Below are four views of election day 2008 in the United States, but they all have a single message. That election will be remembered for all time as the one in which a black man (but interestingly one related to slaves only through his white mother) was elected President of a country whose founders were slave owners. But the campaign and election will also be remembered for other things, as discussed below, which may well set the standard for upcoming elections in the United States.

The first chart is that of the winner of the election, Barak Obama, on election day. The most noticeable feature of this chart is Neptune prominently in the first house and near the Ascenant. Neptune was conjunct the Ascendant since Mr. Obama speech to the 2004 Democratic convention that first gave him prominence on the national stage. Neptune can be handled successfully but with difficulty by an individual, but collectively it usually turns out negatively. Neptune represents illusions, delusions, not seeing things clearly. Neptune on the Ascendant is great for actors since it allows them to easily pretend to be someone they are not, the hallmark of a good actor. With someone in the public eye, it allow the person to appear to be something that he is not. Obama himself described this in one of his campaign autobiographies, saying that people see in him whatever that think he is. Neptune in this position means exactly that. And in fact Mr. Obama got an award from Advertising Age as the best marketing campaign for 2008, beating out Apple that usually won. Neptune on the Ascendant definitely helped him win this award.

The second  chart, a graphical ephemeris of Mr. Obama from June of 2004 to June of 2009 (mistakenly labelled as 6 years) shows clearly that transiting Neptune was dancing around his Ascendant — near the bottom of the graph — during this   entire period.  By noticing how slowly Neptune move  — it appears to   move only 15º in five years — one can judge that it is near his Ascendant for all of his first term.  See also Definition section for Graphical Ephemeris for more details.

The third chart is a comparison of Mr. Obama’s chart (on the inside) and the chart of the United States (on the outside). Several things stand out. First we notice that the Obama Venus is conjunct the US Venus. Love at first sight! If this were two people they definitely should get together. Then Obama’s Uranus is opposite the Moon of the US. The people in the US see this person as being unconventional, maybe even revolutionary. Obama’s Mars is conjunct the US Neptune and square the US Mars. Remember that the tightest hard aspect in Obama’s chart is the Mars semisquare Neptune that now we see fits into the US Mars square Neptune. As mentioned before, Mars-Neptune hard aspects are difficult to maninifest positively. They tend to indicate poorly planned action, deception about violence. Obama fits right into the violence of the US. Obama’s Midheaven is sesquiquadrate the US Sun and his Ascendant is sesquiquadrate the US Venus. Here again are two more indicators that these two were meant to be together. A further indication, his Jupiter is trine the Midheaven of the US, his Sun is trine the Ascendant of the US, and is Venus is square the Midheaven of the US – Obama and the United States: a Match Made in Heaven!! Of course, as in all relationships, hate is the other side of love, and so there can be deep animosity in this relationship between Mr. Obama and the United States as well as love. And one more: his Satun is conjunct the Pluto of the US. We’ve talked about Saturn Pluto aspects before, and will talk some more later, but this does not bode well.

The fourth chart is that of the United States on Election Day. Neptune is loosely conjunct with the Moon of the United States, and it will be drawing closer and going over the Moon over the next four years. In fact, for the 2012 elections Neptune was about the same distance from the Moon but on the other side of it, leaving orb. Here again we see Neptune, as was described above, effecting the people (the Moon represents the people of a country) of the United States. As I mentioned before, Neptune is very difficult to handle in a positive manner for individuals (spiritual adepts are an exception) but for a collective group of people – that is the citizens of the United – it is almost impossible to manifest positively. In its negative manifestation Neptune represents illusion, delusion, deception. The old Roman proverb qui vult decipi, dicipiatur is most appropriate: those who wish to be deceived, let them be deceived. The people of the United Stats were going through a period where they could not see things clearly, there was much denial. We could also see this in the increasing denial that humanity is causing climate change.

The fifth chart is another graphical ephemeris for the period September 2008 to September 2013, showing that Neptune flirted with  the Moon of the United States over all of this period.       We also   note that Uranus crossed the Aries point — the heavy black  horizontal line —  during this period.

One final chart. This shows that on election day, and for a while thereafter, Neptune was at the midpoint of the US Sun and Midheaven. The Sun-Midheaven midpoint, written as Sun/MC (MC stands for Medium Coeli, Latin for middle of the sky) can be seen as the way the US is seen by the rest of the world. With Neptune there, the rest of the world can be deceived (witness the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Mr. Obama shortly after he took office) and many believed that the US was now something other than it once was under the previous administration.

Another issue was pointed out to me by Canadian astrologer Audra Stenger (yellowlotusarts.com). She points out that Obama accepted his nomination under a void-of-course moon. (The void of course moon concept, popularized by New York astrologer Al Morrison and used now by Oregon astrologer Jim Maynard in his calendars, is that period of time after the Moon makes its last ptolemic aspect and before it enters the next sign. It is suggested that events occurring in this period do not come to fruition. See write-up in any of Jim Maynard’s calendars for further details.) She writes of this:

Nothing has come of it. That is what a VOC moon means. I am being a bit existential, so I will elaborate: he has gone back on every single campaign promise and we might as well have kept George W. in office or elected a Republican (as Chomsky says- there is no real difference between the two parties. We really have a one party system here in the US).

 

Obama promised to end extraordinary rendition, close overseas blackop sites, gitmo, end the war in Iraq (never did say he would end the war in Afganistan- hum), end torture, he promised initially to give us Medicare for All, to end domestic spying. what we have instead is illegal drone wars in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia, troops just sent to Nicaragua, and troops in Australia. Additionally, he declared WikiLeaks an enemy of the state just as if Assange were Osama bin Laden.

 

So, I for one, existentially speaking, do not see really where the US is in a different place had a Republican like Sarah Palin been sworn in. At least we all knew she was a dumb as a box of hammers. Obama is a lawyer- he’s smart. To me, Obama is a perfect example of a VOC president. Nothing has come of his presidency that is any different than before, and every political analyst worth their salt agrees.

 

Change you can believe in was his slogan. Well, the more things change, the more things stay the same should be his second campaign slogan.

 

Blogs at the time of this election also reflected  this Neptunian theme: The terms used were “hopium”, Obama Derangement Syndrome (ODS)  and “drinking the Kool-Aid”. The latter was a reference to the massacre at Jonestown where the followers of Jim Jones drank Kool-Aid and Flavor Aid containing poison and died.