US forecast Apr 18 to May 16, 2017

[Jim Eshelman]

(Originally written on the old site April 5, 2017)

USA Mundane Forecast
for the four weeks beginning April 18, 2017

LONG-TERM PATTERNS Map 1 Map 2
For the twelve months beginning January 14, the United States Year chart promotes greater optimism. It might be the best, most interesting year we've had in quite a while. Jupiter is most angular (IC, 0°56'). Uranus is on Midheaven (3°01') opposite Jupiter (1°41'). Sun squares MC (1°14') and Jupiter (2°37').

JUPITER OPPOSITE URANUS brings ideological rebellion - both peaceful and violent forms, as diverse as Woodstock and the storming of the Bastille. Expect remapping of the larger social contract, pushing for wider horizons and expanded opportunities. Proponents of liberal social and political agendas raise their voices, demanding civil rights and social justice. At best, it brings collective optimism, inventiveness, new tech vision, and futurism. Political and thought leaders show more insight and resourcefulness in the face of vast complexity.

However, SUN-JUPITER promises plenty of self-serving, elitist "politics as usual" in the mix, motivated by a non-philanthropic tendency of people with money and power wanting more money and power.

With Jupiter most angular, the year is overall optimistic. Expect victories (e.g., military victories and athletic wins), diplomacy and peace, and heightened prosperity, economic expansion, and a spirit of abundance, celebration, and national pride. With Sun angular, the authority of government is a larger, more persistent presence in the typical American's life. As Sun is well aspected, this will be mostly a beneficent presence.

Arisolar (April 14) Map 1 Map 2
A dormant ARISOLAR brings only a Moon-Neptune mundane square (0°27'). Primarily, this filters everything else through a fun-house mirror's distortions. Possible expressions are so diverse they are hard to anticipate. Expect a heightened sense of deception and sleight-of-hand, even scandal. Extreme waves of emotional reaction, hysteria, panic, fervor, and herd-mind arousal are added to every other eventuality, accompanied by confusion, disorientation, uncertainty, and undermined feelings of safety. The world gets less rational and more emotionally reactive for the three months mid-April through mid-July.


BRIDGE
April 18 is the final day of a MARS-URANUS-PLUTO Zone (which comes back in a couple of days). The tone (fed by the Mars-dominant lunar ingresses) is forceful, aggressive, even explosive. Startling, threatening, and seemingly unpredictable events are highly destructive if physical, assaulting of the status quo if ideological, and stressing us to the breaking point if psychological. World-wide, transiting Mars squares Capsolar Moon, which always marks a few days of increased volatility and threat everywhere, typically with violence, blood, fire, explosions, and destruction - even war and other attack - often culminating in significant loss of life.

April 19 and April 25 to May 7 are URANUS-PLUTO Zones. These weeks emphasize destabilizing, revising, remapping, anti-establishment, anti-government trends that challenge current systems and claw at iconic structures.

April 20-24 returns to a MARS-URANUS-PLUTO Zone as transiting Mars squares CapQ Moon. This repeats the above tone with a Moon-Mars quality felt in all parts of the world (but particularized as Uranus-Pluto for the United States). Expect violence, blood, fire, explosions, and destruction often culminating in significant loss of life. Other forms include war and other attacks, and the death or crisis of leaders. (Mars’ effect is not limited to those categories.)

May 8-14 is a PLUTO Zone. Pluto signifies events that stun the senses and halt the mind, most often separating or severing connections, or a confrontation between mainstream and counter-establishment sensibilities. Human events tend to be fiercely political (terrorist attacks, catastrophic destruction, severing historic relations). For Washington, Pluto commonly reflects profound national impact of an event elsewhere in the country that Washington must confront, and with which it quickly must come to terms.

May 15-16 (and continuing) is a MARS-PLUTO Zone, as Mars squares Cansolar Ascendant. The pair is violent, ferocious, often with explosive unleashing of force (e.g., bombs, vehicular explosions and collisions, wars and other aggression, shooting massacres, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and fires that release explosive force).


LUNAR INGRESSES

Caplunar (April 18)
The Caplunar describes April 18 to May 16, and especially the first two weeks (April 18 to May 1). Mars conjoins Westpoint (0°34'). Moon squares Uranus ecliptically (0°15'), and mundanely aspects Jupiter (0°39').

This is a volatile, threatening month. Mars is angular for so many hurtful events, one wonders where to begin. The tone is of war, or at least severe contention and competition. Angular Mars can mark diverse natural disasters, fires, explosions, and accidents, high profile deaths by inflammatory illness or violence, and, of course, significant military or police activity, actions causing great violence and damage in the name of war, and a general air of crisis and assault facing political leaders. These, or events of a similar tone, are expected for the United States during these four weeks.

