I'm sending some of my thoughts about this event at it approaches this Tuesday morning. My compadre Sparky Shootingstar brought it to my attention at Woman's Dance in West Point Texas, the location I have used for the chart of this event.

The chart for West Point Texas is for June 8 2004 at sunrise at 6:37 am CDT. But I am not sure whether the event will be visible from East Texas. I do know that the tail end of it WILL BE visible from the eastern-most States of North America at sunrise, while the beginning of the event will be visible in Asia at sunset. From beginning to end, the passage will take about 6 hours. The beginning is called "1st contact" and the end is called "last contact." The best veiwing sites to see the entire event from beginning to end will be over the Middle East and North Africa. This should mean that is will have special impact on this region. Or it may mean that this is the region that is even now being most affected by this event. Duh!

The small disk of Venus will pass across the top portion of the Sun as the viewer sees it. A small telescope or even good binoculars will make it visible. Be sure to use the same kind of glasses or filter recommended for watching a solar eclipse -- that is unless you are a sun dancer in ceremony on that date. Which brings me to a point about this event in these times and what is has to do with the last two passages of Venus across the Sun's face on Dec 6 1882 and on Dec 9 1874.

To understand the astrological meaning of such an event we must compare it to the previous events.

By the way, the transits of Venus are rare events occurring in pairs. The whole cycle is about 240 years. For many centuries the current transits are occurring in the Signs of Sagittarrius and Gemini. Two in Sag in the eighteenth century, then two in Gemini in the 21st. The first event is usually followed by a second 8 years later. (Once or twice in a millenia, the second event is skipped. This was so in the 14th century and it will happen again on Dec 18th in 3089.) After the two events separated by 8 years comes a hiatus of 105.5 years, then two more passes, the a lapse of 121.5 years. Then the cycle begins again. Only the last 5 passes have been commented upon in literature. No living person was witness to the last event that happened 121.5 years ago on Dec 9 1882.

From an astrologer's point of view, I need to see the event's whole chart and to consider where all of the planets are -- relative to the conjunction of the Sun and Venus -- before I can tell you what it's all about. And before I can talk about what it is all about I need to know what it was about when it happened before. That is the point of my letter.

In addition, from a mythic astrologer's point of view I need to know of the various associations of the planets with Gods and Goddesses in the multiplicity of cultures that look to the sky -- and the planets, sun, moon and stars -- for signs and omens.

VENUS in the Western astrological tradition is inherited from Greece, Rome, Egypt and the Middle East is the vehicle planet of a GREAT GODDESS. She is invariably a "love" Goddess. In Greece she was Aphrodite. In Egypt she was Hathor and Anat. In Sumer she was Innana. In Assyria she was Astarte. She was also Ishtar. In Greece she was also Psyche and Persephone. In the Celtic World she was the Flower Bride. When the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam replaced the earlier pantheistic religions of the ancient world, Venus was transmogrified into "the great whore of Babylon." In Christianity she became "the Magdalen, the repentant whore" in some thought. None-the-less something of the old Goddess remained as allegory of both the pure and innocent flower maiden as well as the dangerous seductress in the subsequent mythos of European thought and symbolisim.

In contrast, in many parts of Native North America VENUS is male, not female... a great warrior known as MORNING STAR. In Central America VENUS is likewise male, a savior figure known as Quetzalcoatl, or the Plumed Serpent.

Therefore the events of VENUS have different meanings depending upon your culture.

In the conventions of western astrology, Venus, unless badly aspected, is the planet of the love principle, big time. But I must see VENUS in both male and female guises to see the implications of this Venus Transit.

As to the conventional Venus of today's astrology, an event of this sort would bring out the astrological Bliss Ninnies of the New Age in Droves. They are apt to see in every new event, alignment, comet etc involving the Goddess of Love as the coming of the Aquarian Golden Age of heaven come to earth.

On the other hand and in contrast to these are the Doomsday Prophets which are fewer in number and whose voice is most unwelcome in New Age Circles today anyway.

