THE STATE OF THE UNION

THE STATE OF THE UNION

Normally when a leader is elected, they have some strong transits that power them through their term of office. Trump's first Presidency had Neptune squaring his Sun and Moon; Biden had Neptune opposite MC followed by Pluto square Moon and Uranus opposite Sun.

I am left scratching my head, however, at the astrology of this year's candidates. Trump will have Uranus aspecting his Angles, Kamala her MC. And that will be that. It will be over for both of them in a couple of years. What sort of Presidency will that be? There is no sustained or steady progress here. After a rocky Uranian start, they will be a lame-duck President for the final 2 years of their term.

If I had to hazard a guess as to who will win, I would say Harris, because Uranus will be active for slightly longer, and in sign.

 

Looking at the US Sibly Chart for the next 4 years, we see Neptune opposite MC followed by a Uranus Return. The last time Neptune was here was in 1860, the beginning of the Civil War. And, remarkably, there was also a Uranus Return. This, perhaps, tells us why Harris/Trump won't get much done: the present polarisation and division in Congress, and the culture wars in the wider culture, are likely to become more intense and to paralyse the country. This fits well with the divisive, Angular Uranus Return in 2027.

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Chiron's suffering is perfectly curable if we listen to the outer planets, for he is the bridge to them. The pain associated with Chiron only seems incurable if we attempt to address it according to collective norms and values. He is the call to our individual destiny. He asks us to be courageous. In the stories, he was the wise centaur who educated heroes such as Jason, Achilles and Hercules.

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Cancer edges slowly and sideways towards the divine light of Leo, hanging on to what is familiar and homely as she goes.

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THE US PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

Very few people are able to be remotely impartial about Trump. There is so much to dislike and disapprove of about the man personally, that no-one looks below the surface to ask but what did he do as President? What are his policies now? In this respect he is a great challenge to one's ability to be objective. It is much easier, and you will get far more approval from your peers, if you continue to froth at the mouth at the mere mention of the man's name. Caution: do not confuse your frothing at the mouth with insight into the Donald.

Kamala is still in her honeymoon period as a candidate, and further buoyed by the recent Democratic Convention. Everyone has an opinion on Trump, which is not likely to change much at this stage. We know, or think we know, him. We don't know Kamala very well.

Above is the chart for the first of their debates on 10th Sept. How does it impact the 2 candidates' charts? Keeping it simple, I would say that the strongest influence in the sky at that time is the Sun-Moon-Saturn-Jupiter mutable Grand Cross.

This impacts on Kamala personally through her Venus in Virgo. Virgo in a politician is popularity. With tr Saturn opposing it, she is going to have to earn it. Retrograde in Pisces, this is not an easy Saturn. It is good for collectives, but it needs to be channelled thoughtfully. Kamala's weakness is needing notes to speak from. She doesn't have that political instinct that knows what to say in the moment, which Trump has in spades, whether or not you agree with him. Her tactic of wanting the microphones unmuted is, I think, in the hope that Trump will keep interrupting her, and look bad for that. The lack of uninterrupted time in which to speak may also help conceal her difficulty with performing unscripted and thinking on her feet. If Trump wants to win, he will have to shut up sometimes. Like he had to with Biden because of the muted microphones, and it worked in his favour, as Biden had the space to undo himself.

 

The Grand Cross impacts powerfully on Trump’s chart, much more than it does Kamala’s, hard aspecting his Sun-Moon opposition in Gemini-Sag. In this case the Saturn is not so much about earning as reaping, because he is known and has a track record as President.

Saturn likes tangible evidence. Kamala is weak on specific policies. She comes out with generalities such as going forwards not backwards, and that her positions might have changed but her values haven’t. Trump can very specific, when he isn’t spewing aggressive soundbites.

My prediction is that this debate will favour Trump. If Kamala is referring to notes, Trump will make mincemeat of that. If she isn’t, he will be able to dance around her and make her look fumbling. This is reflected by Saturn tending to work against her, and in Trump’s favour.

As for the election itself, Uranus is impacting both the candidates’ charts as their main transit, as well as squaring the US Moon. This makes it very hard to predict. There could well be further unusual, unexpected events. We have already had the assassination attempt, and Biden stepping down. And whichever candidate is elected – and who is to say in this Uranian election if the candidates still will be Trump and Harris – they will have a rocky time as President, as Uranus continues to unsettle and divide and startle.

 

THE CV OF A CHAOS SHAMAN

I have a fantasy novel, the Shapeshifters Trilogy, with an American publisher. They are being very slow! Here is the CV I wrote for the inside cover:

Shapeshifting first happened to Barry Goddard in 2000, when a T-Rex turned up during a dance, took him over, and slowly wandered around the room, taking its first curious look at the earth after a 100-million-year absence. Since that time a menagerie of Animals has gradually presented itself, taking turns at feeling what it is like to be Barry Goddard. Roaring, whistling, speaking in tongues, and clearly no longer a rational well-behaved human, the Animals try to keep Barry behind closed doors to avoid the attentions of the men in white coats. But the Animals are always at his shoulder, taking care of him. In 2021, a Wolf showed up and suggested he write the Shapeshifters Trilogy, an offer he could not refuse. It has been a great adventure. When in human form, Barry lives on Dartmoor in the UK, and writes regularly for social media on Astrology and Shamanism. He also does Astrology readings.

