In a stunning delivery of their verdicts, guilty…guilty…guilty…
was the mantra repeated by the Manhattan jury for all 34 counts lodged against former president Donald Trump in NYC on Thursday, May 31, at 5:07 p.m. (as documented on Wikipedia). Red-faced and livid, of course, Trump condemned the judge, the trial and the nation for what he chooses to see as a political witch hunt, when in fact, if he were anyone other than Donald Trump—who takes responsibility for nothing as a matter of principle—he could have been treated far worse by this judge, the trial and the nation.
But it “ain’t over ‘til it’s over,” as they say, and there are many hurdles ahead before Trump will move from being a convicted felon to being accountable for today’s stunning, unanimous guilty verdict.
We won’t know what his sentence will be until at least July 11th, and if there’s a way for him to delay the judge’s plan for this day, we can probably assume that he and his lawyers will find it. Once the sentencing does happen, of course, Trump’s appeals will begin (as is his right), and we can be rest assured that he won’t stop with a first or second appeal, which could take us well into 2025.
If he’s begun a second term as president during this appeals process, of course, all bets will be off about the outcome. He’s already telling his GOP allies in Congress that he wants a law passed that will allow state cases like this to be sent to the Federal courts, where—if he’s president—he will be able to have it dismissed. Then there’s the troubling fact that he has—as one legal expert put it—“5 friends on the Supreme Court.”
In times like this, of course, it’s tempting to allow cynicism and worst-case scenarios to ensnare our minds. What if Biden keeps losing ground with young voters who are disenchanted with his policies regarding Israel and its war with Hamas, and Trump ends up back in the White House as a convicted felon? It boggles the mind that these young voters could consider Trump the solution to their frustrations, but with a deeply waning Saturn-Neptune cycle dogging our steps, we shouldn’t take for granted that voters will make rational choices this fall.
Of course, there will be no accountability for Trump’s convictions if all this irrationality leads to him being re-elected: his convictions will be overturned and our Justice system will be decimated, one way or another. And that’s if he hasn’t managed to stimulate violence against his perceived enemies during the rest of this election year. If there’s one thing we know about Donald Trump, it’s that he doesn’t rest until he’s tried absolutely everything to get his way and to protect and vindicate himself. More about this when we examine his nativity next to the event chart for yesterday’s guilty verdicts.
 |
| Donald Trump and lawyers react to verdict. |
Before we get to that, however, let’s first examine a chart for the moment the verdict was announced on its own. See Chart 1 below.
Chart 1. Trump guilty verdict, NY Hush Money/Election Interference trial, May 30, 2024, 5:07 p.m. DST, New York, NY. All charts are cast by author on Kepler 8.0 with Tropical Equal Houses, True Node and courtesy of Cosmic Patterns Software.
This chart could hardly be more packed with dramatic aspects and cycle dynamics. Using the 5:07 p.m. DST time noted earlier, Scorpio rises, with co-rulers Mars (Aries) and Pluto (Aquarius) very widely square, spanning the 3rd and 6th houses. At the heart of this event is an intensely personal—to Trump, internal—conflict. This Mars is sandwiched in between Aries Chiron and Eris—the pain felt by Trump at these verdicts can't help but be deeply disruptive and psychologically wounding. As his niece Mary Trump (a psychologist herself) has often observed, “losing” has never been an acceptable option in the Trump family.
For its part, Pluto (Rx, Aquarius) also forms a nice airy, waxing trine with Jupiter in early Gemini, and if we stretch the orbs a bit, the Sun-Venus conjunction (a bit later in Gemini) adds a protective glow to this aspect. The prosecution did have an extraordinarily successful day with the unanimous guilty verdicts against Trump, but it didn’t take but a few minutes for Trump to tap into these trines with his defiant statement outside the courtroom and again the next day in his “day-after” press conference at Trump Tower. Anything to regain control over and wrap himself in a protective narrative that asserts “complete innocence” and attacks everyone else. Staging a very official looking, flag-festooned press conference guaranteed that his narrative would be set afloat in the media sphere and would be covered from start to finish and discussed ad infinitum.
Trouble is, his pre-sentencing demeanor will factor into the judge’s choices of sentences in July, and a continued stance of defiant denial and remorselessness (Jupiter-Pluto trine)—however official looking—may not help him at that time. “Deny, deny, deny” sounds pretty hollow in the face of 34 unanimous convictions.
Even so, his GOP entourage (Venus—the wannabe Veep squad and others) are doing Trump’s bidding, rolling out his relentless narrative claiming the trial was a political exercise, that the case against him never should have been brought (translation, we shouldn’t care if our political candidates falsify records to interfere with election results?) and so on…the usual, in other words.
It’s a narrative that never changes with him, essentially—the nation is going to hell, the system is out to get you and if it can do this to me, just imagine the horrors it can cook up against you. Topped off with “I am your retribution,” of course. It’s an easy, one-size-fits-all narrative that can be applied wherever he goes and never requires him to craft actual policies.
