a hard and often tragic reality without illusion and still remain true to the ideals and dreams of a better world. Instead of provoking despair or passivity, the painful gap between the ideal and the real inspires one to undertake whatever sustained labor is necessary to transform the resistant structures of the world (political, economic, religious, philosophical) in service of one’s highest spiritual intuitions.”[24]

In contrast, though not specifically referring to the US situation and focusing more broadly on global civilization, Barbault was optimistic about the 2026 conjunction. Here is his prediction:

“It is the most benefic configuration of the century and its interplanetary partnership will work for the best in a splendid relaunch of civilization. It contains a harmonious relationship between primordial polar opposites; the coming together of the external and the internal, rational and spiritual, mind and soul… human beings surpassing themselves while experiencing life on a higher level.”[25]

Barbault predicted a “splendid relaunch of civilization.” He also alluded to some acquired transcendent state through a melding of polarities. Barbault noted the harmonious aspects of Pluto and Uranus making sextiles to the Saturn-Neptune alignment. It is interesting to note that the AP has major symbolic significance related to pushing the boundaries of civilization and technological progress. Critical events leading to the dramatic shift in world power tend to occur alongside such alignments historically. As occurring within the upward trend in the Cyclic Index, and considering these more harmonious aspects, Barbault foresaw a positive uprising occurring on a global level.

In contrast, the more constructive potential of Tarnas’ Saturn-Neptune interpretation framed it as a dark night of the soul that prompts constructive action and has the potential to change various cultural structures that have become maladaptive or misaligned with spiritual or moral aspirations. Reflecting on the evidence and discussions in this essay, I find it hard to have an optimistic view of this alignment, at least in the short term and on the broader collective level. Yet, astrology points to a symbolic reality that underwrites reality itself. From that perspective, astrology suggests that reality is ultimately symbolic rather than literal. We can look at everything happening in the world as a symbol pointing to a shift in consciousness that is reflected in all these events and crises we face.

A perplexing aspect of this alignment is the censorship issue discussed and the ability to distort or manufacture perception on a massive level. The situation speaks deeply to the archetype of Neptune and its obfuscating and sometimes deceiving attributes. This touches on a critical crisis we face: a crisis of reality and perception, a collective confusion about what is true or false, or who to trust or believe. The boundaries of perception and reality will be pushed, but in what direction ultimately? Is Han’s dystopian warning about the death of free will to emerge in a way we have yet to see or imagine? Will emerging threats be misunderstood or hyperbolically depicted as in the correlations with Saturn-Neptune and periods of collective paranoia and mass delusion? When consumed in reflective digital echo chambers, each with its curated version of reality, is the possibility of an organized collective pushback or awakening even possible? The battle over a specific vision or ideology is also possible here, or a significant failure of such, and a defining moment in that process will likely emerge over the next few years. Yet, ultimately, what vision or reality will win out?

In my previous essay on this topic, I predicted a thematic global disillusionment and awakening that would manifest in a variety of ways. I argued that it was ultimately time for a radical alteration in our collective worldview. I think the collective disillusionment and hopelessness, and the failure of the status quo system to deliver new possibilities or inspire excitement and hope among the people has more to do with political and metaphysical worldviews that have reached their expiration. The vacuousness and narcissism of the major US presidential candidates (and their associated political parties) heading into this Saturn-Neptune cycle is a revealing symbol about the corruption of the political duopoly and the capture of the system by unrestrained profit accumulation and material exploitation. It also points to a lack of a compelling creative vision not just nationally but within the broader, hegemonic worldview of modernity.

The materialist-secular worldview and its accompanying atheism and existentialism have resulted in a society disenchanted in multiple ways. It has resulted in a technocratic system that perceives humans as mere machines that can be programmed and directed toward predetermined outcomes. Yet, that view is highly delusional. Humanity and its civilization are byproducts of the natural world, a complex non-linear system far from mechanical, static, and controllable. That vision will ultimately fail because it fails to see, understand, and appreciate the complexity and nuance of reality and the nature of consciousness. Chaos cannot be eliminated by advanced algorithms or the weaponization of social theories.

In contrast to this, we have a rising tide of conservative political and cultural ideology. This often reflects a desire to retreat to conservative traditions and a puritanical past. It is partly a revitalization movement that perceives the progressive cultural changes of the past century as dangerous and maladaptive. If only society could go back to some semblance of cultural and traditional purity, things can be restored to normalcy and stability. This is equally delusional when taken to an extreme and it ignores the diversity, equality, and freedom that many of the progressive cultural changes of the past century have manifested. On the far end of this are the delusional authoritarian aspirations of Christian theocratic fascism that seeks to align the US culturally and structurally with traditional Chrisitan values (or what a subset of evangelical and fundamentalist Christian leaders believes those values are).[26]

However, the tension between these extremes points to a middle ground arising that can also be seen as a reflection of the following two decades of Pluto through Aquarius. Are there ways in which radical liberalism has gone too far in the direction of excessive hyper-novelty? Are there ways in which radical conservatism has gone too far in restricting bodily autonomy and civil liberties? Current debates over adolescent gender transitions, abortion, and broader LGBT+ issues within the culture appear to reflect this tension and nuance. They require careful, open debate and consideration rather than overly simplistic and broad, biased conclusions.

