We're not going to take it anymore! All hail the Tea Party!

YOU have gotten used to this high-octane stuff.  Astrology smashing through the week’s headlines.  Some week I will run out of the easy stuff and you will tune in and find Stardate 2879.3:  Time Twins Mr. Spock and Capt. James T. Kirk.

My intention is not to pass judgement on the US political mess (who am I?), but to demonstrate how you can use astrology to know more about the world in which you live.  Learn how to fully read a chart, how to organize planets, houses and signs to make your own conclusions, your own realizations.  Will your results be the same as mine?  Of course not!  The goal is to use my techniques (Morin’s techniques, frankly), not to agree with my personal beliefs.

Some updates.  So far as the Little Red (actually white) Schoolhouse in Ripon, WI and the meeting of February 28, 1854, I have been corrected.  That meeting took place in a local church.  I think my analysis of the probable time (in the evening) will stand.  During the day, people attend to business.  In the evening there are meetings, rallies, revivals, concerts, casual romances between strangers, etc.  The second meeting, of March 20, 1854, was held in the school, very likely about the same time of day, which advances all the house cusps by one sign.  Mars should rule.

Numerous people have emailed dates of other meetings, each claiming to be the “origin” of the modern Republican Party.  It seems clear that by the summer of 1854 that something was afoot.  In particular, the March 20th meeting has been called out as the true founding date of the Republican Party.  Of that day, March 20, 1854, The Wisconsin Historical Society has preserved an account, which includes,

It was a cold and windy night.  On the desk where the teacher was accustomed to preside, was a single candle.  And on the benches were the men who sold goods over the counter, the minister, the blacksmith and the farmer whose horses stamped in the chill outside the candle-lighted building. 


This was not a meeting for debate.  Every man present knew why he was there—it was to dissolve the local organizations of the old parties, to organize and adopt such measures as the inauguration of a new party required.  — The Milwaukee Journal, June 2, 1929 (my emphasis).

Read this carefully.  If there was no debate as to the need for a new party, then March 20 was not the inception of the Republican party, but its first organizational meeting.  Distinctions matter.  Of the February 28th meeting, the same report says,

In the meantime came the “Nebraska question,” with every Whig and Democrat in the country lined up.  Should Nebraska and Kansas be admitted as territories with power to do as they pleased about slavery, despite the Missouri Compromise and its guarantee that there was to be no slave north of 36-30?

“No,” said the community on the hill, and hastened, men and women, to attend a meeting in the Congregational Church, called by Bovay and held on the last evening in February, 1854.  The burden of the speeches concerned the subserviency of the old parties to the slave holders and the necessity of a new party.  A resolution was adopted that if the Nebraska bill should pass, they would “throw the old party organizations to the winds and organize a new party on the sole issue of the non-extension of slavery.”  (emphasis mine)

Which makes the Tuesday, February 28th  meeting, not the one of Monday March 20th, the do-or-die meeting, the one at which the necessity of a new party, and its fundamental identity, was debated and finally decided upon.  Is there overlap between these two meetings?  Yes, a great deal.  History is messy like that.  But we cannot understand the actions of March 20th without reference to the previous meeting of February 28.

TEA parties have been a venerable tradition on both sides of the Atlantic.  In America we go out of doors and rant.  In England tea parties are picnics attended by oversize animals and demented local businessmen.  As a form of political protest there have been various informal “tea parties” in recent years, none of which amounted to anything much.

This changed on February 19, 2009, when Rick Santelli, a CNBC business news reporter, gave a most amazing rant from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.  The video clip is available on-line and you will see that it is clearly time-stamped:  8:11 am Eastern, 7:11 Central.  Chicago is Central, thus the time:  Thursday, February 19, 2009, 7:11 am, Chicago.

The gist of Santelli’s rant—and it is a rant—is that the government is wrong to help underwater homeowners stay in their homes.  That the government is wrong to “subsidize losers,” that there are plenty of people who would be happy to buy these properties on the cheap.  Rather than tax everybody else to pay for bad mortgages.  He was interrupted by one of his hosts who pointed out the mob rule aspect of his rant.  Santelli then continued by saying that before Castro everyone in Cuba lived in mansions and that since Castro they all have to drive around in very old American cars.  Santelli concluded by claiming that the 5% of the trading floor that was there with him at the moment (7 am CST) was a representative cross-section of America.

Santelli was born in Chicago on January 12, 1953, the grandson of Italian, not Cuban, immigrants.  He graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and, age 26, began a career at the Chicago Mercantile.  In 1999 he joined CNBC as a business reporter.  He is an expert with the Chicago Mercantile, which is why he was hired.  In stressful times one often hears such rants.  One remembers the classic “love it or leave it” of the Vietnam war.  Which in the past the media has noted, and then moved on to a discussion of possible solutions for the problems which gave rise to the rant.  But that was when the Republicans were in their post-FDR slump, and the Democrats, always and forever feckless, were still basking in his glow.  The Republicans are now back up to speed and the Democrats have slithered back into the shadows they love so well.  It’s 1928—or 1860—all over again.

