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February 27, 2015

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The Great Depression

The Great Depression of the decade of the 1930s affected the United States and the rest of the industrial world. It started in the United States with the stock market crash of late 1929. The two important dates of the crash were Black Thursday — October 24. 1929 — and Black Tuesday — October 29, 1929 — when the market fell severly. After these two events, it became clear that a crisis had developed, even though few had an idea of how long it would last. The Republican President at the time, Herbert Hoover, who had taken office in March of that year, was not very effective at curbing the unemployment resulting from the stock market crash. The worst years of the Depression were 1932 and 1933. One of the things that most upset the public about Hoover’s term was his handling of the Bonus March that culminated on July 28, 1932. Hoover had been considered a boy wonder, earning his first million — he was a mining engineer — by the age of 40. He had performed miracles in such things as relieving the famine in Belgium after World War I, and was considered a Progressive, even though he was a Republican, as was another Progressive politician Theodore Roosevelt.

In the Bonus March, an army out-of-work veterans of World War I and their families rallied in Washington, D.C. to claim the money that had been promised them for service in the War but wouldn’t come due until 1945. At that point in the Depression that certainly needed it. The police forces of Washington at first tried to control the situation, which resulted in two deaths from shooting. Then Hoover sent General Douglas McArthur (Army Chief of Staff) to control them, and he was somewhat harsh, burning down the camps that they had set up, which were probably the first Hoovervilles that dotted the landscape of America after the Great Depression set in, serving as homes to the homeless. He also sent in mounted troops and tanks to disperse the residents of the camps, charging that the veterans were infiltrated by Communists. Accompanying McArthur was a young office by the name of Dwight David Eisenhower, but he was not involved in the bloodshed. Eisenhower would subsequently rise to commanding officer of all the troops in Europe during World War II, but he never was involved in killing. Perhaps this was because his mother was a member of a Peace church. He late went on to be President of the United States. But since Hoover had given the orders, Hoover was the person who got the blame for this catastrophe in dealing with veterans.

After Hoover was so tarnished by the Bonus March catastrophe, the Democrat Franklin Roosevelt was easily elected. After 1933 unemployment decreased until 1937 and 1938, when what is called the Roosevelt Depression occurred. After his re-election in 1936, with the largest majority ever for a President, FDR thought the Depression was just about over and he stopped much of the government spending that had helped people. He was wrong on this. Full employment did not return until the US got itself involved in World War II, which really heated up the defense industries, which employed many, and also sent many civilians into the military, were they were employed.

Black Thursday

This first chart is for October 24. What I find most interesting is that the transiting Moon, which travels at about 1 degree every two hours, was exactly opposite natal Pluto, which at the time was unknown but would be discovered the next year on February 18. Pluto rules large, transformative events, which certainly fits the Great Depression. The aspect was exact at 9:08 that evening.

Black Tuesday

The second charts for is for Tuesday, October 29. At 11:29 that morning the Moon was directly on the Midheaven. By this time the public and the world were aware of what was going on, that a stock market crash had happened.

Graphical Ephemeris Start of Great Depression

The third chart is a graphical ephemeris for one year starting the middle of 1929. There were three aspects involved in the Great Depression, involving the three outer planets. One was a square of Uranus and Pluto, which was the closing square of those two planets before the conjunction of the Sixties. This accounts for the rebellions of the thirties, and in fact it looked increasingly like there would be a revolution just before Roosevelt was elected. Then there was a sesquiquadrate between Uranus and Neptune, which also lasted during most of the Thirties. Finally there was a semisquare between the two outer-most planets, Neptune and Pluto; these were conjunct in the 1890s, and would form a long sextile during the Cold War. These three planets went in and out of orb during the decade of the Thirties. We can see from this graphical ephemeris that the last aspect (Neptune semisquare Pluto) was within two degrees of exact at the end of October, and would be exactly semisquare for the first time about two months later.

End of the Bonus March

Here is a chart for the Bonus March. The army came at 4:45 that afternoon, but the killing occurred before that time. This chart is drawn up for 4 pm, just as the Moon was setting on the US chart, and thus on the Descendant. And indeed, it was setting for the government of Herbert Hoover. The tightest aspect in this chart is Jupiter opposite the Moon of the US with orb of 2 minutes, almost exact. One meaning for Jupiter is “bonus” or plenty, what the people of the United States were demanding. Unfortunately the next tightest aspect, at 5 minutes, is Saturn trine the Midheaven: The government of the US was stingy. But the next President, Franklin Roosevelt, was able to provide Jupiter — optimism — in spades, it was one of his major accomplishments. Roosevelt was born when Jupiter had just turned direct, and so it was slowly moving in his natal chart.

Ten Years of the Great Depression

The next chart shows the 10 year period from 1929 to 1939. It is an harmonic 8 chart (as was the previous graphical ephemeris) so that when any of those two outer planets are making an aspect, the lines will come together. You can see how those three outer planets go in an out of aspect during this period You can also see that the tightest clumping of the three planets occurs in 1932 and 1933 (black arrow), and they slowly drifted apart after that as the depression got less worse.

Maximum Depression

This wheel chart is set up for 9/9/1932 showing the three outer planets and the aspects binding them that are most exact: Uranus square Pluto, Uranus sesquiqadrate Neptune, and Neptune semisquare Pluto.

It is also interesting to note that Pluto was transiting opposite its natal position — US chart — during the time of the New Deal. Since Pluto is moving faster at this time than it was a century ago, it will complete the circuit and return to its natal position in a few more years, as we will discus later.

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January 16, 2015

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Presidential Mistakes

Picking the best and at times the worst of presidents is an endless contest. In most lists, the best presidents of the United States are Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President, and Franklin Roosevelt, the thirty second President — both Aquarians. Both are considered the top two Presidents, in no particular order. But both made an extremely bad decision, which no one credits them with, that were among the worst presidential decisions every, and the results of which we still live with.

During his first term, Lincoln’s Vice President was Hannibal Hamlin. Hamlin was a radical Republican who fully supported the abolishment of slavery. He was replaced in the second election by a Democrat from the border state of Tennessee and they ran on, instead of the Republican Party ticket, a new party formed for that election only called the National Union Party; the idea was to show that the Democrats and Republicans were united and that the Civil War was a bipartisan effort. Unfortunately, Lincoln was assassinated shortly after the election of 1864, which the National Union Party won. Lincoln’s chosen vice president was Andrew Johnson, a Democratic Senator who still supported the Union, even though Tennessee had joined the Confederate States. It was for that reason that Lincoln decided to have him on the ticket of the new union party that was set up just for the election of 1864. By early 1865 the South had lost the Civil War, and Lincoln had been assassinated, so Johnson was the new President. Johnson had given a bad impression when he had shown up for his inaugural as vice president drunk, but as Lincoln had explained, that was only because he was so nervous. Johnson was never a friend to black people, either when they were slaves or after the War ended.

The period between the end of the war and 1876 was called Reconstruction; the South was suppose to re-enter the Union and the freed blacks who had formerly been slaves were to have been brought into full-fledged citizens of the United States. To say that Reconstruction was unsuccessful would be an understatement, and we are still living with the consequences of that period. The so-called Black Codes were soon passed in the South, which restricted the freedom of the newly freed slaves. While there were more Blacks elected to the Congress during Reconstruction than ever since, few long lasting changes were made and after the end of Reconstruction the South tried to revert as closely as possible to the antebellum ways of treating their black citizens. Andrew Johnson did not help Reconstruction, and he so angered the Radical Republicans in Congress that they passed a law so that Johnson would break it and they would have an excuse to impeach him, and they did. Johnson goes down in history as the first President to be impeached; he was not convicted, but after that his frosty relations with Congress did not improve.

Reconstruction ended in 1876, even thought it had not been finished. What happened was the election of 1876. That was a interesting year in the United States. It was the centennial of the founding of the country, and there was much celebration on the Fourth of July, a special birthday. Just a few days before that party a civil war veteran named George Armstrong Custer had been killed fighting Indians and the news had just reached the East. The current President, Ulysses Grant, who had accepted the South’s surrender in the Civil War, was very unpopular. The election that November was disputed, and in fact was more controversial than the recent election of 2000 and Bush v Gore. It was seemingly won by the Democrat Samuel Tilden and the Republican Rutheford Hayes lost. But in several states both the Republicans and Democrats turned in electoral college votes, which disagreed. Eventually a committee was formed consisting of members of the Senate, House, and Supreme Court. The committee was suppose to choose between the disputed electoral votes. As a result, the Republican was chosen, but the Democrats, who were the party in the South of white people, also got something that they wanted: a removal of troops in the South and thus an end to Reconstruction. The whites in the South could go back to interfering with the newly freed slaves with no interference from the Army. The new President was referred to a Ruthefraud Hayes after that election.

