What follows below is the first of four excerpts I will be posting here from a short book I first wrote during the pandemic, entitled The Mundane Moon: an evolving cosmic story for "We the People."
My original intent was to publish it in 2021, but for reasons I can't quite remember at the moment, I had second thoughts and decided to put the project on the back burner -- my guess is, another topic or project seemed more pressing at the time.
Happily, I had time to revisit this project during my recent hiatus and it now seems more than timely. In fact, I'm now hoping that it will provide us with a "people-centered" approach to understanding a whole complex of major astrological events coming our way in the next couple months, including key transits, the upcoming Aries ingress, important cycle dynamics and yes, the dramatic and much-anticipated April 8th eclipse in mid-Aries that we will actually experience up close and personal across the U.S.
The mundane Moon is especially relevant right now because on this March 25, a key cycle that impacts us all in the U.S. will be completing and relaunching anew. I'm referring, of course, to the completion of the 1994 U.S. Sibly progressed lunar cycle and the dawning of the new 30-year long progressed cycle at 19+Pisces, the degree at which the Sibly Progressed Moon and Sun will come together. Given everything else going on these days, I suspect that revisiting some highlights from the various quarters of this 1994 cycle and examining how it's likely to proceed from here will be worth the effort.
That said, please know that the excerpt that follows has been updated where needed for timeliness and some images that were not part of the original have been added to make sure it works well with this blog format. As noted, the entire book, minus some appendix materials will be shared here in the coming few weeks as we approach the new cycle: your feedback and questions are always welcome in the Comments. Thanks so much for your kind attention!
The Mundane Moon: an evolving cosmic story for "We the People"
copyright 2021, Raye A. Robertson, all rights reserved
Excerpt 1 of 4
Intro: a People-centric model
It’s always intrigued me that the Moon in a mundane chart represents the People—which in the U.S. in 2024 feels like such a wounded, disjointed collective in search of an identity and direction. So, how are mundane astrologers supposed to think about this point in a nation’s chart and, for that matter, about issues involving “We the People?” This study will take up these questions by examining how the mundane Moon functions in collective-oriented charts and tracking how major events often correlate with key transits and progressions to that point. Hewing to a familiar perspective, this study will focus on the U.S. and the Sibly chart. Hopefully, the beginnings of a People-centric model for mundane chart interpretation will emerge along the way.
Humanity’s primitive history becomes relevant here: for millennia, humans co-existed with Nature in far more intimate ways to satisfy their unmistakably lunar needs of nurture and reproduction. The Moon guided our deep ancestors in tangible, life-sustaining ways; no wonder that very Moon came to represent us astrologically in society. People lived immersed in Nature’s cycles and in a vivid state of wonder and awe at the Universe around them; we see this reverence embodied in powerful creation stories, rituals and circle dances that capture the wondrous cosmic dance of the Sun, Moon and Earth. Our ancestors communed with these “gods” and were enlivened by them.
Early hunters and gatherers learned from their Cosmic dance partners, rippling outward from solitude into wider circles of lineage, allies and the Commons—into the solidarity and sharing that is so essential to any Society’s wellbeing yet today. Whatever we do to feed ourselves these days, we’re still hunters and gatherers of a sort, and we still need those primal cosmic connections. We need them not only as solitary humans, but as families, communities and societies. I suspect the mundane Moon remembers stories we need to hear.
Unfortunately, time and intellectual detachment has rendered this Moon uncomfortably mysterious—a sentimental abstraction that often seems faceless. Economist Francis Fukuyama argues that to understand today’s politics (people interacting in society, basically), we need “…a better theory of the human soul.” [1] Perhaps a deeper grasp of the mundane Moon could help here? Fukuyama dares to acknowledge the spiritual dimension of this “theory of soul” he’s after. Humans are not always rational, he says; nor can their behavior be reduced to statistics alone.
Astrology concurs: we know that motivation is rooted in survival fears, in values, in emotional and psychological dynamics, and importantly, in social and environmental influences. And yes, we know that we are caught up in both time and space: for better or worse, where we’re born often impacts our choices. Perhaps the mundane Moon represents far more than a faceless mass of people making “rational” choices?
