IDF Spokesperson's Unit; via Wikimedia Commons.
While researching a book project and teaching a pilot course based on the concept, I rediscovered an astonishing passage in astrologer and Jungian analyst Liz Greene's book, The Outer Planets & Their Cycles: The Astrology of the Collective. Greene has had an impressive career, distinguished as both an astrologer and Jungian analyst, and more recently, an academic, publishing two extensive works on the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. She has been highly influential in the development of modern psychological astrology and its offshoots.
Outer Planets contains lecture transcripts that Greene gave at a Wrekin Trust conference in the early 1980s, addressing the topic of mundane astrology and collective psychology. The book was published in 1983 and reissued in 1996. The latter edition is the version I'll reference here. The passage serves as an example of a poignant prophetic insight that was more true than Greene could have probably imagined when she said it, drawing from her integration of modern astrology and Jungian psychology.
Additionally, Greene's insights demonstrate the usefulness of cyclical cosmology, the study of history alongside the cyclical alignments of the outer planets to make predictions about future historical trends. This approach was pioneered by the French mundane astrologer Andre Barbault (1919-2019). Barbault's work significantly changed mundane astrology in the late 20th century.
I discovered Green's book over fifteen years ago in a used book section of a San Diego bookstore. I remember reading this specific passage then, but having little understanding of the situation involving Israel and the Palestinians (I was really quite ignorant, actually), I didn't grasp the broader significance of Green's larger point and warning. Interestingly, though, I flagged the page because it was my first introduction to the concept of enantiodromia, a term that Greene referenced as a Jungian coinage. Enantiodromia is a concept that goes back to pre-Socratic philosophy, specifically the work of Heraclitus (which influenced Jung and much of the Hermetic philosophy that Jung also drew from).
When I came back to this passage earlier this year, I was astounded by its relevancy regarding the plight of the Palestinians following the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks against the Israeli state. I disucussed the issue in my second Saturn-Neptune essay, published October 2024, because I believed it deeply reflected the symbolism of the Saturn-Neptune alignment and that the grim reality of the subsequent genocide (vield as Israel's "right to defend itself") would became more upfront and mainstream by the time of its exactitude in early 2026 (specifically February). I refer readers to the section of that essay titled "The Genocide in the Room" for additional commentary and context.
When I published my second Saturn-Neptune essay, the issue of labeling the Israeli response to October 7 a genocide was highly controversial within the mainstream media and the political establishment (it still is, though the media blackout appears to be somewhat dissipating). In my article, which I intentionally published a week before the US Presidential election in November, I highlighted the profound symbolic reflection of that election, illuminating a deep spiritual and moral void at the heart of the American political establishment. The genocide was central to this.
For me, the choice between two brands (left or right) of US-sponsored genocide was more than deeply problematic; it was outright horrific and reflected the narcissistic and psychopathic underbelly of the US empire. Taking a "lesser evil" stance in that election wasn't an acceptable political strategy since both parties were complicit in not only allowing but participating in the systematic ethnic cleansing of the Gaza and occupied West Bank regions (through the constant flow of taxpayer funding and US weapons sent to the state of Israel).
This underbelly is nothing new: the horrors of America's founding were predicated on the enslavement and abuse of African people and the slaughter, displacement, and intentional cultural degradation of Native Americans. The previous war crimes perpetrated by the US (especially numerous following the September 11 terrorist attacks, and of course, the Vietnam War) included. In relation to the Israel/Palestine conflict, war crimes have become so blatant and deeply normalized within the machinations of politics, media, and cultural influence, America has devolved into something even more overtly insidious. The uniqueness of this conflict is not merely that it's happening but that it's happening in the light of day, in the social media era, where the evidence of genocide is instantly available via any mobile device. The images and the numbers of casualties are there for all to witness.
