Editing Humanity with ♄-♆ in Aries, Part Three: What it Means to Be 'Homo sapiens'

A Pre-History Lesson

“To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them.”

– William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Hamlet’s Dilemma

Hamlet asked his famous question as an individual. But sometimes history asks it of an entire species:

What does it mean to be “alive?” What constitutes a person? What makes us a conscious species deserving of the title “wise man” (homo= man; sapiens = knowing or wise)?

These are not small existential questions. And yet they are exactly the questions being mirrored now through the fusion of Saturn and Neptune in Aries—the sign of “I am”—at the very beginning of the zodiac.

Their conjunction on February 20, 2026 at 0° Aries marks an important moment. But it also signals a much larger story that has been unfolding for a long time.

Neptune dissolves boundaries. Saturn builds structures. When these two archetypes meet in Aries, they can provoke Hamlet-like questions about what it means “to be”—not just as individuals, but as human beings. They ask us to redefine who “I am.”

But when this conjunction occurs at 0° Aries—the world axis—the scope becomes far larger. The question expands from the identity of the individual to the identity of the species. What does it mean for homo sapiens “to be”?

As I mentioned in Part One, I do not believe it is an overstatement to call this a “Genesis Moment.”

And now that I’ve framed this current quality of time with no small amount of gravitas, I will add this: we’ve been here before.

Humanity has approached this threshold in the past and made decisions about what it means to be human—both individually and collectively. Those decisions reshaped our relationship to one another and to the Earth itself.

When did those decisions occur?

Here is a clue: every species is defined by its relationship with its ecosystem.

In this series, we have already explored a present-day existential quandary involving LLMs and a future-oriented question of “becoming” and the role transhumanism is playing. Now, in Parts Three and Four, we turn to the past—first to prehistory and then to early recorded history—to examine how humanity has answered these questions before.

For now, we begin at the beginning.

A Pre-History Lesson

Most Saturn–Neptune conjunctions do not occur at the birthing point of the zodiac.

In fact, determining whether this alignment had ever occurred at 0° Aries required a fair amount of research(1) and calculation to determine whether this alignment had ever occurred at 0° Aries in recorded history. As it turns out, it has not happened in “recorded” history—but it has occurred twice in prehistory, with the second instance occurring at 0°01’ Aries! (A detailed explanation of these calculations appears in the footnotes for those who enjoy celestial math.)(2)

These two dates are August of 8128 BCE and January of 4360 BCE. That’s it. No Saturn-Neptune conjunctions at 0° Aries for the last 6,400 years. You may be thinking, “That’s interesting…but what can we possibly learn from a moment that far back in time?” It turns out, quite a lot.

August 8128 BCE: The Neolithic Revolution

The Neolithic Revolution, occurring roughly between 10,000 and 8,000 BCE, marked one of the most significant transitions in human history. It is commonly described as the shift from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural ones following the end of the Ice Age.

Some scholars, particularly supporters of the Younger Dryas Impact Theory, argue that this period may also represent recovery after the collapse of earlier and possibly more technologically sophisticated cultures. Regardless of which interpretation proves correct, one fact remains clear: the Earth was changing, and humanity adapted.

Drivers of this adaptation included dramatic climate change and population pressures. By around 8,000 BCE, melting ice sheets in the North Atlantic began flooding the region between Britain, Denmark, and the northern European coast. This process eventually submerged a landmass now known as Dogger Land, displacing entire populations and compressing communities into smaller areas.(3)

Environmental instability also increased the need for reliable food sources.

In response to this, some of the earliest urban settlements in Mesopotamia, such as Çatalhöyük in central Turkey and Jericho,(4) eventually began experimenting with domesticated plants. These early agricultural “technologies” required human intervention to grow and propagate, gradually reshaping daily life.(5)

Does climate change and the impact of changing technologies sound familiar?

Humanity’s relationship to food, daily life, social organization, and the Earth itself shifted toward a new agricultural paradigm. I would argue our present revolution is no less seismic. But it is also dynamically connected to that earlier shift 10,000-12,000 years ago. To understand why, we must first understand the Great Year.

