"We have it in our power to begin the world over again."— Thomas Paine, Common Sense, January 1776
The United States's 250th Solar Return chart (outer wheel) against its natal chart (inner wheel).
As America reaches its 250th solar return, it contends with quite a few astrological conundrums that echo the crises shaking its foundations. Mars, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and July's Aquarius Full Moon all stand at highly sensitive points relative to the U.S. horoscope. Come July 19th, the popularly cited "basket" formation of Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto will hold at its handles the U.S. Lunar Nodes in Leo/Aquarius, propping up and propelling the country's destiny. America is sitting square in the celestial crosshairs, fraught with profound anxiety as we all sense the great inexorable change that is underway.
It would take several articles to enumerate every astrological alignment in America's 250th solar return chart, and even more to try and articulate a synthesis of these alignments. But it's worth going over a few that really stand out.
Perhaps the most prominent is the Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini that culminated on July 3rd. Significant events in the life of America as well as the current president tend to occur during Mars-Uranus alignments. Examples include the start of the Civil War, the Capitol riots of Jan 6, the raid of Mar-a-Lago by the FBI, and the start of the Iran War.
At their most dramatic, Mars-Uranus alignments reflect a shattering of what used to be taken for granted as normal. This can occur as a sudden breakdown, like starting an international war, or as a sudden breakthrough, like walking away forever from an abusive situation or acting on an epiphany that changes the direction of one's life. Mars and Uranus act together to create inflection points, where the direction we think life is heading takes a sudden sharp turn, never able to double back to the way things were. The Mars-Uranus square of April 2020, at the depth of the Covid shutdowns, illustrates this energy to an extreme.
Another important alignment is Neptune transiting over the IC (or bottommost point) of the U.S. horoscope. This is a roughly 160-year transit that last occurred at the start of the Civil War. It reflects a renewal of the country's spiritual and moral values, best embodied within the fiery biblical orations of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth in the 1860s; or of Reverend William Barber and James Talarico today.
This transit also illuminates the dark side of Neptune, the immoral cruelty of deflecting illusionists, be they antebellum enslavers or corporate oligarchs, vampirically feeding off the work, money, and psychic attention of the masses. Neptune transits highlight longstanding deceptions, making them so obvious that one must go to increasing lengths of self delusion to continue to adhere to them. At first, it is like pointing a spotlight at fog—nothing is clear except the fog itself. Vague shapes without clear definition or motivation move in the mist, cultivating fear that strengthens the illusion. But keep the light shining on it and the shapes clarify as the fog dissipates, revealing and demystifying the specious liars that had been blowing smoke all along.
Each of these alignments have their importance in reflecting America's ongoing evolution. But I've recently begun looking at another significant factor, the conjunction of Pluto to America's South Node, a fateful alignment that has surprising correlation with major events in American history.
The North and South Nodes are important because they refer to the underlying spiritual purpose of the chart. With the South Node in Aquarius, America picked up the mantle of proto-self-governance from Great Britain (a distinctly Aquarian empire, for reasons I hope to explore in a future article). America's North Node in Leo points its destiny towards creative liberation of its people, shining as a solar beacon of free self-expression so long as it can resolve its inherited baggage of classism and racism, dark twins emerging from the shadow dimensions of Aquarius.
Pluto makes significant aspects to the North and South Nodes of the U.S. chart at the same time as each Uranus Return. This highly unlikely planetary synchronicity occurs because of Pluto's eccentric orbit combined with the position of the lunar nodes in early Aquarius/Leo. While it takes Pluto more than eighty years (a full Uranus cycle) to move 90º from Aquarius to Taurus, and Taurus to Leo, it takes the same amount of time to move twice the distance from Leo to Aquarius, where Pluto is today.
Most astrologers are aware of the important connection of the Uranus Return to the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II. Uranus as rebel and emancipator is rich with significance here, but Pluto at aspect to the nodes drives the destructive and regenerative process that transforms America into a higher version of its spiritual purpose.
Treaty of Paris, by Benjamin West, depicting the official end of the Revolutionary War.
Partially blank because the British delegation refused to pose.
Take for example the conjunction of Pluto with America's South Node in the years 1781-1782. These years saw the final battles of the Revolutionary War and America's bid for global recognition of its independence. Pluto-South Node conjunctions trigger karmic patterns that need to be released in order to grow, like a snake shedding its skin. Once the colonial child of Great Britain, America shed the old imperial monarchy in favor of the Aquarian ideals of democracy, permanently transforming the world order.
The next significant nodal alignment was the square, at 90º to both nodes. Pluto reached that alignment at the cusp of the Civil War. This reflected a critical evolutionary turning point that would determine how the country would develop and utilize its power going forward.
Pluto then conjuncted America’s Leo North Node during the decisive battles of World War II. Pluto crossing the North Node accumulates power that pushes forward the karmic purpose of the chart. This period initiated the era of America as global superpower, driven by its influence in rebuilding Western Europe in its democratic image, along with the threat of its atomic weapons—a terrifying Plutonic development.
Today, on America's 250th birthday, Pluto again conjuncts the U.S. South Node as Uranus approaches its next return. We are again jettisoning the power structures built during the prior Pluto cycle in preparation for a new form of nationhood. Uranus shocks and shatters outworn systems while Pluto grinds the wreckage into compost for new life. This process serves to refine and re-root the Aquarian ideals of freedom and justice that have, slowly and imperfectly, animated America from the start.
Those ideals matter as we careen precipitously into the Age of Aquarius. Humanity is struggling to figure out what it means to be free and how to build a civilization that supports freedom. We must not abandon, but in fact reclaim with renewed conviction, the Aquarian values eloquently expressed by Thomas Paine—himself an Aquarius—in 1791: "Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good."
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