Barack Obama Chart Analysis: Part 2

In Part 1 of Obama's chart analysis, I looked at the evolutionary axis including the Moon's old and new responses. We now continue with the trauma helix and the planetary functions, from Saturn to the Sun.

Trauma Helix

Picking up where we left off, the young Obama held a speech against Apartheid to widespread applause, only to claim afterwards that it meant nothing to him. Long story short: His friend Regina goes on to criticize him for his self-centeredness and he begins to rethink some of his prior actions. There are also other past episodes that come to light, such as a wild party he held with a brother that created such a mess that the Mexican cleaning maids arriving next morning started to cry.

This apparently led to a moment of reckoning for Obama. I am quoting it at length here so that you can see for yourself that the details fit very exactly with the trauma helix involving the outer planets. It is a part of Obama's past that is not very well known.

Look at yourself before you pass judgment. Don’t make someone else clean up your mess. It’s not about you. They were such simple points, homilies I had heard a thousand times before, in all their variations, from TV sitcoms and philosophy books, from my grandparents and from my mother. I had stopped listening at a certain point, I now realized, so wrapped up had I been in my own perceived injuries, so eager was I to escape the imagined traps that white authority had set for me. To that white world, I had been willing to cede the values of my childhood, as if those values were somehow irreversibly soiled by the endless falsehoods that white spoke about black.
       Except now I was hearing the same thing from black people I respected, people with more excuses for bitterness than I might ever claim for myself. Who told you that being honest was a white thing? they asked me. Who sold you this bill of goods, that your situation exempted you from being thoughtful or diligent or kind, or that morality had a color? You’ve lost your way, brother. Your ideas about yourself-about who you are and who you might become-have grown stunted and narrow and small.
       [...] How had that happened? I started to ask myself, but before the question had even formed in my mind, I already knew the answer.
       Fear. The same fear that had caused me to push Coretta away back in grammar school. The same fear that had caused me to ridicule Tim in front of Marcus and Reggie. The constant, crippling fear that I didn’t belong somehow, that unless I dodged and hid and pretended to be something I wasn’t I would forever remain an outsider, with the rest of the world, black and white, always standing in judgment.

Dreams From My Father, p. 109-110

At then end of this paragraph, we have the South Node 1H Aquarius outsider spelled out in clear. Before that, we also have indications of trauma carried over from prior lifetimes, as expressed by the outer, transpersonal planets (or as Michael de Baker calls them, multipersonal). Jeffrey Green himself worked with the outer planets as trauma significators, so this is standard EA. What Michael de Baker did in his book Chiron: Trauma Key was to show how 1) Uranus, Neptune and Pluto express different strands of the same trauma and 2) how Chiron interprets this and conveys it in condensed form to Saturn. This is the model I will be using here. In summary:

• Uranus represents the mental aspect of trauma; shocking events that trigger past-life memories
• Neptune represents the spiritual aspect of trauma; the sense of meaninglessness and hopelessness
• Pluto represents the psychological aspect of identification with the trauma which the soul pulls into its own narrative
• Chiron is the messenger who picks up the trauma from Uranus, interprets it and delivers it to the physical realm of Saturn. Saturn will then know how consciousness will need to be structured (how the individual will need to restructure or reframe himself) for evolution to occur.

I will start with Uranus, as this is often a mental trigger for past-life trauma being reenacted. Note that we treat Uranus as trauma indicator separately from Uranus as South Node ruler or as a planet conjunct the North Node.

• With Uranus in 7H Leo, we can see the mental trauma in the shocks delivered to him by other people (7H) due to his self-centeredness and his pride (Leo).
• The same thing is experienced by Neptune as a deep source of meaninglessness for having betrayed (Scorpio) his own truth and morality (9H)...
• ... and by Pluto as having been judged unworthy (Virgo) by other people (7H) and having failed to make the necessary adjustments (Virgo) for equality to be realized (7H).
• Finally, Chiron will interpret the whole story as a pain having to do with having lost (Pisces) his way (1H) and having forgotten (Pisces) who he is (1H). With Chiron as well as with the other outer planets, the healing is found in the trauma itself: remembering (Pisces) who he is (1H) and remembering (Pisces) his path (1H) in life.

You may remember that I previously looked at Chiron as having to do with humiliation and invisibility in connection to his sense of identity - in opposition to Pluto, the issue of lack of equality. I believe both of these interpretations are valid, though the latter is more telling as part of the trauma helix.

Planetary Functions

So Regina was right; it had been just about me. My fear. My needs. And now? I imagined Regina’s grandmother somewhere, her back bent, the flesh of her arms shaking as she scrubbed an endless floor. Slowly, the old woman lifted her head to look straight at me, and in her sagging face I saw that what bound us together went beyond anger or despair or pity.
       What was she asking of me, then? Determination, mostly. The determination to push against whatever power kept her stooped instead of standing straight. The determination to resist the easy or the expedient. You might be locked into a world not of your own making, her eyes said, but you still have a claim on how it is shaped. You still have responsibilities.
       The old woman’s face dissolved from my mind, only to be replaced by a series of others. The copperskinned face of the Mexican maid, straining as she carries out the garbage. [...] The tight-lipped, chalk-colored face of [grandma] Toot as she boards the six-thirty A.M. bus that will take her to work. Only a lack of imagination, a failure of nerve, had made me think that I had to choose between them. They all asked the same thing of me, these grandmothers of mine.
       My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn’t, couldn’t, end there.
       At least that’s what I would choose to believe.

Dreams From My Father, p. 110

To change a dysfunctional situation, we need determination. We need to take responsibility. In other words, we need Saturn.

