Joe Arpaio is sort of the perfect storm of influences to show where America is right now. I cannot interpret and type up charts fast enough for this administration, so I will pause for a quick recap. You can scroll down to the chart, if you want to skip the recap/summary and go directly to the Arpaio Astrosplaining.
My main interest in the Astrosplaining series is what I am coming to think of as the fascist/antifascist axis in human experience. My idea is that those of us who have other incarnations in ancient Orion, and continue to experience this theme of fascism/fighting fascism in this life, will have prominent Mintaka connections in our natal charts (as I do). So I started looking at the people who I react to on a gut level and Astrosplaining them, looking for my Mintaka and Antares opponents in society writ large. My intuition tracks fairly well with my findings so far.
I have a juiced-up Pallas, so I like to identify patterns. Here are a few of my general observations of the Trump-related charts I have reviewed (including those I have not blogged), before I get to Arpaio:
- bowl and wedge charts
- prominent to extreme Jupiter (most Trumps, Bannon, Sater)
- impaired or haywire Neptune (Ivana’s kids, Melania, Manafort, Stone, Sater)
- Antares (Czarinka, Stephen Miller, Prince, Devos) [General McMaster is the natural enemy of Antares natives]
- Algol the blinking demon (General Kelly, Priebus, Stone, Arpaio)
- Algorab the Crow (Manafort, Stone, Tillerson, Miller, Gorka)
I believe the Algorab contingent are a specific group of related souls who have incarnated together at this time to pursue specific mutual goals, just as a group of literal crows may work together to kill an eagle.
On the bright side:
- Speaking of eagles, General McMaster has an extremely auspicious Aldebaran/Mars/Pallas. General McMaster is IMHO currently the leader of what I think of as America.
- General Kelly has Fomalhaut, however he will not withstand the same speeds and pressures as General McMaster. I believe he is a man of integrity doing his best to bail water from Hurricane Donald. No one individual has a big enough heart to fix this.
- General Mattis is a capable individual. I have not fully reviewed his chart.
Joe Arpaio, General Mattis, and General McMaster have bucket charts (Saturn, Saturn, and Neptune, respectively). General McMaster is the 3D (or 9D) chess player, the bowl/bundle charts are the checkers people. (No offense to those with bowl charts. Bernie has a bowl chart, and I love him and his dense, unwavering stubbornness. The guy is staunch, a human wall.) The Antares (and eventually Algorab) people are endangered by General McMaster. He is the lion in this game reserve. General McMaster will be the Duncan MacLeod of the clan MacLeod of this whole mess.
MINTAKA
Ayn Rand fairly personifies the dark side of Mintaka. I am including her as she is the intellectual flagship of the GOP, and her chart and life display the negative side of Mintaka quite well; Erik Prince is slightly stronger in that reflection than her, because he literally kills people. But Arpaio is Mintaka on the nose, because he was in physical possession of the people, harassing and exploiting them until they died, thus firing on every piston. Barron Trump has Mintaka directly on the IC, which I am interpreting as a deep connection to the antifascist side of the Orion wars. (We will have to wait and see which direction this Orion theme manifests with him, where he decides to go. But it will manifest.) Steve Bannon and Felix Sater both have Jupiter on Mintaka.
Erik Prince has Vesta (the True Believer) on Mintaka. He also has Mars on Antares (toxic masculinity), directly opposed General McMaster’s Mars/Pallas on Aldebaran. Those two, Prince and General McMaster, are very well-matched in a dog fight.
Priebus has a super interesting chart for a rainy day, with Aldebaran/Pallas, which could have put General McMaster on his side. But he also has both Algol (Mars) and Algorab (Juno) contacts, which make him a bit baffling to me. General McMaster is the natural enemy of the Antares people, and is ultimately incompatible with the Algorab people, not necessarily the Algol people. The Algol connection will depend upon their integrity level, whether they withstand contact with General McMaster. Algol is not the easiest blinking demon to ride gracefully.
Algol is about taking the lid off, like Pandora’s box. For a lot of people, lack of restraint tends to go badly. Most of us need some guard rails in life. But Algol allows the native to go in any direction, based on free will. Algol’s reputation for decapitation or hanging may be an overliteralization of the idea of taking the lid off.
However, I do think of the overall influence of Algol in this administration as that which is capable of taking the lid off by getting rid of Trump or toppling the chief executive. That sort of Algol would make an enemy of General McMaster, who I believe is there to protect the country. I would expect General McMaster not to allow a coup simply because our government is set up to never have one. That is not a trick this animal can do. General McMaster is not the guy who stands by while you kill America.
