We all knew there would be big news today: how could there not be, with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s actions on Friday?
Friday's news dropped a bombshell—that Mueller had entered the first grand jury indictments in his sprawling investigations. That was the first act in a multi-staged process, of course, so today we learned who Mueller’s first targets from the Trump campaign are, and what potentially illegal connections he found between them and Russia, especially as those connections relate to last year’s presidential election.
Again,
no surprise, three key players from the Trump campaign were ordered to show up
at FBI headquarters today: former Trump
campaign manager Paul Manafort, his “right-hand-man” and successor as Trump
campaign manager, Rick Gates, and “special foreign policy advisor,” George Papadopoulos.
According to ABC
News.com, “An indictment issued by a grand jury in Washington,
D.C., against Gates and Manafort contains 12 counts, including conspiracy
against the U.S., conspiracy of money laundering and failing to disclose work
as foreign agents.”
As
for foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos,
ABCNews.com further reports that he “pleaded
guilty to making false statements and making material omissions to
investigators in January probing interference in the 2016 presidential election
in relation to his contacts with a Russian professor with ties to the Russian
government.”
Anyone watching the
Trump camp these past two years knows that none
of its players (including most notably, Trump himself) ever admits guilt about or responsibility for anything, so we’re
off to an interesting start with these indictments!
So, let’s briefly
consider the astrology at work in all this. No doubt, much more information will
be forthcoming soon, so this will be a quick read, just to establish a
framework for deeper exploration down the road.
Unfortunately, we
don’t have complete birth data for any of
the players, with not even a date for
Gates and Papadopoulos, so we’ll be relying heavily on a noon chart for Paul
Manafort, whose April 1, 1949 birth in New Britain, Connecticut is documented
on Wikipedia.com. With
no birth time, we will have to ignore any information related to his chart
angles, houses or Moon placement.
Even so, we’ll
forge ahead with what we have – there’s plenty to explore! Because so much of Mueller’s
investigation pertains to actions taken during Trump’s campaign, and inevitably
to Trump himself (whether he wants to admit it or not), the triwheel below sets
both those charts against what we know about Paul Manafort. According to news accounts, Trump announced
his campaign on June 16, 2015 at 11:08 a.m.—in Trump Tower, of course.
Triwheel #1: (inner wheel) Donald J. Trump, June 14, 1946, 10:54 a.m. DST, Jamaica, NY; (middle wheel) Trump Campaign Announcement, June 16, 2015, 11:08 a.m. DST, New York, NY (news report); (outer wheel) Paul Manafort, April 1, 1949, 12:00 p.m. ST, New Britain, CT. Tropical
Equal Houses, True Node.
Interchart Fire Kite: Manafort Venus-Mars-Sun/Node midpoint (all Aries)
trines Trump Pluto-Announcement Venus/Jupiter midpoint-Manafort Pluto (Leo)
trines Trump Moon-So. Node (Sagittarius). This grand trine is intersected by
Manafort’s Neptune (Libra), opposite his own Sun, sextile his and Trump’s Pluto
(Leo), Announcement Venus/Jupiter midpoint and widely sextile Manafort Chiron
(Rx, Sagittarius). This
mind-boggling fiery circuit of energy likely explains why Manafort would have
appealed to Trump as an asset to his campaign. Manafort’s strong Aries energy
radiates strength, combativeness and the ability to get things done, and those
are traits that appeal to Trump. Manafort’s timeline with Trump’s campaign
ranged from March-August, 2016, when he was let go as Trump’s campaign manager.
Trump’s announcement was timed to take maximum advantage of the situation
financially (his Pluto conjoins Announcement Venus/Jupiter midpoint), and when Manafort
came along in early 2016, he probably struck him as a useful “helper” in this
regard.
By
August 2016, Manafort’s history of lobbying for foreign entities like the
corrupt, pro-Russia politicos in Ukraine (to the tune of millions of dollars) had
come out in the news, and that made him radioactive. Manafort’s willingness to
take enormous risks may have been an attractive Aries characteristic, but when
Trump himself began feeling the heat, Manafort had to go. He left behind his
“right-hand-man,” Rick Gates, who took over managing the campaign and even
planned Trump’s inauguration ceremony. Gates is described in some places as a
Manafort “protégé,” but he seemed to fly under the media radar for the most
part until now.
