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May 19, 2017

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History Repeats

An obscure journalist in the Nineteenth Century, who became better known through his books and manifestos, once said that “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce”. We are now seeing the truth of this dictum played out before us.
The Nineteenth Century journalist Karl Marx wrote a book called The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. People in the present mostly don’t recognize “Eighteen Brumaire” which for the educated European of the Nineteenth Century would be as recognizable as is 9/11 is today. It all has to do with the end of the French Revolution; perhaps if we called that date sixteen years ago the twentieth of Virgo it would not be so recognizable either.

After the French Revolution, many things were changed. For example, the customary methods of weights and measures were replaced by a more reasonable system based on units of ten, which was called the metric system and which I believe it is still in use in a few countries. And the calendar was changed. The French Revolutionary calendar had months corresponding to zodiacal signs, and Brumaire is Scorpio, so 18 Brumaire is 18 Scorpio or November 9. The year in question was 1799.

So What happened on November 9, 1799? It was well known again to European intellectuals of the Nineteenth Century. There was a coup in France by Napoleon Bonaparte against the Directory of the French Revolution that ruled France, essentially installing Napoleon as a dictator in France and ending the French Revolution. This was a big deal. So the date 18 Brumaire was when the French Revolution ended. Let us look at the chart for that date.

Eighteen Brumaire

In this char Sun is conjunct Neptune, and it had passed over Neptune two days earlier, possibly when the planning for the coup took place, This conjunction suggest confused days in Paris. And it certainly was. The tightest aspect is the sesquiquadrate between Pluto — revolution, transformation — and Venus – justice. And it certainly was that.

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

One of the contentions of this blog is that every time there is a midpoint configuration involving Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto – – at most three per century — there is a major change in the zeitgeist of society, which could be called it a soft coup. We are living now under the combined impact of the three coups from the Twentieth Century, since the first from the Twenty First hasn’t happened yet. The one closest to us in time, and so the one we most notice since many are still alive who remember life before that event, is what I call in shorthand the Neoliberal Coup, even though the previous one, called the National Security State coup, is also very strong, and will be discussed in a later post, though it has been discussed before.

We have seen this played out in the present. The commanding issue of this time is Neoliberalism, since it originated with the midpoint configuration of the late Seventies discussed earlier. These midpoint configurations indicate such a large change in society that much is different afterwards, so much so that we find it difficult to believe that another world was once possible and may be again. This Neoliberaism coup finally crashed with the so-called Great Recession of 2007-2009, when Pluto crossed the cardinal axis and into the sign Capricorn. The hero designated to slay the dragon of neoliberalism was Barak Obama. And he appeared to suggest that he was the Champion who could do so — remember Hope and Change? I’ve discussed before the strong influence of Neptune in the election of Obama. But he proved not to be the Champion people wanted him to be, and this was the tragedy.

income_dist

These two graphs illustrated what has been happening. The first one shows allotment of income in economic recovery — after each economic downturn there is a recovery when incomes increase. In the recovery after World War II, under President Harry Truman, 80% of the income increase went to the bottom 90 % of the population and only 20 % went to the top 10%. This ratio kept falling during subsequent recoveries after other downturns, and by the recovery under President Reagan the upper 10% got 80% of the income increase, leaving only 20% for the bottom 90% of the population, the reverse of what happened under Truman. But at least the bottom 90% got some income increase. This changed under the last recovery, under President Obama. In that case the bottom 90% lost about 15% of their income, while the upper 10% gained almost 120%, or in other words got some income from the bottom 90%, thus increasing the already massive inequality. This is unprecedented in the last 70 years.

wealth_dist

The next graph shows the distribution of wealth — assets — of families over the last 100 years. We can see that the top 0.1%, that is the upper one tenth of one percent of the population, reached a height of 26% of the total wealth in 1929 right before the start of the Great Depression. Their share of total wealth then fell until the late Seventies and the beginning of Neoliberalism; at this point their share was only 7%. That share started to increase, but still the share of the wealth owned by the 90% increased until it was 36% in the mid-Eighties under President Reagan. It then began to fall, and of course the share held by the upper tenth of a percent increased until now they have almost met and crossed. We await newer figures with anticipation! But one can see from these two graphs that things have gotten worse for the bottom 90%, and this was foretold when newly elected President Obama told a group of assembled bankers, who expected the worst, that he was the only thing between them and the pitchforks. And now that he is ex-President he has been rewarded by those same bankers with two $400,000 speaking engagements and of course a $65 million book deal, and in early May he made a $3.2 million for a speech in Milan, showing clearly that he is not a part of the 90%

A recently published book by a Professor Emeritus in Economics at MIT called The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy by Peter Temin lays in out. He says that American society is dividing into an upper 20%, in the finance, technology, and electronics sector, and the lower 80%, and that those two groups are increasingly divided from one another. Those in the two groups live in different countries, and do not communicate. Needless to say, those running the media – newspapers, television — live in only one of those worlds, unlike many years ago before the Neoliberal Revolution when many journalists were from the 80% that are not in the FTE sector.

Barack Obama was chosen to run since he was a much better mask to hide America, a biracial mask that was more glamorous than the one offered by George W. Bush, whose behavior had damaged Brand America. And he promised Hope and Change (TM) which people believed somehow would solve the problems that Neoliberalism had brought into their lives. But as we have seen by these graphs, and many studies, not only did things not improve, but they got worse. Inequality increased over the last eight years. So the mask has been ripped away, and America is seen as it truly is. Now things are blatant with a louche businessman as the face of America.

Pluto Opposite Sun

One clear sign that the current populace of the United States is not happy with the current government, current President, and in fact all of what was called in a simpler time the “Establishment” was shown obviously by the transit of Pluto opposite the United States Sun, depicted above by a chart for an exact pass and below by a graphical ephemeris for a five year period. The Sun represent the President, etc. and revolutionary, transformative Pluto is opposite it. The last time this opposition happened the Sun represented the King of England, Georrge III; the result was the American Revolution.

pl2sutg

So next comes the Farce. In a farce, situations are often exaggerated so that people understand what is going on, since the situation under the tragedy was somehow too subtle for people to comprehend, or the influence of Neptune was too strong. Often the protagonist in a farce is indicated by some outward comical characteristic, say to pick an example totally at random, flaming orange hair. The real problem in this farce is that people may not understand that it is a farce, and they will either attack the messenger — always a bad idea — or believe if only the farce stops things will go back to normal and everything will be as it should be. One can imagine people demanding that the previous mask be returned to them, that if only the mask comes back things would be well. One would think by now people would realize that the farce is just an exaggeration of what was the situation before. To be more specific, Donald Trump is not sui generis, but rather an exaggeration for emphasis, as is usually the case in a farce. But of course the Powers behind Neoliberalism are only too happy if you attack the Protagonist of the farce rather than the men behind the curtain, themselves.