I note that Arpaio has ugly Algol, and I suspect the pardon made General McMaster’s teeth hurt. This is one possible example of Algol potentially toppling the government, extreme civil unrest due to the Arpaio pardon.
So far my theory of Astrosplaining fascism is holding up quite well. For example, Steve Mnuchin doesn’t strike me as part of this particular theme. My sense of him is just another greedy fool, which is usually either Saturn (material concerns) or Jupiter (expansion/gaining) gone amok. Their charts verify that he and Mrs. Mnooch both arrive from outside the ideological war, no contact with any of the heavyweight fixed stars listed above, just as I expected intuitively. A lot of the Orion/Mintaka people are somewhat below-radar in daily society, people like Erik Prince or Ayn Rand who are well-known in certain circles, but not really among the overall population considering their actual influence.
One who does bad things because he is restless and clever (Mercury) is different than one who does bad things because he enjoys inflicting pain (Pluto). Saturn does bad things because he is petty and stingy. Jupiter does bad things because he is greedy and likes to be important. Mintaka is the one who does bad things for ideology, fun, and profit, like Erik Prince. And Arpaio. It’s a three-pointed idea, like if Saturn, Pluto, and Jupiter had a baby. An evil, demented baby.
Mintaka is an outer octave of Pluto, and tracks directly to narcissism and codependence. To be clear, I am using the strict definition of codependence: putting the needs of others before one’s own, the opposite of narcissism. Again, everything can go either way. Every coin has three sides: the head, the tail, and the rim. Similarly, every experience has a positive, negative, and toggle. So the entire axis runs from the extreme codependence, where others feel more real or valid than oneself, to extreme narcissism, where others feel less real or valid than oneself. And that brings us to Joe Arpaio.
First things first, chart leader and shape. Sun in Gemini, Mercury and Mintaka combust, or closely conjunct the Sun. So technically Mercury gets to be the winner, chicken dinner. Not the moldy bologna sandwiches he feeds the prisoners. However because of the nature of the Sun, its central role in the existence, Mercury is like a finger on the Sun’s hand here IMO.
In terms of the shape, I am calling it a Saturn bucket for now. Could arguably be seen other ways, and I may review this later. But the Saturn bucket makes perfect sense for a police officer. Saturn and Jupiter are both greedy and selfish. But Saturn is cold and sour. Saturn sweats the details and collects to the penny, where Jupiter thinks big and has a good time. Saturn travels in the cheapest and least comfortable way possible, where Jupiter finds a way to do a hostile takeover of a corporate jet company, and uses their transport. They are equally greedy and selfish, but they act almost like a zoom, where Saturn zooms in and Jupiter zooms out.
For now, I am looking at Saturn. Arpaio is notoriously petty. He didn’t come up with the world’s cheapest bologna sandwiches all at once. That was one of his weird cheapskate ideas that tickled his fancy (Uranus opposition Moon). It worked for his harsh, petty Saturn, and his T-square apex Pluto intervened with a cruel and oppressive idea and carried it to its ludicrous extreme. The astrological equation for all of that is right there in his chart.
Arpaio’s Saturn also has an inconjunct with Neptune in a sign ruled by Saturn, and therefore on Saturn’s agenda, in Virgo. The inconjunct is an energetic redirection or work-around. In this chart, I expect it to blur the edges of reality with respect to Saturn’s petty, punishing sense of entitlement. This is exactly how he ran afoul of the law, by losing track of actual jurisprudence (like America’s Saturn opposing Arpaio’s personal Saturn) because of his officiousness. His chart played itself out until his hallucinations manifested as literally other people. Then Saturn did its reality check, then Trump tore up the check. (Bashar has described Trump as having the trickster energy. I had not realized a heyoka could be unconscious of his role, but apparently so.)
Arpaio hits all the marks for an old-school, ancient-Orion fascist: finds increasingly cruel ways to exploit others for more fun and greater profit. Note his Sun on Mintaka. Because of the special role of the Sun in astrology, both Mercury (his thoughts and communications) and Mintaka are basically sublimated to the ego in this chart. Every breath he takes is in service of the Orion wars. My Mintaka is only on Venus. His is on the Sun, for cry eye.
My personal recollection of Orion involves vast slaveholdings, much worse than even the African slave trade, which seems to my mind like the worst thing I can honestly imagine. There were many more people involved with the abuse in ancient Orion, many millions more, and over a much longer span of time, with the cruelty constantly growing more demanding and depraved. It got so out of hand that the worst planet, Huva, was destroyed. (This was many millions of years ago, Mintaka is approximately there now.) The oppression I am aware of on Earth is the tip of the ancient Orion iceberg. Mintaka is that particular idea of holding captive sentient beings and monetizing their suffering. Mintaka also is a theme among those who know the other side of that, those who have been so exploited.
