Monday, November 29, 2010

Embarrassment in High Places

There have been several important and interesting stories in the news recently but the most interesting came on the very last weekend of November in exact correspondance with the Last Quarter Moon at 6 plus degrees of Virgo and Sagittarius. This was the most recent Wikileaks scandal – the simultaneous publishing to several news services of 250,000 State Department documents and cables to foreign embassy personnel. This event has been termed a major diplomatic crisis and condemned by the U.S. government. Some of the cables were signed by Hillary Clinton personally.

In order to assess the meaning of this event, and to get a clue as to how significant this leak of information is in terms of this country’s evolving history, in advance of seeing how it plays out over time, we can check the transits to the U.S. chart for their general import.

This was a very significant set of transits. First of all, Saturn at 14 degrees and 22 minutes of Libra is within half a degree from U.S. Saturn, or in other words, the United States is experiencing its Saturn return – which happens only once in every thirty years – just as this event transpires. Saturn, located in the U.S 10th House, represents the executive branch, which is the part of government most embarrassed by the incident. Three exact hits in all will eventually take place, on December 3rd of this year and in March and at the end of August, 2011, nine months from now. We might therefore very well expect to see some of this event’s repercussions surface by next spring and summer. Secondly, when the Last Quarter Moon took place a little after 3 PM on the East Coast, the Sun was exactly trine this country’s North Node, located at 6 Leo 35. This also speaks to the significance of this event for the future, especially since the natal U.S. North Node is located in the 8th House of transformation, or death and rebirth. The Sun’s position also formed a sesquiquadrate to both U.S. Chiron and to U.S. Mercury, which are square to each other in the U.S. chart. There is national shame involved (Chiron) and also of course the media (Mercury). The Sun also opposed U.S. Uranus, which speaks to the sudden (unexpected until a few days ago) nature of the leak of the documents, which had the State Department scrambling for damage control. Transiting Mars and transiting Jupiter also strongly aspected the U.S. Mercury degree, and Mars opposed U.S. Mars as well, representing the military. U.S. Neptune was strongly aspected by these planets also, by square and by opposition, so that the fog of illusion and disinformation that we have frequently commented upon comes into the picture now as well. Pluto and the transiting North Node are also exactly opposed to U.S. Venus / Jupiter, located in the U.S. chart’s 7th House – representing relations with foreign governments – and these relations are sure to be very much impacted by the revelations contained in these documents. Finally, transiting Neptune and Chiron in exact conjunction are conjunct the U.S. Moon, representing the public, within one degree.

The Neptune emphasis is very pronounced, and symbolizes the equivocal nature of the event. Is this a case of “truth will out” for a positive spin or is it actually a mistaken zeal for truth that will make things more difficult for those attempting to keep the world running smoothly? Only time will tell. Right now these are all parts of the picture, various illusions that the leakers represent, and perhaps none of them is the real “truth” of the matter.

It is very interesting also to examine the parallel to the Pentagon Papers scandal from the sixties. Astrologers have been saying for years now that the teens will markedly resemble the turbulent sixties, and here is one more example. Once again, an interminable war is being fought on foreign soil for dubious diplomatic purpose, in this case in two different countries. Again these are seen as a morass that the United States cannot extricate itself from without losing face in the court of world opinion. Once again there are many who are opposed to this war, although the level of public protest certainly has not reached that of the marches of the sixties. And once again there are leaked documents which might gain in significance as the war continues on. The stated intention of the Wikileaks project was to present evidence of torture and other violations of international law and of civil liberties that were promulgated by both the Republican administration of George W. Bush and by that of his successor, President Obama. In regard to the latter assertion, an interesting story was published by Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now, on November 9th, just after the Scorpio New Moon of early November, which also strongly aspected the U.S. chart. It ran as follows:

U.S. Defends Right to Assassinate U.S. Citizens

The Obama administration argued Monday that the White House should have unreviewable authority to target and assassinate American citizens anywhere in the world if they pose a threat to the United States. The argument was made in federal court in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights. The groups are representing Nasser al-Awlaki, who brought a lawsuit in connection with the government’s decision to authorize the targeted killing of his son, Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Muslim cleric now living in Yemen. Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU said, "If the Constitution means anything, it surely means that the president does not have unreviewable authority to summarily execute any American whom he concludes is an enemy of the state."

We live in perilous times, not only for the threatened individual, but for the threatened democracy that we cherish. All we can do at the moment is to keep our heads up and our eyes open and pitch in where we can. We also serve the eventual and inevitable evolution of our society by staying as alert as possible to the deeper meaning of events as they unfold.