I thought it might be help­ful to those who may want this, or may not have the time to lis­ten to the radio pod­cast of my show on Sat­ur­day August 19^th. Here is a tran­script of the show:

The Meaning of America and the Great Eclipse of August 21, 2017

Intro

Today we are going to con­sid­er the Eclipse that is hap­pen­ing on Mon­day August 21^st, and what Spiritual/Astrological mes­sages, mean­ings and insights this event offers for you, this coun­try and the larg­er world.

Each of us on a jour­ney of dis­cov­ery and awak­en­ing, and many more souls have moved clos­er to the Greater Aware­ness that awaits one and all. From the begin­ning of time, the Spir­it with­in the human heart has stirred all of us to wake up and to real­ize that we are the ones mak­ing things hap­pen. That it is why edu­ca­tion and crit­i­cal think­ing, phi­los­o­phy and sci­ence, and meta­physics and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty have been essen­tial to this jour­ney of Spir­it. At times, these Ways of Know­ing have flow­ered, and guid­ed civ­i­liza­tions and peo­ples for many years. We can look to and be inspired by the great teach­ers and teach­ings in the past, formed into the greater and less­er mys­tery schools of Egypt and Greece and Rome, and the Gnos­tic teach­ings in the ear­ly Chris­t­ian era where they were embraced and then sup­pressed. Those eso­teric teach­ings con­tin­ued in the work of the Alchemists, Rosi­cru­cians and Masons. This Ancient Wis­dom, what is known as the Peren­ni­al Teach­ings, con­tin­ue to be passed down unbro­ken from beyond the mists of time, through Antiq­ui­ty until our (so-called) mod­ern period.

These Uni­ver­sal Teach­ings have inspired and guid­ed and remind­ed humans what we are real­ly here for. We are not here to amass wealth, or pow­er, or fame, and though we are cer­tain­ly in a mor­tal world and we need a home, cloth­ing food and many oth­er things to exist here, those things are not our aim, or goal or pur­pose here. At the end of the day, all we take with us, from life to life, are the lessons we have learned in how to be a bet­ter human. Our trea­sure is mea­sured by how we treat our plan­et and oth­er life-forms, and most espe­cial­ly by the love we have shown to one anoth­er. This is the whole point of life. We are here on this love­ly Earth, sur­round­ed by beau­ty, to become ful­ly self-aware, lov­ing and cen­tered co-cre­ators of creation.

This Ancient Wis­dom is there to remind us and help us, that we, and all of life, are on this jour­ney of self-awak­en­ing. And, since we are all here now, we quite nat­u­ral­ly think and feel that “this” is the crit­i­cal moment, (and it is of course for us). And cer­tain­ly, from look­ing around us there are many signs that speak to this feel­ing that we in are in a time of great import. But you can be sure, that through­out human his­to­ry, peo­ples in their time felt as we do now, and right­ly too. At any moment, a soul can “wake up”, and a “Star” is born in the heav­ens so to speak.

So, there is no time to waste, but we also have plen­ty of time too, because we have all being doing this for a very long time indeed.

But cer­tain­ly, we would agree that Spir­i­tu­al­ly, Envi­ron­men­tal­ly, Eco­nom­i­cal­ly, as we wit­ness these phe­nom­e­na and forces com­ing togeth­er (or crash­ing togeth­er), we would agree and say “Wow, this seems like a pret­ty big time indeed”, and we feel a greater urgency to get it right, and to steer our lives upon a more pro­duc­tive, lov­ing and inte­grat­ed way forward.

What is an Eclipse?

Two times a year, rough­ly six months apart, we have a beau­ti­ful align­ment of the Sun, Moon and Earth form­ing the Lunar and Solar Eclipses, which quite won­der­ful­ly show how we are part of an inter­re­lat­ed “Dance of the Plan­ets”, which we know as our Solar Sys­tem. At times, their orbits and planes of motion inter­sect one anoth­er, so that the Sun, plan­ets and Moons pass before one anoth­er. Here on Earth these Solar/Lunar/Earth align­ments, what is so extra­or­di­nary and mys­te­ri­ous to many, is that often dur­ing a Solar Eclipse, with the pas­sage of the Moon across the face of the Sun, that it will do it so per­fect­ly that it cov­ers the Sun so that only the plas­ma of the Sun’s coro­na is vis­i­ble to us. If the Moon were slight­ly larg­er or small­er, or a lit­tle fur­ther away or clos­er, we would not have this dra­mat­ic show! How did this hap­pen, why is this so?

We under­stand from the Ancient Wis­dom that every­thing is “con­scious”, that Spir­it which is Life is ever-present through all the hier­ar­chies of cre­ation, that every­thing from the most semi-con­scious forms of mate­ri­al­i­ty to the most con­scious­ly evolved beings on our plan­et to the most sub­lime forms beyond our human king­dom, that every­thing is alive and con­scious and con­tains some form of intel­li­gence. So, from these ancient teach­ings and from our intu­ition­al know­ing, we believe because we know in our minds and in our hearts, that there is a Divine Plan and a Divine Intel­li­gence guid­ing every­thing and everyone.

We under­stand because we know that this Uni­verse is a vast hier­ar­chy that is formed, sus­tained and held togeth­er by the One Spir­it, the One Life. That in this vast range of Life-forms and Intel­li­gences, it is said that the human king­dom is right there “in the mid­dle” of this hier­ar­chy, and is under­stood to be a most spe­cial one. We are told, that the Angels long to be us, and Life-forms below us long to human, because we reach in the human king­dom this won­der­ful expe­ri­ence of self-aware­ness, of self-under­stand­ing and there­fore we encounter the great gift and awe­some respon­si­bil­i­ty of “Choice”. We learn, through tri­al and error, step by step, the con­se­quences of our actions, and we learn, hope­ful­ly over time, to choose what is lov­ing, and good for us and for one and all.

But it takes time, it takes an awful­ly long time for humans to do that. There are souls that have reached the end of the Jour­ney, like the Bud­dha, like Krish­na like Jesus, who achieved full aware­ness, what is known as Cos­mic Con­scious­ness. And, there are souls who are just bare­ly wak­ing up now, and every­thing in between. But all of us are on that path, and we are all con­nect­ed, we have and find our com­mon­al­i­ty and com­mon con­nec­tion in the One Spir­it that we exist and abide in, that sur­rounds us, is us, and per­vades the whole Uni­verse. We are that!

The Truth of the Uni­verse is every­thing is One; and the Great Illu­sion is that every­thing is separate.

These pro­found real­iza­tions are also so sim­ple. They can be seen and expe­ri­enced in their com­plex­i­ty too. That out of Noth­ing or Non-Being came the One, and pro­ceed­ing from the One came dual­i­ty, and then trip­lic­i­ties and so on. From there a whole range of of life-forms, of beings and bod­ies came to form all the var­i­ous divi­sions, ener­gy-forms, and the dimen­sions of the Hier­ar­chy that is Cre­ation, and this is infi­nite­ly com­plex and very chal­leng­ing to tru­ly comprehend.

But I think we should also keep it sim­ple, and it is impor­tant that peo­ple look at all the uni­ver­sal teach­ings, from var­i­ous civ­i­liza­tions and cul­tures, whether in the Vedas, or in Bud­dhism or Chris­tian­i­ty, to look at all these teach­ings in their eso­teric or Heart teach­ing-form, in their essen­tial or root truths, and you will find that they all say the same thing! Because they are all observ­ing the same thing, you and I, human­i­ty, and then the world around us, we come to see that every­thing is part of this great, beau­ti­ful Jour­ney of Life and Con­scious­ness and that we all abide in the One Spirit.

What mes­sages and guid­ance might we obtain from this Eclipse sweep­ing across Amer­i­ca on Mon­day? Every phe­nom­e­nal expe­ri­ence is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for us to respond to with our present lev­el of under­stand­ing. We encounter the world and these ener­gies and we respond to it in that moment. When larg­er phe­nom­e­na like this hap­pen, when in the mid­dle of the day the sun “dis­ap­pears”, peo­ple notice this! In past times they react­ed often with great fear and appre­hen­sion, and they would ascribe to these phe­nom­e­na a neg­a­tive char­ac­ter, and bad things would prob­a­bly hap­pen as a consequence.

But the Uni­verse isn’t full of “neg­a­tive” energies…it is just Ener­gy. If we under­stand what it is about, what it is for, we are meant to use that expe­ri­ence and that ener­gy in a most pos­i­tive and beau­ti­ful and build­ing way.

But for those who remain more unaware or more “fear-based” or deny our con­nec­tions to one anoth­er they may spin off of that very same ener­gy and see it as a dark, fore­bod­ing and neg­a­tive thing. And it becomes neg­a­tive for them. Again, we make our real­i­ty by how we under­stand our­selves and the uni­verse around us.

There is cer­tain­ly great anx­i­ety and fear in the world and the USA at this time. As I have been not­ing in many forums, we are mov­ing through an end of an age here from 2008 through 2024. There has been great break­downs of the insti­tu­tion­al struc­tures of cul­ture and civ­i­liza­tion, from the high­est on down to the local lev­els of soci­ety. And when peo­ple become con­fused and uncer­tain, they become anx­ious and they become fear­ful. They need to find some­thing to hold to, to believe in to get them through this time of dis­rup­tion. Some will return to their roots, to tra­di­tions and cul­ture that are affirm­ing and bind­ing and healthy and loving.

And some may turn to an ide­ol­o­gy or belief sys­tem that is about oth­er­ness, see­ing them­selves as we are this and they are that, and so they make the oth­er as the object and source of their anx­i­ety and fear and suf­fer­ing. Their solu­tion may come down to the putting oth­ers down so as to lift them­selves up, mak­ing scape­goats of those not like them.

Now this hap­pens repeat­ed­ly through­out his­to­ry, of course. But we are see­ing and expe­ri­enc­ing it more imme­di­ate­ly and vis­i­bly now giv­en our means of media and world-wide com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and so we are shar­ing these expe­ri­ences togeth­er in real time. Peo­ple are being high­ly stim­u­lat­ed by local and world events like nev­er before. And, again, it is our chance, chal­lenge and oppor­tu­ni­ty for each of us to choose how I see this, and how I should respond to this.

So eclipses are these moments when the ener­gies com­ing from the Sun, the source of Light and Love for our sys­tem, these ener­gies are altered or mod­u­lat­ed by this align­ing of Sun, Moon and Earth. In the Solar Eclipse that ener­gy is falling on the Moon, then in a way “burn­ing through the Moon” and com­ing to the Earth via that mod­u­la­tion. The Moon’s shad­ow falls upon the Earth and dark­ness descends dur­ing the day. By doing this it stirs up the ener­gies that are con­nect­ed with that sign which just hap­pens to be Leo for this Eclipse.

The Mean­ing of America

But we need to con­sid­er what this might mean for us here in Amer­i­ca. What is strik­ing about this eclipse is that it is falling at the very end of Leo, sweep­ing across the USA from the North­west to the South­east, right across the whole of the coun­try. But in the Chart of the USA the Eclipse lands exact­ly oppo­site to the Moon in Aquar­ius. What might this mean?

