Who is He? Obama's Sun-Neptune Square

7.20.08


Barack Obama makes a lot of people nervous… and not just because of his race.

Feeding off the perception of a lack of concrete information about the man, many Obama detractors are panicked by what they claim not to know about him.

Is he a closet corporate lobbyist? Is he secretly a Muslim? Is he our worst fear come to life—a 'Manchurian candidate' double-agent sent by The Terrorists to infiltrate the American way of life? (Admit it: The whole Obama/Osama similarity is a bit eerie.)

Yet, for every seemingly paranoid read on Barack Obama, there's its matching glorification of him as Our Greatest Hope, sent by the angels to save the US from its neocon insider-enemies. He is clever and calmly spoken. He is young, handsome and optimistic. Hell, he's even kind of cool. And thanks to how truly special and amazing he is, Obama finds himself on the receiving end of so many fawning devotees that his stadium-sized rallies have been likened to rock concerts… and he, the pop-idol god who makes 'em faint on the spot. Now that's some persuasive power.

Of course, Obama is neither our worst fear nor our greatest hope. He's merely a man. But if we were to examine the astrology behind Obama's uncanny ability to appear as what we collectively most yearn for or bristle at, we wouldn't have to look very far before finding one huge obvious clue—his Leo Sun squares Neptune.

The Leo Sun itself isn't exactly a surprise. This is a quintessential rock-star placement, the Sun in its ruling sign a big shining light of personality standing front-and-center, sharing its brilliance with the world. Bill Clinton, our last Leo Sun president, certainly has a similarly noteworthy charisma to him (so much so that, as we all know, it actually gets him into much trouble). And George W. Bush has a Leo rising, giving him enough superficial likeability to get himself elected on the voter belief he'd be a more fun guy to knock back a beer with than stodgy ol' Al Gore.

But when the Leo Sun squares Neptune, however, that purest light of ego-self (Sun) is interfered with by a mystifying cloud of fog we can only partially see through (Neptune)… leaving us to fill in specific blanks with what we wish to see, or what we wish not to see. Individuals born with a Sun-Neptune square often possess a hard-to-read quality, their sense of self somewhat obscured by context—who they're with, what they're trying to get across, how they're feeling that day. Neptune, after all, seeks to dissolve ego boundaries, causing it to become less clear where another person actually ends… and where our own investments in who we imagine them to be (the good or the bad) begins.

There's an inherent glamour and romance to Sun-Neptune people, in that we may pin our most idealistic imaginings onto the mysterious blank-slate in front of us. They appear larger than life (especially with a Leo Sun), able to rise above the common fray… and we wish for them to lift all of us up, too, on the wings of the faith we place in 'em. Neptune promises such blissful transcendence from our daily woes, if only we can keep our faith intact.

Just as significantly, though, Neptune also tempts us to flirt with our own self-delusions. And as such, Sun-Neptune individuals often attract our suspicions just as readily as our admiration. Those not instantly drawn in by the promise of who the Sun-Neptune person might be—and unwilling to proceed on faith alone—may instead sleuth for hints of them being something wholly different than who they appear. Their sympathetic slipperiness of self is so quickly misunderstood as active deception, creating anxiety or paranoia aimed squarely at them… though, again, not necessarily based on who they actually are.

Barack Obama so clearly fits this Sun-square-Neptune bill, right down to the public's unsure ability to discuss his mixed-race heritage. What could be a more poignant example of a confused sense of self than running as 'the first Black president' when you're actually half-White? Even the difficulty in getting an accurate birthtime on him led to whispers that Obama wasn't in fact born in this country (a disqualification for his candidacy)… and even after we saw a scan of his actual birth certificate, some wondered aloud if maybe it had been faked.

Obama's Sun-Neptune square, of course, also has its ramifications for our trying to get a good handle on what he really believes. In Obama's chart, Neptune falls in the 9th house, the domain of our personal ethical and religious beliefs… and judged on the Sun square, it does seem that ambiguous or inconsistent stances on such 9th-house issues have the potential to unsettle Obama's sense of leadership. The Reverend Wright controversy, in which Obama drew criticism for tacitly endorsing his clergyman's 'angry Black man' politics through silent witness, is a perfect example of this. The Neptunian connectedness Obama felt from participating in Wright's church undermined his ability to clearly express his own personal views as distinct from others'. This won't be the last time we're offered a perplexing glimpse at Obama's ever-shifting moral compass—not because he's a bad guy, but because he's an idealist who legitimately wants to bring everyone together. Alas, some differences are real, substantive and unbridgeable.

Full disclosure: I didn't immediately hop on the Obama bandwagon, though many of my like-minded peers were early fans. I never believed he was a covert Islamicist, anymore than I've swallowed the messianic kool-aid. But beyond his obvious rhetorical brilliance, I just didn't get the whole appeal. Though it's likely I'll vote for Obama, my mistrust of the hyped-up hoopla surrounding him has not gone away. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it actually affected my astrological examinations of the upcoming election—to the extent that I initially saw the results swinging in McCain's favor. (Yes, it's true, our so-called 'predictions' are usually under the influence of our underlying emotional temperature, somehow or another.)

Recently though, after meditating further on the election issue, I changed my call. I now believe Obama will win the election… barring any upsetting events, impossible to foresee, that might affect how everything proceeds. (With transiting Uranus opposing Obama's Mars, I don't think an unexpectedly dramatic turn-of-events is out of the question.) I also came to terms with the emotions underlying my initial forecast—and they point back to Obama's Sun-Neptune square.

The frightening specter following Obama around his campaign, and which nobody feels comfortable talking about, is the threat of an assassination. (Hillary Clinton got ripped a new one for publicly putting words to an undercurrent we all had access to.) Just as Neptune with the Sun can transform common individuals into 'saviors', it's also a combination that makes martyrs. Those with a Neptune affliction to their Sun often sacrifice themselves on behalf of someone else or for the larger good. Adding this astrological piece to the racial climate in America, I found myself subconsciously worrying about Obama's safety—and, as a result, wishing a defeat would take him out of the line of fire.

Now I realize Obama definitely knows what he's getting into, even if we don't exactly know what we're getting into with him. He chose to run, knowing the potentially 'disastrous' (or so-called) consequences of his election. The assassination fears run way deeper than one man, into the unresolved heart of a nation built on slaves' labor and sustained by continuing to hold folks down. And now I know Obama is likelier merely to disappoint (another common Neptunian experience) than to be killed.