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THE ASTROLOGY
OF AMERICA'S DESTINY

A Birth-Chart for the USA
by Dane Rudhyar, 1974





THE ASTROLOGY
OF AMERICA'S DESTINY


Table of Contents










CHAPTER FIVE:
Two Hundred Years of Growth Through Crisis
- 6

Transits
Astrologers analyzing the birth charts of individual persons usually pay much attention to the daily altered relationships between the planets and to the positions these planets occupy in the individual's birth chart; to the astrologer these are known as transits. Such a procedure implies to some astrologers that an individual carries around himself or his aura an unchanging model of his birth chart. The "influences" of the planets in their everyday motion reach him only as the transiting planets form a definite astrological aspect with the degrees on which the planets were found at the time of birth.
      We can also look at the moving planets in another way. We can study the manner in which the entire cycle of a planet and its phases affect the person's chart from the moment of birth to the year and day the planet returns to its natal position in the zodiac. We can also realize that, in some cases at least, cycles of relationship between two planets — for instance, Jupiter and Saturn — from conjunction to conjunction are just as important as the cycle of one planet considered alone. Two planets whose functions refer to the same level of activity constitute pairs. What really counts at any time is the relationship of the whole solar system to the total configuration it had at the time of a person's birth. This is especially true when we are dealing with a collective person, like a nation, during whose existence all planets can repeatedly form all possible relationships between themselves, and between what they are every day or year and what they were at the birth of that nation. There are five basic levels of human activity: the vitalistic and organic (governed by the Sun and the Moon); the personal-emotional (Mars and Venus); the social-cultural-religious, (Jupiter and Saturn); the mental level (Mercury and Jupiter, or at a higher level, Pluto); and the level of transformations affecting the individuals relationship to a larger whole — social, cultural or spiritual-cosmic (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto).
      When in the past astrology dealt with sociocultural and political or military issues, much attention was paid to the cycle of relationship between Jupiter and Saturn. This cycle has quite regular features, as conjunctions of the two planets occur every twenty years, and a larger cycle of sixty years has them recurring at about the same zodiacal positions. That sixty-year cycle was used in Babylonian astrology, and in fact up to the discovery of Neptune and Pluto.
      The Jupiter-Saturn cycle refers to sociopolitical and cultural-religious activities talking place within a consciously formulated field of operations — a field with set boundaries defined by Saturnian values operating on the basis of the exclusion of whatever does not fit within established patterns of collective behavior and taken-for-granted beliefs. On the other hand, the more complex cycle defined by conjunctions of Neptune and Pluto refers to processes that essentially seek to include all that could possibly be included within a larger field of reference. Such inclusion naturally implies the basic but gradual transformation of what is being gathered within, and perhaps "transfigured" by, a greater Whole — whether it is cosmic, spiritual or political. The Neptune-Pluto cycle lasts a little less than five hundred years, and especially since the rise of modern science and technology seems to be the most fundamental measure of time in the present and future history of mankind.
      If we consider the structural development of these two cycles it becomes apparent that they resemble the lunation cycle bounded by two successive New Moons; but the lunation cycle, from which the month is derived lasts only thirty days. It can deal only with the minutiae of social experience, and its main value is found in the field of organic life. A Mars-Venus cycle also presents interesting features and a significant rhythm, but it is of greater value in astrology than in history. We shall therefore limit ourselves to a brief consideration of the larger cycles insofar as they can be related to the birth chart of the United States.
      One important point, however, should be stressed. When we deal with a nation as a collective person at the social level of consciousness represented by the Saturn-Jupiter pair refers to a larger field of activity and relationship than when we study an individual person and his participation in a community. At the level of the whole nation's activity, the term "social" refers to the nation's relationship to its international environment. When studying the Jupiter-Saturn cycle in terms of the U.S. birth chart, what we should consider is the way in which the nation as a whole operates and has operated within the world community. We are dealing with international rather than interindividual problems of relationship — with the character of the nation's participation in the world community. At present, this world community is not harmonious, but neither is the social life of a person living in a city slum harmonious; and if we reach beyond the strictly social level to that of organized religion and spiritual fellowship, even there, during our emotionally and spiritually tormented era, harmony and certitude are most often lacking.




By permission of Leyla Rudhyar Hill
Copyright © 1974 by Dane Rudhyar
and Copyright © 2001 by Leyla Rudhyar Hill
All Rights Reserved.



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