Wizard's Weekly Wrap-Up: August 17-23, 2025
Summits, Scandals, and the Shadow of the Dragon: The Week that Foretold the End of Illusions
This week the world shook, both literally and politically.
Trump’s Alaska summit ended with Putin grinning like a man who’d just robbed the table blind, while Russia launched its biggest aerial assault on Ukraine in weeks, sending Trump home to European leaders circling like sharks, Epstein files leaking like broken faucets, Bill Barr mincing his words and Ghislaine Maxwell rewriting history, as if anyone believed her.
As the Sun and Moon met in the first degree of Virgo, heralding the arrival of eclipse season, Israel rolled into Gaza hours after the UN declared famine, while Trump froze visas for wounded children trying to reach U.S. hospitals. The humanitarian crisis deepened; Netanyahu lashed out at critics abroad; and the world watched starvation and airstrikes collide while Trump moved on to decorating the Oval Office in 24-karat denial.
Trump took Putin’s advice and tried to ban mail ballots and voting machines, mused that America wouldn’t even need elections if we were at war in three years, declared war on the Smithsonian for telling the truth about slavery, fired a general who contradicted him, and raided John Bolton’s house.
Trump added another mighty-morphed painting of himself to the White House walls, launched a TikTok account on the app he once called a national security threat, and his team left sensitive documents on a hotel printer while the cosplayed international diplomacy.
Republicans in Florida painted over the Pulse nightclub rainbow memorial, while Republicans in Texas held Democrats hostage, the border wall got a $2.7 billion coat of heat-soaking black paint so immigrants can’t climb it, Cracker Barrel changed its logo and the right wing lost its mind, Walmart announced their shrimp may be radioactive, and Jillian Michaels found herself on the hot seat thanks to The Biggest Loser documentary.
Trump’s administration quietly began reviewing 55 million visa holders for deportable offenses, while an appeals court tossed his massive civil fraud penalty, and the monarch in the Oval Office sent warships toward Venezuela in between chasing a Nobel Prize, promising “peace” while the ground shook beneath his throne.
As always, I’ve tracked the signs, read the stars, and sifted through the noise to bring together this week’s story, from breakdowns to breakthroughs. This is how I cut through the chaos: by finding the hidden order that makes even collapse feel strangely fated.
So take a breath.
Hold your nerve.
It’s time to make meaning from the madness.
Let’s go in and dive deep.
**The cosmic insights shared here are mapped to the real movements of the heavens during the past week. If you want to know more about planetary pattern recognition, read about it here**
🐉 The Week the Dragon Stirred
A 7.5-magnitude quake tore through the Drake Passage this week, the narrow, wind-scarred channel where South America’s Andes plunge beneath the sea to meet the frozen coils of Antarctica.
To geologists, the Drake Passage is the fault line between the South American, Antarctic, and Scotia plates, but to myth-keepers across cultures, it’s one of Earth’s dragon lines - the “serpent spine” of the old stories, those great energy arteries where mountains, rivers, and magnetic fields braid together like living veins.
In a breathless second of silence this week, the plates snapped, the deep pulse of the planet cracked the ocean floor, and the southern hemisphere felt her bones shift.
When the ground moves in such a place, the old myths say it isn’t just rock on rock - it’s the planet’s body turning over, the dragon shifting in its chains. The dragon stirs when power grows rotten, rising to reckon with kings who think themselves untouchable, with empires built on lies and palaces hiding secrets under marble floors. In ancient tales, when the dragon moved, kings fell, crowns rolled, empires buckled, and the age itself turned over.
In the old stories, dragons were always synonymous with eclipses. In China, they said a dragon had swallowed the Sun, its black jaws snapping shut across the sky. The legend foretold that the dragon swallowed the light of kings, the order of heaven itself, so villagers ran into the streets beating drums and hurling curses upward, but not because they feared for their homes or their harvests. The dragon never came for the fields or the villages. It came for the palaces. It came for the crowns. It came for the empires that believed they could outrun consequence.
Far across the seas, the Bakunawa rose from Philippine waters, a serpent vast enough to drink the Moon from the heavens. They said its hunger pulled tides, bent winds, even cracked the earth when it thrashed in the deeps, and when its shadow fell across the night, people screamed and rattled spears to drive it off, because each bite marked the turning of an age, each eclipse the end of a reign grown too proud.
Everywhere, the dragon’s mouth on the sky was a warning: the world as it was could not last. The tremors in the Drake Passage this week were not random; they were the opening chord of the dragon’s song.
These next four weeks are the long inhale before the eclipses slam the door on the old world and rip open the sky for whatever comes next. Virgo season starts with the planet herself shaking us awake and the rest of the story arrives with September’s shadows.
Because it isn’t just the planet’s plates that are moving right now; power plates are shifting too. Leaders brazenly defy the will of the people, while Gaza starves and bombs fall on Ukraine. In Washington, citizens protest authoritarian rule while in Texas the rules of democracy bend.
Everywhere, the ground is quaking, not just under our feet, but under the palaces, the parliaments, the pulpits, the people. The dragon’s reckoning hasn’t fully risen yet, but the tremors are rolling through every empire, every capital, every place that thought itself permanent and untouchable.