In considering Lasche’s argument about the collapse of tradition, family structure, and shared morality as factors that have led to cultural narcissism, in some ways, the conservative view has a point as far as traditional lifeways are concerned. There are many cultural structures that have been instrumental to human evolution and civilizational expansion that have been radically altered over past centuries. Yet, considering more complex societal factors like hypercapitalism, we see this corrosion of structures as not only a byproduct of progressive cultural changes but also economic ones that make the sustainment of certain traditions less appealing or accessible. If buying a home and raising a family is no longer a viable economic option, then alternative structures and lifestyles will inevitably result as humans adapt to changing economic conditions. Metaphysical and cosmological models of traditional religions have become less convincing and appealing due to numerous scientific discoveries and evidence and thus they fail to make rational arguments.

The conversation over the collapse of shared morality is not exclusive to Lasche and has been observed as instrumental to the rise of modern cult-like movements and what psychologist Matias Desmet called “mass formation,” a trance-like hive mind that overtakes a population alongside a serious threat or crises (as well as a host of predeterminate factors).[27] Lack of a collective sense of meaning and purpose was instrumental to this. This was an argument of Hannah Arendt who saw the rise of Nazism as having a similar basis in the collapse of authority and a shared, collective purpose in the modern world. Sociologist Frank Freudi’s work focused on this very issue as having given rise to modernity’s collective hyper fixation on safety and risk aversion that he called the “culture of fear.” According to Furedi, the collapse of centralized authority and shared morality (and excessive focus on individualism) have given rise to a cultish devotion to scientistic morality that perceives and portrays science as “a moralistic and political project” aimed at establishing a consensus to be obeyed, the very opposite of science as a rigorous tool and methodology whose findings are openly questioned and debated.[28]

Since most of human evolution took place within the context of small groups of nomadic, hunter-gatherers, the ability to maintain a shared collective authority, moral code, and purpose was more feasible and instrumental to human survival. The rapid expansion of the global human population, globalization, technological advancements, and ever emerging scientific discoveries have made matters more complicated. Individualism and cultural plurality in modern American culture are also major factors for the difficulty of getting everyone on the same moralistic and ideological page. There are no easy, “one-size-fits-all” solutions to these problems and they reflect a reality humanity must learn to adapt to.

The shadow of these times ultimately reflects humanity’s inability to deal with chaos, unpredictability, and uncertainty and their desperate attempts to make sense of these conditions through the limitations of their worldviews. I would argue that neither technocratic materialists or religious conservatives offer viable solutions nor refreshing insights. The Neptunian archetype inherently belongs to the realm of the chaos gods such as Uranus, Pluto, and many trans-Plutonian objects. Its merging with Saturn incites a challenge to integrate and concretize the ideal and intangible, but it also represents a confrontation with the limitations of our understanding of reality and our ability to control outcomes. Disillusionment is always a consequence of any delusional pursuit of attempting to stamp out chaos and uncertainty from the world, or any hubristic confidence in one’s view of the world.

If there is a positive side to this moment in time it is the potential awakening that will pave the way to new visions and conceptions of reality better informed by those limitations. That will take time to germinate and blossom within the world, but their seeds are being planted now, and each of us, if we manage to escape the trappings of confining digital echo chambers, divisive political cults, or collective mass delusion, can glimpse pieces of it and assist in actively pushing the boundaries of ethically corrupt cultural and political structures (in addition to reality, perception, and even humanity’s deeper spiritual potential).

As for the US, many academic historians have argued that the country is a declining world power, and that path has accelerated in recent decades. As mentioned earlier, historian Alfred McCoy anticipated an accelerated decline of US global power occurring along a similar time frame as Barbault, within the 2020-2030 range. At the time of the publication of his last work in 2017, he suggested there was still time for Americans to organize and work through political channels to oppose the military industrial complex’s endless expansion and the US’s dangerous foreign policy maneuvers. As McCoy argued, “the possibility remains that, even at this late hour, the American people could come together—as they did during World War II or the Cold War—to build a more just society at home and a more equitable world abroad.”[29] Those efforts unfortunately do not seem to have made much headway. Yet, this alignment perhaps points to a last chance for a collective awakening to begin mobilizing such a movement.

As for the American Dream, within the context of unfettered capitalism, it was destined to be an unsustainable mode of being in the world, neglecting humanity’s place as one piece of a vast interconnected ecosystem. This does not suggest that aspiring for a political and economic system that equitably secures material stability for its citizens is a bad thing, but that a system that allows for the delusional boundless accumulation of capital and resources cannot go on forever, especially one predicated on the perpetuation war, genocide, and environmental destruction. The hypercapitalistic extreme of the American Dream derives from the delusional belief that humanity is separate from and more supreme than anything else evolving on earth. Many traditional religious ideologies perpetuate this delusion of humans as somehow transcendent of and supreme to the natural world. This delusion operates unconsciously within even the materialist and scientistic worldviews that deify human ingenuity and innovation as something salvific rather than paradoxical and flawed. Cultural narcissism emerged out of the vacuous core of the materialist worldview but also the religious foundations it grew out of, and it poses significant risks for the survival of humanity, civilization, and numerous ecosystems and living species. Reimagining not only the American Dream itself, but broader conceptions of reality and our place within it, will be crucial for improving global conditions and preserving numerous cultural and ecological systems in the future.