The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 515, titled:

Mar-Uranus Conjunctions in Gemini in US History

With Chris Brennan and Nick Dagan Best

Episode originally released on December 12, 2025

Original episode URL:

https://theastrologypodcast.com/2025/12/12/mars-uranus-conjunctions-in-gemini-in-us-history/

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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com

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Transcribed by Teresa Lardo

Transcription released December 31st, 2025

Copyright © 2025 TheAstrologyPodcast.com

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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hey. My name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. Joining me today is astrologer Nick Dagan Best, and we’re gonna be looking at Mars-Uranus conjunctions in US history. So hey, Nick; welcome back. 

NICK DAGAN BEST: Hey Chris; thanks for having me back. Ooh boy do we have a show today! 

CB: We do have a show. We did another one of our classic research episodes where the problem we set in front of us was that now that Uranus has gone into Gemini for the next seven years, Mars-Uranus conjunctions are gonna start taking place in that sign. And there’s gonna be four Mars-Uranus conjunctions starting next year on July 4th. We have the first Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini taking place weirdly on the nation’s birthday, and so I wanted to know more about what that’s about and see if we could try to forecast the future by looking back into the past at historical conjunctions, especially when Mars conjoined Uranus in Gemini, and see what happens. And I think we found a few things, yeah? 

NDB: Oh, I would say we found a few things. 

CB: Absolutely. All right. So a bit of context – you and I several years ago did a whole episode on Uranus in Gemini and how that has historically coincided with really critical turning points in US history. So the first Uranus in Gemini period coincided almost perfectly with the Revolutionary War and the birth of the US as a country. Then the second Uranus in Gemini period about 84 years later coincided with the Civil War, which is the bloodiest war in US history in terms of its own people and deaths of people in the US. And then 84 years after that happened to coincide with World War II as well as the aftermath of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. And then 84 years after that when Uranus comes around and completes another cycle, it brings us to today. And basically Uranus made its first ingress into Gemini this year in the middle of 2025, and it’s gonna fully move into Gemini again next year, and then we’re gonna be in Uranus in Gemini land for the next seven years. So one of the questions is, you know, what is that gonna bring? We’ve seen that it’s coincided with major conflicts in US history. But in particular, the Mars-Uranus conjunctions, since that was in the birth chart of the US at the Declaration of Independence, seem particularly potent and volatile. And so that’s gonna be our special study here today, yeah? 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: So tell me more. What do you think about that; how would you frame that? So Uranus in Gemini and Mars conjunct Uranus – like, what do we need to say about that? 

NDB: Yeah. Well, Mars copresent with Uranus along with the conjunctions – the whole period that the two of them are in the same sign. Sort of like two volatile, powerful bodies being in the same room, if you will. A sign can be like a room, and a room has its own quality when it’s empty and then if one person walks into the room, the room is changed by the presence of that person in that room. But if a second person comes into that room, the quality of that room has changed yet again and it’s a combination of the chemistry between the two people, whether it’s friendly or hostile, and then of course the environment they’re in – the room they’re in. 

And so Mars and Uranus, they are like the same two shall we say people for argument’s sake being in the same room at the same time. But we’re telling a story about different periods when they’ve been in this one particular room through American history, but also what’s happened when they’ve been in other rooms or rather other signs. Other Mars-Uranus copresences that have happened in signs other than Gemini, but have some kind of relationship or parallel to what we see happening when those two planets are copresent in Gemini. 

CB: Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that really, it takes us back to the concept that you and I just covered extensively in our episode on recurrence transits. And the premise in that episode that we outlined and established and validated pretty thoroughly is that when if you have a specific signature or an aspect or an alignment between two planets in your birth chart, then whenever the same alignment reoccurs in the sky, you’ll have an important turning point in your life and in terms of manifesting some of the potential of that placement. And one of our first examples of that was the United States because the United States at the time of the Declaration of Independence was born with a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini. So part of the takeaway that we’re gonna see from that in this episode is that each time Mars and Uranus, again, move into a conjunction in the sky, that often ends up signaling an important turning point in US history. But especially so when Mars and Uranus are conjoining in Gemini itself, which is the natal sign that that signature was in in the birth chart. So we’ll see some instances where the conjunctions are still relevant as major turning points in US history outside of Gemini, but I think adding them into Gemini puts an extra special emphasis on that and amplifies it really significantly in terms of historical importance. 

NDB: Yeah. There’s a clear pattern that Uranus in Gemini, that transit, signifies a sort of a return to position one in the cycle of US history. I mean, yeah, even before the Revolutionary War, it tends to be really central even to the first British coming to the American continent. 

So yeah. There is that element – and certainly the Revolutionary War being this defining starting point. We’ve established especially with that episode three years ago that it is this sort of position A-1 relative to American history. And so since Uranus is in Gemini and these periods when it has been copresent with Mars have usually been coincided with a lot of the real high points in these struggles we’re talking about, so they’re worth examining on their own. 

CB: Yeah, for sure. High points and low points. So let me show the – I’ll show the Sibley chart. But one of the things that’s important about this – so this is one of the charts for the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776, which is usually celebrated as the nation’s birthday at this point. And there’s different arguments about what time to use that day and what the correct rising sign is. There’s other arguments even about using other days over the course of that summer when things were coming together. But one of the things that’s important about this technique is it doesn’t really matter, because that Mars-Uranus conjunction was copresent, as we’ll see, the entire summer that they were putting together the Declaration of Independence. So pretty much no matter what date you use that summer, you have Mars and Uranus in the same sign in Gemini. And in this chart, Mars is at 21 degrees of Gemini and Uranus is at eight degrees of Gemini, so that’s what we’d call a copresence or a sign-based conjunction. And what we found is repeatedly in our historical episodes as you said was just that as soon as two planets move into the same sign, their energies start blending together and it’s considered to be a sign-based conjunction, but then it gets more intense the closer they are to the exact degree of the conjunction. 

So this is the natal signature, and the fact that the US has a Mars-Uranus conjunction is part of the reason why then we would expect Mars-Uranus conjunctions to be important whenever they recur, especially in the sign of Gemini, in US history. And to give you an idea of why we are curious about this now at the present point in history, here’s a graphic that I worked on and I designed with my graphic designer Paige Herbert who helped me to illustrate what the entire Uranus in Gemini cycle looks like that we’ve just entered into from 2025 until 2033. So Uranus first went into Gemini in 2025, and then it will leave Gemini for the final time in this cycle in 2033. So that’s where we’re looking at here is something like seven years more of this cycle, and then within that, Uranus is gonna station several times. But the thing we’re focused on today is there’s gonna be four conjunctions of Mars and Uranus during the course of that transit. The first one at three degrees of Gemini on July 4th, 2026; then the second one is the 23rd of June, 2028, at 11 degrees of Gemini. Then the next one is gonna be 2030, June 15th, at 19 degrees of Gemini. And then the final conjunction will be 2032, June 6th, at 26 degrees of Gemini. 

So as you can see, Mars-Uranus conjunctions take place about every two years or about every 25 months or so on average. But those are the ones we’re really curious about because they will recreate the natal signature of the US birth chart perfectly, which therefore should represent an important turning point in US history that’s intensified within the broader context of this seven or eight-year Uranus transit which is already marking a huge turning point in US history. 

NDB: Yeah. It’s really striking that that first conjunction is right there on July 4th, of course, like you mentioned. In 1776, 250 years prior to this – I mean, this is gonna be a big July 4th. It’s a 250th anniversary. But when the original Declaration was signed, Mars was already headed – like, it was in the last third of Gemini by that point, because from the minute it went into Gemini in June of 1776, Richard Lee drafted the resolution to declare independence, and then Thomas Jefferson started working on the text of the Declaration, and then they all sort of read it over and what have you so that by the time you got to July the 4th, a whole month had gone by of Mars and Uranus being copresent, and it sort of pretty much culminated with the Declaration being passed on the 4th. In this instance, it’s like the conjunction itself happens on the 4th, which really does look very remarkable when you contrast it to the original event 250 years ago. 

CB: Right. Absolutely. Yeah, and apparently there’s gonna be a lot of celebration surrounding that. I was reading recently that Trump was trying to schedule a UFC fight on the front lawn of the White House for July 4th, but they’re running into scheduling issues so now it’s supposedly moved back a little bit earlier to his birthday in June. What is that? Like, June 14th or something like that? 

NDB: June 14th, yeah. Yeah. 

CB: But I think Mars will be in Gemini by then? Actually, I’m not sure about that. Don’t quote me on that; it might still be in Taurus at that point, but — 

NDB: I think it’s still in Taurus at that point. 

CB: But certainly building up to the conjunction. But obviously that’s not gonna be the only thing. Like, that’s funny and weird symbolically, but as we’ll see through in the course of this episode, these conjunctions are kind of tough. And like with all planets, of course, you know, there can be a range of positive and negative manifestations, and sometimes it’ll be more constructive and sometimes it’ll be less. But Mars is traditionally like, the planet of war and conflict and strife and division, whereas Uranus is the planet of sudden changes, unexpected happenings and events, radical pushes for freedom and liberation. And when you put these two planets together, sometimes it can result in a pretty volatile combination where you have these sometimes very sudden violent events that can take place on these conjunctions is one of the recurring themes that we’ll see come up over and over again at different points, especially with conflicts or wars or battles or other things like that, right? 

NDB: Yeah. Well, certainly we’re getting into a lot of wars. And there are other violent episodes as well that we’re including here. Yeah, but not everything. Sometimes Mars-Uranus is just things happening – a lot of things happening – very quickly. If it’s not surprising, it’s an accelerant, and yeah. One of those times when you can be sitting around waiting forever for something to happen and then everything happens very quickly in a short period of time. 

CB: Absolutely. Yeah, everything happens all at once. We had that actually on our last Mars-Uranus conjunction, which like, not to give away the whole thing already, but our last Mars-Uranus conjunction took place about a year and a half ago. It was that one in Taurus, and that was the week that there was the assasination attempt in Pennsylvania on Trump’s life. Then two days later, the Republican National Convention opens, and he announces JD Vance as his vice presidential running mate. The court case, a major court case involving the secret documents that was hanging over Trump’s head was suddenly dismissed by a judge that exact same day – the exact day of the conjunction. And then Trump is nominated as the Republican candidate. And then two days later, Biden announces he has covid. And then a few days after that, he drops out of the race entirely, which completely upends the presidential race and in retrospect we can see paves the way for Trump’s winning the presidency and starting his second presidency. 

So when you said like, you know, sometimes a lot of things happen at once, that is a pretty good example of some crazy stuff that can all happen at once during these conjunctions. 

NDB: Yeah. And even, you know, going back to 1776, there’s a lot in that period as well leading to the Declaration of Independence that is likewise a lot of things happening very quickly, you know, after a period of great uncertainty. So yeah, that is a common sort of observation we can make. 

CB: Yeah. But on the other side – I mean, I’m glad you said there can sometimes be positive things, because as we’ll see, there can sometimes be positive developments as well. One of the ones I found that we’ll talk about was the passage in the House, the critical turning point where the House – the US government essentially – passed the 13th amendment, which is the amendment that outlawed slavery. So in that instance, it’s this sudden freedom and liberation of this huge group of people that have been oppressed since the founding of the country in that moment around the time of a Mars-Uranus conjunction. So and by parallel, even the Declaration of Independence itself was the colonies banding together and deciding to break away from England and to form their own country, and this push for freedom and liberation by essentially separating from a larger political entity can be part of the process as well. So we’ll see a lot of revolutions, push for liberation, sometimes insurrections and other things like that under these conjunctions. 

NDB: Yeah, exactly. I was thinking the same thing, whether it’s the 13th amendment freeing slaves or whether it’s the original Declaration of Independence, the theme of freedom is certainly very Uranian and all the more so Mars-Uranian. Mars, a planet of action, making it happen. But yeah, Uranus is a planet of ideals. You know, a planet that looks to how things should be rather than how things are, and what needs to be changed. So yeah. That’s gonna be a common thing that people think needs to be changed is, you know, if they don’t feel like they’re free. 

CB: Right. Well, and Mars is the planet, though, of action and taking up arms and sometimes getting what you want by force or doing things forcefully. And when you put that together with Uranus sometimes it is people taking up arms in order to achieve that Uranian ideal of freedom.

NDB: Yeah. Exactly. 

CB: Yeah. So that’s one aspect of things that we’re gonna be seeing. I’m trying to think of other things we should say to set it up, but for the most part, it’s like, we don’t have to because we’re gonna let history speak for itself. And that’s one of the things is that in trying to anticipate what this upcoming period is gonna look like, our purpose in this episode is just to look back in history at these three distinct periods that we’re gonna go through in order, starting with the Revolutionary War period, then the Civil War period, and then the World War II time period, and see what happened and what events came up in these different Mars-Uranus conjunctions during those periods, and then what some of the overlaps and parallels were between the periods. And then through that, we can kind of like, infer or let history speak for itself in terms of what that means if some of these cycles are gonna be repeating over the course of the next seven years or so. 

NDB: Yeah, exactly. Let’s let the material speak for itself, because I think a lot of it is more or less self-explanatory. 

CB: Yeah. Totally. All right. So this is gonna be one of our legendarily long episodes because it’s a big research episode, so everybody should buckle in. Like, make some tea or some coffee or something like that. We’re gonna share our research with you. There will be timestamps where you can jump around theoretically if you wanted to, but yeah. With our episodes, it always pays to, you know, we’re gonna give you a huge download of a bunch of information over the course of this. And the people that stick through it, I think, will be handsomely rewarded, because that’s part of the process of learning astrology is sometimes you gotta learn a lot of things. We’re gonna summarize as much as we can, but there’s a lot to go over today. 

Any other preliminaries before we jump into our first period, or is there any major things I’m forgetting that we’re overlooking? 

NDB: No, let’s just say “give me liberty or give me death” and get on with it! 

CB: Okay! I will liberate us from this long introduction right now. 

NDB: Thank you. 

CB: Okay. 

NDB: Patrick Henry did have the Sun in Gemini and Uranus was conjunct his Sun when he said something to the effect of “give me liberty or give me death” in the spring of 1776, so there you go. 

CB: There you go. All right. 

All right, well, let’s jump into our first period, which is the Revolutionary War period. And I’ll share the graphic that Paige made for the period of Uranus in Gemini from 1774 to 1782. So that was the period from the first ingress of Uranus into Gemini, June 19th, 1774, all the way until its final egress out of Gemini and into Cancer for the final time on April 28th, 1782. And if you ask any historian, you know, what was going on in US history during this time period when Uranus was in Gemini back then, they will tell you that this pretty perfectly encapsulates the period of the US Revolutionary War. And for our purposes, we’re gonna be focusing in particular on these four conjunctions and copresences that took place between Mars and Uranus where the first exact conjunction between Mars and Uranus took place June 25th, 1774. The second exact conjunction took place June 15th, 1776. Then the next one was June 7th, 1778, and the final one was May 29th, 1780. And of course, the copresences for these are gonna span out maybe a month or so either side ahead of or after the conjunction; it’ll vary. And I may put up like, a data sheet in post just to show you when the copresences are. But that gives you a rough idea of the time frames that we’re looking at for those four conjunctions of Mars and Uranus. 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: So one of the things you and I found as we were putting this together is like, initially I was trying to keep this narrowly focused just to make it manageable of only look at the Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Gemini. And we found a ton of stuff as we’ll see during those periods. But one of the things that’s really important about these periods is that it’s part of a sequence, and what we found basically is that there were Mars-Uranus conjunctions in the previous sign in Taurus that often acted as a precursor that set the stage and led into the culmination of events that occurred under Mars conjoining Uranus in Gemini. But there were those precursors of Mars conjunct Uranus in Taurus, the previous sign, and then once Mars-Uranus in Gemini was wrapping up and winding down, once Uranus started moving into Cancer, there would start being Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Cancer, and that would sometimes carry forward or bring to completion some of the themes that had previously sort of culminated under the Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Gemini. So for our purposes, even though we’re gonna focus on Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Gemini, we are also gonna have to pay attention to how some of the lead up and the following conjunctions were part of that story and its unfolding of events basically, right? 

NDB: Yeah. It’ll be clear to people why we’re including Mars-Uranus copresences in Taurus and Cancer and sometimes other signs in the story. It’s all part of the big, larger narrative. Just fleshes out the story. 

CB: All right. So the Revolutionary War starts April 19th, 1775, and it lasts until September 3rd, 1783. So that gives you some time frame of that. And in terms of set up, though, one of the Mars-Uranus conjunctions that you pointed out that happened in Taurus as a build up, I believe, was that British warships arrived in Boston Harbor in September of 1768 under a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Taurus, right? 

NDB: Yeah. I think you found that one, but I do know this story. After – yeah. The Townshend Acts are sort of a precursor to the later Intolerable Acts, and there’s pushback right away. And so the British sends the military, and this is the beginning of a British occupation effectively of Boston. And it’ll eventually there’ll be the Boston Massacre two years later at the end of 1770, and then as things get more tense, eventually these are the same troops who will be there – or some of them are the same troops that will be there – when war breaks out in 1775. 

CB: So what’s the context, just the synopsis for US history is like, that entire let’s say seven year period before Uranus goes into Gemini and we have the Revolutionary War that almost perfectly coincides with Uranus in Gemini, there’s this build up phase where things start ramping up pretty rapidly during the course of Uranus in Taurus for that seven years before the Revolutionary War where there’s becoming increasing tensions between the colonies in the United States and England and the British crown. And there starts being especially conflict over taxation, right? 

NDB: Yeah. For the New England part of the Civil War, it’s taxation. And that’s what these warships being in Boston Harbor, you know, are all about is the dispute over being taxed without having a say in it is, I think, the real sticking point. Once you go down to Virginia, the Revolutionary War is about other things. But yeah, certainly as far as people like Samuel and John Adams and the other Massachusetts revolutionaries, that is the big gripe, grievance. 

CB: Yeah. So and it’s like, this was important, this conjunction in September of 1768 because this is the first military occupation of a colonial city when you could really see things heading in that direction. Because one of the themes that we’ll see that really came up in this one that sometimes happens is there starts being these little rebellions, and then sometimes the people in power will attempt to suppress the rebellion through military means – sometimes brutally – but then sometimes it’ll backfire and just lead to a larger rebellion at that point and a larger war or conflict. And that’s kind of the scenario that we see most distinctly here in the Revolutionary War period is the colonies starting to grumble and itch and kind of yearn for having more freedom and self-autonomy, or even like, recognition of equality and some things there. But then the response from the British is to start clamping down harder and to start exerting military force and sometimes overreaching, eventually leading to things like the Boston Massacre when a bunch of people were shot who were protesting. And then that suddenly lights a fire or throws gasoline on a small fire and just makes it explode and makes it much larger. And that’s really interesting; it’s one of the recurring themes that we’ll see is just like, we sometimes talk about Pluto making things bigger. But Uranus also when it gets together with Mars takes a little Mars thing, and it seems like it blows it up into what we’ll see later is eventually like, a big mushroom cloud. 

NDB: Yeah. I mean, to be fair, the British weren’t just, you know, strong-arming at this point. I mean, yeah, they sent troops to sort of quiet down trouble, but they are trying other things to keep the colonists happy. 

The whole reason for the taxation is that there had just been a big war fought – it’s called the French and Indian War in the States – but it was really a world war. It’s called the Seven Years War in the rest of the world. It’s the war where my hometown, Montreal, was conquered by the British from the French. A lot of things changed around. And the American colonists thought because of this war, you know, they were still British at this point themselves. They thought because the British won this war that they were gonna have access to, you know, land maybe going out to Mississippi they were hoping. But the British had actually promised various Amer-Indian nations that actually they would contain their colony and that places like modern-day Ohio and what have you would remain in French and Indian hands. 

And a lot of the American colonists were upset by this. They thought like, hey, we won this war; we should be getting this land. And so they would defy the British boundaries and send settlers into what was legally Indian territory, and then there’d be pushback, and then the British would have to send the military in there to protect the colonists. And so that cost money, and that’s what the colonists were being taxed for. 

And yeah, there was – right around that same time that the warships arrived in Boston Harbor in November of 1768, there was a treaty that the British signed with the Haudenosaunee, who are often known as the Iroquois Nation. And it’s called the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, and it was a treaty that was signed to sort of establish the new borders that the peace treaty from the war had agreed to five years earlier in 1763. So Mars and Uranus were still in Taurus on November 5th, 1768, when this treaty was signed, and it was meant to really sort of establish the new boundaries between where the colonials would live and where the Amer-Indians would live, but that’s soon to be – if anything, this treaty probably caused more problems than it solved. And so a lot of what would unfold outside of New England with respect to the grievance that sparked the Revolutionary War, a lot of it has to do with people – particularly Virginians, Pennsylvanians – feeling like it’s their right to move west and establish settlements deeper into the interior despite what treaties the British would sign. 

CB: Got it. Okay. So that’s that conjunction, so this is Mars-Uranus in Taurus, and it’s setting the stage for everything. But then we jump forward a couple of conjunctions to 1772, and there’s one more Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Taurus where things keep heating up and escalating basically, right? 

NDB: Yeah. In June of 1772, there’s a British schooner – like a custom schooner – the Gaspee, and it’s attacked by Rhode Island colonists. And they lure the vessel aground; they attack the captain; they remove the crew. They burn the ship. And it’s all a protest against the enforcement of trade laws. And yeah, you know, it’s quite a rowdy incident – maybe one of the more aggressive ones that the colonists did prior to the actual war breaking out. And this is before the Boston Tea Party by a whole year and a half. 

CB: And this is a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Taurus? 

NDB: Correct. Yeah.

CB: Okay. So just I’ll keep trying to remember, but if we don’t remember, it’s like, every event we’re talking about is a Mars-Uranus conjunction or copresence in Taurus, which again like, the copresence only lasts – especially when Mars is direct and not moving retrograde – Mars is only in a sign for like, a month and a half or like, a couple of months basically, right? 

NDB: Yeah. You know, it can be shorter if it’s really close to the Sun; it can be, you know, a month. 

CB: Got it. Okay. All right. So then we jump forward a couple of years to the next Mars-Uranus conjunction, which is one of our final sets of build up things that puts everything in place, right? 

NDB: Yeah. The Intolerable Acts. There’s a few of them. These are acts that the British government was passing in 1774 that was really getting the colonists more and more angry and furthering the sort of the split that was setting in. Yeah, there’s a number of different sort of trade acts and a quartering act where troops have to be, you know, accommodated in people’s homes and what have you. So it really sort of gets everyone up in arms all the more so and basically sparks – these Intolerable Acts are what make the colonists finally agree to get together and have the First Continental Congress in September of 1774, effectively provoking the creation of the first US government of sorts, albeit unofficial at first. 

CB: Right. So this is like, the Intolerable Acts that are passed under this Mars-Uranus conjunction are a series of acts to – of laws – that are passed by the British to clamp down after especially the Boston Tea Party. And they closed the port of Boston; they restricted town meetings. They allowed royal officials accused of crimes to be tried in England and did all sorts of stuff, like made them house troops locally in Boston — 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: And this is what lead – this literally prompts the First Continental Congress, which is the thing that then eventually leads to the Declaration of Independence. 

NDB: Exactly. Exactly. 

CB: Okay. So in some ways, it’s like this conjunction marks when the colonies were really locked into a path of war at this point it seems like now in retrospect. 

NDB: Okay, a path of war – yes. They don’t think so, but yeah, I mean, it’s making it more inevitable now, if that’s what you mean. Sure. 

CB: Obviously everybody could have like, called it off and decided not to go to war, so there was a certainly act of volition. But it just seems like this is one of the final things in retrospect where we can see there’s like, this arc or a graph that’s rising, and the — 

NDB: Sure. 

