Why Donald Trump will be the next US President

If Donald Trump becomes President of the USA, he will be the first to do so who has neither held political office nor been in the military. BUT he has been the star of a long-running reality TV show (The Apprentice), which nowadays gives the necessary gravitas. This as Saturn (reality, political leaders) squares Neptune (show business). And, as they say, politics is show business for ugly people - or at least, for people with strange hair styles.

To judge whether someone is likely to get elected as a leader, I look for 2 things: firstly, is their chart being empowered by transits, not just at present but during their subsequent term of office? And have they got more charisma than the other guy? It sounds ridiculously simple, but it always seems to be the guy with the charisma who wins. Clinton vs Bush sr, Bush jr vs Gore, Obama vs Hillary/McCain. Charisma is the ability to connect with people, it is a Venus quality, and the guys you don't like can have it just as much as the guys you do like.

First of all, Hillary Clinton. We don't know her birth time, but with her Sun at 3 Scorpio and her Moon at the end of Pisces (and Venus in mid Scorpio), she has no major transits coming up (maybe to her Angles if we knew them, but that alone probably isn't enough). So my first prediction is that Hillary will not be the Democratic candidate, let alone the next President. Transits apart, she doesn't have the charisma factor either - a lot of people find her hard to like, even if they agree with her politically.

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Hillary has Venus in charismatic Scorpio, but it is square to Mars-Saturn-Pluto in Leo, giving her a hardness and aggression that overwhelms the Venus - her charisma probably only peeps out at quiet moments when there are no battles to be fought.

The only other serious Democratic contender is Bernie Sanders. There is some doubt over his birth time, but even so his Sun is experiencing an opposition from Neptune, and his Venus-Moon opposition has hard transits from both Uranus and Pluto. So this guy is in the game, and will probably be the Democratic candidate. If he does become President, it will be just for one term, as his transits will run out of steam, as will he, being nearly 80 by then.

Bernie Sanders

Then of course there is Donald Trump. He has Saturn hard-aspecting his Sun and Moon and North Node through to the end of 2017, and then Neptune starts to move in on his Sun, Moon and Node, admittedly from some distance, but that can easily be enough.

This is the man who wants to ban Muslims from entering the US, and to build a giant wall along the US-Mexican border. This is very Saturn. He also wants to 'make America great' again (as if it wasn't already the world's most powerful country) and this theme of redemption points to the future influence of Neptune on his chart.

Neptune is also influencing Sanders' chart, and it is more immediate, but here the meaning is I think to be found in his feeling for the ordinary American struggling to survive in the face of the greed of Wall St and big business. Neptune is also associated with socialism, which Sanders leans towards. He does not present himself as a redeemer in the Neptunian personality-cult sense that Trump does.

Donald Trump

Trump is the latest representative in the lineage of paranoid politics in the US, that whips up a fear of enemies from within, that began with the Salem witch trials, then continued later with a fear of Catholics and the Irish, then the Communists in the McCarthy era and now the Muslims, stirred up by Trump.

One of Trump's great strengths astrologically is that his Sun-Moon opposition in Gemini-Sag lies along (or near enough) the US Asc-Desc axis (Sibly Chart), while Trump's Desc at 29 Aquarius is 2 degrees off the US Moon at 27 Aquarius, making him very close to the American people, they feel he is one of their own. Sanders does not have this close connection: he is therefore more like an outsider looking in, able to see in a way that Trump can't, but he doesn't belong like Trump does. Trump is  a wasp (the German Drumpf family), Sanders has Jewish ancestry.

Trump is a few weeks older than that other wasp, George W Bush. Both have North Node in Gemini conjunct Uranus, describing the maverick, charismatic, right-wing quality they share. Both are from wealthy backgrounds, giving the sense of entitlement that can come with Leo Rising (which they also share), that perhaps makes it easier to dismiss others not just as inferior but as enemies.

This election is taking place in the closing stages of the Uranus-Pluto square, which has been with us since about 2009. This square traditionally brings political extremes (the last square was in the 1930s). In the UK we have it with the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour party. He is very popular, very left wing, and generally seen as unelectable.

