Wednesday, March 13, 2024

The Mundane Moon, continued: Mutability reigns--the 1994 Sibly Progressed Lunar cycle’s waning 3Q






The 4th in a series of 5 posts adapted from The Mundane Moon: an evolving cosmic story for "We the People," we pick up the story at the transition between the 2Q and 3Q waning phases of the 1994 Sibly progressed lunar cycle. The beat goes on..  


Mutability reigns: the 1994 Sibly Progressed Lunar cycle's waning 3Q

 

 

By March 2017, when the Sibly PSun and PMoon formed their final square for the 1994 cycle, Trump was putting his own controversial stamp on the presidency.  

The Mueller (Special Counsel) investigation formally (and questionably) ended in 2019; by that December, Trump was impeached15 for strong-arming a young Ukrainian president for “dirt” on soon-to-be rival Joe Biden, although the GOP-dominated Senate failed to convict. We can’t make this stuff up—bottom line, it was a chaotic, often lawless-feeling presidency, but most disastrously, the controversies it generated caused ever-deeper divisions within the American people and squandered precious time needed for addressing climate change. In retrospect, it’s fair to wonder if these twin results were the whole point of his four years in office.  

 

Triwheel #4: (inner wheel) the U.S. Sibly chart; (middle wheel) Sibly progressions for March 1, 2017; (outer wheel) transits, March 1, 2017. All charts are cast by author on Kepler 8.0, with Tropical Equal Houses and True Node and courtesy of Cosmic Patterns software.  

 



Not surprisingly, all this could be seen as potentials in Triwheel #4 above, picturing the 2Q/3Q transition in March, 2017. Reaching completion this coming March 25th, this phase has seen some of the most dramatic developments of the entire 1994 cycle: a global pandemic that ultimately cost more than 1.1 million American lives ; the dissolution of Roe v. Wade and women’s reproductive rights by an activist conservative Supreme Court and the subsequent chaos produced for women on the state level; an election (2020) marked by rampant misinformation and ongoing attempts to overturn it entirely. All of these outcomes can be seen in the way Pisces TNeptune conjoins Pisces PSun and squares Sagittarius PMoon in this triwheel.   

These impacts have been enhanced by and complicated with right-wing extremist (often white supremacist) rage that is perhaps financed in surprisingly “corporate” ways (Aries TMars-Uranus-Moon-PVenus tapping into our radix Aries Chiron and square radix Capricorn Pluto).  

These same angry, divisive dynamics would underpin Trump’s refusal to accept his loss to Joe Biden in November 2020, and the violent aftermath of that refusal on January 6, 2021. There were (and continue to be) moments when our very democracy seemed to be at stake. Thankfully, this phase also ushered us into the relatively “normal” Biden/Harris administration, but it’s more than sobering to consider the deep, divisive challenges that Biden has had to work with from day one.   

The question left dangling, of course, as we navigate an Election 2024 Biden-Trump rematch seven+ years later, is can we count on the Biden administration to address the serious challenges posed by another Trump attempt to transform American democracy as we know it? Given the extreme dynamics within the American body politic that we haven’t seriously encountered since the 1930s, can Biden’s pledge to protect the Soul of this nation from both the internal and external forces of extreme right-wing (often characterized as “Christian”) nationalism provide any real assurances?   

For his part, Trump is anything but subtle about his plans to transform this nation into an oligarchic (perhaps even theocratic) regime that places him in control as the resident “strong man” leader/”savior.” If anything, he makes a show of looking to dictators such as Hungary’s Victor Orban and Russia’s Vladimir Putin for his models of leadership, and the GOP, for whatever reason—and despite myriad legal challenges and 4 major federal indictments against their candidate—has decided to hitch a ride on his wanna-be authoritarian coattails.  

In fact, Trump could spend more time in court rooms than he does on the campaign trail between now and November, if the wheels of Justice aren’t somehow obstructed (which appears entirely possible). Here’s a quick summary of his legal situation by David A. Graham, published recently in The Atlantic: 

“In all, Trump faces 91 felony counts across two state courts and two different federal districts, any of which could potentially produce a prison sentence. He has already lost a civil suit in New York that could hobble his business empire, as well as a pair of large defamation judgments. Meanwhile, he is the leading Republican candidate in the race to become the next president. Though the timelines for many of the cases are now up in the air, he could be in the heat of the campaign at the same time that his legal fate is being decided.” 

