Are Coincidences Just Coincidences? What If Astrology Actually Works?

Through the Looking Glass

Never in a million years did I expect to make a film related to astrology. Then again, in retrospect, perhaps it was hiding in plain sight all along.

I first encountered astrology in 1973 after fleeing New York City for the West Coast. As a past student activist grappling with the collapse of the progressive movements of the ‘60s and the hard-right turn of the country, I headed for the dock of the Bay in San Francisco.

There I became friends with Marla and Maya, a mother and daughter of Russian extraction. Marla looked like a Tarot card. She dressed only in red and black. She wore her midnight hair like a crown. Her eyes were pure Scorpio, a bottomless pool of mystery and magic in the grand Russian mystical tradition.

Marla wanted to gift me with an astrology reading. Oh great. Welcome to California. As a New Yorker, I inwardly rolled my eyes, politely finessing her invitation. She was relentless. Finally, I gave in as a harmless concession to our friendship.

David the astrologer greeted me from a table covered with hand-drawn charts and pages upon pages of neatly written numerical calculations (this was before personal computers and programs). In the next hour, he told me more about my inner world, my psyche and my character structure than anyone could possibly have guessed. He gave me insights that proved invaluable forever after.

I was astonished. Marla was elated.

Within a year I’d moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico at a time when it was a tiny backwater where waves of cultural and political refugees landed in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. I happened to fall in with a small group of sophisticated astrologers who used a somewhat arcane form of astrology known as Cosmobiology. It focuses on the planets and planetary geometrical configurations called “aspects,” rather than on sun signs and the zodiac. It uses a 90° dial that shows the “hard” aspects of dynamic tension. Like the phases of the moon in relation to Earth, they are the conjunction (new moon), opposition (full moon), and 90° square (half-moon). These hard aspects are believed to correlate with manifestation, events and action.

I learned that the founder of Cosmobiology, Reinhold Ebertin, had published a study that looked at 350 years of Uranus-Pluto transits when they were in these hard aspects, relative to the Earth. (Each transit lasts for approximately 12 years while the planets are within a certain orb from each other). As Ebertin wrote in an updated 1972 introduction to his 1940 book The Combination of Stellar Influences, under the header Collective Destinies:

“Anyone who has undertaken the task of going back many centuries in time to discover which events have occurred under certain planetary configurations will not cease to be astounded. Of particular interest is a study of Uranus-Pluto constellations of the past 350 years, published by Reinhold Ebertin [himself] in 1962. Approximately three years prior to the exact due date of Uranus-Pluto constellations, revolutions would flare up… There is evidence of other significant events involving great numbers of people taking place under very striking planetary configurations.”

The idea that all of humanity could be living through recurring astrological cycles timed to distinct historical epochs got my attention and stuck with me. As it happened, it’s the approach to astrology that would 40 years later lead me to Richard Tarnas’ deep research on what he and transpersonal psychologist Stanislav Grof would call “world transits.”

The Cosmic Weather Report: Testing Societal Astrology

Although I studied astrology modestly for a few years, it was never more than a hobby for personal use, definitely not something for polite company. I went on to do other work as a filmmaker and social entrepreneur.

Never in a million years would I have expected to make a film related to astrology. That is, until 2012 when I asked an astrologer friend if there were any serious books written not about person-centered astrology, but about societal astrology, i.e. world transits. He referred me to Richard Tarnas’ landmark book, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View.

Tarnas is a Harvard-educated cultural historian and professor of philosophy and psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He is the founding director its graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. His first book, The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our Worldview, is a scholarly magnum opus used in many universities worldwide. Joseph Campbell called it “The most lucid and concise presentation I have read, of the grand lines of what every student should know about the history of Western thought.”

Then Tarnas surprised his academic readers with his next book, Cosmos and Psyche. In this exhaustively researched work, Tarnas, who is also a master astrologer, explores a provocative proposition: Is there a correlation between the movements of the planets and entire cultural epochs in human history?

The book chronicles these world transits, a dance of planetary combinations of the outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto) in specific geometric aspects in relation to Earth.

