Tuesday, June 8, 2021

Confronting Leviathan: the June 10th solar eclipse




This is a new moon (solar) eclipse, of course, with the Sun and Moon conjoining like twins trying to share the same set of Mercurial earphones at 19°+Gemini...

 

The information signals coming through are muffled and possibly distorted by ideology-driven framing, however—especially in the U.S., where the chart, set for Washington, D.C. places Sun and Moon in the 12th, tightly conjunct Mercury (Gemini) and square watery 9th house Neptune-Pallas (Pisces). Discernment of the facts could be elusive, although a Vesta-MC Virgo-Pisces opposition (chart set for Washington, D.C.) in wide t-square with the eclipse points and Neptune-Pallas could provide a pragmatic focus. Whether or not this will save our body politic from power players who count on being able to create and manipulate public perceptions to their own ends is something to watch.     

 


Chart #1. Solar eclipse, June 10, 2021, 6:52:29 a.m. DST, Washington, D.C. Tropical Equal Houses, True Node. All charts cast on Kepler 8.0, courtesy of Cosmic Patterns Software. 

 


Asteroid experts Demetra George and Douglas Bloch associate Vesta with a “focusing principle” that in perfectionist Virgo can tend to obsess over imperfections.1 Anyone watching the so-called election “audits” that are going on in various U.S. states right now knows how this might apply; attempts to focus distorted information and flat-out lies into sketchy purposes, especially on the local level (3rd house Vesta) have been afoot for some time and are likely to continue unless we can navigate this t-square's distortion/discernment stand-off in favor of the facts.  

As Vesta moves deeper into Virgo, Jupiter (Pisces) will briefly oppose it, which may or may not bode well for fact-based politics, but before that happens, Mars will be transiting conjunct Vesta and opposing Neptune-Pallas over the remains of this summer and into the fall, all still under the influence of this eclipse. Current trepidations about another round of violence in the Capitol, driven by Trump and company’s refusal to drop the “big Lie” about Election 2020 are probably warranted. Delusions afloat that the election was “stolen” from Trump and his followers—and most bizarrely, that somehow Trump will be magically reinstated in the White House yet this summer—are still stoking grievances and undermining real efforts to get anything rational done in D.C. these days.  

The mythical Leviathan evokes today's apocalyptic fantasies, as well.
All of this is convenient timing for Trump, of course, who’s faced with possible indictments from high-level legal cases against him and his Trump organization yet this summer. Deflection is a well-honed weapon in his arsenal, of course, but even if he escapes convictions there, his impact on the GOP’s credibility, sanity and frankly, its commitment to democracy are legion. In fact, if we want to wax mythological for a moment, they're being swallowed whole by the “Leviathan” of white supremacist conspiracy-mongering that Trump and his right-wing media cohorts have summoned up from Neptune’s primal Chaos. According to INACH.com, COVID-19 has enabled this pernicious development: 

“The novel coronavirus and the disease it causes (COVID-19) swept the globe in mere months. Entire economies shut down and people were confined to their homes for months. One more thing was also common, the loss of the feeling of security and the mourning of the life people used to live. COVID completely turned the world upside down and arguably changed how we live our lives forever. 

Such major cataclysms always provide a fertile ground for hate and conspiracy theories. People, especially when they feel insecure, look for easy answers, people that they can blame, straightforward theories so they can make sense of the world once more. The pandemic has not been different. Multiple communities have been targets of vicious verbal racist attacks, discrimination has become rampant towards certain minorities and a myriad of conspiracy theories blossomed in the wake of the virus.” 

Unfortunately, throughout history, unscrupulous cynics have leapt at opportunities to stoke the public anger that arises from people’s fears, grief and insecurity, twisting those emotions for their own treacherous purposes—Trump and his GOP followers are far less interested in providing for people’s needs than they are in benefiting from their anger, and they’re okay with conjuring up the demon of racism for the sake of a long-term stranglehold on power. This is fascism, folks, and although we’ve been lucky so far, we’re no more immune to it than Hitler’s Germany was in the 1930s. It breaks my heart to draw this correlation, but the facts support it.  