These realities are only intensifying Trump’s determination to win the coming 2024 presidential election, of course, and big conservative donors (is Elon Musk really co-signing for his current appeal bonds?) seem more than prepared to pay his way into the White House again and to help pay his escalating legal fees and fines. We might ask what that says about their dedication to this nation as an intact and credible democracy. Is preserving their profit interests the only thing that matters in this world? 

So, yes, this Sibly progressed 3Q phase has unfolded within an unusually volatile period of events that is certainly reflected in the planetary dynamics, but we shouldn’t underestimate the distinctive role that the Sibly progressed lunar 3Q phase has played in the overall picture. The final waning phase in this cycle is a time to root out any toxic, outworn dynamics between Leadership (PSun) and the People (PMoon) that are hampering the nation’s effective functioning. And clearly, this rooting out process is happening none too soon: in the final days of the 3Q phase under discussion here, we seem to be reaching a breaking point for toxic societal “stuff” that needs to be resolved, healed and/or transformed.  

It’s difficult to envision this healing happening, however, without holding Trump accountable for his attempts to overthrow the 2020 election and to steal away over a hundred of the nation’s most sensitive secrets in the federal classified documents case against him, and more. If our history and integrity as a nation are to retain any meaning whatsoever going forward, isn’t that the least we should expect?  

The peaceful transfer of power is a fundamental prerequisite for democracy and demands that candidates who legitimately lose must concede, the more graciously the better: unfortunately, Trump and key loyalists made other choices, resulting in an illegal 7-state attempt to use fake electors in the final ballot certifications, to pressure the sitting Vice President, various secretaries of state and others to illegally “find votes” for Trump when they didn’t exist, and when those efforts didn’t pan out to overthrow Biden’s win, they promoted what became the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.   

As if all this wasn’t harmful enough, Trump and many of his loyalists have never admitted that Biden was legitimately elected, even though the results of the 2020 election were more intensely vetted and scrutinized than any in our history (even by unbiased experts like data specialist Ken Block, hired by the 2020 Trump campaign to do so!). Even when the facts unequivocally supported Biden’s victory, the Trump camp and various right-wing allies chose to keep up an unrelenting campaign of misinformation that treats Trump as if he’s the victimized but legitimate president who is only waiting to be reinstated once the “truth” comes out.  

This hasn’t been an entirely surprising tactic for maintaining power (and soliciting political donations) in these deeply Neptunian times (Neptune’s been transiting Pisces since 2011 and before that, Uranus and Neptune spent 7 long years in a Pisces-Aquarius mutual reception), but a culture that is deliberately polarized around lies and a dystopian, Neptunian “victim” mythology that tries to project Trump’s personal troubles onto all of us, is bound to stoke ever more anger and frustration and confusion in our body politic, resulting in ever more toxic “stuff” that needs to be cleared and healed.  

So, with all this dysfunction, there’s an argument for viewing the fast-approaching inception of a new Sibly Progressed Lunar cycle as a truly transformative moment for the U.S. and its 21st century geopolitical identity. The question is, given the candidate choices before us, into what are we being transformed? What toxic “stuff” will we be able to heal and let go of, finally? What fragment of our national Soul as a nation will we be able to protect and preserve into the future?  

 Interestingly, the launch of this upcoming new 2024 progressed lunar cycle this March 25th will very closely precede our Sibly chart’s 5th Chiron return (Chiron transiting conjunction to its original late Aries radix position in the Sibly chart), first exact on April 20th, so we can expect that a renewed cycle for healing and/or further wounding our body politic and democracy will take shape around that time. For a deeper look at this impending Chiron return, please see the July, 2023 post here 

 


In a nutshell, this July post argues that our “original Wound” as a nation has always been related to the grave disparities between our founding ideals of equality and justice for all—as laid down by Thomas Jefferson in our Declaration of Independence, the basis for the U.S. Sibly chart and hence, for our radix Chiron placement—and the starkly unequal reality of rule by the wealthy white land-owning (in today’s parlance, the “1%”) class of men that the nation, for all practical purposes, lives under.  

