Jolted awake by a screeching noise, I looked around for the cat. Noises in the night are often cats prowling and attacking squeaky toys.
The cat was up, ears aloft as antennas, scanning the surroundings.
“Was that you?”
“No,” he replied, “it was Ronald Reagan.”
Often when woken in the middle of the night, the environment can seem, well, spooky. What just happened? Was I dreaming? Am I still dreaming?
“Ronald Reagan is dead,” I said.
“Does that matter?” the cat asked with sleepy arrogance.
I suppose not.
Ronald Reagan Lives
In the clear light and freshness of a new morning, I explored the happenings of the nighttime. I probed the cat carefully.
“It sounded like a cat in heat, or maybe a dog being attacked.”
“It was Ronald Reagan,” said the cat, adamantly. After a few licks of turkey and giblets pate (because that’s how we like our wet food), he lifted his head to ask, “Why is that so difficult to understand?”
“It’s difficult to understand,” I said with all the patience I could muster for a four-legged without logical capabilities, “because he died in 2004.”
Chewing slowly, he said as though talking to a child, “Well, some people died thousands of years ago and people still pray to them, don’t they?”
The Spirit of Reagan
A lengthy discussion ensued of the living energy of leaders secular and non-secular. The cat pointed out that the horoscope represents that living, ongoing energy.
“You should know that,” he said, clearly grouchy from his lost sleep. “Some astrologer!”
Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, branded his presidency the Reagan Revolution which promoted increased free trade by removing obstacles to business for strong economic growth which would “trickle down” to the masses. And growth occurred.
The economists of that time (1980) warned of great disparities of wealth (extremely rich or very poor) which creates social instability, excessive risk, and ecological damage. And that occurred too.
Born with sun and Venus in Aquarius, Reagan was both “revolutionary” and physically appealing. Venus is the pleasure principle, is associated with beauty, and Aquarius is an air sign so there was always a genteel manner. His voice is echoing as I write and it is quite pleasing, one that calms the nerves. An actor prior to politics, Reagan’s wife Nancy once commented that there was an inner core of her husband she could never reach.
This is a common reaction to those with strong air in the chart: in extreme, “the lights are on, but no one is at home,” and the lesser “Where are you in there?” Are you just saying that or do you really, truly feel that?
On the outside we often never know.
And, as the cat pointed out, that’s maybe why an airport was named after him, cause he was an air sign with his head in the clouds.
The calculating Reagan
In addition to Aquarius “for the people” energy, Reagan also had Mars, Mercury, and Uranus in the ambitious and calculating Capricorn. Capricorn is the very sign of authority and Reagan was a very polished politician. In contrast to today’s politicians, Reagan was a type of “Gentleman Politician,” you know, the men’s lounge, the smoking jacket, I’m simply trying to please everyone, everyone is happy, right?
Capricorn is hierarchical so Reagan believing that racism was over was simply the voice of a white man who was oblivious and content in his own rung of the social system.
Saturn and moon in Taurus created the stable, unflappable personality we associate with Reagan. Aquarius and Taurus – both fixed (stubborn, determined) signs – creates a personality quite comfortable in its set ways. Both are also very detached signs, not emotionally connected which is part of why they can stay calm in troubled times.
Capricorn and Taurus are earth so have tendencies to see things in literal ways. Hence, racism is over because looking out my window I don’t see it. To understand systemic racism, one must understand the system, how it truly works, how statistics reveal truths we don’t see outside the window. That’s conceptual thinking. So is trickle-down economics — there’s a lot to think about, to follow, about what trickles where.
Until very recently, Reagan was the supreme leader of the Republican Party, his name evoking religious sentiment and a standard against which others of his party are measured.
But, my cat said, we really haven’t heard Reagan’s name mentioned much since the night of January 6, 2021 when the current administration threatened the peaceful transfer of power, something Reagan mentioned in his time as the mark of greatness of our nation.
Now we are tainted.
Reagan’s energetic legacy
In both an economic sense and an energetic sense, we can look at how Reagan influenced the future, which is now.
Take the 2008 global economic collapse. Pluto had just entered Capricorn, destroying the economic infrastructure which, in pure state, would have destroyed government. Government repaired itself through economic magic, “quantitative easing” or as opponent George H. W. Bush called it in the 1980 primaries, “Voodoo Economics.”
And that it is. It’s a numbers game until it’s the reality of folks losing their homes and not quite understanding why.
Deregulation allowed over leveraging (also called risk or in regular-person terms, gambling). An exalted few are able to bet on entire industry. Later the debt “trickled” away which “privatized the gains” and “socialized the losses.”
Pluto in Capricorn from 2008 to 2024 transited Reagan’s Mars, Mercury, and Uranus. Capricorn in extreme is concerned only with self and position of self – this is a direct legacy of Reaganomics which changed not just economics but the public opinion of economics which took the shame out of greed.
Who cares that when the housing market collapses, some people make lots of money?
In 1980 healthcare costs weren’t a concern for daily living. You could go to the doctor. He or she could write a prescription. American healthcare today is a Capricorn system of hierarchy and control by large organizations as middlemen in the doctor-patient relationship. Healthcare increasingly unaffordable — may bankrupt us in times of great need. That’s trickle down and up, but mostly up. More people have jobs (trickle down) in a system that will bankrupt them (trickle up).
Reagan was “The Great Communicator,” an air sign who could sell the complex in a simple manner. And it sounds so nice and easy! Forty years later, it’s both the same and different than it sounded.
Uranus transiting Taurus transited Reagan’s Saturn and moon. Taurus is the body and material possessions – this transit is the beginning of the “pandemic” which affects the body and the response was a new type of “vaccination” for the body. Lots of chaos ensued from this, including economic (Taurus supply chain “stuff”) as folks across the globe were put on lockdown destroying small business and benefiting the largest businesses (Capricorn).
Saturn in Taurus folks often feel they don’t have enough: it’s a poverty mentality even if having grown up in wealth. In Reagan’s heart-of-hearts or Saturn-in-Taurus he may have truly believed lifting the rules would benefit everyone.
Uranus transiting moon would have created emotional upset for this equanimous personality. The 1-800-TAURUS-MOON hotline was recently disconnected as Uranus moved into Gemini in 2025.
Did Reagan call the hotline from the grave?
Uranus in Gemini toward the end of its seven-year transit will hit Reagan’s Pluto in Gemini at the same time transiting Pluto will hit Reagan’s sun. Gemini is communication and Aquarius is idealization, so we’ll see if the Great Communicator’s image is risen from the energetic grave or buried forever.
Maybe they will name a space station after him, my cat thought.
Why does Reagan howl in the night?
Why does Reagan howl from the grave? The cat and I came up with some ideas.
I thought maybe seeing our president buddy up to our enemies, ones that Reagan spent his life fighting, might be part of it.
The cat wasn’t sure if Reagan’s dream of “Star Wars” would make him happy or howl – the movie franchise is certainly doing well but the skies are full of stuff.
Would Reagan think the president offering money for votes a “trickle down” effect or would it make him howl?
And while much foreign policy today is leftover, undone, work of prior administrations, Reagan might be howling over the ugliness of it. Diplomacy real or staged is much more pleasing to the eyes.
We finally agreed that Reagan might simply be howling because as 40th president, 40 years later his image is dissolving. But his policies are alive and well, some pretty, some ugly.
Spooky postscript: While working on this blog, Reagan’s name came up twice in media (a movie set in the 1980s and a documentary of present warfare). The cat and I expect to, again, be woken in the night.