The sheer prevalence of mutable placements in this eclipse chart suggests the possibility of extreme tactics designed to push limits that we may have thought were inviolable, like the sanctity of free and fair elections in a democracy. Those who have bought into Trump’s election lie narrative (including members of Congress and in state legislatures) are, along with the right-wing spin-machine (this is a Gemini eclipse), still enabling that narrative and trying to give it what voting rights expert and lawyer Marc Elias calls the “veneer” of official status . This is happening especially in the GOP-led states where Biden won, states that are seeing an onslaught of phony (and potentially illegal) vote “audits” that aim to destroy the public’s confidence in their election results.  

From day one, even before he took office, Trump has cast himself as the victim of any institution or individual expecting him to take responsibility for anything, and with this eclipse conjoining his Sun-No. Node-Uranus, opposing his Sagittarius Moon (chart not shown)2 and all of it being t-squared by eclipse Neptune-Pallas, I wouldn’t expect much different going forward. He showed us for four long years that his strategic "doctrine” is totally personal: wield complete power; admit zero responsibility.  

I suspect that such Neptune aspects are capable of eroding a person’s capacity to think clearly, so it's quite possible Trump actually believes his “big Lie,” even though he knows better. This is no diagnosis, but several dementia patients I’ve charted over the years have gone through similar Neptune transits to their personal planets in the course of their disease, so we can't rule out the possibility that some kind of mental erosion is in progress with him. We don’t really need to get caught up in that discussion, however, to see how dangerous all this is because of Trump’s lingering hold on the GOP, which is itself a Pisces entity (founded on March 20, 1854 in Ripon, WI), so heavily influenced by Neptune at all times. Neptune’s dark side will likely hold sway until the “ism” Trump spawned fades away as well.  

Adding an extra layer of crazy to all this is now Russia, reportedly claiming that those who stormed the Capitol on January 6th are being “persecuted” by the DOJ—a point Putin apparently plans to make in his upcoming talks with Biden. Not that I believe for one minute that Putin seriously believes this claim; more likely it’s a cynical attempt to neutralize Biden’s criticism of his treatment of opponent Alexei Navalny (or any other human rights issues) at those talks. The “looking glass” game of “whataboutism” is a typical deflection maneuver with Putin, but in this case he appears to be trying to leverage the delusions planted by Trump to justify weaken Biden's position for his own purposes. Today's news says the Russian media is parroting Republican talking points about the insurrection as we speak--how convenient, just before he's due to meet with Biden. Reality check: anyone watching television or sitting in the Capitol on January 6th knows better, full stop.  

When people tell us what they intend, maybe take them seriously?

The insurrectionists told us loud and clear that they aimed to overturn our legitimate election, by whatever means, so by their own words and deeds, they were clearly not peaceful protestors who could be slapped on the wrists and sent home. Aside from the lives lost, several very important laws that are essential to any government (let alone a democracy) were broken that day; even so, there’s an apparent move on to lionize these would-be domestic terrorists, dubbing them martyrs for some pitifully twisted “cause.” Up is down; down is up; the slippery trip down the proverbial “rabbit hole” of toxic misinformation becomes more and more complete. 

Bottom line, the GOP is clearly determined to undermine Biden’s presidency and the Dems’ agenda by any means necessary--apparently even if it disables diplomatic efforts with a proven antagonist. They're basically doing the Kremlin's (and China's and Iran's) dirty work with their relentless, provocative dissemination of lies and distorted information. When Republicans win, “elections have consequences” and we should all just “get over it,” but when Dems win, the elections must have been fraudulent—huh? Could it be that the GOP under Trump has become simply too addicted to power and too unable to connect with the truth to hear their own treachery? Habitual, pernicious dishonesty is a sign of an addictive system, according to psychologist Anne Wilson Schaef, author of When Society Becomes an Addict. I think she’s on to something.   