This relentless and unchanging narrative is already being served pretty well by the staunch Mercury-Uranus conjunction in Chart 1’s Taurus 7th house, yet we’ll see how this conjunction plays against his nativity—it has the potential for disruption, too. With 7th house Mercury ruling the Gemini 9th and the Virgo 11th houses here, he is relying heavily on his allies to help disseminate his narrative, yet Scorpio Pallas (Rx) opposite this Taurus Mercury-Uranus certainly reflected how the cause of justice (Pallas) has revealed the dark facts that contradict his narrative. In the end, his court defense and claims of “perfect innocence” failed in the face of actual facts and evidence.
That said, Saturn’s position in Pisces in its deeply-waning balsamic phase with Neptune suggests that the public will be assailed with Trump and company’s attempts to rewrite reality—a possibility that’s reinforced by the wide Moon-Saturn conjunction we also see in Neptunian Pisces, with cusp ruler Neptune itself following soon after in the same house. This conjunction also speaks to the very personal dimension of these verdicts for Trump—and for the nation. How should we feel about one of our presidential candidates being a convicted felon 34 times over?
As one commentator put it by way of historical comparison, Richard Nixon at least had a sense of shame and resigned once his Watergate crimes were uncovered; clearly, Trump intends to run his campaign from jail, if he has to, claiming he’s a political prisoner when the facts say he has been convicted for 34 counts of breaking serious laws on both state and federal levels. Yet, he's being talked about like some tragic Alexei Navalny or Nelson Mandela character--IMHO, what a way to dishonor those truly great men! Or, Neptune might have us simply look the other way and pretend nothing happened, but are we really prepared to say that character and responsibility (Saturn) don’t matter in our leaders anymore?
The numbers and the biwheel
Trump’s influence on the public seems to thrive in an atmosphere of grievance, anger and cynicism, so when all but two of the current cycles are waxing and the cyclical index numbers begin trending upward, as they have since the recent inception of the new Jupiter-Uranus and Jupiter-Neptune cycles, he may find he has less sway over people’s moods than he did in his first presidency. Not saying that serious problems don’t persist in these United States, but the numbers—for Chart 1 above, a mere negative 43—suggest to me that things are feeling lighter than they have for quite a few years.
If his nearly constant stream of ranting messages on social media are any indication, however, Trump himself certainly hasn’t lightened up: if anything, he’s more defensive and thin-skinned than ever and even more dedicated than usual to attacking any and all perceived critics or “enemies”—pre-emptively, wherever possible. He attacks elections as “rigged” before they’ve even happened; he’s attacked the judge for the now-decided case since day one—before Merchan had a chance to even rule on anything. He’s met any perceived slight or injury or inconvenience during the course of this case with ranting and a torrent of accusations. It’s all fed his fund-raising efforts and added bricks to the "wall" of his protective victimization narrative.
In fact, it’s been a real shame to see how he’s treated this judge, who has probably cut him more breaks than most judges would, while still maintaining an orderly courtroom and protecting the legal process. Even so, Trump’s over-defensiveness is baked into his character and can be seen in his natal Venus-Saturn conjunction in Cancer (inner wheel, Biwheel 1).
Biwheel 1: (inner wheel) Donald J. Trump, June 14, 1946, 10:54 a.m., Jamaica, NY (Astrodatabank rated AA); (outer wheel) Trump guilty verdict, NY Hush Money/Election Interference trial, May 30, 2024, 5:07 p.m. DST, New York, NY (Chart 1 above).
As we can see here, a Verdict Mars-Chiron conjunction (outer
wheel) squares that critical Venus-Saturn conjunction that Trump wields so
protectively, but there’s much more going on here. Opposite Trump’s
Venus-Saturn (Cancer) lies Verdict Ceres (Rx, Capricorn) and (more widely) Verdict Pluto (Rx, Aquarius); opposite Verdict
Mars-Chiron lies Trump’s Jupiter (Rx, Libra). The orbs get a bit stretched
including this Jupiter in the configuration, but we can fairly say this
biwheel features an interchart cardinal grand square. Such grand squares can be
pressure cookers—Verdict Mars-Chiron fall over Trump’s 8th house,
suggesting that, as stone-faced, defiant and “strong” as he’s attempting to
appear, he’s probably feeling deeply and existentially threatened by the verdicts.This is not about paying money to someone he's damaged--that would be simple and fairly routine. This is about being seen as a criminal, aka "loser" and being potentially humiliated by what comes next. With Verdict Pluto transiting opposite his natal Venus-Saturn, it's no surprise that he would be out for revenge.
This inner dread and alarm fits his natural defensiveness and triggers his own formidable Mars, which falls in the grips of yet another tense configuration here: as discussed under Chart 1, Verdict Pallas (Rx, Scorpio) opposes Verdict Mercury-Uranus (Taurus)—here we see that this Taurus duo conjoins Trump’s MC and squares his late Leo Mars and ASC. His career and his temperament are literally in the crosshairs of this event. If we add his late Aquarius DSC into the mix, we have an interchart fixed grand square. Some media accounts of Trump’s reaction to the verdicts have said he was “stiff and stone-faced”…“red-faced”…”more angry than I’ve ever seen him”…and similar observations.