CB: — temperature and the heat is sort of culminating and leading to the eventual culmination that would happen within the next few years of officially declaring independence and declaring war. 

NDB: Yeah. No, even like, the following year, even after the first fighting has started, the colonists do send what they call an olive branch message to the King trying to sort of smooth things over and say, “Hey, we’re still willing to talk.” But by that point, the signals have been crossed and as far as the King is concerned, they’ve really crossed the Rubicon. So 1775 is when everyone knows that they’re at war and there’s no turning back. But certainly these acts are what accelerate the whole sort of resistance build up, and yeah, the creation of the Continental Congress, which in itself is kind of something of a miracle to have happen because the different colonies don’t really care for each other or relate to each other at this point. They’re very different from each other. And they’re only getting together because things have become so intolerable in their view. 

CB: Right. And it’s like, at the same time period under this same exact conjunction, on July 18th of 1774, the Fairfax Resolves are put together, and this was Virginia rejecting the British supreme authority, and it was actually drafted by George Mason and George Washington in July of 1774 during the time of this conjunction. And this was another really pivotal document that was headed in that direction. 

NDB: Yeah. You can say it’s a sort of precursor to the Declaration of Independence. And Virginia is gonna form itself into a republic a couple of weeks before the actual Declaration of Independence is signed, so in many ways the creation of the United States is following a sort of pattern that Virginia is setting by declaring its own independence, making itself a republic. But that isn’t quite happening yet in 1774, but it will be happening by 1776 just as the US is about to. 

CB: Yeah. But all the seeds are clearly there already in this document on this conjunction, because they’re asserting Virginian and colonial rights basically; they’re rejecting Parliament’s supreme authority and declaring that the colonists were not conquered subjects but were free Englishmen, and also demanding consent for taxation, calling for intercolonial unity and boycotts and all sorts of other things to protest against the Coercive Acts. So it was like, moving the colonies in the direction of having a unified resistance and eventual independence. 

NDB: Yeah. Absolutely. 

CB: All right. So that’s really important. And then just, you know, to go back slightly, it’s like one of the things we’re gonna see in modern times is like, keep all of this in mind, because these are all of the Mars-Uranus conjunctions that were happening in Taurus. And on each one of them as we’ve seen they were taking us towards the culmination of what ended up being the war under Uranus in Gemini. And the parallel today is like, we’re just finishing up all of the Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Taurus that have been taking place over the past decade. And some of those were – I already mentioned the one that happened a year and a half ago with that pivotal turning point during the 2024 presidential election when there was the attempted assasination of Trump, there was the picking of Vance, there was getting rid of his legal issues, and then there was Biden dropping out of the race. And then before that, one of the precursor ones – one of the ones a couple of years before that – happened at the beginning of 2021, and that was January 6th, and that was Biden’s inauguration that was this heavily militarized inauguration that happened in the immediate aftermath of January 6th and the disputed 2020 presidential election. So it’s like, you know, parallels are those conjunctions, which we’ll get into in more detail later. But think about, you know, these are why we’re going through some of these parallels here. 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: All right. So this takes us to the most important event now, and we jump forward two years to the next set of Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Gemini. They took place in the late spring and early summer of 1776, and the most important one was the Declaration of Independence itself, which was the formal founding essentially of the United States when the Continental Congress adopted the document that legally severed ties with Great Britain, and it transformed the colonial rebellion into a war for sovereignty and independence. So hugely important turning point, and it’s falling right on this Mars-Uranus conjunction which is now not happening in Taurus; it’s happening in Gemini. So we’ve now fully moved into the Uranus in Gemini era, and this is one of the first conjunctions that’s taking place there. 

NDB: Yeah. That’s the truth. The self-evident truth – all men are created equal, and Mars and Uranus were copresent in Gemini. 

CB: Yeah. And obviously, the ideal is of all men being created equal but then that not necessarily being the case, and then one Uranus cycle later, that question gets revisited where they take a further step towards actually actualizing that ideal by making it so that a huge part of the human population wasn’t enslaved. 

NDB: Right. 

CB: All right. So — 

NDB: Exactly. 

CB: Yeah, which happened on a Mars-Uranus conjunction subsequently in Uranus. 

So one of the things that’s important that you already mentioned but it bears repeating since we’re in this section, but it sort of culminates with the Declaration of Independence, but the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence was formed on June 11th, 1776, and this is very close to the exact conjunction which occurred on June 15th at seven degrees of Gemini. So that’s actually what’s interesting is like, they were drafting the Constitution during the course of that month basically the entire time that Mars was passing over and conjoining Uranus and that the two were copresent in the same sign. And while we think of it as a singular event which is just the Declaration of Independence, there was this entire process and this entire almost like, storm that was swirling that entire summer that was putting all of this together. 

NDB: Yeah. And the following day, June 12th, was when the Virginia Declaration of Rights was adopted, and a lot of what went into the Declaration of Independence was already coming out in the Declaration of Rights. Virginia was forming – the Commonwealth was forming itself. Patrick Henry was becoming the first president of the Virginia Commonwealth; Uranus is conjunct his Sun; it’s right around this time he’s saying, “Give me liberty or give me death” or something to that effect. And that is sort of the prototype for the US presidency, you know. They’re setting up the Virginia state that’ll – there’ll be a sort of a parallel created as Jefferson is writing the Declaration of Independence and they’re eventually gonna create a US government as well. But yeah, that’s all happening at the same time, so. 

CB: Nice. Okay. And one other thing that happened during this time that I thought was interesting and important very close to the exact conjunction is there was a plot called the Hickey Plot to assassinate George Washington which was discovered in June of 1776. And the plot was discovered around June 20th or so, which is only like, five days after the exact Mars-Uranus conjunction took place. And one of the conspirators, Thomas Hickey, was court martialed and then they hung him on June 28th. But it was a really important and pivotal moment because the failure of the plot and the execution of one of the conspirators kind of solidified the new government’s authority and demonstrated the need to both purge internal threats as the British forces were in the process of approaching New York, but the failure of the plot – it sort of forced them even more to band together and realize that this was even more serious and that they were in a real war, basically, at this point. 

NDB: Yeah. Absolutely. 

CB: So and the parallel with that, of course, is interesting just because we have a failed assasination attempt on this Mars-Uranus conjunction that takes place on literally on George Washington June of 1776, and then as we’ve already talked about, we have a parallel with that that happened in the summer in – what was it? July? 

NDB: June – yeah. It was July of 2024. Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. July of 2024 with the failed assasination attempt on President Trump who was like, candidate or former President Trump at the time, but there’s an interesting parallelism there. 

NDB: Yeah. Sure is. 

CB: All right. So after this, there was a lot of things that happened that summer, but we’re gonna jump forward to the next Mars-Uranus conjunction that took place two years later, right? 

NDB: Yeah. In 1778. And this was a period in 1778, the war sort of pivots. In February, France agrees to join the war on the side of the colonists, and the word of that arrives back on the American side in May. And all winter long, George Washington and the troops have been freezing to death and training under Baron von Steuben and really getting sort of trained as a European-style military so that when they come out to fight in the spring of 1778, they’re a much better trained army than they’ve been up until that point. 

And there’s a large battle called the Battle of Monmouth close to Philadelphia, and it’s probably one of Washington’s greater victories, greater achievements. It’s a huge battle, and it does – the British are overwhelmed and they wind up evacuating Philadelphia, running off to New York. And this basically ends the war in the northern half of what is now the country, but from here on the Revolutionary War just sort of moves south. It’s gonna happen in – all the action’s gonna be in Virginia and South Carolina and North Carolina to some degree as opposed to happening in Pennsylvania and New York and Massachusetts.

CB: Okay. Nice. And I thought this one was notable that this happens right near a Mars-Uranus conjunction in June of 1778, and that it’s notable as the largest single day battle of the entire Revolutionary War that fell right on this Mars-Uranus conjunction. 

NDB: Yeah. It’s the largest single day battle, and it’s also, like, it’s the last battle that the Americans are gonna fight without basically the French winning it for them. Because yeah, from here on, it’s gonna be the war in the southern states is gonna be really brutal, and the British will dominate until the French navy comes in at the 11th hour, as it were, at Yorktown. So this really is – it’s a real victory for the Americans. It’s a military victory for the Americans. And it does win, you could say, half the war, you know. Even if the French never came in on the side of the colonists, I think because of Monmouth the Americans would have won something at the negotiating table, you know. So yeah, important for that reason as well. 

CB: And this battle was also famous due to the rage of George Washington cursing out the general who retreated on the other side as well as for the legend of Molly Pitcher, right? 

NDB: Right. Charles Lee was a highly regarded general, and he was generally well thought of. But he did not – he thought he should be in charge rather than Washington. So he was known to be a bit disobedient or what have you with Washington. But he’s leading a retreat in the middle of Monmouth, and Washington rages at him and yeah, you know, Lee winds up losing face. Later on, Lee will be kidnapped; he’ll go off to some tavern in the middle of a campaign, and a British spy is at the tavern and finds out and he gets kidnapped, and he winds up giving very important military secrets to the British when he’s in their custody. So that’s kind of a disgrace. 

And then Molly Pitcher was a woman who – her husband was manning one of the guns and he gets shot, so she jumps in and takes over the fighting. Takes over the gun he was manning. 

CB: Nice. That’s cool that that like, legendary story about her and of, you know, there’s some themes there of women in combat or breaking norms in battle that seem matching with Mars conjunct Uranus.

NDB: Yeah. I mean, to some extent. Obviously, you know, military history is mostly male-dominated, but yeah. I mean, something like this where ultimately in wars of this period, everyone’s along anyway. Women were present during these battles because armies traveled with women and children. Wives of soldiers would be helping out as nurses and what have you. But so there are women around, and yeah, you know, if a gunner gets shot and the situation is really vulnerable, then who is so male chauvinist as to stop a woman from jumping in and taking over? 

CB: I mean, lots of male chauvinists are, but in this instance that’s what makes this legend striking in American history just because it was an instance where a woman becomes like, a central figure in a battle. 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: All right. So after this, we jump forward two years, and under this Mars-Uranus conjunction in May of 1780, there’s a notable – a major massacre that takes place, right? 

NDB: Well, yeah. It’s a battle – the Waxhaws Battle – where the British cavalry are wielding sabers and they just go after these American infantry and really cut them into pieces. So it’s a particularly bloody kind of battle, the kind of bloody battle you only get when horsemen with sabers are coming at you from all directions. So it’s kind of gruesome there and really cements the reputation of this guy, Banastre Tarleton, who becomes sort of a boogeyman monster for Americans in the South because he’s just such a bloodthirsty maniacal soldier. Really brutal. 

CB: Right. Because the point, though, is that the American soldiers were surrendering and the British forces killed them so that it was like, this pivotal moment in terms of the brutality that radicalized a lot of the local population and turned the conflict in the South into more of a bitter guerrilla war at that point. And I think that’s a really interesting keyword there, because Mars-Uranus, the idea of guerilla warfare or warfare that’s being done in a way that’s unique or different or weird or innovative as being a good keyword for Mars-Uranus. And of course, that is one of the things the Revolutionary War is known for is you have this smaller force with the colonists up against a much larger and more advanced force with the British. And in order to like, level the playing field, they’re using guerilla warfare and different tactics like that in order to get an edge. 

NDB: Yeah. And that’s what’s ironic in a way about Banastre Tarleton’s way of fighting at Waxhaws, because when Washington had been fighting the French and Indian War, when Washington had been a young British soldier, I mean, he saw that trying to fight Amer-Indians in a European style where all the troops gather on a field and get up in the morning, line up, you know, literally like soldiers and then start fighting – that wasn’t gonna work in this setting. That all kinds of subterfuge and other manners of guerilla fighting were gonna be necessary in order to win. So that was the lesson that Washington learned in the previous war. And then by this war, yeah, the American colonists are often fighting in a kind of guerilla style combat. And Waxhaws in a way is a British response to it, to also be sort of guerilla-like, you know, to adapt to this way of fighting. And —

CB: Got it. 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: This battle, though, it becomes like, a rallying cry for American revenge. And the massacre thing, though, is important here because we see later in later chronologies other massacres taking place on Mars-Uranus conjunctions. Of course, the most famous one ends up being like, the culmination of all of them ends up being in World War II at the very end of World War II is the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which are just like, you know, much, much bigger version of that in terms of massacres. But we’ll see that theme come up a few times. 

NDB: Oh yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. 

CB: All right. And then there was another major – under this conjunction just a little bit earlier, or in the same month — 

NDB: Two weeks earlier. 

CB: Yeah. In May of 1780, there was another important military turning point. 

NDB: Yeah. There was the Siege of Charleston, South Carolina. The British laid siege to it; there were like, 5,000 troops. It lasted six weeks. 

So a siege means that a city is – or an area is – cut off from food supply and other things, and they try to sort of starve and tire out people within a city. And that’s ultimately what happened. The city wound up surrendering to the British, and it was pretty much the worst defeat that the Continental Army experienced in the South. I mean, they were basically taken out. The only colonial army that would fight in the South after the surrender of Charleston is Washington’s troops that come down to Virginia from Pennsylvania the following year. So yeah, this kind of – right up until this point, this is about a year and a half before the war is gonna end at Yorktown – well, the fighting will end at Yorktown. But at this point, it does look like the British have really taken the South, and it’s gonna take more fighting to really beat them down. 

CB: All right, so that’s major, and then we jump forward two years to the next Mars-Uranus conjunction, and this is the one that’s the most striking to me after the Declaration of Independence falling on a Mars-Uranus conjunction, which was like, the beginning of the war, is that on the Mars-Uranus conjunction in April of 1782 marks the beginning of the diplomatic end to the Revolutionary War when a British representative is sent to meet with the American representative, Benjamin Franklin, who’s sent on behalf of the US to meet with the British in Paris. And this is the beginning of negotiating peace talks that would eventually lead to the Treaty of Paris and international recognition of the United States as a separate independent country. 

So we get functionally like, the beginning of the end of the American Revolutionary War happening on a Mars-Uranus conjunction just as it started functionally with the Declaration of Independence under a conjunction. 

NDB: Yeah. No, that is very striking. I mean, the peace talks would go on for a while, but they do start under the Mars-Uranus, the initial contact between Oswald and Franklin. It does happen there. So yeah, it is amazing. It was only about a month earlier or so at the end of February – six weeks earlier – that British Parliament had voted to end the war. Because when they found out about Yorktown, they’re just like, forget about it. We’re pulling out. And so these peace talks begin, yeah, less than two months after the British have decided to end the war. And Richard Oswald from Britain goes and meets Benjamin Franklin in Paris, and the peace talks begin. 

CB: Brilliant. So that’s amazing and we’ll see some parallels with that with the end of some wars under Mars-Uranus conjunctions such as like, the end of World War II not just coinciding with the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan, but then immediately after that like, the immediate surrender of Japan, which then ends the war in the Pacific and functionally basically ends World War II under a Mars-Uranus conjunction as well. 

So I think that’s really important to keep in mind, and I was thinking about that because I think it has to do with the fact that we’re looking at conjunctions here. And a conjunction, of course, is the start of a new cycle between two planets in terms of their relationship with each other, so sometimes you’ll have the beginning of something – like the beginning of a war, like the beginning of the American Revolutionary War – under a Mars-Uranus conjunction. But then conjunctions are also the end of a cycle, and the bringing to completion of something that came before as well. And in some instances, that can be marking the end of a conflict or the end of a war after once you get towards the end of something. 

NDB: Yeah. Exactly. It’s very tidy. 

CB: Yeah. 

NDB: The way it bookends it, yeah. 

CB: Absolutely. And then as a post-script, so you know, then Uranus moves into Cancer after that, and we start a new seven-year period of Uranus in Cancer. And get this – the US Constitution is signed and ratification begins in a Mars-Uranus copresence in Cancer in 1787 and 1788. So this is the same, during the ratification, the same Mars retrograde that you and I did a whole episode on when we did an episode on Mars retrograde in Cancer in US history, because the Constitution would be signed with Mars ingressing into Cancer and becoming copresent with Uranus. But then during the course of all the states ratifying it, or going through the process of starting to debate it, basically, and all the debates between the Federalists and the anti-Federalists, Mars went retrograde in Cancer copresent with Uranus. 

NDB: Yeah. It’s very, very striking. The shaping of the Constitution preceded it, but as soon as they were ready, just a couple of days before they were ready to sign it in September of ‘87, Mars made the ingress to Cancer where it joined the South Node which was getting ready to leave Cancer. But I find it really funny that the signing of the Constitution was Mars in Cancer with the South Node, which is like, an already weak Mars even more sort of depleted. And then heading into that retrograde where all the sort of the back and forth is gonna start over ratifying the document and what ensues, like you said, between the Federalists and anti-Federalists. 

CB: Yeah. So that means – you know, so if you step back and look at the complete picture here, it’s like, we have the precursors to the war, the build up to it, taking place on the Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Taurus during that seven-year period. We have the Revolutionary War being encapsulated almost perfectly by especially the Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Gemini over a seven-year period. And then early on in the subsequent period of Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Cancer, we have the creation of the actual governmental structure of the United States with the creation of the Constitution. 

NDB: Yeah. It’s wild. The way it happens then, it’s… Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. That’s insane. So that’s a good example, you know, of a recurrence transit basically of the United States. That especially the US has this signature in the birth chart, in the Declaration of Independence basically, and then this signature just becomes important when it keeps happening at different points in US history. And a lot of it is built into the foundation of the country in this succession of like, foundation charts basically that often end up having this conjunction as well basically. 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: Nice. Okay. You mentioned the node, and I’m wondering if this is a good period to mention that piece since it’s not something that we’re otherwise mentioning. But one of the things you focused on is the periods when eclipses start taking place in Gemini as being particularly important turning points during the course of the Uranus in Gemini transit, but also the Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Gemini, because eclipses will magnify things significantly, right? 

NDB: Yeah. They’ll magnify and sort of put the given sign at the sort of the center of whole story. So yeah, when eclipses are happening in Gemini or certainly when one of the lunar nodes is going through Gemini, yeah, it really sort of centers the story all the more on that particular sign. It just makes it that much more Gemini intensive. 

CB: So and the eclipses that were happening in Gemini when the North Node was transiting through Gemini were happening like, 1777, 1778, and 1779, right? 

NDB: Yeah, exactly. Right where they’re going from the colonists are struggling with the British but they win Saratoga, and then the French agree – because they win Saratoga in 1777, the French agree to come in on their side in early 1778. And then by 1779 is where the war is shifting from the northern theatre to the southern theatre, apart from fighting the Haudenosaunee, the Mohawks, which does continue in the North. But they’re not fighting the British in the North, so fighting the British moves to the South at that time as well. 

CB: Got it. Okay. And you also tie this together with Mars retrogrades which really will come up more in one of the later ones where there’s some Uranus in Gemini periods where there will also be like, a Mars retrograde in Gemini. And that’s another filtering factor that can even amplify the importance even higher if there’s a Mars retrograde in Gemini during the course of the entire like, Uranus in Gemini transit. Because then it’s like, taking – as we saw in the recurrence transits episode, sometimes the retrogrades would be one of the markers which would show one of the most important or more important recurrence transits compared to other just regular conjunctions. 

NDB: Yeah. Well, I mean, when Mars goes retrograde in a given sign, it winds up spending a good six, maybe even sometimes seven months in a sign. And that’s what you get – both the Civil War and World War II are periods when Mars goes retrograde in Gemini while Uranus is in Gemini, and you do get these really prolonged periods where the copresence of the two planets lasts half a year. So yeah, that is important. And it’s a striking sort of accident of astronomy. Do you wanna show that Venn diagram now since we’re — 

CB: Yeah. 

NDB: — on this, or? Yeah. 

CB: That’s why I wanted to mention it, because I wanted to make sure we show that before we — 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: — move on. So here’s the diagram. 

NDB: Yeah. This is a diagram I sent to Chris the other day when we were preparing. So if we think about the —

CB: Describe it. 

NDB: Yeah, if we have these four periods, we have 1774 to 1782, which is the Revolutionary War; 1858 to 1865 for the Civil War; 1941 to ‘49 for the Pearl Harbor to NATO World War II thing; and then 2025 to 2033, the thing that’s coming up. 

So with regard to the cycle of Mars and with regard to the cycle of nodes, I came up with this Venn diagram that shows what these four periods have in common with each other and how they differ. 

So the Revolutionary War and the coming period will include a Sun-Mars conjunction in Gemini. In 1774, there was a Sun-Mars conjunction in Gemini; in 1778, it was Sun-Mars-Uranus conjunct, and that was actually King George III’s 40th birthday – his solar return – for the year that his colonists and his greatest enemy, the French, are gonna join up against him. And then the Sun-Mars conjunction coming up will be in the year 2030; there’ll be Sun-Mars conjunct in Gemini while it’s copresent with Uranus. 

But then in the Revolutionary War, you did have the North Node went into Gemini like we were saying between 1777 and 1779, and eclipses happened with that North Node. And that’s something that the Revolutionary War shares in common with World War II. World War II or just after getting out of World War II, the early Cold War – 1945, ‘46, ‘47 – the North Node went into Gemini during that period, and we had eclipses happening with Gemini while Mars and Uranus were copresent in Gemini. Or certainly while Uranus was in Gemini. Whereas the Civil War and the upcoming period are gonna be periods where the South Node goes into Gemini and we have eclipses with the South Node. This was true during the Civil War from 1862 to 1863, and then it’ll happen again this time I think around 2028, 2029, 2030? Something like that more or less. 

And then as we said earlier, the Civil War and World War II have Mars retrogrades in Gemini, whereas the Revolutionary War and the upcoming period have some Mars conjunctions. So yeah, the Venn diagram should make it clearer than how I just tried to explain it, but there’s an interesting sort of overlay of patterns at work here. And I think these are two key criteria to look at to get a sense of what’s different and what’s the same about these different periods in history. 

CB: Yeah. So that means functionally then the period that we’re looking at that’s coming up from 2025 to 2033, that Uranus in Gemini period, the present one, the two parallels if you’re approaching it from this perspective with Mars and the nodal cycles and the eclipses is that our current period has the closest overlaps with the Revolutionary War period when there was a Sun-Mars conjunction in Gemini, and there will be a Sun-Mars conjunction in Gemini coming up. And then the other overlap is with the Civil War period, which also had the South Node in Gemini, so we will also have the South Node in Gemini over the course of the next decade. So then because that was one of the questions you and I had in the last episode in the 2022 episode where we just covered Uranus in Gemini as broad periods without Mars conjunct Uranus is we could see the pattern from the three previous Uranus in Gemini periods where we had a civil war, we had World War II, and we had a Revolutionary War. And so we had a pattern for either an internal conflict like the Civil War, or an external conflict like World War II, and the question of whether our upcoming period was gonna be either an internal conflict, an external conflict, or both. And this one seems like it’s learning, it’s almost inclining more towards the… Well, it’s like, the Civil War one on the one hand with the South Node in Gemini, but then that’s one of the things that’s interesting about the Revolutionary War is we think about that as more of an external conflict in retrospect of like, you know, the “Americans” versus the British. But one of the things that’s funny about that war is it was kind of like a civil war itself, because it was —

NDB: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. 

CB: — it was British colonists and people often conceptualizing themselves still in some ways as British but that were breaking away from Britain and setting up themselves independently. 

NDB: Yeah. I mean, again, I’m from Montreal. And the whole sort of – I mean, Montreal was a 100 percent French city until this war ended and a lot of people who had been living in what is now the United States were compelled to leave their homes and move up to Canada and move up to places like Montreal. To this day, there’s a group in Canada called The United Empire Loyalists – you know, people who are descendants of the original refugees who came up after the war. So yeah, it’s a whole thing. It absolutely was a civil war. That’s what gets very brutal, you know, is, yeah. You know. For instance, if like, Philadelphia for a while was taken over by the British, but then the British evacuated. And so the people left in Philadelphia who had been friendly with the British are suddenly in a very precarious position because then the colonists come back in and see them as traitors. And you know, that gets ugly. And so yeah, there’s a lot about the Revolutionary War that had civil war-like connotations to it. 