Any time you have a T-square (the red triangle), the planet at the apex is another key to the chart, somewhat like the handle on a bucket. In this case the T-square is Uranus, the Moon, and Pluto at the apex. That is a very unstable mixture, key word volatile. This element of this chart would suggest extreme control issues and highly variable moods and ideas. Pluto adds an all or nothing, black and white, polarizing vibration. The Moon would tend to blur the boundaries of where the trouble really lies (especially with his co-opted chart leader, Mercury, his thoughts and communications), and then his Pluto would try to control others enough to stop the raging fire within. Bad (or sick) guy! Sad!
It is ultimately a bit difficult to determine an overall chart leader here. Mercury is technically the ruler because the Sun is in Gemini. But it is debilitated by the Sun, and the Sun is specially empowered. The Saturn bucket handle is prominent, and Saturn is in a sign it co-rules. Then the Moon acts as another fulcrum, waxing and waning, pulling focus back and forth between the Sun and Saturn like an energetic tide.
It comes down to a question of whether you see Arpaio as more money- or ego-driven. Saturn is the miser, the Sun is the ego. Astrologically he is really quite both, and the Mars/Algol conjunction moves into prominence despite Mars being less engaged than some other planets overall, because of the magnitude of Algol.
A Saturn bucket can be IMO a bit dark. Saturn is the planet that we use for a negative answer in yes or no questions. That is the nutshell way to understand Saturn. He is everybody you would rather not deal with, who tells you no, gets all up in your business, and makes you deal with or pay them: the police, the tax man, the grim reaper. This is an Earth element planet, and can make people energetically dense. Arpaio’s Ceres (the Earth Mother) in Capricorn, ruled by Saturn, suggests a firm belief in tough love and character-building experiences.
If there were such a thing as a dual bucket, a bucket with two handles, Arpaio could have Saturn and the Moon. The Moon is about all of the parts of life we have a hard time putting our fingers on, like dreams, feelings, and parts of ourselves we are not so aware of. The Moon does not have any light of her own, she only mirrors the Sun. For less evolved people with prominent Moons, there is a danger of projecting one’s own thoughts, feelings, and shortcomings onto others, a failure to see that there is no out there, out there. It is possible that Arpaio’s relentless abuse of Latinos comes from this kind of projection, self-hatred turned inside out. This is his Moon reflecting his Sun, and again, drawing his energies back and forth between the Sun and Saturn like an internal tide.
There really is a lot to look at here, but I think the Mars/Chiron/Algol conjunction is also important. As discussed, I am calling Saturn and the Sun the co-leaders, with the Moon, Pluto, and Mars also important. But Algol cannot simply be ignored.
As discussed above, I see Algol as a metaphor for taking the lid off, like Pandora’s Box. Then Arpaio has all this moodiness with his Moon. The Moon rules one sign, Cancer. That is where we find both Venus, his ability to love and be loved, and Pluto, the devil, at the head of that volatile T-square. Those things are inextricably bound to his moods. This individual is both highly emotional and intensely linear, in terms of his wavering, and his materialism and desire for control of the material world.
Arpaio has an aspect pattern that I think of as a mini-kite, the blue triangle from the Sun/Mercury/Mintaka to Uranus and Jupiter. A proper kite would be flanking one side of a grand trine, where there is a higher level of order in place and then this is like a little booster. However, I see this configuration often enough that I feel it still has a similar energy, of being like a little extra sail in the personality. Maybe ranges from like a solar charger for your phone, to Cindy Crawford’s mole, depending on the person. Just a theory, don’t quote me.
Anyway if the mini-kite is a different sort of T-square, where the planets are engaged in this little subprocess in a positive way, that would be like people in three different departments of a large company that are really great friends, because they are on a sports team together after work. Then within the overall company, you might expect certain benefits when any one of them is inclined to help or support you, because they are a package deal energetically. Of course that sort of thing can go either way. But if it were causing friction, it would be in a T-square. So this sort of mini-kite is a smoothening out IMHO, a leveraged or extra cooperative circuit within the personality. I feel like it still counts even without the grand trine.
