Who was the empirical one? Was it Aristotle or Plato?
Plato was ontological and Aristotle was empirical, correct?
Plato is defining how things are constructed and Aristotle is saying hey we have to practice.
…And then comes Socrates and he starts questioning everything and creates dialogue…
Plato points to the realm of Forms, εἶδος (eidos) or ἰδέα (idea): eternal structures, kinds, and patterns that shape how things are.
Aristotle looks at what you can observe, classify, and practice in the world, grounding knowledge in experience.
Socrates precedes both in method. He asks questions, he unsettles certainty, he insists on dialogue as the way to approach truth. His practice of questioning gave birth to Plato’s philosophy, and from Plato’s teaching, Aristotle’s empirical investigations followed.
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Isn’t it beautiful to go back to source, to go back to the classics and understand our way of thinking? We have lost that capacity because we are not questioning how things are made. We are not questioning how forms and structures are conformed. And we are not really using the power of observation and correlation to classify them because we are not using our own experience to know. And worst of all, we are not using questioning as a practice to learn more about how this ontology and this empiricism can create a space of curiosity and unfoldment that will lead to a proper dialogue where new things will emerge.
And this is where dialogue is born. Dialogue is interested in listening to many views, in understanding many perspectives. So then, the questioner, the one who questions, will have something new that is generated.
So yeah, what are you questioning these days? What is in your empirical mind?
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So what is Ontology?
Plato pointed to Forms. It is about being. It is about how things are constructed, how they exist, what makes them endure.*
So what is Empiricism?
Empiricism is about experience. It is about what we can observe, what we can classify, what we can test in practice. Aristotle grounded philosophy in what we can see and know through the senses.**
And what about Socratic discourse?
Socratic discourse is about questioning. It is dialogue. It is unsettling certainty. Socrates was not giving answers, he was creating the conditions for discovery, for something new to emerge in conversation.
So how can Society practice Ontology?
By asking what is the essence of things before rushing to use them. For example, in technology, before creating another app, we could ask what is its being, what does it add to human life, what is the structure it creates.
So how can society practice Empiricism?
By grounding decisions in lived experience, not just in abstractions. For example, in education, instead of only teaching theories, students could observe, classify, and test ideas in practice, so knowledge comes from experience, not from memorizing.
So how can society practice Socratic discourse?
By making dialogue central. For example, in politics, instead of shouting positions, we could create forums where citizens question each other, not to win, but to uncover. In family, it could be as simple as sitting at the table and asking each other questions without rushing to judgment, letting curiosity guide the exchange. In work, it could be teams asking why things are done a certain way and opening space for better solutions instead of just repeating patterns. In art, it could be dialogue between artist and audience, where the work itself becomes a question that invites many perspectives.
Socratic discourse means the question is as important as the answer, and new understanding comes from the exchange itself.
(So what is eloquence? From Latin eloquentia, from ex- meaning out, and loqui meaning to speak. It is speech that flows out, clear and persuasive, born from knowledge and presence.)
Eloquence moves a point across a dialogue without violence. Such as Cicero said, eloquence is wisdom joined to speech. Yes, yes, yes.
I feel that if you carry yourself with eloquence, you can express a perspective without having to violently insult another person just because your views are different. Now, in order to be eloquent, you need to understand that you have to do a little bit more of reading, and also you have to know that which you are talking about is something that you know, that you have experienced yourself, not just repeating, like a parrot, what other people are saying. (it helps to write about it, to practice your newfound knowledge)
In order to be eloquent, you have to be educated and not schooled.
If you are schooled you are just repeating something you do not know. When you are educated you are practicing it, you are testing it, you are experiencing it, so you become empirical about it.
So how do we apply this to today? In small steps, I will say. Bringing ontology and empiricism and Socratic discourse back into our daily life. Start with oneself.
Ask yourself,
-why am I doing this?
-How am I responding to this situation?
-Am I doing it from a place of truth?
-Am I just willing to establish my territory?
-Do I have experience enough, other than curiosity, to get into the terrain and see for myself the meaning of things?
-Am I curious enough to go into the ontology of how things are constructed?
When one practices in small bits, whether at home, in creation, in family, and then in small communities, I see a window of hope emerging as dialogue can be a living practice.
