Dear Friend and Reader:
My original plan for this week was to write an interpretation of the chart for the assassination of John F. Kennedy, prior to the Mercury retrograde election on Tuesday, but then the storm intervened. I will get to Sandy and the election in a moment. First, let’s make contact with this event, which influences everything where the concept ‘presidential’ comes into our awareness.
About five or six weeks ago, I got curious and took another look at the JFK murder chart (something that all serious astrology students encounter, sooner or later), and I finally figured out what’s going on.
I’ve probably cast this chart five times before; this time I used a set of traditional rules, and a lot of experience covering crime scene charts, and the scenario came into focus like the kangaroos jumping out of the seemingly random pattern in the Magic Eye books.
Reading the chart this way has changed my view of the world, tying together much that I’ve encountered before in the study of history and the conduct of the U.S. government, particularly when it comes to making wars. I have not been able to get the thing off my mind, and I can practically see it when I close my eyes. [Here it is, in two formats.] The assassination chart describes the structure of our government, and why (as a result) we need to adjust our expectations of what a presidential election is about.
Instead of doing a full reading, I’ll summarize and, if time permits (and my readers are interested), I will come back to the issue in a few weeks around the time of the 49th anniversary of JFK’s death. Here are the basics.
The chart is organized in two main layers, depending on how you ask about what happened (this is a significant point if you’re studying astrology or any other form of divination — the form of the question determines how the question is answered). This organization of the chart fits the multiple scenarios we always hear about, including the possibility of parallel murder plots and a wide diversity of potential motives, many of which serve as diversions.
If you ask the question, “What is the nature and cause of death?” (a question of the 8th house) you arrive at what I’ll call the political layer of the chart, which describes the outer drama of the assassination, set in the context of the glamour of the Camelot era.
You see a vision of Jack and Jackie (Venus and Mars in Sagittarius, high up in the chart). There is the image of the dead president, looming over the chart as the Sun (a universal symbol of the king) in the last degree of Scorpio — a dead man walking.
Lee Harvey Oswald makes his cameo appearance as the ‘official assassin’, who was — incredibly — murdered while in police custody within 48 hours of being arrested. We never got to hear from him, there was no trial, and he was never convicted.
He shows up as Mercury conjunct Vesta in the 10th house (of government) as a government agent of some kind. Mercury here also points to the official explanation, the highly implausible one about a lone gunman operating outside of any conspiracy. This is the theory that gets all the attention.
The whole scenario, cast this way, promptly points to a big pot of money; a lot of money was at stake. (In particular, this is government money; it’s represented by Jupiter, which rules the 10th and 11th houses of the government and its tax revenue.) Under this scenario, the killer was a government agent and the motive was money.
The political level of the story seems to go cold there. It’s like a huge, flashy distraction, centered on the fire signs. Mercury so prominent in the chart suggests, “This event was designed as a message.” The intent of the murder was to explain the way things are, to anyone who might be interested.
If you ask the question, “Who is the secret enemy?” you get a different scenario. That’s a question of the 12th house, the house of what is concealed. The 12th is similar to the 8th in some ways, though while the 8th is subject to taboo (the eschewing of a topic everyone knows is there), matters of the 12th are often subject to total denial. The 12th can work like a world apart, or a parallel universe. In this chart, that is especially true; all of the affairs of the 12th in the JFK murder chart are contained within the 12th house itself — there’s no leak. (However, through the aspect pattern, there are connections between the two seemingly different levels or scenarios.)
Let’s focus on just the 12th; see if you can follow this. You can find the 12th house as the slanted line just above the dark, horizontal line in the diagram above. You can see the squiggly orange Capricorn symbol near that line, on the outside of the circle, with the ’19’ and ’46’ next to it.
This tells us that the chart has Capricorn on the cusp of the 12th, so for more information, we look to the ruler of Capricorn (notice, there is logic to reading a chart). That is Saturn (who would represent the ‘secret enemy’ and the associated conspiracy), which is concealed in the 12th, out of sight and out of mind. It’s as if most people have no idea that whatever is represented by this house or its ruler even exists. [Note to astrology students: among charts with a strong 12th house, I divide them into two categories — ones with the 12th ruler in the 12th (more difficult to spot the real issue), and ones with the 12th ruler somewhere else in the chart (easier to spot the real issue). This chart falls into the first category.]
