Thoughts and beliefs come togeth­er per­fect­ly now. Some­times you get mired in the details, and some­times your head is in the clouds; but now you find your­self in per­fect bal­ance. You get the big pic­ture AND you under­stand all the steps it will take to make it hap­pen too.

You faced a challenge/choice around Jan­u­ary 11, but now you can see your plans and actions com­ing togeth­er. Your ideas have moved beyond the plan­ning stage. Think­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­ceed effort­less­ly and ele­gant­ly. You are bril­liant and it feels good.

We’re all con­nect­ing now… Expect good news; then pass it on.

Venus the plan­et of val­ue, beau­ty and love moves into Capri­corn till March 1. Clas­si­cal val­ues and tastes are what we find pleas­ing now. Our needs are met with style, grace and stay­ing pow­er, no pass­ing fan­cies. Love is seri­ous, be atten­tive and respectful.

Secu­ri­ty, sta­bil­i­ty, and longevi­ty are what we want and need in our world of val­ues, and from one anoth­er. Tra­di­tions, cer­e­monies, dig­ni­ty and refine­ment rule the world of val­ue now. If you love each oth­er, then you show that you care by tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for one another.

The Sun aligns with Mars in Aquar­ius; ener­gy is no prob­lem! Every­one is moti­vat­ed, dri­ven and more than a lit­tle excitable now. So, bet­ter ease up before some­one gets hurt. There is a sense that we can dri­ve beyond the old lim­its, break through the bar­ri­ers and reach fur­ther than before.

Make a stand for social jus­tice, join togeth­er and you will make a dif­fer­ence. If the cause is just, you can lead and they will fol­low. Dreams can come true, but you have to act for some­thing that is more than just for your­self. Answer the call of free­dom by extend­ing your hand in friendship.

2011
The over­all pic­ture for Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s astro­log­i­cal fore­cast for 2011 cer­tain­ly seems to be more pos­i­tive than that of 2010. The chal­lenges are for­mi­da­ble, but the oppor­tu­ni­ties are real.

Plu­to Trine Plu­to (Feb. 22, May 26, Dec. 22, Sep. 8, 2012, Sep. 27, 2012)
Plu­to was a great chal­lenge to Oba­ma in 2010, but what a dif­fer­ence a year makes. For 2011 and much of 2012 he will be under a most favor­able trine of his Plu­to by Plu­to. And this at a time when the USA is under­go­ing the Plu­to oppo­si­tion to Jupiter could pro­vide one of the means by which the US is able to make the most of that opposition.

Plu­to rules the willpow­er, which is the true source of our abil­i­ty to bring about self-change inter­nal­ly, and which also cre­ates our abil­i­ty to help bring about changes exter­nal­ly. While the US grap­ples with Plu­to oppos­ing its Jupiter, Oba­ma will be able to har­ness his own will pow­er, and by exten­sion, the will pow­er of the posi­tion his wields, the Pres­i­den­cy, to help bring about, what could be sig­nif­i­cant trans­for­ma­tions in the socio-eco­nom­ic-polit­i­cal order with­in our nation, and exter­nal­ly with oth­er nations. This is espe­cial­ly indi­cat­ed by the fact that Oba­ma’s Plu­to is in his 7th House of rela­tion­ships, and the tran­sit­ing Plu­to is mov­ing through his 11th House of social ideals.

What this might indi­cate is that Oba­ma’s abil­i­ty to be a re-builder, re-new­er, re-gen­er­a­tor of our forms of rela­tion­ship (Plu­to in the 7th house), will play out and be seen in 11th house mat­ters, which in a mun­dane analy­sis would be the nation’s ideals and dreams about the future as well as the Leg­isla­tive branch of government.