In keeping with Chiron’s natural dynamics, these disparities between ideals and realities wreak havoc on some people’s lives more than others, but ultimately, they serve no one. Instead, they are allowed to fester unaddressed and minimally acknowledged...that is, until some inevitable trigger event ignites the underlying tension and the social order explodes all around us.  

It happens in predictable ways, creating chaos for some period, but rarely resulting in truly substantive change because the systemic factors that guarantee some people will thrive while others will not, no matter how hard they try, are designed to win out in the end. The “arc of the moral universe,” as civil rights leader and Rev. Martin Luther King put it shortly before being assassinated in 1968, is “long, but it bends towards justice.” A long and frequently derailed path, indeed. 

Of course, throbbing in the hearts of those who find themselves shut out from the so-called “American Dream” is the deep chironic and karmic desire for healing—maybe just to know that their lives “matter” in this nation that, in very real terms, was built on the backs of their enslaved ancestors.    

 


 

 Perhaps a tad more in tune with this “arc of the moral universe” than a lot of presidents have been, in his first term, Biden has been working to correct some of his own past mistakes—for instance, moving forward aggressively with a racial equity agenda that would seriously alter the 1994 Crime Bill16 that he shepherded through the Senate early in this progressed cycle. This bill is often blamed for the scourge of mass incarceration and police abuse that has disproportionately impacted black and brown Americans since then, abuse that could no longer be ignored with George Floyd’s murder17 on May 25, 2020.  

No surprise, Black Lives Matter protests have been focused on these issues since their 2013 inception during the 2010s waxing Uranus-Pluto square (Aries-Capricorn). Ordinarily, a biwheel between the events of that day in May and the Sibly chart would suffice for this discussion, but here we’re talking about the challenge at the heart of any progressed lunar cycle: how can the People (PMoon) relate to Leaders (PSun) who either directly or indirectly sanction their demise? For this we need to also consider the Sibly progressions for George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police on May 25, 2020 in Minneapolis, so please see Triwheel #5 below. 

 

Triwheel #5: (inner wheel) the U.S. Sibly chart; (middle wheel) Sibly progressions for May 25, 2020; (outer wheel) George Floyd murder, May 25, 2020, 8:01 p.m. DST, Minneapolis, MN. Source: Wikipedia.org. 

 


     Notice that in the outer wheel of Triwheel #5 above, the TMoon (Cancer) is conjunct the radix Sibly Sun (Cancer, inner wheel) within minutes and is trine TMars and Sibly Ceres (both Pisces), bringing to mind the cruel, but “normalized” violence accessible to ordinary people like police officers enacting “official” (government sanctioned) power, the power that crushed the life out of George Floyd in the ordinary course of a convenience store stop that day. Thankfully, bystanders had the presence of mind and the courage to record the police actions and the slow, breath-crushing death of their neighbor, George Floyd, under one officer’s knee.  

The officer was perhaps feeling especially empowered that day: Sibly PSun (Pisces) comfortably trined radix Sibly Sun and Sibly PMoon (Capricorn, middle wheel) fell conjunct the Sibly PSo. Node, putting the People at a disadvantage. A disadvantage that was “colored” by TJupiter and TPluto (outer wheel)—both Rx, but conjunct each other and radix Sibly Pluto (also Rx) in late Capricorn. These transiting powerhouses were expressing the potent early days of their own new cycle (first exact that past April 4th), which offered an opening for the abuse of power. Is it any wonder that protests exploded in response, demanding high-level action on the part of our government?  

 

A scene from a Chicago-based protest in 2020.

