CHAPTER FIVE:
Two Hundred Years of Growth Through Crisis - 8

The United States was born as a collective national person during the Saturn-Jupiter cycle which began with the conjunction of these planets in Aries (1762) toward the end of the French and Indian Wars. France's defeat in this lengthy series of wars ensured the prenatal development of the United States. The last of the Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions in Aries (and in Fire signs of the zodiac) occurred some sixty years later, in 1821. This was during the second administration of President James Monroe, whose Monroe Doctrine asserted the national will to keep the old European countries out of the affairs of the Americas, and established the U.S. claim to a privileged position in the Western Hemisphere.
      The Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of 1782, falling in the first House of the U.S. birth chart, followed the de facto conclusion of the War of Independence after Cornwallis' surrendered at Yorktown. America was experiencing her new identity as a national entity. Uranus — the herald of a new era opening up the potentiality of all human transformation — had been discovered on March 13, 1781, a few months before the end of the hostilities.
      Soon after the conjunction of 1802, obtaining from France the Louisiana Purchase established the United States as a continental nation — an international deal which gave it considerable prestige in the world community. This prestige had nevertheless to be reaffirmed through the crisis of the War of 1812, as Saturn in Capricorn was opposed by Jupiter. At this time Jupiter was moving close to the position in Cancer that it occupied on July 4, 1776.
      Astrologers often refer to the 1842 conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn as "the Great Mutation" because it began an uninterrupted series of conjunctions in Earth signs. A chart erected for the exact time of the conjunction on January 26 is considered important in establishing long-range trends in world affairs. I believe that since we can now deal with the vaster and far more inclusive five-hundred-year cycle of Neptune and Pluto, the Great Mutation chart has lost much of its world-wide significance. Nevertheless, the 1840's mark a great turning point, with the discovery of Neptune by the astronomer Johann Galle on September 23, 1846, and the beginning of the "seed-period" of the Piscean Age (approximately 1846 to 2062). This 1842 conjunction fell in, the first House of the U.S. chart, stressing issues connected with the essential individuality of the nation.
      The Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of October 21, 1861, in Virgo is the most important in American history, as it marked the beginnings of the Civil War and of Lincoln's term of office (March 4, 1861). As this conjunction fell in the ninth House of the U.S. chart, we might say that a basic philosophical or legal issue was at stake, as well as one related to expansion. The westward spread of the United States had made slavery totally obsolete, and with the spread of Neptunian humanitarian ideals, the situation in the South had become spiritually intolerable. Slavery became an international issue when English workers, urged by Karl Marx, protested against England's intention of breaking the blockade of the Southern states in order to get the cotton needed for her mills. Had the superior English Navy intervened and broken the blockade, the Confederate States would have obtained the money and munitions they badly needed, and the war might have ended very differently. Lincoln was in constant correspondence with the International Workingman's Association in London, and since 1846 had taken great interest in labor problems. His first message to Congress, in December 1861, not only condemned slavery but took a strong stand in favor of labor.(6)
      The 1881 conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn fell in the fifth House of the U.S. chart. Nothing very spectacular occurred at the time, except perhaps the Chinese Exclusion Act and the beginning of some general restrictions on immigration. An attempt by Secretary of State James Blaine to establish a Pan-American movement failed at the time, although it succeeded much later. A connection can be established between this conjunction in Taurus and the conjunction of 1941 that witnessed World War II and our involvement in it. A massive gathering of planets in Taurus followed the 1881 conjunction, stressing an ever-increasing concern with material productivity and a materialistic-behavioristic philosophy. The Jupiter-Saturn opposition that followed occurred as Neptune and Pluto came to their conjunction in 1891-1892, opening a new five-hundred-year era in the development of civilization.
      The following conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn occurred as America's participation in the world community and in the basic philosophical, psychological and religious issues of our times was increasing. 1901 marks the beginning of Theodore Roosevelt's forceful international policy and the introduction of new technological discoveries — from movies to aviation. The Wright brothers' first successful flight took place on December 17, 1903. 1921 marks the collapse of President Wilson's international "great dream" and a return to isolationism.
      At the same time, as the conjunction fell in the second House, a financial and industrial boom was beginning. A number of prominent American intellectuals moved to Europe — particularly to Paris — to protest against the materialism and Puritanism of American middle-class society.
      The 1941 conjunction witnessed Franklin D. Roosevelt's handling of World War II. And with 1961 we come to President John F. Kennedy, the two Cuban crises and our deepening involvement in Vietnam. The opposition of Jupiter and Saturn, from December 1969 to November 1971, was remarkable in that there were actually five such oppositions within these twenty-two months; a significant symbol of a particularly confused international situation as well as of a tug of war between conservatives and liberals in organized religion and in the field of education. Preceding this Jupiter-Saturn opposition, Richard M. Nixon was elected President — after the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King. At the same time, men reached the moon, and the senseless killing of protesting students at Kent State University added another tragic chapter to the conflict between an idealistic youth and the status-quo worshipping Establishment. We shall see in a later chapter what might be suggested by the triple conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Libra, which takes place in 1981 in the tenth House of the U.S. chart between the Mid Heaven and Saturn.

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6. Cf. Internationalism by Irwin St. John Tucker, quoting at great length from Nicolay and Hay's Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln and including some of the correspondence mentioned above.  Return