Barack Oba­ma
Anoth­er approach to under­stand­ing what has hap­pened and what may hap­pen to any orga­ni­za­tion is by exam­in­ing the plan­e­tary align­ments in the lead­er­ship. As I men­tioned in Part 3 of the 2011 Gen­er­al Fore­cast, Mun­dane or World­ly Astrol­o­gy will not only look to the con­di­tions in a nation­al chart or com­pa­ny chart, but will also look at the plan­e­tary indi­ca­tions in the charts of its lead­ers as well. This tra­di­tion is very ancient and astrologers at the courts of kings and emper­ors would fol­low the pre­cept that “as the king’s for­tunes go, so goes the king­dom”. So, for the Unit­ed States at this time, what can we dis­cern about its future from the indi­ca­tions in Barack Oba­ma’s chart?

It is not my inten­tion here to ana­lyze Barack Oba­ma’s chart except inso­far as to point out the rel­e­vant fea­tures that are being acti­vat­ed by tran­sits at this time. Per­haps, at a lat­er date, we will come back and take a more thor­ough look at what his chart indi­cates for him (and us). The most impor­tant facts to note are that he is a Leo, with a Moon in Gem­i­ni and he has Aquar­ius rising.

Just as in the analy­sis of the USA chart, we can­not look ahead at 2011 with­out look­ing back to what the US Pres­i­dent has just expe­ri­enced, (and we, in a very real sense, expe­ri­enced through him).

2010
In 2010 there were, of course, many align­ments in Barack Oba­ma’s chart, but what were the most sig­nif­i­cant? We do not want to minute­ly exam­ine each con­fig­u­ra­tion; we want to see what were the major themes invoked dur­ing the year. More­over, we need to look at these major align­ments with ref­er­ence to what they indi­cate about his expe­ri­ence as the head of a nation and not in terms of his per­son­al life or experience.

Plu­to Incon­junct Oba­ma’s Moon (Jan. 2, Jul. 26, Oct. 31)
Plu­to incon­junct the Moon will bring about a chal­leng­ing expe­ri­ence for a leader as they seek to con­nect with, relate to and mir­ror the mood of their time. The moon rules “the pub­lic” or the peo­ple in mun­dane astrol­o­gy and is reflec­tive of pub­lic opin­ion and beliefs. The tran­sit of Plu­to would have cre­at­ed a kind of dis­con­nect between the pub­lic and Oba­ma. He would have expe­ri­enced a sense that there were ener­gies or forces in play (Plu­to) that were mak­ing it hard for the peo­ple to con­nect with him, and he with them. Plu­to would indi­cate that this was caused by a cathar­tic release of very deep ener­gies from the col­lec­tive uncon­scious, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on mat­ters about pow­er and con­trol. The chal­lenge for Oba­ma would have been nei­ther to “lose” con­trol, nor become “over” con­trol­ling. Instead, the oppor­tu­ni­ty would have been to reestab­lish a healthy bal­ance between his own will and self-con­trol as he grap­pled with the forces being unleashed from the col­lec­tive. At the same time Oba­ma would have gained more insight into the attempt by ele­ments in soci­ety to assert their con­trol, (often through hid­den means (Plu­to) or sub­terfuge), as those ele­ments attempt­ed to sway the feel­ings (mood) of the pub­lic. The aspect would have demand­ed the utmost in intel­li­gence, tol­er­ance and humil­i­ty as he dealt with often inchoate forces bub­bling up from deep with­in the Amer­i­can psyche. 

 

Nep­tune Con­junct Oba­ma’s Lunar South Node (Mar. 18, Aug. 20, Jan. 18, 2011)
Nep­tune pass­ing over Oba­ma’s Lunar South Node might not seem to be such a sig­nif­i­cant tran­sit to some. How­ev­er, when we take into account the fact that it also the exact same posi­tion of the Moon in the chart of the Unit­ed States, well then our atten­tion should be riveted.

This align­ment reveals that one of the sig­na­ture tran­sits for 2010-11 in the US chart (that I did not ana­lyze in pre­vi­ous entries) was the Con­junc­tion of Nep­tune to the Moon in the US chart. I did this because I thought it would be more inter­est­ing to see these two tran­sit events togeth­er, (Nep­tune Con­junct US Moon, Nep­tune con­junct Oba­ma’s South Node), so as to bet­ter illus­trate what it indi­cat­ed for the US in 2010 on into the begin­ning of 2011.

