INTRODUCTION:

The gen­er­al out­look for 2012 is defined by the major align­ment of Uranus and Plu­to, a square aspect that will con­tin­ue to shape our lives well on into 2015. This is the first major align­ment since their con­junc­tion in the 1960’s…do you remem­ber or know about what hap­pened in the 60’s? Well, then you should know that we are in for a bumpy ride indeed!

The wax­ing square of these two trans­for­ma­tion­al plan­ets, an influ­ence that has been increas­ing­ly felt by the world over the last cou­ple of years, will be the pri­ma­ry dri­ver for per­son­al and social change for the next sev­er­al years. I will look at their influ­ence gen­er­al­ly, which is what is termed their Tran­sit to Tran­sit align­ment. Then dur­ing this year, and in fol­low­ing years, exam­ine how their align­ment with one anoth­er also inter­sects var­i­ous impor­tant charts in the world in what are termed Tran­sit to Natal aspects.

The analy­sis of the Uranus/Pluto align­ment will be split up into sev­er­al seg­ments or postings.

There are, of course, a num­ber of oth­er “less­er” align­ments or phe­nom­e­na that will take place over the next 12 months and I will briefly note them, sav­ing their actu­al dates of activ­i­ty for detailed analy­sis. Among the most sig­nif­i­cant of these devel­op­ments will be the final entry of the plan­et Nep­tune into its own sign of Pisces where it will stay until 2026; the plan­et Sat­urn mov­ing from Libra into Scor­pio in Octo­ber; the plan­et Mars going ret­ro­grade from late Jan­u­ary till mid April; the plan­et Venus mov­ing ret­ro­grade from mid May till the end of June; along with the usu­al year­ly shifts such as the Solar and Lunar eclipses as well as Mer­cury retrogrades.

I will then turn to the more spe­cif­ic analy­sis of Tran­sit to Natal align­ments focus­ing upon the Unit­ed States and Preis­dent Oba­ma’s charts. 

INTRODUCTION:

The gen­er­al out­look for 2011 would appear to be bet­ter than that of the last sev­er­al years. We have come through a series of align­ments that have shook and shocked our world, and there is more just ahead in this decade. And it has been whis­pered, just maybe, we will move into the dawn of a new world, the begin­ning of a new age, by the 2020’s. But, for now, 2011 might pro­vide some degree of need­ed respite to our chal­lenges and tribulations.

Where­as in 2006-07 we had Sat­urn oppos­ing Nep­tune, which her­ald­ed the bust­ing of many illu­sions in the world, not the least of which was the credit/debit bub­ble burst­ing. This was fol­lowed by 2008-10 where we faced Sat­urn and Uranus in oppo­si­tion, which was the dri­ving force of the con­flicts between out­worn exist­ing insti­tu­tions and sys­tems, ver­sus the some­times inco­her­ent erup­tion of ener­gies seek­ing to bring about fun­da­men­tal change in the sta­tus quo.

This jux­ta­po­si­tion of Sat­urn and Uranus was then joined in the lat­ter part of that peri­od, in late 2009 into 2010, by Sat­urn squar­ing Plu­to. This chal­lenge (Plu­to) to the sta­tus quo (Sat­urn) added a deep­er and more threat­en­ing tone to the forces of change sweep­ing our world. The forces attempt­ing to pre­serve order and those attempt­ing to cre­ate a new one are now locked in a great struggle.

A Time to Pause
But it would seem that this year there is to be a pause. That is mere appear­ance, of course, because time (the plan­ets) march on and there is always change, even if it is less intense for some of us. But it is a time to look for signs, a time to re-assess and re-group. For up ahead, the dance of the plan­ets con­tin­ues, and they will lead us into more pow­er­ful forces and align­ments, the very forces that can and will bring about a new world.

This entry is by way of begin­ning my expla­na­tion of what to look for in the year ahead and in the years to come, (and what we can learn from years past), as shown to us by what is known as Mun­dane or World­ly Astrol­o­gy. Just as in per­son­al or per­son-cen­tered astrol­o­gy, this can and must be viewed in two dis­tinct ways.

Two Kinds of Tran­sits
One type is as in the exam­ples above; that is of plan­ets mov­ing in a great dance with one anoth­er in our solar sys­tem. They con­tin­u­al­ly form up var­i­ous com­bi­na­tions of aspects with one anoth­er that cre­ate or pro­duce effects felt by one and all col­lec­tive­ly here on Earth. These com­bi­na­tions astrologers call Tran­sits to Tran­sits. With­in this great whirling of wheels with­in wheels, pat­terns form and re-form, pat­terns repeat but nev­er quite exact­ly as before. But since there is much that can be gained from look­ing at those pri­or align­ments, we look back to those sim­i­lar pat­terns in an attempt to dis­cern the con­di­tions for our present and future. So I will refer to oth­er times and places to illus­trate the nature of what we are faced with now.

The oth­er type of align­ment is what astrologers call Tran­sits to Natal. These are cre­at­ed by the plan­ets mov­ing through our solar sys­tem as they form rela­tion­ships with the plan­e­tary place­ments that are in a par­tic­u­lar birth chart. For Mun­dane Astrol­o­gy, we look at the charts of Nations, World Lead­ers and oth­er notable indi­vid­u­als, major Eco­nom­ic, Cul­tur­al, Spir­i­tu­al, or any oth­er “birthed” orga­ni­za­tions, to ascer­tain the forces at work in their past, present or future. I will be exam­in­ing a num­ber of such enti­ties in this 2011 fore­cast, and, as events unfold, will from time to time look at oth­er play­ers on the stage of history.

And with this sec­ond type of align­ment comes a caveat to my open­ing claim that 2011 will be a respite. Although the depth and pow­er of the “Tran­sits to Tran­sits” this year is more mut­ed, that may not mat­ter for some. For many indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions, the tran­sits to their own charts that will be in force this year will be pro­found and chal­leng­ing. The forces that have been unleashed of late are still play­ing out in each of us and in our orga­ni­za­tions. That means for many of us, 2011 will seem as event­ful and chal­leng­ing as what we have wit­nessed before. The wheels are turn­ing; the dance of life goes on.

Des­tiny
But we must always remem­ber; this world is going to be trans­formed, not by plan­ets or stars, but by… us. We are the actors in this dra­ma; and forces play through and around us. But it is up to each and every one of us to make the world that is com­ing into being.

All we can do, and must do, is under­stand where and what we have come from, to watch for and under­stand the signs that have always been there to guide us, and, so guid­ed, ful­fill our des­tiny which is to cre­ate a heav­en here on Earth.

MAJOR ALIGNMENTS — Part One:

As I men­tioned in the intro­duc­tion, the year ahead seems to offer a brief respite from the pow­er­ful align­ments we have expe­ri­enced in the recent past. Plan­e­tary motions, how­ev­er, are not cir­cum­scribed by our cal­en­dar and often align­ments and their effects spill over from one year to anoth­er. So too in this year some of the sig­na­ture events of 2010 are fin­ish­ing up here in the first quar­ter of 2011.

Jupiter Con­junct Uranus (Jan. 4)
Among the more sig­nif­i­cant of these align­ments was the sub­ject of what I wrote in the post­ing for Jan­u­ary 4, Jupiter Con­junct Uranus. This event was the third and final con­junc­tion (New Moon) of Jupiter with Uranus. Their cycle, from con­junc­tion to the next con­junc­tion, lasts about 14 years and each con­junc­tion her­alds the release of ener­gies that stim­u­late the devel­op­ment of dis­cov­er­ies and break­throughs in arts, sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. More­over, on a social lev­el, their impulse serves to quick­en the evo­lu­tion of new forms of social devel­op­ment and inter­ac­tion. This more per­son­al or social aspect of the align­ment was explained in the post­ing for Jan­u­ary 5, Jupiter Con­junct Uranus- World­ly vs. Per­son­al.

Though they have “fin­ished” their con­junc­tion, we will see the effects of their align­ment in the years to come in the wider prop­a­ga­tion of the sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal advances they stim­u­lat­ed. We will also see the social aspects of their quick­en­ing play­ing out in our rela­tion­ships with one anoth­er too, as the urge to estab­lish greater free­doms with­in and between one anoth­er accel­er­ates the devel­op­ment of var­i­ous cul­tures and societies.

Jupiter Oppo­si­tion Sat­urn (Mar. 28)
The oth­er “car­ry-over” align­ment from 2010 is the oppo­si­tion (Full Moon) of Jupiter and Sat­urn. Their cycle, from Con­junc­tion to Con­junc­tion, (or as in this case, Oppo­si­tion to Oppo­si­tion), is 20 years. In 2010 they came to an oppo­si­tion in late May and mid-August, and their final con­tact will be on March 28, 2011.

With Jupiter rul­ing prin­ci­ples, truths and beliefs, and Sat­urn rul­ing struc­tures, insti­tu­tions and real­i­ty, their oppo­si­tion pro­vides a sharp con­trast for us to see how much what we believe to be true is being lived out in fact. In oth­er words, it is a time for a reck­on­ing between the belief or mean­ing behind the form and the form or real­i­ty itself. More often than not, (and this depends upon what else is hap­pen­ing down here and “up there”), this oppo­si­tion can cre­ate a cri­sis of faith in our belief sys­tems or a loss of trust in our insti­tu­tions… or both. Cer­tain­ly, here and around the world, this was a year of reck­on­ing, and more than we might at first realize.

