What does a local astrologer have to say about our current crises in Kansas City?

Kansas City’s astrological chart based on its birthday, March 28, 1853, and location. Courtesy Julia Purdy. 

So what does a local astrologer have to say about COVID-19 in Kansas City?

By Jill Draper 

Most people know their zodiac sign based on the day they were born, but did you know cities and nations also have a sign? Members of the local Aquarian Organization of Astrologers held a Zoom meeting in April to discuss the coronavirus in the U.S. with special emphasis on Kansas City. After a technical review of the city’s March 25 shutdown date, they turned to a wider look at “these chaotic times.”

Here are some of their thoughts, according to Waldo resident Julia Purdy, who has studied astrology for 40 years and recently served as the organization’s president.

Based on the upcoming motions of the planets, Purdy predicts “a long haul” with hopeful conditions more likely next spring. But hold onto your hats in the meantime.

“Between now and the end of the year, Mars will go back and forth in a retrograde pattern—it’s just nasty,” she says. “It may be a bad fall. All the planets are not in a good place.”

When a Jupiter/Saturn conjunction occurs at the winter solstice on December 21, she says there’s a chance for a big break or a fresh start. “It seems very significant. It could be the beginning of a new cycle of social experience or perhaps the announcement of a vaccine.”

At a national level, Purdy notes that Pluto has completed its first 248-year journey around the sun since the U.S. became a country on July 4, 1776. “People don’t live long enough to have Pluto returns, but countries do,” she says. “Pluto equals transformation, a way of wiping the slate clean and starting over. But sometimes that’s not so pretty. Astrologers have been looking at this epic transformative event with some trepidation.”

The zodiac sign for the U.S. is Cancer, characterized as naturally friendly, practical and nurturing. Kansas City was incorporated by Missouri on March 28, 1853, and that makes it Aries, with Jupiter in Sagittarius. Purdy describes this combination as masculine, adventurous, free-spirited, risk taking, independent and at the same time idealistic.

“Pluto equals transformation, a way of wiping the slate clean and starting over. But sometimes that’s not so pretty.”

“We have cowboy DNA,” she says, noting the city’s historical connection to cattle ranchers, stockyards and agricultural commodities. 

Kansas City is also the city of fountains and classical sculpture, influenced by its refined Mars/Venus conjunction in aesthetic, artistic Pisces, she adds. “We have elegant boulevards, the Nelson-Atkins, the Kauffman Center and the KC Art Institute. Easterners are surprised when they come west of the Mississippi to find such a cultured little metropolis.”

According to Purdy, a nodal T-square to the Pisces planets shows the contradiction between these two very different images of the city. “We started out as rough and ready cowboys, but we’re supposed to grow into a more refined and compassionate story. The pivot point is a hard angle, so sometimes it’s a hard choice.”

She continues, “During the next couple of years the transiting nodes will come back to their home location—they do that every 19 and a half years. So perhaps we’ll be updating our image again.”

Purdy says studying a city’s birth chart can be helpful to individuals considering whether to relocate or start a new venture.  

She became interested in astrology while enrolled at the Kansas City Art Institute. Browsing a used bookstore, she picked up an out-of-print title, “Heaven Knows What,” by the late William Grant Lewi, an English professor who has been described as “the father of modern astrology in America.”

“It just caught my imagination, and it became a thing I did on the side,” Purdy remembers. She worked in advertising at the Kansas City Star and in information technology at Sprint before retiring. But during part of that time she studied at the Seattle-based Kepler College, which provides online education in astrology.

Astrology’s history is long and detailed, she says, and most cultures have their own version of it. Well-known observers have included Copernicus, Sir Isaac Newton, Carl Jung, Winston Churchill, J.P. Morgan and Nancy Reagan, as well as many celebrities and financial professionals. 

“Basically there’s a relationship, a map, between celestial bodies and activities on the earth,” Purdy says. “It’s in our art, history, mythology—it’s just everywhere.”

The Aquarian Organization of Astrologers was established in 1973 and is part of the International Society for Astrology Research.. Their main fundraiser is an astrology and tarot card booth at the Renaissance Festival.

On July 13 Purdy tentatively plans a launch party for a book she has written, “The Jupiter Advantage,” which traces the natal personalities of well-known people. See astrologykansascity-aoa.com for details.

When clients request consultations on their birthday about the coming 12 months, Purdy offers this advice: Astrology is a pattern map of probabilities. It is not an unchangeable outcome. She also cautions that users must be discerning. 

“Look for professional astrologers who have a basic understanding of astronomy. It’s a little bit of the wild west out there.”

[This article was written May 21–before Minneapolis resident George Floyd was killed at the hands of the police and protests resulted. It appeared in the May 27th issue of The Telegraph.]