In a nation’s chart, the Moon rules the peo­ple of that land, the feel­ings of the peo­ple and of a nation. So the Moon real­ly holds the notion of what we under­stand or believe our­selves to be as Amer­i­cans, of what mean by being an American.

That is why I believe that for us this eclipse is remind­ing us about “The Mean­ing of Amer­i­ca”. But to do that we need to under­stand “where” did Amer­i­ca come from. Every­thing comes from some­thing, and if you wish to know where you are going and why, you need to under­stand where you came from.

What many peo­ple know, but many more peo­ple do not know, is that our rev­o­lu­tion­ary war in the 1700’s was pre­ced­ed in Eng­land by the Great Civ­il War they had from the 1640’s to the 1680’s. It was their “rev­o­lu­tion”, and it was bloody, and dis­rup­tive and trau­mat­ic. Roy­al­ist and Par­lia­men­tary forces bat­tled one anoth­er. The King was cap­tured, he was impris­oned, and they even­tu­al­ly chopped off his head! Par­lia­ment ruled instead of the King, but it devolved and descend­ed into a rule by dic­ta­tor­ship by a man named Oliv­er Cromwell. Even­tu­al­ly, the monar­chy was restored but with much stronger con­trols and over­sight by parliament.

From that great tur­moil, from that world turned lit­er­al­ly for them upside down, all the found­ing fathers of Amer­i­ca come out of that expe­ri­ence, and all the spir­i­tu­al and intel­lec­tu­al strug­gles over what that meant, over what is gov­ern­ment, and how should it be formed, because they lit­er­al­ly lived in a time of anar­chy and then the restor­ing of gov­ern­ment, they thought through these ques­tions. This was dur­ing the peri­od known as “The Enlight­en­ment”, from the late 1600’s into the ear­ly 1800’s. There were many great thinkers and philoso­phers of that time, who looked back to the great teach­ings of the ages, back to Greece and Rome, as well as to the mys­ti­cal and eso­teric teach­ings for guid­ance like in the order of the Masons.

The Dec­la­ra­tion of Independence

The prin­ci­ple author of our Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, Thomas Jef­fer­son, looked to the writ­ings of the polit­i­cal philoso­pher John Locke (1632–1704) for guid­ance and inspi­ra­tion. When we look to the words, phras­es and con­cepts he chose as he wrote our dec­la­ra­tion, we need to know that he chose his words very care­ful­ly. If we want to know how we began, and to know who we real­ly are, we need to under­stand what these famil­iar but mis­un­der­stood words real­ly mean if we are to under­stand the “Mean­ing of America.”

The Dec­la­ra­tion is our Found­ing Doc­u­ment, and when we declared our sep­a­ra­tion from the monar­chy, from “our” king, from that polit­i­cal enti­ty, and we decid­ed that we would “gov­ern our­selves”, to form a gov­ern­ment of “self-gov­ern­ment”. Well, that was tru­ly “rev­o­lu­tion­ary”. Up until this time in his­to­ry, the hier­ar­chies of polit­i­cal orders were based on Trib­al­ism, Ances­try, Eth­nic­i­ty or of a Place, and the ruler­ship was deter­mined most­ly by Hered­i­ty, a line of suc­ces­sion and by con­quest. But here, we would come togeth­er declar­ing our­selves to be behold­en to no prince or king or emper­or, that we would form a sacred com­pact with anoth­er and we agreed to pledge our­selves to all be sub­ject to this con­tract, bound to one anoth­er by our self-deter­mined laws. In Amer­i­ca, the Law would be King.

So, the most crit­i­cal and well-known phrase in our Dec­la­ra­tion reads like this:

“We hold these truths to be self-evi­dent, that all men are cre­at­ed equal, that they are endowed by their Cre­ator with cer­tain unalien­able Rights, that among these are Life, Lib­er­ty and the pur­suit of Happiness.”

When we hear those words, we might sim­ply think that “Life” means life, to have a liv­ing, and we might think that “Lib­er­ty” means hav­ing free­dom and own­ing prop­er­ty, and “Hap­pi­ness”, means just being hap­py. But this is not what those words meant and are meant to mean. When we look at Life, or Lib­er­ty and espe­cial­ly that phrase the “pur­suit of Hap­pi­ness”, what do they real­ly mean?

Life in this con­text does not mean to be alive. Since all of Cre­ation is Mind, and every­thing has some mea­sure of intel­li­gence asso­ci­at­ed with it, for Jef­fer­son know­ing this, Life meant that we need to have the right to think freely, to devel­op our con­scious­ness and aware­ness to grow spir­i­tu­al­ly. And Lib­er­ty is about the Will, about our exer­cise of our Free Wills. And yet, by that we must equal­ly acknowl­edge and respect the Wills of oth­ers, because each of us is a spark of the divine, each of us exists in our sacred space, and we can only exer­cise our will to the extent we do not deny the sacred space of another.

The True Mean­ing of “Hap­pi­ness”

But the most curi­ous phrase, the one peo­ple should con­sid­er care­ful­ly as to what does it mean, is this “Pur­suit of Hap­pi­ness”. Well the true mean­ing or deriva­tion of hap­pi­ness comes from the Ancient Teach­ings or Wis­dom, affirmed and restat­ed in Greek Phi­los­o­phy by Aris­to­tle, and Locke and Jef­fer­son refer back to this ancient under­stand­ing or mean­ing or def­i­n­i­tion of hap­pi­ness. The word in Greek that defines this notion of hap­pi­ness is Eudai­mo­nia.

