23/02/2026
2026–2‑21 Radio Show Transcript — The Cycle of Spirit and Civilizations (February 21, 2026)
Astrological Musings — The Cycle of Spirit and Civilizations, Neptune and Pluto
If you wish to listen to the show instead, here is the link on Astrologer Bill Attride Radio Show: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astrologer-bill-attride-show--6475581 or Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/astrologer-bill-attride-show/id1525943058
or Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3SmvPEucjBjt69RJtSUVk
Dear Listeners, I do apologize for the Zoom setup mishaps for the show on Saturday. I incorrectly configured the settings, so that most of you were not able to listen, nor were you able to speak with me. The audio settings were also a problem, and I have changed those as well. I believe I have corrected these settings (but I will test them out before our next show to make sure!). For now, here is the transcript for the first half of the show:
This is my first show of 2026, and my last show was in May 2025. I took a break, longer than I intended, from the show, because I had been working 7 days a week, which is not very healthy or wise. I am re-starting the show with the intention of meeting with you every 4 to 6 weeks or so, and by moving it to a Saturday, the show becomes part of what is one of my regular workdays.
Today I want to return to where we left off last May, to look at these rather larger, long-wave influences that inform and shape our human history. Specifically, I want to help us understand where we are at this moment, at this end of an age, which by that I mean the end of a general type of culture, society, economy and political system, or what we could characterize as a certain form of civilization.
For the past few years, certainly since 2008, we have been experiencing the end of age that has been in place since the late1700s and early 1800s. Though it certainly is experienced as an ending, I will also point out that as much as we are reaping the Karma of the last 250 years, we are also here, our purpose at this time for us is for you and me to be the redeemer creators that will bring into being a new world.
For myself, I find that is through the Ancient Teachings, and by this particular gift of Astrology, that we can consider our present moment within the context of the larger story of the spiritual journey of humanity, and understand how we came to this moment, and what we need to do now to meet our moment of destiny with the light of understanding.
As I have mentioned many times since before 2008, what we are experiencing is shaped by similar, but never exactly repeating, patterns of planetary alignments and positions that form a cycle of the emergence, rise and dissolution of civilizations through the ages.
For me, the interweaving planetary cycles of Pluto and Neptune form the most fundamental timekeepers of our journey. Because of their orbital relationship, they form a pattern whereby every time Pluto is in one Sign, like from 2008 to 2024 in Capricorn, Neptune is either in Virgo or like in our period in Pisces. When Pluto is in Capricorn, the prevailing civilization begins to come “undone”, the Institutional order tries to adapt and maintain itself, but the catabolic forces are leading to its diminishment. It was formed long ago, and it no longer can function as the vessel of human experience.
Now we have entered the next moment in the Cycle, with Pluto in Aquarius, and Neptune in Aries. For the last 16 years we have been fighting over the past, trying to preserve or to tear down the social order and the institutions (Capricorn) that supported them. Now we are going to spend the next 20 years in what we should see as a revolutionary struggle over the hopes and dreams, the kind of Community (Aquarius) of the New World that is being born. What we are here for is to be the ones who preserve and pass down what is worthy, but that we must be equally discerning as to what of the old order must change to make a brighter, shining future for those who come after us.
I thought it would be helpful to compare our time to the two most recent periods that parallel our own. Those eras were the 1780s and 1790s, and the 1530s and 1540s. What is striking about those two periods is that each ushered in a new zeitgeist, a new Spirit-Time or paradigm for a world period, as revealed in the realms of spiritual ordering, and in the political, economic, technological and social systems. Perhaps by seeing how these prior periods formed the foundation for their time, we might be able to discern some meaning and guidance with regards to our own turn in history now from 2024 to 2044, and what will be the new Spirit-Time that we are forging for ourselves and our descendants.
I will be focusing for our purpose today on mostly Europe or what is known as “the West”, but similar structural changes were occurring around the world in each of these periods too. So, how should we understand the Spirit-Time of any age, how should we divide up these shifts in with regard to Faith and Science, in the Economy and Social Orderings? More critically, what changed in them to change the world at that time?
What I believe, what we need to understand, was that in each period, and I would argue that this is certainly true for us now, that the very heart and soul of the profound change that was happening each time, the root cause of what brought about all these shifts, in all these realms, was a shift in the kind or type of human who was experiencing this, who were creating this shift, formed by what kind or type of general consciousness was prevailing, and of course, the spiritual attunement or development that was present, and to see what was emerging out of that time.
Why were these changes happening? Because humans were changing, so that what we witnessed in the outer realms of manifestation revealed in all these realms, of Faith, Science, Politics and the Economy, that this was formed by a new type or kind of human consciousness. The primary driver for all of Creation is Spirit, and as it was changing and moving through our human family, and what we saw then, and what we are experiencing now, is a spiritual change or evolution, as the human world moved and is moving from one Spirit-Time to another. That is what we are experiencing in our period now.