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April 28, 2017

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Antietam

The battle of Antietam, also called the Battle of Sharpsburg since it was fought near Sharpsburg, Maryland, was an important battle in what is commonly called the Civil War of the United States. The Civil War is a term mostly used by descendants of the Union side; the preferred term for the descendants of the Confederacy is “War Between the States”. In actually, this wasn’t a real civil war, since in the case of a civil war two powers are trying to take over the government; but in this case one power wanted to leave the government. We see many of these in current times, resulting in Eritrea and Ethiopia, South Sudan and Sudan, and potentially Scotland and Great Britain and Basque and Spain.

The Battle of Antietam is considered the bloodiest day in American History, though a natural disaster in Galveston did claim more lives thought over more days. It was fought in the state of Maryland on September 17, 1862. The battle was started before dawn on that day, which gives us a time upon which to draw a chart. Twenty thousand men were killed, wounded, or missing as a result of that battle. Even though the battle is seen now as a draw, neither the Union or Confederate sides getting a victory, it was enough to cause the President Abraham Lincoln to feel confident enough to issue a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, that at last reveled the true nature of the Civil War. This document allowed Great Britain, who had been thinking of recognizing the Confederate side, even though the UK had emancipated its slaves in 1833, to finally decide that the Union side was the one to back in the country that had been its colony less than 100 years previously.

Sharpsburg is on the Antietam creek, a tributary of the Potomac; it is about a mile north of the Potomac and about fifty miles west of Washington, DC so it was very close to the seat of the Union government and home to President Abraham Lincoln. Antietam was the first large scale battle to take place in the East where the Confederate soldiers had invaded the Union territory. This was one of the reason it is considered a important battle, and why it was considered Union victory, even though it wasn’t. The leaders of the two side were George McClellan of the Union side and Robert E. Lee from the Confederacy. Even though Lee’s forces were outnumbered, McClellan thought that his forces were outnumbered. Because of McClellan’s lack of aggressiveness in this and other battles, he was soon relieved of his duties by Lincoln. The battle is famous for another, more gruesome reason. Photography had been invented during the Uranus-Neptune conjunction forty years before, and Mathew Brady is famous for photographing scenes from the Civil War. The photographer Alexander Gardner was working for Brady and in this battle he captured the first photos of dead people where they fell in battle. These were shot in 3-D, Gardner’s standard at the time, and they were shown in Brady’s gallery in New York City and were available by mail order from a catalog. One can try to imagine the sight of dead American bodies seen by citizens in their parlors — it was quite a shock and truly brought home the carnage of the War to people.

The Battle Starts

This first chart is an event chart for the beginning of the battle. According to accounts, the troops started before dawn. I’ve set this chart for a few minutes before the Sun hit the Eastern horizon: 5:40AM. I did not see before I did the chart that Uranus was exactly on the Midheaven at that time, which is certainly appropriate for a battle where there is much excitement and changeability. Mars, of course, is in the Seventh house where the enemy would be met. Neptune is also there — the fog of war and McClellan’s mistake about Confederate troop strength. The Sun is square Uranus, which would occur all day. There is a very tight (under one half degree) sesquiquadrate between Saturn and Pluto. We have discussed before the tragic consequences that befall the nation and the world under a hard aspects between Saturn and Pluto, and here we see it again. The Sun is conjunct Saturn — much hard work on that day, but Jupiter is in the first house, and indeed the outcome — the Emancipation Proclamation — was positive. There are two clear oppositions from the first to the seventh houses — Mars opposite Mercury — angry words — and Jupiter opposed to Neptune — apparent happiness.

Later That Morning

Here is a chart drawn for 7 that morning. You can see that the Sun has already risen, but it is still square Uranus. This chart shows that the last quarter Moon is at the Midheaven in the early morning, where it would be visible.

Antietam-USA

And here is a chart for this event within the USA natal chart, where we can see the effects of the battle on the country. That sun conjunct Saturn is near the top of the chart – the exact conjunction of the Sun with the US Midheaven is about a week later — this is high noon for America for the year. Neptune is opposite the MC, indicating the the Civil War is a generational crisis of the country. Probably the most obvious aspect is transiting Uranus conjunct the Mars of the United States, Uranus inflaming the martial spirit of the country, and it has been pointed out this was an important battle where the Confederate troops first invade the North and got near to the capital.

Emancipation Proclamation

And finally here is a chart for when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. You can see the Sun has now moved to be conjoined with the MC — this is the crowning point of the year for the US. And we can see that Venus is conjunct the Moon at 12 noon, which is a good guess for when the bill was signed. In this case Venus represents Justice, which by signing this bill Lincoln was assuring for the slaves that were affected — those living in states which were in conflict with the Union. The Moon is almost New — which would happen in a little over a day — signifying as New Moons do the start of a new cycle.

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March 31, 2017

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The Golden Spike Heard Around the World

In today’s interconnected world, we are used to hearing about events that happen elsewhere almost immediately, and this trend has been going on for some time. Depending on your age, you will have been asked “Where were you when you heard that 1) Pearl Harbor was attacked 2) Kennedy was shot 3) the World Trade Center was hit 4) Donald Trump was elected President”. All of these events were announced almost immediately to the world. But it has not always been that way, and in fact we can identify the first such event: The driving of the last spike to complete the Transcontinental Railroad joining the West and East Coasts of the United States. This happened at twelve noon at Promontory Point in Utah on May 10, 1869.

This was important for a number of reasons: The Civil War, called the Second American Revolution by some people, had just ended, and as a result Americans were feeling more confident after the crisis that “sounded like a fire bell in the night”, to quote Thomas Jefferson shortly before he died, was at the end, or so it was thought at the time, and this “Golden Spike” symbolized the joining of the whole United States almost in its current form. Now that Americans could easily travel from coast to coast, the remaining native Americans who more occupied the West than the white settlers from the East, could now be hunted down and eliminated as a threat to the expansion of the American experiment. And this completion of the Transcontinental Railroad was an exhibit of what was becoming the dominant financial power — similar to Silicon Valley in these days — of the country. Railroads were very important in the growth of the West, the growth of American power, and the growth of financial power that became large scale corporations which were to dominate America towards the end of the Nineteenth Century, a dominance that has by no means receded in the following centuries.

The railroad itself had first been developed in England at the beginning of the century, and that development itself represent a major change from what had been the norm of the world for the millennia before that time. As long as there had been any type of people on the Earth, it had only been possible to travel from one point to another by either moving yourself by foot or depending on some animal such as a horse to carry you or to travel by a ship whose speed was dependent on either the wind or sailors with oars. This top speed was limited and there was not really anyway to go faster. With the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution a power was developed that could move faster than dependence on muscle power alone. This was a major change.

Driving the Golden Spike

In the event chart for the Golden Spike, we see first that the Sun is on the Midheaven. This is perfectly normal, since the ceremony for the placing of the golden spike was scheduled for noon, and since this was before time zones, the Sun by definition is at the Midheaven at noon. Mars is on the Ascendant, and indeed the coming of the railroads would lead to a great increase in movement — Mars — in the environment of the United States. Other than several conjunctions — look at the traffic jam of Sun, Pluto, Moon, and Jupiter — there are very few aspects. Saturn is the only planet below the horizon, attempting to anchor this event to the earth symbolizing the spike driven Into the soil of Utah. The Sun is conjunct Pluto with an orb of three and a half degrees, and this was indeed a transformative event. The tightest aspect here is Mercury semisquare Neptune — confused communications.

