Earlier in the week, a friend documented the birth data for the Occupy Wall Street movement. According to a poster that was circulated announcing the event, the first protest was called for noon on September 17 in New York City. That’s good enough to cast a chart. Just what about this chart says “occupy”?
(Note Mercury at the top of the chart, the planet of messages and messengers in the house of corporations and governments. Many planets not shown in this rendering are aligned with Mercury — see the table below.)
The first thing that leaps off the page is Mercury, the messenger. Mercury is strong in this chart: placed in Virgo, one of the signs it rules, and being the most elevated planet in the chart. It is located, along with the Sun, in the 10th house of governments, the corporate system, and, in general, influence, reputation and fame.
It is little wonder that this movement has gone national so fast. This, despite Mercury and the Sun in a mutable sign; notably, the coverage took off after the Libra Equinox, with the Sun in a fast-moving cardinal sign and making aspects to Uranus, Pluto, and Saturn — the T-square that is defining our moment in history.
Mercury in the powerful 10th house translates to “speaking truth to power.” So far as I can see, whatever constitutes power is going to be getting the message. What happens as a result remains to be seen, but Occupy Wall Street is coming across in their boardrooms loud and clear. Mercury in Virgo is also about thoughtful, intellectual leadership in an era when one usually has to be an idiot to get on TV.
Contrary to the spin that this is a confused movement looking for a message, it is the embodiment of a message. In one month, the movement has re-framed the discussion about the economy. At the time of this little gathering, the national discussion was about why we could not pay to rebuild bridges in Vermont after Hurricane Irene. But how come we have trillions for bank bailouts and wars and executive bonuses? Now suddenly we’re talking about economic equity, job creation, single-payer healthcare, and putting the Glass-Stegall act back into place.
This chart also has a powerful 11th house, with Venus and Saturn, the two planets best placed in Libra, shining out. Venus and Saturn are great friends in this sign. So many people are sympathetic because they already understand the issue, or rather, they understand how all of the issues being raised by the protesters (the public) are related.
Yet, there’s another important factor: Mercury is hooked into a lot of energy coming from a group of minor planets in mid-Sagittarius. You may not be a fan of the minor planets, but this chart helps clarify how they work. Mercury at 14+ Virgo is picking up the energies of many of the subtle planets and a very large, not so subtle, point called The Great Attractor (see table below, with 90-degree sort focused on 14°+ mutable). The Great Attractor at the core of this chart helps us understand how this movement got so big so fast.
A few days before the first Occupy event, I wrote an article about the Pisces Full Moon, called The Chaos Generator. This was a strong Full Moon, and it too aligned with the cluster of minor planets in Sagittarius, but not as closely as Mercury, which nails it to a fraction of a degree, right at the moment of the first gathering. When you align a fast-moving planet with a group of slow-moving planets, you ramp up the power of the fast planet, giving it extra purpose and influence.
Here is a thought from that article: “The Pisces Full Moon also makes a square to the solar eclipse in Gemini earlier in the year (both are in mutable signs … this will add public resonance — eclipses have that sensation … it’s a potential turning point, which includes all of the themes associated with the planets in Sagittarius.”
Minor planets in the Occupy Wall Street chart, focused on 14+ degrees of the mutable signs (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces) which function as one influence. Many planets are aligned with Mercury, the most powerful planet in the chart. Included in the alignment are Sappho, which brings people together, and Panacea, which is about far-reaching solutions. Ephemeris calculation from Serennu.com.
I also pointed out the presence of the Great Attractor, located at 14+ Sagittarius, which was part of the aspect structure. (1) “Whatever aspects the Great Attractor takes on part of the energy — especially a conjunction. People who have natal planets in aspect to the Great Attractor can have an odd kind of charisma, where they seem untouchable. It’s as if they have an invisible boundary around them that makes you keep your distance but want to get closer at the same time. The word attractor is used because everything is rushing toward it, but nothing can ever keep up.”
Continuing: “It can also have a magnifying effect on whatever is there, like a cosmic repeating station that might take the relatively subtle theme of a planet or asteroid and broadcast it outward. Remember, the Great Attractor is the mass of many thousands of galaxies; it’s positively enormous. Then things come along and line up with it, and that’s exactly what we have going on now.”
I concluded the article, “The simplest way to say this is that unless we take our political problems to a higher level, what you might call a spiritual level, we’re going to be caught in the same game endlessly. The issue is evolutionary. We might ask ourselves not about when we’re going to come up with a solution to our political problems, but rather to the problem of politics.”
An interesting factor about Occupy Wall Street is that it is being run as a collective. There are mass meetings, called general assemblies, that are held a couple of times a day. It is further organized into working groups that take on specific tasks, but there is no name or face associated with Occupy Wall Street. It does not have an ego identity and nobody is “claiming credit” for it. This is actually a reasonable first step in solving the problem of politics. Obviously, the absurd rules of the U.S. Senate have outlived their use; it’s dumb to allow one drunk politician to hold up progress for the whole country.
Each of us will influence how this unfolds with our choices. Leadership is now in plasma mode. This is a new mental environment for some and perfectly natural for others, but it’s the environment we are in. We are in a different universe than the ‘freaking out is mandatory’ environment of the post-9/11 decade. How we think and feel will contribute to the greater body of this thought movement. This is not merely a sit-in or series of protest marches, but an evolution of thought in a highly quickened psychic environment. I suggest you learn to navigate the energy. It’s lighter and requires more agility, and if you stay flexible, you can have a lot more fun.
(1) Editor’s note: From an earlier article by Eric Francis: “Among the many strange marvels of the sign that contains the galactic center is another galactic point called the Great Attractor, located at about Sagittarius 14 degrees and two minutes.” EricFrancis.com
Eric Francis is the editor of Planet Waves