Body language says a lot with Trump, of course, but all the
talk about him keeping his eyes closed during the proceedings (even before the
verdicts) has always suggested to me that he was trying to keep himself calm. For
him not to react instantaneously when someone impugned him from the witness
stand, whether justified or not, must have been a major effort. It has, after all, been a very bad year of legal accountability for Trump and his organization, if we consider the heavy damages he's been ordered to pay both journalist E. Jean Carroll for sexual abuse, and the State of New York for his company's devastating fraud case.
That said, Trump’s progressed Mars has advanced to conjoin his natal Chiron (Libra) at the same time his progressed Mercury (Leo) is squaring his natal MC (Taurus). His natal Venus and Jupiter (which turned direct by progression just months after his birth) now form a cardinal square with his natal Venus-Saturn (Cancer). We won’t get deep into the weeds of his progressions in this post but for the sake of reference, please see Biwheel 2 below.
Biwheel 2: (inner wheel) Donald J. Trump, June 14, 1946, 10:54 a.m., Jamaica, NY; (outer wheel) Secondary Progression, Solar Arc MC method, for May 30, 2024, 12 p.m., New York, NY.
Returning to Biwheel 1 for now, please note that the Verdict Aries-Libra Nodal axis cuts across Trump’s 8th-2nd house axis, with the So. Node conjoining his Libra Juno-Chiron, suggesting that it’s time for him to experience or pursue healing on some level—perhaps, but not necessarily with his wife, Melania (Juno). Unfortunately, the public persona he puts on seems unable to admit weakness, error or to take responsibility for anything he does in his life—a situation that isn’t helped by the way his Juno-Chiron duo is sandwiched between his Neptune on one side and Jupiter (both Libra) on the other.
Is there a more vulnerable, perhaps even humble human being beneath the raging and the bravado that might welcome a healing process? We may never know, but addiction to a self-image of “I can do no wrong” (his Jupiter trines his Gemini Sun and Uranus while his Neptune squares his Cancer Mercury, disposing those Gemini points) can be as crippling as any other addiction.
Reinforcing the importance of all this in the wake of this week’s NY verdict is Verdict Mars-Chiron sextiling Trump’s Gemini Sun and No. Node, while it trines his Sagittarius Moon and So. Node. Clearly, this trial stands as a pivotal moment—and a huge opportunity—for the defendant to work on himself, if he’s capable of such self-reflection, but this chart also lights a spark to the potential emotional “wildfire” we’ve come to expect from him. Here that’s reflected by Verdict Mars-Chiron (Aries) trining both his natal Moon-So. Node (Sagittarius) and his natal Mars-ASC (Leo). The pain of being held accountable (and his “perfect innocence” being 34 times repudiated) is already kindling a fiery response.
Final thoughts
And so it begins…the price of bringing a law-disdaining character like Donald Trump to any kind of accountability could be heavy, but what are the alternatives? High profile figures routinely get away with a lot--and less well-heeled people are routinely short-changed and incarcerated for the slightest offense. Even so, there are lines that can’t be crossed without destroying something fundamental about the institutions that define our system of government and in the end, protect We the People from the chaotic whims of dictators, gangs and thugs with friends in high places. Dictators who want to bend our natural-born rights to their purposes, gangs that violently take over, as in Haiti and elsewhere, and thugs with friends in high places--Putin with his complicit Orthodox Patriarch comes to mind.
Bottom line, institutions like the rule of Law matter—yes, we are responsible to the Law, but it’s also responsible to us. In the case of The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump, the People won, and it seems they won for good reason, 34 times over. Many, many questions remain, of course.
How will Trump’s case unfold during this already fraught election year? Will his unabashed buddies on the Supreme Court step in to overturn the conviction as they decide the brazen case before them about Trump “immunity” from prosecution? Will that “fiery response” referenced above include political violence on our streets between now and the election?
In fact, Mars did just recently reawaken that powerful April 8th eclipse point of 19°+Aries, re-energizing the eclipse’s potentially volatile (and wounding, conjunct Chiron) agenda, so all bets are off at the moment about political violence. The area around Trump’s trial was amazingly calm, given the hype about “bloodbaths” if things didn’t go well, but time will tell. What we can be sure of is that Trump will use the months before his sentencing to whip up as much anger and vitriol as he’s able, and unfortunately, his boosters in Congress and in various states will probably be doing the same.
That said, to reject anger and division and to embrace the incredible gifts we all enjoy in this country, despite all its warts and scars, may be the most heroic thing any of us can do at the moment.
Keep it light, my friends!
 | |
| Artist rendering of the verdict being read. c. Elizabeth Williams via AP. |
What's new...
New Guide to Planetary Cycles, Vol. 1 now released and available on Amazon
in Kindle E-book and Paperback versions
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.
