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October 22, 2022

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Midterms and Minor Aspects

The midterm election in the United States is greatly looked forward to by political junkies because it is the first obvious election mandate for the Joe Biden presidency. Because of the interest, I have decided to look at this chart and it is indeed interesting.

The first thing one notices is that a full moon is happening on that election day November 8, 2022. Mercury is conjunct the Sun tightly and Venus is widely conjunct it also. At the other end of the opposition Uranus conjoins the Moon as well as the North Node of the Moon. Expect the unexpected. This latter conjunction should be a big flag, and sure enough this Full Moon is also a lunar eclipse. Unlike a solar eclipse which last only an hour or so, a lunar eclipse lasts several hours. There are four retrograde planets at the time of this full Moon: Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune. Mars is one of the least often retrograde planets and it is near to its natal position and thus a Mars return for the United States. The Sun and the Moon make an almost exact semisquare/sesquiquadrate with the US Midheaven. Clearly this election will influence the standing and appearance of the United States within the wider world, which is something the Midheaven represents.

One can say that the outcome of the election will be a surprise. This can be taken many ways. In the United States the first midterm election after a new president has been elected two years previously there is traditionally a loss for the President’s party, what President Obama called in the 2010 midterm election a “shellacking”. So on one hand this midterm might present a huge loss for the Democrats, even more that would be expected. On the other hand, it could be a surprise in that the ruling party suffers no defeats unlike what happens normally. Because of Neptune’s prominence perhaps we will not know the final result for some time after election day since the results will be obscured by Neptunian haze.

And of course, as is true for this year, Neptune is opposite its natal position and Pluto is conjunct its natal position. The last time there was a similar configuration was the late Thirties when Pluto was opposite its natal position and Neptune was conjunct its natal position. At that time the world saw the beginnings of World War II and the Great Depression had been going on for several years.

A brief discussion of aspects and orbs is needed for an introduction to minor aspects. Aspects are the angular separation between two planets or other points. The validity of aspects was shown decades ago by John Nelson of RCA in that the aspects of planets (in a heliocentric manner) could affect the quality of radio signals, something that RCA was very interested in. Hard aspects caused more interference with radio signals. Orbs are the distance from exact — called partile — in which an aspect is said to still be effective. One easy way to get an argument among astrologers is to question the size of orbs. Some astrologers use what I consider to be huge orbs, so big that meaning ceases to exist. I once did computer work for an astrologer who insisted on using a ten degree orb for what is usually considered a minor aspect, an inconjunct or quincunx of 150 degrees.

Aspects are based on numbers — the numbers which divide a full circle to give the aspect which is a fraction of a circle. The three most important aspect families are based on the first three numbers — called whole numbers in mathematics because that is what they are, not fractions of a number. The first number is one and that gives the conjunction which I consider the mother of all aspects just as the number one is a divisor of all other numbers. The next number is two which gives the opposition, square, and so forth which are based on octaves of two. The number after that is three which gives trines, sextiles and so forth.

Note that the much used number twelve belongs to both families of two and three and of course one but then all aspects are derived from the conjunction. And the number twelve occurs in many areas for example in Judeo-Christian religion where we have the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles of Christ. In both cases each of the twelve have been assigned to a particular zodiacal sign. Both the day and the night have twelve hours so this is a very well used number and has been for millennia.

The families of two and the families of three are most often described respectively as hard aspect and soft aspects, though I prefer the terms overt — in the open — and covert — not out front. Everybody can feel an aspect of series two, it knocks you over the head; these are called event-oriented, but series three aspects are present but do not force themselves on you. Traditionally they are easy, but all of World War II saw a transiting trine of Uranus and Neptune so they are not necessarily pleasant.

We normally just use what are called the Ptolemaic aspects (after Second Century astrology Claudius Ptolemy who wrote early astrology books Tetrabiblos and the Almagest). These are conjunction, sextile, square, trine and opposition. If one is a little more daring they would throw in the semisquare — the name indicates that it is half of a square — and the sesquiquadrate — a square and a half which are also called minor aspects. They can also be called the octile and trioctile, indicating that they are based on the number eight. Continuing the series, half of a semisquare is a demisquare of semioctile. These aspects are 22.5, 67.5, 112.5, and 157.5 degrees. Like the square and the semisquare, the demisquare can be powerful if it close to exact. But the question occurs what orb should one use for a demisquare?

A question about orbs is what is the shape of the orb, that is how does the strength of the aspect fall off as distance from exact — called partile — falls off. Is the orb a sawtooth, where it falls off rapidly as the aspect becomes less than partile? Is the aspect of the same strength if within the orb after which it falls off immediately, like a tooth shape? Or is it like a normal curve when the strength falls off slowly at first as the aspect is less than partile and then falls off faster. I tend to believe in the normal curve since many things operate based on a normal curve.

With a normal curve you have something called the standard deviation (represented by the Greek letter lower case sigma). Most of the area under the normal curve is contained within two standard deviations on either side of the center, so I will consider the orb value as being two standard deviations. But remember that there is life outside two standard deviations, which suggests that occasionally an aspect can be active outside its orb, but this is not usual.

The next question is what orb to use. It seems obvious (to me) that as the aspect becomes a greater harmonic the orb should decrease, that is the orb for a square is less than an orb of a conjunction. I have always liked what are called harmonic orbs, in which the orb is proportional to the number on which the aspect is based. So for example if we consider the orb for a conjunction to be twelve degrees — and twelve is a number used often in astrology — then the orb for an opposition is six degrees, or twelve divided by two, and the orb for a square is three, or twelve divided by four. So an orb for semioctile or demisquare would be 12/16 or 45 minutes.

The following section on the October Surprise was written weeks ago but Mercury Retrograde got in the way. I used to think that “Mercury Retrograde” was just an excuse astrologers used when something did not come together but since that time I’ve experienced many Mercury retrograde periods during which many things did not come together, more so than in non-Mercury Retrograde periods. (But note that the periods for a couple of days before and after the retrograde — when Mercury is moving slow — are also problematic.) This just concluded Mercury Retrograde period — from September 10 to October 1 — was brutal.

October Surprise Graphical Ephemeris Harmonic 16

While looking at the current transits I noticed planets coming together in late September but in minor aspects so that one would usually not see it. Demisquare aspects are not often noticed but can be seen in a what is called a fourth harmonic chart — aka ninety-degree dial — where all positions are multiplied by four and then 360 is subtracted until the total is under 360. While looking at a graphical ephemeris I noticed an interesting lineup of planets in late September. Notice how the lines for Jupiter, Uranus, and Pluto come together in late September. Shown below are the first harmonic of this date– 9/26 — where we notice Sun, Mercury, and Venus conjunct and oppose Jupiter, Mars trines Saturn, Jupiter semloadisquare both Uranus and Saturn which are square and Sloadun tightly semisquare Uranus. But then look at the fourth harmonic chart. Pluto is square the Sun-Jupiter opposition to Saturn-Uranus and Mars is trine/sextile both ends of the opposition. The squares in the fourth harmonic chart are demi-squares and the oppositions are actually semisquare/sesquiquadrates. There are a lot of plloadanets connected and I thought that this indicated an “October Surprise”.

This is not just a theoretical discussion: It is almost a tradition in American politics to have what is called an “October Surprise” before an election in November, something that is unexpected and causes changes in voter’s minds. The term originated in 1980 during the Carter-Reagan campaign when the Reagan team prevented the hostages in Iran from being released until after Reagan was elected, thereby denying a win to the Carter campaign; the Carter campaign was certain that a release before the election woulloadd have helped his election chances. During the summer people’s mind are consumed by other things than electoral politics, but after Labor Day and the return of students to their school people become more concerned about facts on the ground. So it is after Labor Day that an “October Surprise” can occur — October Surprise Season begins. By looking at astrology, it appears many planets will come together in minor aspects late September to set the stage for an October surprise.

In the fourth harmonic chart (above) we see a T-square with Saturn-Uranus opposite Sun-Jupiter all square the apex point Pluto. Remember that in a fourth harmonic chart the square is in actually a demi-square.

Notice other timings. The transiting Sun goes over natal Neptune just after Labor Day and then goes over the MC on September 26, the same date as was pointed out above.

Looking back one can see things — obviously — that one can not see looking forward. With the benefit of hindsight we can see what happened about September 26. Much to the surprise of many — but not the CIA which warned Germany of this possibility (https://www.reuters.com/world/cia-warned-berlin-about-possible-attacks-gas-pipelines-summer-spiegel-2022-09-27/) — several bombs went off on the Russia to Germany pipelines Nordstream 1 and 2 which were supposed to deliver gas to Germany from Russia. The first explosion occurred at 2:03 CEST (Central European Summer Time) on September 26. Protests had been happening in Germany demanding that that country drop its sanctions against Russia and allow gas to flow through the pipelines, something that could not happen after bombs blew holes in the pipelines.

Looking at the chart for the first Nordstream explosion, we see that it happened about two hours after the New Moon with Jupiter in Aries opposite this New Moon. This perhaps indicates the explosion of gas that burst from the pipelines when the explosion hit, and the result has been captured in a photograph. Some are saying that this was the biggest one-time release of methane. When you look at the chart it appears like the is an arrow pointing at the New Moon, commanding your attention.

I’ve also included the fourth harmonic chart of this event so that you can see how similar it is to the chart earlier displayed that only suggested an “October Surprise”.

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July 4, 2022

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The First Neptune War

It won’t be called that in the history books of course. Maybe the Cyber-war (from cybernetics) or the Social Media War or the Propaganda War. But Neptune in its various meanings very well represents this war. Neptune or Neptune inspired things seem very important at this time in history. While there has always been an important place for propaganda in the midst of war — consider stories of Huns raping Nuns in Germany in World War I — the use of propaganda in this war is magnified because there are now many high tech means of creating and transmitting it.

The famous American astrologer Rob Hand tells how the astrologers of the Thirties, who were mostly Republicans — unlike today’s astrologers — could not believe the accepted chart for FDR because he had Uranus in the twelfth house and those astrologers could not believe that such a extreme radical as FDR didn’t have Uranus in the first house where it would be much more prominent. One may think that since astrologers reject the standard narrative that astrology is a pseudoscience they would be more likely to contest other standard narratives — such that FDR was a radical — than most people, but human nature does not always work like that.