 

Nothing to see here?
When crazy becomes real 

The fact that the party whose leader basically instigated the January 6th Capitol insurrection wants to now rewrite history and claim that it was no big deal and doesn’t need further investigation speaks directly to Schaef’s exploration of dysfunctional, addictive societies. Crazy, conspiracy-based theories were spun into overdrive by then president Trump and his acolytes—what were they thinking was going to happen as a consequence? Manifesting the “dream” (“illusion,” “conspiracy,” “the imaginary,” etc.) is what the Saturn-Neptune cycle is all about, and on January 6th, it was hitting the final 3Q semi-square, with Saturn at 2°+Aquarius and Neptune at 18°+Pisces, so negative manifestations were all too likely that day.  

Since January 6th, “manifesting the dream” has taken on an equally dark tone in the hundreds of outrageous bills state legislatures have tried (and succeeded in some cases) to pass that would make voting in upcoming elections difficult, if not impossible, for many people who have a known track record of voting Democratic. The racist dimension of these laws has not escaped attention, of course, but that does nothing to stop their quest. 

Many of these bills are also designed to take power away from the very state officials who safeguarded our democracy from Trump’s claims of being cheated last time—secretaries of state who stood up for what they knew the facts to be, whether they liked the outcomes or not. They did this because they are obligated to operate in a non-partisan fashion as they oversee elections on the state level and they took their responsibilities seriously.  

According to Sue Halpern, writing for the New Yorker, the controversial bill Texas governor Greg Abbott is trying to pass “includes measures that would, for example, allow a judge to overturn an election result simply if a challenger claimed, without any proof, that fraudulent votes changed the outcome.” This is not democracy, folks; these tactics put so-called “Banana Republics” to shame.   

Fact is, many life-long Republicans acknowledge today that their “Party of Lincoln” has lost its way: the party seems to have been presented with a choice between democracy and Donald Trump, and Trump and his uniquely delusionary autocratic dreams won out. GOPers in thrall to him may not feel like they have a choice (wrong), or they may even want to enable Trump’s demonstrated addiction to control and power--if he wasn’t addicted, he would be able to admit a loss. Either way, the party has been turned into Trump’s personal cadre of co-dependents—it’s a match made in addiction hell, where lying and manipulation have become a way of life. These dynamics describe addictive families and societies to a tee, and they’re always destructive.  

Taking responsibility (Saturn) is the only way out of this mess, clearly, so Saturn’s continuing Aquarius square with Taurus Uranus should be instrumental in helping that happen, if we don’t allow those energies to be co-opted by autocratic ambitions as well.  This is where vigilance, speaking hard truths and action are so essential. This is not a rehearsal or a hypothetical danger; Trumpism (if not Trump himself) covets the power invested in the White House and is determined to engineer a long-term takeover beginning in 2022. Unfortunately, the astrology of our times may enable that takeover if we don't make better use of it. 


Healing the addiction 

It’s a well-worn truism that Saturn is the only effective planetary counter to Neptune’s excesses—work, discipline, effort and a commitment to the facts are required to heal any addiction. We’ve all seen how addictions work: to heal, an addict must drop their denialist, escapist and passive aggressive ways of trying to control the world around them by admitting absolute powerlessness over the addiction and by acknowledging the facts of the situation, however grim or uncomfortable.  

Uranus should be instrumental in this in the near term, especially while Saturn occupies the sign these two planets co-rule, Aquarius. As we can see in Chart #1 for the upcoming June 10th eclipse (above), Uranus is also tightly aligned with Ceres (Taurus) as it squares Saturn, which reflects the facts confronting us right now: if we want to strengthen and repair our democracy, there’s serious work to be done. The Saturn-Uranus cycle has officially entered its 3Q phase, so the focus here should be on clearing away outworn “stuff” that’s standing in the way of building strong institutions and infrastructures.  