Clearly, centuries of injustice were boiling over into public discourse during that volatile summer, but instead of addressing the pain and outrage of African Americans (and others!) in any compassionate (Sibly PSun in Pisces) way, then-president Trump’s chief response was to push public officials to use their national guard forces to squash the protests, asking his Defense secretary Mark Esper about “shooting them in the legs,” if that’s what it took. The New York Times captured the moment well in one short paragraph: 

“As several cities erupted in street protests after the killing of George Floyd, some of them resulting in clashes with the police, Mr. Trump made no appeal for calm. Instead in a series of tweets and comments to reporters on Saturday, he blamed the unrest on Democrats, called on ‘Liberal Governors and Mayors’ to get “MUCH tougher” on the crowds, threatened to intervene with the ‘unlimited power of our Military’ and even suggested his own supporters mount a counterdemonstration.” 

How would this approach ever heal this nation’s deep historical and karmic scars over slavery and racism? It wouldn’t, any more than the more recent “Moms for Liberty” campaign to ban books from schools and libraries that discuss any aspect of America’s racial history that might make white people feel “uncomfortable.” So, basically attempting to erase African-American history from our public consciousness.  

The contrast between the Trump and Biden approaches to these festering wounds couldn’t be more stark, in fact: Biden has been working to attack systemic racism in ways few presidents have—speaking out about such book-banning efforts, making childcare and health care more affordable, trying to forgive crippling student loan debt wherever possible so young people across the board have an easier road ahead, and so on. In other words, trying to nurture the “small e” (non-Wall Street) economy from below instead of depending on the illusory forces of “trickle down” that only perpetuate systemic biases.  

Of course, considering our impending Chiron return and new progressed lunar cycle, such efforts by Biden are playing out during an astrologically opportune moment. Are there any perfect solutions to America’s long karmic debt of racial inequity on the horizon? Probably not, but that “arc” has to keep bending in the right direction if we ever expect real progress: despite the Supreme Court’s effort to stall progress by nullifying important parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in 2013, there’s simply no non-destructive way to go backwards on this issue.  

Similar to the reversal of Roe v. Wade and the attempts to drag women back into the good old days of “barefoot-and-pregnant" (or what’s being called “tradwives” today), rewinding our racial relations back to the white supremacist dream world of Jim Crow simply cannot fly. In both these arenas of human and civil rights, we’re approaching a critical moment of transformation with the new Sibly progressed lunar cycle ahead.  

 

"Tradwife" in training...
 

Which takes us back to Triwheel #4 (reproduced below): on March 1, 2017, Sibly PMoon reached it final waning square to Sibly PSun here, spanning 12°+ Sagittarius to 12°+Pisces. Notice that the PMoon (Sagittarius) is also exact within 2’ of the Sibly ASC and that PSun conjoins TSun-Neptune (Pisces)—extraordinary signals that this end-quarter of the 1994 progressed cycle would be uniquely challenging and focused on a People’s crisis of confidence in (or of being undermined by) Executive power.  

An intense interchart t-square between PMoon, opposite the Sibly Mars/Uranus midpoint and Sibly DSC (all Gemini) and all square that amazing Pisces meet-up, confirms this focus.   

 

Triwheel #4: (inner wheel) the U.S. Sibly chart; (middle wheel) Sibly progressions for March 1, 2017; (outer wheel) transits, March 1, 2017. 

 


 

The tension of this t-square has manifested both domestically and internationally, with protests and insurrection at home and warning signs abroad, and naturally involved the U.S. president—the PSun-Sun-Neptune convergence in Pisces trines Sibly Sun (Cancer), the radix 9th house ruler. Trump took a uniquely personal approach to foreign policy, and with PJupiter (Rx, Cancer) hovering near Sibly Sun (Cancer) here, this approach expanded his Executive power, although probably never quite as much as he thought it should be (his first impeachment in the House was about how he abused his international influence for the sake of political power).  

That expansion of Executive power rendered our domestic discourse even more divisive and geared towards undermining our democracy itself—Sibly Sun quincunxes PMoon here and semi-sextiles the volatile Sibly Mars/Uranus Gemini midpoint. In Sagittarius, the PMoon, the People, would be animated, demanding, and—squared by TNeptune—prone to duplicity, misinformation and conspiracy thinking, or to that even deadlier Neptunian scourge, the COVID pandemic.  

