The USA

The three pre­vi­ous post­ings for the 2019 fore­cast, (past, present and future) con­cerned the uni­ver­sal ener­gy-forms of plan­e­tary con­di­tions, known as “Tran­sits to Tran­sits”, that reveal and inform our jour­ney in mean­ings and mes­sages for one and for all.

Now I will con­sid­er the con­di­tions for an indi­vid­ual enti­ty and the aspects formed to their chart, or what are termed “Tran­sits to Natal” indi­ca­tions. I will begin by con­sid­er­ing the chart of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, and in the next post­ing con­sid­er the chart of the Pres­i­dent, Don­ald Trump.

Nep­tune and Saturn

The prin­ci­pal tran­sit in the chart of the USA in 2018 was Nep­tune to Sat­urn (an incon­junct aspect or 150°). This tran­sit was exact from 2017 into ear­ly 2019, (although we should always look at all these out­er plan­e­tary align­ments as peri­ods of time, as process­es that build in over sev­er­al years lead­ing to these more exact peri­ods of culmination).

This tran­sit involved the chal­lenge that any cul­ture will face (again and again), between its present-day struc­tures of Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Soci­ety (Sat­urn) and the pres­sure to incor­po­rate ever more Spir­i­tu­al Truths into that struc­ture (Nep­tune). This was the same align­ment for the USA that occurred in the mid 1850’s. That peri­od was char­ac­ter­ized by the strug­gle over the very nature of the USA, of what of kind of econ­o­my, cul­ture and spir­i­tu­al char­ac­ter the USA would have with regards for the prin­ci­pal of human equal­i­ty (as is affirmed in our sacred com­pact, The Con­sti­tu­tion), or turn against the tide of his­to­ry and human rights and con­sid­er some as less deserv­ing, in effect treat­ing some as objects (i.e. slavery).

There cer­tain­ly are major echoes of that strug­gle in our cur­rent peri­od, with the issue of how we view the true his­to­ry ver­sus the lega­cy (memo­ri­als) of the Con­fed­er­a­cy, how we treat var­i­ous groups with­in our soci­ety, (Minori­ties, LGBT, Immi­gra­tion, Refugees), the issue of vot­ing rights and rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and the con­tin­u­ing shad­ows formed by echoes of racism and the vir­tu­al geno­cide of the Native population.

Though this aspect will fade now, the echoes it stirred and the present-day divi­sions it high­light­ed will con­tin­ue to be one of the prin­ci­pal chal­lenges the USA will face for many years to come, as we will and must con­tin­u­al­ly strive to final­ly heal these divides between our dear­est ideals and our less than per­fect union.

Sat­urn in Capricorn

The oth­er major theme of 2018 will per­sist in a mod­u­lat­ed form through 2019, as Sat­urn mov­ing through Capri­corn con­tin­ues to make sig­nif­i­cant align­ments in the USA chart. The tran­sits in 2018 were to Venus and Jupiter, and 2019 begins with Sat­urn Oppo­site to the USA Sun. Then through­out 2019 Sat­urn will Square the USA Sat­urn. As I not­ed last year, this par­tic­u­lar series of align­ments of Sat­urn has his­tor­i­cal­ly been asso­ci­at­ed with eco­nom­ic, and then socio-polit­i­cal dis­rup­tions for the USA, (in 1988–1991, 1959–1962 and 1929–32), where each time not only did strong eco­nom­ic challenges/disruptions occur, but these also trig­gered social and polit­i­cal upheavals.

Steer­ing through such chop­py eco­nom­ic waters, one would hope to have well-found­ed trust in a strong, steady leader and staff to help us avoid the worst eco­nom­ic out­comes. We can only hope that by some for­tune of hap­pen­stance we will get through with­out too much harm, because most would agree that this neces­si­tat­ed form of lead­er­ship is sore­ly lack­ing now.