With a “divid­ed” gov­ern­ment, Oba­ma as chief exec­u­tive should be able to help bring about some con­crete actions to address some of the prob­lems the US is faced with now. With his Plu­to in Vir­go, and the tran­sit­ing Plu­to in Capri­corn, we are talk­ing about real, prac­ti­cal work­able solu­tions. Each side will have to sac­ri­fice part of its “agen­da” and dog­ma to get things done. Our con­sti­tu­tion, after all, is so arranged that coop­er­a­tion and mutu­al agree­ment are inte­gral to the polit­i­cal process, per­haps this year we will see it at work.

Pluto/Jupiter for the USA — Pluto/Pluto for Oba­ma
With the USA at the same time expe­ri­enc­ing the Plu­to oppo­si­tion Jupiter, Oba­ma’s tran­sit of Plu­to to Plu­to takes on much greater sig­nif­i­cance. The USA is prob­a­bly fac­ing a great strug­gle over prin­ci­ples this year; the strug­gle is over our prin­ci­ples of rela­tion­ship to one anoth­er inter­nal­ly and to oth­er nations exter­nal­ly; it is those prin­ci­ples that end up being enshrined in our laws and our treaties. Oba­ma’s tran­sit can pro­vide a coun­ter­point to the dichoto­my and strug­gle in the USA chart by the prac­ti­cal and respon­si­ble exer­cise of his lead­er­ship role. He can be a bridge between oppos­ing fac­tions and steer them toward some com­pro­mise over our rules of con­duct with one anoth­er, as he also helps to bring about new poli­cies in our inter­na­tion­al relationships.

Will he be able to keep the oppos­ing sides work­ing towards con­sen­sus and con­crete action? Plu­to would say yes. But to know that ful­ly we must look to the oth­er influ­ences mov­ing through his chart this year to see what else is in play on our stage of history.

Uranus Sex­tile Jupiter (Mar. 26, Nov. 17, Jan. 1, 2012)
Uranus Trine Mer­cury (Apr. 22, Oct. 1, Feb. 13, 2012)
Why are we see­ing two tran­sits list­ed togeth­er above? Because the plan­ets that Uranus is tran­sit­ing are in a rela­tion­ship with one anoth­er in Oba­ma’s chart. When­ev­er one is being “lit up”, so is the oth­er. The rela­tion­ship of Oba­ma’s Mer­cury to his Jupiter is an Oppo­si­tion. An oppo­si­tion is an aspect of aware­ness, a jux­ta­po­si­tion of two aspects of real­i­ty; the chal­lenge is to find a way of inte­grat­ing the two through syn­the­sis. The fail­ure would either to swing from one to the oth­er, or to live out one and sup­press and there­by project the oth­er onto others.

Oba­ma’s Mer­cury
Oba­ma’s Mer­cury is in Leo in his 6th House; his Jupiter is in Aquar­ius in the 12th house. With his Mer­cury in Leo Oba­ma seeks to express him­self in such a man­ner so that he earns respect, appre­ci­a­tion and approval. But if tak­en too far, it would mean that he would speak for an audi­ence, say­ing what they wish to hear so that they will approve him, and so in the end he would not be so true to him­self. When he gets it right, Oba­ma is cer­tain­ly a potent ora­tor; and, when he com­bines that Mer­cury with his Gem­i­ni Moon, his mes­sage can be con­veyed in such a man­ner that ideas and feel­ings blend togeth­er so that the lis­ten­ers are tru­ly touched.

Oba­ma’s Jupiter
Jupiter in Aquar­ius leads him to seek to relate to the world less per­son­al­ly, more in terms of group ideals and social con­scious­ness, more deal­ing with broad social issues and con­cerns, than the indi­vid­ual sto­ry. The prin­ci­ples he seeks to relate through are human­i­tar­i­an and uni­ver­sal, with an under­stand­ing that the bedrock of our democ­ra­cy is found­ed upon tol­er­ance and social jus­tice. But if tak­en too far, it could cre­ate a feel­ing of aloof­ness and detach­ment from the pub­lic; it would make him seem that he is not as able to con­nect to oth­ers in a more per­son­al way.