I suspect that this cycle also represents the challenges posed by recent cyberattacks—determined by intelligence services to most likely be the work of Russian-supported criminal hackers. These ransomware attacks have escalated their efforts lately, targeting more U.S. infrastructures and systems than usual. Meet the Press devoted a huge portion of the program this week to this issue, framing it as an urgent concern that requires the highest-level attention. The motives, aside from the sheer dollars demanded by the hackers, are easy to imagine: anything that makes the Biden administration looks weak makes Putin (and not incidentally, Trump) happy, which tells us about all we need to know about why the GOP is working to obstruct Biden’s infrastructure plans—Biden might come out of the exercise looking good, and they’re committed to not letting that happen, no matter the cost. Never mind that GOP constituents need the projects and jobs offered by that bill as much as anyone does. The GOP has relinquished governing for control—according to Schaef, a driving concern in addictive systems. 

Sen. Joe Manchin, (D, WV) is playing dangerous games with democracy.
As we see in Chart #1, Saturn rules the 7th house of enemies, so the Saturn-Uranus square reflects both the high-tech thuggery and, because of the fixed signs involved, the current politics of obstructionism. Sen. Joe Manchin (D, WV) has decided to do the GOP’s dirty work for them with his refusal to help the Dems pass any bill in the Senate that isn't supported by at least 10 Republicans. Not surprisingly, Manchin’s noon chart (born August 24, 1947 in Farmington, W.V.) is incredibly “fixed,” but curiously, his Virgo Sun, Cancer Mars and Gemini Uranus have also been triggered during this ongoing eclipse season. It’s very difficult to take his excuse of commitment to bipartisanship seriously, but several Leo planets in his nativity (Pluto, Saturn, Mercury, Venus) suggest that he might relish the spotlight and the control he’s gained from being Biden’s “perfectionist spoiler.” I’m sure a lot of Dems are feeling “with friends like this...” 

Maybe it’s simply unrealistic to expect great strides forward with Biden’s infrastructure plans until the current Saturn-Uranus 3Q winds down and the new cycle begins; that’s a long, ten+ years from now, however—the cycle will be first exact in 6/2032, when the two planets conjoin at 28°+Gemini, and to my mind, the Taurus-Aquarius mix lends itself to the building of material structures better than Gemini does, so I’m not laying any bets on how this will ultimately unfold.  


Eclipses keep us moving 

A lot has been said in the mainstream news about this being a “ring of fire” solar eclipse on June 10th, and I’m happy to say it might even be visible from where I’m writing this, however astronomically, it’s not likely to be as dramatically powerful as it might look. According to Space.com: 

“Because the moon will be just 57 hours past apogee, its farthest point from Earth during its orbit, it will appear somewhat smaller than usual — smaller than the apparent disk of the sun. It is for this reason that viewers in the shadow's center will get an annular rather than a total eclipse: the sun will become a brilliant ring (or annulus) of light encircling the moon's dark silhouette for several minutes." 

Weakening this eclipse’s ultimate astrological impact is that, although it’s a “dragon’s head” eclipse (the No. Node shares the same sign as the eclipse), this Node is 9°+ degrees away from the eclipse point. This may be a saving grace in some regards, but this is not an eclipse to ignore, nevertheless.

For one thing, it’s happening at a mutable Zodiac degree that has a history of being disruptive to American affairs—and it’s taking place conjunct Trump’s natal Gemini planets, tying into his mutable full Moon configuration—so it’s probably not a good time to take anything for granted. It also conjoins Sibly Mercury and t-squares the Sibly Neptune-transiting Neptune opposition (Virgo-Pisces) at the same time (chart not shown) it forms several aspects to placements in Vladimir Putin’s chart3 (see Biwheel #1), so pretty much reflecting on his role in the cyber-criminality and tensions at work between our two nations these days. 

The upcoming Biden-Putin meeting promises to be confrontational.
Perhaps most dramatically, the Eclipse point conjoins Putin's Gemini Part-of-Fortune and grand trines his Libra Saturn-Neptune conjunction and steely Aquarius No. Node. Every time the energies of this eclipse are re-animated by key transits to its Gemini origin point, the energies and intent of this grand trine will be stimulated.  

Biwheel #1. (inner wheel) Vladimir Putin, October 7, 1952, 9:30 a.m. ST, St. Petersburg, Rodden: DD (conflicting/verified); (outer wheel) Solar eclipse, June 10, 2021, 1:52:29 p.m. DST, Moscow, Russia. Tropical Equal Houses, True Node. All charts cast on Kepler 8.0, courtesy of Cosmic Patterns Software. 

