The gesture power always makes near its end is to build an image of itself, usually in gold and larger than life, positioned where no one can avoid seeing it. It’s what power always does when it senses it’s fading.

History is awash with examples. In AncientRome, Emperor Nero commissioned a thirty-metre bronze colossus of himself, but he killed himself before it could be completed. More recently, Turkmen dictator Niyazov died less than a decade aftera twelve-metre gold-plated statue was erected in his honor, and the forty-foot bronze of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad was felled only twelve months after it went up. Same with all the statues of Hafez al-Assad throughout Syria - the once gleaming homages to the fearsome autocrat were stomped on by his people and relegated to dumpsters. 

Time after time, across thousands of years, every time the golden statue goes up, it invariably means the king it’s honouring is on his way down. Eventhe King of Pop, Michael Jackson, resorted to floating a giant thirty-two foot statue of himself down the Thames on a barge in 1995, just years after the first allegations against him emerged. It was one of nine that were placed across Europe at the time, but they’re all gone now, just like the man himself. 

And so it’s through this lens that we watched, last week, the unveiling of a twenty-two-foot golden statue of Donald Trump at his golf course in Miami, depicting the president with his right fist raised in the air, as he did after the assassination attempt in Butler in 2024. The statue was unveiled in a dedication ceremony led by an evangelical pastor who was at pains to explain that, though the statue was finished in gold leaf, this was no golden calf. “We worship the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone,” he said. “This statue is not idol worship. This is honour. This is gratitude. This is patriotism.”

The golden calf he was referencing was the one the Israelites made when Moses went up Mount Sinai to fetch the Ten Commandments - they melted down all their gold into the shape of a calf and started bowing to it, and according to the Bible, Moses was so displeased with their idol he ground it to dust and made them drink the powder. 

Not a golden calf as such, Trump’s statue is more reminiscent of another famous golden statue mentioned in the scriptures - that of King Nebuchadnezzar, who was, at that time, the most powerful man on earth. The ruler of Babylon at the height of its empire, he had an image of himself made of gold - not unlike Trump’s - and summoned the governors, the judges, the counsellors, and all the rulers of the provinces, to come and fall down before the statue and worship at its feet. And like Trump’s statue, not everyone was pleased with the new monument - some refused to bow, and Nebuchadnezzar had them thrown into the fiery furnace. Trump just taps out a mean tweet, but the burn is much the same. 

The story didn’t end well for Nebuchadnezzar. Within a year of raising his statue, he was driven out of Babylon, quite literally, into the desert, where the scriptures say he “did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws.” 

What happened to Nebuchadnezzar happened to Nero happened to Saddam happened to al-Assad, and even happened to the King of Pop. And now - because history repeats - we watch and wait for this new golden statue and the leader it was made to honour to complete the pattern. 

Because history has been watching this story play out on repeat for eons, and the pattern couldn’t be more clear - erecting a golden statue of yourself has never, in all of human history, been the gesture of a leader in their prime. It’s what tyrants and fading kings do when they sense their time is up.

History says the image always falls, and the sky above us agrees.

In February, the Saturn-Neptune conjunction at 0° Aries landed on the cusp of Trump’s 8th house of death and transformation - whatever was due to dissolve will dissolve, and whatever was due to end will end.

Additionally, Trump turns 80 next month, which means he’s approaching the once-in-a-lifetime transit where Neptune - the planet of glamour and illusion - breaks its own spell. The fog lifts, the gold leaf wears off, and what was underneath is shown for what it always was. For Trump, with natal Neptune sitting in his 2nd house of money and image and self-worth, this is the dissolution of his entire wealth-and-power glamour, happening over the coming weeks.

And two weeks after his 80th birthday, Jupiter enters Leo and begins crossing his 12th house Pluto, then his Mars, and finally his Ascendant. The 12th is the house of hidden enemies and buried things, and Jupiter there doesn't make a man bigger - only his shadow. It’s the spotlight on what’s been kept in the dark.

Already images have circulated of Trump’s golden statue defaced - covered in toilet paper - but the statue is only the prelude, and the sky says the man himself is next. He will face the reckoning, just like every king who built a statue of himself before him did. 

The pattern does its own work.

The sky has already turned the page.