Chart for Bush Inauguration, 2005-1-20

Accuracy of this Chart Data

Here's a highly accurate chart for you political astrologers out there. This chart should be useful for making sense of events in the coming four years, whether by transit or progression. For my initial (and undoubtedly biased) impressions of this inauguration chart, see my transit pages for Jan 2005.

The Inauguration Ceremony took place at the US Capital Building, latitude 38N53:24 and longitude 77W00:34. All the timings of the event were manually timed from television broadcasts and should be accurate to within a second or two. These times are given in Eastern Standard Time (EST); 5 hours should be added to convert to Greenwich Time.

Timing of the Inaugural Ceremony

The ceremony began at 11:37:10, with Senator Trent Lott presiding.

Several interesting aspects occurred before the oaths were administered. First, the Moon (9Gm17) was semisextile the ascendent at 11:46:17, followed by Saturn (23Cn19) going over the cusp of the 4th house at 11:48:20. Dennis Hastert then swore in Dick Cheney as vice president between 11:49:27 and 11:50:11.

The oath of office for President Bush lasted from 11:56:27 to 11:56:54. It's this latter timing that was used in the chart, above. There were no new aspects until he started his address.

Bush's inaugural address started at 11:58:34 and lasted until 12:19:44, about 21 minutes long. Venus was trine the ascendent (11:59:17) as he started, contributing to the warm reception he received from the crowd. It took less than 2 minutes for him to mention the World Trade Center attack (12:00:20), a "day of fire" in his words, and to start weaving his vision of the need to actively spread freedom around the world. The aspects at this time included Neptune square the ascendent and the IC standing exactly on Bush's Saturn (both at 12:01:28), followed by Ceres passing over the descendent (12:02:08). Mars and Jupiter were moving into position to form a Yod with the ascendent, with each planet forming a quincunx to the ascendent at 12:11:45 and 12:13:35, respectively. Curiously, he was talking about how "evil is real" and needs to be confronted during the Mars contact, and was explaining his "ownership society" idea while Jupiter was active. The final aspect during his speech was Sun on the midheaven at 12:19:10, just as he was exhorting us to be ready for a challenge at the end of his speech. With the Sun on the midheaven, he was apparently embodying these ideals, in a mythic sense.

Pluto was quincunx the ascendent (12:28:15) just before the ceremony wrapped up at 12:33:08.

And now...

A new cycle has begun and we get to see how this chart unfolds in the coming years. Of particular interest will be the transits of Chiron over the Sun this year, the conjunction of Pluto with the Galactic Center in 2006-2007, and the passage of Pluto into Capricorn during the election year of 2008.