Spike – USA

In the chart for transits of this event within the USA chart, we see that Uranus is conjunct the Sun of the US, and this event was hastening the expansion of the country into the west (tough luck for the natives that already lived there!) and brought much change to the country. Uranus also tightly square the US Saturn, and this is event leads to more conflicts between the old established orders and the New. Mars is opposite the Moon of the US — the people of America would now be on the move, and they wouldn’t stop.

But the news of the event would not have reverberated around the world so quickly without another development which had happened a quarter century earlier. That development was the telegraph. Up until this point, messages over long distances, farther than the human voice could carry, were limited to the transportation under muscle power as indicated above, or with a carrier pigeon or balloon. But the last two were very sporadic and dependent on others, not dependable, and certainly not remotely instantaneous. The telegraph changed all that.

There were many early attempts to create telegraphy, documented in, among other sources, The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage, which as the tile suggests that invention was akin to the development of the Internet in our age. At last information could be transmitted at the speed electrons traveled along a wire. While we don’t have a date when the telegraph was first invented, there is a famous first telegraph message. It was sent by the erstwhile painter Samuel F. B. Morse to an assistant in Baltimore with the message “What Hath God Wrought” from the book of Number in the Bible. This “first telegraphic message” happened on May 24, 1844.

What Hath God Wrought?

In the chart for this event the Moon is opposite Neptune, which would be discovered in a little over two years from that date. To me this opposition suggests the stretching of the imagination that the telegraph and the succeeding electronic communications marvels would bring to the people, represented here by the Moon. The essence of Neptune is captured by the word “virtual.” The tightest aspect — almost exact — is the Sun semisquare Venus. Since Venus travels around the Sun within the orbit of the Earth, Venus can never get much further from the Sun, as seen from the Earth, than it is in this chart. The Sun is an evening star in this case, setting long after the Sun, known as Venus Hesperus. This suggests that the meaning of events — in this case telegraphy — would be realized or understood long after the fact. Since the telegraph directly involves Mercury functions– communication — it is interesting to see that Mercury is Retrograde for the important first telegraph communication. This further augments the Venus Hesperus position — the results of this invention would be revealed long after the fact.

Telegraph — USA

In the chart for the first telegraphic communication on the US natal, Jupiter, loosely conjoined with Uranus, is on the IC of the chart. Uranus transiting over the IC of the United States by itself indicates that profound and deep seated changes wee already happening to the society of the country, one example of which is the sudden desire to express Manifest Destiny by expanding to the West Coast of the continent, which at that time was not part of the United States. Richard Tarnas has dealt at length with Jupiter Uranus hard aspects and invention (see Section VI of Cosmos and Psyche) and this invention would bring further long lasting changes to the society of the United States, and of the World. We also see Neptune approaching exact conjunction with the Moon. Unlike previous forms of communication – think voice or letter – the communications by telegraph are quite Neptunian, involving bursts of electricity transmitted down a wire, a level or more removed from reality. This was the first form of “virtual” communication. The influence of Neptune is reinforced by the tightest aspect of transiting Saturn sesquiquadrate the natal Neptune. The reality of communications is transmitted by a Neptunian — almost illusory — means of the telegraph wire.

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March 10, 2017

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An Appearance of Neptune

The United States is getting hit with a strong Neptune transit now and through the rest of the year, and also in 2018, as you can see in the graphic ephemeris below. This aspect is a square of Neptune to the Ascendant of the United States. This square was quite close in the summer of last year and will have its first exact aspect next week, and the aspect will be exact again or very close in the Fall and Winter of this year and early 2018. The black arrow indicates where the purple line representing transiting Neptune crosses the horizontal dashed gold line representing the natal Ascendant near the center vertical axis representing March 17.

Two years of Neptune Square the US Ascendant

The United States is already seeing one of the effects of this strong Neptune influence, and when it is exact next week we will possibly see others. The political establishment, which includes the major media such as the newspapers the New York Times and the Washington Post, and cable news channels CNN and MSDNC, have seized on the meme of Russia controlling the Trump administration after having determined who would be the President of the United States. These are extremely serious charges, and nothing like them have been made before, even in the dark days of McCarthyism in the late Forties and early Fifties, though the John Birch Society once charged President Eisenhower with being a Communist agent, but that was considered a laughable minority view. These charges basically claim that the current President is an agent of Russia and its always demonized leader Vladimir Putin. Under this rush to judgement all manner of accusations are possible, and all are believed if it suits the narrative. This is a prime example of the pervasive influence of Neptune. Neptune, remember, especially when in a hard aspect, quoting Ebertin, rules confusion, deception, fraud.

But coming up next week, when the aspect is exact for the first time, are two important but perhaps overlooked items on the National Calendar. The first happens on March 15, when the suspension of the National Debt, put together by the then President Obama, and the then House Speaker John Boehner, in 2015 expires, so that the government can no longer borrow money. All those checks people depend on from the government may no longer exist after that date. This seems like a sure recipe for confusion.

But a few days after that something else is expected to happen. At least everyone, including the person most involved, Janet Yellen head of the Federal Reserve, suggest it will happen. When this happens it will be the third time the prime interest rate has been raised since the Great Recession, the first time being in December 2015 by just a quarter of a percent; then again in December of last year it was boosted by a modest half percent. Evidently Yellen believes that the economy is doing so well we can “afford” to raise the rate. This is an end to the qualitative easing in the United States that supported many large businesses after the Great Recession of 2008. That event will be the raising of the basic lending rate a bank uses to borrow money, which should trickle down to the interest rates for credit cards, home mortgages, and many other things that involve borrowing money. Not only that, but we can expect several more rate increases in 2017 and 2018. I would expect the stock market, which has been going gangbusters since the election, to start to moderate its (irrational?) exuberance. If this rate increase happens it is expected to change many things outside the United States as well. Suddenly there will be capital outflows from countries in the European Union and from China, expected soon to be the biggest economy in the world, into the United States. The United States dollar will be then stronger against foreign currency. But there is an important reason to raise the rate: when an economic downturn hits the Fed reacts by lowering the prime rate. If the rate is already very low, the room to maneuver is very tight. Some analysts suggest that the country has waited too long after the Great Recession for the first hike. But again there will be confusion. Stay tuned.

Exact Neptune Square Ascendant

If we look at this chart for the exact square we see a number of interesting things. The Sun is at the nadir, opposite the Midheaven. This can be read symbolically as that the energies of the entity — the USA — are at their lowest ebb of the year (the highest would be six months later in September). Transiting Mars is sesquiquadrate natal Neptune and semisquare natal Mars, which reflects the Mars-Neptune square in the natal chart, which is accentuated at this time. Mars square Neptune is always problematic. It suggests disturbed or misdirected energies; sometimes (??) the country makes actions that work against its own best interests. With all the Mars-Neptune energies at this time, the country may take rash actions or make incorrect decisions. Saturn is in the first house so the USA hasn’t totally recovered its self-confidence. All of this suggests a very Neptunian period with everyone spouting their own theories of what is happening/will happen. The mass media will certainly be caught of in this Neptunian fog.

