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July 1, 2016

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Saturn on the Ascendant

Saturn is a relatively fast moving planet, compared with the three outer planets of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.  Saturn was the slowest moving known planet through all of history before the Enlightenment, and circles the Sun in about a third of the time as the next outer planet Uranus — Saturn takes almost 30 years.  So transits of Saturn across the angles of the US chart are not nearly as impressive as those of the slower moving planets, but there is something noticeable.  This is important to discuss now, since we are seeing another case of this transit, along with a slower moving transit.  As two examples below indicate, when Saturn transits an angle combined with a transit of an outer planet over the same angle, the results can be especially impressive.

 

saas1898

 

The first Saturn Ascendant case we will explore is the Spanish American War, when Saturn was conjunct the Ascendant of the US, and to make this more important, Pluto was on the Descendant and thus opposite Saturn at the same time, as was explored in an early entry on this blog. The Spanish America War is considered important to the development of the imperial United States because it was the first time that the US took a colony, and in fact several, outside the confines of continental North America.  Not only did the US take Cuba from the Spanish, and it was a “colony” of the United States until it was overthrown by Fidel Castro in 1959, but also an even larger colony of the Philippines, which necessitated a bloody war to put down a rebellion.  The American Anti-Imperialist League was founded in 1898 to oppose annexation of the Philippines.  Among the prominent members were authors Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Henry James, and William Dean Howells, as well as ex-president Grover Cleveland and industrialist Andrew Carnegie.

 

saas1942

 

Saturn was opposite the Ascendant of the United States in 1942 and 1943, when the US had just entered World War II, despite strong reservations about entering the war among the populace, and the war was not going in the Allies favor.  The Soviet Union had been invaded by Germany the previous year, and large scale fighting was happening on the Eastern Front, with millions killed.  The beginning of the Holocaust was happening, though few in America had an inkling of what was going on.

 

saas1957

 

The following conjunction of Saturn to the Ascendant was in 1957 as the first earth satellite, Sputnik, was launched by the Soviets on October 4.  The beep, beep, beep that the satellite put out was a sign of fear in the United States; this was the height of the Cold War, when America, which had survived the Second World War with little damage or loss of life, thought that they were far beyond the Soviets, who had much of the war fought on their territory and had lost tens of millions of people.  The Americans had real fears when the Soviets were ahead of them in the “Space Race”.  The fact that early American attempts at launching a satellite failed did not help the mood in the country.  The thought was that the Soviets could launch nuclear-armed ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) at America with their missile technology.  As a result, much like the current emphasis on STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) studies, there developed after this event a push for more science and mathematics education in the US schools, which probably resulted in many computer people who made their mark on the country in the last decades.

 

saas1972

 

The next opposition was in June 1972, just as the break-in at the Watergate Hotel was happening (June 17, 1972).  This seemingly minor break-in, before a Presidential election, would have profound repercussions for the United States in the next couple of years.  In the following years, this seemed like a traumatic event, and the nation’s peoples were rooted to their television sets (no social media at the time, since the Internet was only some three years old and not available to the public) following the preceedings of the Watergate Committee of Congress.

 

saas1986

 

The next Saturn conjunct Ascendant was December 1986 as the Iran-Contra Affair was unfolding.  In normal cases this incident, which involved the US government trading arms illegally to Iran in exchange for the Western hostages that were held by allies of Iran in Lebanon, would have resulted in the impeachment of President Reagan.  But the “Teflon” President scraped through, arguing that he was unaware of the incident.  This exposure made many Americans more doubtful about their country.  Eugene Hasenfus, an American pilot, was shot down over Nicaragua on October 5, 1986, while carrying weapons to the US-supported Contras which were fighting the government of Nicaragua, thus exposing the whole scheme.

 

saas2001

 

The next opposition, when Saturn was on the Descendant and Pluto was on the Ascendant, the opposite of the Spanish-American War configuration, was when the Twin Towers in New York City were taken down by airplanes, known as 9/11.  This was discussed in more detail here.

The next conjunction is in this year, 2016, but there is also at the same time a transit of the outer planet Neptune square the Ascendant, and thus this is the transiting Saturn square Neptune aspect also which has been discussed at least twice before.  Briefly, this aspect occurs when the people are getting tired of something that seemed like a good idea when it was started.  While you can see the link for a full discussion of these events with charts, I will summarize them again.  These words were written before the Brexit vote in Great Britain, but the results of that vote are entirely in keeping with the meaning of Saturn in hard aspect to Neptune.  The European Union, which a majority of United Kingdom voters chose to leave, is primarily a neoliberal institution, despite the hopes of those who initially had the idea of a united Europe.

These quadrature aspects — conjunction, opposition, square — of Saturn and Neptune often happen near the end of long wars.  This is especially true with our current two long running wars — in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Of course, America is now involved in so many wars around the world, and attempting to start more wars, that as the saying goes it is difficult to keep track of them all without a scorecard.  In fact, the New York Times recently noted that President Obama is the first President during whose entire eight years in office the US was at war.  That fact alone says an awful lot about the times we live in.

Saturn was opposite Neptune in late 1862 and 1863 when the Civil War was being fought, the bloodiest battle on the Continental United States.  Many people had doubts about the wisdom of this war.  Men in the North could pay $300 for someone to take their place in the Army and many did.

The opposition of these two planets occurred again, three times, in 1899, after the Spanish American War had been stated.  There was growing doubt about this war which was America’s first attempt at colonialism, as illustrated by the formation of the American Anti-Imperialist League mentioned above.

A Saturn-Neptune conjunction occurred in late 1917 just as America entered the First World War, despite President Woodrow Wilson campaigning on the pledge to keep the US out of the War.  The jingoism inspired by this entry to the War changed America and the government in ways that could not have been foreseen.

There was a square of the two planets in 1944, 1945 as World War II was nearing its end, though not all realized it at the time.  The battle had been long and bloody, especially for America soldiers in the war in the Pacific.

These was a conjunction of those two planets in late 1952 and 1953, as the Korean War, which appeared to be an easy victory when it started, dragged on for several years to the increasing disgust of Americans.

There was an opposition of the planets in 1971 and 1972 as there was increasing abhorrence of the long running Vietnam War, which had spread to neighboring countries of Laos and Cambodia.  Many protests erupted on campuses across the nation after the news about the incursions into other countries became known.

There was a square of Saturn and Neptune in 1979 and 1980, which saw the American hostages captured by Iran after the US-supported Shah had been overthrown in a popular uprising.  The American hostages generated continuous headlines in the media and arguably lead to the defeat of President Carter in the election of 1980.

There was a conjunction of the two planets in 1989, discussed further here.  This saw the fall of the Berlin Wall, almost on the date of the third exact conjunction, and the downfall of several other Communist regimes.

There was a square in 1998 and 1999, just as the Clinton Impeachment trial was happening.  Americans were disgusted either by the tawdry details of Clinton’s affair or the Republicans hounding of a sitting President for a minor event.  Meanwhile, there occurred the Battle of Seattle where crowds were protesting the World Trade Organization — another neolibereal institution — meeting in that city.

The previous oppositions of Saturn and Neptune were in 2006 and 2007, as the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, promised as quick victories, were still dragging on.  But of course US troops are still fighting in both countries, plus many more, as the upcoming square happens on 11/26/2015, 6/17/2016, and 9/10/2016.

In this case, Neptune is square the Ascendant of the United states as well, and so that aspect has to also be considered, as well as the conjunction of Saturn to the Ascendant as well as the square of the two planets which will be felt around the world.

 

tgsane2016

 

Here is a graphical ephemeris showing the behavior of Saturn and Neptune over this year. Saturn first crossed the Ascendant of the US (dashed golden line) at the black arrow, and then Saturn is square Neptune and they both cross the Ascendant at the red arrow, and on the center line, at June 15 of this year.  Note that the horrific shooting at an Orlando nightclub took place on the morning of June 12.  Then Saturn is again square Neptune at the green arrow, and the final crossing of Saturn over the Ascendant is at the blue arrow on approximately October 13.

While currently there are many things that looked like a good idea when started but are now seen to go badly, the most obvious, because there have been increasing signs of discontent from the populace, is Neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism started in the late Seventies and has grown since then.  This graph will illustrate what has happened, so it is worth discussing in detail.  In all instances, it is common for older people to complain that the world as it is now is not like the world they knew when they were young; this complaint that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket has echoed down through history: there are instances of the ancient Greeks making the same complaint.  But as we shall see in the graph below, now the complaint is real: The world is more avaricious now then it was fifty years ago.  This change has affected everything.  See this link above for more details and what astrological formation represented this major change, and why it was such a major change.

 

gini

The Gini Index is a standard measure of inequality.  A Gini of 0 means total equality of income — everyone has the same income — while a Gini of 1 means total inequality, one person has everything.  This graph shows the Gini in the United States and Great Britain (and Holland to some extent) over the last two hundred fifty years.  Decreasing Gini show that more equality is happening while rising Gini shows that society is becoming more unequal.  From the graph one can see that inequality increased to a peak in second half of the Nineteenth Century and then fell slightly.  Then with the Great Depression inequality in the United States fell sharply until it bottomed out about 1950; inequality remained low through about 1975 when it began to rise and right now inequality is as high or higher than it has ever been in the United States.  This has been the result of neoliberalism practiced over the last forty years.  People in the working class have felt shafted for a long time, and with the Great Recession the middle class, those of that class that are left, have felt it also. But people remained compliant (see, for example, the recent book The Age of Acquiescence by Steve Fraser for details).  But over the last few years we have seen a transit of Pluto opposite the Sun of the United States.  The last time this happened was before birth of the US, when Britain passed various measures to get more money out of the colonies, and the stage for the Revolution was set.  In that case the Sun represented the King and Great Britain.  Now the Sun represents the President and government, and people are not happy with them.  We’ve seen some of this played out on the political stage over the last year. Any politician who is somewhat wise (I realize that may be an oxymoron) should pay attention to these developments, because they are cresting after an incubation period of forty years.  But at best politicians will blame any action against neoliberalism as the result of the deluded thinking of low-information voters.

 

tgplsu

 

This graphical ephemeris, for a seven and a half year period centered on January 6, 2015, shows Pluto’s transit opposite the Sun of the US chart – dark yellow dashed line.  You can see that in the current times, about two grid lines to the right of the center line, Pluto again comes close to the US Sun, about two degrees from exact, but will not exactly oppose it again this cycle.  Depending on the orb you use, Pluto has been opposite the US Sun for five years.

