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"The natal chart is like a seed and progressions are the unfolding in time of that into the plant it is to become. Transits, are like a daily weather report. In political astrology, these three factors have to be taken into account!"
Unless otherwise stated, all data is rated A or AA from AstroDataBank
Recent NewsScope Articles
Jan. 5, 2015 - Will Hillary run? Bono's Chiron-Pluto opposition; Angelique Kidjo, Africa's premier diva.
Jan. 12, 2015 - Neptune's anxiety; France under attack; Pope Francis's exciting Venus return.
Jan. 19, 2015 - Court takes up gay marriage; Swiss Bank shocks system; Chris Kyle, American Sniper.
Jan. 26, 2015 - Deflategate: Tom Brady's footballs; February's top 5; Klay Thompson's best quarter.
Feb. 2, 2015 - Greece's Alexis Tsipras; Shake Shack's debut; Katy Perry at the Super Bowl.
Feb. 9, 2015 - Saturn in Sagittarius, Jill Stein's Green New Deal; Elvis meets Nixon.
Feb 16, 2015 - Jeff Jawer, astro-luminary; journalists in transition; Jeff and Scorpio Rising US chart.
Feb. 23, 2015 - Uranus enters the US sixth; Neonicotinoids and bees; Dr. Seuss is back!
March 2, 2015 - The Boris Nemtsov papers; March's top 5; David Tredinnick, the MP favoring astrology.
March 9, 2015 - Ceres into view, AAPL and solar energy; Chai Jing's "Under the Dome" goes viral.
March 16, 2015 - Britain's royal family under the Eclipse; Kate and William; Charles' progressed MC.
March 23, 2015 - Nuclear deal with Iran? April's top 5 astro-events; Krissi Brown remains in a coma.
March 30, 2015 - Andreas Lubitz, unfit for duty; Q&A - Richard III; Bas Lansdorp's Mars One mission.
April 6, 2015 - Obama and the Iran; NJ Senator Menendez indicted; Mad Men's Matthew Weiner.
April 13, 2015 - Hillary makes it official; Bill progressed Venus; Chelsea's prog Mars.
April 20, 2015 - Marco Rubio declares; Hillary and the Inequality bubble; Floyd Mayweather Fight.
April 27, 2015 - "Clinton Cash" and Clinton fatigue; Petrobras scandal; Bruce Jenner is a woman.
May 4, 2015 - Baltimore, a tale of two cities; May's top five astro-events; Marilyn Mosby's meteoric rise.
May 11, 2015 - Scottish independence; Ceres and the food revolution; the Hanneke Wrome.
May 18, 2015 - Rand Paul steps forward; re-thinking the U.S. Moon; Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner.
May 25, 2015 - Ireland votes in favor of same-sex marriage; June's top five; American Pharoah.
June 1, 2015 - The FIFA scandal; Bernie Sanders, the authentic politician; Emma Stone's rising star.
June 8, 2015 - China hacking into American data; Martin O'Malley, the Dark Horse; MVP Stephan Curry.
June 15, 2015 - the Trans-Pacific partnership; Venus and Jupiter; Secretariat, the racing machine.
June 22, 2015 - Lilith and Pope Francis's historic encyclical; July's top five; Eris, the spiritual warrior.
June 29, 2015 - Obama secures his legacy; Minnesota top biz state; New Horizons nears Pluto.
July 6, 2015 - Greece and the New Moon; Donald Trump's remarks; fighting spirit of Eva Longoria.
July 13, 2015 - Mercury-Mars-Pluto alignment; China's bubble; Serena Williams and Roger Federer.
July 20, 2015 - Loretta Young date raped by Clark Gable? Wat happened in filming Call of the Wild?
July 27, 2015 - Uber and the "sharing economy; August's top five; SETI gets a $100 million donation.
Aug. 3, 2015 - Scott Walker and the plutocracy; Donald Trump and Rand Paul; JFK and Gene Tierney.
August 17, 2015 - Will Hillary win? Will Biden? The progressed Part of Fortune . Jen and Justin marry.
Aug. 24, 2015 - Pluto opposes the U.S. Sun; Jerry Brown, dark horse. Megan Fox files for divorce.
Aug. 31, 2015 - China-U.S. trade relations grow; Sept's top five; Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook.
Sept. 7, 2015 - The U.S. Pluto return; China and U.S. power plays; The Force Awakens, part 2
Reader feedback
re: NBA Finals - Great article on the NBA Finals. I love that you're an astrologer AND a sports fan! Hey, maybe you can start a website with astro insights for sports bettors like me! I love sports astrology, and you could really carve out a niche for yourself. NO ONE is doing it.
re: NewsScope - How can I get your news every week? I am a new reader.
