A couple of weeks ago we were treated to a boomer nostalgia-fest on the fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show. This followed on the fiftieth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination and we will see many more fiftieth anniversaries over the next few years. How about the fiftieth anniversary of the Trips Festival on January 21, 2016? Of course, this summer we will have the centennial of the start of World War I. I’m guessing that more people are alive and in positions of power who remember the Beatles than remember World War I, and why shouldn’t they be nostalgic since in many ways this period is so unlike 50 years ago, even though we now have the first President born in the Sixties. Much attention has been paid to of late to how the minimum wage, in adjusted dollars, is worth so much less than it was in the Sixties, and, perhaps correspondingly, the spread of incomes is much greater than in the Sixties. People alive at that time remember how hopeful it all seemed, and now only those who are really wealthy can imagine that this is a hopeful time.
So I figured that I should do my part. Above is the chart for the Beatles’ appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show 8PM Sunday evening February 9, 1964. I didn’t expect to see much since this is not, despite what some think, a very critical moment. But I was wrong. We see the defining signature of the Sixties, Uranus conjunct Pluto, near the top of the chart. We notice Saturn conjoining the Moon of the United States, which it had been for a few months and would remain, getting even tighter, for the rest of 1964. The country had recently witnessed the assassination of the young and seemingly vibrant President, and so of course the people were depressed. But I want to point out aspects that were the most tight. Since I have added Harmonic Charts to the Definitions section I can discuss this event using one of my favorite techniques. These two aspects were transiting Uranus square the United States Uranus and the transiting Pluto sextile the U.S. Sun. Note that the two planets that define the Sixties, Uranus and Pluto, are the ones making the strongest aspects to the U.S. chart. The closeness is most obvious when we look at the harmonic charts. In the fourth, which shows squares as conjunctions, we see that transiting Uranus is almost on top of natal Uranus. Likewise in the sixth, which shows sextiles (as well as trines and conjunctions) as conjunctions, transiting Pluto is almost exactly on top of the U.S. Sun. In this chart transiting Uranus is opposite natal Uranus, because a square is a sextile and a half. Thus we can see that the “Sixties” planets were closely involved with the U.S. on the Beatles’ first appearance.
So this period is more important than I thought. In the 84 year Uranus cycle, which has to do with among other things Change and Revolution, this moment was at one quarter of the way through this Uranus cycle that started at then end of World War II. This period was sort of a coming out party for those who were born around the time of the initial conjunction. That statement is almost a cliche but I find it interesting that it is shown so obviously in the transits at the time. The conjunction of Pluto with the Sun took place in the Twenties, which was a transformative time in its way. Forty years later we have the sextile between the two planets. With the sextile the transformation of the country is a much lower key affair, something that you wouldn’t notice except in hindsight. At the time people thought that this was just some crazy teenagers over-reacting to some long-haired youth from across the Ocean. With a perspective of fifty years, things look different.
