SCORPIO NATION

In his review of 'The Good Shepherd', a film about the CIA, Philip Brown at Astrofuturetrends says: “The Sibly U.S. horoscope has Scorpio on the cusp of the 12th house and this is one reason why I do like this horoscope. Without buying into a whole lot of conspiracy theories, I think that the U.S. has a tendency to grow secret power cabals that operate independently of any oversight.”

I rather liked this point, and it got me reflecting on just how Scorpionic the USA actually is. And that therefore the Sibly Chart, which is markedly lacking in Scorpio/Pluto influences, cannot be right!

The USA is the wealthiest, most powerful nation the world has ever seen, and has been so for 100 years. I do not think that a nation could achieve this position, and keep it, without a significant Scorpio/Pluto influence. When I read a history of the USA some years ago, I was struck by how, in its path to becoming a world power, the USA was continually re-inventing itself in all sorts of fundamental ways: this was not the mere adaptability of a mutable sign, but a deep and vital and continual re-birthing, which is a classically Scorpionic characteristic.

There are also some of the less savoury characteristics of Scorpio, such as the suspicious, paranoid element that goes in for overkill in response to perceived threats and that seems to need a wholly bad enemy on the world stage, whether it is Communism or Terror. And the USA's use of power on the world stage is to a large extent covert. It does not generally go in for a lot of military occupation, like any normal empire, where its power would be visible to all. It has other ways of bending foreign countries to its will.

Then there is Philip Brown’s point about the secret power cabals, operating independently of oversight. In response to this, there seems to be a lot of mistrust of the government on the part of the American people, with high percentages, sometimes even majorities, of the population believing, for example, that the Moon landings were faked or that there are ongoing cover-ups around alien landings, UFOs and alien technologies such as anti-gravity machines and free energy. Which isn’t to say that some of these beliefs might not be right: it’s just the huge amount of mistrust and suspicion surrounding them, which is so Scorpionic, that I’m getting at.

Incidentally, I do find these sorts of conspiracies quite interesting, and I’m always hoping when I occasionally follow one of them up that I’ll find some good supporting evidence. But I never seem to. Maybe my problem is that I’m not fuelled by a need to believe in these things.

It is interesting that the Sibly Chart has gained such a following among American astrologers, for it is so un-Scorpionic. The Sagittarius Rising of the Sibly Chart (July 4 1776, 17.10, Philadelphia) seems to me to describe how America likes to see itself, and the image it wishes to project: generous, expansive, freedom loving, optimistic, and honest. And America is all those things, but it also has a Sun-Jupiter conjunction in Cancer, which does the job adequately. No individual or country finds it easy to look at its own shadow, and America finds it harder than most (as evidenced by its strong need to identify ‘Evil’ out there). Here I’m probably going to put my foot in it, but you could argue that the American fondness for the Sibly Chart expresses its reluctance to acknowledge its own shadow, and this must include America’s astrologers. Whoops! I’m just putting forward a theory! But not without reason. And it works both ways. You Americans can probably see aspects of the British shadow that are hard for me to identify.

So what chart should we use? I think we need to have Scorpio Rising at the very least. There seem to be 2 possibilities here. There is the 2pm chart for 4th July 1776, for which there is a certain amount of evidence. (See Nicholas Campion’s ‘Book of World Horoscopes’ for a detailed discussion of the various possible charts for the USA). And there is the 4pm chart for 2nd July, which I promoted in my blog of 4 Dec. This hasn’t just got Scorpio Rising, it’s got 12th House Scorpio (for the secret cabals), Moon conjunct Pluto and 8th House Sun. It gives the full measure of Pluto/Scorpio which I think a US Chart needs to have. (The 4pm timing is quite uncertain).

9/11 gave a lot of credibility to the Sibly Chart, because the Saturn-Pluto opposition of the time lined up along its ASC/DESC axis. But with the 2nd July Chart, Saturn-Pluto was squaring the MC/IC axis, which given 9/11’s prominence on the world stage (MC) and the way it shook America to its roots (IC), seems to me to be more appropriate.

When looking at mundane charts, it is important to remember that we rarely find one definitive chart for a country. Different charts can express different levels or aspects or incarnations of a country. In the case of the 2 July Chart (the date the vote for Independence took place), Nicholas Campion says: “Even the participants in the drama regarded this vote as the vital event in both political and symbolic terms…” And of the various 4 July Charts he says: “If the vote was taken on 2 July, on 4 July the collective aims, purposes and self-identity of the thirteen new independent states were adopted.”

So take your pick!