A. NewsScope is updated every Monday. Just bookmark this page in your favorite places, and come back early in the week to get in depth astrology perspectives about current events.
re: O'Malley - Being a resident of NH, I've met Martin OMalley several times. I think of him as running for Vice President. Seems to have a good technical grasp of how to govern, setting goals, measuring outcomes, analyzing results. Might be a good Al Gore to Hillary's Clinton.... Loyal reader
re: NBA finals - I have a sports related question for you because I know you're a big basketball fan/former player. Who do you think is going to win the NBA Championship? Cleveland or Golden State? Thanks so much. LOVE your column, keep up the great work.
re: Putin - For all the Western nations suspicions about FIFA and Its awarding Russia the World Cup competition, Putin seems more popular than ever at home. It seems every attack by the media only strengthens his standing. Maybe the media should back off their scandal search and move on! What astrological factors explain his longevity?
re: Bernie Sanders - It is obvious, as you point out, that all the Republicans are concerned with serving the plutocrats, and not the people. It seems the same is true with Hillary, except she is someone more in touch with the people. The exception is Bernie Sanders. He is way more in touch with Americans. NewsScope is still interesting and insightful after all these years!
re: U.S. Moon - Just a comment on your recent article about the US moon’s irrelevance with today’s politicians, Ted Cruz has natal Jupiter in Scorpio, 25 degrees 42, and the north node at 25 degrees 19. I was under the impression that having a planet at 25 degrees, regardless of the sign, is a huge plus in the political landscape and connecting with the public at large.
A. Yes, you're correct, I forgot about his Jupiter, though I mentioned it in NewsScope March 30, 2015. By secondary progression, his Mercury will be at 26 degrees Capricorn next year, and nearly conjunct the U.S. Pluto.
re: U.S. Moon - Your comments about the relevance of connections to the U.S. Moon in Presidential Elections are interesting. I still feel they are very relevant. My system is to count up the number of conjunctions of an individual's Chart to the U.S. Chart and compare them. Whoever has the most conjunctions generally wins the Election. It clocks out. Your way works good and my way works good. People who become very popular in the United States (Hollywood Stars, writers, etc.) generally have a high number of conjunctions to the U.S. Chart.
re: Gable-Young - Your analysis of Loretta Young's and Clark Gable's charts got me thinking about birth times, trends, etc. I seem to be part of a cohort of women who had their one and only child at 40, we being some of the women who came of age in the late 60s and early seventies. Any prominent aspects affecting my group over those time eras? We definitely all came through that time when women/girls no longer had the absolute expectation (either personal or society-imposed) to marry and have kids right after college, or to "settle down" in some woman-friendly career, like teaching. We were the first wave to live feminism/women's lib. So what happened with us, astrologically speaking?
A. The Pill happened, along with the radical Uranus-Pluto conjunction in the 1960s that opposed conventional Saturn. It's noteworthy that the four main asteroids were first introduced into horoscopes, making a kind of gender balance among deployed planets.
re: Minnesota - Thanks for your thoughtful defense in the matter of the Minnesota education system and "liberalism." Your weekly newsletter is always a treat. However this comment of yours hit one of my personal issues. We are all in this together. Any person's children and grandchildren deserve a quality education. In part because they will be taking care of the previous generations as we get older. But also because it is morally correct to provide opportunities for every human to find his/her unique gifts to share with the world.
re: Trump - Do you think Donald Trump has a chance? I think he touches a nerve in people. I think the political correctness has gone a little too far, we have all become a little mealy-mouthed.
re: Clark Gable - It is surprising how many male Hollywood stars have prominent Venus aspects. I wonder if the old label of "feminine planet" pertaining to Venus really has meaning. Now that male good looks, indeed beauty,
A. Actually, celebrities are said to be ruled by Venus. They attract attention, like Venus. We can see how well this works in Clark Gable's and Loretta Young's charts.
re: Loretta Young - Very good delineation..but one question remains for me unless I missed something. Who was in the role of Judy's father? Was Loretta married to someone else? Is there a physical resemblance to Clark? Is Judy still alive? By the way, I continue to be soooooo impressed by and with your skill at and capacity for, delineation!