That word trans­lates lit­er­al­ly as “Union with Good Spir­it”, or what we might call “Human Flour­ish­ing”, or most tru­ly we would say “Human Self-Ful­fill­ment”. What Jef­fer­son was say­ing is not that peo­ple should be allowed to be hap­py, to just be hap­py or cheer­ful or some­thing like this. He was say­ing this a spir­i­tu­al mat­ter, and what he was writ­ing about and what we are doing here comes from the sto­ry of Human­i­ty, grow­ing and devel­op­ing and becom­ing ever more self-aware and self-deter­mined. What we are try­ing to do here, what the true pur­pose and goal of human life is to achieve the Union with one’s High­er Self, to expe­ri­ence the truth with­in by join­ing with what I call the “Beloved”, or the Divine Spark with­in us.

Hap­pi­ness and Self-Fulfillment

What this means for Amer­i­ca, is that the foun­da­tion­al val­ue of our Nation is that we are try­ing to allow and empow­er each per­son to be able to pur­sue their Full Human Poten­tial. In oth­er words, this core prin­ci­ple of our found­ing doc­u­ment, and we broke from the King because he was deny­ing our right to gov­ern our­selves, we could not ful­fill our­selves while being under the rule of a monar­chy, and so we jus­ti­fied our break­ing free so that we could pur­sue our right to Self-Ful­fill­ment. We estab­lished this as our under­stand­ing of the pur­pose of our Ven­ture, that the true pur­pose of rela­tion­ship is that it must serve human Self-Fulfillment.

We have formed our sacred com­pact with one anoth­er, based upon this pledge, that we will ful­fill our poten­tials for and with and through one anoth­er, as we steadi­ly move towards and align our­selves with our true and Divine Nature.

This is what Jef­fer­son meant by the Pur­suit of Hap­pi­ness, Jef­fer­son meant Self-Ful­fill­ment through Spir­i­tu­al Awak­en­ing. Which means every choice we make as indi­vid­u­als or as a soci­ety, must be ground­ed in this sim­ple ques­tion: Will this Action or Activ­i­ty bring us clos­er to uni­ver­sal human self-ful­fill­ment or move us fur­ther away from it. We make good and bad deci­sions every day, all of us do. But to sup­port our own or oth­ers greater self-ful­fill­ment is the true goal and way to Happiness.

This must be our Guid­ing Prin­ci­ple, this true def­i­n­i­tion of Hap­pi­ness must be our bea­con, if we are to be tru­ly hap­py and cre­ate a soci­ety that cel­e­brates and sup­ports the Spir­i­tu­al Ful­fill­ment for one and for all.

What does this eclipse mean for the USA?

In terms of what is hap­pen­ing right now, and look­ing at the chart of the USA which was cre­at­ed when our Dec­la­ra­tion was made pub­lic, to see what this eclipse might mean for us, we find that this eclipse is falling at the very end of Leo and oppo­site to the Moon in our nation­al chart. The Moon rep­re­sents the peo­ple of a coun­try. Because the USA Moon is in Aquar­ius, we have posit­ed that what is most essen­tial and nec­es­sary for us is the need to cre­ate and pre­serve a “space of free­dom” for one and all. This makes per­fect sense giv­en the mean­ing Hap­pi­ness, that our Free­dom is required so that we as self-aware beings may be ful­filled to pur­sue what we have ide­al­ized, which is our true hap­pi­ness or the good that comes through our Self-Ful­fill­ment. We are try­ing to cre­ate ever bet­ter spaces of free­dom so that we may become who we tru­ly are with and through one anoth­er. We are here to lift one anoth­er to greater and greater Self-Fulfillment.

With the Eclipse casting/burning this Shad­ow of the Moon and Leo onto the Earth, it brings to bear even more strong­ly the Les­son of Leo, and the Kar­ma of Leo. Either you are grow­ing and devel­op­ing in the pos­i­tive forms of Leo ener­gy-forms, or the shad­ow side takes over.

The Les­son of Leo

The les­son of Leo as I under­stand it, is learn­ing about the truth that at the core of us is the spark of the Divine. What is found here, in the Heart of Leo, is the uncon­di­tion­al love of the High­er Self for the self, resid­ing in all of us. When you come into con­tact with that, you are filled with true love for your­self, and equal­ly for one anoth­er, because you now know and under­stand that this same Divin­i­ty is in every oth­er too.

You appre­ci­ate your­self as “spe­cial”, but appre­ci­ate every­one else in their spe­cial­ness too. This unique sense of self comes from your Quin­tes­sence, your spe­cial spark of the Divine at the heart of every being. What makes every­one alike yet also dif­fer­ent, is that we are all one with this Divine Cen­ter, yet we are unique instances of this Divine Love.

We all want Respect, we all want to be and to see our­selves Tru­ly, and to real­ize this we have to be true for one anoth­er. Every­one wants to be seen and loved for who they tru­ly are. Hence, we are here to “Shine” for one anoth­er, to love and respect one anoth­er. And by doing this, we lead by exam­ple, we encour­age and inspire oth­ers to bring forth their bet­ter, fin­er natures. This is what it means to be a “Leader”, this is what it means to Love, and this is what leads to true Self-Ful­fill­ment. And we need one anoth­er for this. And this is the Heart and Soul of Leo.

But the Shad­ow Side, and often the shad­ow side can be kicked up or elicit­ed in those who are not ready to take the next step, who have been liv­ing in fear, have not under­stood the true source and nature of love in their life, at all or in this life. What hap­pens to them is that have a fear (and appar­ent real­i­ty) of being unloved, and being dis­re­spect­ed and not being appre­ci­at­ed. So that if they fail to tru­ly see them­selves and love them­selves, when they look for “that look” in the other’s eyes, that sign of love that they are look­ing to see com­ing back to them, they can­not and will not see it, because they can­not see it in themselves.

