With Campaign 2020 grinding on, Stars Over Washington is very pleased to present a guest post authored by Peter Doughty!
Power Shift
by Peter Doughty
The other night - Friday night, probably - I was sitting back with ye olde laptop in me lap as I digested a bit more of the bits and pieces I’d been chewing on, that came from the Democratic Party online shindig for anointing POTUS and VPOTUS candidates. It’s been quite the buzz, even in my perennially independent-minded head. Sure, I’ve leaned that direction all my adult life and never did vote for any R candidate that came along: their so-called conservatism never seemed to line up at all with my brand of such.
So, the news of the choice for VPOTUS was, frankly, exciting — somewhat, for a while. After all, the sorts of economic, cultural and political changes that even the near future would seem to hold were not about to pass her lips, masked or not — nor those of her running mate.
Yet from an astrological perspective, the charts of both candidates provide plenty of fodder for fascinating and perhaps illuminating study.
In the case of Mr. Biden, all that Scorpio energy — Mars, Mercury, Sun and Venus, in that order — in the twelfth house would mark him from birth with a path involving much struggle and suffering, and, maybe, inner work. So it would seem. As one with a diurnal chart (Sun in watery Scorpio above the horizon), his first personal cycle of Saturn would be under the general dominion of Venus. However, Venus also being above the horizon as well as “in exile” in Scorpio, she would not be adorning a path toward being a small-p party animal.
Life was evidently not much easier for Mr. B through his second Saturn cycle (until 2001), under Mars’ dominion. More strength and determination were called for, though he was still essentially trapped within labyrinthine institutions.
Now, though, his life is under the general sway of Luna: quite happy (under the overall circumstances) in the steady and huggy sign of Taurus. Ms. Harris could not be in much better astrological condition, conferring popularity and success as long as Mr. B. plays a caretaker role (natal Luna in the service-demanding sixth house).
There are some quite interesting connections in progressions and directions to his natal chart (of course). I will merely say this: The astrological confirmation of the appropriateness of, and the larger societal readiness for, teaming with a woman with roots in atypical cultures comes through most emphatically. The exact natal opposition between Juno in the first house and Saturn in the seventh, along with the seventh-house profection year (age seventy-eight) to begin in November, shout it out. This is a classic depiction of a need for a truly collaborative partner at this time. And the foreign-ness of Juno in Sagittarius is, well — astrologers couldn’t make up something more symbolically spot-on.
It looks like Biden — or, more likely, the hidden councils of his Party — has chosen well.
What I find most intriguing about Ms. H’s natal chart is the exact full moon, somewhat similar to that of the Agent Orange of the Oval Office.
His was a special full moon: a lunar eclipse, with all the spookiness implied and noticed whenever it recurs (at least twice a year). Hers was just a regular full moon.
Hers, like his, was an Air sun / Fire moon combination: cardinal signs, denoting initiative and new directions. His, with the individualistic and defiant element of Uranus thrown in, emphasized reaction, chaos and rendering asunder.
Evidently, Ms. Harris' role is to be one of the chief architects of a newly constituted polity arising from the ashes of the nation’s Pluto return and the depredations of Trumpism. There is apt to be, in her imprint on events and developments, a definite back-and-forth between instinctive, pointed response and action and, on the other hand, patterns of rational consideration to the point of vacillation: Luna in Aries, Sol in Libra.
What probably among most astrologers appears as the most significant portion in the synastry is the superimposition of Ms. Harris’ grand cross in the fixed signs upon Mr. Biden’s chart, linking with his Scorpio cluster and Chiron in Leo. The latter is his “wounded leader” placement, activated by the Great American Eclipse three years ago, nearly to the day. (I wonder what he was doing that day, and where he was?)
For Ms. Harris, the grand cross represents the inheritance of a great burden, just as she enters into her third personal Saturn cycle, under the dominion of Saturn. That placement for her links closely with his Chiron placement. Fortunately for her, and even more so for the citizenry, natal Saturn is in a dignified condition in Aquarius. This indicates that she would undertake great responsibility in this phase of her life, and that it would involve carefully balancing the needs and demands of disparate social or political groups.
As fate would have it, she might have been thrust into the role of headwoman of some tribe struggling to survive the onslaught of Jair Bolsonaro’s destroyers of the last of the delicate rainforests in the Brazilian hinterlands, or mayor of some hamlet on the Great Plains which lately lost its leader in the Great Derecho of 2020. Instead, she’s stepping into line to become the first female president of a faltering republic and shrinking empire which once styled itself champion of the “free world.” What will even be the shape of the presidency in this next era? That’s another and much larger question, with no attempt at an answer here.
Biden and Harris are holding out the carrot of a return, somehow, sometime, to something that might pass for “normalcy.” But it ain’t gonna happen. The largesse both are talking about are represented by Biden’s natal Jupiter, exalted in caring (when it’s not involved in accumulating) Cancer, in a close sextile (sixty-degree) relationship with Harris’ Jupiter in easy-going, got-plenty Taurus. Actually, the latter — in the context of her grand cross — represents the stemming of the bulk of the big-money projects they propose.
The overall national and international economies are on a cliff-edge, teetering near their tipping points.
The resources increasingly devoted to disaster-recovery take away big chunks from whatever Green New Deal ideas come forward. Those will have to depend on regional and local resources, even as their economies are broken.
Yet a great many localized enterprises, like a thousand points of light, can increase a sense of focus and purpose, within the potential for a measure of continuity. (The pervasive and persistent disruptions on a vast scale, symbolized in 2021 by Jupiter and Saturn in square to Uranus, guarantee an era of even-greater difficulties.)
Ms. Harris, whenever and to what degree she assumes prominent responsibility, will have to carry that cross. There will be many false starts and dead ends in cultivating the next stage, yet evidence shows that good-faith effort and due diligence will be among the new norms.
And those ain’t small matters.
For both Ms. Harris and the Agent, December marks the month of climactic shifts in circumstances. On 14 December — a week before the Great Solstice with the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction — a total solar eclipse falls on the natally-eclipsed Luna in the Agent’s chart, and on the western horizon of Harris’ natal chart. Translation: likely precipitous descent into total madness for the former, and full-scale partnership mode for the latter.
May our better angels prevail.
Biden-Harris synastry chart
In addition to his personal consulting work, Peter Doughty blogs every other Wednesday at Zodiacal Spiral and co-writes a monthly forecast with Aeolea Wendy Burwell at Rocmetaphysical online magazine.
