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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
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First, let us consider the character of the zodiacal signs appearing at these four Angles. I contend that America on the whole has found and should find the path to self-realization — that is, to who she is as a collective person — through the kind of religious approach characterizing the sign Sagittarius. The Puritan ideal is at the very root of national life, and few nations have stressed as much the realization of divine guidance and the tendency to indulge in religious mass demonstrations — as even today Billy Graham, "Jesus freaks" and many ashrams led by Hindu yogis can testify.
      A Gemini Ascendant would stress instead an intellectual-analytical approach to self-realization; and this would not fit the mass reactions of a nation which, at least until recently, considered intellectuals (or "eggheads") a little queer, and which in its institutions of higher education gave such an overwhelming attention to sports in preference to books. On the other hand, our intellectual concepts and prejudices signified by the seventh House have been imported from our European partners — at first from England, later from France, and during the nineteenth century from Germany.
      The Sagittarian temperament is also usually considered to have the following characteristics: self-righteousness, the desire to be loved, dependence on intuition rather than on strictly intellectual logic, an outspoken, impulsive and demonstrative temperament, good fellowship, generosity, humanitarianism, joviality and philosophical optimism,(1) love of sports and of distant journeys or adventures. Sagittarian also are our ambitious schemes, and passionate desire for expansion and for "bigger and better" results. We might add that, physiologically, the American type, perhaps best symbolized by Uncle Sam, is characterized by long and well-developed thighs, also a Sagittarian feature.
      The zodiacal sign at the cusp of the fourth House of the U.S. birth chart is Aries. This fits well with the pioneering spirit of Americans, with the feeling that we must be the first to open a new field of activity and to bring to it a truly Martian zest and vitality — the planet Mars is said to "rule" the sign Aries. Here we see emphasized the reality of America as the "New World"; also a taken-for-granted "gut feeling" that we are destined to lead the world under the guidance of suprarational, cosmic or divine forces. This — a typical Aries trait — is also shown on the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States by the phrase inscribed above the pyramid: ANNUIT COEPTIS, usually translated as "He favors our undertakings."
      The zodiacal sign Gemini is found at the Descendant (seventh House cusp) of the U.S. chart. The Descendant characterizes a person's approach to all types of relationships and particularly the manner in which he meets people. Gemini is associated with a restless curiosity and a somewhat unsteady eagerness to experience new sensations and investigate new ideas. The typical American tends to respond to the challenge and excitement of new contacts and modes of association. He should respond, because it is his destiny to be an agent for the development of ever more complex and unprecedented forms of relationship. In the same sense it is America's destiny to discover her archetypal-spiritual truth-of-being through Sagittarian types of activity, and to experience her most profound feeling of self by allowing the Aries type of energies to flow through her collective personality.
      The essential character of the American mentality should be attuned to what the zodiacal sign at the Mid Heaven of the chart, Libra, represents: a capacity for togetherness and cooperation, and an unusual development of the social sense and the desire to be liked and appreciated. In no other country have strictly social values — values based on the interactions and cooperation of individual persons — been emphasized in education and developed as much as in the United States; this in spite of the prevailing individualistic nature of our society. In fact, it is because the American nation was formed as a compact between individuals (particularly at its origin in the Plymouth colony) that the need for a cooperative social spirit has been considered so essential, at least in theory. Unfortunately, Washingtonian isolationism, the rough and rugged individualism of the frontier and the relentless personal ambition and greed for power of the nineteenth-century robber barons have resulted in failure to realize the supreme value of harmonious cooperation, and of participation on the basis of equality with other nations. Nevertheless the League of Nations and the United Nations — have largely been the works of American presidents who were open to the power of America's destiny, to which our great poet, Walt Whitman, gave stirring formulation.


1. New Thought and Christian Science, with its denial of evil and disease, are characteristic American products of such a philosophical outlook.  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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