In fact, this progressed lunar 3Q’s Neptunian mutability left us tragically open to the ravages of the COVID pandemic: Neptune’s transit of our radix 4th house didn't help our death toll numbers or our ability to act coherently, according to the facts. Thankfully, Biden took a demonstrably different approach to COVID than Trump did—one that tapped into Neptune’s “higher angels” of compassion and healing divisions, rather than further eroding public confidence in the ability of our government to act in times of crisis.   

A vigorous cardinal transiting opposition between Mars-Eris-Uranus (outer wheel, conjunct in Aries) and Jupiter Rx-PMars Rx (outer wheel, conjunct in Libra) grand squares Sibly Pluto and TPluto (Capricorn) opposite Sibly Mercury and PNo. Node (Cancer), denoting aggressive, controlling impulses that promise economic and media-related disruptions and corporate concerns during this 3Q. Since Jupiter rules the entire Sibly chart, this tense array threatens to overturn important parts of our status quo.   

 

Newspapers are shutting down at an alarming rate.

The economic crisis that has beset the American newspaper industry comes to mind, of course, and could be the “canary in the coal mine” for even deeper problems for media institutions and the bedrock principle of Freedom of Speech that their work relies on (yes, Trump will prosecute journalists who speak truth to power—their job—if he gets the chance!).     

Pluto’s role in all of the above has been complex: I’m convinced that our radix Sibly Pluto-Mercury opposition relates to the important tradition of peacefully transferring Power from one administration to the next, based upon the voice of the People (Cancer Mercury disposed by Sibly Moon). In Triwheel #4 we see great pressure applied to that normal process through the Aries-Libra transiting oppositions noted earlier—they also pull in Sibly Saturn (Congress and the Judiciary) as they t-square TPluto (Capricorn).  

Needless to say, the Courts have played a critical role in the developments of this entire 3Q phase, with the Supreme Court handing down one controversial ruling after another the whole time, some involving the many cases against Trump moving slowly (glacially) through several courts and doing everything possible to delay and/or defy accountability. Perhaps our system of government’s true throwback to autocratic times and in need of serious reform, the Court’s public approval rating has been at an all-time low 

All of this has been complicated by the slow-but-sure return of TPluto to its Sibly counterpart during this 3Q phase, in February 2022. A complete overturning of one form of government (democracy) to another (a Trump-style autocracy) is regrettably not hard to imagine this 2024 election year. We dodged the bullet in the 2022 midterm elections, but whatever we can do to renew our democratic institutions between now and November could matter, greatly 

In Triwheel #4 Pluto also speaks to the economic fallout from the pandemic, of course: TVenus’s role in “take-no-prisoners” Aries, opposite Sibly Saturn (Libra) and this axis’s square to TPluto opposite Sibly Sun probably speaks to why Trump was so adamant about reopening the economy, despite the pandemic—his own power (Sibly Sun) felt threatened. The PVenus (middle wheel) square to Sibly Pluto and sextile to Sibly Moon here reflect economic challenges and opportunities—Biden’s COVID aid bill (aka, the American Rescue Plan Act), which finally passed on March 11, 2021 was well-timed to help and turned out to be an important safety net for those disadvantaged by the pandemic.   

Amidst the tragedy, the pandemic forced some very creative solutions to all kinds of problems, and with such active Venus-P Venus dynamics, women have been behind many such solutions, often by necessity. The more “yin” fields of nursing, teaching and caregiving have certainly played key roles, but those Venus dynamics also signaled a wave of new Congress women and of course, our first female Executive, V.P. Kamala Harris (TVenus square Sibly Sun).  

  

2% of kids and 7% of adults have taken the latest COVID vaccines.

The nation’s response to COVID-19 was caught up in the undermining conjunction between Neptune to Sibly PSun (Pisces), and in the frustrating yod between PMercury-Sibly Moon (Aquarius) with Sibly Neptune (Virgo) and Sibly Mercury (Cancer). This push-pull dynamic also tied into and facilitated some of Trump’s divisive power plays (PMercury-Sibly Moon-Sibly Mars-TJupiter Rx grand trine), such as pulling out of WHO, the Paris Accord and from key arms control treaties (7th h. Sibly Mars). This grand air trine has deep ties with Trump’s nativity (not shown), as well, so it may have helped fuel his attempted “coup” on January 6, 2021, which is effectively ongoing. 