US Moon
The Aquar­i­an Moon in the US chart is very sig­nif­i­cant; espe­cial­ly since it is the plan­e­tary ruler of the Sun Sign (Can­cer) and for the oth­er plan­ets in Can­cer which are Mer­cury, Venus and Jupiter. This means that the Can­cer ener­gies of the US are tuned to an Aquar­i­an sensibility.

The Moon rep­re­sents the peo­ple of a nation’s chart, so the defin­ing fea­ture of the Amer­i­can peo­ple and its mass con­scious­ness will reflect Aquar­i­an traits. The Aquar­i­an tem­pera­ment is one that endows that being with a tremen­dous need to be unique, inde­pen­dent and free; while at the same time cre­at­ing an equal­ly strong desire to be part of some asso­ci­a­tion or group whose vision and ideals are direct­ed towards bring­ing about a bet­ter world. The US Moon in Aquar­ius helps cre­ate the dis­tin­guish­ing fea­ture at the found­ing of this coun­try, that true friends (Aquar­ius) come togeth­er in fel­low­ship to help sup­port one anoth­er in the real­iza­tion of one anoth­er’s hopes, dreams and aspirations.

These ideals can either take the form of an Aquar­i­an dream to go back to a “gold­en age” or seek to leap ahead to the next, (and that is why it is said that Aquar­i­ans are either 50 years behind or 50 years ahead of their time). They feel them­selves to be spe­cial and apart, yet wish to bring about this vision of a bet­ter world; the para­dox being that in the very unique con­tri­bu­tions that they offer to the present time they end up reaf­firm­ing that they are, well, different.

It would cer­tain­ly seem that among the many of the dis­tin­guish­ing fea­tures of the Amer­i­can peo­ple the one that stands out is their dis­tinct sense of being spe­cial; whether it be the Pil­grims seek­ing to cre­ate a “New Jerusalem”, or the Found­ing Fathers cre­at­ing a “New Order for the Cen­turies”, or the west­ward migra­tion dri­ven by the call of a “Man­i­fest Des­tiny”, or the feel­ing that it is “Morn­ing in Amer­i­ca again”, time and time again there has been this sense that the place and pur­pose of Amer­i­ca is spe­cial. That this was the nation that would “break” the bonds of the past and offer a place where any­one could become what­ev­er they want­ed to be; here is where a per­son could rein­vent them­selves and pur­sue their dreams. 

Oba­ma’s South Node
The South Node in any­one’s chart rep­re­sents what many might call “kar­ma”. (Though, in a more exact under­stand­ing, one should call the whole chart one’s kar­ma). The South Node is what the soul brings in from many past lives, a mix­ture of the feel­ings, thoughts, actions and inac­tions gath­ered togeth­er now into this life. It rep­re­sents the accu­mu­la­tion of one’s habit­u­al way of being, the path that is eas­i­est to take.

The present life is found­ed upon this accu­mu­lat­ed expe­ri­ence, but can also be lim­it­ed by it. We need to draw upon our past pat­terns to help us now, but if we uncon­scious­ly do so and fail to ful­fill our chal­lenge to grow, then the South Node will indi­cate how the soul will hold itself back from its oppor­tu­ni­ties to devel­op spir­i­tu­al­ly now, a devel­op­ment that is indi­cat­ed by their Dhar­ma (as revealed by the North Node). The South Node should be a foun­da­tion for new growth in this life, as the North Node will indi­cate how the soul might best accom­plish their devel­op­ment in this life.