The Great Muta­tion of Jupiter and Sat­urn
For this dance of Jupiter and Sat­urn has a sto­ried his­to­ry for astrologers. We have used their ser­i­al align­ments as they progress through the ele­ments to under­stand some of the larg­er forces at play in our uni­verse. What we have dis­cov­ered is that Jupiter and Sat­urn will come togeth­er in their con­junc­tion in the same ele­ment, (Fire, Earth, Air and Water), for about 180 to 200 years, before they move onto the next ele­ment. This move­ment from ele­ment to ele­ment is called the “Great Mutation”.

Since 1842 their con­junc­tions have been occur­ring in Earth and their last such align­ment was in the spring of 2000. While in an ele­men­tal phase, those con­di­tions estab­lished by that ele­ment per­me­ate and pro­mote the devel­op­ments in cul­ture and soci­ety. So, the last 169+ years have wit­nessed an explo­sion in the har­ness­ing of ener­gies and mate­ri­als of the earth, lit­er­al­ly. It has been an “age” of mate­ri­al­ism, of the rise of our car­bon fueled soci­ety and the cre­ation of a very spe­cif­ic kind of real­i­ty. But there is change in the air already, and our real­i­ty is about to be transformed…

For what we have also found is that there is often a sign of things to come right before the next Great Muta­tion. Often, it seems, the sec­ond to last con­junc­tion occurs in that next ele­ment in the series. So in 1802 there was a pre­cur­sor align­ment in Earth. And most recent­ly, it was the 1980–81 Air con­junc­tion in Libra, before we reached the final align­ment in Earth via the Tau­rus con­junc­tion of May 2000.

The Next Age
What these seem to pro­vide is a “seed­ing” of what is to come, a taste of the new world that will be inau­gu­rat­ed at the next Great Muta­tion, which for us is just ahead in 2020. As the 1802 con­junc­tion jump-start­ed the “Age of Mate­ri­al­ism”, so too has the 1980–81 align­ment ini­ti­at­ed what we might call the “Age of Virtue”. Though some aspects of this Vir­tu­ous­ness or “Vir­tu­os­i­ty” have man­i­fest­ed in rather phys­i­cal forms, such as in the devel­op­ments in the 1980’s and 90’s which wit­nessed the pro­lif­er­a­tion of com­put­ers, cel­lu­lar phones and the inter­net, (our inter­con­nect­ed­ness was accel­er­at­ing), and which has now lead to the evo­lu­tion of vir­tu­al worlds and com­mu­ni­ties, (such as expe­ri­enced in phe­nom­e­na like Face­book), we will see that the 2020’s and beyond will wit­ness the con­tin­u­ing unfold­ment of forms of con­nec­tiv­i­ty that will tran­scend these phys­i­cal forms and their lim­its. But we are, (I am), get­ting ahead of ourselves.

Jupiter and Sat­urn Now
At the present moment, the final oppo­si­tion of Jupiter and Sat­urn with­in the Earth series pro­vides us with this moment in time to see to what extent we have trans­formed our­selves and our world through our mate­r­i­al “mas­tery”. And, it equal­ly reminds us what lim­its and chal­lenges have been cre­at­ed by this earthy par­a­digm in our con­scious­ness as well. We may mar­vel at our cre­ations, yet we must mourn what we have sac­ri­ficed of this Earth to bring about our mate­r­i­al world. 

What’s ahead?
In the next post­ing we will exam­ine the oth­er major align­ments of 2011, as well as oth­er phe­nom­e­na such as Solar and Lunar eclipses and oth­er mat­ters that reside in the “Tran­sit to Tran­sit” category.

Then, in lat­er post­ings, we will turn our atten­tion to the oth­er great method of Astro­log­i­cal Insight, pro­vid­ed by the “Tran­sits to Natal” aspects, and exam­ine the var­i­ous align­ments of the plan­ets to spe­cif­ic charts of nations, world lead­ers and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als. Stay tuned…

MAJOR ALIGNMENTS — Part Two:

We turn our atten­tion now to the oth­er major “Tran­sit to Tran­sit” align­ments of 2011 and oth­er phenomena.

Jupiter Square Plu­to (Feb. 25)
The cycle of Jupiter and Plu­to, again from con­junc­tion to con­junc­tion, is rough­ly 12 years long. Their last con­junc­tion (New Moon) occurred at the end of Decem­ber 2007. That con­junc­tion released a new poten­tial for inte­grat­ing our Will (Plu­to) and Beliefs (Jupiter) with­in the con­text of the sign of Sagit­tar­ius, the seek­er of truth.

We arrive at their wax­ing square on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2011, and again we face a choice. Now we are at cross­roads, we must find a way to inte­grate Jupiter in Aries, which seeks to pur­sue new and ide­al­is­tic forms of rela­tion­ship, with the demands of Plu­to in Capri­corn, which seeks to main­tain con­trol as demand­ed by tra­di­tion and estab­lished author­i­ty. The spir­it of Jupiter yearns to bring about new forms of per­son­al and social advance­ment, but the will of the sta­tus quo as expressed by Plu­to may lead to a dif­fi­cult reck­on­ing. The way through is to hon­or what has worked but not to yield to those who mere­ly wield pow­er with­out hon­or­ing their responsibilities.

Jupiter Sex­tile Nep­tune (Jun. 8)
The cycle of Jupiter and Nep­tune is about 12 to 13 years long. Their last con­junc­tion was dur­ing 2009. With Jupiter pro­vid­ing the prin­ci­ples to guide our rela­tion­ships, the align­ment to Nep­tune in Aquar­ius cre­at­ed a renewed sen­si­bil­i­ty of com­mu­ni­ty and com­pas­sion. It was no acci­dent that the biggest push to uni­ver­sal health care in the US was attempt­ed dur­ing this time.

Now at the wax­ing sex­tile on June 8, 2011 the more prac­ti­cal work­ing out and man­i­fes­ta­tion of this impulse is seen. What were once inti­ma­tions, ideas and pro­pos­als have become real pat­terns of how we now see we must relate to one anoth­er. There is a sense that we have come to under­stand that fol­low­ing the path of truth requires that we must con­duct our affairs with tol­er­ance, com­pas­sion and for­give­ness. This under­stand­ing will be chal­lenged, and we will have to choose which path to fol­low, a year lat­er, in June 2012, when our present beliefs and dreams about our future face a test.

Jupiter Trine Plu­to (Jul. 7, Oct. 28, Mar. 13, 2012)
The cycle of Jupiter and Plu­to moves into this more pos­i­tive phase for the next 9 months. Hav­ing faced the chal­lenge in late Feb­ru­ary, we will find our­selves able to expand more effort­less­ly now in our mate­r­i­al life and spir­i­tu­al under­stand­ing. Because Jupiter has moved into Tau­rus (Earth) and Plu­to is in Capri­corn (Earth), this cre­ates very pos­i­tive con­di­tions for real eco­nom­ic growth. Though there are always expand­ing and con­tract­ing forces at play in any year, this is cer­tain­ly a strong fac­tor sup­port­ing those areas that are capa­ble of growth, espe­cial­ly those which have read the signs of change and adapt­ed. Spir­i­tu­al­ly, to the extent the right choic­es were made in Feb­ru­ary, the oppor­tu­ni­ty now is to bring about a real evo­lu­tion in our moral affir­ma­tion of one anoth­er. We are will­ing to seek accom­mo­da­tion with each oth­er as an expres­sion of our under­stand­ing for one another.

SOLAR ECLIPSE/LUNAR ECLIPSE
The Solar and Lunar Eclipses pro­duce effects that draw our atten­tion to the lessons to be learned in the signs of their occur­rence. In a way, they pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty, through dra­mat­ic and visu­al excla­ma­tion, to have a deep­er expe­ri­ence and con­nec­tion to either a new release of ener­gy (Solar) or rev­e­la­tion of mean­ing (Lunar). Much more exten­sive analy­sis will be offered when the eclipses occur. Here is a sum­ma­ry of what to expect.

Solar (Jan. 4)
The Solar Eclipse of Jan­u­ary 4 was already cov­ered in my post­ing for that event: Solar Eclipse (Jan 4) 

Solar (Jun. 1)
The Solar Eclipse of June 1 her­alds a new series of lessons for us since it occurs in Gem­i­ni. The Lunar nodes are mov­ing from Cancer/Capricorn to Gemini/Sagittarius. Yes, that’s right, these points in space move “back­wards” through the Zodi­ac. They are estab­lished by two inter­sect­ing “spheres” formed from the orbital paths of the Earth around the Sun, and the Moon around the Earth. Where those two orbits inter­sect is the time, every 6 months, where the Sun, Moon and Earth line up with one anoth­er. This is what allows for there to be the phe­nom­e­non of the Moon’s shad­ow pass­ing across the Earth (Solar Eclipse), or the shad­ow of the Earth pass­ing across the Moon (Lunar Eclipse).