Neptune’s
involvement here, turning the grand trine into a Kite
configuration, is significant, in that so much of what actually went on during
the Trump campaign, especially with Manafort at the lead, is nebulous—and
purposely so, it seems. “Alternative facts” have ruled from day one. Manafort
basically hid his involvements with pro-Russian lobbying over the years (he
only registered retroactively as a foreign agent when his activities came to
light in the news), and we still don’t know what Trump saw in him as a campaign
manager apart from that. Maybe, in fact, Manafort’s foreign activities were the appeal for Trump—Trump was
still pursuing a big hotel
project in Moscow, even as he campaigned for president!
Manafort
Uranus (Gemini) conjoins Announcement Sun-Moon and Trump Sun-No. Node, sextiles
Trump Mars-ASC (Leo) and opposes Trump Moon-So. Node (Sagittarius). Manafort’s
Saturn
(Virgo) also plays into this configuration through its out-of-sign conjunction
with Trump’s Mars-ASC, and with
Trump’s Progressed Sun (Leo). This Sun was on the verge of progressing
into Virgo at that point, where it would exactly
conjoin Manafort’s Saturn, so there appears to be
rather fated timing involved in the relationship between these two men.
Reinforcing
this notion is Manafort’s No. Node (Aries) in close trine to Trump’s Mars-ASC, and
sextile/trine to Trump’s nodal axis. The presence of transiting Uranus
applying to Manafort’s No. Node (Aries) when Trump announced his candidacy
adds another surprising bit of “kismet.” In fact, the depth of the connections
we’re seeing raises a lot of questions. Manafort now stands accused of “conspiracy
against the U.S.,” and these late Aries points (Manafort’s No. Node and
transiting Uranus, especially during 2016) square Sibly Pluto at the
same time they tie in so comfortably with Trump’s Gemini-Sagittarius axis.
Trump makes no secret that his goal is to dismantle the Federal government (the
so-called “Deep State”) as we know it, but to
what ultimate end?
Trump’s
campaign promises always dangled some vague connection between dismantling the
government and “mak[ing] America great again,” but how the first goal would facilitate
the other was never explained. “Believe me, it’s going to be great,” was a
common response to questions. Now we have to wonder how closely Manafort’s
pro-Russian activities were aligned with Trump’s goals. Something to watch
going forward.
We
can’t draw any conclusions yet, but astrologically, we should keep in mind that Vladimir Putin’s Sun is exactly conjunct
Manafort’s Neptune and a few degrees from Trump’s Jupiter (all in Libra, charts
not shown). If these players weren’t already known to have connections, we would
probably discount all this as happenstance, but since there are known connections, both direct and
indirect, who knows what’s at the heart of this tangled maze?
Manafort
Jupiter (Capricorn) opposes Trump Saturn-Venus (Cancer), trines Trump MC
(Taurus) and inconjoins Trump Mars-ASC (Leo). It’s
hard to miss that Manafort’s Jupiter also conjoins Sibly Pluto, so his lucrative career
as a top-level D.C. lobbyist (lucrative enough that he allegedly laundered a
lot of money to keep from paying taxes) makes perfect sense—particularly during
this administration, given the
connections we see here between Manafort, Trump and his campaign.
It
was clearly a mutually beneficial relationship up to a point, but the
inconjunct between their charts suggests that Trump and Manafort experienced
some frustrating encounters along the way, as well. This may be why Manafort
was terminated as campaign manager and not simply reassigned.
It’s
possible that the two men have continued to benefit each other, but it probably
became risky to do so from close quarters. We’re seeing this type of
“long-distance” relationship between Trump and Bannon as well, since Bannon was
let go from the White House, so there may be a pattern at work here.
Finally…for now
This
is just the beginning of a long legal
story that will unfold over the rest of Trump’s administration. For anyone
paying close attention, it’s hard to believe that Trump himself is not implicated, however for the moment,
he’s eluded the net that Mueller’s investigation is casting over its first
targets. The White House is trying its best to shift the public’s focus from
Trump onto Trump nemeses Clinton and Obama, but few outside Trump’s core base
are buying what he’s selling. In a future post we’ll examine how all this is
working against the U.S. Sibly chart—lots
to talk about there!
In the meantime, Happy Halloween!!
Raye
Robertson is a practicing astrologer, writer and former 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,
culture and media, the astrology of generations, and public concerns such as
education and health. Several of her articles on these topics have been
featured in The Mountain Astrologer and other publications over the years.
She is
also available to read individual charts—contact her at: robertsonraye@gmail.com.
© Raye Robertson 2017. All
rights reserved.
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