That per­son then becomes instead Envi­ous, Jeal­ous, and they puff them­selves up and become Brag­garts and Bul­lies. They may try to force respect and belit­tle oth­ers to feel some sort kind of twist­ed self-love and self-impor­tance. They demand it, and they demand loy­al­ty, and def­er­ence, but they show no respect and they have no humil­i­ty. They real­ly do not feel; they only emote. They try to take or buy or steal what they want, and they call that “Love”, but it is not love. It is fear com­ing out of self-loathing, and it ends up destroy­ing that per­son as it harms many around them too.

So, this Eclipse will elic­it these very dif­fer­ent effects depend­ing upon each person’s devel­op­ment. It will stir great and greater love in many peo­ple; but for those who are more bro­ken it may set them off in a more neg­a­tive way, of feel­ing less­er and try­ing to com­pen­sate by putting oth­ers down.

The Great Fixed Star Regulus

What we find also is that this Eclipse is aligned with one of the Great Fixed Stars in Astrol­o­gy, the Star Reg­u­lus which is locat­ed at the end of Leo. This is star is known as the “Watch­er of the North”, and is one of the four stars found at the so-called Four-cor­ners of our por­tion of Space. These Fixed Stars aligned with impor­tant ele­ments in someone’s chart are said to indi­cate or con­fer some great bless­ing or pow­er, but if the les­son of that star is not under­stood, the indi­vid­ual will fall from grace.

Reg­u­lus is said to be the Heart of the Lion, and its mean­ing and mes­sage is linked to sto­ry of a myth­i­cal King of Per­sia, Feridum. He was a pros­per­ous king but lost his king­dom when he engaged in revenge. All these Roy­al Stars promise great poten­tial and suc­cess as long as some par­tic­u­lar human neme­sis is avoid­ed. With Reg­u­lus, the issue is that of “revenge”. If this Star is strong in any chart this temp­ta­tion will be that individual’s test.

So, we might ask our­selves does this Eclipse and Reg­u­lus line up in any par­tic­u­lar chart? It most cer­tain­ly ener­gizes the US Chart, but it is oppo­site to the Moon and there­fore more direct­ed toward that. I would say for us in the USA, we will be expe­ri­enc­ing this greater les­son of Leo remind­ing us that as we focus and cen­ter our Social Con­scious­ness and Con­science (from our Moon in Aquar­ius), that we need to recon­sid­er more tru­ly our com­pact with one anoth­er in our col­lec­tive pur­suit of Life, Lib­er­ty and the Pur­suit of Hap­pi­ness. We need to help one anoth­er to expe­ri­ence a fuller mea­sure of Self-Expres­sion, Cre­ativ­i­ty and Love and Respect (from Leo) as the way in which we may more tru­ly ful­fill our mot­to, “Out of many, One.” The ques­tion will be how do we cre­ate, but to remem­ber to do so in social­ly mean­ing­ful and sig­nif­i­cant ways, and so help one anoth­er to achieve more self-ful­fill­ment indi­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly too.

But what about a par­tic­u­lar person’s chart? When­ev­er we are look­ing at a nation’s chart we will often look at the leader’s chart to gain insight into what is hap­pen­ing too.

Don­ald Trump

I have been writ­ing in the blog, and speak­ing in the radio show about Don­ald Trump’s chart, and I have said that this month of August was going to be one of the most crit­i­cal for him this year. Not only has he just had anoth­er pas­sage of Plu­to over his Jupiter (his test of Will with Truth and Law), but he is also expe­ri­enc­ing Sat­urn going over his Moon twice in this month, (indi­cat­ing that he is at a very low point both emo­tion­al­ly and phys­i­cal­ly). And one of those Sat­urn pass­es over his Moon is exact tomor­row, August 20^th.

But this very eclipse is lin­ing up with his chart too! Trump is born with Leo Ris­ing, and his Mars is in Leo just inside his 12^th house. The Eclipse lands on his Mars and Ascen­dant. The Ascen­dant rules your pres­ence in the world, it is how you meet the world. And the ques­tion would be for any­one, are you being authen­tic or not. And Mars rules desires and actions; it is there to serve your “self” as you assert your­self. But with Mars in his 12^th house Trump prefers to act in the back­ground, in the shad­ows, hid­ing what he is real­ly doing, and con­ceal­ing his real inten­tions. When unde­vel­oped, a per­son with Mars in Leo in the 12^th house is full of fear, but will mask that with bul­ly­ing and brava­do. If he is not care­ful, his own actions will lead to his own self-undo­ing, and ulti­mate­ly lead to his fall from grace or pow­er and even poten­tial­ly face some form of imprisonment.

As astrologers, we would argue that this Eclipse will elic­it this chal­lenge to him and he will have to stand in the Shad­ow and Light of Leo and answer as to whether he is abid­ing in the Truth of Leo or not. More­over, con­sid­er­ing that his Ascen­dant and Mars are aligned with Reg­u­lus, promis­ing great fame and pow­er, the ques­tion will be put to him as to whether he has avoid­ed the per­il of revenge.

Giv­en Trump’s his­to­ry of how he has con­duct­ed him­self in the busi­ness world, and now as a “pub­lic ser­vant”, Kar­ma would seem to be lead­ing him to a reck­on­ing that he has forged for himself.

Unlike oth­ers who have been ele­vat­ed to this office before, it appears that Trump has not been hum­bled by the majesty and respon­si­bil­i­ty of the pres­i­den­cy. He does not under­stand the Leo les­son of Love; nor has he under­stood the les­son of his­to­ry, that the gift of suc­cess will be snatched away if one suc­cumbs to the temp­ta­tion of revenge.

