Do or Die: In Search of Hilary

Editor’s Note: The following article on Hilary Clinton’s chart was written by Eric Francis on May 18, 2006. It is available, in it’s original format, at this link. –RA

Dear Eric,

I hope you are planning to give us a few paragraphs on Hilary, and soon. She is creeping me out.

First, the comments about Dub in today’s news, and what a charismatic guy he is, blah blah, and next, the news that she and Rupert Murdoch are pals in fundraising.

In the conspiracy paradigm that affirms the world is ruled by a secret elite whose aim is complete domination through economic and military supremacy and the dumbing down of all things collective, Bill, Hilary and Dub are members of the same club, with the same agenda.

People aren’t going to see through this without some help, especially if some kind of momentum for the first woman prez starts to pick up. It’s time for the white horses to ride in, and she is not on one of them. (Come on, Al!) If Dub took the White House twice on a bet that mainstream folks wanted a frat boy, they won’t see through this one either.

If you use my words, please don’t use my name.

Thanks,
[One Who Shall Remain Nameless]

Dear Nameless,

Do I really have to write about Hilary Clinton?

I guess if it’s for the good of my country, I will do it. My source on the data is Astrodatabank, which contains a brief biography of H.M. Hilary. I will leave my personal prejudices out of the discussion to the best of my ability, and as one who grew up and lived most of my life in New York, I will refrain from calling her a carpetbagger. That is someone who shows up somewhere they have no connection with and pretends to represent the people in some way.

Note, when you click on this chart you will notice that the houses are different. Astrodatabank uses the equal house system. Today I am using Topocentric (which is like Placidus).

I will try to be fair. I don’t like her. I stopped liking her, for good, the day that everyone was making their speeches Pro or Con for the Iraq invasion. This was during a time of worldwide protest, when the people were indeed speaking up. Hillary got before her colleagues in the Senate, and the world, and made a speech that for the first 10 minutes sounded like she would oppose the war. Then, she changed her tune. This invasion had to happen, she said, because we had to stop Saddam. He was a threat to the world. Has she admitted that she was wrong?

This is a hologram of her political career. And at the end of the day, we are left with an opportunist who is in the game for its own sake. It is true that the Bushes and the Clintons have a long, long relationship that goes back at least to the Iran-Contra scandal, when so many secret flights came and went from Central America via Arkansas when Bill Clinton was governor.

We may look at the ways the ruling class organizes itself, but at the end of the day, the majority of politicians are basically out for themselves, and their first and usually only job is to survive. Whenever we look at a politician and attempt to assess their agenda, we need to keep that in mind. The Clintons are actually pretty good at this game. Heck, they are still IN the game nearly a decade after Bill was impeached.

But now let us gaze into the foggy depths of her soul. I claim the privilege of investigating her chart in the public interest, based on the tradition that political leaders are subject to astrological scrutiny because their actions affect so many people. She is a concern because she is currently one of the most recognizable names in politics, and is a contender for the presidency in 2008. She is a Democrat, but follows the formula that “we’ll beat the Republicans by being exactly like them.”

Way to blend into the woodwork with that Pisces Moon, dangling in the last degree of the entire tropical zodiac! This is an extremely interesting degree of the horoscope, just as much for being the 360th degree as it is for its Sabian symbol. The Sabians are a degree-by-degree system that helps us decode the message of a planet. Basically, the degree of Hillary’s Moon is the story of a boy who is fascinated by the image he sees in the side of a mountain, which looks like the face of an old man. Gradually, through admiring this profile, he comes to look like it. It is about the ways we can shape our own character.

This is based on the Nathaniel Hawthorne story, “The Great Stone Face.” I have seen this degree work in this way over and over again. To put the Pisces Moon there is to raise it to a level that verges on humorous, since the Pisces Moon has a lot of this quality already.

By this and other accounts of her chart, we get imagery of someone who can “be who she needs to be” so she can do what she needs to do. She is basically a shape shifter. But she is not the kind who changes overnight; that is its own talent. She is the kind who morphs over long years, and transitions into something else entirely.

There is another symbol of that factor in her chart. Notice that her Sun is in the sign Scorpio. Notice that the Moon’s south node is also in Scorpio. Remember, when you see the Sun near one of the Moon’s nodes, that means there’s an eclipse or two in the vicinity. The impression I get from reading her natal chart is that this is not the person she was when she was born. She has, in her life, gone through a series of metamorphs that have changed her on an essential level from one shift to the next — but at the same time, she is able to maintain the image of someone who is consistently always herself.

The frightening thing is you never know who is behind that facade — and I gather that she doesn’t know either. The Pisces Moon is the most compelling astrological archetype I can think of for not being sure who one is. Indeed, it changes so often, and so unpredictably, that it would be hard to keep track of; but, if there are strong aspects, it’s possible to learn. But Hillary’s Moon makes only one aspect: to Juno. Her husband. Billy boy. And though Hillary is allegedly a kind of feminist icon (not!), let me say this somewhat politically incorrect thing: she would be nobody without him. He is the mission, the purpose, the idea. She is already clinging to the edge of reality, even with him there. But there is no question that she needs him to define her purpose and give her a solid reference point in the universe.