 

Below is the chart for when I began writing my first book (The Medicine Wheel) in 2021. 

 

 It's a great chart. I might start to have some serious success in the next few years, as Neptune squares the Venus (popular appeal) and Pluto conjoins the Jupiter-Saturn. It may be my book on Chaos Shamanism, currently being written, that steps into the zeitgeist.

 

THE ENGLISH JUNTA

Sir Keir Starmer has a tight Sun-Pluto conjunction in Virgo, opposite Jupiter. The administrator (Virgo) who has found himself in a position of great power (Jupiter-Pluto). He has a huge majority, rules the Labout Party with an iron fist, and can do what he wants. How many of us could handle that?

The signs so far are worrying: he branded the protesters collectively as racist thugs, and has shown no inclination to listen to what the legitimate majority of them are unhappy about. And he has had the wrongdoers, both offline and online, in jail in record time, using his inside knowledge of the justice system as Director of Public Prosecutions. It already seems clear that, in his haste to keep control, innocent people have also been jailed.

Empathy and bringing people with him are not his strong points. He is a charisma-free zone, and was elected as an act of desperation by the British people. Using the law (Jupiter) to make the population do his bidding seems to be how he thinks. The working classes, which as Labour leader he is supposed to represent, probably hate him already. Currently, he is acting like the head of an army junta. Labour has its values, but freedom of the individual has never been top of its list.

 

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The cat sometimes spends hours asking to be let in through the posh entrance, before swallowing his pride and using the cat flap. "Don't you know who I am?" This tells us something about the nature of Leo. On the subject of which, 2 nights ago I had a dream in which I was sraightforwardly Leo Rising, not Virgo, as I have always been. Many astrologers also insist I must be Leo Rising. Below is my newly painted house. QED. NOT Virgo 🤣

 

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Integrating Mars energy is a soul journey for most women in the second half of life, just as Venus is for men. I think that the feminist critique of men, that sees them in largely negative terms, is mostly unlived Mars, projected in its shadow form. We men are generally much better than the public discourse would have us believe.

 

CHIRON'S 'INCURABLE WOUND'

Chiron is said to be ‘the incurable wound’. I think that is an existential statement. It is the discomfort of existence itself, caused by it not going the way we would like it to. ‘Discomfort’ is putting it mildly. There can be terrible amounts of suffering in this embodied earthly life. I guess I used the word ‘discomfort’ to make the point that however good it gets, it is never perfect. This is where the Buddha starts in his 4 Noble Truths, with the idea of ‘dukkha’ as the basic characteristic of existence. It is often translated as ‘suffering’, but that puts it too strongly, because we are not always suffering in an obvious sense. The word ‘dukkha’ refers to an ill-fitting chariot wheel that gives a bumpy ride. That is more like it.

You’ve got to watch what you emphasise, because this existence is something to be embraced joyfully, not escaped from. What effect has it had on the whole of western culture to have had the image of a guy being tortured to death on a cross as the central religious symbol? It certainly fits well with the idea of this world as being the devil’s domain, and the sooner we can escape it, the better. No wonder Christianity eventually failed as a collective religion.

 

 

Existence is only inherently unsatisfactory to the extent that we treat it literally and embrace it in the wrong way: embrace it as something that can always fulfil our desires in the way we want, our desires that have a ‘right’ to be satisfied these days – something that the natural world does not recognise. Does a gazelle on the Serengeti have a right to life and happiness? No, it had better watch out or it will get eaten.

This is where we can learn from Chiron. Mythologically he was a teacher, as well as eventually having an incurable wound that could only be assuaged by giving up his immortality. This tells us all we need to know: the Chironic wound is only healed by reference to something beyond embodied, conscious existence and its desires. Chiron orbits the Sun between Saturn and the outer planets. He therefore acts as a bridge, as does Saturn, to those greater aspects of life that we are not ordinarily conscious of: the 'invisible' outer planets.

To use another analogy, Chiron is like a crack in the earth, up through which the lava of the outer planets can flow, and Saturn is like an rig at the surface, giving form and shape to that lava.

 

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I offer Zoom astrology readings, by donation. Contact: BWGoddard1 (at)aol.co.uk. My books, Surfing The Galactic Highways and The Medicine Wheel are available for pre-order on Amazon (or by post from me now.)

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Chiron shows us where we need to listen to the outer planets if we desire the joy and meaning that ordinary existence can never provide: the ordinary existence that is lived through the ego and its desires, rather than through a surrender to the universal spirit that runs through the cosmos, which is really what we are.