The effects of Neptune squaring the Ascendant are, well, Neptunian.  There is much delusion in the public sphere; to me it seems worse than it has ever been, even in the first Cold War.  The journalist profession has been greatly reduced by the rise of the Internet, but those that are left have engaged in malpractice by their propagandistic reporting.  A couple of examples from the current time is the woeful failure of the news media, supporting the dominant paradigm, in their description of Presidential candidates (Trump is a fascist, Sanders is a socialist, Clinton is a progressive) and their behavior as a stenographer for the government in their covering up of the potential for war (if war has not already started), with a massing of NATO troops at the Russian border, the greatest the world has seen since World War II.  It was 75 years ago that the last massing of troops on the Russian border happened — Operation Barbarossa — which resulted in over two million Soviet citizens killed within three months, and the Russians remember this, even if the West does not.  The news media propaganda ignores facts such as seen in the map below.  Neptune is very heavy in the cover-up.

 

russia-wants-war

 

Another more positive manifestation of Neptune is with drugs.  The whole war on drugs scenario, which has been going on for a hundred years, and not forty some years as people like to claim, is rapidly being called into disrepute in states of the US and countries around the world.  And once people lose their beliefs in the evils of (some) “drugs”, governments may have problems with their populace.  This will cause big changes in the upcoming years, because a major lie of most countries and the United Nations has been exposed. People have yet another reason to distrust what they are told; this is not good for keeping the people in line.

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May 27, 2016

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Watershed Elections – One

The election of 2016 is being billed as the “most important election ever”  (or at least in a long time) and we must of course vote for the proper candidate.  Of course, each presidential election is billed as the most important one ever, until the next election occurs.  But there is a natural astrological cycle, known for thousands of years, that rules the rise and fall of, traditionally, kings.   And this twenty year cycle just so happens to correspond  to the four year election cycle.  We will explore this cycle through United states history; this twenty year cycle also corresponds to what has been called “Tecumseh’s Curse”, which says that every president elected at the start of this cycle will die while in office.   This election season of 2016 is just the tail end of the previous cycle that started in the year 2000, and is just a preparation for the watershed election of 2020.

This  cycle, which was discussed previously, is the twenty year synodic cycle of  Jupiter and Saturn, the two outermost planets known before a few hundred years ago.  This synodic cycle can be seen as similar to the lunar cycle with which we are all familiar:  New Moon — the conjunction of the Sun and the Moon — is the start of  the cycle, which then goes through the Full Moon — opposition — and back to the New  Moon.  For the case of the Jupiter-Saturn synodic cycle, the cycle starts with the conjunction of the two planets and goes through the opposition ten years after the conjunction and then the cycle ends and a new one begins ten years later at a conjunction of the Jupiter and Saturn.

But very  conveniently, and why we can talk about “watershed elections” is that this cycle has, for centuries, corresponded, more or less, to the presidential election cycle, with the conjunctions occurring near the start of an even decade.  Thus what I’m calling a watershed  election occurs at the start of an even decade and corresponds to the conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn.  In many cases the election is significant for the future of the country or of Presidential elections; in other cases the country was on the verge of a significant change that would be felt in the future;  an in some cases both were true.  We will see examples below as we look at each watershed election.

The charts below illustrate the first Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in each cycle.

 

1800
The first election in the new United States that corresponded to the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction was the election of 1800 — called by one of the participants, Thomas Jefferson, as “The Revolution of 1800”.  This was discussed previously (February 26, 2016) because it corresponded to the transit of Uranus over the MC of the United States.  Briefly this was the first time that a President of one party was replaced by a President of the other party.  Since this had never happened before, many in the country and the world did not know if it would be successful and peaceful, or as in many other situations – the coup of Napoleon in France had just occurred — the losing party would continue to hold power.   Also, because of a bug in the Constitution, there was no winner for months and some were talking about a possible civil war.   But eventually, just in time for the scheduled inauguration, a winner was chosen and it appeared to the world that the United States would be a successful country.  At least, an early crisis had been avoided and the Constitution was changed to correct the bug which had been exposed by the election.

 

1820
There was not much special about the election of 1820.  It was the second term of James Monroe  and it turned out to be the last time a member of the “Virginia Dynasty” controlled the Presidency of the United States.   The Virginia Dynasty was a string of men from Virginia who controlled the office of the President since the first election of George Washington in 1789.  The only exception was the single term of John Adams of Massachusetts in  1796.  All the other Presidents — George  Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe were from Virginia and served  two terms each.  1820 was still within the Era of Good Feelings,  after the War of 1812  (often called the second revolution) when there was not much strife in the country and essentially one political party — the Democrat-Republicans — since the Federalist Party had self-destructed after not supporting the War of 1812.  Monroe was elected by a near unanimous vote in the Electoral College, one vote withheld only because of the desire for George Washington to be the only President elected unanimously.  This term would see the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine, which has influenced foreign  policy down through the years.  This  document was mostly written by Monroe’s Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams.

But the controversy that became apparent at this time, and was to increasingly shape the country for the next 40 years, was slavery. Here are two markers that this question was coming into public consciousness, at least among whites.  One can assume for slaves this had long been an issue of paramount importance.

In Ohio the first abolitionist newspaper — The Philanthropist — was started.  Whenever something becomes so popular that a periodical is published supporting that tendency, you  know that many people are supporting that tendency.   That paper had been started by a Quaker in September of 1817 and was popular in Ohio and neighboring Pennsylvania.  It stopped publication in 1822, but the banner of abolitionism was picked up by others, most famously by William Lloyd Garrison.

And on the national front, we have the Missouri Compromise which brought the division over slavery out into the open, where it would remain for the next 40 years.  This  action sounded, as an elderly Thomas Jefferson said, like a “fire bell in the night”.  America could no longer pretend that the real division between slave and non-slave states did not exist.

Up until that time, the number of slave states and the number of non-slave (called free) states was the same, and so it was thought they balanced each other out, even though the Constitution had given the slave states unequal power by saying that each slave counted as three-fifths of a human being for  determining  the population of that state and thus the number of Representatives and Electoral Votes.  But then Missouri wanted to join the Union as a slave state, upsetting  the balance.  The immediate solution was to split a new state of Maine off of Massachusetts and allow it to come into the Union at the same time as a free state.  Furthermore,  extending the idea of the Mason-Dixon Line, which had originally divided the Northern — free —  and the Southern — slave — states, it was declared that the Southern border of Missouri would serve as a marker so that only slave states would exist below that line and only free states (except for Missouri) above that line.  This compromise lasted for 35  years, and by that time it was obvious (or should have been) that that division would not hold.

The chart above shows the Uranus-Neptune conjunction square the US MC and also square Pluto.  Big changes were coming to the United States and the world: The Age of Jackson, the Industrial Revolution, the Communication Revolution, the invention of photography, the rise of laissez-faire capitalism, to name a few.

 

1840
The winner of the 1840 election is someone who is mostly forgotten these days, even though he was the son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and the grandfather of another President.  This man was William Henry Harrison, who was the oldest person ever to hold the Presidency until Ronald Reagan.  Though Harrison came from a distinguished background, he was portrayed as living in a log cabin and drinking hard apple cider.  This  was known as the Log Cabin and Cider campaign, and the Whigs — his party — had many tchotchkes created that usually involved small log cabins and jugs of cider.  Occasionally a large ball would be rolled from town to town supporting his candidacy. And one distiller— by the name of E. G. Booz — created a log cabin shaped bottle of whisky to commemorate the campaign;  his last name became a popular slang for the substance he was making .  This was the beginning of election paraphernalia that parties now make for their candidate.  Harrison also campaigned for himself, something that had never been done before since it was considered not in keeping with the dignity of the office.  But in an age before trains and planes, all this activity was wearing on what at that time was a elderly person.

Harrison and his Vice-President, John Tyler, campaigned on the slogan Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too, Tippecanoe being one of the Indian battles in which Harrison was a commander.  He defeated  Martin Van Buren, the real founder of the Democratic Party and the first President without an English background, who had been raised in humble surroundings, unlike Harrison.  In the campaign Van Buren’s desires for luxury were compared to Harrison’s humble surroundings, an early example of campaign nonsense.   Van Buren was done in by the Panic of 1937, America’s first financial crisis, which was partially caused by previous president Andrew Jackson’s war with the Second Bank of the United States.

This campaign was also one of the first to feature women in prominent roles.  While of course they would not be able to vote for another 80 years, women helped in other ways such as cooking large Tippecanoe feasts.  Some people found the presence of women in the campaign shocking.

And to prove how similar that campaign was to more recent events, Harrison would given different speeches to different audiences.  For example, he would be against recent immigrants in some cases, but when talking in front of a German audience, he would be all in  favor of these recent arrivals.

And there were rumors spread during this campaign by opposing parties: Since the Democratic Vice President candidate was known to be living with a black woman, and raising her children with the education of whites, the story was spread that Harrison had fathered several children with Indians.   And of course the Democrat’s Presidental candidate — nicknamed Martin Van Ruin for the economic disaster his term had  ushered in — was condemned for his silk-stocking high life.

Once in office, Harrison gave his inaugural speech — a long one written by Daniel Webster — on a cold day in March without a top hat, supposedly so he would not emphasize his age.  He got pneumonia and after a month died.  He served the shortest amount of time of any president, and was in fact the first President to die while in office, and also a first example of the Tecumseh  Curse mentioned above.  Harrison had been involved in the military campaign in which  Tecumseh died, but more likely the man who killed him was the Vice Presidental candidate of the opposing Democratic party.

Since this was the first Presidential death, the country was now sure how things would work out.  His Vice President, John Tyler, assumed the office of the President, thus establishing the fact that the Vice President would replace the President if he died.  But at the time this was not a fact, and Tyler was called “His Accidency”.  Tyler was  only nominally a Whig, but he had been a Democrat from Virginia, and in fact his father had been a roommate of Jefferson’s when they were in college.  Tyler was also a slave holder and the number of the descendants from his involvement with his slaves outnumbers those descendants of Jefferson which are more well known.

The  Whigs such as Henry Clay were not too happy with Tyler’s performance as a Democrat.  Tyler wanted Texas, which had become an independent county in 1836, to  become part of the United States, and in fact Congress finally voted for admission of Texas after Tyler had been replaced by James Polk, but before Polk’s inaugural, but this did not hold up.

In the chart above we see Uranus square the US Mars, and also Sun sesquiquadrate that same Mars and a loose conjunction between Uranus and transiting Mars, all suggesting a sudden event, perhaps violent.

