America’s Sun Jupiter Venus

What is the Meaning of this Sun/Jupiter/Venus?

Essentially the triple conjunction of Sun Jupiter Venus demonstrates the founding structure of American law, its philosophy, and its core beliefs at the founding of the republic. Core beliefs that make up the structure of a free people, whether organized as a republic, a kingdom, a theocracy or whatever structure this freedom takes, can guide a people for centuries, and in very healthy and vital civilizations, for millennia.

The example of Moses comes to mind. Moses (Exodus 18), had by this time led his people out of Egypt, given them a whole set new laws, and now was leading them through the desert to the stated goal of a new land. Yet his energies were overwhelmed: He was trying to make all decisions, major and minor, and of course it was not working. One day a councilor-prophet came to him. His name was Jethro, and in effect he gave Moses this management advice. Delegate your power, but do it by choosing the right persons using the right type of people:

1. He was instructed to choose “able men who fear God”. Able people in the bible and in the history and philosophy of antiquity were simply effective executives (in the Peter Drucker style—I highly recommend reading his book, Management). These were the men of ability, true leaders who have always been the ones who get things done. The other part of Jethro’s statement, that they “feared God”, meant that they would be ethical, especially as referred to the Ten Commandments, and other new laws just given. 2., He was instructed that his choices be “men of truth”. That is self-explanatory. Ask yourself how many politicians, administrators, bureaucrats, judges, policemen and others would you trust to be a simple “man of truth”? People will accept a judgment from a king, a judge, any magistrate, far more easily if they know this person is a man of truth.  3. The third proviso for choosing those who would make up your government was to choose “those who hate dishonest gain”. Those who hate dishonest gain are never going to take bribes; and as long as that belief and practice is in effect, the body politic is well neigh incorruptible.

In Antiquity, Israel, applying these three core principles, lasted as a nation, during all its ups and downs, some fifteen hundred years.

Fifteen hundred years is a long time. America, since its War of Independence, has lasted a little over 200 years.

Core principles work. In every great civilization where its peoples are generally free, a historical analysis of their success will uncover deep core values: of speaking the truth, of connection to a higher power, of incorruption or hatred of dishonest gain. Early Rome, under its kings and later under the republic, functioned on these deep core values. This kind of energy gave Rome millennia of influence and power, longer even than 1500 years.

Early Athens achieved the same success, and for a time it was better than any other civilization, till it lost its way, departed from its core principles, then lost its freedom. Sparta under the core lawgiving of Lycurgus lasted some 800 years. When it departed from its core values and laws, it dissolved into the myth of history.

Various European civilizations carried deep core values, and they prospered. This is simply how the human order works. In England, the deep core values of human freedom began with the signing of the Magna Charta in 1215 AD, and then with subsequent updates to this promissory of rights.

Sun Jupiter Venus

The core values in America are found first and foremost in the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776).  It was written by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams; as writing, it reads as inspired revelation. Astrologically, the core values of America, ones that probably will have to be renewed again and again, if America is to survive as a nation state, well, those values are found in the Sun/Jupiter/Venus of the Declaration chart.

The Declaration, says:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That means that we are created equal, that there are certain unable to be taken away rights given to us by God. Some but not all are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness (which is wisdom and virtue). Ownership of private property is another (from John Locke and Adam Smith). These are rights and powers which we then, by our votes, pass on to the state.

Note that the state does not give us these rights, and the state can not take them away. Those were given to us by God before the state was created. In fact, the people have the right to remove the state and replace it with another, if that state attempts to take away these basic rights:

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government…

Abolishing the state, the United States of America, has never happened, yet, but it could and probably will, if America lasts as long as Rome or Israel lasted. The Emperor Constantine instituted a new government in the east, when he saw that ancient Rome was corrupt (by this time, 325 AD). He built a new city that became the capital of the empire, as it were, the new Rome, but named it the City of Constantine. New laws were instituted; the city became a repository of all the ancient science, and literature, history and law, and art. For over a thousand years, it would feed the wisdom of Antiquity to the world, and it would nurture and protect that new religion we call Christianity today.

The rule of law essentially says that no one stands above the law—not elites, not presidents and kings, not judges, not the nobility, the nomenklatura, the priests. The goddess holding the scales of justice is blind.