Clearly, personal and collective lunar dynamics intertwine in ways we need to understand in society. “Irrational” forces such as the Moon and Neptune deeply impact how we live in families and in society, and that’s just a start. There’s a reason that many who struggle with addiction also routinely struggle to find creative, fulfilling lives in society—when Opioid addiction became a public health crisis, as it did in the U.S. in recent years, what did that say about the creative yearnings of our collective Soul? When we were feeling afflicted and repressed more recently by the COVID-19 pandemic, how many reached for creative hobbies and pursuits just to get through?
Importantly, how do we resolve the tension between our personal needs and the demands society makes of us? Do we willingly participate in civic life, perhaps even agitating for change, or do we willfully numb ourselves against it all because paying attention is just too unpleasant and upsetting?
A person’s nativity speaks to some of this—an upper hemisphere natal Moon often reflects the former possibility, whereas a lower hemisphere Moon suggests less collective focus. Lunar aspects that bridge the hemispheres can help draw us out of our individual lunar shells, or for those whose focus is already quite collective and objective, such aspects may help draw us inward towards greater subjectivity.
Perhaps it follows that, in a mundane chart, the Moon’s particular sign and house combination, in the context of the whole chart it occupies, represents the archetypal American (Canadian, Brit, etc.).
Archetypes, of course, can be projected onto a nation’s population in both positive and negative ways; they can offer compelling characteristics that feel “authentic” and worth emulating (like the “rugged individual” or “Cowboy”) but they can also be severely limiting. In societies that have evolved in more pluralistic and multicultural directions, they can, in the wrong hands, become downright regressive and isolationary. The challenge is to find original ways of expressing our nations’ archetypal lunar energies that work in an ever-evolving and highly-connected world.
The character of a nation’s People will inevitably change over time, of course—changes that are reflected in the progressed travels of that same mundane Moon and in the nation’s progressed lunar cycle. Even with this perspective, however, it’s far from clear by what alchemical lunar process millions of individuals living within the same national borders coalesce into a so-called Body Politic, or People. Turns out, scholars and philosophers have been writing about this for centuries.
Christine de Pizan used this anatomical imagery throughout her respected 1407 study, The Book of the Body Politic, but she focused primarily on the interdependence of the various body Parts on each other and their impact on the Whole society/body. Ordinary working people were considered the belly, legs and feet by her model—perhaps another reason astrology associates the Moon with the People. Bellies (Moon) are always looking for nourishment and security, and if they’re not sufficiently fed, nothing goes right. De Pizan also acknowledged that such laborers carry the weight of a society—hence the association with legs and feet.
Despite her pre-Enlightenment timeframe, de Pizan didn’t give the ruling classes free rein to exploit everyone. She put it best:
“For just as the human body is not whole…when it lacks any of its members, so the body politic cannot be perfect, whole, nor healthy if all the estates…are not well joined and united together. Thus, they can help and aid each other, each exercising the office which it has to…just as the members of a human body aid to guide and nourish the whole body. And in so far as one of them fails, the whole feels it and is deprived by it.”[2]
Centuries later, astrology still acknowledges this interdependent model; people are still identified by their social roles: leaders/executives resonate with the leonine mundane Sun; the warrior with Mars (rank and file military and other public servants evoke Mercury, ruling Virgo). Jupiter and Saturn traditionally ruled nobles, clerics and aristocrats; more recently, religious institutions, corporations, the legal establishment, legislators and their institutional support system take their place. Scientists, inventors, technologists and astrologers are now associated with Uranus, while celebrities, scholars and artists—the “Creative class”—evoke Venus, Jupiter and Neptune. Since Uranus and Neptune have been discovered, we’ve better realized how potent social, spiritual and creative forces work on the mass level.
