Tribal Rulership, Power & Possession, Ideology & Identity
If you read or watched my analysis of Trump and Musk’s Human Design charts, you’ll recognize the dominant themes playing out on the world stage in June. Not that these themes haven’t been on display all year, but we’ll likely see it turned up a notch. Both of these men have birthdays in June, after all, and one of these men is planning a military parade for his birthday. But as the last Saturn-Jupiter square features the Moon-Pluto signature again, the Pope's planned mass at a Chicago stadium might upstage him.
But I don’t want to get ahead of myself. I’ll be adding my update on that chart soon. In the meantime, you may want to watch the Jupiter-Saturn presentation I did late last year. It adds some context.
Jupiter in Cancer ingress on June 9, 2025
When Jupiter transitions into Cancer on June 9th, the Sun is at 19 degrees Gemini. This cross in Human Design is called the “Cross of Rulership”. The Sun is in gate 45 which is a tribal gate that is hanging off the throat center and it represents the material direction of the tribe. The opposition to this gate is gate 26 which is hanging off of the ego center and represents salesmanship to the tribe. Our president happens to have his North Node and Uranus in gate 45 and Musk has his natal Venus here. I could rattle off quite a few world leaders who have this placement in their bodygraphs.
This is Ra Uru Hu’s quote about this cross. Just a note about Ra’s descriptions, they are archetypal and can sometimes be very cynical. He frequently describes his descriptions as written for the “not self” or for someone who is not conscious:
I always find it interesting to look at the four gates of rulership and think about what leadership really means. When you look at gate 26, the polarity of the 45 (our president’s south node), you're looking at rulership through bullshit, rulership through salesmanship, rulership through jingoism, rulership through nationalism, rulership through fanaticism, rulership driven by the tribal sword...
On the other side you have old school tribal leadership - leadership by blood and not by the collective: I don’t want to have unions, says the 45 entrepreneur. I want slaves. I don‟t want unions. I don’t want any collective bargaining. I don't care what they all think. I know what's good for them. And of course, this is one of the themes of the 45—I know what's good for you. At its most exalted, the responsibility of the 45 is that you're only allowed to collect taxes if you will build schools. If you educate your people, if you give them advantages over other tribes then as a ruler you’re going to be praised. Any dictator that'll put a chicken in every pot is going to be praised by the people.
There can be a very loyal tribe built around a person who has the 45th gate as long as that person delivers the goods. If they don’t deliver the goods, then the tribe can turn on them. You see this happening in real time as Trump’s reciprocal tariff announcements started to affect the financial markets and Tesla’s sales started tanking.
The Gemini gates hang off the throat. Gemini’s can be very powerful writers, speakers, and in turn thought leaders. Whoever controls the ideology can also control the identity of the tribe. Musk buying Twitter during this presidential cycle was a strategic calculation. It was costly, but it gave him leverage and it has paid off for him so far. In fact, driving Democrats off this platform was also a strategic decision because it further siloed Democratic voices. Democracy only works if you can organize collectively. The platform wars have simply divided us because there are no current replacements to organize at scale. Meanwhile, information continues to be siloed and the information that we have access to is starting to shift.
It all starts with a shared ideology. That’s why free speech is prioritized in the U.S. constitution and why there’s a concerted effort to erode this fundamental right. To some extent the effort to erode free speech is not a partisan one. We’ve all been participants in this effort. There are certainly thorny questions to be raised about where the lines are drawn. But those lines need to be determined carefully and should not be determined in a partisan way. The founders of our country knew that this fundamental right was essential to our democracy.
It can certainly be easier when an authoritarian rules because there’s a potential to move much quicker with these types of decisions. Prior to Trump’s election, I started to hear some acquaintances arguing against a democracy using this type of reasoning. Controlling the tribe’s ideology leads to less resistance. When we all identify in a similar way, it is much easier to move in the same direction. That’s why various cults and religious movements can hold so much sway. Taking control of the ideology can lead to actively voting for a bogeyman we’ve been warned tirelessly against by the very same party in question.
It’s easy to see how ideology becomes identity with the movement of Gemini in the throat gates to Cancer which begins in the identity center (the 15th gate, the gate of extremes). Ideology has the potential to turn into personal identification especially for those who don’t have a strong sense of identity in the first place. Those with open or unidentified identity centers also have the power to lead others as their flexible identities allow them to appeal to a wider audience of people. Others may project onto these people that they have a shared identity when the truth might be more complex.
Though Jupiter is transitioning to Cancer, Mercury and Jupiter’s cycle in Gemini is not finished yet. In 2024, these two planets started a new cycle at the beginning of Gemini while Neptune was still at the last degree of Pisces. On June 8th, the day before Jupiter enters Cancer, Mercury and Jupiter connect again at the last degree of Gemini before Mercury runs speedily ahead into Cancer.