The June 1 Gem­i­ni Solar Eclipse is say­ing that in order to use this new release of ener­gy that comes at a New Moon, you will first have to go back and repair, cor­rect or fin­ish some aspect of your think­ing. Gem­i­ni rules intel­li­gence, but true intel­li­gence is found­ed upon crit­i­cal self-aware­ness. Just hav­ing the “right” answer does not make you spir­i­tu­al­ly intel­li­gent; the real issue is, are you ask­ing the right question?

Lunar (Jun. 15)
The Lunar Eclipse on June 15 is in Sagit­tar­ius and we ordi­nar­i­ly expect that a Full Moon would pro­vide some new rev­e­la­tion about the rela­tion­ship between our low­er mind (Gem­i­ni) and high­er under­stand­ing (Sagit­tar­ius), between our Future and our Past. But with the eclipse our present real­i­ty is obscur­ing the mes­sage. We must con­front some­thing in our present state of mind in order to receive the Full Moon message.

Solar (Jul. 1)
Back to back Solar Eclipses adds an urgent tone to the mes­sages from the stars. This time the New Moon is in Can­cer, and the new begin­nings for how we can secure our lives requires we more deeply under­stand where secu­ri­ty real­ly comes from first.

Solar (Nov 25)
The Solar Eclipse of Novem­ber 25 is in Sagit­tar­ius. The release of a new ener­gy in under­stand­ing must first address the need to repair our notions of truth­ful­ness. Do you know where you are going? Oh, then you know from whence you came? Remember.

Lunar (Dec. 10)
The Lunar Eclipse on Decem­ber 10 is in Gem­i­ni. The illu­mi­na­tion pro­vid­ed at the Full Moon is inter­rupt­ed by our present cir­cum­stances. Though we wish to think more clear­ly (Gem­i­ni), old pat­terns and assump­tions need to be con­front­ed. The issue is “how intel­li­gent are you?”

PLANETARY INGRESSES
The move­ment of a plan­et from one sign into the next is called an ingress. The Moon is in sign for about 2 ½ days, the Sun for rough­ly 30 days, and an out­er plan­et, like Uranus, for about 7 years. As these shifts occur we expe­ri­ence a new melod­ic blend­ing of and mes­sage from the stars.

Jupiter Enters Aries (Jan. 22)
Jupiter has gone into and back out of Aries in the past year. We have already felt its mes­sage of new begin­nings, which were quick­ened and height­ened by the pair­ing with Uranus. Now until June, we feel the urge to race ahead because we want to be in the future already!

Jupiter Enters Tau­rus (Jun. 4)
Jupiter moves into Tau­rus for a year on June 4. With sol­id foun­da­tions and patience there is tan­gi­ble progress now. There is steady growth, and phys­i­cal secu­ri­ty will increase for many. With the end of the Jupiter/Saturn oppo­si­tion, com­bined with the trine of Jupiter and Plu­to lat­er, Jupiter in Tau­rus should cre­ate a much more pos­i­tive result for those economies posi­tioned to ben­e­fit. The gen­er­al US eco­nom­ic fore­cast will be revised upward.

Uranus Enters Aries (Mar. 11)
Just as with Jupiter, we have already had a taste of Uranus in Aries in 2010. Now the plan­et of inde­pen­dence, orig­i­nal­i­ty and inven­tive­ness moves into the first sign to stay for 7 years. The pre­vi­ous swing through Aries occurred from 1928 to 1934. Now that may look a lit­tle omi­nous to some, but there were many oth­er fac­tors con­tribut­ing to the social and eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tions that took place then.

Uranus in Aries brings about sig­nif­i­cant advances in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. There is an urgency and eager­ness to make new begin­nings in many aspects of life. The pace of life quick­ens, but impa­tience will also be stoked. The rise of pro­gres­sive lead­ers and move­ments advo­cat­ing change will go head to head with the old order as Uranus and Plu­to line up with one anoth­er from 2012–2015.

Nep­tune Enters Pisces (Apr. 4, Aug. 4, Feb. 3, 2012)
Just as with Jupiter and Uranus last year, Nep­tune dances back and forth between one sign and the next this year. It has been in Aquar­ius since 1998 and it will stay in Pisces start­ing next Feb­ru­ary 2012 until March 2025. This is a com­ing home event, since Nep­tune is said to rule Pisces.

The last time Nep­tune was here was 1848 to 1862 and the pur­suit of dreams (and fan­tasies) grew apace. In the US, the west­ward expan­sion was accel­er­at­ed as the vision of gold sparkled in the eyes of “forty-nin­ers”. In the spir­i­tu­al world, on the heels of the “Sec­ond Great Awak­en­ing”, a grow­ing reli­gious fer­vor spurred the calls for jus­tice as abo­li­tion­ists strug­gled to make our coun­try con­front the great evil and shame of slavery.

For the next 13 years, a path­way has been offered for a renew­al of under­stand­ing, com­pas­sion and sac­ri­fice. We are mov­ing into a peri­od of spir­i­tu­al revival and growth. Dreams, romance and the imag­i­na­tion will take flight.

Be pre­pared to wonder…be ready to embrace… and be able to sur­ren­der, so that the gifts of Spir­it may enter our hearts and so remind us that we are one. “E Pluribus Unum”

What’s Next?
In the next Gen­er­al Fore­cast post­ings we will begin to look at spe­cif­ic play­ers on the stage of his­to­ry and see what the align­ment of the plan­ets has in store for them, and us. In this tech­nique, we will look at what are called Tran­sits to Natal; that is observ­ing the plan­e­tary motions as they inter­sect with and influ­ence the birth charts of nations, world lead­ers and notable fig­ures, orga­ni­za­tions and many oth­er “birthed” entities.

In addi­tion, dur­ing the year when inter­ests, cir­cum­stance or whim indi­cate, I will look at these and oth­er rel­e­vant charts to illus­trate the astro­log­i­cal per­spec­tive. More­over, I will also respond to rea­son­able requests for sub­jects for analy­sis dur­ing the year as well.

 

TRANSITS TO NATAL — The Astrol­o­gy of Nations and World Lead­ers — Part Three:

INTRODUCTION:
The analy­sis of a Natal or Birth Chart is famil­iar to many of us. An astrologer will delin­eate the char­ac­ter, oppor­tu­ni­ties, chal­lenges and life poten­tials of their client. The astrologer will also use the tech­nique we are about to use, Tran­sits to Tran­sits, as one major way of explain­ing to their client, what they have expe­ri­enced, what is before them now, and what is like­ly to be encoun­tered in the future.

What Chart?
With an indi­vid­ual the deter­mi­na­tion of what con­sti­tutes the chart is fair­ly sim­ple; the chart is cal­cu­lat­ed for the moment the indi­vid­ual achieved “inde­pen­dent” exis­tence, the first breath. But what are we to do with a nation? Or when does a com­pa­ny begin? And what hap­pens when there are changes such as major shake­up in gov­ern­ment or ruler­ship? Or when a com­pa­ny merges or breaks apart? What is a mun­dane astrologer to do? Well, it is not easy, and there are no easy answers. 

Take for instance the Unit­ed States. Most of us would assume that the chart must be July 4, 1776. Okay, but what time of day, morn­ing, mid­day, after­noon or evening? Well there are many dif­fer­ent times that have been put forth and ana­lyzed by astrologers. But some his­to­ri­ans, and astrologers, argue for July 2 when the vote for inde­pen­dence was made by the Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress. Some argue for the so-called Dec­la­ra­tion of War that was passed in a res­o­lu­tion on July 6, 1775. Or some would date it from when “hos­til­i­ties” broke out at the Bat­tle of Lex­ing­ton on April 19, 1775. Some will look back to the land­ing of the pil­grims in Decem­ber 1620!

How­ev­er the accept­ed and cel­e­brat­ed “birth­day” for the US is July 4, 1776. What time did it hap­pen? There is evi­dence in writ­ten records, mem­oirs and oral tra­di­tions for ear­ly morn­ing, mid-morn­ing, ear­ly after­noon, late after­noon and evening too…So what is an astrologer to do?

Well, we take a chart and then com­pare what has hap­pened in his­to­ry with what the chart would indi­cate for those events. We try and find what seems like a good or best match and work with that. Over time a chart seems to work and feel right…but it is far from a set­tled issue.

Charts and Charts…
Once we have a birth chart for a nation we ana­lyze it and oth­er charts to see how it and these oth­er charts pre­dict the devel­op­ments and chal­lenges of that soci­ety. What oth­er kinds of charts? We look at the charts of lead­ers such as pres­i­dents or prime min­is­ters, kings or queens, to see what the indi­ca­tions are for their lead­er­ship for that soci­ety in that peri­od. Not only do we look at the indi­vid­u­al’s chart, but we also cast a chart for when they assume or take their oath of office. So, in the case of the US now, we not only look at the chart for the US, we also look at Barack Oba­ma’s chart as well as a chart for when he was sworn in. We exam­ine Har­ry Rei­d’s chart, and we looked at Nan­cy Pelosi, to see how the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives might fair, but now turn our atten­tion to John Boehn­er, all in order to see how the dynam­ics play out in our polit­i­cal system.