A more recent example of this blindness is the 2016 election where most astrologers thought that Hilary Clinton would be elected President even though a couple of fairly standard methods for predicting the winner showed Donald Trump elected. See for example the book Astrology: Worlds Visible and Invisible by Everett Blackman for a discussion of one method of determining the President.

Below is a chart for the speech by Vladimir Putin announcing the invasion (or special operation) of Ukraine. The actual invasion happened a short time later. This was called Operation Z, the Russian name for the invasion of Ukraine, though you can’t call it that in Russia. This was the beginning of Putin’s speech (at 6 in the morning) announcing the upcoming invasion. I don’t find it very compelling for the start of an event that will change the world and may even destroy it. At the start of the Covid Panic we had a Saturn-Pluto conjunction, which time after time has indicated something important happening.

Just look at the Saturn Pluto opposition at both the start of the Spanish-American war and 9/11. And both of those opposition were on the Ascendant-Descendant axis of the United States, indicating that both events would impact the U.S. In this chart for Operation Z we have not even a minor aspect between Saturn and Pluto. We have a tight semisquare between Jupiter and Pluto, and a square between Mars and the hypothetical planet Zeus, which can suggest an outbreak of hostilities but still is not world shaking. That square does suggest the invasion — the meaning given is “military technique, officer, firearm” — but I was hoping for a lot more. There is also a conjunction of Venus and Mars in the first house near the Ascendant which suggests that the Russians feel passionate about this war.

And then I realized that that was not the true start of the war. Getting the correct birth time is important to astrology. Once a German doctor measured several events, such as crowning, first breath, and cutting the umbilical, to find which birth time gave the best chart. This is discussed in the book Recent Advances in Natal Astrology. The first breath was the winner. We must do the same thing with world events.

When did this war start? It could have been when a recently formed CIA decided to train ex-Nazi Ukrainians to combat the Soviet Union; it could have been when in 1991 representatives for America said to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward” if East and West Germany could reunite and join NATO, but that promise wasn’t in writing so it didn’t count. By 1998 other countries joined NATO and by now there have been fourteen additional countries in NATO that have certainly pushed the organization more than an inch towards Russia; we will discuss the chart of NATO in the next post. Experts such as George Kennan, who could be said to have started the Cold War with just one telegram (though it was a Long one) warned about this expansion of NATO just before he died at 101. He thought expansion of NATO a really bad idea.

No the war started in 2014 as evidenced by this chart.

In late April of that year the following formation occurred: a grand cross with Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, and Pluto. It was part of the Uranus Pluto square of that period in the early teens. Notice how tight this grand cross is: each orb is less than 20 minutes of arc — this is almost perfect. This was the dominant astrological formation of the year (or any other year for that matter).

Charts with distinct patterns can be significant. For example a man named David who lived 3000 years ago had a chart with a six pointed star, which was difficult to do before the outer planets were discovered. Back then they used wider orbs than I do. The grand trine between the Moon, Mercury and Jupiter is clear, but also imagine another grand trine between Venus, Mars and Saturn. He put that star on his shield to warn his competitors of his awesome chart. That star still appears in many places currently and even appears in the flag of a country. The formation is even named for the man who had that star originally.

Also interesting is how this grand cross fits into the US chart like a hand fits into a glove. (We’ll see in a later post that this chart fits into the charts of the other participants as well.) Jupiter is conjunct the U. S. Sun at a half a degree and all the other three planets of the grand cross are as tight or tighter to the U.S. Sun. Thirteen degrees of cardinal signs has been energized by this grand cross. Certainly something important happened within/to the US in 2014 but it wasn’t obvious (at least to me) at the time what that was. That period was half way through the second term of Obama and his viceroy for Ukraine, his vice president, was involved with that country. For example, his son had a job with a Ukrainian oil company that paid him well even though he had no experience with the oil business or with Ukraine. And Ukraine was still important under Trump: one impeachment for President Trump involved his call to Ukraine and he was slow to send weapons to that country even though his predecessor thought that would be a bad idea. Ukraine has been involved in American politics for at least eight years.

And here is a graphical ephemeris for that period and you can see clearly how all four planets cross at one point of time. Astrologers knew about this formation long before it happened. Note that it is part of the Uranus Pluto square the effected much during the start of the second decade of the Twenty-First Century, for example the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street in the United States occurred at the time. And I have a personal story about the events under that square. At the time I was in the habit of riding my bike through several towns in my valley and back again, a total distance of about 50 miles every weekend. The trips were always fairly uneventful. But the trip I took on the weekend before April 22 stands out in my memory for several events. The first was a large pickup truck parked on the bikepath three miles from my house. Later there was a minor accident. After that on the return trip I avoided another accident but got into skirmish with a pedestrian on the bike path. It was obviously memorable.

The year of 2014 was special in Ukraine. That was when an event called the Maidan Revolution, which had been forming the previous year, took place in Kiev’s Square of the same name. This followed several months of demonstrations against the then current democratically elected President of Ukraine. Some people think that the United States was involved in that protest, even though the U.S. has never done anything like that before except in South America (remember the Monroe Doctrine) and in Iran and perhaps a few other places. During the protest some US government officials – such as Victoria Nuland, who holds a high position in the Biden administration — were handing out cookies to the protestors. For Americans an analogy would be if on the insurrection of January 6 there were representative of the Duma, the Russian parliament, handing out cookies to the protestors while admitting that they thought Trump would be a better President. If that happened you can see that some people would be a tad suspicious.

After these demonstrations in the square there was a coup in Ukraine, the most obvious coup in history according to the founder of the private CIA, Stratfor. Some people think the coup was supported or even instigated by the US; the NYT thought so at the time. Nevertheless, the current President of Ukraine was replaced by someone who in a strange coincidence happened to be the person Ms. Nuland thought would be perfect for the job.

One of the most odious acts of this period is when at least 40 workers who were against the Maidan revolution were driven into a union house in Odessa by some who were called at the time Nazis and burned alive or killed if they tried to escape. This happened on May 2, 2014 a couple of months after the coup. This year the government of Ukraine has set a curfew for May 2 because they were afraid of protests or riots on that day to draw attention to the event. In certain ways that massacre of Russian citizens in Odessa can be considered the start of this war, the Kristallnacht of this war, and the astrological conditions are extreme. You will seldom see an exact grand cross involving several outer planets. And of course the Uranus-Pluto square during that three year period set up the conditions.

Now that we have established the chart for the beginning of this war that I am calling the first Neptune War, we will look at the charts of the participants next time and see how the chart for late April 2014 was involved with them. But I’ll end by noting on effect that chart had on the internal manifestation in the United States.

The Sun square Saturn in the US chart was highlighted by this grand cross since Mars is conjunct the natal Saturn. Normally Sun square Saturn would suggest an inferiority complex, a certain restriction on one’s life force. No one would say that applies to the United States. Of course, having Sun conjunct Jupiter and Venus, the “Greater Benefic” and the “Lesser Benefic” in traditional astrology certainly helps counteract this tendency. But deep down the country has an inferiority complex involving how it has treated other people, especially black and native people, but it has tried hard to ignore that square for a long time. That repressed Sun square Saturn is now coming into the fore because of the emphasis given to it by the grand cross and you can see all of this in discussions involving racism, white privilege, etc. The people and the government of the United States are acting out this square but not really dealing with it.

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December 31, 2021

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The Sixth Crisis

Every 80 to 90 years in American history there has been a crisis. These crises started very small and local but each succeeding crisis was larger and involved more people, not just in the United States but in the rest of the world. To astrologers, the year range of 80 to 90 should ring a bell: The period of Uranus is 84 years and that of Neptune — at 168 years — is exactly double that. As we will see the motions of these planets interact with the chart of the United States in ways such that there are five different cycles that all come due within a period of 5 to 10 years. These cycles are Uranus coming to its natal position — called a Uranus Return — and Neptune coming back to either its natal (return) or opposite (demi-return) its natal position. These two cycles occur for any chart drawn for a birth in 1776. The next two cycles are transiting Neptune coming to or opposite to the Midheaven in the Sibly natal chart for the U.S. and Uranus coming the Descendant of the Sibly chart. These two cycles involved a certain chart of the United States. The fifth cycle is Neptune coming to the Aries or Libra point; this cycle does not involve the United States at all, but holds for the world at large. I’ve also noticed — as you will see from the graphical ephemerides shown below — that there is also a hard aspect between the Pluto and the natal North Node of the Moon each time these other transits are happening. I’m not sure what to make of this, but Ebertin’s description of the principle of these two points is intriguing. Ebertin says the principle of these two points is the common destiny of a large mass of people.

The first crisis in American history is called the Starving Time. This took place in the recently founded colony of Jamestown. The colonists weren’t on great terms with the people that already lived on this land that was new to them and also the colonists made many mistakes. The winter of 1609-10 was for them the final reckoning. They didn’t have enough food to make it through the winter and so almost 90% of the population died over that winter. Some were so desperate that they removed bodies from their graves for food. The required supply ship from England was late in coming so they were not rescued until the following spring and it took years to finally recover from the Starving Time. So while the severe crisis only lasted the season the recovery took years covering the period when Uranus and Neptune were making the appropriate aspects.

Here is when the various transits mentioned above played out for this crisis. You can follow all these in the above graphical ephemeris. Neptune was conjunct its natal position (one full Neptune cycle before the birth of the country) in 1610-11, Neptune was conjunct the Midheaven of the not yet formed United States in 1615-16. Neptune crossed zero Libra in 1614-15; Uranus conjoined its natal position in 1608-1609; and finally Uranus crossed the Descendant of the not yet born United States in 1609-10. In this case the transit of Uranus over the Descendant was the closest in time to the actual crisis, but since it took several years to recover from the damage and the almost loss of the colony important actions related to the crisis were occurring when Neptune crossed those points.