 

1860
The election of 1860 is quite famous, and so the story of it does not need to be elaborated here.   The first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, who had been a Whig before the Republicans Party existed, had been elected in November of 1860, and before he became President several states already had withdrawn from the Union and the Civil war was shaping up as  a real possibility.  The previous two Presidents, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, had done noting to lessen the impending crisis which had been developing for forty years.  Lincoln was also killed by an assassin shortly after he started his second term, thus again fulfilling Tecumseh’s Curse.

As discussed before, Uranus at the Descendant and Neptune at the MC are highlights of this first major crisis of the United States.

The Civil War represented a major change in American culture and society, even though 150 years later the country has not seemed to have absorbed the ramifications of the Civil War and  its aftermath.

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March 25, 2016

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Change Will Come: Uranus Pluto Hard Aspects

 

urpl2015

Last Uranus Square Pluto

 

We are currently witnessing a square of Uranus and Pluto; the last exact square was on March 16, 2015.  Variants of this aspect have occurred before, and various commentators recognize this fact, even though they are unaware of the underlying astrology.  During the Arab Spring, the various Occupy movements, the sit-ins in Wisconsin, several people compared those events to the Sixties, the unrest of the Thirties, the  actions in the first part of the Twentieth Century, and even  to the wave of revolutions that swept Europe in 1848.  No one that I know of compared those events to the French Revolution or the English Civil War.  And no one remembers the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.  But all these have something in common.  And then I heard Glen Greenwald – who helped release the Edward Snowden revelations – complain that the information released was known years before,  but suddenly it became a topic of interest.    And then he said that it was like “something in the ether changed”.  And as we shall see, if not exactly something in the ether changed, something in the heavens changed.

 

urpl1966

The Sixties

Before this opening square of Uranus and Pluto, the last quadrature aspect of those two planets was in  1964, 1965, 1966.   Those were  the years it was exact, but of  course the influence extended beyond those years.  The first noticeable “Sixties” action that I  have been able to find is the lunch counter sit-in at a Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina on February 1, 1960.  Part of this lunch counter is in the Smithsonian.  Lunch counter sit-ins had been done before, but this one was different.   More people came to sit-in on following days.  The idea spread and was practiced in other communities.  In hindsight we can see this was the start of something big, and it is justly celebrated.  Another event took place that year – the release of the movie Psycho.  This was an unusual kind of a movie from a famous director – the main star appeared in her bra in the opening scenes, and this main star was killed well before the movie ended.  These things were not done in mainstream movies, and suggested (again, hindsight is very helpful) that a major changes in the cinama of Hollywood  was in the offing.

I  could go on and on about the Uranus/Pluto nature of the Sixties, but the phrase has almost become a cliché, and many people either love  or hate – neutral is hard to find – the decade.  But the things that people either love or hate about the decade very well show the influence of Uranus and Pluto, so when you think of the two planets together, think of that decade.

 

urpl1933

The Great Depression

The square of those two planets, the closing square before this conjunction, was in 1932, 1933, 1934.  This  was the depth of the Great Depression.  In the United States, people were extremely upset, and we had  a near Revolution that leaders were worried about.  Huey Long was making waves in Louisiana.  Roosevelt took office  in the midst of this and was able to relieve some of the pressure and “save capitalism from itself”.  Also in America there was another potential revolution that very few people know about.  This  is a fascist revolution that would replace the government of the United States.  See, for example, The Plot to Seize the White House by Jules Archer  (republished a few years ago as a paperback) and The Plots Against the President by Sally Denton.  But in several European countries,  things took a different course, with the rise of Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, and Franco in Spain.  In the Soviet Union, Stalin gained power the same year the the Depression hit and Japan was invading China.

 

urpl1902

Birth of the Twentieth Century

The opposition before this square took place in 1901 and  1902.  Many events happened in this period before World War I, which has been discussed  more in a previous post.  The Progressive Movement in the United States, the formation of the International Workers of the World – Wobblies – the First Russian Revolution, which  was  not successful and led to the second, more well know revolution, and  Gandhi’s  development of non-violence, announced on September 11 in South Africa, were some of the appropriate events of this period.  There was a rise in feminism at the time, and rebellions appear in several countries.  The book Vertigo World  by Phillip Blom outlines the changes that went on at this time.  There were other important aspects at the same time, and as  a result the changes in this period at the start of the Twentieth Century were quite complex.  In the United States this decade saw the rise of the Progressive  Movement, that claimed politicians such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, architects such as Frank Lloyd  Wright, and historians such as Charles Beard.  Possibly the most important development in this period for the future of the world was the rise in popularity of the automobile, which has been developed several years earlier.  Spurred by the availability of Henry Ford’s Model T – unveiled on October 1, 1908 – America started its continuing love affair with the automobile, but Europe, where the automobile was invented, had loved cars even earlier in the decade.

 

urpl1877

The Great Railroad Strike

The square before this opposition was  in 1876, 1877, 1878.  The Great Railroad Strike of 1877  was the biggest labor action of that year.  There was many other labor actions in these years, partly because the Panic of 1873, a major financial depression which  may or may not have ended before the Panic of 1893 hit America.  Even though this was called the Gilded Age for wealthy America, for most of the others – the 99% of that age – life was not so rosy.

 

urpl1850

Year of Revolutions

The previous conjunction was in 1850, 1851, and 1852.  Mostly famously, 1848 was known as the Year of Revolutions in Europe, in which almost all countries in Europe underwent revolutions, though most were short-lived.  This was the year that a journalist named Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto.  In the United States there was the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention, which marks the first stage of feminism.  There were revolutions in other countries around the world in the next few years.  Hardly known by Americans, but extremely well known in China, was the Taiping Rebellion, which  started in December 1850 and went on for almost fourteen  years.  The Taiping Rebellion is considered one of the most deadly violent events in history, with an estimated twenty to thirty million civilians  killed.

urpl1794

French Revolution

The opposition before that was 1791 through 1795.  This marked most famously the French Revolution, especially the Time of Terrors which occurred when the conjunction was most exact.  There was also a rise of feminism, indicated by the publication of the book A Vindication of the Rights of Women by prominent feminist Mary Wollstonecraft,  who is  not as well known among among the general population as her novelist daughter, also named Mary.

urpl1710

Beginning of Industrial Revolution

The conjunction before that was 1709 and 1710.  This marked the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in England.  The English restricted any release of the ideas that they developed into the outside world, so the Industrial Revolution did not exist elsewhere for almost 100 years.  During this conjunction Thomas Newcomen developed the first steam engine, that was later refined by the more famous James Watt.  Abraham Darby developed a way of making  pig iron using coke (instead of charcoal), which paved the way for complicated machines.

 

urpl1649

English Civil War

The opposition before that 1648 and 1649, which saw the height of the English Civil War.  Many radical groups formed  at this time, such as the Ranters, the  Diggers, and the Quakers.  Elsewhere in Europe saw he end of the Thirty years War, a shockingly brutal war that lay waste to much of the continent, especially Germany, and marked the end of religious conflict that had  grown out of the Reformation.  This war ended with the Peace of Westphalia, whose notion of sovereign states has been a basis  for international law in the centuries since.  The organizational work for the Royal Society (of London) was done during this  period, indicating that the Scientific Revolution was truly established.

 

urpl1597

Beginning of Scientific Revolution

The conjunction before that was in 1596, 1597, 1598.  This marked the beginnings of the Scientific Revolution, with Kepler and Galileo introducing Copernicus’ theories to a Europe that hadn’t know of them, and Galileo using a telescope to lead to a new understanding of the solar system.  Francis Bacon laid down the basics of Science, essentially advocating for what is now called the “scientific method”.  This time also saw the height of drama in Elizabethan England  with such writers as Shakespeare, Jonson, Marlowe, and Spenser.  At this time people’s way of looking at the world changed, as shown in a recent book by Philip Bell titled Curiosity.

 

urpl1456

Beginning of Printing Revolution

The conjunction before that was in 1454, 1455, and 1456.  This saw the end of the medieval Hundred’s Year War between England and France, the beginning of the War of the Roses, a popular subject to Shakespeare  and the first war of the modern era,  the fall of the Byzantine Empire, which sent many Greek scholars to the West, and the publication of the 42-line Gutenberg Bible, which was the first major book printed in the West.  It is hard to overestimate the importance that printing had to the developments of the next 500 years.

More details can be found in the book Cosmos and Psyche by Richard Tarnas, Section IV.

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March 11, 2016

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The First Red Scare

Red Scares are a prominent feature of American life that have happened before there was a Communist Party in the United States.  But the first full-scale red scare took place in the aftermath of World War I, under a Democratic Administration. This happened with Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, who was Quaker and had great concern for the underprivileged in keeping with the progressive Democrat under whom he served, Woodrow Wilson.  The Palmer raids of 1919 and 1920 were notorious, but their longest lasting legacy was that Palmer’s young assistant, J. Edgar Hoover,  learned the basics of Communist perfidy at the time.

By 1920 the Communist Revolution in Russia was only a couple of years old, and anarchists and radicals, many from foreign lands, were especially taken with the revolution in that backwards country, Russia, and hoped that such a revolution could happen in more developed countries.  They were extremely enthusiastic with the Revolution that had taken place, and their beliefs had not yet been tempered by the passage of time and experience.

 

palmer_raid

First Palmer Raid

 
The first Palmer Raid took place on November 7,  1919, two years to the day from the Russian Revolution.  This raid set the pattern for others to come, not only in that period but also after World War II.  In the chart for that event, we see the transiting Uranus squarely on the natal Moon; as we have explained before, such a combination indicates that the people are disturbed, upset.  Such a conjunction happened just before the United States went into Afghanistan earlier this century.  We see that Pluto is conjunct natal Jupiter and thus moving through the core of the United States.  But also notice that transiting Saturn is opposite transiting Uranus;  This opposition, as can be seen by the graphical ephemeris below, was exact in early August (black arrow) and would be exact again in late Spring and early Summer of 1920 (red arrow).   This opposition sets two forces in conflict:  Saturn represents law and order, stability, conventional thinking, whereas Uranus represents unconventional ideas and actions, the promise of the new.  This describes the conflict that was going on then, in the conservative times after World War I.  The Amendment to the Constitution requiring Prohibition had just been passed and was to go into effect on January 17, 1920.  Republicans would replace Democrats as President during the decade of the Twenties, lasting until Democrat Franklin Roosevelt took over after the Great Depression had already started.  Another example of the Saturn Uranus opposition took place in 1965 and 1966, when newly elected, as President, Lyndon Johnson faced a “credibility gap” over the increasing involvement of American soldiers in the Vietnam War.