We also look at oth­er insti­tu­tion­al charts. Again, with the US as an exam­ple, we will look at the chart let’s say of the Fed­er­al Reserve. Well, how do we know what is its birth date? Well, we do, the Fed­er­al Reserve came into exis­tence at a spe­cif­ic moment by law, and that becomes its birth chart.

Then there are oth­er charts that become sig­nif­i­cant in under­stand­ing the larg­er world such as in the charts of busi­ness­es or cor­po­ra­tions. Well, when do they begin? Again, it depends. Some­times we use a chart for when an enter­prise first opened for busi­ness. Often­times there are dates (some­times with state seals and times!) of incor­po­ra­tion. Many astrologers will use, if avail­able, the chart of when a com­pa­ny first began trad­ing on a stock exchange. Any and all of these can prove use­ful and accurate. 

And, just as in the polit­i­cal world, astrologers will exam­ine the birth charts of eco­nom­ic and busi­ness lead­ers to see what else we might dis­cern about the var­i­ous enter­pris­es they are entrust­ed with.

We will look at oth­er indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions too, such as notable per­sons in the arts, sci­ence, edu­ca­tion, med­i­cine, or to impor­tant orga­ni­za­tions like the UN or World Bank, or maybe the Euro­pean Union or the Euro, these and many oth­ers are exam­ined by Mun­dane Astrologers.

But what hap­pens when a nation changes sig­nif­i­cant­ly, from one form of gov­ern­ment to anoth­er? Or a com­pa­ny merges or splits up. Well, we try and make use of what­ev­er doc­u­men­ta­tion there is and cre­ate a new chart for that enti­ty. For exam­ple, though there has been a chart for Tunisia that we have employed to under­stand what is hap­pen­ing there now, that chart may cer­tain­ly be super­seded by a new form of gov­ern­ment and con­sti­tu­tion, and a new chart.

Often­times we might have sev­er­al dif­fer­ent charts we are look­ing at for the same nation or orga­ni­za­tion. The mea­sure of a chart is tak­en by the accu­ra­cy with which it explains the past and present cir­cum­stances. Then there is some degree of con­fi­dence of what we can expect in the future.

The March of His­to­ry
But events, indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions are in a con­stant state of change, so we must be alert and mind­ful of that and not become com­pla­cent. Astrol­o­gy is first and fore­most a study of cycles. Each birth chart rep­re­sents a moment in time, and time is march­ing on. And so must we.…So let’s begin to take a look at what we might dis­cov­er from the analy­sis of Tran­sits to Natal, the tran­sits to the birth charts of some notable nations and indi­vid­u­als in the com­ing year. And dur­ing the year, we will take a look again at these and oth­er actors on the stage of his­to­ry. First up, let us exam­ine the Unit­ed States of America.

TRANSITS TO NATAL — The Astrol­o­gy of Nations and World Lead­ers — The Unit­ed States- Part Four

Unit­ed States — Which chart?
The analy­sis of the Unit­ed States requires that we stip­u­late first which chart we are using. I have found that Dane Rud­h­yar’s ver­sion of the Sib­ley chart works well for me. It is set for July 4, 1776 at 5:14 pm in Philadel­phia, PA and has 13° of Sagit­tar­ius ris­ing. I will not endeav­or here to give a “read­ing” on the char­ac­ter and chal­lenges of the Unit­ed States as revealed in this chart, per­haps I will do some­thing like that in a post­ing lat­er this year. Here I want to focus upon the rel­e­vant tran­sits that explain what the US is faced with in the com­ing year (and beyond). Often, to help illus­trate that, we will look back at oth­er sim­i­lar times and align­ments to give us some rel­e­vant frames of reference.

Unit­ed States — 2011 a look back first
An analy­sis of what lies before the US in this year imme­di­ate­ly rais­es the ques­tion as to what have we just come through. After all, the expe­ri­ence of any enti­ty can­not be neat­ly divid­ed up by our notion of when a year begins and ends. More­over, as many of you know, the align­ments in a chart may be in effect for much longer than one year as well. So, before we begin to look ahead we must look back. What have we just come through? What were we being asked as a nation to address? And, yes, what can we expect in the year ahead?

(2009–2010) Plu­to Oppos­ing Venus
Sev­er­al major tran­sits were in effect for the Unit­ed States in 2010. One of these, Plu­to in Oppo­si­tion to Venus actu­al­ly hap­pened in 2009 and 2010. Plu­to rules death and rebirth; it smash­es apart what has out­lived its time so that the rebuild­ing can take place. Venus rules val­ue, the notion of what is wor­thy whether that be in terms of self-worth (or nation-worth) as well as out­ward phys­i­cal val­ues like in tan­gi­ble assets. So, this align­ment of Plu­to to Venus brought about a fun­da­men­tal tear­ing down of the old assump­tions about US val­ue and our real val­ues as embod­ied in our prop­er­ties and busi­ness­es. More­over, Plu­to rules the will and pow­er­ful forces arrayed for and against one anoth­er. Plu­to oppos­ing Venus indi­cat­ed a great strug­gle over ques­tions about, and the nature of, what are the val­ues of Amer­i­ca. Well this sounds famil­iar does­n’t it? We cer­tain­ly went through a re-eval­u­a­tion or our phys­i­cal assets, (land, stocks, bonds, com­pa­nies), as well as strug­gled over the def­i­n­i­tion of exact­ly what is to be most val­ued about America.

The last time Plu­to went over Amer­i­ca’s Venus was 1972–73. The term “Stagfla­tion” was coined to describe a coun­try bur­dened by debts from the Viet­nam War, while at the same time the Arab Oil embar­go stoked the fires of unimag­ined infla­tion. Mean­while, in the polit­i­cal are­na, there was an inci­dent called “Water­gate” that shook the foun­da­tions of and threat­ened the bal­ance of pow­er between the Exec­u­tive, Leg­isla­tive and Judi­cial branches.

And, so too in this time, there have been major eco­nom­ic shocks, as well as calls for a fun­da­men­tal rearrange­ment of the bal­ance of pow­er between the states and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. Cycles repeat, but the sub­stance of what our chal­lenge is and the char­ac­ters that play across the stage of his­to­ry change.

(2009–2010) Sat­urn Square Venus
While Plu­to was oppos­ing Venus, Sat­urn was at the same time Squar­ing Venus, (This was one of the Tran­sits to Tran­sits we looked at ear­li­er, of Sat­urn Squar­ing Plu­to, so that means what­ev­er Plu­to was affect­ing in any chart, so too would Sat­urn). Sat­urn last made this same square to Venus in 1980–81, a time of a severe down­turn in the US econ­o­my. With Venus rul­ing val­ue, beau­ty and love, the Unit­ed States was just not feel­ing very “lov­able” in 2009-10! Our sense of our worth, of our val­ue was dimin­ished. Real­ly, it was a time to reassess the whole ques­tion of where does our val­ue as a nation come from, what do we have, what do we cre­ate, and how do we con­sume val­ue? Cer­tain­ly many, if not all of us, indi­vid­u­al­ly and as a whole, have had to reassess our val­ues at this time.

2011
Uranus Squares Venus (Apr. 18, Oct. 7, Feb. 28, 2012)
Well this is a whole New Year indeed! Excite­ment and stim­u­la­tion is acti­vat­ing the plan­et of val­ue this year. It is frothy, dare we say bub­bly, and the last time Uranus made this pass, 1927–28, it was a heady time.…but we were head­ing for a fall that few could imag­ine then. Will his­to­ry repeat itself, no… Nev­er! But we have to watch out; we must look back to see what chal­lenges were encoun­tered and oppor­tu­ni­ties missed, and real­ize we will face new chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties that are appro­pri­ate to our moment in time.

Last time
The late 20’s were a time of inven­tive­ness and social exper­i­men­ta­tion. Bound­aries were being bro­ken, records were being set. Our imag­i­na­tive bound­aries were blown out­ward by the courage dis­played, (and tech­nol­o­gy used), in “The Spir­it of St. Louis”, as Lind­bergh con­nect­ed the new and old worlds. There was an influ­ence that was ener­giz­ing new rela­tion­ships both between one anoth­er, and in our nation’s rela­tion­ships with oth­er nations. Amer­i­ca was seen as the most “pros­per­ous” of nations, we were the ris­ing star in the world and the way ahead looked glo­ri­ous. What we failed to see, what we failed to con­front, was that the very nature of what we con­sid­ered to be valu­able, how we made and mea­sured val­ue, was in des­per­ate need of trans­for­ma­tion. The oppor­tu­ni­ty was there and was missed and so we fell back…

2011 The US and Venus/Uranus, Our val­ue and pur­pose.
In 2011 we face a sim­i­lar chal­lenge and oppor­tu­ni­ty. The chal­lenge with Venus and Uranus is met when we raise to a new lev­el our expe­ri­ence of val­ue in our rela­tion­ships with one anoth­er, and with the world. The US has its Venus, (and Jupiter and Sun), in the 7th house, the house of rela­tion­ship. Our val­ues and self-worth (Venus), our prin­ci­ples, gen­eros­i­ty and good for­tune (Jupiter) and our very being and pur­pose (Sun), is revealed, real­ized and shared by the nature and qual­i­ty of our rela­tion­ships to one anoth­er and with the world.