The second crisis was called in the colonies King Williams’s War and other names as well; this was just the North American part of a larger war called the Nine Years War. In North America this war involved England (including the English colonists), France, and Native Americans. This was the first of several wars in North America involving those same parties. In North America, this war was fought from 1688-1697.

Many other things were going on in this period. For the British — and America was a colony of Britain at this time — 1688 was a very important year for what is called the Glorious Revolution. This was a non-violent change to the governing of the country, which at the time meant the king. The king of England at the time was James II, younger brother of Charles II who was the restored king after his father, Charles I, was executed during the English Civil War in the middle of that century. James II of England was Catholic and was hard on the Church of England which had been established by an early Tudor king. He was replaced in this Glorious Revolution by his daughter Mary and her husband William, who was also King of Holland and a Protestant.

Four years later an event happened in America that is still talked about today: the Salem Witch Trials. These occurred in 1692 and 1693 in the village of Salem Massachusetts. Two hundred people were accused of witchcraft and 19 were eventually executed.

Also in this period the slave trade experienced a big boost. Perhaps it was the elimination of a Catholic king in England that allowed this expansion to take place. This is discussed more fully in the book Freedom’s Debt by William Pettigrew. Of course, this meant a big increase in slaves brought to America. Perhaps those who support the 1619 Project concerning when slaves were first brought to America should pay more attention to this milestone.

Starting in 1689 there were a number of rebellions in America that in ways presaged the Revolution that would happen at the next crisis. The book to read about this is The Glorious Revolution in America by David Lovejoy.

Here is when these planets made the appropriate aspects for this second crisis. Neptune was opposite the natal Neptune in 1693-94. Neptune was conjoined the Aries point and the IC of the United States in 1697-98, just as this war was ending. Uranus returned to its natal position in 1692-93; Uranus crossed the Descendant in 1693-94. So here we can see with a longer event — not just one winter as in the first crisis — that all five of these planetary indicators line up with the crises.

The third crisis was the American Revolution. This war went on from 1775 to 1783. By definition, Neptune was conjoined the natal Neptune and Uranus was conjoined the natal Uranus at this time since the birth chart is set for a date shortly after the start of the war, which is said to be the Battle of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. But both Uranus and Neptune crossed the angles that they are close to in the natal chart while the war was being fought. Note that other countries than England and its colony were involved in this war, most notably France that may have saved the bacon for America and indirectly caused its own revolution.

The fourth crisis was the American Civil War, which is sometimes called the second American Revolution (eg. historian Charles Beard). It officially started with the firing on the Federal Fort Sumter, a military base in North Carolina, by the Confederates. This happened on April 12, 1861. But events leading to that civil war had occurred for years if not decades before that event. One important occurrence was the raid by John Brown and his followers on the Harper’s Ferry military depot in the middle of October 1859. The Dread Scott decision of the Supreme Court, announced by incoming President James Buchanan in March of 1857, was another prominent forerunner.

The American Civil War did involve more than just the North and South. The nationals from many other countries enlisted and fought in the Civil War, which was seen important by them for the causes of anti-slavery and state’s rights. Both England and France were considering recognizing the Confederacy but the timely intervention of the Russian Navy prevented this from happening. The crises was already becoming international.

As can be seen in the above graphical ephemeris, here is when the appropriate transits took place. The Neptune demi-return occurred in 1857 and 1858; the Uranus return was in 1860 and 1861; Neptune was positioned at 0 Aries in 1861 and 1862; finally Uranus crossed the Descendant of the United States (Sibly chart) and Neptune crossed the IC of the US in 1861 and 1862.

The fifth crisis was World War II. The official start of this war was on September 1, 1939 when the German forces invaded Poland, but there were many events in the years before that that presaged a world-wide war, such as the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and then their invasion of China in July of 1937. For Americans the war started when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, an American military base on the American colony of Hawaii, in December of 1941.

These were the appropriate transits: Neptune returned to its natal position in 1938, 1939, and 1940 — it was exactly there in early September 1939; Neptune was at the Libra point in 1941, 1942, and 1943; Neptune was at the Midheaven in 1943 and 1944; both the Uranus return and Uranus crossing the Descendant were in 1944 and 1945.

After this war there were many changes, the most in American history. We will discuss this more fully in the next post. This time is considered the start of the Anthropocene, that geologic age that is determined by the force of human beings. Also this time was the start of the Atomic Age. The use of plastics, which was fairly limited before the war, exploded afterwards and has grown immensely since: as a result women could finally wear nylon stockings and the plastic ball-point pen proved popular.

For the sixth crisis, the one we are starting now, the Neptune demi-return is 2021 and 2022; Neptune crosses 0 Libra in 2024 and 2025; it crosses the Sibly IC in 2025 and 2026; the Uranus return is in 2027 and 2028; finally Uranus crosses the Sibly Descendant in 2028 and 2029. It appears that this crisis will last most of the decade.

Dedicated to Enid R. Leonard who has been an editor for many of these blog posts.

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October 16, 2020

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DIY Presidential Election

People often ask “Where have the moderate Republicans gone?” The answer is obvious, they are still here but now are called “Democrats”. Former President Obama once gave the ploy away by saying that in the 1980’s he’d be considered a moderate Republican, and in fact he got a Republican health care bill passed, one designed by the right wing Heritage Foundation. These “Republicans” have gone on for forty plus years, and it was more accented in the current Democratic “convention” where many named Republicans spoke to unify the image that the Republicans have joined the Democrats. So essentially we have two Republican parties, the “Real” Republicans (TM) for a full-bodied Republican experience, and a Republican-lite Party, that will give you much the same treatment but with soupçon of progressive values. So whichever candidate wins the election, which is planned for November, a Republican will be our next president, beginning the 53rd year with a Republican President.

An interesting phenomenon of this recent election cycle is the number of Republican elites showing their allegiance to the Biden-Harris team. There are two ways of looking at this. Even though these elites could make more money under the corporate-friendly Trump administration, the risk is too great that the people might revolt since Trump is too up-front about his actions; it is better to have a more subtle corporate-friendly administration in charge so that the populace does not get too riled up and actually do something about their horrible so-called leaders. On the other hand, perhaps these elites know that one of the draws of Trump in 2016 was that since the elites hated him the people voted for Trump as a way to give the middle finger to said elites, and when the populace sees even more elites turning away from Trump they will support him even more, so that these elites actually want Trump to win. It is really hard to tell what their plan is.

And in the current situation where every question about the suitability of the Democrats can be answered by “but Trump” Biden can be even more Republican since he assumes the progressive have no one else to vote for.

Since this quadrennial exercise in something they call democracy has only two candidates that can win the election, we will inspect the charts for those two people.

As Paul Simon put it many years ago: “Laugh about it, shout about it/When you have to choose/Any way you look at it you lose”. Harry Truman also had something appropriate to say many years ago: “Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.” But now the question is, who is the real Republican.

The current atmosphere is so intensely partisan that I will not pick a winner. Rather I will point out the relevant charts — election and inauguration transits and solar returns — and allow you to make whatever judgement most closely aligns with your politics. But whoever wins, the United States will have a Republican President, that I know with certainty.

First lets look briefly at the natal charts. There are three of them. The first is the standard chart for Donald Trump, the birth time most commonly used. It gives him an Ascendant of 0 Virgo, and as someone who has a Virgo Ascendant, I find that very hard to believe. After the other chart — an hour earlier — was promoted, many astrologers used it as an excuse for their incorrect prediction of a win for Clinton in 2016. In this 10:54 chart we see Mars near the Ascendant, but since he is the first president not to start a foreign war in 40 years this seems a bad example of Mars on the Ascendant. But perhaps Mars being in the Twelfth house explains it: he wants to start a real war like other presidents, but the hidden effect of Mars in the twelfth house forces him to just apply many sanctions instead. But in both charts we will see Sun opposite Moon (that is a Full Moon birth) with the North Node of the Moon closely conjunct the Sun. Donald Trump was born under a lunar eclipse, something that has seldom been talked about, but it is certainly important. Eclipses have for millennia been considered significant and special. He also has Uranus conjunct the Sun, suggesting that he is an agent of change, whether he does the change or causes others to make the change.

As far as I know there is only one given birth time for Joe Biden. In his chart all planets but one are above the horizon, suggesting a person directed towards the outer world, very comfortably in the public. The Sun-Venus conjunction (one degree in Scorpio) suggests an affectionate nature and willing to show this. Perhaps this in an indication of his famous “handiness” and preference to smelling the hair of young girls. Note that his Uranus is right on the Descendant (it is actually half a degree below, but if the birth time were off by just a couple of minutes, not unlikely, then Uranus would be above the horizon). Uranus here indicates that he attracts rebels or revolutionary people. Perhaps he is a closet Marxist? Note that he is a heavy Scorpio with four personal planets in that sign. The previous Democratic candidate also was a Scorpio. Perhaps his candidacy is the Scorpio revenge, since the sign was denied victory last time. The Sun sign of Scorpio is the most common sign for Presidents, along with Aquarius.

The other time for Donald Trump, about an hour earlier, comes from who is know as the Trump family astrologer, Marilyn Briggs. In this chart we have Jupiter closely trine Uranus with the Ascendant sextile both, and thus also a midpoint configuration. Ebertin says of Ascendant equals Jupiter/Uranus “The ability to shape one’s environment according to one’s own ideas…Shared happiness with others”. Uranus and Jupiter together suggest a real love of freedom, a don’t fence me in attitude, optimism. This is the only real difference between the two charts, since most planets don’t move that much in an hour. In this chart his rising sign is in the middle of Leo. Ask yourself is Trump an example of Virgo rising or Leo rising?

Let us look at the transits to these three charts on election day. For the first chart for Trump there is nothing very spectacular, and the only important transits are those that also occur in the other chart, since the angles, the only thing that really changes in an hour, are not affected. The important Jupiter-Saturn-Pluto conjunction, discussed in the previous post, is opposite the Venus-Saturn conjunction in the natal chart. Specifically, Saturn is opposite Venus — traditionally trouble with women (who knew!) — and Jupiter-Pluto is more strongly opposed to his natal Saturn, perhaps energizing his sense of responsibilities indicated by Saturn.