Finance leaders and institutions resonate with Saturn’s role as chief regulator and Pluto’s role as the “Dragon” guarding the nation’s Treasure; Venus chimes in with her rule over currency and some precious metals, and then, there is the Moon--ruling the more accessible currency of silver on which We the People and everyday life are more dependent. But doesn’t that essential collective include every person in the land? If so, there’s a lunar component to every role played in society; the challenge is for those who rise into the other social categories to remember that connection.
What makes a People?
We still haven’t addressed how individuals coalesce to form that Body Politic, however. The Moon is ever changing, of course: we see it at work in the moody political swings that mark partisan contests, but as alluded to earlier, every nation possesses a radix (natal) Moon that tells us something about the more enduring native character of its People—that nation’s Soul. Cultural trends come and go with transits and progressions, but there is something ineffable about any People that stands out and is reflected in a radix Moon. So, what does pull us together—what makes a mass of individuals an identifiable People?
In our own times, Constitutional scholar Danielle Allen suggests that what makes “one People” is the natural impulse and need for individuals to “gather together peaceably.” This requires order, which leads people to organize around filling their collective needs. Diversity should be no obstacle or issue here; human needs are universal. Allen concludes that “A multitude organized politically becomes a people…a ‘people’ was thus simply a group with shared political institutions.”[3] Anything “political” (from the Greek, “polis” or “city”) derives from and relates to the people—it's not “tribal,” in the sense of a group of people organized around family ties, or genetic heritage; a Body Politic transcends genetics to forge social and collective bonds of a more all-inclusive kind.
So, lunar needs drive the impulse to coalesce; our willingness to seek orderly consensus around filling those collective needs emerges from there. But needs-driven People cannot operate in a vacuum, clearly—both the de Pizan and Allen models require leadership, structure and values, principles and ideals, but as we've witnessed throughout human history, those collective imperatives can be hijacked for dubious purposes. Given more recent developments in American politics and history, to Allen’s definition I would add that at the very least, a People must be capable of acknowledging a common set of facts about themselves and their nation.
In the course of events
Maintaining a healthy body politic is an ongoing challenge, of course, as the tragic events of January 6th, 2021 in the D.C. Capitol certainly illustrated. A healthy People can harbor disagreements on all kinds of issues without melting into violent incoherence; what we can’t do is to start demonizing each other as enemies. The fact is, any People is forever evolving and responding to outside influences—that’s why this study will examine both transits and progressed lunar cycle dynamics alongside U.S. radix placements during a specific time frame. Do America’s recent lunar dynamics account for the regrettable civic decay we’ve seen in recent years? The easy answer is yes, but the complexities warrant a deeper look ahead.
To begin teasing those complexities apart, this exploration will focus attention on key events during the 1994 progressed Sibly lunar cycle, which launched at 20°Aquarius in October, 1994 and is now in its deeply balsamic 3Q phase (see Table 1 for specifics)—it’s a cycle that all living U.S. adults have experienced to varying extent, and in some ways, it’s been a cycle that has felt deeply “American” because it resonates with our late Aquarius, 3rd house radix Moon. Let’s think about that placement and the U.S. Sibly chart’s historical context for a moment: it’s a chart that represents a key moment in the Enlightenment’s ideological focus on liberating people from oppressive monarchies and forming functional democracies.
The Sibly Moon at 27°+Aquarius reflected all that to a tee: in a rational/scientific air sign and house (3rd) ruled by revolutionary Uranus--a fitting early story for a nation that historians like to refer to as an “idea,” unique for being fixed for all time in two founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. All of that has come under intense stress in recent years, of course, as the Trump administration worked to undermine and even dismantle many of our institutional checks and balances and “small d” democratic safeguards and threatens to continue that destruction is re-elected this November, 2024.
As we’ll see, certain themes have persisted throughout this cycle, and each quarter has something to say about the Sibly Moon and our evolving Body Politic. First, however, a brief survey of the time frame we’ll be examining.