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February 24, 2017

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The Inauguration

Donald Trump is the gift that keeps on giving. His name is everywhere, filling the newspapers. If you live on the West coast or in the Northeast it is mandatory that you hate him, even though we are told that love trumps hate. A friend suggested that I look at the chart of his inauguration. As you can see from the event chart below, the Inauguration of out 45th President started at 11:45 in the morning of January 20. I’m not sure if this started before noon because the Vice-President has to be inaugurated before the President, and the President must take the oath at Noon, or this was just a bit earlier than noon for some other reason. However, the chart drawn for noon has the Moon well below the Descendant, by almost 5 degrees, though it is above the horizon a degree and a half. This illustrates that the horizon — which people had an instinctive knowledge of –` and the Ascendant/Descendant` are not the same

Chart At Noon

Note: Because of limits of the software, the whole word “Inauguration” can not be spelled out at the top of the charts, so one character is missing.

Inauguration

The most prominent aspect to note is that the Moon is opposite the Ascendant, Mars is sesquiquadrate the Moon, and Saturn is semisquare the moon. And in fact you can see a “cats-cradle” formation between the Moon, Saturn, Mars, and the Ascendant, indicated by the arrows. Jupiter is square the Midheaven, promising good fortune but not without difficulty (square)and because Jupiter is also opposite Uranus, we have a loose T square with the MC at the apex of that opposition. Ebertin says for this “optimism, a love of change and variety”. Looking at the fourth harmonic chart (below), we see Mars-Saturn is opposite along the Ascendant and the Moon, Jupiter is very tight to the Midheaven, and of course the Venus Pluto sextile in the first harmonic chart is now a trine in this fourth harmonic chart. The Moon = Mars/Saturn midpoint combination is not too pleasant: Ebertin says a ”a fit of depression”. And for the Ascendant = Mars/Saturn he says “obstacles caused by other people”. Mars Saturn is a difficult combination. Some have compared this combination of planets to driving with the brakes on: Mars wants to go fast, and Saturn wants to hold back. It can suggest difficult progress on actions that are taken hastily. Since this combination is connected with two personal points, the Ascendant and the Moon, it is very powerful. And as we can especially see in the fourth harmonic chart that this whole configuration — Moon, Mars, Saturn, Ascendant — are tightly bound together, as is Jupiter to the Midheaven. It suggest slow progress but with much depression and anxiety amongst the populace, perhaps especially women (Moon). But this is cause for optimism with Jupiter so tightly connected to the Midheaven.

Inauguration Fourth Harmonic

Looking at the transits of the time with the US chart (below), we see that the two tightest aspects are both trines — harmonious — with the transiting Mars trine natal Mercury, and, almost as tight, transiting Sun — the day — is trine the US Midheaven. These are both very tight, as can easily seen in the third harmonic chart (also below), where trines come out as conjunctions. We can also easily see from this chart that there is a tight Moon-Neptune trine (conjunction in the third harmonic), both transiting. Since the Moon represents the minute, the exact time of this event since the Moon moves so fast, at this moment in time the populace (Moon) were confused (Neptune) or self deceiving (Ebertin). Also note the sesquiquadrate between Neptune and the USA Mercury, which says much the same thing. The trine from the transiting Sun to the US MC is beneficial, promising that this President will be very purposeful in achieving his objectives, which of course may not be good news to many people. The other trine — Mars to Mercury – – suggest much the same, forceful movement towards a goal, an active mind and many angry (Mars) thoughts (Mercury). The media of the United States (Mercury) will find forceful pressure from the incoming President. Finally we have transiting Mercury opposite Jupiter, the third tightest aspect: There will be lots and lots of things to talk about with this upcoming administration.

USA at Inauguration

USA at Inauguration Harmonic 3

That of course is assuming Donald Trump is President for very long. It is no secret that many are out to get him, including the National Security Establishment and the Democrats. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned on the cable news channel MSDNC that Trump is “really dumb” to criticize the intelligence community since they have “six ways from Sunday of getting back at you.” As I write they have already drawn first blood, with the firing/resignation of Michael Flynn as his National Security Advisor. As anyone who has watched nature movies knows, when a predator smells blood they go in for the kill. Now that one member of the administration is down, and Trump has shown that he won’t support his representative, and thus looks weak, there will be attempts to pick off other members of the administration, starting of course with the weakest, aiming for the big prize, dislodging Donald Trump himself. The chart below show what I believe is a critical time for him, and it could be a fatal time: This is August 21. 2017.

Trump At the Solar Eclipse

The first thing to notice is the both the Sun and Moon are conjunct and on his Ascendant. But notice that the Node of the Moon is there also, meaning that this is a Solar Eclipse, and indeed it is the one famously visibly in America. This is a tremendous omen for the president. For those who use Fixed Stars, Regulus, the Heart of the Lion, is also at this point, and that suggests a downfall of epic proportions. But also notice the position of Saturn, exactly conjunct his Moon and opposite his Sun. On this day Saturn is stationary but the exact point where it turns direct is four days off. Saturn has been on his Moon and Sun all of 2017 and it has not been a pleasant time for him. And because of Saturn’s retrograde travels it has been a very, very long time: Donald Trump is getting hit by Saturn as long as is possible. I’m sure he’s hurting, but he won’t show it.

Here are few keywords for the fixed Star Regulus: Brave, bloodthirsty, ambitious, egotistical. You get the idea. More can be found by a search on line. Sound familiar? Now keywords for Ascendant conjunct the Ascendant: Great wealth but troubles, benefits do always last. Again, you get the idea, this describes a person very successful but with an ultimate downfall. As I said in the previous paragraph, the end of August looks like a most problematic period for Donald J. Trump — too many people are after him!

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January 27, 2017

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War of the Worlds

The British writer H. G. Wells — a Virgo — is best known for his science fiction stories, and in fact Wells and his contemporary the French writer Jules Verne basically set the prototype for most science fiction written in the succeeding centuries. The story of time travel was essentially created by his story The Time Machine. This theme has been popular down through the ages and there is even a contemporary television drama based on this very theme. The Mad Scientist trope was originated by his novel The Island of Doctor Moreau. And then there was his story The First Men in the Moon which is about just what the title suggests. But the theme of alien invasion which has been richly explored was originated by his novel The War of the Worlds (serialized in 1897, published as a book in 1898), which tells of an invasion of the Earth by Martians. This story was written in the last decade of the Nineteenth Century, under the Neptune-Pluto conjunction, when Modernism was just beginning to shape Western civilization. He predicted World War II in his work The Shape of Things To Come, written in 1933 (arguable not an extreme prediction at that time) which later became a film which he wrote. Wells was a forerunner in his science fiction.

