The Decline of the American Empire
Last week I wrote about the Sibley chart that I and most other astrologers use for the United States as a preface for this series since this is the chart I am using to track the change of fortune for the US. The Sibley chart shows Sagittarius rising, with the Sun in Cancer in a wide conjunction to Jupiter in the seventh house of alliances and open enemies.
Since I mentioned writing this article, the US debt was downgraded for the first time in American history by the Standard & Poor rating index. (Let’s ignore for the time being the irony of the fact that it was errors in the methodology of S&P’s and other rating agencies that got us into this mess with the subprime mortgage debacle.)
I’ll save an exhaustive analysis of the Sibley chart for another post, but it’s important to note a few things before discussing the situation today. The Sagittarius ascendant in the US chart reflects the expansive tendency of the American empire which is probably the single thing that will be its undoing. Like other empires before it, the expansion of the national identity (Sagittarius ascendant) through ideas like “Manifest Destiny” which inspired pioneers to trek across the undeveloped terrain and do battle with the native peoples and Mexicans and Canadians who were already living on the land.
This relentless push for expansion tends to weaken the underpinnings of a nation, as we can see in the history of the Roman, the Russian and the British empires, the great empires of our age. During the period from 1995 to 2008, when Pluto transited through Sagittarius bringing globalized governments and corporations, it appeared to some that the expansion of […]