A. Yes, the child is Clark Gable's. At one point, Loretta had her ears surgically altered because they stuck out so far, just like Clark's. Most everyone in Hollywood knew the truth. Loretta did get married to producer Tom Lewis in 1940, who took on the role of father, and they had two more sons. Loretta finally told her daughter in 1988 when Judy angrily confronted her, wanting to know the truth from her own mouth. Judy Lewis wrote a book, Uncommon Knowledge, about how it seemed she was the only one who didn't know her true parentage. She died in 2011.
re: Minnesota - In this week's NewsScope you have an article titled "Minnesota and the Jupiter-Uranus Cycle." You applaud the State's Governor for taxing the rich and raising the minimum wage, showing your liberal bias in interpreting mundane horoscopes, contrary to what you have said previously. BTW, what kind of jobs were created in Minnesota during those years? Serving patrons at McDonalds?
A. One of the reasons CNBC awarded the state the best place to do business is their excellent education system, to which an unusually large portion of the tax proceeds go to. As economists know, those with better educations get better jobs. That's why MN is at the top, not because the govt provides many low wage jobs.
As for my liberal bias, I wonder if you consider Warren Buffett to be a liberal? He has long supported tax reforms that share the burden more equitably. See his editorial on the subject here: nytimes.com/super-rich. I have also frequently written about the unfair leverage that the top 0.1% of the elite have over American politics, esp since the 2014 Supreme Court decision McCuthcheon vs the FEC allowed unlimited campaign donations. See neptunecafe.com/plutocracy
MN's plan works against this downward spiral into a Plutocracy, which is now the most unbalanced since 1929. If you consider that we are all connected psychically, socially, ecologically, and if 40 percent or more of the population is suffering financially, then that's a recipe for economic disaster. The federal government was designed to allow the states some self-determination, and if something works in one state, it can be replicated across the nation.
re: Jim Webb - I'm kind of looking for someone other than Hillary for the Democrats and have a spark of hope re Jim Webb, who's just thrown his hat into the ring. The only data I have on him is Feb. 9, 1946, St. Joseph, Missouri, no time…but that does give him some strong connections (at least so it seems to me at first glance) with reference to the Scorpio Rising USA Horoscope. Complex sort of duck, but maybe…What do you think?
re: racism - The question I want to ask is what astrological transits correlate African American. I love reading your blog -- sorry your webpage -- but I have yet to see a column on the massacre that happened in Charleston South Carolina. The question I would like to ask is can you do an astrological chart on this prevalent racism going on, can you do an analysis on why African Americans are having a hard time? Is there any coincidence to this events they may respond too it is a astrological explanation of these tragic in current events?
A. I do have a chart that describes African American relations with the rest of the country. I wrote about it last December and the chart is also there. See nsc120814
If you do the transits and progressions to that EP chart, you can see how active it is now. Mars at 22 degrees Aries is being activated very powerfully soon by transiting Uranus, and currently, transiting Pluto is conjunct the natal Mercury-Venus. Thanks for your email, and perhaps we can update this soon...
re: U.S. economy - Isn't it a little ironic that the series of Uranus/Pluto squares is now over: ending in Spring 2015. Yet now, the economy starts to look shaky again with China's slowdown. Apparently 10 years of Federal Reserve intervention has its limits. It is almost like Uranus partially offset the Pluto opposition to the USA Sun but is no longer helping.
A. Uniquely in the U.S., Uranus has been a minor player in the Uranus-Pluto square. Most likely, the reason is because in the U.S. chart, the progressed Ascendant has been aligned with natal Pluto, emphasizing this factor. You can read about this in more detail at plutocracy.
re: Pluto - You wrote: "However, the times are changing and elections may be decided by the Pluto factor." Thinking about this at a people level makes me cringe. A connection to the U.S. Moon used to be of the utmost importance. As a candidate, you have to connect with the people. You serve them. They vote for you. But now, it's all about power. The people don't matter anymore. SIGH
re: Pop Quiz - In answer to your Pop Quiz in your weekly Neptune Cafe newsletter, it looks like Donald Trump's progressed Part of Fortune is at zero degrees Scorpio. Will it be at 15 degrees Scorpio come election? Love reading your column each week!!
A. No, you're doing something wrong. His Part of Fortune (progressed) is currently at 2 degrees Virgo. Do you have astrology calculation software? It'll be at 19 degrees Virgo in Nov 2016, which squares his 10th house Uranus. This describes a disruptive force more than an election win.
NewsScope for September 14, 2015
By Michael Wolfstar
Joe Biden’s Candidacy
Although Joe Biden’s chances of winning the 2016 election were addressed a month ago, several readers requested a deeper look at his chart since he’s currently weighing whether or not he will enter the race. In the most general terms, his Sun in Scorpio is a definite plus: the U.S. has had five Scorpio presidents, more than any other sign with the exception of Aquarius, which also has five.