Assassination of Lincoln

The first thing we look at in this assassination chart is the position of Mars, that indicates gunshots. Since we have a time, the position of the Moon is valid, and it is opposite the US Mars. Transiting Mars is on the cusp of the eight house (the long dark blue line extending out from that planet indicates this) which in traditional astrology is the house of death. Mars is within the core of the US chart — Sun, Venus, Jupiter — and approaching an exact conjunction with the Sun. Mercury is sesquiquadrate the Midheaven, and the news of this event was communicated rapidly, besides taking place within a theater. Saturn, depression, is aspecting the Moon, Pluto, and the Ascendant of the US chart.

***********
Franklin Delano Roosevelt had an unprecedented four terms. In fact, the twenty second amendment to the US Constitution was passed to prevent this from happening again. In his third term, Roosevelt had as Vice President Henry Wallace, who had been Secretary of Agriculture during the first two terms and an important supporter of the New Deal. Wallace was an American original. He was a farmer from Iowa whose political beliefs were out of step with the Washington Establishment. He was also someone who had esoteric beliefs that were out of place in Washington. In fact, it was his idea to put the eye on the pyramid on the back of a dollar bill. This corresponds directly to something in the astrological birth chart of the United States, as we will discuss at some other time. Not only was he FDR’s Vice President in his third term, he was also Roosevelt’s choice for the fourth term. But by that time Roosevelt was noticeably sick, and the Democratic Party officials knew he wouldn’t last for four more years, so they knew that whoever was vice president would become President, and they wanted someone in that position that they could control, and they did not want that person to be someone with the maverick ideas of a Henry Wallace. They convinced FDR to nominate Harry Truman, who had supported New Deal policies and was also from the Midwest, but was not an independent thinker and could be trusted to take orders. Some people called him a hack, and his start in politics was the result of action by a local political organization called the Pendergast machine. But the convention, which was heavily in favor of Wallace, would have selected him anyway, except the power in the convention hall failed conveniently and the selection was put off to the next day.

While Wallace really supported FDR’s policies, especially in regards to the Soviet Union, and he had been in the Roosevelt cabinet since the first election, Truman did not support the Roosevelt foreign policy and was strongly influenced by such people as his Secretary of State, James Byrnes. As a result, Truman was in charge of ordering the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, and he took a tough policy towards the Soviet Union after the war ended and ignored the agreements made at Yalta. He helped bring the policy of anti-communism to America, which led to McCarthyism, and helped bring the Cold War with his Truman Doctrine. Conservatives and liberals did not like Wallace at all, and this belief still exists. I recently saw an article in the New Yorker from last year defaming Henry Wallace. But if Wallace had served as President after the war, the Cold War would have had much less chance of happening, and the future of the world would have been considerably different. Truman brought in the National Security State, which has only gotten stronger after 9/11. As discussed previously the beginnings of the NSS changed America’s path and position in the world.

Even though the Cold War is over, the Cold War tendencies to mistrust the Russians are still in full force in America, and has led to a second Cold War and the accompanying danger of nuclear war.

Death of Roosevelt

In this chart we have a conjunction of four planets in Aries — Sun, Moon, Mercury, and Venus — and a new Moon had happened eight hours earlier. This quadruple conjunction is aspecting much of the chart: Moon, Pluto, Ascendant, Uranus, Mercury, and Mars. Saturn is approaching the core planets of the United States: the government will be depressed, and there were many changes to the government in the next three months it took Saturn to cross the Sun. In fact, Saturn was exactly on the Sun of the US on July 4, 1945.

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December 5, 2014

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Jacksonian America

Ah, what could be more boring than a discussion of the Age of Jackson? He was President of the United States between 1829 and 1837. That was almost 200 years ago and who cares about people in antebellum America. They sure didn’t call it “antebellum” in those days, for obvious reasons. But many important things developed at that time, which of course we take for granted now. The standard biography about Andrew Jackson is the three volume set by Robert Remini, though many have written biographies about Andrew Jackson, a very interesting President whose character tells us much about America, though that might not be good. A very good overview of Jacksonian America is The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln by Sean Wilentz. What I am referring to as “Jacksonian America” or the Age of Jackson started before the man was elected President, and just like Ronald Reagan, he served as a symbol for changes that were sweeping the country.

The Age of Jackson is important now because that was when the country started many of the characteristics that are bedevilling it currently. With the election of Jackson, as shown below, the country veered off from the path it had followed up to that time. Many claim that the country became democratic, or at least more democratic, since by that time more could vote than just property holding white males. Of course, women and Blacks, whether freed or slaves, could not vote. Women had the vote for a brief time in some places, such as New Jersey. This is the period in which America became a “hustler” nation (as described in Walter McDougall’s book Freedom Just Around the Corner and Morris Berman’s Why America Failed), a nation devoted to what’s best for Number One, a change from a democracy of fraternity to a democracy of cupidity (Hofstadter) as discussed previously.

Democrats claim that Jackson and Jefferson were the founders of their party, and have a Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner once a year. While Jackson did pay obeisance to Jefferson, I think there was a disconnect between the party of Jefferson and the party of Jackson, which was called The Democracy. And while Jackson gets the credit for creating the Democratic Party, the hard organizational work was done by Martin Van Buren (who according to Gore Vidal in his novel Burr was the illegitimate son of Aaron Burr) who was Jackson’s Vice-President in his second term, and served a single term thereafter, because the Panic of 1837 (partially caused by Jackson’s dispute with Nicholas Biddle and the Bank of the United States) doomed him to only one term. Van Buren, called the Little Magician and Martin Van Ruin, who was the first of non-British descent to make President, also ran for President in the Free Soil Party which became part of the Republican Party twenty years later.

Like other eponymous President Ages, the Age of Jackson started before Andrew Jackson became president, or even before he first ran for President. Ages get names for significant Presidents who happened to be in office when major changes were overtaking the country, and they were just one of the changes, and something about their behavior or actions symbolized the changes taking place in the country. For those who accept the Great Man theory of history, then the President was the person responsible for the changes taking place in the country.

In the United States, the country had as Presidents up until Jackson either Founding Fathers or relatives of such, and most of those Presidents before Jackson were members of what is called the Virginia Mafia, since they were all from Virginia. The Presidents of the United States were George Washington, from Virgina, and then John Adams, from Massachusetts, first Washington’s Vice President and then a one-term President, then Thomas Jefferson, from Virginia, the James Madison, from Virginia, then James Monroe, from Virginia, and then John Quincy Adams, from Massachusetts and son of the first Adams. In the contested election of 1824 Jackson ran against Adams and, even though he had more electoral votes, did not have enough and so the issue was settled in the House of Representatives. One of the candidates, Henry Clay of Kentucky, withdrew and threw his support to Adams. Later, when Adams was President he appointed Clay to be Secretary of State. This was not a politically wise thing to do, but since Clay was obviously the most qualified person for the post, it was natural that he was appointed by Adams. Jackson was very upset at what he considered a “corrupt bargain” and began campaigning for the next election. There was so much ill will towards Adams that not much was accomplished in his term, but his remains the most accomplished post-presidential career. Jackson beat Adams in the next election and served two terms.

At this point in the early Nineteenth Century the Industrial Revolution, which had began in England over 100 years before, finally spread into the wider world. The Industrial Revolution is declared to have come to America in 1790 when Samuel Slater, who was an apprentice in England, brought ideas of the Industrial Revolution to New England. England had attempted to keep the ideas of the Industrial Revolution within England, but that could only last so long.