Each aspect has a hard or soft quality — that is, either more dynamic and stressful or more confluent and harmonious. Just as the dynamic tension of the hard aspects is said to correlate with action and events, soft aspects are held to represent ease and flow, and are more like states of being.

Tarnas’ research focused on the hard or dynamic aspects of the planets in relation to Earth. In tracking the major events and cultural trends of history, he found these planetary configurations far more telling than sun signs or the zodiac.

Astrologers associate each planet with a unique, closely described archetype. The revered psychologist Carl Jung defined archetypes as the fundamental governing principles of the human psyche, contained in what he called “humanity’s collective unconscious.” He came to regard astrology as “the sum total of psychological understanding of the ancients,” and he used it extensively in his practice.

As Tarnas describes, “The earliest form of archetypal perspective was the primordial experience of the great gods and goddesses of the ancient mythic imagination.” The philosopher Plato described archetypes as transcendent forms – timeless universals that serve as the fundamental reality informing every concrete particular, both human and cosmic.

He suggests that the archetypes are multivalent, containing light and shadow and everything in between. “They can express themselves in a multitude of ways, all faithful to that essential core set of meanings for that archetypal principle. It can be in very positive, creative, life-enhancing ways, but it also can be quite destructive, and be acted out blindly and unconsciously in quite problematic ways. For instance, Adolf Hitler and Charlie Chaplin were born just days apart and have very similar birth charts.”

Holding a Movie Mirror Up to the Zeitgeist

In the book, tracing back across history, Tarnas discovered overwhelming correlations between historical periods with a distinct cultural character and the archetypal qualities that astrologers associate with those planets that were in alignment during those cycles. In other words, each dynamic planetary alignment has coincided with a distinct zeitgeist – a “spirit in the air” whose characteristics are archetypally consistent, and in that sense archetypally predictable. Or as the saying goes, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

In theory, although we can of course never know concretely exactly what will happen, we can get intimations of what the general zeitgeist will be. Kind of like a cosmic weather report. (There can be more than one world transit occurring simultaneously, or one or more outer planets phasing in and out of the central world transit at any given time. Like life, it gets complicated.)

I was transfixed reading the book. No fair-minded person could summarily dismiss the uncanny historical-archetypal correlations Tarnas rigorously documents.

Then again, correlation is not causation. Are these coincidences just coincidences? If not, it implies a radically different worldview from the current scientific cosmology of a random meaningless universe. It suggests that consciousness, which along with intelligence science has restricted to only human beings, may pervade nature and the cosmos. Might we live in a conscious cosmos?

Upon finishing the book, I had an almost 3-D holographic vision of the film. It would become the ten-episode series Changing of the Gods. What had really grabbed me was not the astrology per se. It was the fact that, then in 2012, we were in the early stages of a world transit of the planets Uranus and Pluto, whose overarching archetypal character is “revolutionary transformation.” The last time it had happened was in the Sixties – from about 1960 to 1972. It was the potential of chronicling this terrestrial moment of revolutionary change in real time that most compelled me.

Historically, as Ebertin had found and Tarnas affirmed in great detail, these Uranus-Pluto periods have been characterized by radically changing paradigms and epochal social and political upheavals. Revolutions both left and right. Profound social transformation. Breakdowns and breakthroughs. Disruption writ large. Game-changing innovation and radical social thought. The unstoppable archetypal quest for liberation, freedom and rights, mirrored by its shadow side of power trips and authoritarianism in all its forms.

Tracing back to the French Revolution and beyond, Tarnas sees these recurring planetary cycles as archetypal waves that break and recede across history. Although these forces are always present to some degree, when these “hard” angular planetary alignments occur, there’s a qualitative spike in the frequency, intensity and ubiquity of archetypally related events throughout the world.

Tarnas had published Cosmos and Psyche in 2006, just before the start of this next Uranus-Pluto transit in 2007. Would this transit rhyme yet again?

Tarnas says that although these transits do rhyme, he believes there’s an evolutionary spiral and a sense that history is moving in a certain direction. He sums up the theme of Uranus-Pluto transits with the famous quote by the 19th Century Transcendentalist, abolitionist, and suffragist Theodore Parker: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Parker spoke those words in 1853 during a Uranus-Pluto transit.