However and whatever the great astrological events that happen, the world goes on pretty much as it always has, with some good and some bad occurring simultaneously.

So what good and what bad does this event herald for us? To know this we have to check out the chart and also to look at what happened the last time these events occurred.

The Chart for 1774 looked at from the image of Venus as Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty showed herself in the 1st Exhibition of Impressionist Art in 1774 in Paris -- a city eternally in the grip of Venus anyway. After all it was Paris who was favored by Aphrodite who gave him to love Helen, the world's most desireable woman. The French public, fed for years of the uplifting moral and sentimental images of the Classicists, neo-classicists and the poetic Raphealites and Pre-Raphealites were appalled!... not merely at the undefined methods of impressionism, but specifically because the works mostly lacked any uplifting purpose. Art would never again return to what it had been. The old school made a stand but it was not able to continue. By 1882 the die was cast. The chart for 1882 had umpteen planets in Taurus, Venus's Sign. A great many of the revolutionary artists and writers of Europe and European descent were born during the sojourn of these planets in Taurus, people like James Joyce and Pablo Picasso.

The work of the 19th Century and of the 18th as well, fell away, as it did after the period called the Enlightenment, from the use of art to elevate Christianity. But the Art of the 18th century was full of the images of how people were expected to be in society. Art was then used to elevate society. And if the themes were not religious they had become instead uplifting and moral in purpose. There were great and noble canvasses of the works of MAN -- of decisive military battles, of historic events with a capital 'H," and of worthy men nobly posed. There were also a whole slew of pictures in the 18th century of women and children depicted in domestic scenes; pouring water into a pitcher, rocking the baby and stirring the porridge. By the 19th century , the time of the two Venus transits, women depicted in the art of the day had become increasingly aestheticised, painted among the lilies, white pale white limbs and eyes looking up to heaven. Or they were depicted being carried off by barbarians to who knew what horrible fate, usually depicted in harems lounging about, covered only by diaphonous draperies. They were shown lying in lassitude amongst the flowers, or naked and slender --- well not really slender -- at a dark pool in the woods gazing into the reflective mirror of the water, and they were depicted in bed, slowly dying of consumption or yearning -- usually both.

There were tons of painting done before the impressionists came along of the dying not-yet bride, sometimes from life, more often from the allegories offered by Hamlet's Ophelia, by The Lady of Shalot, by Elaine who died for the unrequited love of Lancelot, and so forth. There were heaps of paintings of dead virgins washed ashore. On Peaks Island, where I live, the ship called the Hesperus was driven onto the rocks during a storm. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, an extremely popular poet of of the 19th century in America wrote an epic poem of the event called "The Wreck of the Hesperus." It ends with the skipper's young maidenly beautiful and virtuous daughter, who'd been lashed to the mast during the storm, being washed ashore -- dead -- still tied to the mast. This was a very favorite image of women in that day and age. In fact the message of all of the paintings and poetry of the 19th century was that women are hugely the fount of virtue -- or should be, and that should they step out of their appointed sphere or away from the virtue they'd be better off dead. Ultimately the message was subliminally "The only truely 'good' woman is a dead woman." I kid you not. This echoed what had been said of Indians ..."The only 'good' Indian is a dead Indian." I kid you not again.

The impressionists, in contrast, did not give a rat's ass about making the women or men in their paintings virtuous or noble. They painted it like it is. Absinth drinkers, prostitutes, mommies, rich bitches, guys hanging out drinking, dancers, racehorses (not painted to make their owners proud,) men and women kissing in public! Oooo la la! and how scandalous! But in some ways a beginning of liberation no less affecting than the concurrent suffragettes, nurses in a public hospitals and girls getting educated. This era saw the beginnings of the liberation for women from beatings with a stick no bigger around than her husband's thumb, for women who had no way to support children if they were left by a man or if he had died, for women forbidden to speak their mind in public or in private. And the extreme virtuousness of women was beginning to pale. My daughter remind's me that in this day and age we not only have songs from my day like Gloria Gaynor's "I will Survive" but we have girl rappers and the somewhat regressive "Sex in the City." We also have today the hopes for the liberation of Islamic women -- not so much from the veil as from being kept prisoners at home just as Charlotte Gilman Perkins wrote late in the 19th century "The Yellow Wallpaper" about a woman going insane from being held prisoner in a room in her own home by her husbandand a colluding physician.