 

1919tg

Saturn Opposite Uranus

 
As a result of the First Palmer Raid, a converted troopship left the United States with famous anarchist Emma Goldman and almost 250 others.   This so-called  “Soviet Ark”  was cheered by patriotic Americans, though the massive violations of civil liberties involved in gathering the deportees was ignored by the masses.  The ship left New York harbor on December 21,1919, and arrived in Finland on January 17, 1920.  The deportees were then conducted to the Russian border where they would hopefully be taken, because America certainly did not want them.

Another famous case from this time involved Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti who were eventually executed for the murder of a guard during the robbery of a shoe company in Massachusetts on April 15, 1920.   This case was a cause célèbre for many years, involving letters from all over the world and many famous jurists and lawyers.  Eventually Michael Dukakis, then governor of Massachusetts, declared in 1977 that the two men had not received a fair trial.

 

socco_v

Sacco-Vanaetti

 
In he chart for this murder,  we see clearly the opposition of Saturn and Uranus;  Uranus is no longer on the Moon of the U. S., but Pluto remains in the same position. There is a close conjunction between Jupiter and Neptune, which Ebertin links to idealism, and indeed there was much idealism and hope for a better world among the radicals that were so active in this period.

Another powerful movement at this time was the International Workers of the World, called the Wobblies, who had grown in the first decade of the new Century.   There was much persecution of them at this time, the most glaring happened in Centralia, Washington on November 11,  1919, which involved the hanging of a Wobblie who had been removed  from his prison cell  and the deaths of five others.  This happened during a parade celebrating the first anniversary of Armistice Day, the end of World War I.  The  newly-formed American Legion was not happy with the presence of the Wobblies.  The chart for this riot shows many of the same planetary placements we’ve  seen before with Pluto and Uranus and  the Saturn-Uranus opposition.   What is new is the position of the two fast-moving inner planets:  Venus,  the patriotic gathering for the parade, is at the Midheaven, and Mercury is at the Ascendant, and indeed this event is one of the more famous and well-communicated incidents of the First Red Scare.

 

arm_riot

Armistice Day Riot

There was much labor unrest during this period, which further worried the owners of industry.  It has been estimated that 20% of the workers had gone on strike by the end of 1919.  After the war was over, many workers wanted the back pay and raises that they had not received during the war.

Wilson, who had run on the campaign slogan “he kept us out of war” when he ran for re-election in 1916, and then promptly got the United States involved in World War I, did not want dissenters from the war effort, so he got passed the Espionage Act shortly before America entered the War; this Act was designed to prevent talk against the war.  This Act was used to send Socialist Eugene Debs to prison for speaking against the war, and that is where he campaigned for President in 1920.  While the Act has mostly  been against people giving aid to enemies of the United States, this is the same Espionage Act that has been used most against Americans who were not dealing with enemies by our current President to sentence whistle blowers to prison.

 

espionage_act

Espionage Act

 
In the chart for the Espionage Act, we see that not much had changed in the two years between this  chart and the one for the Palmer Raid.  Saturn is approaching a conjunction with Neptune, signifying the remorse many Americans would feel for the involvement of the country with a European War.  There is also transiting Saturn opposite natal Pluto, always a bad combination which has been discussed before.   A transiting Saturn transiting Pluto conjunction had occurred at the start of this very war.

There was strong dissent among the judiciary to these attempts against free speech. One of the better known was Schenek v United States (Charles Schenek was in the Socialist Party in Philladelphia) in 1919  (where the Court unanimously declared that the Act did not violate the Constitutional protection for free speech), and where Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously declared, regarding other cases, that free speech would not allow a man to shout fire in a crowded theater,  but also declared that the government must show that any speech presents a “clear and present danger” to bring about evil that the government must prevent  before it could be limited.   This decision was handed down March 3, 1919.

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February 26, 2016

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Change At The Top: Uranus at the Midheaven

The planet Uranus has transited across the Midheaven of the United States chart three times since the country was founded. From the symbolism of the planet — Uranus — involved and the point of the chart — Midheaven — one would would expect a, possibly revolutionary, change happening to the United States, something that would effect its basic manifest principles and be obvious to outside observers.

 

 

urmc1800

Revolution of 1800

 

Here is a chart for the first time Uranus transited the MC. This date was when the election was taking place – remember that at that time there was no single election day.  The important event that happened at this time was called by Thomas Jefferson, who was intimately involved, the Revolution of 1800. The story of what this revolution was takes us back to those early years of the Republic. The bugs weren’t totally worked out of the Constitution, and there had been only three elections for President, and only two Presidents. The concept of “political parties” had only formed in the last few years, and the concept had not yet fully jelled.

The Constitution required that, after the Electoral College voted for President, that the top vote getter would be President and the second highest vote getter would be Vice-President. In the previous election of 1796, this had resulted in the candidates of two different parties being elected.  Remember at the time the concept of parties was not very well formed. In that election John Adams, who had been Washington’s Vice-President, was elected President; he represented the Federalist Party.  His Vice-President was Thomas Jefferson, the candidate of the Democratic (or Republican or Democrat-Republican ) party.  He had been Secretary of State under George Washington. This was most unusual, since the two parties had the two different top Federal offices. Adams and Jefferson had been close friends, but they drifted apart (they would later get back together). In fact, they both died on the same day, July 4 (!) , 1826. The rumor has it that the messenger reporting Jefferson’s death, on his way to Quincy to John Adams house, passed the messenger to report Adams’ death on the highway.

Next came the Election of 1800. John Adams, who had served one term, was running again, on the Federalist Party, and his Vice-President, Thomas Jefferson, was running against him as a Democrat. Also running was Aaron Burr, also a Democrat, and Charles Pinckney, also a Federalist. Though it was thought that Jefferson and Adams were Presidential candidates, it was never specified. There was no winner of the Electoral vote, so, as specified in the Constitution, the election result was determined by the vote in the House of Representatives, with each state getting one vote.

This was the last gasp of the Federalist party — they never won another presidential election, and within a decade they would be gone from the political scene — and so perhaps they wanted to make it difficult for the upcoming Democratic Party. In the House the vote for President was 36 votes for Jefferson and 36 votes for Burr, the two highest vote getters. Since it was a tie the House needed to vote again. So for several months during the long winter of 1800-01 — the Inauguration was scheduled for March 20, according to the Constitution until it was amended to move Inauguration Day two months earlier — each vote for President resulted in the same tie between Jefferson and Burr. Things were getting desperate and there was talk of a civil war. Here was the first disputed election in the new country, and it wasn’t turning out well at all.

One needs to look at the political situation at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century to get an appreciation of what was going through people’s minds not only in the United States but in Europe as well. There had also recently been a revolution in France , less than 20 years after the American Revolution, and that had devolved into the Time of Terrors with much use of the guillotine; finally there had been the coup of the Eighteenth of Brumaire a little over a year before by Napoleon Bonaparte. The French had established a Revolutionary calendar, with months corresponding to astrological signs, so that eighteenth of Burmaire (Scorpio) corresponds to November 9, 1799. Since things had gone so wrong with the French Revolution, it was normal to expect things to go wrong with the American Revolution, and this seemed to be an example. People wondered if the American experiment would survived the Election of 1800.

Finally on the thirty-sixth ballot, one state changed its vote so that Jefferson had one more vote than Burr and so there was a new President, selected before Inauguration Day. The country was saved. As I mentioned before, this kerfuffle was due to a bug in the initial Constitution, and the matter was changed with the Twelfth Amendment.

This was “The Revolution of 1800”. At the time it was possibly the end of the United States as whole entity. But the country pulled through, electing the third President of the United States. But it was very appropriate to the first pass of Uranus over the Midheaven of the United States.

Currently, a Supreme Court decision called Citizens United (Citizens United v Federal Election Commission) is considered what made corporation people. But corporations have long been recognized as people by the Supreme Court, using the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868 to recognize that the recently freed slaves had due process and equal protection under the law, but it spoke of this as applying to “people” rather than “natural people”. Some have suggested that this wording was due to Roscoe Conkling, a Republican Senator from New York who was member of the Stalwart faction of the Republicans and, incidentally, a Scorpio.  Conkling was a major fixer in the State of New York and a power behind Chester A. Arthur, who became the 21st President of the United States. In any case, the 14th Amendment has been applied to corporations more often that flesh and blood human being since it was first added to the Constitution.

But this all started with a Supreme Court decision called Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad Co. The decision was the result of several attempt by counties in California to tax railroads. The State had lost the decision. But of much more consequence was something the decision did not say. A note added to the decision by a clerk (who had been president of a railroad) said that the Fourteenth Amendment applied to Corporations; this became accepted as part of the decision ever since, even though it wasn’t. This was the first time that corporations were declared as people under the Fourteenth Amendment, and that decision has had great influence ever since. In fact, the Fourteenth Amendment has been applied more often to Corporations than to the Freedmen for whom it was intended. From the beginning of the country corporations had been intended to be limited businesses chartered by the State for a specific purpose, but especially after this Supreme Court decision, that changed drastically. In the intervening 130 years, corporations have transformed to become the dominant social form in the United States, if not the World. This was certainly a major change in the rulers of the country, as signified by he transit of Uranus over the Midheaven of the United States, even if few have realized the immensity of the change. There are now some people agitating to overturn the Citizens United decision, but the cat was out of the bag long before that decision.

 

urmc1886

Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad Co.

This is the chart set for the day the decision was handed down – May 10, 1886 – but the case was argued in January of that year and had wound its way to the Supreme Court, originally as three cases, over the preceding years.

The significance of the third transit of Uranus over the Midheaven of he United States will be immediately recognized by most people after the year of that transit is mentioned: 1968 (and 1969). There are probably more books with the year “1968” in their title than any other year, as many recognize it as a truly revolutionary year in the United States. At least many felt that way at the time.  A brief mention of some events of those years will indicate the character: A second place result of Eugene McCarthy in New Hampshire primary on January led to announcement by sitting president Lyndon Johnson that he would not seek another term in office in March.  The assassination of Martin Luther King in April.  The assassination of Robert Kennedy in June.  A police riot around the Democratic Convention in Chicago in August.  The election of Richard Nixon (who has been called the last liberal President by Noam Chomsky and also the last New Deal President) in November.  1968 was an election year in the US, and that always leads to more action and reaction. The next year saw the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival, which was made even bigger by the movie about it the next year in August; that festival followed closely the Moon landing in July.  Also in August of that year a group of people directed by Charles Manson killed pregnant actress Sharon Tate (wife of director Roman Polanski) and others in her group in her house in Hollywood, creating a major uproar. Then there was the little noticed assassination of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton by the FBI in December and the Altamont Speedway Music Festival that resulted in a stabbing that was often called “the end of the Sixties”, also in December.

