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April 26, 2019

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These Four Years

Over the last four years of the second decade of the Twenty First Century there have been a couple of significant transits to the United States chart and an important world transit — one that affects everyone. All these transits involve Uranus and Neptune. The transits can most easily be seen in the first harmonic chart for the United States at a given moment, but to examine the activities of these transits over the entire period we must examine the twenty-fourth harmonic. How do we come to the twenty-fourth harmonic?

The twenty-fourth harmonic represents all aspects that are multiples of fifteen degrees, such as 45 (3×15) and 120 (8×15). These “minor’ aspects have been used by German astrologers for years. One of them, Edith Wangeman, used all aspects that are multiple of 7.5 degrees to the Ascendant to determine various features of the subjects face. So “minor” aspects have long been used in astrology. In this case we have on the surface a square (harmonic 4) to the Ascendant from Neptune, a sesquiquadrate (harmonic 8) from Uranus to the Ascendant, and a trine (harmonic 3) from Neptune to the Sun. The lowest common denominator of those harmonic is 24 (3×8).

Uranus and Neptune Active in US Chart

Here is a example chart from September 24, 2017 when the square from Neptune to the Ascendant, the sesquiquadrate from Uranus to the Ascendant, and the trine from Neptune to the Sun were all within orb. But since the planets move those three aspects were in and out of orb over the period stating from summer of 2016, as you can see from the graphical ephemeris. The first approach of Neptune square the Ascendant happened at the black arrow. Notice that both Neptune and Uranus hit the Ascendant, but Neptune hits first. The last approach of both Uranus and Neptune to the Sun is indicated by the green arrow. Notice how both the Uranus transit line (blue) and the Neptune line (violet) are close together during the whole period. Black arrow points to Neptune line, red arrow points to Uranus line.

2015-2020

Neptune involved with both the Ascendant and the Sun has been displayed over the last two plus years in the faux scandal known as Russiagate. A prominent Neptune also appeared in several Capricorn Ingress charts set in Washington, DC that project the year ahead. Some people are comparing this to the ruse that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) before the second Gulf War (eg. Matt Taibbi). But disinformation campaigns have always been used when America has wanted to go to war against someone who is not overtly aggressive (which is usually the case), witness the Tonkin Gulf activities that got American full bore into Vietnam and the current attempt at regime change in Venezuela. Russiagate is of a different order of magnitude, something that doesn’t happen often. The best discussion of this type of event is in the book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay published in 1841. These delusions that sweep a country (like a Neptunian fog) occurred in for example the Dutch Tulip Mania, the South Sea Bubble, and the Salem Witch trials. Also similar is what is called the Great Disappointment which occurred in America at about the same time as Mackay was publishing his book. The followers of preacher William Miller, called Millerites, expected Christ to return to earth on October 22, 1844. When somehow that did not happen, the date was advanced, but the return still did not occur. After that many followers of Miller gave up even though more excuses were offered. This incident also reminds me of the book [Invasion of] the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney first published in 1955 and obviously influenced by the McCarthyism that had swept the United States in the years before. The book has also been made into two movies. The protagonist of the book discovers a town where all the citizens have been replaced by “pod people” that resemble the former citizens but hold strange beliefs. Claiming that the President of the United States is a traitor and taking instructions from a foreign country with which we are at war is not something that has been been done before in American history, at least not by people considered reliable. It is amazing that various Democrats echoed claims similar to that of the John Birch Society that President Eisenhower was a Communist agent, and they are not in the least bit embarrassed by that.

Russiagate says essentially that 1) Russia interfered in the American election of 2016 to get its favored candidate — Donald J. Trump — elected president of the United States, and 2) that Trump and his associates “colluded” ( a non-legal term) with the Russian government to take advantage of their aid. After the Mueller Report makes clear that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians the argument still goes that the Russian government sought to put Trump in the White House and is interfering with elections around the world in the past and future. There is no evidence of this, and in fact the primary evidence — a server or servers of the DNC that contained emails — has not been examined by the FBI, even after three years. This attack by the Russians has been called another Pearl Harbor, 9/11, or Kristallnacht. And it appears the Mueller Report accepted this “attack” as a given, so the news media is running with it, not realizing that the show is over and that most citizens have moved on, thus displaying once again how cut off the elite are from the concerns of ordinary people. That kind of ignorance can leads to serious consequences, as Louis XVI found out with the French Revolution.

Russiagate is a similar delusion, but the ramification are stronger. When boiled down, one can see that the intelligence communities, the Democratic Party, and the news media attempted to prevent a President from being elected, and when that failed attempted to prevent him from governing. He was prevented from having his own foreign policy (cries of treason certainly effected the notoriously thin-skinned Trump). The ramifications are chilling. What if some other President is elected, for example Bernie Sanders, who also displeases the intelligence and defense communities. I hope he watches his back.

An interesting question, which will be fodder for many books and PhD theses in the future, is why did this happen. The transits of Neptune did not cause this, but only symbolized what happened. Previous relevant examples are displayed in the collection of essays called The God That Failed about ex-Communists disillusionment with Communism, and also in the Millerite saga mentioned above. After all of the media told voters that Clinton was a shoo-in to win the election and that Trump was the new Hitler, there had to be some explanation for Trump winning. And since Clinton was such a desirable candidate, a great campaigner, and the previous eight years brought roses and ponies to all of the electorate, it could only mean that some external force put their thumb on the election scales. And since Clinton had previously said that Trump was Putin’s puppet and it was decided (see the book Shattered by Jonathan Allan and Amie Parnes) to blame the lost on the Russians, it was a slam dunk to force that outcome. Essentially we see that a political party used a coverup story for the fact that their candidate lost to a reality tv show host and that they rigged their primary to prevent a competitor to the anointed one from winning. Neither items are much discussed anymore with everyone fixated on the Russians. The result, represented by Neptune which can be illusions or delusion, is what has been called Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) wherein normally intelligent people lose all critical faculties. There was always a bit of religious mania/obsession (Neptune) in the support of Russiagate, witness the Mueller prayer candles and other tchotchkes. Everyone was waiting for the Mueller report which would turn all things right, just like the Millerites thought.

Another pernicious result of Russiagate, though it had been aborning for years, is an increase in Russophobia wherein things are said about the Russian people (for example, that they are almost genetically driven to co-opt or penetrate — James Clapper) that if said about any other group would produce instant rebuke. Since much that needs to be managed in the world involves cooperation with the second biggest nuclear power, this Russophobia puts brakes on any attempts to deal with many situations confronting society, such as terrorism and nuclear proliferation.

Trump promised to “drain the swamp” while campaigning, something that resonated to many, but instead he invited the swamp in, with neocons like John Bolton, Mike Pompeo , and convicted liar Elliott Abrams running things. As during the Eisenhower administration many decades ago, it seems like the Secretary of State is calling the shots as far as foreign policy is concerned. Would he have hired these rogues without the pressure from Russiagate? One can only speculate.

And what was most disappointing is that liberals in the Democratic Party, who are “supposed” to be concerned about such affronts from the intelligence community, were the strongest backers of Russiagate. One remembers a time when the CIA was thought as a band of liars — as ex-CIA director Mike Pompeo recently admitted — and the FBI was known for setting up Muslims as terrorists. And now it appears to many — but not those hard-core Democratic loyalists — that they were trying to bring down an elected President. That does not set a good precedence for future Presidents.

One feature is the hardcore dedication of major news media — New York Time, Washington Post, CNN, MSDNC — to Russiagate, so much so they would report false stories if it helped the narrative. After this it seems obvious that the major media is compromised by the intelligence services. The legacy media was suffering from layoffs and lack of readers/viewers until Donald Trump energized their reader/viewership; one wonders what the result will be if they lose their golden goose. One guess is that the media will continue with some variant of Russiagate as long as they can. They will probably find something in the Mueller Report that they can run with.

One repercussion is that the news media won’t be believed after this, especially when they report something about President Tump. They have squandered their credibility, just like in the tale “The boy who cried wolf”. In fact so many in the media were such strong supporters of the Russiagate narrative that many people will not trust any of those sources ever again about anything. Perhaps the media bosses don’t care, as long as their readers will believe what they print. And after Trump complained about “fake news” and was proven so fully right, one wonders if the media will survive among those who still practice independent thought.

That mostly Democrats pushed Russiagate is a big win for Trump in the next election. I don’t remember when a political party gave such a big boost to the opposition party’s presidential candidate. After they derided his complaints about a witch hunt and his statements that he did not collude with the Russians and he was rebuffed and laughed at by the opposition party and the media, Trump has now been proven correct, and to say the media now has egg on its collective face is a understatement. But will anyone apologize, or just continue to try and gin up some controversy? One consequence is the demonstration that liberals can be just as malleable by deception as conservatives. Perhaps partisan politics overrules the truth.

First Pluto Return

As I have mentioned before this scandal will not die down, but the ramifications of it will be the cause of our Pluto Return. Since there has never been a Pluto return for a country before, we do not know what to expect. But it seems like a Saturn return — which indicates a new maturity — but more Plutonian, which suggests transformation of the entity in question, the United States and its government. In fact, the Pluto Return is already starting, we just don’t notice it yet without the benefit of hindsight. Here is a chart of the first of three Pluto returns, where transiting Pluto returns to its natal position. There is also a close passage of transiting Pluto to its natal position without being exact at the end of 2023.

But Uranus is also making aspects to Ascendant and Sun, though in this case the aspect to the Sun is not commonly recognized, an aspect of 75 degrees (eg., 28 Aries to 13 Cancer). We can also see the Uranian influence though this has been drowned out by the hubbub about Russiagate.

Uranus Conjunct Ascendant

Uranus aspecting to the US Ascendant have long indicated progressive trends. Uranus transited the US Ascendant at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, and this period is called the Progressive Era because of Progressive politicians like Theodore Roosevelt, Progressive architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, Progressive composers like Aaron Copland (who was born at this time) and Progressive historians like Charles Beard, changed the way America operated after the Gilded Age of the latter Nineteenth Century. When Uranus next transited the US Ascendant in 1984, we saw such things as the Nuclear Freeze movement, Harold Washington as mayor of Chicago (1983-87), Jesse Jackson running for President (1984, 1988), and the agreement by Soviet Premier Gorbachev and American President Ronald Reagan banning a type of nuclear weapon in the INF treaty (signed December 8, 1987).

Uranus conjunct Ascendant

So here we have another hard aspect of Uranus to the US Ascendant, not as strong as a conjunction but nevertheless things are already changing in a more “progressive” direction. Some examples on the political front include the election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a representative from New York and Ilhan Omar from Minnesota. A Congresswoman from Hawaii has been calling out the many wars America is fighting abroad. People in Congress and, surprisingly, even in newspapers are beginning to talk about Israel in less than flattering terms. And then there is the #MeToo movement that has developed and grown over the last couple of years.

But the controversy and investigations spawned by Russiagate will cast light on the strong influence of what has been called, among many other things, the Invisible Government (book by David Wise and Thomas Ross 1964), a powerful force in the country that is not elected. Eisenhower referred to it as the Military Industrial Complex. This is something that has been growing since the Second World War, and finally people are starting to recognize how strong an influence it plays even in elections. This “organization” involves the intelligence community, the defense industries, and the mass communications. More people should become aware of the noxious influence of these organizations.

Also because of Russiagate there is increasing skepticism of the national news media, something that should have been obvious after the Iraq War debacle, but somehow (perhaps the stars weren’t aligned properly!) those lessons were forgotten.

And part of the progressive shift is a result of President Trump, who has Uranus conjunct his Sun and opposite the Moon — truly Uranian. For a long time, America has been guilty of crimes against its own citizens and the rest of the world, but those were always covered up by “politicians”. But finally the mask has been removed and people can see what is really going on, as I discussed previously. Few realize that Trump is merely a symptom of the rot that has infected America and instead believe that it is only he that is rotten. Some think that all will be well if we return to the good ol’ days when they did not have to look at crimes of their own country and fully believed in American Exceptionalism. Ignorance is Bliss, as George Orwell didn’t say.

