There is a famous legend called Tecumseh's Curse that says that when William Henry Harrison defeated the Shawnee at the Battle of Tippecanoe, Chief Tecumseh's shaman brother Tenskwatawa levied a curse on the "Great White Fathers" that started with Harrison's death just after taking the oath of presidential office in 1841. For the next 120 years, every president elected in a twenty year interval — Lincoln in 1860, Garfield in 1880, McKinley in 1900, Harding in 1920, FDR in 1940, JFK in 1960 — died while in office. Indeed, every president except Zachary Taylor who has died while in office was elected under this twenty-year cycle.

Starting in 1980, the curse took a new twist: Ronald Reagan didn't die while in office but his life was almost ended by an assassination attempt. Following in 2000 was George W. Bush, who also had a close call with death when a would-be assassin lobbed a grenade at him, but it failed to detonate. It seemed that Tecumseh's Curse had lightened up to become Tecumseh's Bluff.

There is a striking astrological correlation here. Every doomed president was elected for a term that coincided with a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction, which runs on a roughly 20-year cycle. This conjunction was seen in ancient times as a portent for major shifts in power, whether from war, natural disaster, popular uprising, or death of a king. Even in the cases of Reagan and Bush, while they did not die in office they represented a very new way of governing (the Reagan Revolution, the Bush Doctrine), and this theme carries on today with Joe Biden, elected just before the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of 2020, whose administration has explicitly worked to reverse the Reagan and Bush policies that have distorted the nation's values.

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For this current presidential term, we are seeing another new twist on the old curse. First, while Biden has not died in office, he did voluntarily relinquish power. Secondly, the former president, who thinks he's still president, has experienced two attempts on his life. This is not very surprising given his hate-filled, divisive rhetoric and aggressive nature (basic life rule: when you continually yell with anger and hate and support violence, you bring it right to your own doorstep). But could it be that the curse is still active and evolving? In one sense, we could say that a curse is the repeated manifestation of an unconscious pattern or urge. It may be a fearful mystery why some bad thing keeps occurring, but only because we are unable to see how we ourselves are creating it. Could it be that we are seeing these changes in the effects of Tecumseh's Curse because we are beginning to make the underlying pattern conscious?

However we may think about the repeated theme of presidents dying every 20 years, whether as curse, natural course, or coincidence, that the theme continues to appear, albeit restated differently these past few go-arounds, should be of note. America was founded as a king-less nation, and it is held to that intention every Jupiter-Saturn cycle, like a cosmic regulator ensuring no presidential executive gets too complacent with their position.

As to the fate of the current presidential contenders, Tuesday's full moon was a doozy for both of them. It was not only a Pisces Full Moon but a "supermoon" (Moon at perigee, thus appears larger) and a lunar eclipse, or "blood moon" because the moon turns red due to the shadow of the earth passing over it. At the time of the full moon eclipse, the Sun and Moon filled out a Grand Cross (four points at 90º angles) with Trump's natal full moon eclipse, as well as with Harris's lunar Nodes and her Ascendant/Descendant axis.

What does that all mean? Bear in mind that the day Biden announced his stepping down, which lifted Harris into the spotlight, there was a full moon that made a Grand Cross to Harris's natal full moon (both Trump and Harris were born during a full moon). When a full moon makes a Grand Cross to sensitive points in a natal chart, big things happen. One's destiny — the outcome of one's free-will participation with fate — is triggered. Given that Trump's second assassination attempt occurred just one day before this full moon is testament to this. His fateful, hateful chickens are coming home to roost.

The wildcard factor here is that wildest of planetary cards, Uranus, which continues to square Trump's Mars and conjunct Harris's Jupiter while it also squares the natal Moon of the United States. Every Uranus square to the U.S. Moon has coincided with a major war, yet there are astrological reasons to be optimistic that won't quite be the case this time around. For Trump, whose caustic, aggressive nature is a fundamental part of his identity, this Uranus square is a true vexation to his persona and style. For Harris, the Jupiter conjunction could very well reflect the sudden meteoric rise of her career. Jupiter is the planetary ruler of her career, and Uranus tends to light up Jupiter's domain during strong alignments like this.

Lunar and solar eclipses typically occur in pairs, and the corresponding solar eclipse to Tuesday's lunar one will occur on October 2nd. This is the last eclipse before the presidential election. Interestingly, it makes no major alignments to either candidate's chart, but it does make a major alignment to the United States's Sun. It's as if the stars are reminding us what is really at stake here: The future of the country as a whole. This solar eclipse demands that we assess what kind of country it will be — inclusive and nurturing, or divisive and corrupt?

In 1806, Tenskwatawa impressed William Henry Harrison by correctly predicting a solar eclipse. Five years later, Harrison destroyed Tenskwatawa's settlement at Tippecanoe. How far have we grown from that moment? Perhaps the blessing in Tecumseh's Curse is that by virtue of it no longer killing presidents we no longer need to trade blood to establish who we are.

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