After 1968 and 1969, the country had changed the Sixties had died, and the Seventies were all set to roll out. This third transit of Uranus had changed the United States for good, and people still recall those years, for better or worse.

 

urmc1968

1968

 

This third chart is set for the first exact pass of Uranus over the MC in 1968. It also corresponds to the Sun at the Midheaven.

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February 12, 2016

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The Trump Phenomenon

Election years in the United States are often more eventful that other years, and even though 2016 is not a “watershed” year like 1960, 1980, 2000, it is still proving to be quite interesting.  Interest, excitement, and constant news about the election keep people’s minds away from what is actually happening in the real world, serving as a good cover.

The first thing to consider is the major transit over the last several years, as illustrated in the graphical ephemeris below.  That was Pluto transiting opposite the Sun of the United States.  Since Pluto travels so slowly, taking about 250 years to go around the sun, this transit has never happened before in the history of the United States; the last time this happened was 1767-1770, when America was being hit by such measures from Britain as the Townsend Act, the Stamp Act, and the Tea Act, that were causing many Americans to become increasingly disgusted with the British.  In that case, the Sun represented Britain. Now the Sun represents the President and the government of the United States. This transit represents the extreme displeasure the citizens are displaying toward their elected government and President; many realize that after the Great Recession at the beginning of the current President’s term, their lives have only gotten worse, even though the lives of the wealthy, especially the bankers that caused the problem, have only gotten better, much better. During the last seven years the amount of income and more importantly wealth possessed by the top 1% of the population has increased to a level unseen since the first Gilded Age of the Nineteenth Century, and perhaps not even then. Meanwhile, the government tries to convince people that things are getting better, through speeches and bogus statistics. People are angry. This transit will be within two degrees of exact during this presidential year.

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Pluto Transiting Opposite US Sun

This transit of Pluto “explains” the extreme animosity to the President’s ideas in Congress, and the rise of “insurgent” and “anti-establishment” candidates in the primary contests that so many commentators have mentioned. It is also why I believe that any candidate from the Party of the President can not be elected unless he or she strongly attacks the current President, which of course will not happen.

But first a disclaimer. When I write this, the first primary has yet to be held. Since these are primaries, candidates appeal (pander?) to their base so you can not believe anything they say. The candidates for the Reactionary Party (Republicans) try to be appear more conservative, and the candidates for the Conservative Party (Democrats) try to appear more liberal. We assume for this discussion that America is still a democracy, which is a very dubious assumption.

When Donald Trump initially announced his run for President of the United States I immediately discounted it as a publicity stunt by the host of a television reality show, one that only served to advance the agenda of comics such as Jon Stewart, who was still on the air at the time. But then I took a look at his birth chart.

I think that it should be a requirement that if you want to run for public office you need to provide an accurate birth time. But I expect that I’m in the minority in that view. Surprisingly enough, we only have two good birth times for all the presidential candidates this year (the other is Jeb!), including those who have dropped out. Even Hillary Clinton, who has been in the public eye for a quarter century, has two birth times twelve hours apart, which is of little use. Fortunately Donald Trump was well known long before the current election and has an accurate birth time.

trump

Donald Trump

The first thing I noticed about the chart is that it is a full moon birth, with the North Node of the Moon conjunct the Sun. This immediately told me that this was a eclipse, and in fact there was a full lunar eclipse on June 14, 1946. So Mr. Trump is an example of an eclipse birth. I recently had an eclipse in a solar return, and the effects were quite spectacular, so I started to pay more attention to his candidacy.

Three things stand out in his chart: Uranus conjunct the Sun. This suggests someone who is a maverick, revolutionary, eccentric, does not like the rules, a progressive mind (Ebertin);. Venus conjunct Saturn: difficulties with women, restrictions in love, a sense of duty (Ebertin). And lastly Mars at the Ascendant: Angry, a temper, displays violence, a fighting spirit (Ebertin). Because the Sun is quite important, I think his Uranian tendencies would be the strongest feature of this person, but most people would pay attention to his anger, since the Ascendant is what people notice, the persona as it were, and not the basic character of the individual, which in this case is more Uranian than martial. Most of his planets are in the East, nearer the Ascendant, and as was said before, this indicates someone who is more in charge of his own destiny.

It is also valuable to see how Donald Trump connects to the United States chart, since he is being seen and judged by the people of the Unites States. Here are two charts, the first with the US planets within the Trump natal chart, showing how Trump responds to the US, and the second with the planets of Trump within the chart of the US, showing how the US responds to Trump.

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usa_trump

Most interesting is the Mars exchange in both charts. Trump’s Full Moon falls on the Mars of the United States (right), with his Sun conjunct the US Mars. Furthermore, Trump’s Mars (left) is opposite the US Moon. He definitely connects with the martial spirit of America – they love the angry part of him.  Some might suggest that this is sure to lead to war if he is President (of course, since the current President has gotten us involved in seven wars it will be tough to top him) but the most enduring trait of of a President is found in the planet most closely aspecting the MC.  For example, George W. Bush had Mars most closely aspecting his MC, and he is most known for his Iraq War. For Trump this planet is Mercury, with the Saturn aspect almost as close.  Does this mean he would be seen as an intellectual or communicator (I can hear the laughter now) or someone who reins in the country?

Another interesting connection is through Mercury.  Trump’s Venus-Saturn conjunction – the importance of which was pointed out earlier – is on the US Mercury (left), and Trump’s Mercury (right) is conjunct the very important US Sun-Jupiter-Venus. His way of thinking really reverberates with what America is at its core. And this to me explains why he has drawn such vociferous criticism –- Trump is America, and it is frightening to look in a mirror if you don’t like what you see.

Most interesting is how Trump’ Moon falls into the first house of the US: The US feels that this is a man that fits well with the country, that he is at home. This may explain his popularity over the years with America.

He has made some outrageous statements about Muslims, and this gives everyone a chance to decry that terrible man Donald Trump who we are certainly not like. He must represent the end of Western civilization, they proclaim , and though I have yet to hear anyone compare him to Hitler using that dictator’s name  (I stand corrected, I just saw one) , several have called him fascist. And the mass media certainly takes part in the pile-on, breezily reporting any statement that might offend the liberal readership . But some things puzzle me.  Trump has made several statements that are to the left of putative socialist Bernie Sanders, but these are never reported. One of the closest allies of America has a religious test for immigrants and no Muslims are allowed in, but this is never brought up. That same nation, while very close to Syria, has not accepted even one Syrian refugee but no one mentions this as some abomination. It’s enough to make one’s head explode.

It is interesting that statements suggesting there should be no Muslim immigration at present are considered a prime example of blatant Islamophobia, but the killing of many, many thousands of Muslims in several countries, the investigation of mosques in the United States, and the setting up up Muslims because they are Muslims for bomb plots is consider perfectly fine. I recently saw the figures that 23,000 bombs have been dropped on Muslim countries in 2015. It seems like the old adage that many of us learned as children has been turned on its head: Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me. The major hypocrisy is mind blowing.

The most similar previous President to Donald Trump, in my opinion, is Andrew Jackson, the seventh President.

Andrew Jackson definitely had a temper. He was involved in some 100 duels during his lifetime, and carried a lead shot in his body until he died, since it was too close to his heart to remove. He killed at least one person in a duel.  Less that decade before he first ran for President he invaded Florida — at the time owned by the Spanish and a refuge of escaped slaves — and killed two British subjects. This could have been an international incident. Most of the cabinet of James Monroe were aghast at this, but his actions were defended by the Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, who would later be involved more directly with Jackson.

Jackson became a war hero in the Battle of New Orleans when he defeated the British with a very small loss of his own men. Unfortunately, the peace treaty ending the War of 1812 had been signed a few days earlier. But this victory raised Jackson stature in the public eye.

When he first ran for the Presidency in 1824 it was against three other candidates, including John Quincy Adams, his old defender. Jackson won the popular vote, but not a majority of the electoral vote, and so the election was thrown into the House of Representatives. One of the candidates, Henry Clay, threw his votes to Adams, who thus won the election. Later, Adams appointed Clay to be his Secretary of State, and Jackson charged a “corrupt bargain” had occurred between the two men. Clay was probably the best choice for Secretary of State, but Adams’ appointment of him was tone deaf.  Jackson began campaigning for the 1828 election then, and Adams was unable to pass any meaningful legislation because of all the controversy. As result, John Quincy Adams, who has recently been estimated to have the highest IQ of any President, was not able to accomplish anything in his four years in office.

The campaign between Jackson and Adams was marked by several lurid charges that may very well be beyond the pale today. Jackson charged that Adams was a pimp, and Adams charged the Jackson was a bigamist. Adams may have arranged some dates for Russians when he was a minister to Moscow, and Jackson thought his wife was divorced (she did also) when he married her.

Jackson won the election in 1828, and people began to call him King Andrew. Many people were opposed to his Presidency, and those who were against him formed a new political party called the Whigs. At his inauguration many people crushed into the White House, common people who he was supposedly a representative of, and trashed the place, leading to upset among the good people of Washington.

kingandrew

Jackson hated paper money; he was proud that he carried gold and silver dust in a leather pouch that he could use to pay for things, that he thought was real money. He hated the Bank of the United States, an idea of the first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, and his battles with the BUS president Nicholas Biddle led the way to the Panic of 1837.  I’m sure Jackson would be most upset to find that his portrait is now on paper money — the Twenty Dollar bill.

When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Cherokee Indians of Georgia when the white settles wanted to take their land, Jackson essentially told the Supreme Court to “stuff it” and the Cherokees were overwhelmed. His solution to the Indian problem resulted in the Trail of Tears and similar excursions that sent Native Americans thousands of miles and killed many (see Jacksonland by NPR host Steve Inskeep).

But Jackson was a break from the “Virginia Dynasty” that had controlled the Presidency up until that time. All the previous presidents had been from Virginia if their name wasn’t Adams, and all had been Founding Fathers or their relatives.  Jackson was so important to setting a changed tone to the country that his period is called the Age of Jackson. He is celebrated annually by the Democratic party as one of their founders (along with Jefferson) but it was really his second Vice President, Martin Van Buren, who laid the foundation for the modern Democratic Party.