Another thing driving this move in a progressive direction is the rise of Internet. There are now blogs, podcasts, and YouTube videos that explore themes that are not allowed in the mainstream media. While this ability always existed since the invention of the printing press — witness the phenomena of the Underground Press in the Sixties and Seventies — with the Internet these sources are available to many more. But in a twist of historic irony, those who read the Underground Press back in the day are now the age group that is the biggest consumers of cable news and eschew the Internet news offerings that conflict with the tales on cable news. And so we turn to what may be the largest consequences of Russiagate, the censorship by private entities of what can be seen on YouTube or read about on Facebook or Twitter. And since these are private companies the First Amendment doesn’t apply. For example, Facebook is using the Atlantic Council to give them guidance on what is “Fake News”. The Atlantic Council is essential a Think Tank for NATO. What could go wrong?

Opening Uranus Semisquare Neptune

The larger context to all this is the Uranus-Neptune opening semisquare that is the overriding aspect of the these four years. The corresponding closing semisquare was in the early Seventies — 1971 through 1975 — as shown in the graphical ephemeris below. This was the aspect just before the conjunction of those two planets in the Nineties.

Uranus Semisquare Neptune Early Seventies

Many things happened in this period, for example the US went off the gold standard, the Watergate scandal, China was recognized by the larger world, and there was a pushback against “too much democracy” (Trilateral Commission) as a legacy of the Sixties. That grew into the neoliberal revolution. There was the “oil shock” in industrialized countries. We did not know how much changed until much later.

When looked back from the next decade, we will see these four years as a forerunner/ precursor just as the four years of the early Seventies was a precursor, but in this case the opening semisquare will see a reversal of some of the changes set in motion with the closing semisquare of the Seventies.

One big case that determined much of the ensuing years of the closing semisquare was the Pentagon Papers, released by Daniel Ellsberg and first published in the New York Times on June 13, 1971. The Pentagon Papers was an official inside view of the history of the Vietnam War. The chart for that date, below, shows Mercury at the Descendant; Mercury represents the press, and in this case the press was highly visible to the public (Descendant). Pluto was near the MC, and was conjunct both before and after this date; Uranus was widely square the US Sun and was exactly square both before and after this date. This indicates a major upheaval in the government — Watergate and the Church Commission were direct results of the Pentagon Papers being released. And finally transiting Sun was conjunct natal Mars, showing that on this day something involving War happened, which certainly describes the release of the Pentagon Papers.

Pentagon Papers Published

The decision which allowed the newspaper to publish the Pentagon Papers was a landmark in press freedom. And now, in the opening semisquare, we have shaping up what will be another major press freedom case, with the removal of Julian Assange from the Ecuadorean embassy. If the removal, quick sentencing, and his imprisonment in what has been called the UK’s Guantanamo was done by an official enemy (eg Russia or Venezuela) the outcry would be deafening, but since it was done in the friendly UK, there are hosannas for his capture. This is after he was illegally expelled from the Ecuadorean embassy, but at least that country got more than 30 pieces of silver for this act. Despite protests that “he is not a journalist” (ask Danial Ellsberg about that) this has grave consequences for whatever journalism still exists in the United States. Assange embarrassed the elites and that is unforgivable.

But this case also ties into Russiagate directly. One notices that Democrats, who one would expect to be protective towards First Amendment rights, are vehemently hostile to Julian Assange in this case. Again Russiagate has moved the supposedly liberal party further to the right. Assange is blamed for being an instrument of Vladimir Putin and the person who single-handedly caused Clinton to lose the 2016 election. And the media, which will lose big-time if this case goes successfully for the government, would rather defend some newsclown (to use Philip K. Dick’s phrase) like Jim Acosta than support a real journalist whose scoops should embarrass them all. So even if Trump did not collude with Putin, they think, it is entirely his fault and that of Julian Assange that Clinton lost that election. So the madness goes on. Some people are so tied to the myth of Russiagate (see previous references to religious obsession) that they are unwilling to give the idea up.

Collateral Murder

The main case which the US government says it wants Assange for involves the release of a video called “Collateral Murder” which was obtained by Chelsea Manning and showed pilots for the US military committing an obvious war crime, the shooting of civilians — including reporters for Reuters — on July 12 , 2007. This is the release that put WikiLeaks on the map, gaining them much attention. Fortunately we have the time of the release, courtesy of WikiLeaks: Here is a chart for that event. The thing that stands out is transiting Saturn on the US MC — restrictions on the display of government. Transiting Sun is also opposite natal Saturn, further emphasizing that planet. Neptune is the US Moon, illusions among the populace. There is a transiting Moon-Pluto conjunction (this is a timed chart) opposite the US Jupiter — changes to the enthusiasm of the US. Notice that transiting Uranus is almost to the IC of the US. These Uranus transits of the angles show long term trends. In this case it is internal (IC) reflection of what was happening when Uranus transited the MC, in 1968. The Uranian characteristics that were so prevalent in that watershed year — there are probably more books with “1968” in their title than any other year — have now been internalized. Unfortunately those who most breathed the air in 1968 have become conservative and unable to smell the Uranian air of this decade.

Another positive outcome of this whole process will be a greater disbelief of the mainstream media, which has long been stenographers for power (see for example Manufacturing Consent by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky), but now it has become so obvious that only those willfully blind would fail to notice it.

Will these four years be an example of the influence of Neptune as people descend further into their rabbit hole of delusion, or will it provide a wake-up call that the elites, which journalists have now become the handmaidens of, are more and more limiting the knowledge we can get, and thus showing the influence of Uranus, which as Richard Tarnas reminds us, is best symbolized by Prometheus, the Bringer of Light?

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February 22, 2019

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America’s Core Planets

In the United States chart used in this blog, known as the Sibly Chart, named for Ebenezer Sibly, an astrologer at the time of the American Revolution who created it, there is a conjunction of Jupiter and Venus that is conjunct the most important point of any astrological chart, the Sun. This conjunction occurs in any chart drawn for early July 1776. That the Sun is the most important point should be clear from the prevalence of “Sun-Sign Astrology” in newspapers and cocktail party chatter around the world. As has been mentioned several times, the conjunction of Venus — the Lesser Benefic — and Jupiter — the Greater Benefic — can be thought of as double-plus good, as George Orwell might have called it in his most famous novel.

America’s Core Planet

Having this wonderful combination – Sun, Venus, Jupiter — together can make one wonder if the time for the official birth of the United States was planned in advance, since it is certainly the most auspicious combination one can imagine. Or maybe America is just that lucky!

This triple conjunction has proved to be very beneficial to the United States: It has made it a very popular country with the rest of the world, attracting many immigrants and producing popular movies and computer products. The Internet was developed in the United States. And we could go on and on. If you live in the United States, you know the drill. As time has passed, the United States has not been the only source of these things as other countries developed. And of course the country was protected by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans from much of the death and destruction that took place in Europe, certainly very beneficial to the development of the United States. This allowed the US to become the world’s most powerful country after World War Two.

But other, not so desirable characteristics come from having this triple conjunction. For example, it is possible for a country with this combination to think that it is special, God’s gift to the world, the only indispensable nation, perhaps even exceptional. As President Obama said in an address to the UN in 2013, “I believe that America is exceptional” which only repeated what all Presidents must say. With this, shall we say, heightened self worth, such a nation would take great umbrage if someone threatened that self conception of being exceptional. And such a threat could be indicated by a hard aspect of Saturn, that wily taskmaster, to that triple conjunction.

During these transits we can see two possible responses. One is an attempt to expand the limits of American behavior: We are the most important country in the world and so let’s push the bounds, to see how much we can get away with. Let’s invade some other country or foment a coup! The other response is to feel that the world is attacking the United States (How Dare They!!) and to fight back or to remind the citizens of how noble their country truly is. Perhaps something has happened either internally of externally to rain on the parade of the United States, to make it doubt its self-worth — with Saturn square the Sun natally, this is easy to do.

I talked about this in a recent post. Here I want to explore that transit in more depth, showing the cases of Saturn conjunct or opposite to the US core triple conjunction. These transits of Saturn take two or three years to complete. For the charts below, I chose the time when Saturn was conjunct or opposite the middle of the three planets involved, Jupiter, so one can extend the time period to 18 months before and after the date shown in the chart. The accompanying graphical ephemerides will make the period clear, with the first contact/close approach with Venus indicated with the black arrow and the last contact/close approach with the Sun shown by the red arrow, although the orbs would allow a few months before the first and after the second, as you can judge from the images. Since Saturn takes just under thirty years to go around the Sun once — think Saturn Return — these periods of conjunction/opposition take place every 15 years or so. There may be things happening to America during these periods that make the citizens of the country depressed, feeling that they are not worthy or having troubles. Or perhaps the “leaders” of America decide that now is the time to show the force America can bring to bear. We will see examples of all of these responses in the cases below from the Twentieth and early Twenty-First Centuries.

2018

Saturn Opposite Core 2018

Right now America’s “chattering classes” are having a collective conniption fit because Donald J. Trump is President of the United States. This can not be, they keep telling themselves. He’s so blatant! He’s not polite! Before the election, people were warned that he is not a politician. And with the death of George H. W. Bush, we can see what they mean. This Bush was certainly racist — witness the Willie Horton ad — and started more wars than Trump has so far done. Who can forget the little excursion into Panama that killed 3000 people (not the “official” number) in an attempt to remove a CIA operative (remember that H.W was the head of the CIA for a year in the Seventies — though of course he is never referred to as a “CIA thug”) who no longer took orders. And who can forget the first Gulf War, moved forward by the lie that Iraqi soldiers were dumping babies in incubators on the ground to die. The person who delivered this warning to Congress was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, and thus far from an unbiased observer, but never mind. And then, in what must surely rank as an immense war crime, action was performed by troops under Commander in Chief Bush on what is called the Highway of Death. Retreating Iraqi soldiers and civilians were trapped on a road back home from Kuwait City after planes exploded cars at both ends of the highway. These were retreating people after the war was over. There proceeded to be a rush of planes (there was even a traffic jam over the highway as so many wanted to get in on the action) that destroyed every vehicle and human being on the highway. The cliche “Shooting fish in a barrel” was never so apt. Certainly a noble mission for America.

Though George H.W. Bush only became director of the CIA in the Seventies (under President Gerald Ford) he had been working with/for the CIA for 15 years, since the early Sixties. Fun fact: George Herbert Walker Bush is one of the few Americans who was an adult on November 22, 1963 who does not remember where they were on that day. He says he was “somewhere in Texas”. This has given rise to many conspiracy theories. In addition, in a recently published article, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh reveals that Bush made the Iran-Contra scandal (where the Reagan administration was selling arms to Iran (which was illegal at the time) in exchange for money for the Contras who were fighting in Nicaragua to overthrow the government there) public in order to avoid damaging a covert operation he was running out of the Pentagon. This is the George Bush so many are now lionizing on his death.

George H. W. Bush is also famous for saying, when he was still vice president, “I’ll never apologize for America. Ever. I don’t care what the facts are”. The occasion for this outburst was when a US Navel ship (the captain later got a commendation) shot down an Iranian civilian air liner over Iranian air space, killing almost 300 people.

But to use proto-punk rocker Neil Young’s phrase, George H. W. Bush had a kinder gentler machine gun hand. He was a politician so he knew how to speak, as was shown in the hagiographies to him. Trump is not a politician, and so he says things without understanding that he is giving away the secrets: you can do horrible things as President of the United States, but you have to pretend that you haven’t. Don’t be blatant about it. And of course always pretend to be polite. I am reminded of the quote from I.F Stone: How do you know if a politician is lying? If you see his lips move. But now the cat is out of the bag. No wonder the War Party is upset!

2017-2019

This extended discussion of George H. W. Bush not only illustrates the complete coverup of his crimes on the occasion his death during this current transit of Saturn and thus he is being sanctified as a noble representative of the best of America, but will also apply to the activities at the time of the first Gulf War, as we shall see later.

Current events are providing such a wealth of examples of American behavior during this Saturn transit as indicated above that it is hard to limit oneself, but I’ll offer only one other case, since it is so obvious to anyone who is not immersed in the blob (or is it the borg?) of Washington, D..C. But first a little background.

