ELECTIONS PRIMER I: Donny Trump, Iconoclast

Two developments have induced me to write some more installments of my thus-far extremely intermittent blog:

1. I got a notice from my blog-host that my year’s subscription had run out; I paid said blog-host for another year, so I figure I may as well get my money’s worth.
2. People keep stopping me in the street and saying, “Tell me about the elections! What does astrology say about it? Write a blog post about Trump!”

In order to get people to stop buttonholing me on the street about unpleasant subjects (i.e. elections, Donny Trump) just as I get lost in a contemplation of love, light, and beauty, I will say a few words about elections, starting with an observation, stolen, I think, from William Irwin Thompson: that we should see elections as periodic exercises in self-delusion peculiar to people who think that they live in democratic societies. That observation, of course, will not satisfy my buttonholers.)

I plan to put forth a few blog entries, for, as noted, I want to get my money’s worth, as, due to the machinations of politicians of all persuasions, not to mention the lobbyists who own them, my money decreases in value rather rapidly as day succeeds day, so I need to make the most of the money I think I have while I think I still have it.

Okay, then. First for the preliminaries:

1. I think it was Grant Lewi who said, years ago in Astrology for the Millions, that you could learn a lot about election-results by noting the position of transiting (TR) Saturn in the horoscopes of the candidates. To wit: if one candidate has TR Saturn going upwards in the horoscope (i.e. moving from the 4^th house toward the 10^th) and one has Saturn going downward (from the 10^th toward the 4^th, and particularly, from what I’ve seen, in houses 12-3), the former will, other things being equal, win the election. Note, of course, that “other things” rarely seem “equal,” an observation related to “b” below.
2. The guideline about TR Saturn, which I found quite reliable up to around the beginning of the 21^st century, arises from two assumptions that we should examine: 1. Elections get run fairly and squarely these days, so that the person who gets the most votes will win the election. 2. Getting elected to public office, particularly the one called “President of the United States” (AKA: “Leader of the Free World”), qualifies as a positive career move (for TR Saturn’s upward movement through a person’s horoscope usually means that the person finds himself on the upswing in career-matters, though this remark seems more true for men than for women, a matter we will explore next installment under the heading “Hillary Clinton”).

Does getting elected president of Les Etats Unis qualify as a positive career move these days? Take the 2000 election. Gore, having won the popular vote (see “b1” above), apparently didn’t win the election in an acceptable way, at least according some n’er do wells in the Supreme Court, a body purportedly operating free of political influence. Furthermore, having lost, he went on to his new career as Climate Jeremiah, in which guise he woke many people to the dangers (to put the matter mildly) of climate change. I would say, with the wisdom of hindsight, and with all due respect for Mr. Gore’s political acumen, that getting elected president would not have qualified as a positive career move for him. Quite the contrary, as he seemed to find for himself a more appropriate vocation by losing the election. And, of course, the guy who won the election (that transplanted son of a former CIA director) went on to a) make a complete fool of himself, and b) do more damage to the planet and its people than one would have thought possible for a semi-literate and possibly-brain-damaged rich kid.

Conclusion: results from the 2000 election strongly suggest that we should question our assumptions. Of course, anyone watching the recent Democratic Primaries can see quite clearly that even if you win nearly half of the popular votes, you do not thereby assure yourself of getting nearly half the available delegates, for some delegates have “super” powers and can do what the fuck they want, thus barring the way to candidates who, for whatever reason, the super-delegates decide not to like.

Enough preamble. What do the horoscopes of Mr. Donny Trump and Mrs. Hillary R. Clinton tell us? Let us start with Donny, a businessman of rare incompetence who has captured the nation’s attention at least partly because he doesn’t seem to know jack about anything, business-related or otherwise. (Will such remarks induce me to vote for Mrs. Clinton? Good question.)

A bit of personal narrative to begin: When I gave a talk a year or so ago at the local branch of the NCGR (National Council of Geocosmic Research), someone asked me if, considering Mr. Trump’s horoscope, I thought he really had a chance to win the Republican nomination – or, indeed, the presidency. I answered that, alas and alack, horoscope factors surely suggested that he did have a chance. Let us look.