The 1530s and 1540s
This passage of Pluto in Aquarius was like our own time, when Neptune was moving through Aries. During this period Europe was transitioning from a Medieval society into an early Modern one. It was the end of the Middle Ages, the end of Feudalism, which had a twin pillared political-religious system, ruled on one side by Local Barons and on the other side by the Church. This order broke down and apart and gave way to the rise to powerful centralized monarchies in France, Spain and England and the Hapsburg Empire; and those Absolute Monarchs, and their subjects, were able to challenge and overthrow the Catholic Church’s power in the realm of Faith.
What had changed? During the 1530s, the Protestant Reformation had split Europe into Catholic and Protestant cities and kingdoms, and for the first time in centuries, ordinary, everyday humans began to think for themselves about the nature of spirit and the central role of the individual conscience in the spiritual order. Then in the 1540s, Copernicus’s heliocentric theory heralded the beginnings of what we know as the Scientific Revolution. Our human understanding of reality moved from a reliance on ancient authorities and religious dogma, from a rigid top-down control of thought and belief, and towards empirical observations, mathematical reasoning, and what we call the scientific method of inquiry. The very nature of how humans think, and how they think about themselves was reversed from top down to bottom up. But why, why did this happen?
Though many changes were contributing to this, it fundamentally came about because human consciousness was altered, because of a new found means for individuals to think for themselves, to question the orthodoxy that had held them in a hierarchical order of belief and control from Pope to Priest for hundreds of years, so that every day humans began to think without being held in bo***ge by dogma and their lives circumscribed by fear of excommunication.
The principal revolutionary advancement that accompanied and quickened this shift of human consciousness and understanding was the “Gutenberg revolution”, the printing press, which led to a veritable transformation of communication and thought for all humans, and for the first time our known history, mass literacy became possible, accelerating the spread of new ideas, and so forging and forming a new collective consciousness for humans. The minds and consciousness of humans was radically altered, and I would argue expanded.
1780s and 1790s
This next passage of Pluto through Aquarius was accompanied by Neptune moving through Libra. During this period in Europe and the “West”, history was defined by the American and French Revolutions, as absolute monarchies, which had accompanied the previous Pluto phase, were the ones being challenged or overthrown now by radical republicans, leading to constitutional monarchies and bourgeois democracies. I would argue that this passage of Pluto in Aquarius with Neptune in Libra should be understood as the result or second phase of what was initiated in the 1500s. I believe we should understand that during the time when Neptune is in Aries we experience the emergence of a whole new consciousness, but it has to propagate and unfold until, 240 years later, the Libra phase brings that revolution of consciousness to a fuller or more expansive realization.
Indeed, the seed that was planted in the 1500s led to the radical empiricism and intellectual idealism of the Enlightenment, which found its most consequential realizations in the American Revolution, “all men are created equal”, and in the French Revolution with the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen”. We had gone from a world defined by the masses governed by the Pope and Lords, to self-government, where ordinary humans should have agency and choice and could and should govern themselves.
Whereas in the mid-1500s there was the Reformation and the rise of Humanism, in the late 1700s there was the Enlightenment and the spread of Secularism. Whereas in the 1500s there were Religious Wars, in the 1700s there were Political Revolutions and the revolutionary, but truly spiritual proposition that all humans are equal.
Now the question is, where does that bring us now. What might we discern in the current debates about our nature indicate or form the shift in Consciousness that we are to be experiencing in our phase of Pluto in Aquarius and Neptune in Aries.
2024 to 2044
During our period, Pluto will be in Aquarius while Neptune is in Aries. Which means our period is more like the 1530s and 1540s, than like the 1780s and 1790s. It would seem to me that we can look at this shifting of Neptune from Aries to Libra in each succeeding passage of Pluto through Aquarius and more accurately define the influence and meaning for each type of Pluto cycle, and what might happen in such a cycle.
I see the Aries type, the 1500s and our period, as being a time when there is a truly new “seed” of consciousness being released, a fundamental shift in consciousness is at hand. Then the Neptune in Libra period, 240 years later, should be considered as being the result or phase two of that seeding passage.
From the perspective of Astrology and considering Neptune’s move from the last sign of Pisces into the first sign of Aries, it makes sense that this passage would release a new seed of Consciousness. But just like in nature, a seed is forming for quite some time before it germinates, grows and finally emerges into the light of day. What early signs or evidence do we have for what may have or may be emerging in our time? What is the nature of human consciousness now, and what might it be becoming?
For me, with a belief and understanding anchored upon the Ancient Wisdom or the Perennial Teachings, this question of human consciousness must be centered upon the Spiritual truth that this entire Creation is the Spirit, Mind and Body of the One, at that the entirety of Creation is alive and conscious, from the monads, atoms, and molecules, to organisms, devas, stars and Galaxies, that in all these many forms there are many realms and levels of consciousness, and yet, they are held together in the Divine Light of the One.