In America’s long running war in Iraq, aka the Second Gulf War, one of the worst massacres occurred in the city of Fallujah, a crime that ranks with Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. The leader of the troops during this assault was a man called James “Mad Dog” Mattis, who is also called the Butcher of Fallujah. Much radioactive dust, in the form of depleted uranium weapons, was dispersed, and as a result the incident of birth defects is much higher in that city than the rest of Iraq. And other things were done a well, such as firing on ambulances and aid workers, and preventing civilians from escaping the city, that are considered war crimes. Under the Trump administration, “Mad Dog” was appointed to the post of Secretary of Defense, with little protest. Recently, “Mad Dog” Mattis was fired from that position, and the howls from the Washington establishment, both Republicans and Democrats, was defeating. Mattis is now being held up as a paragon of virtue, one of the few remaining individuals to uphold America honor. It is a very surprising response to a war criminal, and only shows how out of touch the Establishment really is. Even more strange in this period of the Saturn transit is that people who were once firmly anti-war and now strongly pro-war.

2003

Saturn Conjunct Core 2003

This period occurred after the attack on 9/11/2001, but those attacks were still so recent that people felt that America was under siege by the rest of the world, and allowed strange things to happen, such as the passage of the Orwellian named Patriot Act that curbed civil liberties. But it also saw the invasion of Afghanistan (as Uranus transited the US Moon) and the buildup to and invasion of Iraq. A huge protest around the world happened against the invasion of Iraq at this time. This was back at a time when America was only involved in one war and there was still a large group of people opposed to the upcoming war. America had a real anti-war movement at the time of the Second Gulf War, but the war went on nevertheless.

2002-2004

Like father, like son. We see now the rehabilitation of George W. Bush, who once was considered to have created the worst US war catastrophe in many decades with this war. But no longer. He is now the “partner in crime” (one wonders what that really means) with the former first lady, and he charms people by passing cough drops to her. This is probably an attempt to sanitize his war crimes, which were promoted by the very same media who now promote Russophobia and a new Cold War. But this time it is different!!!

1989

Saturn Opposite Core 1989

The First Gulf War was started by George H. W. Bush under dubious pretenses as shown above, and afterwards that President said “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all” which may have been his hope and intention from the beginning. This war was started at the beginning of August 1990 and lasted 7 months. And there was also the invasion of Panama (“Operation Just Cause”) which was suppose to prove also that America still could invade another country. This was in December 1989. See discussion above.

1988-1990

There was also the Savings & Loan meltdown which was the biggest bank collapse in American since the Great Depression. It had been developing for several years, and finally came to a head in 1989. Over 1000 S&L executives were put in jail. To understand just how large this was, realize that in the even bigger financial scandal in 2007-2009, not one executive was put in jail, just a few low-level people.

1974

Saturn Conjunct Core 1974

Watergate was the scandal that occupied American in 1973 and 1974, leading to the resignation of Richard Nixon from the Presidency, and so Gerald Ford, who was never elected on a Presidential ticket, became President of the United States, a historical first. And following this resignation, there was the Church committee (and later the Pike committee) to investigate crimes of the CIA and FBI. Americans were feeling bad about their country, and then in April of 1975 there was the wholesale retreat of American soldiers, and any civilian they could take along, from Vietnam. America felt it had lost its first war, and all kinds of reasons were offered to explain this terrible defeat. The “Vietnam Syndrome” arose, causing Americans to be cautious about entering another war in a far-off land.

1973-1975

There was a recession running from late 1973 to early 1975, which certainly fits this period. Some of the causes were the oil crisis of the early Seventies, which caused a 55 mph speed limit to be instituted in the United States (to much consternation), and gas was hard to come by, with some customers only being served on alternate days based on their license plate. Americans for the first time realized that there was not an infinite supply of “stuff” they needed for their daily routines. President Richard Nixon had taken the US off the gold standard and essentially ended Bretton-Woods with a speech in August of 1971 which caused further economic shocks whose repercussions lasted for a long time. New York City was close to declaring bankruptcy, and the headline in the Daily News for Oct 30, 1975, the day after Ford made a speech denying funds to New York City was: “Ford to City: Drop Dead” . And there was “stagflation” and high oil prices. America was at a low ebb.

1959

Saturn Opposite Core 1959

On October 4,1957 the first satellite was launched into Earth orbit, and this satellite — Sputnik I — was not launched by the Americans. After that followed several American attempts to launch satellites that failed, resulting in further humiliation for America. Here was the greatest country in the history of the world, one thought, and it was not able to launch a space satellite. And this feat had great implications for America’s imposing defense system: If we couldn’t even launch a satellite, we must be fairly weak when it comes to launching a missile or fighting a war was the obvious conclusion.

Then there was supposed to be a summit meeting between the American and Russian leaders, but the shoot down of a US spy plane — the U2 — over the Soviet Union put a kibosh to those plans. Again, a typical citizen thought, how could the most exceptional country lose a plane over the supposedly primitive Soviet Union. The world was not working out a it was suppose to, Americans thought.

1958-1960

The Fifties were coming to an end, and there was restlessness in the populace. This was soon to be displayed by the election of a new President. Shaggy people called beatniks (after sputnik) were seen lurking in coffehouses and reciting obscene poetry, such as “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg. This too was upsetting to some Americans, making them wonder what was happening to their country.

1945

Saturn Conjunct Core 1945

World War II had already gone on (as far as Americans were concerned) for several years, and still there was no noticeable progress until D-Day in 1944. Most did not realize that the Soviet Union had done the heavy fighting with Germany for several years. And the Japanese seemed intractable. But there was a steely determination on the home front to win the war.

But at a larger scale, FDR saw that this was a chance to display America’s dominance of the Post-War world. But in April of 1945, Franklin Roosevelt, who had been President for a dozen years, died and an untested Missouri politician was put in his place. Americans wee not sure how this would go down.

1944-1946

And then the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan made made Americans wonder if the world would survive. This was a shock to those Americans who thought that once the war was over everything would go back to “normal”. The new world after the war turned out to be anything but normal.

1930

sa2ju1930

This was certainly a crisis for the American spirit; we’ve all seen the photos of people on the breadline or trying to sell apples. The Depression for America officially started in late October of 1929, and over the next few years, under President Herbert Hoover, things really did not improve. But there was much revolutionary activity on both the left and the right, as the populace got increasing disgusted at the way things were. There was a strong Communist party in America, and a strong semi-fascist movement such as radio preacher Father Coughlin and Huey Long the governor of Louisiana. America was at a crossroads, and the election of Franklin Roosevelt saved the capitalist system in America.

1929-1931

1915

Saturn Conjunct Core 1915

As you can see from the graphical ephemeris, this Saturn transit lasted from the beginning of the war through the election campaign for Wilson’s second term. He campaigned on “He kept us out of War”. But the Lusitania, a large British ocean liner carrying many US citizens, was sunk by German U boats in 1915, and that was a downer for Americans. Until 1982, it was believed that the Lusitania was only carrying passengers and not munitions as well, thus the sinking of the Lusitania was a war crime committed by Germany. This loss of American citizens due to German hostility angered the US public. The sinking put further pressure to enter the war, but not until the last few months of the war did Americans see combat.

1914-1916

1900

Saturn Opposite Core 1900

In the early phases of this transit, American, as detailed previously engaged in a war with Spain and decided to become an Empire. But then the President of the United States was assassinated and a new, quite different leader took over. This was after two previous Presidents had also been assassinated in the last 35 years. A war was being waged in the far off Philippine Islands, and it was quite brutal. And then a new Century was dawning, and this also caused Americans to feel apprehensive. Cinema and the automobile were just a few of the inventions that were threatening the old established order that people had known for so long.

1900-1902

Saturn had been on the Ascendant and opposite Pluto a few years before this period took place, just like Saturn had been on the Descendant and opposite Pluto a few years before the period described under “2003” above. In some ways that period is an echo of this one, with an entirely new Century opening up once again.

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January 18, 2019

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Recent Saturn-Pluto Cycles

The prototype of a planetary cycle, the period between one conjunction to the next of any pair of planets, is the lunar cycle, something that humanity has been intimately familiar with for millennia. The lunar cycle starts with the New Moon — a conjunction the Sun and the Moon — then precedes through the opposition of the Sun and Moon — called the Full Moon — and then goes on to the next conjunction, that is the next New Moon. Symbolically, the cycle starts at the conjunction, and whatever the cycle represents reaches a culmination at the opposition and then precedes to gather resources in preparation for the end of this cycle and the beginning of the next cycle with the next conjunction. This “Lunation Cycle” has been spelled out in detail by renowned astrologer Dane Rudhyar in a book of the same name.

But this cycle from conjunction through opposition to conjunction can be looked at with any two planets. The Jupiter-Saturn cycle was explored in a series of posts about Watershed Elections a couple of years ago. Since we have recently explored two Saturn Pluto oppositions in a post called “Bookends of the American Empire“, I thought it would be interesting to explore recent Saturn-Pluto cycles, especially in light of the fact that we are ending one of these cycles and thus startling a new one in a year.

After the Saturn Pluto opposition in 1898, which was discussed previously, and which saw the Spanish-American war, the war in which the United States divested Spain of its colonies in the Caribbean and Pacific, the next conjunction of Saturn and Pluto was in 1914 at 2 Cancer, that is near the Cardinal axis. This Saturn-Pluto conjunction saw the start of World War One. (Of Interest, the closing square of those two planets corresponded exactly to what is called the Panic of 1907 in the United States, where the stock market lost 50% of its value in three weeks and a wealthy individual had to bail out the US.) This is illustrated in the chart below. This is only one of many examples as to why Saturn-Pluto has such a fearsome reputation.

World War

When these Saturn-Pluto aspects are looked at in light of the relations between Russia and the United States, this conjunction heralded the first Cold War, after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Immediately after that revolution a civil war broke out in Russia and American President Woodrow Wilson, along with many European nations and Japan, sent troops to fight on the non-Communist side in that Civil War. After that the United States refused to recognize the Soviet Union until President Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, near the time of the opposition mentioned below.

This Saturn-Pluto cycle lasted until the end of the Second World War, in 1947, so it covered the period of both World Wars. This particular Saturn Pluto cycle can be considered the “World War Cycle”. Some authorities consider the Second World War to be merely a continuation of the First World War, with a brief intermission — the “Roaring” Twenties — between the segments. For America, which only got involved in the First World War in the last year, the Second World War did not start until Pearl Harbor was bombed at the end of 1941. But officially the Second World War started on September 1, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. But the war had been raging long before that, though it wasn’t called a war: Japan invaded China early in the Thirties; in Spain, Franco, with the aid of Hitler, was fighting the Spanish Civil War in the middle Thirties.

“Full Moon” for Saturn-Pluto

The midpoint of this “War” cycle happened in 1931. This was the equivalent of a Full Moon in the lunation cycle, the peak of the energy that started at the conjunction. The culmination of this cycle, with the opposition of Saturn and Pluto, is illustrated in the above chart. The first obvious event happening in 1931 was the worldwide Great Depression that was reaching its depths in the early Thirties. This year also saw the rise of fascism in Europe, with for example Hitler being elected Chancellor of Germany in January of 1933. In Asia, Japan took over parts of China with the invasion of Manchuria on September 19, 1931. So the clouds of war were gathering at the opposition which would result in the Second World War in a few years. Notice that Uranus is square Pluto, Uranus is sesquiquadrate Neptune, and, though the orb is very large, Pluto is semisquare to Neptune, the three aspects that highlight the Great Depression, though all three are not always in orb for the whole period.

Great Compression

The next conjunction followed directly the end of World War II in 1947. This corresponds to, among other things, the rise of the Cold War (or the Second Cold War, if we consider the First to be the one after the previous Saturn Pluto conjunction) between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the United States, this Cold War is seen as exclusively the result of the expansionistic tendencies of Stalin and the Soviet Union (see for example any book by John Lewis Gaddis), but a more balanced appraisal would see that a badly crushed Soviet Union, whose territory had been ravished by the Germans and had lost on the order of 27 million people, was hardly in the same league as the United States, which had recently dropped two nuclear weapons on a defeated enemy. The Soviets desperately wanted the security that could be provided by a border of friendly nations, which just happened to be those invaded by Soviet troops during World War II since the West was in no hurry to come to the aid of the Soviet Union in its fight with Germany.