By the third decade of the Nineteenth Century what is called Laissez-Faire Capitalism developed within America. This had been started by the publication of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations in 1776. Laissez-Faire implies leaving people alone to follow their own path. What it amounted to in reality is that businesses could do whatever that wanted, within reason, to make money. At the beginning of this revolution, because it was certainly a revolutionary principle, things went along fine. It wasn’t until after the Civil War and the rise of corporations, starting with the railroads which had been empowered by the War, that things began to vary from the ideal.

Along with this was the development of something called the Market Revolution in America. The cotton gin had been invented at the end of the Eighteenth Century, and it was coming into use in the South, where much cotton was grown. Before the cotton gin, people wondered if there was a future for slavery, but the cotton gin made possible the use of a type of cotton that had previously been difficult to use. This made the need for slaves to harvest the cotton more important than ever. This cotton was shipped to the many weaving factories in New England that had been automated by the work of Samuel Slater. Massachusetts especially developed many weaving factories and employed young women from the cities.

At this time, when the Age of Jackson was starting, there was also a Transportation Revolution. Before this time goods could be slowly transported by horse and wagon over relatively primitive roads or shipped down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. But in this period many well maintained roads — call turnpikes — were build by the Federal government, which allowed faster transportation by horse-drawn wagons. There was also the building of the Eire Canal in upstate New York, joining the Great Lakes to the Hudson River whose outlet was New York City. This allowed ships to enter the Hudson River at New York and access the many cities bordering the Great Lakes, including Chicago, and from there reach by wagons much of the Midwest. While the Eire Canal is in much disrepair now, at the time it was revolutionary and allowed the country along the canal to build up, as well as the land of middle America that could now be reached from the Atlantic. Other canals were built at this time, connecting, for example, Lake Eire and the Ohio River. The Cumberland Road, also known as the Nation Road, was built in this period and extended over 600 miles from Cumberland, Maryland into Illinois. It became the first road in America surfaced with macadam. Steamboats became popular on the Mississippi River (think Mark Twain) and allowed relatively easy transport of people and goods up and down the most important river in the country, and helping to unite the Midwest. Accentuating this trend to easier transportation, the railroad was first introduced into the United States in 1828. By 1830 the Tom Thumb, first common-carrier railroad, was built. The development of a railroad system in the United States was helped by much investment from England.

The Communication Revolution is another event that occurred in antebellum America. America had been a country interested in writing since the early days. Daniel Boone, when he was out in the country, enjoy being told the tales of Shakespeare. Bookstores were one of the first establishments to go into a new town. In this Jacksonian period the Napier steam-driven press was developed in England and allowed more books and newspapers to be printed easily. This allowed the burgeoning middle classes to more easily find books, magazines, and newspapers, and helped support a literate population. Schooling increased and eventually public schools became commonplace. The telegraph was invented at the end of this period by artist Samuel F. B. Morse in 1835. The telegraph has been called the Victorian Internet and for the first time ever allowed near instantaneous communication.

Age of Jackson 1

The most important transit for this period, and one with deep seated meaning, is that of Pluto over the IC of the US chart, and thus opposite the MC (black arrow chart 1). The IC represents the foundation or base of the entity in question, in this case the Untied States. Transits over the IC appear to last longer and their meaning less obvious than transits to more visible points. Since Pluto moves so slow, this transit had never happened in the history of the country; it previously happened in the 1570s. Pluto represent large scale change or transformation, and that is indeed what the Age of Jackson had to offer. There was a massive change in the United States, which had only won their war for independence forty or so years previously. The country had started to become its own person (cf Joyce Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution for a description of the first generation of post-Revolution Americans). Pluto then went on to square the Sun of the US in 1832–38 (black arrow chart 4). This was the time of the development of abolitionism and William LLoyd Garrison’s newspaper The Liberator. The closing of the Pluto Sun cycle, and of course the beginning of the next cycle happened with the Pluto conjunct Sun aspect in the Twenties.

Age of Jackson 2

Age of Jackson 3

Compounding this situation during these years was the actions of Uranus and Neptune. These two planets were conjunct in 1820-23 (red arrow in first chart) and square the MC of the United States. This conjunction happens three times per 500 years and the next time that conjunction happened was in the early 1990s and we are still strongly witnessing the effects of that conjunction. The conjunction of the early Nineteenth Century was opposite two of the core planets of America, Jupiter and Venus. Uranus went on to oppose the Sun in 1823-24 (black arrow in second chart) and Neptune opposed the Sun 1824-27 (black arrow in third chart). These aspects just added to the central changes happening in the country, in so many areas. In this group of aspects the final one was Uranus conjunct the US Moon (chart 4), which has been discussed before and signified the revolution of Texas, which had been part of Mexico but then split away, hoping to be part of the United States.

Age of Jackson 4

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November 7, 2014

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The Cold War

The Cold War between the United States and its allies against the Soviet Union and its allies started right after World War II ended — we will deal with the exact start in a later post — and supposedly ended with the fall of the Soviet Union on Christmas Day 1991. Some authorities contend that the Cold War started with the rise to power of the Communist Party in Russia at the end of World War I. That was indeed an early version of the Cold War, which involved the United States, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan sending troops to fight against the Communist government in a Civil War that occurred with the fall of the Czar in Russia. And near the beginning of the Second World War several leaders, such as Harry Truman, maintained that we should support Germany if it looked like the Soviets would win, and support the Soviet Union if it looked like Germany would win, in a hope that both countries would destroy each other. Nevertheless, the Soviet Union was allied with the United States during World War II and so the Cold War did not start in all its glory until that war ended

Cold War 1950

The operative aspect during the Cold War was what is called the Long Sextile between Neptune and Pluto. Pluto is an oddity among the planets since its orbit is very eccentric so that at some times it travels much faster than at other times, and once every 250 years it goes inside the orbit of Neptune so that it is no longer the outermost planet. That happens appropriately when, since Pluto is considered to be the ruler of the sign Scorpio, the planet is in the sign Scorpio. This happened between January 1979 and February 1999, with Pluto closest to the sun (perihelion) half way between those two dates. As the result of this, the sextile between the two planets lasted a very long time, and it will return in another decade, but that is an important topic for another time. As a result, this is called the Long Sextile.

Cold War 1980

The first two charts illustrate a typical sextile between the two planets , one from 1950 near the beginning of the Cold War,and one for 1980, thirty years later when the Cold War had warmed up again. In both charts notice the blue line representing a sextile between the planets Neptune and Pluto. But the real proof is in the graphical ephemeris shown below. This graphical ephemeris covers a fifty year period, between 1944 and 1994, and shows in the sixth harmonic just two planets, Neptune and Pluto. We know that in a sixth harmonic chart, planets that are exactly sextile show as conjunctions, or lines that are together in the graphical ephemeris. From the graph we can see that the two planet first came close together in 1946 or 1947, stay close together until they finally separate in 1991 or 1992, mirroring the extent of the cold war that lasted all those years. We also notice that the lines get very close together in he early Fifties, just as the Cold War was getting intense with the successful Communist victory in China, the Korean War, the first successful atomic bomb explosion by the Soviets, and in the United States McCarthyism. The other time the planets are very close together is in the early Eighties with President Ronald Reagan, when defense spending greatly increased, when he talked about the military plan called “Star Wars” and helped the fights in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

The Cold War 1945-1991

Also notice that the two lines, representing Neptune — blue– and Pluto — red in the late Sixties, early Seventies are further apart. This is when President Richard Nixon was practicing the policy of détente with the Soviet Union. One important treaty negotiated during this period was called SALT I for Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. This was in the works between late 1969 through 1972. On May 26, 1972 an Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was signed between Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev. Also in this period was the famous “Nixon Goes to China” moment when Richard Nixon when to “Red” China, something that was unheard of before then, and the subsequent recognition of China by the United States and then the admission of mainland China to the United Nations, something that had been blocked (mostly by the United States) since 1949. In fact, it was because the Soviet Union was not in the United Nations Security Council in 1950 to protest the exclusion of China from that body that allowed the United States to have the United Nations approved the start of the Korean War.

As we’ve seen previously, a midpoint involving the three outer planets represents a watershed moment. For the midpoint that indicates the start of the Cold War, this is certainly true. It was a bifurcation point in the flow of time, where the future was radically different that it would have been without the Cold War. The Cold War has affected the whole world and the way it behaves, in ways unimaginable and not really seen at the time it started. But by now the “official” Cold War has been over for almost a quarter century. We are living in a post Cold War world, but the effects of the Cold War has changed the way we response to most everything.

