I thought it would be fun to check in with the inauguration chart, one year on. That chart was distressing to some astrologers; Obama was sworn in with the Moon void of course (in the last degree of Scorpio) and Mercury was retrograde. The implication was that something was not quite going to make contact or go according to plan; that there would be a lot of revision involved. Here are some excerpts from The Delicate Sound of Lightning, published a few days before Obama was sworn in.
“Barack Obama’s inauguration next week is the chart of a world in transition, or one about to unravel. These may amount to the same thing, necessary aspects of the same process: though if you ask me, this is a dangerous chart. We live in dangerous times and most of us have no clue the extent or depth of this fact, nor its profound virtue. This chart contains both the idealism of the election and also references to the mess that we are going to be left to clean up in the wake of what amounts to either an eight-year military dictatorship or abusive marriage.”
“What I have noticed is that in addition to things not going as planned, unlikely things happen when the Sun or Moon is void. It’s like a little door opens and the usual rules are suspended. If you know this, you can work with it. Awareness is the key, however, and that’s a scarce commodity….The Moon is, however, exactly conjunct a centaur called Amycus, which has a very long orbit of 126 years (about six times longer than Saturn’s orbit, for reference). Most astrologers would deny that this eliminates the void condition, but you can’t ignore a conjunction if you know about it. Philip Sedgwick suggests that Amycus is about the creation of a long legacy; and also about ‘doctrines and policies designed to produce a result (policy manuals, creeds), any mechanical device that enables a shift in energy, for instance a clutch for shifting gears, monuments, commandments (as in carved in stone), pictographs and petroglyphs’.
“Things never go as planned with Mercury retrograde; never is a strong word and I am using it consciously. Things don’t necessarily go badly under Mercury retrograde, but the plan changes. Events and information can be confusing, and it’s difficult to get to the essence of the problem. It’s difficult to plan for. Retrogrades tend to go particularly poorly if you don’t have a little money stashed away and if you don’t take care of your computer, your car and other basic technology devices.”
“The president, in part represented by the Sun conjunct Jupiter in Aquarius, is a progressive person who has cloaked himself as a moderate, kind of like George Bush did: a radical conservative who claimed to be a moderate. The public, for its part, is reticent to express its progressive values, even though it may have them deep down on some personal level. We need to be moving deeper into Aquarius, and we are reluctant to do so.”
The next day, Chief Justice Roberts was back at the White House swearing in Obama again. So there was a second inaugural chart, which is described in this article, The Return of the King.
“So — what happens when you inaugurate the president with the Moon void of course during Mercury retrograde? Naturally, you have to do it over again. After all that astonishing fanfare, the real kind with trumpets and flags, along with $125 million spent on the swearing-in ceremony attended by some three million spectators, Chief Justice John Roberts flubbed the presidential oath of office. He came back to the White House the next evening for a redo, just in case anyone should doubt the reality that Barack Obama is indeed president.”
Here is another:
“The Moon is conjunct a centaur planet, the next one after Chiron, called Pholus. This critter, discovered in 1992, accelerates events and gives them an irreversible property. Pholus is also about how we react to a famous person. Many people are indeed doing just that right now; we have our first president since Kennedy who is actually part of celebrity culture, or who can work those memes as well as Madonna. And Pholus, even without the Great Attractor right there, is driven by curiosity. There is the question, “What would happen if I/we____?” Is it possible that this question could catch on?
“To this, add the Great Attractor and the Moon, with Pholus at full strength in Sagittarius and the Moon like a condenser of the energy. In a public chart, the Moon is a significator for The Public, that odd entity that at once exists and does not exist as a distinct thing. Is The Public more reactive than it seems right now? Like, a lot more reactive? Is it absolutely ready to ignite, come alive, sense its own existence? We’ve become so accustomed to The Public sleeping through one atrocity after another that a lot of us have forgotten that it even exists.”