The next Saturn-Pluto Cycle lasted from 1947 to 1982. This was a period called by the French Les Trente Glorieuses – the thirty golden years following the Second World War (see for example Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century) when inequality in many countries of the world was reduced. So I believe that this second Saturn-Pluto Cycle of the Twentieth Century was a period of economic compression, called the Great Compression by some economists. This was a period when the views of such people as Lord Maynard Keynes of Britain were given credence, and activities like the Bretton-Woods Conference set up an economic program for the whole world. Major decolonization took place, such as India becoming an independent nation, and the State of Israel was proclaimed out of what was formerly part of the Ottoman Empire before World War I. Victory in the Chinese Civil War for the Communist side was only two years off and that victory caused repercussion among the masses of Southeast Asia who had just thrown off the yoke of European colonial powers.

Sixties

The culmination of this cycle, when Saturn was opposite Pluto, was in 1965, just as the Vietnam War was starting to heat up — the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed in the US Senate August of the previous year. This was an obvious manifestation of the Cold War which had started with the conjunction eighteen years earlier. There were many urban riots in the United States, such as Watts Riot in August 1965, Detroit Riot July 1967, Newark July 1966. Civil rights leader Medgar Evers was killed in June 1963 in Mississippi; the Birmingham, Alabama church bombing occurred September 1963; Chaney, Goodman,and Schwerner were killed in June 1964, also in Mississippi. There was a coup in Indonesia October 1965 that killed between half a million and a million and a half and set the stage for a dictatorship in Indonesia that lasted over thirty years, almost until this century.

Neolibealism

The next Saturn-Pluto cycle, which started in 1982, and which we are still in, was totally different. No longer a great compression, but rather a great expansion, as Neoliberalism started to take off under Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States. This was a period where the wealthy 10%, 1% and most especially 0.1% increased their share of the wealth. While their share of the wealth increased from the early Eighties, this increase in inequality really took off after the Great Recession of 2008. This can be seen as the Neoliberal cycle.

War on Terrorism

The culmination of this cycle was discussed previously. There were three Saturn-Pluto Oppositions. Here is a chart for the second, on November 2, 2001. For any astrologer at the time, it should have been obvious that something momentous was going to happen in late 2001.

Mea Culpa: I did not see this happening myself, since at the time I favored the Gemini Rising USA chart, if I even thought about a chart for the United States, and even though I had read the Dane Rudhyar book (Astrology of America’s Destiny) that promoted the Sibly chart, and at the time I thought little of Saturn and Pluto transits, and hadn’t looked at any past transits. But 9/11 seemed such a big event to the United States that it must surely show up in the natal chart for that country, and show up in an appropriate way. Jupiter transits wouldn’t cut it. The aspects to the Sibly chart, as shown in the last post (and very similar to the chart above) are the most appropriate transits possible. If one were to make up the transits for such an event, nothing would be more fitting than the actual chart. Pluto on the Ascendant describes 9/11 to a tee.

We are now in the last year of this “Neoliberal” cycle of Saturn and Pluto, and the results of the reign of capital over the previous 35 plus years is becoming painfully obvious. We are seeing the dregs of our long bout of neoliberalism coming to an end with a strong hangover. People are starting to vent their anger in many countries, to the obvious displeasure of those elites who profited so handsomely over the Saturn-Pluto cycle now coming to an end.

But another Saturn Pluto conjunction is happening soon, just a year away. What will the new cycle bring? My guess is that it will see the end of Neoliberalism, the hallmark of the previous cycle, but we will also see the end of other trends that have manifesting themselves recently. Whatever it will be, the upcoming period will be different than the preceding 35 years.

sapl2020a

In this case the conjunction only happens once. This is followed by a conjunction of Jupiter and Pluto three times, followed by a single conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn at 0 Aquarius on the Winter Solstice. This new cycle of Saturn and Pluto, starting in 2020, corresponds to the Zeitgeist Change that I wrote about for several months. This will be a preview of all the changes coming our way. One can see that conjunction as the “opening gun” for the big changes to happen in the third decade of the Twenty-First Century. Since two other important cycles are also stating at about this time, the Jupiter-Pluto and the Jupiter Saturn conjunctions, change will be the hallmark. The Jupiter-Saturn cycle was discussed at length in post about Watershed Presidential elections and 2020 will see another Watershed Election. In the chart for the single Saturn-Pluto conjunction on January 12, 2020, we see that both the Sun and Mercury are conjoined Saturn and Pluto. This quadruple conjunction is also configured with the United States chart, as shown below. It is trine the US Saturn, opposite the US Mercury, and sesquiquadrate the US Uranus. So this Saturn-Pluto will definitely affect the US, in ways we can’t see yet. Not shown is the inconjunct (quincunx – aspect of 150 degrees – separation or adjustment) between the multiple conjunction and natal Mars, suggesting the military and war will be involved. Also emphasizing this fact is that the antiscia (reflection over the Cancer/Capricorn axis) transiting Mars is on that super conjunction.

Upcoming Saturn Pluto Conjunction

So what we have is Saturn and Pluto, which can be dire, but then Jupiter comes along, changing the gravity of the situation. My feeling for the Pluto-Saturn conjunction is that it will be the culmination of a crisis already developing, something involving violence or war (viz. Mars). This crisis will be so close to fruition, only saved by the oncoming Jupiter, that the peoples of the world will be scared out of their standard thought processes and there will be an opening opportunity to explore some new options. Jupiter will save us from the developing catastrophe signaled by the first Saturn-Pluto conjunction in 38 years. After the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction comes the single Jupiter-Saturn conjunction that sets the stage for the next twenty years. The first decade — the 2020s — will be the expansion decade: think the decade of the Sixties — and the second decade — the 2030s — will be the contraction decade: think the decade of the Seventies. It will be a truly historic two decades for the world, one that will be long remembered, if possibly only by the cockroaches.

All of these transits are shown in the two-year graphical ephemeris below. The single conjunction of Saturn and Pluto happens first, shown by the black arrow at the beginning of 2020. Then comes the three Jupiter-Pluto conjunctions; the first of these conjunctions is at the red arrow at the end of March. Finally there is the single Jupiter-Saturn conjunction shown by the green arrow in December of 2020. 2020 will be a packed year!

2020 Conjunctions

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December 14, 2018

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Bookends of the American Empire

While America has always been an expansionist nation, witness the Louisiana Purchase, the Adams-Onis Treaty (which gave the US Florida and defined the border between Oregon and what has become California), the addition of Texas, and most obviously the War with Mexico, and this was all before the Civil War, America was not an Empire, and it had no colonies overseas, that is outside of North America.

But this changed at the end of the Nineteenth Century, and there was an exact moment when the decision was made within the government of the United States that America should become an empire, only fitting for an up and coming powerful country that was surrounded by other powerful countries that had their own colonies. If one looks at a map of Africa from around the turn of the Twentieth Century, it is obvious that Africa had been divided up amongst the European countries. This has been discussed before, about the time when the continent was divided up formally among the European powers. But America was not part of the game. Spain had been the first major European colonial power at the end of the Fifteenth Century, and it had been joined by Great Britain, France, Holland, Germany, Portugal, and Italy.

But America finally got its chance, and the name of that opportunity was the Spanish-American War, which was won by America — Spain at that time was a fading power on the world stage — and thus as part of the victory the United States got Spain’s colonies, not only Cuba, over which the battle was fought, but also Guam and the Philippines. The Secretary of State at the time was John Hay, who had started out in Government as secretary to Abraham Lincoln. (For an interesting portrayal of the young John Hay, read the novel Lincoln by Gore Vidal.) Hay, who referred to the Spanish-American War as a “splendid little war”, wrote an important document in US diplomatic history called the Open Door Notes. In this document, he declared that the rest of the world should allow an Open Door with regards to China, a weak (at the time) power that European colonies had already latched onto. The Notes, first issued on September 6, 1899, wanted those other powers to make room for the up and coming power of the United States. This was essentially a statement that the United State planned to become an Empire also.

Open Door Notes

Here is a chart for the issuing of Open Door Notes. There is nothing really spectacular about it. At noon — a good approximation of when it was issued — the Moon was transiting the Midheaven of the United States, appropriate for something that would influence and color the behavior of the country for the next 100 years. The important Neptune-Pluto conjunction of 1890 is just starting to separate, but still in the “New Moon” phase. Saturn is in the First House, a few degrees beyond the Ascendant; this was a legal (Saturn) document that had important consequences for the country, at the time only a generation removed from the Civil War and the technical end of slavery, and facing the future of the Twentieth Century. A long time depression (Panic of 1873/Panic of 1893) was just ending.

‘An American Century’

Henry Luce, publisher of Time, Life, and Fortune, had declared, in an editorial in Life magazine February 17, 1941, almost year before America entered World War II, that the Twentieth Century was the American Century, just as Spain, Holland, and Britain had their places in the Sun. In the chart for this event, we see that the transiting Sun is conjunct the natal Moon of the US, the “American People”. This is indicative of the American Century.

But the cause of the Open Door Notes and American’ decision to become an Empire was the Spanish American War. (For further details of this important decision, see the recently published book One True Flag by Stephen Kinzer). The start of the Spanish American War was the explosion of the USS Maine in the Havana Harbor. This gave rise to the statement “Remember the Maine”. Yellow journalism was popular at the time (unlike now!!) and one of the best of the publishers of newspapers at the time was William Randolph Hearst, who famously told his artist in Cuba, Frederic Remington (who is also famous for his Western paintings) who was worried that there was no real war in Cuba, that “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war”. And he did.

While it was thought at the time that the explosion on the Maine was a result of Spanish perfidy, it is now thought more likely that the explosion was the result of a boiler on the ship. But nevertheless, that explosion caused Americans, such as Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, to invaded Cuba and battle the Spanish.

”Remember the Maine’

This important explosion happened on February 15, 1898, and symbolically at least, it represents the start of the American Century that Henry Luce wrote about less than half a century later. If we look at this chart, the most prominent feature is the Saturn-Pluto opposition. This blog has often written about the powerful combination of Saturn Pluto hard aspects which were found at the start of World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and the death of democracy in Chile in 1973, among many other events. But not only are these planets in opposition, but that opposition is powerfully configured with the chart of the United States: Pluto is on the Descendant of the United States, and Saturn is on the Ascendant of the country’s chart. This seem appropriate, since the explosion (Pluto) occurred outside of the country, represented by the Descendant.

Within the year, the Open Door Notes was issued, and American had a colony in the Caribbean Sea, only 90 miles from Florida, and colonies in the Pacific. Unfortunately for the United States, the colony of the Philippines was not working out well for them. Who could have guessed that the people of the Philippines, having been liberated from their Spanish masters, were not too happy with the New Boss (same as the old boss) the United States. There started a bloody colonial war between the Philippines and the United States which lasted about three years. Waterboarding was practiced by Americans on captured Philippine soldiers. In American an anti-war organization (American Anti-imperialist League founded June 15, 1898) was formed with several prominent citizen at the time, such a the author Mark Twain, industrialist Andrew Carnegie, and psychologist William James.

American Anti-Imperialist League

In the chart for the formation of the American Anti-Imperialist League, important things to notice are the Sun-Neptune conjunction (idealism) conjunct the natal Mars (war) of the United States. Also of note is Jupiter (good intentions) at the Midheaven of the country. This league, and its diverse members, was a physical statement that there were decent people in the country, even though the actions of the government denied that statement.

Another example of the American Empire happened shortly after the end of that war, when President Theodore Roosevelt sent ships near the isthmus of Panama, then part of Columbia, to prevent the Columbian soldiers from interfering with the revolution in the isthmus to separate it from the country of Columbia. Once this revolt was successful and a new country was declared, thoughts of a canal between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were seriously considered.