CB: Yeah. So at least from this perspective, we’re looking at something that is similar to the Revolutionary War or something going back to the founding of the country basically, and the things that were set up at the founding of the country and some sort of return to or reckoning with those foundations. And then on the other hand, we’re looking at something similar to the Civil War and what happened during that timeframe of the country sort of turning onto itself. But you have both the Civil War internal conflict and a little bit of an external conflict vibe due to the Revolutionary War and its situation as well. 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: All right. Well, that’s helpful framing for everything. I think that’s good for the Revolutionary War. Shall we transition into talking about the Civil War? 

NDB: Sure thing. Let’s do that. 

CB: All right. 

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All right, let’s move into the next section where we’re gonna talk about Uranus in Gemini during the time of the US Civil War. So let me share the graphic first, which is the graphic that Paige made, which shows the Uranus in Gemini period from 1858 when Uranus returned back to Gemini, which is the zodiac sign that it was in during the time of the Revolutionary War, 84 years later. And Uranus stayed in Gemini until 1866. So if you tell any historian those dates when the planet Uranus was in that zodiac sign of Gemini from 1858 to 1866, they will immediately exclaim and tell you that the US Civil War took place from 1861 until 1865, so right in the middle of that Uranus in Gemini period. 

So during the course of that period, there were four Mars-Uranus conjunctions that we’re gonna look at. There was one that took place on April 27th, 1859, at one degree of Gemini. The next one took place April 17th, 1861, at nine degrees of Gemini. Then the next one after that was April 7th, 1863, at 17 Gemini, and finally the next one was at March 22nd, 1865, at 25 degrees of Gemini. So those are the four conjunctions we’re gonna be looking at, and one of those was a Mars retrograde in Gemini, right? 

NDB: Yeah. The last one. 

CB: The last one in — 

NDB: The one in 1865. Prior to the conjunction, yeah, there’s a Mars retrograde. 

CB: Okay. So it doesn’t end up being a exact triple conjunction, which we’ll see happen in World War II, but it does end up being this really extended copresence between Mars and Uranus in Gemini in a conjunction by sign. 

NDB: Yeah, from like, late August 1864 to late March 1865 – a full seven months of Mars and Uranus being copresent in Gemini because of the Mars retrograde transit. 

CB: Got it. Okay. And the only other detail during this is the eclipses were taking place in Gemini – South Node eclipses – in 1861, 1862, and 1863, right? 

NDB: Correct, yeah. 

CB: All right. So that was amplifying things. 

All right, why don’t we get right into it then with some precursor events that led up to the Civil War while the Mars-Uranus conjunctions were taking place in the previous sign, which is Taurus. And the first one that you found happened in June of 1851 under a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Taurus, and that was the publication of the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, right? 

NDB: Yeah. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote this book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I think she was from Ohio, which was a free state, but it was on the border with Kentucky and so she would sometimes go over to Kentucky and see how slavery operated down there. And she wrote this novel that was intended to sort of really impart the realities of slavery and present some of the challenges to a white reading audience. And the story really galvanized public opinion and really stirred up the abolitionist movement – got a lot more people on board for advancing the idea that slavery was inhumane and incompatible with a free society. 

CB: Okay. So this is a really important turning point in terms of just its portrayal of the brutality of slavery and putting more of an emotional immediacy on the abolitionist movement which then starts picking up steam and eventually is what leads into the Civil War and becomes the primary conflict of the Civil War in terms of slavery basically. 

NDB: Yeah. Abraham Lincoln would eventually meet Harriet Beecher Stowe – 1863, I think – and he would say to her, “Oh, you’re the little woman who wrote the little book that started this big war,” I think is his quote – something to that effect. But yeah, even Lincoln wanted to kind of blame the war on her – jokingly, in his way, but there’s something to be said for it. 

CB: Okay, so that’s an example of that, but it’s foreshadowing – these are still Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Taurus, but it’s obviously foreshadowing the conflict that would be at the heart of the Civil War over slavery. And you know, obviously, like I know there’s gonna be some people watching that are gonna be like, “No, it was about states’ rights,” and there’s still this stupid argument that sometimes takes place in the US. But then I look at some of the secession documents on some of the states that attempted to secede, and it was obvious that slavery was the thing that they wanted to retain as part of their state’s rights. And that was obviously the focal point of the entire conflict like, building up to the Civil War like in events like this. 

NDB: Yeah. I mean, you know, most of the southern states when they seceded cited the threat to the institution of slavery as being one of the main reasons that they were seceding. So I mean, it’s usually Confederate-sympathizing people who will make that argument about states’ rights, but from the point of view of the Confederacy, it was absolutely about slavery. What those people could say is they could say, well, some of the people who fought for the Union weren’t fighting to fight slavery but just were fighting to keep the country together, and that’s certainly true of some of the people who fought for the Union. But it’s not true with regard to why the war broke out, why the South seceded and the reasons that they gave. 

CB: Right. 

NDB: Yeah. You do get these little pockets in the South that did have Union sympathy or little pockets that maybe did – like Virginia voted against secession the first time around, but then after Fort Sumter, they had a second vote, and they voted to join the Confederacy. And so Virginians will say, well, Virginians didn’t vote to join the Confederacy for slavery; they joined because of Fort Sumter. Yeah, okay, but they voted to join after Fort Sumter because they were joining up with people who had left to preserve slavery. So there’s still like, an attachment to the cause of slavery even from people who might try to make some legitimate argument about their own personal motivations in this regard. But yeah, it’s a big smokescreen largely, you know? 

CB: Right. Yeah. Well, and I think that becomes clear when we get to our next conjunction, which is really interesting, that I found in May of 1859, which was the Vicksburg Commercial Convention. And in this event, southern leaders and some commercial interests got together in Vicksburg, Mississippi, for a convention that voted to advocate for the reopening of the African slave trade. And I thought this was so striking when I came across this as I was like, just going through the conjunctions and seeing what major events were happening, because at the time, the proposal was in direct violation of federal law which had banned the slave trade in the year 1808 – so like, 50 years earlier it had been outlawed. And they were trying to bring it back, basically, under this Mars-Uranus conjunction which was – are we in Gemini at this point? 

NDB: Yeah, we are in Gemini at this point. 

CB: Yeah. Okay. So this is the very first – so the other ones were precursors, but this is the very first Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini after Uranus had moved into Gemini. And so you know, it’s getting really serious in terms of the whole issue of slavery coming to a head in the United States and with some of the – in this instance – the southern states literally trying to like, reopen the slave trade in this instance right on a Mars-Uranus conjunction. 

NDB: Yeah. I mean, this would have been very tricky and probably why it didn’t work, because Britain was shutting down the slave trade on the open seas. So if they had tried to reopen the slave trade, they would have been running up against British warships all the time. And in fact, I mean, Britain was at one point contemplating joining in the battle on the side of the Confederates because the southern states grew cotton and the British industrial machine needed that cotton. But when Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation – that he would do it – after the Battle of Antietam, it was a sort of signal to England that if England came in on the side of the Confederacy, they would be fighting for the slavery cause and not merely to open up the cotton markets. And so Britain didn’t join in. Britain at that point – like, up until Antietam – Britain could have wound up joining the Confederacy not unlike the way France joined the colonists during the Revolutionary War. And then the Union would have had a really formidable European opponent rather than just the rabble down south, so to speak. So with that in mind, yeah. It never would have – it was kind of… You know, the morality of slavery notwithstanding, it was a fool’s errand because this would have put them right in the path of the British anyway. 

CB: Right. Because I actually found in other research, there was the other war with the British – the War of 1812 – and on a Mars-Uranus conjunction around January of 1813, the exact day of the conjunction, the US forces were defeated and massacred by the British and Native American allies. And it was the deadliest battle for Americans in the War of 1812 right on this conjunction at 27 degrees of Scorpio, January 22nd, 1813. So you mentioning like, the potential for the British that they could have gotten involved during the Civil War on the side of the southern states, the threat of that obviously from the point of view of the northern states, they could think back to the War of 1812 which had just happened a few decades earlier. 

NDB: Yeah. It wouldn’t have been out of the question for war to break out at this point. I mean, soon after the Civil War, Britain and the US do sort of enter into a more peaceful partnership that has been in place for most of the history since, recent times notwithstanding. But yeah, during the Civil War, it was still a contentious relationship. It was still stressful. And for that matter, you know, Montreal was a major center in the Civil War. The Confederacy had spies in Montreal who would meet up. When John Wilkes Booth was eventually shot when he was on the run for killing Lincoln, they found in his pocket a ticket from the Saint James Hotel in Montreal where he had been staying a few months earlier. And so like, even there – oh, and for that matter, Union and Confederate businessmen were meeting in Montreal for the cotton trade even though their respective sides were at war; there were Union and Confederate businessmen doing cotton business on the side despite the war, and they were doing it in Montreal to be outside the purview of their citizens, so. 

CB: Okay. 

NDB: Yeah. There’s still all that involvement hanging around the Civil War that always has the threat of foreign involvement. France at this exact time is fighting in Mexico to take over Mexico. The whole Cinco de Mayo festival celebrates a battle that the Mexican beat the French in 1862. So the Civil War is existing under this whole international gaze, you know, and things could have gone differently. 

CB: Right. And then to provide another piece of context for this one, I found an earlier precursor event that is like, the flip side of the coin, which is the 1811 slave revolt which began on January 8th, 1811, was right on a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Scorpio. And it was the largest slave revolt in US history which occurred in Louisiana at the time. It’s sometimes called the German Coast uprising. 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: But it was like, this violent, sudden insurrection, but then that was brutally, brutally suppressed. And so we’re seeing on these Mars-Uranus conjunctions sometimes both sides of that coin, which is like, the brutality of slavery and the oppression of people and the taking away of freedoms – let’s say Mars as the taking away of something and Uranus representing freedom and liberation – but then other times we’re seeing a return to reckoning with that during the course of the country and sometimes the push for freedom and the attempt to achieve freedom and liberation through taking action, through force and sometimes through military or — 

NDB: Violence. 

CB: — violent actions. 

NDB: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. That one was in Scorpio. It was – yeah. Over 500 slaves; it was brutal. It was huge. 

CB: Okay. So then the flip side of that – so that’s back in 1811 versus here we have, you know, this convention – Vicksburg – and under a subsequent conjunction in Gemini in 1859 right at the start of the Uranus in Gemini period where they’re literally trying to bring back the slave trade after it being outlawed in 1808. 

So that sets, again, more of the context, but it also shows that there was like, a – it signaled a willingness among southern radicals to break with federal authority, which I think is the other thing that was really symbolically important about this conjunction and that event that it represented like, a significant escalation in the sectionalism and the pro-slavery sentiment by advocating the reopening of the slave trade. 

NDB: Yeah. Sure. I mean, there had been – going back to the late 1820s, early 1830s, at one point South Carolina going against Andrew Jackson had made noises towards secession. But yeah, this is more of a unified movement, not merely South Carolina acting on its own. 

CB: Yeah. Well, and the other part of this meeting that was important is that they were actively in the meeting on this conjunction promoting the idea that there should be a secession if a Republican won the presidency in 1860, so this actually acted as a precursor for the Civil War by highlighting some of the southern economic and political grievances that were beyond just trade, even though obviously like, a lot of the commercial grievances were just a cover for sort of radical pro-slavery politics. 

NDB: Yeah. Absolutely. 

CB: And that ends up being, once we jump forward two years, ends up being what happens is that Lincoln wins the presidential election in 1860, which is the southern pro-slavery states’ worst case scanario, and then the Civil War begins very early in his presidency literally on the next Mars-Uranus conjunction which is our most important Mars-Uranus conjunction of this entire series, because it turns out that the Civil War begins with Fort Sumter, April 12th, 1861. And this is right next to a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini, right? 

NDB: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And this is the proper beginning of the fighting. The Confederates launch an attack on a fort in the Charleston Harbor – Fort Sumter – where the Union is, and there’s a shelling overnight. By the next day, the Union surrenders the fort, and the war has officially begun. So yeah, and Mars-Uranus are now copresent. So even though the first Mars-Uranus copresence in Gemini did not involve the war, the following three did, and it start right at the beginning with Fort Sumter, the very beginning of the fighting is Mars-Uranus. 

CB: Yeah. That’s incredible. And take a look at the chart. So here’s a chart just roughly speaking for that day. And I’m always so shocked by this, at how close the alignment is. So this is set for April 12th, 1861, when Fort Sumter is first attacked, right? And Mars is at six degrees of Gemini and Uranus is at nine degrees of Gemini. So they’re within three degrees, and that conjunction is still building up to go exact. And what happens is they attack Fort Sumter; Fort Sumter falls; and then Lincoln in the next few days, like, immediately starts calling up the troops basically and starts gathering forces and gathering an army. And then the Civil War is on shortly after that. 

NDB: Yeah, exactly. I mean, that’s really when it’s gonna blow up. And then on the 17th, the day of the exact conjunction, is when Virginia does secede. Like I mentioned, they had voted earlier against secession, but now because of Fort Sumter, they hold the second vote – I believe it’s a Mercury retrograde thing involved in there somewhere as I recall going back, and maybe the first vote was or something, but this is also important. So the exact conjunction happens when Virginia secedes, and this is important relative to the war because when Virginia secedes, that is when Robert E. Lee decides he’s gonna fight for the Confederacy, because Robert E. Lee is not loyal to the United States. He’s loyal to Virginia. So he said to himself, he’s agreed to himself that he’ll go with wherever Virginia goes. And he wasn’t personally in favor of secession, but when Virgnia ultimately did vote for secession on the second vote, that decides it for him. Lincoln actually wants Lee to come fight for the Union, and Lee is considering it until Virginia secedes, and then he knows, well, now he’s gonna fight for the Confederacy because he’s loyal to Virginia. And Robert E. Lee, although he’s ultimately gonna be on the losing side, is a formidable opponent for the Union to have. 

CB: Right. And this is really symbolically important then, Virginia seceding April 17th, 1861 – literally the day of the Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini. And then as we’ll see later at the end of the war, like, Robert E. Lee is the most important general of the South, and it’s his giving up and his famous surrender at the courthouse that ends up coinciding with another Mars-Uranus conjunction at the very end of the war that brings it to a close. 

NDB: Yeah. It’s funny. It’s true! He joins the war at the Mars-Uranus, and then he leaves it at the Mars-Uranus. 

CB: Yeah. So that’s incredible. But Virginia seceding the exact day of the conjunction and Fort Sumter happening and Lincoln’s call to arms happening all that week is just one of those examples like we say that sometimes when these Mars-Uranus conjunctions happen, especially in Gemini, like, everything starts happening at once – a ton of really important pivotal events start taking place all in a relatively short span of time. 

NDB: Yeah, no, that’s a good point. That’s exactly what’s happening during this particular time. A whole sort of snowball effect like what we were describing earlier. 

CB: Totally. 

Okay, so let’s jump forward two years to the next Mars-Uranus conjunction that’s happening around April of 1863 when the Enrollment Act is enforced, right? 

NDB: Yeah. This is the first military conscription act in US history. And the war is passed a little before the copresence on March 3rd, but the copresence starts not long after that. And when the act goes into enforcement on the 1st of April 1863, the copresence is in place. And yeah. I mean, this is an American military draft – a subject that has come in and out of the nation’s history over the years, was certainly a bone of contention as recently as the Vietnam War. And it would get a lot of pushback. Some men would really resent being forced to fight for a war that they didn’t wanna participate in, particularly new immigrant men fresh off the boat looking for a new life in the new world, then suddenly they’re being sent off to fight a war that they knew very little about, so. Yeah. This comes — 

CB: Yeah. 

NDB: — into effect. 

CB: That’s crazy. So it’s the first wartime draft in US history starts being enforced right on a Mars-Uranus conjunction. I think that’s incredibly striking. 

NDB: Yeah. I agree. 

CB: All right. So this sort of alters the relationship between the public and the state in ways that, as you said, would have lingering effects – most famously during the Vietnam War and some of the protests against the draft that happened then. But in the immediate aftermath of this conjunction, it also triggered widespread social unrest and riots across the North, right? 

NDB: Oh yeah. Yeah. Some people really did not wanna go. Yeah. 

CB: Okay. Got it. So that’s another important thing is like, social unrest sometimes and riots happening around the times of these Mars-Uranus conjunctions. 

NDB: Yeah. Public rage. 

CB: Yeah. So at the same time, just days later, we have the first battle of Charleston Harbor that takes place on April 7th, 1863, right on the exact conjunction of Mars and Uranus in Gemini. 

NDB: Yeah. And this is – I mean, this is picking up from where Fort Sumter left off two years earlier, but now it’s a full-on naval battle with these ironclads, these new steel warships of the industrial revolution, fighting it out. And of course, this is Charleston Harbor where we were just talking about how during the Revolutionary War, there was the Siege of Charleston where the British subjected them to a total surrender. So this doesn’t quite go the way that did, but yeah, the ironclads were a formidable new sort of fleet, but the Confederate forts were able to beat them off in this instance. 

CB: Yeah. And what was important about this one to me is that these nine ironclad warships, it was a new technology, and it was employing a new technology as a test – as like, a new form of naval warfare this time. So I thought that was striking, because Uranus can also represent technology and Mars can represent, you know, the military or warfare. So sometimes when you put them together, you see the unveiling or the application of new forms of technology for war, which again we will see the ultimate culmination of and the best example yet many Mars-Uranus conjunctions later at the end of World War II when the atomic bomb is suddenly unveiled and used in war for the first time ever, twice, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on a Mars-Uranus conjunction. But I believe in this conjunction, we can see an earlier version of that where you have the US trying out a new military technology right on a Mars-Uranus conjunction exactly on April 7th of 1863. 

NDB: Yeah. I mean, there was a lot about the Civil War that was kind of cutting edge with regard to warfare. There had been the Crimean War about five years earlier in the mid-1850s. England and France were at war with Russia in order to protect Turkey from Russian advancement, and some things about – like, for instance, the Crimean War was widely photographed just like the Civil War would be. But the Civil War was starting to lean towards how warfare would go in the 20th century. So Europe would really have a taste of what Americans were experiencing in the Civil War when the First World War happened. You know, trench warfare, machine guns are now, you know, a thing. So during the Revolutionary War, they were still fighting with those guns you had to – you shot, and then you’d have to load the gun and all that! So now in the Civil War, you have things like guns that can fire repeatedly and what have you. Not the machine guns that we think of in the 20th century, but things that you can now fire concurrently. 

CB: Right. Even in the Revolutionary War, there was the unveiling of some new technology. Like I was reading about yesterday, the turtle submarine was the first manned submersible that was used in combat back in 1775 and 1776 during the Revolutionary War. So it’s like, you have the unveiling again of new military technology sometimes during these – especially the Uranus in Gemini – periods. And that’s something we see in all three, so that’s something, of course, then we can anticipate in the upcoming time period is the unveiling of new military technologies. 

NDB: Yeah, absolutely. These ironclad ships that fought in the Civil War – I mean, these are really early prototype warships that we think of very commonly in the 20th century, that were used commonly. But you know, not long before, boats were still made of wood! So this is a real sort of new technology indeed. 

CB: Yeah. And it doesn’t always work out; that’s the funny thing is like, the turtle submarine didn’t work out. Like, it kind of failed. It was gonna attempt to set explosives underwater, but it didn’t work. It malfunctioned. And it’s interesting that in this instance, the ironclad warships didn’t work either; they ended up being defeated by the heavy guns of the Confederate forts. So sometimes it can be like, the unveiling of new fledgling technologies, but sometimes there can be malfunctions or things that don’t go right with those technologies initially as they’re still in the very early stages. 

NDB: Yeah. Sure. I mean, eventually the ironclads were formidable, but I mean, it was tests like these that showed the military where the weakness in the technology was and what needed to be improved. 

CB: Got it. Okay. All right, so that’s that conjunction in 1863. Then we move forward to September through December of 1864, which is Sherman taking Atlanta and the march to the sea, right? 

NDB: Yeah. And this is where the Mars retrograde’s gonna come into play. This is that whole seven-month period when Mars and Uranus are copresent because of the Mars retrograde. And a lot happens at once. But indeed, I mean, we can basically start by saying that Union troops enter Atlanta I think September 2nd, so a few days after Mars has made its initial Gemini ingress. And they’re in Atlanta and then once the election happens on November 9th, Lincoln is reelected president November 9th, so two months later, Sherman after that begins his march to the sea. And just like, he’s burning down everything headed towards Savannah. And he reaches Savannah at Christmas, and gives Lincoln Savannah for Christmas is his remark. So Savannah’s the Christmas present. 

So yeah, starting off in September in Atlanta and winding up by Chrstimas in Savannah and having just obliterated everything in sight in Georgia between the two is what Sherman’s been doing – this total war as he calls it. Something that would become a lot more common in the 20th century. But I mean, really, really – I mean, you know, you’re talking about the atomic bomb. I mean, obviously Sherman doesn’t have an atomic bomb. But what he does to Atlanta and Savannah is quite thorough, you know, and quite devastating, and as close as you could come to that sort of nuclear level of devastation. 

CB: Got it. Okay. So just like, widespread devastation as being — 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: — you know, one of our keywords for these Mars-Uranus conjunctions. Or like I said, sometimes it’s like, Mars already is war and killing and death, and sometimes it just seems like Uranus amplifies and magnifies it, especially in instances like this when Mars also goes retrograde in that sign. And what are the retrograde dates that we’re looking at for that? Or what’s the complete almost like, time period? 

NDB: Yeah. Mars goes retrograde – whoops. Just lost my thing here. 

CB: I’ve got it. It’s October 23rd, 1864, through January 5th, 1865. So that’s the most —

NDB: Thank you. 

CB: — intense point. But then what that ends up doing is it extends the copresence between Mars and Uranus all the way from August 25th of 1864 through March 30th of 1865. And we’re kind of burying the lede, actually, because the event that happened right before that that was pivotal, was absolutely critical, is that Abaham Lincoln is reelected president on November 9th, 1864. And this is Mars-Uranus conjunction as Mars is like, you know, in that retrograde around the time of that retrograde, and this was a pivotal election basically. Because if Lincoln had lost this reelection, then the war would have been over and the southern states could have pulled ahead basically. Like, they could have won the war. But because Lincoln wins, it allows the North to basically bring the war to its ultimate conclusion. 

NDB: Yeah. No, that’s absolutely true. And it’s thanks in part to – or largely thanks to – Sherman’s triumph in Georgia that really gives Lincoln the edge to win the election. That and also for the first time they let American soldiers vote in the field, and I think something like 70 percent of the military vote for Lincoln as well. So that helps his case quite a bit. 

Interestingly, Lincoln was born about 17 days before a Mars retrograde station himself, so the fact that he gets reelected during a Mars retrograde is kind of fitting with the cycles of his own chart. But this really was, again, talk about the acceleration of Mars-Uranus, about how a lot of things can happen at once. You know, Sherman in Georgia’s certainly a big part of it, and like we were saying, really spans a good deal of that whole copresence in his devastation of Georgia, and then moving up to South Carolina to do the same. But there are other things. Like —

CB: Let me show his chart real quick just for the —

NDB: Sure. 

CB: — the reelection just so people can see visually how striking this is with the retrograde. So this is November 9th, 1864, and we see Mars is retrograde at 16 degrees of Gemini, and Uranus is at 28 degrees of Gemini, also retrograde. So we’re talking about like, a super intense, fiery Mars at this point. And then Lincoln is reelected at this time, which is kind of interesting then in taking it into the final phase of the Civil War, but then also his second presidency which he, of course, would not complete. 

NDB: Yeah. Exactly. It’s a very striking election chart. There was a lot at stake. And the guy he was running against, his opponent, was George McClellan who had been a Union general with a lot of promise who Lincoln had ultimately fired from command for being not proactive enough. So there was something of a grudge election as well, so it was a good thing Lincoln won on those grounds. 

CB: Was McClellan the one that was fired for being like, incompetent and losing and retreating a bunch? 

NDB: For not pursuing the enemy after an initial victory. Like, he could win a victory, but he wouldn’t like, pursue the enemy to make sure they were, you know, shut down and wouldn’t rise up again. So Lincoln got upset that he would repeatedly fail to sort of follow through with whatever gains he would make. 

CB: Got it. Okay. So and then this period, because the Mars retrograde in Gemini gets extended into early the next year in 1865, brings us to another of the most important events ever in US history that happens to coincide with a Mars-Uranus copresence and conjunction is on January 31st, 1865, the House passed the 13th amendment, which was the amendment that officially abolished slavery in the United States. Lincoln’s reelected, the Senate had already passed the measure, but this was the critical turning point was getting it through the House. And when the House passed it and then like, the day later, Lincoln signaled his — 

NDB: Right. 

CB: — willingness to sign it, this was the crucial turning point where the abolitionists had finally won and slavery was finally gonna be officially outlawed. So this is a really crucial turning point in January of 1865 when functionally, yeah, slavery would become abolished. And it did have to be then passed onto the states to ratify after this, which they would do over the course of the next year, but this was a really critical turning point that was happening during the later stages of the Civil War. 

NDB: Okay. Yeah. There were a few other things – there are a few sort of important strains happening during the Mars retrograde even in 1864 that are quite notorious. 

On September 27th, 1864, in Missouri, there was this thing called the Centralia Massacre. Bloody Bill Anderson led a gang of sort of Confederate outlaws, including Jesse James and his brother – this is sort of the forming their crime gang. But yeah, they massacre unarmed Union soldiers who were on leave after Gettysburg. And that scene is an important part of like, the war on the western theatre and of course the burgeoning legend of Jesse James. 

On October 19th, 1864, the northernmost conflict was fought in the form of a bank robbery and a raid on the town of Saint Albans, Vermont, which I’ve driven through a few times. Of course, these Confederate raiders came down from Montreal to launch this attack on Vermont. And yeah, there is also – things are starting to get very ugly in the west with Plains Indians. Because of the Civil War, there are fewer American troops out in the prairies at this time, and so uprisings and conflict with Amer-Indians start growing, and there was one massacre – I think it’s the largest execution in American history – in 1862 of a lot of Indians in Minnesota. But then in 1864, November 29th, there’s something called the Sand Creek Massacre where 700 Colorado territory militia troops attack Arapahoan and Cheyenne settlement of them and killing well over a hundred, including women and children. And that’s the sort of – the Indians wars on the plains are really sort of building up as the Civil War is also at its peak. And the Sand Creek Massacre is a big part of that, of this sort of growing, mounting military tension that’s gonna extend itself through the rest of the century. 

CB: Okay. Yeah. So another major instance of like, a massacre taking place under a Mars-Uranus conjunction as like, a recurring theme. 

I wanna go back to the 13th amendment, though, because I think this is one of the most important events in US history and I don’t wanna bury the lede on this since it’s been a recurring theme that we’ve seen since the foundation of the country with the institution of slavery and then the back-and-forth tensions that we saw during the 1811 slave revolt, for example, of a group of slaves attempting to revolt and gain their freedom. And then we saw the first Mars-Uranus conjunction at the beginning of the Civil War with that group of southern states or business interests that were trying to bring back the institution of slavery officially and the slave trade. But then here we have the US government functionally abolishing the practice of slavery on a Mars-Uranus conjunction in early 1865, and that’s a really critical and important turning point, but it also shows that the Mars-Uranus conjunctions can have positive results sometimes through empowering the Uranian function of that urge for freedom and liberation. 

NDB: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, it is ultimately what the war is being fought for, so there is a tremendous victory in that. Yeah, there’s so much – New York City was set on fire in November. Some of the hugest, largest battles occurred during this Mars retrograde. There was really a lot in this whole period along with that that was happening all at once and things were happening very quickly. 

CB: Yeah. And we can’t cover all of them, but I definitely wanna cover the ones in our top list here. So one of them that was a little obscure but I thought was incredibly interesting was Lincoln, his second inauguration took place on March 4th, 1865, and it turns out that John Wilkes Booth, the man who would later assassinate Lincoln, attended the second inauguration. And he wrote in his diary that day – which again, this is under a Mars-Uranus conjunction. Mars was at 17 degrees of Gemini and Uranus was at 25 degrees of Gemini. John Wilkes Booth wrote in his diary that day, “What an excellent chance I had, if I wished, to kill the President on inauguration day!” 

So on a Mars-Uranus conjunction on inauguration, we have this weird foreshadowing of Lincoln’s later assassin who would assassinate him later that year being in attendance and even like, thinking about and premeditating the assassination that day as the conjunction is literally forming in the sky in Gemini at that time. 

NDB: Yeah. It’s astonishing. 

CB: And he was like, an actor, right? 

NDB: Yeah, he was a very well-known actor from a family of well-known actors. It’s kind of like, you know, imagine if Timothee Chalamet assassinated Donald Trump or something. You know? It’s kind of like, on that level. 

CB: Right. Yeah. 

NDB: No, he was very famous. 

CB: Okay. So that gives some context; that’s really important. 

So other things that were happening, though, is early in 1865, again while Mars is still in there with Uranus in Gemini because there’s this very slow, extended Mars-Uranus copresence, we have Wilson’s Raid, which was the largest cavalry raid of the Civil War. And I noted this because I kept seeing a bunch of instances throughout US history near the Mars-Uranus conjunctions of the largest X of something during the course of a war or during the course of a conflict. And a lot of those really stood out to me of like, largest cavalry raid, largest you know, what was it, like, casualties in the war or largest battle or other things like that. 

NDB: Yeah. Battle of Franklin, Battle of Nashville, really big sort of devastating battles. It’s true. We’ve seen a number of these things from the first introduction of a new technology to the battlefield to just sort of things being more so, more dead bodies, more soldiers on the field, yeah. Like you were saying —

CB: More destruction. 

NDB: — the largest this, the largest that. Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. So with Wilson’s raid, a Union force of 13,000 troops swept through Alabama and Georgia and just destroyed basically the remaining Confederate industrial infrastructure and supply lines, which effectively ended the South’s ability to sustain the war. And this is in the March-April timeframe. And then this basically brings us to there was this series of battles that Robert E. Lee was fighting, basically, in March and early April that he failed and where the North won a series of successive battles, and then eventually it led to the most important general of the southern states, Robert E. Lee, surrendering basically. And this is often used as like, the ending date of the Civil War on April 9th, 1865, which is interesting because it’s just after the conjunction. But Mars has just barely moved into Cancer, and it’s still within a degree-based conjunction of Uranus in late Gemini where Mars on this day, April 9th, 1865, where Robert E. Lee surrenders at the courthouse, Mars is at four or five degrees of Cancer, and it’s still conjoining Uranus within 10 degrees at 26 degrees of Gemini. So that functionally when the Civil War ends in this critical symbolic moment, Mars and Uranus are conjoined in the sky just as they had been conjoined at the very beginning of the Civil War with the Battle of Fort Sumter. 

NDB: Yeah. Excellent point. They are still very close together even though they’re no longer copresent in a sign. They’re certainly conjunct by proximity. 

CB: Yeah. And what was interesting is as the conjunctions were going exact in the weeks leading up to this, it seems to be all about these weeks of Union advances and Lee desperately trying stuff. Like on March 25th, the Battle of Fort Stedman, he tries to break out but he fails. And then April 1st, Grant cuts Lee’s supply lines at the Battle of Five Forks. Then April 2nd, Lee abandons Richmond and has to run, and that was like, a huge symbolic thing of abandoning Richmond, Virginia – his home state. And then finally, April 6th, Grant catches the running army at the Battle of Sayler’s Creek, and then finally April 7th, Grant sends the first letter basically that opens up the communication about surrender, which eventually culminates on April 9th with Lee officially surrendering at the courthouse at —

NDB: Appomattox, yeah. 

CB: — Appomattox. 

NDB: Funny story about Appomattox, the courthouse. There’s a man; I forget his name. But he had been living in Manassas; one of the first battles apart from Fort Sumter to be fought was the first Battle of Bull Run, first battle of Manassas. And it happened in this man’s front yard or whatever. And he was like, “Okay, I’m done living on battlefields. I’m gonna move more into the interior.” And he moves to Appomattox, and he lives like, adjacent to the courthouse where the peace is signed. So it’s really funny, the story of this man who, you know, he had the battlefield and he moved and then the war ends in his den or whatever. 

The other funny thing about the evacuation of Richmond is I know that Lincoln went to Richmond very soon after it was evacuated, and he sat in Jefferson Davis’s Confederate president’s official chair less than 24 hours after Davis had been sitting in it. So there’s quite a funny turnover in that way. 

CB: Okay. So let me show the chart for this, for the surrender of Lee at the courthouse that day and sort of the symbolic ending of the Civil War at that time, because there was some residual stuff but this was a really important turning point. And you can see what I was just describing for those watching the video version of Mars at five degrees of Gemini and Uranus at 26 degrees of Gemini just coming off of that conjunction, but also coming off of that extended copresence that took place over many, many months because of the Mars retrograde in Gemini that had occurred. If I animate the chart – I’ll back it up and you’ll see here in the fall by like, September, August-September of 1864 – so this is in the lead up to the US presidential election that takes place in November, and Lincoln’s reelected. You see Mars moving into Gemini and then slowing down and getting ready to station retrograde, which it eventually does in late October just before the election itself. And then you have Mars retrograding like, all the way back over the course of December all the way into January when eventually Mars stations direct at one degree of Gemini in early January of 1865. And then Mars, because it’s so slow coming out of retrograde, it just stays in that sign as it’s slowly moving forward again through January, through February, through March, and then we start seeing some of these culminating battles of the Civil War and some of those desperate moves by Lee to keep things together happening, and we see the exact conjunction going exact around March 21st and 22nd as that’s happening, and he’s in this desperate situation. And then eventually, April 6th, we see the final – or April 9th, we see the final surrender. So even though, you know, Mars is in Cancer and Uranus is in late Gemini, if you looked out in the sky, like, you would be able to see – you could see Mars. It’s a little hard to see Uranus; you can sometimes under certain conditions, but if you have like, binoculars or something you can see it. They would just be right together in the sky just like they were at the start of the Civil War at Fort Sumter and when Lincoln started calling up troops and when Virginia secedes – and remember, Virginia was Robert E. Lee’s home state. That was the reason that he’s in the Civil War is because Virginia secedes. But also it’s a recurrence of the Mars-Uranus conjunction going right back to the Declaration of Independence that was happening at the sky then, and when the US Constitution was set up and was first signed, basically, was a Mars-Uranus conjunction. And then we, of course, it’s just absolutely crazy to me that we’re seeing a Mars-Uranus conjunction again at the very end of the Civil War. 

NDB: Yeah. It’s pretty wild. And of course, even like, Lincoln’s gonna be shot a week after this. And Mars is still, you know, within about 11 degrees of Uranus when he’s killed. And — 

CB: What day? 

NDB: The war is more or less over. There is a little bit — 

CB: What day was Lincoln killed again? 

NDB: April 16th, I think. Shot on the 16th, died on the 17th – is that right? No, sorry! Shot on the 14th, died on the 15th. I knew it was close. 

CB: So Mars is just 11 degrees away from Uranus at this point. Uranus was at 26, and Mars was at seven Cancer. So it’s still like, degree-based not that far from Uranus. So we’re almost like, functionally talking about another Mars-Uranus conjunction, but this time it was during a successful assasination attempt, and one of the most successful ones on a president in US history. 

NDB: Yeah. The first one! 

CB: Oh, it was the first one. Okay. So it sets up like, a – well, not an entire precedent in terms of that was a successful one, but we had the attempt we saw previously on Washington’s life during — 

NDB: Sure. 

CB: — the 1776 one. 

NDB: Yeah. And there was an attempt on Jackson at one point, but this is the first successful murder of a president, yeah. 

CB: Got it. Okay. So that’s pretty crazy. 

NDB: Yeah! 

CB: So that’s the Civil War ending, and that’s our last data point because that’s just a really good bookend, basically, to the bloodiest war in US history. And I’m just gonna put the graphic up again one more time for this just so you can see it in retrospect because I just think it’s – I’m still just like, absolutely stunned at how well it lines up. And it’s one of the reasons I wanted to do this episode is just like, here’s the conjunction for those watching the video version – the first Mars-Uranus conjunction is that meeting in the South where they’re trying to like, get the slave trade going again. Then you have the second conjunction in 1861 – the first one was in 1859, the second one’s in 1861. But 1861 is the start of the Civil War and Fort Sumter. And then you have this intense period in the middle, the middle conjunction of 1863. And then finally you have the fourth conjunction and the final conjunction in 1865 which marks the end of the Civil War. 

NDB: Yeah. Stunning. 

CB: Stunning. Okay. 

All right. Well, that’s incredible. Any final words on the Civil War? Any things worth mentioning before we wrap up this section about the Civil War? I mean, what made that one super unique, obviously, was that retrograde that occurred towards the end. 

NDB: Yeah. That retrograde – and it’s such a busy retrograde. You know, it was impossible to do it justice under time constraints because there is just so much going on there. It’s the great example of how Mars-Uranus can just make everything happen at once it seems, or it coincides with periods where everything seems to be happening at once. So yeah, that’s the part that really blows me away. And yeah, just the way that the war sort of begins and ends ultimately on conjunctions is also quite astonishing. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. And the eclipses during this period were in Gemini conjoin the South Node, and this was – it looks like 1861, 1862, and 1863 in terms of those eclipses, right? 

NDB: Yeah. Which is really the period when the Confederacy is working to identify itself, you know. Jefferson Davis is elected president; he’s a Gemini Sun. Uranus is conjunct his Sun when he’s elected President of the Confederacy. And yeah, you know, during that period – 1861 to 1863 – the Confederate Army is doing pretty well thanks to Robert E. Lee, and Lincoln is still struggling to find the general he can really use to win the war. Eventually he finds Grant, and Lincoln is teaching himself how to fight war in the library by reading books, which is quite amazing. Something Trotsky would also do later. But yeah, it’s a period when things are still sort of shaping up and the final outcome is by no means guaranteed. 

CB: Okay. Nice. So yeah, and it’s interesting that the eclipses start basically in 1861 in December later in the same year that the war breaks out earlier in that year on the Mars-Uranus conjunction. And it seems like that period from these two conjunctions of like, the 1861 conjunction through the 1863 conjunction, which also happens to encapsulate the period when the eclipses are taking place, is kind of like, the period in which the war could have gone either way and like, the South — 

NDB: Yes.

CB: — could have won the war, basically, right? 

NDB: Absolutely. 

CB: Okay. So that’s — 

NDB: Yeah. I mean, the South always had a smaller population, a smaller military and less money. So in that sense, they were the underdog, which I know sometimes people say you shouldn’t call them the underdog; you’re supposed to sympathize with underdogs. But you don’t always sympathize with an underdog. But yeah. You know, but that being said, because they had Robert E. Lee and because of some aggressive early fighting, they did very well. 

CB: Got it. 

NDB: Until they were overwhelmed. 

CB: So I think it’s just important in terms of identifying through the means that we can and seeing if some of those means ends up being applicable to other periods just when the most important stuff starts. Because I think it’s interesting that we get like, eclipse 1861, another one 1862, another one 1863. So the eclipses are happening there in between those conjunctions. And then late in the process in the war, we get the Mars retrograde, which ends up being a big looming, extending thing over here in 1864, 1865. And so that basically the eclipses, the Mars retrograde, and the Mars-Uranus conjunctions then functionally end up being the things that bookmark the start of the Civil War and the end of the Civil War.

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: Up here at this point. And I think that’s important because then Uranus went into Gemini back here, so there was this gap basically before Uranus first started going into Gemini back in like, 1858, versus when the Civil War actually began in 1861. And the question of like, you know, why that is – I’m gonna draw a very poor version of a question mark here, question mark of like, why do we have a gap there between the ingress versus when the war actually starts? And part of the answer from a technical standpoint that you can kind of see then perhaps is it’s those eclipses that really end up being pivotal on top of the Mars-Uranus conjunctions and also the Mars retrograde that make this period really unique and push the war to not start until later in the Uranus in Gemini period. 

NDB: Yeah, maybe. Although when we get to the Second World War, we’ll see the eclipses happen after the war more than during it. 

CB: Well, that is what’s crazy about the next one is that in World War II, it’s like, Uranus going into Gemini basically very closely coincides with the US getting involved in World War II, which had already been going for a few years at that point in Europe and in Asia. But that’s one of the things that’s most striking about that Uranus in Gemini period is just like, Uranus in Gemini – like, US immediately involved in the war. And it signals the US is getting engaged in the World War at that point. So I’m just trying to figure out what the lessons are that we can learn as pointers from like, each of these time periods. 

NDB: Right. I will point out when Uranus makes that first ingress in June of 1858, that coincides very neatly with the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which are the things that put Lincoln on the national stage because Stephen Douglas is already a far better known politician. And so by engaging in the debates for this Senate campaign, Davis’s celebrity, ironically, helps raise Lincoln’s status by being his debate opponent. So even though Lincoln loses that election, he suddenly has this national name from those debates. Funny enough, Stephen Davis had once courted Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, before they were married, so it was also a debate between these two guys who had both been in love with the same woman. But there is something to that, you know. There is something to like, Lincoln entering the world stage when Uranus enters Gemini, and that to some degree in some way the war is starting there and then because he’s now this lightning rod for the South to look at and say, “Okay, this abolitionist guy is gonna come for our property, and we don’t want it.” 

CB: Right. Well, and that’s one of the things that was important about those debates is that the Lincoln-Douglas debates were largely about slavery. And so that sets a lot of the context then for the Civil War, but also for like, the South’s trepidation going into that time period of starting to say, “If this guy’s elected, we’re gonna secede because he’s gonna try to abolish slavery,” basically, and that entire tension which was the fusebox or the tinderbox that set things up for the war just before the Civil War. 

NDB: Yeah. And ironically, Lincoln wasn’t looking to take their slaves away when he was elected; he was just looking to limit slavery from being expanded. You know, he said that all along during the campaign, but they didn’t believe — 

CB: Well, you and I have famously argued about this, because I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think that’s true. I think he always intended to do it, and I think what he said publicly about his intentions is different than what a politician actually intends to do privately. And we saw similar things with, I’ve always pointed out to you, with Obama, for example, where on paper, Obama was against gay marriage during the first presidential election. But then by the time of his second presidential term, he’d suddenly had a change of heart supposedly, and now he was openly pro-gay marriage because it had become politically — 

NDB: Right. 

CB: — okay enough to take that position publicly finally in US history and in terms of public opinion. But I don’t believe that Obama was actually like, against gay marriage four years earlier and then he suddenly was; I think it’s just a matter of what a politician can say as a politican publicly versus what they can’t say at different points like, changing depending on the weather of the mood of the nation. 

NDB: Fair enough, except – I mean, historians have to go on documented history and less on inference from character, although sometimes we do that. It’s just, you know, yeah. You know, Lincoln in terms of anything — 

CB: I know. 

NDB: — we’ve seen him say or write, you know, held that position, and so that is what we have, and anything else is an inference. 

CB: Well, all of the southern states that seceded immediately after he was elected would disagree with you and would say that they all believed — 

NDB: Yeah, they would. 

CB: — that he fully intended to abolish slavery and then he did. So I feel like that’s, I don’t know – we don’t have to do — 

NDB: Okay. No. 

CB: We’ve had this —

NDB: No, fair enough. I mean, you’re right. The South certainly thought he did, and that is why they seceded; that is absolutely true. They didn’t believe that he didn’t want to. We can certainly agree on that. 

CB: And then he did. But then — 

NDB: And then he ultimately did. 

CB: Your point was like, well, he didn’t say that he was gonna – he said he wasn’t gonna do that or something. 

NDB: He said very explicitly; he didn’t campaign on it, and he said repeatedly that, you know, and even once the war is going, even in August of 1862, he writes to Horace Greeley and says he would do anything to maintain the Union if it meant anything. Like, slavery wasn’t the thing that was motivating him; it was keeping the Union together. And there’s a lot to suggest that that is, you know, his main concern overall. 

CB: Yeah. I’m sorry. I don’t buy it. 

NDB: Okay. 

CB: I’m not buying it! 

NDB: Okay. All right! 

CB: But we can talk about – we’ll do a whole episode on that one of these days with maybe — 

NDB: No doubt the comment section will get spicy, but anyway! 

CB: Yeah, well, maybe people – I’m sure there’s historians that could go into more detail and argue both sides of that way more better than either of us can, for sure, since people do —

NDB: Fair enough. 

CB: — entire like, PhDs on this topic. But for now, I think we’ll leave that there and just say, you know, it’s striking that the war became about slavery and was about slavery so much, and that a lot of that does get encapsulated by Uranus in Gemini but also the Mars-Uranus conjunctions and that tension we saw in those conjunctions of like, the fight for freedom and liberation versus the fight for attempting to keep people oppressed, basically, and to remove and to take away and steal the freedom of other humans. 

NDB: Absolutely. Yeah. Ultimately that’s the thing. 

CB: Yeah. All right. I think that’s good for this section, so let’s take a little break. 

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All right, let’s begin our third section and looking at the history of Uranus in Gemini and Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Gemini by now looking at the period that spans the Uranus in Gemini transit from 1941 to 1949, which basically fully encompasses and starts with the US involvement in World War II and then goes into the first part essentially of the Cold War and the formation of the Cold War in the late 1940s and early 1950s. 

All right, so here first is the graphic that Paige made to give us a timeline to sort of show what we’re looking at for those watching the video version. So Uranus first goes into Gemini, makes its first initial dip into Gemini, in August of 1941. And then right away in December of 1941, Pearl Harbor happens, and the US is suddenly immediately involved in World War II. So that’s interesting, because World War II, of course, had been going on for a few years at that point, at least ever since Germany invaded Poland in 1939. And then World War II ends, interestingly, right in the middle of this period roughly in 1945, both when the war comes to an end in Europe basically in 1945 in the spring, and then later in the summer when it comes to an end with Japan after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So then what’s interesting about this is we have like, the second entire half of Uranus in Gemini taking place from 1945 all the way until 1949, and what I find fascinating about this and I’ve only come to understand better is like, usually I used to just think of this as like, the World War II Uranus in Gemini period, and it is that, but that’s just the first half of it. And the second half of it is the US entering its perhaps biggest conflict ever in terms of like, its biggest enemy and its perhaps most dangerous enemy ever, which is the conflict with the Soviet Union which takes place during the entirety of the second half of the 20th century. And it really gets set up in this five-year period in the second half of this transit, essentially, right? 

NDB: Yeah. I mean, what you can really say is the five-year period or four-year period between Nagasaki and Hiroshima to Uranus leaving Gemini in 1949 is this is the period where the United States is the only global superpower, because it’s just after Uranus goes into Cancer for good in June of ‘49 in less than three months, the Soviet Union is testing their first atomic bomb. And then shortly after that, the Chinese Revolution ends and the People’s Republic of China is created. So it really is this distinct period that we almost can’t imagine now where the US was in conflict with the Soviet Union, but the Soviet Union did not yet have a bomb. And the United States, of course, had just used two of them, and most of the country had only just learned that such weapons existed. And everyone’s coming to terms with that. 

