Originally posted in July, 2023, this article speaks to Chiron's transiting return to its position in the U.S. Sibly chart--a significant passage that is perfecting today, 4/20/2024.
Here’s where the threat of autocracy we are now facing as a nation becomes not only socially significant to American life but also deeply personal. Chiron speaks to both dimensions of our lives and is deeply relevant to our present dilemmas.
Inescapable questions of both social and personal importance arise: what happens to We the People both collectively and individually when our nation —singing its own praises as the “land of the Free and the home of the Brave”--becomes the land of the captive and the intimidated? I suspect, in the dystopian words of the Blade Runner character, Deckard, that we will reduced to “cops and little people.” Those who attack to avoid being on the defense, and their victims.
What happens when we allow toxic ideology and one man's insatiable revenge fantasy to dictate who thrives in America and who doesn't?
There are no “winners” in such ugliness, yet all signs are flashing vivid red that those who believe this nation was meant for the exclusive aggrandizement of White Christians do not care how ugly their actions and plans are. It's as if one deluded MAGA fever dream has fed and proliferated into a nation-wide quest for autocracy (they call it Project 2025) as the answer to all the “problems” posed by a diverse body politic.
Like having to recognize the humanity and rights of all; like having to share the bounty of this nation with all its people; like having to take responsible action regarding climate change and Humanity’s future on this planet. Like not rewriting the laws to suit narrow biases and choke out all hope for equity.
To choke out our very reason for Being as a nation, if we are to believe our founding documents.
On July 4, 1776, the thirteen American colonies signaled their unified intention to break free of British tyranny by issuing a brief Declaration of Independence, a document that catalogued 27 colonial grievances with the tyranny of King George III and codified the founding ideal that has animated our flawed, but aspirational democracy ever since: "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."
So much of our founding narrative has been caught up in and embellished around these near-mythic aspirations, but when the dust settled on those foundational years between breaking away from Britain and forming the constitutional republic that still sort of guides the everyday functioning of our government (so, 1776-1789), the practical task of building this nation became something far less “equal” feeling.
In fact, a definite divide quickly became apparent between those who really benefitted from Thomas Jefferson’s soaring rhetoric and those who remained subsistence workers. Essentially, white,
land-owning men ruled and everyone else served. It was a divide that
would be deepened by fateful compromises our Founders made with the
slave trade and the use of slave labor in select Colonies. If not for
those compromises, the so-called Royalists of the time might have
prevailed against independence—Britain didn’t ban the slave trade until 1833, and King George III --who would soon after 1776 succumb to illness and incapacity—probably wouldn’t have restricted it as long as the taxes kept flowing.
Hence, the deep-seated Wound this nation grew up around, like a mighty tree emerging from a flawed and conflicted Seed. Mundane astrology looks to a nation’s Chiron for insight into its foundational wounds and for clues about the healing journey that nations, like individuals, must pursue. Rewriting our history with slavery and trying to pretend there was an upside to that legacy, as Florida and other states under right-wing rule are trying to do, is certainly not the path to healing.
Likewise, rolling back women’s rights, blatantly endangering women with misogynistic reproductive policies and crushing the very Beings of transgender individuals are also not the path to healing. In the end, toxic male dominance is about forcing the subservience of any group considered “less than”—take your pick!
Of course, without labeling it a religious movement as such, those pushing the current hard-right trends are essentially weaponizing the mechanics of our democracy (our Bill of Rights and other judicial and legislative means) to impose an emphatically male-dominated system of religious belief on us all, despite the First Amendment’s prohibition against establishing a state religion.
White male dominance has been a matter of dogma in extreme conservative religious circles forever, of course: our history is rife with quasi-biblical justifications for slavery, racism and the suppression of women. Hence the inherent connection between our national Aries Chiron and the deep-seated original Wound that afflicts the Soul of this nation.