And of course American troops were sent in to many Central American counties, such as Haiti which was occupied by America for nineteen years and Nicaragua which was controlled by the Americans for more than the 21 years it occupied the county, and when they left the US allowed Anastasio Somoza to control that country.

This was all between the First and Second World Wars; after the second war the United States clearly emerged as the dominant power in the world, since all the other powers had been decimated by the fighting, while the United States, protected by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, suffered no damage whatsoever — the only real exception was the bombing of that base on the Pacific colony of Hawaii (not a state until 1959).

American was the dominant power for decades after the end of World War II. But then, at the dawn of the Twenty-First Century, the first attack on the homeland of the United States since the British burned Washington, DC during the War of 1812 occurred. This was the attack on the World Trade Towers on September 11, 2001. Here is a chart for that event on a Tuesday morning.

911

In this chart we see Saturn is again opposite Pluto, and again this opposition is on the Ascendant-Descendant axis of the United States chart, just as it was in the chart for the explosion of the Maine and the start of the Spanish American War. But in this case Pluto is on the Ascendant and Saturn is on the Descendant. This again makes sense, since the explosion (Pluto) occurred in that country (Ascendant) and not abroad. This represents the closing of the cycle that started with the opposition of those two planets on the United states angles at the end of the Nineteenth Century,.

These two events, the Spanish-American War and the attack on 9/11 — represent the bookends of the American Empire and the markers of the American Century, the Twentieth Century.

The previous 500 years were a time of a unipolar world, when there would be only one power that was dominant. The first of these powers was Spain that managed to get the first colonies in what was called the New World. After that Holland was the dominant power; at one time that country had a colony in the New World called New Netherlands, dominated by the city called New Amsterdam which they had purchased from the native inhabitants of that land for some trinkets. Britain was the next dominant power, and when they got that city from Holland they renamed in after the Duke of York and now it is called it New York City. Finally America became the dominant power in the world.

But we are in a new 500 year cycle, and the Unipolar moment is over. We are now in a multipolar world, where several countries are dominant at the same time. Unfortunately the United States did not get the memo, and so it is behaving as if it is still the dominant power in the world. This could result in very sticky situations as the United States behaves as if the world has not changed, and the rest of the world realizes that it has changed.

After the opposition of Saturn and Pluto at the beginning of the Twenty-First Century, which represents symbolically the culminating of a cycle which started in 1982, the beginning of the Reagan Revolution and what was called at the time the New Cold War, indicative of Reagan’s increasing hostility toward the Soviet Union, comes the following conjunction of those two planets, representing symbolically the end of the old cycle and the beginning of a new cycle. In my next post, these Saturn-Pluto cycles of the Twentieth Century will be discussed, looking forward to the upcoming start of a new cycle.

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August 3, 2018

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Zeitgeist Changes — Part 5

The Fourth Turning is a 1996 book by William Strauss and Neil Howe that was recently popular during the election of 2016. It postulates a crisis for America soon, because previous crises have bedeviled America ever 80 to 90 years since the Revolutionary War. As astrologers, that time period should ring bells, and in fact the cycle has extended longer than Strauss and Howe imagine. As has been suggested by this blog, it is unfortunate that historians don’t know astrology. If they did, they would realize that this pattern extends from before the Revolutionary War and corresponds to planetary periods. By looking at the astrological pattern, we can see this cycle has been occurring since the nation was founded, and is getting more intense with each succeeding cycle. The period of 80 to 90 years is one Uranus cycle and one-half of a Neptune Cycle. Let’s look (again) at what happened every 80 to 90 years in American history.

Starving Time

The first successful colony in what has become the United States was in Jamestown in what is now the state of Virginia in May of 1607. The Winter of 1609-1610 is called the Starving Time: Of the 500 residents of Jamestown in the Fall, only 60 were left by the time Spring rolled around. Domestic animals were killed for food, and some cannibalism took place, as shown in (for example) a New York Times story about a current archaeological discovery on the James River. A fleet from England did finally come, but it had only more colonists and not food. In the summer of 1610 (July 7) as they sailed away, another ship with supplies came and they all returned to the colony, which then was firmly established. This was the first crisis of America. If we look at chart for November 24, 1609, that winter of the Starving Time, we see that Uranus is on the Descendant of the United States. However, looking at the next chart for November 24, 1614, when Neptune first came to the Midheaven, we see that it is a full five year after the crisis, and so this does not seem to fit the pattern. Of course, in this example the crisis only lasted a few months, not nearly as long as the others did. Or perhaps since there was no government (represented by the MC axis) there was no transit of the MC. Note that in this case the Uranus conjunction occured before the Neptune conjunction/opposition, but those two will exchange places over the cycles.

Starving Time 2

King William’s War 1

Several wars occurred in the early colonies, called in general the French and Indian Wars, since both were involved, and each war got a name in the colonies depending on who was the ruler of England at that time. They had different names in Europe, since France was also involved. Both France and England had colonies in North America, and the French were allied with the Native Americans, and those two overseas powers were involved in several wars to determine who would have possession of the New World. Spoiler: England won and would become the dominant force in the world for 150 years.

In 1688, there was the Glorious Revolution in Great Britain that replaced the Catholic King James II (son of King Charles I who was executed in the English Civil War) with Protestants William and Mary from Holland. Thus the first such war in America was called King William’s War, and it was fought in 1689-97 with England, France, the American Indians, and the American colonists. This was about 80 to 88 years after the Starving Time, and from the chart we can see that Uranus was at the Descendant during the War, Neptune reached the IC of the United State (not yet born) in 1697, three months before the end of the war.

King William’s War 2

Eighty to ninety years later, after all the French and Indian wars had died out, and after the important Seven Years War (1756-1763), which saw England defeating France to become top dog in the world, it was time for the Revolutionary War, and sure enough those two planets were in their correct spots.

Revolutionary War 1

The official dates for the Revolutionary War are from the Battle of Lexington and Concord (April 19,1775) to the surrender at Yorktown (October 19, 1781). This first image is for June 23, 1777; that date is not, as far as I know, a stand out date in the Revolutionary War. Notice that all three outer planets are near their birth locations. This is not surprising, considering that this chart is less than a year after birth. What the chart does show is that Uranus is passing over the Descendant and on this date is exactly opposite the Ascendant for the first time since birth. Again, not surprising since the natal position of Uranus is close to the Descendant. Whereas the Ascendant relates to the personal projection – a good synonym is persona – the Descendant is the opposite point, and indicates how we relate to the outside world. In personal astrology, this often is used to refer to the partner or people one draws to oneself or open enemies. In either case, it refer to energy coming to us from outside, which can easily be seen as a war which also comes to us.

Revolutionary War 2

In the second chart, for November 23, 1778 we see that Neptune has come to the Midheaven of the United States. The Midheaven refers to the way the country relates to the outside world or vice versa; one can see it as a public persona as opposed to the private persona of the Ascendant. Perhaps this suggests that a war, which involves the government (MC axis) of the United States is always started under the illusion of good intentions and a peaceful outcome.

Civil War

And 80 to 90 years after the Revolutionary War, along comes the Civil War, sometimes called the Second Revolutionary War, for different reason depending on which side the speaker is on. The dates for the American Civil War are from the firing on Fort Sumter (April 12, 1861) to the surrender at Appomattox court house (April 9, 1865). For the the Civil War there is only one chart, for March 11, 1862. The war had started almost a year earlier. We see both Uranus opposite the Ascendant as in the first Revolutionary War chart, and Neptune conjunct the IC (Imum Coeli –the Bottom of the Sky) of the United States chart, opposite the Midheaven. This is about one Uranus cycle, 84 years, after the first chart. The fact that Neptune is now opposite the earlier position (the second chart for November 23, 1778) is not surprising since the period of Neptune is almost exactly double that of Neptune. Note also that since the natal Uranus is close to the Descendant and the natal Neptune is close to the Midheaven, these periods are also close to a Uranus return and a Neptune bi-return. But we do see a pattern. Notice by this time both Uranus/Descendant and Neptune/Midheaven axis aspects occur at the same time. We will notice later that the Neptune aspect will occur before the Uranus aspect.

World War II 1

The dates for American participation in World War II – the Americans were definitely late to the party – is measured from the attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) to the surrender of Japan (Germany had surrendered 4 months earlier) September 2, 1945. One notices that the wars get larger – more participants and over a larger area — and more bloody over time. Starving Time in Jamestown only lasted one winter and less than 500 people died, though of course by percentage of population it is very huge. Compare that to World War II, which lasted for the Americans four years and less than 500,000 Americans died, though it was a world war and many people from other countries, especially the Soviet Union that bore the brunt of the German invasion, died.

World War II 2

Let’s look at the World War II charts. The first chart is for November 5, 1942, the first time Neptune conjoined the Midheaven of the United States in this cycle. Then the second chart for World War II for August 6, 1944, one year to the day before the dropping of the atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, the first pass of Uranus to the Descendant of the United States. Also Neptune is very close – one degree beyond – the Midheaven. This was again one Uranus cycle, and one-half a Neptune cycle since the Civil War. The pattern repeats itself. Notice how the Neptune aspect now takes place before the Uranus aspect. The Descendant is where energy comes in to you from outside, and so Uranus on the Descendant suggests disturbance, upset coming into the country, like for example a war. At least it was in the four cases we looked at. Since we have only the United States as an example, and only five cases to draw upon, we can’t draw a definite conclusion. But in every case there was, the correlation was exact.

What we have seen are five crises, starting at the birth of the colony at Jamestown and occurring every 80 to 90 years with increasing death, violence, and geographical spread, involving the United States. The obvious question is when will this pattern happen next. As you may already suspect, this is coming up soon, and this is one of several cycles that are coming due at about the same time. We will leave for later the exploration of the exact date; but first, we must look at another cycle of great importance.

But how will the next turn of the Uranus/Neptune cycle manifest? One might expect another war, even bigger than World War II. This reasoning was what caused The Fourth Turning‘s notoriety during the election. Several possibilities: Aliens from outer space will invade and the nations of the world will band together to fight them. A bit fanciful, then perhaps it will be an asteroid that will be expected to hit the earth and the nations of the world will band together to fight it. Or perhaps it will be a world wide fight between the 1% and the 99% since inequality will have become so much worse than it is now. Several people consider the state of the United States so divisive and contentious – the term used is polarized — that a new civil war is expected to break out, so that is another possibility. This period could see the Third World War, more horrible that the Second which occurred 84 tears before. Or perhaps this will see the final collapse of the ecosystems of the world. But since I’m an optimist (Jupiter conjunct Sun) my best guess is that the nations of the world will finally decide that the global crises are so ominous that they need to band together in a World War II-scale attempt to fight for the survival of the planet. Of course it should have been done in the 1980s. There is much more that needs to be said about this period, one of the most important of at least the 21st Century, but we need to have more background. If this is the type of crises we will face in a few more years, it suggests that many things will happen between now and then to make the countries of the world think that that type of world wide response is finally necessary. And they are, you need just to look around with eyes unblinded, which is difficult with the constant bombardment of information that we daily receive. But the signs are all around, we just have to see them through all the chaff.

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July 20, 2018

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The Trump-Putin Summit and the Pluto Return

The meeting between United States President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin occurred on July 16, 2018 and the reaction from the Anglo-American press (I have yet to become familiar with the press of other countries in this matter) was immediate, vociferous, and uniformly hostile. Many called Trump’s acts treasonous. The term “traitor” was bandied about frequently. If we look at the chart of the US with transits of the time of the summit, we can shed a little light on why the reaction of the political classes were the way they were.