Table 1. Timeline for the 1994 Sibly progressed lunar cycle.
| Progressed New Moon | Progressed 1st Quarter | Progressed 2nd Quarter | Progressed 3rd Quarter |
| 10/14/1994 20°Aq | |||
6/10/2001 27°Aq-27° Tau | |||
12/24/2008 | |||
3/1/2017 12° Pis-12° Sag | |||
3/25/2024 19° Pisces |
Eventful years
Over this cycle’s nearly 30 years, we’ve seen major developments in U.S. history—some, like the slow-rolling Opioid epidemic that first surfaced in the 1990s, didn’t even attract much attention at first, but it caused horrendous loss of life, damage to families and loss of public trust. By the time the epidemic hit the news in the late 1990s, its horrors were nearly matched by an apocalyptic mood that had mounted in American society that decade, along with a host of technological advances. This mood expressed itself in dystopian films like Terminator 2-Judgment Day (1991), Face/Off (1997) and The Matrix (1999): such films played complex mind games with us and pictured humanity as fragile in the face of violent autonomous cyborgs and inscrutable technologies. No wonder so many people freaked out about “Y2K” and filled their cellars with survivalist rice and beans!
Those first years of the cycle were relatively prosperous for some, even so; tech stocks soared as the World Wide Web became more widely available to the public and lucrative new IT jobs opened up; amazing technological changes were in the air.
Some developments were less hopeful—the Web also enabled corporate globalization, which had been seeded much earlier, but was about to ravage large segments of the American economy. The Bush I and Clinton administrations collaborated to pass the instantly controversial U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal known as NAFTA in 1993, which was followed closely by the release of David Korten’s landmark When Corporations Rule the World and domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995 [4]—the same year the World Trade Organization was forming to manage globalized trade.
Korten warned that globalization would become a kind of environmentally disastrous corporate colonialism [5] and he wasn’t far off. At the time, however, with steadily rising stock market numbers, a “dot.com boom,” and sporadic terrorist events in the news (domestic and international), few were listening.
Unfortunately, the Oklahoma bombing signaled a distinct trend towards domestic extremism [6], white supremacy-related plots and conspiracies that have mounted throughout this cycle. All of this found wings under grievance-stoking Trumpism and culminated tragically at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. That so much of this unfolded during this 1994 cycle time frame and against a backdrop of anti-government conspiracy cults like Q-Anon reflects back on those pre-millennium anxieties noted earlier.
Clearly, a People evolves continually in response to forces and events that animate public discourse, so to provide a leaping off point for this exploration and to establish some general themes for it, we’ll examine the 1994 Sibly progressed lunar cycle launch against the Sibly radix and transit charts for that moment. (Triwheel #1, below).
We’ve come a long way, Sibly Moon
A nation’s value system shows up in its astrology, and so do the tensions that result. For instance, Sibly Neptune (Virgo) at the top of our radix chart (inner wheel, Triwheel #1 below) is often thought to represent our national “Dream”—with widespread opportunity, home ownership and middle-class prosperity a “Promised Land” of sorts. This “Dream” is often elusive; while this Neptune trines our “big finance/Wall Street”-related Sibly Pluto, it inconjoins our radix (Sibly) Pallas-Moon conjunction (Aquarius), throwing up frustrating obstacles to a fair share of that prosperity for the rest of us.
The frustrations are exacerbated by Sibly Venus—in Cancer, disposed by and widely inconjunct our Aquarius Moon. We carry the economy with our productivity and consumption, but it hasn’t always worked the other way round. Satisfying the “bread and butter” needs of the American people was probably not the point of our founding chart, and for better or worse, this reality produces difficult disconnects with our founding ideals and sets us up for constant political struggle.
Take the intense issue of health care coverage and its erratic availability. When the Obama-era Affordable Care Act—an imperfect, but important foray into national health care—passed Congress in 2010, Neptune exactly conjoined Sibly Moon—it was a public ideal whose time had come, but since Neptune moved on into Pisces in 2011, attempts to repeal that access proliferated—even in the face of the COVID pandemic. At that Pisces ingress, Neptune also inconjoined progressed Sibly Moon (PMoon), reflecting these frustrating setbacks for the adoption of truly universal health care. Who benefits from the pain all this creates?