The next time Mercury and Jupiter form an exact conjunction in 2026, it will be in the sign of Leo when the Nodes will have just entered the Leo-Aquarius axis. So it skips an exact conjunction in Cancer and the pair will not meet up in Cancer until 2037!
The last time that Jupiter and Mercury formed an exact conjunction in Cancer was 2002, a little less than a year after 9/11. Generally, Jupiter and Mercury conjunct in each sign during Jupiter’s 12-year cycle. But because of Mercury’s retrograde cycle it can repeat conjunctions in the same sign from year to year and skip other signs in its cycle. For example, between 2014 and 2015, we had 2 conjunctions in Leo. In 2014, the conjunction happened at the beginning degrees of Leo and in 2015, the conjunction was at the last degree of Leo. That year, Trump who has his ascendent degree at 29 Leo won his first presidential election.
Mercury and Jupiter are often compared as the lower mind vs. the higher mind. And the sign Cancer is ruled by the Moon, governing our bodily rhythms, our sense of identity, and our emotional memory. Since Mercury does not get a chance to download higher information from Jupiter in Cancer, whatever ideologies that are being foisted upon us forcefully are unlikely to stick to the collective for the long term.
Collectively we might cling to old identities, identities that feel safe and familiar. This break between conjunctions in Cancer seems to reinforce the symbolism of our collective identity crisis as we are facing population shifts and a changing world order. We might try to cling to these old identities in fear of what lies ahead, especially if the present suggests a bleaker outcome than the past we cling to.
We are likely to face fated events this month in the form of leaks in the media, legislation, or judgements we didn’t see coming. If we can adjust to these events quickly, the people have an opportunity to wield more power. This is a month for alliances to shift suddenly, as we prioritize those who can help us achieve a larger goal. We can no longer hold out hopes that our ideals will come to fruition at some future date. As Jupiter gets nearer its square with Saturn, we’ll all start to feel a push to take concerted action toward our larger goal.
Full Moon in Sag: June 11, 2025
Raven Caldera calls this Moon the Priest’s Moon.
On the Priest’s Moon, we think about the traditions and beliefs we hold—religious or otherwise—and whether we are able to objectively question them. If you think you don’t have any traditions or beliefs, hunt up those friends everyone has (or should have) who are very different from you, but are somehow your friends anyway. Ask them what rigid beliefs you hold, and be prepared to think about the answer.
People born on the Priest’s Moon will spend their lives struggling with the boundary between inspiration and intellect, between reform and tradition, between doubt and faith. The point of the struggle is not to let one side win, however, or at least not to win too often. The point is to move continually back and forth between them, creating a balance, and eventually coming to a point where both are one, and nothing discovered on one side can make the other untrue. In the meantime, since this is an emotional Moon, the danger will be to go with the side that is the most emotionally appealing. Priest’s Moon people need to come to a humbling understanding about how much their own feelings influence their perception of the Truth, and the side they choose to find it on.
This full moon is all about the mental cross with Mercury ruling the Sun in Gemini and Jupiter ruling the Moon in Sagittarius squaring the nodes in Virgo and Pisces. The higher mind vs. the lower mind and how we learn and process information in order to gain a higher understanding.
Stephen Arroyo, in his book Exploring Jupiter writes about this cross:
In order to understand deeply the type of mind and mode of learning that Jupiter represents, we have to contrast it with Mercury and, to some extent, Neptune, the other ruling planets of mutable signs. In fact, we have to explore as well the signs of the "mental cross," as it is often called (it is referred to also as the "mutable quadruplicity" since there are four signs involved). All the signs of the mental cross and their ruling planets have to do with learning.
And a comprehensive understanding of all their principles will allow us to appreciate the various modes of learning. Each takes a different approach and achieves a different perspective, and each actually complements the others in filling in part of the whole picture of knowing and understanding life.
It has been unfortunate that the Mercurian approach of separation and detailed analysis (through both Geminian and Virgoan modes) has dominated Western society and education for well over a century. A well-reasoned and powerful indictment of the profoundly negative and troubling consequences of this domination of the data-obsessed analytical mind upon Western educational institutions can be found in “Killing the Spirit: Higher Education in America” by Page Smith, an experienced educator and historian.
He points out that, by declaring so many religious, philosophical, and not-politically-correct subjects out of bounds for study in our schools, it constitutes a profound impoverishment and a shrinkage of the scope of human experience that students are able to explore. He points out that the exclusive focus on "research," a respectable name for endless gathering of data, most of which yield no insight or useful improvement, leads to a "barrenness of intellect beyond calculating.
