Obama vs. Sarah Palin–It’s All In The Stars–Pt 1, Obama

Let’s not kid ourselves. This election isn’t about John McCain vs. Barack Obama, or Sarah Palin vs. Joe Biden, it’s about Palin vs. Obama, in the first Generation Zero showdown in a presidential election. For those out of the know, “Gen Zero” or “Gen Zed” as I lovingly refer to it is a sub generation born between 1958 and 1966, sanwiched between The Boomers and Gen X. The theme song for this back end boomer caste is Richard Hell’s, “Blank Generation” which neatly sums up many Gen Zed attitudes by cynically spitting out, “Triangles were fallin at the window as the doctor cursed/He was a cartoon long forsaken by the public eye/The nurse adjusted her garters as I breathed my first/The doctor grabbed my throat and yelled, “God’s consolation prize!.” This pretty much says it all as this/my sub-generation, the second child at the table when the fat of the land was being carved up.

The boomers got there first and capitalized on the savings that their depression era mammies and pappies salted away and started buying land and cheap real estate before the Gen Zedders were able to get on the credit train. While The Boomers came of age in the anything goes sixties, Gen Zero was weened on the acid reflux of Vietnam, the fall of Nixon and the impotence of Carter. Needless to say, influenced by the values of the sixties, their playground looked a lot less promising when they/we came to age. Instead of The Beatles and “Love Is All You Need,” they/we got Led Zeppelin and a “Whole Lotta Love” (loosely translated into “the shaft”) and the cloudy haze of self-searching through the supermarket of drugs franchised by their elders. They also didn’t really get the benefit of the “greed is good” Reagan era that Gen X trumped into dot.com start ups, IPO’s and conspicuous consumption. Trying to live up to the spiritual values that most of the boomers had abandoned (hello Bill Clinton) in favor of hard core capiltalism (hello Jerry Rubin) and late to the game when it came to an obsession with gadgets and video games, (hello Shawn Fanning), This is the generation that Obama and Palin represent and will leave it’s imprint on America and the world for at least the next four years.

Obama and Palin could not be more different as represented by their astrological make-up and yet they still mirror the zeitgeist of the times in which they were born into and raised.

Let’s start with Obama. He is Leo Personified. There is no denying that the man LOVES adulation and the messiah program that is being run for him makes him all the more malleable as it appeals to his Leo ego in a very, very, big way. What’s interesting abut Obama is because he has such a debate and grey area surrounding his birth time, certificate, etc, it’s difficult to pin him down about where the planets fall and angles meet. Based on what I have seen he has been cast as a Scorpio rising and as an Aquarian rising, but due to the controversy surrounding his birth chart, it’s difficult to get a fix on him. Sound familiar? The Aquarian rising chart has him being born in Hawaii, but the other rising suggests a differetn birthplace. Some have mentioned Canada, while others Kenya. Based on what I know and feel, I believe Obama is a Scorpio rising. That said, he has Neptune in Scorpio sitting nearly on top of his ascendent. This is critical as it transmits the experience of Obama as messiah to the masses. With Neptune in Scorpio greeting the world at large, people are apt to project feelings of religiousity and worship onto him and let’s not detract from the fact that he can be incredibly inspiring, so it is easy for people to want to put their faith in him. Whenever a planet like Pluto, Uranus and in this case, Neptune sits on the ascendent, the person with such an alignment has the ability to impact the world at large. They can appear almost trans-personal, channeling energies that are at times supra-human.

But as always these qualities have their shadowy doppelganger and in Obama’s case it’s delusion, both his own and those that worship at the altar of “Barry O.” There can be an almost pathologically disengeuous quality that someone with Neptune right on his rising sign would display. There can also be heavy skeletons in the closet, ones that involve sex and drugs and lastly, since Neptune often represents Jesus/Christ, Age of Pisces, it’s also a sacrificial alignment, the sign of the martyr, the hanged man. Barack Obama, for all of his elevated inspiration and ability to rally the masses could also become a fall guy or Christ-like figure, crucified for some other agenda. Not predicting–just saying.

His moon is in Gemini and sits on the cusp between his 7th and 8th houses. As it sits right on the cusp between those two houses, Obama is torn between honoring the traditional commitment of finding emotional security in a stable relationship and indulging in the deeper realms of his psyche for forbidden fruit and dark pleasures, outside the realm of relational confomity–especially as it relates to the duality inherent in Gemini. It’s a potentially compromising position to say the least. For Obama, the central quesion is, “Should I stray or should I no?” In any case, his Gemini moon and natal Venus in Cancer gives him two planets that connect with aspects of The USA chart, with it’s Sun in Cancer and ascendant in Gemini. With these two components, it’s clear that he has a pre-destined relationship with this land it’s populace. It’s a fascinating dichotomy/dynamic. Interestingly enough, the Sabian symbol for Obama’s Cancerian Venus is one degree, which translates into; ” On a ship the sailor lowers an old flag and raises a new one.” Will Obama oversee and orchestrate not just a new vision of America, but actually a new America itself?

In the Scorpio rising chart of astrologer, Joyce Hopewell (now there’s a cabinet seer for Obama), has both his Saturn and Jupiter sitting at the nadir of the chart, while both his Sun and Mercury in Leo in the 10th as well as a number of other planets in neighboring houses, all funnel down into Saturn/Jupiter, right on the cusp of the 3rd and 4th houses, the rulers of the US. I have little doubt that he will be the next president of the US, but what is not clear is how he will respond as the next president. With duplicity and duality, conviction and conniving, all mixed together, he is a lightning rod for both light and dark energies and the only thing that will save him and us from bewing swayed to move the country into a friendlier facsim will be his ability to always question the motivation of self and others. While surety and confidence have been his calling card without fail, if he becomes president, more humility and doubt will be his greatest allies for the highest good.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at the very surprising, Sarah Palin.