introduction to generational type and astrology

Does history repeat?

Ask an astrologer and they may find humor in their answer’s self-evidence. Since humans first tracked the sky and divined omens millennia ago, we have noted the striking correlations of the sky above and the worldly events below. The apparent harmony of the spheres signify the temporal unfolding of life and its constitutive homeostatic systems1 and dynamic cycles,2 a dance of wheels within wheels in which we as agential beings participate. History is an antecedent invention, empirical records of facts, testimonies, and coherent narratives that recapitulate the archetypal correlations of antiquity, supplemented by those of the modern planets, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.

Ask a historian and they may humor the suggestion of a literal recurrence, perhaps conceding that some events may metaphorically rhyme. Humans don’t have unlimited agency to shape our fates, after all; despite our many advances in embodied and material technologies, the incomprehensible scale of our endeavors and their potential for catastrophe, we possess the same fundamental needs and behavioral inclinations as we had millennia ago, constraining our responses to present, novel events. Inherited, rational knowledge of the past is rarely a substitute for the intuitive wisdom of first-hand experience, often dooming us to chronically relearn hard lessons.3 To suggest these patterns have a sustained regularity of planetary orbits is a far more exceptional claim, however, demanding exceptional evidence.

Among laypeople, some cyclical models like Spengler’s theory of civilizational decline or the Schlesingers’ political oscillations between conservatism and liberalism may intrigue, but history is most commonly understood in terms of two visions that Richard Tarnas articulates in Cosmos and Psyche: history tracks “a predominantly problematic, even tragic narrative of humanity’s gradual but radical fall and separation from an original state of oneness with nature and an encompassing spiritual dimension of being”4 or else “the evolution of human consciousness as an epic narrative of human progress, a long heroic journey from a primitive world of dark ignorance, suffering, and limitation to a brighter modern world of ever-increasing knowledge, freedom, and well-being.”5 The former has affinity with everyday impulses towards conserving tradition against further descent, the latter with reforming and revolutionizing impulses for further transcendence, best embodied by the ideals of the Enlightenment and the rise of secular democracy. The former intimates a downward line of time, the latter upward.

The contemporary period has thrown these complementary visions into a state of profound uncertainty, as the double-edged power of instrumental reason and industry have produced unprecedented mass cruelty and devastation through the twentieth century, “the Enlightenment vision beginning to encounter its own shadow.”6 In response, some, like the typified historian above, contend that “no coherent pattern actually exists in human history or evolution […] which itself is shaped and constructed by forces beyond itself and beyond the awareness of the interpreting subject.”7 In this light, history is best understood, in Arnold Toynbee’s words, “one dang thing after another,” too complex at best or ultimately arbitrary at worst succession of events.

While containing some truth, this one-sided framework ultimately exacerbates the prevailing crises of meaning and purpose that hang like a pall over much of humankind. History is not a mere objective description of the past but serves a fundamental function, like mythologies of old, to provide an essential sense of time and place in the world. Whether secular or spiritual, these stories ground us in real or imagined pasts that help envision idealized good or bad futures. To help “overcome [this] fragmentation and alienation of the late modern mind,”8 archetypal astrology proposes a reenchantment of the cosmos and the revival of participatory and symbolic attitudes of pre-modernity, renormalizing embodied and affective modalities of thought and behavior for reconnecting to the natural rhythms of life. This worldview, while supported by emerging scientific fields and theories, has yet to culminate in a Kuhnian scientific revolution against the hegemony of physicalist and reductionist framework, for which the act of meeting the cosmos half-way isn’t worth the risk of confirmation bias.

In the meantime, the gulf between worldviews need not be incommensurate for those amenable to modest yet robust models of cyclical time. This is best exemplified by a theory proposed by amateur historians Neil Howe and late Bill Strauss, who too call for a return of humanity to mind the cycles of the natural world, against the “scholarly rejection of time’s inner logic [and the] devaluation of history throughout [American] society,”9 but do so on the basis of materially emergent patterns divorced from cosmic implications. As analysts and aids in Washington, their shared interests led to their collaboration on a history of the United States through its generations and their life cycles. As Howe explains, “along the way [they] discover[ed] some outstanding patterns in history,”10 a fourfold cycle of historical moods that shape and are shaped by generational cohorts, first presented in their 1991 book Generations. In their 1998 follow-up The Fourth Turning, they provide great evidence for precedent correlations to their theory, both mythic and academic, and elaborate predictions for this cycle’s nadir through the second and third decades of the 21st century. They in turn prophesy an event of symbolic equivalence to the American Revolution, Civil War, and Great Depression and World War II period, “bone-jarring crises so monumental that, by their end, American society emerged in a wholly new form.”11