It’s an important thing to remember – I’d like to say this here and now – about the general theme when Uranus has gone into Gemini is that when Uranus eventually leaves Gemini and we have a new situation – like after the Revolutionary War, we have the creation of the country; after the Civil War, we have a centralized federalized state, and then after the Second World War, we have this global superpower. In all these cases, that was never anyone’s intention or desire when Uranus had first gone into Gemini. The outcome at the end is always something that nobody was trying to make happen, you know? No American, whether they were rich or poor, right-wing or left-wing, wanted the US to become a global superpower in 1941. But it happened anyway just because a series of events led to that. Similar with, you know, as we were saying with the Revolutionary War; when Uranus went into Gemini, there wasn’t anyone who wanted to break with the King at that point. That’s something that came later. 

CB: Okay. 

NDB: And I think it’s an important thing to remember now in a period where the country seems to be changing very quickly and no one’s really sure where it’s gonna go, and we’re very suspicious of some people’s nefarious schemes, it’s important to remember that the outcome has never been what anyone was trying to make happen. It’s always been some other thing that almost seems obvious after the fact, but was not obvious to anyone until it happened. 

CB: Sure. Yeah. I mean, I understand that here, especially with World War II in the sense of like, the US became the de facto world superpower after this due to on the one hand the nuclear bomb and being the first country to develop that, but then also due to the incidental, the almost accident or side effect of Europe being completely decimated and Asia being completely decimated after World War II and the US being the only major superpower that didn’t fight it on their home land and therefore was in this crazy good economic position after World War II compared to everybody else. So it certainly comes out that’s like, a side effect essentially of World War II in terms of the US. 

But other times, it’s like, sometimes with the Revolutionary War, certainly the colonists and some of the people that were pushing for freedom and liberation of the colonies ended up creating something or getting something in the end that matched their ideal of having some sort of liberation maybe. Like, would you say that? I mean, that would be true, though, right? 

NDB: Yeah. There’s a lot of stuff about the rhetoric and the aims of the Revolutionary War that had been in place for a good long time. I mean, 20 years earlier during the French-Indian War, Benjamin Franklin had met with some Haudenosaunee people and noted their system of government and proposed it even then 20 years before the Revolutionary government that hey, maybe Americans should organize themselves in a democratic fashion, not unlike the way the Haudenosaunee do. Although the Haudenosaunee didn’t have Congresses and Senates and what have you; they had a full-on participatory democracy, what in the modern-day terms we’d call anarchism. But regardless, it’s a democracy in the sense that there are no leaders and everyone has – or in most cases, people have a participatory vote. I think it’s only mothers of sons who have a vote in war, for instance, and things like that. 

Anyway, long story short, there are a bunch of different themes leading up to the Revolutionary War. They’re not brand new ideas. But the idea of turning the country into this new republic and breaking away from the British empire – that really is something that no one was really planning on. You know, no one sitting in the Continental Congress. Maybe Tom Paine is thinking it, but — 

CB: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. There are like —

NDB: Yeah, there’s your Tom Paines, sure. Yeah. Okay. But Thomas Jefferson isn’t thinking it; George Washington isn’t thinking it; Benjamin Franklin isn’t thinking it. Benjamin Franklin has to have his road to Damascus moment; he has to sort of turn around and see things differently before it comes to that. 

CB: Okay. Or like, John Adams – at least in that series I watched, that John Adams series with Paul Giamatti, they kind of portray him that way as well of like, he was somebody that wasn’t a revolutionary at first and even like, pushed against the idea. But then like — 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: — came around to the idea eventually. 

NDB: Yeah. No, I mean, him as well. There’s that great scene in that movie when he does finally meet King George III when he’s the ambassador and the way he’s gotta back out of the room when he leaves the room; you’re never supposed to like, show your back to the King. And it’s a great scene; it’s my favorite scene in that whole series. 

But yeah, no, it’s true. I mean, for all these guys, it really was something that they had to come to, you know? And Tom Paine was a very – like, Tom Paine was an Englishman who had just sailed to the United States. He got off his boat in like, late 1774. He writes Common Sense barely a year after he’s first arrived in the United States. And he’s got his own – he grew up in a town where executions were held, and so he saw – like, it’s the naval punishments and what have you. So he saw a lot of brutality in England because of where he lived, so he had the opinions he did because of his English experiences. But yeah, then he sails to America, barely survives dysentery on the boat ride over, and meets up with Benjamin Franklin because he has a referral and winds up writing Common Sense, which is very important and is looking forward. But insofar as like, the men gathered at the Continental Congress, they are not talking about overthrowing the King in 1774, 1775; that isn’t happening yet. 

CB: Okay. All right. So to take it – let’s get back on our track — 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: — of World War II. So World War II – the nuclear question is gonna become a recurring theme, because this one is centered on that and it falls right in the center. But it comes out in more ways than one. But there were some important pre-Uranus in Gemini things that happened when Uranus was going through Taurus and especially when Mars conjoined Uranus in Taurus in the period that led up to the period that we’re gonna talk about. 

So there’s two in particular I wanted to mention. One is that Nazi Germany annexed Austria, and this took place in 1938 when they invaded Austria – March 12th, 1938. And this was very close to the exact conjunction, which was March 28th, 1938, in Taurus. And so this was like, one of the major turning points early on, because even though World War II isn’t usually dated to starting until the following year – 1939 – when Germany invades Poland, this is the first step of Hitler’s outward expansion by taking over Austria right on this Mars-Uranus conjunction in 1938. And I think there’s something incredibly symbolically significant about that. 

NDB: Yeah, absolutely. It catches people off-guard; it’s the Anschluss creating the greater Germany, uniting the German-speaking countries. And of course, Hitler was Austrian himself by birth, so there was an element of bringing the family all under one roof, I suppose, from his perspective. But yeah, I think you’re right; there is an element of it that is a precursor to eventually him invading Poland. It’s a step prior to eventually when he goes too far by invading Poland later. 

CB: Right. Because it absolutely emboldens him, and nobody in Europe does anything or hardly even says anything, so it emboldens him and sets him up to pursue further territorial expansion, which is eventually what leads to World War II in Europe. 

NDB: Exactly. Yeah. 

CB: Because it’s the following year, 1939, he invades Poland, and then Poland has treaties with other countries like the British, right? 

NDB: Yeah. They had sworn to protect Poland. And I mean, in between that, there was the Sudetenland crisis. So after he invades Austria in early ‘38, later in ‘38 he invades this part of Czechoslovakia where there’s a large German-speaking population called the Sudetenland. And he invades that, and there’s this whole meeting with the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, the French prime minister, and Mussolini and Hitler, and they negotiate. And the Czech president is sitting outside waiting for them to decide what they’re gonna do with his country. And ultimately, they decide, okay, Hitler promises he’s not gonna do any more invasions, but they say, “Okay, you can keep this Sudetenland that you’ve just taken.” 

CB: Right. 

NDB: And Neville Chamberlain — 

CB: The policy — 

NDB: — gets, yeah. Neville Chamberlain gets this written promise from Hitler that, of course, turns out to be broken a few months later, you know, even before he invades Poland. But by the time they invade Poland, you know, that’s really it; that’s when he crosses the line, and they can’t just pretend to put up with it anymore. 

CB: So this is that whole – this kicks off that whole period of like, the policy of appeasement, basically? 

NDB: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The term “appeasement” comes from the thing I was telling you about with Sudetenland, but this is leading up to that appeasement, yeah, and certainly is appeasement in its own right although they’re not even calling it that yet. 

CB: Right. Okay. That makes sense. 

Our next event after this is important but it’s a little bit more subtle than that one, and it takes place on the following conjunction of Mars and Uranus two years later. And this is still a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Taurus; it’s the last Mars-Uranus conjunction in Taurus setting up a precursor to what will happen again during Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Gemini. But in March of 1940, under this conjunction, is the Frisch-Peierls memorandum, where there’s these two refugee physicists in Britain who write a secret memo that calculates that an atomic bomb is actually feasible using only a small amount of uranium. And prior to that time, like, the idea – Einstein had already written his famous letter that’s more well-known than this one to the president, to Roosevelt, saying that he thinks the Germans are developing a bomb and we should – the US should – start working on developing a bomb. But at that time, when Einstein wrote the letter, they didn’t think – they thought it was gonna take tons of uranium and it was gonna have to be like, a huge thing to build a bomb and it wouldn’t be able to be something that could be loaded onto a plane. But then all of a sudden when this memorandum is written right on this Mars-Uranus conjunction, they redo the calculations and they figure out that it’s actually a small amount of uranium could be used to create an atomic bomb, and it makes it small enough that it could be loaded on a plane. And that changes everything when it comes to the nuclear project. And so this document directly led to the formation of the British committee and the US Manhattan Project which were the ones that would secretly during the course of World War II develop the bomb eventually culminating in its development in 1945 and them basically employing it. So this is a super important turning point with essentially the start of the process conceptually of being able to do the atomic bomb right on a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Taurus in 1940. 

NDB: Yeah. And there’s an interesting midpoint to all this, because in August of 1943, there’s the Quebec conference, and Mars goes into Taurus towards the end of that conference. And it’s at that conference that Churchill and Roosevelt really sort of solidify the joint nuclear operation. I mean, it’s already underway, but they finalize a lot of details and the shared responsibility of it all. 

CB: And that’s under what alignment? 

NDB: Sorry – I said Taurus, but I meant Gemini. When Mars goes into Gemini in late August of 1943, there’s the first Quebec conference, and that’ll happen. So even on the way —

CB: Oh, okay. 

NDB: — there’ll be another Mars-Uranus copresence where the nuclear project at the top level is being formalized. 

CB: Okay, nice. I didn’t know about that one. And what did that conference establish again? 

NDB: Just the cooperative effort of the two nuclear projects between Britain and England, the secrets they’re sharing and who’s gonna do what and, you know, just the detail of the joint project. 

CB: Got it. Okay. Got it. Nice. Yeah, this one ends up being all about the bomb and stuff, as we’ll see as we get further into it. 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: Okay. So now we jump forward two years, of course, to the next – I guess we get the 1942 one, right? 

NDB: Yeah.

CB: Okay. So this one is March 1st, 1942. This is the exact day of the conjunction of Mars and Uranus in 1942, and this is the Battle of Sunda Strait, which is this major battle because in December of 1941, Japan attacks the US in a surprise attack in Pearl Harbor, and then immediately, the US declares war and gets involved in World War II officially. Because that’s the weird thing about World War II and about the Uranus in Gemini timeframe is like, World War II’s been going on for like, two years at this point since 1939 at least when Germany invades Poland. But the US, due to especially – what is it – like, internalist – what’s the word when you’re like… 

NDB: Oh, yeah… 

CB: Like, protectionism? 

NDB: Isolationist. 

CB: Isolationism. Nice. Okay. That’s what it is. 

NDB: I knew it started with an I! Yeah. 

CB: Because it’s like, World War I hadn’t occurred that much earlier; it occurred in the – it ended in like, 1917 timeframe. And so there’s still a huge amount of sentiment in the United States of like, not getting involved in another major foreign world war. And so even though Roosevelt knows this is happening and he’s like, sending supplies and doing stuff secretly as far as he can in the late 1930s and early 1940s, it’s not until Japan attacks in December of 1941 that there’s public sentiment changes overnight and all of a sudden, the US in involved in the war. And this is not long after Uranus had first dipped into Gemini, of course, in August of 1941. 

So what’s important here, though, and what I found is the US and Japan start having open conflict in the Pacific by this point by this Mars-Uranus conjunction. And this major battle takes place the exact day of the conjunction, March 1st, 1942. But the US task force basically gets wiped out at this point. It’s like a striking defeat on the part of the US that effectively ends the United States Asiatic fleet as an organized fighting force in the Pacific and sets them back majorly right at the start of the war. 

NDB: Yeah. I mean, they’re still building all the new boats and armaments and what have you with the newly converted industrial machines that Roosevelt has used, you know, getting the whole war machine in place. The United States didn’t have a big sort of war machine up until then; they had to move very quickly to get all the equipment that they would need. So it was early on. But you know, soon enough that the US would be fighting with more up-to-date ships and what have you. 

CB: Right. So this is like — 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: — and this conjunction happens at 26 degrees of Taurus, so this is still – because Uranus had gone into Gemini in August of ‘41, but then it retrograded back into Taurus. And then we get the Mars-Uranus conjunction at the beginning of 1942. And so this ends up then being kind of a precursor thing, which is that the US is like, rapidly winding up its wartime production capabilities, and they start engaging the Japanese basically in the Pacific, but there’s this loss that happens – like, a loss in a battle. 

NDB: Yeah. I mean, Japan had been fighting China already and they’d won a war against Russia, and so they were pretty battle-hardened, whereas the US was reluctantly getting pulled into this thing, so I’m sure some of that is a part of it as well. I just wanna clarify when Uranus went into Gemini the first time in August of ‘41, it was right when it went in – that was when Churchill and Roosevelt met for the first time – what they called the Atlantic Charter when Roosevelt was – the US wasn’t in the war yet, but they were giving these lend-lease weapons to Britain. And so that relationship solidified it. Then Uranus went retrograde, went back into Taurus, and Pearl Harbor did happen when it had retrograded back into Taurus. But by the time it’s going into Gemini, the fighting proper is starting – you know, this early skirmish notwithstanding. 

CB: Got it. Okay. So then we jump forward to 1943 and 1944; we jump forward one Uranus conjunction cycle. And this is actually our first set of conjunctions in Gemini, and what’s really striking about it is that Mars goes retrograde in Gemini in 1943 and 1944. So as a result of that, we get a triple exact conjunction of Uranus in Gemini – the first one being September 9th, 1943, then December 30th, 1943, then January 16th, 1944. So we end up having this really extended and long Mars in Gemini period as a result of that retrograde. 

NDB: Yeah. And you know, it’s interesting, because the Mars retrograde during the Civil War, you know, didn’t involve a triple thing because the retrograde happened before the conjunction. But this one, because there’s three, really is it’s another one of these everything happening at once type of situations. And yeah, probably all the more so because of the actual Mars stations and the Mars retrograde. Not least of which, you know, having one of your opponents switch sides just as Mars goes retrograde is part of it, I think. Or just as the conjunction hits, rather. 

CB: Okay. So in terms of events, one of the major ones is the invasion of Italy’s mainland begins in September of 1943 during this Mars-Uranus conjunction. And this is like, the beginning of the collapse of the first major Axis power. So — 

NDB: Yeah.

CB: — this is a significant turning point. 

NDB: Yeah. The king of Italy takes power away from Mussolini and gives it to Badoglio, and Mussolini is rescued from imprisonment by someone Hitler sends, so you know he gets out of dodge. But Italy is now on the Allied side of the war, although the Allies have to invade Italy to fight Germans and get them out of Italy, so. And that’s what they’re involved in. You know, D-Day hasn’t happened yet; the French landing that everyone’s heard of, that’s still a year away in June of ‘44. But this is the Allies penetrating what Churchill called the soft underbelly of Europe, which is Italy – easier to invade through Italy than through France, you know. And so that’s what they do is sort of like, the first part of fighting the European war. You can also start to think of this – this is when the Americans – I mean, they fought in Sicily in July of ‘43, but with taking on the mainland of Italy in September ‘43, this is really them, the Americans, getting involved in the fighting in the American continent for the first time. Because up until this point, they’ve only been fighting in the Pacific insofar as World War II is concerned. 

CB: Right. 

NDB: Oh! And Africa. There’s also been fighting in Africa. But not in Europe. 

CB: What I didn’t realize when I researched and wrote this one down is I didn’t realize that the date falls almost exactly on the conjunction, because I just looked this up, and it says, “Italy’s unconditional surrender was publicly announced on September 8th, 1943, by General Dwight D. Eisenhower from Algiers following the secret signing of the armistice on September 3rd, making the date of the announcement the key moment when the Italian people and the world learned hostilities were ending, although German forces reacted by occupying Italy.” Look at the chart for this. This is stunning; I didn’t realize it was this close. But September 8th, 1943, literally the day of that announcement, Mars is at eight degrees of Gemini and Uranus is at eight degrees of Gemini. So we’re talking about this happening right on the exact conjunction. 

NDB: Yeah. And that looks like that’s on the fixed star Aldebaran as well or very close, which is interesting as well. 

CB: It’s also close to the – like, the Sibley chart Uranus is eight degrees of Gemini, isn’t it? 

NDB: Oh, good point. 

CB: So this is also like, the exact Uranus return of the US, and it’s coinciding partially with having this major victory in Europe and starting to turn the war in that direction as well as one of the first major ground invasions happening of the US invading Europe and setting things up for D-Day, which actually brings us to our next most significant event that also happens during this timeframe, which is that Eisenhower gets appointed as Supreme Commander during this period around December of 1943 and January of 1944. 

NDB: Well, you’re leaving out the Tehran conference before you get to that, though. Tehran is super, super important. 

CB: I mean, I’m just following the outline of what we agreed on yesterday. 

NDB: Oh, okay. Sorry about that! 

CB: What —

NDB: I should — 

CB: — did we forget to add an event? 

NDB: I think – yeah, because I had it in my notes; I should have put in that part. So yeah, the Tehran summit. Well, first there was the Cairo conference, November 22nd to 26th, where Churchill and FDR met with Chiang Kai-shek who was the Chinese leader fighting Mao. And then after that meeting, they go to Tehran and they meet with Stalin for the first time. And this is where they lay out all the plans for D-Day, because Stalin has been getting on their case since the beginning. The whole reason he’s in an alliance with England and the US is they’re supposed to be helping him fight the Germans, and they’ve been like, fighting the Japanese and fighting in Africa and doing all these things. But now they’re ready to fight in Europe, and so they’re meeting up with Stalin and they’re finalizing all this. And this is why like, you’re talking about Eisenhower being chosen as the Commander in Chief for the European theatre. That’s all being decided over the course of these talks. So — 

CB: Which is all happening during the Mars retrograde in Gemini. 

NDB: Exactly. Yeah. Leading right up to – the summit ends just before the actual Sun-Mars opposition. The Sun-Mars opposition is December 5th; the summit ends on December 1st. And it’s on December 7th, you know, just after that FDR decides that Eisenhower’s gonna be the Supreme Allied Commander, as a result of everything that was decided in Tehran. So yeah, I definitely wanted to include that. 

CB: Got it. So there’s that entire process, but then the consolidation of leadership culminates on January 16th, 1944, which is interestingly the day of the exact Mars-Uranus conjunction when Eisenhower formally assumed his duties in London, marking the official start of the operational countdown to D-Day and to the invasion of France and of Europe. 

NDB: Yeah. And D-Day would have, well, not an astrological connotation, but they did deliberately do it during the Full Moon of the summer solstice because that’s when you would have – like, you didn’t wanna have a lot of lights and what have you to alert the Germans, so you wanted to sail into France on moonlight alone. So they did it on a Full Moon, and it was a real, like, they weren’t sure until the last minute if the weather would permit, but they knew in order to pull it off right that they had to do it under a Full Moon in order to be able to see what they’re doing but at the same time land without alerting the Germans. 

CB: And you’re saying that was a Full Moon, or an eclipse? 

NDB: No, it was a Full Moon, not an eclipse. 

CB: Okay. 

NDB: I’m just saying —

CB: Got it. 

NDB: — that they – yeah. 

CB: Got it. Nice. Yeah. 

NDB: Good ol’ moonlight, you know. Old-fashioned warrior trick. 

CB: Yeah, I love that. It’s funny how much stuff gets planned around things like that even still. Like, I was reading something after I did one of our Mars retrograde episodes recently where it was like, it turns out that there’s a most optimal time to launch a spaceship to Mars, and it ends up following in the range when Mars is about at the square. And I think it’s like, the retrograde square or something like that. 

NDB: Oh yeah, yeah. Well, I’ve got a book in my library on all the Venus space missions that they’ve sent, and they always send them during Venus retrogrades because that’s when Venus is closest to earth; it makes perfect sense. Ditto, you know? Like, if Mars is going retrograde, it’s gonna be closest to earth; you’re not gonna have to send the spaceship as far. So it makes perfect sense that that’s when they do it. 

CB: Yeah. So it’s funny how many – there’s a bunch of little instances like that in history where people end up doing things for practical purposes based on certain planetary alignments, but then it also has funny astrological implications as well. 

NDB: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. So back to this point, though, because this is a crazy alignment about Eisenhower because it’s literally like, the day of the exact conjunction, the third conjunction. Look at the chart for this. 

So this is the day that Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Eisenhower shows up in Europe and assumes his formal duties in London as the Supreme Allied Commander for Operation Overlord and for the invasion of Europe for D-Day basically. And look that this – like, Mars is at five Gemini and it’s exactly conjoining Uranus at five Gemini. Like, that’s crazy to me, and it also is crazy because it fulfills some of the symbolism – I keep thinking about like, Vettius Valens’s significations of Mars, which I almost – maybe we should have read at the beginning. Because some of them have been strikingly relevant here. But one of them is – it actually talks about like, generals and supreme commanders and the heads of military being associated with the planet Mars. And it’s crazy that we have on the day of this conjunction this top general assuming his command post. 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. In preparation for what would be the biggest – I think it was still the biggest invasion in history, right? 

NDB: It was. And Eisenhower being chosen is kind of ironic, because really the top choice would have been George Marshall, but FDR felt that he needed Marshall with him as his advisor. So choosing Eisenhower to be the Supreme Allied Commander is really like, you know, because he’s gotta keep the best guy with him; he’s gotta go with the second-best guy to actually send on the mission, and that’s Eisenhower. So it is kind of – and Marshall does feel a little put out that he doesn’t get to go, because he really is the most qualified. But it’s almost like he’s so qualified, FDR needs him at his side. He’s too valuable to send there. 

CB: Got it. And then, of course, Eisenhower is important here in being the Supreme Commander of the invasion force. But he, of course, famously would go on to become president of the United States after World War II in the 1950s, right? 

NDB: He certainly would. He would be elected when both Saturn and Neptune were conjunct his Sun in Libra in the first televised presidential election in American history, 1952. 

CB: So that’s crazy because we’re seeing on this Mars-Uranus conjunction the general who would become one of the most famous generals in American history assuming the highest command post that he would ever get in the military and doing the thing that he would become the most decorated military, you know, person for, which eventually then becomes the springboard for him achieving the presidency later on. 

NDB: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Not unlike what happened to Grant after the Civil War, who also ran for the presidency and won two times. 

CB: Okay, yeah. I was just gonna ask you who were the other – because Washington, of course, was a famous military general who then became the first president. 

NDB: Yeah, Washington and Grant, obviously, was a really important general. But even a lot of the following presidents were men who had distinguished themselves in the Civil War – you know, Garfield, McKinley. Well, two guys who were assassinated as well, but they were both Civil War officers who did a lot. Yeah, most of them… Well, okay, I can think of maybe some who weren’t, but a good number of them were. So yeah, it is something that happens, obviously, but Eisenhower – yeah, he follows in the footsteps of your Grant or your Washington where the reputation and the achievement and the victory is so overwhelming that the guy’s just a shoo-in, you know, regardless of qualification, which is definitely in question with both Grant and Eisenhower, but that’s another argument. 

CB: Well, that’s kind of interesting then in terms of like, a little Mars and Uranus thing that Washington is the general during – well, that there’s a contrast. There’s the people that were a general before, and then that becomes part of the reason they get elected president later, versus somebody like Lincoln who’s like, not a military person, and like you said, he was like, reading books in order to like, learn how to be a military commander. 

