US Healthcare and the Obama-Roosevelt Connection

I’ve been trying to get an exact time for last night’s historic Healthcare vote in the US House of Representatives, and I’m going to go for 11.37pm local time.


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This puts the MC, the public aim of the exercise, in Virgo, the sign of health. And the Sun, the planet of the leadership, is in Aries, a sign of initiative, ambition and new beginnings. The Sun is also considerably challenged by its t-square with Saturn and Pluto, so the vote could easily have failed, and it shows just what a fight Obama has had. On his side was his own Venus at 2 Cancer, his appeal to others, which completes this very difficult t-square and makes it more manageable. Also on his side was the fiery Grand Trine between the Sun, Mars and Ascendant: the gifted visionary won through.

Appropriately, the Sun was also lined up along the ongoing Saturn-Uranus opposition, which tends to bring big social/political/economic change in its wake (the last opposition was in the 60s, and the last conjunction was in the early 90s, at the time of the collapse of the USSR).

You can never quite tell which way it is going to go with Saturn-Uranus, as the forces of progress (Uranus) and conservatism (Saturn) battle it out, with Uranus always having the potential to surprise us one way or the other. But I don’t think there has been an opposition or conjunction of Saturn and Uranus in recent history that hasn’t brought deep change. So from that point of view it was a safe bet that the legislation would get through, even though a couple of months ago it was looking dead in the water.

The legislation still has to get through the Senate, but as I understand it, it will be put forward as amendments to the healthcare bill passed at the end of 2009, and incorporated into budget legislation, so will only need a simple majority rather than the larger one that was originally needed and which the Democrats no longer have. So that vote looks like a bit of a formality, leaving last night’s vote as the crucial one.

Of course the Bill is considerably watered down and compromised, but it is of great symbolic importance and can be built upon.

It was also make or break time for Barack Obama. If he could not get key legislation through Congress when he had a majority in both Houses, then his ability to govern would have been called into question. As it is, this legislation is transformative and sets him on the road to being one of the great Presidents. Because that is what makes a great leader: one who transforms the country, like FDR in the US and like Churchill and Thatcher in Britain (and Attlee, who founded our free healthcare system, but who seems to get forgotten).


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With natal North Node conjunct Uranus, it is Obama’s destiny to be a mould breaker. If he wasn’t, he would feel deeply unfulfilled. Just being black and President is hugely mould breaking. With 98 years of political resistance behind it, ever since Teddy Roosevelt proposed universal health insurance in 1912, to pass this legislation is again mould-breaking.

By transit, Neptune is almost exactly hard-aspecting Obama’s natal MC-Node square. Both of these points have deeper vocational/destiny implications, the square creates dynamism, and Neptune is bringing both awakening and compassion for all. (Neptune wakes us from illusion as well as creating illusion). The MC and the Node are also in a sense impersonal, they are not about our personal desires, they are about something much wider than that.

To find the personal element in Obama’s involvement in the Healthcare issue, we need to look to his Moon, which is in Gemini conjunct the IC. Moon conjunct IC shows a deep emotional identification with, and concern for one’s people. Gemini gives the ability to articulate what is felt by the Moon and by the people. The IC is also one’s personal background, and Obama has spoken of the effect of lack of proper healthcare on his mother (Moon).

Neptune is coming within 5 degrees of squaring Obama’s Moon, so to my mind the transit has begun, which is partly why I am saying the Moon describes his personal involvement with the issue.

What I am about to say has one of those astrological wows! to it.


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Theodore Roosevelt, who began what Obama is completing, also had a natal North Node-Uranus hard aspect (in this case a square), and his Uranus was closely conjunct Obama’s Moon. So Obama has a strong personal connection (Moon) with Roosevelt’s mould-breaking nature.

More than this, Obama’s Uranus-Node-MC hard aspects Roosevelt’s MC.

When Roosevelt proposed universal health insurance in 1912, Chiron, with its healing associations, was conjoining his Node. Now, 2 Chiron cycles later, Chiron is opposing Obama’s Node. Again like Obama, transiting Neptune was hard-aspecting Roosevelt’s Moon.

Over the last year, the Jupiter-Neptune-Chiron triple conjunction in Aquarius, which so well describes the collective impulse to create a better healthcare system, has been conjoining Roosevelt’s Aquarian MC. So his 100 year old dream is being awoken at last.

So there is something wider connecting these 2 men, some impulse in the collective that has taken a long time to bear fruit but which is now reaching an initial completion in the form of legislation.

Bill Clinton, the last President to take on the healthcare issue, also has a North Node Uranus conjunction. He failed miserably. Congress didn’t even vote on it. The North Node Uranus aspect shows his connection to the issue, his wish to transform the status quo. But neither this conjunction nor his MC were being activated by transit in the mid-nineties, so the time was not right.