by April Elliott Kent
On January 8, with Jupiter and Uranus in a nearly precise conjunction, a gunman opened fire on a rally in Tucson, Arizona. Fourteen people were wounded, including congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Six others were killed, among them a nine year old girl. Recently elected to her school’s student government, Christina Taylor Green had an enthusiasm for politics and had gone to the rally to hear the congresswoman speak.
After the incident, it emerged that Green was born on September 11, 2001. Nine years after the shocking attacks of that day, it’s almost impossible to remember that Americans were once a people as bright and idealistic as Christina Taylor Green. The rhetoric dividing the nation has become more vicious by the year and has ultimately turned deadly. The Uranus/Pluto revolution foretold by so many astrologers is underway. Forget the war on terror; as the incident in Tucson reveals, we appear to be a nation at war with one other.
I’ve avoided reading or hearing much about the Tucson incident. It’s the kind of story that’s become heart-searingly familiar in recent years, and the kind that lures the most hateful kinds of crazies to internet message boards and radio call-in shows. But when I was preparing to write this essay and looked up the Sabian Symbol for the Full Moon’s degree, 30 Cancer, I was startled when I read:
A Daughter of the American Revolution
The Daughters of the American Revolution is a lineage-based women’s organization that describes itself as being “for the descendants of individuals who aided in achieving American independence.” Applicants must meet very specific genealogical criteria to be admitted. But while it’s unknown whether Christina Taylor Green might someday have sought membership in this exclusive club, she has nevertheless become a different kind of symbol – an unwitting “daughter” of a new American Revolution.
Tellingly, the degree of the Sun at this Full Moon is 30 Capricorn:
Directors of a large firm meet in secret conference.
Many believe that patriarchal figures lurk in the shadowy halls of our nation’s democracy, deciding our fates in secret; that democracy is, and perhaps has always been, an illusion. If that’s your belief, it’s an understandable impulse to want to wrestle your destiny from their fists.
What’s unsettling is that the current climate more closely resembles the Civil War than the American Revolution, with Americans killing other Americans. When history looks back at the current civil unrest, I feel confident its beginnings will be traced to September 11, 2001. That’s the day we finally lost whatever innocence we had left as a people, the day the widening ideological gulf that divides us opened up and released foul demons eager to commandeer our public discourse.
But it’s also the day Christina Taylor Green was born. Kids, even those born on one of the darkest days of our nation’s history and reared on a steady diet of cynicism, don’t yet know they’re supposed to distrust their politicians or hate their fellow citizens. They’re still hopeful and engaged, interested in everything, and invested in a vision of the future that doesn’t include politicians and innocent bystanders being murdered in front of a supermarket.
At this Full Moon, the Sun is conjunct, and the Moon opposed, violent Mars in revolutionary Aquarius. It does seem as though – Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and Christ notwithstanding – revolution inevitably produces blood and violence. But both the Sun and Moon are also in positive aspect to the dazzling conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus in Pisces, the sign of empathy and acceptance. Perhaps there is yet the possibility of reclaiming the kinder vision of America that many of us grew up with. If a day like September 11, 2001 can produce both shocking catastrophe and a luminous little girl, I have to believe that January 8, 2011 may likewise contain the seeds of tender goodness as well as terrible evil.
The revolution is upon us, and we are all its sons and daughters, members of its not-so-exclusive club. Our country is in trouble, and someday, in hindsight, revolution may turn out to have been not only inevitable, but necessary. What’s yet to be revealed is exactly what we’ll be fighting for, who we’ll really be fighting against, and what kind of fighters we intend to be.
© 2011 April Elliott Kent
All rights reseserved
