Earth, Air, Water, and now the Fire: Money/Labor; Communications/Transportation; Women/Disclosure...
Neptune in Aquarius and Pisces
Note for all those listening: The embedded audio strip, that follows this note, is an excerpt from The Sign of the Times by Stan Barker (1984). The book is currently out of print and very hard to find. It is a classic in the field of mundane astrology. It is an extraordinary ride through Neptune’s ingress into each of the zodiac signs that incorporates a vivid depiction of our American history from the beginning, through each chapter, to the end.
If you are listening on a mobile devices, the audio button located at the top of this page is an animated voice reading of this article and does not include the Stan Barker excerpt, but you can still hear The Sign of the Times excerpt by selecting the embedded audio link below.
Chapter 1
Central to the core thesis of the book The Sign of the Times The Neptune Factor (1984) is the question: Has the age of Aquarius has arrived? While I intend to tackle this difficult question in a future post, in the meantime, I refer you to the following video:
and its related article that contains a list of more resources.
Also, see Tammy Cantrell’s excellent Substack for an encyclopedic list of links to more astrological resources.
For now, I have presented evidence in my previous two posts demonstrating that the Neptune factor is still in effect. In The Gemini Wave I discuss the similarities between the previous Gemini waves and the related Aquarius (air) wave of 1998-2011. In The First Water Wave I discuss the current Pisces (water) wave of 2011-2025 and its similarities to the previous Cancer water waves. While air waves share the common concerns of transportation and communication, the water waves share themes of emotional fervor and the central stage placement of women and their related issues of concern.
If the age of Aquarius had already arrived we would no longer expect to see this prevalence of Aquarian influence followed by Pisces wave influence tracking closely to their respective years. We would instead expect to see Uranus with its sudden lightning shifts of earth shaking events and Taurus concerns for labor, resources, and money. I think many would agree that today we live in the more murky world of Neptune/Pisces with its poorly defined boundaries, uncertain realities, and cult-like political leaders.
In my first Substack post of this series Neptune in Taurus, the embedded audio contained there is from chapter three “The Garden of Earthly Delights”, here Stan Barker discusses the Taurus wave that occurred at the end of the 19th century and its related concerns of money matters, economic growth, and rise of the robber barons J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie.
When the book The Sign of the Times (1984), was published the Capricorn wave was still in its first year. In chapter eleven, “Big Dad”, Stan Barker largely falters in many of the predictions he makes regarding the remaining years of this Capricorn wave 1984-1998. He predicts that labor unions will consolidate, make a comeback, and become stronger than ever. He could not have been more wrong. I would argue that, even though many of his predictions were far off the mark, the concerns of Capricorn were nonetheless very much ascendant during this period. In true robber baron fashion the concerns of the working man were squashed at the same time record levels of business profit and expansion of the 1990s smashed all previous historical world records. This massive growth only began to falter in the early 2000s when the next Aquarius wave was taking hold. Though Stan Barker's specific predictions were inaccurate, his overall thesis remains intact.
The Capricorn wave was characterized by the off-shoring of our industry and the financialization of the U.S. economy. All of this resulted in a redistribution of wealth, favoring those at the top of the pyramid and leaving those at the bottom with less than ever. A trend that has continued on, to today.
If there has been any strength shown in the union labor movement of recent history it has only now begun to appear here at the end of this current Pisces wave. I think even Mr. Barker would have to agree that this is where you would expect to see it, during a water wave, where concerns of economic deprivation are dealt with only after being exposed during the previous air sign wave. For a detailed discussion of how we got from the economy of the 1980s to our present state of affairs under Trump see this interview with Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under President Ronald Reagan. Here he discusses how the industrial base of our economy has moved overseas and why the current tariffs being enacted by President Trump will not work to bring those industries back.
Starting at the 17:30 mark you can hear:
A discussion of why the Civil War was not a Civil War
How the Civil War began over tariffs imposed by the North.
And how The Missouri Compromise was enacted to constrain the North’s ability to impose tariffs.
How tariffs have been effectively used throughout our country’s history and why they will not work today
Why Trump’s use of tariffs has him acting like a dictator
How ideological entrenchment, that grew out of The 1964 civil Rights Act, has created many of our current problems especially within the Democratic Party
Here in the embedded audio below I present the prologue to the book. Following that is another embedded audio for Chapter 1: “The Neptune Factor”. In this opening chapter, Stan Barker provides only the briefest of descriptions of past Aquarius and Pisces waves. He spends a total of 16 pages on the two signs altogether. Within these short few pages, he also includes his thesis on the Neptune Factor. In the chapters that follow, he spends from 20 to 40 pages on each of the signs, individually, describing in great detail two historic waves for each sign. This chapter sets the stage for my next post and the Aries wave that is upon us from 2025-2038.