PROJECTION, PUNISHMENT, AND PROPAGANDA
Some Pre-Ambling
In this short blog, the first in a series, YPC (Your Present Correspondent) will try to sort out some of the dangerous confusion related to the current situation in Ukraine. In particular, he will focus, in this installment, on projection, with a touch of propaganda for spice. He will look into goings-on related to Mars in the United States horoscope: its effects (so to speak), both presently and throughout US history. In subsequent podcasts, he will deal with Pluto , Eris, and other matters, including but not limited to the astrological factors related to Putin, Biden, Zelenskyy, Russia, and Ukraine. He will place a heavy emphasis on psychological projection, which nations engage in (so to speak) at least as often as do individual humans (including but limited to so-called “world leaders”).
The US finds itself (but doesn’t really see itself) in the midst of a national psychosis revealing long-ignored psychological complexes surging to the surface in problematic and highly dangerous ways. He will put aside, for now, the interesting discussion of how nations can have such complexes. It seems, that they can, even though, strictly speaking, nations do not have minds and so cannot, some will say, have such psychological complexes. The evidence suggests otherwise.
YPC uses the Rudhyar horoscope for the US. He has tested it horoscope extensively and it always seems to ring true, particularly as regards the US’s relations with other nations or groups. Also this: nations generally manifest the most problematic facets of any astrological situation, particularly those involving projection. This occurs because unlike individuals, nations do not have a central seat of conscious awareness that through which they can work to withdraw projections or effect positive change.
Projection: Mars in the US horoscope
The US has Mars in Gemini in the 7th house in a close square to Neptune. On the most obvious level, that position suggests assertiveness or aggression in one-to-one relationships or with “open enemies” (a traditional designation of the 7th house). Anyone with that position, or even a Mars-influenced 7th house (e.g. Aries on the cusp), will have a tendency to project Mars onto others. Individuals can work with this tendency and transform it into a strength, asserting themselves cleanly in relationships and developing a keen eye for projection, as the Mars-influence generally appears in the open. Nations, on other hand, generally remain blind to such potentials.
Even a cursory examination of US history will reveal that this country habitually projects Mars onto other nations or groups and either ignores its own aggression or casts that aggression in a favorable light, that favorable light often manifesting as delusory statements about defending freedom (e.g. militaristic boilerplate). An obvious example: the centuries-long mistreatment of the indigenous people of this continent (and elsewhere), who have so often found themselves treated as either savage aggressors or aggressive obstacles to the expansion of the American Empire. (The treatment came not only from the military (Mars), but also from the media, now corporate-dominated, a matter explored in upcoming podcasts, symbolized by the Mercury-Pluto opposition in the US horoscope and Mercury ruling Gemini. Thus the “propaganda” in the title of this podcast. But the initial aggression clearly came from the Empire, with military and media arms playing their roles. After all, the invaders wanted the land on which the indigenous people lived.
Other examples of the Mars-projection abound: Saddam Hussein and Iraq were seen as a threat to the US, as is Iran these days; similarly with Putin and Russia, as with the USSR some years earlier. In 1846, Mexico was portrayed similarly. The Vietnamese and Ho Chi Minh purportedly constituting a threat to democracy despite Ho’s professed admiration for the Declaration of Independence. .
BTW: saying that the US natal (N) Mars often appears via projection does not mean that YPC absolves the projected-upon country (in this case Russia) of responsibility. As Jung said decades ago, we hang projections on hooks just as we do coats, and the projected-upon party must have some of the projected energy or the projection won’t hold up. Thus Marie Louise von Franz:
Seldom, if ever, is nothing of what is projected present in the object. Jung speaks therefore of a “hook” in the object on which one hangs a projection as one hangs a coat on a coat hook.[1]
In this case, Putin decided (along with other Russian oligarchs, one assumes) to invade Ukraine, violating international law – all very Mars-like. But the projection exaggerates the energy and ignores the participation of the projecting party (in this case the USA), often blinding that party (in this case the US) to its own participation and habitual tendencies. Many people in the US (millions, it seems) seem to see Putin only as an aggressor – and as the only aggressor – though many in Russia apparently see his actions as self-defense – and not unreasonably, considering US/NATO actions and broken promises over the past several years and more, not to mention previous destructive invasions of Russia from the west. From a strictly geo-political perspective, Putin, had and has good reason to fear a US invasion or attack, certainly better reason than the US had for invading Iraq. The missiles at the Russia/Ukraine border have constituted a clear and present danger for some time.