So, why not test the hypothesis by making a film that would hold a mirror up to the zeitgeist of the Uranus-Pluto world transit from 2007 through 2020? Would this be an epic period of revolutionary transformation, comparable to the ‘60s?

Would the powerful revolutionary energies be expressed in progressive, emancipatory movements, or in authoritarian and Fascist forms of reactionary populism? How would the arc of the moral universe bend? Who would bend it?

It’s not an abstract question at this life-and-death crossroads for humanity. We face a five-alarm planetary emergency and an existential civilizational stress test. The very fate of human civilization hangs in the balance. Something is dying, something is being born. The outcome is deeply uncertain.

As Tarnas observes, “World views create worlds.” Could it be that today’s perilous ecological and civilizational crisis is a crisis of consciousness – a crisis of worldviews?

If there’s one fatal systems error in the modern worldview, it’s the assumption that we are separate – separate from nature, separate from the cosmos, separate from each other. But what if we are not separate?

Is there another worldview emerging today that can allow us to navigate our way to restoring the world? Does the arc of the moral universe bend toward justice?

The film presented a compelling canvas to trace the trajectory of social movements for liberation, freedom and justice across centuries, landing the arc of the moral universe in the “fierce urgency of now,” as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had named the moment in 1963 at the March on Washington.

Which brings me to my day job as CEO of Bioneers, a nonprofit my wife Nina Simons and I founded in 1990. Bioneers highlights breakthrough solutions for restoring people and planet. As a celebration of the genius of nature and human ingenuity, it acts as a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators, including First Peoples, the original bioneers, with practical and visionary solutions for the world’s most pressing environmental and social challenges. It’s a systemic “solve-the-whole-problem” approach based on the premise that “it’s all connected.”

Bioneers presented a “cast” of innovators for the film who could address the key questions that a Uranus-Pluto transit would put center-stage. What is the revolution today? What is the transformation?

Then came my dark night of the soul. Having spent decades working to advance novel ideas and bring credibility to practices that had often been dismissed, scorned and marginalized, I was concerned that my making a film about astrology could cause reputational harm to the work.

After much soul-searching, I decided to take the plunge. Facing the end of the world as we know it, if not now, when?

Then again, perhaps Uranus and Pluto were recruiting and I took the bait.

Bucking Bronco Filmmaking: Revolutions Everywhere

In the book, Tarnas provided a kind of field guide to where to hold our movie mirror up to the zeitgeist. He detailed specific arenas of human affairs where Uranus-Pluto transits have consistently manifested. Political revolutions, both left and right. Women’s rights movements. Black liberation and civil rights movements. Extreme othering, scapegoating and right-wing populist, authoritarian and Fascist movements. The liberation of the instincts, including sexual revolutions and the liberation of consciousness through the use of consciousness-altering substances and psychedelics. Technology revolutions. Scientific paradigm shifts.

That framework became our taxonomy. In the film office, my team and I began building “The Wall.” Floor to ceiling, up and down every available wall space, we listed the key events for each historical transit period in each category. I’d already begun surfing the contemporary zeitgeist for archetypal events and keywords.

Media provided the mirror to reflect the spirit in the air. I ended up spending about eight years lashed to never-ending pundits and newscasts that would compose the contemporary documentary mosaic of the film. We ended up using over 5,700 third-party clips, images and other items, a record amount as far as we know. We’d spend years with lawyers clearing it all.

The experience was like making a movie about riding a bucking bronco while riding a bucking bronco. In a lightning storm.

To give one example, would the Uranus-Pluto transit that began in 2007 indeed mark a world-changing technological revolution? Author Thomas Friedman chronicled the great disruption in his book Thank You for Being Late in a chapter eerily titled, What the Hell Happened in 2007? As Friedman documented and related in a radio interview:

“In 2007 Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone at the Moscone Center in San Francisco and began a process by which we put a handheld computer connected to the Internet in the hands of virtually everyone on the planet. In 2007, actually in late 2006, a company called Facebook opened its platform to anyone with a registered email address, and it went global in 2007. In 2007, a new company called Twitter went off on its own independent platform and went global. In 2007, the most important software platform you’ve probably never heard of, called Hadoop, named after the founder’s son’s toy elephant, launched its algorithm. It’s one of the key foundations of big data. It’s what allows a million computers to work together as if they’re one computer.”

