With the Sun’s arrival in Libra, I can look back on what I wrote for the Aries Ingress for the United States, and see whether I got anything right. My life was sufficiently strange the last six months, to admit that I’m not going to pick up on all the things I got wrong or right in the national news over the last six months.

The theme last March was aversion, describing what happens when all the planets are looking from the wrong signs on the places that they rule. And the chart as a whole indicated that humans had a lot more responsibility to keep things on-track than usual, without the normal extra helping of assistance and challenge from the planets.

This time around, we see a chart that will cover the next six months. Ordinarily, a judicial ingress chart like this one would show a year ahead, if the Ascendant was in a fixed sign. However — since this is the second chart of the year, it naturally expires at the next Aries Ingress in March 2024. Accordingly, this chart only lasts through then, when a new chart comes into force.

Reviewing the Last Six Months

Before I go on to look at the next chart, let’s take a look at what I suspected would be going on between March and September. I can note the following things:

• In the first house, I noted that a lot of people would be asking questions about personal sustenance and survival; and indeed the price of food remains high relative to historic norms.
• In the second house, I noted ongoing challenges and opportunities in the financial sector, with trouble arising in the hotel and airline industries (although banks were in the news the day I wrote the article). I didn’t forecast the historic rise in Federal Reserve interest rates, and that should have been obvious.
• Transportation, logistics, and communications in the third house were supposed to suffer a rocky road. This indeed remained problematic, and schools continued to be troubled all through the last six months.
• I predicted some turmoil in the housing and real estate sectors, and (with companies trying to figure out the back-to-the-office problem), this one feels right. But landlords are still trying to keep rental rates and prices high — because mortgages and bank loans on the properties and construction on the properties are all dependent on the occupation rates of buildings and their rent!
• The fifth and sixth houses, represented by Capricorn and Aquarius, demonstrated the challenge we’ve seen all summer between working-class unionists and billionaires and shareholders. Ultimately, unions are going to come out on top; and we saw this with the Writers Guild strike results coming in with the WGA gaining significant concessions in their contracts with the participating media companies.
• The seventh house was about the mix of isolationism and engagement that the US sees in its relationship with the EU, Russia, and its own populace. That was the correct call, I think.
• Biden did spend a good chunk of time in the last six months cleaning house in the bureaucracy of the federal government, as I thought likely in the 8th house.
• The ninth – yes, we did see a lot of challenges in the travel and tourism sector, with COVID’s rise and fall getting in the way of lots of travel plans; but college seemed to go on as normal.
• The Tenth and Eleventh, showing the executive and legislative branches, did have their turmoil over the last six months. I didn’t forecast Tommy Tuberville’s ongoing obstructionism of military promotions, but I think the coalition of allies to make government work had a lot of challenges keeping things going over the last six months.
• The efforts at reform that I hinted at in the Twelfth House are still in process, but not being delivered soon enough. Meanwhile, the rules-breaking and open flouting of ethics rules at the highest levels still seems to be going on.

September ’23 to March ’24

As noted in some of my earlier charts, the Sun always stands for a country’s chief ruler, in this case the sitting President of the United States Joe Biden. The Sun is cadent in the third house, and in fall in Libra, both unfortunate conditions — but the Sun rules the first house, suggesting an enormous level of popular support among the general population. They may not be able to make themselves heard in the media, but they like the leader they’ve got, and will continue to like him through the start of the new astrological year.

That said, the Third House is about transportation, logistics, communication, and lower education — Will Biden turn his attention toward schools, and solving some of the problems in lower education? The chart seems to think so. If so, he’s got a fight on his hands with Mars, the South Node, and the Imum Coeli here in Libra — the president faces tough challenges getting his plan through Congress or avoiding challenges from the courts — and with October 14th’s solar eclipse passing directly over the western US, this may be an insurmountable obstacle for Biden. The existing political and economic players in logistics, communication, and education are deeply entrenched and willing to fight back. Biden has an agenda in this realm, and wants to see it accomplished, but may not have the votes and alliances to achieve it.

When we look to the Moon, though, in the Sixth House, we see that the portion of people in the United States who are able to make their voices heard are pretty decisively the working class. The sixth house is associated with the rank and file of the military, miners and oilfield workers, firemen, and factory workers — and this group is showing up in numbers in the the chart. If Pluto tends to represent the billionaire class and even the top 10-20% of wealth-holders in the US, the current retrograde suggests that this group is rushing to meet the Moon with compromises and options in the next six months… and the people are going to get a lot of what they want.

Mercury is in the second house of the US treasury, banks and financial markets, in the middle decan The Hammer and Anvil. The herald-planet is particularly strong here, and this indicates a successful and overall-positive set of experiences for the money-changers in the next six months. A number of other astrologers have predicted some downturns in the economy due to some upcoming unpleasant transits — but the trine between Jupiter in the house of government and Mercury in the house of the financiers suggest that deals will be worked out as usual. These deals are also likely to be made with the needs of US labor markets in mind, as well, though, which hasn’t always been part of consideration in the American political and economic calculus for many years.

While we’re on the subject of Mercury, it’s worth noting that they are square to Gemini in the eleventh, indicating conflict and turbulence. The eleventh represents Congress, and Gemini strongly indicates “a house divided”, while Sagittarius in the fifth house represents the minority party in Congress. Sagittarius is the only triple-bodied sign, representing technical, animal and humane aspects, and is ruled by Jupiter. We often throw up our hands and remark cynically on how members of Congress are bought and sold, or obligated to various special interests. Yet Mercury in Virgo in the second, ruling over Congress, and Jupiter in the tenth being inconjunct to Sagittarius, marks Congress as unusually turbulent and divided, without a strong sense of exercised leadership by anyone currently in government. The political goals of the financial sector are largely tuned to one question, “how do I keep my taxes low?” — but low taxes is not policy but ways and means, or methodology. A government, and therefore a country, cannot simultaneously solve a health care crisis, support a military alliance with a country at war, manage immigration and customs issues, promote the general welfare, and organize a broad response to climate change if the only policy it can agree on is “low taxes”. The thing is, different parts of the financial sector want different things: some want “quality roads and low taxes”, others want “border security and low taxes”, and still others want “health care and low taxes” or “strong national defense and low taxes.” The result is that members of a nominally single party in Congress are splitting up along several of these fault lines — all committed to one goal that automatically prevents any of their other goals from being addressed.

So, real change of any kind is going to have to come from the Executive Branch represented by Taurus in the tenth house, where dedicated leadership is provided by Jupiter, Uranus with assistance from the Lot of Fortune. These positions all indicate a lot of immediate crises being addressed, and short-term issues being managed. Even so, the bureaucracy is saddled with Saturn in Pisces the eighth, and Neptune — we can expect a long period of government furlough at the federal level, and a lot of people trying hard to figure out a different way of doing things.

It should prove to be an interesting six months.