What unfolded this week was the first spark from the monster’s throat. The fire hasn’t come yet, but the wind already reeks of smoke, and every empire is downwind.
The dragon rises when the old order has rotted through. It comes to swallow the Sun, to snap the sky shut, to burn the map so another age can begin.
Now, once again, the Sun, the Moon, and every trembling capital await the dragon.
The reckoning is coming.
The dragon will rise.
👑 A King On The Run
And as the dragon stirs, behold the king, his skin sprayed gold with a red crown perched upon his head, stumbling through the last corridors of his own mythology. A man who mistook applause for power, money for destiny, cruelty for strength. America made him in its image - all the bravado of empire, all the denial of decay - then set him on the throne like some bloated idol to its own appetites.
The dragon always comes for kings just like this. It comes for the crown, for the gold gilded secrets, for the liars who think the sky itself will hold for them.
And so the king runs, through courtrooms, through headlines, through the smoke of his own making. He rallies, he rages, he bellows about witch hunts and vengeance as if noise could frighten consequence back into its cave.
But the dragon is already awake and it has scented the rot in his kingdom, the stench of power turned rancid. It is coming not just for the man, but for the nation that built him, the empire that mistook him for destiny.
Because when the dragon rises, it does not bother to choose between the king and the crown - it burns the whole throne.
Even before the September eclipses darken the horizon, the sky above Donald Trump right now burns. The Sun has swung the spotlight sharply onto him, leaving nowhere to hide, no allies big enough to block the glare.
Above him, the stars tighten their grip: one gnaws at his strength, draining the swagger that once carried him through any storm; another kicks at the throne beneath his feet so that nothing feels steady, not the headlines, not the crowds, not the walls of power he thought would never crack.
A slower, heavier hand presses down on the house of debts and legacies, where lawyers prowl and judges wait, while far out on the edges of the sky, a giant stirs the air until every noise, every scandal, every rumor swells twice its size.
This is the king in late August: bruised, loud, cornered, still bellowing at the gates while the ground shifts under his feet.
And so the king does what kings have always done when the dragon’s reckoning circles closer: he bargains.
🕊 Saint Donald’s Last Confession
In a Fox & Friends confessional this week, Trump confided to the hosts, “I want to try and get to heaven if possible. I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I hear I’m really at the bottom of the totem pole.”
Those are the words of king who knows the shadow has fallen across his throne. Some wondered if “not doing well” meant Trump had received bad news from his doctors, and whether his sudden talk of heaven hinted at a reckoning, medical or otherwise.
Commentators have long pointed to his swollen ankles as a possible sign of congestive heart failure, often treated with IV diuretics - the same treatment that can leave the backs of the hands blotchy and bruised, which would explain the heavy makeup caked on the back of his hands of late.
For advanced cases of congestive heart failure, life expectancy can be just a few years, which is why some now suspect Trump might be preparing to meet his maker - or his reckoning - sooner rather than later.
Always as the king feels the dragon drawing near, he scrambles to smother the smoke of his own misdeeds, hoping the rising scent won’t summon the beast that hunts him.
🐍 The Files That Haunt the Throne
For months now, Trump’s been desperately trying to hose down the inferno he sparked when he attempted to bury the Epstein files after it turned out they have his name on them. His efforts to drown demands to “Release the files” in an ocean of noise have been largely unsuccessful; not what the king needs with a dragon on the loose.
When the White House launched its official TikTok account this week, debuting with a video of Trump declaring, “I am your voice,” the comment sections was flooded with demands about the Epstein scandal, with the top comment on the debut post - garnering over 19,000 likes - reading, “Why won’t you release the files?”
With the smoke of his sins still rising, the king dispatches his confidants to parley with the approaching dragon, wielding words like flimsy shields against its coming wrath.
Former Attorney General Bill Barr leapt to Trump’s defence this week when testifying behind closed doors to Congress, telling lawmakers he “never saw any evidence” tying Trump to Epstein - a line Trump allies quickly trumpeted as total exoneration. But former U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, who actually ran the Epstein investigation, wrote in his book Holding the Line that he deliberately kept Barr out of the loop on the investigation - the former Attorney General “never saw any evidence” because nobody ever showed him any.
And while Barr may think he won that round for Trump, the eclipses lining up over his chart in September suggest the dragon might be looking his way too.
🎙 The Gospel According to Ghislaine
As the dragon breathed down Trump’s neck, this week his DOJ was forced to start releasing Epstein files to Congress, after months of subpoenas and prolonged public outcry, but insiders say it was a slow-drip rollout, heavy on redactions and light on answers. Congressman Robert Garcia indicated that of the 33,000 documents given to the House, only 1,000 contained any new information.
Muddying the waters, Trump’s DOJ released its July interview with Ghislaine Maxwell - Epstein’s partner, herself a convicted sex offender - conducted by Trump’s own former lawyer, Todd Blanche.
In the six-hour recording and 300-page transcript, Maxwell denied there was ever a secret “client list,” painted Trump as a “gentleman”, and said she never saw him behave inappropriately. She waved away rumors about Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton as “rubbish” while also describing Clinton as a friend and implicating neither man in crimes. Maxwell denied knowing about any inappropriate cameras in Epstein's homes, even though the New York Times published images from Epstein's Manhattan townhouse clearly showing surveillance cameras.
