The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
holiday is always a Capricorn affair,
which perfectly befits the occasion.
The impassioned, inspiring leader of the 1950s-60s
Civil Rights movement in this nation, King was cut down violently 50 years ago, far too
soon, before he could see the fruits of his labors, courage and dedication.
As his iconic “I have a dream”
speech has reaffirmed now for fifty-five years,
King aspired to shepherd his followers up the treacherous “mountain” of racial
equality and social justice, but despite clear individual successes—Barack Obama’s 8 years as president, for
instance—the climb is far from over for the broader African-American
community in this land, and for communities of color in general. In fact, it seems that we've stumbled back down that Capricorn "mountain" lately.
That lofty mountain top that King evoked is Capricorn’s highest expression of light—the pinnacle
of achievement for any society that cherishes democratic ideals. Unfortunately,
Trump doesn’t aspire to climb mountains of light: he prefers to dig trenches in
the dark—bunkers against the world and against any ideals that might make him
feel personally vulnerable.
With Trump and his enablers, the
very definition of racism comes under fire: if he just says
out loud what “everyone” is thinking (so goes the Fox prevarication), how could that be racism, right? Since when do news
organization purport to speak for everyone?!
Fox gets by with it because their
number one booster, Donald Trump, constantly speaks in those terms, and they’ve
decided to adopt his Neptunian phraseology. Being the “state” media outlet is a
role they apparently relish.
“Everyone knows…” is a phrase we
hear on a daily basis with Trump, as though he thinks his job is to channel and normalize the country’s dark side. Judging from his approval
numbers, only a small slice of the population agrees: more likely, Trump’s “Everyone”
is simply a projection of what’s lurking in his venal, mean-spirited mind. To
King’s hero on the mountain top, Trump is the troll beneath the bridge.
So, those who try to claim that he
was simply shooting off at the mouth this past week when he called African and
Caribbean nations “shitholes” are challenged today to square all that with the
spirit of this 50th anniversary year of Reverend Martin Luther King
III’s tragic death. To consider how far we have come since that time, and how far we have regressed. Mavis Staples’ rendition of
“We Shall Overcome” is playing on the radio as I write this: it’s not a
nostalgic message these days; it’s a real
cry from the nation’s core.
We have to wonder what spell has
been cast over our nation that has made all this possible. The lure of higher
Wall Street numbers? The seduction of a
tough-talking “strong man” leader who seems to know how to “get things
done?” Pollsters have begun tracking “authoritarian”
voters in America…say what?! Astrology
can help us puzzle through these issues, but ultimately we have to examine our
nation’s soul. Writing for the New York
Times, Ibram X. Kendi claims that “denial” is at the heart of America’s
tortured relationship with race. A fairly long piece, what follows is my
attempt to capture and compress the key points:
“Denial is how America defends itself as superior to
‘shithole countries’ in Africa and elsewhere, as President Trump reportedly
described them in a White House meeting last week, although he has since, well,
denied that…This denial of racism is the heartbeat of racism. Where there is
suffering from racist policies, there are denials that those policies are
racist. The beat of denial sounds the same across time and space…
When someone identifies the obvious, Mr. Trump resounds the
beat of denial as he did before he was president: ‘I’m the least racist person
that you’ve ever met,’ that ‘you’ve ever seen,’ that ‘you’ve ever encountered.’
…Only the racist lives by the heartbeat of denial. The antiracist lives by the
opposite heartbeat, one that rarely and irregularly sounds in America—the
heartbeat of confession.”
The karmic mire of our national
relationship with race is exhausting and deeply frustrating, to say the least.
Volumes could be written about that, but suffice to say here that the Trump
presidency represents a critical tipping point. Astrologically, we’ll consider
why our nation’s “original sin” of racism and exploitation is now coming due.
In one short year, Trump has managed to lance a hateful boil in our national soul, and it's threatening to infect our entire system.
If it’s any solace, we can’t heal
a wound that lies repressed and hidden, so it would be more productive (and
ultimately more redemptive) to take on our demons once and for all.
For many at home and abroad, this
past week in Trump’s White House has dredged up all the agony of centuries of
injustice. At the risk of sounding dismissive, I would offer that
astrologically, this painful, regressive period is actually not all that
surprising. There’s a discernible pattern at work, and we are now poised at a
critical tipping point in it.