America has always had enemies, someone it could dominate and rail against, someone that the people at home would draw together against. For much of the early years of the country the enemy was Great Britain, the country it was a colony of for a long time, and finally rebelled against. The US then had another war against that country a quarter century later. But by the time of the Spanish-American War, the enemy was that by then decrepit empire Spain. This served as an enemy until the Huns in World War One intervened. But at the end of that war there was the Russian Revolution and they became the official enemy, a status that has endured even though the official Cold War has supposedly ended. One historian (Gordon Wood, The Idea of America) has an interesting theory as to why the Russians were so hated after their Revolution. For over a century after the American Revolution, America is where anyone considering a more democratic country would look. It was almost as if the definition of revolution was illustrated with a map of America. But after the Russian Revolution, this was no longer the case. After that act, when people though of revolution, they thought of Russia. We were no longer the top dog in the Revolution-definition business. Russia had stolen America’s thunder, and America was not about to allow that to happen.

After the Soviet Union ceased to exist, America searched for another enemy to take its place. The first choice was the menace of drugs, come to steal out precisions bodily fluids. That audition did not go over too well, and fortunately 9/11 allowed America to bring back a bogeyman that Ronald Reagan declared war on 20 years earlier, but this time it seemed more real and was brought home to Americans on their television screens, the window to reality. This new threat was terrorism, and so a War on Terrorism was declared. Some people pointed out the difficulty in declaring war on a noun, and that terrorism was a tactic, and some even pointed out that America was the largest purveyor of terrorism, but none of those arguments held much sway with the American people. In fact, the argument became are you for the country or for the terrorist, just like in previous times the question was are you for us or the Communist. It was a black and white world.

It won’t be for several hundred years, when we are able to look back at the Cold War as a historical period and not as a entity which has just recently passed, and maybe not really, that we can see this period is one of insanity. It changed drastically where money was spent, so that trillions were sent to defense companies, making their owners very wealthy, which reduced the amount of money available for most of the people. As President Eisenhower said “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” These days that certainly sounds like Communist propaganda, and the person who said is not fit to be allowed in society, but Eisenhower was a Republican President and a war hero of the Second World War. That one quote shows how much things have changed in the last sixty years.

We are now in the post Cold War world, but having the Cold War as such a prominent feature of the world for so long — 45 years — has changed the way people think. Our first response to any problem is to send in the weapons, if not “boots on the ground” then at the very least a few bombs, missiles, or drones. The world has developed so that the killing of strangers because they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time does not seem worthy of comment, and the interception of all personal messages seems perfectly normal. In fact, supporters will often give praise, or at least find an excuse, when their leader does any of that.

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October 24, 2014

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Revolution At The Top

The planet Uranus has transited over the Midheaven of the United States three times since the country was born. Uranus is the planet of revolution and the Midheaven represents our public position in the world, so one would expect just by combining those two symbols that this transit would suggest a revolution in the way we are seen or present ourselves to the world, in our public persona. Let’s see how that plays in in reality. Unlike Uranus transiting the IC, where the effects will be hidden from public view, transits to the MC will be public and apparent to all the world.

The first time Uranus reached the MC of the United States was 1799-1801. This time represented an important Presidential election for the country, its fourth. In the first two elections, George Washington was easily elected. He represented the Federalist Party which was all there was at the beginning, since initially it was thought that there was no need for political parties, that the president would represent everyone. In the first two elections Washington was unopposed. Washington chose not to run for a third term, which amazed outside observers since it was thought that he would continue to be president for his life, or in other words a king, much like what European countries were use to. By the time of the third election in 1796 there was a party other than the Federalist, the Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson, and he ran against the Federalist candidate, John Adams, who had been Washington’s Vice-President, and who won the election. This was the first contested election, with Thomas Jefferson serving as vice president, even though he was from a different party than Adams.

By the time of the fourth election, things got more interesting. Adams was again running against Jefferson, along with Aaron Burr as Republicans. But not all the bugs had been worked out of the election process, and there was no separate President and Vice President, a problem that the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution was passed to fix. The person receiving the highest votes was suppose to be President, and the person receiving the second highest was to be Vice President. But both Jefferson and Burr got the same number of votes in the Electoral College.

This was the second contested presidential election in United States history and the first where the power would transfer from one party to the other; people were not sure that the transfer would be peaceful. In France they had had a Revolution ten years previously, it had gotten violent, and now a dictator by the name of Napoleon had taken over the country just a year before, so people were wondering if the United States would go the same way as France.

Revolution of 1800

After the Electoral Collage vote tied, the election fell into the House of Representatives, where each state had one vote. But each ballot was the same, with both Jefferson and Burr getting the same number of votes. This process stretched out towards Inauguration Day in late March, and tempers were rising. There was even talk of a civil war. It began to look like America would be another failed state. The balloting had gone on 35 times and still there was no winner. If it hadn’t been for the three-fifths clause of the Constitution, which gave states extra electoral votes based on three-fifths of their slave population, Adams would have won and the election would not have been thrown into the House. Finally, on the thirty-sixth ballot, one person changed his vote and Jefferson was elected as President and Burr became Vice-President. Jefferson later called this the “Revolution of 1800.” The United States survived its first election where the office of the President changed hands to a different faction.

Uranus has a period of 84 years; the next time Uranus went over the Midheaven of the United States was the middle of the 1880s. Important activities were happening regarding labor relations — the May Day celebration in Chicago comes to mind, most notably the Haymarket Massacre on May 4, 1886. This was a rally to support the eight hour work day. A bomb was thrown into the rally resulting in gunfire, chaos, and the death of seven police and at last four civilians. Some anarchists were convicted on little evidence. Four were executed as a result of the trial, while another killed himself just before his execution. Others were pardoned. This was a very important milestone for labor relations in the United States, and it resulted in the annual observation of May Day as a labor celebration. It also served as a warning to the middle and upper classes that the workers below them were unhappy with the state of labor.

Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad

But I believe the most important event at the time, which has even more meaning now than then, took place initially in California and eventually ended up in the Supreme Court of the United States where a decision was handed down that changed the real rulers of the country. This was the decision known as Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad. The argument before the Supreme Count and the decision took place in the first half of 1886, but it had been in process for years. That county in California wanted to tax that railroad, but the railroad did not want to be taxed. Th upshot of the decision, the one that is still with us today, came from a headnote to the decision and not the decision itself. Interestingly, the headnote was not written by any Justice but by a court reporter who had been the president of another railroad. Basically, the headnote said that corporations were persons as far as the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was concerned. At the time of this decision this Amendment had been passed only 18 years previously. The Fourteenth Amendment has been applied more often to corporations than the freed slaves it was intended for. Some think that this assumption of corporations as people was possible because that amendment uses the term “persons” instead of “natural persons” which is legally more applicable to flesh-and-blood people. In any case, recent Supreme Court decisions such as the infamous Citizens United have only built on the structure of that earlier Supreme Court decision that took place over 125 years ago.

1968

The third passage of Uranus over the Midheaven of the United States, and one that happened relatively recently, needs no introduction, since the year in question has many books with the year as a title. This transit was in 1968 and 1969. The listing of “revolutionary” events of these years almost becomes repetitious. This was near the end of the Sixties, and passions had built up over the years. A brief mention of the events of 1968 in America includes the assassination of Martin Luther King in April, the assassination of Robert Kennedy in June, and the police riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in August. 1969 saw the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival in August, the Moon Landing in July, and the Concert at the Altamont Speedway in California in December, which was declared the death of the Sixties. (For a take on that concert from a group that was there, check out “New Speedway Boogie” by the Grateful Dead from their album Workingman’s Dead released the next year.) Also in December the followers of Charles Manson, inspired by another rock song “Helter Skelter” from the album The Beatles (called the “White Album”) brutally murdered five people at a Hollywood home, and two more the next day. Another important but rarely mentioned event of 1969 was the assassination of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton by the FBI in December. This is one of the events that helped radicalize even more the Weathermen (“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” Bob Dylan sang in the song “Subterranean Homesick Blues” from the album Bringing It All Back Home) a splinter from the New Left group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) that was widespread in the Sixties. The Weathermen would go on in the next couple of years to make waves in society with their violence.