Andrew Jackson has been a popular subject for biographers, with many people writing about him such as Jon Meacham, H. W. Brands, and of course Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. The standard biography of Jackson is the three volume set by Robert V. Remini, which is also available in a condensed one volume.

jackson

Andrew Jackson

Here is a chart for Andrew Jackson.  Remember that birth times for Presidents born in the Eighteenth Century are necessarily suspect. His was a Full Moon birth, and in this chart he has Pluto at his Midheaven and Uranus at his Ascendant. Both planets were unknown at the time of his birth, Uranus being discovered a few years later. As we’ve explored often, the combination of Pluto and Uranus shakes things up.  Also of note is his Venus square Pluto — intense love.  He took offense at anyone who would say bad things about his wife Rachael, and even fought a duel over this.  He was crushed when she died right after his election in 1828.

One way of determining who will be president among the two candidates is to look at transits to their chart right after the election. Look for hard transits of Saturn to Sun or Moon. This indicates the responsibly that comes upon a person when they assume the role of President. It could also indicate the despondency they have after losing the presidency.

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trumptr1

trumptr3

Here are three charts for Donald Trump right after the election of November 8, 2016. We see that Saturn is near his Moon and thus opposite his Sun shortly after the election on December 30, and it stays close until it turns retrograde and then approaches his Moon once again on April 23, 2017; it then turns retrograde directly on top of his Moon in August and moves away. The whole process takes many months in 2017; either Trump is very despondent at losing the election or it takes him most of the year to learn the responsibilities that come with being president.

Another relevant question is how often has a candidate replaced a two term candidate of the same party if he were not a Vice President who was put into office by the death of the President before him. For the Republicans this happened last when George H. W. Bush replaced Ronald Reagan, who then served one term. The other time was in 1876 when Rutherford Hayes succeeded two term Ulysses Grant.  That election was so marked with irregularities that it made the 2000 Bush v Gore contest seem non-controversial.  For the “Democrats” this happened three times: first when James Madison replaced two terms of Thomas Jefferson in 1808, then when James Monroe replaced two terms of James Madison in 1816 – he also served two terms; and finally when he was succeeded by John Quincy Adams. But all these men were running under a party that is called Democratic-Republican; the real Democratic Party was started by Andrew Jackson, who ran against Adams twice. For the new Democratic party, the only time this happened was when Martin Van Buren (the first non-English background President) succeeded Andrew Jackson.

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January 22, 2016

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Manifest Destiny and the Mexican-American War

The term Manifest Destiny was first used by John O’Sullivan in his magazine American Review, but it described a feeling that was  common among many Americans, especially members of the Democratic Party.  This was the belief that some higher power such as God  wanted Americans  (His chosen  people)  to expand over the North American continent.  People thought of taking  both Mexico and Canada. The feeling described by the term Manifest Destiny had spread across America in the early Forties of the Nineteenth Century.   In today’s parlance we would say that Manifest Destiny was a meme, that the idea had gone viral.

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Manifest Destiny

Here  is a chart for Spring Equinox of 1843 showing the  outer planet Uranus  beginning the transit of the IC of the United States chart, a position  that it would  occupy for  the next couple of years. The IC represents the base or foundation of the person  represented by the  chart, in this case the United  States.  This point is the furthest submerged, and transits to this point are long lasting and not easily recognized, the  effects seem almost to come out of  nowhere.  In this case, after the crisis represented by the transit of Uranus  over the MC 42 years earlier, to be discussed later, America was beginning to feel sure of itself,  and this urge to expand was just a manifestation of this new found feeling of being a unified country.

In the  election of 1844, the original dark horse candidate James Polk,  a protégé  of Andrew Jackson, was finally nominated to head  the Democratic ticket for President, opposing Henry Clay of the Whig   Party; that party had  won the previous election  but that President had died immediately upon taking office.  Clay ran on the expansion of  American infrastructure whereas Polk ran on  expansionism, to  bring Texas and  Oregon into the  Union.  He also wanted to bring California into the United States, but this  was not mentioned at the time. Polk  won.

Three future presidents served in the Mexican American war: Ulysses S. Grant,  Franklin Pierce, and the next president, Zachary Taylor.  James Buchanan, the President after Pierce and before Lincoln, was Secretary  of State under Polk, and Abraham Lincoln was a Whig Congressman under Polk.

The war with Mexico was unique up to that point.  America had fought wars before, with Great Britain and mostly with Indians, but this was different.  The Indians were somehow already living on land that was considered United States, and they just had to be convinced to allow US settlers to live on the land that they somehow occupied.  And the British were the former masters of the United States and they had to be prevented from continuing to tell the country how to behave.  But Mexico was a separate republic, an the US had no right to their land.

After his election, Polk  sent Taylor and United States troops to a position just north of the  Rio Grande river, which he considered the northern border of Mexico and thus the southern border of Texas.  However, most people in the United States who were not Democrats as well as the Mexicans and Texians  (their preferred name) thought the border to be the Nueces River many miles north of the Rio Grande.

 

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Taylor to Rio Grande

Here is a chart for Taylor’s advance over the Nueces River on February 3, 1946.  This was an act of aggression that many recognized at the time.  The tightest aspect is Pluto sesquiquadrate the US Ascendant, recalling the tight Pluto semisquare Ascendant in the natal chart.  Pluto can be seen as aggression and urge to dominance.  But notice also the approaching Saturn Neptune conjunction of the US Moon.  This is not a good sign for a positive reaction at home, as we’ve explored before.  Presidents should know better than to schedule a war any time a Saturn Neptune hard aspect is coming up.

This action was not well received by the Mexicans or Zachary Taylor either.  Taylor was a Whig and like most Whigs was against the war with Mexico, which he thought was patently illegal. But he had his orders.   The Mexican army attacked Taylor’s troops,which they saw as invaders, and Polk had his casus belli.  The war lasted for two years, and proved to be longer and more bloody than anyone had imagined.  Does that remind you of a more recent war?  As an outcome, Polk was able to get the state of California, which had long been his goal, as well as most of the new states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada  well as small parts of other states.  And the United States got Utah, which had been settled by the Mormons after they were chased out of Indiana. In fact, to help the war effort Mormon troops fought with the enlisted men and the volunteers

 

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Official Start of War

Here is the chart when the Mexicans attacked the Americans, which is the putative start of the war, even though it had really stated with the previous action.  We see that this is close to the Mars Return of the United States, when Mars returns to its natal position.   A Mars Return would indicate a time when one is especially martial.  But note that that Saturn-Neptune conjunction is on the US Moon quite tightly.  Saturn Neptune indicate that what was once thought to be a good idea is no longer believed to be, and since it is on the US Moon, the people of that country deeply felt that.  And in fact by the fall of 1846 enthusiasm with the war was already waning, as news of the atrocities committed by the US troops reached the Americans.

Here are the charts of both James Polk and  Zachary Taylor, who succeeded him as President of the United States.

 

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James Polk

The time of Polk’s birth is supposedly from his diary, so it should be accurate.  He has Jupiter rising, suggesting that he gives a lot of his energy to the world, that he is optimistic.  And in fact he had a great difficulty in delegating tasks to others when he was President and would not take vacations though many, including his wife, begged him to do so.  On nomination he assured his followers that he would serve only one term, which was fortunate since he died a few  months after leaving office.  He was also a  Scorpio president, Scorpio  being ruled by Pluto (an unknown planet at the time).  Another well-known Scorpio President was Theodore Roosevelt, also known for his aggressive  behavior.

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Zachary Taylor

In the chart for Zachary Taylor, “Old Rough and Ready” (he did not like to “dress up”), the second and last elected Whig President, shows Pluto rising and Mars at the Midheaven, with most of his planets in the East, that is the left hand side of the chart.  The positions of Pluto and Mars are most appropriate for a military commander.  Planets in that hemisphere indicate a person largely in control of their own destiny, someone whose own actions determine their outcome in life.

The troops sent into Mexico were composed of regular US  troops, mostly lower class people who needed a job the military could provide, and volunteers, who were generally of a higher class.  About two-thirds of the troops were volunteers, and there was much ill-feeling between the two groups.   Many of the volunteers brought “servants” with them, mostly slaves. The volunteers were  also not nearly as well trained  as the regular army troops.  There were also many atrocities committed by the volunteers against the Mexicans, and as Fall of 1846 approached, people in the United States, and then in London,  began to hear about these atrocities .  General Taylor did not like the volunteers, but Polk sidelined him by sending in another military commander who got two-thirds of the troops.  Polk was afraid that Taylor was getting too popular as a military leader and might run for President (which he did) as a Whig, which Democrat Polk did not like.

A majority of the volunteers came from slave states,  but the largest source of volunteers was Illinois.  While technically Illinois  was  free state, southern Illinois bordered on the slave state of Kentucky and Illinois citizens owned many  slaves.  Also, Illinois citizens were in general great believers in Manifest Destiny.

Originally Polk, and many of the troops serving in this war, were for taking more of Mexico that they actually did.  Once the troops entered Mexico, they saw how barren the country was, and were upset at the backwardness of the Mexicans, who they considered to be barely  above Indians  or slaves.

When the vote to authorize the invasion took place in Congress — this was still a primitive time when they actually followed the Constitution’s requirement that the Congress declare war —  although the Whigs were against the war, many of them voted for it.  They remembered that once there had been the Federalist Party that had strongly opposed the War of 1812, and as a result that party was no longer in existence.  The Whigs did not want to follow the same path. However, some Whigs followed their conscience and voted against the war;  these were called the “Immortal Fourteen”, amongst whose members was John Quincy Adams, who had been a President twenty years before and was a strong abolitionist voice in  the Congress.  But the war resolution passed.

After the War, most people expected the new territories acquired to be settled by slave owners, thus making slave states the majority in the country.   Certainly Polk, a slave owner from Tennessee, expected this.  But an abolitionist congressman  from Pennsylvania by the name of David Wilmot introduced what was called the Wilmot Priviso, that prohibited slave owners from making any states from the new territories slave states. This controversial bill  was introduced into many sessions of Congress, and the controversy about the status of these new states was one of the things that led to the Civil War.

 

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Wilmot Proviso

 

Here is a chart for the first introduction of the Wilmot Proviso.  Again there is the Saturn-Neptune conjunction on the US moon, but now is is opposed by Mars (War).  Venus (Peace) is conjunct the US Sun (Government)  and Jupiter (Expansion) is opposite the US Ascendant.

There were embedded US reporters with the troops in Mexico, and often their reports reached Polk before diplomatic reports did.  These embedded reporters were uniformly for the war  until they began to see the atrocities committed by the American volunteers against the Mexican people.

