We Didn't Start the Fire - Part 1
The Astrology & History of the Reichstag Fire
Late at night 92 years ago, one little match started a fire in Germany that would change world history, but as it turns out, the embers had already long been burning. On February 27, 1933, Dutch Communist Marinus van der Lubbe allegedly snuck into the German parliament building, the Reichstag, and with only a few matches, his old shirt, and some chemicals, set the entire building ablaze.
The building would burn to the ground, as would civil liberties and democracy as the German people knew it. From the ashes would rise the Reichsadler - the Imperial Eagle of Nazi Germany. This is the history and astrology of the Reichstag Fire, and what it can tell us about the current political crisis.
Empires Fall and Reichs Rise
In order to understand how one building fire could burn democracy to the ground, we must first look at the government system in use in Germany at the time, how it compares to what we have in the United States, and the economic climate of the time.
Germany had been ruled by a monarchy for centuries. Imperial Germany under the rule of Kaiser Wilhelm II fought alongside Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire as part of the Central Powers during World War 1. They lost. Bigly.
Economic hardship prompted the first wave of the German Revolution in late 1918, leading to the end of the war and abdication of the Kaiser. A longer second revolutionary wave over the next 9 months sought to establish a new government, often with violent confrontation between opposing parties.
Eventually, the German public was able to elect a constituent national assembly that was tasked with drafting a new constitution. The National Assembly also served as a de facto parliament until a new government could be formed and leaders elected.
The Weimar Constitution was ratified on August 11, 1919, and went into effect on August 14, creating a federal constitutional semi-presidential republic. That is a wordy way of saying the new Weimar Republic had a parliamentary government, similar to the systems used in Canada and Great Britain, with a President and legislative branch elected proportionally by the people and a Chancellor appointed by the legislative body. In short, it was what we would call a democracy.
Parliament, or Reich, as a whole would be comparable to our Congress, and the German parliament building was called the Reichstag. The upper house of parliament, or Reichsrat, was composed of appointed leaders from the German states who were sent to represent their interests. This would be similar to the U.S. Senate. The lower house of parliament, which was also called the Reichstag, would be similar to our House of Representatives.
What’s the difference between the Chancellor and the President? In the United States, the President is both the Head of Government and the Head of State. In the Weimar Republic, the President served as the Head of State and was elected by the public for a 7-year term. The Chancellor, who was like a Prime Minister, served as the Head of Government and was chosen by the Reichstag.
Multiple parties ran their candidates nationally and the elected Reichstag party with the largest share of the votes had to “form a government”. That is to say they had to build a coalition with the other parties to ensure a majority voting bloc in parliament. That parliament then chose a Chancellor who served as part of the executive branch alongside the elected president. The Chancellor functioned somewhere between a U.S. President and our Speaker of the House.
Embers Still Smolder
The Weimar Constitution also enshrined a number of civil liberties for the German people, including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, a ban on establishing a state church, freedom of assembly, protections against search and seizure (including mail), the right to free and secret elections, and many other Very Important Legal Protections that we also currently enjoy here in the U.S.
Germans were also protected by habeas corpus, which literally means “you should have the body.” This was a protection against unlawful detainment, where a court could be petitioned to produce a prisoner and demand officials show they have the authority to hold this person in custody. In other words, they couldn’t just “disappear” people off the street and hold them indefinitely at some black site without legal cause.
Overall, the National Assembly created a very democratic framework that highlighted the rights of the individual and did its best to create checks and balances within government, However, the Weimar Constitution also had some weaknesses. Perhaps the largest was Article 48, an “emergency decree provision” that allowed the president to suspend civil liberties and remove local governments without the prior authority of the Reichstag. A certain Mustache Man would abuse this power to the worst of his abilities.
Despite some challenges, the Weimar Republic was overall a positive development for the country. The hyperinflation experienced post-WWI had calmed itself and the economic situation for many improved greatly during the 1920s. Culturally and diplomatically, Germany was on the rise, although there were still significant political divisions within the country.
Then the Great Depression of 1929 hit.
What post-WWI progress Germany had made was quickly reversed. Unemployment soared. The resulting economic hardship exacerbated lingering political and social divisions and strained the constitutional framework of democracy. Of course, we all know how this story eventually ends, but the path to dictatorship took a while to smolder.
