A strange thing happened to me on March 7, 2025. For a Friday, there was not anything necessarily spectacular about it other than it was the end of the work week. I was busy. Had a handful errands to wrap up and variety of tasks related to my astrological work that needed to be completed. But most of the day I felt this gnawing urge to write about Uranus and Neptune. While going about my day, in the background was this thought that kept torturing me, “God, these guys are so cool. When they get together, they just make magic. Just about anything could happen. I need to say something about that. But what?”
By dinner time the idea returned. Afterwards, I sat down on the couch to watch some TV and was exasperated with this little bug in my ear. I tried to make a deal with this incessant urge in my head.
“Ok, STOP. I will write something about this. I do not know what, but I will do it. But I cannot just force this, y’know. With Neptune and Uranus, it must be organic. The inspiration must come out of nowhere. If I try to force it, then what I produce will just be hot garbage.”
It finally left me alone and I could relax and enjoy my evening. As the night drew on, I got tired and decided to head off to bed. While lying in bed, I was organizing my music albums and playlists on Spotify. While vibing to some tunes, I was suddenly overcome with the urge again. Except this time, it was specific. I knew what to write. I thought, “Ok. Game on.” I popped open my notepad and started writing. It was effortless and I wrote out a full paragraph in probably less than a minute. I stopped and re-read it a couple times.
“Damn. I do not know what this is, but it sounds a little like a poem. Maybe some lyrics. What if I broke it out into stanza format?”
I rearranged the piece a couple times. Then laughed.
“Well, it’s not very good technically, but I really like the feel of the energy in this. I love how it evokes the archetypes without explicitly naming them. I might be able to do more with this, but for now I think I will just drop this on Facebook and see if they have any opinions on it.”
A final draft of this little diddy is below:
Inspiration & Breakthrough
“It’s funny how long
I convinced myself
that revolutionaries
made the world spin
But I had it all wrong
It was the poets
Ye gods,
it was always them
Their instincts
and sympathies
and ecstasies
of larger realities
inspiring all manner
of yearnings
to break free
and risk it all
for that big idea,
and breaking vision,
that smashing hope,
and shining prism
Underneath
the righteous fury
Hides
something righteous
Compelling us
to tear it all down
and charge forward
Eternally chasing
That true north
of beautiful perfection
For ultimately,
the revolutionary
without its muse
Cannot exist
Can’t draw forth
electric change
Without first
becoming enchanted
by the possibility
of union”
I made a few minor revisions and then sat there flowing with the energy I had channeled. “Man, I am in bliss with this energy. What exactly is this?”
It was quiet in the house. Dark. The music was still playing.
“Are all artists and writers like this? Do they just go through levels of surrender, falling into and away from themselves until something just explodes? I don’t even know…”
And then out of nowhere an idea hit me:
“Was Lennon like this? Was he feeling this when he wrote ‘Across the Universe?’”
Yeah. Seriously. It went there. I now think I am John Lennon (laughing). Even though my little diddy is fairly amateurish and what he produced was a timeless piece of art, what concerned me was the FEEL of the two. I was overwhelmed by it. There are millions of great songs and artists out there. Why did THIS song from THIS artist pop in my mind as a benchmark?
And then I realized what might be happening.
“When did Lennon write his song? Do we have a chart? Has anyone looked?”
Off to Google I went. After a bit of internet sleuthing, I found numerous histories of the song. From what I could gather, the exact date as to when the song was written is not known, but it is has been estimated that it was written sometime in the late months of 1967. Fortunately, there is some testimony as why it was written. Apparently, Lennon got into a fight with his first wife Cynthia that night. Later, while lying in bed and still mad at her, he decided to write a song. He wanted to embed this fight into the song like a dis track (kind of a dick move), but the problem is that when he tried to write it the dis just would not take. Instead, something else manifested and he wrote the song that night. Reading Lennon’s response to the process, I get the sense that he was genuinely surprised as to what was coming out of him.
“It’s not a matter of craftsmanship; it wrote itself. It drove me out of bed. I didn’t want to write it. I was just slightly irritable, and I went downstairs and couldn’t get to sleep until I put it on paper. Then, I went to sleep.”
