The USA

In my three pre­vi­ous post­ings we exam­ined the near past, present and future of what are known as “Tran­sits to Tran­sits”, the Astro­log­i­cal Ener­gy-Forms that are Uni­ver­sal and res­onate for one and for all. Now we will turn our atten­tion to spe­cif­ic charts, and the con­di­tions artic­u­lat­ed there by what are known as “Tran­sits to Natal”. Like last year, I will first take into con­sid­er­a­tion the chart of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca; in the next post­ing, I will use the same method­ol­o­gy to look at the con­di­tions in Don­ald Trump’s chart.

In 2017 the USA was under the influ­ence of Uranus Squar­ing Plu­to, which posed the chal­lenge of hold­ing togeth­er in an inte­gral, mutu­al­ly sup­port­ive way the prin­ci­ple of Freer Minds (Uranus) and Cen­tered Wills (Plu­to). Giv­en the close oppo­si­tion of the USA Mer­cury to Plu­to, this extend­ed into a two-year theme from 2016 through 2017. We expe­ri­enced an anx­i­ety-filled and exhaust­ing bat­tle over thoughts/truths and the vio­la­tions (tres­pass­ing) of Sacred Space that had been at play through 2016, and con­tin­ued through 2017.

For 2018, there are two sig­nif­i­cant tran­sits to the chart of the USA: 1) Sat­urn mov­ing into Capri­corn will oppose both the USA Venus and Jupiter; and 2) Nep­tune will align with the USA Sat­urn in a man­ner not seen since 1854–55.

Sat­urn in Capricorn
His­tor­i­cal­ly, the move­ment of Sat­urn into Capri­corn, which is the Sign oppo­site to the USA Sun in Can­cer, has seemed to elic­it chal­lenges and dif­fi­cul­ties. The three pre­vi­ous peri­ods were 1988–1991, 1959–1962 and 1929–32. In each of these peri­ods there were mar­ket dis­rup­tions which led to reces­sions (and, of course, to the Great Depres­sion), and which also brought about sig­nif­i­cant shifts in the bal­ance of polit­i­cal pow­er, (1992, Bill Clin­ton won with, “It’s the econ­o­my, stu­pid!”, as the excess­es of the Rea­gan years caught up with Bush the elder; 1960, JFK defeat­ed Nixon as the lat­er peri­od after the Kore­an War and the Pres­i­den­cy of Eisen­how­er brought on a reces­sion; and 1932, FDR came to pow­er with his New Deal after Her­bert Hoover’s pro­grams failed to alle­vi­ate the ago­nies of the Great Depression).

While no tran­sit will repeat exact­ly as it was, (as every oth­er plan­et and plan­e­tary pat­terns have moved into new posi­tions), there are cer­tain­ly res­o­nances and rhymes from one pas­sage to anoth­er. This tran­sit of Sat­urn over Jupiter and Venus, (the Greater and Less­er Benefics in Astrol­o­gy), and then over the Sun in 2019, will most like­ly lead to sim­i­lar chal­lenges to what was encoun­tered in these pre­vi­ous peri­ods. We may expect to expe­ri­ence a peri­od of eco­nom­ic chal­lenges lead­ing to polit­i­cal re-align­ments just like we have before.

Nep­tune Incon­junct Saturn
The oth­er major plan­e­tary aspect for the USA in 2018 is brought about by the Plan­et Nep­tune mov­ing through Pisces, form­ing an Incon­junct (150° aspect) to Sat­urn in the USA chart. Giv­en the orbit of Nep­tune is about 164 years, this exact aspect has only occurred once before, in 1854–55.

Sat­urn in Libra, and in the USA 10^th House is said to be emblem­at­ic of our Foun­da­tion­al Prin­ci­ple, which is that the USA is a coun­try formed by a covenant of equals. We agreed in break­ing from a King­dom to form a “self-gov­ern­ment”. To do so our prin­ci­ples, pat­terns and rules of inter­re­la­tion­ship would be inscribed and pro­tect­ed by Law, (in the USA, the Law would be King). Our abid­ing prin­ci­ple would always be that we are all equal to one anoth­er, and no one is above the Law.