Here is a chart for 6:20 in the morning eastern time, which means it was 1:20 pm Helsinki time, the start of the summit. Since the aspects we will be looking at are not terribly dependent on the exact time, timing is not important. Three aspects stand out.

tr-pu_summit_correct

Saturn is opposite both natal Venus and Jupiter, and in fact Saturn is almost exactly (one minute of orb) opposite the Venus/Jupiter midpoint — black arrow. Jupiter and Venus are conjunct, and both conjoin the Sun of the US in the natal chart; this triple conjunction is very important in determining the basic self image of the United States. I’ve discussed this at length in an early post about the Virtuous Nation. It is difficult to imagine a “nicer” conjunction than that of Jupiter (the “greater benefic”) and Venus the (“lesser benefic”) and since that conjunction is conjunct the Sun of the United States, the country’s sense of self and vital energy, and all the other characteristics of the Sun, are modified by Venus and Jupiter. The United States has a self image as a beneficent noble country that started with the shining city on the hill, as John Winthrop (Massachusetts 1630) said of the United States, long before the country actually existed. That line is from the Sermon on the Mount and has been used by many others, such as Ronald Reagan. So we see that this Jupiter Venus conjunction is extremely important to the US self-image, and the county’s leaders are always shocked when other people do not believe or accept that self image.

But on the day of the summit Saturn was opposite those two planets, and exactly opposite the midpoint of the two planets. Saturn and Venus/Jupiter are not exactly good buddies. The placement of Saturn there casts a shadow on Venus/Jupiter, on that self image that America holds so closely to. Saturn indicates a threat to the image that America is an exceptionally good country. American does not like that! That aspect suggests why the reaction was so rabid; deep down, the wonderful self image of the United States was threatened, and that is not good.

Notice that both an aspect and a midpoint are involved in this configuration, suggesting that it is stronger than if only aspects or only midpoints were involved. We will see in a future post how this applies in other areas.

This next planetary configuration of importance also involves aspects and midpoints: Transiting Mars is sesquiquadrate natal Mars and natal Neptune (red, green arrow), and is exactly on the Mars/Neptune midpoint. In the US natal chart, Mars and Neptune are square, with an orb of one degree. This square is also very important to the behavior of the US. Mars and Neptune are difficult planets together, and the square is probably the hardest of major aspects between the two planets. Mars – Neptune suggests deceptive uses of energy, or more to the point for a country, the US is under a delusion that its use of energy, war — the most clear manifestation of Mars for a country — is always good, for obviously the US is the shining city on the hill which only has the best interests in mind when it goes to war. There are many other things that could be said about this aspect, but that is a discussion for another time. While the country believes that its action are of the highest moral purpose (Neptune), there is much delusion or incorrect belief about the real purpose of those wars. If one delves truly into the motives and outcomes of various US wars, such as the Vietnam War or any war in Iraq, that is quite obvious.

With transiting Mars involved with the two planets and that aspect, much anger (another Mars term) is brought out. Everything represented by that Mars-Neptune square is energized. How dare anyone try to claim that the new Cold War between the United States and Russia (which of course is only due to the bad actions of Russia and the demonic Putin) is not fully warranted, journalists howl. This is very threatening. As former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray titles it on his blog, detente bad, cold war good is a current American mindset.

A third aspect of note is that the transiting Sun — representing the day of the event — is conjoined the natal Mercury, representing the press in all its many forms (blue arrow). There was a Twitter explosion over this summit, and mostly invective. The major mainstream media fell over themselves in condemning Donald Trump for his treasonous behavior.

A lot of this is the manifestation of Russiagate, the scandal that has engulfed Washington over the last two years. At first I thought it would eventually die out, but it seems to be sticking around and is gathering even more energy.

Since Watergate, the scandal that brought down President Nixon, occurred during the closing semisquare between Uranus and Neptune, I had long though that the opening semisquare of those same two planets which we see now would see another Presidential scandal. And I’m beginning to think that this extremely large scandal, perhaps the largest in American history will, when it resolves, be the basis of the Pluto Return of the United States.

As far as I know, no country with any type of constitution has survived long enough for a Pluto Return — the return to the natal position — at about 250 years. Look at how often even England, not to speak of France or Italy, have formed a new birth chart because of a new government or Constitution. But the United States keeps ticking along with the same old Constitution. (For examples of how the Constitution, which is revered by many as almost the Ten Commandments, has been the cause of many of the problems that bedevil this country, see The Frozen Republic and The Velvet Coup both by Daniel Lazare.) If you are over thirty, you realize how important the Saturn Return — when transiting Saturn returns to the place it occupies at birth — is to our own growth as an adult. And the effects of the Saturn Return are noticed several years before the event. I’ve known of marriages, divorces, and major moves that have happened in the run up to the Saturn Return. The Pluto Return is even more powerful. And we will soon get to see one of the World’s first examples!

plret_tg

Here is a graphical ephemeris of the three and a half year period for the Pluto Return. We see Pluto first comes close to its natal position in early 2021 (black arrow); the first exact conjunction is at the beginning of 2022; the last pass is a the end of 2023 (red arrow); and the last near conjunction is at the end of 2024, though of course that period could be extended. I believe what we are seeing now will result in a major shakeup in the government, more powerful than what occurred after Watergate.

There are two basic theories of what we are seeing that is called Russiagate. Either one is unprecedented in the history of the county. And of course the people that are supporting either narrative differ from the standard Democratic-Republican or even left-right dichotomy that we usually see. One side is backed by “Establishment” Democrats and Republicans, along with (of course) the intelligence services and all the media outlets, newspapers and television news channels. The other side is backed by the “extreme” left and right along with corresponding blogs, since there are no mainstream outlets for such divergent voices. Also, several prominent experts in Russian history support this position, but of course they are never heard from in mainstream sources.

The official narrative goes something like this: The Russians conspired to fix our election of 2016 (along with many other elections and movements around the Western World) so that their chosen candidate would be elected, and that candidate likely colluded with them to do so. Thus we have the President of the United States working for a foreign power. When in the Fifties the John Birch Society, a conservative anti-communist organization, charged President Eisenhower with being an agent of the Soviet Union, most people laughed it off. But this time all the press (Mercury), or at least the “prestige press”, are uniformly in agreement and in fact broadcasting the scenario. To have an actual traitor running the government who is in thrall to a foreign leader is something no one believed would occur in this country. Many are calling this the new Pearl Harbor or bigger than 9/11. When the proof of this is final and that traitorous candidate is eliminated, a major shakeup in the government and in election procedures will occur.

The counter narrative has it that the Deep State (what I called the National Security State in a previous entry) conspired to put its chosen representative, Hillary Clinton, into the White House, and when the unimaginable happened and the candidate they were sure would lose became President, they conspired to prevent the current president from doing much and hopefully driving him from office, either through impeachment or other less sanguine means. The whole Russiagate narrative is like a snipe hunt for America. The Deep State has much practice in regime change for other countries, and now it is applying those techniques here at home. This too is unprecedented and when it comes out that this is happening a major shake up of the United States government will occur.

So there you have it, two mutually exclusive scenarios, both of which are beyond what has happened to the American Republic since its birth and both of which will require major changes in the laws of the land and perhaps even the Constitution to prevent such a thing from happening again. In either case we have a major shakeup coming, fitting exactly with the meaning of a Pluto Return.

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December 22, 2017

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Early Twentieth Century Disasters

In the early part of the XXth century, inspection and control were lax, safety measures somewhat non-existent, and large disasters occurred more often than 100 years later. Here are four.

The General Slocum was a cruise ship in Brooklyn, New York, built near the end of the Nineteenth Century. On June 15, 1904 it was chartered by a church group for an enjoyable cruise to Long Island and a picnic. The ship was carrying an estimated 1331 passengers, mostly German immigrants or second generation German-Americans from a Lutheran Church in lower Manhattan. The disaster that befell it is less well known than the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, discussed below, which also took place in New York City. Shortly after leaving the dock a fire started on the ship. It is still unclear exactly how the fire started. Witnesses claimed the fire started in either a cabin filled with paint or one filled with gasoline. The passengers could either die by fire or die by drowning, since most probably could not swim, and the clothing of the early Twentieth century made swimming difficult. There were mostly women and children on the ship, and the large skirts on the women made swimming difficult. Ship safety quality had not been maintained: the fire hoses were rotten, the life preservers fell apart and the crumbling cork acted as a dead weight for the wearers, and the life boats were not accessible, in some cases wired down or painted to walls. To coin a phrase, it was a disaster waiting to happen. The captain of the ship also made bad decisions that delayed rescue. Help was slow in arriving. The ship left dock at 9:30 for a church picnic, and the fire was noticed at 10, which is when the chart is drawn. As a result, over 1000 people died. Since most of the people lost were from Little Germany in Manhattan, that neighborhood declined after the disaster. The captain was sentenced to 10 years in Sing Sing. He was released after 3 and a half years. Steamship inspection was reformed.

Slocum Fire

The first thing we notice in the chart of this event is the conjunction of Sun, Mars, Pluto, and Venus, with Mars and Pluto (major violence) within one-half degree. And that conjunction is trine Saturn: Extreme violence on that day (Sun) affecting mostly women (Venus). The trine indicates that the death in this case had long lasting (Saturn) effects. The Sun opposite Uranus suggests the suddenness of this disaster (and don’t forget that the word “disaster” means “bad stars”, that is a evil combination of planets, and is essentially an astrological word). The sextile between Jupiter and the Sun, and from the sixth harmonic chart we can see how close that sextile (conjunction is the sixth harmonic) actually is, shows that this disaster was indeed big, that is, Jupiterian.

Slocum Sixth Harmonic

The sinking of the Titanic is a famous disaster, and movies have been made of the incident. The Titanic was supposedly unsinkable, and it left London on its maiden voyage for New York City, filled with both poor people and the rich. It struck an ice berg in the North Atlantic at 11:38 pm ship time on April 14, 1912. It took two hours and 40 minutes to sink and more than 1500 people died, making it one of the largest maritime disasters in history. The Titanic lived up to its name: it was four city blocks long and 11 stories high; it included a gym, a swimming pool, and a squash court. Since it was considered unsinkable, only half the number of needed lifeboats were provided. Another problem was a lack of binoculars which prevented crew members stationed in the crow’s nest from seeing the iceberg they were approaching. The ship was equipped with state of the art communications, but somehow the warnings about ice that were received never were passed on to the bridge. Many of the lifeboats were lowered half full since ship’s crew was not certain they had been tested for seaworthiness. Even though there was a close ship when the accident happened, that ship (later identified as the British ship Californian) never responded to the Titanic’s plight. Most people could have been saved if a rescue ship was available when sinking began.

Titanic Hits Iceberg

In the chart for the time the Titanic hit the iceberg, and thus the “birth” of the accident, we see the approaching New Moon at the bottom of the chart, so there was no available lunar light at the time of the collision. There is a semisquare between Mars and Saturn, which suggests the difficulties in rescuing people, both through the half-filled lifeboats and the difficulty of getting a rescue ship. Pluto hit the Descendant about 20 minutes later, as the ship was sinking. There is a wide Pluto Mars conjunction here just as seen previously. There is a one degree Moon square Pluto (periled humanity) that became exact in another two hours, about when the ship finally sunk. At the same time Neptune came to the Descendant, indicated the ship’s watery grave.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire is well known, but relatively few people died as a result of that fire that took place in a commercial building in Manhattan. Only 146 people died, mostly from fire in a building from which they could not escape, but some from jumping as they tried to escape the fire. On Saturday March 25, 1911 at 4:40 in the afternoon a fire broke out on eighth floor. Immediately a bookkeeper called the company offices on the tenth floor and appraised them of the fire. Those on the tenth floor exited immediately. Those on the eighth floor also ran for their lives and escaped. But no one told the workers on the ninth floor. Fire escapes collapsed and some got out by climbing down the elevator cables, and others used the two small freight elevators. Some thought the fire began in a box of fabric scraps that a cigarette was thrown into. The doors were locked to prevent the workers from leaving, as required by the owners to prevent stealing, and only one of the four large elevators was in working condition. This incident is famous for highlighting the poor working conditions available for young women in the early Twentieth Century, and caused many demands for reform of labor laws. Currently, as most clothing manufacturing has moved overseas, such disasters happen in foreign counties, such as the famous one that was reminiscent of The Triangle Shirtwaist fire that occurred in Bangladesh a few years ago. The owners of Triangle Shirtwaist refused to allow unionization (workers wanted to join the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union — ILGWU — but were prevented by the owners). After this fire, the ILGWU was much more popular with the public. The owners of the business paid a week’s wages to the families of those who had died, and received $200,000 from insurance.