It was also during the 19th century in America and Europe that women or girls who masturbated, or displayed Lesbian tendencies or suffered from "nerves" or "hysteria" were subjected to having their clitorises excised as a cure for their unwomanly behavior, just as African women have for centuries undergone the excision of the clitorises and often labia as well to "take the maleness out of them." One of the big women's issues of today is whether or not to "outlaw" traditional genital mutilation of young female African refugees in Europe and the USA. On the side of health complications the answer is unequivically to do so. The cultural issues are where the arguement gets heated. And no less heated is the arguement against and for male circumcision which is also practiced as a religious rite for Jews and in Arabic countries and since the 19th century as a "health" measure among gentiles. Many astrologers are uneducated about Venus's association with genitalia. Hello. If astrologers 'knew' their planets as the Gods and Goddesses after whom they were named, they might take into consideration their stories -- like Aphrodite was born from her father's (Uranus) wounded genitals having been cast away into the sea. Which is why Venus's passage across the face of the Sun brings up the issue of Genitalia -- espescially but not exclusively of Female Genitalia.

VENUS and the Goddess in North America
Although for ages and ages these Venus transits are in the Astrological SIGNS of Sagittarius and Gemini they are astronomically occuring among the stars of Taurus and Scorpius. This is due to something called Precession of the Equinoxes. Explaining what that is would take a volume. Suffice it to say that the actual Stars and the Signs named after the stars are now about one Sign off.

The conjunction of the Sun and Venus on June 8 takes place at 18 degrees of the Sign Gemini. This degree is 4 degrees from el nath the first horn of the Bull and it is over the star Tau Orion which is in the sword of that constellation. 18 degrees of Gemini is associated with the death and assasination of American presidents and would-be presidents. On June 11 Saturn will onjoin George W Bush's Sun. His first Saturn / Sun transit saw him honored with an MBA. His second may not bring him down. It remains to be seen. But Uranus in Pisces WILL erode the conservative hold on the country. And since it will be followed by Neptune in 2011 - just befor the next Venus transit - the tide WILL turn towrd the liberal points of view by them.

The face of Taurus is anciently associated with the female vulvic "V." That "V" was anciently associated with the source of life, not only as the vulva but also as the womb abd also as the "v" of the furrow plowed into the earth (plowed by the Bull actually) as well as the 'v' of the river beds which overflowing with waters seasonally fertilized the Earth. Under that "v"in the sky which are the stars of the Bull's face there is a constellation called Eridanus, the river. The river that flows from the vulva was likewise thought to be the river of life. That was the "V" of vulvic Venus. The ancient Judeo-Christian River of life flows out of Eden which was situated in the land between two rivers - Mesopotamia which is present day Iraq and Iran, coincidently the place where this event is directly overhead. Hence the focus on events there today and even upon the sexual humilition having been afflicted there recently upon Iraqui men imprisoned. It is nothing in war to hear of the rape of women by conquerers, this is a kind of 'rape' of men. And in at least one case, the sexual humiliation was inflicted by an American woman soldier. We have not heard Iraqui women's stories yet.

The location of these stars of the "V' on the face of the Bull is at least 19,000 years old (I'm being historically VERY conservative. I suspect it is far far older than that.) The 19,000 year old evidence is from a famous paleolithic cave called Lascaux in Southern France. On the face of a cow - actually on the faces of several cows drawn by ancient human beings on the ceiling and wall of that cave are dots arranged just as the stars are or were on the face of the constellation Taurus. So whatever the face of this animal means it has had this meaning for at least 20 millenia.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TODAY?

