Conceptualizing The Outer Planets

I’ve been thinking about how Robert Schmidt was theorizing that Uranus was a transcendent collective Sun, Neptune a transcendent collective Moon, and Pluto a transcendent collective Mercury. I prefer these characterizations to others that you often hear as they make more sense to me.

Uranus is electric and could be described as a form of nous--of higher learning and knowing in the way it can shake up thinking/beliefs/construction.

The astrologer Caroline Casey talks about how Uranian events only seem 'sudden' when authenticity is suppressed. It's as if the energy says, if you won't face up to who/what/how you are, then I'll force an event to 'help' you.

I appreciate Neptune is seen as illusion/delusion, foggy & slippery. But if we zoom out, we can see that where Neptune lands in the natal chart can speak to a a kind of collective lineage of stories that coalesce around the zetigeist for the roughly 14 year period Neptune is in a particular sign.

Neptune can describe collective spiritual longing. It can also describe a collective repository of emotions and a collective subconscious. If Moon can describe where we "tap in" to Source on an individual level, then Neptune might be seen as doing this on a collective level.

The idea of Pluto as a transcendent collective Mercury was really startling to me at first. But if we think of Pluto as mischief/trickery/machinations amplified on a wholly grand scale, it kind of makes sense...

Mercury is the only one who can traverse and inhabit both the upper & lower worlds and is a crucial boundary-crossing symbol in astrology. Pluto also embodies this concept of embodying extremes in signifying transformation (albeit in not so easy ways).

Of course I'm not saying any of this in a definitive way, rather sharing as a point of discussion for those astrologers who use outer planets in their practice.

I personally found Schmidt's musings helpful in delineations when doing natal chart work. I find these thoughts much more powerful when looking at mundane cycles. Do Schmidt's conceptualizations speak to you? Or can you see yourself using them at all?