Astrological Observations August 2017

The Great Eclipse, The United States and Donald Trump

The Meaning of America and the Great Eclipse on August 21, 2017

Today we will exam­ine the mean­ing and impact of the Great Eclipse of August 2017 which will sweep across the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca from the North­west to the South­east. The eclipse strong­ly impacts the USA astro­log­i­cal chart, as the eclipse is direct­ly oppo­site the USA Moon. I will explain what this indi­cates in terms of the mean­ing and mes­sage for our coun­try. Briefly, the Moon rules the peo­ple in a nation­al chart, and for the US it is placed in the sign of Aquar­ius. This means that the heart and soul that forms the sense of being a US cit­i­zen is our heart­felt com­mit­ment to the cre­ation and preser­va­tion of our “space of free­dom”. This space of free­dom or self-real­iza­tion is fun­da­men­tal to our pur­suit of “Life, Lib­er­ty and the pur­suit of Happiness”.

We will look at where this prin­ci­ple of Hap­pi­ness comes from, look­ing back to the author of our Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, Thomas Jef­fer­son and the thinkers who inspired him rang­ing from the Ancient Teach­ings, Aris­to­tle, and more recent­ly restat­ed in the Polit­i­cal Philoso­phers of the Enlight­en­ment, specif­i­cal­ly John Locke.

I will then con­sid­er the loca­tion of the Eclipse in the last degrees of Leo, and what that means with regards to its align­ment with one of the Roy­al Fixed Stars, Reg­u­lus. We will con­sid­er what this means for us as it aligns not only with the USA Moon, but this Fixed Star also con­nects to the Mars and Ascen­dant of Don­ald Trump’s chart.

Through­out his­to­ry, eclipses have been expe­ri­enced as por­tends of great chal­lenges and changes; What might we expect to wit­ness in our moment in his­to­ry now?

As before, I will answer your ques­tions dur­ing the show, whether on this sub­ject or some oth­er mat­ter, includ­ing per­son­al ques­tions about your astro­log­i­cal chart. If you do wish to ask a per­son­al ques­tion, please be ready to pro­vide at least your birth date and birth place, and time of your birth if you have that too.

If you wish to sug­gest a sub­ject or top­ic for a future show, please email me as I would be hap­py to hear from you.

Please join me on Sat­ur­day August 19^th at 6 pm as we con­sid­er the mean­ings behind the cur­rent events in our country.

Here is the main link to Astrologer Bill Attride Radio:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/astrologerbillattride

Here is the link to the show on Sat­ur­day August 19^th @ 6 pm EDT:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/astrologerbillattride/2017/08/19/astrologer-bill-attride-radio-show-6-the-great-eclipse-of-2017-usa-and-trump

The phone num­ber to call if you wish to ask a ques­tion dur­ing the live show is: (516) 531‑9638.

I very much look for­ward to shar­ing time with you on Sat­ur­day August 19^th!

Warm regards,

Bill

The Way of Peace

This will be some “August to remem­ber”, what with the Lunar Eclipse of this past Mon­day, the grand Total Solar Eclipse sweep­ing cross­ing the USA from the North­west to the South­east on August 21^st, and today’s turn­ing of Mer­cury or “Her­mes, the mes­sen­ger of the Gods” from August 12^th through Sep­tem­ber 5^th.

Mer­cury turns sta­tion­ary ret­ro­grade in Vir­go at 11 degrees, 38 min­utes. Then ret­ro­grades back into Leo on August 31^st. Mer­cury turns sta­tion­ary direct Sep­tem­ber 5^th, on the very degree of the Solar Eclipse of August 21^st! As always, in the heav­ens and down here too, every­thing (and every­one) is con­nect­ed to one anoth­er, and this cos­mic dance of spir­it is filled with res­o­nances of mean­ing which can guide you upon the path of awakening.

Of course, Mer­cury does not go back­wards at all. Rather it is pass­ing by Earth on its “inside track” orbit around the Sun. But from our van­tage point it appears to stop mov­ing for­ward and loop back­wards for about three weeks, and then move for­ward again against the back­drop of the stars. But what mat­ters for you is what does this mean, what are you sup­posed to do dur­ing this (and any) Mer­cury ret­ro­grade cycle?

The ret­ro­grade of Mer­cury, which occurs usu­al­ly three times a year for three weeks at a time, is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn your atten­tion inwards, to focus your won­der­ful fac­ul­ty of per­cep­tion, analy­sis, dis­cern­ment and rea­son, and to turn this Promethean gift of the gods back upon itself. Mer­cury ret­ro­grade is your oppor­tu­ni­ty to re-con­sid­er/re-exam­ine: “how you per­ceive, what you may know and how you may bet­ter com­mu­ni­cate with one anoth­er”. You are here as human, to make use of your won­der­ful gift of intel­li­gence, so that you may learn to rea­son more tru­ly, and parse the phe­nom­e­nal world “out there” which depends upon form­ing a bet­ter cor­re­spon­dence between these out­ward real­i­ties and your thought-forms “in there” or inside of you.

Over time, you will become more aware that with­in you is a fac­ul­ty, the “watch­er who is watch­ing”, your high­er self or beloved, who will help you to align these inner and out­er worlds, and you will under­stand that they are formed by the same under­ly­ing and uni­fy­ing Ener­gy-Form that you know as Life or Spir­it. You will, as you move towards wis­dom, come to know that the degree to which you will per­ceive the Truth “out there” will be matched by the extent that you come to know your­self too. For as it is said, “As Above, So Below”, and, “All is One and the One is in us all”.