Denial of this reality (or worse, support for it) can be understood, in large part, via the dynamics of group psychology, a feature of Greene's book and conference lectures. However, she addresses the topic exclusively through the Jungian and astrological frameworks. On the political level, there is an obvious occurrence of groupthink happening (this is a well-accepted conception of what led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003). On a broader public level, Belgian psychologist Mattias Desmet's "mass formation" hypothesis is also worth contemplating, especially in understanding the mass of Israeli citizens, IDF soldiers, and a whole segment of US representatives who fully support the Israeli government's current strategy and policies. I'm not sure if this is Desmet's personal or professional view, but his work helps contextualize this kind of mass mobilization of evil. Desmet's work, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, focused on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic response, so it still stands as hugely controversial (and largely ignored and dismissed). His broader historical reference point and parallel was the symptomology that led to the Holocaust during World War II, which he saw as driven by the dominant materialist worldview above all else. I'll discuss this more in my conclusion.
As Greene would argue, Jung's model of the psyche, his concepts of the shadow and the collective unconscious, also allow us an understanding of the Israel/Palestine conflict (in addition to numerous similar incidents). This is what allowed Greene to make the following insight regarding the founding of the Israeli state in 1948. Of course, Greene is not alone here. Numerous individuals have taken note of the potential dangers and irony associated with the founding of Israel in light of the conflict and tension it created with the regional Arab population. Notably, German/American historian Hannah Arendt, who expanded upon the concept of totalitarianism in the aftermath of the Holocaust, wrote about these dangers, especially in relation to the rising tide of Israeli nationalism, in her essay Zionism Reconsidered.
Greene's observations begin in "Lecture Two," in which she addresses some audience members' questions but primarily focuses the lecture on Saturn's conjunctions with the three outer planets (Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto). At this point, Greene segways into the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in tropical Leo, which occurred at the end of World War II. She brings up the fascinating observation that many of her clients born at this time (the time of the conjunction at the end of the 1940s) consistently revealed dreams involving the Holocaust (despite being born after it ended). Reincarnation is discussed as a possibility, but Greene perceives the Holocaust as a symbol rather than a literal image. Greene argued that while the reincarnation perspective may be valid, the symbolism of the dream says more about the client's present condition. Following this, Greene shares this insight:
"If you really want to get a strong taste of what Saturn-Pluto feels like, then you must look at the images of the last war [World War II], because the last war is a paradigm of Saturn-Pluto. It's a powerful symbol of what I feel this aspect is about, including the overwhelming Plutonian dictatorship and the crushed scapegoat that is hunted and persecuted, which is also in a strange way Plutonian. All the sexual sadism and dreams of racial purity and supermen are bound up with Saturn-Pluto...."
"Oddly, Israel was born as a state under that same Saturn-Pluto conjunction that followed the Holocaust. This is either a piece of immense cosmic irony, or it's something very profound. Unfortunately the behavior of this very great and dedicated new nation sometimes verges horribly close to the very thing that engendered its birth.* This suggests something very paradoxical, which Jung called enantiodromia. That means that if you polarize very violently against an opposite, you have a tendency to secretly become that opposite without realizing it. I feel this is the danger of polairsing with any of the outer planet conjunctions with Saturn. If you fight too hard against one side, you wind up being taken over by it unconsciously. The same danger lies in Saturn-Uranus and Saturn-Neptune. If Saturn tries to fight too hard against Neptunian idealism and romanticism by attempting to be incredibly practical, it tends to secretly behave like a religious fanatic bringing the kingdom of heaven down to earth, without even being aware of its messianic aura. It works the other way, too. Saturn-Uranus may polarise on the Uranian side and talk about freedom and change of the educational system and overthrowing of conventional authority, but unconsciously it will be as authoritarian and rigid and tyrannical as the very thing it kicks against."(emphasis added) [1]
In the 1996 edition, Greene added this footnote connected to the asterisked line about how Israel sometimes "verges horribly close to the very thing that engendered its birth":
"This comment was made in reference to the situation in the Middle East in 1980. The present situation between Israel and the Palestinians in the summer of 1982 tends to make me wish to repeat that comment even more forcibly."[2]
Greene was likely referring to the Sabra and Shatila Massacre in 1982, following the Lebanon War in which over a thousand (or several thousand) Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were killed by Israeli allies aided by the Israeli military. The event is only one of many to come involving the gradual displacement and elimination of the Palestinian people since the founding of Israel. The state's nationalistic Zionist pursuits have evolved into a colonialist project that has persisted for decades, a project that's now reaching a gruesome endpoint just three years following the Saturn-Pluto conjunction of early 2020.