Other "Taurean" events occuring at this time are the birth of several extraordinary rare true white (not albino) buffalo calves in North America. The latest was born just a few days ago on May 24th in Flagstaff Arizona. This calf's mother is also a white buffalo. The 1st contemporary birth was that of Miracle on August 20 1994. Her birth preceeded a near flyby of the Venus transit. There have been at least 9 white buffalo calves born since Miracle.

For Native American People the birth of these any one of these calves is a sign that White Buffalo Calf Woman's promise to return and bring harmony to all people is at hand. White Buffalo Calf Woman's story specifically tell us how men must approach a woman sexually. In her story two men see a beautiful woman coming toward them. It is She. One of them looks upon her with lust intending to take her. The other does not. The one with evil thoughts is punished. The other is chosen to be her messenger. She teaches the seven ceremonies to follow to be in harmony with all. She brought the pipe whose bowl IS the feminine. The stem is the masculine. They come together when the sacred pipe is taken out from its bundle to make a prayer. Whites called that pipe the Peace Pipe. To me the bowl is a Venus object like the stars on the face of the Cow - Bull. Venus is also related to peace because in the Old World Venus was a Goddess of Peace. This includes the fact that to the Lakota people VENUS was a Warrior God, Morning Star, whose appearance at Dawn also brought peace and harmony.

But he IS a warrior and the function of a warrior is to protect and defend his people. The two previous transits of Venus across the face of the Sun brought decimation and destruction to Native People on this continent.

The Venus transit of 1882 was best seen in India, China and Australia. And that is where dramatic world changing events were taking place at that time. But it still affected the Americas. The Transit of 1874 occurred in the Western hemisphere and would have been most visible over South America, where once again world affecting events were taking place. And it still affected North America. These American events concern me most because I am an American. History repeats itself and sometimes it resolves old issues or it pours salt into old wounds. This is true of the ancient emnity between the Islamic world and the Christian world which dates from the Crusades and is being reinacted today. I don't have the dates for the Transits of Venus during the Crusades. But we do have the Dates for the Transits of Venus during "The Indian Wars" in the 1800's in North America. were, again, Dec 9 1874 and Dec 6 1882. We need to consider history at least 8 years earlier than 1874 as well as events at least 8 years after 1882 when there were two VERY NEAR flyby's of Venus to the edge of the Sun's face.

By 1870, "conflicts" with Indians on the Western frontier were the BIG NEWS of the Day. The war was over, as was reconstruction nearly over. The army that had been raised in the North to fight the South was sent Westward. White America anxious to profit from land ownership forged westward. The only thing standing in the way of white ambitions were the Indians. First lone riders, then wagon trains, then stagecoaches and the mail riders, then the transcontinental railway paved the way. Buffalo and Indians threatened to impede the flood of the westward movement.In addition Capitalism had left the hands of entrepreneurs and seated itself into big corporations. These Corporations were the railroad investors. The best way for the 'little guy' to get ahead was to won his own land -- a notion that was ludicrous to early contact Indians and which was a mode of destruction for Western Tribes whose land as was left to them was as much as possible taken away, treaties broken and people murdered.

The Venus Transit chart for Dec 9 1874 shows the Sun, Venus and the Moon all in Sagittarius in a great trine (triangle) with Chiron and Neptune in Aries and with Uranus in Leo. Uranus itself opposes Saturn in Aquarius, signature of a revolution in Structures, with old forms disappearing and new forms taking their place. There is a great 'generational' opposition between Chiron and Neptune in Aries and Jupiter conjoined to Mars in Libra, indicating laws being eroded and treaties ignored. The Saturn in Aquarius opposite to Uranus -- the Planet which Rules Aquarius -- in Leo shows the polarity between old forms and new. Pluto in Taurus Square Uranus and Saturn is an indicator of a stiff resistance to revolutions of all kinds, however.

The Great trine and the emphasis upon revolution and the planets in Venus's Sign of Libra in Paris emphasized the revolution in art that was displayed in the first great Impressionist Art Exhibition in Paris. Here the Goddess rules.