Slow Burn
We’re going to go back a month prior to the Reichstag fire when Adolf Hitler was inaugurated as Chancellor. No, he wasn’t yet the Fürher, or supreme leader, of Nazi Germany. In fact, he wasn’t even president. Paul von Hindenburg was actually still president, but he was 86 years old, in failing health, and would eventually die from lung cancer in 1934. In reality, Hitler and Hindenburg did not get along, so how did they come to share power of the executive branch?
Hindenburg was first elected in 1925, just as Germany was beginning its “Golden Twenties”. The country was on the rise. Now, in 1932, he was facing re-election as an 82-year-old incumbent with a very different public sentiment. Political divisions and economic tensions experienced from the Great Depression had allowed the opposing Nazi party to rise in power.
Although there were questions about his mental and physical reliability, the elder statesman and war veteran Hindenburg seemed the only candidate who could outperform Hitler, the polarizing Nazi party candidate. Hitler came in second to Hindenburg during the election, but he was clearly poised to take power as Hindenburg’s health continued to fail.
Does any of this seem familiar?
Hindenburg had won re-election, but the Nazi party had also made significant gains in the Reichstag. The friction between the parties made it difficult to form a coalition and choose a Chancellor. Without a Chancellor and functioning Reichstag, Hindenburg could accomplish nothing. Against his better judgment, he recommended Hitler’s appointment as a means to an end.
Hitler quickly began to put his new position to work. He targeted Communists, Social Democrats, and Catholics, and successfully petitioned Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag, forcing a new election in early March that could bring the Nazis majority rule. Their first order of business? To pass the Enabling Act of 1933 on March 23, 1933.
This Act allowed the Chancellor to make and enforce irrevocable laws without the approval of the President or the Reichstag, in effect eliminating all checks and balances from the democratic Weimar Republic. From there, it was a swift slide into the totalitarian dictatorship we would come to know as Nazi Germany with the Reichstag simply rubber-stamping anything Hitler wanted.
Again, we ask, does any of this seem familiar?
We’re getting a bit ahead of the game, though. Before Hitler could burn democracy to the ground, he needed a flame around which his supporters could unite. Would it happen naturally, or did it need a little push?
On February 20, just a week before the Reichstag burned to the ground, Hitler held a secret meeting with 25 leading German industrialists to secure election financing for the Nazi party candidates. These were the “tech bros” of the time who could use their immense wealth and power to sway the political landscape towards a majority party that would serve their financial needs.
You can see where this is going….
Stars and Scars
Let’s look at the chart for Hitler’s Chancellor appointment. We don’t have an exact time, so we’ve gone with 12pm. We’re not going to pay too much attention to the houses or ASC/MC, but YIKES - they may not be too far off! We know Hitler was a powerfully transformative speaker who despite being Austrian, he stirred the German people up with a call to nationalism (Gemini ASC; Pluto in Cancer-3H).
The freaking enormous 6th and 12th houses could speak to both the scope of his work and the extent of the cruelty and restriction that would eventually be his undoing. Both houses contain intercepted signs: Scorpio in the 6th (dude was a sneaky bastard) and Taurus in the 12th (it was ALWAYS about the money).
Not-so-fun-fact: Old Addie went from Poor Painter to Richie Reich over the course of his dictatorship, joining the elite class of Nazi oligarchs who preyed on the German people until their empires became so vast that they turned to prey on one another.
We should keep this in mind - FOR REASONS.
Okay, onto the more certain elements. Notice there are a pair of stelliums: Neptune, Mars, and Jupiter are in Virgo, while the Sun, Saturn, Mercury, and the MC (assuming our time is correct) are in Aquarius. Jupiter and Neptune take their sweet time moving along and they are both in the sign of their detriment. Mars is also retrograde, making this a stinky stagnant stellium that no amount of sage and selenite can unfunk.
The Sun conjunct Saturn in Aquarius gives a heavy-handed authoritarian vibe. We don’t know that these houses are accurate, but sitting in the 10th house of the executive branch certainly does make sense. Remember that Hindenburg was still president (Sun), but he shared ruling power with Hitler, who was certainly going to use his new position to restrict (Saturn) the collective (Aquarius).