She also cast doubt on the official Epstein suicide narrative, floating a jailhouse conflict as an alternative, while dismissing the idea of a powerful cover-up. Her testimony brought up nothing new that materially advanced the case, but plenty that conveniently flattered Trump, as talk of a pardon swirled.
It continues a pattern of Trump’s team eagerly pushing out anything that paints him innocent, while slow walking anything that might do the opposite and keeping the real bombshells buried. No sign of Maxwell’s proffer deal, the “Club Fed” transfer agreement, the records waiving her sex offender status for outside work, or the complete un-redacted Epstein files.
MAGA world called it a clean bill of health for Trump; critics called it theater - especially since prosecutors once described Maxwell as willing to “brazenly lie under oath” to save herself.
Survivors and victims erupted in anger, with Virginia Giuffre’s family blasting the DOJ for giving Ghislaine Maxwell “a platform to rewrite history” during Blanche’s soft-ball interview. They said the transcripts contradict her child sex trafficking conviction, erase the pain of survivors who risked everything for justice, and send the chilling message that such crimes are “acceptable and will be rewarded.”
With big names like former FBI directors and attorneys general set to testify in the coming weeks, the spotlight is intensifying. The king may summon as many former lieutenants as he likes to swear they never saw evidence of the monarch’s badness, but there’s not enough clean testimonies in the whole world to outweigh the stench rolling off the throne.
The coming September eclipses don’t care about carefully crafted transcripts or redacted files. With the smoke of their sins still rising and the dragon breathing fire on their charts this next month, the likes of Barr and Maxwell may think they can rewrite the past before the reckoning arrives but the sky doesn’t care about their stagecraft.
September’s eclipses come like twin hammer blows, splitting open alliances, dragging secrets into daylight, rattling the walls of every kingdom trying to hold back the tide. Trump’s chart screams betrayal and legal reckoning just as Maxwell’s protections fray and Barr’s old sins start smoking through the floorboards.
They can spin, stall, and swear innocence all they like. The dragon isn’t listening. It’s coming for them all.
🏆 Fool’s Gold
In the old stories, when the dragon drew near, kings wrapped themselves in crowns and trophies, believing enough shine could blind the beast to the rot beneath.
Trump’s gilded the entire Oval Office in gold - every nook, every cranny now a 24 karat shimmer. “There’s nothing like gold,” he declared this week, “nothing like solid gold.” As if glitter alone could keep the dragon at bay, not knowing gold never blinds the monster, it summons it.
In the Volsunga Saga, Fafnir hoarded his cursed treasure until the greed itself turned him into the very dragon chained to the gold he thought would make him untouchable.
Trump lives inside the same mistake. The golden ornaments, the gilded ceilings, the Oval Office dripping with metallic glow - all of it looks like power, like permanence, like proof that the king will never fall, but the dragon does not come for the farmers or the fields.
The dragon comes for the hoard.
🥇 Trump’s Trophy Crusade
Trump clutches at trophies as if the right trinket might buy the dragon’s mercy.
This week, he invited FIFA President Gianni Infantino to the Oval Office, holding the World Cup trophy and joking, “Can I keep it?” This just weeks after Trump pocketed a medal at the FIFA Club World Cup final in New Jersey - the art of the steal, critics declared, from a man who seems feverish about hoarding trophies, earned or otherwise.
And for months now, Trump’s been on what can only be described as a full-blown canonization tour, casting himself as global deal-maker, war-ender, and future Nobel Peace Prize laureate, eyeing that award as his next glittering token.
This week he boasted, “I’ve done six wars - I’ve ended six wars,” presenting himself as the ultimate peacemaker. The White House claimed he was referring to conflicts spanning Israel–Iran, DRC–Rwanda, India–Pakistan, Armenia–Azerbaijan, Cambodia–Thailand, and Egypt–Ethiopia, but fact-checkers rated the claims “mostly false” or at least wildly misleading, pointing out that many of these conflicts remain unresolved, temporarily paused, or were mere border flare-ups with Trump’s role minimal at best.
“See,” says the king, “I have been a good ruler. Look,” he insists, “I bring peace. I end wars. I am loved.” Cornered kings always boast and bargain. They throw speeches and platitudes like sand in the wind, hoping to blind what’s coming, but the old stories never change. The dragon listens to deeds, not words and it does not lose the trail.
In the end, the dragon always finds the throne.
💘 When Vlad Met Donald
Seemingly desperate to prove he is the harbinger of peace and secure that Nobel Prize to appease the looming dragon, last week Trump literally rolled out a red carpet in Alaska to host peace talks with Vladimir Putin, a man wanted by the International Criminal Court for stealing children and waging war. Trump stood waiting on the tarmac, clapped as Putin’s plane landed, and beamed as he shook the autocrat’s hand like he was welcoming a saint.
Two vicious kings, both being stalked by a dragon seeking comeuppance for past sins.
This “summit” wasn’t carefully planned diplomacy - it came together at lightning speed, cooked up after Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff bungled an alleged Russian concession on Ukraine. Within days, Trump announced he’d meet Putin on U.S. soil, leaving Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy out in the cold. For Putin, just getting the meeting was a win, and holding it in Alaska - once Russian territory - made it even sweeter.
