Barack Obama, Tony Blair and transiting Neptune

The newspapers have been full of how awful for Barack Obama the US mid-term elections were. I think he hasn’t done too badly, when you look at Bill Clinton and GW Bush, who ended up losing control of both Houses of Congress. Obama has only lost control of one of them, the House of Representatives, so I call that a good result, given that Presidents expect to lose ground in mid-term elections.

On the other hand, the results were also the biggest swing to the Republicans since 1948. But again, that has to be expected when a President is elected on such an unrealistic wave of hope. You get a backlash. This is Neptune’s realm: hope and disillusionment, usually naïve in the way that collectives tend to be. Tony Blair in the UK had the same thing, and when the backlash came it was, and still is, vicious. Blair’s time in power was characterised by major Neptune transits.

Next year Obama will have an exact square from Neptune to his MC at 29 Scorpio. During 2008, the year of his election, Neptune reached 24 Aquarius, 5 degrees off the exact square, but I think we have to see the transit as having been strongly operative then, as he was elected on such a wave of hope.

The MC is our place in the world, how the world sees us, so the transit was perfect for someone to be elected to public office on a wave of hope: the hope that Obama’s new ideas (Neptune in Aquarius) would bring transformation and healing (Scorpio MC). When he came to power, Tony Blair had Neptune conjoining his MC.

The time when a planet is standing still before changing direction is often a time when telling events occur, or a process moves into a new phase. Neptune was (and is) standing still during the mid-term elections, a time when the disillusionment setting in around Obama was given concrete expression.

As Neptune finishes squaring Obama’s MC in a couple of years, so will it have started squaring his Moon at 3 Gemini. Obama’s natal Moon is opposite his MC, showing his ability to emotionally engage (Moon) the public (MC) through words (Gemini).

So the transiting Neptune square to Obama’s MC is by no means the end of the story. In about 2003 I made a prediction about Tony Blair, saying that it was Neptune that had put him in power, and that as long as he had major Neptune transits, he would remain in power. I turned out to be right within about 6 months.

To me it looks the same for Obama. Sure, there will be waves of disillusionment along the way, but he will not lose power until Neptune has finished with him. Obama has natal Moon square to Pluto at 6 Virgo. So his Neptune-Moon transit will not really be over until Neptune has also finished with Pluto – which, if you like, is simply power. That transit will be exact in 2014, half way through his second term as President, which is about the time that Presidents inevitably become ‘lame ducks’, because they are on their way out. That is when we will see a dissolution (Neptune) of his power (Pluto.)

So it is an uncannily similar trajectory, astrologically, to Tony Blair, who was a similar type of leader (though less thoughtful and reasonable.) Blair has natal Sun square to Pluto, and it was as Neptune opposed his Pluto, having squared his Sun, that he finally lost power.

Obama is thoughtful and reasonable, and this is his Aquarius Rising, how we personally present and express ourselves. A lot of Americans experience him as a bit cool, a bit unengaged with people. I do not agree with this, and as one ordinary American said, he’s just thoughtful, he thinks about things, and Americans aren’t used to this in their leaders. George W Bush, with his Leo Rising, could present himself as the life and soul of the party, as warm and engaging. But in reality was he more connected to people than Obama, did he care more about people? I think not, it was show. You need to take into account the Rising Sign, but you also have to look beyond it.

And one thing we see if we look beyond Obama’s Rising Sign is a Moon that is hidden near the IC at the bottom of the chart, and square to Pluto in the seventh. It is Angular and powerful and not at all obvious, partly because that is the Moon’s nature, partly because of where it is in the chart, and partly because of the challenging aspect to secretive Pluto. In a successful politician, this clearly points to a strong need (Moon) for power (Pluto). Which is kind of what you’d expect in a leader, how else would they have the motivation to get there? But I think Obama is very good at hiding that side of his Moon. What you see is the reasonable Aquarian and the visionary, inspirational Sun in Leo square to 9th House Neptune. And the powerful way with words of Gemini and Pluto.

I’ve always suspected, mainly from the astrology, that there is another side to Obama that we do not see. The sign of his Moon is Gemini, which is good for articulating (Gemini) what the people are feeling (Moon opposite MC). But Gemini is a tricksy sign, it has light and dark (Tony Blair has Gemini Rising.) So I suspect we will start to see a different Obama, one who is less reasonable and tolerant, as Neptune moves into Pisces next year and begins its square to his Moon. With Tony Blair, it was as Neptune began to make an exact conjunction to his Moon in 2002/3, and the run-up to the Iraq War began, that he definitively changed from people-pleaser to intolerant ideologue. It will be at the next Presidential election in 2012 that Neptune will start to exactly square Obama’s Moon: so we can expect to see another instalment of Obama the visionary redeemer, but in a different way. And the world will be changing in a deep way at that election, due to the exact square in 2012 from transiting Uranus to transiting Pluto, which is a bit mega.

The planet Mercury, which rules Gemini, takes 176 earth days to rotate on its own axis. This is quite interesting, because it means the planet is divided into light and dark in a fairly fixed way. Any one place on the planet experiences about 3 earth-months of light followed by 3 months of dark. And this corresponds to the division of Gemini into light and dark.