Progress is always incremental, and regression is an unfortunate part of the
spiraling, cyclical process. Two steps forward in one cycle…encounter
resistance and fall back a few in the next…scramble to regain lost ground,
tweaking some problems from the first go-round…fall back a tad in the next…it
never ends. Regressive tendencies lie dormant in every nation’s psyche, just
waiting for hard times to unleash them.
These tendencies evoke Pluto
and the shameful, antisocial impulses we typically banish to its underworld
(unconscious) realm. Out of sight, where we can more easily deny them—Neptune sits at Pluto’s
right hand in that underworld, enabling and masking, twisting and
distorting reality. If Trump is just saying what everyone is thinking, he can’t be racist, can he?
When—in the face of several
confirmations that Trump did call
Africa and Caribbean nations “shitholes”—one senator claims he didn’t hear Trump say that (is he simply
lying, or is he afraid to be accused of disloyalty?), does that mean we should
simply accept the consequences of Trump’s actions without complaint, and with
no assurance of truth? When Neptune and Pluto link arms in this
way, madness follows, but way off in the distance there may be redemption, as
well.
Let’s first quickly consider the
sunrise chart for today’s MLK Day Holiday.
Chart
1: MLK Day 2018, January 15, 2018, 7:25 a.m. (sunrise) ST, Washington, D.C.
Tropical Equal Houses, True Node.
We’ll be talking more about this
chart in the biwheel below, so here we’ll just capture the “lay of the land.”
Notice that a Venus-Sun-Pluto conjunction rises at the Capricorn ascendant!
This is the same basic energy that gave Senator Dianne Feinstein the courage to
take action in the face of GOP attempts to squelch the Russia investigation
this past week, only here it’s happening at the ascendant (set for Washington,
D.C.).
In Feinstein’s case, Venus
represented her stature as an older female leader (Capricorn); in today’s
chart, it seems that the nation-at-large is being called to courageously live
out its founding values. Importantly, this stellium falls conjunct Sibly Pluto (chart shown in Triwheel #1 below), which falls in the 2nd
house of our national values! Pluto traditionally rules gestation
and birth, so by definition it rules these fundamental values. Were we founded
on a set of innocent, perfectly democratic values? The mythology would say yes;
perhaps we know better in our heart of hearts.
I would argue that Neptune—which
rules the natural 12th house and evokes the Source of life by its
association with the oceanic realm—co-rules
the gestation process, a point that is brought home by the nice sextile we see here between Neptune
and the Moon/Pluto midpoint in Capricorn. This aspect reflects
unsettled obsessions, and a call to purge ourselves of toxins—a call that can
be expressed in a range of ways.
Clearly, Trump’s efforts to expel people he finds
objectionable—Salvadorans, Haitians, Mexicans (including the Dreamers he
purports to love, but clearly hates)—fit this aspect to a tee. It’s no wonder
that the Senate is working overtime to craft an immigration bill that he will sign
at this time.
Polls show, however, that the
majority of Americans see Trump’s racist policies and our tortured history in this regard as the problem, the toxin
we need to purge, if you will. At the risk of over-simplifying the challenge,
the choices boil down to hate or love, cruelty or compassion.
IMHO, the most powerful times in the 1960s Civil Right
movement were the loving, non-violent ones
that spoke to the nation’s conscience. King’s uplifting message was above all loving and inclusive; he knew that our historical wounds were hurting all of us, and that healing them would
help all of us over the broad sweep
of time.
Are there in-between measures we can
take to address legitimate concerns about immigration? Certainly, but even so,
one of the more chilling moments this past week was when Trump says he wants an
immigration “bill
of love”. He’s done his best to confuse away the difference between truth
and lie—now he’s on to confusing even love and hate?! A person’s heart is known
by his deeds; enough said.
Where
America stands today
There’s a lot more to talk about in
the above chart, but this is a good leaping off point for considering it from today’s context—considering where the
nation’s focus is today. To do so, I’ve cast the Triwheel below, setting the
chart we considered above against the Sibly radix chart (inner wheel) and the
Sibly chart, progressed to today’s
date (1/15/2018). This layering should help us discuss the topic at hand in the
context of our foundational ideals and intentions (warts and all), and based on
where we’re at now (progressed chart), should provide either a progress report
or a wake-up call.
What are our compelling priorities
and deepest vulnerabilities today, and given these, how are Trump’s
race-baiting policies likely to play out? Let’s begin.
Triwheel
#1: (inner wheel) USA-Sibly
chart, July 4, 1776, 5:10 p.m. LMT, Philadelphia, PA; (middle wheel) USA-Sibly
chart, day-for-a-year progression for January 15, 2018 at 12:00 a.m. GMT,
Washington, D.C.; (outer wheel) MLK Day 2018, January 15, 2018, 7:25 a.m.
(sunrise) ST, Washington, D.C. Tropical
Equal Houses, True Node.
MLK Capricorn stellium
(Venus-Sun-Asc-Pluto-Moon-Part-of-Fortune-Mercury-Saturn) opposes Sibly Cancer
stellium (Venus-Jupiter-Sun-Mercury-Part-of-Fortune) and Sibly Progressed Jupiter
Rx-No. Node (Cancer). Not to confuse us any further, Sibly
Pluto (Capricorn) also plays into this amazing set of oppositions and
along with Saturn (ruling Capricorn), it is the driving force here. Dramatic
restructuring of power in society is the core principle here. We see this
process at work in the White House, yet we need to hope that the Trump
administration will not have the final
word in the process, whether on race-related issues or anything else!
Note that MLK Pluto is within 2° of its own southern node
(approx. 21°Capricorn),
a point that deserves some explanation. Astrologer Michael Lutin sums the
challenge up beautifully in the Sept./Oct. edition of The Astrological Journal (UK)[1].
It’s worth an extended quote (compressed a bit to capture key points):
“A complete reorganization and re-examination of government
on the world, global, corporate and personal level in your own job is being
stirred. A revolutionary spirit is occurring as well as the effort to suppress
it.
What makes this even more exciting and complicated is the
fact that Pluto, at its place in the heavens in the late 18th
century, is now moving across what we call the plane of the ecliptic—or the
path of Earth around the Sun…And it will conjoin its own South Node. This
position and motion oddly happens to coincide with the abnormal shift in
political and military alliances.
…Fears and paranoia can be magnified in a time like this.
Xenophoboa arises. And the people have to struggle to fight a feeling of
futility…We astrologers know that strange as it seems, a portal to the beyond
is being opened…it is actually an opportunity to go through the darkness and
re-ignite the light.”
At the end of Lutin’s article,
Melanie Reinhart points out a stunning coincidence that should influence our
thinking about Pluto’s movements: this transit of its Capricorn nodes coincides
with the launch point of the 1993 Uranus-Neptune cycle we are now
experiencing! The cultural, political and social upheavals brought on by that
cycle in the late 20th century are very relevant to our current situation.
One example of this stares us in the
face continually: the onset of globalization and its redefining of economic
realities, not to mention its “flattening” of national boundaries and its
exploitation of natural resources, has created one migration crisis after
another, dislocating people from their homelands through no fault of their own.
More than 65 million people are displaced worldwide, and yes, that will create
some urgency about immigration policies in the nations where people may seek to
settle. Clearly, every nation has choices of ways to respond.
I’ve talked at length about these
issues in other articles; here, let’s just dwell on the choices the Trump
administration has made for dealing with this global reality: lock the doors, build walls and expel
those “undesirables” they fear will proliferate (via "chain migration"--a Neptunian twist on slaves arriving in chains?) if they
don’t. Be “selective” about those we
take in (more from Norway, please…the fewer refugees and poor people the
better). Oh, and while we’re at it… Lady Liberty says what?
This of course ties into Trump’s
racist policies, since his administration is promoting blatant demographic
cleansing (Moon/Pluto!)—culling the numbers of immigrants and cutting off
the pipeline. This is the difficult, even existential situation we’re faced with,
as our national wound of racism calls out for healing and we wonder what
America stands for anymore.
Lutin points out that over the long
scope of history, “empires and dynasties have risen and fallen” under similar Pluto
passages (p. 23). Not to overstate the matter, but left to our lesser angels,
we can be tipped over that abyss. As
difficult as it can be, however, Capricorn is a wonderful Saturnian energy for
clearing the Neptunian fog and focusing on what’s important and true, so let’s
make hay while the cold wintry Sun shines!
Saturn’s role here as Capricorn
ruler and the lead planet in this
incredible MLK Day stellium can’t be
overstated—it’s as though Saturn is personally leading the
charge up that treacherous “mountain” we’re faced with these days. It’s
challenging our early Cancer Sibly planets to get with the program, and by
exactly sextiling Sibly progressed
Saturn, it also encourages the
national soul-searching (progressed Saturn is retrograde in
Scorpio) we see everywhere in the press. Like a “tough love” teacher, Saturn
says that we can be better than this.