The Great Year

Every 72 years, the sidereal vernal equinox shifts approximately 1° earlier in the zodiac (for example, shifting from 0° Aries to 29° Pisces and onward towards 6° Pisces where it is today). This essentially means that over long periods of time, the first day of spring slowly moves backward through the signs. This phenomenon is called the precession of the equinoxes and it takes approximately 25,772 years to complete a full 360° cycle. Astrologers often refer to this cycle as the Great Year.

If we treat the Saturn-Neptune conjunction at 0° Aries in 8128 BCE as a symbolic starting point within that 25,772-year cycle—not an absolute beginning, but a meaningful point within it—we are now approaching its halfway point, or its 180° opposition.

In other words, we may be standing halfway through a civilizational experiment that began thousands of years ago.

In astrology, oppositions are dynamic and are sometimes described as a crisis point of culmination. They represent tension between initial impulse and maturation, or between origin and outcome. They can create friction but also catalytic change if needed. If 8128 BCE marked the archetypal “birth” of an agrarian identity or rebuilding from a more technologically sophisticated culture, then the present moment signals a reckoning with the development of that identity.

About 10,000–12,000 years ago, we chose to become a species that cultivated the earth, building communities after climatic upheaval. In saying, “Let’s all pitch our tent here,” we created social roles. Some cultivated, some hunted, some guarded, some innovated. Our homes changed. Our rhythms changed. Our relationships changed. Our relationship to the Earth changed.

It should not surprise us then, that we are being asked to revisit those foundations now. It is almost like our mother, Gaia, giving us free reign to play and after hearing a commotion a half hour later, she returns to the room and asks, “What on Earth are you doing in here?!”

It does not take an astrologer, sociologist, or environmentalist to see that we’ve made quite a mess. Perhaps it does take a comedian like Rob Newman to point out, “There is no Planet B.”(6) So now what?

Do we clean up our mess and try again? Do we double down? Do we wait for consequences? At one of the largest turning points in a vast cycle of time, humanity is being asked to reflect on its identity as a species on Earth:

Are we here to live—or to consume?

Are we like a virus—or a participant in balance?

Are we capable of playing well with others?

January 4360 BCE: The Growth of Communal Spiritual Identities

Nearly 4,000 years later, the Earth shifted again. 

During the African Humid Period of 4500-4000 BCE, the Sahara transformed again due to the Earth’s wobble—stemming from that same long-term precessional movement of the Earth. What was once grasslands, lakes and rivers, and an otherwise habitable savanna became a scorching desert. Weakened monsoon patterns gradually dried arable land.(7)

Climate once again reshaped identity.

As a result of this symbolic shift from wet and cool Pisces to hot and dry Aries, African humans migrated toward the Nile Valley, laying foundations for Egyptian civilization. Trade networks expanded and predynastic Egyptian burial sites began to reflect social differentiation.

Meanwhile, in Mesopotamia, the Ubaid period (6500-3800 BCE) brought advances in irrigation and social stratification as well. As settlements stabilized, humans became more attentive to natural cycles—and more aware of how dramatically the Earth itself could change. 

It shouldn’t be a surprise then that evidence of mother-goddess worship appears as early as 6750 BCE at sites such as Jarmo. Small statues of pregnant women have been found there in large numbers, suggesting that each household contained at least one example of this fertility-centric awareness.(8)

During the later Ubaid period, these households began organizing themselves into communities with religious centers. For example, the famous ziggurat at Eridu—dating to around 2100 BCE—was built atop seventeen earlier temple structures. Archaeological layers show that the site had been used continuously for ritual purposes as far back as 5000 BCE.(9)

Elsewhere, in the Negev Desert, archaeologists have uncovered a complex oriented toward the four cardinal directions with a designated area of worship facing the setting sun. It dates to roughly 4700–4200 BCE—one again, close to the second Saturn–Neptune conjunction at 0° Aries.(10)

Together, these examples suggest that communities were increasingly organizing themselves around shared spiritual identities.

Environmental change had once again catalyzed social, technological, and spiritual reorganization.

Choosing Between Car Accidents or a Bat

It is striking that Saturn-Neptune conjunctions at 0° Aries have occurred only twice in roughly 10,000 years. One might expect more data for such an important point in the zodiac. Yet the rarity of these alignments makes their coincidence with major shifts in human identity difficult to ignore.