We’re experiencing all this these days in numerous state-level attempts (some backed by the Supreme Court) to roll back voting rights, in attempts to rewrite and soft-pedal America’s racial history, in seriously increased incidents of infant and maternal mortality since Dobbs’ passage made reproductive care such a tortured obstacle course, and in the Supreme Court’s recent decision to effectively make higher education less accessible to our non-white young people.
Toxic male dominance wasn’t invented by our Founding fathers, of course: it’s been the norm in western civilization for millennia, despite a host of iconic female figures over the centuries who seemed to buck that trend.
Even so, our American experience with all this seems especially fraught, and it’s no surprise that during this time of our national Chiron return, we are dealing with a severe “return” of repressed toxic tendencies. Women seem to be just a bit too empowered? Knock them back to the 1950s with a blow to their reproductive rights; African-Americans seem to be finally gaining some ground in the professional sector and the economy at large? Bring on the domestic terrorists, the book-banners and put such “uppitiness” back in its “place.” These patterns have repeated in heinous ways throughout our history, and by the logic of our national Chiron cycle, we need to own that before we can heal and move on.
Our founding moment and a timeline of Chiron returns
But let’s
remember where all this started: when the American colonies’ liberatory
moment arrived on July 4, 1776, the chart for that moment (Chart 1 below) featured a potent 5th house Aries Chiron. Chiron expert Martin Lass associates an Aries Chiron with several deep-seated, nearly existential wounds, namely:
“A profound sense of loss of self-worth, a core feeling of worthlessness, unworthiness and even undeservingness of life itself. Self-denial. A feeling of not being wanted, needed or useful. A feeling of being uncentered, unfocussed, lacking solidity.” [1]
Chart 1. The U.S. (Sibly) chart, July 4, 1776, 5:10 p.m. LMT, Philadelphia, PA. All charts are cast with Equal Houses and True Node on Kepler 8.0, courtesy of Cosmic Patterns software.
Further, according to Lass, the “search for identity” is key while Chiron occupies this Mars-ruled sign, and a tendency to “live vicariously through others” is one of the chief expressions of this Chiron. I would add that because Aries is disposed by our national 7th house Mars (Gemini), there also seems to be a tendency toward zero-sum thinking regarding Others: if You profit, I must be losing. Or more familiarly, if I lost, those who won must have cheated and stolen the win from me. It’s a sad world when we can’t acknowledge, celebrate and support the gains of Others.
Lass is speaking here about the personal attributes of a Chiron Aries, of course, but the social and collective dimension to this search for identity and this sense of feeling unmoored and insatiably empty is clearly apparent. It’s often been said that—in contrast to more monocultural nations like Japan—that America is an “idea” that transcends nationality, ethnicity and culture on the strength of its animating ideals of liberty and opportunity for all. Or, as put by the Lincoln Project:
“America is the only country founded on an idea, and it was the most radical idea of its era; the belief that citizens could govern themselves. It was called The American Experiment because there was no reason to believe it would work. For 244 years, it worked, albeit imperfectly, and was an example to the world. On January 6th, this grand experiment nearly ended.
There is an apocryphal quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin. In 1787, while leaving Constitution Hall in Philadelphia, a woman asked him what they’d created. ‘A Republic if you can keep it,’ he is purported to have said.”
Perhaps that grand “idea” has grown stagnant and hollow to many because they don’t feel themselves benefiting from it? Nothing guarantees that we won’t lose our democracy entirely in these fraught times, I fear, but the intensity of the Chiron return process we are now engaged in (as Chiron transits into the final few degrees of the cycle) will force us to ask ourselves serious questions and make serious choices ahead. Even allies like Israel and members of NATO like Hungary, Italy, Spain and Turkey have adopted hard-right or authoritarian rule, and forces within (and probably without) the U.S. are poised to push us in the same direction if they are given an opening in 2024. In other words, the stakes are higher than they’ve been in a long while for an election.