Neptune has been surprisingly involved in such issues: in the relatively prosperous 1950s, an idealistic Libra Neptune transited trine Sibly Moon, and when Neptune transited Scorpio and trined Sibly Jupiter-Venus (60s), it also conjoined the Sibly PMoon for a time. We didn’t have universal health care then, either, but we had middle-class-friendly laws and unionized work places with benefits—coverage outside of work wasn’t as critically needed.
A few key Sibly basics
Since the goal here is a People-centric analysis, it seems the focus needs to be more on everyday concerns than on abstractions about government, etc. So, we’ll focus more on the Sibly’s lower hemisphere, which is naturally more attuned to everyday concerns than the more institutionally-oriented upper hemisphere is. The signifiers of our leaders (President-Sun, Congress-Saturn, Judiciary-Jupiter, Saturn, religious institutions-Neptune, Jupiter) are all found in the radix upper hemisphere, while our mundane Moon and its Aquarius ruler Uranus grace the lower.
Signifiers of our collective Treasure (Pluto) and the military/public service (Uranus) are found in the 2nd and 6th houses, respectively, bridging the People’s concerns with those of Government through investment (bringing corporations into the picture) and taxation (2nd h. Pluto) and through employment and public service (6th h. Uranus). It’s significant here that 6th h. Uranus disposes our Aquarius Sibly Moon—labor issues, and at times, unrest and rebellion, naturally reflect the People’s perspective, and our history offers plenty of examples.
The Sibly progressed lunar cycle tracks the evolving relationship between the nation’s leadership (Sibly Sun) and the nation’s People (Sibly Moon), between our sovereign power (Sun) and the grass-roots support (Moon) from which that power derives, including military support (Moon disposed by 6th house Uranus). The “Head” and the “Body” are interdependent, indeed—our Cancer Sibly Sun falls in the 8th house of the larger Economy, while our consumerist Moon rules the 8th house and disposes that Cancer Sun from the 3rd house of local communities). Interdependent and complicated.
Thankfully, this progressed cycle offers a window into how these relationships evolve over a meaningful stretch of time. The period in question here stretches from October 14, 1994 to March 25, 2024 (so coming very soon). In Triwheel #1, the inner wheel represents the U.S. Sibly radix chart, the middle wheel represents the Sibly, progressed to that 1994 moment, and the outer wheel represents the transits at that 1994 inception moment. Every triwheel thereafter will follow this same arrangement for the next cycle quarter/phase--four total triwheels, in other words, one for each quarter of the 1994 progressed cycle.
After we've explored these four charts in subsequent postings here and have established that context, we will turn our attention to a triwheel for the new progressed cycle launch that's due later this month, on March 25.
A note about nomenclature. Please take note of the nomenclature we’ll be using in the triwheels that follow: “radix” refers to the U.S. Sibly chart as it was on July 4, 1776 (found in the inner wheels in each instance); “P” before a planet or aspect refers to a progressed planet or aspect—always found in the middle wheels; “T” before a planet or aspect refers to a transiting planet or aspect, and will always be found in the outer wheels.
 |
| Thymos/Love c. Saatchi Art |
Growing pains: the U.S. Sibly chart’s 8th progressed Lunar cycle
Our lingering October, 1994 cycle began as the nation’s 8th progressed lunar cycle. With seven such 30+-year cycles under its belt in 1994, the U.S. was starting to show its age, but American corporations were experiencing a kind of renaissance—Korten’s When Corporations Rule the World was more than prescient, given the determined power players waiting in the wings to globalize corporate power--in the outer wheel of Triwheel #1, below, 12th house TPluto, Venus and Jupiter are conjunct and, we can imagine, eagerly anticipating what lay ahead.
Triwheel #1. (inner wheel) the U.S. Sibly chart; (middle wheel) Secondary progressions for 10/14/1994, U.S. Sibly chart; (outer wheel) Transits, October 14, 1994 (new U.S. Sibly progressed Sun-Moon conjunction (new cycle launch). All charts are cast on Kepler 8.0, with Tropical Equal Houses and True Node and courtesy of Cosmic Patterns Software.