Lennon’s natal chart offers some clues as to when this fight might have occurred. “Late months” I interpret as the fall or early winter months, October – December. Lennon has Aries rising so Libra is on the cusp of his 7th house and Scorpio shares the house as well. This means that October and November will be hot for him because the transits of the Sun, Mercury, and Venus moving through the area of life governing his significant relationships. Also, Mercury in Scorpio is placed in this house and is in square aspect to Pluto. That is a brutal combination. I’ll bet Lennon could say some wickedly horrific things when he got into a fight with his significant others, the kinds of things that leave a mark or at least send them to bed mad at each other. This aspect is one major reason he would sit in bed boiling about it and be petty enough to want to write a song to lash out.
With these intuitions, I played around with some chart possibilities and arrived at one possible date and time of November 17, 1967 around 1:30 am. I embedded this transit chart into a tri-wheel using Lennon’s natal (inner wheel), his secondary progressions (middle), and these transits for the song (outer).
The synastry amongst these charts correlate well to the story. As expected, there is a flurry of transit activity moving through the 7th house. Of interest, transit Mercury’s tight square aspect to the Moon and Pluto highlights exactly the dynamic we noted above. Also, transit Saturn’s opposition to 7th ruler Venus adds fuel to the fire. Saturn is in Aries and the 12th so I get the impression that Lennon was doing something that was upsetting Cynthia, making her feel like she was not being cared for, maybe ignoring her, and words were said that landed like bombs (transit Mercury t-square configuration apex). Also, when we consider the dispositor for Mercury and Saturn, Mars, is also in square aspect to the ascendant – descendant axis, we get a pretty clear picture of a relationship under a lot of stress and conflict. With Mars’ placement in Lennon’s 10th house, it also makes me wonder if his career or fame were contributing to the fight in some capacity as well. With the 1:30 am chart possibility, then the transiting ascendant – descendant axis also works like a trigger for the fight as it aligns with the t-square noted above.
But this is where things get weird.
In addition to all the astro dynamics that correlated to the fight, there were also a handful of much bigger themes rolling through Lennon. And it all involves Uranus and Neptune.
At that time in his life, transit Uranus had gone into conjunction with his Neptune while transit Neptune had gone into opposition with his Uranus. This inverted and reinforced relationship of energies feels inspired, possessed, prophetic…and beautiful. The involvement of transit Chiron in Pisces in this relationship adds another element, Lennon’s search for universal love and compassion. The transit Moon acted as one trigger on November 17th and the transiting midheaven – imum coeli axis was the timing mechanism for the manifestation of the energies.
These big-time energies from these archetypal gods took over Lennon. It did not matter that his emotions and thoughts were stuck on the fight with his wife. All that was wiped clean when he started to create. At that point, something else took over. Neptune was talking directly to him. Just look at passages from the song:
“Pools of sorrow
Waves of joy
are drifting through
my opened mind
Possessing and caressing me”
And…
“Images of broken light
which dance before me
like a million eyes
They call me on and on
across the universe”
And…
“Limitless undying love
which shines around me
like a million suns
It calls me on and on
across the universe”
The scope of this inspired connectivity and blurring of division and separation are hard to conceive, but these words get us awfully close. This is more than a poem or song. It is a spiritual affirmation. It speaks a type of love that is impossible for us broken humans to take seriously. Yes, part of that is also the influence of Chiron in Pisces, but it is channeling of Neptune’s divinity that flows through. It is hard, really hard to tap into the feel of that full connection. Most of us do not go there because to embrace it means to weep for the multitude of ways we fall short, the detriment of our limited vision, but that it is also ok if we are continuously striving. And in that there is a grace in our failings that can sometimes evoke a fragile beauty in response to the contradiction of blindly existing with these connections.
Uranus works in tandem with Neptune. And while we may suggest that its influence was the breakthrough that Lennon experienced in reaching Neptune, Uranus’ role is much deeper and aligned to its archetype as well. Uranus tells Lennon:
“Nothing’s gonna change my world”
Neptune was bombarding him with the juxtaposition of perceived polarities (“pools of sorrow, waves of joy, sounds of laughter, shades of life”) while also hitting him with the impermanence of everything which served a larger purpose: to “call me on and on across the universe.” Uranus is bumping off those truths and hammering them home further. No matter changes we go through, no matter the disruption and chaos, nothing can change who we are because it is connected to everything else. All polarities are within us. Change only feels the way it does because we are perceiving it from a limited vantage point. We are an echo who has convinced itself that it is separate from the source. Whatever “change” Uranus initiates could be for the sole purpose of getting us closer to that source, Neptune.
