Only a few days ago I was looking at the horoscope of Ajmal Kasab, the Islamic terrorist who took part in the devastating attack on Mumbai, in November 2008. He was a Cancerian, though I remarked that Cancer isn’t a sign one normally associates with terrorist activity.
Meanwhile, there was the attempt to explode a bomb in New York. To be more specific, a sports utility vehicle was packed with gasoline and propane, and parked in Times Square, but the detonation device failed.
A few days later the chief suspect for this failed attack was arrested, as he was attempting to fly out of America, to Pakistan.
The suspect’s name is Faisal Shahzad. And guess what? He’s a Cancerian, born on June 30 1979.
He is rather different from Ajmal Kasab. He comes from a reasonably well-off family – his father was a senior officer in the Pakistani Air Force – and he has American college degrees. Indeed, he’s a naturalised US citizen.
It is rather difficult to make sense of Faisal Shahzad’s horoscope. The sign Cancer is traditionally known as one of the ‘mute’ signs, along with Scorpio and Pisces. The rationale being that crabs, scorpions and fish don’t make much noise. And it would seem that Faisal Shahzad had something of a double life, being outwardly relatively normal, and all the while planning his terrorist attack.
Possibly the most important feature of his horoscope is a conjunction between the Moon and Saturn, in the sign Virgo. This conjunction can be very concerned about rituals and routines, and it can also be a bit strange. It wants things done in a particular way, and when things aren’t right it can get upset.
And to understand what was going on with Faisal Shahzad, we have to think about his Saturn Return. The Saturn Return is the time when Saturn returns to the place is was when we were born – and this will happen just before our thirtieth birthday. Though really, it should be regarded as a phase, rather than a precise moment in time.
Faisal Shahzad’s actual Saturn Return happened in August 2008, and this would perhaps have been a time when he had to face up to what he had and hadn’t done with his life. It could have been at this stage that he started making important decisions, that lead him into terrorism.
The following Summer, in May 2009, he quit his job. That month the planet Saturn came to a standstill, reasonably close to his Moon-Saturn conjunction. In other words, it was another Saturn Return experience.
It was also the peak of a seven or eight year period called ’sadhesati’ in Indian astrology, when Saturn is passing close to someone’s Moon. As I described in a previous article, in can be very difficult, and in extreme cases one can lose everything. For Faisal Shahzad, this period started in 2004 and ends in 2012.
Still, this doesn’t explain why he became a terrorist. It’s possible that he had a gullible streak. In his horoscope Venus, the planet of relationships, is making a stressful, 180-degree aspect to Neptune, the planet of deception. So maybe he was easy to manipulate?
There is also the state of Faisal Shahzad’s Mars. It’s in Gemini, moving towards a 90-degree aspect with Saturn. This suggests a person who is frustrated, who finds it difficult to express himself in a constructive way. At the same time, Mars is aspecting the Uranus-Neptune midpoint, which is a further indication that he felt that the roads in front of him were blocked.
Under these circumstances he might have been attracted to the quick-fix of bombs and guns, though fortunately for New Yorkers, his dysfunctional Mars made him a less than perfect bomb-maker.
Copyright © 2010 Archie Dunlop
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