Few historians appear to support Strauss and Howe’s theory12; reviews often compare their work to the gold standard of all-encompassing, overdetermined, and non-falsifiable pseudoscience, astrology. Its sociological framework, however, has had profound consequences: Strauss and Howe’s name for the generation rising at the time of their first book, Millennials, has become common; Generations inspired Bill Clinton to select fellow Boomer Al Gore as his Vice President, seeking a like-minded partner in the Oval Office;13 and Howe remains recognized as a preeminent sociological researcher on generations.14 The popular success of Strauss and Howe’s framework is undoubtedly due to their generational types fitting the common idioms of American cohorts: industrious GIs, conformist Silents, righteous Boomers, and cynical Generation X. The appeal to common perceptions lends plausibility to its predictive implications, as the suggestion of a coming crisis mirroring wars of intuitive eminence in American history inspires many crusaders for radical change across the political spectrum, including Steve Bannon, one-time adviser of president Donald Trump.15 Strauss and Howe’s first book Generations explicitly naming a “Crisis of 2020”16 as a pivotal year,17 receiving more bipartisan attention in the wake of the year’s pandemic and mass protests.18

In stark contrast to their dismissal among historians, their work is of obvious significance to astrologers. The American crises highlighted by Strauss and Howe match the major events highlighted by Richard Tarnas during the returns of Uranus to its position in the sky at the birth of the United States19 and its attendant archetypal valence of “change, rebellion, freedom, liberation, reform, revolution, and the unexpected breakup of structures.”20 Similarly, its fourfold structure evoke the axial and quadrature alignments21 emphasized by archetypal astrology’s historiographic methodology. While reasonable to pursue a synthesis of these models and describe the similarities of Strauss and Howe’s to the framework of astrology, precedence for this approach22 suggests it would be generative to delineate Strauss and Howe’s theory with minimal synthesis, providing a thick description of their theory on its own merits, highlighting their points of divergence as opportunities for conceptual cross-pollination. Strauss and Howe formulated their ideas inductively from extant primary and secondary historical texts towards their overarching theory, “sometimes poring through many articles or books to confirm an observation covered [...] in less than a sentence,”23 offering astrology a case study in how its own insights into the grand patterns of the cosmos may otherwise be reached. Similarly, its naturalistic approach to historical cycles through generations can help contextualize the acausal synchronicity of Uranus24 to worldly events, providing new inroads for astrological wisdom into popular consciousness.

To unpack generational type, we will begin with the history of generational type and the differentiation of family and social generations, followed by a review of its theory of individual and social life cycles and how they operate as an engine for social progress. This framework is then applied to the United States’ history, first looking at the “Great Events” that correlate to its natal Uranus axial alignments, followed by a review of the quadrature aspects. The particular typologies and life cycles of the four generational types are addressed, but given their tangential relation to astrological theory, they are left largely unexplored.

1 For example, the sympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems are complementary systems for regulating alertness; the right and left hemispheres of the brain’s neocortex are likewise systems that are oppositional and interdependent.

2 Astronomical examples include galaxies, solar systems, planets, and moon; terrestrial examples include water, and elements cycle, ocean, wind, and convection currents; biological examples include the cardiovascular and respiration systems, the pineal gland’s tracking of the wake-sleep and seasonal cycles, and the life cycle propagating new generations of organisms.

3 Two supplemental truisms: “History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.” - Mark Twain (apocryphal) “Those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.” - George Santayana

4 Tarnas, Richard. Cosmos and Psyche. 13.

5 Tarnas, Richard. Cosmos and Psyche. 12.

6 Tarnas, Richard. 15.

7 Tarnas, Richard. 14-15.

8 Tarnas, Richard. 27.

9 Fourth Turning, 12.

10 C-span video: https://www.c-span.org/video/?17548-1/generations-history-americas-future

11 Fourth Turning, 6.

12 William Strauss on C-Span: “The kinds of historians who are drawn to our book -- and I'm sure it will be very controversial among academics because we are presenting something that is so new -- but the kinds who are drawn to it are the ones who themselves have focused on the human life cycle rather than just the sequential series of events. Some good examples of that are Morton Keller up at Brandeis and David Hackett Fischer. These are people who have noticed the power in not just generations, but the shifts that have happened over time in the way Americans have treated children and older people and have tried to link that to the broader currents of history.” 26:04

13 As recounted by Bill Clinton aid Dick Morris, in https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/us/politics/coronavirus-republicans-trump.html

14 For example, he has presented at various Pew Research events, including a panel on Millennials available here: https://www.pewresearch.org/2010/03/11/portrait-of-the-millennials/

15 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/08/us/politics/stephen-bannon-book-fourth-turning.html

16 Generations, 15.

17 Strauss and Howe specify two potential time spans; either Generations 381: “lasting from 2013 to 2024” or 382: “2020 to 2029”

18 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/us/politics/coronavirus-republicans-trump.html

19 Cosmos and Psyche, 118-119.

20 Prometheus the Awakener, p 17.

21 The axial alignments of the conjunction and opposition, and quadrature alignments of the opening and closing squares.

22 For example, see Rose, Edwin. Generational Patterns Using Astrology, Chapter 7.

23 Generations, 17.

24 In addition to Neptune and Pluto, as their orbits are approximately double and triple that of Uranus’s, respectively.