And from this you must remem­ber, that you are made of one anoth­er, that you are inex­tri­ca­bly formed togeth­er by all your expe­ri­ences you have had with one anoth­er. This is one of the great­est illu­sions you must over­come, that your phys­i­cal expe­ri­ence of being sep­a­rate and apart from one anoth­er is ulti­mate­ly an illu­sion. For whomev­er is before you, “is tru­ly of you too”.

And this is most espe­cial­ly true when con­sid­er­ing the devel­op­ment of your Self-aware­ness, which forms your ever-ris­ing expe­ri­ence of Con­scious­ness, which will even­tu­al­ly lead you to the ever­last­ing Place of Peace, which is known as the Greater Under­stand­ing. You grow in aware­ness and under­stand­ing pri­mar­i­ly by inter­act­ing with one anoth­er, by shar­ing your expe­ri­ences, per­cep­tions, insights, expla­na­tions, the­o­ries, knowl­edge and wis­dom with one anoth­er. It is pre­cise­ly this inte­gral matrix of shared Life-Con­scious­ness-Spir­it which makes pos­si­ble your growth.

We are all sto­ry-tellers, shar­ing our expe­ri­ences and insights with one anoth­er, and so we become who we are by being part of one anoth­er, being a part of one another’s sto­ry. We are the cre­ator of our­selves and we are the cre­ators for one anoth­er too, and we could not be who we are with­out one anoth­er. We could not be human at all with­out one anoth­er. We could not be or become with­out being there for one another.

Of course, dur­ing much of the day and days to come, life will go on. And you will inter­act with your world and with one anoth­er in your usu­al or ordi­nary ways of receiv­ing, per­ceiv­ing, ana­lyz­ing, as well as in how you share your impres­sions, ideas and under­stand­ings with the world around you. But do not assume that things are the same…for they are not.

These weath­er pat­terns in the world of mind, (yes, on a fun­da­men­tal lev­el, the whole uni­verse can be con­ceived-expe­ri­enced as var­i­ous lev­els and forms of mind-stuff, some quite lumi­nous and spir­i­tu­al and some ful­ly-formed into dense phys­i­cal real­i­ties, so that the whole of cre­ation is a hier­ar­chy of thought-forms and consciousnesses…the whole uni­verse is Alive, the entire­ty of Cre­ation is Spir­it or Life, and so it is ulti­mate­ly formed as One Mind too); Yes, these winds of the mind have shift­ed here on Earth as Mer­cury turns, and you need to make use of this time­ly gift of the spir­it for you.

Now, as you turn your lamp of per­cep­tion and aware­ness more inward, you are giv­en this time to exam­ine how well your inner map­ping aligns well or not with the out­er real­i­ty, and how well your under­stand­ing aligns with those with whom you jour­ney. For the next three weeks, you need to be even more atten­tive, more adapt­able and most crit­i­cal­ly, even more hum­ble that ever before.

If you are to grow, you must accept that there is far more for you to learn than you have so far, and that you are only begin­ning to under­stand the mean­ing and pur­pose of your jour­ney. For it is through this gate­way of Humil­i­ty and Ser­vice, which is the Vir­go Way, it is by this that you will encounter Spir­i­tu­al Grace, Grat­i­tude and Growth.

By this atten­tive and kind­ly spir­it, you will be more open to let­ting go of what is less­er with­in your mind, and you will there­by ele­vate your own mind and those around you too. For it is by self-reflec­tive refine­ment, and the mutu­al shar­ing of this with one anoth­er, it is by this that you will receive the great­est gift of Spirit.

What is the great­est thing you could ever have? Some would say Wealth; some would say Fame or Pow­er. But those who are wis­er know that none of these can be had or enjoyed with­out the great­est gift and trea­sure of all, Peace of Mind. To be at peace is the great­est trea­sure. But it is not to found “out there” (at least not yet). Peace is won and forged with­in, and then you may be able to extend it around your­self and share it with oth­ers too.

This is what is being offered to you here once more. Anoth­er chance to clear your mind and thought-forms of fear, anx­i­ety and anguish. To remem­ber who and what you tru­ly are, a being of Light and Love. You are always at Peace, in your High­er Self, in the Watch­er who watch­es and waits for you to come home to your Place of Peace and Love and Under­stand­ing. All you need to know is that Peace of Mind is found with­in, in the place of Inte­gral Whole­ness and Heal­ing that is the realm of Vir­go and Mercury.

Mer­cury in ret­ro­grade is always a time of Heal­ing, and there is no bet­ter sign to expe­ri­ence this gift than in sign of Well-Being that is Virgo.

The key to Life is to be at Peace, or as many would say, “To walk in Beauty”:

As I walk, as I walk

The Uni­verse is walk­ing with me

In beau­ty, it walks before me

In beau­ty, it walks behind me

In beau­ty, it walks below me

In beau­ty, it walks above me

Beau­ty is on every side

Sur­round­ed by Beauty

Liv­ing in Beauty

Lov­ing in Beauty

May you walk in Beauty

May you live in Beauty

For all your days

May you be at Peace

Sur­round­ed by Beauty

It is done.

The Gift of Respect, The Way of Love

There are Three Lessons in Fire:

In Aries, you expe­ri­ence the Les­son of Presence.

In Leo, you expe­ri­ence the Les­son of Authenticity.

In Sagit­tar­ius, you expe­ri­ence the Les­son of Understanding.

Today you move from the Lunar Waters of Can­cer into the Solar Fires of Leo. Your expe­ri­ence of Can­cer for the past month, (and tru­ly found in each and every day too, since all of these signs are the ever-present, Twelve-Fold Ener­gy-Forms of the Uni­verse), Can­cer has brought you clos­er to the Root of You, to your essen­tial Essence or “Quin­tes­sence”.