Chiron surrendered his immmortality in return for Prometheus being unchained from the rock in the Caucasus, where he had his liver pecked out every day, as punishment for bringing fire to humanity. This suggests a sympathy on Chiron’s part for what Prometheus had done, bringing us spirit and imagination – if you like, bringing us the outer planets. And also the trouble it can cause.

We see this trouble at the time of major outer planet transits, when new life is trying to be born, either through the creativity of Uranus, the ensoulment of Neptune, or the death and renewal of Pluto. Humans like what is familiar, what is known, and at these times we will often hang on to what we know, trying to fix our lives so that they keep working as they always have done, to avoid what can seem like the madness that is trying to enter our lives. This hanging on to the old can cause a lot of suffering: it can make us ill, it can even kill us.

The outer planets mean business, they embody the Necessity, capital N, for life always to be moving on and unfolding. Chiron is here the pain we experience when we resist this call: but he is also the joy and wholeness we feel when we answer it. Chiron is half horse, he is both human and animal, he represents the joy of that union: spirit (human) and body (animal), the joy of incarnation, which is what we are here to do.

So Chiron on the one hand tells us that embodied existence is inherently uncomfortable, even deeply painful; but it is a pain that teaches us deeply and in an ongoing way; and that we are here paradoxically to embrace that unsatisfactory embodied existence, the pain is not something to be shied away from. That pain is something that can keep us embodied, it is like an anchor, that can stop us attempting to float off to some heavenly realm. Chiron is an antidote to spiritual bypass.

So wherever Chiron is in your chart – assuming he is somewhere of significance – then that is where you need to listen to the outer planets. If you don’t, then your life will probably not work in that aspect. If you try to do ‘normal’, then you will feel wounded, inadequate. A wound that is incurable on its own level.

A good example is the soul illnesses that many people get, those ones that are hard to diagnose and demonstrate and cure, so that you can often suspect you might be malingering! In fact you are not, it is real, but it will not be healed by conventional medicine, which does not have a concept of a soul dimension to the illness. You need to listen deeply to the spirit within you if you want to get well, it needs a slow revolution in who you are, a different basis from which to live meaningfully.

If you have Sun conjunct Chiron, say, then your whole identity needs to be based around listening to the Spirit, to the outer planets. It is not a part-time thing. This is not easy. If you have that conjunction in Aquarius like I do, then the sign itself gives another shove away from conventional existence. It is much easier to do what everyone else does, the tram lines are well laid down and you get all sorts of benefits like belonging and acceptance and certainty.

So Chiron is not easy. He educated some of the Greek heroes, like Jason of Argonaut fame. So he demands heroic efforts from us to rise to his challenges. You might sometimes feel it is too much, that when you chose this life – assuming that is what happens – that you bit off more than you could chew. I think it only feels too much when we doubt the outer planets. They are what give us the superpowers to rise to the occasion. You cannot be a hero by willpower alone, something that is bigger than human needs to be working through you. That is why we can't help admiring heroes and heroines.

The one thing not to do is to identify with the wound and to blame your parents for it. Parents have much less effect on who we are as adults than we are led to believe (see The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris.) Don’t blame anyone for it: it is there in you to be grappled with, wherever it came from. It can take a lot to understand Chiron and to rise to his challenges. We may make lots of wrong turnings along the way, we may spend years wallowing in his pain.

 

 

I’ll bring in a political example. Politicians are not notable for their self-knowledge, for they are more motivated by outward events. Tony Blair has a wide Chiron-Midheaven conjunction in Capricorn (as well as many other aspects to Chiron.) If any career needs to be a calling, this is it. And you saw it with Blair. He never said it, but he felt he was doing God’s Will in invading Iraq. He formally converted to Catholicism soon after stepping down as PM – Chiron in the 9th, Capricorn here being traditional religion.

At the time of the Iraq War in 2003, Blair was nearly 50, just starting his Chiron Return, and over the next couple of years it also crossed his Midheaven. This was the time when he became ‘toxic’ to voters, because many felt he had misled them over the real reason for the war. They felt he had the blood of our dead soldiers on his hands.

So you can see the kind of weird Chironic mix that was going on. Blair couldn’t help but turn it into a calling – part of his wider project of saving the world from nasty dictators through military intervention. But being a politician, he didn’t have the attunement to his own deeper motives, the ability to be honest about them, that is required to listen to the outer planets: the voice of God, if you like, to put it in Blair’s language. What he thought was the outer planets was very mixed with his own motives.

I won’t attempt too much of an analysis of them, because it is hard to know. It is interesting how certain many people seem to be of politicians’ motives, when really we don’t know, it just takes a bit of honesty to see that. In Blair’s case, I think it is fairly safe to say that mixed in to the brew was his wish to go along with America, whatever it was they were doing. And, of course, his personal ambition, which is not a crime, you need it to get anything done, unless you are a saint. But he no longer seemed able to listen to dissenting voices, a sign that his ambition, his desire for a ‘legacy’, had got out of balance.