Solar Eclipses – beating the war drums but not yet

Tension is mounting as North Korea blows a possible nuclear raspberry at the USA and Trump is facing up to Xi Jinping on a laundry list of differences (NK, trade, China’s territorial expansion). China is also muscling in on a disputed border with India. The Middle East is a hyena’s nest of myriad conflicts amongst them Russia power-playing, the debilitated but-not-dead-yet ISIS, Qatar versus the Arab autocrats, and behind it all the great Shia-Sunni schism being played out with all the ferocity of Europe’s Roman Catholic v Protestant Wars which led to several centuries of carnage.

The upcoming Leo Solar Eclipse does have a military-connection Mars trine Saturn and an explosive Mars trine Uranus; with an overly forceful Jupiter square Pluto and Jupiter in a religious/culture clash opposition to Uranus. So it is fraught. Though it is not as stark as the solar eclipse before the Korean War of 1950 with the New Moon opposition Mars square Uranus; or World War 11 with the eclipse  Mars again in hard aspect to Pluto and Saturn in 1939; or World War 1 with the eclipse Mars in hard aspect to Saturn Pluto and trine Uranus in 1914. Or even 9/11 where the preceding solar eclipse had Saturn opposition Pluto and Pluto conjunct Mars, with Mars sextile Uranus.

The Saros Series eclipse which oversaw 9/11 repeats in 2019, which doesn’t mean a replay of 9/11 will happen, since it has only occurred once and these cycles repeat every 18.5 years approximately. But the eclipses from mid 2018 onwards do begin to look harsher as the Saturn Pluto conjunction approaches and Mars is in play in the July 2018 eclipse, both eclipses in 2019 and in a peculiarly unpleasant square to Pluto Jupiter and widely Saturn in mid 2020.

Trump is the only world leader with a birth time and his Mars Descendant line runs to the west of Korea with his Pluto Descendant at maximum impact through Beijing; so both are hot spots for him. His Mars MC line runs through Poland where he is today giving a rousing clash-of-cultures speech and down through Libya and central Africa. GW Bush’s Mars MC line ran straight through Afghanistan. Trump’s Pluto MC line runs through Germany where he’s likely to run into considerable opposition.

Trump’s Admin chart is nothing like as stark as GWB’s First Term January 2011 which had Mars on the Descendant in vengeful Scorpio opposition Saturn square Uranus. In Trump’s Term chart there is a Mars in Pisces square Saturn, which will give rise to bad-temper and some military sabre-rattling, but (cross fingers) won’t be the game-changer that GWB’s term was.