At the very least, expect blunt aggression, sudden and outlandish, with "bombshells" that knock over the table and spill the ongoing game. Mars expressions will be sudden, surprising, explosive, eruptive, and shifting. Moon-Jupiter adds patriotic fervor, ideological aggression (especially religious motives), and conflict arising from favoring one community, ethnicity, or other contained group over another.

April 20-21 brings Sun-Uranus to CapQ angles, then the 25th reinforces with transiting Uranus, newly in Aries and exactly square Capsolar Sun. The president is in the cross-hairs of this, and we expect something psychologically startling and explosive with other Uranus themes highlighted. More malignantly, the CanQ has Saturn angular (usually mixed with Neptune) April 18-23.

Arilunar (April 25)
The Arilunar covering April 25 to May 1 is dormant, so the Caplunar persists without dilution. Uranus themes are quite vivid this week, though. Besides the 0°08' Moon-Uranus conjunction, both are within a couple of degrees of Mercury. The normal collection of Mercury-Uranus events will prevail worldwide which, for the United States, especially means significant revelations and disclosures, sudden tactical shifts, and accelerated tweet-storms. Uncertainty fuels the sense of emergency, of things happening at a rapid pace; and uncertainty is rarely good for the stock market. Scientific and tech news is likely to be ablaze this week, at a level affecting the world as a whole rather than America in particular.

Uranus has just entered Aries (it is at 0°05'), on a trial basis. This will inaugurate longer-term social and geopolitical trends that I will discuss elsewhere. Neptune continues on CanQ angles the first couple days of the week.

Canlunar (May 1)
The Canlunar covers May 1-8. Moon-Mercury-Uranus recurs (Moon is now 0°03' from their midpoint), so the worldwide trends begun last week continue. Unique to the week, though, is Neptune within 1° of a Washington angle.

This combination gives the week a weird air. News, even revelations, fly at a rapid rate, but emotionally (even factually) one doesn't know what to trust about it. People wildly think along atypical lines. "More facts" doesn't mean "better facts," let alone "clearer facts." We have confusion, uncertainty, and disorientation; and it will be interesting (but probably not pleasant) to see its effect on the stock market.

Jupiter crosses CanQ angles May 2 and May 6-7 (each has a two-day orb).

Liblunar (May 8)
The Liblunar covers May 8-16. This is the worrisome week, concentrating all the factors that have built in earlier lunar ingresses of the month.

For the third week we have Moon-Mercury-Uranus, now a partile opposition. Neptune, for the second week, is exactly angular. To these, add a foreground Mars-Neptune square (0°32' in mundo). Panic is the keyword. Expect terror, surging adrenaline, heightened hysterical emotion - increasing risk of treachery, sabotage, other betrayal, poisoned relationships, and scandal. Typical expressions of this aspect include fires, violent natural events, leader deaths or crises, populist uprisings or mobs, financial panics, and mass murders.

Saturn conjoins CanQ Asc May 10, and Pluto squares MC May 11 (each felt two days either side). These look like the central crisis days for Washington and the nation.

[Jim Eshelman]

PROGRESSIONS
Although Pres. Trump has no exact progressed aspects this month, several are ongoing. He's still riding the long wave of progressed Sun conjunct natal Ascendant (expiring in August). Progressed Mercury conjoins natal Pluto, while progressed Mars squares natal Mercury.

Of great concern for him is progressed Saturn conjunct progressed MC, which peaks next January. Surely only the Sun-Ascendant progression is holding this at bay, and it can't do that much longer. The long-term picture for Pres. Trump professionally and politically is dire.

TRANSITS
PLUTO squares natal Jupiter all month. This uplifts and casts down, in both cases performing extremely and against the odds. It has lifted him to a pinnacle, and may continue to hold him there, though his risk is a Nixonesque hard casting down on the rocks if this mingles with other adverse planets. (Last month's strong, positive Jupiter transits are now gone.)

URANUS squares his Saturn until May 8 (being exact on April 20). Security is challenged. Solid, unmoving things taken for granted are now shaken. Tension rises. Typically, people become stubborn, emphatically independent, and uncooperative.

Beginning May 6, Uranus squares his Venus. More on that next month, but it should go according to the standard interpretations. (Is this primarily personal or political? Does it affects his closest personal relationships, or foreign relations?)

Key Mars transits, of briefer duration (a day or two either side of exact) Mars square his Mars April 18 and Mars square his Ascendant April 22. These suggest he is deeply embedded in conflict and aggression.

SIDEREAL LUNAR RETURN (April 16)
Transiting Mars squares natal Mars (1°20') and conjoins natal MC (1°04') - right on the SLR angles. Therefore, this month Mars is the primary descriptor for Trump (via his SLR) and the nation (via the Caplunar). We can soft-pedal this with cautious language, but the only fully honest prediction is that this month either brings us into fully engaged war, or right to its front door.

Other combat is possible, too, of course. Trump is more neglectful of his manners than usual. Natal Pluto sets widely. Add the Pluto-Jupiter and Uranus-Saturn transits discussed above. With Mercury aspecting his Saturn, facts do not fall his way.

DEMI-SLR (April 29)
Things get even worse in the last half of his month. In the Demi-SLR, Mars is 0°01' (a mere minute!) from square Midheaven in Washington. Saturn is 0°31' from Descendant. Moon rises within a degree, and Moon opposes Saturn across the horizon (1°31' wide in mundo).

It's bad for him. His health and physical well-being are under serious assault. Our challenge is to discern where this comes from. While the nation's well-being may be at risk, this seems much more a personal attack - a ferocious one - on either his physical or political health. Pluto-Jupiter and Uranus-Saturn are in force, of course, and both of his luminaries are broadly angular - which makes it seem more personal.

SIDEREAL LUNAR RETURN (May 13)
Just before the end of the Caplunar month, Trump has a new lunar return - and the pressure doesn't let up. Pluto is 0°23' from Descendant. Thus begins a month that will end with decisive finality. Something is ended, a line crossed - there is no looking back. Pluto squares his natal Jupiter (0°49'), and this aspect is the key to exactly what happens. My wishful thinking sides with this marking a decisive fall but, in all honesty, it could reverse to a beyond-all-odds win. As Donald Bradley wrote in 1948,

Jupiter-Pluto. No flights of the imagination are allowed by this planetary combination, which is the harbinger of the end of the old and beginning of a new cycle in the native's relationship to his career, his financial status, and the outside world. (Cf. the speedy coronation of new kings.) It is the marker of crises which make or break the native's reputation, by forcing grave issues out into the light of day, for all to see and judge.

A fall is more likely when his other transits are considered. Saturn aspects his Pluto, Uranus squares his Venus, his natal Saturn and Neptune are similar distances off Ascendant and IC. It is not a fun time to be Donald Trump. Nonetheless, this SLR mostly overlaps the mostly positive May 16 Caplunar... of which, more next month.

[Jim Eshelman]

(Originally written 4/25/17)

We have begun moving THAAD missile defense systems into South Korea. Additionally, tomorrow the entire Senate is meeting at the White House for a briefing on North Korea by the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Director of National Intelligence, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

It is thinly possible that the meeting is not to brief them sufficiently to support an out-and-out declaration of war; but, even if that's the case, the very fact that they're meeting and we are deploying missiles just off NK's southern border is probably enough to call this month's main predictions a success. I suspect, though, that there is more to come.

[Jim Eshelman]

(Written 4/30/17)

Moon-Uranus-Mercury, that are of such interest, share a swath through the eastern edge of the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas (they center on Wichita, e.g.) before cutting through central Oklahoma and Texas. See also a curve from New Mexico-Arizona to Washington.

6:20 PM Central , Canton, Texas (east Texas) Saturday April 29, 2017. After 4-6" of rain, at least three tornados, including one that might have been the longest track tornado ever seen in Texas, touched down, killing four people and injuring 52.
A group setting up for a prom at the local highschool huddled in a bathroom and all survived the building's collapse.

People also died in Arkansas and Missouri after being swept away by flooding.

[Jim Eshelman]

Wow, I'd call that "cutting a swath through Texas" LOL.

For Canton, the Arilunar MC is 2°43' Aries, placing Mercury, Moon, and Uranus all less than 2°24' of MC. Sun also squares Asc, 0°11'.

CapQ MC is currently (this minute) 21°24' Gemini, opposite ingress Pluto. There's even a nice touch for the prom, since transiting Venus conjoins Capsolar MC this weekend, and Jupiter squares Capsolar Asc. Mars is exactly on Cansolar IC.

[Jim Eshelman]

The month is over - and I invite your debrief on it. (I'm sorry to say that I'm quite impressed with how the Mars-Neptune worked out in last week's Liblunar; and Trump was quite obviously under the pressures described for him, I think. Finally, the high-tech world-spanning finish to that long Mercury-Uranus buildup was merely the capper on a month of abundant technology announcements.)

[SteveS]

I'm quite impressed with how the Mars-Neptune worked out in last week's Liblunar

Exactly!

[Jim Eshelman]

Stirred by other news this morning (about FBI initial inquiries into Trump etc.), I'm reminded that Trump fired Comey on May 8. That's a most fascinating thing given the Liblunar and Trump's lunars above.