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October 17, 2014

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The Twenties

There were several aspects that define the decade that is call the Twenties in the United States. This decade also had a meaning in Europe, which had recently been ravaged by the Great War and was slowly recovering. In Germany the Weimar Republic was an attempt to have a functioning democracy in that country after the previous regime was so tarnished by World War I. England and France were also recovering from the effects of the War, and Russia just saw a new Communist government take the reigns of power after the previous one had been overthrown by the Communists and a civil war between the Red and White Russians — supported by Western Powers England, France, and the United States — had been won. As is often the case after a major war, new governments and new ways of life take over. There had also been a major influenza epidemic that had swept the world in the closing years of the previous decade, killing millions, and that of course also changed the world.

Even though the United States had witnessed little of the war, and then only from a great distance, they also had many changes, often self-induced. The Prohibition of Alcohol took place on January 17, 1920, designed to coordinate with the beginning of a new decade. America was also coming off a previous period that had seen the passage of the Espionage and Sedition Acts under Woodrow Wilson, which allowed such dissents as Eugene Debs to be jailed. It is noteworthy that this same act is being currently used by President Obama to jail whistleblowers. There was a great fear of foreigners after World War I, and a distrust of the Russians (the country was not recognized until 1933), which led to much fear of communist/alien/anarchist presence in the country.

But in the United States the “Return to Normalcy” (the phrase of the first president of the new decade, Warren Gamallel Harding) continued until the stock market crash of 1929. The decade of the Thirties was to be much different, not only in the United States, but throughout the world.

Uranus trine Pluto Early Twenties

The first aspect of note is a trine between Uranus and Pluto that lasted from 1920 to 1923. This affected the entire world, not just America, and indicates the changes that took place after the end of World War I and the influenza epidemic. The US had three important aspects to its natal chart, which had different effects (or rather symbolized different things) but their combinations was the profound changes that took place in America during the Twenties. This trine is shown above in a third harmonic graphical ephemeris.

In Germany, which had been ruled by the Hohenzollern family since the Eleventh Century (long before Germany existed as a country) which included their leader during World War I, Kaiser Wilhelm II, the rulership came to an end with the Germany Revolution after the War. This was followed by what is called the Weimar Republic. This was Germany’s first attempt at democracy, and it was a period of great interest in such things as astrology and “New Age” ideas. This of course came to an end with the rise of Adolf Hitler in 1933.

Neptune Opposite US Moon

One aspect, that has been mentioned before is transiting Neptune opposite the Moon of the United States. The peak of this was 1926-29. Since Neptune moves so slowly, this was the first time that this aspect has happened since the planet was discovered. Neptune Moon can be read as the people are deluded, which can refer to the stock market mania that swept the country during the Twenties, and it could speak to the great interest in sports during the Twenties, witness Babe Ruth and Red Grange in baseball and football, respectively; and that golf became a middle-class sport. After the horrible war people just wanted to forget the past decade and have fun. But the most obvious association is Prohibition that took place, in the United States and some other countries, during this decade. While other countries, such as Canada, gave up Prohibition earlier than the United States, the US maintained it until 1933 when the Depression, marking the next decade, was fully ensconced.

It is still debated whether drinking increased or not in the Twenties, especially later into the decade when the corruptness of the Prohibition agents was revealed. But one of the things that caused Prohibition to be repealed is that many school children were showing up to school drunk; these were children who did not drink before. There was much deceit involved in getting alcohol, not only in bootleggers and speakeasies, but also in the large demand for sacramental wine, only (of course) used for religious purposes, and also in doctors recommendations for alcohol, only (of course) for medical reasons. The nation became, because of Prohibition, a less law-abiding country, with many people willing to look the other way. Unfortunately, this attitude did not change after Prohibition was repealed, because once those attitudes take root it is hard to turn them off.

Uranus Transits IC of US

The transit of Uranus over the IC of the United States, and thus opposite the Midheaven, is a bit harder to describe. The peak of this was 1926-28. The IC — Imum Coeli or Bottom of the Sky — is the most hidden point of the chart, the foundation or base of the country. Transits over that point represent deep seated changes. I’ve notice that transits over the IC start earlier and last longer than more obvious changes. Transits over the IC seem to represents changes in how the country see itself. With this transit the people of the country began to feel comfortable with credit. Before this decade, most people were uncomfortable with buying on time. Starting with the Twenties, people bought consumer items with credit and paid them off over time. This allowed the middle class, which was growing in this decade, to purchase more of the items they needed for their lifestyle, a trend that has really never stopped since that time, though the Great Depression and the Second World War put a damper on things for a period. The United States recently went through a similar aspect, and the results have been described as the “New Normal.”

The overriding aspect of this decade was Pluto conjunct the Sun of the US, lasting the whole decade but with a peak 1923-27. One of the meanings given for Pluto is organized crime, and the Twenties was certainly a highpoint for crime, when, because of Prohibition, organized crime really took off and gained a foothold in America that of course did not lessen once Prohibition was repealed in 1933. This is something lawmakers seem not to know, or forget as soon as the current crisis passes, but a failed policy often (always?) has unintended consequences and even though the failed policy can be ended, the unintended consequences often will not go away. That is certainly something that current lawmakers would be well to understand.

Pluto Conjunct US Sun

Probably one of the most vivid image of the Twenties is the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, where seven people (but not the intended target) were killed in Chicago in February of 1929, but that was only symptomatic of gangland killings that took place in the Twenties as businessmen attempted to protect their turf since the courts were unavailable to them. The story of Al Capone is still popular since he epitomize the rise of gangsters in that era.

A more far-reaching symbol for Pluto is transformation, and this happened to the country, if not to its government. Pluto also represents large-scale enterprises. During the whole decade a series of Republicans served in the Presidency, and one Secretary of the Treasury served the whole period, Andrew Mellon, the third richest person in the United States. During this decade the cult of the market grew strong, sort of a preview of what would happen in our own time after another Republican was elected President, and worship of the stock market reached new heights.

In the decade of the Twenties, America was transformed from a rural country to an urban country. This was the decade in which a majority of the people started living in cities and no longer were farm dwellers. As more people were in cities, automobiles really became popular. There were many manufacturers of automobiles, especially General Motors, and they gave competition to Ford, who had ruled the roost since the introduction of the Model T before the Great War. In the late Twenties Ford introduced the Model A to compete with the other manufacturers and it proved to be a great success, becoming one of the more popular models of the period. By this time the infrastructure for automobiles — roads, gas stations, mechanics — had been developed and so America became a driving society.

There was also a sexual revolution in the decade, despite what people want to think of the Sixties. Margaret Sanger had popularize birth control and founded the Planned Parenthood Federation, though it was initially called something else. Women started smoking, something that had been relatively unknown in decades before, and drinking openly. The image of the flapper is well know, and women began to bob their hair, something that had previously been connected to prostitutes.

This decade was also the time that movies started to talk. The first talking movie is considered to be The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson and released in 1927. This sounded the death knell for silent movies, and made the cinema even more entrancing. This movie was a full 90 minutes long, similar to what is found today. Also in the Twenties commercial radio got started with news, entertainment, live performances and, of course, sports. Just as the Fifties was the decade of television, the Twenties was the decade of radio.

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October 10, 2014

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The People Are Disturbed: Uranus-Moon

The symbolic meaning of the planet Uranus transiting over (conjunction, square, opposition) the Moon in the United States chart is that the people of the country (symbolized by the Moon) become upset, disturbed, shocked, perhaps even revolutionary. If we look back through the history of the United States we can see this pattern in play; usually it results in the country going to war.

Now some may argue that the United States goes to war so often, at the drop of a hat, that any cycle could point to an agitation of the people. And in fact I notice an agitation half-way between each of these points to be discussed, which hints at an eighth harmonic cycle. But on reflection, each of these occurrences seem to be a really important incident.

After looking at these cycles through the history of the United States, the next obvious question is when does the next one occur. We will discuss that at the end.

Afghanistan 2002-03

The United States had been attacked in September of 2001 and people were very agitated. They wanted revenge. The President of the United States, his Secretary of State, and many news outlets were helping to get the populace of the country riled up for war. Many compared the attack on the World Trade Center to the attack on Pearl Harbor, and were hoping for the same response.

