Astrology Mirrors my Neptunian/Utopian Spirit

December 24, 2025

Note: See Monday and Tuesday posts.

Hold on to your hats. This post will look technical, since I’m putting two astro charts inside it. Astrologers may appreciate; I’d advise those unfamiliar with astrology to just chill; you will “get it” (get the synchronicities!) too, by just paying attention to what I tell you to notice!

Okay. Here goes:

On my 83rd birthday, December 19th, as I was walking and reading, there just happened to be a New Moon in the heavens! A brand new beginning, with Sun and Moon conjunct, on my birthday, sitting on the same degree as my natal Sun! And I did not realize it. I was just walking the trails and reading the book, totally entranced on my annual three day birthday retreat, December 18-20, 2025.

And why didn’t I notice it? You’d think I would have. After all, I am an “astrologer” who, from the mid-’70s through the mid-’90s wrote articles published astro magazines, spoke at astro conferences, and made my living as a professional astrologer! For 20 years! But no, I DID NOT NOTICE that the New Moon “Just happened to be” conjunct my own natal Sun on on the very day I was born, the day this year, on my 83rd birthday, when the Sun returned to its natal place.

And what tops it off: I was born with Neptune in Libra, a member of the “peace, love, dope” generation. (Neptune’s total cycle is 165 years; it was last in Libra from 1942 through 1957). We were the ones who invented the word “co-dependency” — to describe our tendency to lean into our partners to the point where we lost our own individuality.

And during that three day period of my birthday this year, the transit of Neptune, now approaching the end of its sojourn through Pisces, the sign that it rules, with its big dreams, idealism, visions, imagination, evasion, fogginess, forgetfulness, and utopian fantasies of creating heaven on earth, along with transit Saturn close by, was directly squared by the approaching, exacting and then waning New Moon in Sagittarius..

Yes. I was reading a book, PARADISE NOW: THE STORY OF AMERICAN UTOPIANISM, the first printed book I had found myself immersed in, all the way through, for many many years.

And I was doing so during an astonishing heavenly configuration that resonated within me, body, mind, soul and spirit. Sun/Moon in Sagittarius exactly square Saturn/Neptune in Pisces.

After I returned, on the December 20th, I finally let go of my three day electronic fast; sat down with my ipad . . . and wouldn’t you know, I see, via email, this substack post by Maureen Richmond: 

In my own natal chart, generational Neptune, that planet of dreams and visions, at 1°59 Libra, closely approaches 4°53 Libra, the topmost point, the Midheaven of the chart: my actual path, as an embodied soul on Earth this time around, is generational, NEPTUNIAN. So no wonder utopia has always been my lodestone, my guiding light!

Here’s my chart.

Notice Neptune at the top. Conjuncting the Midheaven, the path. Notice how it links  to six other planets in the chart.

Here’s the chart for December 19th, 2025. Notice the frictional squares (red lines) that link the transits of Saturn and Neptune in late Pisces to Sun, Moon, — and even loving Venus (ruler of Libra).

I’ve already focused in on the Saturn/Neptune in Pisces phenomenon that is creating a slow-moving karmic slog/fog, insisting that each of us, and all of us, look back, open up old wounds, acknowledge them, forgive both ourself and others; in short, direct our focus (Saturn) on healing (Neptune) the buried traumas of the deep past before we launch forward on February 20, 2026, the day when these two planets both move into 0°Aries exactly for the very first time in thousands of years.

Okay. Back to my own chart: notice that the Sun, Ascendant, and Mars are in fiery, even furious at times, Sagittarius. Thus my many eruptive years as a “violent (dogmatic Sagittarian) peace (Neptune) activist,” which, when I finally did consciously notice this horrendous contradiction, I stopped, suddenly, nearly half my lifetime ago; just quit cold (as is the tendency of natal Saturn/Uranus in Gemini, opposite Mars in Sagittarius). And thus began a seven-year healing process with “Orphan Annie”: to remember, honor, and ultimately release my own traumatic war baby wounding. (Dad left for the war when I was nine months old; My mom’s milk dried up and she weaned me to a cup; I was sitting on her lap when she was  listening to the radio with the blaring notice about Hiroshima: my military Dad was stationed in the Phillipines.)