A New Order
The found­ing fathers hint­ed at this, (and much more), when they put forth as the mot­to of our coun­try, and which is inscribed on the Great Seal of The Unit­ed States, “Novus Ordo Seclo­rum” which means “A New Order for the Cen­turies”. They under­stood that what they were cre­at­ing was some­thing new, some­thing hereto­fore unfa­mil­iar because it rep­re­sent­ed a break with the past. Here, in this nation, we would come togeth­er and freely deter­mine our rela­tion­ships with one anoth­er. We would sur­ren­der all title and priv­i­leges, and stand as equals to one anoth­er and be sub­ject to no King, or Prince, or Clan or Class, but to what we had all agreed upon as our com­pact with one anoth­er. This sacred com­pact is sealed and pro­tect­ed by the one and only true ruler in Amer­i­ca, the Rule of Law, (which is why the US has Sat­urn (order), in Libra (scales of jus­tice) in our 10th house (author­i­ty). In the Unit­ed States, the law is King, no one is above the law.

Embod­ied in our “Law” are the val­ues that we have so far evolved to in our con­duct with one anoth­er. Those val­ues are made into rules which we have agreed upon, so that we know how we are expect­ed to con­duct our­selves with regard to one anoth­er. In oth­er words, we have estab­lished these laws as the crys­tal­lized form of val­ues with and between one another.

But unlike some, who believe that those orig­i­nal laws, our first rules, the Con­sti­tu­tion, to be a fin­ished piece and not to be altered, most of us find that the sto­ry of human ful­fill­ment is an unfold­ing one that is far from over. And, so, we must keep improv­ing upon and adding to our val­ues and our rules. The Found­ing Fathers knew this work was not fin­ished or done with them. They sought to go beyond what had been, yet they could not reach or agree beyond a cer­tain under­stand­ing. They strug­gled over issues and did not over­come some of their own chal­lenges, and so left it to oth­er gen­er­a­tions to face the glar­ing injus­tices embod­ied in our first set of “rules”. How could it be otherwise?

Our Chal­lenge, Our Oppor­tu­ni­ty
In 2011 the chal­lenge we face is to exam­ine to what extent we are ready, will­ing and able to ful­fill and incor­po­rate the mes­sage of Uranus into Venus. Uranus in Aries is shap­ing our Venus in Can­cer by chal­leng­ing us to con­duct our­selves at the next nec­es­sary lev­el of indi­vid­ual ful­fill­ment and social inte­gra­tion. There are always forces, (and dis­trac­tions), pulling us apart and draw­ing us together.

Venus in Can­cer speaks from the Truth that we must hon­or where we have come from; we must remain and find val­ue in our com­mon her­itage and so secure and bind our­selves one to anoth­er. Uranus in Aries is chal­leng­ing Venus as to exact­ly what con­sti­tutes “roots” or “her­itage” or “secu­ri­ty”.

There is a con­stant ten­sion between our nation’s desire to return to a sim­pler time, to our root val­ues (Venus), and the inces­sant force of spir­i­tu­al (and tech­ni­cal) advance­ment dri­ving us for­ward into new expres­sions of val­ue (Uranus). The answer is to be found in hon­or­ing the spir­i­tu­al essence of our roots, our com­mon her­itage and val­ue that binds us one to anoth­er, (but not being bound to the mere let­ter or the law or form of that val­ue), while at the same time inte­grat­ing into those val­ues a new under­stand­ing of the mes­sage of Uranus in Aries which hon­ors, affirms and asserts the essen­tial dig­ni­ty of the indi­vid­ual with­in the group order, (with­out going so far in assert­ing “indi­vid­u­al­ism” that we break our social con­tract with one another).

Of course, to many who have seen the abus­es of pow­er, and the manip­u­la­tion of the law to serve the pow­er­ful and not defend the weak­est of us, to many the hope that we can restore let alone move for­ward the dream of Amer­i­ca and its essen­tial val­ue or worth seems dis­tant at best. Just as in the late 1920’s, we too now find our­selves at a moment in his­to­ry where the great­est inequities exist in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the wealth in Amer­i­ca, a val­ue that we all have cre­at­ed with and through one another.

Nature, (and Spir­it), move what­ev­er ordered sys­tem from a state of imbal­ance to bal­ance. It seems most sys­tems have “mech­a­nisms” inte­gral to their nature that bring about a re-bal­anc­ing even­tu­al­ly. In our social order we must find our way back to “nor­mal” by being coura­geous enough to face what we have wrought and bring us back and for­ward to a bet­ter world, before the forces in and around us bring about a more painful, because “forced”, adjustment.

Time to Act
We have a choice.…but not for long. For there are more align­ments hap­pen­ing in the world gen­er­al­ly, (those Tran­sits to Tran­sits) and to our coun­try specif­i­cal­ly (Tran­sits to Natal), that are to meet us this year and in the next many years to come. We have a des­tiny, but we must under­stand, decide and act as those brave men (and women) act­ed in their hour of deci­sion in 1776.

First, we must face what is here before us now; there is more that we must under­stand about the forces bring­ing about the changes we will grow through in 2011. So let us turn our atten­tion to the great­est of these in the next post­ing, the align­ment of Plu­to with Jupiter. Then we will look at some oth­er less­er, though no less impor­tant, align­ments for 2011.

 

TRANSITS TO NATAL — The Astrol­o­gy of Nations and World Lead­ers — The Unit­ed States- Part Five

2011
Plu­to Oppos­ing Jupiter (Jan. 17, Jul. 8, Nov. 20)
In 2011 we face anoth­er, per­haps our great­est, chal­lenge and oppor­tu­ni­ty, the Oppo­si­tion of Plu­to to our Jupiter. Jupiter rules the prin­ci­ples, beliefs and laws of a nation. Venus is the val­ue “behind” the law, but Jupiter is the law itself as well as oth­er embod­i­ments of what we have dis­cov­ered to be “True”, as in Sci­ence, Phi­los­o­phy and Reli­gion. Jupiter also rules how we relate to one anoth­er and to the rest of the world. Essen­tial­ly, Jupiter does this because it rules the beliefs we hold that deter­mine our atti­tudes and actions towards one anoth­er and the world.

Plu­to rules the pow­er of trans­for­ma­tion, of death and rebirth and the great strug­gle of pow­ers with one anoth­er as they exer­cise their will. The oppo­si­tion of Plu­to to Jupiter sig­ni­fies a great moment in our his­to­ry when we must make absolute­ly clear, (the oppo­si­tion should be the moment of rev­e­la­tion), what are the prin­ci­ples we under­stand, stand upon and project out among our­selves and into the world as a nation. To help us see how this might play out in 2011, let us look at Plu­to’s pre­vi­ous tran­sits of our Jupiter.

Plu­to’s pre­vi­ous align­ments to Jupiter

1827–29
The pre­vi­ous align­ments of Plu­to with Jupiter may pro­vide us with some insight as to what is being demand­ed of us now. The first tran­sit of Plu­to to Jupiter was a square that last­ed from 1827 to 1829. Dur­ing this peri­od a fun­da­men­tal shift in the char­ac­ter of the Nation was expe­ri­enced as exem­pli­fied by the begin­ning of the era of Andrew Jack­son, which her­ald­ed the end of the so-called “era of good feel­ings” and the re-emer­gence of par­ti­san pol­i­tics. This was in part the con­se­quence of the empow­er­ment of the gen­er­al white/male pop­u­la­tion who now were giv­en the right to vote direct­ly for the elec­tors for pres­i­dent. As a result, Jack­son­ian pop­ulism stoked the fires of the bat­tle lines that had been form­ing between the wealthy finan­cial, mer­chant and man­u­fac­tur­ing inter­ests as against the vast agrar­i­an and labor­ing groups. An exam­ple of this, and one of Jack­son’s sig­na­ture accom­plish­ments, was to do away with the US cen­tral bank at that time, (sound famil­iar Mr. Bernanke?), as he stood for the “com­mon man” against the wealthy spe­cial interests.

1918–20
The next tran­sit of Plu­to to Jupiter was a con­junc­tion from 1918 to 1920. Pres­i­dent Woodrow Wilson’s vision of what the world should be after the deba­cle of World War I fell on deaf ears, both at home in Con­gress, and with the world lead­ers who met at Ver­sailles, France. Amer­i­can ide­al­ism, as embod­ied in Wilson’s view of a new world order, the putting forth of our “truth” (Jupiter), was reject­ed by the old guard in Europe and at home. Amer­i­ca retreat­ed into itself and did not par­tic­i­pate in the League of Nations, and, as a result, sowed, some would argue, the seeds for the next great World War.

Inter­nal­ly, the pro­gres­sive move­men­t’s attempt to “reform” Amer­i­ca led to the enact­ment of moral­i­ty by fiat as embod­ied in the 18th Amend­ment, (Prohibition).This led to the most fla­grant dis­re­gard of “law” since most Amer­i­cans ulti­mate­ly did not agree with that expres­sion of social virtue (val­ue). Yet, at the same time, the forces of progress final­ly achieved the enfran­chise­ment of the “oth­er” half of the US pop­u­la­tion with the pas­sage of the 19th Amend­ment, (Wom­en’s right to vote).

