CHAPTER SIX:
A Chart for the Beginning
of the Federal Government - 7

When the Confederate States of America were formed on February 4 and 9, 1861, the United States had been in existence for 72 years. The arc between Mercury and the Moon in the Federal Government chart measures 72 degrees. When Lincoln was inaugurated President of the no longer united States on March 4, 1861, in the Federal Government chart, the progressed Sun was at Taurus 24°42' and the progressed Moon at Aquarius 4°12'. The Moon's Nodes by progression had reached the natal Ascendant a few years before, and had just squared the natal Mars.
      When the unity of the nation was reestablished in 1865, the progressed Sun had reached the Descendant of the Federal Government chart, thus symbolizing an emergence into the above-the-Earth hemisphere of the chart and giving a new power to the government's relation with other governments. But Lincoln was assassinated when this progressed Sun, on the 27th degree of Taurus, was near an exact square to the natal Mars; such a square signifying the spirit of the unfortunate period linked with the carpetbaggers' behavior and the formation of the Ku Klux Klan.
      It is interesting to compare the relative positions of the Sun and the Moon in the charts of the Federal Government and the Declaration of Independence. In the former, the Moon is waxing and near its first-quarter phase; in the latter the Moon is about 45 degrees past full — a phase which I have called "disseminating," because what theoretically has been fulfilled or envisioned — at Full Moon should then be formulated and disseminated in terms of ideas and mental projections. This contrast between the phases of the solilunar relationship in the charts of the Declaration and the Federal Government is significant because in 1776 the signers of the Declaration were spreading ideas which had developed in the Western world throughout the preceding decades, while the framers of the Constitution were attempting to build a new governmental structure.
      In the March 4, 1789, chart, the Moon is operating within a lunation cycle that had begun seven days before at the New Moon of February 25. Symbolically this can be said to measure to the year 1782, which as we already saw witnessed the adoption of the Great Seal of the United States.(10) The War of Independence had practically ended during the autumn of 1781 with Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown. The New Moon of February 25, 1789, occurred on the 8th degree of Pisces, whose symbol suggests "A call to participation in the service of the race, as an evolutionary crisis approaches."
      The following New Moon occurred late on March 26, 1789, on the 7th degree of Aries. This, by progressions, gives us the years 1811-1812 and the start of the war with England. The next New Moon took place in the morning of April 25, and brings us to the year 1841, which saw the arrival of the first settlers in California via the Oregon trail. During that lunation cycle the gold rush gave a new momentum to the westward migration, and the Civil War was fought around the last quarter's phase of that cycle. Thirty years later, the new progressed lunation cycle began with the New Moon of May 24, which was an annular and total solar eclipse. This post-Civil War period was a period of graft and corruption, both in the South and under, President Grant in Washington. The Great Chicago Fire highlighted the year 1871, and a financial panic developed in 1873. During that lunation cycle the power of big business increased tremendously, and labor began to organize and fight back (1878 and 1886). Under President McKinley the United States was growing into a world power.
      This brings us to the New Moon of June 23, 1789, at Cancer 2°, which by progression corresponds to the year 1900. Soon afterward, President McKinley was assassinated (1901) and Theodore Roosevelt as President became a symbol of American expansionism under the "Big Stick" policy; at home he had to fight against the unchecked power of the big trusts. The following lunation cycle began in 1929 with the stock-market crash and the Depression, which led to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, a vast increase in the power of the Executive and the consolidation of governmental bureaucracy

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10. This is not the way the converse progressions usually are said to operate, but in the present case this type of going backward is acceptable since we are not referring to an actual birth.  Return