What Donald Trump actually wants

The ancestral trauma behind his words and actions

It can’t have been easy growing up on the Isle of Lewis after the First World War. But Mary Anne Macleod had it a little bit easier than many of her contemporaries – her father ran the local post office and shop.

She wouldn’t have starved, but her ancestors would have known real hardship and poverty.

Mary was descendant of tenement farmers and fishermen. Men and women who lived with their large families in small crofts with bare earth floors and peat-smoke stinging their eyes.

During her childhood food and work would have been hard to come by, especially after the war. The rest of Scotland would have felt far away too and London was a completely different world – on Lewis most people spoke a different language, Gaelic. They were different, foreign, even in their own country.

Mary, and many of her contemporaries, chose a brave path. They wanted a better future for themselves and their children.

When she was only 18 years old Mary crossed the Atlantic for the first time – to start work as a domestic servant in New York. She lost her job during the depression, returned to Lewis, and then travelled back to New York again.

This time she made it. And life became a bit easier. She married a second generation immigrant, Fred, who had already managed to set up a successful property business. She had five children.

One of them was given a Gaelic name – Donald, meaning “great chief” or “ruler of the world”.

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Donald John Trump was born on an eclipse with Sun in Gemini in the 10th house of status and career and Moon in Sagittarius in the 4th house of ancestry and home.

He is a shape-shifter, fickle, mercurial, a maverick and a good, albeit unusual, communicator with that Gemini Sun conjunct Uranus.

But, his Moon is what pulls him toward a story and a fate that focuses on home, country, family and the clan.

And his home, with a Sagittarius 4th house, is a foreign place.

He is a second generation immigrant and he is building his family fortune in a foreign country.

His Sun and Moon form a harmonious aspect to a regal Leo Ascendant, the lens through which his chart is projected onto the stage, and to Mars, the warrior, in the 12th house.

He is the chosen clan chief.

The 12th house is the house of spirit, of the all that is. Placements there are sometimes slightly beyond our grasp and sometimes they pull us into a larger story, so we become part of a bigger narrative arc playing out during our time.

We can of course still control how we behave, we can still choose how we work with the fates and the energies in our chart, but someone like Donald Trump with a 12th house Mars and Pluto in Leo, born on a full Moon eclipse, is clearly meant to be an actor in a larger story.

But what is the story?

With Neptune in status-loving Libra in the second house of money forming an easy sextile to Pluto in Leo in the 12th house it is perhaps a narrative around self-enrichment leading to a gilded life – and to power.

It’s the story of the successful immigrant.

It's a compelling story and it's also a very American story – designed to appeal to the descendants of immigrants who left everything they knew behind in order to create a better future for themselves and their families.

It is his mother’s story.

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According to research into Mary MacLeod’s ancestral line her grandmothers and grandfathers would all have been moved from their homes during the highland clearances – when (often English) wealthy land owners moved their tenants from their ancestral homelands in order to use the land for sheep grazing.

There is a lot that can and has been said about the clearances – and there is a discussion to be had around the trauma and damage this caused the people of the Highlands. As with all of these stories there are also different sides competing for the prize of the “true narrative”.

However, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that wealthy landlords moving powerless tenants by force from their land leaves a legacy of trauma.

And it could be this trauma that is reverberating through the US at the moment – just like the genocide in Gaza is the trauma of the holocaust where the victim has turned into the perpetrator.

Here we have the son of an immigrant whose family was forced from their land, trying to make sure equally traumatised people who often have been forced from their land can’t make the same journey as him.

Why?

Because as is often the case with generational cycles of abuse the trauma is unconscious and unexamined – and unhealed. And anything that is a reminder of it has to be cleared away.

Family members who have written or spoken about the mood music during Donald Trump’s upbringing suggest the story of his mother’s arrival as a poor immigrant was suppressed.

Her story was a source of shame.

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Donald Trump has Mercury, Saturn and Venus in Cancer in the 11th house of the collective. So his choice to only allow space for the “good immigrant”, i.e. those who are the descendants of white Europeans just like him, could even feel nurturing to some.

And then there is the often mentioned lucky Jupiter trining his Sun, North Node and Uranus from his second house of wealth and security.

But what's less often mentioned is that Chiron, the core wound, is also there.

What does it mean to have Chiron and Jupiter so close together?

Well this is nowhere near a scientific sample, but looking at dictators might offer a clue – Vladimir Putin has a loose Chiron/Jupiter trine, Adolf Hitler had Chiron opposite Moon/Jupiter, Mao Zedong had Chiron forming an exact trine to Jupiter, Josef Stalin had Chiron/Neptune square Jupiter and his nodes.