“In 2007, GitHub, now the world’s biggest open-source software repository, opened its doors. In 2007, Google released an operating system called Android. In 2007, Google bought a little-known TV company called YouTube. In 2007, Jeff Bezos unveiled the world’s first eBook reader called Kindle. In 2007, IBM launched the world’s first cognitive computer called Watson. In 2007, three design students in San Francisco who were attending a design conference rented out their three air mattresses to people who could not get hotel rooms. It worked out so well that they started Airbnb in 2007.”

“In 2007, Change.org and Palantir started. The cost of sequencing a human genome in 2001 was $100 million. A couple of years later, the cost was $10 million, and then the cost dropped over a waterfall. The year was 2007. In 2007, solar energy took off. In 2007, a process for extracting natural gas from tight shale called ‘fracking’ began. In 2007, the Cloud started, and that’s when the first profits emerged. And in 2007, Intel for the first time went off silicon. It introduced non-silicon materials into its transistors, which allowed the company to keep exponential growth going.”

Friedman’s conclusion: “2007 may in time be understood as the single greatest technological inflection point since Gutenberg invented the printing press.”

Speaking of technological revolutions, when I was first getting the film going in 2013, Netflix was a mail-order DVD company that everyone expected to go bankrupt any day. Nor could I have known the streaming revolution would make it possible for us to shift from a two-hour feature documentary format into a ten-episode long-form series.

Again, however, correlation is not causation. Perhaps these coincidences were just coincidences. Or as Freud said about his work with dreams, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

Yet as we proceeded, comparable world-changing inflection points rocked each of the arenas we’d begun to chronicle. It was like a string of serial firecrackers going off at different times without warning. To paraphrase the news commentator and reporter Rachel Maddow, history wasn’t just rhyming – it was practically plagiarizing.

Revolutions both left and right erupted across the world, beginning in 2010 with the compounding upheavals of the Arab Spring. So many revolutions, rebellions and democracy movements ignited that we ultimately had to leave many examples on the cutting room floor for reasons of length. As Tarnas had documented in prior Uranus-Pluto transits, once again political dynasties fell, such as the Bushes and Clintons. Geo-political upheavals shifted the global balance of power, such as the hegemonic rise of China and the imperialist ambitions of Putin’s Russia. Trump, Bernie Sanders and Emmanuel Macron monkey-wrenched political parties. Brexit radically disrupted the EU.

In 2008 Obama was elected as the country’s first Black President, triggering a virulent racist backlash, and by 2020, Black Lives Matter would become the biggest movement in American history. Simultaneously, the world was living through a corrosive global eruption of xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, white nationalism, Christian nationalism and neo-Fascist politics. Light and Shadow.

Following Trump’s misogynistic campaign and head-spinning election, his inauguration day marked a historic resurgence of the women’s movement, drawing the biggest demonstration in DC history. The same period marked the birth of the unprecedented #MeToo movement. In a shocking reversal of the ‘60s, abortion battles dramatically escalated that would soon lead to the epochal overturning of Roe v. Wade. Multivalence in action.

Sexual revolutions once again manifested with the surprising federal legalization of gay marriage and leapt into the terra incognita of transgender rights and gender fluidity (pronouns, anyone?). The liberation of consciousness resurfaced full-tilt-boogie with the widespread legalization of medical and recreational cannabis. Simultaneously, the popular use of psychedelics spiked once again on a scale comparable to the heyday of the ‘60s, while legitimate medical and scientific research resumed after decades in the wilderness.

As 2020 drew to a close and the transit was trailing off (departing a 10° orb for the square), we knew we needed to pick a somewhat arbitrary end date for our story. It picked us. On January the 6th, 2021, Trump insurrectionists stormed the US capitol in an attempted coup to overturn the election. Quite the slam-bang finale. Props to the writers’ room.

The Uranus-Pluto transit from 2007 through 2020 lived up to its press releases.