Inside the room, three hours of talks led to nothing. The scheduled working lunch was canceled. Reporters noted that when members of the U.S. delegation emerged from the meeting looking rattled, their eyes were wide and faces ashen. Trump looked deflated, like a man who had just been handled.
At the press conference following the meeting, Putin took the podium first - against protocol for a summit held on American soil - and spoke twice as long as Trump who mumbled about “great progress,” refused questions, and shuffled off.
The summit produced no ceasefire, no sanctions, and no relief for Ukraine, but it gave Putin what he wanted most: legitimacy, a stage to look like America’s equal, and a photo beside a compliant U.S. president.
🏔️ The Alaska Summit Fallout
On his way home from the summit, Trump called Zelenskyy and Europe’s leaders from Air Force One and told them Putin had rejected a ceasefire and demanded Ukrainian territory, dropping his own ceasefire demand to parrot Putin’s position that talks should start immediately.
He told Sean Hannity sanctions were off the table “for now” and shrugged the burden onto Zelenskyy: “It’s really up to President Zelensky to get it done.”
After what he said was a “long and substantive” call with Trump, Zelenskyy announced he would meet Trump at the White House this week for further discussions, but that headline was overshadowed by the news that Trump administration officials left sensitive State Department documents sitting in a public hotel printer that were eventually leaked to the press. Among the pages were the names and numbers of U.S. and Russian delegates, the note that Trump intended to gift Putin an “American Bald Eagle Desk Statue,” and the menu for a lunch that was mysteriously cancelled. Most shockingly, the menu was printed with the words: “in honor of his excellency Vladimir Putin.”
🇪🇺 Europe Rallies for Ukraine
On Sunday, European leaders closed ranks with Zelenskyy in Brussels, warning that Ukraine’s borders must not be redrawn by force. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen called for Ukraine to become “a steel porcupine, indigestible for potential invaders,” while French president Emmanuel Macron cautioned that weakness toward Russia now would only invite future wars.
In a rare show of unity - and a clear rebuke to Trump - they and other European leaders agreed to accompany Zelenskyy to Monday’s White House meeting, after Trump publicly lambasted him in the Oval Office during their last encounter.
As scholar Tom Nichols noted, the sudden mass delegation suggested “something went very wrong in Alaska if this many European leaders are coming to Washington on short notice.”
Trump seemed thrilled, posting that the White House had “Never had so many European Leaders at one time” and that it was his “great honor to host them!!!”
🐦 Tweet Diplomacy
Before meeting Zelenskyy, Trump posted online, writing, “President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to… No getting back Obama-given Crimea, and NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE. Some things never change!!!”
Zelenskyy pushed back hard in a post of his own, calling for “lasting peace” and reminding Trump that giving up Crimea in 2014 only paved the way for more war. “Crimea should not have been given up then,” he said, “just as Ukrainians didn’t give up Kyiv, Odesa, or Kharkiv after 2022.”
His closing line cut through Trump’s spin: “Russia must end this war it started. Our strength with America and Europe will force a real peace.”
👔 The Suit Heard ’Round the World
While world leaders swapped tweets, the right-wing internet was abuzz about what mattered most to them - whether Zelenskyy would finally put on a suit for Donald Trump.
MAGA pundits were outraged when Zelenskyy showed up for his last Oval Office meeting in February wearing black trousers and a shirt emblazoned with Ukraine’s military emblem, a deliberate statement of wartime solidarity with his troops. Trump’s acolytes screamed that the Ukrainian president needed to “dress properly” for the White House this time, turning wardrobe choices into a weird proxy fight over respectability.
On Monday morning, Trump grinned as Zelenskyy stepped out of his car at the White House, dressed in a black field jacket, black shirt, and black slacks - not a suit, but a step up from last time, something almost businesslike. “Looking sharp,” Trump called out, the remark landing somewhere between compliment and calculation.
Inside the Oval Office for a joint press conference, Brian Glenn, a pro-Trump media personality, gushed to Zelenskyy: “You look fabulous in that suit.”
“I said the same thing,” Trump chimed in, turning to Zelenskyy with a grin. “Isn’t that nice? That’s the one that attacked you last time.”
Zelenskyy, deadpan, fired back: “You are in the same suit. I changed, you did not.”
It was quick, sharp, and instantly viral - Zelenskyy trolling the very pundits who had spent days fixating on his clothes while Ukraine burned. And it set the tone for what came next: a meeting between two men with wildly different stakes in this war, one treating it like a stage, the other carrying it on his shoulders.
🌍 The World vs. The Showman
During their private discussion, Trump floated the idea of a Putin–Zelenskyy face-to-face meeting, pitching himself as the broker who could get both men in the same room, hinting at a possible trilateral summit with him at the table, or at least back-to-back meetings to hammer out the outline of a deal.
While Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed Moscow was open to such a meeting, Zelenskyy made it clear Kyiv would only come if there were serious, enforceable security guarantees - not just photo-ops.