For Joe Biden on election day, we have that same triple conjunction opposite his natal Jupiter, perhaps emphasizing Biden’s sense of victory and optimism. Most notable is that the transiting Sun for this day is one degree from exact conjunction to his natal Mars: Joe Biden will feel particularly energized on that day, but hopefully he will not feel violent. Neptune is on his IC, opposite his Midheaven, and from the graphical ephemeris for this year we can see that the opposition was exact in April of 2020, about the time he was sewing up his command of the Democratic Primary, the middle of August — about the time of the convention — and finally for the third pass early February of 2021, shortly after the inauguration of the President. The only case I know off-hand of this transit of Neptune over the IC was a twenty-some male who “experimented with psychedelics” under that transit. I’ll go out on a limb and say that this will not be the Biden experience. Neptune in this position could indicate the spiritual underpinning of Mr. Biden’s campaign to save the soul of America, or it could indicate that his foundation (which is what the IC represents) is a delusion.

The other chart for Trump is quite different. In this case the Midheaven has moved enough so that Uranus is at the Midheaven with an orb of 2 minutes (relocated to Washington, DC, where he currently lives; at his birth place the conjunction is not as tight). As we can see from the graphical ephemeris, this conjunction was exact in June 2020, May 2021, as well as November 2020. This conjunction could presage a surprise or upset. Since natally Uranus conjoins his Sun, Mr. Trump is a agent of change, and this election will emphasize it. To some, this election will bring in the fascist shock-troops, and a less partisan belief might say this election will cause major, perhaps even revolutionary, changes to the country.

Also of interest are the transits on inauguration day, which will be January 20, 2021. Interestingly, on the date of inauguration the transiting Sun has just entered Aquarius and is conjunct the spot of the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction that happened a month before. While both Jupiter and Saturn have moved on, they are still loosely conjunct the Sun. There is also on inauguration day a tight — five minutes — conjunction between Mars and Uranus. Mars Uranus hard aspect are an astrological cliche, suggesting accidents. Ebertin says “Obstinacy, brutal frankness.. intolerance… premature action”. Sounds like what many people are predicting as a result of the election no matter who wins.

Looking at the Trump 10:54 chart, the conjunction mentioned in the previous paragraph is widely making a hard aspect – a semisquare — to Trump’s Sun-Node-Uranus conjunction and a wide sesquiquadrate to his moon. These aspects will remain for his other chart, since only the angles really move in the hour between those two charts. Other that a Venus sesquiquadrate his Ascendant, there is little action to his angles — Ascendant and Midheaven — just as in the chart for the election.

For Joe Biden, that loose conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn, and the Sun is sesquiquadrate his Midheaven and square his Moon. This Saturn action may indicate that he is assuming serious duties, that of a President. Neptune is still on his IC, opposite his Midheaven, as in the election day chart, but it is closer, only one degree away.

Finally we have the inauguration chart for Trump born at 9:51. While the Mars-Uranus conjunction doesn’t do much in the other natal charts, for this Trump chart that conjunction is on his MC, not surprising because Uranus is on is MC for much of the year, as shown in the graphical ephemeris. This may indicate the uproar if Trump — with this natal chart — loses the election. Or it could indicate the uproar among the Democrats and their media if Trump — again with this chart — wins the election. If you thought the pushback in 2017 was something, wait until you see the response in 2021. Also this will be a good test of which natal chart is more accurate. Stay tuned.

We also have two solar returns to look at for each candidate, once because Donald Trump has two charts, and the other set because Joe Biden’s birthday is three weeks after election so that the return right after the election is possibly more relevant than the one almost a year before the election.

Then there is the age old question of which solar return to use, the one for the birthplace or the one for the place of location. Since both these men were born close to their current residence, this does not make much difference. But to some this is important. I knew a person once who spent the night in my house on his way to an obscure location in Eastern Washington because he thought he would have a favorable return at that location.The other question is should the tropical or precessed (similar to sidereal where an adjustment is made for precession of the equinox) zodiac be used for the return.

I once did an experiment with two friends, both astrologers, who had life changing health occurrences in a year. I drew up four return charts for the appropriate year: precessed and non-prrecessed for both the birth location and the current location, and these two locations for both people differed by over 1000 miles. We then looked at all charts, and without coaching by me they picked out the most relevant chart. I then made a judgement and chose the same charts as they did — it was quite evident which chart suggested the upcoming year properly. In both cases the non-precessed chart for the birth location was the one that worked. So that is what I have used for these two candidates.

The return for Trump for the 10:54 chart is not especially noteworthy. Nothing really stand s out to me. In this chart all planets except for the Sun are above the horizon, and the Sun is in the first house, the house of self projection. The Sun is square Mars-Neptune-Moon conjunction. That conjunction is important also in the Solar Return based on the 9:51 chart where we will talk about it. The Jupiter Pluto (and also loosely Saturn) conjunction is right on his Descendant. Powerful forces (indicated by those three planets) which have been building up during 2016 are most likely coming for him from the outside environment, thought some make suggest that he will have a dominating control over his environment. My belief is that the Descendant (as opposed to the Ascendant) indicates the external environment for the human being whose projection is represented by the Ascendant. Most of the planets above the horizon indicate that the year in question will be very public for him.

The return of the 9:51 chart shows that all of these planets are above the horizon, more so than in the 10:54 return. That would suggest that in the year to come June 2020 to June 2021 — he will be in the public eye. As in Joe Biden’s 2020 return, Mercury on the Ascendant indicates speaking to the public. The Mars – Neptune conjunction on the Midheaven is problematic. Mars-Neptune usually indicates unfocused or confused action — witness the Mars-Neptune square in the US chart. According to Ebertin, this conjunction on the MC suggest failure and a sense of inferiority, something that Mr. Trump feels from his childhood in Queens, an “inferior” borough compared to Manhattan. Or perhaps it suggests his sense of rejection at having lost the election. The Moon is also on the Midheaven but in the Tenth house suggesting that the public will be very aware of him, but of course that is a given.

The return for Biden for 2019 show most of the planets below the horizon. Only Uranus, Neptune, and the Moon are clearly about the horizon. Perhaps this indicates how he has been kept in the basement both literally and figuratively. The Sun is clearly at the lowest point of the chart reinforcing his actions from home. The Moon conjunct the Ascendant suggests his connection with the American people, at least Democrats, and is indicative of his amazing comeback in the Democratic primary, from almost dead to a front runner almost overnight.

The return for Joe Biden drawn for November 2020, shortly after the election, has of the planets below the horizon except Venus with Mercury slightly above and exactly conjoined the Ascendant. Perhaps this shows that he will not be the “real” president, but only a figurehead, and that others, like his vice president and other people that he has surrounded himself with even before the election, mostly retreads from the Clinton and Obama administration as well as some neoconservative Republicans, will be the ones really running his administration. In fact, I’ve already seen talk about the Harris administration, with Joe Biden. Uranus is on the Descendant, suggesting progressive forces trying to push him from the outside.

So there you have it, a look at the 2020 presidential election through the lens of astrology. Perhaps in a month or so we will know the results.

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April 24, 2020

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Neptune Über Alles

We have had a whole lot of Neptune over the last few years, and it is not going to end any time soon. I’ve previously written about the Neptune transits to the Ascendant and the Sun of the United States. The last of those transits has just about finished. But coming up is the Neptune demi-return, the return of Neptune to be opposite its natal position. This occurs at almost the same time as the Pluto return. This is not too surprising, since the period of Neptune — 168 years — is almost two-thirds the period of Pluto — 248 years — so there is a certain resonance to their periods. This Neptune demi-return will be followed soon after by Neptune hitting 0 Aries and Neptune crossing the IC — opposite the Midheaven — of the US, so soon the whole world, and especially the United States, will have more than a touch of Neptune.

Second Neptune Demi-Return

Neptune the planet — who was in Roman mythology (Poseidon in Greek) the god of the Seas (and also earthquakes) — covers many ideas. In the best sense it can relate to spiritual matters, but also deception and illusion in a mundane situation or for those who are not spiritual adepts. Neptune should be strong in actors (witness Elizabeth Taylor’s birth in Neptune-ruled Pisces) who need to behave like someone they are not. But is difficult to manifest the spiritual side of Neptune when we are talking about countries (eg US) or many people in their mundane existence. In such cases Neptune can represent lies, deception, dissembling, but also vapors, poison gas, and illness, especially when the causes are not well know. In particular, with the current COVID-19 pandemic that is engulfing the world, Neptune is a fitting symbol. But remember Neptune symbolizes many things, so don’t get caught up in assigning it just one meaning, as Neptune is more difficult to tack down than other planets. Though is seems a little too obvious, Neptune can easily be associated with plagues or pandemics. More fundamentally Neptune can represent invisible or at least unclear things, as in the term “Neptunian” fog. So things now are very Neptunian — the situation is unclear, and it is almost as if everyone has an opinion of what is happening, and some quote “experts” but in a more general sense, no one really knows what the future will be, but it wouldn’t be “more of the same”.

Let us briefly look at previous times Neptune made hard aspects — conjunction, square, opposition — with its natal position. There are relatively few of these, since Neptune moves slowly around the Sun. In a human being with a limited lifespan, the stages of a life can be measured with the aspects of Saturn to its natal position, most commonly labeled with the term “Saturn Return” though other aspects are important also. But with a country, and especially the United States, the progress of the country can best be measured with the aspects of Neptune, as I indicate in the following paragraphs.

First Opening Neptune Square

The first opening square of transiting Neptune to its natal position was in 1817. This was an interesting time even if there were no stand-out events. The last of the “Virginia Dynasty” Presidents, all of whom came from the state of Virginia, James Monroe, had just been elected. It is known as “The Era of Good Feelings” when past animosities were ended. The War of 1812, which had seen the burning of the nation’s capital city, had ended two years earlier. The Federalist Party, those who had essentially started the country before there were actually political parties, and had been represented by the first two Presidents, was for all intents and purposes dead. This time represents the end of the “childhood” of the country and a time when it moved into adolescence. Not only were Presidents elected that were different than the first few, for example Andrew Jackson in another ten years, but the contentious issue of slavery was about to become very obvious and could no longer be ignored with the Missouri problem that was solved by the eponymously name Compromise.