Are Coincidences Just Coincidences? As Above, So Below

Which brings us to scientific paradigm shifts, astrology and the driving question of whether coincidences are just coincidences.

During the recent Uranus-Pluto transit, there were historic breakthroughs in our scientific understanding of cosmology, the Big Bang and the origins of the universe. Yet simultaneously there was also occurring a quiet yet profound paradigm shift in the larger sense of cosmology. As Tarnas points out, “Cosmology is the container for everything that happens in a civilization: our understanding of ourselves as human beings in the cosmos, our psychology, our strategies for how we relate to the larger community of life. All this is shaped by our cosmology in fundamental ways, including by the legacy of the Modern Mind, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, when we separated ourselves from nature and the cosmos.”

That paradigm is giving way to something radically different. During this recent period, science has definitively revealed the genetic kinship of all life, an understanding that we’re literal relatives in an extended family of kinship with the web of life. We are not separate. It’s all relatives.

Meanwhile, as humanity has been getting an environmental education the hard way, the Ecological Paradigm has begun to displace the mechanistic machine worldview. There’s a growing scientific understanding of the dynamic interdependence of all life on a “symbiotic planet,” as the late microbiologist Lynn Margulis called it. The Gaia Hypothesis that life is an intelligent, dynamic, self-regulating, self-healing system has been increasingly validated and accepted.

“Scientists are starting to talk like shamans, and shamans are starting to talk like scientists,” says anthropologist Jeremy Narby in the film. As Narby points out, when he published his book Intelligence in Nature in 2006, few scientists accepted even the concept of intelligence in nature. “Some have said that there has been a revolution in vegetal biology since 2005. What science has produced since then has been an enormous confirmation of the surprising capacities of plants and of uni-cellular organisms, of fungi, of trees and networks of trees, and of interspecies communications. At this point, there are no articles on stupidity in nature. There are now thousands of articles and bits of research on these surprising capacities of all kinds of species for communication, learning, remembering, and perceiving. Plants perceive, they smell and they hear. There’s all this research that has unfolded in the last decade – it’s been like a snowball. It’s funny how it happens, because for so long the subject of the intelligence of plants was almost a taboo subject.”

Which brings us back to the mystery of consciousness, a science that today is in its infancy.

Entertain once again the hypothesis that when certain planets align with each other relative to Earth in specific geometrical aspects, there simultaneously arises a zeitgeist that precisely correlates with the archetypes that astrology associates with those particular planets.

Could it be that consciousness pervades nature and the cosmos? If so, how could this be? What would it mean?

In the final episode of Changing of the Gods, we explore these mysteries through the scientific research on Holomovement by the revered physicist David Bohm and Carl Jung’s theory of Synchronicity. These ideas also correspond to ancient Indigenous worldviews and spiritual traditions.

As the physicist Will Keepin describes in the film, Bohm was a colleague of Einstein and a leader in quantum physics. At the same time, he sought to reconcile quantum physics and relativity theory with one another, as well as with ancient spiritual traditions. He held intensive dialogues with leading spiritual masters, particularly with Krishnamurti, as well as with the Dalai Lama, in order to understand their perception of reality.

After 40 years of work, Bohm proposed that the nature of reality is what he called a Holomovement. He suggested that the cosmos is a single, unbroken wholeness in flowing movement, in which each part of the flow contains information about the entire flow, like a fractal in physics.

As Keepin explains, “This Holomovement, he said, has two aspects: the Implicate Order and the Explicate Order. The Explicate Order is that subset of this wholeness that is directly perceptible to the human senses, what we would perceive as the normal physical universe. The Implicate Order, he said, is everything else: all that is beyond our five senses and the mind, but is no less real for being Implicate. Bohm found that this understanding of physics is very consistent both with quantum theory and with spiritual understandings down through the ages.

“The analogy Bohm used was that the Explicate Order is like the foam on the waves of the ocean, and the Implicate Order is the ocean itself. The Implicate Order is the foundational reality. On the surface of that, you have this ephemeral movement of the waves, which, when they break, give rise to the foam, and that foam is like the nature of the physical universe. It arises and it passes away. We know this from fundamental particle physics, where we have creation and annihilation of matter going on all the time.”