Later that day, Trump and Zelenksyy were joined at the White House by a squadron of European leaders - Britain’s Keir Starmer, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Friedrich Merz, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Finland’s Alexander Stubb, Ursula von der Leyen for the EU and NATO’s Mark Rutte.
They came to discuss security guarantees, weapons packages, sanctions, the future of Ukraine itself (and to ensure Zelenskyy didn’t get rolled by Trump, like he did last time) but instead, what unfolded was part summit, part farce, part reality-TV cliffhanger. Just before the multilateral meeting began in the East Room, Trump leaned toward French President Emmanuel Macron and whispered of Putin, “I think he wants to make a deal for me. Do you understand? As crazy as it sounds.”
The comment was caught on a hot mic, making it clear from the get-go that Trump didn’t see himself as negotiating an end to a brutal war; he saw himself as the main character in a play where Putin ends the fighting as a personal favor for him.
While serious leaders in the room came to talk deterrence and security architecture, Trump came believing Putin likes him, maybe even admires him, and that his man-crush may solve a land war in Europe by delivering him peace like a bouquet of roses.
🎭 Summit of Chaos
From the moment the summit began, analysts noted a significant mismatch between Trump’s improvisational style and the complex diplomacy the moment demanded. Experts noted Trump was “cosplaying” at diplomacy: staging it with confidence but lacking the substance and understanding to steer it meaningfully.
Others noted Trump’s cognitive decline - like his bloated cankles - was on full display. As Trump introduced the leaders, he reached Finland’s Alexander Stubb - a man he’s reportedly golfed with - and squinted like he was searching for Waldo. “President Stubb of Finland and…..he’s uh…..he’s somebody that, where are we here?”
“I’m right here,” Stubb deadpanned, sitting directly across the table. When Trump finally spotted him just inches in front of his face, he said, “Oh! You look better than I’ve ever seen you look. But you’ve done a great job, and we wanted to have you here.” It was comedy, it was chaos, it was a summit turning into a late-night monologue before our eyes.
And yet the meeting rolled on, as though none of this had happened. While Europe pushed its case for long-term security guarantees, and Zelenskyy warned again that a “quick deal” sacrificing territory isn’t a peace Ukraine can survive, Russia launched its largest missile and drone barrage on Ukraine in weeks. Entire apartment blocks in Kharkiv burned as these leaders talked ceasefires in Washington.
In the middle of the meeting, Trump suddenly paused and left the room to call Putin directly. “I didn't do it in front of them,” he later told the press. “I thought that would be disrespectful to President Putin.” The call lasted forty minutes, so there sat the whole cast of world leaders, waiting at the White House table while Trump ducked out to privately talk to the man who started the war they were all there to solve.
When Trump returned, he nodded, smiled, and told everyone they would “know where we stand in two weeks.”
Two weeks. Always two weeks.
But this time, two weeks brings the Pisces lunar eclipse. You can almost hear the dragon’s roar.
🩹 Blaming the Burning Villages
By summit’s end, the official readouts spoke of “productive discussions” and “constructive dialogue”, but the body language told a different story: seasoned leaders staring at each other like people watching the pilot leave the cockpit mid-flight to phone the guy who hijacked the plane.
In an interview with Fox News later in the week (during which he bizarrely rambled about “a thing called an ocean…a big, beautiful ocean”), Trump also declared offhandedly, “Russia is a powerful military nation whether people like it or not. It’s a much bigger nation. It’s not a war that should have been started. You don’t do that. You don’t take on a nation that’s ten times your size.”
In the wake of Russia unleashing its largest aerial assault in weeks, killing civilians, flattening homes and turning Ukrainian nights into firestorms, Trump didn’t condemn Moscow, but rather blamed Ukraine for picking a fight with a country ten times bigger, as though size absolves aggression.
It was another clear window into Trump’s worldview: strength makes right, and Ukraine should have known better than to resist.
⏳ Two Weeks to Nowhere
On the campaign trail last year, Trump vowed again and again he’d end the war in Ukraine on day one of his second term. He failed to do so, and now, seven months in, what he delivered this week wasn’t statesmanship but theater.
But behind Trump’s circus lights, the machinery of diplomacy is actually grinding on. U.S. and European military planners are finalizing options for Ukraine’s security guarantees. NATO leaders are quietly mapping out a long-term framework to keep Kyiv armed and protected. Zelenskyy is pushing for enforceable commitments before even thinking about a Putin meeting, while Russia keeps up its bombing campaign and Ukraine hits back at Russian energy infrastructure.
And now the clock is ticking on Trump’s self-imposed deadline, but what comes next will hinge on whether these behind-the-scenes plans harden into real guarantees before the next round of missiles or summits resets the stage all over again.
For Ukraine, the coming eclipses promise no easy exits. The September 7 lunar eclipse drags Ukraine through heavier fighting, political strain, and backroom bargaining; it’s the hard, grinding middle of the story. But the September 21 solar eclipse opens a crack - a chance for real commitments or alliances to harden into place before winter closes in. By then, the war won’t be over, but the map of what comes next may start to shift.
