Chart USA: Saturn as National Teacher

  The United States' Capitol Dome in Washington, DC

(photo credit: Mary Ann Reitano, 2008)

After listening to the Congressional bollox this week, it occurred to me that it was time to catch up with the celestial doings when it comes to Chart USA.

Chart USA (the Appomattox Surrender chart)

April 9 1865  - 3:53 p.m. (LMT +5:15) - Appomattox VA

The chart is dated April 9, 1865 and is specifically timed for Appomattox, Virginia. The ins and outs of why this is can be found in a whole series of posts on the US Chart which can be linked to in the 'corporate and political posts' list in the sidebar.

For those who don’t need those details, let’s hit the high points on what’s going on. (Or the low points, if you prefer.)

October 2012 saw Saturn move into Scorpio. This was the month of all the political debates and, if you remember, a general heightening of everyone’s concerns about who was going to win the election. Prior to October, things were merely partisan. As of October, people really got focused, which fits with Saturn having moved from the theoretical ‘let’s talk about it’ airiness of Libra into the ‘hey, this is really important’ water sign emotionality of Scorpio.

The North Node of Chart USA is at 0 Scorpio 01. That’s a degree which is about bedrock qualities and choices which have the potential for much good or much destruction.

The Congressional moment which got my attention this afternoon – that of Congress picking up its toys and going home for Christmas with the nation’s fiscal issues still unsolved – comes as Uranus as gone direct and Saturn (reality) has just crossed over the nation’s Industria in the 2nd house of values and money.

Anyone who listens to politics – or who has listened to the news for the past week knows that the United States is heart-deep in discussions about gun control, mental health…and in general, the values of Americans as people. As a symbol, Saturn is about structural growth which as often manifests as useful rules and limits as it does with walls and refusals to consider anything but that which suits your needs. In the 2nd house of the national chart it speaks to the national coffers as well as the vital question of what do the people expect of their government. The 2nd house of this chart being ‘colored’ by Libra, the give-and-take of negotiation is a value to be held by the US government and which the people will always grade its government on.

Oh yes – the natal Saturn in this chart is at 27 Libra. That means the nation experienced a Saturn return rather recently – back on September 13th, to be exact. Saturn’s orbit being 29.46 years long, this means that the (2nd house) values and (Saturn) rules which came into play early in 1983 are over.

1983 was during the Reagan era. What the Saturn return tells us is that the US has learned the lessons which began back then. The nation is ready to - and needs to move on.

Saturn will come back to the degree of this Industria next September. What we have therefore seen is the opening round of a year when we are going to see a lot of hard choices and changes being put into the works.

And being resisted.

And getting torn down, torn apart and getting rejected.

A lot which was, will now end. A lot which needs to be built will be taken on. Saturn periods are not known for being kind or carefree. Often the bad news gets delivered in such a manner that the thing you have been avoiding or postponing taking on becomes the imperative which hits you in the face.

A lot of people don't like Saturn because they think life is about the reward and not the work which earns the reward. Saturn times teach us otherwise. 

Since you know I’m all about eclipses, November’s solar eclipse at 21 Scorpio opposed the national Venus (at 24 Taurus) in the 9th house of foreigners, education, law/legalities, religion, medicine and media. Since Venus is conjunct Algol (emotional reactivity) and Deucalion (finding the moral path) it’s not surprising to see things evolving as they are, touching on all these subjects from the perspective of the eclipse conjuncting Sisyphus and Child – the choice to do something back because you are childish or to children.

Pluto is moving through the 4th house of the people (and real estate). With the 4th also being the traditional house of families, habits, cultural values (traditions) and ‘setting the course’ this is a time when we would expect the US citizenry to be going through a lot of self-questioning changes with regards to who they are as a people…and what they really value. Pluto has been conjuncting Facies for everyone, of course…but in this chart Facies is at 6 Capricorn (fixed stars do move!) and thus Pluto ‘turned’ on Facies during that evidently fateful September period then came forward across Europa (getting carried away) and Niobe (pride goeth before the fall) at 7 Capricorn…and by February will be hitting Kallisto.

