It is hard to believe that almost forty years ago, David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty vanish into thin air on live television. Watching it was unbelievable. Even though I was five, you knew he had done something but you just didn’t know what. Of course how he did this is now widely known but back then it was a big riddle. He rotated the live audience so she was hidden behind the brightly lit towers. The astrology of the moment though tells us a lot about the illusions of Neptune.
You have to understand the illusion to read the chart. Normally, the actor is represented by the planetary ruler of the Ascendant. This means the Copperfield is represented by the retrograde Libra Pluto. This makes his partner the Aquarius Ceres. You might think that is the Statue of Liberty, but it isn’t. It is the watching (Aquarius) stable people (Ceres) on a vehicle (3rd house). The audience on stage is Ceres. Lady Liberty is the retrograde Scorpio Saturn. She’s a solid, public monument (Saturn). At this moment, she’s ruled by Copperfield himself. Things that return vanish in the 8th house. It’s the secret chamber, Hades, the underworld and the pits of darkness. Not only is Copperfield the Plutonic kidnapper of Lady Liberty as he stands behind his audience but he is also the Taurus Mercury in the 5th. As he stands by the radar monitor, he touches his forehead. Mercury represents the mind. Mercury opposes Pluto and both are Copperfield. The curtain drops showing the helicopter, so we know its not just a black screen, and we stare into the darkness, Lady Liberty safely tucked behind the brightly lit tower. As Mercury, he delivers the direct message that our freedom could be taken away at any moment. Freedom is Sagittarius. The Vanishing Sagittarius (freedom) Neptune (loss) conjunct the south node speaks through Copperfield’s words.
The horoscope of the moment tells us some things about the event but this event is also a transit chart of David Copperfield, magician and illusionist extraordinaire. Copperfield has his Virgo Sun in the 12th house. His modus operandi was making his audience part of the show. His Leo zodiac sign (performance, fame) was on the cusp of his 11th house (audience). He is well known for selecting models, Claudia Schiffer his most famous, from his audience to take part in his illusions.
In the Vanishing chart, Pluto is conjunct Copperfield’s natal Libra Neptune. His natal Pluto is trine the Vanishing Sagittarius Neptune conjunct the south node and also conjunct his natal Imum Coeli. From his depths (I.C.), Copperfield musters up his greatest illusion to deliver the Sagittarius Neptune’s last message. As the Pisces Neptune starts to square that position it seems more prescient every day. Our freedom could be taken at any moment. Pluto takes things. When he takes freedom, he is a Sagittarius Pluto. The first amendment is now under attack. As we watch Sagittarius Pluto children come of age, mobs of them censor anyone, family or friends, who disagree with them. If they can’t shout you down, they block you to create a safe space for themselves. They bully and shout down speakers they disagree with. They seek to take others free speech.
Copperfield’s message that day seemed hokey. No one was taking our freedom. We would fight anyone, USSR I’m looking at you, to keep America’s freedom. Now here at the first square to that message, with Neptune in Pisces, the planet of the oceanic depths told us the truth. While it may seem that the Sagittarius Pluto generation is taking freedom, in reality they are mimicking David Copperfield’s illusion. He took Lady Liberty only to return her. Pluto only rules the dead and always has to return the living. So long as freedom lives, it can vanish but it won’t be lost. The illusion of Lady Liberty vanishing lives in all Sagittarius Neptune natives. One of them, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is leading the fight and paying a great price to decimate Russia’s military in its invasion of Ukraine. He is snatching Ukrainian freedom back from Putin’s hands just as Copperfield returned Lady Liberty.