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

In this chart we have Moon conjunction Mars (fiery deaths of women) square Saturn conjunct Venus (loss of females). Pluto is in the tenth house, loosely conjunct the Midheaven and reaches the MC 50 minutes later.

The SS Eastland was also a passenger ship used for cruises, and based in Chicago. The workers from a General Electric affiliated plant started boarding early for a picnic, a break from their mundane lives. After the Eastland had been build, it was found to be top-heavy and prone to listing on one side. On the morning July 24, 1915 the ship soon filled to capacity, which was over 2500 people. While it sat at dock, the Eastland began to list to one side, causing passenger to gather on the other side. It kept listing, and finally tilted over 90 degrees to the port side so that the deck was half submerged and the ship rested on the bottom, which was only 20 feet below the surface of the water. Many were trapped under water, and some were crushed by heavy furniture that moved when the ship tilted. Even though they were only 20 feet from the dock, 848 lost their lives. After the sinking of the Titanic, changes had been made to lifeboats carried, and some think that the Eastland was top heavy and thus had a tendency to capsize because of all the lifeboats it carried on the top deck, called the Hurricane Deck. People dived into the water attempting to rescue passengers, and welders arrived and attempted to open the hull to remove trapped passengers; neither operation was very successful.

Eastland Lists

In the Eastland chart, the Moon opposite Pluto jumps out at us; Moon and Pluto have already been mentioned several times in this entry; major events affecting women, and these two planets are trine and sextile the event Ascendant, showing that it happened in this location. Sun is tightly conjoined with Neptune; this could indicate the watery doom that befell many on that day, or the confused responses to an accident that happened while the ship was at dock. Mars Uranus combination are famous in accidents (consider the meanings of those two planets) and here we have a trine between Mars and Uranus. And, as in the first cruise ship accident discussed, here there is a Sun-Jupiter aspect — Sun trine Jupiter with orb about two degrees: Another large death toll.

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October 31, 2017

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An American Way of Death

The massive killing of concert goers in Las Vegas is in the news, and since an exact time the shooting started is available, I had expected to write about the chart for this incident. But just to expand the scope of this entry, I decided to cover the charts for two other recent mass shootings. There are so many it was an embarrassment of riches, so to speak, but I finally decided on two more very famous incidents: the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado and the Sandy Hook shootings in Connecticut. Then we are looking at an incident from the East Coast, one from the center of the country, and one from the West. But mass killing didn’t just happen recently. There were many massacres of Native Americans throughout American history, but they are not well timed. But one early incident occurred in the Twenties involving school children that we have a date and time for and I will look at this also.

Las Vegas Massacre

Looking at the chart for the first shot at the crowd, we see the long lasting transits Uranus semisquare Neptune, which goes in and out of orb over the next three years, and only sets the background to the craziness of the world during these years, and Uranus opposite Jupiter, not nearly as long lasting as the previous aspect — Jupiter moves through one sign per year — and indicates an excess of unpredictability. But the most obvious aspect is Saturn just above the Descendant, about half a degree. The exact opposition to the Ascendant would happen about four minutes later, in the midst of the shooting. Saturn has a bad reputation, called the “greater malefic”. Saturn opposite the Ascendant says that something bad is coming into your environment from the outside, which is exactly what happened. Notice also the Venus-Mars conjunction trine Pluto. The Mars trine Pluto is quite close, orb about nine minutes. Mars-Pluto suggest great violence, but this aspect is a trine, not a square. Most people think a trine is soft and easy, unlike a square. But this is not quite true. A trine indicates action that goes on easily, without causing an upset which is noticeable. In the case it is now known that the shooter amassed a huge supply of weapons and carefully planned his action. The whole operation appeared to come about without difficulty, indicative of a trine. Of course this aspect was long lasting, whereas the Saturn on the Ascendant was very brief, since the Ascendant changes at the rate of approximately one degree every four minutes, so this aspect was only valid for several minutes, exactly the time of the shooting.

Las Vegas Shooting – USA

And here is a chart for the transits at that time in the US chart. We notice that both Neptune is square the US Ascendant and Uranus is sesquiquadrate that Ascendant. This occurs because of the Uranus semisquare Neptune aspect mentioned above, but in this case we see that that aspects is so situated that both planets aspect the US Ascendant, meaning that the craziness mentioned about directly impacts the US. Transiting Saturn is opposite the US Mars — frustrated energy.

Columbine Shooting

The next chart is for the shooting at Columbine High in Colorado in 1999. Among other things, this shooting highlights the hypocrisy of American leaders in regards to mass shootings and gun control. Bill Clinton, President of America at the time of the shooting, spoke out against the stupidity of this shooting at the same time that he was bombing Serbia and killing many civilians. I suppose very few of his listeners at the time noted the extreme conflict between what he said and what he did. The old saying “Do as I say, not as I do” was never more useful. In this incident, two high school students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 students and teachers and wounded 24.

In this chart we find Mercury exactly — less than a quarter degree — on the Midheaven. This event was communicated – Mercury — fairly immediately to the populace at large. Everyone knew about it. To further accentuated the people’s knowledge of this event, we have the Moon (people) square mercury and the Midheaven. What is most noticeable is the T-square involving Saturn opposite Mars square Neptune. It is hard to imagine three planets with a more negative reputation. Mars square Neptune, also seen in the US chart, show misapplied or confused energies. Saturn and Mars shows frustrated energies that do not come out the way expected (the two lads involved had expected an explosion from bombs they had planted, but that explosion never happened) or are frustrated. Saturn and Neptune have been discussed before, simply indicated the disillusion with what had once been thought to be a good idea. Notice that the orbs in all three of these aspects are tight; the Mars Saturn opposition is within 20 minutes, and Mars is retrograde, adding to the underhanded nature of actions at this time.

Sandy Hook Shooting

The third chart here is for the shooting at Sandy Hook School in Connecticut. In this incident 20 year old Adam Lanza shot 20 students all of whom were under eight years old, and six adult at the elementary school. He had earlier killed his mother and at the end of the killing at the school he committed suicide. The chart is not very impressive; the tightest aspect is in the Sun-Saturn semisquare, which is about seven seconds of arc. But let us look a little deeper, at the fourth harmonic chart. The fourth harmonic chart, like any other harmonic chart, shows nothing that is not already in the primary chart, just like a microscope shows nothing that is not already in the thing being observed. But the fourth harmonic chart shows things that aren’t easily noticeable in the primary chart, things that can be very important. And in this chart we see that there is a T-Square involving some very interesting planets. Now realize this is not a T-square, involving an opposition and two squares, in the conventional sense. The “opposition” in this case is the exact semisquare between Sun and Saturn pointed out above. In the fourth harmonic chart a semisquare or a sesquiquadrate appear as oppositions, since they are based on one-eight of a circle and eight times one half (opposition) is four. The squares in the fourth harmonic chart are actually semi-octiles, multiples of 22.5 degrees, but important hard aspects. Here we have Sun, Saturn, Neptune, showing a difficult day, one where things do not turn out as expected.

Sandy Hook Fourth Harmonic

And just to show that large scale mass murders are not just due to guns, here is a crime that occurred in the (Roaring) Twenties involving dynamite. This took place in the Bath Township of Michigan. This incident still remains, even after Sandy Hook, the deadliest school massacre in American History. At the time dynamite was a relatively new explosive, having been invented by Alfred Nobel 60 years earlier. Bath was a small village near the capital of Michigan, Lansing. An initial explosion at 8:45 in the morning was from a cache of dynamite that had previously be laid. Not all of the dynamite planted exploded. A member of the school board named Andrew Kehoe drove up to the school with a dynamite filled pickup truck which he blew up by shooting the truck, killing himself and several bystanders. Forty-five people died as a result of his actions, including 38 students.

Bath Township Massacre

So here is a chart for the main explosion at the school, from dynamite which was on a timer. There was also an explosion at the same time at Kehoe’s house, which killed his ill wife, and explosion later at the school when Kehoe shot his truck, killing himself, the school superintendent, and some others. There is a square between Sun-Mercury and Neptune — confused communication and a day (Sun) of deception. But notice Mars conjunct Pluto with Mars less than a degree off the Ascendant– violence, bloodshed in the environment. Jupiter is right on the Midheaven, and Jupiter is considered the “greater benefic”. Perhaps the deaths would be much greater if all the dynamite planted at the school went off, so there was some luck involved. Also, many students were on a break and so avoided the blast. But Jupiter also suggests the magnitude of this killing, which as I said before is still the deadliest in US history, and it was at a small school. And Jupiter is conjunct Uranus (see Richard Tarnas for other meanings of the conjunction involving discovery) which reflects the opposition of the same two planets in the Las Vegas shooting chart.

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August 31, 2017

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Before The Civil War

Currently we have Neptune in an opening square to the Ascendant of the United States and a trine between Neptune and the US Sun. Because of the slow passage of Neptune, this pattern was repeated last before Neptune was discovered, in 1853 and 1854. Thus I thought it would be interesting to look at that period in American history.

ne342017

In the period 2016 through 2018 we have transiting Neptune making an opening square the the US Ascendant, as has been discussed before, and also a trine to the US Sun. These two important Neptune transits go on for several years. The first chart shows a position within this period in which you can see both the square to the Ascendant — red line — and the trine to the Sun — blue line. Since the square is a fourth harmonic aspect and the trine is a third harmonic aspect, the harmonic which shows both aspects as a conjunction is the twelfth harmonic: 12 = 3X4. So here is a twelfth harmonic graphical ephemeris allowing one to see when both aspects are coming into orb, exact, and leaving orb. Neptune first approaches square to the Ascendant in late spring of 2016 — black arrow — and then the trine with the Sun finally ceases in early 2019 — red arrow. So for about three and a half years the United States is strongly Neptunian.

tgne2017

But this combination of aspects has happened once before in the history of the United States, that is, after its birth, and that was in the period 1853 and 1854. The third chart is a wheel showing when both aspects were within orb, and the fourth chart is a graphical ephemeris, like the previous one, showing when Neptune approaches the opening square with the Ascendant — black arrow — until when the final trine with the Sun took place at the end of 1854 — red arrow. This period was shorter than the current one, but many important things did happen

ne341854

In 1850, under a Uranus-Pluto conjunction, the South thought about leaving the Union, but in a vote of Southern states, only one state, South Carolina, voted for succession, so the matter was dropped for the time being. But 1850 did see the Fugitive Slave Act (part of the Compromise of 1850) passed, which required northerners to return slaves that had escaped to their rightful “owners”. This act was not very popular in many Northern cities, and there was widespread refusal to obey its demands.

Before the Civil War

Then in 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed, shepherded by Stephen Douglas who would become famous for his debates with Whig politician Abraham Lincoln, whom he ran against in the election of 1860. To understand the full import of this act, we will have to explore the history of Congress’s dealings with slavery, which was always a controversial subject in America,

In 1820 Congress passed the Missouri Compromise, which was suppose to settle the issue of slavery in the country. Missouri was going to enter the nation as a slave state, thus upsetting the balance of slave and free states in the country. To avoid this, Maine was broken off from Massachusetts and thus became a free state at the same time that Missouri became a slave state, maintaining the balance. Furthermore, when other states were made from the vast territory that was the Louisiana Purchase, all states north of the southern border of Missouri (expect obviously Missouri) were to be free states and those south of that border would be slave states.

Missouri Compromise

The chart, above, for the day the Missouri Compromise was passed, is very interesting. There is a conjunction between Uranus and Neptune, the last one before 1990, opposite the US Venus and square Pluto, which sits on the IC of the United States. That Pluto position — the conjunction with the IC was yet to happen — indicates that deep changes to the society of the US were coming in the near future. This period saw a Venus return for the United States (transiting Venus returns to its natal position), and with that strong opposition, Justice seemed to be in the ascendancy. This was an illusion but it would takes several decades for this to become clear.