So as a people and as a people who are supposed to be in an ongoing partnership with their government, the US as a nation – politicians and citizens alike – are now moving between having realized where we have failed utterly and what really caring as a nation means.

The conjunction to Kallisto spans 2013 to 2014 and will see the US (and its citizens) struggling with what caring really means. The priorities of the nation at home and abroad will be looked at. The priorities about what resources should be put to and whether the US is a nation of individuals or a nation and national ‘family’ of sorts will be debated and thought through. Kallisto’s story is one which requires that you face the ‘bear’ you have been or acted like to others and survive through accepting that you have acted less like a person and more like an animal.

(Don’t look at me…I don’t write these myths, I just report on them!)

It’s worth noting that the Neptune of this chart sits at 8 Aries, too. Uranus will conjunct this point during 2013 and in doing so, create an opposition to 8 Libra, a degree known for loss.

Given the length of this transit, the fact that Neptune is involved and that we’re going to be experiencing a series of solar eclipses in Taurus and Scorpio which are going to hit several other Chart USA planets, it’s likely that some very bad things are going to be seen, learned and found out before things get straightened out….which should happen somewhere around 2017.

I did also look at the chart of the GOP, seeing as it was the Republican-led House of Representatives which led the exit from Washington today.

The Republican Party

March 20, 1854 - noon (LMT +5:55) - Ripon, WI

The thing which seems striking about this chart (which deserves a full discussion of its own) is that Neptune is currently in the process of ‘dissolving’ the GOP’s Venus…and from there will move on to working over the party’s Eris. With this Venus involved in a grand square which includes the nodes of this Chart GOP, we can expect there to be a lot of strain on the party's relationships individual and public.

It’s been about 150 years or so since the Civil War and Lincoln as the Republican President of the country. That’s about half a Deucalion cycle – Deucalion being the symbol of ‘finding the moral path.’ Today the US has a black President whose powerful ability with oratory makes him sometimes seem like a modern Lincoln.

The nation is struggling with what it has been and what it wants to be. Ten years from now the GOP will be a substantially different party and the US will be set on a new course.

 The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC

The day I went to see this statue I was in so much pain I probably should have been in a hospital. 
But I wasn't. All I remember is wanting to walk up those steps and see Lincoln for myself.
By the time I got there, I was in such terrible pain that some kindly tourist came to help me
up the steps. I was so moved...I just stood there and cried.     

(photo credit: Erich Robert Joli Weber, June 2012)

But in the interim, there is bound to be some pain. When it began, the Civil War was a war of economics which involved the very vital question of what being ‘human’ means, and what rights – and responsibilities – go along with being human.

Those same questions seem to be coming around again. Back then, the nation and its people went through hating each other because it seemed some people cared more about human dignity than economics. Then, as now, it was the rich who protested and the poor who went on working.

I doubt the Republicans are going to cede (even if Texas has toyed with the idea).

I’m also not surprised to know the nation is going through its Saturn return...and that such a time in the history of the United States would be filled with tests and needs and pain and challenges galore.

We are also told that if we accept the hard work Saturn brings, if we will put ourselves through the course of living up to our own very best standards, we will come out the better for it, too.
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From An Astrologer’s Notebook: Pluto Clocks World Concerns

 

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Pluto as photographed by the Hubble telescope

photo credit: NASA/JPL

 

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As I stood at the sink washing up, something occurred to me - namely that there's a pattern to the 'overhanging' concerns we all go through.

You know, year in, year out. World stuff.

I’ll give you an example: I was born in the 1950's. Back then, the world was all into the 'cold war' between the USA and Russia. That all began to break down while President Reagan was in office (1981-1989) and the really cleared out during Pluto’s trip through Sagittarius, a traverse which began back in 1996 and which concluded in late 2008.