She has the image of stability, of stasis, but in truth she is the Human Earthquake.

Now why do I say that? Look at that tight cluster of planets in Leo. She has Mars conjunct Pluto conjunct Saturn. I am sure that there are some friendly people born with this aspect, but I don’t think she is one of them. This is a ‘driven at all costs’ kind of astrology. In Leo, it is certainly driven to seek regal power at an obsessive level.

The thing about Leos is that they do a great job being in charge. In other words, if you’re a boss, find out who the Leos on your staff are. They are probably the ones who already have a grip. They key to keeping most Leos happy is more responsibility. They need to have the feeling that the buck stops with them. There are exceptions to this guideline; Leos who consistently flake out do so either because they are not rising to the occasion, or because they have other factors in their chart which prevent them from being effective, and even these can be worked with. Even these ones can aspire to be the boss, despite their sense of inadequacy or whatever may hold them back.

Hillary, with Mars, Pluto and Saturn in Leo, definitely qualifies. Note that they are in her 3rd house; what she is (or thinks she is) the boss of is what everyone else thinks. Indeed, any one of these three planets would work fine, placed in this house and sign, to make somebody kinda bossy. But this babe is going at full throttle. She makes Bruce Springsteen seem like The Underling.

She has help from the Scorpio department. Five major points are in this sign: Sun, Chiron closely conjunct Venus, Mercury and the South Node. This ensemble is squared by the above-mentioned Leo planets. Hmmmm. That’s a lot of squares. They go between Leo and Scorpio; they involve the planets of Leo and Scorpio; most important, they involve the lunar nodes. The nodes add the real flavor of something important going on (Saturn and Pluto help a lot too).

In other words, this is not the usual ‘work it out till you get it’ kind of square. It has that quality — but there’s more. Squares will keep you busy, because one’s attention typically goes from one side of a square back to the other. It’s like the aspect has so much tension you can only handle one side at a time. Slowly, you start to integrate the two, which is why they are considered aspects of integration and depth of character. At first, even up to the Saturn return, it’s like one can work with or perceive one quality or the other at one time. Then, slowly, you can do both at once. If you have any square aspects, try this — interpret them individually and see how you respond to each separate ‘side’ of your personality or your experience of life.

When we add the lunar nodes, the picture goes to a much more urgent level. We can add the theme, ‘in this lifetime, on behalf of all the other ones’. Indeed, the Moon’s south node in Scorpio tells a long story of the use and potentially the abuse of power.

One thing with this chart that impresses me is precisely this struggle between service and power. I get the service theme from the emphasis on the 6th house. Because there’s a stellium in Scorpio, the late Scorpio planets influence the 5th pretty intensely. And the 6th is what we need to do in service of the greater whole. The nodes take it from a practice run to a game of ‘You Bet Your Life’. Especially, especially with three planets close to a square of the nodes and Saturn sitting the closest of all.

As for transits. Note that Saturn is in Leo. And that little Saturn is getting ready to conjunct Mars, Pluto and itself — Hillary is having a Saturn return soon. In fact, she’s basically in one, which will reach its peak in time for re-election campaign this year, and then the early presidential race in 2007. This will be interesting; she feels the turning point and I think that all her maneuvering now is because she feels it coming.

Note a couple of other potent transits that I am sure (being a psychic Scorpio) that she also feels coming (and if you ask me, she is the type to not only have an astrologer, but to lat least consider what she says). One is somewhat in the past, but her rise to prominence theoretically ‘in her own right’ came as Uranus transited over her 10th house cusp. Not bad, but because Hillary grounds the flaky side of Pisces, she has been flaky; it’s disheartening when you don’t know what side of important issues a politician stands on.

However, Pluto is going to square her Moon in the midst of this all, and that’s going to change her. I don’t get the feeling it’s going to be for the better, either. My sense is that she’s feeling pretty desperate about getting older and wondering what she’s really accomplished in life, and she’s going to try to, well, accomplish something. She feels this too and it’s adding a sense of doom, very much a do or die feeling.

And she is having this feeling as a politician in a time when the world, on account of a lot of desperate politicians acting desperately, is in a do or die moment of a whole different kind. Politicians fight for their individual greed and survival and, blocking up the halls of power and standing in the way of progress, prevent our collective mechanisms of response from working.

There is still a lot of astrology to go down between now and 2008. Heck, there’s a lot of astrology to go down between now and the solstice in a month. And the deck chairs on the Titanic, or rather, the Hindenburg, are going to get rearranged quite a few times, and nobody in the political community is going to be quite the same again, even those like Hillary who lived through the Nixon impeachment up close. But let’s see, because I can feel it and so can a lot of other people — this is all leading to something meaningful. And I have little doubt she will play a part. We have yet to see what.

That’s what I have to say about Hillary.

Yours & truly,