His classic novel The War of the Worlds, also serialized in an American magazine in the late Nineteenth Century, tells of an invasion by a Martian space craft into the Southern English countryside and the subsequent destruction of parts of London that were familiar to his readers. When this theme was brought to America, as the films and the radio play discussed below did, the setting was changed to America, which was much more meaningful to the American viewers and listeners. It was made into a film several times, the latest in 2005, directed by Steven Speilberg.

This novel was set into radio play by the famed actor Orson Welles (note the last names are similar but not the same) and his group the Mercury Theatre near the end of the Great Depression and before the official start of World War Two, less than a year later with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. The play was performed by Welles and adapted from the novel by a playwright who was later blacklisted in Hollywood. The play was considerably different from the novel. In Welles’ play, an orchestra was playing music of the kind people danced to in 1938, but this seemingly innocuous radio performance was interrupted by breathless announcements of an landing of an invasion party at a farm in New Jersey, close to New York City where the broadcast originated. Americans were in a fairly fragile state at the time, which may explain the famous reaction to the radio broadcast. About 50% of the people who heard the radio broadcast on the eve of Halloween though that it was a true report of an invasion of this planet, in New Jersey, and of those 40% panicked. There were, however, no deaths on this occasion; the same can not be said when the same performance was tried in Peru in 1949. Welles’ Mercury Theatre would often base their plays on works of literature, and in fact just a week before this broadcast they did a radio performance based on Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, so people familiar with this CBS show should not have believed in was true. It seems “fake news” is not just a contemporary phenomenon. At this time radio was a relatively new medium, and Welles used it masterfully. He was up against a show — ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy — that was ten times as popular as his show. Much of Welles version of War of the Worlds was with an orchestra, with interruptions of announcements of the invasion timed to match the commercial breaks of the competing show. Those who just tuned to his show from Bergen’s continued to listen after being entranced by the invasion. As the invasion got worse, a “Secretary of the Interior” who sounded an awfully much like current President Franklin Roosevelt, urged listeners to stay calm. By the end of the show, as in the novel, the aliens are killed by the bacteria of Earth to which they have no immunity. However, many did not listen to the end of the show, but made panicked calls to their relatives or their local police departments.

By the next days, those who had realized that it was simply a radio drama congratulated themselves at their wisdom and thought Welles was a genius, while those who had believe the story were outraged and there were many lawsuits, all of which were eventually dismissed.

After people settled down, the results were beneficial for both Wells and Welles. More people started to read the original novel and H. G. Wells changed his opinion of the radio adaptation. Orson Welles received a large contract from a movie studios and went on to direct and star in Citizen Kane, which even today is considered one of the best movies ever made.

War of the Worlds Broadcast

We have two charts to look at. It is convenient that we have an actual time for the performance, the time of that the broadcast started in the studios in New York City at 8 in the evening the day before Halloween. If we look at the chart we see that the Moon is just beyond an opposition to Pluto: the opposition was exact about fire hours before the broadcast. In this case the Moon opposition Pluto indicated that the populace (Moon) was already primed to overreact and panic (Pluto) to this event. Now obviously it helps that we know what event resulted. Moon is opposite Pluto once a month, so while this always indicates that the people might be more prone to panic at this time, usually nothing occurs for people to act on the latent urge to panic. The moon also make a tight trine to Mars which was exact a half hour before the broadcast. Mars of course rules war, a very appropriate symbol for the event. Then we have a loose opposition between Mercury — communications, such the radio — and Uranus– upsets. Since the Moon is a fast moving planet, traveling about twelve degrees a day, its transits are not very consequential in the long, or even medium, run, but they are indicative of evens that happen at a certain time of that day.

Broadcast Transits to USA

For the chart of these same transits within the chart of the United States, we first of all see an exact Neptune Return of the US. This is the first time that Neptune had returned to its natal position. For human beings planetary returns are important for some “crisis” (not a negative term) in the nature of the planet involved. For people, the most notable return is that of Saturn, which occurs ever 29 years or so. At one time this led to the saying, among those who had not experienced their first Saturn Return, of “Never trust Anyone Over Thirty”. In biographies we can notice that people often change around thirty, an you may notice that in your own life. People truly become adults at that time. The second Saturn Return is at age fifty eight, and a change occurs then that many do not recognize. A third Saturn Return, which also corresponds, more or less, to the Uranus Return, occurs at age 85. This is important but not much talked about. But humans never have a Neptune Return (or a Pluto Return, which is very important and coming up for the United Sates) which occurs at about 160 years. This Neptune Return of the US involved some Neptunian examples of illusion and deception, though perhaps not intended.

In addition, Mars has just passed over the Midheaven of the United States. This happens every two years, so it is not uncommon, but its position shows that Mars-like things, especially War, occupied the consciousness of the United States and thus the citizens of that country. We also see transiting Saturn aspecting the Sun, Moon, and Ascendant of the United States, as well as opposing its own natal position, reflecting the still depressed state of the populace in these waning days of the Great Depression, and also the further repression that was currently happening because of Roosevelt’s tightening of activities that ameliorated the Great Depression, resulting in what is called the Roosevelt Recession. One can see that a number of astrological factors occurred at the same time that permitted the panic following this radio broadcast to take place. While obviously the combination of these factors, all minor, would not allow someone to forecast the consequences, upon hindsight it is possible to “hindcast” what in fact did happen.

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October 28, 2016

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McCarthyism

The phenomenon known as McCarthyism was an attempt, when seen at a distance, to purge America of radical tendencies that had developed under the closing Uranus-Pluto square of the Nineteen Thirties and the New Deal Administration of Franklin Roosevelt. It actually originated long before the Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, came on the scene with an introductory speech in West Virginia, and some people think that it should actually be called “Hooverism” for FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who did much to promote an anti-communist agenda in the United States, but without the baggage that McCarthy brought to his confrontation. Nevertheless, “McCarthyism” is what this direction in the United States was known, so it is the term we shall use.

McCarthyism may seem to be a relic of the distant past, when politics was much less sophisticated than it is in the enlightened Twenty-First Century, but here in this election season in the United States we are seeing McCarthy-like practices being bandied about in a big way, this time by a major political party and backed by the resources of most of the major media sources, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. And no one seems to be upset with this. It is, as the French say, The More Things Change the More They Remain The Same.