As the administration has set out to dismantle our educational institutions, will we take this opportunity to open ourselves to a diversity of ideas or will we become even more narrow-minded in what topics we are allowed to consume and debate? With AI taking over and regurgitating the research and data for us, will that unleash access to the higher mind once again? Or will we become even more barren of intellect and let the machines take over?
One of the reasons Philosophy was once prioritized in education is because it teaches people how to think rather than what to think. The “what” is not as important as the “how” or the “why”. In fact, the answer is not as important as the question. If AI can teach us anything it is this. As a fundamental rule, any belief that we hold dear should be strong enough to withstand questioning. If you or others become defensive at the question, ask yourself why? There’s a difference between combative questioning vs. genuine curiosity. We’ve somehow lost the nuance of this difference.
This is something I’ve had to come to terms with in myself and it was only really brought home to me by witnessing this automatic defensiveness in my son. I had to take a step back and realize how much my own defensiveness was influencing him. Not only was I brought up in a chaotic environment which influences the brain's reactivity, but I was also intellectually bullied as a child. I had no rights to my own thoughts or curiosity, even my private journals stolen and read by my brother's friends. Writing and presenting has been tremendously helpful in developing and understanding my own thought process. I can look back and see how far I have come in my own understanding.
It comes back to your unconscious belief systems. Do you know why you hold certain values and beliefs? Have your taken the time to investigate our own beliefs? Are you holding onto any of these too rigidly or are you open to expanding your mind to become more inclusive rather than becoming increasingly narrow and exclusive? Does freedom of belief and or expression matter to you and how much?
This is a thorny question in a world where education is increasingly de-prioritized. When we see how easily it is to be manipulated. But isn’t this also a part of our individual evolutionary learning process? Once you get burned, you aren’t as easily manipulated. But then again, the lines are moving so quickly it’s becoming harder and harder to trust anything outside of our own experience anymore. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
Was this why Ra started to focus on strategy and authority as a decision making process as he developed the Human Design System? He knew this time was coming and he wanted us to have an alternative way of making decisions besides our own faulty minds? These rules can be their own mind traps, but they can also be tremendously helpful. I have watched how easily I can jump into situations that are not good for me unless I discipline myself to wait. Yes, I might lose out on some fun experiences too. But more often than not, feeling into what is right for me by giving myself plenty of time has been a lifesaver for me. As an emotional triple-split projector, it takes me a long time for certain things to connect. But once they do, I have the benefit of a certain depth of understanding that most people do not have. Most importantly, I trust my process a lot more now. I especially trust the people who don't rush my process.
I want to pull in another Ra Uru Hu quote about this Full Moon's profile and cross as I find it very descriptive of what we are already witnessing. This full moon and the next two are considered transitional profiles in human design, a bridge to the other side. They fall on a cusp profile, which is considered a fixed fate profile. This cross is called the Cross of Possession:
The 4/1 is pure unadulterated possessiveness without any idea that there is anything to give back. Have you seen Finding Nemo? I can tell when you have young kids. If you've seen Finding Nemo, Finding Nemo is a wonderful animation, but there's this incredible scene near the end of the movie where there are thousands of seagulls standing around a pier, and here is the father of this little fish that is the center of the story and it's flopping like fish do before they croak, flopping on the deck and all of these seagulls start a mantra, and it's great; they go, mine, mine, mine... mine, you’re mine, it’s mine, it's all mine. It’s not yours, it’s mine.
With both the Moon and Mercury out-of-bounds, this full moon is all but guaranteed to be an excitable and emotional full moon. Its themes can be connected to the New Moon in Sagittarius of December, 2023. If you have any planets near 20 degrees of the mutable signs, you may want to think back to what you started during that time period to understand how that seed might be sprouting during this full moon.
This full moon squares the nodes, so we are at a crossroads again. This cross-roads has to do with the themes I just presented. Who are we collectively and how are we going to move forward based on our collective identity? Will we in the United States keep heading down the path of Authoritarian rule or will we see more resistance? Will fate intervene either way?
At the end of the day, it’s about security. What makes us feel the most secure? With so much tension in the air about World War III, we may make irrational decisions during this time. It’s important to watch your own mind. The news stories are already ramping up. Be wary of what you read and take care of your mental health.
Remember, we have the opportunity to exercise more power if we can adjust quickly to surprise events. We can’t adjust quickly if our minds are in fear mode. Fear is only constructive if it makes us move in a way that is beneficial to our future safety. Acting from a pure fear response can make us do irrational things. But we only have so much control and sometimes our only choice is to go within. Once we have established our own peace of mind, connecting with others can be helpful. What can we do to help others from a place of balance and stillness?
If you want to watch the video I presented about this full moon with more details about these charts placed in Washington, you can find the video below:
