Dear Friend and Reader:
You know things are weird when a top story in the news is how long a report might be. Not how long it is; how long it might be. Not what’s in the report. Not what is missing. Rather, the potential page count. This game of charades has been going on through a most unusual Mercury direct event, with the smallest, fastest planet forming a weeks-long conjunction to Neptune, the planet of deception and delusion.
This is a truly unusual pattern — and it’s the one we have surrounding the question, “Did Trump or anyone on his campaign conspire with the Russians to steal the 2016 election?” There is another question: “Is Trump a Russian asset?”
What perfect questions to ask with Mercury lingering around Neptune for weeks on end: a real cliffhanger. A special kind of Nancy Drew mystery.
That Mueller dropped the report right before Mercury direct is interesting, even exciting. I’ve noticed that the station direct has a signature of “the truth comes out.” However, Mercury-Neptune contacts of this intensity — in a chart of an event — can also have the distinct message that someone is lying their ass off.
These days, there are lots of lies to go around, and they are usually exposed, so the two concepts are compatible. This is, however, a rather tricksterish conjunction, and it’s likely that it will take some time for the truth not only to emerge but also to come into focus.
A Legion of Legal Secretaries
The document of unknown thickness is the result of 22 months of work by a team of 19 federal prosecutors, many FBI agents and a legion of secretaries and paralegals supporting them, plus people with adequate security clearance to vacuum the floor of offices where the president is being investigated for felonies. The project has cost the American people about $20 million, according to news reports I’ve read. [Remember that this began as an FBI investigation into election meddling by the Russians in 2016 — long before Donald Trump was a suspect.]
And now that it’s done, we don’t even know how long it is, or what size truck or disk drive the supporting documents fit in. Is it a minivan, or is it a tandem tractor-trailer? Is it measured in gigabytes, terabytes or petabytes?
Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel of the United States, this past Friday delivered his report to his bosses at the Department of Justice. It was received by the new attorney general, a man named William Barr, who then summarized the report in a letter to Congress on Sunday, which said that there was no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
Further, Barr claimed that the president had not obstructed justice (a federal crime and impeachable offense) in the course of the investigation.
We all watched as Donald Trump fired the FBI director and bragged to the Russians that it would make the investigation go away. We watched as he fired the prior attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for not protecting him from the investigation.
Sessions, if you recall, recused himself from the whole Russia affair after it was revealed that he had lied to the Senate during his confirmation hearing, about his own involvement with the Russians. That is why the Department of Justice named a special counsel — a presumably independent federal prosecutor empowered to look into the matter.
I’ve known enough law students to understand that walking out of a bank with a gun drawn and a bag of money does not make a person guilty of bank robbery.
While we are waiting for some inkling as to what the report actually says, I’m here to publish my impression of the astrology and what might be lurking behind the scrim.
My First Impression, Friday Afternoon
You don’t get a second chance to have a first impression. Friday afternoon, The Washington Post reported that the White House was notified by the Justice Department that it had received Mueller’s report, and that the investigation was officially over.
The chart for that event has the last degree of Leo rising — the same degree as Donald Trump’s ascendant. A degree of the zodiac moves past the ascendant every four minutes, making this appear rather personal to Trump. I initially reported my interpretation here. You can read about Trump’s chart in this article from late 2016.
“The aspect of the day is Sun conjunct Chiron to the tee — as this was happening. This is not good for the president. Whatever the report says, it’s likely to deliver a mortal injury to Trump or his presidency. The Sun represents the king. This is the last thing he wants […]. That this occurs during Mercury storm complicates matters somewhat: there are many layers to come out.
“The ascendant is stunning — it’s Trump’s degree rising, making this chart directly personal to him. This is just unimaginable. The Sabian symbol for this degree is ‘An Unsealed Letter’ — everything comes out. This is what the astrology says. Now let’s see what happens.”
This is an important facet of doing mundane astrology: observing and checking your work over time. This is the essence of the learning process.
Let’s elaborate a little more. Leo rising (in whatever degree) means that the Sun is the ascendant ruler. The Sun as a general significator represents the king or the president, particularly in a news chart involving the government. In this chart, the Sun is in the 8th house, which in mundane astrology is where we find dead things. Sun conjunct Chiron in the 8th is the picture of an injured or dead presidency.
Mars at the top of the chart rules the 9th house — that of higher justice. In our scenario, Mueller is the marshal who has arrived in town to restore law and order. Quite incredibly, Mars is occupying the 10th cusp — that of the presidency and the government — to the degree. The Sabian symbol is “A Vast Public Park.” There’s something here in the public interest. That Mars looks like Marshal Mueller.