The founding of the state of Israel, May 14, 1948, 4:00 PM EET, Tel Aviv, Israel (Rodding rating A). Note the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in tropical Leo (circled in red). Note also that Pluto in tropical Aquarius is currently about to transit into opposition to the nation’s natal 10th house Moon (ruler of the Midheaven) and later in 2031-2032, to the 10th house Saturn-Pluto conjunction itself. This reflects an intense exposure of the nation’s underbelly (4th house), challenging its public/global persona (10th house), revealing its highly polarized collective shadow in the first opposition to these placements from Pluto since the nation’s founding in 1948.
Greene's statements today would be considered antisemitic by many within the US political establishment and media, and of course, the Israeli government itself, which claims that any criticisms against its policies are an attack on all Jewish people. Of course, this is a ridiculous attempt at deflection, and I discussed the issue more in my second Saturn-Neptune essay, notably that numerous Jewish people throughout the world, and Jewish organizations, have denounced the Israeli government and it's genocide against the Palestinians. As if that should matter, since criticism of any nation's government is never conflated with criticism of all citizens of that state (nor their religious beliefs).
Greene's comments here are complex, and she covers quite a lot, including some insight into the current Saturn-Neptune alignment. Her latter insights could apply as well to many modern attacks against astrology and astrologers made by devout materialists, such as many atheistic academics and scientists who come off just as dogmatic and authoritarian as the religious zealots they oppose. The dominant faith in materialist metaphysics (which is built upon numerous assumptions and much philosophical shoddy ground) is equivalent to any religious or spiritual belief.
Scientism, the ideology that science is the only valid tool for understanding all aspects of reality, also verges on the very thing it claims to be countering in the world, that is, the dangerous authoritarian tendency of religious fundamentalism. Enantiodromia is an illuminating concept here. As Desmet's book showed from this perspective, the enantiodromia-fueled shadow of scientism was revealed during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, showing just how incredibly vulnerable any ideology (especially the more extreme and polarizing) is to the very thing it vehemently seeks to displace in the world. In the early 2020s, science was grossly distorted into a dogmatic code of conduct, and anyone who questioned "the science" was quickly scapegoated and ostracised. My essay on Pluto in Aquarius discussed this at more length. The true lesson here is that every human being is vulnerable (especially those who really believe they've transcended evil). No ideology is immune, especially the more polarizing and divisive it is.
As for Israel, Greene used this insight into the Saturn-Pluto conjunction to give a prophetic warning about the shadow that was festering beneath the veneer of Israel's more visible collective persona. That shadow has reached the maximum end of the polarity as entantiodromia would suggest. As I write this piece, a final solution much like the 1940s Holocaust is being implemented on the Palestinian people, ironically, much like the Jewish people themselves endured in Europe. Anyone left alive in Gaza and the occupied West Bank regions (from the incessant bombing that has endured since 2023) are being intentionally starved to death. For nearly five months now, Israel has deliberately cut off humanitarian aid to the region (which includes food, medical care, and, grossly, even baby formula) for what it claims to be a move to pressure Hamas to release the remaining hostages. For months now, there has been an increasing amount of media coverage of the situation, clearly showing its reality. Daily, images of babies and children dying of disease due to malnutrition emerge. Even more revealing, journalists have been banned from filming Gaza from the air, with the Israeli government threatening to cut off or delay air drops of food as a consequence (the air drops have only recently been allowed due to increasing media and international pressure). The Israeli government clearly doesn't want the world to see how utterly horrific the situation truly is; in fact, not many words are adequate enough to describe it. Genocide is the only appropriate term, a term many in the media still hesitate and avoid saying directly.