1973–74
The last tran­sit of Plu­to to Jupiter was a square from 1973–1974. As before, Plu­to’s trans­for­ma­tion­al ener­gies as well as its sig­na­ture effect to bring about a great strug­gle of wills played out in var­i­ous spheres of Amer­i­can life and with the World. Polit­i­cal­ly this was exem­pli­fied by Water­gate and the fall from pow­er of a pres­i­dent for the first time in our his­to­ry. All three branch­es of gov­ern­ment strug­gled with what had been unleashed by a “sim­ple” break-in at the head­quar­ters of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Social­ly, one of the most divi­sive issues to this day was enact­ed into law in a Supreme Court deci­sion that pro­tects, as a pri­vate deci­sion, a wom­an’s right to decide the ques­tion of abortion.

In inter­na­tion­al mat­ters, seem­ing­ly, one could argue, as a some kind of karmic coun­ter­point to the attempt by the US to pro­mote and push its vision at Ver­sailles in 1918–20, the strug­gle in the Mid-East and the Arab-Israeli con­flicts led to the Arab Oil embar­go, as OPEC attempt­ed to force Amer­i­ca and oth­er West­ern pow­ers to yield to their point of view by chok­ing off the life-blood of what dri­ves the mod­ern world economy.

 

PRESENT
2011 Plu­to Oppo­si­tion to Jupiter
So what is to be our oppor­tu­ni­ty and chal­lenge this year? What are we faced with as a nation inter­nal­ly, and what is the nature of our coop­er­a­tion or strug­gle with oth­er will­ful mem­bers of the world of nations? It seems that at each align­ment of Plu­to with our Jupiter, we as a nation are chal­lenged to relate to one anoth­er with or through a new under­stand­ing. Like­wise, at each align­ment there seems to be a sim­i­lar demand to shift the man­ner in which we relate to the world around us.

Inter­nal­ly
With­in our bor­ders, the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion of the bal­ance of pow­ers between the Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and the States, a ques­tion that has been put before us again and again, is cer­tain­ly a key aspect of the strug­gle over our prin­ci­ples now. As Venus rules our val­ues, Jupiter rules those val­ues in oper­a­tion, seen in our prin­ci­ples of con­duct between one anoth­er which we have cer­ti­fied, agreed to and cod­i­fied into the Law of the land.

Where­as the Plu­to oppo­si­tion to Venus raised this ques­tion in a per­son­al man­ner in 2009-10, (the strug­gle over val­ues was per­son­al­ized in the crescen­do of rhetoric that bor­dered on scream­ing “Fire” in a crowd­ed the­atre at times), Plu­to oppos­ing Jupiter will now move these same ques­tions to the stage of an argu­ment over prin­ci­ples, over “the truth”, which will lead to a strug­gle over our rules of con­duct, over the law itself. Cer­tain­ly, one exam­ple of this strug­gle is the attempt to pro­vide some form of uni­ver­sal med­ical cov­er­age for all Amer­i­cans, with the imme­di­ate reac­tion among a num­ber of states to chal­lenge and seek to void that Fed­er­al statute. This con­flict will ulti­mate­ly lead to a Supreme Court deci­sion that will cer­tain­ly please only part of the population.

Echo­ing the Jack­son­ian era, the calls to “reign in” or “do away” with the Fed­er­al Reserve Bank could shake the finan­cial mar­kets as new uncer­tain­ties are added to the eco­nom­ic order still recov­er­ing from the shock of 2008-09. Yet the Fed­er­al Reserve chart seems to indi­cate that it may have weath­ered that storm for now. This sto­ry seems more of con­ve­nient dis­trac­tion to turn atten­tion away from a big­ger story.

Veiled behind the front of pop­ulist fer­vor, pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tions led by finan­cial cap­i­tal seek to turn back any attempt to impose any sen­si­ble reg­u­la­tion on “the mar­ket”, whose fevered bub­ble burst­ing we have yet to recov­er from. The calls to bring to “Jus­tice” (Jupiter) those who led us over the precipice have been met by the manip­u­la­tion by the pow­er­ful (Plu­to) as we are all made to feel guilty (Plu­to) since, “well, did­n’t we all behave badly?”

Will the oppo­si­tion of Plu­to to Jupiter smash through the “smoke and mir­rors” and reveal the depths of deceit by those who have been entrust­ed to pre­serve and pro­tect our val­ues; or will Plu­to’s pow­er to veil the truth by those who can and will manip­u­late the sys­tem lead us from this last cri­sis into the next “big one” in the not too dis­tant future? This is one of the ques­tions that must be addressed as the Unit­ed States strug­gles to bal­ance Jupiter (Truth) and Plu­to (Pow­er). Truth is Pow­er, but Pow­er can cor­rupt the truth. Which will it be?

Exter­nal­ly
Chal­lenges from abroad may bring some of our inter­nal strug­gles into focus. Cer­tain­ly, the pow­er of the indi­vid­ual to chal­lenge the larg­er order, (by dig­ging into the secret depths (Plu­to) of any sys­tem), by expos­ing “the Truth” (Jupiter), has played out this last year (and into this one) with the phe­nom­e­non known as Wik­ileaks. Although many of us have been made aware of the rev­e­la­tions about Iraq and Afghanistan poli­cies that were con­tained in diplo­mat­ic and mil­i­tary doc­u­ments, there are oth­er rev­e­la­tions that have been promised that expose malfea­sance or cor­rup­tion in the eco­nom­ic cen­ters of pow­er. Per­haps this will not indi­rect­ly expose some play­ers clos­er to home.

Where­as in 1918–20 the the­atre for will­ful strug­gle played out between a ris­ing Amer­i­ca and the old world of Euro­pean pow­ers, and the 1973–74 bat­tle of wills fea­tured an Amer­i­ca as a super­pow­er fac­ing its very real vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty over the con­trol of oil, it would appear that the “test of wills and prin­ci­ples” in this peri­od may fea­ture an Amer­i­ca that has stum­bled won­der­ing how it might hold its own against a new pow­er assert­ing itself in the East. We have become a debtor nation whose “con­sumer” soci­ety depends upon the will­ing­ness of our provider of goods to keep extend­ing us cred­it. We wish to pro­mote our Truth (Jupiter), but there seems lit­tle Pow­er (Plu­to) behind it. To many it seems our time for “great­ness” is past, and that we are in decline and that we do not under­stand how or why this has happened.

Our True Source of Strength and Val­ue
To begin to under­stand, we must come back to the Natal or birth chart and remem­ber that Amer­i­ca’s great­est strength, (with the two “benefics” of Astrol­o­gy, Venus and Jupiter, Val­ues and Prin­ci­ples, in the 7th house of rela­tion­ship), is to be found in our great gen­eros­i­ty of spir­it towards one anoth­er and the rest of the world. Our strength, our real wealth, lies in our con­tin­u­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the evo­lu­tion of a greater spir­i­tu­al under­stand­ing of the mys­tery and pow­er of freely formed rela­tion­ships with one another.

The dynam­ic, quick­en­ing nature of these vol­un­tary rela­tion­ships, the very spe­cial “free” asso­ci­a­tions that were observed by de Toc­queville in the 1830’s in his “Democ­ra­cy in Amer­i­ca”, have been a chal­lenge for us through­out our his­to­ry. We seek to find a way to bal­ance the efforts to ful­fill our selves as unique indi­vid­u­als, (to be “free”), while, at the same time, we must hon­or, sup­port and sac­ri­fice for one anoth­er in those very asso­ci­a­tions we have with each oth­er. To some who may believe in a form of “absolute lib­er­tar­i­an­ism”, we must under­stand that you can­not be alone to do what­ev­er you want and be free. Free­dom is a social real­i­ty that is cre­at­ed through mutu­al under­stand­ing, tol­er­ance and for­give­ness; it is found­ed upon the knowl­edge that our true poten­tials are dis­cov­ered, expressed and extend­ed through our mutu­al sup­port of one another.

Where two or more are gath­ered togeth­er, acknowl­edg­ing their unique­ness, yet seek­ing through their asso­ci­a­tion to devel­op one anoth­er in and through that relationship…there is Free­dom. Not free­dom “from” some­thing, but Free­dom “to” become what we will be. We are not human beings; we are tru­ly human becom­ings. We can become what we will become because we agree to turn to one anoth­er and cre­ate the future…together.

Our Chal­lenge Now
Plu­to oppos­ing Jupiter asks noth­ing less of us than to under­stand, tru­ly under­stand and artic­u­late, our shared root prin­ci­ples that we must now affirm and ask each of us to hon­or and ful­fill. Plu­to will force this as we expe­ri­ence the exer­cise (or mis-exer­cise) of pow­er either with­in our coun­try, or between us and anoth­er nation. This dra­ma will play out as a con­fronta­tion of Will or Pow­er (Plu­to) with Truth or Prin­ci­ples (Jupiter). It will appear “out there”, but the true strug­gle and hope for us all rests upon each and every one of us to do the work with­in ourselves.

