Astrologer OPA’ s Quarterly Magazine V24-02 JUNE SOLSTICE 2015 page 28
Spiritual Impact
Ram Dass has been obliged during his life to live the polarity between the fierce ARIES and demanding CANCER archetypes locked in a mythic square that pits the fire against the water energies, challenging the expansive self- generated imperative against the collecting, yielding and preserving ones.
Moon in Sagittarius aspected by Mars / Leo and Neptune / Virgo
Adding to the spicy conundrum just referred to is a can-do MARS / LEO / 1st trining an expansive MOON / SAG / 5TH. There is considerable go-for-it energy in those individual elements alone and exponentially more so with the facilitating trine connecting them. These fiery, confident dynamics have, during his career as an explorer of liberation, spurred him into action mode towards the various experiments in the mystical domain, which the transpersonal influences have relentlessly and unconsciously proposed to his nimble psyche.
The Moon in Sagittarius, the ruler of his turbocharged Cancer Asc, is highly activated in his chart. Beyond the MARS trine, it is in powerfully strengthened by mutual reception with Jupiter / Cancer / 12th.
Additionally, Neptune Rx in Virgo and the 3rd house figures in with a flooding square to the Moon. We have then in Ram Dass a SUN, ASCENDANT, & MOON each with significant contact from the transpersonal planets. The NEPTUNE square, rather than serving as a dreamy and artful infusion from the lord of other worlds, lends to his emotional expression a dissatisfaction with the mundane and routine: welcome Lady LSD, and an experimental life on the edge.
Egging him on as well with an edgy urgency to his fierce explorations is the Aries Sun / Uranus / Nodal combo loosely squared by Saturn / Capricorn, on the 7th house cusp. No smooth ride for Richard Alpert, however rich Dad was.
Neptune, Venus & Mercury in natal aspect
. Richard Albert was an excelling student and turned his practical researches from the grounded Taurus Mercury more to the‘ inspired’ side of life, with the help of Neptune trining it from Virgo. Such an aspect is a most excellent inner cocktail for researching experientially the hallucinogenic effects on the physical body and psyche.
Neptune / Virgo / 3rd offers yet again her transpersonal influence in the form of an opposition to Venus / Pisces / 9 th. This blessed blend of transpersonal influences in the VIRGO / PISCES axis marks the quintessence of an evolving soul the compassionate state of mind. It is a likely call to devoted service, to the activation of the inquiring heart, and to a love of higher learning in its most spiritual dimensions. Harvard University is not enough here, but rather the Cosmic Universality.
With so much grit to transform amid the grace, there is scant room to easily bliss out, or go delusional, as some of the Neptune action might suggest. Given the ubiquitous transpersonal stream flooding little Richard Alpert from day one, there was very little chance that the young fellow would simply get out of this life as Richard Alpert, PhD from Boston and a few notable research papers.
He is Here Now as Ram Dass,- Compassionate Servant, Conscious Mensch.
DESCRIPTION OF 3 LIFE-ALTERING EVENTS AS RICHARD ALPERT AND RAM DASS LSD: Loosening the knot,- at Play in the Fields of the Lord( strawberry fields)- May 5, 1961
Just before the age of 30 and coming to the end of his Capricorn Saturn return, Richard
Alpert and Tim Leary blew open the doors of perception with their initial LSD experiment, the first of many unpredictable excursions into the inner landscape. The profound astrological context of that day included:
- Transiting Nodal axis had been conjunct Pluto and then natal Neptune / Virgo / 3rd for some time, all of which opposed natal Venus / Pisces / 9th- a signature invitation to altered states.
That Neptune / Nodal formation is in a T-square to his Moon / Sag. The transiting NN / Pluto also trines natal Mercury / Taurus. This is a set-up for a radical re-visitation to non-rational realities and emotional habit patterns, as well as a natural flow to the imaginative mind.
- Also on that particular day, and acting as triggers is a rectangle formation involving transiting Uranus / Leo / 1st opposing Mercury / Aquarius, then trine to Venus in Aries, and sextile Moon in Libra / 4th)
From this geometry, one might say that Richard Alpert was destined to have his emotional mind quite literally blown, courtesy the outer planets, the nodes, and the electric revolutionary astro-weather of that day.
Following these interior revels were 6 years of active experimentation that involved chipping away at neurosis and prestige, and ego de-construction. Still dis-
The Career
Astrologer OPA’ s Quarterly Magazine V24-02 JUNE SOLSTICE 2015 page 28