Bohm ultimately concluded that, along with energy and matter, there’s actually a third fundamental constituent of reality: consciousness. As Keepin concludes, “He showed that the electron in quantum physics behaves as if it were an ordinary classical particle from Newtonian physics, but with an awareness, a consciousness of the rest of the universe. The electron is functioning in some sense as a conscious being, or it can’t be distinguished from functioning as a conscious being. It has some kind of conscious awareness.”

Bohm saw the cosmos as composed of “energy, matter and meaning (or consciousness).” Keepin relates Bohm’s theories to astrology: “There is one unitive process of consciousness that is manifesting on multiple scales of time and space simultaneously everywhere. Because of that, there are correlations between what’s happening in the microcosm of human consciousness and the macrocosm of the solar system and beyond.

“Astrology is the consequence of this fundamental fractal or holographic structure of consciousness as it comes into manifestation in material form in space and time. That energetic dynamic between Uranus and Pluto at the planetary scale is happening also at the consciousness scale within each of us. This is the reason that we find these correlations of social transformation and revolution, which directly relates to the realm of archetypes in psychology.”

Or as the ancient Hermetic Axiom puts it, “As above, so below.”

Astrology: Synchronicity on a Grand Cosmic Scale?

A second scenario for how astrology might work springs from Carl Jung’s theory of Synchronicity. As Richard Tarnas describes in the film, “Early in Jung’s career, he had noticed, in both his patients and in his own life, that when there would be significant inner states happening, there would be certain events that could happen in the external world that would coincide in such a way that they seemed to be so meaningfully connected – it’s as if they were being invisibly orchestrated. He came to call these ‘synchronicities.’ These events are connected by meaning, namely, as Jung would put it, by the archetypal principle that is informing both the inner human and the outer event.

“Jung is struck by these coincidences that are meaningful, but their meaningful connection can’t be explained by anything that modern science has at its disposal. He’d been having dinners with Einstein earlier in the century and discussing phenomena like this. Einstein had ideas that helped Jung start thinking more about what might be at work. In his later years, Jung worked with the iconic quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli, and they co-authored a book together, The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche.

“In the same way that quantum physics shows how there can be nonlocal connections and the entanglement of seemingly separate particles, the archetypes seem to underlie both matter and psyche. In addition, Jung had been studying astrology from quite early on – by 1911 we know he was already deeply doing that research. He came to consider one possibility for understanding astrology was that it was synchronicity working on a grand cosmic scale.”

Because Jung knew how controversial his monograph, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, would be in the scientific community, he spent about 20 years collecting data. His astrological observations comprised one primary data set.

As Stanislav Grof, who founded Transpersonal Psychology and has collaborated extensively with Tarnas on developing the astrological work, sees it, “The planets really don’t cause anything. They just indicate the situation in the universe, like a clock. The radical concept here is that time is not just a quantitative principle, but time has a quality. Every moment is loaded with archetypal meaning.” Grof calls astrology “the Rosetta Stone of the human psyche.”

As Tarnas suggests, “This world view is very challenging for that disenchanted, objectified view of the nature of reality. It suggests that meaning and purpose are embedded in reality itself, embedded in the cosmos itself, embedded in the Earth itself. We as human beings are expressions of the Earth, of the cosmos. We’ve been born out of it. We are it in human form. Our interior being is in some ways continuous with the interior being of the cosmos itself. It’s what is, in philosophy, called the anima mundi, ‘the soul of the world.’”

They don’t call it the Great Mystery for nothing.

So What Does It All Mean?

Ironically, our journey to the stars lands us back on Earth with a thud. Nice little planet, if you can keep it. The terrestrial ecological crisis is screeching into the red zone.

As Tarnas points out in the film, “We as a planet are confronting our mortality. Near-death experiences have tremendous power to reconfigure moral values. Jung called this the Kairos moment – the right moment for a changing of the gods – a transformation of the fundamental values, principles and symbols of civilization. Clearly, something like that is at work. Our future deeply depends on what level of consciousness and engagement we bring to this historical moment to bring forth the best possible results.”