In a way, Oba­ma may fear that if he tru­ly speaks “his mind” that he might lose some of his rela­tion­ships to the Amer­i­can peo­ple or to oth­er nations; yet, if he tries to just pre­serve the rela­tion­ships, he will end up not being able to say much at all, (he will not be able to lead), or he will end up say­ing what he knows to be untrue.

Oba­ma’s Oppor­tu­ni­ty
The gift of this dou­ble tran­sit, of Uranus to his Jupiter and Uranus to his Mer­cury, is that it poten­tial­ly bridges this dilem­ma and pro­vides a path of syn­the­sis. He should be able to main­tain his com­mit­ment to prin­ci­ples from which he derives his pur­pose to rep­re­sent Amer­i­can Ideals, while artic­u­lat­ing the mes­sage about them in such a way that pro­vides a bridge of under­stand­ing and con­sen­sus for a broad spec­trum of the Amer­i­can peo­ple and oth­er nations. Uranus is the plan­et of inven­tion, of think­ing out­side of the box, (or not even see­ing the uni­verse as being “boxed up”!), and its align­ment with Mer­cury and Jupiter can help Oba­ma to demon­strate that the solu­tion to our “prob­lems” requires that we give up some of our old assump­tions (Jupiter/beliefs) and so cre­ate new ideas and solu­tions (Mercury/intelligence).

It would appear that Oba­ma has an oppor­tu­ni­ty to begin to trans­form what is at the root of our polit­i­cal sta­sis; that we just don’t lis­ten, under­stand or coop­er­ate with one anoth­er. It would seem that Oba­ma might be able to make things work out, right? Well, of course, there are oth­er fac­tors at play; and one of the big ones is the “wild card” in this very align­ment we have just been examining.

Here again, as with last year, the align­ment of Uranus to Venus in the US chart is also occur­ring in Oba­ma’s chart. The very plan­et that could be a bridge between Prin­ci­ples and Solu­tions, (Uranus to Mer­cury and Jupiter) is also form­ing a square to his Venus. So, what does this indi­cate on its own mer­its? And how will this affect his abil­i­ty to wield his will (Plu­to), hon­or our prin­ci­ples (Jupiter) and artic­u­late intel­li­gent solu­tions (Mer­cury)?

Uranus Square Venus (Apr. 12, Oct. 16, Jan. 31, 2012)
Oba­ma has his Venus in Can­cer at just under 2° of Can­cer; the Unit­ed States has its Venus at just over 3° of Can­cer. Just as in 2010, when Sat­urn passed over Venus for both, so too this year Uranus will tran­sit their Venus’ togeth­er. The Sat­urn tran­sit was dif­fi­cult since it cre­at­ed a feel­ing of a lack of self-worth, a lack of val­ue which results in all sorts of prob­lems for rela­tion­ships. But in the end it serves to clar­i­fy what is more valu­able with­in and around us. Uranus is a very dif­fer­ent ener­gy; cre­at­ing a dif­fer­ent kind of chal­lenge and oppor­tu­ni­ty for the US and Obama.

Just as the Uranus tran­sit to the US Venus calls for a new under­stand­ing and expres­sion of Amer­i­can val­ues, so too does this mean that this tran­sit to Oba­ma’s Venus calls upon him to ful­fill his role as a leader whose pur­pose is to artic­u­late those chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties we face now.

Uranus Shocks
Uranus is not gen­tle, espe­cial­ly when it is form­ing, as it is here, a “hard” aspect; it opens up new path­ways and pos­si­bil­i­ties through shocks, sur­pris­es and upsets. Often­times its ini­tial effect can appear as a loss, it requires a sac­ri­fice, but its true pur­pose is to break up the old forms of val­ue, (to release the spir­it of val­ue from a more lim­it­ed form of being), so that spirit/life may cre­ate new forms of val­ue which are to be expe­ri­enced, (in this case, most impor­tant­ly, in our rela­tion­ships to one anoth­er and to oth­er nations, the 7th House).

