Predicting the future with 100% accuracy all the time, to the exact day every time is impossible, whether you are an astrologer or a doctor or a market analyst. But an astrologer who is good at his or her job with the birth chart can pin down particular times of opportunity or potential peril with surprising accuracy.
Nobody could have known in advance that many of the tensions that have built up over the years between local communities and their police departments throughout America would erupt in death and rioting and excessive use of force in Ferguson Missouri, or when exactly. Hindsight, as always, gets the best of all of us.
However, if Ferguson Missouri had been an individual who was coming to me for a reading, the conditions that Ferguson has been facing recently are as plain as the nose on your face: a perfect storm of difficult transits. The human factors that led to this tremendous mess, this affront to human decency, are many and complex. But the astrology involved is straightforward.
When we are looking at what each planet symbolizes in astrology, “law and order” is the domain of Saturn. Saturn is the planet that holds the lid down on the forces of anarchy. Actually Saturn loves to hold the lid down on anything it can. Saturn does not discriminate, in that it is the universal representative of command and control. Uranus, on the other hand, is the rebel, the revolutionary idea, the cry for freedom.
We are in the middle of a Saturn Uranus quincunx: a rare and powerful struggle between the forces of order and chaos. Saturn is now at 17° Scorpio and Uranus is at 16° Aries. Although this aspect affects us differently based on the details of our birth charts, it has had a profound and obvious effect on the “birth chart” of Ferguson. As I’ve shown before in entries about Bitcoin and Godzilla, business ventures and even abstract concepts have a birth chart, and for a municipality we would look first to the chart for the date of incorporation. The city of Ferguson Missouri was incorporated on November 19, 1894 (thanks, Ruth from the Ferguson Historical Society for the info) — and the Saturn-Uranus quincunx is playing hell with Ferguson’s natal Uranus.
On Saturday, August 9, Michael Brown, an 18-year-old who had recently graduated high school and was looking forward to college, was shot to death by a police officer in his home of Ferguson Missouri while walking down the street with a friend. The next day, a candlelight vigil in memory of Brown ended up turning violent. Several businesses were vandalized and looted and over 30 people were arrested and two police officers were injured. The date after that, hundreds of people gathered outside the Ferguson Police Department demanding justice for the shooting. There were more arrests.
Events quickly seem to take on a life of their own, as many people protested peacefully, but some did so angrily. The police responded with rubber bullets and tear gas and armored vehicles. Two journalists were arrested for “loitering” in a local McDonald’s while they were eating. The police lobbed tear gas at a TV news crew. The FAA declared a no fly zone over the city at the request of the police, although whether this was for the safety of police helicopters or to prevent further news coverage is debatable. We do know that the limited resources of the Ferguson police, 55 officers in total, were able to spare enough people to block the main road into town to prevent further media coverage.
Saturn was conjunct Ferguson’s natal Uranus within a fraction of a degree on the day of the Brown shooting. And transiting Uranus was quincunx that natal Uranus within a much smaller fraction of a degree. Furthermore, both transiting Mars and Pluto were quincunx Ferguson’s natal Pluto (Pluto within less than half a degree of exact). Finally, transiting Mars was trine Ferguson’s Jupiter: perhaps violently fueling the excess.
Things still haven’t settled down. These transits are all still in effect. In fact, as of this writing, transiting Mars is exactly conjunct Ferguson’s Mercury, and will be exactly conjunct Ferguson’s natal Uranus… where this mess all started… in about a week. There has been no violence so far tonight, the protests have spread far beyond Ferguson. Although one would like to think things would have settled down, all the indicators are that the ugliness may not have come to an end yet. And even if there is no more violence, clearly there is definitely something here that needs to be faced.
And here we are, still well within the grasp of the Uranus-Pluto square. Stay tuned, America.
***
I can’t tell you exactly what happened when Michael Brown was shot. I wasn’t there. I do know the cop – whose name has not yet been released – apparently tells a story about a struggle for his gun that resulted in Michael Brown’s death. I also know that there is more than one eyewitness who claim that the cop in question simply shot Michael Brown while Michael was backing away with his hands up.
I guess what I’m saying here is this: we can’t really tell for sure if an 18-year-old black guy with no criminal record walking to his grandmother’s house with a friend may have in fact suddenly decided to go off the rails for no reason whatsoever. Or, perhaps a white guy who is a member of an ever increasingly militarized police force decided it was okay to kill an unarmed young man.
You know how it is, though: if a meteor fell out of the sky and killed a black guy, there are some people who would insist he was asking for it, and there are others who would claim it was all deliberate on the meteor’s part. Those of you who saw my recent blog entry about my having personally been witness to another high profile incident resulting in the death of a black guy can probably figure out what I’m thinking about this though.
So: if Ferguson Missouri was a person coming to me with this birth chart a month ago, I would look Ferguson Missouri in the eye and say “you have some very difficult transits coming up, and you really need to sit down and think about how you’re living your life and what you’re doing with it, okay?” As it is though, Ferguson Missouri is not an actual person. It is merely a subset of America.
So, America: you really need to sit down and think about how you’re living your life and what you’re doing with it, okay?
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