Question #1: Where do we find TR Saturn in DT’s (and the fellow does often seem to have the DTs) horoscope?

Answer: We find TR Saturn in Donny’s fourth house, ascending toward the midheaven. In other words, Donny has TR Saturn going upwards. Admittedly, TR Saturn hasn’t gotten itself out of that 4^th house, so we would not see Donny as near the top of his career-arc by any means, but the available evidence suggests that over the next ten years or so, Donny will “be on the rise” in matters vocational, despite, and perhaps because of, his tendency to say stupid things.

Furthermore, Donny finds himself in the midst of some helpful Uranus transits: transiting (TR) Uranus has, already and recently, trined Donny’s Moon and sextiled his ascendant; in doing so, it brought his Mars-Ascendant conjunction in Leo into the picture, creating a grand trine by transit: TR Uranus has tried Donny’s Moon and moved into orb of a trine to his Mars – thus forming the grand trine in fire signs. That grand trine turns into a kite when you add the Sun in Gemini (a kite = a grand trine with one planet opposing one of the planets in the grand trine: Donny’s Sun, along with his north node and, more loosely, Uranus, opposes his Moon in Sagittarius). Kites fly; grand trines do not necessarily do so, for they often remain as merely potential energy, not turning into kinetic energy – i.e. not manifesting as action in the world, but merely as contentment in the mind, yielding a tendency to rest on one’s laurels instead of earning them. The kite formation, introducing as it does two sextiles (in this case: Uranus sextiles the Sun, the sun sextiles Mars) gives more dynamism to the grand trine. In any case, grand trines in fire signs seem less prone to laurel-resting than do grand trines in other elements, so Donny’s grand trine – and his kite – certainly bodes well for his aspirations, no matter how disturbing.

The Uranus influence has brought us Donny Trump the iconoclast, for Uranus likes to upset apple-carts wherever he finds them. Because Uranus makes – and will make, and has made – a series of helpful aspects (helpful for Trump, not necessarily helpful for the rest of us)[1] – and because Donny has N Uranus conjoining his Sun, opposing his Moon, and trining his Jupiter – iconoclastic approaches seem to have worked pretty well for him during the Uranus transit. Donny breaks idols; people applaud, particularly if they feel (and we probably have to agree that they have good reason to do so) that those idols have served only to keep them in subjection.

Of course, we find other important factors. For example, TR Saturn will, before long –December/January 2016/7; July-October 2017– conjoin Donny’s Moon and oppose his Sun, not the best factors for advancement of any kind, particularly when TR Saturn arises as a projection, in which case he arises as forces in the prevailing hierarchy bringing to bear limitations of all sorts. A few weeks ago, around the middle of March (when Saturn made his retrograde station), Saturn came close to his opposition with Donny’s natal (N) Uranus, so his movement toward career advancement ran into a polarized situation in which establishment forces opposed his iconoclastic tendencies, with natal (N) Uranus symbolizing, through its conjunction with the N Sun, the iconoclastic tendencies and TR Saturn symbolizing the forces of the established order rising in the transitory situation to oppose Donny the Iconoclast.

As I write this, TR Mars, retrograde since mid-April, makes his station right on Donny’s nadir, after which it will begin to rise through the horoscope, moving toward the midheaven. This suggests increasingly public postures from young Donny, particularly as he has N Mars right on his Leo ascendant, a matter for further exploration in the next blog-entry.

This Saturn-Uranus theme runs right through Trump’s present situation, as he has, has had, and will have a series of Uranus transits along with a series of Saturn transits. We will weigh those matters in the next installment; we may even bring Ms. Clinton into the picture, complete with her corporate donors and her merry wit.

The horoscopes (click on the links):

Mr. Donny Trump:
Donny Trump

Ms. Hillary R. Clinton

Hillary R. Clinton

[1] For the record: TR Uranus trine N Pluto 2013-14; TR Uranus sextile Uranus 2015-16;  TR Uranus sextile Sun 2016-17; TR Uranus trine N Moon 2016-17; TR Uranus trine N Mars 2017-18; TR Uranus trine N ascendant 2017-18.