The chal­lenge of Uranus is met by being open and wel­com­ing of change; Uranus serves to break up old pat­terns that have sti­fled the flow of spir­it and there­by cre­ate con­di­tions for a new order. The dan­ger is that the upset or chal­lenge will be expe­ri­enced as some­thing to fear; reac­tion sets in that actu­al­ly brings about more painful shocks and adjust­ments that could have been more man­age­able had the ener­gy been allowed to do its work. The oppor­tu­ni­ty of work­ing with Uranus is that by being open to new forms and expres­sions of val­ue, the per­son or enti­ty can keep unfold­ing their spir­i­tu­al potential.

Spir­i­tu­al Law
Spir­it must take on form; it must lim­it itself and become some “thing” in order to be any­thing on the earth plane. But that form is lim­it­ed and will even­tu­al­ly lose its mean­ing, its relevance.…its beau­ty. So, the form must be tran­scend­ed so that Spir­it can rein­car­nate into a new form of expres­sion. This process is one of the most fun­da­men­tal spir­i­tu­al laws that gov­ern our universe.

We do and must try to pro­tect, pre­serve and pass down these forms of val­ue as long as we can. How­ev­er, whether in great forms of art, or beau­ti­ful forms of human inter­re­la­tion­ship, even in our per­son­al val­ues, prin­ci­ples and laws, at some point the par­tic­u­lar form must be tran­scend­ed; spir­it must be free to form anew. One of the prin­ci­ple agents of such release and ref­or­ma­tion is Uranus.

Uranus and our Chal­lenge
The chal­lenge of Uranus in Aries to Venus in Can­cer is to re-define how we find or cre­ate secu­ri­ty in our lives, all the while our world is in the midst of great changes, (Even greater than we might at first imag­ine. I will come back again to this theme of the epic changes ahead, but just know that we have not faced changes as great as this for over 200 years).

If we stay attached to the exist­ing forms because we are afraid, we will suf­fer. If we re-affirm the spir­it that cre­at­ed those forms, we can find a way to renew our sense val­ue at the cen­ter of our lives, and so forge a new base of secu­ri­ty to stand upon. When the form is break­ing apart, we must get back to the spir­it behind the form; we need to go back to root ener­gies and so restore and re-affirm our spir­i­tu­al truth in renewed forms.  

Venus
Uranus is chal­leng­ing and break­ing up the old forms of Venus in Can­cer. Venus is the plan­et that binds us to one anoth­er through our shared val­ues, whose purest and truest expres­sion is found in our love for one anoth­er. In any soci­ety and cul­ture, what binds us to one anoth­er as a peo­ple is what we cre­ate with one anoth­er and share with one anoth­er. In any sys­tem, there are ener­gies hold­ing it togeth­er and forces pulling it apart. What holds us togeth­er is our love for what we share in as a people.

Venus and Amer­i­ca
With Venus in Can­cer, Amer­i­cans come togeth­er in our love of the indi­vid­ual, and the sacred­ness and dig­ni­ty that forms our dri­ving spir­it of self-deter­mi­na­tion. Our myth is the sto­ry of the jour­ney of the indi­vid­ual to dis­cov­er and con­nect to their root ener­gies, to be cen­tered upon one’s true self, and so be empow­ered to go forth and ful­fill his or her des­tiny. The spir­it of rugged indi­vid­u­al­ism has been giv­en form in our idyl­lic imagery of “the pio­neer”, of “the inven­tor”, of the “per­son of con­science”, which is ground­ed in our fun­da­men­tal belief that one per­son can (and does) make a dif­fer­ence. These and many oth­er images are at the core of every Amer­i­can’s belief in the essen­tial worth of the individual.