First Neptune Demi-Return

The first time it was opposite its natal position was in 1858 and 1859. We all know what was happening then: This was the final run-up to the American Civil War, which had been developing for at least forty years since the opening square, but by the time of that demi-return the war was almost here. This Civil War marked America’s entrance into young adulthood after it “solved” a problem that had been with the country since its founding.

First Closing Neptune Square

The closing square of Neptune was in 1898. It is noteworthy how often several important transits happen at the same time — the current decade is a hallmark example of such a phenomena. But this Neptune aspect was also an example; this period saw the Spanish American War and the beginning of the Philippines War while there was a Saturn Pluto opposition. America was now passing out of earlier adulthood which was marked by the Civil War and was becoming a full adult and, wanting to be considered a “successful” country, became an empire. This can be seen as the beginning of the “American Century”.

Neptune Return

The first complete Neptune cycle, which involved Neptune returning to its natal position, was 1938 and 1939; in the same way that that first demi-return was a run-up to the American Civil War, this return was the run up to the Second World War, though most Americans at the time were just happy that the worst of the Great Depression was over. Those who paid attention to what was happening in Europe or the Far East knew something was coming down. By the end of the War, America had achieved the promise that had been set in motion at the closing square: it was truly a world-spanning empire.

Second Opening Neptune Square

The second opening square, which also corresponds to a Saturn-Pluto conjunction and much else was happening in 1980 and 1981. As has been mentioned before, this is the beginning of Neo-liberalism, that branch of extreme capitalism that has dominated the world for the last forty years, and, I believe, is coming to an end with the Neptune demi-return. This closing square represented elderhood for the country, but not in a good way — the country has become older without becoming wiser, like an elderly teenager. This upcoming decade represents hopefully a maturing out of that difficult stage. Unlike a physical human being, countries can have more than one “lifespan”. In this sense the upcoming Pluto return (symbolically, since Pluto can represent death) is the end of that stage most represented by the promise of the first Neptune return.

Since in the US chart, Neptune is close to the Midheaven, it is not surprising that the Neptune returns and demi-returns corresponds closely to Neptune at the MC or opposite the MC, which has been shown before to correspond to a crisis in America. The first such crisis was the Revolutionary War, then the Civil War, then World War II. This next crisis is coming up, and one indicator is the Neptune demi-return that also corresponds to the Pluto return, so one might guess that this return/demi-return of two outer planets will be more impressive/significant than either by themselves. But these returns also correspond to Neptune on the Cardinal axis, either at 0 Aries or 0 Libra so they also represent major changes in the World.

US history in textbooks is often divided into four periods — before the Revolutionary War, between Revolutionary and Civil Wars, after the Civil War but before World War Two, and after World War Two, that is today. So American history is conveniently demarcated by those the events, though all signify ongoing events to which those turning points — Revolutionary, Civil, World War — are significant. And it should be obvious that life before the Revolutionary War, when people were British citizens, was different than life after when they were citizens of a new country. After the Civil War, those who were slaves were now free and could, theoretically at least, vote and travel about. And after World War Two so many things changed that it is often called the Great Acceleration or the start of the Anthropocene — literally a new era in world history. We are soon to reach another one of those turning points. The time after this Neptune demi-return (and many other events which I have talked about before) will be unlike the time before (ie, now). The history of the world, when looked back at from the future, will show that there was a major change that happened in the third decade of the Twenty First century. Neptune is a big, but not the only, part of this, symbolized by the only outer-planet midpoint configuration with Neptune at the apex in 500 years and Neptune crossing the Cardinal axis at Zero Aries, the start of things.

This future could be determined by the same forces that made the last 70 (or 500) years what they have become, or it could be determined in a more democratic way. I believe it was the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume who said that in all societies the people are the ones that truly have the power, but they have been convinced that they don’t, so it does not matter. In authoritarian societies like the former Soviet Union, it was obvious that the media and the government were lying to citizens and so they paid attention to the samizdat (unauthorized newspapers), but in more “democratic” societies people don’t know they are being lied to, so it is almost a harder problem to convince them that they have the power. What we need to see now is that the individuals come to believe that they are the powerful ones and not allow themselves to be controlled by the government and that handmaiden of government, the mass media, all of whom are owned by large corporations that do not have the interests of individual citizens as their prime concern.

In the chart of the US, Neptune is square Mars. This is an extremely problematic aspect for a nation. The country in question is deluded about its use of power, which in the case of a nation is military power. It — the country — tends to believe that all uses of force are only for the benefit of others and military operations are done with the best of intentions: Deception is paramount. When transiting Neptune is conjunct/opposed the natal Neptune it is also squaring the natal Mars, further emphasizing the ingrained Mars Neptune square. This demi-return could be the time of another crusade to save the world. In the current US this crusade comes in two flavors: straight neoconservative, often the favorite of Republicans, and the responsibility to protect (R2P) which is favored by Democrats (also called “the cruise missile left”). In practical application, there is not much difference in outcome, but the R2P crowd (Samantha Powers is a good example) are often cheered in elite publications. That is the “respectable” type of intervention.

netg2020

In the fourth harmonic graphical ephemeris we can see how close the lines for Mars and Neptune are, near the bottom of the image. Neptune first comes close to Neptune-Mars in the summer of 2020 and first exactly contacts both planets in Spring of 2021. Both planets are contacted throughout the remainder of 2021 and 2022 and the last exact opposition to natal Neptune is at the end of 2022. Also visible in the upper half of the graphical ephemeris is the progress of the Pluto Return which starts and ends a little later than the demi-return.

But I don’t want to be all negative. This Mars-Neptune emphasis could be a time for self reflection (in the country) and a realization of how much the National Security State (aka Military Industrial Complex or Deep State), that was born shortly after World War II, has come to influence and even determine what the United States does. The current media mindset with Russia,Russia,Russia (they’re going to hack our 2020 elections also!) shows how much an enemy is needed. And before Russia the enemy was terrorism, and before that drugs, and before that Communism, and before that Germany, and before that Spain, and before that the South (from a Northern perspective), and before that the British.

Neptune indicates the very fluidity of the situation. It is at such a time that the maximum amount of change can be made, or else we can fight among ourselves and let our “Masters” control the situation and its outcome. But one thing is certain: with Neptune so involved, don’t accept anything at first impression, always look beneath the Neptunian surface.

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March 27, 2020

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Prelude to the Pluto Return

Mercury rules mentation — the use of the mind — and communication, and other related topics. But when you consider the chart for an entity, in this case the United States, the meaning of Mercury subtly changes but still has the same core meaning. For a nation, Mercury represents the press, formerly just the printed press, but now also the cable news networks and news carried on the Internet in places such as Facebook and YouTube. As the means of communications have expanded, so have the referents of Mercury. This brief discussion of the meanings of Mercury is a foreword to the discussion of a transit of Mercury coming up in the next two years.

In the natal chart of the US, Mercury is opposite Pluto with an orb of a little over three degrees, not terribly tight. This suggests that the press has been a transformative medium in American history. For example, with the rise of political parties in the late Eighteenth Century, newspapers were also created simultaneously to support the parties being formed and that press did much to support the birth of those political parties. And even today most of the press, while perhaps called “non-partisan”, are closely associated with political parties: the New York Times is associated with the Democratic Party these day, and so are the cable channels CNN and MSNBC, so much so that it is often called MSDNC. Fox Cable news channel is a mouthpiece for the Republican party.

Pluto Opposite Mercury

But coming up will be a transit of Pluto opposite the natal Mercury just before the Pluto return, as can be expected from the geometry of those two planets as just mentioned. This is likely to change our relationship to the press. First, lets looks at a graphical ephemeris showing the whole period of the opposition. We can see that the opposition first becomes close in early 2019, where the red curved line representing transiting Pluto comes close to the dashed horizontal gold line representing natal Mercury. The first exact opposition happens shortly after the Saturn Pluto conjunction of January 2020. The exact opposition continues to happen throughout 2020 and 2021, including a stationary period in the Fall and Winter of 2021 about three quarters into the graphical ephemeris. Finally, in 2022 as the actual Pluto return happens, the opposition is ending but still as close a it was in 2019. So we have Pluto opposite natal Mercury being effective for at least four years, 2019-23, if not extending even further. Perhaps it can be considered to be happening now, with the rise of the term “Fake News”. If so, it will grow, though the standard theory of time suggests that it will be more powerful after the aspect than before.

One can see that as soon as Pluto went away from the opposition of the Sun, which continued on at least through 2017, it began approaching the opposition to Mercury and the shouts of “fake news” began to be heard. Since in the current times the Sun represents the government and especially the President of the United States, this opposition to the Sun represented the animosity toward whomever was President before 2017, resulting in the obvious upset election in 2016. Not only were people angry with the government and its representative, but they were also mistrustful of the press. Jim Acosta from CNN being booed should have been no surprise.

Today in America — and perhaps other places in the world, witness the UK, Spain, Brazil — “truth” is a very partisan issue; depending on your political viewpoint a thing is either black or white (or perhaps in America we should say blue or red), with no shades of grey allowed or even an expression of a wrong color viewpoint. And if you believe white then black believers are a spawn of demons and deserve to be in a low circle of Hell.

But here we are talking about Pluto opposite the US Mercury, so let’s restrict our comments to the United States. This opposition suggests some major changes in store for the press and their connections to the bigger world, and the way we believe in truth in the United States.

According to Democrat partisans it is only because of the brave American press that we know of the nefarious crimes of President Donald J. Trump, such as his attempts at bribery of the new president of the Ukraine, a place that we need to help fight the Russians so that we don’t end of fighting them in America, as one Democrat-sponsored witness in Congress said, later quoted by the Congressman from Hollywood California. If this sounds familiar, it is because George W. Bush said that we had to fight terrorists in Iraq so we did not have to fight them here. To the Republican partisans Trump is a brave man who is trying to stand up to the nefarious doings of the Deep State which thinks him a bad spokesman for the American agenda: he’s not smart enough (or politician enough) to know he should put lipstick on the pig, and the press is not telling this story of the Deep State coup.