In any civilization that embodies the rule of law, well, that body of law is a vibrant living thing. Each generation will discover that there are those who would destroy it; each generation must teach itself to support, protect, preserve, sometimes to revive the rule of law. This war of preservation is a leitmotif that runs through the ancient histories of Rome and Greece and Israel. Ancient practices sought to protect that balance of the rule of law; they had words like ostracism, dictator, censor, cleansing of the prophet, and many others.

The war to preserve the rule of law is found in all the stories of all free peoples. This is why free people recall the Star Chamber, the long Parliament, Cromwell, the McCarthy witch hunts. The whole McCarthy thing in the 1950’s attacked the rule of law.

The American Chart

The 1776 chart is, I believe, as important as is the 1066 chart is for England. So the July 4^th, 1776 chart is the one I am going to use.

The focal point and power center of the chart is the Sun/Jupiter/Venus conjunction. This energy needs to be examined at different levels. On a deep philosophical/historical level, this chart represents an era when an already deeply free people who felt their freedoms being taken away came together to create a government of the people based on “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (possibly a republic, possibly a constitutional monarchy: It wasn’t determined at that time; that would have to wait eleven years). It all came from England, where the rule of law had been developed to a level beyond that of ancient Rome’s, where liberty in all classes was vibrant and real, where the pursuit of happiness was a seeking of “wisdom and virtue”, as the Scottish philosophers, like John Locke, would have it.

All these ideas are embodied in this triple conjunction. The Sun and two planets are all in the sign of Cancer. Ultimately, in historical astrology, the sign Cancer is the people, as that sign is ruled by the Moon. The Moon is the people. Jupiter is between the Sun and Venus; it connotes a religious theme, a connection to a Higher Power, a Creator. All of this put together says that the people are “endowed by their Creator (Jupiter/Sun) with certain “unalienable Rights”(Venus), that is, that people are given power by their “Creator” directly to them, which they can then give to the government. It also says they can take this power back, that:

whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.

The people are the ultimate power here. That is why America’s three most powerful planets sit in the sign of Cancer.

The Rule of Law

A vibrant well-protected rule of law is the sine qua non of any free people. A culture, a civilization lacking the rule of law will never achieve the greatness of a free people. When the rule of law is achieved as it was in the ancient Roman Republic and for a while in ancient Athens, then that civilization will prosper and grow. When the rule of law begins to be encroached upon, to be degraded and “gotten around”, then that civilization will eventually collapse into dust, as did Rome and Athens. The rule of law imparts great strength to a people, yet it is fragile and must be always protected.

Ultimately, what is being challenged in this Pluto opposition of JU/VE is the rule of law in America.

This Pluto opposition is about the preservation of the core principles of the Declaration.

The core principles of our republic are basic human freedoms, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.

This Pluto opposition is about the creative destruction of all that would interfere with the core values of the founding of the republic. For example, over the years a real estate bubble was created by our government; when this bubble burst, it led to financial retrenchment, to what is called the Great Recession, which is one of the worst economic downturns in our history.

Pluto is now moving into an exact opposition with Jupiter (2011-12). Jupiter in any nation’s chart defines its ruling class, its elite. In the United States that means the Washington beltway—its politicians and bureaucrats and administrators and special interests like government unions. This opposition will bring about the creative destruction of these elites. These elites will experience opposition from all different areas of society, but primarily from the people, from the grass-roots, from many who have never been involved in the political process before. Where this goes is hard to say, but it is what faces us for the next five years.

When elites have lost their connection to those they are supposed to lead, and the people thereby begin to suffer, well, under an aspect like this one, these elites will be overthrown. That suffering today derives from all the financial reverses that come from a collapsed bubble in the real estate market. Pluto has been opposing Venus in Cancer.

Historically, this process of collapse has occurred over and over again. The French Revolution is a perfect example. The ruling class of that era, comprised of the nobility and the king, had simply lost touch with those it was supposed to govern. Things were so bad in 1789 that the populace was starving. Thus the French Revolution. In the First World War, the Russian Czar and the ruling class were so disconnected to the people, so dysfunctional in their rule that conditions of scarcity and starvation took hold, and a ruling class that had governed for centuries collapsed.

That collapse of the elites can be far more benign than violent revolution. In America, the first elite rulership to fall was the Federalist Party. It crashed hard and never recovered. In 1933, the Republican Party, which had essentially been the ruling class since the Civil War, fell out of power for decades, and when it came back into power, it was totally reconstituted with new aims, a new philosophy of governing.