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I am hoping that this blog may help to bring some kind of acceptance – especially for my American friends trying to get over the shock of the election.

AN ASTROLOGER’S ANALYSIS OF THE AMERICAN ELECTION

One of the great things about astrology is that it evokes a sense of a bigger picture; of the weaving of the over-arching tapestry of destiny. When the changing currents of planetary alignments are understood, very often a release occurs and events that appear highly disagreeable may suddenly be recognised as just one thread in the weaving of a pattern that has not yet come to completion. Right now, this may be helpful for those struggling to come to terms with the unexpected result of the American presidential election.

This year, like everyone else, I have watched events in the USA with growing dismay as the American people found themselves cornered with an unwelcome choice of candidates for the presidency, possibly the worst in their history. Whatever my doubts about Clinton, from my British perspective, Trump was incomparably worse and I had been hoping the American people would go for the lesser of two evils and vote for Clinton.

A couple of days before the election I decided to take a look at the horoscopes of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. As soon as I did so, I had the rather upsetting insight that Trump was going to win. Anxiously I talked this over with an astrological friend and she persuaded me that Clinton has a much more stateswoman-like chart, only it turned out that my initial perception was right.

Donald Trump was born with Jupiter in Libra. On 9th September 2016, Jupiter in the skies above us, entered the first degree of the sign of Libra and started moving, with increasing momentum, towards 17 degrees of Libra, the position of Trump’s natal Jupiter, (astrologers refer to this event as a ‘Jupiter return’). Jupiter was the king of the Gods and he is known in traditional astrology as the Greater Benefic, the bringer of good fortune. Lucky, golden Jupiter represents the principle of expansion and brings a time of opportunity and the opening of many doors. So what we have seen is how Trump has been picked up and carried aloft by the glorious wave of mighty Jupiter surging towards his Jupiter return, which will become exact on December 4th.

Much disturbed by the information about Trump’s Jupiter return I moved tentatively on to take a look at Hillary Clinton’s natal chart. I saw that Jupiter was having no particular impact, instead a very different energy was active in Hillary’s chart. Hillary Clinton has the Moon at 22 degrees of Pisces and on the day of the election the little planetoid Chiron was at just under 21 degrees of Pisces.

Chiron was discovered in 1977 and there is still uncertainty as to exactly what kind of object it is. Whatever doubts astronomers have, astrologers have recognised, since the mid-1980’s, the tremendous significance of Chiron in the horoscope. Chiron represents the archetype of the Wounded Healer. When transiting Chiron approaches the position of planets in a person’s natal chart it has a very powerful impact and in the first place this transit is all about the wounding, the healing comes later. One of the features of the wounding that Chiron brings is that, at first glance, it seems to make no sense, it appears to bring an entirely unreasonable outcome.

The ancient Greek myth of Chiron is now widely understood by all kinds of astrologers, therapists and healers. Chiron was the wise and noble king of the centaurs. One day he was accidentally wounded by an arrow belonging to the hero Hercules. Hercules had dipped the tip of his arrow in poison that he collected from the Hydra – a monster that he had defeated and killed. The Hydra’s poison was deadly and incurable and left its victims dying in agony. But Chiron was immortal – he could not die and so he lived with the constant agony of his toxic wound.
What all this means is that on November 9th, while Donald Trump was dancing to the fanfare of Jupiter, Hillary Clinton was suffering the wounding of Chiron. The poisoned arrow was piercing through her armour into the heart of her Pisces Moon; the Moon representing the archetype of the Feminine, the Yin energy, the Matriarch, the Goddess.

And there is much more to this story, because there always is with astrology.

Donald Trump has fiery, Leo rising with Mars right on his Ascendant. Mars is the god of War and it is in his Mars that we meet Trump’s persona of the Braggart, the Narcissist; selfish, aggressive, crude, brutal and violent. But Mars also represents the archetype of the Hero and probably many Americans were willing to overlook his maverick, egotistical behaviour in the hope that underneath all that they might find Robin Hood, Davey Crocket, Wyatt Earp or some other fantasy of a John Wayne-style vigilante overthrowing the bad guys. I guess we can all pray that there might still turn out to be a fragment of truth in that fantasy.

Trump has the Sun in Gemini – a brilliant mind but mercurial like quicksilver, fickle, changeable and likely to be unreliable – easier to take flight than to stand still and deal with difficult issues. Mars brings energy and will power but there is not a single thing in Trump’s chart that connects with the element of Earth, of grounding, of presence, of responsibility and endurance. We are looking at the archetype of the eternal youth, of Peter Pan, a charismatic and courageous boy who can never grow up. So how will Trump find the resources to deal with this incredible responsibility that has come upon him? That remains to be seen, the horoscope is not a static thing, individuals always have the chance to develop and transform the characteristics represented in their chart. He may surprise us. He will certainly have a capacity to think outside the box that a more steady and earthbound individual would lack. But he may turn out to be America’s nemesis, a 21st century Nero fiddling while the world around him burns. The astrologer Eve Jackson noticed that Jupiter and the sign of Sagittarius were strong in the horoscopes of the leading figures of the Nazis. People are easily inspired by the optimistic promise of Sagittarius but the shadow side of this energy is fundamentalism; extreme self-righteousness and fanaticism that can lead, all too easily, to fascism. It may be that under Trump’s leadership we are about to be confronted by a level of patriarchal brutality that we hoped might, by now, have been consigned to history.