But to see the light, we must also see what blocks it. Society’s shadow.
*The term ontology was coined much later, in the seventeenth century, from the Greek ontos (being) and logos (account). Plato himself did not use the word, but his inquiry into being and Forms is what the term later came to describe.
** The term empiricism also came later, from the Greek empeiria (experience). Aristotle himself did not use the label, but his focus on observation and the senses laid its foundation.
Society’s Shadow
How to Project Our Own Individuation to Get Out of It
Society’s shadow. How can you see it? How can you reveal it? It is your own shadow projected onto society, and then you are in a dark room full of mirrors with very little light, living in this incredible labyrinth of confusion, of projections, of not understanding, because you are so fascinated with the idea to hold on to ideologies. If you start looking at them and how you got indoctrinated and how you got schooled into them, that shatters the whole reality. The mirrors break, and then you are left inside of this platform that has no boundaries, no end, no definition, and then you ask yourself:
Who am I? I am the reflection of all my relationships.
This is Libra time, and it is a beautiful time right now to slow down and take time to understand your relational values. Once you know your needs, you have leverage, and now you must see how you relate to your needs in relationship to other situations, people, and things. Look at your chart to find out where Libra is ruling, where your Venus is, and what are the aspects that are in dissonance or in resonance that will help you get to the next level. There are levels of understanding. They are not hierarchical; they are more like tuning the frequency of understanding. You are either tuned or completely not tuned, and therefore everything that is outside is clashing with your inside, or vice versa.
The calling for these times is to be courageous. Be courageous enough to ask: what are the possibilities? What are the possibilities that are coming to you.
Where are you going to redefine this emergency? We have a first quarter square with the Moon in Capricorn. Capricorn is our outer authority, and the Moon is our inner authority. Can you compensate your emotional body with the emotional body of society and see where you are not really seeing truth?
The chart is interesting. Mars squared Pluto on September 25, 2025; it is a third-quarter square. Mars in Scorpio is very intense; he wants to find out and go deep, no stone left unturned. Last time these two combative, powerful, transformative planets met was at 0°46’ Aquarius on February 14, 2024. Venus joined a few days later, while the North Node was together with Chiron in Aries. The first-quarter square followed on June 10, 2024, when Mars reached 1° Taurus. Then came a series of three oppositions to Pluto, from December through April, moving through Cancer and Leo while Mars was in its biennial retrograde journey. Now, at the three-quarter juncture, can you reach back into your diaries and follow through this cycle? What has evolved in your life since February 2024, and what are you looking to seed when these combustive energies create a brand-new cycle on January 27, 2026, at 3°34’ Aquarius — the same degree where Mars opposed Pluto in April 2025?
For me, that conjunction in February 2024 set off a deep reset, part of the psychological hard drive that Pluto has been wiping as it hovers at the edge of my twelfth and first houses. At the first-quarter square there was urgency to reach out to community. During the triple opposition, in my sixth house, I could discern how I wanted to validate myself and distinguish from groupthink without falling into isolation. Now, with Mars at the three-quarter square in my ninth house, it is pushing a reevaluation of ideologies and fixed ideas, while Pluto continues its long square to my natal Jupiter. In summary: the hard drive is wiped, cleaned, and ready to allow new ways of thinking and relating.1
What you are looking for is to see what events coming from the outside are actually shaking your boat. Are you still on the boat or are you trying to swim back into it? Do you have a vessel that contains yourself, but it is not full of rage and pointing fingers?
Virgo season is rough right now with the South Node, and we have Venus getting close to the South Node of the Moon. That is where you point into what values you need to reshape. If we keep on as we are, there is not a lot of progress coming in the next few months before the great reset on February 20, 2026.
Another aspect I think is important is Mercury square Jupiter. Jupiter is still in Cancer moving through the last ten degrees before turning retrograde, and Mercury in Libra is asking for a conversation, to try to see what are the things that make you feel you are not an individual. Mercury is in opposition to Chiron in Aries and is inconjunct the North Node. Something may happen where you have to surrender to the energy of which ideas are becoming ideology and which ideologies need to be reshaped and seen from a different perspective. You have to step up. You cannot remain passive; passivity is stagnation, and it is a choice. The choice is clear right now.