While there had been various “tea party” events over the past decade, in the days after Santelli’s outburst, many “tea party” events were quickly organized.  Which makes his televised statement a founding moment.

The Tea Party Chart

IN mundane maps the signs of the zodiac are not much used.  The Tea Party chart has Pisces rising, which is an aspect of religion.  On the first house cusp, with the Sun nearby, Santelli’s rant was one of religious belief.  Watch and listen to the video clip:  He certainly believes what he says.

Chart ruler is Jupiter, in Aquarius.  Pisces-Jupiter-Aquarius combinations to me are indicative of preachers (Pisces) haranguing their congregations (Aquarius).  Jupiter conjunct Mars gave him a great deal of energy, self-confidence and zealous, warlike expression.

I am coming to view the north node, when there are planets in close aspect, as granting a degree of self-righteousness.  I note the universal belief that the north node is “where we should be going,” so if there is a planet conjunct the node, then the north node must make that planet’s actions to be right and true and proper, at least as far as the individual is concerned.  (You as observer may want to disagree.)  When the north node is on the ascendant, or conjunct the ruler of the ascendant, then  whatever the chart signifies would have the connotation of being right.

Which was certainly the feeling that everyone had at the time.  That Rick Santelli had spoken Truth, however unpleasant.  There is no profit in my pointing out that “truth” that distorts history and victimizes people is not a very useful truth.  As I know well, there is no such thing as absolute truth, or, indeed, any sort of “truth” at all.  “Truth” and its opposite, falsehood, are relative terms.  To a weary, long-suffering, mentally addled public, such as America, what Santelli said was true enough.  Just as Howard Camping’s fantastic dream of the end of the world last May 21st rang true for countless millions.  By contrast, Jimmy Carter’s warning of energy dependency, on April 17, 1977, while certainly “true” was also most unwelcome.  Truth is relative, it might even be a relative of yours or mine, but this is not something easily judged with a chart alone.

The house in which we find the ruler of the chart, along with Mars (for energy), the righteous node, as well as know-it-all Mercury, was 12.  Here we have an enormous set of problems.

The twelfth house is perhaps the most slippery in the entire chart.  It rules prisons and workhouses and insane asylums and institutions of all kinds.  It also rules secret affairs and intrigue, which can include sex.  A moment ago I went to the shelf and looked through Rex Bills and Lee Lehman’s rulership books.  I was looking to find the astrological rulership of corporations.  I did not find corporations in Lehman’s book, which did not surprise, as hers is a compilation of late medieval sources.  Bills, a modern work, gives corporations as Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus.  He does not give a sign, nor a house, but  you will note that in the Tea Party chart, the chart ruler is one of Bills’ rulers of corporations, another of his rulers, Neptune, is nearby, and the third, Uranus, is in the first house.

You will also note that both Jupiter and Neptune have natural 12th house and Piscean connotations, and that Uranus is associated with Aquarius and the 11th.  I am of the opinion that corporations, which are, essentially, large organizations of (oftentimes) addled people, are  12th house creatures.  Corporations are largely secretive as well as beyond individual control.  This is important because, although Santelli’s words were taken up eagerly by the public at large, it is very clear that he was, in fact speaking on behalf of the world in which he has lived, quite comfortably (or so I imagine) for more than 30 years.  Which is the world of corporations.  Not the general public.

Note the position of Mercury.  If corporations are 12th house, then Mercury in the 12th may be said to speak on their behalf.  Mercury in Gemini is glib.  Mercury in Aquarius, another powerful placement, is a smart-aleck.  The on-line dictionary defines smart aleck as “an obnoxiously conceited and self-assertive person with pretensions to smartness or cleverness.”  I myself have Mercury in Aquarius and recognize the tendency.  Aquarius is, in fact, a sign of smartness and intelligence and, in its strange and aloof nature, also quite conceited.  You will note the node is very nearly at the midpoint of Mercury, the obnoxious, and Jupiter, the chart ruler.  You will also note the south node, symbol of “all that is wrong” is in the 6th.

Raphael III defines the 6th mundane house as ruling, “the public health and the general condition of the working classes and servants.  It also governs national service, Army and Navy, the Soldiers and Sailors, Battleships, etc.  The nature of the sickness affecting the country generally can be deduced from the planets in this house, or ruling over it according to the parts of the body ruled by such sign, etc.”

The nodal signs are, north, in Aquarius, in the 12th, indicating We the Corporations who are Right, vs: the south node, in Leo, representing you, the petty and mean and hopeless and drowning serfs (ruler Sun in Pisces, which is wet), who have no rights, no rights at all.  On this point, Santelli was explicit:  Pay your bills and be happy, or shut up and take the consequences.  (And for that, he was cheered?)

