I was asked to look at the Cancer Ingress chart for a Solstice potluck I attended recently.  I drew the chart for when the Sun is at 0 Cancer and thus when the first instant of Summer, in the Northern hemisphere, officially starts.  The chart’s location is Washington, D.C. because it is the capital of the nation.  I did not know what to expect, but the chart only emphasized what we have seen before, and so I will refer you to previous entries.  In this chart the most prominent planet near an angle (Ascendant, Midheaven, etc) is Neptune rising and just a few degrees below the Ascendant and in the first house.  The second most obvious is Saturn in the tenth house and a few degrees from the Midheaven.  If one were born in, say, Jamaica, New York, Saturn would be even closer to the Midheaven.  As has been talked about before Neptune indicates that the next half year, at least, will be very Neptunian; it is as if vaseline were spread over America’s perception of the world, even more so now than usually.  This manifests itself most clearly in the Russiagate scandal, which polls show is greatly favored by politicians and the mass media, whereas the general public believes there is really nothing there and wishes that politicians would show interest in things like health care and the lack of good-paying jobs.  From a distance, it appears that America has gone crazy.

Saturn at the top of the chart is simply an indication that things will not go smoothly in the public arena, and the the world will see the country as somewhat hidebound (insert your favorite Saturn world here).  For a person born in Jamaica the next six months will only be really bad, with everyone attacking him,  as they have been doing since  even before the election.

The tightest aspect is a trine between Pluto and the Moon.  For this aspect, Ebertin says “striving for power” to which one can only add “well, duh!!”.  We already see jockeying for the 2018 midterm elections, of which Russiagate is the Democratic attempt to win back a populace increasingly turned off to their love of the elites.

There was some excitement recently over the fiftieth anniversary — fiftieths are always a big deal, as are a hundred year anniversary — of the release of the Beatles album Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which is considered a landmark, for among other things the year it was released — 1967 — the so-called Summer of Love in San Francisco. Since I had already looked at the release of the Bob Dylan album Slow Train Coming I knew how to handle album releases.  It turns out that this album was released on two separate dates, one in England and later one in the United States.

For the release date in the United States, drawn at 12 noon, we have Sun at the MC and the Uranus-Pluto conjunction, which so defines the Sixties, at the Ascendant and thus loosely square the Sun for the day of the release.  Since this album was an epitome of Sixties-culture, the fact that the Sun was in aspect to that conjunction on this day is only appropriate.  Venus is conjunct Jupiter, suggesting good (sweet) music.  On that day the transiting Moon went over Saturn, suggesting that there were some disappointments in the future (see for example the Manson murders (supposedly he rallied his “troops” by using a Beatles song from a later album) and the concert at the Altamont Speedway, for starters) .

For these transits within the USA chart, we see that that Uranus Pluto conjunction is right on the natal Neptune and straddling it.  Neptune reminds one of the mystical experience that that era promised and sometimes delivered, and also drugs, which featured prominently in the album in question.  We already saw that Moon-Saturn transiting conjunction, but here the transiting Mars is exactly on Saturn of the United States.; this Mars-Saturn combination has been described as “Driving with the brakes on” but of course nobody realized that at the time.  Also interesting is that the Sun for the day is exactly on the Descendant of the United States.  It was an important day that people would recognize and remember, but also symbolically the Sun was setting.  That June also was the fabled “Summer of Love” where so many young people would be going to San Francisco (with or without, as the popular song of that summer had it, flowers in their hair). Fifty years is a long time ago.

The album was released in Great Britain on May 26, and I used a natal chart for the United Kingdom for 1801 with the union of Britain and Ireland as a background for the transits of the day.  In this chart we see a Jupiter return for the United Kingdom, and certainly the Beatles, and the other bands of the “British Invasion” were good for the bottom line of the country.  England was swingin’ in the Sixties!  Transiting Venus is conjunct the Moon of the UK — music for the masses indeed.  But Saturn is also prominent in this chart, being just above the Descendant.  This suggest much the same as the prominence of Saturn in the US charts mentioned above.

But there is another fiftieth anniversary which this summer sees that is not discussed as much, that is of the shooting of a US ship Liberty by the Israelis less than a week after this album was released in the Sates.  The USS Liberty was a research ship for the US Navy, and it was attacked by Israeli Air Force planes and torpedo boats.  All told, 34 sailors were killed, 171 injured, and the ship was damaged considerably.  This incident has never been adequately explained, and there were several “conspiracy theories” that rose up about it.  In the wake of the 50th anniversary, Haaretz, often considered the most important newspaper in Israel, published a major article investigating the incident, something that American newspapers shy away from.  Men on the Israeli ship realized at the time that they were about to fire an an American vessel, but the order was to continue firing at the Liberty.  US troops that were in the water were also fired upon. Later Israel apologized and United States President Lyndon Johnson accepted their apology and the matter was let drop.

In the chart for the event, which took place about 25 miles northwest of the Egyptian city of Arish, just after a New Moon, where the Moon was less than three degrees beyond the Sun, about six hours after the exact New Moon.  And of course we see the signature Uranus-Pluto conjunction in the twelfth house.  Mars in the first house is opposite Saturn, and indeed it was a martial adventure, with Mars Saturn problems since there has been a Saturnian coverup of this event in the 50 years since.  Jupiter and Venus were closely conjunct — less than one degree — at the beginning of Leo, and semisquare the New Moon, but this event did not bring any of the promises of Venus-Jupiter (great beneficence) to the sailors on the Liberty, but it did for the Israel, since they escaped with only an apology for what could have been an international incident: an ally killing many US troops in a a totally unprovoked attack.

The chart for the transits to the USA chart for this instant are not that much different than for the release of Sargent Pepper less than a week before, except that the Moon and Sun have moved during the interval.  The New Moon is now on the USA Mars — gunfire, violence — and the meaning should be clear as regards this incident.