This compromise had lasted for a third of a century, but now that Kansas and Nebraska were about to enter the country, and both of the states were clearly north of the southern border of Missouri and so they should be free states, Douglas, among others, wanted popular sovereignty to be in effect. This allowed each state to determine its own policies of slavery. This popular sovereignty passed in the Kansas-Nebraska Act, thus killing the Missouri Compromise and, though it was not initially clear, setting the final stage for the Civil War, which was to come in another seven years.

There were many unintended consequences of this Act. Because of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, more and more people became disgusted and disillusioned with slavery and expressed their increasing unhappiness. Many slave owners from Missouri rushed into Kansas hoping to swell the vote in favor of slavery in that state. These people were called border ruffians or pukes, and were seen as interlopers by the people who already lived in the Kansas territory. There were many skirmishes been the pro and anti slavery citizens of Kansas, leading to what has been called “Bleeding Kansas”. An important preacher from Brooklyn, Henry Ward Beecher (brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin had been published in 1852) sent boxes of what were called Beecher’s Bibles and were actually rifles to Kansas that helped with the bleeding. A man by the name of John Brown killed five pro-slavery people in Kansas in 1856, before his more famous attack on Harper’s Ferry. The Whig Party, that had formed as a response to Andrew Jackson, essentially disappeared with the passage of the Kansas Nebraska Act, and anti-slavery Whigs joined with members of the Free Soil Party to form the Republican Party in 1954, thus ending what is called the Second Party System and replacing it with the Third Party System — Republicans and Democrats — which the country still has. So we can see that the passage of this piece of legislation, considered so fine at the time, on hindsight can be seen as one of the final acts that lead directly to the Civil War. The Missouri Compromise had settled the waters of the slavery antislavery controversy for awhile, but as an elderly Thomas Jefferson said at the time, this was as a fire bell in the night. It just took forty years for the fire to be acknowledged.

In summary, this period with the multiple Neptune transits for the United States saw the final disillusionment with the status quo opinion that it was possible to compromise with the slave-owning republic that was south of the Mason-Dixon line, but expanding. This compromise had been in effect for a third of a century, but it was finally rapidly collapsing. The end, as Neptune transited opposite the MC of the US and Uranus transited opposite the Ascendant of the US, would not be long in coming.

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June 16, 2017

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Yet More Neptune

Neptune has pride of place in the birth chart of the United States. It is conjunct the Midheaven of the US (a wide conjunction, 8.5 degrees) and is the most elevated planet in the chart. This prominence of Neptune is very visible in the United States, and even manifests itself in US currency. This placement of Neptune is articulated by the term “American Dream” and displays itself in the concept of Manifest Destiny, a term popularized in the 1840s and illustrated by this famous painting. manifest-destiny-3-638

America has been the birth place to many religions and in fact there is a region of Western New York State which is called the Burned-Over District (details are in Whitney Cross’s book The Burned Over District first published in 1950) where many religions erupted, including Mormonism, seemingly after a controversy involving the death of a Mason and the birth of the first third party in America. People new to America are amazed at the strength of religion in the society. Imagine the extreme difficultly of a Non-believer running for any public office, and compare this to any European nation, most especially France. And look at the back of a one dollar bill. There you will see an eye on top of a pyramid, a physical representation of the position of Neptune in the birth chart of the United States. That position was determined in 1935, and was suggested by then Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace, who probably had more knowledge of esoteric symbols than any other government official since, though of course the founders of this country were mostly Masons, and I am told the amount of esoteric symbolism to be found in Washington, DC is considerable. This eye on the pyramid was the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States which originated back from the birth of the country.

As has been talked about before the United States is currently having a Neptune transit, with Neptune square the Ascendant of the United States. This has manifested itself in many ways, but two stand out as being featured prominently in the news media, and demonstrating once again that the media is also under Neptune’s influence. In general, people are now disillusioned with the charade of politics as usual, and this plays out in many ways. The key word is disillusioned, a word of Neptune.

Neptune Square US Ascendant

Neptune’s hard transits, since Neptune is a slow moving outer planet, are relatively rare in the history of the country. What we are seeing now is an opening square of Neptune to the Ascendant. As can be see in this graphical ephemeris, it was first exact in early summer of 2016 (black arrow), was then exact in March of 2017 and will make its final passes of an exact square at the end of this year and the beginning of the next year.

Neptune Conjunct US Ascendant

The previous conjunction was exact in 1975 and 1976, forty years ago. In the United States this saw a rise of born-again Christians (“Jesus People”) — at this time my astrology teacher became a “Jew for Jesus” and threw away all her astrology book., It seemed to be a time when many who had believed in political change in the Sixties gave up on that idea and turned to spiritual pursuits. While it is difficult to chose an exact chart for this event, a milestone is the release of Bob Dylan’s first Christian album Slow Train Coming on August 20, 1979. Though this was some years after the exact conjunction, it astounded many Dylan fans at the time since he was not known as a Christian (but rather into his Jewish heritage) even though such a song as “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine” from the album John Wesley Harding may have suggested differently (though of course that album was released after his supposedly almost fatal motorcycle accident and showed a distinct change from what had gone before). But the album was also surprising because his previous album, Street Legal, contained a number of reference to Tarot (“between the King and Queen of Swords”) and other esoteric matters.

slow_train_coming_usa

In the chart for the release of this album, seen as transits to the United States chart (left), Neptune is past the Ascendant but still close and in the First House. What stands out is the triple conjunction of Sun, Venus, and Jupiter in Leo opposite the Moon of the US. That day represents some type of culmination of trends in America, and the beginning of something new. As we can see from the event chart for the release (right), Uranus was midway between Neptune and Pluto; This period in history represented the beginning of the Rise of Neoliberalism, discussed at length elsewhere in his blog, in the world whose effects have become obvious by now, almost forty years later. It was indeed the beginning of a new trend.

Neptune Closing Square to US Ascendant

The closing square of Neptune to the Ascendant was in 1933 though 1935, the depths of the Great Depression when Franklin Roosevelt had just taken office. Father Coughlin, a Catholic priest who used the radio to reach a large audience, posed a challenge to Roosevelt whom he first supported; Coughlin later became anti-semitic and began to support some policies of Fascist leaders. Huey Long, the governor of Louisiana, was another early supporter of Roosevelt who split with FDR and offered a “Share our Wealth” program that was more radical than the new Deal of FDR. He was associated with Father Coughlin and was assassinated in the middle of this transit. And of course the Communist Party of the USA saw much gain in its membership as people saw the problems with capitalism. In all these cases, and others, people were all too clearly disillusioned –a Neptunian word — with capitalism. In the graphical ephemeris for this period we can see the squares of Neptune to the US Ascendant; the first exact square is shown by the black arrow.

Neptune Square US Sun

Neptune transits are also very prominent to the United States chart during the bout of McCarthyism in the late Forties and early Fifties. Neptune was on the MC of the US during the first half of that decade, as the country entered and fought World War II. Neptune then was prominent in the US tenth house at the end of the war and shortly thereafter. Then, as shown in the graphical ephemeris above, Neptune was square the Sun of the United States starting at the beginning of 1948 (black arrow shows first exact square) and the last exact square was in late 1949, though the effects continued into 1950. As mentioned in the above link, the late Forties was the period when the Cold War was really started. Truman was laying the foundation of the Cold War (e.g. the Truman Doctrine) and instituted a loyalty oath for government workers which was then ramped-up by the Republicans, as is their wont, and the forerunners of McCarthy, such as Richard Nixon, were practicing their witchhunting of Communists

One prominent example in the current square of Neptune, which has been mentioned before, is now going under the sobriquet of “Russiagate”. This is the belief that Russia and its demonic leader Vladimir Putin are behind most of the troubles in the world today, and that Putin’s noxious influence has determined the winner of America’s last Presidential election. This is a feature of the ongoing New Cold War, which really came into prominence (though it started with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991) with the violent coup in the Ukraine (though of course it is not called a coup in the mass media, though the President of what has been referred to as the private CIA (Stratfor) has called the event the most obvious coup in recent memory), which took place of February 22, 2014. This was the beginning of a difficult time for the world, and was indicated astrologically by the Grand Cross on April 22, 2014, which can be seen as the starting gun for a dangerous race.

Grand Cross

The charges in Russiagate have filled the news, and most seemingly liberal people, those who supported Clinton’s campaign for the Presidency in 2016, assuredly give credence to this belief of Russiagate. But there is really no evidence for this, as former President Obama, former director of the CIA Michael Morell, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have all said. People need to realize that there is no there there. Certainly there are many sins that they can get Trump on, but instead many people chase this chimera; that alone should suggest that this is part of the plan to further demonize Russia and avoid any possible detente. But this has not stopped the belief, which is featured prominently in the major newspapers and news channels. As I’ve said before, this is Neptune writ large. This is surely a projection by American officials since the United States has “influenced” the elections of other countries more than once. One example was so famous, involving a President of Russia who was far behind his opponent, that Time magazine even had a cover story celebrating the exploit. One wonders if afterwards Moscow was filled with complaints about “Clinton hacked our election”.

Time-Yeltsin-227x300

In fact, now almost any meeting with someone from Russia is suspect, innocent contacts with Russian officials are considered a sign of treason, and academic researchers are urged not too seem to close to Russia. Full disclosure: I had a meeting with two Russian women over the Memorial Day weekend of 2012 in a bowling alley in New Orleans, so perhaps I too have been infected.

But recently something else has gripped the news media, and is strongly related to “Russiagate”: the charge, uniformly accepted by the aforementioned mass media, that the government of Syria attacked and killed many people (including beautiful innocent babies) with a poison gas, identified as sarin. As a result President Trump sent Tomahawk missiles to pound Syria, thus proving he is Presidential by committing a War Crime, as all Presidents of the United States, at least as far back as Harry Truman, have done, and turned around the almost universal hatred of him into much (temporary) adulation. Having committed a war crime was always the advantage Hillary Clinton had over him in being presidential.

But the nature of this chemical attack is very hazy. Note that Neptune rules both poison gas and hazy. Several things not mentioned: Syria has no poison gas, according to the United Nations which destroyed those weapons several years ago. Then, as in any crime, one must asked cui bono — who profits. Since Syria was winning the war and about to engage in a gathering to settle the war (in Brussels) this was surely the absolutely worst time to let off an attack by a chemical bomb, even if Syria’s government had them. But of course the opponents to the government of Syria have much to gain from the attack. Then there is the report, also unmentioned in mass media, by a expert in national security and weapons of mass destruction from MIT that the explosion was from a bomb on the ground and not dropped from the air. And of course there is doubt that the gas used was even sarin, since pictures of first responders show them not using any protections that are required for dealing with sarin.

But this bombing certainly gave a boost to the lagging presidency of Donald Trump. In fact, some commentators at MSDNC have suggested that Putin arranged the chemical attack so that his buddy Donald Trump could appear decisive by his response. The Russians themselves believe that Trump certainly knew this was not an attack by the government of Syria, for the obvious reasons given above, so they think that he is still open to talks with them, and that this was just an action he needed to take since he had been so weakened by the Russiagate attacks. So whichever way you look at this incident, it is totally Neptunian. When an crazy idea seems to take control of otherwise rational people, you can be sure Neptune is involved. As we saw previously, there were strong Neptune contacts to the US chart at the beginnings of the Cold War in the late Forties.

Watching these events happen with a knowledge of Neptune allows one to observe the action of Neptune at first hand. It seems like a fog has swept over America, and the fact of Russian interference with American (and those of other countries) elections is taken as fact by so-called reputable news services. Between Russiagate and President Donald Trump, America must be the laughing-stock of other countries, or at least those who are not swept up in the American bubble. And since almost all people — liberals — concerned with civil liberties hate Donald Trump with a passion, they don’t notice what looks at a distance as if the organizations such as the FBI, CIA, and NSA — the so-called Deep State — are attempting a soft coup to replace the elected President of the United States, just as if the USA were a “banana republic”. They have much practice at replacing elected leaders in other countries, and now their skills are being applied closer to home. It is a fitting close to the American Century. Liberals should remember the famous saying from World War Two: First they came for the Communists and since I wasn’t a Communist I said nothing….

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Yet More Neptune