NDB: Yeah. No, I mean, that is what’s really interesting about Lincoln is that he’s got no – I mean, he was in the militia or whatever and I think served in the Black Hawk War or something to that effect. But nothing, you know, most men of his social class wouldn’t have been involved in that probably. But yeah, really no real military interest or expertise whatsoever, and he’s literally teaching himself how to become a general by reading books in the library when he’s not in the telegraph office following the war. 

CB: Maybe that’s an important theme here that we should be – I’m starting to pick up on then is just the rise of these significant military leaders during these times where during the Revolutionary War, it was George Washington. During the Civil War, it was Lincoln doing the opposite process. But then his primary general that helped him win the war ended up being Grant. And then Grant, of course, later becomes president. And then now we’re seeing during World War II, we have FDR, who’s not a military person in the same way that Lincoln wasn’t, but then we see the rise of a general who ends up being his primary general in Europe at least, and then that general later after the war rises up and become president. 

NDB: Yeah. No, it’s a good point. We ought to be looking out for who the next one might be. 

CB: Yeah. That could be a really important clue. 

Look at – I just pulled up my book, Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune, available in fine bookstores everywhere, to see that passage – you’ve got it? Nice. Thank you. All right, thank you for this promotional moment. So let me share the screen really quickly just because there’s this – the very beginning of the 2nd century astrologer Vettius Valens in his anthology, he goes through each of the planets and he gives this long list of significations for each of the planets. And later on in his significations of Mars, he says this. He says Mars “brings about leaders and military service and high-ranking officers, soldiers, and sovereignty.” So think about that; this is a guy writing in like, the 2nd century in Greek who’s writing about Mars representing the military but also high-ranking military officials. And then literally the day of this Mars-Uranus conjunction in 1944 on January 16th, we see one of the highest military commanders who’s moving into a position of not just leading the US military, but is taking this position of having the highest position over the entire Allied military alliance in preparation for this invasion. That’s pretty stunning. 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah. 

NDB: Good ol’ Vettius. You can count on him. 

CB: Yeah. You can. All right, so moving on. That’s basically the conjunction of 1943 and 1944; do you have anything – are there any other major ones that we didn’t include in the main outline before we jump to the next one? 

NDB: Yeah. I mean, there are a number of important battles; we don’t wanna get lost in the weeds. I guess one thing I — 

CB: Right. 

NDB: — would add in here is one of the fireside chats that FDR gives at this time. On January 11th, so just five days before the conjunction, he gives a fireside chat where he proposes an economic bill of rights, which would guarantee employment with a living wage, freedom from unfair competition and monopolies, housing, medical care, education, social security. And he sort of, you know, talks to the American people about this in January of 1944 after he’s just come back from Tehran, the war’s going on. It’s a very curious time for him to bring it up, but it’s a speech that has resonated with a lot of Americans since, and it’s something that people bring up from time to time. So it’s also interesting that that came up in the mill of it all. 

Also interesting since I’m on the subject of FDR, he was born with Mars stationing retrograde in Gemini or not stationing retrograde; I think it was about to — 

CB: Right.

NDB: — station direct, rather. 

CB: On his Midheaven — 

NDB: But yeah. 

CB: — right? 

NDB: Yeah. He’s got the Mars retrograde in Gemini. Lincoln, like I said, was born just as Mars was about to go retrograde in Libra, so that’s another thing that – like, FDR and Lincoln are both Aquarius Suns, but they’re also both born very close to Mars stations. 

CB: I’m glad you mentioned that, because that is pretty crazy about FDR, about Franklin Delano Roosevelt. So here’s his chart – January 30th, 1882, 8:45 PM. He has Virgo rising, and his Midheaven’s up around let’s say around 22 degrees of Gemini. And his Mars, which is retrograde in Gemini, is at 27 degrees of Gemini. So that’s a great point that like, he was born with Mars retrograde in Gemini in the 10th house of career and action and reputation and your life’s work, and then famously would be right in the thick of World War II when Mars went retrograde in Gemini in the 1940s during this pivotal turning point. 

NDB: Exactly. It’s also, you know, curious he’s got the South Node there as well. You know, it’s probably too big for this episode, but I’ve been looking at the individual charts of people involved in these three wars and where they have the nodes. Always interesting to me when they do have a North or South Node in Gemini. I mean, think about it; his South Node at seven degrees of Gemini. You know, Mars-Uranus conjunctions are happening all over that South Node as he’s planning the whole D-Day thing, as the Italians are surrendering, as the summit in Tehran’s happening and Eisenhower’s gonna be the Commander. All that is happening with these conjunctions going over his South Node, which is really interesting to me. 

CB: Yeah. That’s actually really crazy. And that also means that around the time that he was born, there was eclipses taking place in Gemini around the time that FDR was born. And the eclipses during our time period sort of kick in in like, 1945 in Gemini, right? 

NDB: Right. After he dies in 1945. 

CB: Okay. 

NDB: So those don’t – the nodes overlap, but the eclipses? Not quite. Almost. I guess the other thing is, you know, he’s got Mars retrograde in Gemini with the South Node in the 10th, and this is someone who had a physical disability but kept it from the public, which – I mean, it’s just an aside, but when I’m looking at the chart, that just sort of occurs to me as well that he’s doing all this when he’s, you know. Most of the American people don’t know that he’s actually confined to a wheelchair and can only walk around for short periods with these very painful leg irons and walking with his son holding his arm and stuff. He pulls off amazing theater for cameras, for film cameras, doing this. But he’s — 

CB: You’re associating that with the South Node? 

NDB: Yeah, which lacks agency, which can be a depleted force. 

CB: Okay. I was thinking more like, in some of the Hellenistic astrologers like Valens called the nodes the eclipsing places, and eclipsing can literally mean to hide or obscure something. 

NDB: Right. Although yeah, the North Node tends to amplify; the South Node tends to diminish or – and it has no agency. The South Node is like, you know, doesn’t move. It responds; it reacts, so yeah. Just an —

CB: Right. 

NDB: — observation. Yeah. 

CB: Nice. All right. So let’s see. So we jump forward after the Mars retrograde, the big one in ‘43 and ‘44. We jump to the next Mars-Uranus conjunction, and weirdly it falls – this is the most important one of our entire series, because it was a huge turning point not just in US history but in world history, which is the atomic bombings of Japan, of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, fall on the Mars-Uranus conjunction and copresence in August of 1945. And then that also marks the end of World War II. 

So the US develop and tested the atomic weapon a little bit earlier in the summer when Mars was still actually in Taurus. But then they ended up deploying and using them in war for the first time in August of 1945, and by that time, Mars had moved into a close conjunction with Uranus. 

NDB: Yeah. It’s wild that this happens at this time. 

CB: Yeah. So the exact conjunction is August 17th of 1945, but you have to think of it in terms of the succession of events, which is like, the dates – for some reason I didn’t write down the dates. What was the dates again? 

NDB: Hiroshima’s August 6th; Nagasaki is August 9th. The surrender, I think, is August 14th – my birthday. But the actual surrender is September 2nd – like, the physical surrender when the Japanese surrender to MacArthur in person is September 2nd; I remember that. 

CB: Yeah. So let me share the chart for that, because it’s really stunning just from an intellectual sort of stepping outside of yourself just astrological perspective. So this is the chart for August 6th, 1945. And actually, maybe I should pull up the exact chart because the exact chart itself is actually even more stunning because it happens to be on the Midheaven at that time. 

So here is the chart for the exact moment of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, and it happened at 8:15 AM in Hiroshima, Japan. And Virgo was rising, and the Midheaven was at 16 degrees of Gemini, and Uranus was exactly on the Midheaven at 16 degrees of Gemini conjunct Mars at nine degrees of Gemini. So basically not only was the Mars-Uranus conjunction happening and moving into a close alignment in Gemini at this point, but they were both like, right on the Midheaven at their highest elevation at the time of this event, of the first time that the atomic bomb was used in war in the entirety of world history. 

NDB: Yeah. The detonation moment. It’s totally wild. It’s totally, totally wild that the chart works out like this. 

CB: Yeah. So on the one hand, you have – there’s many different sides of this that or like, pieces that we’ve seen earlier of little versions of that all come together at this moment which is like, on the one hand, we see the use of a new military technology suddenly being deployed for the first time. So the first time this new military technology is being used in war to kill people. Just like in the Civil War we saw the attempts to use those iron fleet ships in one of the battles and unveiling that technology, this is like, a much more advanced version of that under a subsequent Uranus in Gemini transit. We also under some of the previous Mars-Uranus conjunctions have seen massacres and mass casualty events, and this is one of those events because they didn’t hit like, a military target; it hit also a whole civilian population that was wiped out in an instant by a single bomb, which is something that the world hadn’t seen before. But that’s a whole major part of this is just the civilian and human deaths and casualties and murders that happened at this instance under this Mars-Uranus conjunction, which is like an amplified version of what we’ve seen before. 

NDB: Yeah. I mean, think – you know, going back to the Civil War when Sherman is carrying out his total war against Georgia. I mean, that is seen as like, this new level of barbarity at the time, and that was, of course, a Mars-Uranus extension with the Mars retrograde. And then in the Revolutionary War, we had things like Waxhaws or even just the general guerilla style fighting that was prominent in that campaign and the wiping out of Mohawk villages and things like that really sort of massive sort of massive massacres that occurred. The Mars-Uranus copresences do seem to coincide with a fair amount of war being taken to a new level, if you will, you know. I mean, I don’t wanna call it an evolution, but I guess it is in a way. You know, just the advancement, so to speak, of how war is fought – the brutality of it, the sort of thoroughness of the destruction, I suppose, is a big part of it as well. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, and it becomes the turning point in human history because this becomes the thing that unlocks for the first time ever the ability of humans to destroy themselves and to destroy the entire human race as this opens the whole nuclear proliferation age, which would ramp up under another conjunction that we’ll see in just a little bit when the US only gets about like, five years or something of being the sole country that has nuclear weapons. And then Russia detonates their nuclear weapon and surprises the US under a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Cancer just after our period. And that begins the period where suddenly you have these two superpowers building up thousands of nuclear weapons and bringing the entire world to the brink of destruction through the mutually assured destruction doctrine of wiping each other out and this period of almost like insanity. 

NDB: Yeah. And it really only ultimately collapses when one side runs out of money, you know, which is really… You know, in the ‘80s, the proliferation was still growing, and then Reagan came up with that Star Wars SDI defense system idea, which at the time was pure science fiction. No scientist in the world thought it was serious whatsoever. But just the idea of it and Reagan talking about it got the Soviets worried enough and knew that there’s no way that they could compete with that cost. And so that’s when the things really started to unravel for the Soviet Union not being able to compete with Reagan’s daydream of a science fiction space weapon. But there you go. It had to — 

CB: Right. 

NDB: — get to that point before it could stop. You know, it had to become completely outrageous and unaffordable before it could stop. 

CB: Right. Let me read again some of the significations of Valens, because I think they’re relevant here when we’re seeing this process of Mars being amplified and what Mars meant in ancient astrology. Because sometimes in like, modern astrology, we think of it in like, Mars in a psychological context of one’s drives or ambitions or other things like that. But sometimes the ancient delineations of Mars are a bit more stark, especially when it was described in its more negative capacity. But in instances like this are sort of more striking and appropriate in a way. So again, here’s my book, and this is Valens’s significations of Mars where he says – and I’m thinking about this event of the atomic bomb being used, but he says, 

“The star of Mars signifies violence, wars, robbery, screams, insolence, adultery, taking away of one’s possessions, banishment, exile, estrangement from one’s parents, captivity” – which I think is actually interesting about our earlier discussion about slavery. He has some other ones, like the sexual assault of women, “abortions, sexual intercourse, marriages, loss of good things, lies, hopeless situations, violent thefts, robbery, plundering, separations of friends, anger, fighting, verbal abuse, hatred, lawsuits. He also brings about violent murders, wounds, and bloodshed… Imprisonment, torture, masculinity, perjury, decpetion, those who have much experience in wrongdoing, those who work with fire or iron,” because Mars is associated with fire. “Those who work with their hands,” and then this last part that I already read that “he brings about leaders and military service and high-ranking officers, soldiers, and sovereignty.” 

NDB: Scroll back up for a second to the previous page, because there’s one other thing when I’m thinking about – you skipped over it, but think about it. When we’re talking about nuclear bombs, “attacks of fevers, ulcers, skin eruptions, inflammations.” 

CB: Right. Absolutely. Like, the after effect of those who survived — 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: — the bomb but experienced the effects of the radiation and the burns. 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point. Well, and it also – I mean, I guess I’ll just go on. It says… Blah, blah, blah, back portion… It signifies “falling on one’s back,” and it “rules that which is hard and abrupt.” 

So I think we’ve seen like, a lot of those significations play out in different ways today, but there’s something about some of those that become amplified to their worst extent sort of in this moment. But in terms of the broader war and the sequence of events, we saw that when the bomb is dropped on Hiroshima, Mars is at nine degrees of Gemini and Uranus is at 16. But then look at the sequence of events if you animate the chart over the course of the next week, which is that Nagasaki happens three days later. So Japan doesn’t surrender, and the US drops a second bomb on Nagasaki on August 9th. And by this point, Mars is at 11 degrees of Gemini, and Uranus is at 16 degrees of Gemini, so the conjunction has grown even closer. And then on August 15th is the —

NDB: 14th. 

CB: — emperor’s —

NDB: 14. 

CB: I have it down as the 15th. What event? The emperor’s broadcast? 

NDB: Truman’s broadcast to the American people. But maybe this is an international dateline issue. Maybe it’s the, you know, because it’s tomorrow in Japan today. Right? 

CB: Okay. So I’ll put it for 14th. So what was Truman’s broadcast? 

NDB: Truman’s broadcast was on August 14th, and it’s when he notifies the American people that Japan has surrendered. 

CB: Got it. So Mars is at 14 degrees of Gemini by this point, and Uranus is at about 16 degrees of Gemini. And on August 15th in Japan, the emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan to the Allies, effectively ending World War II. And so we have the end of World War II basically at this time as the conjunction moves within a degree or two of exact. So that’s just an absolutely stunning alignment then of World War II coming to a close, because it already ended in Europe a few months earlier with the fall of Germany in like, April and May. But then here we have the end of the Pacific campaign with Japan surrendering, the other remaining Axis power, right under the exact conjunction basically in August of 1945. And that’s again just another stunning alignment, and it’s also stunning because we saw the end of the Civil War taking place under a Mars-Uranus conjunction at the end of that war as well. So that means the two biggest wars, basically, in US history both ended under Mars-Uranus conjunctions. 

NDB: Exactly. It’s wild. I am seeing here in my notes indeed that Japan’s surrender was announced to the Japanese people on the afternoon of August 15th in Japan, which because of the timezone difference was seven PM on August 14th in America. So yeah, it was that timezone thing – international dateline thing. But you’re absolutely right. Both wars ending on the Mars-Uranus is stunning. It’s just – and the Revolutionary War, of course, also basically ended with the Mars-Uranus with the peace talks. 

CB: Oh, you’re right. Yeah, I forgot about that. So that’s like, the third war… Yeah, that’s just crazy. That’s absolutely crazy. And again, it’s like sometimes things are starting under Mars-Uranus conjunctions because the conjunction can represent the start of a synodic cycle between two planets, and other times things are ending under these conjunctions because a conjunction also represents the end of that entire circle or synodic cycle between those two planets. 

NDB: Yeah. And you can even see how for a given person they start something under one Mars-Uranus conjunction and then end their business with that affair at the next one. You know, I think we’ve seen a few instances of that just going through these wars. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. 

So one other thing happened on the day of the exact conjunction, I noticed, on August 17th, 1945. On this exact day, the orders were finalized for the division of Korea at the 38th parallel, which separated the Soviet and American occupation zones and basically set the stage for the Korean War that would take place not that many years later. 

NDB: Yeah. Good point that that falls into all of that. Yeah. I mean, one of the reasons the atomic bomb was dropped was Truman had convinced Stalin to invade Japan when they were at Potsdam, but the fear was that if Russia got too far into Japan they would get to take more territory. So you know, amongst all the other reasoning for dropping the bomb was to make sure Russia didn’t get their hands on Japan, but rather that the Americans did. 

CB: Right. I’ve read a lot of the different debates about that and the extent to which, like… Sometimes people argue about the extent to which was the dropping the bomb necessary, or was dropping the second bomb necessary, and to what extent it was partially meant to be a message to the Soviets at that point, because the Americans were starting to look at what would happen after World War II ended and that the Soviet Union would be their primary opponent as soon as World War II was over. 

NDB: Yeah. I mean, some did. I think Truman trusted Stalin a bit more than he would later. But I’m sure people in the state department who were seasoned know-it-alls knew that they had to look at Russia that way, for sure. 

CB: Sure. Yeah. Well, and that’s – because that’s the thing is like, when we look at our timeline – let me pull it up again – we are at 1945. We’re only halfway through our Uranus in Gemini period, and what happens immediately after this over the next four or five years of Uranus in Gemini going through the rest of the sign is that the Cold War starts, basically, and the foundations of the Cold War between the United States and Russia gets started. And that is part of what leads us to our next conjunction basically, which is we jump forward two years to July of 1947. And the National Security Act of 1947 is passed at this point, and this is striking because it was the largest structural reorganization of the US government in US history, and it established the permanent military intelligence complex by creating the central intelligence agency – the CIA – the Department of Defense, and then finally also the United States Air Force as an independent branch. So that’s huge and it’s falling on this Mars-Uranus conjunction in 1947. 

NDB: Yeah. You know how Pete Hegseth and Trump have called it the Secretary of War – the Department of War – again. It used to be called the Department of War until Truman changed it with this act, so it’s funny they’re trying to undo something that was decided during a Mars-Uranus in Gemini when Uranus went back into Gemini. 

CB: Got it. Okay. So and this is the like, post-World War II period where the world is coming out of World War II. But part of the impact of World War II is that a large part of the different countries have been split up between Russia and either the US or other countries because the Soviets – like, the US invaded France and Europe form one side – the US and Britain did and other Allies – but then the Soviets pushed in from the side of Russia into Germany, and then Germany gets split up and a bunch of the other countries get split up, and we have the beginning of the Iron Curtain at this point essentially as well, right? 

NDB: Yeah. Exactly. That all sort of fragments and a lot of that is taking shape exactly during this period that we’re covering right now like in early ‘48, not long after this conjunction. You know, Czechoslovakia’s trying to break away and they’re sort of forced back into the fold and yeah. The new regime is taking hold. There’s also the Berlin airlift will happen between ‘48 and ‘49. But this particular, yeah, this conjunction in ‘47, Truman’s revamping the whole operation, creating the CIA, creating some things that he’s gonna regret before too soon. And yeah. You know, this reconfiguring is part of what the Cold War is gonna mean; it’s what the US being a global superpower is gonna mean. That’s what this new beefed-up government operation is gonna be all about. 

CB: Right. Yeah. So that takes us to two years later to the conjunction that takes place in 1949, July 25th, 1949, and this is really important – the exact conjunction itself happens on July 27th at two degrees of Cancer. So now we’re moving into the post Mars-Uranus – the post Uranus in Gemini period and moving into the Uranus in Cancer. But what happens on this date on July 25th just two days next to the conjunction is President Truman signed the NATO treaty, and this was basically ratifying and putting into place the US and its involvement in NATO, which is an alliance of countries basically that was being put together to counter the Soviet Union at this point as part of the ramping up of the Cold War that was happening. And it’s incredibly striking to me that NATO was ratified on a Mars-Uranus conjunction at this time. 

NDB: Yeah. Absolutely. The treaty was signed April 4th when Mars was in a big stellium in Aries conjunct Venus and the Sun in an eclipse – well, a couple of days after an eclipse – with the node. But yeah, the ratification is really, you know, because the US, of course, was the country that started the League of Nations and then didn’t join the League of Nations. The United Nations it was now about two years old, but the US hadn’t been good at – you know, they had been isolationists up until the war. And now they’re creating these organizations, these multinational organizations – you know, security and financial and what have you. So it’s really interesting, the shift. Like, how America changes during this period. It’s really hard to convey. If you think about how Americans saw themselves, saw their country, saw their place in the world in 1940 versus 1950, it’s really, really different. 

CB: Yeah. That’s a good point, though, the contrast of the isolationism of the US going into World War II and then seeing the consequences of that basically, which is being dragged into and having to fight a major war as a result of like, putting that off and trying to stick to themselves and pretend that you could be an island in isolation and let everybody else deal with their own problems. But then the US comes out of World War II doing the opposite and instead being involved in setting up the United Nations and then here on this Mars-Uranus conjunction setting up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization which is between 12 nations, the 12 founding nations, which was like, the US, the UK, Canada, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Portugal, as a military alliance basically against the Soviets and against Russia. 

NDB: Yeah. Although the first time — 

CB: Yeah. 

NDB: — a NATO force would go into combat would be Afghanistan, 2001. 

CB: Okay. Yeah. So that’s really important, and then finally we jump forward – no, we don’t jump forward. Actually, under the same exact Mars-Uranus conjunction but just a month later, the first Soviet nuclear test takes place August 29th, 1949, when the Soviet Union successfully detonated its first atomic bomb. And this was really important, because on the one hand it shattered the US’s monopoly on this new technology of atomic weapons, but also because it was a sudden surprise and shock to the US because the US was anticipating that the Soviets were still five years away from having the atomic bomb. But it turned out that they were much more advanced than the US realized, and suddenly it completely changed the game right on this Mars-Uranus copresence and conjunction in Cancer in August of 1949. 

NDB: Yeah. And it’s worth pointing out, the Cold War was this incredibly paranoid time. But it’s worth reminding people that – not to defend the paranoia, but – a big reason the Soviets got the bomb that quickly was because of their espionage program, even during the Manhattan Project. I mean, when Truman tells Stalin about the bomb at Potsdam in July of ‘45, Stalin already knows. He doesn’t tell Truman he already knows, but Stalin already knows all about the Manhattan Project. He knew about the Manhattan Project before Truman did, which is ironic in itself. But when the Soviet Union gets the bomb, it’s because they have had spies everywhere and reporting back to them. So it’s not unlike, you know, any of these instances of paranoia like the Great Terror in the French Revolution or what have you; it’s generally based on something that, while being technically true, gets blown way out of proportion or the response to it is not proportionate to the actual level of the threat. And I think this is another example of that. 

CB: Right. That the espionage that the Soviets engaged in allowed them to get further ahead in their research into nuclear weapons than they would have been otherwise. And that actually as a sidepoint brings up a later conjunction that I noticed in 1953, which is when Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for espionage on June 19th, 1953, on a conjunction – on a Mars-Uranus conjunction – that went exact on July 12th at 18 degrees of Cancer. And they were executed for supposedly being involved in espionage of sharing Soviet – nuclear secrets from the US with the Soviets. 

NDB: Yeah. Today it’s 100 percent certain that Julius Rosenberg was actually guilty. Ethel may not have – well, probably was not or merely by association, but she probably should have been found innocent. But Julius Rosenberg, it turns out, was guilty. But yeah, it was hardcore. That was how people felt, and it really divided the population. You know, I mean, they had kids, you know? Executing a married couple with children means you’ve suddenly created orphans, you know. Their kids were adopted by the man – I forget his name, but he wrote the lyrics to “Strange Fruit,” the anti-lynching song that Billie Holiday made famous. His name is on the tip of my tongue. But anyway, yeah. Really, really sad story. It’s true – Julius was guilty, but Ethel was probably executed wrongly. But it does impart to you that although people were often going overboard and, you know, you can always argue the death penalty is going overboard, but it was based on some real fears, you know? The nuclear question was – I mean, we’re terrified of it today. Imagine being terrified of it in 1949 when it’s really new and just that much alien and unfamiliar. So yeah, this whole thing made people really crazy. 