Hitler was also a charismatic speaker (Mercury) who used his platform to connect to the collective (Aquarius). Mercury is sextile the Moon (People) in Aries, and he had the ability to spark their fire - figuratively and literally.
Can you imagine what he could have achieved had he used this power for good?
Unresolved Irritation
There are also a pair of aspects that will carry through this entire discussion as they are slow moving and appear in both the Reichstag Fire and Fire Decree event charts. There is an Almost Yod (not a “real” pattern name, but that’s what we’re calling it) as two quincunxes nearly meet at the apex but instead overlap.
As a reminder, a quincunx is a 150° aspect that has neither the ease and flow of a trine (120°) nor the direct challenge of an opposition (180°). It’s still challenging, but in an irritating way. I liken it to trying to walk out of the ocean while the tide pulls at your legs and the sand slips from beneath your feet. They are unsettled energy.
When two quincunxes meet at the apex, they form the isosceles triangle of a Yod. This Almost Yod feels extra tense. It reminds me of the OG Ghostbusters when Harold Ramis as Egon Spangler warns, “Don’t cross the streams!” Yes, bad things happen when you cross the streams.
The first aspect is Uranus (rebellion, innovation, labor unions, anarchy) in Aries quincunx Mars (police, military, aggressors) conjunct Jupiter (law, religious leaders, fanaticism, banking) in Virgo. Hitler would use the police and military to target Communists, labor leaders, and anyone else who dared to oppose him or attempt to rein in his unbridled lust for power, but he was always after the money.
The second aspect is Neptune in Virgo quincunx the Sun, Saturn, MC, and Mercury stellium in Aquarius. We already discussed the energy of this stellium, but the friction of Neptune in an Earth sign feels like a grain of irritating sand you can’t get rid of.
Aggressive Mars is caught between the addictive delusion of Neptune and the expansive fanaticism of Jupiter and this just feels… ominous, accurate, and all-around nauseating. Perhaps that’s the luxury of hindsight talking.
One other placement to note: Chiron is sitting at 23° 34’ Taurus, which is conjunct fixed star Algol. In 1933, this little slow-moving bundle of venom was at 25° Taurus, and this conjunction would indeed be the harbinger of violent pain that both played upon unhealed wounds and created new ones for years to come.
Taurus is all about resources and a Chiron placement here often means you are grappling with deep Money Wounds and a scarcity mindset. I know this all too well as it’s my natal Chiron and yowzers, it can do a number if you’re not willing or able to do the deep healing work. For me, this placement drives me to disrupt Money Culture and level the financial playing field. As Chancellor, Hitler instead used it for greed and oppression.
Now, this is not Hitler’s natal Chiron, but he was certainly driven by his own unhealed wounds and millions paid with their lives because he and his ilk wouldn’t go to therapy. He also used those scarcity fears to stoke his violent rhetoric and vicious targeting of the Haves versus the Have-Nots. The cruelty was the point. We will see all of these aspects and patterns reappear in the charts of Part 2.
Stop and Flow
Our final note on this chart involves two of the patterns. There are more, but these are the most relevant to the Reichstag Fire.
We have a Grand Earth Trine with Chiron in Taurus trine Venus in Capricorn trine the Mars-Jupiter conjunction in Virgo. Venus also rules money and Capricorn is the sign of government. Hitler’s term as Chancellor had some serious cosmic support when it came to playing on Money Wounds, pushing an aggressive agenda that expanded his powers, and harnessing the power of the purse to establish a new government.
Again, we must ask, what could have been accomplished had he used his powers for good?
We also have a T-square with Pluto in Cancer opposite Venus in Capricorn, both of which are squared by Uranus in Aries. While he was certainly able to expand his power (Pluto) over the homeland (Cancer), he was still at odds with other members of the government (Capricorn), specifically the Reichstag, which held the powers of the purse (Venus). To challenge them would take a sudden fiery act of rebellion (Uranus in Aries).
And now that we have the backstory and understand what was at stake, we will look closely at the “sudden fiery act of rebellion” and its consequences in Part 2. Thank you for reading Politics & Pentacles!