Finally, TSaturn (Sagittarius) semi-sextiles Sibly Pluto, sextiles Sibly Moon (Aquarius), squares TChiron (Pisces), trines TUranus-Eris-Mars (Aries) and opposes Sibly Mars (Gemini). Domestic terrorism and plans for a “new civil war” are no longer dystopian fantasies—during the course of this 3Q phase, Homeland Security has issued more than one heightened threat alert,18 and with these heavy Saturn-Mars connections, they should probably be taken seriously.  

Between March 16th and March 22nd, 2021, in fact, the U.S. saw 7 mass shootings—including one in which 8 people (6 of whom were women of Asian descent) were shot to death in an attack on three Atlanta, Georgia-area massage parlors. Ten other people were randomly massacred by a likely mentally-challenged man in Boulder, CO. And on and on.  

On January 6, 2021 (outer wheel, Biwheel #1 below), TSaturn (Aquarius) squared TMars widely conjunct TUranus (Taurus), while Neptune continued its long-term t-square to the TNodal axis, the Sibly horizon (widely) and Sibly Mars (Sagittarius-Gemini); unfortunately, no one had a magic wand capable of banishing the twin perils of COVID and misinformation-fueled domestic terrorism, but it does since appear that the three new planetary cycles that launched during 2020 (Saturn-Pluto, Jupiter-Pluto, Jupiter-Saturn) helped us shed some of the toxic, outworn energies and divisiveness of the Trump years and move on, despite Neptune persisting in Pisces into 2025.  

 

Biwheel #1: (inner wheel) USA Sibly chart (see Triwheel #4 for complete data); (outer wheel) U.S. Capitol assault, January 6, 2021, Washington, D.C. Source: Wikipedia.org 

 


 


Biden tried to address the economic fallout from COVID, especially on the grass-roots level and got behind an aggressive roll-out of three different vaccines nationwide. As I write this, people seem to finally feel assured that the worst is behind us with COVID. Unfortunately, COVID isn’t the only epidemic peril in these Neptunian times: communities are still dealing with anti-vaxxers who refuse vaccines for themselves or their children—just this past week, a potentially serious outbreak of measles was reported in both California and Illinois.  

Bottom line, a certain percentage of the population will probably never trust vaccines, and because the issue is an easy way to divide people, Trump’s their man. The irony is, of course, that Trump himself privately got the COVID vaccine. He was also the one at the top who got the ball rolling on vaccine development back in 2019. Perhaps there’s no remedy for the face that, with Neptune lingering on in Pisces, a certain amount of our public life is going to continue feeling incoherent and irrational. 

 


It probably also goes without saying that this mutable quarter’s “perfect storm” of crises will surely influence the beginning phase of the new progressed cycle ahead (no, things will not magically turn around overnight on March 25th!). Will we be able to take whatever progress the Biden administration achieves and run with it, or will we be pulled back into the swamp of division and the total authoritarian breakdown of our system?  

Here’s where I think the racial equity issue Biden is determined to tackle looms large. Trump reanimated white supremacist extremism in a big way, so Biden’s agenda represents a huge leap of faith that well-crafted government policy and actions can transform hearts and minds around this issue. I sincerely hope he succeeds because astrologically, it’s simply time to put this karmic issue behind us.  

Since 2022 we’ve been living with, not only the final waning days of the 1994 waning cycle, but also the lingering impacts of TPluto’s return to its Sibly position (first exact 2/20/2022, Biwheel #2 below) and the simultaneous exact opposition between transiting and Sibly Neptune, so the period since then has been the perfect time to take collective responsibility for that transformation by dismantling structural racism wherever it exists and restoring our national commitment to the ideals of human rights, dignity and decency.  

To truly be a People, every person’s value and worth (thymos) must be recognized, respected, protected, and yes, celebrated. Both Sibly Pluto (Capricorn) and the Sibly Moon (Aquarius) are disposed by Saturn—structural support systems mean everything.  