CB: Yeah. Well, and we talked about that incident in 1953 with their execution because this was also during the height of the panic and on the one hand the paranoia surrounding the Cold War, because 1953 is also the Saturn-Neptune conjunction. So this is the — 

NDB: Right. 

CB: — center of the Red Scare or the – what’s the other term for it in this time period? 

NDB: Red Scare… 

CB: Maybe that is the term. I thought there was another one. 

NDB: Yeah. No, Red Scare is as good as any. I mean, there might be others, but that’s pretty good. 

CB: But anyway. So I thought this was striking, the 1949 one, because it means basically that the Soviets in the post period set off their atomic bomb on a Mars-Uranus conjunction and that this was the start of the nuclear arms race basically between those two countries that would just escalate to the point of insanity during the course of the rest of the 20th century. And what’s fascinating about this is I found one last one to bookend this, which is that the USSR dissolved at the end of 1991, and then on February 1st, 1992, George Bush – Bush and Yeltsin signed the Camp David Declaration that formally ended the Cold War hostilities, and this declaration was really close to the exact conjunction of Mars and Uranus, which took place on January 29th, 1922, at 15 degrees of Capricorn. So it means that the Cold War — 

NDB: 1992. You said 1922. 

CB: Yeah, 1992. The Cold War ended officially on a Mars-Uranus conjunction. 

NDB: That’s wild. 

CB: Isn’t that crazy? Like, what the hell — 

NDB: Yeah. No, that is – when you think about everything we’ve just covered, and you zip to the last page of the book so to speak and there you are – another Mars-Uranus conjunction. Yeah. That’s really wild. 

CB: It’s like we have the ratification of NATO in ‘49. We have the end of the Cold War and this declaration ending hostilities on a conjunction in 1992. You have… The broader thing about the nuclear question is you have that paper being written in March of 1940 basically showing that the possibility of an atomic bomb was practical and could be done and starting the entire process that would lead to the Manhattan Project and everything else on a Mars-Uranus conjunction in 1940. Then you have the use of the atomic bomb right in the middle of Mars conjunct Uranus in Gemini in 1945. You have the Soviets detonating their bomb in 1949 under a Mars-Uranus conjunction. Then you have this interim period where the US and the Soviets just do this brinkmanship for several decades of building up hundreds of bombs, pointing them at each other, coming very close several times to absolutely destroying each other through things like the Cuban Missile Crisis or that submarine incident where a Soviet almost like, sent off — 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: — weapons and other almost accidental or near destruction like that. And then finally you have the deescalation after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the US and the Russian state signing this declaration on a Mars-Uranus conjunction that kind of closes that era to a certain extent. 

NDB: Yeah. It’s epic. Wow. I’m not easy to impress with astrology; I’m used to having my mind blown with astrology, but that, yeah. Gotta say, that’s something else. 

CB: Yeah. Well, when you and I put our minds together on these things, we do some amazing research and amazing stuff happens, and I think we’ve done that again here today. 

NDB: Yeah. I think we can pat ourselves on the back. 

CB: Absolutely. 

NDB: Well done, brother. 

CB: Okay. So I wanna do a wrap up section, but before we do that, I just wanna see – is there anything else we should have mentioned in this section about, you know, what functionally – let me put it up again, the diagram for the period that we’re wrapping up right now, which is Uranus in Gemini from 1941 to 1949, which obviously – it’s like, the first half centers on the US involvement in World War II and its culmination and end, and then the second half is basically the beginning of the Cold War. And I hope it’s clear now why… You know, when you and I started this episode, you were wanting to do – to go outside of the period a little bit, and I kept saying like, “No, let’s keep it to Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Gemini and just do that.” But the further and further we went into that, I realized that things were culminating during the Mars conjunct Uranus in Gemini periods, but there was an obvious like, build up in the Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Taurus just before that. And there was an obvious like, continuation and carry forward and bring to completion period in the subsequent Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Cancer that happened after our core period, so that it was really clearly in all three instances creating a narrative and a sequence of events that was like, Uranus in Taurus, Uranus in Gemini, and then Uranus in Cancer. 

NDB: Yeah. That’s been happening repeatedly here, so I think we’ve made that case very well. 

CB: Yeah. So I hope that’s clear now why we’ve decided to structure it like that, to talk about a little bit of Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Taurus, mainly in Gemini, and then a little bit in Cancer because of that sequence and that continuation. But… 

NDB: And you did drop one in Capricorn at the end there – when the Cold War ended in 1992, that was Mars-Uranus copresent in Capricorn. But still, yeah. Same principle. 

CB: Yeah. Little teaser there, little bit. 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: Okay. Well, if we don’t have anything else to say about this period of the 1940s, I’d like to take a little break and then we’ll come back and wrap things up. 

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All right. I think now we’re gonna transition into our final section here, which is to talk a little bit about what we learned from all of this and also to look at the upcoming period that is coming up now that Uranus is moving back into Gemini over the next seven years and try to anticipate some of the themes that are coming up based on what we’ve seen so far. 

So I think on the one hand, you know, we did the Uranus in Gemini – you wrote an entire book about Uranus in Gemini in the United States that you published back in like, 2013, right? So it’s like, you’ve been talking about it for at least that long. I interviewed you about that book very early in the history of the podcast, probably around 2013, 2014. Then you and I did a whole episode on Uranus in Gemini periods back in 2022, I think, is when we released that — 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: So we — 

NDB: Yeah, November ‘22, yeah. 

CB: We did a sort of similar overview. But I hope now it makes sense for those that already watched that previous episode how we wanted to do this one, and in order to get into it more granularly by really focusing on those Mars-Uranus conjunctions, especially after the episode we did on recurrence transits where I could really see how powerful that technique is, and I could truly understand why then with the US being born with that at the time of the Declaration of Independence that it built that signature into the birth chart for the entirety of US history, but especially during those periods in which Mars and Uranus are conjoining in Gemini as being super crucial and important turning points in US history. 

NDB: Yeah. I mean, it’s really clear. It lays out this timeline of all these critical building blocks in the history of the country. I mean, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, you know, and Hiroshima, yeah. You know, it’s just everywhere. 

CB: And the Civil War and the 13th Amendment and the Cold War and its start and ending point, including like, the foundation of NATO and the formal cessation of hostilities basically between the US and Russia temporarily in 1991, 1992. There’s so much there. 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: Let’s take a look, though, and see what we’re looking at coming up as we enter into this new period. 

So here once again is the graphic that Paige made us for Uranus in Gemini from 2025 through 2033. So that is the broader period that we’re looking at, and Uranus first dipped into Gemini last year on July 7th, 2025. But then it stationed and Uranus – it made its first retrograde station in Uranus in early September, and then it retrograded back into Taurus on November 7th, 2025. And then Uranus is gonna return to Gemini on April 25th, 2026. And then we’re gonna get our very first Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini at three degrees of Gemini exactly on July 4th, 2026. 

So I hope it’s clear now when you and I and other astrologers who might be even vaguely aware of Mars-Uranus conjunctions in US history raise their eyebrows when they see a Mars-Uranus conjunction coming up in Gemini literally on July 4th, on the birthday of the country, you now understand why that might make some of us a little bit nervous or give us a little bit of trepidation, perhaps. 

NDB: Yeah. I mean, it really looks like a Thing with a capital T. I mean, the whole, the idea of their being an MMA fight there or whatever they’re gonna do – I mean, that was kind of on the nose, whether that comes to pass or not. You remember — 

CB: Well, that’s just – that’s a sideshow to what the magnitude obviously of what we’re talking about coming up. 

NDB: Presumably it is, yeah. I mean, it sure sounds like it. Remember like, you know, Trump’s birthday this past year, his 79th birthday, the fact that he’s got Mars rising in his chart and it was his 79th birthday – 79 is a synodic Mars return, a goal year – and he had that military parade. And we kind of called it long before that his birthday was gonna be special, even though it kind of wasn’t but he sure wanted it to be. I’m getting the same — 

CB: Well, there were several things there that we’ll talk about in just a sec. 

NDB: Yeah. But there’s just something about this July 4th and the fact that the conjunction is there that really makes me think, like, yeah, this is gonna be no ordinary national holiday. 

CB: Yeah. Well, it’s gonna be important events that circulate around that conjunction, but not just that. Because it’s happening on the nation’s birthday that year, it’s gonna imprint that conjunction on the solar return chart for the year that follows from July of 2026 until July of 2027 is another side effect of it falling right on the birthday like that. But I wanna outline the full period here. So we can see – you know, Uranus in Gemini first starts in 2025, and Uranus doesn’t depart from Gemini for the final time until May of 2033. So we’re looking at a very long, like, you know, six, seven years coming up of this period playing out over the course of most of the next decade. And the exact conjunctions are listed there, but I also wanna list the copresences which we didn’t always give the dates. I may splice them in in post for the earlier ones. But here’s a slide that gives the copresence dates of Mars copresent in Gemini with Uranus in a sign-based conjunction. And then the exact conjunction dates, because as we’ve seen, both of those are relevant here. And these are gonna end up being critical dates in the things that are to come in the time of troubles, basically, that’s to come, which is the first copresence is June 28th through August 11th, 2026, and it centers on an exact conjunction at three degrees of Gemini which takes place on July 4th, 2026. Then two years later, we get the next copresence, which is June 7th through July 20th, 2028, and that one centers on an exact conjunction at 11 degrees of Gemini on June 23rd, 2028. Then two years later, we jump forward to the next Mars-Uranus conjunction and the copresence happens from May 19th through July 1st, 2030, and it centers on an exact conjunction where the energies will peak around June 15th, 2030, at 19 degrees of Gemini. And then finally, the 4th and last conjunction – the copresence takes place from April 28th through June 11th, 2032, and it centers on an exact conjunction around June 6th, 2032, at 26 degrees of Gemini. 

So those are gonna be our critical, crucial timeframes and dates for the Uranus transit through Gemini over the next decade but also especially for the Mars-Uranus conjunctions that will take place during that time. 

NDB: So there’s an – oh, can you put it up again for a second? I wanted to point one thing out. 

The third one – June 15th, 2030. That’s the day after Trump’s 84th birthday – his Uranus return. And he was born with the Sun conjunct Uranus, and on that day, the Sun is gonna be conjunct Mars and Uranus. 

CB: Which day? 

NDB: Well, his birthday’s June 14th, but the June 15th, 2030 is very close to his solar return and his Uranus return, and Mars is gonna be in there in the mix. And we’ve got another interesting Sun-Mars conjunction to talk about in a moment, but I just wanted to point that out since you had that slide there. 

CB: Got it. Okay. Yeah, that’s good. Okay, so I wanna talk about some precursors though that have led us up to the present point in time as we’re on the edge of and we’re moving into the Uranus in Gemini period and the first conjunction of Mars and Uranus in Gemini next year. 

So turns out there’s been a number of precursors that may be relevant to our present time that were events that coincided with Mars-Uranus conjunctions over the past decade or two especially. And one of them I wanna talk about to start with that I thought was really striking was the exact day of the Mars-Uranus conjunction in Pisces that occurred on April 15th, 2009, was the Tax Day Tea Party protests, and this was the first major nationwide mobilization of the Tea Party movement where hundreds of rallies occurred across the United States on this exact day. And so this was in that period immediately after Obama got elected in November of 2008 when you started seeing… Because it’s like, the context was that there had been eight years of President Bush, which was especially centered on the 9/11 years of, you know, President Bush gets into office and then immediately within the first year of his presidency, September 11th happens, and then the US goes into a war with Afghanistan, and then later Bush takes us in 2003 into a war in Iraq. And he gets reelected in 2004, but by the end of his term after eight years of Bush, there’s just like, fatigue with the endless wars and a lot of the stuff that he’s been up to. And then we see this like, historic ushering in of what seemed like a new era at the time with Obama being elected at the end of 2008 and coming into office at the beginning of 2009. But then what was so striking about that period in the spring is there was this Mars-Uranus conjunction, and then all of a sudden, there was this upsurge of like, a movement on the right basically to do certain things, basically, and a counter movement that was building essentially at that point on the right, I think is fair to say, right? 

NDB: Yeah. As a reaction to the earliest days of the Obama administration. 

CB: Right. And early in Obama’s presidency, you know, Trump started becoming more prominent. Because throughout the 2000s, he’d been doing a television show, The Apprentice, but early in the Obama presidency he was one of the louder voices that was questioning whether Obama was born in the United States and he was claiming that Obama was born in Kenya or something like that. And Trump we could see early in Obama’s presidency started trying to push to remake his image, it seemed like, a little bit. And one of the important instances of that that you noticed was a Mars-Uranus conjunction in early 2011 when Trump taped the Comedy Central roast, right? 

NDB: Yeah. It’s actually really interesting, because 2011 was the year that Uranus moved from Pisces into Aries. But as it happened, so did its copresence with Mars. So in March of 2011, the Comedy Central roast of Donald Trump was taped. And I have to say, he came off as a pretty good sport at that one compared to say, Chevy Chase or what have you. But two months later at the end of April 2011, by that point, Mars and Uranus had both moved from Pisces into Aries; they were still copresent. That was when the famous White House Correspondents’ Dinner happened when Obama roasted Trump, and Trump didn’t take it so well – was not quite the good sport I think that he had been for Comedy Central two months earlier or a month and a half earlier. And then it was I think that same night or the following day that Obama had Osama bin Laden taken out. But yeah. You know, there was something about the rift between Trump and Obama that that Correspondents’ Dinner, I think, is a major landmark. I think it’s recognized by most people to be one in the rift between them. So it’s interesting that that was Mars-Uranus. 

CB: Yeah. Let me put that up so you can see the chart, because it’s crazy. It’s like, here’s the chart for April 30th, 2011. And we see Mars at 21 Aries, exactly conjoining Jupiter, but Uranus – it’s coming off of this conjunction, and it’s still in this copresence with Uranus at two degrees of Aries, which has just recently changed signs. It actually changed signs, I think, the day of the Fukushima disaster, nuclear power plant disaster, which was also a Mars-Uranus event. But this event is important, because on the one hand, you have a huge turning point in US history that takes place at that time in a significant moment because of the US finally locates and assassinates Osama bin Laden in retaliation for the September 11th attacks 10 years earlier, almost exactly a decade earlier. So you had this really major public moment that took place, although nobody that night knew it had happened yet, although it would be announced right afterwards. But then the same night, something really important is happening that’s also very publicly visible, but nobody at the time realized how important it would be, which is like, Obama and Trump are both attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and Obama gets up and kind of roasts Trump and says… One of the things he did, actually, I remember at the time is he put up a Photoshopped image at one point of like, he was like, if Trump ever gets in the White House, then it’ll look all kind of extravagant, and he put up this mocking image of what the White House would look like if it was covered in gold and stuff like that, which ironically tended to be — 

NDB: Is what’s happening! 

CB: Right. It’s like, yeah, like, not even to be mocking about it, but it’s like, literally some of the pieces of that are weirdly prescient in terms of some of the gold redecorations and the building of the ballroom and other stuff that are happening right now. But a lot of people have speculated that they might have been an important moment in terms of Trump’s hatred of Obama, which is getting roasted like that very publicly and very severely or something, let’s say. 

NDB: Yeah. I mean, it’s not the same thing as the Comedy Central thing, which of course still puts him on a chair; it has the gloss of being friendly and even kind of good-natured and what have you, even when it’s very mean. Whereas, you know, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is a more serious affair and Trump was obviously gonna see this very – he’s gonna see it as an adversary taking a swing at him. 

CB: Right. Well, and the thing about the Comedy Central roast that I think is important is like, a lot of celebrities were doing those roasts during those time periods in order to remake their image. And I think to me, I take that sometimes to mean that this was — 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: — one of Trump’s early steps towards his eventual — 

NDB: Yeah! 

CB: — goal of running for the presidency, because he’s doing something in order to remake his image and to humanize himself by going on and getting roasted by a group of comedians and friends. 

NDB: Yeah. And to my point, like, I think he pulled it off that night in that. I mean, we all know he’s very thin-skinned, but on that particular night, he was a good sport about it all. He sat there, he took the jokes, and got through the night, and you’re right. It’s a perfect vehicle for a makeover, and I think a lot of people used it for exactly that. 

CB: Right. So that’s in 2011, but then I know there’s some intermediate ones. But then we jump forward to one of the next and most crazy intermediate ones, which is there was a conjunction that went exact on January 20th, 2021, which was a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Taurus, and this was the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration, and it was just weeks after the January 6th event where in late 2020, Trump lost the presidential election, but then he rejected the results and he said the election was stolen. And then eventually, this culminates in early January when Trump is holding rallies in Washington, DC, and then a bunch of his followers went and like, stormed the Capitol, and it was this really striking event in US history that we all watched unfold live on television at the time. And as astrologers, we’re especially watching it, because what we saw was earlier in the day when it began, Mars was at 29 degrees of Aries. But then by later that day, Mars had clicked over into zero degrees of Taurus where it joined Uranus, which was in the early degrees of Taurus at that time. So it became literally the sign-based copresence that day, the day of January 6th, which was really crazy to see at the time. 

NDB: Yeah. And it reminds me of like, you know, that Mars at 29 Aries on January 6th was coming out of the retrograde. In September of 2020, Mars had gone retrograde at about I think 27 Aries or something like that, so it was just moving out of that path that it had been in the retrograde phase as it was moving into Taurus. And that even kind of reminds me of how, you know, Mars on 9/11 was just a couple of degrees outside of where its retrograde station had been a few months earlier. You know, on 9/11 it was at two Capricorn; the Mars retrograde station in I think May of 2001 was at 29 Sagittarius, so there’s this… Yeah. Something about these things blowing up. The US is often under some kind of – well, often. I mean, let me rephrase that. When the US has come under some kind of attack, be it a 9/11 or a January 6th, it’s always been after a Mars direct station, after there’s been a Mars retrograde. And often, you know, in the cases of 9/11 and January 6th, it’s a couple of days, couple of degrees outside of where the retrograde station had been. Pearl Harbor — 

CB: Right. 

NDB: — same thing, after a Mars direct. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but the list goes on and on. It’s quite consistent. But yeah, I mean, it’s interesting — 

CB: Yeah, for sure. 

NDB: — for that reason. Mars moving out of the retrograde in Aries and then it’s going into Taurus as all that craziness is already well under way. 

CB: Right. Absolutely. So what ended up happening then is like, January 6th happens the day Mars switches over into the copresence with Uranus in Taurus, but then the exact day of the conjunction ends up being Biden’s inauguration, January 20th, 2021. And because January 6th had just taken place, this attack on the Capitol had just taken place, DC was heavily militarized basically on that inauguration. And that was one of the most striking things about the inauguration is it kind of shut DC down in terms of some of the normal things that used to happen or did happen up to that point in inaugurations. And look at this conjunction. Uranus was at six degrees of Taurus that day, and Mars came up to six degrees of Taurus that day. 

NDB: Wow. 

CB: So yeah. So it was this really – I remember that day watching the inauguration, because everyone was nervous because we also didn’t know what was gonna happen after that and whether there would be like, further confrontations or something else. But it ended up going by relatively peacefully. 

So that’s 2021. Later just a few weeks later, you noted something that was really important that took place under the same Mars-Uranus copresence in Taurus that year on February 8th, 2021, right? 

NDB: Yes. Yes I did. It was – wait, what was it again? Hold on! I lost my place in the list! 

CB: Trump created the company that would eventually — 

NDB: Oh yes! 

CB: — become Truth Social. 

NDB: Correct. Yeah, sorry, I lost my list. The Trump Technology and Media Group was founded, and that is – I mean, he had just been kicked off Twitter, of course. Also I mean, this is when he’s going through the second impeachment, because January 6th has just happened. And so all of that – again, it’s that acceleration of things. You know, January 6th happens, so that triggers the second impeachment. It triggers him getting kicked off Twitter, so he starts his own company that’s gonna start Truth Social. All of these things are taking place during that Mars-Uranus. 

CB: Yeah, because what’s important about that to remember and what we noted at the time is because Trump was born with Leo rising, all of the Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Taurus were taking place in his 10th house. And that was one of the most striking things about that conjunction is after January 6th, he started getting just like, major blowback from that where the second impeachment happened, he was kicked off of Twitter and a bunch of the social media sites. But one of the things about getting kicked off and receiving as much blowback as he did in early 2021 while Mars and Uranus were conjoining in his 10th house is that he laid the seeds and foundations for his comeback basically and for where he is today. And one of the things you noted during that time period is he started the company that would eventually create Truth Social, which would become his new platform for sending messages to his followers and getting his word out once he had gotten kicked off of Twitter. That it was basically like a clone of Twitter. 

NDB: Exactly. Yeah, which is – I think recently, he’s reappeared on Twitter, but you know, he still has Truth Social. And yeah, that’s been his avenue since then. 

CB: Yeah. So in that way, it’s kind of like him at his lowest point, and let me actually share his chart. 

So here’s his actual chart, so this is Trump’s chart with Leo rising, and we see that Mars-Uranus conjunction at six degrees of Taurus, so that’s in his 10th house. So on the one hand, that’s dealing with like, the aftermath of being president, losing the presidency, watching on that day Biden – his opponent – get inaugurated and take power, dealing with the second impeachment and dealing with getting kicked off of all of social media, but then also laying the foundations for a comeback that would take a few years to fully grow and bear fruit. 

So we jump forward next two years. So that was a Mars-Uranus conjunction at the beginning of 2021. We then jump forward two years to August 8th, 2022; there was another Mars-Uranus conjunction in Taurus in Trump’s 10th house. And what happened at this point was the Mar-a-Lago raid took place where I think it was the FBI raided Trump’s home and took a bunch of boxes which were claimed to have like, government documents and government secrets that he wasn’t supposed to have. And then as a result of those raids, he was charged and had some really serious government charges pressed against him at this time, which could have ended his presidential – his aspirations to be reelected again and was another low point, basically, that was comparable to the previous conjunction when Biden was inaugurated. 

So here’s the chart for that day, which is Mars was at 23 degrees of Taurus, and it was conjunct Uranus at 18 degrees of Taurus. And Trump’s Midheaven’s actually at 24 degrees of Taurus, so what we all – all the astrologers – noticed at the time was that Mars was exactly conjoining his Midheaven at this time when the Mar-a-Lago raid took place. 

NDB: Yeah. Very public. 

CB: Right. All right, so then that’s in 2022. And then we jump forward two years to the next Mars-Uranus conjunction, and that conjunction goes exact on July 15th, 2024. And what happened is two days before the Mars-Uranus conjunction went exact on July 13th, 2024, Trump was at a rally. He was giving a rally in Pennsylvania, a presidential campaign rally because we were in the middle of the presidential election and he was running against Biden. And somebody – there was a sniper that attempted to shoot Trump, and there was the attempted assasination attempt basically took place that day literally two days from an exact Mars-Uranus conjunction in his 10th house. 

But then two days later – so he survives the assasination attempt. Two days later, the Republican National Convention begins on July 15th which formally nominated Trump to be the presidential candidate for the Republicans. And the same day, Trump announces JD Vance as his running mate on July 15th, 2024, the exact day of the Mars-Uranus conjunction. And then also the same day, a judge I think in Florida dismissed the Trump classified documents case that had been brought up against him two years earlier after the Mar-a-Lago raid on the previous conjunction. Suddenly it gets dismissed on the following conjunction two years later on the exact same day. 

And then if that wasn’t enough – it’s crazy. I mean, this is absolutely crazy. Which we were watching unfold at the time, and you can see us talking about this in the forecast episodes and just being like, this is wild. But now that we’ve done this history, it’s even more crazy to — 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: — put it in that context. 