During that time, a new concern had arisen – terrorism. Specifically, terrorism driven by religious extremists.

About the time I headed off to take my evening shower, it struck me: we’re always in a Plutonic Twelfth House concern mode. The whole world! All the time. You, me – everybody. This is how we live. And considering that I can easily look back 150 to 200 years and see this self same trend at work, it’s likely that we human beans (that’s right – beans. As in ‘string’ or ‘garbanzo,’ take your pick!)…that we’ve  been doing this self same Pluto/Twelfth House thing since time immemorial.

Which brings up two questions: when was time immemorial? And am I the only one who thinks ‘Plutonic Twelfth House’ sounds vaguely like a sideways theft from Shakespeare?

And no, this is not Astrologica of the Completely Exotic Kind. Not by a long shot. In fact, it’s pretty simple. All I need is to remind you about a couple of things.

The first is what Ye Olde Natural Zodiac Wheel looks like. That’s not hard, right? As for that term, that’s just shorthand for the zodiac pictured in ‘natural’ horoscope order with the first sign (Aries) positioned in “first” slot of the wheel – what we think of as the “9 o’clock” to “8 o’clock” slot of our watch. And so the zodiac cycles around, counter clockwise, to  Pisces, last sign of the zodiac. Et…voila!

 

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The other thing is about zodiac quadrants. The “quarters” of the above wheel each contain three signs. And while the assertive vs. receptive (yin/yang) qualities of each sign alternate between yin (here lettered in blue) and yang (lettered in red) as you go around the wheel, each quadrant has it’s own meaning.

Those meanings come from what? They come from the idea that the bottom half of the horoscope wheel is all about things private, personal and local (in you or to you). The top half of any horoscope wheel (no matter what signs are there) pertain to things worldly, public and seen by all.

 

 

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The horoscope wheel also being a relative picture of the earth, the left side of it is east, the right side is west. This is all about how Earth revolves through the day – the reason why the Sun rises in the east and all that? The Sun rises is the east because the Earth rotates in an easterly direction. 

So east is about moving into the future….and the west where the Sun sets…or another day ‘done’; what is now past, passed by, known or already experienced.

From this we get the left/right halves of the horoscope representing this same set of ideas…

 

 

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Put these together and you get….

 

 

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Okay….so maybe you didn’t need to know all that for me to make my point. But I’ve been wanting to get these ideas for a bit now…humor me, okay?

Anyway…back to the cold war and when it broke down. It really melted away while Pluto was in Sagittarius – the last sign in the 3rd quadrant.

The big era of worry before that had been about world epidemics – things like polio. The first safe polio vaccine was announced in 1955 – while Pluto was wrapping up its transit of Leo. And just as in more recent times, that began the ‘breakdown’ of polio as a world scourge and world concern. As Pluto moved into Virgo (a sign much associated with health and health care) during the 1960’s, polio went out.

That was also the rise of ‘health care systems’ – the beginning of ‘institutionalized’ or ‘corporatized’ health care around the world.

Similarly, as the east/west cold war broke down, so we had the rise of religious fanaticism. And – surprise! Sagittarius is the sign of religion, particularly the dogma, rites and rules of religion…a totally different thing from spiritualism, which is Pisces.

For those looking for religious fanaticism to go ‘out,’ that means you have a while to wait. If the rule is that the ‘breaking apart/solving of the problem’ happens as Pluto moves through the middle sign of each quadrant (and the ‘cross-quarters’ point therein – which would seem in each prior case to time when Salk’s work began to pay off and Reagan got into political swing)….if we have to wait for Pluto to reach 15 Aquarius (the 4th quadrant’s cross-quarter point) – that doesn’t happen until 2032.

That would mean that religious fanaticism would be on its way out beginning in 2043.

But it also means it’s going to happen.

As for me doing the dishes, yes, these are the sorts of things I think about when scrubbing pots and plates.

What do you think about?