In America, in 1874, George Armstrong Custer announced that there was gold in the Black Hills of North Dakota, setting off a stampede of gold hunters into this most Sacred part of the Lakota territory. ...thereby undermining Lakota treaty rights, and paving the way for white invasion of lands reserved as Indian territories. In the coming two decades those treaties would be broken by whites over and over and eventually they were negated entirely by the Federal and territorial governments.

Some of the events affecting Blacks and Chinese during those 32 years were:

In 1870, the Union Pacific hired Chinese laborers for $32.50 a month. The monthly pay earned by a white laborer for the same labor was $52.00, saving the Union Pacific Railroad and the railroad barons $20 per month per laborer. The average wage-earner of the day earned $6 to $10 a week. White laborers believed that the Chinese competed unfairly for their jobs. They did not blame the corporate hirers. Ultimately the Chinese were the victims of an increasing racism with mob violence killing thousands. Finally the Government closed the doors to Chinese immigration because the railroad had been completed. In the same year a California court ruled in White vs. Flood that a black child may not attend a white school, setting the legal precedent for school segregation.

In 1871 100 Apaches were murdered - mostly women and children -- at Camp Grant in Arizona where they had come for protection. The authorities then attacked them. It was claimed it was retaliation for various Apache attacks across the region. And that same year Congress approved the Indian Appropriations Act which ended the recognition of the tribes as sovereign nations, thereby ending all obligation for the gov't to make treaties with tribes and made all indians individual wards of the government. This was a further attempt to dismantle the tribal structure of Indian life.

Cochise surrendered in 1871 to General George Crook but then escaped to his mountain stronghold so that he would not be forced to take his people away to a reservation in New Mexico. Later that year he allowed General Otis Howard to agree to establish a reservation in Arizona and he surrendered again.

In 1873 President Ulysses S Grant vetoed a bill which was aimed at preventing the extermination of buffalo. Roughly three million of the animals a year were being killed by white hunters for their skins and tongues. Their carcasses were left to rot where they fell. The plains were dotted with them. Travelers on the trains shot them for fun from the open windows as they spen past the herds. Without the buffalo the Lakota and other plains Indians lost the subsistance of their lives entirely. They were meant to be exterminated as well and toward the end of this era were humiliated by having had to depend upon Government handouts in order to stay alive.

In 1874, the year of the transit of Venus, as I wrote above, General George Armstrong Custer the one who made that stupid mistake later announced that there was gold in the Black Hills territory of the Lakota Sioux setting off a gold rush that invaded Indian sacred ground. During this same year a White man announced the discovery of Mesa Verde the ancient ancient cliff dwelling place of the Anasasi. This site came into eventual 'ownership' by the Federal Parks Service. It is now a tourist and research site.

In 1875 A senate commission met with Red Cloud and other Lakota leaders to negotiate legal access for miners to the Black Hills and offered the Indians $6,000,000 for the region. The chiefs refused to alter the terms of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, and vowed to protect their land from illegal intruders.

In 1876 Federal Authorities ordered Lakota chiefs to report to their reservations. Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and other leaders defied the government order and refused to comply.

On June 17 Crazy Horse and 500 warriors surprise General Crook's troops on the Rosebud River. The troops were there to drive the chiefs back onto the reservation. The Indians defeated the troops and forced them to retreat. On June 25 George Armstrong Custer who was leading a part of General Terry's troops discovered Sitting Bull camped by the Little Big Horn River. Custer attacked but discovered he was outnumbered 4 to 1. The army was defeated, no white soldier was left alive. The battle has come to be called Custer's Last Stand. Sitting Bull led his men safely into Canada.