 

Plu­to and Mer­cury – A Reckoning

Build­ing in dur­ing 2019 and becom­ing ful­ly man­i­fest in 2020 is a rather pow­er­ful align­ment of Plu­to going over the USA Mer­cury. (I men­tioned this in my radio show this past week (Jan­u­ary 19^th) and will dis­cuss it in more depth for the next show on Feb­ru­ary 2^nd, and I will also con­sid­er Don­ald Trump’s chart and transits). 

This is a very pow­er­ful tran­sit gen­er­al­ly, but even more so as the USA has a Mer­cury Plu­to oppo­si­tion in its natal chart, (Mer­cury is at around 24° of Can­cer and Plu­to around 27° of Capri­corn). This two-year tran­sit will high­light a fun­da­men­tal con­di­tion that has great­ly influ­enced the char­ac­ter of the USA, and we may be able to antic­i­pate by the last two align­ments of Plu­to to the USA Mer­cury what this might mean for us now.

The two pre­vi­ous tran­sits of Plu­to to the USA Mer­cury (and to Plu­to) were 1981–83 and 1933–37. Those two peri­ods mark per­haps the two most sig­nif­i­cant shifts in mod­ern eco­nom­ic poli­cies for the Unit­ed States that led to two very dif­fer­ent types of eco­nom­ic conditions.

Dur­ing the ear­li­er peri­od, when the coun­try (and world) grap­pled with “The Great Depres­sion” the USA was on the “razor’s edge”, much like the rest of the world, between two paths of either Fas­cism or Social­ism. But the USA found anoth­er way with FDR’s New Deal, and oth­er polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic adjust­ments, which cre­at­ed a sus­tain­able path of growth for the next sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions (late 1940’s through the 70’s). Inte­gral to the suc­cess of this path was that the remark­able rise in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and wealth was more even­ly dis­trib­uted among the var­i­ous stra­ta of the country.

The 1981–83 peri­od was marked by the so-called “Rea­gan Rev­o­lu­tion”, which promised that by cut­ting tax­es dra­mat­i­cal­ly, espe­cial­ly the top mar­gin­al tax rates, the result­ing redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth would cre­ate more growth for one and all. How­ev­er, from the ear­ly 1980’s onward the share of the USA’s pro­duc­tive growth ben­e­fits sharply skewed to the upper­most per­centiles of the pop­u­la­tion. The mid­dle- and low­er-income groups began to steadi­ly fall behind in the degree to which they share and enjoy the ben­e­fits of the growth of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and wealth.

More and more peo­ple found they had to work hard­er and hard­er, as they received less and less. Oth­er fac­tors also con­tributed to this eco­nom­ic shift away from the more or less equal shar­ing of Amer­i­can pros­per­i­ty of the pre­vi­ous 40 years, (the move from an indus­tri­al to a ser­vice econ­o­my, increas­ing automa­tion, trade deals with­out enough pro­tec­tion or mech­a­nisms to help affect­ed work­ers, the shift to a stock mar­ket dri­ven by the short-term prof­its for invest­ment banks (the “tail wag­ging the dog”) as rais­ing cap­i­tal became an end unto itself rather than for pro­duc­tive and long-term invest­ment, etc.). But it was the change in the mar­gin­al rates of tax­a­tion which dra­mat­i­cal­ly shift­ed the dis­tri­b­u­tion of how equi­tably the dif­fer­ent sec­tors and stra­ta of Amer­i­ca ben­e­fit­ed in the last 40 years.

What hap­pened is that the promise of Amer­i­ca, “of life, lib­er­ty and the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness”, began to fade for more and more. This was brought to bear bru­tal­ly in the sec­ond “Great Reces­sion of 2008” where­in mil­lions of Amer­i­cans saw their dream of a brighter future for their chil­dren dis­solve into bank­rupt­cy, fore­clo­sures, bit­ter­ness, fear and anger.

