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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 FOUR:
A Birth Chart for the United States of America
- 12

Much more could be said if I were to attempt a thorough technical analysis of the chart, which I believe should be considered the seed-pattern of the collective American personality. A detailed comparison of this chart with some of the others astrologers claimed to be valid would add little to the foregoing. Nevertheless, a few points are worth mentioning with regard to the chart with a mid-Gemini Ascendant, which is most frequently used by other, astrologers. I believe that what is often said about this Gemini Ascendant chart tends to encourage an inaccurate and deceptive view concerning certain aspects of American national character and destiny.
      It is certainly true that Americans display some Gemini traits, and I have already spoken of the meaning that a Gemini Ascendant would have in terms of the essential individuality of the American nation. But here we should consider first the question of what is characteristic of Gemini, and then what aspect of the American personality logically applies to these characteristics. I am convinced that they accurately refer to all that the Descendant and seventh House signify.
      On July 4, 1776, the planets Uranus and Mars were located respectively on the 9th and 22nd degrees of Gemini. We hear it said that because the American people as a whole tend to be restless, changeful and revolutionary or at least unconventional, Uranus must have been rising. This statement ignores the fact that, in the chart with the Ascendant on the 14th degree of Sagittarius, the natal horizon — the line linking the Ascendant and the Descendant — is very close to the lines of nodes of Uranus.(8) On the basis of a great deal of evidence I am convinced that when the natal horizon or the natal meridian of a person's chart is nearly identical with the line of nodes of a planet, this person is deeply marked and his activities are conditioned by the character of the planet. It is a nearly compulsive conditioning rooted in the unconscious; the individual is fated to act as an "agent" of the force that the planet symbolizes. One could say that he is " selected" to play a specific role in the overall economy of the Earth. By contrast, when the actual physical planet is near an angle it usually affects only the more conscious and individualized activity of the person. It can be neutralized by other planetary factors.
      The United States has played a Uranian world-transforming role in the evolution of mankind and of the whole planet. To play this role is the dharma — or essential destiny — of America. The actual presence of the physical planet Uranus in a particular natal House reveals where this role of destiny is to operate in a most focalized manner. In the U.S. chart I have presented, Uranus is logically positioned in the sixth House of labor, health, service and technology and of retraining after personal crisis. It is a logical position because it is in this sixth-House field of experiences that the transforming power of American initiative has made by far its most momentous contribution. I need only to mention the development of powerful labor unions, mass-production assembly lines, amazing technological feats (from Edison to the atom bomb and the trip to the Moon), and a host of revolutionary developments in the field of unofficial as well as official health care, and "spiritual healings." The proliferation of the many aspects of civil service, of military devices and techniques also fits this sixth-House position of Uranus. America is the country where know-how is worshipped, and this means a constant drive to discover new ways of doing things and to foster built-in rapid obsolescence in order to clear the way for new forms.
      It has also been said that Mars could not be located in the seventh House because "the U.S. has never lost a war." Such a reasoning is based on the unfortunate belief that Mars by nature is an omen of ill-fortune or accident. The fact is that Mars represents the capacity to act in order to obtain what a living organism needs for its subsistence, or what a person desires because it has proven of value. As Mars "rules" the muscular system and the mobilization of the ego-will, without Mars man would be a vegetable, unable to move himself. The reason for attributing a pejorative meaning to this planet is that unfortunately human beings tend to rush toward what arouses their desire or greed and by carelessly and emotionally doing so they are likely to be hurt. In one of its aspects Mars may truly be god of war, but astrologers should learn to free themselves from Greek mythology, and think in more basic and functional terms. The presence of Mars in the seventh House of the U.S. birth chart aptly describes the aggressive way in which Americans have met the world of nature and whoever or whatever stood in the way of their expansion — the Indians, for instance. We should also not forget that economic and financial aggression is just as effective as military bravado in the achievement of a national goal — as the Arab nations have just learned.


8. The nodes of a planet are formed by the intersection of the plane of its orbit with the Earth's orbit. They belong to what I have called "orbital astrology," which refers to the structure of the whole solar system. Thus it is their heliocentric positions that are important. Lately geocentric positions have been used by a few astrologers, but such a use of planetary nodes seems to me unsound as it makes them lose their nodal character.  Return




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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