In 1877 Crazy Horse surrendered to General George Crook at Fort Robinson Nebraska. He escaped. Later in the early fall he was arrested, taken to Fort Robinson and murdered. Mining camps boomed in the Black Hills. This same year Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce ended a four month retreat that was an attempt to bring his people to Sitting Bull in Canada He led nearly 500 women and children and 200 warriors on a 1500 mile trek in an attempt to reach sanctuwary. They were stoopped 40 miles from the Canadian border by a force of 500 troopers. Their number had been reduced on the long journey but they hold out for five days in a snowstorm. Chief Joseph surrendered to General Howard rather than see all of his followers dead of cold and starvation making his famous speeech that ends with "I will fight no more forever."

In 1878 40,000 Negros migrate into Kansas. Kansas had been the state of Contention as to whether it would have entered the Union as a free state or as a slave state. It had been partitioned from Nebraska to satify Southeners who clamored for a new Slave state. What an Irony that it was now opened for ex-slave settlement. I wonder if this was a divide and conquer strategy on the part of the Federal Government or on the part of the State Governemnt/ Were the ex-slaves granted Indian Lands. With all of the evidence for the taking of Indian lands elsewhere it makes me wonder?

In 1879 The Federal government began a vast study of the Western landscape and of the indigenous peoples who inhabited it. The gov't was searching for minerals as well a sites suitable for development with dams and the like. All of this eventually to result in what came to be called open land and Federal lands - all to be taken from the Indian territories. In that same year the first 84 Lakota children were removed from their homes and sent to the newly established United States Indian Training and Industrial School in Carlisle Pennsylvania founded by former Indian fighter Captain Richard Henry Pratt. They were punished for using their own language, had their hair shorn, were dressed in western attire as the beginning of a program of enforced assimilation of White Culture and the expunging from all subsequent children of Native Culture. This was not a volunteer program. These children were forcibly removed from home and families.

In 1880 the Federal Government banned that most sacred of ceremonies, The Sun Dance.
It was also in this year that President Bejamin Hayes signed the Chinese Exclusion Treaty that strictly limited the number of Chuinese immigrants into the country and upon the number allowed to become naturalized citizens.

In 1881 Sitting Bull returned from Canad with a small band of followers and surrenderred to General Alfred Terry. And in this year as well Helen Hunt Jackson published her book detailing the Federal Government's treatment of Western Indians. Her book was called "A Century of Dishonor." Had she included Eastern Tribes as well it might have been called "Over Three Centuries of Dishonor." But she did not. Her findingings and her expose shocked the nation.

In 1882 the year of the second transit of Venus in that Century -- the transit that was visible in India and in China -- Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act. It completely prohibits all and any Chinese immigration and naturalization for a stated period. In 1881 40,000 people immigrate from China. In 1882 43 individuals enter the country. In 1882 Jesse James who stole from the rich -- and from banks and trains --- and gave to the poor is shot in the back by Robert Ford who hoped to collect a $5,000 reward.

In 1883 Sitting Bull protests bitterly when U.S. Senators propose opening up part of the Lakota reservation to white settlers. Despite his objections, the land transfer proceeds as planned. This same year the Northern Pacific Railroad is completed. White buffalo hunters gather on the Northern Plains for the last great buffalo hunt. Among them is a New York assemblyman, Theodore Roosevelt, who hopes to bag a trophy before the species is gone entirely. Hunters have already detroyed the southern herd. By 1884 all of the wild buffalo are eradicated. Only a few animals are kept by sentimentalists. In this same year a group of reformers called "The Friends of the Indian" consisting of clergymen, certain government officials and reformer types meet in upstate New York to develop a strategy for bring Indians into mainstream American life. Their recommendations affect U.S. policy for the next generations and nearly result in the obliteration of Native American culture.

In 1885 President Grover Cleveland warns so called "boomers" to stay off Indian Territory lands in Oklahoma. These lands were established for settlement as the end-of-the-road for Five tribes of the Southeast who'd been promised the whole territory and the right of self governance. They walked from their ancestral homelands in From Tennesee, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida the majority of the Cherokee on a forced march in 1838 and 39 called The Trail of Tears. The worst depradations of Southeastern Indians having preceeded those of the West by decades, those of Northeastern Indians by a century or two.