When we look at the current condition of human consciousness on Earth today, what is forming it, what is shaping it and where it might be going, we would have to understand that the way our minds work compared to humans in the 1800’s and even the early 1900s, well we are quite different now because of the very nature of what makes our mind and shapes our consciousness.
I love to play with words, as they hold meanings that are often hidden but quite significant. The word, “Consciousness”, means “Together-Knowing”, which really affirms that we form our human understanding in, through and from our many relationships and interactions with one another, from Mother-Father, Brother-Sister, to the whole range of friends, colleagues and of course our dearly beloveds. But how those experiences that form our understandings and consciousness are being forged now is what has changed.
Starting in the 1500s onwards, with the Gutenberg revolution, increasing steadily in the 1700s, 1800s, and early 1900s, we humans continued to interact with one another via direct speech mostly, but we were also able to shape one another through messages mediated by books and letters and such. But during the 20th century, and now exponentially in the 21st Century we have reshaped our minds with ever more powerful messaging technologies, and I think that it has created such a profound shift now that humans of those earlier periods would not and could not understand the way we are today.
We have shifted from mindful, deliberate communications, such as in handwritten letters and face-to-face speech, to modern, instantaneous, and fragmented digital interactions, and this has transformed human connections from deep, slow, and intimate to fast, broad, and often superficial.
It is true that while technology enables global connectivity and efficiency, it has replaced thoughtful, subtle non-verbal cues with emojis, it has reduced and sometimes tragically eliminated our emotional depths and true understanding of one another and increased the potential for miscommunication and alienation from one another.
We need to understand this most important and essential truth, that our thoughts and our communications are not merely “in our head”. We are living beings, shaped and guided by feelings and intuitions. We are feeling-thinkers, where the delicate interplay and interconnections between our hearts and our minds creates our consciousness.
Because we have diminished our ability to feel and think, our highly connected but extremely fractured world has ruptured the more deliberate and methodical means of humans refining and filtering truer thoughts from the less true, which cannot be accomplished by logic and reason alone but relies on our intuition to reach beyond what is known or apparently true to a higher and deeper level of understanding. Without this essential quality, we have become overwhelmed by a veritable cacophony of points of view and opinions that push and pull individuals and groups into disassociations from their higher selves and from one another, stirring up passions and fears with no means to discern what is real or true.
I would have liked to enumerate the reasons for and divisions of the types of consciousnesses we see in our world right now, but we are running out of time. So, I will turn to that examination of the groups and factions in our current Zeitgeist, of what I call thought-bubbles or bubbles of belief for my next show or the one after.
For now, what I do hope and believe is that this time of Pluto in Aquarius with Neptune in Aries will usher in this next shift of our consciousness, and that it may provide a means to heal this breach between thought and intuition, between our heads and our hearts, so that we will be able to experience deeper and more spiritual lives. I do not think we will find this by some technological “fix”. Instead, it will come from within, from our souls, from our spirit so that paths will be forged that lead us away from confusion and fear and back to the light. So let me end today’s talk we these thoughts.
As opposed to waiting for the shift that is coming, we need to take responsibility and be the shift, to be the kind of human we wish to be. How do we do this?
We must begin and remain aligned with the heart of Creation, which is that the entirety of the Universe is the One. Truth is not to be found over here or over there; Truth is eternal and omnipresent, and it is what forms every particle of Creation, including the stars and planets and you and me. The Truth is within us as much as we are part of a veritable ocean of truth that is the cosmos itself. And it is this immutable reality that makes truth knowable.
What this means is that whether you go inwards to listen to the quiet, still voice of your higher intuitive self, or you choose to go outwardly to observe and learn from realms ranging from the most ethereal to the most substantial, you will come to truth. On the one hand we can turn to those who came before us, to the seers and teachers throughout the ages, who left pearls of wisdom and truth to guide our steps; and equally we should look at, and follow the example of those who live in this light as they preserve these gifts by their conduct and service here today.
But for yourself, as in every life, you must hone your own spiritual intuition and understanding by doing what we have done since the dawn of our awakening, you must share what you have observed and understood with others; and, most critically, you must equally be open towards them as they share what they have discovered with you.
This is part of the message of Aquarius, that we are made by our fellowships, and you cannot find the way of truth by yourself because you are made of one another, and you need one another to lift the veil of misunderstanding, to hone your discernment by tempering your understanding in the crucible of sharing, contrasting, and renewing.
And remember, and this is most certainly true, that it is not enough for you or I to speak, nor is it enough for us to listen, we are here to be the truth, to live the truth, in how we conduct ourselves and treat one another.
There is only one path, there is only one way…and that is by being the Love that we are.