More on Chiron’s role in U.S. affairs
Ruled
by Mars, an Aries Chiron also evokes issues within the military, which
ideally animates would-be soldiers and warriors with the purpose of
protecting and serving the nation. Lately, however, the issues being
raised have been unusually acute and troubling—among them, the persistent phenomenon of sexual assault, a culture that’s either deemed too “woke left” or too “extreme right” and impacting recruitment numbers. Here’s where our national polarization becomes dangerous and counter-productive.
Add into this the phenomenon of civilian militias run by former military men such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who openly present themselves as White power activists, and we must wonder if our young people’s warrior spirit and sense of service is being exploited for toxic purposes, possibly to the detriment of national security.
On this very topic, it’s clear from Kathleen Belew’s documented history, entitled Bring the War Home, that extremist militias are far from a new American phenomenon. An extended excerpt is warranted here:
“The white power movement that emerged from the Vietnam era shared some common attributes with earlier racist movements in the United States, but it was no mere echo. Unlike previous iterations of the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist vigilantism, the white power movement did not claim to serve the state. Instead, white power made the state its target, declaring war against the federal government in 1983.7 This call for revolution arrived during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, which many historians have considered the triumph of the mainstream New Right.8 Antistatism in general, and hostility toward the federal government in particular, had motivated and shaped earlier conservative and reactionary mobilizations as well as the New Right itself, but white power capitalized on a larger current of discontent among conservatives.” [3]
So, an Aries Chiron return can also be about the return and empowering of a form of toxic masculinity that has a distinctive misogynistic/race-baiting edge to it. Don’t believe me, however. From a recent special edition from Politico.com, entitled “How Bronze Age Pervert [BAP] built an online following and injected anti-democracy, pro-men ideas into the GOP”:
“BAP has become a key figure in the world of conservative masculinity influencers, which includes figures ranging from YouTube guru Jordan Peterson to TikTok personality and accused rapist and human trafficker Andrew Tate. Over the past several years, this universe has gained followers and proven itself to be a reliable channel to conservative ideas and Republican politicians for young men in particular. It has also been a breeding ground for reactionary political ideas....
BAP counts Michael Anton, former White House national security spokesperson, Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House aide who was fired for speaking at a white nationalist conference, and a number of young former Trump staffers among his readers. A review by Anton for the conservative think tank the Claremont Institute said the book speaks directly to a ‘youthful dissatisfaction (especially among white males) with equality as propagandized and imposed in our day.’”
It’s difficult to determine which parts of this Politico report are the most important to cite: the entire article warrants serious attention from anyone who cares about the women and girls in their lives, or who simply care about human rights and dignity, in general. It bears repeating: we’ve seen a precipitous rise in misogynistic attacks online, a U.S. and global trend towards the suppression of women’s long-held rights , a stubborn culture of sexual assault in the military, and in a most troubling development, the alleged use of sexual assault by ICE officials at the southern border to “deter” would-be asylum seekers. How to assuage male dissatisfaction with “equality as propagandized and imposed?” Go on the offense, seek to humiliate and denigrate.
So, among other dynamics, our national Aries Chiron return is catalyzing the re-eruption of all these toxic trends, with the same old list of victims, but with one prominent, not entirely new addition. Perhaps because identity is such a fraught issue with this passage and because recent progress on LGBTQ+ issues had encouraged more openness about individual situations, those who are born into the difficult experience of fluid identity—e.g., the transgender individuals among us—have come into heightened focus. Until we walk in their shoes...
On the flip side of that story, however, are the young men who seem to be gravitating to the darkest corners of the internet for some cause that will lend them confidence, pride and a sense of belonging, and the politicians who think that pandering to their malaise with toxic far-right policies (De Santis comes to mind) will make them “special.”
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| by Keith Negley |
Bottom line, there’s no denying that far too many young men seem to be in deep psychic distress these days, and our society is currently paying a very heavy price for that distress.
