This is the second in a series of articles about the
Astrological Karma of George W. Bush. See my April Column for the first installment of this series.

Personally, I see George W. Bush as a rather wounded Cancer. I say this not only because of the dichotomy between his Leo Ascendant/Aries Midheaven and his Cancer Sun, but because all the tension in his chart (three squares) is afflicting his Sun in Cancer. The themes involved in this tension relate to experiences in childhood, his own past life memory, the family unconscious, and the quality of his mind and belief system.

George W. has the Moon, which represents childhood, in positive aspect to his Venus. This indicates that there was a lot of love and affection in his childhood. This aspect coincides with a close emotional relationship with the mother, which, in George W.’s case by all accounts seems to be true. His Moon is also conjunct to Jupiter, which would represent a positive, beneficent, fortunate, expansive influence in his childhood. The wealth, affluence, and prestige attained by his father, the large family, and the warm-hearted outspokenness of his mother, would all point to this positive influence of Jupiter.

There is a complex of Astrological factors here, however, which would show additional influences at work in the childhood and psychological make-up of George W. Bush. Before I explain these factors, however, I will first describe a major karmic event in the early formative years of George W. Bush. When George W. was three years old his Mother gave birth to a daughter named Pauline Robinson, whom the family called Robin. When George W. was seven the Leo/Aries side of his nature was already giving him a reputation as being quite feisty, a bit bossy, and even somewhat of a bully. In relation to his sister Robin, however, his Cancerian qualities became evident. With Robin his behavior was always gentle, caring, patient, and protective. At the age of seven, however, some intense Astrological ‘transits’ began hitting his birthchart. In February or early March of that year, the elder George and Barbara Bush were told that their daughter Robin had leukemia and would probably die in three weeks. They rushed her to medical specialists in New York and were able to prolong her life for six months until she unfortunately died.

Young George W. knew that Robin was sick, but he was never told that she could die. In his auto-biography George W. says: “I was young enough, and my parents loved me enough, that Robin’s death did not traumatize me.” In contrast, it has been reported that while feeling betrayed by having the truth kept from him by his parents, George W. cried uncontrollably, slammed the door to his room, and destroyed half of his baseball card collection until his mother stopped him. Later he tried to control his tears, but for years afterwards he would wake up screaming from nightmares. One of George W.’s best friends in childhood, Randall Roden, remembers sleeping over at the Bush home one night and being awakened by one of George W.’s nightmares, ‘It was one of the most realistic experiences I have ever had about death, and I am certain it had a profound effect on him because it had a profound effect on me.”

Once again we have another telling dichotomy. Did George W. lie about the more traumatic reactions to his sister’s death or did he suppress them from his memory? In any case, Bush now had to endure the pain of such a tragic loss, with parents who hid the depth of their emotional trauma from their children and continued to live in a situation where it wasn’t really spoken about. George W.’s Moon in Libra being in tension (square) with his Sun in Cancer accurately reflects the tension between the cheery exterior and hidden interiior of the Bush family.

For the Moon in Libra Hilarion says in Astrology Plus:

"This sign is ruled by Venus, the planet of harmony, tranquility, balance, love and beauty. The Moon in this sign at birth denotes an early home environment which was characterized by control of emotional excesses, with at least an outward show of tranquility and harmony. Whether the harmony were really there under the surface can be judged from the degree of affliction to the Moon in this position. A heavily afflicted Libran Moon points to a home life which is superficially smooth and tranquil but with a cauldron of unresolved conflict and turmoil beneath the surface."

In Barbara Bush’s memoir she admits that she and George H.W. Bush awakened each night in great pain after the death of Robin, while hating the fact that nobody spoke of Robin, as if she had never existed.

George W.’s brother, Jeb Bush, described this Libran Moon, emotionally controlled atmosphere in their childhood in the following account he gave in an interview with author Bill Minutaglio:

"It goes against how we were...it’s just, we are not...it’s not natural for us, for, uh, I think I can speak on behalf of all the family, to get into, to be, to turn on this reflective mode and somehow spill our guts,....We were brought up to basically do the exact opposite...and so I think, naturally, it’s an uncomfortable thing."

The positive aspect of this Moon to Venus would indicate that a genuine harmony and love did exist in the family. The difficult aspect (square of the Moon to the Sun) would nevertheless show this tendency for things to appear calmer than they were, an aspect of tension especially difficult for George W.’s Sun in Cancer.

It is to the credit of young George W. that he became very concerned about his mother’s well being at the time of Robin’s death, and it is believed that it was at this time that he tried to uplift the spirits of those around him by becoming the family and later the class clown. His sense of wounding and betrayal, however, still festered. The elder George Bush and Barbara kept trying to have another girl. After another three more boys they finally gave birth to their daughter Dorothy. This was a joyous occasion for all of the other members of the family. It has been noted, however, that George W. was somewhat disconnected and even resentful of Dorothy’s arrival:

I’m ashamed to admit it, but I actually hated Doro the first month or two after she was born. No one in the family mentioned Robin’s name any more and it seemed to me at the time that everyone was fawning over Doro like she was the second coming of the Almighty. You have to remember I was young back then and confused in my feelings and emotions, but I don’t think anyone, including my mother, knew that a little of me died with Robin and seeing this new bably sister only served as a daily reminder for a while of my own personal l

W. was fourteen in the year that Dorothy was born. Carrying the weight of Robin’s tragic death in his psyche reflects the propensity of the sign Cancer to become emotionally attached and even possessive of others in relationship. Indeed, part of the karma of a Sun in Cancer person can be met in the following way (from Hilarion, Astrology Plus):

"When an individual expends most of his energy in the nurture of others, there is a tendency to feel that without these others remaining in contact, there George will be little substance or meaning left to life. The threat of losing the others...can be expanded into a general feeling of great insecurity on the part of the Cancer individual, for which the only antidote is trust in Providence or God. When several lives are lived in the Cancerian pattern, the feeling of insecurity can become a trait in the soul which requires correction through an incarnational pattern in which events are arranged to increase the feeling of insecurity in the hopes that the individual will ultimately turn to an inner faith in something beyond man."