It was chiefly through youth, underground, or alternative culture that this particular brand of Uranian-Neptunian rapture was to have its most potent, undiluted expression. Several unrelated trends seemed to magically converge to form the "rave," the newest and arguably most advanced form in the long lineage of the rites of ecstasy. Through the combination of mind-altering substances, music, hypnotic lights, psychedelic visuals, and, in many cases, thousands of people, the rave became the underground forum for giving expression to the most transfixing potentials of the Uranus-Neptune combination. Stimulating, euphoric, and intoxicating, the rave took rapture to unprecedented heights and extremes.

Every building block of the rave experience seemed tailor-made to allow one to exit the confines of mundane reality and the constrictions of the ego. Responsible for setting the atmosphere and channeling energies, accomplished DJs attempted to create the perfect set with expertly crafted sonic journeys that lasted hours. Music, featuring repetitive, hypnotic beats and swirling keyboard melodies, encouraged uninhibited, free-form dancing that could easily induce trance states. The feeling of unity established through the shared experience of large crowds only heightened the sense of bliss and loss of self. Visuals, ranging from alternating strobe lights to pulsating lasers to slowly morphing psychedelic images, provided a phantasmagoric, disorienting backdrop to the music and dancing. Though not essential to the rave experience, it would be remiss not to mention the importance of the hallucinogen of choice, MDMA, also known as xtc, x, or e. First synthesized during the previous Uranus-Neptune opposition, MDMA went from relative obscurity in the early 1980's to becoming nearly a household word in less than a decade.¹⁰ Fusing a speedy flood of excitation to the nervous system with a distinctive warmth that dissolves inhibitions and enhances openness, MDMA appeared to be the Uranus-Neptune combination in pill form.

The verdict on the cultural significance of raves is mixed. From one perspective, raves were simply a hedonistic mini-vacation that promoted escapism and irresponsibility. From the viewpoint of the converted, raves were a bona fide mass religious experience that promoted tolerance, provided the perfect remedy for middle class emotional inhibition and reserve, and even provisionally eroded class and racial differences. Given the trickster face of Uranus and the unavoidable indefinableness of Neptune, only a conclusion that embraces the logic of both sides is justifiable.

The Uranus-Neptune conjunction also gave rise to a generation that merged technology with the religious impulse. As the rave community began synthesizing dissimilar artifacts together, related subcultures began weaving an uncharacteristic blend of state-of-the-art science and technology with esoteric and ancient religious wisdom. Known as technoshamanism or technopaganism, practitioners, believers, and adventurers saw technology not as artificial and dehumanizing but as the most advanced tool to access the sacred. Internet technologies were used as a mouthpiece to disseminate a revived gnosticism to the masses. To the technoshaman, a sort of animism was attributed to bits and bytes scaffolding the world wide web; cyberspace was imbued with a consciousness that was not unlike the spirit world accessed by a traditional shaman. Moreover, advocates of technoshamanism used digital machines and the latest computer wizardry to rapidly induce non-ordinary states of consciousness in their flock. In all cases, machines were seen as conduits to the divine.

This was also the era in which the paranormal fringe went mainstream. In this time of high strangeness, anomalous phenomena -from UFO's to crop circles to alien abductions-seemed to proliferate at a startling rate. Just as religious visions and miracles were breaking through the cracks of convention, the paranormal and the unexplained entered through kinks of armor of consensus belief. Uranus's beam of light shown just bright enough to allow many to see the interface between Neptune's otherworldliness and our own world. Media began to focus their attention on unsolved mysteries and the paranormal as shifting demographics indicated that belief and interest in anomalous phenomena was on the rise. Art Bell's radio show, "Coast to Coast" went from relative obscurity to becoming the most popular overnight radio show in the U.S. with millions of listeners across the world tuning in every week. The X-Files, with its conspiracy theory edge and search for the supernatural, hooked American audiences and became one of the most critically-acclaimed and successful shows of the 1990's.

The search for extra-terrestrial intelligence progressed from being the stuff of science fiction and fantasy to becoming an area of serious investigation. Roswell, Area 51, and SETI became household words as numerous books, television specials, and movies served to popularize, if not legitimize, the quest for uncovering the truth of alien contact. Without addressing the authenticity of extra-terrestrial phenomena, the popularity of the symbol of the alien-as seen in the cold stare of the "grey"-can be seen as both an archetypal image serving to express the collective's heightened need to connect with something outside it's self and also to give visual representation for the quickening pulse of creative, evolutionary energies present during the Uranus-Neptune conjunction.