Joseph McCarthy

Joseph McCarthy was a Senator from Wisconsin who replaced the son (who had replaced his father) of “Fighting” Bob LaFollette, the man who formed the Wisconsin Progressive Party, and McCarthy was replaced in turn by William Proxmire, a famous liberal Senator during the Sixties and Seventies. Here is a chart for Joseph McCarthy. He is a Scorpio, the most notorious of signs (in the New Testament of the Bible there are twelve apostles, each associated with one of the twelve zodiacal signs, and Judas is associated with the sign Scorpio). Charles Manson and Jack the Ripper were also Scorpios, and it is the second most popular sun sign for Presidents of the United States. But he also has Aries rising and Mars, the ruler of Aries, near is Descendant. Both indicate that he could have a forceful, perhaps even abrasive personality. Uranus is at the Midheaven, in the Tenth House, indicating that he is seen as rebellious, perhaps a maverick. He was known a “Tailgunner Joe” because of his lie that he served in World War II as a tailgunner in bombers. But perhaps Mars can seen as symbolically at the tail of the chart, whereas the Ascendant is the head.

mccarthy_in_wheeling

McCarthy first came to the public’s attention when he made a speech to a Republican Woman’s club in Wheeling, West Virginia for a Lincoln Day celebration on February 9, 1950; in this speech he made the statement that he had a list of 205 (the actual number is in dispute since there is no recording) Communists in the State Department. The media made much of this charge, and McCarthy was off and running. We are fortunate that we have dates for the events that lead to the rise and fall of Joe McCarthy. Here is a chart for McCarty’s transit on the day of that speech. In this chart the most obvious feature is Neptune on the Descendant of McCarthy’s chart. This could be read as McCarthy is being deceived by others around him (Descendant) or, much more likely, he is deceiving and misleading those around him. Mars is just below his Descendant and about to rise above it, showing that he is about to unleash his Martial energies on an (unsuspecting) public.

But what we call McCarthyism did not start with that speech. Though there had been waves of anti-communist thought in the America before, most notably after the Russian Revolution in 1917, it had really become serious with the start of the Cold War after World War II. The Cold War grew after the watershed moment in world history represented by Pluto at the midpoint of Uranus and Neptune as has been discussed before . That midpoint configuration had set the ground work, but then there was the Saturn-Pluto conjunction of 1947 which started the Cold War with McCarthyism as its handmaid. The importance of hard aspects of Saturn and Pluto have been discussed before. But a third aspect showed the length of McCarthyism, even though those residual effects lasted until the mid-Sixties. That aspect was the transiting Pluto on the Sun-Midheaven midpoint of the United States. Pluto can stand for, among other things, repression, as seen in the Saturn-Pluto aspects. In this case what was repressed is that represented by the combination of Sun and Midheaven, the true personality or government as filtered into the public world. The Sun/MC midpoint is very important to the nature of the country as expressed. It was discussed early on in his blog that Neptune was transiting this midpoint during the campaign and election of Barack Obama, showing the amount of self-delusion and illusion that was seen in that election.

mccarthyism_tg

This five year graphical ephemeris shows Pluto transiting that midpoint; the black arrow indicates one place that the midpoint conjunction was exact. The curvy red line representing the transiting Pluto intersects the dashed line representing the Sun/MC midpoint, just above the natal Moon line.

End of Army-McCarthy Hearings

The end of Joseph McCarthy, though McCarthyism itself would last until the middle of the next decade, happened of June 9, 1954. McCarthy was hassling the Army — he had charged the Army with promoting a Brooklyn dentist who had taken the Fifth Amendment (which prevented self-incrimination) when signing the military loyalty oath. As a result, there was what was called the Army-McCarthy hearings held in the Senate. There was massive coverage of these hearings on the newly popular television. The dénouement of the hearings, and the end of McCarthy’s career, occurred when McCarthy charged an associate in the law firm of Joseph Welch, who was counsel for the Army, with suspicious activity — he had been a member of the National Lawyers Guild, which was considered dominated by Communists. Welch asked of McCarthy “Have you no sense of decency”. After that McCarthy was increasingly seen as a pathetic figure, and he died of alcoholism three years later — May 2, 1957. In the transits to McCarty’s chart for this day, Neptune has come above the Descendant into the Seventh House and is closely conjunct his natal Mars. The Mars-Neptune combinations can be ugly — a weakness or lack of energy according to Ebertin. Mars, which was at the Descendant in the earlier chart is now at the Midheaven, after having gone around the chart twice. Symbolically, Mars — his directed energy — is at the highest it will lever reach. Saturn is on his Mercury — depressed or solemn thoughts — and during the day the transiting Moon has been opposite his Saturn, indicating more Saturnian energy. Mercury is opposite his Uranus, suggesting changed thoughts; transiting Pluto is square his Sun — the oppressor has become oppressed.

But the precedents, influences, and resultant changes to the culture of the United States as a result of McCarthyism are is some ways more important. Here are a few of those stories.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was one of the founders of the ACLU, along with her chief antagonist Morris Ernst. She had been an organizer of the International Workers of the World (Wobblies) before helping to form the ACLU in 1920. Flynn had joined the Communist Party of the USA in 1937, and had told her fellow board members about this, with no objections. In the early days the ACLU was spending most of its time defending anti-war protesters during the first Red Scare that happened around the time it was founded. On the evening of May 7, 1940 until 2:30 am at a New York City men’s club there was a “trial” of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn by the executive committee of the ACLU. This was a forerunner of McCarthyism that involved the anti-communists of the ACLU, not right-wing Republicans, attempting to water down the ACLU’s policy of defending unpopular opinions. This set the scenario of later attacks on Communists. As a result, Flynn was thrown off the board of the ACLU.

Trial of Helen Gurley Flynn

Here a chart for the start of that event. You can see that Pluto is sextile the Midheaven. During the course of the evening, Mars passed over the Descendant at about 11 and Pluto passed over at about 1:15 the next morning. This trial occurred just after the New Moon in Taurus.

Liberals like Morris Ernst (and Americans for Democratic Action, founded at the start of the Cold War in 1947) had good intentions, those paving stones of Hell. They assumed, rightly, that other liberals would not support the ACLU (or other organization like the National Lawyers Guild that Ernst was also involved in) if they allowed Communists to be part of the organization. Unfortunately, they went against the basic credo of the organization by banning those with whom they disagreed.

During McCarthyism there was an informal association of anti-communists, who did everything that could to battle Communism and were often called to testify against someone accused of the mortal sin of being a member of the Communist Party. One of these was Harvey Matusow. A Communist who that began to work for the FBI and later testified against various people, he is notable for finally recanting his testimony, thereby casting doubt on the testimony of many other ex-communists. His book in 1955, False Witness, led to his jailing for perjury, since the FBI and HUAC were not very happy that he had lied for them. Later he worked with a “hippie commune” in the Seventies, and later became a Mormon. A very interesting life and I am surprised more has not been written about him. In his solar chart — no time of birth — the most prominent is Uranus opposite Venus — indicating his changing affections.

Harvey Matusow

Another important pillar of McCarthyism was HUAC — the House Unamerican Activities Committee. This was created in 1938 and existed until 1975. In the early days, under chairman Martin Dies, its main concern seems to be to bedevil Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. In succeeding years, it would call purported Communists in front of the Committee and force them to name other Communists (called “Naming Names”) or refrain from doing so and then stand in contempt of Congress. A no-win situation. This result in the naming of Alger Hiss (helpful for a rising Congressman from California) and the blackballing of the Hollywood Ten, ten artists that were prevented from being involved with Hollywood productions, at least under their own name. HUAC also had an important role to play in the rise of the New Left (as opposed to the Old Left of the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties that was spoiled by the Communist influence). In fact, a movie called Operation Abolition has been made about this event. HUAC had a committee meeting in San Francisco in 1960 (bad idea!) and many from the surrounding Bay Area turned out to protest the event. On May 13, 1960 police officers used fire hoses to sweep the protesters down the step of the building where HUAC was meeting. This action cause many of the students, such as those from UC Barkley, to become more politically organized and to start protesting the Vietnam war, which was only just beginning to percolate into the consciousness of some knowledgeable Americans. The growth of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley and many anti-war protests were a result of that anti-HUAC action. In the chart for this event against the US chart, the most noticeable aspect is Mars at the IC, the lowest point of the chart from which it can only rise; this was the beginning of the rise of those people opposed to HUAC and the things it stood for.

