The collapse of the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City was an event that is memorable and has an exact time, if it did not “Change Everything.” It was such an important event for the United States that it must surely show up in the chart of the U.S if astrology has any validity whatsoever. And the transits should be appropriate for an event of this magnitude and nature. A Jupiter or Neptune transit would not cut it. As you can see from the chart below, there is no need to worry. Not only is the transit appropriate to the nature of the situation, but in fact these are the most appropriate transits possible. In fact, this one event caused me to accept the Sibly chart. Further work with it only increased my certainty.
Let’s look at the most obvious first: Transiting Pluto on the Ascendant. Pluto is 17′ from exactly on the Ascendant. But if you look at the graphical ephemeris you will see Pluto went stationary direct right on the Ascendant, and had been there for over a month. Pluto is big events, explosions even – remember it was discovered in the Thirties – transformation, things from the underworld that we would rather not think of. And it took place here, in the Homeland, hence the Ascendant.
But wait, there’s more. Notice the Pluto-Saturn opposition across the Ascendant-Descendant axis. Fourth harmonic aspects of Saturn and Pluto are notorious. These were involved at the start of the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Cold War and now the War on Terror. Also notice that at the time Saturn was slowing down and turned retrograde in two weeks, as can be seen from the graphical ephemeris.
One other minor point: Notice Neptune opposite the North Node of the Moon and thus conjunct the South Node. The Nodes, among other things, represents the connections among people. But the North and South nodes also have opposite meanings. Neptune on the North Node suggests a lack of community-sense (Ebertin). I hypothesize that on the South node it means the opposite, since immediately after 9/11 there was an increased sense of people being together.
But notice also Uranus slowly conjoining the Moon – the people will be excited. Uranus got closer and went exactly over it while the people were being prepared for the War in Afghanistan. The previous time – 84 years before – when Uranus was in the same position the people were getting prepared for our entry into World War I. Americans were against an entry into World War I, and Wilson was reelected in 1916 on the pledge that He Kept Us Out of War. But that changed quickly as a propaganda campaign took place to get us to hate the Germans – the Huns. Hamburger was called Salisbury Steak and saurkraut was called Liberty Cabbage. This time around French Fries were renamed Freedom Fries because the French (who were responsible for our victory in the Revolutionary War, even though it caused them to lose theirs) did not support our War on Terror.
Notice transiting Neptune sesquiquadrate natal Mars (almost exact) and also sesquiquadrate natal Neptune. This highlights the natal Mars square Neptune for the United States. This square is problematic, and I will write in detail about it later, but let me just say now that it indicates that this country’s use of violence is somewhat hinky. Mars and Neptune are not compatible planets, and the square can be a difficult aspect. With transiting Neptune’s accentuation of that square and adding its own delusional nature to the mix, one can well understand why our reaction to the event was so misdirected.
If we look at the fourth harmonic chart, we see a close opposition of natal Pluto and transiting Pluto, reflecting the semisquare of natal Pluto to the Ascendant in the chart of the United States. I will write more about that aspect later, but for now I will quote the words of a famous agitator about that Pluto-Pluto aspect: Those who live by the sword (natal Pluto) will die by the sword (transiting Pluto).
I consider this event, along with the Pluto ingress seven years later (Pluto ingresses to Cardinal Signs have to do with the rise and fall of nations, among other things) a bookend of the American Empire. This will become more clear when I talk about the other bookend and compare it to this one.