Looking further back Napoleon Bonaparte had a Chiron/Jupiter trine, in Britain Oliver Cromwell (who toppled the King) had a Jupiter/Chiron conjunction.

Chiron also featured prominently in the chart of Teddy Roosevelt, forming a loose trine to his Jupiter, among other things.

Chiron can represent a sore spot in our natal charts that we can never fully heal. Jupiter is the planet that expands and enlarges, it was traditionally called the great benefic, the giver of gifts, the planet of luck and good fortune.

So from the wound comes fortune. And what is the wound here? Maybe these men have been given (or taken) power because of an inner wound that has pushed them to want to stand above the rest of humanity.

And as Chiron can also stand for a collective wound – these men have managed to speak to an anger or a wounding in their societies and by appealing to that side of the collective unconscious, they were given power.

Donald Trump’s Chiron forms a sextile to his 4th house Sagittarius Moon – his mother and the story of his immigrant ancestry.

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Donald Trump has often spoken of his love of Scotland, but during his first presidency he reportedly waited a few months to place a photograph of his mother on the table behind his desk in the White House. It was his father’s portrait that watched over him.

Fred Trump, the con-man, the drinker, the bully and the trickster (as he is described in the media), is of course also a big part of the story.

And his son is clearly meant to work with his legacy – as Donald Trump's Sun and North Node sit exactly on his father's Pluto.

But it is the story of the Scottish mother, Mary Anne, that I find the most compelling.

She would have been a tough, strong and practical woman with a first house Taurus Sun/Saturn conjunction.

The story of the clan, the ancestry, is there too in her chart with her Sun/Saturn (on top of her son's Midheaven) sextiling Mars and Neptune in Cancer in the 4th house of ancestry and home.

Mars and Neptune in Cancer in the 4th house want to fight to create a better future for the descendants of the family.

And these placements sit right on top of Donald’s Venus and Saturn in his 11th house.

This is the dream and the story he is bringing to the collective.

It is a story that was born in the poverty and hardship of the Scottish Highlands. In a country that had been amalgamated into Great Britain and was trying to figure out what it needed to be after the clan system broke down and the ancestral lands were cleared of people to make space for sheep.

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But will the clan's dream ultimately end in failure?

Mary Anne MacLeod is no longer with us, but her birth chart and story still resonate with the astrological song of the times.

Her placements in the 4th house of ancestry and 10th house of status square a natal North Node and Mercury in Aries in the 12th house of spirit, fate and undoing.

This is the fear of the unexpected luck (Uranus in the 10th) running out and the fight and dream for the safe home (Mars and Neptune in Cancer in the 4th) starting all over again – the family turning back into those hard working, big dreaming pioneers straight of the boat (Aries 12th house).

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During the inauguration on the 20th of January Chiron, having recently finished its retrograde in Aries, started to move forward towards Mary Anne’s North Node and Mercury.

A transit that will be exact in mid March 2025.

Retrograding Uranus was also at its closest point to her Sun/Saturn conjunction in Taurus on the 20th of January before stationing direct.

All signalling a sudden change in the family fortune and an activation of the purpose in the family line.

This story, and T-square pattern in her chart, is further activated by Pluto crossing her natal Uranus on the 28th of March 2025.

This is an extremely powerful day for her chart. With Chiron almost exactly between her Aries North Node and Mercury, and Mars just separating from a conjunction with her Neptune in the 4th.

All of these planets activate her T-square.

Just a few days later Neptune enters Aries in Donald Trump’s 8th house of death. Uranus is on his Midheaven. Jupiter is moving towards his North Node and Mars is on his Saturn and Venus conjunction.

The transits at this time are reverberating through the whole Trump clan. They are all hit by this serious astrological weather at the end of March 2025.

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I didn’t expect this post to finish here when I started writing it, and I have previously mentioned that I have chosen not to speculate around the health and longevity of people in the public eye.

I will however make an exception here, because these transits are so spectacular. I’ve also written about Neptune transiting the US’s 4th house as a time when presidents have previously been assassinated.

That is one way to interpret these transits, and something other astrologers have mentioned. Another way to read it is that the 25th amendment will be invoked at this time.

On the 28th of March vice president JD Vance has a tough inconjunct from the big cluster of planets in the late degrees of Pisces to his natal Pluto – as well as a square to his Neptune. It isn’t looking like a positive time for him.

House speaker Mike Johnson also has some extremely powerful transits that day and in late March 2025. Chiron sits on his natal Mars opposing his Libra Uranus. Pluto is conjunct his North Node and trines his natal Pluto, and all the placements in Pisces ping his Mercury, Saturn and Jupiter.

The Moon is on his exalted Venus in Pisces.

The last week of March could be described as a time of heightened peril for Donald Trump and the family’s ancestral dream.