A fun spin on serious cosmic stuff! Wendell C. Perry has 40 years experience studying astrology and how it impacts personalities & relationships. He's written two books & published articles in astrology magazines. He's happy to share this website so that you, too, can have fun with astrology to help you in everyday life!
In my latest book, “The Lunar Nodes,” I write that transiting aspects (squares, trines, etc.) to the Nodes of the Moon or Lunar Nodes are not reliable indicators of events in one’s life. That’s because what the Nodes represent in the horoscope is unique. The Sun, Moon and planets each represent a particular function of living on this earthly plane. The Sun is where we shine, the Moon where we feel, Mercury where we think and so on. The Lunar Nodes, on the other hand, represent a gateway to something beyond this level of experience.
There are occasions, however, when aspects to the natal Lunar Nodes by transit or progression or aspects by the transiting Nodes to important points in the natal chart do coincide with significant events. Such occasions are doubly important because, not only do they represent changes in our lives at this level consciousness, they are also conveying a message from a higher level of consciousness. It’s “forever” calling us and we need to listen.
The Eighth House in the Horoscope of the United States
One reason I favor the Sibly horoscope for the United States (click here to see the chart) is because, in several of the most commonly used house systems, it places the Sun in the Eighth House. Some people might find this objectionable because the Eighth is not generally considered a positive placement for the Sun but I feel that there is no house placement of the Sun that better sums up the history of this country.
One of the things traditionally associated with the Eighth House is debt. This can be financial debts but I feel things get more interesting when we also consider it as including emotional or even karmic debts. The hold that these debts have on us go much deeper than mere money. They latch onto our soul. They drive us on a deep, psychological level in ways that we often have trouble understanding.
The reason that I like this house placement of the Sun for the United States is that it came into being already carrying substantial debts. These were debts accrued as we pushed native Americans off their land. They were also debts we owed to those people forcible brought to this country as slaves. In the years that followed the Declaration of Independence these debts have only increased and multiplied to include other groups. Some people might point to more recent efforts to settle those debts, while others complain that we are barely making the minimum payment.
I felt that the New Moon chart for Apr. 1 (click here to see the article and the chart) described a “mellow” two weeks for the United States and, to a large extent, that’s what we’ve had. This has mostly been because of the receding threat of COVID 19. Infections rates are down in most areas of the country and a return to a pre-pandemic normal actually seems possible. Of course, that could be an illusion, but that’s where the Jupiter to Neptune conjunction comes in.
We can certainly see the influence of the conjunction of Jupiter and Neptune in this optimism. We can also see it in the compassionate way that people in the U.S. have reacted to the plight of people in Ukraine. Unfortunately, we’ve also see the negative side of this conjunction in the rising number of states effectively banning abortion. This reminds me of Prohibition. There, responding to the will of religious zealots, we passed laws that made something that was legal suddenly illegal and turned a lot of otherwise honest citizens into criminals. I fear that, in the long run, these anti-abortion laws are going to have the same effect.
In the Apr. 1 chart, the one trouble spot that jumped out was the conjunction Mars, Saturn and Venus in the Second House. This was a pretty obvious indicator of economic troubles and we got that in the form of rising inflation. But even here we can see the expansive influence of the conjunction of Jupiter and Neptune. Even with prices rising, Americans are continuing to spend.
Thankfully, most of the more dire predictions I made in my analysis of the Full Moon chart for Mar. 18 (click here to see the article and the chart) turned out to be wrong. We didn’t have wide-spread protests about gas prices and the Biden administration has avoided escalating Russia’s criminal invasion of the Ukraine into a military confrontation between the U.S. and Russia (though Biden’s remarks about Putin being unqualified to lead did nudge the line.)
I had hoped that Neptune in that Full Moon chart would give us an surge of compassion and I think we’ve seen that during the past lunation period. In my neighborhood “Pray for Ukraine” signs are popping up like Spring flowers and that sentiment seems to extend across the nation. Even with prices rising and talk of a recession, no one is complaining about the billions in aid this country is sending to Ukraine.
Of course, we also saw a bit on the irrational side of Neptune. The Senate hearing on the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson was turned into a farce in which various Republican Senators insisted on telling America how much they didn’t like sex offenders, while implying that Judge Jackson (and possibly Democrats in general) did.
