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!
As if we already didn’t have sufficient reason to pay attention to the coming election, now we have Kanye West adding his personal brand of chaos to the proceedings. His announcement on July 5th that he was running as an independent seemed to cause more amusement that political concern. Of course, that was also the case when Donald Trump first announced his intention to run in 2015. Look where that ended up.
Obviously, there are several differences between Donald Trump’s 2016 candidacy and Kanye West’s current ambition. One of the most striking is that West has publicly admitted that he has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. While President Trump tells us that he is a “stable genius,” Kanye West is quite open about the fact that he is a “unstable” genius. I respect that. In fact, it might even be a good slogan for West’s campaign.
I’m still using the unverified birth time of 8:45 AM for Kanye’s chart. This time bubbled up from the internet a few years ago and no one seems to know its original source, but the chart seems to fit what we know about West’s personality. I like Cancer as an Ascendant for him. I also like the fact that this time places his Moon in a tight T-square with his Sun, Jupiter and Neptune. (Click on Kanye West to see this unverified horoscope.)
In my analysis of the Full Moon for July 5 (click here to see the article and the chart) I put too much emphasis on Uranus. I expected lots of surprises but what this past lunation period seems to have given us was just more of the same. The only surprises were the misguided efforts by people in the administration to discredit Dr. James Fauci and the strange incidents in Portland, Or., in which federal officers in unmarked cars swooped in and detained Black Lives Matter protesters without notifying local officials.
The real catalyst in the July 5 chart was Mercury, which was on the I.C. and square Mars (in the Twelfth House.) I had expected this to brings us attacks on the media, but it was Mercury’s rulership over information that seems to have predominated. In a move that didn’t seem to get a lot of attention, hospitals were told to send their reports and statistics on the novel coronavirus to the Dept. of Health and Human Services rather than to the CDC. This gives the White House more control over how that information is disseminated and “spun.” Mercury on the cusp of the Fourth House is about keeping information close to home, while the placement of Mars on the Twelfth signifies secrets. President Trump has been struggling to drown out concern over spiking COVID-19 numbers with his own narrative. This shift in the flow of information could help him do that.
Since I grew up going to a Pentecostal church, the notion that" the end is near" is quite familiar to me. However, the current state of our world, with a global pandemic and racial and political divisions cropping up everywhere, seems to have made this kind of apocalyptic thinking more common. I thought it might be interesting to look back at the astrology of another period when the world seemed to be ending.
Rome was not built in a day and neither did it fall in one. The erosion of the Roman Empire was slow and incremental. However, one event has come to symbolize the collapse of that once mighty entity, and that is the sack of the city of Rome by the Goths on Aug. 24, 410. Even though this event happened long after the city has ceased to be the center of Roman power, it still sent shockwaves all around the empire. To the people of that time, the fall of the city represented an ending of apocalyptic proportions.
A horoscope drawn for the sack of Rome (click here to see a chart done for noon of Aug. 24, 410) certainly has some apocalyptic features. It also bears a certain resemblance to what currently happening in the sky. This chart shows Saturn, Pluto and Neptune all in the same sign, Taurus. Right now we have Saturn, Pluto and Jupiter all in the same sign, Capricorn. The main difference is that in 410 the Taurus planets were being activated by a square by Uranus. We don't have that. However, in late September and early October, we will have Mars squaring our Capricorn stellum. (Might want to mark your calendars.)
The nomination of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education happened just after Saturn had passed over its natal place in her horoscope. (Click on Betsy DeVos to see a chart done for noon on her date of birth.) As I said in my article on Ghislaine Maxwell, these Saturn Cycle aspects typically bring us tests and DeVos’ tenure at the Dept. of Education has certainly been a test, mostly of her ability to withstand criticism.
The criticism of DeVos has so far centered on her lack of experience as an educator and her long advocacy of private schools. As one might expect from a Sun sign Capricorn, she has weathered this criticism rather well. Capricorns don’t need to be popular. Once they are given a job to do, they will get it done, no matter what other people say or do. It’s no accident that DeVos is one of the few people amount President Trump’s original cabinet who is still in her seat.
Recently, however, the scrutiny of Secretary DeVos has intensified. As the summer winds down, people are looking ahead toward the beginning of the school year and wondering how we can open classrooms in the midst of COVID-19. With infection rates spiking in many parts of the country, parents are worried about the safety of their kids, while school administrators struggle to find ways to balance education and heath concerns. On the frontlines of all this are the teachers, who will be charged with not only teaching their classes but also enforcing things like social distancing and the wearing of masks.
