Democracy, Not Corporatocracy
NewsScope for October 24, 2011. Although the occupation of Wall Street began on September 17, the idea for the peaceful protest came from the Canadian magazine AdBusters. Modeled after the Egyptian occupation of Tahrir Square, the internet proposal was posted on July 13, 2011*. A chart for this moment (set for noon, Manhattan, NY) astrologically defines the Occupy Wall Street movement.
The Sun in security-conscious Cancer is an oddity because it makes no close aspects to any other planets. As the natural symbol for leadership, the OWS finds itself in the unusual position of having no leaders. As the Adbusters proclamation states, there is no alpha male. The new model is just a swarm of people unified behind a compelling idea. The revolutionary Uranus-Pluto square is angular, where it’s shaped the OWS idea into a global movement.
With Libra Rising, Venus is the ruler of this chart. The closest aspect Venus makes is the square to Saturn in Libra, a difficult combination relating to financial hardship and the feeling of imbalance in the economic system. Saturn in Libra prefers to make advances through negotiation and peaceful means.
Mars in message-oriented Gemini is sextile vocal Mercury in dramatic Leo. The OWS slogan “We are the 99%” captured the imagination of the movement. It was launched by Priscilla Grim on September 8 and went viral, just as transiting Saturn was exactly trine the OWS Mars. Since Mercury is conjunct the U.S. Midheaven, the OWS message has resonated across the nation.
Last week, as transiting Saturn squared the OWS Sun, folk heroes Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie brought some leadership into the movement by singing their 1960s anthem “We Shall Overcome”. Over the next few months, transiting Ceres and Pluto are returning to their natal positions in the OWS chart, which should keep the movement alive and well through the harsh winter.
NeptuneCafe presents
the astrology of Occupy
WallStreet
Over the next few years, the transiting Uranus-Pluto square strikes at the U.S.’s vital dynamic, its Sun-Saturn square, which represents its financial, social, and political structures. According to the activists participating in the OWS movement, these structures have become dominated by a wealthy elite that has created a corporatocracy to maintain and grow their power to the detriment of everyone else.
Will it come down to class warfare? Warren Buffet is in favor of taxing the super-rich. As he said, “There’s class warfare, all right. But it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
If nothing else, OWS has started the conversation. The worldwide resurgence against institutionalized corruption has no stars or script, so anything is possible. As Marshall McLuhan predicted during the 1960s Uranus-Pluto conjunction, its nature is a projection of the new technology that allows its existence. The internet has no leaders or demands. All it does is make connections.
Individuals, organizations, and national movements connecting to each other are like the neural networks of an evolving global brain. It’s as if the collective unconscious is waking up, becoming aware of itself. How can we build a more equitable social-economic-political system? Now that we live in a global village, we need a global solution, especially if we believe that, collectively, we are all connected on many different levels. A revolutionary epoch is upon us.
OWS and the U.S. Horoscope
Political or “mundane” astrologers often rely on outer planet cycles to define an age’s zeitgeist, but since Charles Carter introduced the national horoscope in 1951, many astrologers have turned to this analytical tool. The difficulty for many who would look at the United States horoscope is that there’s widespread disagreement over which chart works best.
In my view, the Scorpio Rising horoscope (July 4, 1776; 2:21 pm; Philadelphia, PA) is ideally suited to frame the OWS movement. The U.S. is generally seen as the chief promoter of “democratic capitalism”, a system of governance that has conflated the apparently antithetical needs of divergent archetypes. Democracy is an Aquarian principle, and the U.S. has its Moon in Aquarius.
On this page - an astrological tour of the charts and planetary dynamics that have fostered this revolutionary development. The Scorpio Rising U.S. horoscope provides the framework for discussing capitalism and the wealthiest 1%. Then, a horoscope timed to the call for action describes the OWS character and events that could fundamentally transform our global village’s financial system.
Democracy, Not Corporatocracy
Part 2
NewsScope for October 31, 2011. As befits the Uranus-Pluto square that dominates the OWS horoscope, what happens next is unpredictable. Beginning as an activist group’s call for an occupation of New York’s financial district, and modeled after the Arab Spring, the OWS movement had by October 15, 2011 evolved into a global protest against financial corruption.
What astrological factors are behind the OccupyWallStreet movement? The initial gathering took place on September 17, 2011 at noon, but a chart for this moment doesn’t describe the leaderless, demandless movement that has taken the world by surprise.
OWS call to action: adbusters.org
Vincent Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo in August 1888, about how he saw "the mysterious brightness of a pale star in the infinite." When you are well, he went on, "you must be able to live on a piece of bread while you are working all day, and have enough strength to smoke and drink your glass in the evening....And all the same to feel the stars and the infinite high and clear above you. Then life is almost enchanted after all."
Read more: www.smithsonianmag
Comments, questions, suggestions? Email wolfstar@neptunecafe.com
Democracy favors equal rights, opportunities and liberties.
Capitalism has no precise definition, since its meaning depends on its historic context. But most agree that capitalism is an economic system where the means of production are privately owned, and profits can be made from investments in a competitive marketplace.