The chart has Aquarius rising. The ruler of the ascendant, critical to any chart, is also Saturn (the traditional ruler of Aquarius). It too is in the 12th, hidden away. The planet ruling the rising sign can represent the question itself, and even the correct question is concealed from view or normal consciousness. Saturn, Capricorn and Aquarius are involved in the 12th house; this looks like an elite secret government, associated with corporate power. That’s what the signs and the planet involved describe, based on the established rules of astrology.
One last thing. The 6th house is the one associated with the military (that’s partly how it becomes the house of ‘service’ in modern terms). In this chart, the 6th house has Cancer on the cusp, so the Moon is the representative of the military and we find it in the 12th as well. The military is in bed with the secret enemy, a covert government organization.
One other last thing. Pholus, a centaur planet, is conjunct Saturn and the Moon. Pholus represents the runaway reaction. Whatever killed Kennedy is about to go out of control. In essence, the assassination of Pres. Kennedy was a military coup d’etat. To understand this, it helps to have some historic background.
Ike’s Farewell Address
This starts to sound less ‘tin-foil hat’ if we go back to the farewell address of the president who preceded Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower. Three days before he left office, Eisenhower, a Republican who was suspicious of the infinite expansion of government, gave a farewell address, one that to this day is considered historic (though it’s rarely referenced when it matters the most).
Eisenhower described the nature of the government as it had emerged in the years after the end of World War II, and as it was likely to develop in the future. He had grave concerns about this, which, incredibly, he articulated to us.
In this speech, he openly cautioned the American public about the existence of what he called the military-industrial complex, an emerging massive, permanent ‘peacetime’ corporate arms industry wedded with government and the military.
He warned that this juggernaut was different from anything that we had ever seen or dealt with in the U.S. before, such as during World War II or the Korean War. He explained that “three-and-a-half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.”
Eisenhower, a five-star general (a lifetime appointment, and a rank no longer used), described the military-industrial complex as the “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry” that was “new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.”
He warned, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Meditate on that for a moment. “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
These are not the words of a groovy beatnik handing out leaflets in Washington Square Park; it’s Ike, one of our most respected presidents and masters of the American military; the only general to hold the presidency in the 20th century.
He continues: “We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
This “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry” is exactly what we’re looking at when we peer into the 12th house of the JFK assassination chart. This is the “secret enemy.” There were many people who wanted to see JFK dead, for a diversity of reasons. For example, there was a radical right wing of American politics in the 1960s, and they did not like his socially liberal policies. Yet in my reading of the chart, the military-industrial complex is the center of the conspiracy to kill him. Who the specific killer was does not matter; the motive does.
The Motive: Operation Northwoods
The Kennedy brothers, Jack and Bobby, were as suspicious of communism and as hateful of Fidel Castro as anyone else in their time. When they took office, however, they presided over a military leadership that was quietly slipping over the edge in its anti-Communist paranoia, much of it focused on Castro. This was a kind of hysteria that doesn’t even come close to our meager fears of terrorism today.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the president’s top military advisory council with all branches of the military represented, was determined to conquer Cuba and get rid of Castro. According to the book Body of Secrets, a well-respected history of the National Security Agency (NSA), they proposed an increasingly insane series of plans to start a war with Cuba, which included bombing the Guantanamo Bay Navy base (a kind of adverse possession on the Cuban island, now infamous) and blaming Castro. This whole series of plans was known as Operation Northwoods. (I first covered this topic on Planet Waves in 2002, which you can read here.)
According to declassified documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request (as well as classified documents the author was given by mistake) the Joint Chiefs proposed bombing Miami, with the inevitable deaths of U.S. citizens, and then blaming Castro, so they could “sell” the war to the American public. These are known as false-flag events — military actions done by one country and blamed on another, commonly used to start a war (or as Jesse Ventura has suggested, every war).
The chiefs proposed setting up a drone aircraft, disguised as a student exchange charter flight, and having the plane fly over Cuba and then self-destruct, right after issuing a false mayday call, claiming to have seen a Cuban MiG fighter jet right before it was “shot down.” Note, they had drone technology half a century ago.
The plan called for having a passenger list of fake American citizens who would have been killed in the non-incident, who would be used to evoke grief and outrage and justify the war. This was planned as a 100% fraudulent, fake, phony, trumped-up excuse to get into a war with a neighboring country, staged at taxpayer expense by the nation’s top military leaders.
And in the most insane, treasonous and absurd plan of all, the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States of America proposed to sabotage the historic flight of John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, killing the astronaut and blaming this on the Cubans — all so we could go to war.