So you see how Neptune, the Midheaven, and the Sagittarius planets and Ascendant are connected? Not easily. Not at all. These planets square one another (see red lines), are “squared off against one another,” frictional, and what makes the lifelong situation even more grating is that one of them is dreamy Neptune, which requires softness, love, to flourish!

Okay. In my own deep past, I functioned for awhile, as a (violent) “peace activist.”

Meanwhile, all my adult life I have also been experimenting with living in (utopian, Neptunian) community, over and over again, various forms of it, including (not in chronological order): a single household in Twin Falls Idaho with three people — myself, my former husband, and his new love to whom I introduced him;  a single quarrelsome household in Jackson, Wyoming, with four other “peace activists”; a lodge in the deep woods near the coast above Mendocino California with about ten people, some of whom were too weirdly crazed, even for me!; a summer commune (two years) that took over the “Idlewild Hotel” (its real name) on a cliff above a beach an hour south of Boston peopled with graduate students with up to a hundred visitors on weekends; on and on, I could mention 20 more community settings for this fiery individual, each one with its own life, its own parameters and therefore particulars, and its own teachings on how to become a truly human being. 

And, when I was the one who started a community, I did so with dogmatic intensity — as the charismatic Sagittarian leader who got so controlling (Venus/Mercury in Capricorn) that things were bound to deteriorate. Only in my 70s and 80s, as founder of Green Acres Permaculture Village, now over 15 years old, with many iterations along the way, have I learned from all my experiences with various forms of community to actually pay attention to what happens, just stay with it, notice it, hold open a compassionate awareness of everyone, all of us suffering souls and our individual circumstances, each of whom IS doing our very best. Each potentially frictional occasion carries its own parameters which, will then naturally, at some point, evolve into whatever needs to happen next.

In other words, TRUST THE PROCESS (Neptune)! Oh you fiery Sagittarian spirit so determined to create Heaven on Earth!

I notice that Charles Eisenstein consciously suffers from the same utopian spirit.

And he also points to the same Neptune in Libra generation, without calling it that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reflections on Utopia

December 23, 2025

From yesterday’s post:

. . . and noticing how the details of the book internally resonated . . .

Yes. Very much so. In fact, all the way through, PARADISE NOW: THE STORY OF AMERICAN UTOPIANISM, by Chris Jennings, ignited memories I had completely forgotten about. In other words, I did not know the memories were even in there, waiting to be unearthed!

Just how did this happen? Well, I realize now, utopia has always been my guiding star, my lifelong goal, inspiring and/or “figuring out” a way of life that dynamically and harmoniously includes the utterly divergents strengths of fractious individuals and shared community, or one might say, philosophically, how to combine the One and the Many.

And, since I live in the U.S.A., “land of the free,” to which intrepid and brave Individuals migrated, first from Europe and, especially now, from elsewhere, the pole not exactly missing from the equation, but certainly de-emphasized, is Community.

On the other hand, I’ve been deeply troubled by the current politics that surround immigration, how this country has been overrun by those who are given free stuff if they do move here and thus expected to vote in a certain way; in other words, come to America, and Community, for you, is guaranteed!

“Socialism,” in all its forms — I tend to keep a desktop folder with socialist memes. For example, these two —

 

 

Is not my bias obvious?

So yes, socialism does seem to be what this country is heading into, or at least was, until the advent of Trumpian individualism. And yet, to me, both selfish, greedy capitalism and so-called selfless, but actually mind-controlled socialism/ communism are one-sided. How to achieve a dynamically harmonious balance between the two?

So you might wonder why I picked up a book that examines five examples of 19th century socialism, all of them stressing life-in-common, including, for some, the dispersal of all private property, including money, to the community. What is it they say now? “You will own nothing and you will be happy?”

For yes, that’s what they were about: how to actually engineer, or invite, or persuade individuals to join their lives to such an extent that we free-thinkers, in late 2025, would be appalled to even consider this an option.

And yet, community has always held the patina of safety, of a way of life that, because it is shared, both in its joys and its sorrows, feels good.

 

My own philosophy, however, has always been, for over half a century now, informed by both Jung and astrology: We are here in bodies on planet Earth to fully actualize our extraordinary individual potential (as shown in the utterly unique configurations of our natal charts). And how do we do that? By interacting with others and the ground beneath our feet!

