Unfinished Business
February 28, 2008 -updated April 27, 2011
Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) is in danger of facing her political Armageddon in Texas and Ohio on March 4. If Buckeye and Lone Star voters send her on a long journey back to New York empty handed instead of back to the White House, she can take heart that she did not lose to just a self-styled “skinny kid with a funny name.” If she loses, her defeat will come at the hands of the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln. Well, sort of.
Soulsign Astrology* has at its core the knowledge that the soul is eternal and that we incarnate in this schoolhouse of Earth to learn lessons that, if conquered, will propel us on an upward karmic path toward, to use the Buddhist terminology, Enlightenment. We come back to fulfill the soul’s desire to grow and to increase experiences in the physical realm. Therefore, while the person dies, the body dies, the soul reincarnates into another human existence. Each individual life happens just once and each incarnation is different. Therefore, while it is not Abraham Lincoln running for President in 2008, Senator Barack Obama (D. IL) is very likely the reincarnation of our 16th President. A different man, a different life but the same soul. (Note: When I wrote this in Feb of 2008, he was Senator Obama; from now on I will refer to him with his current title, President Barack Obama.)
When President Obama launched his presidential bid on a freezing February morning at the Old State Capitol Springfield, Illinois where Lincoln delivered the famous “house divided against itself speech” was he just employing brilliant political stagecraft or was he subconsciously harking back to his own “mystic cords of memory?” It was a bit of both.
On the surface, it would make more sense for a man who reached the pinnacle of American politics to incarnate into a different set of circumstances. If the soul is to learn and progress it would seem that it would say, in essence, been there done that, now what is next? However, there are reasons why one could come back to the same country and in the same profession as before.
Some souls can get stuck. Human emotion, anger, revenge, karmic retaliation toward others weighs on them so that the soul does not move on. Free will once in the physical realm can keep a person on a gerbil wheel of repeating the same life scenarios with the same people. Human weakness often trumps the soul’s desire for growth.
Others have unfinished business on Earth due to circumstances beyond their control. For instance, if an assassin’s bullet destroys a man at the moment his beloved country is on the precipice of peace and unity after years of bloody darkness and his death kills the possibility of a peaceful Reconstruction and leads to a century of Jim Crowe, lynching’s and poll taxes. Instead of being stuck, this person might reincarnate again with the same oratorical passion and political brilliance, not to mention fierce ambition, he had when he was here before to finish the job. How better to be a vehicle for unity, then as a multiracial, multi-cultural man? What better time to come back to power then when the country is involved in another hateful war and is in desperate need of solidarity and hope after years at the hands of hate and fear mongers? What better karmic reward for the man who saved the Union then to come back to restore it to pass luster? What better karmic justice for the President credited for freeing American slaves, then to be the first African American President?
It is of interest that both Lincoln and Barack Obama came to national awareness from a political base in Illinois. (Although Obama achieved something Lincoln never could, that is, win a seat in the United States Senate. Lincoln tried for the Senate and was defeated twice. He came to the White House after serving just one term in the U.S. House of Representatives to a chorus of his opponents foretelling the dire consequences of having a novice at the helm at such a dangerous time.) The fact that one transformational speech propelled each to prominence, Obama at the 2004 Democratic Convention, Lincoln at the 1860 Young Men’s Republican Union at Cooper Union Hall is also informative. However, Soulsign Astrology relies on more than just “coincidences” between two figures. Without strong correlations between their charts, without a soul connection, we have nothing more than a list of interesting factoids. #. The proof must be in the stars and their birth charts.
Abraham Lincoln was born on a stormy Sunday morning, February 12, 1809 in Hodgenville, Kentucky. While some charts show a birth time at 7:00 AM, which would place his chart in somewhat of an alignment with Barrack’s, others record the birth at 2:00 AM, a much more direct alignment. We have to remember that recording the time of birth of the child of a poor farmer delivered in log cabin on a bed of cornhusks on the American frontier was not a high priority. Often late night-early morning births were recorded only when a midwife or preacher could arrive the next day. It is doubtful Lincoln knew the correct time of his birth. His beloved mother died when he was a boy and his relationship with his father so distant that he failed to attend the elder Lincoln’s funeral.
The 7:00 AM time comes from one source, a woman named Peggy Walters described as an old midwife, a distant aunt, a 20-year-old neighbor or the daughter of the actual midwife Mary Brooks Enlow. At some point in her life, presumably when Mr. Lincoln came to prominence, she said that he was born “sometime around sun-up.” It is a fair assumption that she probably was 20 years old when he was born, was asked the question some 51 years later when Lincoln became President and was relying on an old woman’s memory for the answer. Whether she was at the actual birth has never been proved and for all we know her mother, the real midwife, returned to her house hours after the child’s birth and that is what she remembered a half century later. This is hardly a reliable source.
The 2:00 AM birth time also makes for a chart that mirrors Lincoln’s personality. It places Neptune the ruler of Pisces in the 1st house, the rising house. The rising house, the ascendant, signifies our outward personality. The Sun sign, so important to armchair astrologers today, is an illustrator of a person’s life force, their internal energy. However, the ancient Sumerians, the inventors of Astrology, did not give it special emphasis. The Sun’s light actually interfered with their ability to see the other stars and planets and they really did not pay much attention to it. A person’s rising sign was of more interest. Pisces is the sign of the martyr, the greatest payer of karmic debt. Pisces also deals with dreams and the spiritual world, cosmic awareness – the etheric. Abraham Lincoln, the first martyred President, was famous for his prescient dreams, even the one that foretold his own death.