And Hillary. If any of my readers wants to learn astrology in a day, just sit and study the chart of Hillary Clinton – it is all so transparently there to be seen.

Hillary Clinton has the Sun, the Ascendant and three other planets in Scorpio. Scorpio is one of those signs that gets a bad press – the poisonous scorpion with the sting in the tail, hiding under rocks and working in the shadows through secrets, machinations, hidden alliances, plots and power struggles. The Hydra, the poisonous, multi-headed monster that Hercules killed, lived in a dark swamp where the sun never shone and this is one of the images of the negative side of Scorpio – a malevolent festering energy living in a swamp! Donald Trump has referred to Washington DC, the political heart of the US as a swamp and promised to drain it and Washington has definitely been home to Clinton and the place where she developed her formidable talents as a politician. So, right there we have Hercules and the Hydra!

However, there is much more to Scorpio than the well-known image of secrets and lies. Scorpio is the deepest and most complex of all the signs. In the higher expression of Scorpio there is the capacity for profound understanding, compassion and wisdom and the beneficial exercise of power. Scorpio is also represented by the eagle – soaring high and seeing far and by the phoenix that symbolises transformation and the possibility of new life arising from the ashes of destruction. So these are the qualities we have missed out on in the loss of Mrs. Clinton as president.
The major challenge in Clinton’s chart is found, not in the energy of Scorpio but in a difficult grouping of planets in Leo. The conjunction of Mars, Pluto and Saturn in Leo is found in the charts of all those born in the end of 1947 or the summer of 1948 and this configuration has a grim reputation with astrologers. Mars the God of War, Pluto the Lord of Death and Saturn the Greater Malefic, bringer of misfortune and the archetype of the Patriarch – coming together in fiery Leo to present a formidable charge around issues of will power and control. Individuals with this rather terrible knot in their charts can have immense difficulty in finding the right use of power. For those who believe in re-incarnation, Clinton’s chart could represent the challenges of a soul working through a life time of issues around world leadership and the right use of power.

Nearly all of the planets in Clinton’s horoscope are dragged into the battle ground of the Scorpio/Leo configuration and so her Pisces Moon stands out all the more because of its isolation. We have said that the Moon represents the archetype of the Feminine, including the human capacity to love and to care and to nurture and the Moon in Pisces can be exquisitely sensitive, gentle and empathic. However, we can see that much of Clinton’s life has been locked into working through the knots of Mars/Pluto/Saturn hence her reputation as a ‘hawk’. She has definitely taken a leading role in some of America’s recent acts of war and nothing could be further from the capacity for gentleness represented by a Pisces Moon. It seems that in the mire of the Washington swamp and the desperation of the struggle to get power in a man’s world on men’s terms, Clinton has had to disown much of her Pisces vulnerability. Like Agamemnon sacrificing Iphigenia she has betrayed an aspect of her own female nature and this has contributed to her downfall. Whatever your opinion of Clinton, it is hard not to feel sympathy for her as the pain of the wound that Chiron has inflicted upon her Pisces heart is great indeed. But when I sit with Clinton’s chart I wonder if her attempt to play the game of Washington on the terms of the patriarchy was inevitably going to lead to defeat. Perhaps, if we are to have a female leader of the western world, it will need to be a woman who is able to draw a line in the sand, step away from the patriarchy and operate on female terms – a champion of the needs of planet Earth honouring the preciousness of all of life, valuing people above profit, a peace-maker and one who speaks from the heart.

I think it cannot be denied that issues around the Feminine principle and the question of misogyny have plaid a major part in this election. Donald Trump has the Moon at 21 degrees of Sagittarius so he has also been directly impacted by the transit of Chiron ‘squaring’ his Moon. We can see how the exposure of his misogynistic behaviour reveals profound and painful wounding in his way of relating to women. The transit of Chiron to the Moons of both Clinton and Trump shows the blow that his victory presents to the Feminine principle and women’s struggle to find a fair and equal place in American consciousness.

I started this article by pointing out that astrology can be extremely helpful in giving a sense of meaning and a sense of timing to the unfolding of world events. When I first looked at Trump’s chart I saw that, for whatever reason, his time has come, this is his moment. Now we have but to watch and wait to see which way this maverick will go. A transit of Chiron can bring some of life’s most painful experiences of wounding but the archetype of Chiron is above all, about healing. When the wound has been opened and exposed there is an opportunity for a major shift of consciousness to occur and a silvery light of healing and transcendence can begin to shine through the transparency of the scars.

At the time of the next US election, Neptune, possibly the most beautiful the most gentle and the most feminine of all the planets will be at 20 degrees of Pisces and in the following year slowly moving towards the 21st and 22nd degrees of Pisces where all the trouble is happening today. We can speculate and we can hope, that this might well be the time for a new kind of world leader, coming to bring through the energy of the Goddess.

My book - Charting the Soul: Astrology, Characterology and the Human Energy Field
available in the USA on Amazon.com
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and in Europe on Amazon.co.uk
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