In fact, things do seem to have gotten worse for young American men since our national Chiron cycle reached its waning (3Q) square in early 2004, with Chiron transiting Capricorn, widely conjoining the Capricorn Sun and Sibly Pluto and squaring radix Sibly Chiron in Aries. We’ll return to this 3Q moment in a bit under Biwheel 1 below; this will provide more important context for our final chart, marking Chiron’s first exact return to radix Sibly Chiron on April 20, 2024 (Biwheel 2 below).
That said, I fear that other astrological factors have recently weighed very heavily on our young people, such as the past 12 years of a relentless Pisces Neptune and its tendency to erode healthy internalized Saturnian impulses. For too many, this passage—beginning on the heels of a difficult recession and later marked by Neptune’s worst, a long drawn-out pandemic—has basically unmoored them from social relationships and a firm grasp on how to function in the real world. All of this has left an unfortunate vacuum for extreme influencers on the internet and dangerous entanglements with those prepared to exploit their aggrieved sentiments and wounded rage.
We’ve seen the results in the increased radicalization of our youth and in a seemingly constant stream of violent news over the past decade. To my eye, these troubling signs reveal the dangers of collective inertia and a dearth of positive, accessible and meaningful outlets for adolescent and young adult energies. How do so many young men simply fall through the cracks of our normal school-to-work pipeline and end up getting lost in front of a computer or video gaming screen or worse? This may sound hackneyed and cliché, but an Aries Chiron in our national chart shouts that making healthy, meaningful opportunities accessible to young people is critical.
Recent events and trends have made clear, in fact, that if responsible leaders among us don’t take this challenge on, those who wish to exploit young people for their own purposes will. The fact that so many feel the need to re-impose brutal dominance over women and Others to feel good about themselves should send up serious red flags. According to the Politico report, BAP is known for saying,
“women’s liberation infected society with a ‘terminal disease,’” and...“readers should prepare for impending military rule in Western countries.”
Sounds like an Aries Chiron to me...and someone’s fever dream about commanding a personal “army” of violent loyalists. We thought it couldn’t happen here? A Southern Poverty Law Center
report for 2022 documents that in that year alone, there were 702
active Anti-government groups and 523 active Hate groups operating
across the U.S. Yes, it can happen here.
An historic rift
The Republic that Benjamin Franklin charged us with keeping, if we can, was sorely challenged on January 6, 2021, with Jupiter and Saturn conjunct in early Aquarius (coming off a still fresh December 2020 cycle conjunction) and square Taurus Uranus, so a square—and an entire chart—that was shot through with rebellious Uranian energy, including Uranus rising in the 12th house, near the Taurus ASC. Chiron, in early Aries, fell sextile Jupiter-Saturn and semi-sextile Uranus, so it wasn’t surprising to see that right-wing racial identity politics and biases were layered into the insurrection violence and messaging, which was strongly boosted (and put into action) by a militant late-Aries Mars, widely conjunct that Uranus. See Chart 2 for reference.
Chart 2. U.S. Capital Assault, January 6, 2021, 12:53 p.m. ST, Washington, D.C.
As shocking as the events of that day were, the potential for a violent overthrow of our democracy has always existed in our Sibly chart, and our pattern of Sibly Chiron returns every 50± years is part of that story: we sport an edgy Aquarius Moon (the People) that falls trine our 7th house Gemini Mars, while that Mars disposes our Aries Chiron. I’m oversimplifying here, of course, but looking back, it’s clear that those who planned the January 6th insurrection knew how to trigger the darkest impulses of our national woundedness, making anything possible.
To make matters even more fraught and open to manipulation, radix Sibly Mars falls square a destabilizing Virgo Neptune, so on January 6th, 2021, with transiting Neptune opposing Sibly Neptune from Pisces, and transiting Chiron (Aries) irritatingly semi-sextile Uranus (Taurus), Trump's Big Lie claiming the election was stolen was enough to set off those who identified with his grievances.