Operation Abolition

One of the notable members of HUAC was a Representative from California, Richard Nixon. Nixon was chosen to run for the House from California right after World War Two, when he was opposing the incumbent Henry Voorhis. He won after charging Voorhis with being influenced by the Communists. He was a prominent member of HUAC during the late Forties. In 1950 he ran for the Senate against Helen Gahagan Douglas. He won again by charging his opponent with Communist influence, saying that she was “pink right down to her underwear.” Pink was not quite as strong as the color red, which at that time was associated with the Red Menace of Communism, and in fact animated maps in movie newsreels would often show a red tide sweeping over Europe as the Communists in the Soviet Union took over the European continent. At the time, no one ever doubted that a country that had lost over twenty million in the just concluded war, and whose territory had been devastated by the battle with Germany, had the wherewithal or desire to invade several other countries. Such was the delusion that existed under the First Cold War and the miasma that was McCarthyism. Richard Nixon went on to gain higher office as a result of his performance as a member of Congress.

Another important ingredient of McCarthyism was the Taft-Hartley Labor Act of 1947, passed over the veto of Harry Truman, even though he then used the Act numerous times. This law was attempt to roll back the gains labor had made since the New Deal, and unions opposed it. But section 9(h), which was tacked onto the original Taft-Hartley, required noncommunist affidavits from Unions. While it was assumed Communists in Labor Unions would just lie (thus opening them up to other charges such as perjury) what most Communist union officials did was withdraw from the Party before signing the affidavit. And Taft-Hartley allowed the anti-communists in the Unions (such as the Screen Writers Guild) to charge that their fellow members were breaking the Taft-Hartley law if they did not sign.

Taft-Hartley Act

In this chart for the signing of the Taft-Hartley Act, we first see that Saturn is close to Pluto, indicating that times are hard as the Cold War and the resultant repression is gaining steam. Pluto is also approaching the Sun/MC midpoint of 23 Leo. Venus is on the Descendant, perhaps symbolizing that justice (Venus) is setting. Taft-Hartley is still the law in the United States, but unions occasionally ask for its repeal. Neptune is just past he MC and in the Tenth house during this period, suggesting the public self was somewhat deluded.

Six days later the Smith Act was passed, that prevented advocating the overthrow of the United States (by force or violence). It was obviously aimed at Communists, but Communists insisted that they were not advocating the use of force or violence. Opponents of Communist then claimed they were lying (and used a quote of Lenin to back them up) which of course is an argument difficult to prove.

Just before these two Acts were signed, the President Harry Truman introduced what is called the Truman Doctrine, a primary document of the Cold War. In it he pledged to contain the Soviet threat to Greece and Turkey. Greece was undergoing a civil war, which Stalin refused to support, wherein the partisans that had helped to defeat the Fascists in the recently concluded War, and were filled with Communists, were fighting the power of the King, who was supported by the British, and as it turned out, the Americans. The partisans lost the Civil War, but the Cold War gathered strength through the Truman Doctrine. Many argued that if the Communists were so bad overseas then certainly they were also bad here, thus giving a boost to McCarthyism, even though that man had not yet become famous.

What is called the Marshall Plan (named after Secretary of State George Marshal) gave much money (over $100 billion in current dollars) to help rebuilt Europe after World War II, and incidentally prevent any attraction to Communism by the impoverish people of Europe after the battles of World War II had destroyed much of the infrastructure of the continent. Part pf the push to get votes to approve the Marshall Plan required Truman to put the fear of Communism into the American people and Congress. For more details see The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism by Richard M. Freeland. In the chart for the signing of the Marshall Act, we see that the tighter Saturn Pluto conjunction has been joined by Mars so that Mars is at the midpoint of a retrograde Saturn and Pluto.

Marshall Plan

McCarthyism had many repercussions for the Unites States, many of them still unrecognized. For example, because of the fear of having “Lost China” raised during the early Fifties, President Johnson during the next decade did not want to retreat from Vietnam for fear he would be accused of “losing Vietnam”. During the Thirties and Forties, in part due to the influence of the Communist Party, many were interested in internationalism and imperialism, and even mainstream groups like the NAACP would connect the liberation of “Negroes” in this country with the liberation of Africans in the various countries of that continent. Now much of that internationalism has been lost, and the ne plus ultra of leftwing thought is support for Bernie Sanders. Woman’s history was first taught in Communist schools, and the Communist Party was fully integrated, at a time when mixing the races happened very seldom, even in the North; the idea of class was a strong component for the Communists but that focus on class has been lost as now identity politics appears to be the only politics for most of the left. As another example, Henry Hay was an active Communists and a homosexual who married a party member out of attempt to conform. He later founded the Mattachine Society, the first well known gay liberation organization (though of course the term was not used in 1950) and later helped found the Gay Liberation Front twenty years later. And the decline of the unions was a direct result of McCarthyism; the highest rate of overall union employment, as seen in this graph, was in 1954 and has declined since. The current rate is the lowest in 70 years. So McCarthyism has had a large effect on the state of America even to this day.

union_percent

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August 19, 2016

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Watershed Elections – Three

The election of 1960 was the first watershed election after World War Two and the changes that followed directly and indirectly from that war. As was mentioned earlier, the aftermath of World War II saw the second major change to the world in the Twentieth Century. That election was a contest between Richard Nixon, the current Vice President, seemingly representing the old Republican administration and way of seeing versus John F. Kennedy, representing a newer, younger generation, even though Nixon was only four years older than Kennedy.

Knowing about the Jupiter-Saturn cycle detailed previously, one could have predicted that the decade just starting would be much different that the previous decade — the Fifties — without even knowing about the upcoming Uranus-Pluto conjunction. Since President Kennedy was seen as young and healthy, some astrologers at the time, knowing of Tecumseh’s Curse, thought the President would either be assassinated or die in a nuclear war. For a time in the Fall of 1962, it seemed possible that the second option would happen. And then the President was assassinated three years into his first term, the first successful Presidential assassination since McKinley over 60 years earlier, thus fulfilling Tecumseh’s Curse once again.