Nobody grows in a vacuum. It’s impossible. We need especially the frisson of those whom we tend (whether instinctively, or via conditioning) to hate, despise, think beneath us, or envious of those above us, etc. Each time we find ourselves riled up emotionally, we need to ask: what in me am I projecting upon this other person? What qualities that I think I detect in them are actually, or also, in me? Qualities that I tend to deny? In other words, Shadow Work.

One of the five communities dealt with in this book, Oneida, which lasted longer than any of the others, had a weekly evening practice that likely helped them to tolerate their very crowded conditions as they lived in The (very large) Mansion House.

How large?

Rather than pore through the book to find the exact page, I just searched for the answer, and bingo!

This weekly practice was to gather with the express purpose of criticizing each other. Everybody got a turn. No critique was “too much.” Both the trivial and the serious. While your face might burn when it was aimed at you, your turn was just around the bend.

But yes, like the other four communities, after 30 years Oneida died. And this book traces the conception, birth, growth, maturity, and dying process of each of them.

While the Shakers, Owenites, Fourierists, Icarians, and Perfectionists [Oneida] had different visions of the coming paradise, they all shared the belief that some specific, ideal social order exists. Whether or not they saw God or Reason or Passion as the author of that ideal order, they proceeded from the assumption that humankind is somehow meant to live in utopia.

 

This book is especially good at tracing the back story of how each community began (with a charismatic leader, Christian or secular) determined, not just to imagine, but to actually establish a tiny social/material structure and process for group life that would serve as a template, an example for the entire world. To this end, the leader bought land, or had it bought for him, in wilderness usually, though two of the five bought out the physical structures and layout of an already existing “community” that had either moved on (New Harmony: (Owenites), or died out (Nauvoo: Icarians).

The point is, this was not just hopeful dreaming, this was actual hands-on, learning how to farm, constructing houses, fences, small businesses, a mill, etc. Not easy. Not always fun (though more fun at some places than others; in fact Fourier was determined to have all labor be fun).

Because of their small scale and grand ambitions, these communities offer an unusually clear window onto the practical working out of various social theories. Every community, utopian or not, is composed of notions about how people ought to live together. (p. 19)

 

As I poured through the thousands of fascinating idiosyncratic details the author researched and ran with (often ironically, or otherwise gently making fun of), I found myself dreaming, imagining . . . my own visions for community life drifting back into view.

• Like the home town apartment building, huge, a giant trapezoidal, three story building that I vividly imagined common gardens within, back in my early 30s. What if a bunch of us could buy the entire building, and establish a community there?

That was the first really extravagant vision of giant apartment structures that could be completely reimagined as actual living communities, rather than just individual apartments where people usually just pass by each other in the hallway with only, maybe, a shy, or curt, hello, on the their way to their own private, lonely, lair.

Every time I see an apartment building, I cannot help but reimagine its use . . .

Here’s a more recent vision: entire square city blocks with homes along all their edges establishing an actual commons, with gardens, playground, etc. inside, rather than all the separative fences.

Here, now, at home, our tiny three home Green Acres Permaculture Village, with neighbors nearby joining our weekly work parties and weekly Community pitch-in Dinners for one and all.

And of course, given my own predelections, I imagine little villages like ours, many of them throughout this large (460 small homes) neighborhood, eventually networking with each other with paths throughout, not just on sidewalks parallel to streets.

I imagine all suburbs transforming themselves in this way.

And even further: since this is an academic town, with our Green Acres neighborhood abutting Indiana University, how about programs in psychology, sociology, city planning, architecture and design, etc. etc., all utilizing Green Acres as a base.

I simply cannot help it. It’s who I am. A dreamer, a philosophical dreamer: how to work with the One and the Many, Individual and Community.

So yes, my own utopian fantasies have been ongoing, and constant.

The book’s author mentions, somewhat ironically, the two, opposite, etymological origins of the word “utopia”: 

 

In other words:

 

Whether or not each of the five communities actually focused on continuous improvement rather than near immediate perfection depended hugely on the character of its founder. Did he (or in one case, she) have a fundamentalist, dogmatic point of view? Or not. If the former, then eventual conflict with others was guaranteed.

I was almost as interested in how these communities dissolved, or were cut short, or fell apart, as I was in their birthing process.

I’m reminded of my own life. Its impermanence. As I head into its ending, which may be the next second (a heart attack, say), or may be in ten years, likely no longer. In my 84th year, I am clearly on the other side of maturity. It’s well, to keep that in mind as I go about my days.