Currently there are several extremely important issues that a free press should be reporting on, but we hear mostly nothing about them in the prestige press. This lack of reporting of vital matters that could be of use to Americans in seeing the world represents a big problem for citizens who want to understand the true relationship of their country to the world.

The Washington Post recently published what is called the Afghanistan Papers that reveal that throughout America’s longest war, which is still happening, Americans were lied to with great regularity, that the people running the war did not know what was going on, and that the press pretended that all was going smoothly. This has been compared to the release of the Pentagon Papers in the Seventies that disclosed similar stupidity in regards to the Vietnam War, which at the time held the distinction of being the longest war of the United States. The Pentagon Papers were a phenomena at the time. Newspapers published excepts, and there was much talk about them. They even played a role in the Watergate crisis, whereas the President sent people to burgle the office of the psychiatrist who was treating the person who released the Pentagon Papers. But in today’s world, these newly released documents which expose a similar malfeasance for a recent war don’t get any respect. Perhaps now that we only have an economic draft so that only the children of the poor end of fighting the wars it is of little concern to Democrats to represent families with children killed in the current iteration of what has been called regime changes wars.

The UN commission called the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) released a report in 2018 accusing the Syrian government (a putative enemy of the United States) of using poison gas on its population, even though this did not make sense since the Syrian side was winning and had no reason to do something that would bring international condemnation with no upside for them. In response the US, UK, and France bombed Syria. But in recent weeks there have been several whistle-blowers from inside the OPCW and a document dump from Wikileaks that have shown the the OPCW report was contrary to the opinions of its staff and was oriented to align with US government beliefs and so that the report (and thus the OPCW itself) has no credibility. One would expect this to be a big story, that a UN commission lied and thus several countries committed war crimes as a result, but there is no news of this.

The third major story that is not given coverage is the unlawful imprisonment and torture of a man who is considered by many independent observers as the most important journalist in the world today, whose reports many mainstream newspapers published once upon a time, but who now can not give that journalist the time of day. The extradition trial of Julian Assange has been truly a kangaroo court that is happening in Great Britain, a travesty that has been compared to the Dreyfus case that eventually roiled France at the end of the Nineteenth Century. But if the press reports about Assange at all, it is to deposit calumny on him. Many Democrats consider him — in cooperation with Vladimir Putin — the reason Hillary Clinton lost the election in 2016.

Around the world at the time we are seeing a huge number of protests against the government of each country. When looked at from above, all these protests are against the neoliberalism that has dominated the world for the last forty years. But some protests get much more coverage in the American press than others. The coverage of the Hong Kong protests against an official US opponent, even though they have been quite devoid of deaths and injuries, has been given very great media coverage, as opposed to the limited converge of the Yellow Vest movement against the government of a US ally, even though many have lost limbs or eyes from the activities of the French police, who apparently are more violent than the Hong Kong police.

Jupiter-Pluto Conjunction

The first Jupiter Pluto conjunction on April 4, 2020 is interesting because it is right opposite the natal Mercury, so this conjunction will have something to do with the media. Pluto on this date is opposite natal Mercury with an orb of less than one degree. The transiting Sun is opposite the natal Saturn, and to further accentuate Saturn, transiting Saturn is trine the US MC, as is transiting Venus (and thus transiting Venus and Saturn, both at the beginning of air signs, are trine), and thus the transiting midpoint of Venus and Saturn is on the Midheaven. Venus and Saturn together talk about a limitation of justice, a concept that can be applied to many issues effecting the world today. One of the meanings Ebertin gives for this midpoint is “the urge to seek solitude” which I’m sure we can all relate to.

What I have called the mainstream media in the United States, for example the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, is being increasing paid attention to only by older readers and watchers, while younger people, those who grew up more in what can be called The Internet Age, get more of their news online. This has caused a spilt in the Democratic Party which I call the split between the MSNBC Democrats — who get there news from the cable TV channel MSNBC — and the Jimmy Dore Democrats — who get their news from the YouTube channel The Jimmy Dore Show. This dynamic can also be seen in the current Democratic primaries across the country, playing out in the dichotomy of the two remaining candidates. As the population ages and people born before 1960 continue to die, one can expect more and more news to be gotten online, which causes much worry among those producing legacy media. But they also have themselves to blame: if they better reported the truth instead of what their owners want, there would be more trust of them among younger people.

A good source showing that media criticism is nothing new is the book Manufacturing Consent by Edward Herman (the main author, which is why his name came first on the title page) and his long time collaborator Noam Chomsky, published in 1988. There is also a YouTube video. After the book was published, Herman (who was an economics professor at Wharton) edited a magazine called Lies of Our Times, specializing in debunking the lies of the New York Times, which is indeed a full time job.

And of course before that were truth telling journalists such as I. F. Stone (who reported about what was really happening in Korea or Vietnam and whose Weekly newsletter was a must-read for Vietnam War protestors), A. J. Liebling (who famously said the press is free only for those who own one), Wilfred Burchett who was the first reporter at Hiroshima after the bomb was dropped, despite an embargo of Japan by the United States, and George Seldes, a critic of the press in the Thirties and Forties (even though he died at 104 in 1995) who said “The most sacred cow of the press is the press itself”.

So among the great changes that we will see in the upcoming decade will be changes in the media landscape of America and citizens’ relationship to it. As the story “The Boy Who Cried Wolf’ reminds us, after you fail to tell the truth for a long time you will be disbelieved even if what you say is now true.

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February 28, 2020

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As Fast as Molasses in January

Molasses is a product derived from sugar cane and few are familiar with it anymore, though it is often used to make brown sugar and rum. It can be a sweetening agent and it is more nutritious than for example honey. But an interesting historical event happened one January in Boston where molasses took center stage.

I’ve previously written about all the things that happened in 1919 but here is one that I did not mention, and it is not signified by what I said was the major astrological configuration of that year: Saturn opposite Uranus, the staid versus the new. But perhaps if you squint you eyes and try real hard you can see this case as the structure of the vat against the changeable molasses.

On the afternoon of January 15, 1919, at 12:40, a huge vat — 50 feet tall and 250 feet around — of molasses gave way, flooding the city of Boston, or at least the surrounding blocks on Commercial Street, with molasses. The tank was owned by Purity Distilling Company, a subsidiary of U. S. Industrial Alcohol which used the molasses stored in the vat for war purposes. That day was relatively warm for January in Boston: the temperature got to 45. The vat was on Boston’s North Beach between what is now a skating rink and a park. The location of the vat is now a baseball diamond. The 2,300,000 gallons of molasses, weighting 13,000 tons, spread in all directions in a 30 foot wave. Tenements in the region had their basements filled with molasses, and it was difficult to clean. Molasses was tracked around Boston over the next few weeks as cleanup preceded. Fresh water from fire hydrants proved unable to dilute the sticky substance, so finally salt water from the bay was used, resulting in much molasses being dumped into Boston’s harbor. The situation would have been less serious if it had happened in July. But in the colder temperatures of January, the molasses was slow and hard enough that some people and animals were trapped in it, and it was difficult to rescue some since the molasses, which had previously been warmed, was initially as fast moving as it would have been in summer months. An estimated 21 people died as a result of the molasses flood; there were 150 injuries and 14 buildings were destroyed, including a two story brick firehouse that was almost dumped into the Boston Harbor.

Later scientists built scale models of the vat to determine what actually happened. Using these measurements, they were able to estimate the speed of the molasses at 35 mph. So now we know the speed of molasses in January!

mollases

It is fortunate that we have a time for this incident, so that the angles — the MC and the Ascendant — are somewhat accurate. And the MC-IC axis definitely tells a story. As we can see from the chart for this incident, not an especially big one like the start of a major war, but something definite, that Venus, the planets of sweet substances, was at the Midheaven, and opposite Neptune at the IC, a planet suggesting a liquid or lack of clarity or uncertainty at the foundation of the subject. And if you are familiar with the planetary patterns of famous astrologer Marc Edmund Jones (who also gave us Sabian Symbols) this chart is an obvious see-saw, suggesting the theme of opposition and conflict. There is also the Saturn opposite Uranus that was talked about previously and also Mars sesquiquadrate Pluto, suggesting transformation through motion (even if only at 35 mph), and the North Beach was certainly transformed, and an opposition of Mercury and Pluto suggesting the spectators that for several weeks gathered on the North Beach to marvel at the changes in that part of the city. There is even a loose conjunction of Mars and Uranus in the tenth house, that almost stereotyped astrological signature of an accident.

And yes, it was later decided that the foundation of the vat holding the molasses was not especially sturdy. Proper trace minerals that would have hardened the steel used for the vat were not added, the sturdiness of the vat was never tested with for example water before it was filled, and this time the vat held more molasses than was usually the case. Some warm molasses was added shortly before the accident.

The molasses, imported from the Caribbean, was used to make alcohol for the First World War, and it had been a profitable business for U. S Industrial Alcohol. But then this accident happened two months after the war ended. This incident was a major source of litigation over the next years– one of the biggest set of legal cases in the history of Massachusetts, as families of people who were trapped or of animals that were lost sued USIA. There were 119 claimants involved and 25,00 pages of testimony were produced from all the trials over a three year period. U. S. Industrial Alcohol was the company that had owned the vat of molasses so important to the war that had just finished. Since there was a Red Scare happening at the time with much accusations of anarchism and communists under the bed (the crime that Sacco and Vanzetti were accused of happened 15 months later in Braintree, Massachusetts, a dozen miles south), USIA initially accused saboteurs of destroying the vat. But in the end USIA had to pay out $600,000 for the lack of technical supervision in construction of the vat.

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January 24, 2020

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And Just in Time For The Election

The dominant story of 2020 involves the three planets Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto. Each pair of these planets has a conjunction during the year, and there is much expectation of what those conjunctions will bring. The first is the Saturn-Pluto conjunction on January 12. Then the first of three Jupiter-Pluto conjunctions takes place on April 4. Finally the Jupiter Saturn conjunction occurs on the solstice of December 21, 2020.