New Cold War 1980-81

People were unhappy with the “lack” of militancy of the Carter administration, especially after the hostages were captured in Iran after their revolution, and especially after an attempt to rescue those hostages failed but resulted in the deaths of eight men sent to rescue the hostages. So people were primed for the new militancy of the incoming Reagan administration, and he did not disappoint. Defense spending greatly increased under the new administration and a new Cold War was born, with increased hostility towards the Soviet Union.

Cuban Missile Crisis 1961-62

This was a peak in the Cold War. Cuba had been invaded by a group financed by the United States in April of 1961 that had resulted in their capture, so passions on both sides were inflamed. Then in October of 1962 the Soviets attempted to put missiles in Cuba to protect it from another invasion by the United States. The US then blockaded Cuba to prevent the missiles from arriving and the world was on the brink of a nuclear war. Records released at a much later date showed that we were closer to war than anyone had known at the time, and one Soviet torpedoman who said “no” at a critical juncture was all that prevented nuclear missiles from being launched.

World War II 1941-42

The attack by Japanese planes on the Pearl Harbor naval station in Hawaii on December 7, 1941 really got the American upset at the Japanese and ready to go to war. Previously to that attack the US was largely isolationist and did not want to have anything to do with the European War, let alone an Asian one. Of the three exact squares of these two planets the second was on December 20, 1941, two weeks after Pearl Harbor.

World War I 1918-19

Initially the Americans did not want to enter the war, but through clever propaganda from the Wilson administration the Americans became extremely pro-war, even replacing the name hamburger (named for a town in Germany) with Salisbury steak and sauerkraut with Liberty cabbage. After the War some people were still agitated (the Revolution in Russia had just taken place) and there were bombings of public buildings, increased anarchist activity, and many raids of dissidents by Attorney General Palmer.

Spanish American War 1896-97

As discussed previously Americans were itching for a War with the Spanish over Cuba for several years, not only to relieve the Cubans from their hideous Spanish overlords, but also to provide a boost to what was thought to be the falling manhood of Americans since the Civil War was in the distant past. This buildup came to a climax with the explosion on the battleship Maine in the Havana harbor in February of 1898.

Railroad Strike 1877-78

Eighteen Seventy-Six had seen the Centennial of the country, Custer’s Last Stand, and a contested presidential election that made Bush v Gore look mild. The Panic of 1873, which extended more-or-less for the next quarter century, resulted in some railroads lowering their pay for workers in the summer of 1877, while stockholders got bonuses. As a result there was a nation-wide strike of workers called the Great Labor Uprising that saw scores killed by local, state, and federal militias. The strike ended with no raise for the workers, but it resulted in increased labor solidarity and increased class consciousness among both workers and the burgeoning middle class, as well as increased animosity towards strikes among the owning class. There was also an opening Uranus-Pluto square that year, such as the one we are having this decade.

Civil War 1857-58

The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which required run-away slaves to be returned to their owners, the Kansas- Nebraska Acts in 1854, which essentially overturned the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and allowed all new states to determine if they wanted slavery within their borders, and the Dred Scott Decision in 1857 had all occurred recently. Because of all of these, abolitionist sentiment was running high in the North when John Brown made a raid on slaveholders in Kansas, killing five, and then made his raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859. Some think he was insane and some think he was a hero, but this act helped bring the Civil War. John Brown was financed by a group of prominent New England abolitionists known as the Secret Six and supported by such people as Henry Ward Beecher, brother of the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and a prominent preacher in Brooklyn. In fact, many Southerners blamed the Civil War on Lincoln and the two Beecher children.

Texas Revolution 1835

This was near the end of Andrew Jackson’s second term, and he was called by his opponents “King Andrew”. Someone was really agitated about him since the first attempted presidential assassination occurred this year. In Florida white settlers wanted the land that the Seminoles had moved to after losing the First Seminole War, one that was started by Jackson and which involved the murder of two English subjects and could have resulted in an international incident. In this, the start of the expensive Second Seminole War, Jackson asked the Seminoles to move. Meanwhile, gold was discovered on Cherokee land and they were forced to move so that the whites could get the gold. Meanwhile, down in Texas, at the time not a state of the US, Mexico had rebuffed an attempt by Texas to become part of Mexico, and so the Texans were in rebellion against Mexico. The Battle of the Alamo took place the following year.

War of 1812

Hints of the war started almost two decades earlier. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars were happening, and the British, who were fighting the French, were keeping the Americans from trading with the French. Americans were getting increasingly upset with this, and Western voters elected a group of “War Hawks” to Congress to push for a war with Britain. The resulting war did not turn out well for America, with Washington, D.C. burned, but it did result in the National Anthem for the country. The greatest victory of the war, by Andrew Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans, happened after the war had ended, but propelled Jackson to become a war hero which resulted in his running for President in ten years.

Whiskey Rebellion 1893-94

The farmers of the Western Frontier, which in the late Eighteenth Century meant Western Pennsylvania, were upset at a tax on distilled liquor, which meant mostly whiskey. They were also upset that small distillers were taxed at a higher rate than large distillers. This was the first major rebellion against the federal government after the Constitution was adopted. President Washington and Alexander Hamilton led federal troops to put down the rebellion, the first demonstration that the federal government would act to quash revolution. But this activity of the Federalist govenment paved the way to a more democratically-oriented Jefferson Presidency.

Revolutionary War 1773-74

The British had imposed various levies on products that the colonists used, and many people were upset at this. Agitations resulted in the Boston Massacre, where colonists were killed by British soldiers, and the Boston Tea party. War broke out with Britain in the next year, 1775.

The Next War? 2024-25

The next Uranus aspect to the US Moon comes up in 2024-26. We have looked at this period before and we will look at it again, since it is a very important time that we are rapidly moving towards, now only a decade away. In the previous entry, I said this period — 2028 — would see the “nations of the world … finally decide that the global crises are so ominous that they need to band together in a World War II-scale attempt to fight for the survival of the planet.” This Uranus square Moon is the years just preceding this date of 2028. It suggests that the people of the United States (not to mention the other people in the world) will be getting very upset at what has been done to their planet by the forces of capitalism over the last 500 years.

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August 15, 2014

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The Virtuous Nation – Conclusion

Jupiter conjunct Venus conjunct Sun

Virtuous

Here we have both the Greater and Lesser Benefics conjoined with the Sun, representing the Spirit of the United States. This is a powerful configuration, and while there is no evidence that the birth of the United States was planned for this triple conjunction, it certainly is very beneficial. This triple conjunction only existed for two weeks centered around July 4. It is as if a halo of goodness surrounds the United States, to protect it from misfortune, and to allow people looking at it to see a beacon of good.

Triple Conjunction of Sun, Jupiter, Veenus for the USA

But this triple conjunction also effects the way Americans look at themselves, at their country. They see themselves as virtuous. This belief underlies much American behavior. A vocalization of this was seen clearly after 9/11 when the common question was heard “Why do they hate us?” This was often expressed with a mixture of shock and disbelief. If you believe that you are virtuous, you can not understand why anyone would do you harm. If such an event occurs, one can either reassess one’s virtue, or consider the attacker mad. While Americans believe themselves as uniquely virtuous, there is little evidence for this [I am not talking about personal virtue, which was much in evidence in the personal response to the catastrophes of 9/11 and Katrina, for example, but in national actions]. The Marshall Plan after World War II, an attempt to help rebuild war -ravaged Europe, is most often cited as an example of American generosity [See H. W. Brands, The Devil We Knew, Oxford University Press, 1993 p 16-17 for a more balanced discussion of the Marshall Plan], but, in this author’s opinion, the actions of the America Relief Administration, formed by Herbert Hoover, in the relief of the Russian famine of 1921-23 more clearly qualifies as a noble and selfless act.

Virtue has always been important to Americans culture. But because of a historical phenomena in which words remain the same but the meaning changes, virtue in the present has a different sense than it had to the founders of the country. To the Revolutionary Generation, virtue meant civic virtue, “the capacity of some men to rise above private interests and devote themselves to the public good” in the words of historian Joyce Appleby [Joyce Appleby, Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s, New York University Press, 1984, p 9]. This can be seen as a Jupiter virtue. Jupiter is a social planet, concerned with other people and the wider world. This type of virtue still remains in the phrase noblesse oblige . It is a concern for the commonweal, for the well-being of other people, a concern for the community.

