Mercury reaches an apparent turning point today, as does the United States. As far as Mercury goes, we know the outcome. Its apparent motion through Sagittarius will turn from direct to retrograde. As far as the United States goes, the outcome is not clear. One thing that is clear as regards to both the astrology and the politics, is that the situation today has striking connections to the presidential election of 1864.
Abraham Lincoln was the incumbent in 1864. The nation was divided, at war with itself. Millions were suffering. There was a lot of unfinished business. The outcome was uncertain. It was a day of decision, an hour of destiny.
Today, Barack Obama is the incumbent chief executive. It is a position that President Obama wouldn’t have been able even to aspire to, had President Lincoln not been able to complete his single most important piece of business. That completion, as incomplete as it was, made this moment possible. Today, the United States is once again sharply divided, all but at war with itself.
As Jan Seward expressed so eloquently in her Planet Waves blog yesterday, millions of United States citizens are even now suffering as though from war. Once again, there is a lot of unfinished business. Once again, the United States faces a day of decision, and an hour of destiny. That destiny, as is always the case in the course of human events, will be determined by human beings as the heavens watch, not the other way around.