Dear Friend and Reader,
TODAY AS THE SUN sets off a high-charged square with Uranus, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is facing federal charges for attempting to sell the senate seat vacated by Barack Obama. He offered it to the highest bidder and if no one was going to give him what he wanted, he would just have to take it for himself.
Blagojevich is being taken to task by none other than America’s most famous prosecuting lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald. Fitz was the guy who went after Dick Cheney and Karl Rove a few years ago for the spy-outing case involving someone named Valerie Plame. He managed to score a conviction — Scooter Libby. The accusations against Blagojevich include mail and wire fraud and bribery. The motive appears to be a money shortage in the Blagojevich family. Looks like the governor took American free enterprise a little too seriously.
We might ask what highly unusual astrology could set off this incident, which is not about Blagojevich but about the trust of the American people in their government. The incident comes at a time when it seems a modicum of faith was restored by the election of Obama last month. If this is not a rumbling of Pluto in Capricorn, I don’t know what is.
We cast Blagojevich’s natal chart for noon on Dec. 10, 1959, because he is a well known person and no birth time is available. Lesser well known folk usually get a sunrise chart when no birth time is available. Today is his birthday, or in the language of astrologers, his solar return. And on that day, there is an exact Sun-Uranus square, which suggests that the king (indicated by the Sun) has encountered an awakening, stunning and disruptive force for progress (Uranus). This is true for him because it involves his natal chart; this is true for all of us because the square is happening in the Big Sky. If we wanted to find a better illustration what is going on right now, we’d have to make it up.
Blagojevich is a Sagittarius. Dauntless, bold and ambitious, this is one sign that was born to match power with boundaries and discipline; apparently it did not work this time.
His chart has an interesting feature: Mars in very early Aries, opposite Jupiter in very late Virgo. Mars in that
range of Aries activates the Aries Point, the thing that says “the personal is political” and reminds us that very often, the political can be dangerously personal. Mars opposite Jupiter is crusader energy, but that Virgo Jupiter tells us we have someone incapable of seeing the larger picture of life. No doubt, he felt he knew it all. Pluto squaring that point for the past year or two suggests an obsessive mindset.
Here’s the breakdown: the Sun is the planet of the King because it is the energy of power and will and because it is the planet of Leo, the sign of the King. So when we look at a chart that has to do with anything political, we check out the Sun first. Uranus is the planet of the liberator. It is Promethean in that it often times serves as the flash of lightning which exposes otherwise secret endeavours that, once exposed, change the entire plan. New-found knowledge is the domain of Uranus; the kind from which there is no turning back.
So the Sun being squared by Uranus in this chart is a picture of the King getting struck down by a higher form of justice. In this case, it looks like Patrick Fitzgerald is doing the work of Prometheus. (For astro scholars, it was our good friend Rick Tarnas, author of Cosmos & Psyche, who proposed the idea that Uranus was really misnamed, and that it represents the awakening power of Prometheus.)
But what could possibly have made the Governor think he could get away with something like this? I looked back at the aspects that I had written for today and a few lines blazed out at me with a new emphasis that they didn’t have before because there was no big story going on. But check this out: “Like the Sun’s conjunction to Mars, there is an emphasis placed upon the dynamics of power during this time. My new bookshelf tenant Robert Pelletier, in his book Planets in Aspect, states that during this transit, a person will feel as though they should be allowed to do anything that they want to do. This combination of Sun conjoined Mars square Uranus feels to me like a rolling boulder of fire: a fast, heavy weight that carries a lot of release with it, but that suggests a lot of carelessness as well.”
When something triggers the Aries Point, we are served with a reminder that what happens in society-at-large has a place in our own households. It’s very similar to a situation like if you have the misfortune of having a neighbor who burns tires and your small child has asthma. Another corruption trial for a United States politician is one more gash in the trust we extend towards politicians themselves. I think I am right when I say this is another anecdote to corrupt the faith we have in our figures of power; perhaps I would go so far to say that it is seriously corroding the faith we have in one another. This is the Aries Point in action.
But that is not all. This Aries Point activity brings us back to the main prosecutor: Mr. Fitzgerald himself. Eric has written extensively on the man in this article here. To sum up, Fitzgerald is the one who went after Cheney and rove for exposing that Valerie Plame, the wife of Joe Wilson, was a CIA agent.
He nailed Scooter Libby instead, but this was one of the best documented scandals of the Bush years, and what was documented was treason. If you’d like to take a look at Fiitz’s chart, click on the article linked above. You will find, amazingly, that his Sun squares the Aries Point EXACTLY, and Pluto is crossing that Sun right now. He also has his Mars standing opposite his Jupiter, just like Blagojevich, except he uses that enthusiastic, obsessive, even zealous energy in another way: he is a true crusader. With his Sun and Jupiter in Capricorn and his Mars in Cancer, he has the cardinal cross almost covered. The birth chart resonates with Aries Point frequencies. It looks to me like this guy understands the personal is political, and seeks to let all the politico-crooks know he means business.
Not to sound too comic book here or anything…but life sometimes does imitate a superhero movie.
Back to the governor’s birth chart, you may notice that he has his natal Mars on the Aries Point itself. Transiting Mercury is conjoined with it and transiting Pluto is squaring it: sparking off movement. This could translate into the competitive drive (Mars) to attain as much wealth/power (Pluto) as possible through means of venal communications (Mercury). Remember that Blagojevich is being held along with his Chief of Staff, John Harris, on counts of conspiracy, mail and wire fraud.
With Blagojevich on Fitzgerald’s chopping block, who knows what kind of message is going to ripple through the fluid of the political ring? One thing is for certain: with the Aries Point ringing, it’s going to be like a tyrannosaurus rex in surround sound. Look out!
Merry Met,
Genevieve Sophia (with editing by Eric Francis)
Looks as though Fitzgerald is going to be a busy man during this Pluto in Capricorn era. And not surprisingly, his 00 degree Capricorn is exact on the current 00 degree that we’re on with Pluto today. Fitzgerald will, as Eric put it, “have an impact for a long time”.
he visited ‘a factory’ on Monday ???
‘a factory’ that is a bigger story than (another) corrupt politician. i read that this is the fourth of the last eight illinois governors to get charged with corruption(?)
the factory is where the workers, given three days notice that the factory was going to be closed, and who weren’t even going to be paid what they were owed, decided to take things into their own hands and occupy the factory. thereby showing that some people actually stand up to crooked companies and banks, showing that there is power in union organizing despite all the negative media stereotypes, showing that actions like this can have a very inspiring effect on caring people all over the continent and world.
showing that maybe there’s a chance that we can recreate some of the magic of Argentina in the early part of this decade, where as the economy imploded workers organized to take over the means of production since they couldn’t really affect the political process.
why two stories on this governor and none on the factory occupation?