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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Part Sev­en

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”.

Part Six

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.

Part Five

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.

Part 4

Full Speed Ahead! Jupiter rep­re­sents growth and expan­sion, and Aries rep­re­sents the pow­er of new begin­nings. Put them togeth­er and every­one is jump­ing to start projects or push old ones into high gear.

As I point­ed out in the gen­er­al fore­cast for 2011,  Jupiter has already been in and out of Aries in 2010. Now it moves quick­ly through the first sign until it moves into Tau­rus on June 4, 2011.

Let a thou­sand projects bloom! But look out, the heady com­bi­na­tion of Aries and Jupiter has tripped up many would-be pio­neers who for­got to ask, “What comes after this first step?” Opti­mism is in the air, but be judi­cious with your resources and clear about your purpose.

Aries (the Ram) jumps ahead, so now is the time for leaps of faith, a time to dis­play reli­gious and spir­i­tu­al lead­er­ship. Enthu­si­asm, bold moves and the pow­er of new begin­nings infuse the Jupiter urge to grow and grow. Expe­ri­ence the joy of new beginnings!

Yet Jupiter can embold­en many with the con­fi­dence that their truth is… the Truth. And since that is so, there can be no dis­cus­sion, no debate…it has already been decid­ed. Instead, be enthu­si­as­tic, believe in new begin­nings… but do not be head­strong or impatient.

Have faith in your­self and set an exam­ple of opti­mism about the future. After all, you are cre­at­ing your future, so why not start in the right spir­it? The most impor­tant step is how you should begin; begin with right inten­tion and atti­tude. Your right atti­tude cre­ates the right result.

So, let it begin. Be the future you imag­ine. Remem­ber, you are an answer to a cos­mic ques­tion. Your life is the answer. Now is the time to refresh, renew and cre­ate your life.