Scorpio is directly associated with leveraging financial assets. While we often think of Scorpio as it manifests in an individual – intense, secretive, charismatic, powerful, and so on, in the larger picture, Scorpio is a financial sign, like Taurus.
Scorpio corresponds to the 8th house, the house of other people’s money. Those with a strong emphasis in Scorpio or the 8th house are often professionally involved with finance as advisers, tax specialists, or stock brokers. They specialize in inheritance, loans, insurance, and other financial transactions.
The same is true in a national horoscope. When Scorpio is rising in the U.S. chart, four planets are found in the 8th house. Mars and Uranus are in Gemini, and Venus and Jupiter are in Cancer. Together, these four planets describe four financial sectors according to their individual nature.
Venus and Jupiter are traditionally associated with beneficial effects. They are known as the greater and lesser benefics, and when combined by aspect, their benefits are synergistically increased. Venus and Jupiter together create something more beneficial than the sum of Venus plus Jupiter.
The U.S. Venus-Jupiter conjunction symbolizes America’s wealthiest elites. In the 8th house, they represent the owners of capital in its various forms, including banks, insurance companies, brokerage houses, and investment firms.
The U.S. Scorpio Ascendant and its 8th house placements contrast sharply with its Aquarian Moon. The Moon takes on extra importance because it rules the U.S. Sun in Cancer. The Sun, symbolizing American leadership, is constitutionally empowered to follow the will of the people, the voters. However, in recent times, politicians have become reliant on campaign contributions from large corporations to get elected. And now we are in the age of an all-powerful corporatocracy where the will of the people hardly matters.
Basically, capitalism is a Scorpio or 8th house phenomenon. No other variant of the U.S. horoscope reflects this truth. The U.S. is the capitalist superpower that nominally believes in democracy, but which over the last few decades has become corrupt. Laws are no longer written by politicians but by lobbyists who work for businesses most affected by the legislation.
The old saying that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer has become a noticeable trend since Ronald Reagan assumed office in 1982. That trend accelerated when transiting Pluto entered the U.S. 2nd house in February 1998. Around that time, legislators began in earnest to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which was initially designed as a financial reform to prevent banks from speculating with depositors’ cash.
Banks wanted to play the investment game again, and on November 12, 1999, Bill Clinton signed the repeal into law. At the time, transiting Pluto was nearly exactly opposite the U.S. 8th house Uranus (orb 0º16’).
From this point on, conflicts of interest within financial institutions became possible. Citigroup, the largest U.S. bank at the time, began to underwrite and trade increasingly complex financial instruments, including mortgage-backed securities. Other banks, investment houses, and hedge fund operators followed suit in order to compete and profit from the new law. By the time transiting Pluto was opposing the U.S. Venus in the home-ownership sign of Cancer, these leveraged mortgage securities were becoming of doubtful value. The housing market crash that followed, and the government’s support of financial institutions “too big to fail” all took place as transiting Pluto opposed the U.S. Venus in the 8th house of leveraged assets.
Since Pluto entered the U.S. 2nd house, income disparity has grown sharply. We are now at a level not seen since the late 1920s, just before the stock market crash. The top one percent own 40 percent of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 80 percent own just seven percent of the wealth. The median American income has fallen in the last two years to $26,200, while the number of millionaires has increased from 78,000 to 94,000 in the same period.
Pluto transiting through the U.S. 2nd house has increased the influence of Gucci Gulch, the K Street lobbyists. When Pluto entered the 2nd house in 1998, there were 10,400 registered lobbyists in Washington and they spent some $1.4 billion in their efforts to sway politicians. By 2010 (according to Opensecrets.org), their number had increased to 12,964 and they spent $3.5 billion.
Now that the Uranus-Pluto square is coming into its most potent influence, the corrupt, undermining influence of Pluto is being challenge by the liberating, rebellious influence of Uranus. By transit, Uranus is unique because events manifest when the hit is exact or nearly exact. Transiting Saturn tends to manifest after the exact hit, while Mars, the action planet, stirs up activity well before the exact hit. So Uranus can be used to help rectify a chart, or tell the difference between variations of the U.S. horoscope.
When Scorpio is rising in the U.S. chart, Venus is located at 2º57’ Cancer. On September 17, 2011 when the Occupy Wall Street protests began, transiting Uranus was at 2º54’ Aries, only 0º03’ from exactly squaring the U.S. Venus. Venus as the natural symbol of money, and in the 8th house of capitalism, became the object of discontent as revolutionary Uranus squared it.
Over the next few years, Uranus and Pluto will square each other seven times, an historical rarity that deepens and intensifies the potential for radical change. In 2014 and 2015, the Uranus-Pluto square takes place at 13º and 14º of Aries and Capricorn, which aligns with the U.S. Sun-Saturn square.
If we associate the Sun-Saturn square with America’s institutional framework, then we can see how profound the upcoming transformation may be. If reforms aren’t implemented that restore balance to an economic and political system that has become intolerably corrupt, capitalism itself may be on the line.
This is an excerpt from the full length article on OccupyWallStreet, to be pubished in the April 2012 issue of Dell Horoscope magazine