A young girl inside Gaza walks to get food; Jaber Jehad Badwan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
To give a sense of what those behind the right-wing Israeli government are really up to, recently, Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, had this to say about what Israel is currently doing to the Palestinians:
"The government is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out. Thank God, we are wiping out this evil. We are pushing this population that has been educated on Mein Kampf."
The irony of this statement just reeks of enantiodromia, as Elijahu and the numerous members of the Jewish Power party believe it's the defenseless people of Gaza currently being sequestered like cattle with nowhere to escape, mutilated by bombs, and systematically starved to death, who are the Nazi's. This level of total psychopathic delusion reveals the intense denial of shadow (and its subsequent projection) that has overtaken the Israeli political factions, which have become incapable, at this point, of self-reflection (and I'm sure many leaders within these factions never were capable of such to begin with). This is a dangerous groupthink and mass formation that will result (as it has already) in the ultimate tragedy that historical depictions will eventually plainly document.
I want to pivot with two other passages from Outer Planets, because I feel they further contextualize this concept and Greene's argument further. They also carry this discussion a bit deeper into a broader authoritarian crisis of the modern era. The first occurs in "Lecture Three," in which Greene discussed the birth chart of philosopher Karl Marx, one of the authors of The Communist Manifesto. Here is Greene:
"I find this chart very interesting, because you cannot separate a philosophy or a psychological system from the person who propounds it. I am also very interested in the way in which Marxism is interpreted. Whatever Marx meant by his vision, it has certainly taken on some strange forms in the twentieth century. Most Marxists I have met are very annoyed if I suggest that their political system is really a religious vision, because the Marxist is supposed to be militantly atheistic. But militant atheism is, in American jargon, a dead giveaway, because if a person is really an atheist, he simply doesn't care. If he's militant, he's trying to stamp out something in himself."[3]
Greene elaborates more here on the enantiodromia concept, the transformation of an extreme one-sidedness within the psyche to its antithesis. As Greene argued, in relation to Marxism and atheism, it's the militant nature of one's position, the drive to stamp out the perceived threat to the larger utopian project, that, from a Jungian perspective, reveals the true motivation that lies in shadow (lies outside the threshold of conscious awareness and thus out of sight from the conscious portion of the Self).
The attempted eradication of one group of people and their beliefs (whether through literal genocide as in the case with Israel, or merely verbal and political as with the scientism vs. superstition conflict), according to Greene, reveals an unconscious pursuit of one's annihilation, or a part of oneself that has become deeply unconscious due to the overidentification with the extreme end of the archetypal polarity. As with scientism, the denial of one's creative, intuitive, spiritual, and "magical" nature (which has been ubiquitous to humanity for tens of thousands of years) means that this archetypal dimension will be expressed somehow. The more it lies in shadow, and the more rejected it is, the more possessive it becomes, and the more aggressive, divisive, and potentially violent. From Jung's ultimate point of view, this is all a byproduct of the possession of the ego by unconscious archetypal energies. Enantiodromia is a primary way in which this happens, and in the case of Israel and the Palestinians, it's one of the most dangerous and deeply paradoxical. This brings me to the last quote from Outer Planets I wish to share. Greene made the following statements regarding Pluto and the synchronicity of its discovery. Earlier in "Lecture Two," Greene shared this insight:
"Pluto is also very interesting to consider in terms of what was happening in the world at the time of his discovery. Pluto's finding coincides first of all with the rise of the Third Reich. I will be referring again to this connection, because I feel there is a good deal we don't understand about Pluto and I am convinced there is a relationship with the psychological phenomenon of Nazi Germany. What happened in World War Two is still a great mystery. It cannot be explained away by economic and political analyses. Something very archaic and dark erupted into society. We now have a tendency simply to blame Germany, but I am not convinced it's that simple. Something was unleashed around the time of Pluto's discovery which I think has something to do with the collective shadow. Obviously there have been other eruptions of this kind in history. There have been massacres and witch hunts and genocide in every country in the world. But this latest version of it also contained a successful manipulation of those more bestial or archaic forces, and I think the issue of power over these energies is connected with Pluto."[4]
This discovery of Pluto, February 18, 1930, 4:00 PM MST, Flagstaff, AZ.