That Scorpio 12th house triumvirate was transiting square the progressed cycle point (PSun-PMoon conjunction) at 19°+Aquarius (middle wheel) and the radix Sibly Pallas-Moon (inner wheel, Aquarius). Through sextiles with Capricorn TUranus and TNeptune, this same Pluto-Venus-Jupiter threesome was poised to leverage the Saturnian energies transiting the Sibly 2nd and 3rd: the Capricorn points were disposed by Saturn in Pisces, falling in mutual reception with Neptune—a contest was taking shape between the interests of Capital and those of People. Translation: unusually widening levels of wealth inequality between the "99%" (the lunar masses) and the "1%" (the plutonian billionaire class) were beginning to overtake the Economy, writ large.
These world-order-changing energies reflected the widespread anxieties triggered in our manufacturing sector when Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into law in December 1993 (Chart 1 below), with Aquarius co-ruler Saturn nearing the Sibly Moon. The new Uranus-Neptune globalization-related cycle had just launched that past February, 1993 in Saturn’s other home sign Capricorn (19°+), widely conjunct Sibly 2nd house Pluto (27°+). A grim sense of inevitability gripped American labor—in Dec. 1993 Saturn was weighing down American households, conjunct Sibly Ceres (Pisces), and the “middle class boom” was about to go bust.
Chart 1. NAFTA signed into law, December 8, 1993, 12:00 p.m. ST, (noon, no time known), Washington, D.C. Source: Wikipedia.org. Source: author cast on Kepler 8.0.
In October 1994 those Capricorn heavies in the outer wheel of Triwheel #1 above still occupied the Sibly 2nd, setting the tone for a lot of what followed in this progressed cycle’s opening quarter. Those Jupiter-Venus-Pluto Scorpio sextiles to the Capricorn points also enabled financial reforms that mostly deregulated corporate and banking behavior. So, in retrospect, we can see that this cycle launch was a critical turning point, but perhaps no one foresaw its most pernicious outcome: all the same globalization-friendly energies would also enable unscrupulous pharmaceuticals to aggressively market Opioid-based medications across middle America. The Opioid “pill mill” problem—which morphed into an epidemic of heroin addiction—had its roots as far back as the 1980s, according to journalist Sam Quinone’s Dreamland [7] but like all Neptunian disasters, it floated beneath our national radar screen for years.
Cureus reported in 2018 that “In 1996, in the setting of a national push for the identification of pain as a primary medical disorder, oxycodone hydrochloride, commonly known as OxyContin™, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a “minimally addictive pain reliever.” [8] So, government and corporations colluded in this delusion, in effect, and Americans in pain (both physical and spiritual) reaped the whirlwind. Transiting Chiron (outer wheel, Virgo) conjoined Sibly Neptune in Triwheel #1, squared both the inner and outer wheels’ horizons (Sagittarius-Gemini) and Sibly Mars (Gemini), and quincunxed the Aquarius progressed cycle point (middle wheel)—it was a deeply wounding and disillusioning passage that destroyed lives and families, and in retrospect, probably radicalized many of its victims.
It would take until late 1998 for stories about the growing Opioid/heroin death toll to hit the national media—no surprise, by that time, Sibly PMoon had moved on to conjoin our radix Sibly Chiron (Aries). Wikipedia reports that from 1999-2017, “more than 399,000 people died from drug overdoses that involved prescription and illicit opioids.” [9] Certainly, it was a death toll that deserved more outrage than it received at the time, but we were waging two overseas wars and dealing with massive economic upheavals (more to come) during many of those years—maybe Neptune had also helped the nation go numb? Despite the Opioid epidemic’s urgency, it would take until 2017 for U.S. Health & Human Services (HHS) to declare it a public emergency. [10]
So as this 1994 cycle launched, Sibly’s uneasy radix Moon-Pluto semi-sextile, denoting persistent tension between powerful monied interests and the People’s needs, was about to be severely tested, especially as Uranus and Neptune would each conjoin Sibly Pluto shortly after this 1994 moment and would then move on into Aquarius, adding to the disruption. While a radix aspect like this may seem minor and forgettable, it actually set a heavy discordant tone that’s worth a bit more consideration.