It is at this point that the analysis becomes grim.  The past two weeks I have shown the Republican chart, with its strong, albeit warped 6th house paternalistic aspect.  This week we have a hectoring, Aquarian/Piscean corporate chart.  In both cases it is working people who are being beaten up, first by a government (retrograde Venus leading to Jupiter in Capricorn) and now by corporations, direct from the trading floor.

You will note in the Tea Party chart that the chart ruler, Jupiter, not only rules the 12th of corporations, but also the 10th (Sagittarius) of the presidency itself.  In the Tea Party chart we again see the government, now subservient to the corporation, making war against the workers, to the profit of the corporations.

Which is reinforced, yet again, by Saturn in Virgo in the 7th house.  As Virgo is ruled by Mercury, it is therefore Saturn which was the aim of his rant.  Saturn in the 7th normally signifies trouble in foreign affairs, but the target of Santelli’s rant was not foreigners, but poor Americans.  Sakoian and Acker tell me that Saturn in Virgo makes people who are practical, exacting and hard working.  They are perfectionists, they tend to over-work, they do not get on well with others.  They tend to be austere and gloomy and in poor health.

That Santelli had innocent poor people in mind would have been more clear, his rant would have had more focus, had there been an actual opposition between Mercury and Saturn.  Virgo and Aquarius are inconjunct, which Valens describes as “turned away”, in other words, not able to “see” each other.  For those of you who are accustomed to working exclusively with aspects and are having a hard time with rulers, this kind of distinction is important.  If the two planets had actually been opposed, Santelli’s target would have been clear.  But as they were not, the target of Santelli’s rant was perceived to be more general, more diffuse.

And it’s here where we find the power of astrology to reveal.  Reviewing the analysis as a whole, I find that Santelli was speaking on behalf of corporations and against the working poor.

Where’s the money?  Funny you should ask.  In the Tea Party chart, both money houses are empty, though a debilitated Venus in Aries (remember the retrograde Venus in the Republican chart) is trying to get into the 2nd, but really wants to be in the 8th, which it rules.  Ruler of the 2nd, Mars, is conjunct the chart ruler, Jupiter.  Mars also rules Venus.  Both Mars and Jupiter are located in the 12th house of corporations.  One way or another, so far as the Tea Party is concerned, all the money belongs to the corporation.
 
The Moon in this chart is in the last minutes of Sagittarius, in the 10th.  Tenth house Moons resonate well with the public.  Moon in Sagittarius represents ideas we can all believe in.  That it is void in the 29th degree means these ideas are old and burned up (Sagittarius is a fire sign) and no longer valid.   You will note the Moon is less than three degrees from a conjunction with Pluto, and that the aspect is applying, in other words, the two planets are getting closer by the minute.  This is another example how rulership astrology differs from aspect astrology.  Aspect astrology says the Moon and Pluto are in aspect, must be in aspect, because not only are they physically close, not only are they moving towards each other, but the Moon itself has an overly large orb of aspect.  And while it is true that Santelli’s rant galvanized the country (which Moon and Pluto will certainly do), it did not produce intense riots and civil disorder, which a true Moon/Pluto conjunction on the MC will do.  Even when the planets are only three degrees apart, aspects are sign-based.  Subordinate to that, intensity of aspect is degree-based.  Out-of-sign aspects have the underlying value of the signs themselves, and adjacent signs, which are innately conflicting, have little if any relationship.

The Part of Fortune.  In my work with Valens I am coming to value Fortune more and more.  You will note Fortune in this chart is in Capricorn, the sign of government.  It is ruled by Saturn, which is ruled by Mercury.  Which again takes me back to Santelli’s words, much of which were a rant against the government for mistakenly helping “losers.”  Valens says to look at the 10th house from Fortune, to see what and where that is.  In this chart, the tenth from Fortune is the 8th, of, I hate to remind you, Wall Street (other people’s money).  Ruled by Venus, ruled by Mars, which is conjunct the chart ruler in the house of corporations.

It is a sad commentary on the country of my birth that such a moment as this became symbolic of hope, when there is no hope in sight.  I am asked what I think may happen in the future, as if my opinion had merit, which it does not.  Personally I would like to see a general strike, led by cunning operators.  I am fearful of widespread riots, which will be suppressed with loss of life.  I have no hope whatever for the elections of 2012.

Meanwhile the country grows ever angrier.  This has recently come to the attention of the President, a wise and caring leader, who is said to be selecting a suitable scapegoat.  Rumor says it will be Mr. Geithner, who I presume will be well-paid for his participation.  The Old Farmer’s Almanac for 2012 is now on sale.  For the Chesapeake, where I live, winter is forecast to be dry with normal temperatures and above normal snowfall (light dry snow, I presume), but the Farmers do not consider the effects of human rage upon overall weather patterns.  Two years ago I got a roof rake, but not in time to actually use it.  I suggest you prepare for more bad weather.

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