When I read about Native Americans, which I often do during Ohio summers, I begin to think about what it means to “own” something. Prior to contact, tribes had territories and fought over hunting and living ground, but no one “owned” the land.

Among many factors decimating the Native Americans (such as illness, sheer numbers of immigrants, weapons), this one may have contained a crazy element of surprise. Here’s where I hunt and now you call it “yours” and put a big building on it (and later housing developments,  freeways and a Walmart). The shock of someone simply saying they “owned” the land may have made the Native American response quizzically slow.

When children are in their “terrible twos” they are often known to grab things and yell “Mine!” Funny how we tell those children that sharing is good and not to yell “Mine!” But we yell “Mine!” all the time in this world.

The people who came to what is now the United States not only set foot on land and yelled “Mine!” they also captured other humans and yelled “Mine!”

Today multi-nationals are grabbing the water and food and yelling “Mine!”

What is “mine?”

From an astrological perspective, I believe Saturn and Capricorn are about defining societal structures, including this idea of owning property. If we didn’t own property, the result would be Neptune and Pisces – a boundary-less, undefined world. The owning creates the structure, not the other way around.

The structured Saturn fears the diffuse Neptune and calls Neptune “chaos” and “anarchy.”

How would you feel if you didn’t know that you lived in a place called the “United States?” How would you feel if you only knew that you lived on the earth? How would you feel if nothing was “yours?”

With Neptune transiting Pisces, you may begin to have these feelings.

While Neptune is transiting ethereal Pisces, Pluto is transiting rigid Capricorn. These outer planets take years to move through a sign and reflect the “times” and societal changes.

If Capricorn protects “mine” then Pisces promotes “ours.” It looks like we’ll be having some shift in ideas of mine and yours, yours and ours. (And Uranus in Aries assures we will fight for it.)

One reason to have something that is mine, such as my house, is protection. Mine protects me. I think we create “mine” to have a sense of security in a world that is not really secure. Saturn and Capricorn represent the “house” we build around ourselves for protection. This is often called a façade or shield or defense.

When reading about defenses in psychology books, I sometimes get the feeling defenses are seen as bad. I think defenses are a natural part of living in this world. Defenses gone extreme, like the US defense budget, is when we need to examine where our defenses are crippling our growth.

Neptune and Pisces are like wading in the water in the middle of the ocean. There is nothing to stand on. There is no boundary. There are no clear lines of demarcation and to survive in the middle of the ocean, you have to be in constant motion.

As it’s said, you’re born naked and die naked. You own nothing coming in and you own nothing going out. With Neptune in Pisces and Pluto in Capricorn, I think we are going to have global lessons about “mine.”