But our very foun­da­tion­al doc­u­ment, the Con­sti­tu­tion, which is based upon and for­mu­lat­ed into the most cher­ished ideals, the long-hard efforts of human spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing, also encod­ed some of the most per­ni­cious, vile and anti-spir­i­tu­al beliefs and legal prin­ci­ples too. The most hor­ri­ble of these was the legal­iza­tion of slav­ery for a par­tic­u­lar racial type, and for the pur­pos­es of main­tain­ing eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal pow­er for slave-own­ing states, count­ing those slaves as 2/3 of a per­son for pur­pos­es of rep­re­sen­ta­tion for those states.

Dur­ing the pri­or pas­sage of Nep­tune over Sat­urn in 1854–55, the strug­gle over the ques­tion as to whether or not any new­ly admit­ted states would be “slave or free” was bring­ing a spiritual/political cri­sis to a cli­max. The “Kansas-Nebras­ka Act” was passed declar­ing that hence­forth each ter­ri­to­ry form­ing itself into a state would be able to choose whether to be “slave” or “free”. It led to advo­cates of both sides rush­ing in and bat­tling one anoth­er for con­trol, giv­ing us the hor­rors of “bloody Kansas” and vio­lent mili­tia move­ments on both sides (as in John Brown). The polit­i­cal lead­ers of that time could not, would not, bring them­selves to do the only morally/spiritually hon­or­able thing to do, end Slav­ery. This lack of courage to do what spir­it (and his­to­ry) demand­ed became one of the final fail­ures that led inevitably to the Civ­il War that followed.

It is not unex­pect­ed by those who study the great cycles of his­to­ry, but seem­ing­ly for some quite alarm­ing, that the “Orig­i­nal Sin” of Amer­i­ca, Racism, (pri­mar­i­ly as slav­ery for Africans, yet we will nev­er for­get the geno­cide of Native Amer­i­cans, and the series of injus­tices faced by many, many immi­grants, who came with the dream of a bet­ter world only to face the night­mare of being made scape­goats for another’s sin), that this evil that is racism is once again the lead­ing sto­ry of our day. And, we are most painful­ly remind­ed of this every day by the words and deeds of the present occu­pant of the Presidency.

Just as in the 1850’s, we now in Amer­i­ca are being remind­ed that there is a cost to divid­ing our­selves from our spir­i­tu­al moral cen­ter which is fun­da­men­tal­ly found­ed in the Ancient Wis­dom and peren­ni­al teach­ings, whether Spir­i­tu­al, Reli­gious or Philo­soph­i­cal. That fun­da­men­tal truth is this:

That every one of us is a spark of the Divine, equal­ly of and made by love, here to be lov­ing and loved no mat­ter what. And to the extent that any one of us is denied their human dig­ni­ty and essen­tial val­ue, then not one of us is tru­ly human or free. The objec­ti­fi­ca­tion and dimin­ish­ment of any one per­son or group dimin­ish­es every sin­gle one of us. 

There is no “free­dom” for any one of us when any oth­er, or so many, are not held as equal in spir­it, equal as human to one and all. This Nep­tune align­ment to Sat­urn once again reminds us that the work of Spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment and Human Awak­en­ing is ever-unfold­ing, and we are at anoth­er crit­i­cal moment for our coun­try, and for our world.

The ques­tion is will we stand for each per­son as our equal, whether by gen­der, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, eth­nic and cul­tur­al her­itage, nation­al ori­gin, or any oth­er indi­vid­u­al­iz­ing determinant…will we abide and fol­low our great mot­to that is on the Seal of the Unit­ed States of America:

That we are made of many, we are beau­ti­ful, diverse radi­ant beings who are here to hold each oth­er as one, so that we are indeed formed as we claim to be…

“Out of Many, we are One”

The laws of Spir­i­tu­al Jus­tice are per­fect; what you give is what you get.

Let us heal our wounds for one anoth­er; let us for­give but nev­er forget.

May we love and be loved; may we sing and laugh and cry together.

Let us look one anoth­er in the eye,

Let us see the truth shin­ing there.

We are one.

Next, The Chart of Don­ald Trump