One thing we know is that the chart passes the smell test: it seems to describe the situation, regardless of the outcome. In particular, Trump’s ascendant rising, and the Sun conjunct Chiron, were just stunning expressions of symbolism. There are many symbols of the presidency and law enforcement prominent in the chart.
Void of Course Moon in Libra
In my second impression on Saturday night, I addressed the concern about the chart’s late-degree Moon. Using the rules of traditional astrology, the Moon in this chart is void of course. This means that the Moon will make no more aspects while in its current sign, which is Libra. I noticed that initially but considered it secondary, due to the rather incredible personal signification for Trump. In mundane astrology, a void Moon can be a real problem.
On Facebook, I described it as “the sensation of thud rather than bam!” And I added, “The void Moon talks about events that are perfunctory, where the outcome is different from what is expected — particularly of the action itself.” The perfunctory thing is, let’s say you have to arrange a meeting but you don’t want the outcome to matter, schedule it during a void Moon.
In a similar way, it might be that Mueller was doing what he had to do, and included the information he needed to include. Additionally, it seems he’s passed the torch to about six other federal jurisdictions, which, along with the federal grand jury, will continue to investigate.
I added one other thought: “Were this horary astrology — it is not, I’m using horary rules to read an event — the 30th degree ascendant could be taken as a stricture against judgment: a chart that will not resolve. So, too, could the void Moon.”
That’s the essence — there are some more details on the Facebook posts.
We Know Who William Barr Is
Back in 1980, the Reagan-Bush campaign cut a deal with Iranian revolutionaries, who were holding 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage. Under the deal, the hostages would be held through the election, in exchange for which the United States would sell to Iran, our enemy, all the weapons it wanted for its war against our then-friend, Iraq (led by Saddam Hussein).
During this arms-for-hostage business deal, members of the Reagan administration (John Poindexter, the national security advisor, and Oliver North, one of his underlings, and others) took the profits and gave weapons to the CIA-created Contras in Nicaragua, against federal law. The Contras specialized in bombing “soft targets” — hospitals, schools and farms.
There were immediate resignations; there was a criminal investigation and there were prosecutions and convictions. And then George H.W. Bush took office and pardoned six people involved in the whole affair. And the attorney general at the time was William Barr.
Barr, as attorney general, presided over the pardons of six criminals who helped rig the election of 1980 and betrayed the interests of the United States at the same time — including Caspar Weinberger, the secretary of defense.
So we cannot really look to him for any impetus to hold the president or his men accountable for crimes they commit. Then as now, that leaves us looking to Congress for help, though often that results in yet another study — not in any form of justice or correction.
A congressional report issued in 1987 said, “If the president did not know what his national security advisers were doing, he should have.” Congress also held that the president had “ultimate responsibility” for crimes committed by his aides, and that the Reagan administration exhibited “secrecy, deception, and disdain for the law.”
Barr got his old job back on Feb. 14 when he said that he didn’t believe the president could be charged with obstruction of justice. This was regardless of the evidence; Barr did not have it at the time because he was not part of the government, and Mueller had not issued his report.
In his four-page summary issued Sunday afternoon, Barr concluded that Trump had not obstructed justice in the course of the investigation. He did not say why not. But he claimed Mueller had left that determination up to him.
Someone Is Lying, and It’s Probably Barr
The chances are that Barr is lying when he says that Trump did not commit obstruction. It’s much more likely that Mueller intended for Congress to make the determination, rather than a biased attorney general.
We don’t know, however. We have not seen the report or what it contains. We have not seen the backing evidence. We have not heard from many people who surround Trump: his kids, his son-in-law, and a diversity of close aides who were involved in the antics with the Kremlin, which go back many years and seemed to peak in 2016 and early 2017.
It’s disturbing that the Trump campaign and transition team had more than 100 contacts with the Russians. We know that Roger Stone, who was recently arrested, was working directly with Wikileaks. It’s more disturbing that so many people are not even meekly concerned about this, so bent are they on the fabulous Republican agenda of tax cuts for the rich, banning abortion and repealing the Affordable Care Act.
The people of the United States need resolution. We need the truth. But as T.S. Eliot said, human kind cannot bear very much reality. The motivation not to know the truth is that it’s too damned ugly — and then we have to do something about it.
Let’s see how hard Congress and the media push for the full contents of the report to come out, and let’s see how much is left out or redacted. Let’s see how loudly and clearly people are willing to speak about their desire or demand to know what really happened, and what Robert Mueller recommended.
The pattern of the Trump administration has been an attempt to cover one lie with another, so far endlessly. That he can get away with that is evidence of something else: a much deeper spiritual condition that we will need to address, sooner or later, in this lifetime or some other.
We know one other thing: Try as they may, lie as they may, both Trump and the Mueller report about him are an unsealed letter.
With love,