The Sun is squaring the Moon and is opposing Ceres in Aries. Again: balance what you need versus what others are claiming to need or what you think they need. Most of the time in relationship you carry ideas and projections that have little to do with reality. Check yourself out.
It’s like the individual particle, that single monk hits the supersaturated background psychic solution at just the right point for a crystal to form. And then the crystal itself becomes the node, becomes the interface point where several different individual and collective patterns of meaning suddenly reverberate in the world in this new way… seeing effectively a kind of collective intelligence, or a kind of psychic or even psychological energy to history, the history itself, or things of significance that become history, as we look back at them, that are a living experience in the present, can be looked at through these nodal points.
~Mark Jones, The Planetary Nodes Part 3 (seminar transcript).
Planetary Nodes — what they show us
The planetary nodes reveal the larger karmic and evolutionary structures that underwrite collective timing. As Jeffrey W. Green explained, when Pluto or another planet conjuncts or squares the nodal axis, you are looking at dynamics that go beyond an individual life. These nodal activations describe the collective field of karmic experience conditioning us all.
In 2020 we had Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto conjunct their planetary nodes in Cancer–Capricorn. You know what happened. Now Uranus is moving toward its north planetary node in Gemini and the nodal axis around Neptune is activating in the next years. What does it mean for you when Uranus, the planet of shocks, reaches its own node? How will you listen to the interruption it brings? Uranus in Gemini will reshape collective communication, networks, and the ways we think and connect.
Neptune’s nodes2 carry the memory of ideology and belief; their activation asks how we have been fooling ourselves as a society, how illusions and disillusionments are carried in our cellular memory, and how we might liberate ourselves from them.
Mark Jones calls Pluto, Uranus, and the nodes the language of intensity. He says Uranus carries the blueprints in the subtle mind: potentials and residues of past trauma that still shape us now. That is the field we are stepping into.
As Rudhyar said, Uranus symbolizes the interruption of the steady flow, the sudden release of power, the force that challenges patterns that have become too rigid. What happens when Uranus reaches its node in Gemini? How do we listen to that interruption? That is what we are living: the sudden shocks that reveal the shadow.
The wound of wanting to be seen
Only recently did I realize that having a progressed Venus retrograde has been highlighting the main components of my chart. My Pluto polarity point moves from Virgo in the eighth house to my second house, ruled by Pisces, the natural Venus house, the Taurus house. That is the way Pluto’s disempowerment is healed and integrated. That is also where my Chiron lies, square to my natal Venus in Gemini 5th house, the wound of wanting to be recognized, of wanting to be seen. For the first part of my life I was seeking approval from others, merging in intimate situations under the illusion that being loved would mean being seen. But that didn’t mean they were really seeing or hearing me, or that they understood my value. Value does not come from others; value and validation come from inside.
Now I understand why my Sun, Jupiter, and retrograde Mercury in Taurus in the third house are ruled by this Venus. Venus, Taurus, second house — this is the mark of my chart, its core structure. This is my recurring theme. Every chart has a recurring theme, and this is mine. My progressed Venus went retrograde around the year 2000 and will remain retrograde until 2040; forty years of space to invest in myself, to recognize my needs, but always in relationship to others, because Venus/Libra rules the seventh house in the natural zodiac, where Uranus sits. It is through understanding how to keep relationships alive, and how they fracture under pain, that I have learned this progression.
My progressed Saturn went retrograde in my eleventh house and will remain retrograde for the rest of my life. In my natal chart Saturn rules my South Node in Capricorn and the eleventh house, so this retrograde has turned me inward to reflect on what social structures I can belong to, how I collaborate with groups, and how I define myself in society. Saturn requires authenticity, accountability, and an inner authority that does not depend on outer belonging. It has taught me that I am not here to lead or merge into groups, but to define myself in relation to source, inwardly. Through this process I am working through everything relational in my chart: the seventh house, the eighth house, the second house, the eleventh house.
On Harmonics
Rudhyar described the planetary intervals as harmonic relations, and I use that musical language when I speak of harmonics. Planets form intervals, chords, sympathetic vibrations that create resonance or dissonance. There are moments when you meet someone and you feel an immediate sympathy; when you check the chart you see the planets vibrating at the same frequency — by sign, by degree, by house. Other times you feel the impulse to move away, and the chart shows a square, an inconjunct, an opposition. That is what I mean by harmonics.
