I’m not gonna lie, on Friday I started fantasizing about moving to another country. One where people don’t have the right to walk around with guns in public, people with uteruses can get a safe abortion, and lives are valued in other ways, like with universal healthcare and free education. Yes, I live in a progressive state where some of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions are overruled by local laws, but still. I kept thinking to myself, “Why is the U.S. like this?”
As is often the case when I have a question I want to be answered, I turn to astrology and in this instance, it again gave me more insight. You may not be aware, but countries have astrological birth charts just like people do. There’s some controversy about the time the U.S. was “born,” but even still, I’m pretty sure you can guess the date and the location: July 4, 1776, in Philadelphia.
No matter the time you pick for when the U.S. was “born,” a few elements remain the same: We have a Cancer sun and an Aquarius moon. A Cancer sun denotes a desire to preserve your roots and cares about home and family. Cancer is the archetype of the mother and typically doesn’t embrace change readily and wants things to stay the same.
I liked the combo of life and abortion in this photo. Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash
With regards to the Supreme Court decision on reproductive rights, also embedded in the U.S. birth chart is Saturn squaring our Cancer sun. In other words, Saturn’s position in the sky is roughly 90 degrees from the sun in Cancer. Saturn is a planet of boundaries and restrictions. A negative integration of Saturn is oppression, which is what we’re seeing now. Saturn, a planet of boundaries, keeps enacting its will of oppression and domination on “mom.” Most recently in overturning Roe vs. Wade.
This makes a weird sort of sense, doesn’t it? On the one hand, we hear a lot about “family values,” which would be the Cancer sun, but we also have a high maternal mortality rate and no paid parental leave, which is the hardship of Saturn. In other words, this is what it means to live in the U.S., to face these issues over and over again.
However, I’d be remiss here if I didn’t also mention we have another energy in the United States: that of an Aquarius moon. An Aquarius moon is the polar opposite of a Cancer sun. It’s revolutionary, progressive, and forward-thinking. In other words, embedded into the fabric of the U.S. is this pendulum swing one way and then another from conservative to progressive. There’s a constant tension in the U.S. between how things were and how they could be.
It’s not only the U.S. that sees this pendulum swing, obviously, but it’s interesting to notice this dynamic play out. Instead of saying to myself, “Didn’t we already go through this? Aren’t we past this already?” to remember we will perpetually have this tension because these are the issues inherent with the United States.
My spiritual teacher says, “Let us fight these divisive tendencies which want to make our life dark …. All human beings want light. One individual human is more luminous and more throbbing than that universal darkness. So human beings should always be optimistic. The cimmerian darkness cannot retard your progress, cannot cover the light of the human heart. The spirit of your heart must move on and on against obstacles. Kick away your obstacles like pebbles from your feet – you are stronger than your obstacles.”
I dream of a world where we aren’t constantly surprised that certain issues keep resurfacing in the U.S. A world where we understand being in the U.S. means dealing with a certain tension. A world where we recognize politics swing one way and then another but we remember our progress cannot be permanently thwarted. A world we understand we are stronger than our obstacles.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.