There’s no remaining neutral here, as Chiron nears its return to Sibly Chiron in April, 2024: Trump’s entire political career has been about triggering the worst in his followers for his purposes, and of course, it is the nation as a whole and his followers in particular who have so far paid the price for their loyalty. This is clearly a strategy: “I’m getting indicted for you,” Trump told supporters recently, as if he’s expiating their crimes for them. No, many of those who attacked the Capitol for him are already paying the price. And so, the twisted gaslighting mind-games go on.
It probably shouldn’t surprise us that Trump’s natal Chiron-Jupiter conjunction in Libra opposes our Sibly Chiron in Aries [charts not shown, see note 2 for his natal chart info]—bottom line, he greatly benefits from projecting his insatiable grievances into the nation’s long history of woundedness.
A quick timeline of Sibly Chiron returns
In fact, Sibly Chiron returns and the entire transiting Chiron-to-Sibly Chiron cycle has contributed to most of our significant moments as a nation, and for this reason, a quick timeline of Sibly Chiron returns in history seems to be in order. Through the upcoming one next April, the list of first exact return conjunctions is as follows:
May 30, 1825
May 9, 1874
June 8, 1923
June 11, 1973
April 20, 2024
Chiron transits more rapidly through some Zodiac signs than others, so the quarter breakdown for these cycle returns is less than regular. One thing remains reliable, however: the 3rd quarter of each cycle—often the most difficult period in terms of volatile events, etc.--begins approximately 20 years before the coming Chiron return and new cycle. These 20-year periods have been reliably challenging and notable, for example:
-the 1826 cycle’s 3Q spanned 1854-1876, encompassing the Civil War and the end of slavery, undermined by the failure of Reconstruction;
-the 1874 cycle’s 3Q spanned 1903-1923, encompassing WWI, the Spanish Flu epidemic, violent times with the KKK and other white supremacist mobs (e.g., the Tulsa Race massacre), and so on;
-the 1923 cycle’s 3Q spanned 1953-1973 and was a period of tremendous social and political turmoil. It featured the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Cold War, the Korean and Viet Nam wars, multiple assassinations of public officials and Civil Rights leaders, and the forced resignation of then-president Richard Nixon for his Watergate conspiracy.
It’s also worth noting that in each of the above 3Q periods, unempowered groups within American society did make important gains: enslaved Americans were liberated between January 1, 1863 and June 19, 1865; white women gained the vote in 1920, after decades of effort; minority Americans made progress against Jim Crow laws with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in 1964 and 1965. Wounds cry out for healing, so the push for progress is always on during key Chiron cycle periods.
The 3Q phase (1973 cycle) we are experiencing today, in the run-up to the 2024 cycle, has been especially tumultuous, of course, and the future significance of this period is yet to be determined. It’s been almost 20-years marked by the deterioration of our (small “d”) democratic institutions amidst a host of astrological challenges. For instance, a great deal of the malaise we feel today was likely enabled by Chiron and Neptune transiting conjunct in both late Aquarius (conjunct the Sibly Moon) and early Pisces over an extended period during the 2010s.
This passage heavily impacted the American people (Sibly Moon), undermined local communities (Sibly 3rd house), and as Chiron and Neptune edged into the Sibly 4th, some families and communities almost literally died from the ravages of the Opioid epidemic that debilitated so many, all for the sake of Big Pharma profits. Like the later COVID pandemic, the Opioid epidemic was a long-term phenomenon that still claims lives today. Since the 1990s—probably originally enabled by the 1993 Uranus-Neptune conjunction in Capricorn (corporate profits) and later prolonged by the Chiron-Neptune dynamics described above—this epidemic has washed over people in waves of addiction, destruction and death. We can only assume that it—along with the 2008-10 recession and the more current COVID pandemic—has left a deep well of anger and dysfunction within our grass roots politics in its wake.