Saturn Pluto Conjunction

Jupiter Pluto Conjunction

Jupiter Saturn Conjunction

But I want to point out a combination of the three planets with Mars added in just to give the whole thing some spice. That is, as illustrated in the chart below, on or about October 16, 2010, less that three week before the Presidential election in the United States.

New Moon Before Election

Does this chart portend anything interesting? It’s hard to pick the best date here, but I chose this one because there is also a new moon, which indicates new beginnings. In this chart we have Jupiter conjunct Pluto conjunct Saturn within a total spread of about six degrees. Pluto is at the midpoint of Jupiter and Saturn. Mars is square Pluto and most especially Jupiter. The New Moon is opposite Mars and square Saturn and closely square Pluto and thus there is a T-Square with that triple conjunction of those three planets that are the stars of 2020 at the apex. Completing the picture we have Venus opposite Neptune (romantic love/deceptions in justice) and Uranus opposite Mercury (changes in the way of thinking). So the two other outer planets, Uranus and Neptune, are aspecting two personal planets, Mercury and Venus. On that day every planet is making an aspect.

oct162020us

Furthermore, looking at the US chart, the triple conjunction is opposite the US Mercury, representing the press of the nation, and the New Moon is squaring Mercury and sesquiquadrate Uranus, completing the natal Mercury semisquare Uranus, which represents a basic theme of the United States, freedom. I am sure that basic issues about the nature of America will come up at this time. And this year will bring up many issues regarding the press, which will be discussed in another blog post soon.

Last Quarter Moon

Another interesting chart is for the last quarter moon just before this new moon. In this one retrograde Mars is exactly square Pluto, the Moon is opposite Jupiter and thus completing a T-square with the Sun at the apex, Neptune is sextile Jupiter and trine the Moon thus forming half a kite formation that shares a base opposition with the T-square.

If we compare this with the earlier chart Mars is even tighter in a square to Pluto and the Moon is opposite Jupiter and thus the Sun is square Jupiter, forming a T square. Pluto is closely at the midpoint of Jupiter and Saturn chart on October 9, the last quarter moon before the New Moon on October 16. In this chart the square of Mars and Pluto is almost exact.

tg2020

These various permutations of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto are obvious in the graphical ephemeris for the period in question. Starting in August Mars (red line) crosses in order Jupiter (blue line), Pluto (dark red line), and then Saturn (light blue line), turns retrograde and the again crosses Saturn, Pluto and Jupiter before turning direct and crossing those three planets — Pluto, Saturn, Jupiter — again at the beginning of 2021; Mars squares Jupiter for the last time when Jupiter is square Uranus in January. At the date in question — center line of the graphical ephemeris — as you can see Mars is exactly square Pluto.

So I see October as the month when Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto are set up for action by Mars crisscrossing those planets in late summer and early fall of 2020, just in time for the US election that many people are looking forward to with hope or trepidation or both.

Election Day

And for future reference, here is the chart for election day. There is still the conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto opposite the US Mercury. There are four retrograde planets: Neptune, Uranus, Mars, and Mercury. Having a national election when Mercury is retrograde (stationary turning direct) suggests that the early elections reports shouldn’t be trusted. Mars — the least often retrograde planet — retrograde as well as opposite the natal Saturn suggests that the outcome will be delayed or that questions will arise (quelle surprise!!). And of course that triple conjunction that has been featured above suggests problems in communication. An election to remember!

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June 28, 2019

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Pluto Return

Since America has a unique Pluto return coming up in two years I thought it would be useful to look at the previous hard aspects — multiples of 45 degrees — of Pluto to its natal position over the course of US history. As we go through these seven periods, one notices that events do not necessarily happen on the exact date of the return, but rather the hard aspect signals a shift in the future direction of the country that can be appreciated by looking backwards. Sometimes these important changes had already started before the exact Pluto aspect, but the changes set in motion will be amplified in the years following the exact aspect. And these shifts, as can be suggested by the involvement of Pluto, can be seen as a “transformation” in America. Note that in the following Pluto makes either three or five exact aspects over the course of a year and I have chosen for illustration the one in the middle, with Pluto retrograde if there are only three. The first aspect discussed is the opening semisquare with its natal position.

Opening Semisquare

This period saw the first wave of Americans who had been born after the Revolutionary War come to maturity. It also saw three important changes which all bear the name “Revolution” and which were to change the face of the new country of the United States. Since these were long lasting trends, it is impossible to give exact dates for them, even though a couple do occur. These “revolutions” continued until the Civil War.

The Transportation Revolution was to change the way people moved about the country, most important to farmers — and most people were farmers then — who needed to get their crops to market in a timely manner. The transportation revolution saw roads built to allow horse drawn vehicles to move swiftly to new regions, canals built, the most famous one being the Erie Canal in New York State, and most importantly the development of the steamboat which allowed quick transportation in both directions along that major waterway in the center of the country, the Mississippi River. One landmark event in this transportation revolution was the first commercial steamboat trip at about 1pm 8-17-1807 by Robert Fulton, who had been developing the steamboat in previous years. The trip went along the Hudson River from New York City to Albany and back.

There was also the building of roads, which was important if the people who lived in the West (that is to say west of the Alleghenies) were able to get their products to market and to get products from the East Coast so they did not have to be totally self sufficient. The most famous of there roads was initially called the National Road and later the Cumberland Road (and it finally became Highway 40 — the Man Street of America that ran from Atlantic City, New Jersey to San Francisco, California). The National Road was created by an Act of Congress in 1806 but it took a few years before construction actually started.

The Communication Revolution changed the way people thought about daily happenings. There were produced an increasing number of newspapers in the early years of the Nineteenth Century. Steam powered presses were initially developed in England; those presses allowed many more copies of a newspaper to be printed in a given period of time, and so many more people could read that newspaper. Photography was developed in a few years after the date shown, and that changed the way people saw their world. Telegraphy was developed in a couple of decades, allowing near-instantaneous communication, a development as far reaching as the Internet is in the present day.

Perhaps most far-reaching was the Market Revolution, which turned the United States into a full-blown capitalist country, and to use historian Richard Hofstadter phrase, changed the country from a democracy of fraternity into a democracy of cupidity. Laissez-faire capitalism was a relatively recent phenomena at that time, since Adam Smith’s groundbreaking book The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776.

While the Industrial Revolution first started under the Uranus-Pluto conjunction in the early Eighteenth Century, it was jealously guarded by England. The Industrial Revolution first came to America in 1790s in Rhode Island with pirated technology. The technology had been brought to America by Samuel Slater, who was called by President Andrew Jackson the father of the American Industrial Revolution. His design was copied and spread in the following years as America (and the world) joined the Industrial Revolution.

Another, totally unrelated change to America at this time, was the ending of the Atlantic slave trade. In the years following the Revolutionary War Northern States had abolished slavery. Then in 1808 slaves could no longer be imported. But slavery was still a thriving business in the South, and as the nation expanded, it was expected that many of the new states would allow slavery, so the question became where would the slaves come from. Thus in the Southern states a going business arose of breeding slaves to produce more that could be sold for a profit. For more details of this horrific practice see The American Slave Coast by Ned and Constance Sublette.

Opening Square

The Mexican-American War took place in 1846-48, and expanded the continental United States to essentially the size it is today. This was a big increase in the size of the country. Then gold was discovered in California (before the war was over and California was part of the United States) on January 24, 1848 which soon started a huge rush of gold-seekers into California. Oregon Territory was also added, after settling a dispute with Great Britain that had also claimed the Pacific Northwest, at roughly the same time. Thus the next few years after 1849 would see a major expansion of the United States, after Texas, California, and the Pacific Northwest were brought in. This expansion would bring the issue of slavery to the fore, since questions arose whether the new states would be slave or free, and the attempts to deal with that would lead to the Civil War in another dozen years and the birth of a new political party.

Opening Sesquiquadrate

This was a period a long enough after the Civil War that many of America’s leaders were thinking of expanding the country beyond its bounds, to have colonies in foreign lands just like many European countries. A war of independence broke out in Cuba in 1895 (the third in the thirty years) and soon America got involved fighting Spain over its colony in Cuba, and as a result of the easy victory in that conflict, American found itself with foreign colonies: Guam, Philippines, and of course Cuba. The decision was made that America was to be an empire, an important change in the consciousness of America.

Alfred Thayer Mahan published his very influential book The Influence of Sea Power Upon History: 1660-1783 in 1890. People like Henry Cabot Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt immediately got the idea of expanding America’s influence to have overseas colonies, like the European powers did, and they saw with the Cuban revolt against their Spanish masters a change to get involved in the Great Game. The ramification of this decision would bedevil America up unto the present day.

An important Supreme Court decision happened in 1896 which influenced race relations until another decision in 1954. The was the case of Plessy v Ferguson which was an argument against segregated railroad cars. The result was that “Separate but Equal” became the standard for the land, enforcing the use of “whites only” facilities. The ruling of Brown v Board of Education (of Topeka) is widely seen as the first blow against that 1896 decision.

In 1890 the Census Bureau declared that the frontier was closed. The Native Americans had been subdued and most of the land settled. In 1893 a historian from Wisconsin named Frederik Jackson Turner proposed his “Frontier Thesis” which stated that the expansion of the frontier made American democracy and shaped American character; this thesis was later expanded to a book, and it altered the way historians and thus Americans in general looked at the past.

Pluto Opposition

This Pluto opposition to its natal position occurred during the New Deal which was the biggest change in the country since the Civil War. This New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt was a response to the Great Depression which was the largest financial crisis the country had yet seen. The Great Depression, which began in October of 1929, was not amenable to standard measures. After Roosevelt took office in 1933, he instituted measures suggested by various third parties, such as socialists. Laws passed under his administration gave the US Social Security and made it much easier for Unions to do their job. By 1937 the Depression had been ameliorated so much that FDR held back on some limits, which resulted in a resurgence of the depression; this depression was not finally ended until the increased defense spending needed for World War II. This “military Keynesianism” has never stopped.

