Editor’s Note: The following is the final part of an article written by Eric Francis. It was originally published on Nov. 3, 2006, two years into President Bush’s second term. It is now part of the archives, only available with a subscription to our weekly edition, Planet Waves Astrology News. –RA
The Squeeze
A short note on the Mercury-Venus conjunction of Tuesday. Mercury is now retrograde in Scorpio, and is backing into an exact conjunction with Venus at the same time both planets are exactly square Neptune. The configuration is a little more complex, actually, because Neptune is conjunct Ceres, and Venus and Mercury are conjunct the Sun; these factors add emphasis and detail, but the core aspect, exact to arc minutes, is Mercury-Venus square Neptune.
This setup the core of the whole Mercury retrograde process, but it seems emblematic of the collective crisis we’ve been living through for so long. It has a lot to do with sorting out what is true from what is not, on the most personal levels, and then standing by that truth. Just Mercury square Neptune alone can be the seat of a controversy on the subject of honesty, leading in some cases to a measure of impeccability, and in others to people not being able to vaguely distinguish between truth and lies. It is one of the most difficult squares there is, in my experience, because it tends to come with a blind spot about how what is true for you is not necessarily true for someone else.
However, people are quite accustomed to falling for accepting the beliefs of others, unquestioned.
This aspect takes place Election Day in the United States, when the Republican majorities in both houses of Congress are up for grabs (called the midterm elections, because they fall in the middle of the presidential term). In the American system of checks and balances, the three equal branches of government must be held by different political interests, or the system begins to cease functioning. As James Madison wrote, when you put people with the same ideology in charge of everything, that is the definition of tyranny. Currently we have a neocon majority in both houses of Congress, a neocon White House and a very wobbly split in the Supreme Court that put Bush into office.
The Bush/Cheney/Rove administration is aware that if it loses this election, there may be dire consequences: impeachment, for one thing, or congress withdrawing authorization for the Iraq war, as well as the inability for the administration to accomplish anything at all the next two years — except by threat, force and horror.
Campaigning has become extremely nasty, as it has been prone to do the past half decade, because all the usual rules of American politics that might mediate things are suddenly being thrown to the wind. We are seeing the ethics of west-Texas political maneuvering take over reality entirely; there is no honor, and there are no limits; only crushing your opponent.
The way that is done now is by taking the most personal matters, such as who we may choose to love, and fighting them out viciously on the national political stage. Who questions that whether someone loves a man or a woman is their private right? Perhaps more people than speak up, but unless we’re prepared to sacrifice our own freedom to choose, there is hypocrisy in silence.
Anyway, here is the chart. I hope we know what actually happened after this one blows through town. Meanwhile, I suggest you set a watch on your camp, do regular perimeter checks, and accept nothing less than the whole truth when speaking or being spoken to. We can get it, if we hold ourselves and everyone else to the same standard, in that order.