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| Neptunian erosion threatens shorelines too. |
By the time Trump came along to burn his brand into working class grievances and white supremacist aspirations, the nation had become receptive and vulnerable to his right-wing “build a wall” schtick. “American carnage,” he called it in his foreboding January 20, 2017 inauguration speech, with Chiron conjunct Mars in Pisces, completing an interchart t-square with the Sibly Mars-Neptune square (Gemini-Virgo, charts not shown). At least he told us all what his intentions were! Passive aggression is aggression, nevertheless.
Passive aggressive tactics are alive and well in Alabama this week, as well, in the state’s election board’s refusal to follow a Supreme Court order to redraw their voting districts to be less biased against African-American voters and representation. It appears that we can expect more of the same from other states that are bent on re-energizing toxic old Jim Crow laws for the sake of maintaining GOP dominance. The security and fairness of this next election is being attacked from all angles as we speak.
So, will we see over a hundred years' worth of progress towards civil and voting rights be wiped out in the days ahead because one would-be authoritarian, being indicted for crimes against the nation as we speak, wants his re-election to be a “get out of jail free” card? It’s a bit too much to contemplate.
With all this said, let’s move on to consider Biwheel 1 and 2 below. In the former we will quickly consider the chart for the 1973 Sibly Chiron cycle’s 3Q (waning square) moment, set against the Sibly radix chart, which should lay some groundwork for the discussion about Biwheel 2, illustrating the new Sibly Chiron cycle conjunction (also against the Sibly radix) looming ahead in 2024. Let’s begin.
The 1973 Sibly Chiron cycle 3Q moment
Biwheel 1. (inner wheel) U.S. (Sibly) chart, July 4, 1776, 5:10 p.m. LMT, Philadelphia, PA; (outer wheel) TChiron-3Q-Sibly Chiron, January 18, 2004, 8:11:35 a.m. ST, Washington, D.C.
Please note that, in the interest of streamlining complicated aspect descriptions between the two charts in Biwheel 1, I will refer to the planets or other points in the outer wheel (the transits) by name only and won’t keep repeating that they are in the outer wheel. When referring to planets in the inner wheel (so in the Sibly radix chart), I will use the label “Sibly”, as in “Sibly Moon,” etc. So, a Jupiter-Sibly Neptune conjunction means that Jupiter is in the outer wheel, transiting conjunct Sibly Neptune in the inner wheel. I hope this bit of shorthand helps prevent confusion!
With that said, notice first that the Sibly Chiron’s 1973 cycle reached its 3Q moment in early 2004, when transiting Chiron (outer wheel) reached its waning square to Sibly Chiron (Aries, inner wheel) from mid-Capricorn. This square aspect spans the Sibly 2nd-5th houses, where transiting Mars tightly conjoins Sibly Chiron in Aries. The nation’s finances and both the Big “E” and the small “e” economies come into the crosshairs here, a point that is amply reinforced by the transiting Jupiter-Pluto waning square (Virgo-Sagittarius), prominently placed over the Sibly 10th and 1st houses, with Jupiter conjunct Sibly Neptune (Virgo) and transiting Pluto opposed to Sibly Mars (Gemini), creating a significant interchart t-square.
In fact, the Bush administration’s economy was still riding high off Clinton’s deregulation (Jupiter) of the financial industry and was growing at a vigorous pace, but Bush also pushed for a massive tax cut for the wealthy (Jupiter-Pluto), which made deficit-financing necessary for his global war on terror. At the same time, and for a variety of reasons, ordinary consumers were racking up record household debt, which would come back to haunt many of them when our whole overheated economy nearly collapsed in 2008 due to reckless, over-leveraged lenders. This failure created a stubborn recession, record unemployment and a widespread housing crisis: the “1%” recovered quickly; the “99%” were still feeling the pain years later.
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| Cartoon by Mike Luckovich |
The net result of all these corporate machinations was resentment, anger and mistrust (Jupiter conjunct Sibly Neptune, square Sibly Mars). Sibly Chiron’s inconjunct to this reckless Jupiter-Sibly Neptune alliance also invited frustration and anger, which was strongly reinforced by the Aries Mars-Sibly Chiron conjunction.
