“So, there’s a blurry line between the entrepreneurial spirit that has served the U.S. so well and ‘hucksterism,’ but it all falls under Jupiter-Neptune's purview. As does the irony of current politics and one politician’s ‘Big Lie’ triggering existential fears for American democracy. This enmeshing of religion/ spirituality and the quest for political power is often toxic in the end: for one thing, it increases the risk of our delicate balance of executive, legislative and judicial powers being thrown totally out of whack.
--Raye A. Robertson—A Guide to the Astrology of Outer-Planetary Cycles: Volume 1: the Jupiter Cycles
The Jupiter-Neptune cycle speaks loudly to the entangling of religion and spirituality in the quest for political gain, and we’ve certainly seen how that entangling can inspire extreme positions on human and reproductive rights issues on the Court, with six self-avowed conservative Christians weighing heavily on every decision.
We’ve also been learning more and more about the shameless, ethics-free financial gain that Supreme Court Justices apparently feel entitled ("divinely?") to pursue in their outside relationships. Clarence Thomas has, by recent accounts, taken in over 4 million dollars worth of gifts and benefits from his billionaire friends, who often have business before the highest Court. Such rogue behavior on the part of the Court—Chief Justice John Roberts has done precious little to rein in this corruption, apparently—threatens to throw that “delicate balance of executive, legislative and judicial powers” so out of whack that, to quote Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it “paves the way to authoritarianism.”
Both Jupiter and Neptune rule (and co-rule) mutable signs, so it follows that this cycle tends to be especially influential when these two hit key cycle milestones while in mutable signs. This makes the 2022 inception of their latest cycle in Pisces concerning for its potential to further destabilize our institutions and to enable other toxic imbalances, such as those contained in the GOP’s authoritarian Project2025 agenda.
Of course, this cycle is also enabling the outpouring of heartfelt, optimistic responses that might help re-balance and shore up our democracy—AOC’s comment, noted above, was made in the context of a special round table discussion called by House Reps concerned about the SCOTUS ethics crisis and determined to find solutions. Given that Congress—contrary to Samuel Alito’s opinion on the matter—does wield some power over the Court, this round table could be a turning point that’s worth looking at astrologically. Sometimes the least “showy” events can be highly consequential. To that end, let’s briefly explore Chart 1 below, a noon-chart set for the 6/11/2024 (first meeting) of this special round table group in Congress.
A Senate SCOTUS ethics bill was blocked by GOP this week.
Chart 1. SCOTUS round table in Congress (first meeting), June 11, 2024, 12:00 p.m. DST (noon chart, no exact time available), Washington, D.C. All charts are cast by author on Kepler 8.0, with Tropical Equal Houses and True Node and courtesy of Cosmic Patterns Software.
The angles and houses can’t tell us much in this noon chart, but the less time-sensitive placements and their relationships within the chart certainly tell a story. Like the Gemini Sun-Venus-Mercury conjunction that squares Law-related Saturn in Pisces and is inconjoined by Justice-related Pallas Rx in Scorpio. Retrograde passages often feel frozen in time, if not trending backwards, which speaks remarkably well to the behavior of the highest Court at this time.
Not only has the Court chosen to sit on Trump’s immunity case, a move guaranteed to favor him by pushing the remaining Trump trials out beyond the election, but it continues to decide cases in favor of those who want to roll back important progress in voting rights, in women’s reproductive rights, in environmental programs (having ruled against the EPA recently), against the separation of Church and State, and so much more.
As for Pisces Saturn’s role in this configuration, it significantly trines that retrograde Pallas and quite likely enables the Court’s potentially corrupt agenda because with Pisces, the rules Saturn might impose can be undermined or eroded.
ProPublica reported on luxury vacations the Thomas's received from GOP mega-donors.
Venus, of course, speaks to the flow of money into SCOTUS hands and to the fact that big money (often to corporate “buddies”) lies at the heart of so many of the Court’s decisions. Conjunct Executive Sun, this Venus suggests that perhaps the power structure that funds the Court will help rein in the problem of Supreme Court Justices corruptly accepting lavish, multi-million-dollar gifts with impunity. So, exactly the issue posed before this Congressional round table group.
It’s also worth noting that key player Pallas Rx is disposed by Scorpio rulers Mars and Pluto, which fall in exact square in this chart, from Taurus to Aquarius. This is a waxing square, so likely indicating an energetic (potentially volatile) and perhaps bull-headed approach to the Court issues at stake—or perhaps it simply reflects the brute, retributive tone of the comments of Martha Ann Alito (the Justice’s wife), as revealed on tape recently by liberal documentary filmmaker, Lauren Windsor. This possibility is reinforced by the Mercury-Saturn square noted earlier—Mrs. Alito also made reference to “getting back” at the Media in her comments. There’s been a lot of that kind of talk on Capitol Hill and on the Trump campaign trail during this square.