Biden was born with frank, outspoken Sagittarius Rising (November 20, 1942; 8:30 am; Scranton, PA), which makes Jupiter his ruling planet. Jupiter is located at 25º Cancer where it forms a fortunate trine to his Sun, giving the vice president close family connections, an abundance of self-confidence, and generosity of spirit. Also, Jupiter’s precise quincunx (150º) to the U.S. Moon offers the opportunity to be a popular and successful candidate with the American voters.
A major configuration in this chart is a T-square: the Sun-Venus conjunction opposes Uranus and squares Chiron. It describes the potential for sudden loss of loved ones (Uranus opposite Venus), the emotional pain that this brings about (Chiron), and how these experiences shape his overall character (Sun). Progressed Mars had conjoined his Ascendant and opposed natal Uranus when his wife died in a car accident on December 18, 1972.
On May 30, 2015, his son Beau died of brain cancer as transiting Saturn was in the same place, i.e., conjunct his Ascendant and opposite Uranus. Transiting Saturn remains in this degree area, testing whether he has the emotional and physical capacity to carry on a difficult campaign. Over the weekend, the solar eclipse in Virgo landed right on his Midheaven and opposed Ceres, the asteroid associated with grief and loss. This marks the decision point, when his loss most heavily weighs on his future. Hopefully, he decides against running, since his progressed Part of Fortune* does not present a winnable scenario.
* Biden's chart was previously profiled here
Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood
The U.S. government will likely shut down on October 1 for at least a few days. Transiting Pluto is turning direct while opposing the U.S. Sun, creating an intense political climate with little room for compromise. The sticking point is whether the government should continue to send $500 million to support Planned Parenthood, a program that was initially created by feminist Margaret Sanger.
Margaret Sanger was born with a Sun-Vesta conjunction in Virgo (September 14, 1879; Corning, NY; time unknown), a workaholic combination that finds fulfillment by devoting herself to a sacred cause or calling. In her time, and possibly in ours, the Sun-Vesta-in-Virgo woman tends to see sex as a duty to her partner. In Sanger’s case, her Sun trines a Mars-Pluto conjunction, giving her tremendous will power and the desire to have her own career.
Sanger’s Mercury is also in Virgo and conjoins radical Uranus, with the two opposing Jupiter. This three-planet combination tends to have an unusually quick mind, one that becomes interested in revolutionary ideas and scientific advances. With Sanger’s Sun trine Black Moon Lilith, she readily took up with the feminist movement of her day, eventually becoming one of its most prominent leaders.
Ceres is associated with life and death passages and, more specifically, with birth control. In 1921 Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which was the precursor to Planned Parenthood. At the time, her progressed Sun was squaring her natal Ceres. Also, her progressed Ceres was squaring natal Lilith. Sanger’s story shows us how the individual’s horoscope lives on after death: the Solar Eclipse over the weekend landed right on her Sun.
Stephen Colbert, Rectified
Since Stephen Colbert started last week on The Late Show, the ratings have been strong, helped along by his faithful followers from The Colbert Report and his stream of well-known and popular celebrities. AstroDataBank has no confirmed birth time for Colbert, though it displays two rectified charts, both with Sagittarius Rising. I’ve rectified it to 10:02 pm (May 13, 1964; Washington, DC).
Getting the birth time right is essential for accurate delineations and forecasts. Almost always, the Midheaven, its ruling planet, and/or the progressed Midheaven are activated during life’s most important events. Case in point: Colbert’s father and two brothers were killed in an airplane crash on September 11, 1974. At the time, transiting Pluto was exactly conjunct his Libra Midheaven.
This life-changing event had other challenging astro-events involving the angular markers: his progressed Midheaven at 15º Libra was being squared by transiting Saturn with an orb of less than one degree. Plus, his progressed Venus (the ruler of his Midheaven) opposed natal Ceres, the asteroid associated with loss of loved ones. Transiting Neptune activated this progressed aspect. Three unusually challenging configurations all happening at once brought this life-changing transition.
Colbert began hosting his own television show, The Colbert Report, on October 17, 2005 when his progressed Sun conjoined natal Venus, the ruler of both his Midheaven and his 5th house of entertainment. Also, his progressed Mars in the 6th house of work was trine his Midheaven. He mischievously announced he was running for president on October 16, 2007 when transiting Jupiter was precisely conjunct his Sagittarius Ascendant, and his progressed Sun was squaring his Midheaven. Last week, he started The Late Show as his progressed Part of Fortune conjoined his progressed Midheaven and both opposed his Taurus Sun.