With Sibly Pluto in the 2nd, the discord raised issues of values and worth, and looking back, it’s clear that a loss of identity, worth and human dignity characterized too many of the challenges of this cycle. According to Fukuyama, that’s deeply problematic—he’s convinced, in fact, that the one key human trait that we ignore at our peril is described by the Greek word thymos:
“Thymos is the seat of both anger and pride…Desire and reason are component parts of the human psyche (soul), but a third part, thymos, acts completely independently of the first two. Thymos is the seat of judgments of worth…”[11]
So, bad things follow when people lose worth in the eyes of society, of their communities, or in their own eyes. This certainly happened to hundreds of thousands over the course of economic globalization and the Opioid epidemic; how could this not have knock-on effects for our entire lunar Body Politic for decades to come? In 2015, Donald Trump attracted a followership by tapping into such deep-seated anxieties, saying that America was diminished and needed to be made “great again,” when it would have probably been more accurate to say that the People had been devalued and diminished and needed to feel great again.
Uranus/Aquarius has factored heavily into this progressed lunar cycle, of course—first of all, by Uranus disposing the 1994 inception point at 19°+Aquarius. The progressed luminaries would move on to conjoin the Sibly radix Moon (Aquarius) by April 1995 (PMoon) and by 2002 (PSun). Uranus would enter home sign Aquarius in 1996, and by 2002, it would be within orb of the radix Sibly Moon, reflecting the shocking developments of just months before on September 11th, 2001 and the rush to war in Afghanistan that ensued that October. More on all that under Triwheel #2.
Before we turn to that chart, however, notice that in Triwheel #1, TMars (outer wheel) conjoins radix Sibly No. Node in Leo, signaling a trend towards Executive power grabs. Terrorism would soon overwhelm our news and change the public’s view of the balance of power. Security or Civil rights? More on that ahead.
So, one important theme we can take away from this 1994 progressed cycle’s opening quarter is that we had entered a new globalized order in which the People were expected to pay a shocking price for the ambitions of a newly-unleashed corporate sector and the strangely parallel threat of terrorism. As noted, wealth inequality numbers rose by leaps and bounds, as some profited obscenely. Wages for everyone else broadly stagnated or even fell due to labor dislocations. Many are still dealing with the fallout.
References and Notes
1 Fukuyama, Francis. Identity: the Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition, 2018, p. 257.
2 Christine de Pizan, The Book of the Body Politic, ed./trans. Kate Langdon Forhan, Cambridge University Press, 5th printing, 2007, Cambridge, UK, p. 90.
3 Danielle Allen, Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, Liveright Publishing Corporation (W.W. Norton), NY, 2014, p. 117.
4 “Oklahoma City Bombing,” Wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing. Accessed 2/8/2021.
5 David Korten, When Corporations Rule the World, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1st ed., 1995, p. 142.
6 Anti-Defamation League, “A Dark & Constant Rage: 25 Years of Right-Wing Terrorism in the the United States,” www.adl.org, NY, 2017, p. 1.
7 Sam Quinones, Dreamland: the True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic, Bloomsbury Publishing, NY, 2015. Kindle Edition, p. 16.
8 Taylor Santoro & Jonathan D. Santoro, “Racial Bias in the U.S. Opioid Epidemic: A Review of the History of Systemic Bias and Implications for Care,” Cureus, Dec. 14, 2018, https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6384031. Accessed 1/26/2021.
9 “Opioid Epidemic in the United States,” Wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic_in_the_United_States. Accessed 1/16/2021.
10 U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, “What is the U.S. Opioid Epidemic?” https://www.hhs.gov/opioids/about-the-epidemic/index.html. Accessed 1/16/2021.
11 Fukuyama, 346-350.
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.