NDB: Yeah. Perspective. 

CB: So if that wasn’t enough, two days after the exact conjunction on July 17th, Joe Biden – who’s president at the time – announces that he’s sick with covid, and then four days after that on July 21st, Biden announces that he’s dropping out of the race suddenly, and he endorses Kamala Harris to be the candidate in the presidential election. 

So it was this crazy like, sequence of events that all happened around the Mars-Uranus conjunction on July 15th, 2024. 

NDB: That’s wild. 

CB: Yeah. So pretty insane. 

So there’s one intermediate event, which is just this past year in June of 2025, there was a Mars-Uranus square that took place in the middle of that month where Mars went across the late degrees of Leo, and it squared Uranus in late Taurus. And again, there was this explosion of several things that happened all around Trump’s birthday which fell on June 14th of 2025. 

So one of them is that Israel and the US launched an attack on Iran. Next, Trump had his birthday and he hosted a military parade in DC on his birthday with like, tanks and stuff rolling down in front of the White House. In response to that, there was a massive protest called the No Kings protests that took place on the same day that weekend. And then finally, there was also Democratic politicians that were assassinated I believe in Minnesota the same weekend that cast this additional weird and eerie air across everything. And that was the Mars-Uranus square. And so that all takes us to next year when our next Mars-Uranus conjunction is gonna take place on July 4th, 2026, and that sets the context for obviously there’s been all of this buildup, and in retrospect when astrologers and historians look back on the period that we’re all about to experience of Uranus in Gemini over the next seven years and the four Mars-Uranus conjunctions that we’ll have and we’ll experience, we’re gonna see in retrospect that all of these were precursor events that led up to what’s about to take place. 

NDB: Exactly. 

CB: So one other thing I wanna mention here that was an event I skipped over that I noticed that fell exactly on the – you know, because looking at that diagram, it just brings up the question we’ve been wrestling with for a few years now, which is like, is this an internal conflict? Is it an external conflict, or is it both? And obviously over the past several years, we’ve seen it turning into both and the potential for both to take place. But one of the ones I noticed on a recent Mars-Uranus conjunction that may be important is there was a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Taurus that was exact on August 1st, 2022. And on August 2nd, literally the very next day, tensions between the US and China suddenly spiked when Nancy Pelosi went to and visited Taiwan in person despite Chinese threats of military action, and it created this sudden geopolitical crisis. And I think that might be important as a precursor conjunction that happened in Taurus just because if there was something comparable to like, an external conflict like World War II, then obviously the US and China are the two biggest military powers at this point that have been positioning themselves to come into conflict with each other. And there’s been reports that the leader of China has ordered its military to be prepared for a possible invasion of Taiwan by 2027, and Taiwan would be the flashpoint especially between the US and China if an invasion of China to Taiwan did take place, because the US would potentially immediately get involved with a conflict with China at that point. 

NDB: That’s always been the conventional wisdom. Who knows at this point? But you wanna know what is interesting about that? Nancy Pelosi was born in March of 1940 and has a natal Mars-Uranus copresence in Taurus. 

CB: Oh wow. Okay. 

NDB: Yeah! 

CB: Nice. So that was a recurrence transit then for her when she visited Taiwan and did that event on a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Taurus. 

NDB: Yeah. Mitch McConnell also has the Mars-Uranus copresence in Taurus, born in February of ‘42. 

CB: Got it. So I wanna go back then. So I think we’ve clearly outlined – actually, there’s one other data point that we have to outline, which is when the eclipses will take place. So eclipses are gonna start taking place when the South Node moves into Gemini and we’ll have a series of eclipses in Gemini from June of 2029 all the way through May of 2031. So that again as we’ve seen sometimes represents an amplification point when we start having eclipses there, and of course right in the middle of that period is the thing you noticed, which is the Sun-Mars conjunction on May 25th, 2030. 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: Okay. So these are giving us all of our timeframes for potential flashpoints and everything else. So now I wanna take it back and briefly just talk about some of the key themes that we’ve seen in the past in history to sort of wrap this up and round out some of the themes that we’ve seen emerge during the course of these Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Gemini especially. 

So one of the major things that we’ve seen is themes of rebellion, revolution, violent uprisings, secession, and insurrection. So the most striking instances of that, of course, were the Declaration of Independence under a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini, and then the southern states seceding and the start of the Civil War under a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini. 

NDB: Yeah. Absolutely, and just like, all the way through. Perfectly aligned. Ducks in a row. 

CB: What else would you say about that for that theme here? 

NDB: It’s sort of the – well, I’m thinking about the other end. It’s the start, the end, and these are always these periods when the country is sort of redefined, you know? Like, created – I mean, even just these basic things like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution literally defined the country. But even just the transit of Mars-Uranus going from conjunction to conjunction, these events that happen around these times also contribute to defining what the country is or what it’s gonna be. 

CB: Right. Yeah. There’s something about just the fact that the country was born as a result of a rebellion and a revolution and a severing or separation where there was this violent wrenching apart from its parent state of this new entity that asserted its freedom through a military revolution. And there’s something about that that’s built into the core of the country. And then when that same energy got activated again one Uranus cycle later, we got almost another version of that where the southern states attempted to do the same thing, which is like, assert and rebel against the parent state and form a different entity. But in that instance, the rebellion or the insurrection or uprising was pushed back against and quelled, essentially. 

NDB: They really are like two parallels that just sort of diverge, you know, on a few points. Yeah. It is almost like, it feels like a sequel or a remake or something. 

CB: Right. For sure. So a rebellion that attempts to set up a new independent government. But also the flip side of that is one of the things we saw over and over again was the use of military force to attempt to clamp down on a rebellion. So this happened with the Intolerable Acts where it’s like, the colonists were acting up and acting out and were doing little revolutionary things like the Boston Tea Party, and then the British government, the government at the time, which was also the government of America at the time, clamped down with the Intolerable Acts and started using military force in order to like, attempt to control and suppress the rebellion. And we saw something similar one cycle later when Fort Sumter happens, and the southern states start seceding and they start using military action to attack the government. And then Lincoln immediately calls up thousands of troops in response to Fort Sumter to begin attempting to put down the rebellion, which is what the Civil War would become. And then even more recently, like January 6th and the inauguration, was there was a group of people that kind of like, stormed the Capitol at the time, and then that little mini-rebellion kind of got put down at the time in early 2021. So there’s something about that as well, that tension between Mars and Uranus, that sometimes is like, a larger force attempting to quell a rebellion from a smaller force. 

NDB: Yeah. We actually, I mean, some of the things we left out when we were compiling material for this – I mean, there were other sort of uprisings in other periods. You know, uprising in Baltimore in the early days of the Civil War during a Mars-Uranus copresence. A bread riot in Richmond during a Mars-Uranus copresence during the Civil War. There are other instances like this where a mob of some sort gets unruly during a Mars-Uranus copresence.

CB: Yeah. So I wanna – we got a bunch of those, because it turned out we had a bunch of other Mars-Uranus alignments during other eras that were really interesting, but we decided not to include in this episode for the sake of time. But you and I are gonna record a follow-up episode of The Secret Astrology Podcast which is only available to patrons of The Astrology Podcast through Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast, and we’re gonna release that later this month where we’ll go through some other Mars-Uranus events that happened in American history outside of the Uranus in Gemini periods that were really interesting. 

NDB: Yeah. Sign up if you’re not a patron, because we did a Secret episode on recurrences last month after the regular recurrences episode that was really dynamite. And only the patrons are gonna know, so get in on it. Get in on the action. 

CB: Yeah. That was actually a crucial follow-up episode, because we included a bunch of charts that we didn’t get to but also a bunch of like, really important principles in that follow-up on recurrence transits. 

NDB: Yeah. I know. That was a dynamite one. 

CB: All right, so other recurring themes that I saw that I tried to like, identify and isolate – one of them was the use of military force to clamp down on a rebellion backfiring and exacerbating a revolt. So the Intolerable Acts was really an instance of that, because in 1774 under that Mars-Uranus, the Intolerable Acts and the British government attempted to clamp down on the colonists completely backfired and what it did was uniting the colonies and prompted the first Continental Congress. So I think that’s a really important element as well of sometimes when you attempt to clamp down on a rebellion, it can be grabbing a fistful of sand, and all of a sudden the sand just falls through your fingers.

NDB: Or it’s sort of like, you know, when a politician lies and then tries to cover it up and gets in way more trouble for the cover-up than they would have for the lie. It reminds me of that a lot. 

CB: Right. 

All right, other times – let’s see, a violent rebellion or insurrection that’s brutally suppressed. So the 1811 slave revolt of Mars-Uranus in Scorpio was an instance of that. I also noticed the fall of the Alamo was an instance of that, which I’ll talk about in the Secret Astrology Podcast episode. 

Other themes – a ragtag militia defeating a professional empire through unorthodox tactics and guerilla warfare. This is really what the Revolutionary War was all about, which I thought was striking just because that fits the dynamic of Mars-Uranus in like, unconventional warfare can be part of that theme. 

NDB: Yeah. And then Sherman’s total war in the Civil War and then the nuclear arms in World War II. There’s always that just sort of like, total devastation type of thing. 

CB: Yeah. That falls under my next category, which is just like, massacres. Like, we’ve seen a lot of really bloody, violent conflicts that are just like, escalated way beyond things that we’d seen before up to that point, which of course, you know, culminates the most strikingly and the more horrifically with Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: Other things. A military action that lights the fuse for a larger and more explosive conflict. There’s an example of this I guess we’ll talk about in another episode of Polk in 1846 sending troops into disputed lands that leads to skirmishes with Mexico, and this ends up lighting the fuse for the Mexican-American War starting just months later. 

NDB: Yeah. Also Mexico owed money and they were collecting on the debt. But there was that as well, yeah. 

CB: Okay. The use of new weapons and new military technologies – the atomic bomb, obviously, but also the first battle of Charleston Harbor and the use of new forms of naval warfare at that time. I’m sure there’s a bunch of other instances of this that we didn’t get into in each of these wars. Whenever Uranus is in Gemini is often notable because of the advances in technology that take place during the course of those wars, especially because of the urgency of the war really pushing each side to develop new technologies in order to be victorious. So obviously the Manhattan Project is the biggest example of that, but we also saw a ton of other technological innovations taking place all throughout World War II, especially in terms of like, the use of airplanes and things like that during the course of that war and it really becoming much more like a war about air domination being crucial than any other war had been up to that point. 

And then during the Civil War, there were also other things about technology besides just the new ships that we saw, but we had things like the telegraph and communications technology playing a much bigger role during that war compared to let’s say — 

NDB: Huge. 

CB: — the Revolutionary War. 

NDB: Huge. The telegraph is critical. Lincoln spends every day at that telegraph office. And like I mentioned, the Crimean War had happened just five years earlier, and Russia totally lost that war because England and France had telegraphs and Russia didn’t. And so like, even the Russian tsar was reading about progress in the war from British and French newspapers because yeah, you know. And they had the railroads to sort of ship men and weapons in and out and everything, so it was insane the technological disparity. And you see that sort of carry over to the Civil War. Railroad is a real crucial factor for moving men and arms and all that, and sabotaging those rails when deemed necessary, and the telegraph was a total gamechanger. The internet of its day. 

CB: Yeah. Or like, submarine warfare during World War II. Even like, cryptography during World War II and — 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: — the use of codes to send secret messages, and then they attempt to use early versions of computers to break codes. And the Allies being successful in breaking some of the German codes ended up being very important and decisive for the war effort. 

NDB: Yeah. You know, Alan Turing deciphering the Enigma code, and the Americans using Navajo and I think Comanche as well, you know, code talkers was a stroke of genius. It is interesting to me – I mean, in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, Amer-Indians are a huge part of both those stories. We didn’t get into it as much with the Civil War, but the real – like I said, the Plains Wars are sort of breaking out. The massacre in Minnesota, the Sand Creek massacre. You know, that sort of thing is deepening, and the Revolutionary War – I mean, certainly the Haudenosaunee are central participants in that war, as are a number of other tribes around the Ohio area. 

So for us to get to World War II and now, you know, you’ve got the Navajo and Comanche code talkers and other really important participants in that war who are First Nations peoples – it is interesting the way that whole dynamic shifts when you get to the Second World War. Not that the old problems were solved or anything of that matter, but just when we’re looking at the wars themselves and who’s participating and in what way, that is a striking difference. 

CB: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a good point. Yeah, and obviously we can see where that’s going with the conflict basically that’s coming up, which is that we know for sure there’s gonna be the full use of new military technologies which we’ve already see be developed over this previous period of Uranus in Taurus. I’m especially thinking about drone warfare and how crucial that’s obviously become in wars like in Ukraine already, but how that will probably become amplified during the course of the upcoming conflict – the upcoming war, I should just say it. But also other technologies that are emerging at this time, like the use of artificial intelligence, the use of quantum computing in order to crack codes, and all of these other things that I’m sure will play a much bigger role, including potentially other technologies that might be unveiled during the course of this, both communications technologies but also military technologies, during the course of this Uranus transit through Gemini, especially around the time of the Mars-Uranus conjunctions. 

NDB: Yeah. Maybe Nechepso will save the world; who knows. 

CB: Right. Yeah, for sure. 

And then finally, one of my last points that I wrote down because I thought it was so striking was just the liberation of previously oppressed people. Thinking back to the House passing the 13th amendment on the Mars-Uranus conjunction on January 31st, 1865. And although we’ve talked about so much negative and horrific stuff in terms of like, deaths and massacres and great wars and military battles, there are sometimes positive things that come out of these Mars-Uranus conjunctions. And that liberation of previously oppressed people is one of the greatest and highest potentials I think of the Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Gemini. 

NDB: Yeah. I mean, it’s been a crazy time. You know, we’re in the midst of some really egregious violations of basic human rights. So in some way, people not being able to defend themselves from these kind of circumstances, when the smoke clears, there’s gonna be a very strong push to make sure that we have – that people who are vulnerable like that, you know, refugees, stateless people, what have you – that there’s more protection for them on the planet. That people aren’t just sort of stuck with nowhere to go as they often seem to be. 

CB: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So these are some of the themes that we can see from history at this point. And obviously, this isn’t comprehensive. I’m sure there’s many other themes that we could have pulled out from some of the historical stuff that we’ve gone over. But I hope we’ve at least given people some ideas of what it looks like coming up, what we’re in for, but also some of the access points for understanding and contextualizing this really important period in history, especially in US history but also potentially in world history, that we have coming up over the course of the next seven years and why it’s so important and what turning points, what time periods, we’ll be paying especial attention to, especially around the time of those Mars-Uranus conjunctions that are gonna happen in two-year increments starting in July of 2026. 

NDB: Yep. Can’t wait. Sort of. 

CB: Can’t wait. All right. All right, my friend. I think we did it. I think that’s good for today, and yeah. Thanks for doing this with me. Like I said earlier, when you and I put our minds together and our different approaches together to researching stuff, something magical happens, and that keeps happening over and over again over the past three years that you and I have been doing these intense historical collaborations where we go back and we look at what happened under certain alignments in history in order to anticipate what’s coming up, starting with the eclipses series that we did three years ago, I think, at the end of 2022. But then moving into the Venus retrograde series, the Saturn-Neptune series, the recurrence transit series, and now this one, collaborating with you on these has truly been amazing and I’m super grateful to be able to do this work with you. So thanks for doing it with me, my friend. 

NDB: Oh well, thank you, Chris. I love doing these episodes with you, and yeah, I get wonderful feedback on them. So yeah, thank you for having this platform and thank you for having me be the guy that works with you on this. 

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. 

So a couple things – one of them is you have software that you’re working on. You have your databases, I believe, that are still available for purchase, and you also — 

NDB: They are. 

CB: — offer consultations, right? 

NDB: Yeah, I have a bunch of things going on. Nechepso software is very, very close to 1.0 coming out; it is available for subscription now, but we have a refined version of software that’s finally coming out. I have a series of video essays that I am waiting to release, but I wanted Nechepso to get to this level of development before I started putting them out. But that looks like that’ll happen soon, so please feel free to sign up to my Patreon.com/NickDaganBest if you want early access or if you wanna help contribute to my making this series of video essays that I’ve been working on for a long time. I’m looking forward to it, and I think they’re gonna be really cool. And yeah. I’m offering astrology consultations, and I’m offering an end-of-year rebate to your listeners. Promo code ‘2026’ when you book a consultation at NickDaganBestAstrologer.com. I almost forgot my own URL! NickDaganBestAstrologer.com/Consultations to book a consultation. Promo code ‘2026’ gets you 25 percent off a one hour consultation, and that helps me keep the wolves at the door while I work on things like this wonderful podcast and my video essays and everything else I’m doing, so. Yeah. Thank you again! 

CB: Nice. And you have some of your files like, for Solar Fire available for download on your website at NickDaganBest.com, and especially your US history file is this comprehensive file of charts that you’ve collected over the years of important dates and times in US history, which is searchable. So somebody could like, search through your file of hundreds of charts throughout US history to find what happened during Mars-Uranus conjunctions, right? 

NDB: Yeah. My American history file is now almost – it’s over 6,000 charts in it, nativities and event charts. And yeah, exactly. In Solar Fire, using this file, you can do a search where you look for all the charts in this file that have Mars in Taurus and Uranus in Taurus or Mars in Gemini and Uranus in Gemini, or whatever combination you want. You can do the same kind of research that Chris and I have been doing at a high level of return with this material. And yeah, I have a bunch of files that I’m selling on the website now. There’s a US history; there’s a British history. Canada, France, Germany, Russia. There’s a chart of deaths that’s very popular – just a file of death charts and a file of marriage charts as well, which is also gaining in size. So yeah. If you’re interested in doing astrology research, I offer these files for sale pretty cheap on my website. Really it’s like I’m selling you photocopies of my notebooks, but these things – they go a long way. It’s a pretty good price for what you’re getting, so check it out if you’re interested, if you wanna do your own astrology research. And if you’ve been listening to five, six hours of this show, then you probably are.

CB: Yeah. Absolutely. I definitely recommend it, because I use those files in my own research. And then you’ll be incorporating those files into the new astrology software that you’ve released, which is called Nechepso, and that’s gonna be an advanced astrology software program that includes a research component using all of your files. 

NDB: Exactly. Yeah. Nechepso will be including my files. John’s working on getting that incorporated now. But as we release, that’s gonna be one of the early features we’re adding is all my chart files. And there’s a whole – yeah – whole way to use Nechepso to do even more than Solar Fire can do, which is already quite a lot, so. Yeah. Nechepso – look into that, to subscribing. We’re releasing our proper 1.0 version any day now. I’m done giving due dates. I’m done relying on engineers to tell me when they’re gonna be done. But it is looking amazing, and it’s gonna be fast and sleek now too, so that’s great. 

CB: Nice. All right. So URL for that is what? 

NDB: Nechepso.com. N E C H E P S O dot com. 

CB: Cool. Awesome. And I’ll put a link to your website in the description below this video or in the podcast website for YouTube. So people should check out your website. 

As for me, I just wanna thank all the patrons that support and fund this research, because that’s literally the only reason that we’re able to do these long research episodes and for you and I to like, dedicate a week or more to doing this research is because we have patrons supporting it. So if you wanna support this research and get access to bonus content like our notes for this episode or the bonus follow-up episode that we’re gonna record for patrons as part of The Secret Astrology Podcast, then you can sign up at Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast and get more information. So thanks to the patrons for supporting this, and cool. All right, buddy. Thanks so much for joining me, and thanks for doing this episode with me. It was another legendary one to add to our growing library of legendary episodes. So thanks for collaborating with me. 

NDB: Thank you! And it’s not even one in the morning here yet! So we’re making these things go faster somehow. 

CB: You will notice that I did not say this was only gonna be a two-hour episode this time. I controlled myself. At the beginning of the episode, I was realistic about what we were looking at, and we did it in a cool, whatever, five or six hours? Whatever this was. 

NDB: Yeah. No, every time we do one of these, I watch you go through the five stages of grief. You know, the denial always is the longest and most drawn out where you’re like, “No, it’s not gonna be a six-hour one!” And then it’s an eight-hour one. Yeah. 

CB: Right. Because the pitch for this was like, “Hey Nick, I need a light little episode to do at the beginning of December so I can get forward to doing like, horoscopes and the year ahead forecast, and I need to research the Mars-Uranus conjunctions. Maybe we could do a little light Mars-Uranus conjunction episode?” And you know, and then of course that turns into – once you actually get into the weeds of it – like, a much bigger research episode that took more than a week to research and becomes a big sprawling thing, but also because we start finding stuff and it ends up being way more interesting and way more incredible of a case study than I could even anticipate, even knowing some of the highlights going into it. And then yeah. You know, it’s funny; I see a lot of some people complain that they’re not gonna watch the episode because it’s too long, but it’s like, sometimes we’re doing these episodes for us because this is a book. Like, we just wrote a whole book on this — 

NDB: Yeah. 

CB: — topic in this one five- or six-hour workshop. And it used to be back in the day that people would like, have to fly out to attend a workshop in person for something like this, and like, buy plane tickets and get a hotel for a few days — 

NDB: Hotel! 

CB: The whole nine yards. Like, get food. But instead, we’re doing and just putting these workshops out there for free, you know, for just the love of the game. For the love of astrology and the love of the research. 

So if you’ve listened to this entire episode, then thank you and shout out to you for sticking with us. You now have way more knowledge about this topic than probably like, 99 percent of your contemporaries. So way to go for going on this journey with us and thanks for being part of that ride with us. 

All right, my friend. I’m gonna wrap up. Thanks for joining me. Thanks everyone — 

NDB: Thank you! 

CB: — for watching this episode of The Astrology Podcast, and we’ll see you again next time. 

[END CREDITS]

If you’re a fan of the podcast and you’d like to find a way to help support my research, then consider becoming a patron through my page on Patreon.com. In exchange, you’ll get access to subscriber benefits such as early access to new episodes, the ability to attend live recordings, the monthly electional astrology podcast, an exclusive podcast series called The Secret Astrology Podcast that’s only available to patrons, or you can even get your name listed in the credits. For more information, go to Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast.

Special thanks to patrons on my Producers tier, including patrons Kristi Moe, Ariana Amour, Mandi Rae, Angelic Nambo, Issa Sabah, Jeanne Marie Kaplan, Melissa DeLano, Sonny Bazbaz, Kwatsi Alibaruho, Annie Newman, Ginger Sadlier, Berlynn West, and Nicki Crawford.

People often ask me if I’m available for consultations, but unfortunately I’m not right now because the podcast takes up so much of my time. However, I did create a consultations page on The Astrology Podcast website that has a list of astrologers that I recommend for astrological consultations. You can find that at TheAstrologyPodcast.com/Consultations.

The astrology software we use here on the podcast is called Solar Fire for Windows, which is astrology software for the PC. You can get a 15% discount by using the promo code ‘AP15’ at the website Alabe.com. 

For Mac users, I recommend the software Astro Gold for Mac OS, which is astrology software for the Mac computer made by the creators of Solar Fire for the PC. You can get a 15% discount with the promo code ‘ASTROPODCAST15’ through their website at AstroGold.io.

If you’re really looking to deepen your studies of astrology, then I would recommend signing up for my Hellenistic Astrology course, which is an online course in ancient astrology where I take people from basic concepts up through intermediate and advanced techniques for reading birth charts. There’s over a hundred hours of video lectures, plus monthly webinars and Q&A sessions. And then at the end of the course, you get a certificate of completion saying that you studied with me if you pass the final written test. Find out more information at TheAstrologySchool.com. 

Finally, shoutout to our sponsor for this episode, which is the United Astrology Conference, which is happening September 3rd through the 9th, 2026, in Chicago. Find out more information at UACAstrology.com.