50th Anniversary of JFK’s Inauguration

You can watch JFK’s inaugural address here.

We always think of Jack Kennedy in the context of getting assassinated. His ghost is never far from American politics. When I was a child, there was a portrait of him hanging in our family’s basement; all I knew is that he died right before I was born. But who was the guy? I’ve never taken a careful look at his natal chart until now.

The fist thing my eye jumps to is his Libra rising. Libra is the sign of elegance. Everything connected to this energy has an artful touch, and that was JFK. He was one of the smoothest politicians in modern American history; he not only understood that you have to look good, and look good on TV, and sound good; he was a natural at these things.

The next thing I see is a complicated 8th house — the house of contracts, sex and death. He has a Mars-Mercury-Jupiter conjunction. This says he’s got a fast mind and can access vast amounts of intelligence. Like Bob Dylan, another man who shaped the Sixties, this is the deep kind of Gemini. He’s also sexually lit up; it’s physical (Taurus), mental (Mercury) and spiritual (Jupiter). This grouping on his 8th house cusp suggests an extremely complex marriage situation (gee whiz) and a lot of strange financial dealings, following in the footsteps of his father Joe Kennedy.

Also, take a look at his Mars on the 8th, which is the house pointing to the nature and cause of death; Mars suggests violence, and the vertex points to something that feels like fate.

He had the power to be ruthlessly competitive (Saturn in Cancer on the 10th) but coat it in a mirage of charm (Neptune in Leo nearby in the 10th).

One last thing. With that Virgo Moon, he was a quirky guy obsessed with the details. He worked on that inaugural speech for weeks, consulting many of the smartest people he knew. His Moon is conjunct Ceres (close to his mother, who would lose him as Demeter lost Persephone) and square Venus (needing a lot of attention from women). He got that attention, in many kinky ways. He was able to carry it off in part thanks to Libra rising and in part thanks to a media corps that gave him a little space to be a man when he wasn’t busy being president.

And — lest you had any doubt — he was truly brilliant. Uranus in Aquarius in the 5th is an original, creative, scientific and artistic mind. He could have been a rock star — and he was the first rock star president.

Now let’s look at his inauguration chart. In modern times these charts always have Taurus rising, and nearly always have the Sun in the first degree of Aquarius. That’s because the inauguration happens the same day and time every four years.

The first thing I see is Vesta conjunct Chiron. That, to me, is the difficult thing about this chart; that’s the thing that suggests that he’s going to make a sacrifice. The next thing I see is a mighty Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Capricorn; he’s going to have an impact — and oddly, much of that impact is going to come from his death (Jupiter rules the 8th house). Venus in Pisces makes a sextile. He’s a really, really good politician, able to apply both the yin and yang principles.

However — things are not quite what they seem. Neptune is on the horizon, squared by Mercury. And, it’s squared by Pholus, which Mercury is conjunct. Pholus suggests that the karma of this moment goes directly up the generational line. Occasionally these days we remember that Joe Kennedy made his fortune as a bootlegger and ended up as the U.S. ambassador to England. And, in Pholus style, the energy is about to be released. In many ways this chart is about his father’s darkness — look at the point on the 4th house cusp, the Black Moon Lilith, or the osculating apogee.

Still, if I saw this chart at the time, I would have been unlikely to say something was truly amiss. The Moon in late Pisces seems void of course; the ending of the situation is not certain. (note that the Part of Fortune is applying to the Moon, which by some rules means the Moon is not void.) Obama was sworn in with the Moon void, and — fortunately — Chief Justice John Roberts messed up the oath sufficiently that Roberts came to the White House later that same evening and swore Obama in again with the Moon in the new sign.

One last thing. Juno is the most elevated planet in this chart. She’s the divine consort, placed in Capricorn, the sign of government. Jackie was his stability, his grounding, and in many ways a leader of the nation.