Starcatsastrology’s Blog

The headline: Dems and GOP can’t agree on what they disagree about.

Will the U.S. Government shut down? Confidence is high that we get a yes answer on that. The isn’t really about the budget. The disagreement between Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is whether to continue funding Planned Parenthood, a laudable organization that specializes in women’s reproductive health.

The deadlock between Democrats and Republicans is the renewed war on women. This isn’t the first time in recent history that women’s bodies have become the battle field for masculine control games centered on white man’s rights and privileges.

If women and children were so important to the GOP, no child in America would be hungry and no woman in America would have to go without a mammogram, pap smear, pre-natal care, or access to clean, safe abortion.

The USA chart (I use the Sibley chart, July 4, 1776, 5:10 pm, Philadelphia, PA, 12 SAG rising) shows marked stress between legislators and the actual will of the people. A small handful of extremists on the Right who label themselves The Tea Party, funded by Dick Armey and the Koch Brothers, and the Libertarian wing of the GOP (the John Birch Society revisited), keep repeating “the will of the American people is for government to stop spending and balance the budget” in hopes that it will suddenly become “true.”

Gutting unions, rolling back child labor laws and finding new ways to ban abortion and keep poor women and people of color down is the actual goal of the Righties and the Birchers, oops, I mean the so-called Libertarians.

The Ascendant for the Government Shutdown Deadline (12:01 am, EDT, Washington, DC, April 9th) is 12 Sagittarius, the same as the natal Ascendant. Transiting Jupiter in Aries in the fourth house of the Shutdown chart assumes rulership of events now playing out in war-like mode in the natal chart for the USA.

The 4th house of the Declaration of Independence chart is packed with transits: rebellion oriented Uranus at 01 Aries conjoins the 4th cusp, Mars is at 5 Aries in square to the USA’s Cancerian Venus (3 CAN) and Jupiter (5 CAN), Mars is applying to a square with the USA’s own revolutionary Uranus at 8 GE. Jupiter at 17 Aries is applying to a square to the USA’s 7th house, warring Mars (21 GE), Sun at 18 Aries is even closer to that Mars square.

I mentioned all of the 4th house transits through Aries because the 4th house of the chart is where we locate the party OUT OF POWER and gain insight into that groups motives, actions and intentions. By contrast, the 10th house of the chart is where we locate the seat of power and the party in power. The individual man (and someday woman) changes every 4 or 8 years, but the office of president, the commander and chief and chief executive is always connected to the MC and the 10th house.

So it’s the Republican Party we now study through the lens of the 4th house of the USA’s horoscope and the mass of warring factions within its own party seem to have coalesced around a very small cabal of nuts — the inmates who are running the Asylum.

The Shutdown chart Moon is 21 Gemini — conjunct the USA’s natal Mars! Luna sets off the USA’s natal Mars square to issue clouding Neptune in precise Virgo. The USA’s 8th house retrograde Mercury is in quincunx to the nation’s natal Moon showing that from the beginning, there has been a disjointed or disjunctive relationship between the ideology of the wealth-holding class of bankers and the like and the common people.

With both Natal Mercury (in Cancer) and transiting Mercury (in Aries) (squaring each other) acting as dispositors for the USA’s natal Mars and Neptune, this double whammy ignition of natal Mars square natal Neptune puts the People (symbolized by the Moon both natal and transiting) into the position of being the confused pawns of the powerful (8th house natal Mercury) and it’s clear that anytime Moon is with Mars, it’s the Moon that gets hurt.

Next look at Transiting Saturn retrograde. It’s just rolled back over the USA’s natal Saturn. This is the USA’s 8th Saturn Return! The last of 3 Return hits to the USA’s Saturn takes place on August 20th. After that the Gray One moves onward and will not meet himself in the USA chart again for another 29 1/2 years.

But what we’re dealing with during this particular Saturn transit phase is a total of 3 squares to the USA’s Cancer Sun. A thin-skinned, insecurity connected to authority (King George in 1776) and the pressure (Saturn) of breaking away from external authority in favor of self-actualized identity (Sun) feels like the ripping off of an old scab whenever a weighty planet such as Saturn makes a hard, long lasting aspect to the USA’s Sun.

In the case of Saturn to the USA’s Sun, we’re watching a foundational wound erupt. This is what it was at the beginning. The birth moment. The “child” just out of the womb is born into a world fraught with conflict and at odds with itself.

Pluto in Capricorn (the USA’s Pluto return takes place in 2022) has also being goaded by the Aries transiting squares at the base (foundation point) of the horoscope. From the New Moon at 13 Aries going forward matters have continued escalate towards a war (Aries/Mars) between Democratic and Republican powers (Pluto). The issue is being described as financial, but it’s actually raw, ruthless power. Power over money, and it’s appropriation, of course, but more deeply attached to power over human beings — women, children, people of color, workers, the working class and the poor.

If the government shuts down at 12:01 am, April 9th, nobody wins. War including political posturing and games of chicken are complete failures to communicate (USA Mercury quincunx it’s Moon) and respect the wishes of those who allegedly have consented to be governed and to protect the most vulnerable among us.

Transiting Pluto at 7 Capricorn continues his hellish walk towards opposition to the USA Sun while squaring the USA’s natal Saturn. This T-square created by Pluto finds natal Saturn as the release value for all the pressure contained in this configuration. In the short term we’ll witness increased undermining attacks on President Obama by ruthless (Pluto) moneyed (Pluto is riches as well as power) players and, sadly, a weakening of the integrity and authenticity of the American spirit and identity (Sun).

This astrologer thinks that the people of the United States were cut out of the deal a long time ago. Actually from the beginning. Women were not allowed to vote until 1920 in the United States. In other words, women have only been considered “people” instead of property for less than 100 years. Male slaves were given emancipation and voting rights long before women of any race color and creed were granted the same.

In year 2011, the alleged budget argument is, in large part, another kind of assault on women and other easily targeted groups in America.

In a previous blog I laid out the data for the 7 exact Uranus-Pluto waxing squares between Cardinal Aries and Capricorn. As the Sun moves seasonally through Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn, it alone will set off the world shaking Uranus-Pluto struggle. The Solar Eclipse at 9+ Cancer on July 1st this year is going to be highly instructive for us going forward.

Fasten your seat belts, said Bette Davis in ALL ABOUT EVE, “It’s going to be a bumpy night.”