Greene goes further:
"There have always been mad dictators, but I think the Third Reich was a first because it used psychological knowledge to further its ends. Dictators usually dictate with armies, not with the power of hypnosis over the masses. I am sure that the positive features of this kind of insight are very bound up with the development of psychotherapy and analysis, but so far we have really seen primarily the worst of Pluto. Every planet has its dark and its light side. Perhaps the darkness of Pluto has as much to do with his repression as it does with any innate malevolence on the part of the planet. But I feel the kind of power issues that emerged in the 1930's are very relevant to the meaning of Pluto."[5]
Greene's observations here are in agreement with Arendt's primary argument regarding the phenomena of the Third Reich and totalitarianism itself, that it represented a new kind of authoritarianism made possible by the scientific and industrial revolutions, namely the complex web of bureaucracies and the technological capacity to further surveillance and domination. Also, the alienation of the individual due to capitalism (drawing from Marx), a changing worldview, and increasing globalization play a significant role in making such collective mass movements more alluring. Totalitarianism, as defined by Arendt, was indeed a novel means of social control that aimed to control every aspect of social and private life, down to every citizen's perception of reality. The incessant lying and gaslighting of the public is a hallmark of totalitarian movements and their leaders, and it points to its psychological dimension, especially to its insidious manipulation of truth and reality. Philosopher Michel Foucault and novelist George Orwell also illuminated this new dystopian potential that emerged in the mid-to-late 20th century through their various groundbreaking works. Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 are iconic pieces that contain numerous examples of this kind of psychological control and manipulation that are more relevant today than ever.
More recently, Korean/German philosopher, Byung Chul-Han, expounded on many of these earlier theories into his concept of psychopolitics as a more unique form of totalitarianism in the digital age, in which the citizen now actively desires and consents to surveillance, domination, and control as the authoritarian apparatus is fully installed and internalized on the unconscious level. Psychopolitics hits closer to what Greene was alluding to as Han suggests it's the ultimate mode of authoritarian mind control. See my Saturn-Neptune essay for more on Han and how his ideas relate to specific alignments in the early 1980s (interestingly, at the time of Greene's referenced lecture).
I am not arguing that Israel is a totalitarian state per the specific parameters, though it shares many characteristics, especially the intensive surveillance and subjugation of the nation's perceived scapegoat (the Palestinian people and other Arab ethnic groups). However, how an atrocity very similar to that of the Holocaust could occur today (and even be supported by segments of the world population), I think, points clearly to the psychological dimension of this new form of societal control, however you might label it. More so, this equally sheds light on the silence and complicity of the US over the genocide and the ability of a small segment of influential state leaders to gaslight the public over the reality of the situation, perpetuating a media blackout for nearly two years while the genocide is broadcast via social and alternative media. In that sense, the elements of totalitarianism are certainly at play. Lastly, Desmet's work is illuminating here too, as a central piece of his argument pointed to the Enlightenment and the materialist worldview as having paved the way to the mass formation phenomena. The loss of collective contact and valuation with the inward and thus unconscious leaves the masses vulnerable to such mass movements and the collective mobilization of evil. From Desmet's conception, much like Jung, this works via a compensatory psychological drive.
As for Greene's observation of the synchronistic rise of the Third Reich (and its totalitarianism), the developments of the psychoanalytic movement, and the discovery of Pluto, the archetype of this cold and distant planet may point symbolically to this very crisis among humanity, which is, at the core, a spiritual one. In other words, it suggests that the terrifying developments which seem to emerge during these Plutonian times reflect our collective detachment and disengagement from both the personal and collective unconscious. As Jung would argue, what happens "out there" reflects an internal condition, and especially a collective level problem, reflects a collective critical mass of this detachment. I think this is what Greene was getting at, in addition to suggesting that the atrocities of the Holocaust had a more psychological explanation.