The Kennedy brothers, who I remind you hated Castro and lamented “the Cuba problem” as much as anyone else, finally told their military chiefs to bugger off. They recognized these plans as being unconscionable acts of treason, and probable signs of mental illness. (This was parodied by the mentally unhinged General Jack Ripper in Dr. Strangelove, who starts a nuclear war on his own.) The Kennedys told the Joint Chiefs they would be doing nothing of the sort. The next year JFK’s head was blown off. The night his brother won the California primary, he too was shot.
What happened after JFK was killed? Months later, the Vietnam War was started — on the excuse of an Operation Northwoods-like event called the Tonkin Gulf Incident, a staged, minor incident that was used to get permission from Congress to deploy unlimited military resources to Vietnam. A war thus began, and continued clear through the next half century, under a diversity of names: Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Nicaragua, El Salvador, East Timor, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq again, the seemingly endless War on Drugs, and numerous covert wars and actions that don’t have names that we know.
Muslims are the new Communists. ‘Al Queda’ is everywhere. Everyone is a potential terrorist. Now, many forces in the U.S. political establishment are pushing for a full-on war with Iran. Grave consequences indeed.
A lot of money has been made on these wars by banks, arms traders, provisions suppliers, technology firms and various contractors — at least as much money as global misery has been created. It was one thing to ask who killed JFK in 1963, or why. It’s another thing at this late stage of the never-ending war, pushed by the military-industrial complex, with the Operation Northwoods papers being used as the apparent playbook.
On Dec. 31, 2011 at 10:03 am in Honolulu — on a Saturday, a holiday and far from Washington — Pres. Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which expands the battlefield of the War on Terror into the domestic United States, allows American citizens to be considered enemy combatants, and permits the military to arrest and imprison citizens, incarcerating them offshore with no judicial process — things that are both unconstitutional and that violate American political tradition. Yet though this has been widely reported, there has been nearly no protest by the American people against this law, which read realistically, establishes a military dictatorship.
Obama, recognizing the controversy, promised not to use these provisions of the law while he is president. But if it sounds insane, implausible and entirely unnecessary, just remember — Obama has a boss. And it’s not a nice boss. And the American people are not exactly putting up a fuss.
As Chris Hedges — who has in fact resisted NDAA by filing a lawsuit against Obama — wrote, “The uniformity of opinion is reinforced by the skillfully orchestrated mass emotions of nationalism and patriotism, which paints all dissidents as ‘soft’ or ‘unpatriotic’. The ‘patriotic’ citizen, plagued by fear of job losses and possible terrorist attacks, unfailingly supports widespread surveillance and the militarized state. This means no questioning of the $1 trillion in defense-related spending. It means that the military and intelligence agencies are held above government, as if somehow they are not part of government.” (There’s another description of the 12th house in the JFK murder chart — a government above the government.)
Why did Obama sign this? It doesn’t sound very “yes we can” to me. It seems to be all about honoring the wishes of this covert military level of government. One of my readers recently said she has long wondered if they take every new president, sit him down, show them the film of the JFK assassination and ask, “Any questions?”
Remember that when you vote. Remember that when you ever decide to have high expectations of any politician, particularly on the federal level. And if you’re wondering why Democratic presidents have so much in common with Republican presidents, part of the answer can be found in the understanding that they both answer to the same boss.
From One Storm to Another
Speaking of voting, we’re about to have the first-ever presidential election in American history on the day when Mercury stations retrograde. We at Planet Waves have been researching this for a year; here is a fairly comprehensive article on the topic.
Mercury stationing retrograde on Election Day looked like the election was going to be disrupted, and it has been. Much of the Northeastern United States is a mess; at presstime, about 72 hours before the main day of voting, millions of people — and many polling places — remain without power. New York City is crippled; many parts of New Jersey are destroyed. There is significant damage and flooding as far west as Ohio.
All of this, and the retrograde hasn’t even begun yet. There is an especially turbulent phase surrounding the station retrograde from Nov. 2 through Nov. 6, when Mercury is moving at its slowest daily motion. This is called the Mercury storm, when Mercury is moving the slowest during the whole retrograde cycle. These are psychologically the most challenging days of the retrograde.
At the center of the storm is Election Day — the final day of voting, and the day that the majority of Americans go to the polls. It’s also the day we’re supposed to learn the winner. This happens under the influence of the retrograde; so too will all of the tallying, legal challenges and recounts.