Many of the structures that shaped our species’ development emerged during these earlier periods: agriculture, technology, hierarchy, and organized spirituality.

Only recently have we begun growing food in labs, developing technologies capable of planetary destruction, or attempting to leave Earth entirely. Along the way, we have used social stratification and religion both to organize society and dominate one another.

But it’s easy to critique the trajectory of our species without looking at oneself.

Image taken on my cross-country departure from city to rural life

I remember vividly driving away from my home of almost nine years in a major city. My apartment was only a few blocks from a highway, which meant a constant soundtrack of screeching tires, crashes, and sirens. I didn’t realize how much subconscious stress this had placed on my body until I was about twenty minutes outside the city and noticed something startling: silence.

Green fields stretched out before me, an optic oasis for desert-stricken eyes. In that moment it became clear how de-centered I had become from the biological relationship between the Earth and my body’s natural rhythms and needs.

But the story doesn’t end there.

I went to stay with some family in an agricultural community. My family grows their own food and stores it for the winter, and is generally, very attuned to the land. However, this shift to a more ecologically attuned place was also a racially and religiously homogeneous community. After a while, I began to notice another startling sensation: social and spiritual silence. I felt a protective turning inward. In a religious community where even Lutherans are sometimes suspected of not being Christian (forget about Catholics), my identity as an astrologer, a non-literal interpreter of scripture, and an open theologian quickly marked me as suspect. I stopped going to social events and limited conversations about spirituality.

It was a desert of a different kind and I was parched for meaningful connection.

Against my better judgment, I attended a church service with a family member. I won’t recount what was preached that day, because my intention is not to disparage Christianity. In fact, there are many thoughtful people doing important work to reinterpret it in meaningful ways.

But the personal fallout of that ninety minutes startled me once again. For three days afterward I felt physically and spiritually depleted—nauseous, fatigue, depressed, unable to eat. My social and spiritual “body” felt so disoriented that it reacted almost like a physical illness. In retrospect, I should have taken the bat that had somehow gotten into the church and was warming itself midday by an illuminated cross behind the pulpit as an omen.

In response to that event, I found myself longing for my former home in the city—where open-minded and curious people were easier to find, and where I could feel more free to be myself.

But in that nostalgia I briefly forgot the other costs. I was out of balance and was looking for equilibrium, even if it was in a place where I had been de-centered in another form. There came a moment when I realized that swapping forms of disconnection wouldn’t lead to the centeredness I was seeking.

How often do we do this—swapping an imbalanced relationship for technological dissociation, or belief in something larger than ourselves for total self-sufficiency?

I don’t yet know whether there is a place that perfectly resolves this dilemma for me personally. What I do know is that oscillating between different states of ecological, social, and spiritual imbalance does not lead to a centered identity. A whole human life requires a deeper center: going beyond a place and toward a state of being.

This raises a broader question: how have we collectively de-centered ourselves?

Eugene Delacroix: Hamlet and Horatio in the Garden (1839)

From Hamlet to Lord Krishna

At times, our trajectory appears driven by an unconscious impulse to evolve beyond agricultural rhythms, technological responsibility, social morality, or even a Supreme Being. Are we redefining our species as homo insipiens (i.e. “unwise man”)?

Perhaps the next iteration of humanity involves colonizing Mars. Or perhaps if we have “recovered” from a lost technologically sophisticated culture, then maybe extraterrestrials could be our mythic mirror—or even a distant evolutionary cousin of a species that once outgrew its own habitat without learning how to care for it or for themselves. (If that turns out to be true, I am perfectly content with my body fertilizing the soil here. You all can go ahead.)

Returning to our mother, Gaia metaphor, I imagine her stepping back into the room and asking us: 

“What on Earth are you doing in here?!” 

And an honest answer echos back the voice of Oppenheimer: 

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”(11)

At its most basic level, being human means living in relationship with our habitat—not in opposition to it.

Whether we remember that may determine what kind of species we become.

In Part Four, we will turn to a more modern historical lesson to explore how Saturn-Neptune conjunctions in Aries have shaped our evolving answers to the question of who “I am” within our social and spiritual identities.