Gestating the New World/Unsettling American Epistemology (aka Colonial Brain Disorder) Pt 2
Cover art For Indigenous Minds Only: A Decolonization Handbook, Waziyatawin and Michael Yellow Bird
The celestial weather of July 15-20 brings the culmination of a rare formation of outer planets, dubbed “Barbault’s Basket” in reference to the astute (but problematic) astrologer who accurately predicted the 2020 pandemic. A bowl configuration comprised of Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, the formation ushers in a multi-year period with archetypal significations of dramatic social, environmental, and technological change. The Mars-Uranus conjunction on July 4 heralded the formation of the bowl, and had been widely predicted to coincide with volatile events that would further develop during this period. Astrologer Natty reflected that, “Personally, astrology is most helpful for me, less to make richly specific predictions for days like these, but to note that there is an air of chaos, volatility, delay, and frustration and to plan accordingly…” The military acronym “VUCA” — volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity — seems a suitable descriptor of the quality of time under this configuration. In her book, Outgrowing Modernity: Navigating Complexity, Complicity, and Collapse with Accountability and Compassion, decolonial scholar Vanessa Machado de Oliveira describes organizing in VUCA times. (2025) Informed by decades of resistance movements in the Global South, she offers tools to sharpen our thinking and prompt the necessary inner work to meet VUCA times strategically and with care. She emphasizes the importance of slowing down and engaging in “endurance training” to reflect deeply on our personal and societal conditioning about control, dominance, and separability, and how this shapes our response to instability.
The outer planet bowl formation is transpersonal astrology, but just as transits impact us differently based on interaction with individual natal charts, so too for nation-states. In the US, the time has come for a reckoning of American epistemology (aka Colonial Brain Disorder) and the truth of US imperialism. Pluto in Aquarius, along with the movement of the lunar nodes into Leo-Aquarius in late July, highlight an emergent shift in consciousness; not spiritually bypassing, but rather a shift toward understanding the true nature of power. As astrologer Farstellar writes, “What we treat as power is changing all the way down.”
Neptune in Aries, the outer planet of dissolving boundaries and borders, initiates new dreams as well as confusion and disillusionment. Co-present with Saturn, Neptune blurs the nature of reality and perception through AI generated images, political deception, and propaganda.
Meanwhile, Uranus in Gemini sparks the possibility for a radical shift in thinking. Dani Darling writes of Gemini and Aquarius, “The mottos “I think” and “I know” give insight into how this shift will occur. We change and transform our minds, and this breath of a new world activates the fire within.”
Michael Yellow Bird offers an approach for transforming our minds, which he calls neurodecolonization. This approach incorporates “evolutionary mind body practices to decolonize and liberate the brain and body from the effects of colonization — the incongruent and damaging beliefs, values, memories, lifestyle, symbols, structures, processes, and relationships.” (2010) These practices include mindfulness meditation as well as traditional forms of healing such as fasting, sweat lodge or sauna, dancing and singing, collectivism, and spending time in nature. He points to the ways that meditation alters the brain through neuroplasticity to increase psychological flexibility, empathy and compassion, and to reduce fear and excessive self-focus.
The birth of a new world foretold in Indigenous prophecies describe this time as one of great opportunity for humanity to collectively mature into a new developmental stage. This individuation process is a painful one, and empire fights back. de Oliveira emphasizes that the work of this time is to both hospice the dying of the old world and to rigorously defend the nascent new world not yet born against our projections shaped by urgency and habituated ways of thinking. She warns that without unlearning these ways of thinking, and fully integrating the lessons and failures of modernity/coloniality, we will carry these forward in our future imaginings.
Stan Grof’s Basic Perinatal Matrices map the archetypal significations of the outer planets alongside the perinatal experience: Neptune as the intrauterine experience, Pluto as the expulsive and cathartic birth process, and Uranus as liberatory birth itself. (2009) Perhaps we can think of this rare planetary configuration, rather than a basket, as symbolizing a pelvic bowl cradling a new world not quite ready to be born. As we traverse the VUCA times of this gestational period, may we make space for the work of unsettling epistemologies of separation and decolonize our minds.