Therefore, the problem of Israel and Gaza, on the one hand, has a clear origin in a polarizing ideology (that of some extremist offshoots of Zionism and their accompanying enantiodromia), but the broader support of the US government and the whole of the media blackout reflects this larger totalitarian phenomena which is, at the root, a totalizing control of the individual and its perception of reality, a very real problem we are currently faced with collectively. This is ironically the antithesis of the freedom the Enlightenment project sought and fought so hard for (and which America was in significant part founded on, if not more so, for the economic freedoms it gave to a wealthy elite as it still does today).
It is a tragedy that Gaza serves as part of an awakening among the collective regarding the totalizing control of perception that is sought by the current powers that be. Many will be awakened by this event, especially as its reality becomes more mainstream, as politicians and media pundits who previously looked the other way, or even championed Israel's "right to defend itself," attempt to backtrack and save face as the harsh truth of the genocide comes to the surface. This is the season of Saturn-Neptune, and as I have argued, more awakenings are to come, especially leading to immense disenchantment and disillusionment with certain authorities and systems of power that have perpetuated such atrocities and delusions.
Yet, my broader point (not to detract from emphasizing the horrors happening in Gaza) ties in with much of what Greene and others have pointed to about the times we live in and what I believe astrology also synchronistically reveals to us. This awakening is bigger than surface-level events. It's about an awakening to larger forces and processes within the universe and within ourselves which our current materialist worldview denies, obscures, and vehemently tries to blind us to. Jung's larger objective was to show that the psychological was also the cosmic. The Self is embedded in a larger, interconnected whole. This means that we are all in this together, and we are all, on some deeper metaphysical level, complicit in the collective shadow. That is to ultimately say that we can't simply see the evil in the world as only belonging to some fringe group of people, to do so would be to fall prey to the same entantiodromia that led to such evil. There is nothing special about the right-wing Israeli government or the Nazis other than the psychological polarization they fell into, the same risk we all carry, especially the more we believe ourselves as having transcended our human condition.
Ironically, we live in an age in which freedom is touted as the ultimate achievement of modern democracies, and yet more and more, the people of these very societies appear to seek and actively demand more control and authoritarian leadership (in fact, openly consent to it). The current situation in the US, but also that during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic (and many events leading up to it), suggests this clearly. The nightmarish dimension of Pluto and the polarizing crises that erupt during these alignments between Saturn and the outer planets reflect our own cultural and collective psychological polarization. As Greene also alluded to, Pluto is not an inherently bad planet, but one that seeks to make us more conscious of ourselves and our blindspots. As an evolutionary astrologer, that is my position on astrology, though I don't believe the planets are ultimately intelligent agents but synchronistic reflections of deeper, archetypal energies which exist behind the curtain of waking consciousness.
In that sense, there is a purpose to the madness of the world, which is to awaken us to our own inherent madness (whether that be personal or collectively experienced). Yet also, I think Pluto and the other denizens beyond it, suggest there is always a bigger hand at play in the world and within ourselves. That was, of course, Jung's argument. Just when we think we're in control, or that we're free and enlightened, there will surely be a reminder of our proper place in the scheme of the cosmos (as long as we exist as limited egos). That can be terrifying, but also liberating in the acceptance of our flawed human nature and taking some pressure off our backs. We are all works in progress. We all fuck up. The genocide in Gaza is a horrific event that reflects something in which humanity has time and again forgotten, that it's just human, good, evil, and everything in between.
My heart goes out to those who are dying and suffering in Gaza and the surrounding regions. I pray their suffering will be quickly alleviated and those responsible for it will be brought to justice. No matter the bigger picture, we mustn't allow such atrocities to persist in the world and must do our best to liberate all beings from suffering. That is my moral position, and one I hope we collectively get closer to someday.
Page references
Liz Greene. The Outer Planets & Their Cycles: The Astrology of the Collective (Sebastopol: CRCS Publications, 1996), p. 51.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 64
Ibid., p. 31
Ibid., p. 31-32