2008 Year in Review: Obama’s star rises

December 27, 9:58 AMAstrology ExaminerMaria Barron

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AP Photo/Gerald Herbert

An amazing U.S. presidential election was written in the stars for 2008. So was a strong sign that the most eloquent communicator in the pack of candidates would become our president-elect. And so he is a year later as we look ahead to a new government and look back over the incredible year we’ve lived through.

Any review of the year’s most significant star patterns would have to begin with the astral geometry that I will precociously proclaim Obama’s Sign in the Sky.

To emphasize how well this sign fits President-elect Barack Obama, check this out. The first picture in the slide show at the bottom of this article is the formation culled from the moment of solstice that I call Obama’s sign. The second picture shows Obama’s natal chart, based on his birth certificate. The third shows the places where the two charts significantly align when the formation I dub the Obama sign is cast as a transit on Obama's personal natal chart. That’s his natal moon and natal Venus on the inner circle aligned with the moon and Mars of the sign in the sky. That’s his 11th house of community where the powerful planets are gathered.

Whether he knew it or not, he must have felt very much aligned with the planetary energies as 2008 began. No wonder he went into the Jan. 3 Iowa Caucus like gangbusters and threw his image forward across the year.

During the election, Obama kept saying earnestly that “Our time is now.” We heard commentators talk about timing in a nearly mythical manner. There was a sense that it was time for a big change, a generational change, as if there were something more to it than years of pent-up voter frustration with the Bush administration. That political frustration started showing itself forcefully in the 2006 mid-term elections. But there was more to it than that.

The change was in the air and in the earth, and the timing was reflected in the stars. I am not suggesting that the Obama campaign had an official court astrologer. I will say that our next president and the crew that brought him through to this point have a mighty fine sense of natural timing, as well as a great sense of how to communicate, even in a nation full of “strained time-ridden faces / Distracted from distraction by distraction.”

Like T.S. Eliot in his time-poem, Burnt Norton, Obama kept calling people back from distractions, reminding us that there is a focal point, a still point of the turning world, at which the potential for change is profound.

And it was at the natural still point, the winter solstice point that marked the natural beginning of the year 2008, that Obama’s sign appeared like a slender V. At the base, from left, Pluto, the sun, Jupiter and Mercury were gathered in conjunction. Symbolically, that is an auspicious gathering of the forces of power, glory, fortunate fame and communication all rolled into a nice astral sausage. It was the sign of the year’s election in a nutshell.

Mercury, being a personal planet, represented the personality trait that would be honored in this great big fat sign of generational change in power: Mercury the thinker, the analyzer, the communicator.

Obama fit that bill while distinguishing himself from former egghead presidential nominees by retaining a dash of Pluto-sexy. In fact, he fit the whole array of planets and light in the conjunction that heralded the election year. Being a Leo ruled by the sun, he has a sunny personality. He has that lucky Jupiter back-story. And he’s got the Mercury qualities down cold. A friend of mine had a pro-Obama button that read, “This time I want a smart president.” He meant it, too. Obama’s skill at oratory rang especially nicely with the tone sounded by the first planetary chord of the year.

Extending from the gathering of planets in Obama’s sign, the endpoints of the V, which are the Moon in Gemini and Mars in Cancer, show a thoughtful approach to emotional issues, and an emotional approach to issues of action. Those tendencies also played out in the 2008 presidential campaign’s communication with the voters. The Moon and Mars, as endpoints, were hooked into the main gathering of planets and light through tense angles. The challenge laid out was an issue of compassionate action. He who most eloquently communicated trustworthiness for bringing about compassionate action won the day.

The formation that I’m naming Obama’s sign appeared as the central pattern among other star patterns at the solstice. Another pattern, the opposition of Saturn in Virgo and Uranus in Pisces, strongly marked 2008 and will continue into 2009 with a drumbeat signaling cultural change. We’ll take a look at the somewhat dicey Uranus-Saturn opposition in another Year in Review entry.