Compare this to the type of virtue that arose in the United States after 1800, and especially after 1820 and the growth of what historian William Appleman Williams calls the Age of Laissez Nous Faire [William Appleman Williams, The Contours of American History, W.W. Norton & Company, 1988, p225 ff] — Leave Us Alone. This was private virtue, described as “autonomous individuals freely exerting themselves to take care of their own interests” [Appleby, p94]. This can be described as Venus virtue, one more concerned with oneself and one’s family. Venus is definitely not a social planet in the sense that Jupiter is, but is more concerned with one-to-one relationships and one’s personal well-being. This change in the meaning of virtue in the early American republic was because of the belief that America was a great land of opportunity – as discussed above – and because of that all Americans could rise to a position of comfort, if not wealth, if only the government would stay out of the way. This meaning of virtue has by now become the only one recognized by the majority of Americans. The Founding Fathers were aghast at this change in the country that they helped birth [Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, Alfred A. Knopf, 1992, p365,366]. This difference between virtues has also been described as a change from a democracy of fraternity to a democracy of cupidity [Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition, Vintage Books 1989].

This change in meaning of a simple word was profoundly significant for the development of America. Instead of a community minded country, America became a nation of individuals only interested in getting more for themselves [Wood discusses this in detail]. The government was considered the problem that prevented individual initiative from functioning, and so its role was reduced for most of the history of the United States, in comparison to many other countries of the world. We can see this at present in, among other things, the attack on Social Security. Social Security was created at a rare time, the Great Depression, when America needed more Jupiter – perhaps because the country as a whole was feeling an extreme lack of Jupiter — and the program is one in which all people are supported by the community. The attempts to modify if comes from a more Venusian place, where each individual needs to be concerned only with him- or herself. We have seen where the Venus virtue operating within a laissez-faire economic system has offered great abundance to the majority of American people, but the bill has finally come due. This conflict between Venus and Jupiter can be seen in several current controversies, such as health care, where Venus insists that each individual should be accountable for their own health, while Jupiter believes that health care is so important that the community as a whole should guarantee it to all citizens; and global warming, where Venus believes that private, individual initiative will solve the problem, and Jupiter believes that only a larger social plan of action will correctly address the situation.

The triple conjunction of Venus, Jupiter, and the Sun in the natal chart of the United States describes many fundamental features of the national character of the United States. Ever since its founding, the country that was to become the United States displayed strongly Venus and Jupiter characteristics; at the beginning Venus and Jupiter manifested themselves in different ways than when America was a well-established country. This triple conjunction was extremely beneficial to the United States and its reputation around the world. Currently, as America and the American lifestyle become attractive around the world, the Venus-Jupiter characteristics are appearing outside the United States as well — the world is becoming Americanized. This virtuous country, that had its birth in 1776, has, partly because of the appreciation of this virtue, become the model for many other countries who try to emulate the United States.

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August 1, 2014

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Election 2014

Since everyone else is weighing in on the upcoming election in the United States in November, I thought I might as well too, using the lens of astrology. There appear to be two contradictory messages from the election day chart; I think it should be a very interesting election.

Pluto-Uranus on US Sun

The major thing that colors this whole period is shown in the first chart, a graphical ephemeris for 2012 the 2017. It shows the transiting Pluto going back and forth over the natal Sun (yellow dashed horizontal line near the top) of the United States. The last time this happened was before the US birth, that is before the Declaration of Independence. This was a time about 1766 to 1771 when the British were trying to get money from the colonists through such measures as th Townsend Act (1767) and the Stamp Act (1765) that led to such things as the Boston Massacre (March 1770) and ultimately to the American Revolution, as shown in the second chart.

Before the Revolutionary War – Pluto opposite Sun of US

While I am not suggesting that there will be another American revolution, I am saying there wlll be a lot of animosity towards those institutions represented by the Sun. When the country was a colony of England, the Sun represented the King of England and the British government. Now that the US has “self-rule” the Sun represents the President and the government. And right now, those institutions are not very popular with the people, as many polls show. I saw recently that the imaginary character Darth Vader is more popular than any potential or real President, as well as the Congress.

The election chart is set for election day, but I chose the time of 12:29 since at that time the transiting Moon is exactly conjunct transiting Uranus (black arrow), suggesting a time of upset or of “revolution”.

In this chart not only is Pluto opposite the US Sun (green arrow), but Pluto is conjunct transiting Mars (red arrow), which is opposite the US Jupiter. Pluto Mars conjunctions are connected with, to put it mildly, extreme anger. This conjunction will be building up in the week following the election.

Of course, there is the transiting Uranus square transiting Pluto which has been going on for several years now; this aspect has marked this as a decade of upset, unrest, and violence, and you can see it in the daily headlines from Iraq to Israel to Ukraine and of course in the US to a lesser extent.

And since Pluto is opposite the Sun then we have Uranus square the Sun (blue arrow), putting even more pressure on the central government. But notice the both Uranus and Pluto are semisquare the Moon (yellow, aqua arrows) of the United States, and also, self evidently, the Moon is at the Midpoint of Uranus/Pluto. We have a whole lot of Uranus Pluto happening. This suggests sudden revolt. People are angry at what has been done to them by forces beyond their control, and here is a chance for them to express that anger. In the United States people don’t so much vote for a candidate as vote against a candidate by voting for the other candidate, and in the two-party system of the United States, this leaves few choices.

To further suggest the rebellious nature of the election, the Moon-Uranus conjunction is trine the Ascendant and opposite the natal Saturn. Saturn and Uranus have two opposing principles: Saturn represents conformity and the safe path, while Uranus represents rebellion and the more risky path. Thus the opposition is conflict between the old and the new. When these two planets/principles are opposed in the sky, we get conflict between rebellion and safety. Two examples: this opposition happened in 1919 when the Palmer raids (fighting Quaker Attorney General Mitchell Palmer) started. This period in the United States is often called the First Red Scare; just after World War I there was a series of bombing supposedly by foreign anarchists, there were a lot of deportation, such as Emma Goldman, the Sacco-Vanzetti event and trial occurred, and Eugene Debs, who was jailed under the Espionage Act (yes, the same one being used today to jail whistle-blowers) ran for President from his cell. Another example was the “Credibility gap” of 1966 where many voters got upset with the current President Lyndon Johnson and the true depth of the Vietnam war was realized. Based on these ideas, I’m guessing that this opposition, even though one planet is natal, will be similar. We already have a new “Red Scare”; even though the Communist party does not rule in Russia these days we have their leader – Vladimir Putin – which we can demonize as much, and possibly more, that any of the former leaders of the Soviet Union.

But then there is another theme shown in this chart. There is a transiting Sun-Venus (white arrow) conjunction, which is not bad at all, trine the natal Sun, and the transiting Mercury square (brown arrow) the natal Mercury and sesquiquadrate (crimson arrow) the natal Uranus. In the entry about the Brown v Board of Education Supreme Court ruling, we said that the Mercury semisquare Uranus is part of a very pervasive belief that the US is a innovative, revolutionary country, and we showed how Neptune, at the same place Mercury is in this chart, accentuated that belief. The presence of Mercury for the elections in the same place as Neptune for the Supreme Court decision suggests that that this elections will also be about reaffirming the essential progressive nature of the US.

Thus there are two, very different themes expressed in this chart for the US election on November 4, 2014. One suggests rebellion and the other suggests that American is an exceptional country. Again, I think that the election will be interesting. One way of combining the two themes that I thought of is that America will be rebellious in this election, there will be some upsets, but finally people will conclude that this behavior shows that America is still a rebellious country, and this election shows the best in America, though the initial take will not be that generous.

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July 3, 2014

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The Virtuous Nation — Part II

Jupiter conjunct Sun

Jupiter is conjunct the Sun on July 4, 1776, and several of the meanings of Jupiter are closely associated with the United States. Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system, and Jupiter, by itself, would like to expand until it takes up the universe. Jupiter also loves freedom, and does not handle restrictions well. One motto of Jupiter could be “Don’t Fence Me In.” This conjunction illustrates well several standard meanings for Jupiter and the Sun.