A second interchart t-square shoots through the heart of this biwheel, with Chiron transiting widely conjunct the Capricorn Sun and Sibly Pluto that day over the Sibly 2nd house, opposing 8th house Sibly Mercury (Cancer). The Mars-Sibly Chiron conjunction then squares that 2nd-8th axis to form the t-square. So again, there’s heavy focus on the economy-related houses and on the official “narrative” (Sibly Mercury) that was stressing out our public discourse and American families at that time.
With Mars and Sibly Chiron involved, that narrative couldn’t
help but channel public anger and woundedness, and indeed, by the time
Bush’s 2004 term was out, the nation’s economy was in shambles and
people strongly reacted at the ballot box, electing Barack Obama. This
is a story for another day, but suffice to say here, it didn’t take long for him to
become the target of suppressed popular rage (Mars-Chiron) on the other
side of the aisle and a focus of toxic internet conspiracy theories.
Finally, we can’t ignore the Uranus (Pisces) conjunction to Venus (Pisces) and the Sibly Moon (Aquarius), and the fact that in this chart, Uranus and Neptune (Aquarius) were still in the New phase of their 1993 cycle conjunction in Capricorn and were just nine months into a 7-year long mutual reception that happened to begin the same month that U.S. forces invaded Iraq (March 20, 2003). So, another U.S. entanglement that would go on to produce all kinds of anger and disenchantment with America’s role in the world, but for some, it was an obscenely lucrative (Venus) affair.
So yes, anger has been justified over these many years; perhaps the trouble is, this anger has festered in toxic ways that threaten to throw our democracy “baby” out with the corrupt “bath water.” And for what?
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| Cartoon by Bagley |
The 2024 Sibly Chiron return
Let’s now turn to our final chart here, Biwheel 2, below, reflecting the moment Chiron will transit into its first exact conjunction to Sibly Chiron on April 20, 2024.
Biwheel 2. (inner wheel) U.S. (Sibly) chart, July 4, 1776, 5:10 p.m. LMT, Philadelphia, PA; (outer wheel) U.S. Sibly Chiron return, April 20, 2024, 11:28:13 p.m. DST, Washington, D.C.
It doesn’t take much to see here that Sibly Chiron and its transiting counterpart represent a sort of nerve center in this biwheel, forming aspects with nearly every major point in both charts. Chiron-Venus-Mercury-No. Node (all in Aries) conjoin Sibly Chiron, semi-sextile both the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction (Taurus) and Mars (Pisces), which is widely conjunct Saturn and Neptune (Pisces).
As in Biwheel 1, Chiron also inconjoins
Sibly Neptune (Virgo), widely squares Sibly Sun and Mercury (Cancer,
not conjunct to each other) and opposes Sibly Saturn (Libra). If we
really stretch a bit, Chiron also squares Sibly Pluto (Capricorn) and
thus forms a t-square with the Sibly Mercury-Sibly Pluto axis. Indeed, a kind of nerve center that suggests we can’t rule out the possibility for volatility and conflict.
Key point: this possibility, which tends to manifest when transits and
other dynamics come along and trigger this radix t-square, is built into
the very fabric of American life. For this reason, I would also
associate this t-square with the tension and violence produced by our
uniquely lax gun culture.
So, what does all this mean? It seems first that all the Aries energy placed near the two Chirons indicates an aggressive push going on in terms of financing (Venus), messaging (Mercury) and in terms of public discourse and trends (No. Node). This is potentially volatile energy, of course, especially over the naturally fiery, “identity politics”-sensitive 5th house. The resurfacing and/or triggering of Wounds is bound to create tension, which is likely to manifest in several ways. Mars disposes Aries Chiron, so the Mars square to Sibly Mars (Pisces-Gemini) suggests destabilizing actions that may or may not be based on reality (Mars also opposes Sibly Neptune and widely conjoins transiting Neptune). Gaslighting and misinformation are very real possibilities here. We will be caught up in election season, after all!
