CHAPTER SIX:
A Chart for the Beginning
of the Federal Government - 8

The year 1959 began the progressed lunation cycle in which our government is operating now, with a New Moon on the 29th degree of Leo. This led to the rise of John Kennedy, and the tragic events, including the spreading Vietnam war, marking what should have been his full term of office. The apex of that cycle — the progressed Full Moon — was reached in 1973. The Moon-Sun opposition links the 12th degree of Pisces (Moon) and Virgo; and as I write we are in the midst of the Watergate crisis which has brought to full public consciousness some of the problems inherent in the Constitution. Above all, it compels us to realize that the Federal Government has become a technocratic organization making use of a huge propaganda machine and of all the gadgetry of our age of computerized and electronic power in order to achieve what, in its self-complacency, it considers the good of the nation.
      The astrological importance of this progressed Full Moon is emphasized by the fact that this Sun-Moon opposition is identical with the meridian of the chart for the beginning of the Federal Government. It will not be long before the progressed Sun will reach the "natal" Saturn, and this could be a sobering experience. We shall presently see how this ties up with President Nixon's own chart, for the transiting Saturn was exactly on his Mid Heaven — symbol of his public position and prestige — when the Watergate break-in occurred on June 17, 1972.
      Ours, indeed, is a moment of destiny for the American government. The somewhat ambiguous principle of a "division of power" between its three branches is at stake. But we should realize that this division of power between the Executive, the Legislative and the judiciary significantly parallels the delicate balance formed as an individual person seeks to allow the three main constituents of his personality to develop, each with its own prerogatives and its field of operation: the ego-will, the deliberative mind, and the ethical sense of value based on the feelings. These feelings are deeply conditioned, and at times altogether determined, by the images of the culture and religion which the individual in childhood has had to take for granted. The mind itself usually operates at two levels: one which emphasizes collective values and takes such traditional imperatives as bases for judgment (thus paralleling the U.S. Senate as first elected by the states), and the other which is likely to be influenced by rapidly changing issues, intellectual fashions and mass emotions (the House of Representatives with its brief term of office).
      The gradual increase in the power of the Executive — the President and the men to whom he delegates power — reflects the fact that, in an international world in which competition and war are constantly to be dealt with, the ego-will of the collective person, the United States, tends to occupy an increasingly more important role. The President may be considered the symbol of the national will, but the issue, stated in psychological terms, is whether it is the ego or the "self" that wills. The ego is possessive, exclusive, jealous of its powers and prerogatives. The self includes the whole person and reflects that periods spiritual destiny. The present presidential crisis, therefore, can be said to refer essentially to the quality of the will displayed by our recent Presidents, and especially by President Nixon. In its broadest national implications, the Watergate crisis can even be seen as a projection of the generalized crisis in consciousness that is disturbing the American people as a whole, and especially the younger generations. We must now try to evaluate objectively the meaning of this crisis and suggest the nature of the deeper causes that have led to the present stressful situation, not only in the United States but all over the globe.