It just so happens that Obama's Saturn is also in Capricorn, so perhaps the message is hammered home an extra time here. But whatever house or sign it is in, Saturn always points the way to restructuring, reframing, taking responsibility and taking action (slow, conscious action that is, not the impulsive action of Mars).

In the planetary sequence I use here, each planet informs the next one, going from Saturn to Jupiter to Mars and all the way to the Sun:

• Saturn shows how Obama can restructure his consciousness to take responsibility (Capricorn) for alleviating the suffering of others (12H). This in turn informs Jupiter of the fundamental perspective he needs to have on the world...
• ... to see how he can bring about healing and hope (12H) through radical change. In other words, "Change we can believe in". From here on, I believe Obama as president is quickly becoming recognizable, yes?
• Mars then knows how to act and what to act upon: to try to bring about a radical transformation (8h) of all things dysfunctional (Virgo), literally including the healthcare system (Virgo).
• Venus then knows that his primary relationship needs to be with his own impartial leadership (5H - archetypally linked to the Sun: the impartial, generous light that shines equally upon everyone), a leadership that needs to be nurturing (Cancer) and also impartial with regards to race (Cancer).
• Mercury then needs to structure his thinking and communication in the following way: critically discerning (6H) where, when and how he can exercise said leadership (Leo). You may recall that Obama's opponents weren't exactly eager to cooperate with him. On some occasions, he also faced opposition from within the Democratic party, such as when he tried to close the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay. For this reason, he needed to discern on which issues he could lead and which political battles he could win.
• Now, all of the above planets revolve around the Sun. They all contribute to evolution, but here we have the Sun in particular as the focal point for evolution. It is as if the planets do not contribute directly to evolution on their own, but indirectly through the actualization of life purpose that the Sun stands for. So what does the Sun in 6H Leo stand for? Let's have a final quote from the book, a quote from Obama's life as community organizer:

Through organizing, through shared sacrifice, membership had been earned. And because membership was earned - because this community I imagined was still in the making, built on the promise that the larger American community, black, white, and brown, could somehow redefine itself - I believed that it might, over time, admit the uniqueness of my own life.
       That was my idea of organizing. It was a promise of redemption.

Dreams From My Father, p. 135

Redemption (6H) through organization and leadership (Leo). Could that be it? Could this be the single, most important thing that all of the other planets are revolving around?

There are others who have recognized Obama's drive for redemption. There is the redemption for his own past failures, as well as for his father's past failures (he failed miserably in later life) and through his autobiography there is also the sense that Obama has been driven to redeem the black community as a whole from its failures, its dysfunctions, its "pathology". (Dreams From My Father, p. 192) Not to mention the international reputation of the United States as a whole, tarnished as it was after the Bush administration's "war on terror". If he could do that, would that not also contribute directly to the perfection of equality and harmony that is written in the Pluto placement conjunct the North Node?

The sixth house is about making adjustments, which are necessary if true equality is to be attained (the archetype of Libra following Virgo). This can come in the form of redemption for past failures, but from the quote above we also get a sense of something more: If the American community could redefine itself, it might "admit the uniqueness" of his own life. In other words, there might finally be a place for someone like himself. People - himself included - might think that he is alright, after all, regardless of what he did or did not do. And that is also a Virgo adjustment worthy of the name. That is also redemption.

Final Thoughts

There are a few more things I would like to comment on. There are the two retrograde planets, Saturn and Jupiter, in conjunction in the twelfth house. Now, I have not read Obama's latest book A Promised Land where he describes his first term in office, but I've read that it contains a great deal of reflection, reconsideration and reevaluation of some of the choices he made as president. It's as if Saturn and Jupiter, both strongly tied to his political vision, constantly need to restate their questions: Did I really take responsibility to alleviate suffering (Saturn 12H Capricorn)? What changes could have been made - and how can I assume this responsibility anew, today? And how can I reformulate a vision that inspires hope for radical change (Jupiter 12H Aquarius) - without inspiring so much hope that I cannot live up to the inflated expectations placed on me? (Interestingly, on October 9, 2009, when the Nobel Committee announced their decision to award Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, transiting Jupiter was also retrograde conjunct Obama's ascendant). It is one of the primary features of retrograde planets - a constant need to rethink, reconsider, redo, and really most other verbs I could think of starting with "re-".

Notice also the trine from Jupiter to the Moon. Archetypally, the trine lands the Moon 3 degrees into Leo territory relative to Jupiter (i.e. 123 degrees after Jupiter). The Moon, relative to Jupiter trying to inspire hope for radical change, is "stepping into leadership". Enough with the Leo stuff yet?

There is also a very close skipped step involving the MC/IC axis. It is clear that Obama's career has taken a toll on his family life, so much that he says he could not accept another heavy political position of any kind, or his wife Michelle will leave him. In simple terms, the skipped step involved his commitment (Scorpio) to his career (10H) as opposed to the stability (Taurus) of family life (4H).

Finally, though I have followed Obama's autobiography rather closely to back up my findings, I feel there might be another facet of the Pluto placement that I did not touch upon. Is it not the case that a sense of being "wrong" (Virgo) was projected onto Obama by others (7H) during his presidency? That whatever he did, no matter how inclusive he tried to be, it was never good enough (Virgo) for his opponents? And at the same time as he had all kinds of projections heaped upon him, he was sometimes simply ignored (Chiron 1H Pisces opposite Pluto)? I cannot ask Obama about his experience; if he felt humiliated at times, he never showed it. Yet on 3 March 2015 when the Israeli president, after a stealth invitation, spoke to Congress to openly condemn Obama's foreign policy (a move considered a major breach of diplomatic protocol), transiting Neptune was on Obama's Chiron in 1H Pisces, opposing Pluto. Obama might have wondered, once more in his life, why he was being made to feel invisible.

References

Obama, Barack (2007). Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. Canongate Canons.