Expansion

One keyword for Jupiter is Expansion. And the United States certainly believe in expansion, in all its many meanings. The motto of the United States could be “Super-Size”.

Statistics on American usage change from year to year, and in some case can change as soon as they are published. The following are current, but more importantly they will give an idea of what the trend is like in the early Twenty-First Century.

The United States consumes more oil than the next five largest consumers – China, Japan, Russia, Germany, India – combined, and is the biggest importer of oil in the world, more than the total of the next three– Japan, China, Germany. This is 23% of the world’s total usage. It correspondingly emits more CO2 per capita, and until very recently more in absolute terms, than any other country in the world [China just recently surpassed the United States in the production of this greenhouse gas. But since the population of China is several times that of the United States, America holds the per-capita record.], close to a quarter. The external debt of the United is also 23% of the world total. The defense expenditures of the United States are almost half of the world total.

Another area where the United States is Number One is in prisoners. America has 4.5% of the world’s population but has 25% of the world’s prisoners, some 2.2 million people. While other countries, such as the Soviet Union and South Africa use to surpass America in this area, recent changes in the governments of those countries, and much more punitive policies in this country, have allowed the United States to claim the top position. The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, at 737 per 100,000 – that is 1 in every 136 people. The next highest is Russia, at 611. Most countries have a rate below 200.

America has not always been first in so many things, and some things that it used to be first in it no longer is, as more and more of the world attempt to emulate America. And while others countries don’t have the birth chart of America, they can still try. The automobile, although invented in Germany and first popularize in France, was mostly produced in the United States until fairly recently. General Motors was the largest automobile producer for 76 years, but in the first quarter of 2007 it was surpassed by the Japanese manufacturer Toyota, though until 2008 and official 2007 figures are available we can’t be sure. Likewise, Americans were the tallest people in the world since records were kept starting in the middle of the Nineteenth Century through the 1970s, but this has changed since then. The Dutch now average three inches taller than Americans.

Americans also work more than those in other industrial countries, 500 hours more a year than the Germans, 250 hours more than the British. This is increasing, as many other Jupiter effects are: The average American man works 100 hours more than he did in he 1970s, and the average woman 200 hours more [ Erza Klein, “Land of the overworked and tired”, Los Angeles Times, July 16, 2007 ]. Jupiter is the planet that drives workaholics.

The expansion can even be seen in the increasing girth of Americans. Americans seem to have taken the Jupiter principle to heart, or to stomach. According to recent figures, the obesity rate (people over 15 with BMI greater than 30) is 31% for America, compared to second place for Mexico at 24%.

However, America was not always big in the ways indicated above, throughout its history. It was something that had to be worked towards. Through the end of the Nineteenth Century, America expanded in a different sense, as indicated below.

American is also an expansionist nation. This is exactly what Jupiter would want. Up until this century the term “empire” was not often used by scholars, even though the expansion of the United States started shortly after its founding. But recently the term empire is back in vogue, and is used by many people who now find it positive. America expanded within the borders of North America starting with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, and continued on until the Pacific Coast was reached before the Civil War. These various accretions are given names such as the Mexican Cession and the Florida Purchase, though they usually involved more than a simple monetary exchange. 1890 was declared by the government to be the date the frontier ceased to exist, and so after that date, starting with the Spanish-American War of 1898, America started to expand overseas, but not often in ways that traditional colonial powers, such as Great Britain, did.

America is one of the few countries in the world that has military bases outside of its own borders. According to government documents, there are 737 bases in foreign countries, but this number is an undercount, since many bases are not listed, such as those in Iraq [Chalmers Johnston,Nemesis, Metropolitan Books, 2006, p 138-40]. This is not a new trend due to the War on Terror, but has been developing since the end of World War II, when many of these bases were first inserted into other countries. It has been estimated that we have about 1000 overseas bases, and this figure is orders of magnitude greater than any other country.

Enthusiasm

Another keyword is Enthusiasm: Enthusiasm, when carried to an extreme, can be self-righteousness; self-righteousness can become arrogance, which will offend other people. All these three words are associated with Jupiter which, among other things, represents freedom – Jupiter does not like to be tied down or hindered in any way, it wants to be free to expand. Freedom can be thought of as the ultimate good. This can be seen in such slogans as “Don’t Tread on Me” or “Live Free or Die” (both dating back to the Revolutionary Era). This can become a boundless optimism and the “Can-Do” spirit that America is famous for, the feeling that anything can be accomplished. This aggressive independence is part of what has been called the American Dream. But this militant freedom can also ignore the rights of others; it realizes no responsibility but the responsibility to oneself.

But enthusiasm can also become the love of, and indeed the worship of, private wealth. The current heroes of popular culture are the richest men, such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. But this has often been the case: Henry Ford was a folk hero to the common men of the Twenties [Geoffrey Perrett, The Twenties, Simon and Schuster, 1982, p256]. A magazine even publishes a list of the wealthiest people yearly. Close to 40% of the billionaires in the world live in America, according to the 2007 Forbes Magazine listing. The dark side is also what has been called “the hustle”, that asks “what’s in it for me” and is always looking for more [This is discussed in great detail in Walter A. McDougall, Freedom Just Around the Corner, HarperCollins 2004], another Jupiter word. This is one thing that early visitors to this country from Europe noticed, and found disgraceful.

Another side of this enthusiasm is American Exceptionalism, which was touched on before. This manifests itself not just in the belief that Americans are special people, based on our history, ethnicity, climate, or religion, but also in the belief that the rules that apply to other people, for example the rules against torture, do not apply to Americans. With this mindset, one begins to believe that one is better than anyone else, that things that happen to you have never happened to other people. This is when arrogance begins to annoy the people in other countries.

Abundance

In the early years of this country, America was described as “the poor man’s best country”[Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, W. W. Norton & Company, 2005, p 16]. Perhaps we forget now how unique early America was. Whereas all of old Europe suffered under layers of aristocracy, America, being a new country, was free of the stultifying hand of aristocracy. There was plenty of land for the taking [And they took it from the Indians. One of the forces for “Indian Removal” was the desire of farmers for new land to settle.] and so even recent arrivals could settle a homestead and raise enough food to feed their family. A father could easily expect to have land to leave to his sons. This was completely different from Europe, where the land had been divided so many times there was none left to give.

And the land was so fertile! While much of the land in Europe was warn out from having been planted and harvested for many, many generations, and marginal land was beginning to be brought into production to meet the demand, most of the land in America was extremely rich, and American colonists found it easy to raise large crops. In fact, since a population boom had taken place in Europe during the Eighteenth Century, Americans found their grain much in demand in the old world.[Joyce Appleby, Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s, New York University Press, 1984, p 98-99] There was a belief at the time that America should emphasize crops while Europe could export luxuries to America which they could easily afford since their grain was in such demand.

And America has always been known as “the Land of Opportunity” up until the present time. It is certainly one reason it is so attractive to those in foreign lands. No matter what one’s position in the country of origin, in America an immigrant could make a new start, free from the restrictions of the past, with the expectation of material abundance. This was part of the American Dream.

America has always been know as a land of abundance, and this has shaped the way Americans look at themselves and their relationship with the rest of the world. In a British play written in 1605, Virginia was described as having gold chamber pots [George Chapman, Ben Jonson, John Marston, Eastward Ho, William Aspey, 1605. Act III, Scene 3]. Abundance is clearly a characteristic of Jupiter, and when conjunct the sun increases the wealth of the individual involved. One can trace through the history of America numerous mentions of the wealth and abundance of the country.

And the productivity of America was not just due to the rich soil or the labor of slaves. There was something about the laissez-faire economic system that was dominant in Nineteenth Century America that also accounted for this great abundance of material goods, of new and improved products[David M. Potter, People of Plenty, University of Chicago Press, 1954, p 88-90]. Individual entrepreneurs were encouraged to expand America’s abundance, but the ultimate bill wouldn’t be realized for some time.

500 Year Party

An astrological study of history and politics

Category Archives: United States

The Great Depression

Presidential Mistakes

Jacksonian America

The Cold War

Revolution At The Top

The Twenties

The People Are Disturbed: Uranus-Moon

The Virtuous Nation – Conclusion

Election 2014

The Virtuous Nation — Part II

Expansion

Enthusiasm

Abundance