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.