We’ll probably need a new national story. Up until
now,
America’s story has been some version of the rags-to-riches story,
the
lone individual who rises from the bottom through pluck and work.
But that
story isn’t working for people anymore,
especially for people who think the
system is rigged.
I don’t
know what the new national story will be,
but maybe it will be less
individualistic and more redemptive.
Maybe it will be a story about communities
that heal
those who suffer from addiction, broken homes, trauma,
prison and
loss, a story of those who triumph over the
isolation, social instability and
dislocation so common today.
David
Brooks wrote these words on the op ed page of the
New York Times April 29th,
2016
I only guess that no one has told David Brooks
that the US is
having an identity crisis.
It happens to anyone with Pluto (the Transformer)
passing opposite your Sun (your Identity).
We are also having a crisis
(Pluto) in faith and trust
(Jupiter) as transiting Pluto is opposite a
retrograde
progressed Jupiter- which Trump has strangely tuned into.
In many
ways Trump signifies an opponent
who is making us confront ourselves as to our
identity,
to force us to decide who we are as a nation.
Is it only the 1% who
get the goods??
This
identity crisis (Pluto always involves a crisis)
has been true these last few
years in the 5:10 PM
July 4th 1776 set in Philadelphia.
(By the way has
anyone told Trump that
"Making America Great Again" will be
impossible
as long has the USA has 5 planets in apparent
retrograde motion? It
is time to withdraw, reflect,
refine our vision, refocus, reevaluate our past
actions as to what has been achieved and
realign present and future actions to
clearly
defined intentions. We have to ask ourselves
who we are as a
nation and what are we creating?
This is an identity crisis.
Each
moment in time is unique and unlike any other.
Why does a successful restaurant
or corporation fail,
after closing, reorganizing and reopening a second time?
It has a new and different birth moment.
In order to get a picture of what the USA is going through
we
can also use another interesting moment
in time-that is Washington's First
Inauguration
on the steps of Federal Hall on Broadway and Wall,
NYC, on April
30, 1789 precisely at noon.
(David R. Roell, that prolific bookseller, writer
and fascinating astrologer, who passed away
suddenly in the summer of 2014, was
a proponent
of this chart to help explain some of America's
idiosyncrasies).
Can this birth moment help us
explain some of this identity crisis we are going
through; and help us to arrive at a new story,
as Brooks suggests we need?
The rising sign for this chart is Leo the lion, the sign of
kings, dignitaries, heroes and the courageous; the planet of the Reformer and
the Maverick and the Awakener, Uranus is also in the first house, further
defining how we engage with the world.. Considering we were born by revolting
(Uranus) from the king (Leo) and mother country this seems apt. It also
suggests an inherent individualistic or independent streak running through this
country-the mentality that we can do it alone and do not need anybody.
Which is just what Brooks is saying we need to reorient away from.
(A good example of our inherent sudden reforming ability
is in the election of Obama as President. The planet Venus (values and what we
are attracted to)) entered the sign of Aquarius (brotherhood and community) and
came opposite that Maverick Uranus, eight years ago. Our ability to elect an
outsider, a black man, showed the world, (not unlike Washington's ragged
Continental Army defeating the British, the greatest fighting force in the
world), that the USA is quite capable of suddenly upsetting the status
quo and "turning the world upside down".
Another very strong and noticeable planet is situated across the
horizon from rising sign Leo; Pluto in Aquarius in the 7th house of partners
and open enemies. Pluto
becomes the lens through which we see our enemies, it describes them. Pluto is
the planet of revenge, power struggles, and what is hidden in the underworld.
As Uranus symbolizes us as being revolutionaries, Pluto indicates that we
see our open enemies (enemies that we can see-our secret enemies are seen in
another part of the chart) as dark, powerful and out to do us harm. We would
also tend to project onto anyone who asserts them self against us, as all the
unconscious and repressed evil in the world, and that we bear no responsibility
for the situation. It is all THEM!!!
This placement and Pluto's meaning would indicate that our
partners or open enemies are emissaries of the underground; they force us to
confront unconscious compulsions that are lurking beneath the surface. A
good example here (as well as the Trump candidacy mentioned above) is of course
the 9/11 attacks-we just made them the enemy without reflecting on what part we
played in getting the pilots so crazed as to fly jets into 2 skyscrapers.)
So what of this new story and our ability to become less
individualistic and more redemptive, as Brooks suggests? We need to look at the
placement of planets Jupiter and the Moon is Cancer lurking behind the scenes
in our 12th house of secret enemies. Here is our secret undoing-the
issues and people that can cause us the greatest anguish and suffering. These
two planets are very caring and nourishing by nature, but their placement in
this position in the Washington First Inaugural birth moment indicates that our
caring and nurturing and mothering qualities (Cancer), we as a nation, have
repressed or hidden from view.
This is further emphasized by the planet Mars which is very
strong in its own sign, highly placed in a day chart and acts much too
aggressively as a result. This Mars forms a square (friction, tension, stress)
to those beautiful Cancer planets. We angrily fight (Mars) this innate
covert characteristic of our identity-to have empathy, compassion and
sensitivity (Cancer) to the unseen suffering. . We want to keep our
potential to be redemptive-to heal the sick, addicted and those suffering from
trauma or broken homes or those in prison. We are fighting to keep these
victimized or violated people quietly ignored. (Slavery?)
But that will not be forever as planets Pluto, the Transformer
and Uranus, the Awakener, are on the Moon (our feelings) in this chart and
coming soon to Jupiter (help and aid and redemption). These are the same two
planets that oppose one another in the birth moment as discussed above..So the
USA will always be sensitive to the connections they make in the sky. and They
have been making 7 connections to each other since 2010.
We have seen evidence of these transformations recently as
President Obama visited a federal prison, the the first sitting president to do
so; and with the talk of attempts to change drug laws and deal differently with
our huge incarcerated population. Other evidence is both Elizabeth Warren
and Bernie Sanders campaigns to equalize the off balanced scale of have and
have nots. They talk of reallocating the excessive amounts of money
used on the military (after all we have not been physically attacked on the
Continental USA in 200 years) to healing suffering human beings, tackle issues
in the environment and educating and inspiring the young disadvantaged.
A new story is slowly being written thanks to the current
planetary activity which is striking notes
to the planetary placements in our birth moment that
help us see how much farther this "unfinished sympathy has to go. Chaos,
where we are now, is a stage of the evolutionary process
and comes before order and stability prevail. Faith in the innate ability of
these Unites States to radically reform and correct itself
is warranted, even when things "seem" so scary..