 

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Agua Neuva Massacre

The biggest massacre was at a cave in Agua Neuva.  Here is an event chart for that massacre.  Over two dozen Mexican men were butchered in front of their wives and children, and many were scalped.  American soldiers had learned from their wars with Indians. In this chart the tightest aspect is the opposition between Mars and Pluto – Pluto again playing a dominant role – and this aspect was tight no matter the time of day, and there is a waning Sun-Mars conjunction.  Ebertin says of Mars-Pluto “Superhuman power, force, brutality.”  I call it, somewhat jocularly, as the aspect of the mass murderer, and in fact the killer at Virginia Tech had these two planets in conjunction.

 

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US Flag Raised over Mexico City

After a long battle in Mexico City, General Scott won and the American flag was raised over the city.  Here is the chart for that flag raising.  Venus rising is a significator of peace, but peace was not forthcoming since the US troops were wrecking the city and raping the women, so the citizens of that city were not too happy with the America presence and continued to battle them.  This was America’s first experience at occupying a foreign country, and it was not popular with the Mexicans who fought back with stones, result in mass killings by the Americans.

Many in the Northeast were opposed to  the war, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau; in fact the famous confrontation between the two men happened during the war.  Thoreau was in jail for refusing to pay his poll taxes to support the war.  But many Americans were for the war, at least initially.  For example Walt  Whitman, then a newspaper editor in Brooklyn, did not come out against the war until he realized that it was meant to increase the number of slave states. That change of opinion got him fired from his job.

Zachary was elected a a Whig President in 1848, following Polk who died months after leaving office.  The story has it that Taylor died after eating cherries and milk on the Fourth of July while raising money for the Washington Monument which was then being constructed.  But some think that he was assassinated by Southerners, who were not happy that he wanted slavery outlawed in the new states gotten from Mexico.  This theory was propounded by Michael Parenti in his book History as Mystery, and details of this theory can be searched for on the Web.  In 1850 there was a Uranus-Pluto conjunction and many Southerners wanted to leave the Union.  This crisis was defused by the passage of Henry Clay’s Compromise of 1850, but it was a forerunner to the final act of succession ten years later.  This Comprise had been opposed by Taylor, but his death allowed the Compromise to pass, in several bills, which included the hated (by Abolitionists) Fugitive Slave Act, which required runaway slaves to be returned to their “owners” no matter where they were captured.

 

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Death of Taylor

In this chart for the death of Taylor – it took him several days to finally succumb to his mysterious aliment – we see the  Uranus-Pluto conjunction that marked 1850 square his Ascendant and in this Third House, along with Saturn.

The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo finally ended the War long after Mexico City had been captured.  While many Americans wanted to take all of Mexico, Polk’s negotiator did not think this was a good idea, and because of the distance involved and the lack of good communications – the telegraph had only recently been introduced – a compromise was reached in which the US government paid money to the Mexican government in exchange for most of everything that is now the Southwest United States.  This is called the “Mexican Cession” but as we have seen it was far from voluntary.

 

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Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo

In the chart for this peace treaty, we can see that the Saturn-Neptune conjunction has long passed. Saturn now squares the US  Ascendant and Uranus opposes the US Saturn.  The country did not get all  that they wanted from Mexico,  and further difficulties were in store for the country as the issue of slavery became more pronounced over the following decade. The tightest aspect is Jupiter sesquiquadrate the US Moon, and it is also conjunct the US Sun.  The expansion (Jupiter) of the US  was mostly complete with this treaty (a compromise with Great Britain previously in the Polk term had resulted in the Oregon  territory south of the 49th parallel being included in the United States) and the present day continental US took shape.

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December 31, 2015

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The Year Without Summer and the Panic of 1819

We have previously talked about the major changes to the world that happened around the major planetary configurations of 1820-1825, as is illustrated in the chart below.  We see Uranus conjunct Neptune square Pluto with all three planets on the cardinal axis. This was the time that the Industrial Revolution started to effect the world outside England.  The were major changes in the United States that are grouped under the such terms as the Age of Jackson, the Communication Revolution, the Transportation Revolution.  This was discussed previously.  America had became aware of itself as a separate and exceptional nation.  Photography was invented by Nicéphore Niépce in this period.  The Romantic period in the arts flourished.

 

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1820s

1816 marked the beginning of the “Era of Good Feeling” that occurred in the United States after the end of the War of 1812.  Europe saw the end of the Napoleonic Wars, that had ravaged the continent since the turn of the Century, with  the Conference of Vienna the previous year.  There was an economic boom in both the United States, Great Britain, and Europe after all the wars ended.  The population of the West of the United States, such as Ohio, rapidly increased as more and more people moved there.  By 1820, Ohio had more people than Massachusetts, one of the original thirteen colonies.  Also in 1816 the second Bank of the United States (BUS) was chartered.

But  now I want to discuss a warm up  to the period when the configuration was exact.  This started with what was called (at least in Europe)  The Year Without Summer, and in the Eastern states of the United States as Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death.  The events all had a common source the effect of which reverberated through the Nineteenth Century  and was an early example of climate change.

The primary cause of all this was the explosion of the bulk of the volcano Tambora in the Indonesian archipelago.  This happened on April 10, 1815 at about 7 in the evening, local time.  The volcano had first exploded a few days earlier, but this eruption was tremendous and sent ashes into the atmosphere.  The Tambora eruption was twice as powerful as the more well-known explosion of Krakatoa (also in Indonesia) in 1883, and more than twice as powerful as the fairly recent Mount Saint Helens explosion in the State of Washington; this volcano sent its debris horizontally rather than vertically into the atmosphere as the other two did  so it caused much less climate disruption.  About 90,000 people were killed directly by this eruption, and it is considered the largest volcanic explosion in recorded history.

 

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Tambora

This is a chart for the major eruption of the volcano, which sent clouds of volcanic dust around the world, causing a climate change for the next three years.  We are fortunate that we have an actual time for this eruption.  We see  that Mars with Saturn squares the Ascendant, and Mars is opposite the Midheaven.  Pluto makes a sesquiquadrate to the Ascendant.  There is a closing square between Neptune and Pluto; the following conjunction of those two planets would occur in 1890 and mark the end of an almost 500 year cycle and the opening of the Twentieth Century.  There are many other aspects, but  not as tight as these.  But if we look at the fourth harmonic chart of the same event, we see how strong these aspects are.  While the Mars opposite the Midheaven — conjunction in the fourth harmonic  chart — appears very wide — orbs  are also magnified by a factor of four in the fourth harmonic chart — we see that Mars-Ascendant-Pluto aspects are almost exact.  Jupiter is mediating this aspect complex with hard aspects that are not visible in the first harmonic chart.  Pluto is the most likely choice for a planet to represent a volcanic eruption, and its connection with the Ascendant just attests to that eruption happening at this time and place.  Mars’ involvement just makes destruction more likely, and many people were killed and villages destroyed in the immediate aftermath of the eruption.  Jupiter attests to the volume of the explosion.

 

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Tambora Fourth Harmonic

 

The smoke caused by this volcanic explosion had an effect over much of the globe.  In Europe, the following year was known as The Year Without a Summer, since it was cold all summer long.  This caused many hardships at a time when most people grew their own food and could not run down to the local grocery store for provisions.  In Ireland, for example, their main crop of potatoes turned bad, and many people starved.  This was a forerunner of the famous potato famine 30 years later that sent many Irish to America.  `The climate in Switzerland was foreboding when the Romantic poets Byron and Shelly took a vacation at Lake Geneva, along with the wife of Shelly, Mary;  in a contest that summer Mary wrote the book Frankenstein, whose tenor was influenced by the dire weather.

In America, on the East Coast, this year was known as Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death.  The most extreme example of this happened on June 6, 1816. While it was 90 in Boston, in upstate New York they had a surprise snow storm. Children at a local school almost died because they could not make it home and were not prepared for the cold weather.  In Germany 1817 was known as The Year of the Beggar.  There was a weather-caused cholera epidemic in India which resulted in a rout of the occupying British troops.  The cold climate restricted the growing seasons in China, also resulting in hardships and famine.  In fact, this climate crisis of these years was the most significant weather event of  the Nineteenth Century.

 

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Eighteen Hundred and Froze To Death

To me, the most appropriate aspect in this chart  is transiting Saturn conjunct the US Moon.  And indeed it was a depressing time with the unusually cold weather over what was still the main part of the country.  And to reinforce that idea the transiting Sun, representing the day, was in aspect to natal Saturn.

However, in the western part of the United States — and remember in the early Nineteenth Century “West” included everything west of the Appalachian Mountains — there were no  problems with cold weather.  Many  people immigrated from the east, and crops were plentiful.   As  a result of this and the lack of food in Europe, much food from America was  sold in Europe, allowing Europeans to survive and causing a  boom economy for the farmers in the Western United States,  This overall helped the prosperity of the young country.

But as the old saying has it, what goes up must come down.  When weather recovered in Europe, by 1819, there was no longer a need for food from America, so sales fell off drastically. As a result, the first widespread depression happened to America, the Panic of 1819. The elderly Thomas  Jefferson felt much depression because he had to sell his beloved home, Monticello. He was shocked that it would not fetch the price he thought it should.  This panic, which effected people rather than banks, cast a dark pall on what had been the sunny optimism of citizens of the young country.  Of  course, many other factors played a part in this first depression, such as the Bank of the United States and the problems citizens were having with it.  Restrictions on the BUS by some states and some deflationary moves by the BUS also helped pave the way for the Panic of 1819.  The depression was also felt in Europe, though not as severe as in the United States.

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Panic of 1819

The  best I can find out the Panic of 1819 started in January of that year.  Here is a chart for the Middle of January.  Of course, the Uranus-Neptune conjunction is present, if not tight, and square Pluto.  Pluto is also opposite Neptune — speculation.  The most obvious aspect is the tight Jupiter Sun conjunction, conjunct the natal Pluto, sesquiquadrate natal Uranus, and opposite natal Mercury.  And even though the transiting Sun-Jupiter conjunction would not last long, the aspects from Jupiter will.  And Jupiter is the planet of expansion, of capitalism.  And this was indeed the first crisis of capitalism in the new country, a country which was about to accept laissez-faire capitalism with the boom of the Age of Jackson.

 

While there are many books on this crisis, my main source was Tambora by Gillen D’Arcy Wood, 2014 Princeton.