And in the US both Trump and Sanders are at the extreme end of their respective parties. Like Corbyn, Sanders is very popular. But he is socialist, and the American electorate doesn't do socialism.

This year we also have a square from Saturn in Sag to Neptune in Pisces, that impacts on the US Sibly Asc at 12 Sag. And we can see both planets in the campaigns of Sanders and Trump. In the case of Saturn, Sanders wants to see proper governance of big business and to rebuild the infrastructure, whereas Trump plays of the fears (Saturn) of foreigners (Sagittarius) and wants to build walls. It is also the Saturn opposition of 9/11 (which also strikingly impacted the US Asc-Desc with Saturn-Pluto lying along it), so it is a time when fears can be played on. And it is Trump who has the close relationship with the US Asc.

So for 5 reasons, I think that Trump will beat Sanders: he has more personal charisma (Sanders has more integrity, but that's not the same thing); his chart is far closer to the US chart; America doesn't do socialism; the fear factor is big and probably decisive right now; and it is the Republicans' 'turn' after 8 years of a Democratic Presidency.

Wishes and Prayers

I've just started another blog at www.shamanicfreestate.blogspot.com. There's a mailing list on it if you are interested. Meanwhile here is the second post. Happy New Year!

In my last piece I said that I put shamanism - or it put itself -  on a back burner in the early noughties. That was true inasmuch as I stopped doing stuff and ran with astrology instead. But not true inasmuch as I was around someone doing it, though the guy concerned would not have used the word 'shamanism'.

We moved into a new house in Glastonbury in 2001, and I had the wish that a Native American teacher would turn up. And turn up he did, a few months later. A friend had rung saying there was this guy over from Canada who was a story-teller, teacher etc and was looking for places to run events from, so we said yes. And for the next 8 years or so Chip (as I shall call him) and/or Fish (his pupil) visited twice a year and did story-telling, teaching, sweat-lodges, pipe-ceremonies and individual counselling and healing. As well as some great conversation round the table.

So why did he turn up in the first place? Was it just because I wanted him to? I'm sure the bigger picture was playing its part, and there's nothing I can say about that. And I like sensing that dimension - which is most of everything - about which I have nothing to say, and never will. As Chip used to say (speaking from the Chippewa-Cree tradition), our individual human consciousness is tiny compared to the consciousness of the universe, so how can we individually know more than a miniscule amount about the universe?

That just seems to me so sane compared to the modern attitude, inflated by technological success, that sets human consciousness at the pinnacle of knowledge.

So yes, the bigger picture played its part. But I'd also wished he'd turn up. And looking back, it was a wish in the form of a prayer, though I didn't put it to myself like that, and that is also why Chip turned up.

It wasn't just a fancy, it was more of a desire that had a depth and sense of congruence to it, it felt right. And I think that is how prayers work, as in what we do in pipe ceremonies and sweat lodges and wherever else. There needs to be deep feeling involved that is beyond narrow personal desire. If you like, there needs to be a transpersonal element that connects to the wider web of all-that-is. And that gives it power. And it does not need to be 'realistic': that can just get in the way. A prayer is what comes out of our mouths spontaneously and in a heartfelt way. Who are we to say what is and is not possible? Spirit is beyond time and space: shunting things around on the physical level is the least of its problems. Getting us intransigent humans to look at ourselves and act in what is our own best interests is the really difficult problem!

Some people say don't think about your prayers in advance, because they need to be spontaneous. Personally I say dwell on them, think on what you really want for yourself and for others, and those wishes will grow inside you, so that when you are in the ceremony your words will have more power. And when your words have that power, how can there NOT be a response? When we feel something deeply, it connects us to the universe.

But we also need to be open to what that response might be. I know someone who used to treat her prayers like a shopping list, and say them in the full confidence that she would get exactly what she asked for, and as far as I could see, she rarely if ever got that. We may be specific in our prayers, and I think we need to be specific. And then open to the outcome, to the response, because there is something that knows more than we do that is responding.