You Say It's Your Birthday

The United States solar return on July 4th features a tense sun-Pluto opposition. This suggests a transformative year ahead for the country, and the particulars of the opposition, the sun (leader) in the 12th house opposed by Pluto in the 6th (both very close to the ascendant-descendant axis) suggest an opposition to the President from the moneyed interests of the Plutocracy.

Indeed, the news this week reinforces this interpretation. A poll showed that Obama is considered ‘the worst president since the Second World War’. The poll is a bit ridiculous, as Obama is still in office and Americans are notoriously poor with their own history, but it does show that the president is unpopular now. At the same time, the Supreme Court’s decision on Hobby Lobby seems to reinforce the idea that corporations are people, capable of having moral beliefs that would be offended and hurt by the beliefs and needs of actual people. And to top it off, the U.S. stock markets climbed to record heights this week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average topping 17,000, a true milestone.

President: 0, Corporations: 2

The president also lost a Supreme Court decision on his appointments when congress was in recess, and is being sued by House Speaker John Boehner (maybe). Meanwhile, immigration is heating up as an issue along the southern border, as a nation of immigrants tries to stop the next generation from entering the country.

The solar return chart has the moon in Libra, approaching the natal U.S. Saturn in Libra (14 Li 48). With Mars having finished with this degree for
US Solar Return
a while (the Cosmic Warrior is up to 20 Libra), we might expect a bit of a reprieve for the U.S. congress, but Uranus and Pluto are not letting go.

The presence of Venus at 14 Gemini, just off the descendant and trine to U.S. natal Saturn suggests prominent women in the country’s politics in the coming year. Of course, Hillary Clinton would top that list, but there may be more than one female presidential candidate, or perhaps another woman will become a kind of anti-Hillary (Gemini works as both twins and opposites).

Mars, Ceres, and Vesta are conjunct in Libra, adding to the theme of contention and opposition among women over the coming year.

I know that Venus in Gemini could mean many things besides prominent women in politics, but the U.S. is a traditional country in many ways, and so traditional interpretations work well.

The solar return chart for the country (here relocated from Philadelphia to Washington, a minor change) seems to say more about what divides the United States than what unifies it. There is certainly some hope in the chart, but transformative processes are at work, and transformation is rarely easy - especially for powerful countries.