In 1886 anti-Chinese riots kill hundreds and many are forced as far West as they can be driven. Geronimo is forced to surrender in Arizona after a decade of guerilla warfare.

In 1887 Congress passes the Dawes Severalty Act which imposes a system of private land ownership upon the Indians. All tribal lands not taken up in the allotments are declared surplus and sold to whites. Further reduction of Indian land holdings happens when President Bejamin Harrison opens lands in the Oklahoma Indian Territory to white settlers. This happened in 1889 and is called The Oklahoma Land Rush. On April 22 at noon, a gunshot signaled the rush to grab a parcel of what had been Indian Territory as thousands rushed for their share of two million acres.

This is not the whole story, just some of the events of these 30 years. If this litany of anti - Indian events seems like overkill, it is spread out here so that we can know of events which bit by bit were promulgated in order to enrich whites and deny Native peoples their land, their homes, their religion, their language, their culture. They none-the-less are still with us today, recovering what land can be recovered, teaching languages not forgotten, practicing ceremonies once banned. I have also here mentioned some of the issues facing Chinese immigrants back then, but I have neglected to chronicle the situation with Black Americans, the rise of the Klan, of discrimination, of lynchings and injustices.

In their eras each of the groups I have mentioned were a problem to the powers that be, who sought to resolve that problem. In the era of the two previous transits of Venus, men struggled with what was called "The Woman Question." And the American Governments struggled with what was called "The Indian Question." We must bear in mind that Nazi Germany struggled and thought to solve "The Jewish Question" with a program of extermination that failed to completely eradicate European Jews.

At this passage of Venus we see in the news that we are confronted with the "question" of Gay Marriage as well as hatred of and distrust of Arabic Muslims. It would seem that humankind's capacity to consider the destruction of whole groups of people has not abated.


SO WHAT DOES THE CHART FOR THIS TRANSIT OF VENUS LOOK LIKE?
In the USA at Sunrise, Venus and the Sun rise together at 18 degrees of Gemini in opposition to Pluto in Sag. As mentioned above 18 degrees of Gemini is associated with the death of Presidents and the opposition of Pluto makes this one likelihood. I imagine Saturn on Bush's Sun could make him a candidate or his father for that matter. (As I get ready to send this former President Ronald Reagan has just passed away --perhaps it is his death that fulfills this likelihood.) On the morning of the 8th the Moon joins Uranus in Pisces at the top of the chart. Women as revolutionary forces are very much in the news, esp as regards religion and good works. Mars and Saturn are still together in Cancer and that makes for great determination, esp for women and for people born under Cancer. Cancer is the sign of Family and families may forge together purposefully to make needful changes. Family is another name for clan which is itself another name for tribe. It is important to bring family members together at this time, but not we pray, tribe against tribe, family against family.

There is a great cross in this chart. There are planets standing at the gates of the four directions Mercury is Very powerful. It is possible for the four hemispheres, the four races, the four worlds, to conjoin. This is also a symbol of the suffering of the Piscean Age, a crucifiction formation. It would br good if this transit represented forgiveness and compassion.

So for me, I would like to see this passage as a reflection upon what we might learn from the two previous passages. I just this afternoon watched that old movie on TV called "The Judgment at Nuremburg." Go out and rent that one. Pay attention to what Spencer Tracy says at the end. And then decide if you won'y stand against injustice even if it is promulgated by so called bastions of society. Maybe one or two of us could stand up for Martha Stewart whose greatest crime seems to be that she is a mean and snappish employer. Maybe a few of us might decide to send some of our resources to one or two reservations. One or two of us might become involved in women's rights in third world countries, hell, why not in THIS country? Perhaps we could extend a hand to a refugee or speak in kindness to an Arabic neighbor? Surely we could put some pressure upon our clergy to protest the treatment of our prisoners in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay?

Am I being seditious? Human rights are dearly won and easily eroded. Perhaps Morning Star stands by our American sides asking us to feel the winds of peace blowing our way today.

Yours in love and hope -- Wendy Z Ashley