Oba­ma’s Kar­ma
Oba­ma’s South Node is in Aquar­ius and is placed in his First House. (Which means his North Node is in Leo in his 7th House). The Aquar­i­an South Node pre­dis­pos­es him to have a default response to detach him­self from his sur­round­ings, to be aloof and cere­bral, to be dif­fer­ent. The capac­i­ty to be com­mit­ted to social ideals and human advance­ment is very strong; his chal­lenge is to under­stand the demands of right lead­er­ship, how to inspire oth­ers to believe in them­selves by stay­ing con­nect­ed and not detach­ing. The place­ment in his First House indi­cates that his true path in life is to be involved in bring­ing his Aquar­i­an past under­stand­ing of social con­scious­ness into all of his rela­tion­ships; Oba­ma’s life is to be a life devot­ed to oth­ers. The more he can “for­get” him­self and help oth­ers to believe in their dreams, then to that same extent will he real­ize the Dharmic Truth of Leo that a leader must sac­ri­fice the ego in order to ful­fill their true life’s work.

Nep­tune Con­junct Amer­i­ca’s Moon & Nep­tune Con­junct Oba­ma’s Lunar South Node
With Nep­tune, the ruler of Pisces going over the Moon in the Unit­ed States chart, we would expect height­ened emo­tion­al sen­si­tiv­i­ties with greater dis­plays of com­pas­sion by the pub­lic. But that could also be accom­pa­nied by maudlin sen­ti­men­tal­i­ties, vic­tim­iza­tion and dis­plays of (false) mar­tyr­dom with­in the mood of the times as well. The chal­lenge for Oba­ma with Nep­tune on his South Node was to stay pas­sion­ate­ly engaged as a leader while draw­ing upon his capac­i­ty to under­stand the chal­lenge of this moment for Amer­i­ca dis­pas­sion­ate­ly. But with Nep­tune on his Karmic past, the ques­tion of whether he would fall back and with­draw into a detached state, or rise to the occa­sion and draw upon that past to inspire and lead, well that was Oba­ma’s karmic test in 2010.

Cer­tain­ly a sig­nif­i­cant force that was dri­ving the sto­ry to pro­vide uni­ver­sal health care was this man­i­fes­ta­tion of com­pas­sion indi­cat­ed with Nep­tune align­ing with the US the Moon. But equal­ly to be expect­ed were the dra­mat­ic dis­plays of feel­ings of vic­tim­iza­tion and cries denounc­ing this very same effort as social­ism or com­mu­nism. With Nep­tune cross­ing Oba­ma’s South Node at the very same time, he was influ­enced to tap into the karmic ener­gies of his past and either retreat into detach­ment (he was cer­tain­ly accused of that) or dis­play inspired lead­er­ship (that seemed to be lacking).

Again with Nep­tune rul­ing the Oceans and Oil, the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon oil rig blowout also occurred dur­ing the first pas­sage of Nep­tune to the Moon and Oba­ma’s node. The response to this tragedy also seemed to lack the required depth of under­stand­ing and inspiration. 

Yet the final pass­ing of Nep­tune over the Moon and Oba­ma’s node brought the coun­try togeth­er and ele­vat­ed Oba­ma into a lead­er­ship moment as he attempt­ed to bind and heal a peo­ple hor­ri­fied by the tragedy of vio­lence in Tuc­son. Here we found the Amer­i­can peo­ple reel­ing from a sense­less act that required a leader to pro­vide con­text and meaning.

 

Sat­urn Square Oba­ma’s Venus (Nov.16, 2009, Mar. 15, 2010, Aug. 10)
Again we find a con­nec­tion between Oba­ma’s chart and that of Unit­ed States. Oba­ma has his Venus at just under 2° of Can­cer, while the Unit­ed States has its Venus at just over 3° of Can­cer. That means when one is expe­ri­enc­ing a tran­sit over Venus, the oth­er will too. I men­tioned this tran­sit in an ear­li­er post­ing on the Tran­sits to the USA chart. With Venus rul­ing val­ues and the appre­ci­a­tion of self-worth, the tran­sit of Sat­urn to Oba­ma’s Venus was much the same as to the Unit­ed States; they both were going through a peri­od of not feel­ing wor­thy, valu­able or appre­ci­at­ed. In short they were not “feel­ing the love” dur­ing this peri­od. Per­haps this, in com­bi­na­tion with the Nep­tune tran­sit to his Node, account­ed for the seem­ing deficit of lead­er­ship skills in the ear­li­er part of the year.

Next we will turn to an exam­i­na­tion of the major align­ments in Oba­ma’s chart as regards the impli­ca­tions they have for the Unit­ed States in 2011.

Part Sev­en