AL GORE: Man on a Mission By Judith Goldberg, MFA	327 Route 105 Jay, VT 05859 Phone: 802-988-9664 In Baltimore (once a month for 5 days): Chase Executive Suites 10710 Beaver Dam Rd Hunt Valley, MD Phone: 410-340-2722 Email Us

“To Tell the Truth”, one of the most popular game shows in television history, ran from 1956 to 2002. During this nearly half century, it underwent several incarnations, changing hosts, panels, theme music, producers and networks, surviving cancellation, syndication, a move from California to New York and a series of image makeovers. The goal of the game was to stump a panel of celebrities (and the viewing audience) who alternately interrogate three contestants, each claiming to be the real “mystery guest”. Two are imposters who have been carefully coached to appear authentic. After the votes have been tallied the moderator asks the now famous question-- “Will the real ______ please stand up?”

Art Imitates Life

This contest echoes in many ways, the challenges each of us faces on the road we travel in life-- maturing and becoming our authentic selves. Over the years we are “coached” by numerous persons and life experiences, to try on different identities. At some point, the “false selves” must fall away, allowing our real selves to finally stand up. The life of former Vice President, Al Gore, exemplifies this process. This article examines the unfolding events that led to his personal transformation and dispels any lingering hopes that he will ever re-enter politics. The real Al Gore, ecologist, educator, activist and entrepreneur, has finally stood up.

Charting the Course

An analysis of Gore’s natal birth chart and the transits of Saturn through his houses, tells the story. Saturn, the planet which rules time and maturity, creates a road map for the journey of the soul through its karmic lessons. All souls incarnate with a pre-scribed agenda, thereby giving the seemingly arbitrary nature of life circumstances a deeper meaning and purpose. The lives of well known public figures can often provide instructive examples.

Al Gore was born in Washington DC on March 31st, 1948 (12:53 pm), a member of the sub-group of “boomers” born between 1946 and 1948 who have a natal conjunction of Pluto and Saturn in Leo. (His first house Pluto at 12 degrees is conjoined by Saturn at 16 and Mars at 18.)  Now, at age 58, Gore is in his second Saturn return. (Saturn returns to its natal position roughly every 30 years.) His life is coming around full circle and his cumulative experiences are integrating into a powerful new gestalt. Saturn crossing over Gore’s Pluto is activating his “destiny time”, his karmic responsibility to stand in his own power. (See “When Destiny Calls”)

Conveniently Inconvenient

The recent release of Gore’s full length feature film on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth” has caused many to give him a hard second look.  Gore has recently been interviewed by just about everybody who is anybody in the media universe. His headlines are definitively transformational—“The Resurrection of Al Gore”, “Al Finds Himself” “Gore’s True Calling”, “Al Reinvents Himself”, etc. Conveniently, Gore’s coming out party coincided with the emergence of transiting Saturn from his twelfth house, a place of hiding and retreat. When the film was first screened at the Cannes Festival in mid May 2006, Saturn had just crossed his ascendant (rising sign).

Poster Child

Al Gore’s life has always been on schedule--orchestrated with such perfect synchronicity he could be the “Poster Boy for Saturn”. The cardinal points of his Saturn cycle are closely tied to milestones in his career. During his first Saturn return in 1976, at the age of only 28, he was elected to the House of Representatives from his home state of Tennessee. In 1985, while in a Saturn square (Scorpio in the fourth), and following in the footsteps of his influential father, Senator Albert Gore, Sr., he was elected to the U.S. Senate—the next rung up the ladder of power. During the previous year, 1984, his sister died of lung cancer (Scorpio/fourth house/death in the family) a life altering event for Gore. Saturn was transiting his Scorpion South Node (karmic legacies) and Chiron (wounded psyche). Gore abandoned growing tobacco which had been a long time staple crop on the family’s farm in Tennessee. The Junior Senator suffered a crisis of consciousness when power politics forced him to compromise on legislation to label the true extent of the harmful effects of smoking on cigarette packages. A second family crisis occurred in 1989, when Gore’s young son suffered a near fatal injury in an auto accident. Saturn, at the time, was transiting Gore’s fifth house of children, conjoining his moon in Capricorn. Saturn was activating his emotional center, elevating his role as a caring father and re-ordering his priorities. In 1992, while in his second Saturn opposition (Aquarius/Seventh), he was elected Vice President—the “junior partner” in line to inherit the White House. However, in the infamous election of 2000, he won the popular vote and lost the presidency. Restrictive Saturn was then transiting his tenth house (rules the presidency), in the closing square of the cycle. There is an old saying “When God closes a door, He opens a window”. Gore’s destiny lay elsewhere.

Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire

Under the radar, Gore’s true passion was smoldering. It would take thirty years to spontaneously combust. In 1976, the same year he entered Congress, Representative Gore gave his first political speech on global warming. It got a cool reception. In 1992, the year he became Vice President, he published “Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit”. He was then in his second Saturn opposition. The 180 degree opposition of transiting Saturn to natal Saturn often signals a 180 degree turnaround in life. New directions emerge and then increase in prominence until they reach fruition at the second Saturn return 15 years later.

Pulling the Plug

Gore’s old path—politics, gradually became less viable. The country was so lukewarm to global warming that Gore’s handlers advised him against mentioning it as an issue in the 2000 presidential campaign. After the failed election, and 911, candidate Gore “turned away from politics”, according to his wife “and shouldered as his ‘ministry’ the campaign against global warming”.* He had to yet to endure his “dark night of the soul”—his twelfth house Saturn transit, which began in 2003, right on schedule with his decision NOT to run for president in 2004. He and Tipper abandoned Washington and returned to Tennessee. She commented, appropriately, “He felt it was time to recedefrom the public stage. We renewed ourselves. It was very healing”.*

Soul Searching

The major players in one’s karmic soul mission are Pluto (the quest for significance), Saturn and the Nodes of the Moon. The North Node defines “who” one is becoming, i.e. the evolution of the personality, while Saturn tells “how”. With Saturn and Pluto both retrograde (moving backwards) in the first house, Gore would be a late bloomer in finding his true identity, authority and power. Now is his time. To quote “Inconvenient Truth’s” director Davis Guggenheim, “You have a sense that this is the moment in his life, as though all the work he’s been doing is now coming to a head. He is redeeming himself in a classically heroic way—someone who’s been defeated and is lifting himself out of the ashes”.* Gore’s North Node in Taurus (along with Venus) shows his love for the Earth. He has also made huge strides in accumulating wealth! His ninth house Sun in Aries, in mutual reception (trading signs) to Mars in Leo, makes him a natural ecological educator, activist and entrepreneur. Later this year (Thanksgiving Day, to be exact) when Jupiter moves into its home sign of Sagittarius, Gore will enter his Jupiter return. His environmental campaign will go on steroids. He has already committed to training hundreds of acolytes. No doubt he will also relish the freedom from electoral politics which allows him to finally speak his own truth.

Techno-Capitalist

Gore is a visionary and futurist with a passion for technology (11th house Uranus). “Wired” Magazine, a leading edge technology rag, put his picture on the cover (May ’06) along with an 18 page spread about his campaign against global warming, his techno-capitalist connections to Google and Apple, his purchase of a cable TV network and the multi-million dollar green technology fund he has launched with investment guru David Blood (nicknamed Blood and Gore).

Born to Lead

Does this sound like a man entertaining another bid for the presidency? Despite Larry King, Time Magazine (“Will he audition again?”) and a plethora of pundits—if Gore looked back now he would probably be turned to stone! He is on a mission--to tell the truth about the environmental crisis we face and to wake up a complacent population. It is what he was born to do!

* All quotations are from an interview in “Wired” magazine (May 2006)

BIO:

Judith Goldberg, MFA, a graduate of the Creative Choices Internship, is a Vocational/Karmic Astrologer in Baltimore MD. She is a regular contributor to the Spirit Crossing on-line newsletter www.spiritcrossing.com.
You may contact her at judith.goldberg@verizon.net.