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November 25, 2015

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The Massacre in Paris

The attacks in Paris on Friday the thirteenth are  much in the news now, and, as I write this, it seems that the Islamic State is responsible for the attacks.  My favorite term for the IS, used by among others the Kurds, is fascist, since they seem to subscribe that  mindset rather than Islamic mindset.  It is not  clear what exactly will be the response  of the various countries to this attack, but  it will involve more violence.  As we saw after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United states, after an atrocity, people do not think clearly but only want a immediate attack on who they think are the guilty parties.  It looks like that will also be the response after the Friday the thirteenth atrocity.

But of course, the French are more like the Americans and so deserve our sympathy and response more than, say, the recent attacks in Lebanon, also attributed to IS, because after all, those people killed are not “like us”. The Paris attacks are more deserving of grief than the recent downing of a Russian airplane, also due to IS, since the Russians are the official enemy of the West. It’s the difference between deserving and undeserving victims, of which there is a long history.

But there is much  context and history missing from most accounts of this incident, which really hinders a proper response.  This is certainly not unexpected.    Whenever a “terrorist” incident happens to a Western country, it appears to most people that this just came out of thin air, that “those” people just hate our freedoms, to quote  a previous president.  Because of this lack of any historical memory, these incidents will continue to happen and the responses will continue to be much the same.  It reminds one of any of the recent mass shooting incidents and the responses to them.  Most people, either conservative or liberal, react from scripts, which is certainly much easier that analyzing the situation and trying to understand why it happened.  Such a response also makes one safe from criticism or public shaming, thinking that you somehow sympathize with those others, those evildoers.  As a well-known communist agitator once said, it is easier to complain about the speck in someone else’s eye than to recognize  the spike in one’s own.  But at least “He” wasn’t a Muslim!

 

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Eclipse on Spring Equinox

At the time of the Paris attacks, Mars was on the Cardinal axis, showing a connection between martial activities, like violence or gunfire, and the world as a whole, represented by the cardinal axis, and Mars also conjoins the North Node of the Moon.  This point was especially energized because of the total solar eclipse last March 20 at the Aries point.  Notice in the chart for this eclipse, set up against the chart for the fifth republic of France — October  4, 1958 — that both Mars and Uranus are on the Ascendant  of France, indicating sudden violence in the immediate environment.  Note that this eclipse was visible in most of the Middle East and Europe, but not in the Western Hemisphere.  In Paris, it was 80% visible.  The eclipse path went between Scotland and Iceland through the North Atlantic.  Also note that Mars and Saturn were sesquiquadrate at the time of the eclipse; besides Mars being conjunct the France Ascendant, it was also square the Moon of the Fifth Republic, and Saturn was sesquiquadrate that same Moon.

 

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Paris Attack

If we now look at the chart of the actual event at 9:17 Friday evening Paris time, we see Mars near the Cardinal axis, thus activating the promise of that solar eclipse. In this chart, we see transiting Saturn square transiting Neptune, and both are making a sesquiquadrate to the natal moon, representing the people of France. Uranus is still at the Ascendant of the chart, suggesting unexpected events. And Pluto is square the sun of the chart, the will and character of France.

There are also, interestingly, two tight trines from the fastest moving planets: Sun trine Moon (orb 8 minutes) and Moon trine Uranus (orb 17 minutes).  Trines are not normally thought of as “bad aspects”; they are soft, considered easy or harmonious and not noticed; I prefer to think of the third harmonic aspect as covert or not obvious.  Unlike hard aspects, which force you to notice them, soft aspects are present but are not usually noticed without conscious effort.

 

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Fourth Harmonic

The next chart shows the fourth harmonic of the event on the Fifth Republic. Here you can see how close the Pluto-Sun square (conjunction in the fourth harmonic) is and the Neptune-Saturn conjunction (square in first harmonic), which opposes (sesquiquadrate in first harmonic) the French Moon.

 

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Event of Paris Attacks

Finally, we have the event chart itself.  The one thing that leaps out at is Mars at the Nadir opposite the Midheaven: violence at home threatens the foundation of society.

However, this is not the worst massacre in France since World War II, as some are proclaiming.  Back in the Sixties, on October 17, 1961, during the Algerian War between France and the citizens of its colony in North  Africa, Algeria, there was a large protest by Algerians in Paris.  At the time, the head of the French National Police was a  man by the name of Maurice Papon  (not to be confused with George Papoon, who was the Firesign Theatre [all four members had fire sun signs] candidate for President), who was a member of the Vichy government in occupied France during World War II.  Papon sent many Jews to their death during that period.  During a pro-Algerian demonstration in Paris on that date involving 30,000 demonstrators, police attacked the protesters, killing 200 and arresting thousands; the French government finally admitted to the killings in 1998, but only to 40 deaths.

 

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Massacre of Algerians

In the chart for the event, against the Fifth Republic natal chart, we see a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction near the top of the chart; this was the beginning of the Sixties bi-decade.  Saturn is opposite the  Moon, indicating the suffering of the people, and there is a Mars-Neptune conjunction, which suggests the misguided or confused use of energy, of gunfire or violence, which was the case here.  This conjunction is very tight, a quarter degree and sextiles the natal Saturn, representing the forces of law and order, the French National Police, who did the shooting.  There is also a close trine as we’ve seen before between Pluto and the MC.  Uranus — change, sudden or unexpected events — is semisquare the natal Sun-Mercury conjunction, representing the government and media of the Fifth Republic.

 

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Paris Commune Massacre

There was also another well-known massacre in Paris 90 years before that one as described in the recent book Massacre by John Merriman.  This involved the Paris Commune of 1871, which lasted only for two months and was brought to an end in what is called the Bloody Week, starting Sunday May 21, 1871.  The French police cracked down on the communards, and 20,000 of them were killed and many more arrested.  Here is a chart for the start of the Bloody Week. Two things stand out: the opposition between Saturn and Venus, which is the conflict between law and order and obeying the rules (Saturn) and justice (Venus).  We can see which side won.  There is also a trine between Mars, gunfire, and the Mercury-Pluto conjunction, the communication of radical socialist ideas, which is what the Paris Commune was about. It is interesting to note how often trines occur in the charts above.

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October 30, 2015

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Africa and the Berlin Conference

The Berlin Conference on Africa of 1884 and 1885 is little known in the West, but it was of supreme importance for determining the shape of the modern continent of Africa.

The scramble among European powers to have colonies in Africa had gone on for some time and there   was   no order.  King Leopold II, from Belgium, had established a private colony, the Belgium Congo, in Central Africa.  His brutal rule is described in Adam Hochschild’s book King Leopold’s Ghost, published at the end of the last century, but other European powers also wanted colonies in that continent, even if they were not as brutal as King Leopold. That book estimates that about 10 million died  in the Congo under Leopold’s rule, before the country of Belgium took over. The countries of Britain, France, Germany, Portugal all had colonies on that continent.  We tend to forget now, in the Twenty-First Century, that once almost every country in Africa  was a colony of a European power.  If you take a look at an atlas produced before World War II, you will see such names as French West Africa, French  Equatorial Africa, Portuguese West Africa (also known as Angola), Portuguese East Africa (aka Mozambique), German West Africa, Rhodesia (colony of Britain) and of course the Belgian Congo. South Africa was a colony of Great Britain, and finally gained independence in 1934, though it was run by the British colonists and their descendants until 1994 when the African National Congress, founded in 1912, took power. Algeria was a colony of France until 1962, and people of France remember the bitter battles in that country as it rebelled against the mother country.  A movie which was made in 1966, available on YouTube that is called called The Battle of Algiers, shows this revolution.

At  the time the conference was called, Germany was a young nation, formed a dozen years earlier.  Some suggest that the recent birth of Germany made it unstable and was the reason it was involved in the two world wars.  Germany has always had a strong nationalist movement, preaching racial purity and  touting the 1000-year German heritage, that was displayed   before World War II and in the current influx of refugees to Germany (the people are open but the politicians are closed).  But Germany as an idea had long existed as the heart of Europe, even though there was no actual country of Germany.  The recently published book Europe by Bendan Simms  argues of the importance of Germany to Europe over the last 500 years, a period that we  have argued in this blog is a basic measure of the history of civilization.  And now Germany is the central pillar of the European Union.  Just ask a Greek citizen how she feels about Germany now.

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State of Germany

Here is a chart of the incorporation of Germany on January 18, 1871, even though the German Empire  had existed as a legal entity for a couple of weeks.  In this chart we see a Sun-Mercury conjunction opposite Uranus, suggesting that a revolutionary country has been born, and Mars square Saturn, indicating a problem dealing with their violence and military power.

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Africa is Divided

The scramble for African  colonies by European nations caused conflict between the European nations (no notice was paid to the feelings of the African natives to their colonisation, of course) and  so in 1884 German Chancellor Otto Von Bismark called a meeting of the various European powers in Berlin to discuss the matter.  The conference itself took place  between November 15, 1994  and February 26, 1885.   An editorial cartoon at the time sums up the situation:  it shows Bismark dividing up a cake labeled “Africa” while diplomats from various countries await their portion.  This treaty was a disaster for Africa, and the effects of it are still felt in that continent.  There were a total of 14 nations involved in the conference, including Russia and the United States, but the countries named above were the most important.  A large majority of Africa at the  time was  under local control, but after the conference the continent was split up into many countries with no thought to the original groupings of people.  This led to many of the problems of Africa subsequent to de-colonization which started after the end of World War II — that the counties did not  reflect the people on the ground.

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Start of the Berlin Conference

Here are two charts for this important conference that few people are aware of.  The first chart is  for the start of the conference, November 11, 1884. You can see that the Neptune-Pluto conjunction is approaching, it will be exact in another five year, but it is   still 10 degrees from exact.    This conjunction is a once in every 500 year event, and indicated the start of modernism and the Twentieth Century.  But more important are the two oppositions with these planets, Mercury opposite Pluto  and Sun opposite Neptune, both short lasting oppositions.  The Sun opposite Neptune indicates that on that day (Sun) there was delusion, that things could not be seen clearly.  The Mercury opposite Pluto suggests the harsh, Plutonian conditions that were discussed  in this conference.  This was not a good omen for a positive outcome.

berlinn_conf_end

End of the Berlin Conference

The second chart is set shortly before the end of the conference, when the final positions were been hammered out.  We see that Sun is now conjunct Mars, opposite Jupiter and both are square Pluto in a T-square with Pluto at the apex.  This suggests much violence (Sun-Mars-Jupiter) and repression (Pluto) as an legacy of this conference.

So this conference, that was started in delusion ended in the potential for violence and repression.  And there, in a nutshell, is the history of the continent of Africa in the century following this conference in Berlin right before the beginning of the Twentieth Century.