When I chart a composite, the relationship itself becomes a unit, a breathing experience, something I can relate to and interrogate directly. I have been mapping these composites with important people in my life. The composite is less about who the person is and more about what the relationship is doing for me. The midpoints and the shared points create a logic, a structure that opens a way into the psyche. That is how I work: concrete charting that allows me to go deeper into pattern and meaning.
I am also writing chapters in my book on how vibrations operate; the guidelines to see what connects and what repels, how dissonance looks in chart language, and how resonance shows up as structural support in life.
That synthesis is the ratio,
Right now we are in the harmonic of Aries and Libra. This is cardinal energy: the beginning of something. When we look at the fall or the spring, depending on the hemisphere, we are leaving one stage and entering another. When it is Libra, we are entering the relationships; when it is Aries, we are entering the self. The aim is not to become one or the other. The aim is to create a balance that is not halfway, but a synthesis of what emerges through the relationship. That synthesis is the ratio, the potential, the emergence. This is where we are right now.
How can we synthesize this opportunity? When we look outside, the first question is: is this true? And then: if it is true, can I do something about it? And then: acceptance, even surrender. We have to go back to Socrates and the questions he asked. If there is disturbance in what you are observing, go deeper: how are these relationships affecting your psyche, your emotional body? Take time to relate in a way that allows a new experience to emerge, instead of remaining in the loop of “this is this and that is that.”
Mark Jones’ presence + impact
It will be a year since I began working with Mark Jones. What a gift to have someone who helps me integrate my inner relationship with the harmonics that matter to me. I have a logical mind; the logical part of my mind is always looking for understanding. With Venus in Gemini and planets in the third house, I do not only see patterns; I synthesize them. It feels obsessive sometimes, and that obsession is part of integrating the Pluto polarity in the second house and working with Chiron square Venus. Venus progressing through my chart and Saturn’s ongoing significance have been part of this harmonic process that speaks to me at a cellular level.
Mark’s teaching, that the deep self is the true nature of psyche and that Pluto, Uranus, and the nodes speak to what matters most to the soul, has been practical for me. It gives language to the shocks and openings of these years and to how to move from projection into clarity. In every session we tap deeper, and he reflects back the journey I have set for myself.
The mirrors’ projections into individuation
Society’s shadow is large because we have been trained to project. Individuation is the practice of bringing attention inward, of learning the harmonics of our charts and relationships, of listening to the progressions that reorganize how we feel about what is already present. Through that work we become the channel that projects light back into the room of mirrors; the mirrors begin to reflect the shape of our individuation rather than the endless crowd’s projections. That is how we step out of the shadow.
What did you see in your own mirrors?
The synthesis of any discourse is how we embody our own logos.
The Pursuit of Happiness
I woke up this morning, 9/13/2025, with the urge to keep studying the Constitution of the United States. As I started opening the content (The U.S. Constitution, A Reader, edited by the Hillsdale Col…
Sabian symbol for 1° Aquarius (0°–1°): “Lasting Values.” This degree points to the beginning of something new, like the building of an adobe mission as a center of culture and religion in a new territory. It suggests creating structures that endure and sustain a group. Recent activations include: Mars–Saturn (March 31, 2020); the February 2021 Aquarius stellium shortly after the Great Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter (December 20, 2020), when Sun, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Moon gathered; Sun–Pluto (January 2025); and the Mars–Pluto conjunction (February 14, 2024). These repeated contacts underscore how Aquarius 1° carries themes of foundation, endurance, and the re-building of collective values that will shape the cycles to come.
That the north node of Uranus is in Gemini shows how much inspiration can be found just by bringing this to our conscious awareness, studying it, and talking with our friends and communities about it, in order to overcome the south node of Uranus in Sagittarius shadow of fundamentalism — to share the realization that there are many faces of truth as it expresses through the multitude of peoples on Earth.
Neptune’s north node is in Leo, and every one of us is being asked what the nature of our creativity will bring to the collective table. Do we just take from life? Are we simply neutral and passive observers? Or can we find our most profound and beautiful healing vision (north node of Neptune) and create (Leo) our lives from that place?
-The Space between the Stars: The Nature and Function of the Planetary Nodes By Mark Jones / October 9, 2016