To illus­trate how this shared dis­tri­b­u­tion of growth was bro­ken and cre­at­ed a widen­ing gap in income gains, here is a graph of the shift in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of income gains for the USA from the late 1940’s through 2017:

And this graph shows the skew­ing of the con­cen­tra­tion of US Income for the 1%, which reached its high­est point in 1929, and is now (omi­nous­ly) approach­ing that same degree now, (just as it did in 2008):

Val­ue of a Nation

The Pluto/Mercury oppo­si­tion in the USA chart is from the 2^nd House to the 8^th House. The 2^nd House in the chart of a Nation is said to con­cern the “Wealth” of that nation and many would hold that means the tax rev­enue, stocks, bonds, shares, banks, exchanges, trade and com­merce, nation­al export and cur­ren­cy. It is the gen­er­al “wealth and pros­per­i­ty” of the peo­ple of that nation.

For me, though I agree with much of that on some lev­el, I pre­fer to focus upon the root or true source of val­ue by start­ing from a spir­i­tu­al approach. The 2^nd house will always rule “val­ues” in any chart, and in this case, it rules the “Val­ues of a Nation”. The ques­tion then remains, how do we know and mea­sure (or have a scale of mea­sure­ment) for the hier­ar­chy and types of val­ue in an entire nation?

Spir­i­tu­al­ly speak­ing, the Land and Water, the For­est and the Fields, the entire­ty of what is called “nat­ur­al resources” can cer­tain­ly be under­stood by any cul­ture to have “val­ue”. But the under­stand­ing and rela­tion­ship with that is far dif­fer­ent for a trib­al or hunter-gath­er­er cul­ture ver­sus an agrar­i­an cul­ture, or some oth­er eco­nom­ic-cul­tur­al type.

By stick­ing with the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion, “what is the root source of val­ue for any Nation?”, (or any unit of human soci­ety), I would always start with the premise that our truest mea­sure of val­ue is and must be cen­tered upon what forms the peo­ple of that nation. Yes, it is true that the 2^nd house also con­cerns the phys­i­cal val­ue of a geo­graph­ic space, but what will dis­tin­guish a Nation more than any­thing is the val­ue formed by and through the peo­ple of that land. Equal­ly, and even more impor­tant­ly, any soci­ety will be mea­sured spir­i­tu­al­ly by how it treats or val­ues those humans, and indeed how much it holds to the truth that all of life is sacred.

The Chal­lenge

Con­sid­er­ing this upcom­ing pas­sage of Plu­to over Mer­cury (and then the Plu­to return in 2022), what we are wit­ness­ing is anoth­er crit­i­cal moment where the very nature of our soci­ety is at stake. The ris­ing stress­es and schisms in our cul­ture, soci­ety and pol­i­tics are at the root a strug­gle over how we under­stand the nature of our core val­ues as a nation.

We face a time much like of the 1930’s, and the USA must once again address this most fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: How can we heal the divide that has formed between our var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties? How can we hold to our promise to be “A New Order for the Cen­turies”, (“Novus Ordo Seclo­rum”)? How can we restore our com­mon pur­pose and live by the love, respect and val­ue that we must have for one another?

We can if we remem­ber that our very well-being, “Our Hap­pi­ness”, depends upon one anoth­er. We should remain true to our found­ing doc­u­ment, our Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, that “…we mutu­al­ly pledge to each oth­er our Lives, our For­tunes, and our sacred Hon­or”. For it is most cer­tain­ly true that none of us can be tru­ly hap­py if we do not strive to make it pos­si­ble for each per­son in our coun­try to achieve their Self-Fulfillment.

Our indi­vid­ual self-ful­fill­ment depends upon one anoth­er. We must restore our com­mon pur­pose to help one anoth­er, for we have come togeth­er, as the most vibrant and diverse mix­ing of peo­ples and cul­tures guid­ed by the fun­da­men­tal Spir­i­tu­al Truth that we are all “ones of the One”.

Our pledge to one anoth­er is reaf­firmed in our mot­to, and togeth­er they will always point the way and hold us to our path. That mot­to, “Out of Many, One”, (“E Pluribus Unum”), reaf­firms that our very diver­si­ty is our true val­ue and strength.

Yes, we are the future; we are a peo­ple of all peo­ples, cul­tures, creeds and faiths.

Out of Many, we are One.

Next, The Chart of Don­ald Trump