Edmonton is buzzing with preparations for the upcoming papal visit, so I wanted to take a look at how this significant event shows up in the astrology.
I haven’t done a post yet on delineating Edmonton’s chart, though I’ve been working with this chart for a while now. There are two main candidates for Edmonton’s natal chart: midnight on October 8, 1904 and midnight on November 7, 1904. The former was when Edmonton was officially incorporated as a city, and the latter was when there was an event officially proclaiming Edmonton as a city. I use the latter chart.
Here’s a biwheel showing Edmonton’s chart on the inner wheel and the transits for the papal visit on the outer wheel. I set the transits for 11:20am on July 24, 2022, which is when Pope Francis is scheduled to arrive at the Edmonton International Airport, according to the official schedule released by the Vatican.
What jumps out right away is the exact conjunction of Uranus and the North Node on the exact degree of Edmonton’s Midheaven; this is also exactly opposite Edmonton’s natal Mercury-IC conjunction at 18 Scorpio, where the South Node currently resides. Edmonton’s natal Sun and Moon are close by, at 14 and 9 degrees of Scorpio respectively. And of course, Mars is moving steadily through Taurus to join Uranus and the South Node at 18 Taurus just over a week from now.
So, there’s an obvious concentration of energies along the Taurus-Scorpio axis, which is already a very prominent part of Edmonton’s chart. That Uranus-North Node conjunction right on the MC, with Mars close by, has me a bit worried about what will come out of this visit. I’ve written about the explosive nature of that conjunction in this post, and given that this is Edmonton’s MC, whatever fiery things that happen will be on full display.
That conjunction is highly unstable and unpredictable. I don’t know what will happen, but the stage is set for something quite unexpected. At the very least, these few days will be tense and emotionally charged. Given that this conjunction is opposite the natal Sun and Moon, all that fiery, unpredictable energy is directly opposing the people (Moon) and the leaders (Sun) of Edmonton and the surrounding communities. With natal Mercury also included in this opposition, I get the sense that the communications and apology coming from the Pope will be received with some hostility, possibly even with outright anger and violence. It’s also possible, however, that the full impact of this conjunction on Edmonton’s chart will happen later this month or in early August, when Mars reaches the same degree as Uranus and the North Node.
Perhaps there will be protests or other demonstrations at some of the Pope’s stops? Of course, the Pope will have a robust security detail with him and the RCMP would quickly squash anything that looks like it will get heated, but nonetheless I feel nervous looking at how prominent that conjunction is in Edmonton’s chart right now. At the very least, this visit will stir up an explosion of emotions, including all the anger, hurt, frustration and deep-seated trauma that festers within the Indigenous community and indeed throughout Alberta as a whole.
I find it darkly ironic that an advisory was just issued for blue-green algae at Lac Ste. Anne, which is one of the Pope’s stops and the site of an annual Catholic pilgrimage. So there will be a literal stench hanging in the air, emanating from polluted waters, while the Pope delivers his talk there – a very literal manifestation of all that energy directed at Scorpio, and it’s the fourth house to boot. Perhaps this is a symbol for the Pope’s apology itself: a lot of putrid air.
The purpose of this visit is for healing and reconciliation, and especially for the Pope to give a formal apology for the Catholic Church’s role in inflicting horrific abuse and generational trauma on Canada’s indigenous population, primarily through the Catholic-run residential school system. The Pope is only visiting a few communities in Canada, starting with this trip to Alberta. He will be visiting a few places in Quebec and Iqaluit as well.
There have already been articles written about the highly emotional nature of this event for members of the Indigenous community, including several controversies like the decision to pave the road leading to Maskwa Park in Ermineskin Cree Nation, where the Pope will address an audience of Indigenous peoples on Monday. The roads on Indigenous reserves are notoriously bad, and that’s true of reserves across the country. (Nevermind the fact that many don’t even have clean drinking water.) So, it looks pretty bad that it takes a visit from the Pope to get the provincial government to improve anything on reserves. Personally, I would have preferred for him to have bounced and rattled over all those potholes to get a real, visceral feel for what it’s like to live there.
Others have noted the anger and hurt that this visit is stirring up, and the hypocrisy of having the very institution that perpetrated these crimes, coming back here and receiving a lot of fanfare and praise (and new roads).
Transit Sun and Mercury are in Leo right now, Edmonton’s first house, which corresponds well to big communications coming from a leader that will reverberate through the heart of the city itself. They are also square the fiery stuff going on in Edmonton’s fourth/tenth house Taurus/Scorpio axis, so there’s a sense of conflict and tension with these messages – I don’t know that this apology will be integrated into Edmonton’s identity; it seems like it will be held at arm’s length by many.
Transit Saturn is in Aquarius, approaching Edmonton’s Descendant, edging back towards Edmonton’s natal Saturn – Edmonton had a Saturn return in January 2022. I can definitely see the Saturn return vibes in this event: we are being given an opportunity to coldly review the harms that have happened in the past, and are being given an opportunity to build a better structure on which to move forward. However, given that this is also square the Taurus-Scorpio axis, again we see tension and conflict with those forces and a possible rejection of the Pope’s apology and the structures that Saturn is trying to build here.