 

Of course, this same principle applies to any chart tied into this eclipse so intensely, but let’s consider how this restimulation process might work.  Because of their demonstrated importance during other eclipses in history, Mars and Saturn are at the center of this process, according to eclipse expert Celeste Teal. She says:   

“Mars is action-oriented, a real fighter: therefore, this planet will often initiate the most dynamic events related to an eclipse....Mars may represent a bully or an antagonist, and its transit to an eclipse may bring one forth. Mars energy is best utilized when fighting for causes on behalf of others. That’s why it’s appropriately associated with the armed forces and the military.”4 

Saturn, on the other hand, is thought to “close the door” on particular eclipses, especially if Saturn transits conjunct or opposite the eclipse point within the coming few years. Teal says that “The presence of Saturn symbolizes the matured development in the state of affairs indicated by the eclipse.” Interestingly, she points to the role “karma” can take in Saturn’s resolving of an eclipse’s purpose: “Remember, an eclipse frequently shows a place of imbalance, so Saturn’s demands for karmic balance may bring major shifts, with power taken from one place and placed in another.”5  In the June 10th instance before us, Saturn will square that point from Pisces in June, 2024, which doesn’t exactly fit the guidelines for “closing,” but I suspect it could be a significant moment for the current situation.  

As for Mars transits going forward, Mars will oppose the Gemini eclipse point in Sagittarius during January 2022, and then conjoin that Gemini point in August, 2024, so these are potential “trigger” points and should probably be taken seriously. This is especially true of the 2022 transit: it ties in too closely with the intense outer planetary times we know we’ll be experiencing then, with transiting Pluto closing in on its Sibly return and Neptune close to perfecting its transiting opposition to Sibly Neptune. We’ll likely return to this topic closer to that time, but for now, suffice to say that we already have plenty of reason to expect that 2022 will be a volatile year, so nothing new there.  

The constant onslaught of difficult news this past year has made it hard to appreciate when good things do happen, but I’m willing to stick my neck out and suggest that today’s CNN news alert may portend good things to come during this eclipse season. It begins as follows: 

“US investigators have recovered millions of dollars in cryptocurrency paid in ransom to hackers whose attack prompted the shutdown of the key East Coast pipeline last month, according to people briefed on the matter.... The Biden administration has zeroed in on the less regulated architecture of cryptocurrency payments which allows for greater anonymity as it ramps up its efforts to disrupt the growing and increasingly destructive ransomware attacks, following two major incidents on critical infrastructure.” 

This past week’s announcement that the DOJ has escalated the priority of cyber-crime investigations to the level of terrorist investigations probably has something to do with this successful recovery of the crypto-millions, but whatever the case, progress is being made, and that’s hopeful considering our cosmic “weather” these days. Perhaps the threat to corporate bottom lines is the best incentive for getting serious about these threats, after all is said and done?      

Finally, we can’t look at any eclipse or cosmic event that somehow aspects Neptune these days without some thought for the pandemic and its continued impact in many places. From where I’m sitting it appears that people have decided to make tentative “peace” with the not-yet-eliminated peril, keeping their masks hanging on their cars’ rear-view mirrors “just in case,” still using them to walk into restaurants, but shedding them as soon as they sit down. Building up the numbers of people fully-vaccinated is the key now, while we have some breathing room, as is getting vaccines into children’s arms. I’m about to see my grandchildren for the first time in years (seems like decades), and that’s worth the price of a sore arm twice over to me! I hope you’re looking forward to similar joys. 

Whatever your plans, however, be well and safe. I’ll be back in roughly three weeks!  

 

 


 

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, U.S. history, culture and media, the astrology of generations, and public concerns such as education and health. She’s published articles on these topics in several key astrology journals over the years, including most recently, the TMA blog. See the Publications tab on this site for a list of Raye’s recent E-books on current topics.

For information about individual chart readings, contact: robertsonraye@gmail.com. 

© Raye Robertson 2021. All rights reserved.