This chart also places his Saturn in the 12th house (the house of karma and the cosmic consciousness, ruled by Pisces) on the cusp of his rising house, a common location for someone prone to depression or “melancholia” as it was termed at the time. A Saturn 12th house person would also carry a “mystical presence” about him and seemingly be able to tap into cosmic realms unavailable to mere mortals.
In addition, the 2: 00 AM birth time activates his third house, the house of thought and communication by placing his Sun and Mercury there, two markers of someone with the gift of speech. How else could a man educated in a one-room frontier, “blab school” write words that bring goose pimples to the soul as does the “Gettysburg Address” or his second Inaugural address to name just a few?
The 7:00 AM birth time leaves his third house empty – a very unlikely scenario of a man who built and saved his political career on his oratorical abilities and whose speeches will ring through history as long as there is an America. It also places his Saturn in the 9th house, which would have him more drawn to the position of Secretary of State or foreign ambassador than a man who never traveled beyond the confines of North America.
Sadly, the 2;00 AM chart places Lincoln’s Mars (warrior energy) in the 8th house – the house of death and rebirth – in a conjunction with Uranus, a strong designator for a fast, unexpected and violent death. His Mars in Libra – the sign most associated with other people, foretells a violent death at the hands of another.
Today, April 27, 2011, thanks to the lunatic birthers we now know the President’s birth time! See, I knew they had to have SOME value somehow! President Obama was born in Honolulu on August 4, 1961 at 7:24 PM. And yes Hawaii was and is a STATE.
When I found out his correct time – not the time many astrologers had presumed, I wondered if my theory still held. Is Barack Obama the reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln? And the answer – yup, I am still pretty darned sure he is.
The fastest way to examine a past life is to look at the Nodes. A Node is where a planetary body intersects with the ecliptic, the plane in space formed by the orbits around the Sun. In Soulsign, we reference the Nodes of the Moon as it travels on the ecliptic around Earth. The South Node shows us what type of life from which a person comes. Pluto reveals the soul’s desired incarnation, the South Node tells us how and if the person manifested the desire when in the physical form. The North Node indicates where a person should be going in order to fulfill the current soul’s desire.
President Obama’s South Node would need to correlate to Lincoln’s life force with either his Sun or rising sign energy. It does not disappoint. His South Node is in Aquarius in the first house. Abraham Lincoln born on Feb 12 had his Sun in Aquarius. Therefore, his South Node – Barack’s immediate past life force was in Aquarius – correlating exactly to Lincoln’s Sun energy. He was in his immediate past life a person who was born under the Sun sign of Aquarius. That is two direct connections to Abraham Lincoln. Adding an extra connection is it’s placement in the first house. The first house is what has the most influence on our personality- it shows how we project in the world. Someone with a strong first house is someone with a very unique personality. Well he has been dead for over 150 years and everyone still knows who Lincoln was. I would say that is pretty unique!
Can we reverse the process and look at Lincoln’s North Node to find another correlation with President Obama? We can and it too works. Lincoln’s North Node is in Scorpio, and on President Obama’s chart Scorpio “opens” the 10th house – the house of government and authority figures. Lincoln’s soul was progressing toward a Scorpio experience. Lincoln’s North Node was in the 11th house – the house dealing with cultivating unique and revolutionary group activities in the social and political arenas. It is safe to say that his soul using the Obama existence is getting to know what is like to move people in a revolutionary group force to change government. He held the Union together now he wants to continue by bringing much needed change to the way it operates. (When I wrote this in 2008 we still had more hope. Now in 2011, we realize the lunatic fringe just won’t go away and the battle will be hard, hard fought.)
Just as President Lincoln had a very strong 3rd house – the house of mental ability and communication, President Obama has a powerful conjunction of Vesta, Ceres and the Moon there. This is a placement that signifies the ability to dedicate the self to nurturing people through his ability to emotionally express himself.
These factors when added to the similarities and coincidences joining each man’s life, including the early loss of a Mother and distance from a father, spell out a soul connection. President Obama has Saturn in the 12th house as did Lincoln but its more serious aspects are mitigated by being in conjunction with expansive optimistic Jupiter. He also shares Mars in the 8th with Lincoln, which doesn’t make me happy. However, it is in a less volatile sign of Virgo and there is no negative interception with Uranus.
It is amusing to see that this time around Obama got a Harvard education. It was one of Abraham Lincoln’s great shames that he had a backwoods education so much, so that he forced his eldest son Robert, to go to Harvard and Harvard Law School, although he did not finish the latter. One of the many battles Robert had with his parents was over there constant pressure to get the education not available to them. Barack made it to Harvard Law School and became the first African American President of the “Harvard Law Review.”
Their North and South nodes correlate perfectly. Barack Obama has the karmic benefit of the education Lincoln craved and an even stronger communication house in an incarnation at the time of mass and instant media. He also thankfully has Venus, the archetype of the ancient goddess of love and beauty in the5th house in Moon Child a much less ominous placement than Lincoln’s warrior god of Mars. It is no wonder Barack Obama dreamed of being President when he was in kindergarten. He was cannot wait to get back to work.
#Yes, yes I know John Kennedy is supposed to be the reincarnation of Lincoln according to pop astrology and people who like making lists of “coincidences” between the two. Sadly for those enamored with this theory there is just no real karmic astrological links in the charts of the two men. Also, for all of those people circulating the lists of coincidences on the internet please note that Lincoln never had a secretary named Kennedy and was not shot in a theater named Kennedy. Lincoln served one complete term and part of his second, Kennedy never made it through his first term. Southerners did not shoot both men, although Booth was a Southern sympathizer, he was born in Maryland – a Northern state. In addition, the assassins were not born exactly 100 years apart – that is another continually perpetrated myth in these threads.