As Barack Obama riffs to a young audience in a news clip in the film, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. But it doesn’t bend on its own. It bends because you put your hand on that arc and you bend it in the direction of justice.” It’s up to each of us at this world-historical moment to contribute to the solutions in whatever ways we’re each best fitted to do. It’s not a spectator sport. We’re playing for keeps.

For me, after making the film, there were three main takeaways related to astrology. The idea of world transits shifts the societal pronoun from “me, me, me” to “we.” That may be the single most transformational trim tab in order for everything else to work. We need to see ourselves as one species, the human race, and act like it. Our destiny is indeed collective.

The second takeaway is Tarnas’s concept of archetypal multivalence. As he suggests, “These powerful forces and essences have multiple potentials that are all rooted in the same archetype, but are susceptible to different expressions, both light and shadow. It’s above all a message of agency and responsibility.” Every minute of every day, we’re each capable of being an angel or a demon. In every moment, we have a choice about how we act and respond, no matter what the weather is. The shadow is part of the field. Don’t feed it and don’t expect to destroy it, which is a fool’s errand.

And thirdly, ironically, the much-maligned discipline of astrology opens a portal into the mystery of a cosmos saturated with consciousness. Perhaps what astrology implies is that, whether you call it consciousness, sentience, God, Spirit, Creator or the Great Mystery, the invisible world of the Implicate Order seems to be rocking out whether or not we recognize it. At Bioneers, we have a saying: “It’s All Alive – It’s All Intelligent – It’s All Connected – It’s All Relatives.” What if it’s all conscious too?

“We Are the Conscious Expression of the Universe Being Conscious of Itself.”

Lastly, as I write this in January of 2023, Uranus and Pluto are moving into the angular aspect of 120° called a trine. A trine is considered by astrologers to be the most intrinsically harmonious aspect between planets. It correlates with a state of ease, flow and confluence. These Uranus-Pluto energies that have been clashing at right angles from 2007 through 2020 will now begin to interact in flow and harmony for about ten years to come. (At the same time, several other major planetary alignments with quite different archetypal potentials will be coming into play, greatly complexifying the picture.)

Coincidentally, the current crop of scientific tests is validating the premise that specific geometric planetary aspects may be correlated with events on Earth. It’s an eminently reasonable proposition.

Perhaps what’s old is new again. The essential wisdom of the Hermetic Axiom – “As above, so below” – is present in many ancient spiritual traditions, as well as in many old-growth Indigenous cosmologies.

As Chief Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Six Nations), says in the film: “The fate of the world is in our own hands. There’s no savior. There’s only what we will do, the human being. We’re like sands on a beach, miniscule in the universe. The Earth is going to be here. Whether we are going be here – that seems to be in our hands. I’m an optimist. Fundamentally, I’m in favor of life, and I’m in favor of people getting smart and wising up and moving directly. I’ve seen people rise to the occasion, but it takes an awful lot to make them do that. It takes a change of values. Our Haudenosaunee principles are peace, equity (equity brings justice), and the union of the good minds to collectively work for the common good. Put aside your personal agenda and work for the common good.”

Law professor john a. powell of UC Berkeley, who founded the UC Othering and Belonging Institute, frames that change of values in this way in the film, “We need a new story that is willing to accept we’re in a small world together on this little island called Earth. The Buddhist monk and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh used the term ‘inter-being.’ We are not just connected to each other. We are making each other. We are constantly co-creating together, which is more than just a beautiful concept. To me, it’s an accurate description of how life actually evolves. We are the conscious expression of the universe being conscious of itself.

As powell concludes, “I went to see a friend of mine who’s an acupuncturist. I said, ‘So Alex, how old are you?’ And he said, ‘Thirteen billion years old.’ I love that answer, because he’s right. He’s 13 billion years in the making. We’re part of a much larger effort than any one of us may know. Sometimes we’ll get a little down, but I get by with a little help from my friends.”

If we are the conscious expression of the universe being conscious of itself, we have a profound aspirational calling to fulfill. It’s a “value change for survival,” as Oren Lyons calls it. It’s time to wise up and bend that arc toward justice like our lives depend on it, with a little help from our friends, terrestrial and otherwise.