On that theory, then, Arpaio’s apex planet is the Sun, further assisted by Mintaka and Mercury. That is in Gemini, under the auspices of Mercury, subjugated by the Sun. Jupiter and Juno are in Leo, ruled by the Sun. Uranus is in Aries, ruled by Mars on Algol. Despite being sort of a bit player in this chart so far, the fact that Mars is on Algol makes that Mars a force to be reckoned with. This is all very tangled, and here is how I believe it plays out in real life:
The above picture tells the story of Arpaio’s fantasy world played out with real people. This has everything to do with weird cruelty and damaged masculinity. The guy on the right in this picture looks like he is struggling to keep his pants on. Everything about this smacks of Mintaka to me, right where his Sun is: a captive population is abused and exploited in increasingly petty and bizarre ways, to meet the spiraling emotional needs of an empowered sociopath. Arpaio was convicted of violating the cruel and unusual punishment bit, go figure.
So the thing where he needs to dress the underclass in pink, while his surrogates look like commandos, that is Arpaio’s broken Mars bouncing off of his Mintaka-based ego, with some help from Uranus in the weirdness and creativity department.
Arpaio’s Sun:
23º Gemini: A triangular-shaped hill. On one side the sun is shining on pleasant paths and beautiful foliage–the other side is dark and gloomy.
Denotes one who should make the most of his first half of life, when fortune will favor him, and when the happiest and most useful thoughts will reign supreme. The latter part of life promises nothing. It is a path of a peculiar and mysterious nature, and must be approached with caution. He will possess a love of refinement, especially early in life. It is a symbol of Trial.
Arpaio’s Saturn 4 Aquarius
4º Aquarius: A beautiful fountain throwing upwards delicate sprays of yellow-tinted water, a jeweled crown showing in the mists.
Denotes one of refined mind who is destined to advance and gain power and influence over others. He will bring relief to many a thirsty soul, and many will bless him as he passes by the way. He is humanitarian, sincere, romantic, and harmonious. The life is not free from danger until after the thirtieth year has passed. Thence his way is elevation and peace. It is a symbol of Defending.
[I have no trouble flipping this symbol over like a photographic negative, based on the fact that it is the location of the Saturn bucket handle in this Algol/Mintaka influenced chart.]
Arpaio’s Mars 25 Taurus
25º Taurus: A dense column of smoke from which issue flashes of lightning.
Denotes one of natural talent who will be beset with difficulties in gaining recognition, but whose mental strength will be the more determined because of them. When his time comes his power will be felt. He will force acknowledgment by sheer ability and energy. It is a symbol of Premeditation.
Arpaio’s Uranus 22 Aries
22º Aries: A pilgrim crossing himself in front of an ancient temple, an overdressed official and a soldier mocking him.
Denotes a devout person who will be subjected to many trials and taunts in life, but who will, by the strength of his faith, overcome them all. He comes from the masses rather than from the classes, and his sympathy will ever be with the struggling people of the nations. From officialdom and materialism he receives scant courtesy. It is a symbol of Faith.
[The Kozminsky symbols can go quite the opposite way. Arpaio is the overdressed official and the soldier in this symbol.]
Arpaio’s Pluto 20 Cancer
20º Cancer: A wounded Bedouin mounted on his horse in the desert.
Denotes one of unsettled tendencies with a strong desire for freedom and liberty of movement who, brave, daring, and adventurous, is ever restless if held to one place for long. He is not well fitted for ordinary life, as his employment changes so much, and some of these changes will be sudden. His nature is willful, erratic, impulsive, and his body is marked naturally or by accident. It is a symbol of Liberty.
[I can definitely see this being a real motivating factor in the plain ugliness of Arpaio. Pluto, again, is the closest thing to Mintaka in our solar system. His Pluto in Cancer makes it feel entirely personal to him; he needs to have extreme control over others so that he can feel free. It is part of his inside-out Moon. I get this.]
Arpaio’s Moon 1 Scorpio
1º Scorpio: A man, enraged, tearing a book in pieces.
Denotes one of a passionate and determined nature. The personality is forceful and magnetic, but there is a lack of those fine feelings which render life something greater than a mere mass of disruption. It is difficult for the native to discipline and control himself, but his will is strong, and what is a fractious horse to a determined master ! It is a symbol of Irritation.
This really explains the whole chart, in a nutshell. Everything he does is about the way it feels to him. Anything he dislikes in himself gets projected onto someone else, then that person gets punished. It’s all about his ever-changing, arbitrary moods. He can’t just work his way through these feelings in therapy, he needs to see his own insecurities acted out with real people, and that turns out to never be enough. This is a really disgusting chart, and it fits what I know of the man to a heartbreaking degree. I need to stop talking about him now.
Artnunymiss 