Naturally, we could get stuck on the
purely financial dimension of American life (Sibly Venus-Jupiter
oppose MLK Saturn-Mercury, while Sibly progressed Saturn trines radix
Venus-Jupiter)—yes, the economy’s doing well right now—but more
importantly, what higher purposes are
we serving with our financial strength? Are we becoming a better nation in the process?
MLK Mars-Jupiter (Scorpio) inconjoin Sibly
Mars (Gemini) and trine MLK Chiron (Pisces). There’s also a grand water
trine lurking here, if we factor in Sibly progressed Jupiter-Node, but
the inconjunct I’ve noted is of particular interest because it involves the
manipulation of our erratic 7th house Sibly Mars. How we define “Others”
is always a matter of national policy, and as we’ve seen, it’s rife with potentially
racist dynamics. It can also be a volatile geopolitical mine-field, as well.
With MLK Mars-Jupiter in Pluto-disposed
Scorpio, we might suspect that powerful machinations behind the scenes (over
the Sibly 12th) are poised to wage “war” (Sibly Mars) of some kind in the course of achieving
aggressive goals. Over-the-top, itchy trigger-finger defensiveness is key here
(Mars-Jupiter),
so Trump’s “shithole” comments fit right in. With this duo in Scorpio, square Sibly
Moon and Sibly
progressed Mercury (both Aquarius), we need to hope that the damage to
our body politic stops there.
We might argue that there are
already a couple “wars” being waged against those Trump views as “Others:” voter
suppression efforts are afoot to influence the 2018 mid-term elections—a “war”
intent on disempowering certain segments of society (guess which ones); Russian
meddling in our election process is continuing unaddressed by the Trump
administration (which is thereby enabling
it). Unfortunately, Trump’s Sun-Uranus-Node conjunction (Gemini-chart
not shown) falls conjunct Sibly Mars, so perceived threats and
potential “wars” feel very personal to him.
Trump’s hair-trigger defensiveness
is only enhanced by the Sibly Progressed Moon now falling conjunct his natal Sagittarius Moon:
no wonder his over-stimulated emotions have been conflating loyalty
to country with loyalty to him,
personally!
 |
| The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. |
Final
thoughts
Please pardon my digressions: here, we’re focusing
on today’s Capricorn celebration in honor of the good Rev. Dr. King.
Unfortunately, the flip side of King’s “dream” is a painful set of illusions,
which brings us finally to Neptune’s role in today’s chart.
Conjunct our Sibly progressed Sun, Pisces
Neptune
trines Sibly Sun (Cancer), quincunxes Sibly Saturn (Libra) and
sextiles the MLK Moon/Pluto (midpoint, Capricorn). Expressed at their highest
and lightest, these placements are hopeful and potentially redemptive. Yes, we can return to and safeguard our compassionate
national ideals. For instance, there’s a growing American “sanctuary
movement:” people of conscience from every religious denomination
imaginable are walking their talk in communities by offering shelter to
undocumented immigrants threatened with deportation.
Another redemptive move could be
less dramatic, but equally important: we can
sit down for the uncomfortable conversations that need to be had in this country
on the issue of race. We can expose our illusions to the bright light of consciousness where they can be cauterized. Watery energies such as Cancer and Pisces can have us
retreating into our comfort zones, but we need to push ourselves out, to where
the healing begins. The alternative is also frightening, so why not?
Not surprisingly, to heal we need to
also push through long-held, Neptunian illusions. Here’s where Kendi’s
article (quoted earlier) makes perfect sense: maybe we have been under the illusion that we’re better than what Trump is showing us from the White House. That we’re
more “evolved” when it comes to social equality and racial progress? Is that
why Fox can get by with claiming that
“everyone” thinks the way Trump talks?
Kendi captures these possibilities
when he says that the “heartbeat of racism is denial.” Sibly Neptune holds court
at the top of our national chart—it’s not just about that elusive “American
Dream”—it’s about the illusions woven into our national fabric.
So, we seem to be at a cosmic
threshold of sorts, which certainly fits the occasion. Just maybe, to be the
better nation that we can
be—to climb that Capricorn mountain with our dear friend and teacher, Rev.
Dr. King—our illusions of equality and racial progress had to be challenged in a brutal wake up-call.
The important thing is that we do wake up.
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 2018. All
rights reserved.
[1]
Michel Lutin, “When Pluto goes south…does the whole world have to follow?” The Astrological Journal, Sept./Oct.
2017, Vol. 9, No. 5, London, UK, pp. 20-23.
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