The only other time Mercury has stationed on the day of a presidential election was when it famously stationed direct Nov. 7, 2000, in the last degree of Libra. That’s when Al Gore got more votes and Cheney and Bush took office, commonly understood to be a stolen election.
What happened in the past does not necessarily predict the future, though this scenario is indeed nerve-wracking. By now every astrology fan or scholar is familiar with the debacles that can happen when Mercury is retrograde — especially right around the station.
In light of this, a storm warning is in order. I cautioned last week about Ohio, the state on which the whole election seems to hinge. There is the potential for wide-scale voter fraud based on the fact of who manufactured and maintains the voting machines in Ohio — all people associated with the Republican party, its candidates or companies held by the Romney family. There are other critical states, but Ohio has this special issue — and by nearly all analyses, Romney needs Ohio to get the most electoral votes.
There are likely to be a diversity of other debacles or SNAFUs associated with the station retrograde; at the least, it will be a cliffhanger of a day, and it’s also possible that the election process may extend for a while. Yet most people will have no idea that the sensation of stress, weirdness and uncertainty is associated with Mercury retrograde.
As I’ve mentioned, Mercury makes a series of squares to Neptune, a caution that the truth will take some focus, effort, time and patience to discern. The effects of this event may blindside many people. There are likely to be issues with vote tallying, news reporting and the certainty of the outcome. The whole election may end up in court, and we may see some strange turns of events, including a few reversals and false endings. Due to Mercury retrograde, any attempt to steal the election may itself fall flat. Due to the Neptune squares, we may never know what actually happened.
What this is going to do is make the election personal. It already is — we have a candidate who wants to dismantle FEMA and make sure that our daughters have no choice but to get abortions in the back of a van, or face potential prosecution for a miscarriage. We have another candidate who, among other things, has signed NDAA into law (though of course, Congress had to pass the law first).
The effects of this election are personal, and so too is the necessity for action. What unfolds may seem like a “mishap” or “strange development” and it may seem plausible as such. Heck, a hurricane seems plausible — though I’ve been warning that this seems like a manipulated weather event. No matter how nefarious things actually are, there will be people who refuse to acknowledge the possibility of intent. Remember that there is no effect without a cause. To see the truth you will need to look deeper than the surface.
If there is an attempt to steal the presidential election, we will all need to speak up, just like we didn’t in 2000 — and look what happened. The next year was 9/11, followed by two vicious, pointless wars that lasted nearly a decade.
I was appalled at how little spine was shown by both Al Gore and the American public (though Gore may have been given an offer he couldn’t refuse).
Quoting George Bush, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, won’t get fooled again.” If we are ‘fooled’ again, this one is on our karmic tab. If we give up our freedoms, and our right to participate in the political process, we now do so freely, with full knowledge, and to our own peril.
What exactly can you do? The first thing is vote, though that’s just one small gesture of sincerity, and one that will give you an emotional investment in the process. Second, we need you to pay attention to what you see and hear, in physical reality as well as in the media.
Here are a few suggestions, if you’re willing to help out. First, listen to a diversity of news sources — your old standbys, and some different ones. Listen to how the story morphs and evolves. Listen for details, and conflicts in the facts — then document them.
Learn how to make screen grabs and actually make a visual copy of anything that seems interesting, as well as copying the text and recording the URL. Keep these things together. Pick an issue or two and focus on that, tracking the story day by day.
Listen for conflicts, note the things that seem odd or unusual, or situations that seem explained away, and anything else that your intuition says is potentially significant or strange. Observe how you feel through the whole process of doing this — which you may need to do for days or weeks. Then use your blog, your social networking tools, your email and in-person conversations to express to others what you’re noticing, in real time. You’re invited to send your information to me — we will make good use of it in our coverage.
I hope I am wrong, and that this election goes smoothly. Then we can invest our energy in actually taking care of society and influencing politicians to do the right thing — which they will rarely do, unless held to their commitment and their solemn oath. If you don’t want them answering to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the only alternative is that they answer to us. This may sound idealistic, but really — is it so far fetched? And do we really have an alternative?
If the election turns out to be a huge mess, it’s not all a ‘bad thing’ — we will have a positively awesome opportunity to learn, to get involved and to take ownership of the process, even if in small ways.
As Jello Biafra has suggested many times, we must become the media. We now have the means to do so.
Dwight Eisenhower once said: “Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.”
He knew what he was talking about.
Lovingly,
