Aquarius is rising in the 2019 – 2020 Aries Ingress for the USA. As a fixed sign, this indicates the US will be dealing with old stuff. Continuing to reckon with things from both 2017 and 2018. Additionally, events associated with eclipses that occurred in Aquarius & Leo between 2015 and 2018 are brought into focus.
Aquarius is the sign of self-determination and personal-sovereignty. This sign is the insignia of American democracy: rejecting and abandoning monarchical rule while embracing self-governance. It represents the American quest of defining itself separate from the authority that had claimed dominion over it—England and King George III.
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The Declaration of Independence
Those “unalienable Rights” are the self-determination and individual sovereignty endowed by nature itself, or God, whichever you choose.
This year focuses on America’s ever-evolving story of self-determination. Who and what is America when it is not defined by the leaders who claim dominion over it? Who and what is America when it embraces self-governance, rejecting dictatorial and monarchical rule? Where do state’s rights and federal governance agree and conflict?
Historically, Aquarius rising in the US Aries Ingress chart has marked critical turning points in the political landscape of the country, spearheaded by people who seek to reclaim the sovereignty the US so fiercely fought for.
Aquarius Rising Historically: 1859-1868
Between the years 1859 and 1868 Aquarius was rising in the US Aries Ingress chart 3 times. This is an unprecedented period in the story of the USA both historically and astrologically. There is no other time period in US history where Aquarius rose in the Aries Ingress chart with that amount of frequency in a particular decade.
For those who know anything about this time in US history, you know that 1859 through 1868 comprises the years leading up to, during, and right after the American Civil War. That is:
- The simultaneous culmination of the Abolitionist and Secessionist Movements, the latter was spearheaded by South Carolina in secession from the Union December 1860;
- The middle of the American Civil War when Union General Ulysses S. Grant turned the tide in favor of the Union Army in 1863, and;
- The Emancipation Proclamation and the rise and culmination of the Reconstruction Era 1863-1867.
1859-1860: Abolition & Secession
John Brown was a white radical revolutionary who deemed armed rebellion the only feasible way to rid the US of the institution of slavery. He organized to bring new states into the Union as slavery-free states. He murdered several pro-slavery militants and slave hunters in the Pottawatomie massacre (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottawatomie_massacre).
October 15-18, 1859 John Brown attempted an armed slave revolt by raiding a US military arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. He was defeated by a company of US Marines and murdered by hanging by the state of Virginia on December 2, 1859.
At the same time as the abolitionist movement was reaching a fever pitch, the secessionist movement, too, reached a marked moment of reckoning. South Carolina seceded from the Union late in 1860, but it was in the early part of that year that rhetoric ramped up, putting momentum behind the idea that there were in fact two countries in the United States. The difference between these two countries was stated plainly in South Carolina’s declaration document, “increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery.”
What is the legacy of slavery? What has become of those states who proclaimed that they were the object of hostility by non-slaveholding states?
1863-1864
At this point in the American Civil War, the Union Military had contained all fighting to the South. Confederate General Robert E. Lee resigned after the defeat at Gettysburg. The Battle at Gettysburg was the largest battle of the Civil War with casualties on both sides surpassing 20,000 soldiers. And it was this battlefield that was the eventual site of President Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg address. In that speech, he realized that the Declaration of Independence was further being made manifest in the sacrifice of the soldiers he honored that day.
“…that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
-President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, delivered November 19, 1863
This year also marked the implementation of the Emancipation Proclamation. It was signed in September 1862 to be put into effect January 1, 1863. But it was of the 13th Amendment which completely abolished slavery. Though the amendment wasn’t ratified until December 6, 1865, it was initially proposed on January 11, 1864.
1867-1868
Four Reconstruction Acts were passed between March 2, 1867 and March 11, 1868. They were meant to establish order and assimilate former Confederate states into the Union through new state constitutions and pledges of loyalty to the Union. They sought to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation and to establish representation through voter registration and congressional and municipal elections.
It was in reaction to this military occupation of the South and what was required of Confederate states during Reconstruction that violent white supremacy took hold of of the South. A somewhat dormant Ku Klux Klan terrorized Black families in their homes and at the ballot box. Lynchings became a common form of violence against Black citizens by white citizens and the police and governemtns in the south. Black Codes made law of policies meant to create a permanent caste system with whites at the top and blacks at the bottom. It disenfranchised Black people in every aspect of life.
2019-2020
The astrology of 1859-1868 is absolutely critical to events and narratives of not only 2019, but also 2020. Self-determination means an identity imagined free from the gaze of others, liberated from the prison of perception, reasoned outside the parameters of personal bias and judgement. This is the challenge of the coming years. Who are we as a nation? Must we believe in race and the power dynamics that claim to be inherent to its existence? What is America without whiteness?