Yet, at the same time, with our Moon in Aquar­ius (and so the ruler of our Venus), we have had to acknowl­edge that an indi­vid­ual can­not find them­selves, they can­not be ful­filled, they can­not be “free” to do what­ev­er they wish, because an indi­vid­ual can­not have a life of mean­ing and pur­pose with­out sig­nif­i­cant asso­ci­a­tions with oth­er indi­vid­u­als. Here, in Amer­i­ca, we came togeth­er, as our founders stat­ed in the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, and freely chose to cre­ate a new soci­ety and in order to do so “… we mutu­al­ly pledge to each oth­er our lives, our for­tunes and our sacred honor.”

Venus, Rela­tion­ship and Our Sac­ri­fice
We are formed in and find our mean­ings through what we share with one anoth­er. We are not so dif­fer­ent from one anoth­er, real­ly. Our needs and wants find expres­sion in cer­tain forms because of the cul­ture and sub-cul­tures we find our­selves in. The devel­op­ment of our “unique” self is only pos­si­ble because of our well-matched capac­i­ty to sac­ri­fice for one anoth­er. This is the core of the Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence of val­ue: that to be one­self and be free is found­ed upon a love of one anoth­er, that we pledge our alle­giance to one anoth­er, and so we are will­ing to sac­ri­fice for one another.

The word sac­ri­fice means lit­er­al­ly “to make sacred”. Sac­ri­fice is the key to love and self-ful­fill­ment. We make an offer­ing; we give up some­thing in order to achieve some­thing. We seek to become bet­ter than we were before. To sup­port one anoth­er in our own indi­vid­ual strug­gle to become what we wish to become, we must come togeth­er and sac­ri­fice to one anoth­er. We affirm our indi­vid­ual worth in our union which is based upon our shared val­ues. We affirm, strength­en and expand these core val­ues as we give up our attach­ment to less­er things.

Uranus and Our Sac­ri­fice Now
This has always been the chal­lenge of a cre­at­ing a “free” soci­ety. To ful­fill our­selves we must sac­ri­fice for one anoth­er. Uranus Squar­ing our Venus (and Oba­ma’s) is remind­ing us that we must face our chal­lenges now in a spir­it of mutu­al under­stand­ing; and that requires the sac­ri­fice of our less­er alle­giances and our less­er val­ues. We need to be remind­ed, reaf­firm and make a real sac­ri­fice for our core val­ues that have bound us, formed us and guid­ed us. We need to restate our under­stand­ing of these core val­ues so that we are clear as to what it is that we stand upon with one another.

We need lead­ers who artic­u­late the truth that every one of us must sac­ri­fice if we are to meet the chal­lenges that lie ahead. For Oba­ma, for the lead­ers in Con­gress, for the lead­ers in the many agen­cies and insti­tu­tions of our gov­ern­ment, for busi­ness and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, and for each and every one of us who seek to under­stand, inspire and guide us through this time, we all must free our­selves from our old reac­tive val­u­a­tions and refresh our expe­ri­ence of what is of most val­ue between us.

Oba­ma’s Sac­ri­fice
Oba­ma’s chal­lenge and oppor­tu­ni­ty is to be the leader who sets the exam­ple of what we need to become now. He will have to show his will­ing­ness to sac­ri­fice some of his val­ues in order to dis­play courage and lead­er­ship. He must call each of us to those sac­ri­fices that will lead to a “new world”.

As it has been said before, “Beat­en paths are for beat­en men”. We need pathfind­ers now, we need lead­ers who have courage and chal­lenge us to rise above our dif­fer­ences and sac­ri­fice for one anoth­er… because we are one anoth­er. Uranus to Venus says renew your love for one anoth­er, because you will need one anoth­er if you are to meet the chal­lenge of your destiny.

The forces that are lin­ing up in the next sev­er­al years rival those at our found­ing over 200 years ago. We are at the end of age (which also means we are at the dawn of a new age). We must allow our­selves to be filled with the spir­it of under­stand­ing, to be inspired now to choose to turn to one anoth­er, again, and pledge “our lives, our for­tunes and our sacred honor”.

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