The results of this period were to influence America through the administration of Richard Nixon, who was called the last New Deal President by Noam Chomsky. This was more than 35 years after that Pluto opposition, which indicates how strong the effects of that opposition were. They lasted until the closing square in 1983, as explained below.

Closing Sesquiquadrate

Interestingly, the first of the three exact aspects occurred on October 10, 1963, about six weeks before President John Kennedy was killed. This Pluto sesquiquadrate occurred just as the Uranus-Pluto conjunction was forming. The Pluto-Pluto aspects indicates the changes that were coming in this decade, which would alter the way the country saw itself. Notice also the square between Pluto and the Ascendant: America was trying to force its will on a Southeast Asia country, and the results were not pretty. The Vietnam War would continue for the next ten years.

Closing Square

This aspect is near the beginning of the Reagan Revolution, the start of the Age of Reagan that we are still in. There was also a Saturn-Pluto conjunction at the same time, the last one before the conjunction at the beginning of 2020. There were so many changes that started in this period it is difficult to list them all. This was the start of neoliberalsim which has been discussed extensively in this blog. This was the closing square between transiting Pluto and natal Pluto, and the country (and the world) were changed massively by the actions of Reagan and his supporters, which turned out to be most everyone. If one does not take account of neoliberalism in the years since this square, ones analysis will be as vacant as an analysis of a fish which does not recognize that it lives in water.

Closing Semisquare

On August 23, 2001 Pluto went retrograde within ten minutes of conjunct the Ascendant and also a closing semisquare to its natal position. This was shortly after the last exact pass. Not only did this period see the selection of George W. Bush as President by the Supreme Court of the United States, thus avoiding a recount (there was an exact pass on November 29, 2000) but also the beginning of the War of Terror. At the same time there was a Saturn-Pluto opposition, the middle of the cycle that started under the previous hard Pluto aspect mentioned above. The War on Terror would be one of the dominant motifs of the next 20 years, not only in America, but in the rest of the world as well. Many nations used America’s War on Terror as an excuse to also crack down on “terrorism”.

You will notice that the first half of the Pluto Cycle is from 1776 to 1937, a period of 160 years, and the second half will end in 2022, a period of 85 years, or almost half of the first half period. This is because Pluto has a very eccentric orbit and moves faster when it is close to the Sun. Pluto was inside the orbit of Neptune from 1979 to 1999 and thus was traveling the fastest at that time.

Pluto Return

This actual return occurs one week after the 246th Fourth of July, the second of three exact conjunctions, all in 2022. There is also a stationary direct Pluto which is within half a degree of its natal position during the fall of 2023. From looking at the previous aspects, we can guess several things about this upcoming Pluto Return.

The effects of this Pluto Return — a conjunction to its natal position — will start before the exact conjunction, but we will not be able to see the indicators until after the exact return has happened, with the benefit of hindsight. This return will be a transformative event for the United States, changing the country in ways that people can not see now, but afterwards everyone will say “it was so obvious, you could certainly see it coming”. The effects of the return will extend well after the conjunction, perhaps many decades. And since I believe that the conjunction is the mother of all aspects, this transformation will be greater than those we have seen in the various aspects described above.

Uranian sidebar: For those who use the eight hypothetical planets of Uranian astrology we see an important conjunction coming up. As illustrated in the graphical ephemeris below, at the same time that the Pluto Return is happening — 2022 and 2023 — we also have the hypothetical planet Kronos conjuncting the Sun of the United States. In the illustration below, Kronos — whose symbol is a cross with a hat on top — moves very slowly over the golden dashed horizontal line representing the natal US Sun. The standard meaning of this conjunction is a president or leader, someone with high authority. The planet by itself represents everything above normal, high up, excellent. Perhaps this conjunction will mean that America will once again be a force for good in the world, a massive transformation (Pluto return) from what it is now.

Kronos Conjunct Sun

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May 31, 2019

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Political Parties and American Exceptionalism

These two concepts — political parties and American exceptionalism — came into popular consciousness at about the same time, shortly after the birth of the United States and the beginning of the French Revolution. These important changes to the newly born United States are signified by a powerful transit of an outer planet over the Moon that has not been repeated. The Moon represents the people of a country, but it also signifies something more intangible — the basic concepts/consciousness of the people.

It is well known that political parties were not allowed for in the Constitution. When that was being written in the latter part of the Eighteenth Century it was not thought that factions were needed, and in fact George Washington was assigned as the leader of the new country. But that changed, and now we have basically two political parties: the Republican party, established in 1854 out of several minor and dying parties that existed at the time, was considered the “anti-slavery” party at the time of its creation. The other big party now is the Democratic Party, considered the world’s longest lasting political party, and thought to be the “pro-slavery” party before the Civil War. Democrats like to say they were founded by both Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, but that myth is only half true. When Andrew Jackson first ran for President — in the 1824 election — he said he was dedicated to the Democratic party of Thomas Jefferson, but the party formed around him was certainly different than the party of Jefferson. And in fact this Democratic Party, the one we now know, was essentially created by the Little Magician Martin Van Buren, who was Jackson’s Vice President in his second term and then President in his own right for four years after that. Van Buren never got a second term, partially because of a financial crisis called the Panic of 1837, which was caused by, inter alia, Jackson’s war with the second Bank of the United States, a concept dreamed up by George Washington’s surrogate son Alexander Hamilton. Martin Van Buren, as his name suggests, was of Dutch heritage, and was the first President not to have an English background. He was also the first president born in the United States and not a colony of Britain.

Even though political parties were not in the original plan, there was a division early on over the Constitution. These two factions were called the Federalists – those who supported the Constitution, which was originally suppose to be an update of the Article of Confederation — and the Anti-Federalists, who were against the Constitution as proposed and wanted more power to the states, which was what the Articles of Confederation — the law of the country before the Constitution was written — provided. The group that wrote the Constitution were originally chartered just to revise the Articles of Confederation, which could only be changed by unanimous vote, but instead decided to create a whole new document, which of course did not achieve unanimity.

The Federalists considered themselves the elite of the country, and after the citizens of the country voted for a Federalist candidate, it was felt by the elite that democracy was over. They felt that only special people had qualification that made them suitable to be in government. To use a current term, the Federalists considered those citizens who were not in the elite classes to be deplorables.

But during the last decade of the Eighteenth Century, and especially during the second term of George Washington, several “political clubs” were formed, often under the instigation of Washington’s Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson. These organizations were called by such names as the Republican Society, the Democratic Society, etc. The Federalists, which was the name given to the political faction which had George Washington as its representative, did not like these clubs. Jefferson had seen political clubs in Revolutionary France when he was an ambassador there, and thought they would be a good idea in his native country. He saw that the elite ignored the wishes of the common folk and so they needed something to represent them. Jefferson was aware of the elitist tendencies of the people in power — too early to call them a party — and, along with James Madison, urged the non-elite to take powers into their hands. The best known of the political clubs in France was called the Jacobins. These political clubs caused newspapers to form supporting those clubs. Republican newspapers grew in this period and those newspapers served a a push back to the Federalists.

This ferment and dissatisfaction with the way things were, the control of the government by only one faction of the populace, led to the rise of political parties, and the first such party was the Democratic-Republician Party of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. This party was to win its first election in the hotly contested election of 1800.

pl_mo1794

This upheaval among the population of the United States, which led to such a fundamental change, is shown astrologically by the very slow transit of Pluto across the Moon of the United States. Here is a chart for the beginning of those political clubs in 1794. Note that for this chart Pluto is conjunct the natal Moon with an orb of only two degrees, while at the same time Uranus is opposite the Moon with about the same orb and thus we also have Uranus opposite Pluto. This Uranus Pluto opposition was also prevalent in the French Revolution which was taking place at the same time across the Atlantic. In fact, the day Louis XVI was executed (January 21, 1793) the opposition was exact within one minute. As was seen during the decade of the Sixties, Uranus-Pluto aspects can be powerful. This opposition was one cycle before the opposition in the first decade of the Twentieth Century and a cycle and a half before the conjunction of those two planets in Virgo in the Sixties.

pl_motg

By looking at the graphical ephemeris for a several year period we can see that the Uranus Pluto opposition lasted for about six years — 1789-1795 — and the Pluto conjunct the US Moon from about 1793 to 1799, that is to say most of last decade of the Eighteenth Century.

When American was a new country, it really did not have an unifying philosophy, something that could bring the wealthy who essentially wrote the Constitution, and the common folk who populated the country, together. Thus the concept of American Exceptionalism, the belief that America was a unique country designed to lead the world in a burst of democracy, arose. It was thought by French revolutionaries, English dissents, and many Americans that the American Revolution was followed by the French and then certainly other nations would follow those two. Thus there sprang the belief that America was the forerunner and the French were next, and soon the revolution would sweep the world. America was exceptional, and a model for the entire world, it was thought at the time.

One can say that American Exceptionalism began in Europe. The revolutionaries of France admired the youth and vigor of the American experience. One writer, Elisabeth d’Houdetot, wrote to Jefferson in 1790 admiring the Americans for not having an old regime to destroy, as was the case in France. Granted, the French were unaware of the daily savagery of the use of slaves, and the ill-treatment (that is genocide) of the native population. This certainly aided the French (and also British dissenters) in picturing America as grand and successful experiment.

American Exceptionalism served as “national religion” that bound together the citizens of this new land when nothing else would. The citizen were proud that America was a shining light in the world and that it would lead other nations to a revolution. Thus the populace of the Eighteenth Century America were unified – they had a common purpose. All the countries of Europe had a common heritage, and while the Federalists were taken by the British, from whom they rebelled, this was not good enough for the deplorables. So because of the French Revolution, Americans were united in believing that they lived in an exceptional country.

500 Year Party

An astrological study of history and politics

Category Archives: United States

Midterms and Minor Aspects

The First Neptune War

The Sixth Crisis

DIY Presidential Election

Neptune Über Alles

Prelude to the Pluto Return

As Fast as Molasses in January

And Just in Time For The Election

Pluto Return

Political Parties and American Exceptionalism