The chart above is for the New Jersey State Senate's vote Monday afternoon banning the death penalty. Because the senate's vote was the key event, we are taking that as the chart. Source of the time is the Legislative Information and Bill Room, thank you Brian. A parallel measure in the state's General Assembly was adopted Thursday night, and the governor will need to sign it into law; he has supported the measure, and is expected to do so. Here are some notes on the chart. - efc
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IN THE THICK of the Jupiter Pluto conjunction, New Jersey became the first state in four decades to formally repeal the death penalty.
We see a dramatic metaphor here for the conjunction in Sagittarius -- ruling the higher courts and law (Libra rules the lower courts). Pluto is representative of death and the death penalty, and conjuncts Jupiter, representing the rise of an era of elevated consciousness. The alignment of Mercury, Sun, Jupiter and Pluto appears on 7th house cusp -- the western horizon, one of the most sensitive lines in any chart.
Two important points appear close to the Aries Point: the Part of Fortune at 1 degree of Cancer, and the Moon at 2 degrees of Capricorn. This is a decision that took place in a small state, but it will have a substantial impact; it is a turning point for this issue.
The Moon, representing the values of the people, is in Capricorn, suggesting that this was a truly conservative decision (even though so-called conservatives, who don't conserve anything, supposedly support the death penalty. However, the Moon is approaching Mars, and there may be a backlash; certainly, this will raise a controversy in its wake.
Both the impact and the coming controversy are also illustrated by the presence of the Great Attractor in the chart. Mercury is at 14+ Sagittarius. Mercury is the mind, an idea, a message. The Great Attractor (a massive point, many millions of light years away from Earth) is inherently controversial, dividing or polarizing opinions. The thing about the Great Attractor is once an issue is decided and the point is involved, there is not much that opponents can do about their objections. The whole thing is larger than them.
According to Richard Dieter of the
Death Penalty Information Center (who graciously answered his cellphone at 8:30 pm Thursday), New Jersey has never executed anyone in the modern era of American capital punishment. That era began with the
Furman v Georgia decision in 1976. Dieter said that there are currently eight prisoners on death row in that New Jersey. He said that a few times, people later found to be innocent came close to being sentenced to death, but were were given life sentences -- and then freed from jail because they were not really guilty of the crime they had been convicted of.
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