But while the Kennedy administration represented no real change from the previous administration — in fact Kennedy was more of a Cold Warrior than Eisenhower, though many liberals stuck with the dream of Camelot will argue differently — he represented a much different tone than previous administrations had offered, with a bevy of glamorous people and intellectuals in and around the administration. It is well know that if you please and control the intellectuals who shape historiography — the writing of history — and the perception of the administration, you can get away with a lot, something our current Democratic President is well aware of and has used to his great advantage. And in fact back in 2008 many people compared the current President to John Kennedy, a statement that was truer than they realized.

But as is often the case, the changes that were most important were on the street, and there is no end of documentation of that fact, and many are still alive who were old enough at the time that their memories still tell of that different decade. And because television had just come to the fore in the previous decade with the transit of Pluto opposite the Moon of the United States, this was the most heavily documented decade so far in history. There is no need to go over the changes that occurred in this decade that made it very different than the decade of the Fifties since there is a wealth of information about a decade that has become almost mythical. But everyone should understand that this decade behaved truly like a waxing decade.

1960

In this chart for the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of 1961, we see that the Uranus-Pluto conjunction that defined the Sixties is almost 15 degrees from exact, and Uranus is still in Leo. Pluto is conjunct the transiting Node, giving an strange appearance to the glyph. Mars has just entered Cancer and is square the MC; it is about to transit over the core planets of the US: Venus, Jupiter and the Sun. This is suggestive of the Vietnam War which was to inflame the nation for the upcoming decade so much that it helped to define the decade. And there were many urban rebellions, called riots, that also boiled during the decade, as well as the famous assassinations. Mars was very well relevant in the Sixties, along with Uranus and Pluto.

But for every revolution there is a counter-revolution, and the decade starting in 1980 was the beginning of that. While President Ronald Reagan did not start the Neoliberal Revolution that had begun under the previous President Jimmy Carter, Reagan certainly symbolized the growth of Newliberalism (see the November 21, 2014 entry the Neoliberalism and the Cult of the Market for more details). This period of history in America is justly called the Age of Reagan, since he was one of the few Presidents whose influence and behavior so closely symbolized the changes that were going on in this country. Not only has the Age of Reagan not ended, but the influence of Neoliberalism has increased down through the years from 1980. But the 35 years of the Neoliberal experiment has caused so much pain to so many people that it is coming under attack from many quarters, as is seen in the current Presidential campaign. We shall see if we are witnessing the final decade of Neoliberalism, as I have suggested before.

Though Reagan was shot two months after his first term started, he was not killed, thus not fulfilling the Curse of Tecumseh. Astrologers make arguments about why the curse was no longer operative, some of which involve the element (Earth) in which the conjunction takes place. I’ve argued previously that John Lennon took the bullet for Reagan. Reagan was shot less than four months after Lennon was killed; Reagan survived to lead his revolution, and to become synonymous with modern day conservatism. The United States has certainly changed since the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan.

1980

Looking at the chart for the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction for the last day of 1980, less than two months after the election of Reagan and three weeks after the death of John Lennon, we are struck by all the planets on the East – Ascendant side — of the chart. A majority of planets on that side indicates an interest in Self, as opposed to Others, and even though the Eighties were not the “Me Decade” (that refers to the previous decade), in the Eighties America “Stood Tall Again” (which refers to a Reagan campaign slogan) and there was increasing emphasis on the “Homeland”, a tendency that has carried on through all of the Age of Reagan. America has been called the one indispensable nation, as was declared by, among others, a Secretary of State in the next decade, and this is certainly a belief of someone with all the planets in the East. Oaths to American Exceptionalism have much increased in the Age of Reagan.

The Election of 2000 was a special case, since the President who took office was not the person elected. The election of 2000 was subject to much dispute, but it was not nearly as contentious as the election of 1876. However, in that election the defeated party, as in 2000 the Democrats, was able to wrest something desirable from the winning party, in that case the end of Reconstruction, which made a huge difference to the South, the recently freed slaves, and the country as a whole; we are still living with the consequences of that election. In the election of 2000 the losing Democrats did not appear to get anything but just accepted the loss; the only possible thing that was acquired by the Party was the chance to warn everybody about the danger of not voting for the Democrats, and as a result one of the true liberals in this country, who has done much more to modify the behavior of corporations in a positive direction than all Presidents in the Age of Reagan, has been vilified. That election is held up continually, much in this election season, as a warning to those who would vote for a “spoiler”.

But the tone of the United States changed again after the year 2000. In fact one can say that the Twenty-First Century is so far shaping up to be different than the Twentieth, which is considered by some historians as the Century of Death. With the year 2000, and more specifically the date 9/11/2001, American changed into a large booster of the War On Terrorism. While Ronald Reagan declared terrorism to be an import subject to fight, the Twenty First Century saw terrorism become an every present phenomenon. And while some may have hoped the election of a Democratic President after two terms of a Republican President would have ended the War of Terrorism, that war has only spread to other venues. From what we have seen from this century, one could judge this to be the Century of fighting peoples from so-called third world countries, as if that hadn’t been done in previous centuries as well. I believe when looking back at this century, the first two decades will be seen as an anomaly — there are already many hints already of what is really critical.

2000

If we look at the chart for the first Jupiter-Saturn conjunction the most notable feature is Pluto conjunct the Ascendant. Not only was this the case for the 9/11 chart but it suggests the nature of the next two decades as well. Note also that Pluto is semisquare the natal Pluto, thus emphasizing the natal Pluto semisquare Ascendant, the tightest aspect in the chart, which can be described briefly as “My Way or the Highway” — America acts like it is (which was true for much of the last century) the most powerful and intimidating country in the world and can get away with literal murder. The Pluto on the Ascendant foreshadowed the Global War on Terrorism which is such a prominent feature of the first two decades of the new century.

2020

The next watershed election is scheduled for 2020. Looking at that chart, we see that Pluto has moved on from its position twenty years before, and now is approaching a conjunction with the natal Pluto. As well, the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction is just beyond the natal Pluto, so that the midpoint between that conjunction and the transiting Pluto is exactly on the natal Pluto. All of this emphasizes the United States Pluto Return, which will be discussed in detail at a later date. This will be the prominent aspect of the first part of the third decade of this century. No nation has lasted long enough to have a Pluto return, which takes about 250 years. Usually constitutions are rewritten before 250 years have passed; our constitution, which was based on an unwritten constitution of our mother country, was old at the time (see The Frozen Republic by Daniel Lazare for details). What does a Pluto Return mean? In an individual human being, Saturn returns are important. We’ve mentioned before Uranus returns in the United States. This Pluto return will be a make-it-or-break-it time for the country.

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July 1, 2016

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Saturn on the Ascendant

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

saas1898

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

saas1942

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

saas1957

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

saas1972

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

saas1986

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

saas2001

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

tgsane2016

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

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

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

gini

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

tgplsu

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

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

russia-wants-war

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

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May 27, 2016

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History, United States

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Watershed Elections – One

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

500 Year Party

An astrological study of history and politics

Category Archives: United States

History Repeats

Antietam

The Golden Spike Heard Around the World

An Appearance of Neptune

The Inauguration

War of the Worlds

McCarthyism

Watershed Elections – Three

Saturn on the Ascendant

Watershed Elections – One