What each of us must do is look with­in and find what values/principles bind us one to anoth­er; and seek, affirm and secure our foun­da­tions in one anoth­er. Do not be dis­tract­ed by the nois­es out­side; instead, lis­ten to your inner voice, which will always guide you to the real­iza­tion that you are nev­er alone, and there is hope for a bet­ter world. That bet­ter world is found­ed upon our com­ing togeth­er and under­stand­ing that it is this illu­sion that we are sep­a­rate from one anoth­er, whether with­in our nation or between our nation and the world, that has always been our self-limitation.

The greater Truth is that we are all one in Spir­it; we are sparks of the divine seek­ing to under­stand our­selves and our com­pan­ions in this great jour­ney. As our found­ing fathers so elo­quent­ly inscribed upon the Seal of the Unit­ed States, “E pluribus unum”… “Out of many One”.

 

TRANSITS TO NATAL — The Astrol­o­gy of Nations and World Lead­ers — Barack Oba­ma- Part Six

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.

TRANSITS TO NATAL — The Astrol­o­gy of Nations and World Lead­ers — Barack Oba­ma- Part Seven

2011
The over­all pic­ture for Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s astro­log­i­cal fore­cast for 2011 cer­tain­ly seems to be more pos­i­tive than that of 2010. The chal­lenges are for­mi­da­ble, but the oppor­tu­ni­ties are real.

Plu­to Trine Plu­to (Feb. 22, May 26, Dec. 22, Sep. 8, 2012, Sep. 27, 2012)
Plu­to was a great chal­lenge to Oba­ma in 2010, but what a dif­fer­ence a year makes. For 2011 and much of 2012 he will be under a most favor­able trine of his Plu­to by Plu­to. And this at a time when the USA is under­go­ing the Plu­to oppo­si­tion to Jupiter could pro­vide one of the means by which the US is able to make the most of that opposition.

Plu­to rules the willpow­er, which is the true source of our abil­i­ty to bring about self-change inter­nal­ly, and which also cre­ates our abil­i­ty to help bring about changes exter­nal­ly. While the US grap­ples with Plu­to oppos­ing its Jupiter, Oba­ma will be able to har­ness his own will pow­er, and by exten­sion, the will pow­er of the posi­tion his wields, the Pres­i­den­cy, to help bring about, what could be sig­nif­i­cant trans­for­ma­tions in the socio-eco­nom­ic-polit­i­cal order with­in our nation, and exter­nal­ly with oth­er nations. This is espe­cial­ly indi­cat­ed by the fact that Oba­ma’s Plu­to is in his 7th House of rela­tion­ships, and the tran­sit­ing Plu­to is mov­ing through his 11th House of social ideals.

What this might indi­cate is that Oba­ma’s abil­i­ty to be a re-builder, re-new­er, re-gen­er­a­tor of our forms of rela­tion­ship (Plu­to in the 7th house), will play out and be seen in 11th house mat­ters, which in a mun­dane analy­sis would be the nation’s ideals and dreams about the future as well as the Leg­isla­tive branch of government.

With a “divid­ed” gov­ern­ment, Oba­ma as chief exec­u­tive should be able to help bring about some con­crete actions to address some of the prob­lems the US is faced with now. With his Plu­to in Vir­go, and the tran­sit­ing Plu­to in Capri­corn, we are talk­ing about real, prac­ti­cal work­able solu­tions. Each side will have to sac­ri­fice part of its “agen­da” and dog­ma to get things done. Our con­sti­tu­tion, after all, is so arranged that coop­er­a­tion and mutu­al agree­ment are inte­gral to the polit­i­cal process, per­haps this year we will see it at work.

Pluto/Jupiter for the USA — Pluto/Pluto for Oba­ma
With the USA at the same time expe­ri­enc­ing the Plu­to oppo­si­tion Jupiter, Oba­ma’s tran­sit of Plu­to to Plu­to takes on much greater sig­nif­i­cance. The USA is prob­a­bly fac­ing a great strug­gle over prin­ci­ples this year; the strug­gle is over our prin­ci­ples of rela­tion­ship to one anoth­er inter­nal­ly and to oth­er nations exter­nal­ly; it is those prin­ci­ples that end up being enshrined in our laws and our treaties. Oba­ma’s tran­sit can pro­vide a coun­ter­point to the dichoto­my and strug­gle in the USA chart by the prac­ti­cal and respon­si­ble exer­cise of his lead­er­ship role. He can be a bridge between oppos­ing fac­tions and steer them toward some com­pro­mise over our rules of con­duct with one anoth­er, as he also helps to bring about new poli­cies in our inter­na­tion­al relationships.

Will he be able to keep the oppos­ing sides work­ing towards con­sen­sus and con­crete action? Plu­to would say yes. But to know that ful­ly we must look to the oth­er influ­ences mov­ing through his chart this year to see what else is in play on our stage of history.

 

Uranus Sex­tile Jupiter (Mar. 26, Nov. 17, Jan. 1, 2012)
Uranus Trine Mer­cury (Apr. 22, Oct. 1, Feb. 13, 2012)
Why are we see­ing two tran­sits list­ed togeth­er above? Because the plan­ets that Uranus is tran­sit­ing are in a rela­tion­ship with one anoth­er in Oba­ma’s chart. When­ev­er one is being “lit up”, so is the oth­er. The rela­tion­ship of Oba­ma’s Mer­cury to his Jupiter is an Oppo­si­tion. An oppo­si­tion is an aspect of aware­ness, a jux­ta­po­si­tion of two aspects of real­i­ty; the chal­lenge is to find a way of inte­grat­ing the two through syn­the­sis. The fail­ure would either to swing from one to the oth­er, or to live out one and sup­press and there­by project the oth­er onto others.

Oba­ma’s Mer­cury
Oba­ma’s Mer­cury is in Leo in his 6th House; his Jupiter is in Aquar­ius in the 12th house. With his Mer­cury in Leo Oba­ma seeks to express him­self in such a man­ner so that he earns respect, appre­ci­a­tion and approval. But if tak­en too far, it would mean that he would speak for an audi­ence, say­ing what they wish to hear so that they will approve him, and so in the end he would not be so true to him­self. When he gets it right, Oba­ma is cer­tain­ly a potent ora­tor; and, when he com­bines that Mer­cury with his Gem­i­ni Moon, his mes­sage can be con­veyed in such a man­ner that ideas and feel­ings blend togeth­er so that the lis­ten­ers are tru­ly touched.

Oba­ma’s Jupiter
Jupiter in Aquar­ius leads him to seek to relate to the world less per­son­al­ly, more in terms of group ideals and social con­scious­ness, more deal­ing with broad social issues and con­cerns, than the indi­vid­ual sto­ry. The prin­ci­ples he seeks to relate through are human­i­tar­i­an and uni­ver­sal, with an under­stand­ing that the bedrock of our democ­ra­cy is found­ed upon tol­er­ance and social jus­tice. But if tak­en too far, it could cre­ate a feel­ing of aloof­ness and detach­ment from the pub­lic; it would make him seem that he is not as able to con­nect to oth­ers in a more per­son­al way.

In a way, Oba­ma may fear that if he tru­ly speaks “his mind” that he might lose some of his rela­tion­ships to the Amer­i­can peo­ple or to oth­er nations; yet, if he tries to just pre­serve the rela­tion­ships, he will end up not being able to say much at all, (he will not be able to lead), or he will end up say­ing what he knows to be untrue.

Oba­ma’s Oppor­tu­ni­ty
The gift of this dou­ble tran­sit, of Uranus to his Jupiter and Uranus to his Mer­cury, is that it poten­tial­ly bridges this dilem­ma and pro­vides a path of syn­the­sis. He should be able to main­tain his com­mit­ment to prin­ci­ples from which he derives his pur­pose to rep­re­sent Amer­i­can Ideals, while artic­u­lat­ing the mes­sage about them in such a way that pro­vides a bridge of under­stand­ing and con­sen­sus for a broad spec­trum of the Amer­i­can peo­ple and oth­er nations. Uranus is the plan­et of inven­tion, of think­ing out­side of the box, (or not even see­ing the uni­verse as being “boxed up”!), and its align­ment with Mer­cury and Jupiter can help Oba­ma to demon­strate that the solu­tion to our “prob­lems” requires that we give up some of our old assump­tions (Jupiter/beliefs) and so cre­ate new ideas and solu­tions (Mercury/intelligence).

It would appear that Oba­ma has an oppor­tu­ni­ty to begin to trans­form what is at the root of our polit­i­cal sta­sis; that we just don’t lis­ten, under­stand or coop­er­ate with one anoth­er. It would seem that Oba­ma might be able to make things work out, right? Well, of course, there are oth­er fac­tors at play; and one of the big ones is the “wild card” in this very align­ment we have just been examining.

Here again, as with last year, the align­ment of Uranus to Venus in the US chart is also occur­ring in Oba­ma’s chart. The very plan­et that could be a bridge between Prin­ci­ples and Solu­tions, (Uranus to Mer­cury and Jupiter) is also form­ing a square to his Venus. So, what does this indi­cate on its own mer­its? And how will this affect his abil­i­ty to wield his will (Plu­to), hon­or our prin­ci­ples (Jupiter) and artic­u­late intel­li­gent solu­tions (Mer­cury)?