In general, when dealing with projections, it seems wise to move beyond two-valued thinking. In this case, we shouldn’t think that “either Russia or the US must be to blame,” but that both have participated. Certainly one must take responsibility for one’s actions.
From the US Empire’s perspective, other nations always seem to threaten US security (US Cancer Sun). Yet polls taken outside this country reveal that a significant majority of people living outside the US see the US as the major threat to world peace. Certainly no other country has involved itself in more international aggression, with the wars in Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, and Iraq as primary examples. Add to those the ongoing US aggression in Central and South America (a central factor, surely, in the number of refugees gathered at our southern border, people often portrayed as dangerous).
The US generally enters international conflicts – conflicts with “open enemies” (7th house) – after ongoing campaigns designed to obfuscate and deceive. This pattern reflects the US Mars-Neptune square, with N Neptune in Virgo and the 9th of national ideology. (The Virgo placement tells us that, like N Mars, N Neptune is ruled by Mercury.) Neptune’s discovery ushered in the so-called Mexican War, more accurately called the Invasion of Mexico, which garnered for the US what became the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. I won’t go into the details here, as I’ve done so elsewhere, but we might remember how Mexico found itself portrayed as the aggressor even though President Polk, surely one of the greatest scoundrels ever to occupy the White House — a favorite hangout for such people, it seems – clearly instigated the conflict.
Why would Polk do such a thing? His remarks tell us a lot about the pattern of obfuscation and deception described here: he said, apparently with a straight face, that he wanted to ‘expand the area of freedom,’ by which he meant expand the number of slave states in the US, an important matter to him when it came to winning congressional votes involving slavery.
The pattern has continued: the USA cited as a defense of freedom its involvement in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. Just the other day, Biden, another of the above-mentioned scoundrels, cited ‘the defense of democracy’ to justify US support of Ukraine (i.e. supplying billions of dollars of lethal military aid), remarks that only the myopic can take seriously, considering the way a US-inspired-and-supported coup overthrew a democratically-elected leader in that country just a few years ago. Does Biden mean that he wants to support situations in which the US has interfered with democracy? Apparently. Time and again, the US has intervened in other countries’ domestic affairs, often leaving behind piles of corpses (Chile in 1973; Iraq for a number of years, culminating in the full-scale invasion; Vietnam for decades; Venezuela more recently; and even, in Russia, the “support,” euphemistically so-called, of both Yeltsin and Putin not so long ago).[2]
The Past Invades the Present
TR Mars’ March 6, 2023 conjunction with N Mars in early March ups the ante, making increased US aggression more likely. The March transit completes the triple transit that began with the October 3 2022 conjunction with TR Mars in direct motion and continued with the conjunction, with Mars retrograde, in late November. The third transit of a triple-transit series often brings the final denouement of a process in which one receives the lesson plan (phase one), internalizes one’s understanding of it (second phase), and manifests one’s conclusion via action.[3] Receiving a triple transit often indicates that the natal factor in question needs more-than-usual work, which certainly seems true of the US N Mars. The astrological symbolism seems to suggest what the historical record confirms: that this country remains prone to aggression, generally (as now) preferring military solutions to diplomatic ones. Certainly the US has attacked and invaded more nations – more “open enemies” – than any other nation on the planet, usually while blaming that “enemy” and repeating that the US seeks peace while promoting war. Thus the extreme danger of the current situation. Quite possibly, we will see some aggression from Russia, but any inquiry into the causes of Russia’s actions will surely reveal the tragic importance of US actions both recent and not so.
NEXT: MOVING FROM MARS TO MARS-NEPTUNE TO PLUTO TO MERCURY-PLUTO.
[1] Marie Louise von Franz: Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology, p.3.
[2] One can discern another pattern here: the US often allies itself with leaders and countries it will later abandon and attack: Hussein in Iraq; Noriega in Panama; bin Laden in Afghanistan.
[3] Sometimes, though, the transit-energy appears largely in one of the three phases, with the other two remaining largely uneventful.
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I have been thinking recently about US historically being at war more than not. This is such a clear explanation of that fact. Thank you so much. It certainly doesn’t make us feel better, in fact more insecure about the future of mankind.