In an article in the August 2004 edition of Chronogram, I described the horoscope for George Bush's second term as "the inauguration chart from hell."

The astrology portending this occurs in the inauguration chart's 8th house of other people's money, the associated power of contracts and agreements, business interests, and death (yes, these are all assigned to the same house in astrology, with the common factor being the movement of capital through inheritance and dowry). The 8th house also deals with deep secrets, particularly about sex, death, and money.

The 8th is the house to watch in the inauguration chart. This all happens in Sagittarius.

In the swearing-in chart (if curious for the diagram, see the PlanetWaves.net edition of this article), the 8th house has two tenants-in-residence: Mars (lord of war, desire, drive, passion) and Pluto (lord of transformation, death, evolution, and generally speaking, the unstoppable force).

Many readers know that the Pluto in Sagittarius era, which goes back to 1994 and lasts about four more years, is the astrological phase that vividly describes both the jihad and the rise of the American theocratic movement—rule by religion, just like we say our evil enemies do.

The two planets are in a conjunction, that is, working together, multiplying one another.

Opposing these two planets is an early-degree Gemini Moon. So the Inauguration chart features an opposition between the Gemini Moon and the 8th house Sagittarius Mars-Pluto conjunction. This is not a fair match. Saggitarius Mars-Pluto vs. the Gemini Moon is like the relationship between a hammer and an egg. Because the degree of the Moon is earlier than the degrees of Mars and Pluto, and since the Moon is the fastest object in the aspect, approaching the conjunction, it suggests something about to happen.

What is about to happen is that there will be a crisis wherein the Religious Right becomes its own entity distinct from the Republicans; some people with a lot of money will get very upset, and start to call in debts and favors; and there will be divisions in the public and the administration that appear vividly, as if they were already there.

Here is how I summed it up in Chronogram 15 months ago: "The values are all in place, and the game is set. The early Gemini Moon will slide along for about nine months before the media really figure out what is going on. But they will get it, guaranteed."

Nine months from the inauguration date, when the Moon reaches Mars, turns out to be October 20. Refining that date a little more precisely, we come up with October 30. Using a predictive method called Secondary Progressions, if you advance the Inauguration chart at the precise rate of one day per year (hence, about 18 hours = nine months), October 30 was when the Moon made its opposition to Mars. Then, over the next five months, it continues into an opposition with even more formidable Pluto. Mars and Pluto in the 8th house, are the death-money house, by the way.

It seemed, and seems, to be a moment of reckoning. The Moon can represent the public; in Gemini, it can represent the media; it can represent the sentiments of the nation. With the Moon, we feel our way through reality, and the more advanced souls use the Moon as an intuitive device. Both work well; feelings are often intuitive. The Moon is also a wild card for the thing or person in question, in this case, the administration. (In astrology, a single planet can have many significations, and they need to be sorted out carefully.)

But most of all, whatever else it may represent, the Moon is a timing factor.

Apropos of Halloween, we have an image of the Grim Reaper. I think we're going to see things go down in US politics that make the Nixon administration look quaint. In fact, as quaint as Albert Gonzalez said the Geneva Convention's protection of prisoners against abuse and torture was. Because torture is going to be one of the issues that comes home to roost. If an 8th-house Sagittarius Mars-Pluto can represent anything, it is some kind of state secret of this dimension.

Indeed, I will propose here that every odd issue that we have seen go oddly nowhere in the past five years is going to come home to roost in the next five months. People will wonder who Bush really is, how he even got there, and how we can possibly get rid of him. And that will not be an easy question to answer; he will not be as easy to get rid of as a Bush-Cheney bumper sticker. However, unlike most astrologers, I predict he will remain in office through the end of his appointed term, and after a Democrat is elected to replace him in 2008, there will be a Constitutional crisis wherein he or his administration attempts to keep the presidency beyond the end of the term.

But let's focus on the immediate future, and what might emerge at this time (or may well have already emerged by the time you read this). First and foremost is the Valerie Plame spy-outing incident. It turns out that the grand jury's term in this case, impaneled by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, expires on October 28. So there will be an announcement of something around then, and based on the astrology I'm going to say it looks like more than one person in the administration gets charged with a crime. This will not look good on their CVs.

The Plame affair is the one thread that goes through every different scandal of the Bush administration, including the most important one: Why they came to be in power in the first place. At the end of it all, that's the real issue.

For those who may not be following the news, the Plame affair is not an amorous liaison, but rather the situation where someone in the administration (apparently some combination of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, and their bosses, George and Dick) outed an undercover CIA agent in revenge for her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, exposing the lie that Iraq was allegedly developing nuclear weapons. Plame was an agent working against weapons of mass destruction; exposing her identity, and thus endangering her entire spy network, was an act of treason by whoever did it.

The intersection of the grand jury's term expiring and the progressed Moon making its opposition to Mars is ominous. And it is just the beginning. Because once the Moon gets mixed up in Mars, and the public is divided and the press awakened, that Moon moves along to Pluto, which does not suggest an improvement in the situation for those directly involved. And as it happens, We, the People, are involved—and unfortunately, I don't think that the people who have been having a party for the past five years are going to be the ones who get to clean up the mess.