'Why ponder thus the future to foresee,
And jade thy brain to vain perplexity?
Cast off thy care, leave Allah's plans to him -
He formed them all without consulting thee.'¹

Any attempt to predict the future involves serious hubris. The Universe is far more complex than we can imagine. Its workings are open to chance and free will as well as guided by law and destiny.

That said, if astrology is more than a meditation on archetypal psychological symbols, then it must be able to make verifiable predictions. Not as a description of specific events, but about the nature and timing of crises points, danger/opportunities. What follows is an analysis of America's current situation based on astrological reasoning. And a prediction about where it is going.

On April 23, 2014 Mars, Jupiter, Uranus and Pluto formed a rare grand cross in the sky. It was precisely superimposed on the United States Sun and Saturn in its national chart. Figure 1 (all figures are below the text). Its perfect alignment with the American national chart symbolizes a 'crucifixion' of the world's only superpower.

It was preceded by a total lunar eclipse, visibly covering the entire United States only five days previously (Figures 2, 3 and 4). If there was ever an astrological figure that ought to mean something in terms of public affairs this would be it.

It portrayed the United States at its peak, poised for a drastic change of fortune. A benevolent Jupiter conjoined the US birth Sun. It was also in the crosshairs of a vortex formed by the three most disruptive planetary forces: Mars, Uranus and Pluto. Yet there was no overt crises at that time: no natural catastrophe, financial meltdown, cyber crash or major war.

Any of these would have been an Act of God happening to America. Instead the cross ripened over time into something worse: its spiritual suicide.

The American led system unified and in large measure liberated the world. In accomplishing this great work the United States literally spent itself. Acting on a huge scale, and living beyond its means, it amassed an astronomical debt. Then, in a devastating irony, it elected a corporate bankruptcy artist as President.

Donald Trump will do what he has always done: default on unsustainable obligations. That will essentially liquidate the government as we know it. Millions will sink as the social safety net is revoked. Others will survive into a long night of desolation. There will be a Darwinian rebalancing. All of this reflects a deeper cycle of destruction and renewal written into the national genome; an astrological script made clear in the light of 20/20 hindsight:

In the original configuration Mars, the action planet, was both retrograde and conjunct the US birth Saturn. Figure 1. Its normally extraverted aggression turned within to provoke Saturn's Judgment (Libra). And to awaken a far older and more sinister Shadow channeled through America's leading role in the modern world.² (Figures 2, 3 and 4)

Mars impregnated rather than expressed this cosmic pattern. Its pregnancy lasted for the term of a Mars orbit (two Earth years).³ It called forth the dark side of America's unparalleled power - which then came to birth as transiting Saturn in the real sky passed over the American ascendant on election day 2016.

The grand cross emphasized the drastic nature and importance of this event. The Mars-year long pregnancy described the process by which it developed. Fateful Saturn rising showed its result: the election of Trump ending a 70 year long postwar order.

A grand cross is similar to a biological conception. It describes an implicit identity that matures into manifestation through a developmental process. Conception weaves together a genetic program that unfolds through a series of embryonic stages. Then culminates in birth of an organism. A grand cross sketches a spiritual initiative that materializes through a sequence of planetary movements. Then culminates in a new consciousness or historical dispensation.

Two polarized lines of force (oppositions) intersect perpendicular to each other. These form a square with four right (90°) angles. This generates another dimension: a plane. That new space then evolves, actualized by the flow of astral currents within it.

A grand cross is not an action figure. Its four planets block each others' independent agency, instead binding them into a new identity. Just as the four nucleotides of a DNA helix code for a biological genome, so the four planets of this astrological alignment describe a psychological or social genome. A DNA segment expresses itself when synthesized into protein by biochemical agents in the cell. Similarly, an opposition squared can only release its tremendous but deadlocked potency when activated by a cosmic stimulus.

In this case the original energy signature reformed into a more dynamic T-square. Once again a Mars-Uranus opposition formed, with both squaring Pluto.⁴ Pluto's focal point again opposed the US natal Sun, this time stripped of Jupiter's protective presence. (Figure 5) The American Sun's original position in the sky (14° Cancer) was then empty. It became a vortex attracting the T-square's three constituent forces, no longer mutually checked, but directed into its now vacant arm of the +. ('Nature abhors a vacuum.') An 'exiled' Jupiter, as the closest planet to it, absorbed and carried this charge to its own retrograde station conjunct the Moon's north node in Virgo. (Figure 5: point A)

The north node symbolizes an alien quality that must be assimilated, the most demanding task any entity needs to achieve, in order to fulfill itself. Making it even more difficult was that Jupiter is in detriment in Virgo. There Jupiter faces its dark side, to either heal its flaws or magnify their negativity. In this case it emphasized the disease rather than its cure. That an energized Jupiter made a retrograde station in its Purgatory sign conjunct the node of destiny emphasized the power of this encounter.

The Jupiter/north node conjunction also occurred on a sensitive point in the American chart: its Neptune. Neptune symbolizes a nation's collective unconscious. Dreamy Neptune is also debilitated in practical Virgo. Here it symbolized the accumulated toxicity of an increasingly materialistic and alienated culture, discussed below. Jupiter, coming to rest at this point, amplified its illusions into a political movement: the candidacy of Donald Trump.

In public affairs Jupiter turning retrograde conjunct Neptune symbolizes dissolution (Neptune) of a social contract (Jupiter).⁵ An exhausted faith (Jupiter) meets the void (Neptune). This is no blighted hope contingent upon some specific disappointment, but rather a fundamental negation of previous character and a consequent necessity to re-imagine destiny.

Four months later Jupiter completed its retrograde arc and made its direct station opposite transiting Neptune's actual position in the sky at that time. (Figure 6) It made an astonishing connection between a Neptunian quality embedded in the American chart and physical Neptune in the heavens. Jupiter's reverse movement grounded a 'descent' of the American Neptune's potential for disintegration to polarize with the real planet of Neptune, then at its strongest in Pisces. Saturn, a dark fate, stood at the midpoint of this opposition, forming another dynamic T-cross centered exactly on the US ascendant at 13° Sagittarius. (Figure 6)

Thus the grand cross congealed into Saturn's Shadow. Towards the end of a Mars-year long pregnancy it quickened into a tense T-square focused on the American central identity (Sun). Its social/spiritual meaning (Jupiter) was isolated out of the original figure to magnify a deep collective unconscious issue (retrograde station on natal Neptune). This then became explicit (direct station opposing transiting Neptune). Jupiter's retrograde station conjunct the US natal Neptune was also a summons to destiny (Moon's north node). It revealed a problem: public loss of confidence in a now decadent American Dream. Its direct station, opposite orbiting Neptune, proposed a solution, personified by a grandiose ego promising magical wish fulfillment.

December's T-square, a challenge to America's birth Sun, replicated itself after Jupiter's regression from disillusionment to a fatal enchantment.⁶ It transformed into May's T-square centered on the actual presence of the Shadow planet (Saturn). At that time Saturn was retrograde on America's ascendant, its point of self-consciousness. Saturn represents a society's fears. In this case it evoked resentments built up over the vast social and demographic changes of the postmodern era. After Saturn turned direct in August they expressed through a degrading presidential campaign of personal vilification because the political culture could not deal with its structural deformities. This negativity materialized as fate when Saturn rose over the US ascendant on election day 2016.

How did these astrological movements play out in real life? On December 10, 2015 (T-square) Trump unexpectedly surged to first place in the Republican Presidential nominating polls. By May 9, 2016 (Jupiter direct: new T-square) he had won the nomination. The decisive turning point came on Super Tuesday, March 8, 2016, when he swept a large number of primaries - just as a total solar eclipse in Pisces opposed retrograding Jupiter in Virgo. (Figure 6, point B)

In a time of relative peace and prosperity, with no serious external challenges to distract it, America's national id boiled up out of the depths. A flamboyant demagogue arose to channel the inner desperation of millions. Nothing happened to America - rather its own core emptiness imploded.

Jupiter made explicit a spiritual crisis inherent in the materialistic American Dream and its illusion of technological salvation (mystical Neptune in practical Virgo). In all previous eras and cultures life was brutally hard - but what people did had meaning. One had to produce tangible value to survive, such as growing crops or weaving cloth. And one did so within a system of traditional values, religious sensibility and community participation. Today, in contrast, work often has no or negative significance. Most modern jobs involve manipulating electronic blips, making/selling superfluous and often toxic products, staffing a cubicle in a bureaucracy - they create no real value. They do provide creature comfort. The average citizen today has toys and opportunities that no President or Emperor could imagine a century ago. But stuff is not enough. Man does not live by bread alone.

Many, perhaps most, American workers subconsciously understand that what they do is essentially pointless, if not harmful. Its not just that they have no control over the means of production as Marx said - more importantly what they do produce is worthless at best. Their function in society is an empty waste of time and effort.

The average person lacks any meaningful role in an ever more absurd collective life. Distracted by the snares of consumerism. Disoriented by constant electronic babble. The psychic toll of our modern lifestyle is even more degrading to the human spirit than physically destructive of the environment. That's saying a lot.

To live in the modern world means to participate in its rape. To go anywhere puts a scar in the sky with fossil fueled warming. To eat any animal product subsidizes the cruelty of factory farming. Just taking a walk erodes a dust of synthetic particles from shoe soles into the environment. An unconscious guilt surrounds even the most basic acts of daily life.

This insidious loss of self-respect reached a critical mass during the 2016 election. Much of it was projected onto scapegoats: for example, Mexican immigrants who are stealing all the good jobs, such as picking vegetables under a blazing Sun. But deeper down was a realization that an era had run its course. It would be ushered out by a loud liar telling America a simple truth: 'You're fired!'

The winner did not offer a rational program because there is no 'good government' policy fix for this depth of cultural alienation. Trump reflected a mass mood, an inchoate urge to bring it all down. The lemmings want to go over the cliff…

Trump himself personifies this national psychic dysfunction. He was born during a total lunar eclipse.⁷ Moon = (unconscious) feelings: instinct and karma. A total lunar eclipse brings subconscious issues to the surface. Trump resonates with a gathering crises in the American system.

It may come to a head just after a total solar eclipse passes over the United States on August 21, 2017.⁸ A solar eclipse symbolizes an overt disruption of the normal order. The 'American eclipse' at 29° Leo suggests an arrogance of power stumbling over its own feet of clay.⁹

Eclipses involve a relatively timeless unconscious element (Moon) that germinates until activated by a planetary transit. This eclipse will form on President Trump's rising degree of personal awareness. Two weeks later violent Mars will transit that point. The President's character will exacerbate America's downsizing.

It will also change the strategic balance. What follows hard on its heels points to an external threat that would probably confront any American administration. In late September 2017:

Mars will oppose the March 2016 eclipse position. That eclipse's path of totality skirted the southern edge of the South China Sea, a likely flashpoint of US/China conflict.¹⁰ At the same time Mars will also conjoin the North Korean national Sun at 17° Virgo¹¹ - while trining (120°) volcanic Pluto just as it turns direct at 17° Capricorn.

Meanwhile Jupiter will transit over the April 2014 eclipse position as it exactly opposes revolutionary Uranus. Things will change. The deep Saturn quality of that eclipse¹² could manifest as a domestic emergency compounded by a military, even nuclear, challenge from Asia.

Yet despite its trauma this will not be a random event but a foreseeable phase change in a meaningful universe. The trajectory of history, like that of an individual life, has certain inevitable turning points. A caterpillar must wrap itself in the death shroud of a cocoon to be reborn as a butterfly. A child, of whatever personal character, must suddenly encounter the crisis of adolescence. So too our society, swollen to bursting with achievement and extravagance, must break down in order to break through to the next level.

Body cells are programmed to self-destruct when they reach their functional limit. The body politic is unconsciously predisposed to do the same. In an inherently intelligent universe our living planet will 'instinctively' rebalance itself, whatever the cost to its individual components. When that happens each part will meet its own moment of truth. A single brain cell cannot comprehend the thought in which it partakes, yet resonates with that message. A personal ego cannot consciously know its transcendent soul purpose, yet makes that purpose real through its actual behavior. We each, and all of us together, carry an unconscious energy charge and act as its agent.

Sometimes this basic nature must be tested by crisis. Disintegration of a familiar context, what a self or a society does under stressful circumstances, reveals core character.

The coming disruption will thin the herd and reconfigure society. Whether for better or worse remains to be seen. The process will be deadly for many, devastating to others and liberating for some. It will test everyone in extremis for their spiritual quality.

The social progress and psychological empowerment of the postwar era have been breathtaking. No sane person can contemplate the fall of Pax Americana without the deepest sorrow. Its nature is essentially benevolent. It has nurtured billions into a life more abundant. Yet it has become far too abundant, and thus cancerous. Its time has come and an expiration date set.

Notes

1. The Rubaiyat, Omar Khayyam, 1048-1131, Persian mathemetician and poet.

2. The total lunar eclipse associated with the grand cross of April 23, 2014 belonged to an ancient Saros series^* that powerfully emphasized Saturn at its inception in 1022. (Figures 2, 3 and 4) Retrograde Mars dove deep to activate this 1000 year-old curse:

An interpretation: Western Europe, America's cultural taproot, abruptly blossomed out of the Dark Ages and into the High Medieval period right after the year 1000.^† A millennium later this flowering has borne fruit in a New World where man now plays God. We have begun to eat from the Tree of Life (biotechnology, genetic engineering) - the other forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden.^‡

Trump's election set the stage for a second creation story. He represents a collective unconscious will to unleash Saturn as the Grim Reaper; to clear out the deadwood of a mass society. That will make space for a later, more explicit Satanic emergence in a technocratic world purged of its excess population with their burden of economic and ecological problems.

^* See 'Mundane Considerations: Saros Cycles'

^† See 'Synods: Earth: 1007-1206.'

^‡ Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, evoking ego out of instinctual bliss, separating self-consciousness from union with God.

3. The most important event of this period was the sudden maturation of CRISPR* gene editing technology. This easy and reliable technique allows us to add or subtract, amplify or mute, any gene at will. It has already been used in China to modify unviable human embryos as a 'proof of concept' for the development of designer babies. There is no way to put this genie back in the bottle.

Biological manipulation of human identity is the coming temptation. Life will be defined as a medical creation. Personality shrunk to a program. Soul reduced to a chemical formula. Reinventing the human condition also implies streamlining its social matrix. Collapsing the support structure for a bloated population will allow natural selection to determine the fittest candidates for such biotech 'enhancement.'

President Trump will serve as the destructive agent of this transition from an unsustainable mass society to a hardier gene pool of experimental objects.

CRISPR technology came of age just as we reached out and touched Pluto, gateway to the Underworld, with NASA's New Horizons space probe (July 14, 2015). The sudden emergence of this power expressed the esoteric (hidden) meaning of the grand cross during its Mars retrograde genesis. Almost unnoticed, the American 'republic of science and technology' gave birth to a new order of life as machine crafted idols of DNA.

The 2016 election, with an energized Saturn rising on the American ascendant, marked the exoteric (public) manifestation of the cross. Trump's election terminated the postwar world order and cleared the decks for a new dispensation.

* CRISPR = 'clustered regularly interspersed short palindromic repeats.' It was hailed as Breakthrough of the Year in 2015 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. You can learn more about it online.

4. This time, December 10, 2015, both Mars and Pluto were direct while Uranus retrograded.

5. The only time this has ever happened before was on January 8, 1933: just prior to inauguration of the New Deal in the depths of the Great Depression. That radically transformed the American social contract from one of laissez faire capitalism to a managerial welfare state. This was a crisis of economic rationality and social justice wisely met by a great leader. As President Roosevelt said: '… we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things.'

One Uranus cycle (84 years) later the 'difficulty' recurred as an intangible spiritual nihilism. This time it was exacerbated by a demagogue who embodied rather than solved the nation's ills.

6. 'I am your voice … Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.' - Trump acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.

7. Data: June 14, 1946 at 10:54 am in New York City.

8. Totality will be visible along a corridor running from Oregon to South Carolina. It will culminate over Cerulean, Kentucky - close to the US gold repository at Fort Knox.

9. Regulus or Cor Leonis, 'Heart of the Lion,' at 29° Leo is a cardinal 'fixed' star outside of our solar system. It amplifies this eclipse with a theme of enormous power, overreach and fall. The nobility, or faith and credit, of the United States eclipsed. Trust fails, the dollar falls. Survival emergency for billions.

10. See 'Mundane Considerations': China chart.

11. The 'Democratic People's Republic of Korea' was proclaimed on September 9, 1948.

12. On September 15, 2017 Earth will literally reach out and touch Saturn by crashing the Cassini space probe into its atmosphere. How might Saturn respond?

 

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Figure 1: Grand Cross of April 20, 2014

 

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Figure 2: T-Cross of December 7-10, 2015

 

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Figure 3: T-Cross of May 9, 2016

 

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Figure 4: Path of Total Lunar Eclipse of April 15, 2014

 

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Figure 5: Structure of Initial Lunar Eclipse, Saros series 122

 

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Figure 6: Initial Saros eclipse correlation with United States chart

June 2017