What is cool about the timing of this awareness that was gifted to Lennon is that we do not necessarily need to use the November 17th chart to support it. Transit Uranus and Neptune are slow moving. The orb of their relationships to Lennon’s Uranus and Neptune would be in place for October through December. And this became personalized because these slow-moving giants had also aligned to another slow-moving growth cycle, Lennon’s secondary progressed Mercury. Four years earlier, Mercury had turned retrograde and was now tightly aligned with both them. Lennon’s evolution had reached point where he was ready to receive these truths, to intensify the focus of his mind on what they symbolize, and how that impacts everything he thought he knew. Mercury was the “words flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup, slithering wildly as they slip away across the universe.” It was the “thoughts meandering like a restless wind inside a letterbox, tumbling blindly as they make their way across the universe.”
But the November 17th also feels appropriate because all these aligned dynamics were ultimately triggered off by the full Moon as it went into alignment with…wait for it…transit Uranus and Neptune, Lennon’s Uranus and Neptune, and his secondary progressed Mercury. The full Moon shone a light onto the dynamics and shocked Lennon awake. It activated everything.
But notice that there is also a structure to these energies. These relationships were unified in so specific a manner that they created a larger archetypal configuration. For the purposes of this illustration, I drew in the lines in the inner circle to display this. This configuration was named the Mystic Rectangle by Dane Rudhyar almost a century ago. The main feature of this configuration is the need for balance which is symbolized by the two oppositions intersecting in its center. Fortunately, there is more than enough supportive trine (blue lines) and sextile (green lines) aspects connecting everything to help bring about that balance. Here, that balance is the awareness of where we exist, but also what we are connected to, and what change means within that larger scope of conception. It is also the blasting inspiration and visions and beauty and perfection and genius that sometimes all come together in just the right way to take our breath away and wake us up. When we consider the archetypes and energies working through this rectangle, it truly lives up to its name. It makes me wonder if the double balance needed is so powerful that when we find the artistry in our lives to bring it about, it produces realizations equivalently as world shattering. So, maybe the question is: “does the Mystic Rectangle inherently possess a Uranian – Neptune dynamic in what it can manifest?” If so, then this may explain WHY it is mystical.
So where does that leave little ole me? I started out my day plagued with visions of Uranus and Neptune and then burrowed down the rabbit hole until I arrived at this spot. From here, I sat back and wondered where to go. And then it hit me, “When did I submit my little diddy online?” I quickly backtracked my work and arrived at 10:36 pm. With a credible time, we now have a chart for my piece as well.
This second chart is a bi-wheel comparing both pieces. The chart for mine is placed on the inner wheel since the chart for Lennon’s is more of a rectification. As soon as I pulled to two together my hair stood on end. The chart for my piece re-activates the Mystic Rectangle from “Across the Universe.” Since the time from when this song was written, both Uranus and Neptune have now moved into position to oppose each other. This means that what I was feeling was similar to what Lennon was feeling. Again, this does not mean that my piece compares to the complexity and brilliance of Lennon’s. That is not the point. The focus here is with the underlying energies that gave rise to the manifestation and the FEEL of those energies as they were manifesting. In that regard, I understand the level of “possession” Lennon felt when he expressed his and the specific content which it produced.
In the most surreal fashion conceivable, this comparison from one chart to another is literally a connection across the universe because one came into existence 58 years ago and has been hanging somewhere in the aether of this existence of universal connections just waiting to be rediscovered. Tonight, through working with the energies directly, like Lennon, I did so. But I also took it a step further than Lennon by bringing the light consciousness to the teleology we are working with. In this regard, the past and the present combine or unify or…are made void in the reality that these energies are omnipresent across what we conceive change to be in its relation to the concept of time we believe in.
Awareness of unity is the key. It is my hope that my expression offers an appropriate degree of closure in Neptune’s final moments in Pisces and redemption to the energies Lennon discovered.
“For ultimately,
the revolutionary
without its muse
Cannot exist
Can’t draw forth
electric change
Without first
becoming enchanted
by the possibility
of union”
I got the message from across the universe, John. I hope I responded well.
End Notes
[1] The featured image was created by Coolarts223 and was accessed from Google’s creative commons section.
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