We took a wrong turn in a little town called Zhud. There was no road sign, and so we made an inadvertent detour from the Panamerican Hwy. Slowly, we drove through the fog, thickly-set on the curving mountain road. There wasn’t much traffic, and it was a relief not to have buses and trucks heading straight at us, around every new bend. But there was something wrong. Mainly, we were going downhill.

After driving around the US and Canada all summer, our road trip in Ecuador was definitely culture shock! Besides the lack of road signs, we had to contend with potholes, wildly veering drivers, and cattle being driven across the highway.

Our wrong turn took us almost to the coast, into the flatlands of banana plantations. There were acres upon acres of small banana palms, their fruit tucked away in little plastic bags against the birds. They seemed to go on forever, not surprisingly since this is the source of a quarter of the bananas eaten in the States and Europe.

Kids work in these fields, and this doesn’t surprise me, since I often see children working in Quito. Among other things, they stand in the highway and hawk odd objects to the commuters. In Quito, it’s the exhaust fumes that get them. In the banana plantations, it’s the fungicides.

From Guayas, we took a diagonal to get back on track, and soon found ourselves climbing into the mountains again. By the late afternoon, we were in front of the stately Chimborazo, the volcano that inspired Simon Bolívar to write his most famous poem, his delirium. We spent the night at 12,000 feet, a little delirious ourselves.

In this poem, Bolívar comes face to face with Old Man Time, and is shown the real scope of the universe. Even though he is attempting to overthrow governments and change the world, he is humbled. Astrologers, too, need to keep this wide, wide range in mind. We can get so caught up in predicting small events that we miss the giant sweep of time. Our teachers are the volcanoes, which sometimes sleep for centuries and then rouse the whole world when they wake.

When I got back home, I looked at Bolívar’s chart, curious about the astrological events that were going on when he wrote the “Delirium”. There were many interesting aspects, but one thing that caught my eye was Neptune making an inconjunct to Bolívar’s sun. This tells me that he was filled with doubts about what he was doing. His battle plan ­ to cross the Andes with a bunch of ill-clothed peasant and fight the much better equipped Spaniards - is still considered slightly crazy.

But Pluto was also trining his sun at the time. And he was born with a sun/Pluto opposition. And so he was an instrument of fate. Pluto is the planet of destiny, of transformation.

Bolívar was driven to create change, even though the most grandiose of his plans eventually fell through, and he was left with many small countries instead of the single great nation he envisioned. He died reviled, considered a tyrant, and it was only the passage of history that brought him back to his people’s hearts.

Now I’m in Quito, and the sun is brilliant. It was here that Bolívar met his Ecuadoran mistress, Manuela Sáenz, who’s been called “la libertadora del libertador”. They might have looked out on these same mountains that I see from my window.

When they met, Manuela was already a revolutionary. She was born with a Capricorn sun, an Aries moon, and a conjunction of Mars and Neptune in Scorpio. Her Capricorn sun gave her ambition, while her Aries moon pushed her to act spontaneously on her feelings.

Mars in Scorpio is a position of great power, but the conjunction to Neptune probably imbued her with many doubts about what she was doing. She had to proceed on faith, and it wasn’t always a firm support. However, she was very sensitive to what was going on around her, and so would have been expert in undercover work. In this way, she was a great asset to the revolution.

What was Pluto doing in her chart? It was conjunct Venus, the planet of love, in future-looking Aquarius. Her romantic alliance with Bolívar was her destiny, but it was also the destiny of the world. As he acted out the part of the Hero, she acted out the part of the Lover, and both took risks which changed the world.

During the full moon on September 10, Pluto is occupying a crossroads position, and so fate will take a very visible hand. As the sun and moon oppose each other in Pisces/Virgo, Pluto stands exactly between them in Sagittarius. It looks to me like a time when strong forces will be released. Volcanoes come to mind. But Pluto also stands for inexorable social forces, and in Sagittarius, it is allied to passionate philosophies.

There are other pressures in the full moon chart of September. Not only is Pluto situated exactly between the sun and moon, but there’s also an opposition between Mars/Uranus in Pisces and Jupiter in Virgo. Together, Mars and Uranus are a revolutionary force, and they oppose Jupiter, the planet of tradition.

And there’s an inconjunct between Saturn and Neptune, the planet of realism in tense aspect to the planet of doubt. All of the planets are involved in one tightly-strung configuration or another, and no planet provides an easy release.

At the full moon, George Bush Jr. will be affected by a karmic configuration, a yod. The focal point will be Neptune in Aquarius, planet of uncertainty and confusion. It will be making inconjunct aspects to his sun in Cancer (weighted down by Saturn in Cancer) and his Mars in Virgo. It looks to me like George will be depressed, and won’t know what to do with himself, or his country, or the world.

Until September 20, Mercury is retrograde, and so we will all spend most of the month combing through the past. We will all examine our collective history and our personal stories, trying to decipher the rhythms of fate, trying to see the inner meanings and the larger picture.

Even after Mercury goes direct, Bush will have a hard time extricating himself from the past. From Sept. 16 to Dec. 5, Saturn will be within two degrees of his sun, and this is very hard on the ego. Under hard Saturn aspects to the sun, a person tends to get caught in old paralyzing patterns. Although it’s mainly about his inner reality, his outer world is likely to reflect this energy. His approval rating could drop, and he could take a lot of criticism.

Pluto also moves closer and closer to the opposition of his Uranus, an aspect that can topple a king. This aspect is exact for the first time during the coming November, but it’s already in close orb in September. I only wish the election was in 2003, since this transit will be over before November 2004. However, it looks like a pretty rocky road for him, from now to then ­ and I will be surprised if he can recover enough to win.

We are all responsible for the world we live in, and our collective power is enormous. And yet, there are greater forces always working in our world. We can call them gods or whatever we will, or we can let them go nameless. The latter is perhaps truer, although it doesn’t feel as safe. But these are not safe forces. Mountains are moved, and things do change.

Index of Jenny Yates' Writings on Lesbian.com