 

Uranus Square Venus (Apr. 12, Oct. 16, Jan. 31, 2012)
Oba­ma has his Venus in Can­cer at just under 2° of Can­cer; the Unit­ed States has its Venus at just over 3° of Can­cer. Just as in 2010, when Sat­urn passed over Venus for both, so too this year Uranus will tran­sit their Venus’ togeth­er. The Sat­urn tran­sit was dif­fi­cult since it cre­at­ed a feel­ing of a lack of self-worth, a lack of val­ue which results in all sorts of prob­lems for rela­tion­ships. But in the end it serves to clar­i­fy what is more valu­able with­in and around us. Uranus is a very dif­fer­ent ener­gy, cre­at­ing a dif­fer­ent kind of chal­lenge and oppor­tu­ni­ty for the US and Obama.

Just as the Uranus tran­sit to the US Venus calls for a new under­stand­ing and expres­sion of Amer­i­can val­ues, so too does this mean that this tran­sit to Oba­ma’s Venus calls upon him to ful­fill his role as a leader whose pur­pose is to artic­u­late those chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties we face now.

Uranus Shocks
Uranus is not gen­tle, espe­cial­ly when it is form­ing, as it is here, a “hard” aspect; it opens up new path­ways and pos­si­bil­i­ties through shocks, sur­pris­es and upsets. Often­times its ini­tial effect can appear as a loss, it requires a sac­ri­fice, but its true pur­pose is to break up the old forms of val­ue, (to release the spir­it of val­ue from a more lim­it­ed form of being), so that spirit/life may cre­ate new forms of val­ue which are to be expe­ri­enced, (in this case, most impor­tant­ly, in our rela­tion­ships to one anoth­er and to oth­er nations, the 7th House).

The chal­lenge of Uranus is met by being open and wel­com­ing of change; Uranus serves to break up old pat­terns that have sti­fled the flow of spir­it and there­by cre­ate con­di­tions for a new order. The dan­ger is that the upset or chal­lenge will be expe­ri­enced as some­thing to fear; reac­tion sets in that actu­al­ly brings about more painful shocks and adjust­ments that could have been more man­age­able had the ener­gy been allowed to do its work. The oppor­tu­ni­ty of work­ing with Uranus is that by being open to new forms and expres­sions of val­ue, the per­son or enti­ty can keep unfold­ing their spir­i­tu­al potential.

Spir­i­tu­al Law
Spir­it must take on form; it must lim­it itself and become some “thing” in order to be any­thing on the earth plane. But that form is lim­it­ed and will even­tu­al­ly lose its mean­ing, its relevance.…its beau­ty. So, the form must be tran­scend­ed so that Spir­it can rein­car­nate into a new form of expres­sion. This process is one of the most fun­da­men­tal spir­i­tu­al laws that gov­ern our universe.

We do and must try to pro­tect, pre­serve and pass down these forms of val­ue as long as we can. How­ev­er, whether in great forms of art, or beau­ti­ful forms of human inter­re­la­tion­ship, even in our per­son­al val­ues, prin­ci­ples and laws, at some point the par­tic­u­lar form must be tran­scend­ed; spir­it must be free to form anew. One of the prin­ci­ple agents of such release and ref­or­ma­tion is Uranus.

Uranus and our Chal­lenge
The chal­lenge of Uranus in Aries to Venus in Can­cer is to re-define how we find or cre­ate secu­ri­ty in our lives, all the while our world is in the midst of great changes, (Even greater than we might at first imag­ine. I will come back again to this theme of the epic changes ahead, but just know that we have not faced changes as great as this for over 200 years).

If we stay attached to the exist­ing forms because we are afraid, we will suf­fer. If we re-affirm the spir­it that cre­at­ed those forms, we can find a way to renew our sense val­ue at the cen­ter of our lives, and so forge a new base of secu­ri­ty to stand upon. When the form is break­ing apart, we must get back to the spir­it behind the form; we need to go back to root ener­gies and so restore and re-affirm our spir­i­tu­al truth in renewed forms.  

Venus
Uranus is chal­leng­ing and break­ing up the old forms of Venus in Can­cer. Venus is the plan­et that binds us to one anoth­er through our shared val­ues, whose purest and truest expres­sion is found in our love for one anoth­er. In any soci­ety and cul­ture, what binds us to one anoth­er as a peo­ple is what we cre­ate with one anoth­er and share with one anoth­er. In any sys­tem, there are ener­gies hold­ing it togeth­er and forces pulling it apart. What holds us togeth­er is our love for what we share in as a people.

Venus and Amer­i­ca
With Venus in Can­cer, Amer­i­cans come togeth­er in our love of the indi­vid­ual, and the sacred­ness and dig­ni­ty that forms our dri­ving spir­it of self-deter­mi­na­tion. Our myth is the sto­ry of the jour­ney of the indi­vid­ual to dis­cov­er and con­nect to their root ener­gies, to be cen­tered upon one’s true self, and so be empow­ered to go forth and ful­fill his or her des­tiny. The spir­it of rugged indi­vid­u­al­ism has been giv­en form in our idyl­lic imagery of “the pio­neer”, of “the inven­tor”, of the “per­son of con­science”, which is ground­ed in our fun­da­men­tal belief that one per­son can (and does) make a dif­fer­ence. These and many oth­er images are at the core of every Amer­i­can’s belief in the essen­tial worth of the individual.

Yet, at the same time, with our Moon in Aquar­ius (and so the ruler of our Venus), we have had to acknowl­edge that an indi­vid­ual can­not find them­selves, they can­not be ful­filled, they can­not be “free” to do what­ev­er they wish, because an indi­vid­ual can­not have a life of mean­ing and pur­pose with­out sig­nif­i­cant asso­ci­a­tions with oth­er indi­vid­u­als. Here, in Amer­i­ca, we came togeth­er, as our founders stat­ed in the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, and freely chose to cre­ate a new soci­ety and in order to do so “… we mutu­al­ly pledge to each oth­er our lives, our for­tunes and our sacred honor.”

Venus, Rela­tion­ship and Our Sac­ri­fice
We are formed in and find our mean­ings through what we share with one anoth­er. We are not so dif­fer­ent from one anoth­er, real­ly. Our needs and wants find expres­sion in cer­tain forms because of the cul­ture and sub-cul­tures we find our­selves in. The devel­op­ment of our “unique” self is only pos­si­ble because of our well-matched capac­i­ty to sac­ri­fice for one anoth­er. This is the core of the Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence of val­ue: that to be one­self and be free is found­ed upon a love of one anoth­er, that we pledge our alle­giance to one anoth­er, and so we are will­ing to sac­ri­fice for one another.

The word sac­ri­fice means lit­er­al­ly “to make sacred”. Sac­ri­fice is the key to love and self-ful­fill­ment. We make an offer­ing; we give up some­thing in order to achieve some­thing. We seek to become bet­ter than we were before. To sup­port one anoth­er in our own indi­vid­ual strug­gle to become what we wish to become, we must come togeth­er and sac­ri­fice to one anoth­er. We affirm our indi­vid­ual worth in our union which is based upon our shared val­ues. We affirm, strength­en and expand these core val­ues as we give up our attach­ment to less­er things.

Uranus and Our Sac­ri­fice Now
This has always been the chal­lenge of a cre­at­ing a “free” soci­ety. To ful­fill our­selves we must sac­ri­fice for one anoth­er. Uranus Squar­ing our Venus (and Oba­ma’s) is remind­ing us that we must face our chal­lenges now in a spir­it of mutu­al under­stand­ing; and that requires the sac­ri­fice of our less­er alle­giances and our less­er val­ues. We need to be remind­ed, reaf­firm and make a real sac­ri­fice for our core val­ues that have bound us, formed us and guid­ed us. We need to restate our under­stand­ing of these core val­ues so that we are clear as to what it is that we stand upon with one another.

We need lead­ers who artic­u­late the truth that every one of us must sac­ri­fice if we are to meet the chal­lenges that lie ahead. For Oba­ma, for the lead­ers in Con­gress, for the lead­ers in the many agen­cies and insti­tu­tions of our gov­ern­ment, for busi­ness and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, and for each and every one of us who seek to under­stand, inspire and guide us through this time, we all must free our­selves from our old reac­tive val­u­a­tions and refresh our expe­ri­ence of what is of most val­ue between us.

Oba­ma’s Sac­ri­fice
Oba­ma’s chal­lenge and oppor­tu­ni­ty is to be the leader who sets the exam­ple of what we need to become now. He will have to show his will­ing­ness to sac­ri­fice some of his val­ues in order to dis­play courage and lead­er­ship. He must call each of us to those sac­ri­fices that will lead to a “new world”.

As it has been said before, “Beat­en paths are for beat­en men”. We need pathfind­ers now, we need lead­ers who have courage and chal­lenge us to rise above our dif­fer­ences and sac­ri­fice for one anoth­er… because we are one anoth­er. Uranus to Venus says renew your love for one anoth­er, because you will need one anoth­er if you are to meet the chal­lenge of your destiny.

The forces that are lin­ing up in the next sev­er­al years rival those at our found­ing over 200 years ago. We are at the end of age (which also means we are at the dawn of a new age). We must allow our­selves to be filled with the spir­it of under­stand­ing, to be inspired now to choose to turn to one anoth­er, again, and pledge “our lives, our for­tunes and our sacred honor”.