It should be noted that this early Aquarius Pluto still conjoins the nation’s Sibly Pluto (allowing a 5 degree orb)—meaning that all these concerns about Supreme Court justices and their billionaire buddies (many the promoters of Christian Nationalist agendas) can also be seen as the more visible facet of a much broader transformational drive that certain Supreme Court justices seem to be championing. For instance, out of sight and largely out of mind, some “friends” of the Court are in favor of transforming our system of government from representative democracy to oligarchic, theocratic autocracy—a system similar to the one that keeps Vladimir Putin in power in Russia.
With his loyal and dependent oligarchs and compliant Eastern Orthodox leaders, Putin—for whom every election is rigged to prolong his tenure—rules with impunity. This system goes beyond the typical “Strong Man” autocracy because it blatantly co-opts from within the institutions and mechanisms of government and public life, filling the state airwaves with self-serving lies and propaganda and making sure that no political opponents live to have a voice. Not surprisingly, Putin’s nativity (to the extent it can be considered accurate) features a power-hungry Jupiter-Pluto square (Taurus-Leo) and a Saturn-Neptune conjunction in Libra that inconjoins that Taurus Jupiter [1].
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| Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (l) and Jaime Raskin (r). |
Returning to Chart 1 above, notice that the Moon—signifying the People—falls in fixed Leo and square fixed Uranus in Taurus. Could it be that We the People are starting to become a bit shocked at the radical power plays that routinely inform our daily news—and certainly the news regarding the highest Court? According to the round table chair people (Democrats Raskin and Ocasio-Cortez), significant numbers of people have expressed alarm over the shocking amount of money and other benefits taken in by Justice Thomas from his billionaire “friends.”
In fact, Thomas’s longtime benefactor and major GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow has paid for Thomas’s mother’s house, sent Thomas’s foster son through school and has lavished the Justice with numerous extravagant trips and exclusive vacations. Many public officials have been indicted on ethics and corruption charges for a lot less. Informing the public of these facts is an important first step towards responding to the Court’s apparent acceptance of politically-charged corruption.
For its part, Jupiter still very widely conjoins Uranus (the cycle they recently began in April remains in its very “new” phase), which may speak to why Chief Justice Roberts recently declined to meet with the Senate Committee that requested his input about Court ethics and the refusal of Justices Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves in cases involving Trump (the ethical thing to do under the circumstances). Far from inspiring confidence in the Court’s objectivity, in his overblown claims that the Court is independent from oversight, Roberts seems to be saying that he intends to do nothing to address the growing distrust that people have expressed about the Court and that we should all just live with it. The Chief seems to have no plans for reining in his treasure-seeking colleagues, despite the pressure being put on him as the Court’s so-called leader, so what’s there to talk about? Needless to say, all of this falls on that Congressional round table for consideration.
Interestingly, Roberts’ noon-chart (no time available) features a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction (both Rx, Cancer) square his Libra Neptune and trine his Scorpio Saturn, which falls square his Leo Pluto Rx. His steely Aquarius Mercury opposes this Pluto and together they t-square his Saturn [2], which makes me wonder if we can trust his oh-so-innocent looking deep blue eyes: clearly, he’s not afraid to wield Power-writ-large, so assuming that he simply can’t control his compatriots’ corrupt impulses rings kind of hollow. Likewise, if nothing changes and the corruption only deepens, we can probably assume that it’s either by design or by willing complicity.
And then there’s Neptune…
Returning now to Chart 1 for one last thought, we must consider Neptune’s deeply waning cycle with Saturn—note that in the chart, Saturn is a mere 10°40’ degrees from catching up to Neptune. All of which is concerning because the erosion of institutions is a feature, not a bug of this cycle’s 3Q phase, and this agenda tends to gain power and force towards the final days of the cycle. What will this mean for what remains of our democratic institutions? It’ll be a wait-and-see situation between now and the new cycle’s launch in February, 2026, but IMHO, all hope is not lost. Neptune will be exiting Pisces in early 2025 (March 30) and Saturn will follow suit in May, 2025.
Much more on this in a future post, but from the perspective we’re considering with Chart 1 above, the sign changes should be welcome and helpful for cutting through the bureaucratic “fog” and for beginning to act on a plan to reform the Court, not to mention other institutions that have been descending into corruption as well. It’s not Biden’s age we need to be worried about…it’s the fragility of our democracy and the voracious appetite on the Right to feast on its remains that should be our real concern.
Getting to this 2025 threshold from here could be dicey and exhausting to what remains of the presidential election campaigns, and I suspect that there will be times when it feels like corruption and venality are winning the day, but I take hope in a thousand small ways that, as a nation, we’ve got this.
Keep it light, my friends!
NOTES
[1] Vladimir Putin, October 7, 1952, 9:30 a.m. ST (in dispute), St. Petersburg, Russia. Rodden rated DD: conflicting/unverified.
[2] John Glover Roberts, Jr., January 27, 1955, 12:00 p.m. EST (noon chart, no time available), Buffalo, NY. Rodden rated XX: date without time.
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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, and she has authored three books on key mundane astrology topics that are currently available on Amazon Kindle. For information about individual chart readings, contact: robertsonraye@gmail.com.
© Raye Robertson 2024. All rights reserved.
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