Mars also sextiles the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Taurus: aside from the amazing coincidence of a newly-minted Jupiter-Uranus cycle launching the same day as this first exact Chiron return, opportunities will exist to apply technical solutions to the dilemmas that inevitably arise with potent planets like Mars, Saturn and Neptune in mutable signs like Pisces and Gemini.
With Jupiter-Uranus over the Sibly 6th, the focus of technology-driven solutions will likely be on the military and the entire public service sector. Infrastructure projects will still be going on across the nation by then, with a focus on broadband “deserts” and electric vehicle powering stations. With three major planets (Mars, Saturn and Neptune) in Pisces, it’s also not surprising that water supplies and related technologies will continue being a keen focus for some areas of the country.
As for our original Chiron-related concern with festering public anger, it seems fair to ask who really benefits when all that tired old toxic hatefulness is dredged back up and replayed for a new generation? Who really benefits when every little bit of progress by “those people” is met with fear-driven, hateful backlash? When women and children are used as disposable pawns for toxic political games? And most importantly, who is playing the “divide and conquer” games against us that are destroying our democracy as we speak? I suspect we have only ourselves to blame in the end, but I also think our deep Woundedness is being exploited by some deep-pocketed players who have been patiently working to undermine our very foundations as a people. There has always been profit in war...why not instigate one within our borders? Pluto plays the long game, after all, and Chiron wounds are easily manipulated for its purposes.
Chiron and the entire Aries stellium (Chiron, Venus, Mercury, No. Node) opposes Sibly Saturn and this axis t-squares Sibly Sun, which could be very challenging for Congress (Sibly Saturn), the presidency and the nation-at-large (both covered by Sibly Sun). This challenge is reinforced by transiting Saturn inconjunct Sibly Saturn, perhaps reflecting how difficult it is to even comprehend what Speaker McCarthy’s House and Chuck Schumer’s Senate are doing these days.
Even so, Pisces Saturn also trines Sibly Sun, suggesting that Congress can potentially achieve good things going forward. I also take heart that the transiting Libra Moon in this chart conjoins Sibly MC—perhaps peace across our divides is more possible than we think?
If we are to heal our ancient divides—the purpose of a national Chiron cycle, after all—we probably need to start here, by refusing to hate our neighbors and those aspiring to be our neighbors. If we take the time to consider the perils faced by people in hundreds of other nations these days, we can't deny how very blessed we are by comparison. In the end, hatred and division are a choice—a choice often made by others and imposed on us in ways that are both blatant and subtle, as if there is no other way. And in truth, with soulless, transactional and zero-sum thinking (our Sibly Mercury-Pluto opposition comes to mind), there is no other way because division and hatred feed bottom lines.
They may feed bottom lines, but they also choke off collective joy in the process. They choke off compassion, throttle creativity and undermine our ability to be in the world together, to happily share the blessings of life and to celebrate our differences. These are the precious spiritual, healing gifts of Chiron, and they are available to us if we want them.
We are the “land of the Free and the home of the Brave,” right?
Notes:
[1] Martin Lass, Musings of a Rogue Comet: Chiron, the Planet of Healing, Book One, Galactic Publications, Nyack, NY, 2001, p. 319.
[2] Donald J. Trump, June 14, 1946, 10:54 a.m. DST, Jamaica, NY. Source: Rodden, AA.
[3] Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home, Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition, p. 3.
Raye Robertson is a practicing astrologer, writer and retired educator. A graduate of the Faculty of Astrological Studies (U.K.), Raye focuses on mundane, collective-oriented astrology, with a particular interest in current affairs, U.S. history, culture and media, the astrology of generations, and public concerns such as education and health. Her articles on these topics have appeared in several key astrology journals over the years, including most recently, the TMA blog. For information about individual chart readings, contact: robertsonraye@gmail.com.
© Raye Robertson 2023. All rights reserved.
