vol. 2 Episode 46
Greetings,
There used to be a comedy show on BBC Radio Scotland called Swots that skewered geeks, and which used to make me laugh until it hurt.
One sketch has stayed with me all these years because its humor was based in a larger truth, making it both profound, and profoundly funny.
The punch line was that there are four potential outcomes in a Scottish court trial: guilty, not guilty, unproven, and “he had it coming”.
In fact, Scottish jurisprudence has three potential trial outcomes, and “he had it coming” isn’t one of them. But in life, this is arguably a valid verdict.
I was reminded of this bit of satire as I edited this episode, filled with Elisabeth’s and my parsing of the latest indictment against former president Donald Trump. Honestly, to me, he is so boring because he is so transparent. I know that to say a megalomaniac with blood on his hands is “boring” sounds flippant, but hear me: his narcissism is boring.
The maliciousness for which he stands in the cosmic order of things, and the fantasies of deliverance that so many human beings have attached to him, are not boring.
They represent a larger question of what exactly is justice.
The distillation of this new indictment essentially is that Trump knew he’d lost and so his intent was indeed to stage a coup and overthrow a democratically elected president, namely Joe Biden. For the prosecution to prove this will require demonstrating that Trump isn’t insane, isn’t deluded, but is indeed calculating and criminal.
To me, he is all of these things — a sad, mad, raging orange puppet of some secret cabal of angry power mongers who are both led by and leading others around by the dollar signs.
Still, Trump’s most potent weapon isn’t the money. It’s not even his sociopathy, which makes lying and cheating easy.
It’s his ability to convince people he is special because he tells them they are special. His power, like that of any narcissist resides in the fantasy of being separate and apart and better than everyone else. Including, above the law.
Clearly, I believe the correct verdict is that he is guilty, and he should go to federal prison for life. I am not convinced that will happen, but the stars do suggest to me he will die ignominiously.
So, is that justice?
Well, pulling back the lens a moment, I wonder, what does Trump going to prison for crimes committed say about people who believed in the fantasy of specialness? Are they insane but he is not?
Perhaps one outcome does not have to be true at the expense of the other. But it does beg the question of mass insanity vs. mass enchantment. Yet, to enchant so many people so thoroughly requires some ballsy calculation, doesn’t it?
There is a maxim in astrology that the stars do not compel, but they do impel.
With that in mind, even if Trump was compos mentis throughout the entirety of his plotting a coup/plotting a restoration of his rightful place throne, I mean, White House, what does astrology say about the event having even taken place at all?
Because mundane astrologers such as Elisabeth and myself and many others foresaw some kind of Plutonic disaster befalling the US beginning with the 2020 eclipses in Cancer and Capricorn (those were my touchstones, anyway), we could say that “we had it coming”.
I note with interest that both prior to his taking office, and now that he is out of office, the national conversation is on Trump’s mental state. Before taking office, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals were at one another’s throats over whether to diagnose him from afar as a clinical narcissist, a clear and present danger to the world.
There has never been consensus, or even a plausible clinical explanation of the man’s mental state, even if there is strong opinion about his guilt or innocence. Whether there even is such a thing as clinical narcissism is still debated.
One valid take-away from the Trump phenomenon is that clinical mental health diagnoses are deeply flawed, and are in fact simply our vapidly materialistic way of pivoting away from the problems created when soul and spirit are drained from how we view and address imbalances of heart and mind.
Are all supporters of Trump insane? Or are they deluded fantasists? What if they are duped, yet good?
And yet, the Trump era brought the eruption of our national evil under-belly from below the belt line. Trump didn’t cause that. He helped us uncover it. It was already there. It has always been there. Will it forever be there?
Which makes me think about this as a collective, philosophical moment in both our national history, and that of the world where plenty of other liars and crooks are living large among us in positions of leadership over us.
Remember that Pluto brings about the extreme of extremes. In my own practice, I counsel clients that things involving Pluto will be hard. Very. Hard. Sure, it also means that things will get scrubbed clean of all the detritus, but who wants to get brushed with a cactus?
And yet, when the gunk is gone, the power remains, is even more powerful for the lack of the crap. What to do with such a depth of resources? This might be a good problem to have post-Trump, provided we have admitted our individual role in the blight having been allowed to fester. And we each do have one. That’s what makes the Oedipal story, unsullied by that weirdo Freud, so important to understand: what is seemingly beyond our control is still ours to face, even if we actively tried to avoid it.
In short: take life on its own terms and accept that sometimes, evil arrives at your doorstep and you have to call it what it is, not give it a prescription.
And so, I ask: was Trump the president we deserved, or the president we needed? It depends on how you view justice, karmically and morally.
That’s what makes astrology such the font of living waters I find it to be: it helps us map the seemingly inchoate worlds of karmic and moral justice, bridging them together, and carrying us from one to another, but sometimes allowing us to stand with one foot in each land of Fate and Fortune.
Because we collectively have been apathetic, ignorant of our richness as a democracy, mistaking it for a marketplace, Trump could be viewed as our fortune — this is what we sowed and now must reap.
But we have also been duped by the invisible forces of power mongers behind the scenes, such as we are finding out drip by grungy drip, as the spooky powers of people like the über creepy Leonard Leo’s hold over the Supreme Court is evermore uncovered.
This trial will now occur months after the planets have eased off the pressure points of our national birth chart, all but of course, Pluto, which will apply its thumbs to our nation’s soul map for another 2-ish years to come.
And isn’t it just a little suspicious that the man’s name is also synonymous with “archetype”, as Jungians and Tarotistas well know? Yes, it’s not his “real” name, but maybe his role was to bring archetypal powers to our attention.
Which also makes me wonder: what if it’s a question of that ensouled universal principal of life that impels itself forward by way of moving through us knowing that with a few squares here, a couple of oppositions there, and more than a few eclipse cycles, we humans could be roused to become better beings who wouldn’t stand for a messianic madman, clinical or otherwise?
Is that our random choice or engaging with the gods for better outcomes?
Guilty, not guilty, unproven, no matter — I submit, Trump is both our fate and our fortune. We had it coming.
Also in this episode…
Sabian Symbol mentioned by Elisabeth
Elisabeth’s analysis of Ginni Thomas’s chart, and the coming stress upon it
The Henrietta Lacks settlement
Endemic leprosy in Florida
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xWhitney (and Elisabeth, too!)
Trump and us: We had it coming