Now, hav­ing gone with­in and felt the truth of your “Self that is the Cen­ter”, you have the urgent and irre­press­ible need to release your­self. Through motion, or E‑motion, you out­ward­ly act in ways to ful­fill your­self. You must move from with­in and go out­wards, you must Per­form, (act through a form of self-real­iza­tion, that is to “Per-Form”). You seek to release and so be your­self by Self-Expres­sion, Cre­ativ­i­ty, Lead­er­ship and Love.

This is the realm that is Leo;
This is the Sign of the Sun; This is the place where you “Shine”!

Some­where in your chart you are Leo, and here you will shine always. It is there that you release your Self (what­ev­er is your Sun Sign) in a man­ner that reveals and cel­e­brates the truth that is in and of you.

You have come clos­er to your true self in Can­cer, as you washed your soul in the waters of life, in your roots of remem­brance. Hav­ing felt this, hav­ing yoked your life to your truer self, then you may bring forth by Leo what is a more lov­ing form of you.

Here in Leo, you are chal­lenged, for it is upon you to choose well: “What stage shall I act upon? What role should I act through? What man­ner of expres­sion should I become?”

All the world is a stage, and it waits for you to be you.

And, if you do choose well, then you will find that you are being a bet­ter you, releas­ing and reveal­ing your­self through ever more authen­tic forms of self-expres­sion; you rise into that truer you…and those who wit­ness this will cheer and applaud and say, “I see you!”

And this is what you need, and it is all you have ever want­ed. To be seen for who and what you are is what will bring a smile. You sim­ply want “to be your­self”; and you need to be loved for this too. You need to be appre­ci­at­ed and respect­ed for being exact­ly who (and what) you are.

That is all you and every­one else wants too. And, this is also the les­son of Leo: that for you to be Authen­tic, for you to be seen in your truth, to be tru­ly for who you are, it is equal­ly true that you must do this for oth­ers too. Respect and Love are not demand­ed or tak­en, they are freely giv­en when you are Authen­tic. That is why you will shine even brighter, ever more tru­ly, when you show this same con­sid­er­a­tion of Respect and Love to those who see you in your truth. You reap what you sow, you are what you give:

“I see you; I see you too!”

When you step into the right role, when you act upon the prop­er stage, you become an inspi­ra­tion for others…you become a Star. Your light, your love, shines forth and is returned a thou­sand-fold by those who love you back. You earn respect because you treat oth­ers with respect. Your shin­ing exam­ple inspires oth­ers to believe and be them­selves too, and the world becomes a lit­tle bet­ter, and the light becomes a lit­tle brighter.

You are here to lead by exam­ple, by inspir­ing oth­ers to believe in them­selves too. The world does not need “lead­ers” who think that lead­ing means telling peo­ple “what they should do, or be, or not be”. Lead­er­ship is part of your Spir­i­tu­al core, the know­ing truth that with­in one and all is the self-lumi­nous spark of the Divine.

Spir­it forms in each of us the capac­i­ty to Lead, to know that what peo­ple need is some­one who believes in them. All who tru­ly lead do so through this lov­ing acknowl­edge­ment: That by the sim­ple act of look­ing the oth­er in the eye and say­ing to them: “I see you, I believe in you…and you can do this”. This is “the Way”, and that by doing this you open your heart and theirs to a bet­ter world too.

By rec­og­niz­ing and respect­ing the divin­i­ty in any oth­er you help them and your­self to be, you help one anoth­er “to shine”.

You need to live this Leo part of you every sin­gle day. The way is this, quite simply:

“Love your­self as you love one another.”

By this, you are true to your­self and you encour­age every oth­er to love and believe in them­selves too.

Yes, Leo is about being in touch with the essence of Spir­it; You are here to be a Cre­ator, you are here to Love and be Loved.

Cel­e­brate this time of Leo:

Stretch your­self.

Lead by Example.

Love your­self; and Love one another.

Look one anoth­er in the eye.

See what is look­ing back at you, and smile…

Now, sim­ply say what you see,

Namaste.

Reminder:

Astrological Observations July 2017 – The United States and the Full Moon in Capricorn, “Origins and Destiny” 

Where have we come from; where are we going?

Today we will con­sid­er the sig­nif­i­cance of yesterday’s Full Moon in Capri­corn, as it illus­trates that most impor­tant and inte­gral rela­tion­ship between your ori­gins and your des­tiny. If you want to know where you might (or should) be going, you need to under­stand where you are com­ing from.

What is true for you is also true for any spir­i­tu­al enti­ty or being, so I will illus­trate this prin­ci­ple as we take a look at how this applies to the ori­gins and present-day oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges here in the USA.

As before, I will answer your ques­tions dur­ing the show, whether on this sub­ject or some oth­er mat­ter, includ­ing per­son­al ques­tions about your astro­log­i­cal chart. If you do wish to ask a per­son­al ques­tion, please be ready to pro­vide at least your birth date and birth place, and time of your birth if you have that too.

If you wish to sug­gest a sub­ject or top­ic for a future show, please email me as I would be hap­py to hear from you.

Please join me on Mon­day July 10th at 5 pm as we con­sid­er the mean­ings behind the cur­rent events in our country.

Here is the main link to Astrologer Bill Attride Radio:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/astrologerbillattride

Here is the link to the show on Mon­day July 10th @ 5 pm EDT:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/astrologerbillattride/2017/07/10/astrologer-bill-attride-radio-show-5-the-usa-today-the-full-moon

The phone num­ber to call if you wish to ask a ques­tion dur­ing the live show is: (516) 531‑9638.

I very much look for­ward to shar­ing time with you on Mon­day July 10th!

Warm regards,

Bill