Edmonton is headed for a Jupiter return – Jupiter is currently in the early degrees of Aries, which is Edmonton’s ninth house. That certainly fits with a papal visit, given that Jupiter represents religious leaders and the ninth house signifies religion and churches. This is in the fiery cardinal sign of Aries, which corresponds to the Catholic Church’s colonializing, conquering activities over the Indigenous population.
Jupiter being back in his own sign is an invitation for religious leaders to acknowledge what they’ve done and submit themselves to the Jupiterian pursuit of justice and truth. Jupiter is about to station retrograde however, and will dip back into Pisces in a few months before returning to Aries for good. Edmonton’s exact Jupiter return won’t occur until April 2023. I expect some further events around that time that are related to this papal visit.
I’ve previously noted how in Canada’s chart, Neptune is conjunct the Ascendant in Aries and part of the way I read this is a national delusion with our perceived history, particularly around the fact that Canada is a nation founded by colonizers who committed egregious harms on the Indigenous peoples. We like to forget this and hide behind the fantasy of being a polite, reserved nation, but the roots of Empire run deep.
This papal visit is one part of the story of Canada’s Jupiter in Aries transit, which will see Jupiter bringing some justice and truth to Canada’s identity. As I noted in my post about Canada’s 2022 Cancer ingress, one of the big themes for Canada this summer is justice. In that post, I mentioned that there would be a lot of public attention focused on justice – this papal visit certainly qualifies as that.
I also mentioned that there could be a deliverance of justice around previously hidden crimes, particularly around the ongoing inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Again, that tracks vey closely with this visit, as the issue of MMIWG stems directly from the generational trauma inflicted on the Indigenous community and Canada’s institutions (police, the justice system, healthcare) turning a blind eye towards this community. And of course, the crimes of the residential school system were buried for years until recently, when we’ve finally started dragging these horrors out into the light.
One of the more positive aspects of this papal visit is transit Venus closely conjoining Edmonton’s natal Neptune in the twelfth house. Again, that brings up themes of illusion and delusion around the dark, hidden things in Edmonton’s history. Venus is attempting to bring some balance and harmony here but there’s also the potential for this sense of justice and harmony being just a beautiful illusion that will quickly dissipate.
Over the course of the Pope’s visit to Alberta, the Moon will move from cerebral Gemini into heartfelt Cancer. This suggests a shift in the people’s mood over the course of the event, going from more of an intellectual, thinking and rational approach, to more of a personal, emotional exploration of what this event really feels like on an individual level.
The Moon conjoins Edmonton’s natal Pluto in the evening of July 24, suggesting that people will really start to feel the gravity of this situation and its implications for what it means to the people of Edmonton and Alberta. Expect some particularly dark hot takes on social media that night.
The Moon moves into Cancer just after noon on July 25, just after the Pope’s meeting with Indigenous peoples in Maskwacis, the site of the former Ermineskin Residential School. I think the people who attend that event will leave with intense emotions, both good and bad – that’s pretty obvious and expected, but it’s also reinforced in the astrology nonetheless. Cancer is all about home, family, motherhood and deep emotions, and this is Edmonton’s twelfth house so this event will reverberate deeply throughout the community.
There may be a sense of fantasy, illusion and even delusion as the Moon moves to conjoin Edmonton’s natal Neptune overnight, which sets the stage for the Pope’s huge, sold-out Holy Mass at Commonwealth stadium on Tuesday morning. However, the Moon will exactly conjoin transit Venus, right when that Mass is being held, which is actually a really lovely aspect that should mean attendees feel harmonious and blissed out, or otherwise caught up in a grand fantasy.
Finally, I want to look briefly at the transits of this event against Alberta’s chart. I was focusing on Edmonton’s chart up to now but the Pope will be travelling to a couple different places in the province, so it’s definitely worth checking to see how these transits are showing up in the province’s chart.
Alberta is a Cancer rising province, with Neptune on the Ascendant – gee, where have we seen that before?? Neptunian delusion, I tell ya – it’s baked into Canada on multiple levels.
You can see the Venus-Neptune conjunction is present in Alberta’s chart too, because Alberta was founded only about a year after Edmonton became a city. This is in the first house – so again, we’ve got that sense of wanting to come to some kind of balance and harmony within our provincial identity, but this being a beautiful illusion.
Transit Jupiter is right at the top of this chart, which is certainly in keeping with a public visit from a prominent religious leader. Just like Edmonton, Alberta also has the Sun, Mercury and the IC conjunct at the bottom of the chart, though that aspect isn’t getting pinged nearly as much as it is in Edmonton’s chart. And the Uranus-Mars-North Node conjunction in Taurus isn’t hitting anything major in Alberta’s chart; it’s in the eleventh house, suggesting that the fiery events are concerning various community groups in the province (yep).
Overall, there aren’t that many hits on the Alberta chart – not nearly like there is for Edmonton, which suggests this event will be most impactful to the people in and around the Edmonton area, but not necessarily for Albertans as a whole. I also see this possibly suggesting that this visit will be swept under the rug and quickly forgotten by most of the province.
That said, it’s certainly a very big deal for Edmonton, and again I do feel tension when I look at how the transits are hitting Edmonton’s chart particularly.
It will be an interesting few days. I’m very curious to see what the reactions will be from various groups across the province, whether the Pope’s apology will actually have any truly meaningful impact for the survivors of the residential school system, and where we all go from here.