 

Biwheel #2. (inner wheel) USA Sibly chart (see Triwheel #4 for complete data); (outer wheel) Sibly chart Pluto return (first exact hit), February 20, 2022, 5:25 a.m. ST, Washington, D.C. Source: author cast on Kepler 8.0.  





Even so, Sibly’s Pluto return chart (outer wheel, Biwheel #2 above) suggests that the structural integrity of our system may continue being challenged by more than Neptune. TMars tightly conjoins TVenus here (Capricorn) and opposes the Sibly Sun/Mercury midpoint (inner wheel, Cancer); that opposition t-squares Sibly Saturn and TMoon (conjunct in Libra). These tense dynamics seem to suggest that at least some of the money flowing through our political veins could be enabling attacks on our system of checks and balances. I suspect this peril could become particularly acute during this election year.  

 


As for Neptune’s role here—we’ve been subject (and mostly oblivious) to what Foreign Policy calls Russia’s war of misinformation against our democracy for years, and there’s no sign that Putin is letting up any time soon. A quick summary from FP is warranted here: 

“A few weeks ago, a Russian autocrat addressed millions of Western citizens in a propaganda event that would have been unthinkable a generation ago—yet is so normal today as to be almost unremarkable. Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin has now been viewed more than 120 million times on YouTube and X, formerly known as Twitter. Despite the tedium of Putin’s two-hour-long lecture about an imaginary Russian and Ukrainian history, the streaming and promotion of the interview by Western platforms is only the latest successful foray in Russia’s information war against the West, which Moscow is showing every sign of winning. And in this war, the Kremlin is not just weaponizing social media, but relying on Westerners themselves to spread its messages far and wide.” 

Unfortunately, this is nothing too surprising for toxic Neptunian times, but as the article suggested, we do have choices about whether we perpetuate or ignore and suppress the lies and misinformation coming our way. We can choose to allow ourselves to be "dis"-illusioned by Neptune and woken up to higher possibilities as a nation. Instead, our Congress is distracting us with efforts to ban Tik-Tok because it’s owned by China. If we really cared that much about outside influences making their way into our media and airwaves, Tik-Tok might not be the first obvious target.  

In my view, after considering the key 1994 cycle charts, what Biden calls the battle for our nation’s Soul is right on time, but our embrace of any higher Neptunian path is far from certain. I think of this in reference to the Israel-Hamas war--yet another crisis that has unfolded during this 3Q phase and one that is definitely testing the hearts and minds (and endurance) of our leaders.

When Pluto reached that perfect return moment on February 20, 2022, Sibly PMoon was at 18°+Aquarius (not shown), within one degree of its 1994 cycle point, so perhaps a reminder that the work of this 1994 3Q phase of clearing out toxic societal “stuff” is far from complete. PSo. Node conjoined newly-returned Pluto at the time (not shown), suggesting that it was time to finally let go of any karmic baggage that holds us back. Pluto takes no prisoners, so to move on constructively as a People, there simply is no choice.  

 

 


 

 

Notes & References 

15 “First Impeachment of Donald Trump,” Wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Impeachment_of_Donald_Trump. Accessed 2/8/2021. 

16 “Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act,” Wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_Crime_Control_and_Law_Enforcement_Act. Accessed 2/7/2021. 

17 Evan Hill, et al, “How George Floyd was killed in police custody,” NYTimes.com, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us-george-floyd-investigation.html. Accessed 2/8/2021. 

18 “DHS warns of continued violence by domestic extremists,” Politico.com, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/27dhs-warns-continued-violence-domestic-extremists-463161. Accessed 1/27/2021. 

 

 

 

Raye Robertson is a practicing astrologer, writer and retired educator. A graduate of the Faculty of Astrological Studies (U.K.), Raye focuses on mundane, collective-oriented astrology, with a particular interest in current affairs, U.S. history, culture and media, the astrology of generations, and public concerns such as education and health. Her articles on these topics have appeared in several key astrology journals over the years, including most recently, the TMA blog. For information about individual chart readings, contact: robertsonraye@gmail.com 

© Raye Robertson 2024. All rights reserved.