If Ukraine’s September is a test of endurance, Russia’s is a lesson in control. The September 7 lunar eclipse rattles its financial and military foundations even as Moscow tries to project calm authority, but the September 21 solar eclipse flips the script, handing the Kremlin a fresh card to play, and the weeks after the eclipse look less like retreat and more like a quiet tightening of power. Any talk of peace will be theater - September sets Russia up to bargain hard, hit back harder, and lock in gains before winter bites.
As for Trump, the whole security-guarantee-farce this week was just him kicking up more dust, a peace-keeping performance designed to snag the king a prize to fend off the approaching dragon, but his efforts were hollow and he’s come up empty handed.
The monster looms, and the king is undefended.
🩸 War on Compassion
For a man loudly campaigning for awards for peace-keeping and a place in heaven, Trump’s quieter moves keep slamming the pearly gates shut. This week his State Department froze all visitor visas from Gaza - even the medical ones that brought wounded children to U.S. hospitals for life-saving care.
The move followed a viral tantrum from far-right provocateur Laura Loomer, who posted footage of injured kids arriving for treatment and ranted online about “security threats.” Within days, Trump’s team bolted the nation’s door shut, stranding children mid-crisis while Trump allies bragged about “national security victories.”
This came as the UN officially declared famine in Gaza and Israel launched the first stage of its planned assault and military takeover of Gaza City, escalating airstrikes as the humanitarian crisis hit a breaking point. Netanyahu, facing global condemnation, lashed out at critics abroad after Australian MP Tony Burke called out Israel’s actions, saying, “Strength is not measured by how many people you can blow up.”
The dragon sees through the bluster, and not just Trump’s but Netanyahu’s too. The approaching eclipses don’t let either man hide. For Trump, the September 7 lunar eclipse exposes the hollowness of his peace-prize posturing; for Netanyahu, it lands as global outrage peaks over Gaza and the weight of his decisions bears down.
By the September 21 solar eclipse, both face turning points - Trump boxed in by his own cruelty, Netanyahu pushed toward a reckoning between power and accountability.
September doesn’t bring salvation for either; it brings the bill.
🗡️ Presidential Vendettas
Still, Trump will continue his pursuit for peace-keeping recognition, even while terrorising his enemies at home.
Vengeance and revenge have always been Trump’s modus operandi, but this week he took his score settling to a new low, yanking the security clearances of 37 current and former national security officials, many of them critics or figures linked to past investigations of Trump. Legal experts called it political retribution dressed up as national security, a loyalty test with a security badge attached.
Things escalated again when FBI agents swarmed the Maryland home and D.C. office of John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, in a classified-documents probe that Trump insists he “knew nothing about” while smirking through interviews calling Bolton “a lowlife” and “not a smart guy.”
Bolton has been one of Trump’s loudest critics, describing him as “grossly ill-informed” and saying Trump’s “mind is full of mush.” In May this year, he said “I think the historical verdict on Trump will be devastating. It’s rare to see one person being so destructive. He’s more like a vandal warlord than a constructive president. That’s what history will judge him on very severely.” Bolton’s sin against Trump was saying out loud what everyone in the Situation Room already knew.
But Bolton’s not the only one right now feeling the fire of Trump’s ire. After Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, signed off on an assessment saying U.S. strikes on Iran hadn’t caused the catastrophic damage Trump bragged about, this week Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth showed him the door. Clearly, even intelligence that ruffles Trump’s feathers is now a firable offense.
Trump can’t resist settling scores with the people who cross him. Raided houses, revoked clearances, and fired generals send a clear message to all who defy him that they might just be next.
But the dragon says it is Trump who should be watching his back.
⚔️ Brinkmanship in the Caribbean
Far from keeping the peace, this week Trump stoked war by parking three U.S. Navy destroyers off Venezuela’s coast and slapping a $50 million bounty on President Nicolás Maduro for alleged drug trafficking.
Officially, it was a “counter-narcotics operation,” but unofficially, it was a chokehold on a regime accused of rigged elections, cartel ties, and letting Russia and China plant flags on America’s doorstep.
Maduro answered with bluster, mobilizing 4.5 million militia members and vowing to arm them all for a last stand against “Yankee aggression.” It’s classic Trump brinkmanship: push to the edge, own the headlines, dare the other guy to blink, while the whole thing teeters one mistake away from chaos.
For a man chasing a peace prize, he sure plays chicken like someone looking for a war. It’s all just more noise to say “look over there” in the vain hope that the sneaking dragon can be distracted.
🏛️ War on Washington
Trump’s Nobel dreams fade by the day, overshadowed not only by his brinksmanship abroad but by the image of a president who has turned the military on his own people.
This week, he invoked the Home Rule Act to seize control of the D.C. police and deploy nearly 2,000 National Guard troops across the capital, despite violent crime being at a 30-year low. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth even ordered the Guard to carry weapons on patrol.
Washington erupted. Residents marched under “Free DC!” banners as protesters filled the streets near the White House and Union Station, calling the move an occupation, not a crime-fighting mission.
Vice President JD Vance, Hegseth, and Trump enforcer Stephen Miller tried to soften the invasion by handing out burgers to troops at Union Station, only to be drowned out by chants of “Free DC!” and insults ranging from “Nazis” to “crazy communists” to one very explicit couch joke aimed squarely at Vance.
Miller, ever the diplomat, sneered at protesters as “stupid white hippies” and told them to “take a nap.”
The backlash was overwhelming. A Washington Post–Schar School poll this week showed nearly 80% of D.C. residents oppose the federal takeover, with 61% saying it makes them feel less safe.
But Washington is only the beginning, as this week Trump confirmed he has Chicago and New York set in his sights, boasting to reporters: “They are screaming for us to come. African-American ladies, beautiful ladies, are saying, ‘Please, President Trump, come to Chicago, please.’”
Declaring himself the nation’s “top law enforcement officer”, he’s now preparing to send 1,700 National Guard troops across 19 states for crime crackdowns and mass deportation support - a sweeping escalation critics say blurs the line between policing and political theater, between public safety and occupation.
The self-styled peacemaker can boast all he wants about ending “six wars” abroad, but you can’t expect a Peace Prize when you’ve literally declared war on your own people.
✊ The Fight For Democracy
But Trump’s not just at war with the American people - he’s at war with democracy itself.
In his Oval Office meeting with Zelensky this week, Trump marvelled at how Ukraine had been forced to suspend its elections during martial law, because with millions displaced, cities under fire, and soldiers at war, a free and fair vote would be logistically impossible.
“So you’re saying, during the war you can’t have elections,” Trump mused. “So let me just say, three-and-a-half years from now, so you mean if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections.” Zelenskyy laughed, but the rest of America didn’t. It was a throwaway line testing the guardrails, half-joke, half-trial balloon - typical Trump, always sizing up how much reality can be bent if you grin while doing it.
Then Trump announced plans for an executive order banning mail-in ballots and electronic voting machines ahead of the 2026 midterms, calling them “highly inaccurate, very expensive, and seriously controversial.”
This wasn’t his first swing; back in March, he signed an initial order aimed at tossing out mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, imposing strict proof-of-citizenship rules, and tightening federal control over elections, and lawsuits hit before the ink was dry. Now he’s going further, targeting voting machines in a way Ohio officials warn could decertify their entire system overnight.
The logic behind the move to ban voting by mail got even looser when Trump blurted, “If you have mail-in voting, you’re not going to have many Democrats get elected.” Apparently he meant the opposite, but the sentence crashed mid-takeoff, one more Trumpism on the long road to whatever point he thought he was making. The intent, though, was unmistakable: mail-in voting helps Democrats, so it must be abolished - democracy bent around the needs of one man’s scoreboard.
🤠 Texas Hostage Politics
And it’s not just Trump attacking democracy, his Republican loyalists are at it too.
In Texas, the GOP has spent months trying to ram through a radical redistricting plan designed to cement single-party control. Democrats staged a dramatic walkout earlier this summer to block the vote, fleeing the state to deny Republicans the quorum needed to pass it. Governor Greg Abbott threatened arrests while Trump allies cheered the plan as a way to “restore order” after years of close races in once-competitive districts.
When Democrats finally returned last week, Republicans pounced. House Speaker Dustin Burrows imposed a new rule: any Democrat who wanted to leave the Capitol would first have to sign a “permission slip” agreeing to be escorted by the Department of Public Safety. The stated goal was to prevent another walkout, but the real effect was to put duly elected lawmakers under what amounted to house arrest in their own statehouse.
That’s when Texas Rep. Nicole Collier said no. “I’m not going to be part of that process that gives [Trump] more reinforcement to harm my community and my people,” she told reporters, refusing to sign the slip. As punishment, she was locked inside the House chamber, literally confined until she agreed to surrender her freedom of movement to state police.
Collier spent two nights sleeping on the House floor with a chair, a blanket, and a livestream documenting her confinement, turning the standoff into a national story.
Even after the standoff made national headlines, Republicans only softened the rule halfway: Collier can now walk around inside the Capitol, but she still cannot leave the building unless she signs the escort form she has called unconstitutional. Other Democrats tore up their permission slips in solidarity, and Collier filed a habeas corpus petition accusing GOP leaders of illegal confinement, while supporters were arrested in the rotunda for protesting the restriction.
Even with Democrats still protesting, Republicans pushed the plan through anyway, and on Wednesday, the Texas House approved new congressional maps designed to create up to five more Republican-leaning seats ahead of the 2026 midterms. Civil rights groups warn the maps dilute minority voting power and will face immediate legal challenges, but Texas Republicans believe that the power grab comes first, democracy second.
🥊 California Fights Back
But the GOP’s Texas blitz didn’t go unanswered. Within 48 hours, California Democrats launched a counterstrike of their own.
Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation fast-tracking a special November election to redraw California’s congressional maps - a move designed to flip up to five Republican-held seats by 2026.
Former President Barack Obama threw his weight behind the plan, calling it a necessary response to what he called “an assault on representative government” by Texas and Trump-aligned Republicans.
The new California maps will override the state’s usual independent redistricting process, a decision already sparking legal threats from Republicans. But Democrats argue the GOP’s mid-decade stunt in Texas left them no choice: it was either fight back or let one-party gerrymandering go unanswered.
What began as a state-level skirmish has now exploded into a national redistricting war, with the future balance of Congress on the line.
And if you’re wondering what the stars have to say about how the 2026 midterms will play out, I’ve written about it at length HERE. It’s worth a read!
👑 The Cracks in the Crown
Even before September’s eclipses slam the sky shut, the first fractures in Trump’s empire are already spreading.
In New Jersey this week, a panel of federal judges finally called time on his power play to install personal lawyer Alina Habba as U.S. Attorney. They ruled her entire tenure illegal as of July 1, blasting the scheme as a violation of federal appointment rules.
Further south, Judge Kathleen Williams ordered “Alligator Alcatraz,” Trump’s Everglades migrant detention center, dismantled within 60 days, siding with environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe who argued it trampled sacred land and skipped federal reviews. Florida appealed, but for now, the guard towers come down.
Meanwhile in Tennessee, Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes freed Kilmar Abrego García, the wrongly deported father separated from his family for months after being sent to an El Salvador prison, then returned, then arrested on a trumped-up smuggling charge. She ordered the government to give 72 hours’ notice before any future deportation attempt - a direct rebuke to Trump’s immigration crackdown.
And this week Newsmax joined Fox News in coughing up millions for spreading Trump’s 2020 lies, paying Dominion $67 million to settle defamation claims - another brick knocked loose after Fox’s jaw-dropping $787.5 million payout last year.
None of these blows alone would topple a king, but together they are the dragon’s smoke curling under the door - rulings, reversals, and financial hits stacking like storm clouds on the horizon. The gold ceilings won’t hold. The reckoning is already on its way. September’s eclipses wait just ahead like teeth in the dark.
The dragon is rising, and the old world is running out of places to hide.
🔮 What Lies Ahead: Eclipse Season Approaches
In the week ahead, the script sharpens its quill. Virgo season has only just begun, and already the sky leans forward like a writer at the edge of the page.
This week hums with the tension of revelations still half-written. The Sun squares Uranus on the 24th - a jolt through governments and power brokers alike, the kind that rattles doors in Pentagon basements and congressional backrooms. The Epstein hearings grind on, promising the slow drip of rot from the corridors of power. Trump’s self-set two-week clock on Russia and Ukraine ticks louder, while the tanks around Gaza edge forward under a darkening sky, as if history itself is holding its breath before September brings judgment.
Venus storms through Leo mid-week, striking chords with Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and finally Pluto - the whole orchestra of order, rebellion, dream, and downfall. Expect politics to play this in real time: a whistleblower here, a leaked transcript there, markets swaying as leaders stumble off-script.
By the 28th, Jupiter leans in toward Lilith, whispering promises of liberation for voices long buried - the kind of aspect that sets the stage for September’s UN assembly flashpoints, where powerful nations may finally speak words others fought to silence.
And so the week ahead feels less like closure, more like the tightening prelude: the violins rising, the generals pacing, the scribes at the ready. Virgo season promises no comfort, only precision. And in this story, every move counts before the eclipses demand their due.
These days are only the preludes. September’s eclipses gather like storm fronts - the Pisces Moon on the 7th washing away illusions, the Virgo Sun on the 21st carving truths too sharp to spin. Then October drags Pluto to the door, breaking seals that held for decades.
And beyond, February 2026 glows as the Genesis Portal, the hinge where one age dies and another draws breath.
For now, the lock is turning, the fuse is lit - this is the breath the world takes before the coming storm arrives.
🐉 The Dragon’s Gift
This week, though the dragon may have stirred, it does not rise to burn for burning’s sake. It comes because the old scaffolding won’t hold, because the lies, the cruelty, the hollow thrones can’t be carried into what comes next.
September’s eclipses aren’t here to end the story. They’re here to rip away what was never strong enough to last, so the new world has room to breathe. When the ground shakes and the headlines crack, when kings bellow and palaces fall, it can feel like chaos has won.
But the dragon knows better.
Reckoning isn’t ruin - it’s release.
So let it come. Let the brittle empires break and let the noise and the gold and the posturing fall to dust, because what falls away now was never the future anyway. What survives the fire will be what’s worth building on, and that is where the next age begins.
So this week, remember: you are not called to match the swirling chaos. You are called to withstand it, and to be the still ground when the old world shakes itself apart.
Stand steady.
Stand true.
Let the noise rise and the brittle things fall if they must.
The future won’t be built by those who panic at the smoke or resist the dragon’s fire. It will be built by those who remain when the burning ends, clear-eyed and unshaken.
You are here to be the ground the next world will rise from.
(And if you need some help staying grounded through it all, come join me in the Daily Lighthouse. I’ll be there, each day with you.)
See you next Sunday - until then, stay kind, stay fierce, and stay human.
The tacky crap spray painted gold to try and show “opulence” really sums it all up. It’s Temu dictator chic.
I’m sure you know the Crowns influence on the US still right? This might help make more sense of what’s going on, and it goes way deeper than Trump… who is the perfect archer up for a dying empire, ànd it’s not the US empire it’s the 3 city states of evil empire or the Vatican, London ànd Washington…
https://open.substack.com/pub/shifthapens/p/the-corporate-grid-of-quebeccanada?r=b8pvb&utm_medium=ios
With this said your discussion on the Dragon really peeked my interest and was wondering if you’ve heard of the Phoenix reset also mentioned a little in my article
From Archaixs research?