The United Kingdom has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, and illegal possession of a handgun is punishable with a mandatory five year prison sentence. However this doesn’t mean that the country is immune to gun crime. Criminals find it easy to get hold of firearms, and there’s still the occasional massacre. Like what happened yesterday, June 2.
The perpetrator was a fifty-two year old taxi driver called Derrick Bird, who lived and worked in the county of Cumbria, in North West England. He went on the rampage with a rifle and perhaps also a shotgun, and killed at least twelve people. From the press reports I have read, he had no criminal history, and his life preceding the event was unremarkable.
Derrick Bird was born towards the end of 1957, probably on October 8, which would make him a Libran. I can’t be certain of the birth date, but for the purposes of this article I’ll use it.
If we assume that Derrick Bird was indeed born on October 8 1957, then his Sun was in Libra. Traditionally this is a peace-loving sign, that you wouldn’t associate with murderous rampages. However if a Libran does become a murderer, it might have something to do with this sign’s reluctance to assert itself. Perhaps we’re talking about someone who had spent his whole life compromising, even being meek and mild, and they just can’t stand it any more?
Yet the potential for violence is very clear in Derrick Bird’s horoscope. His Libran Sun is conjunct both Mars and Jupiter. Mars is the planet of violence, while Jupiter is the planet of excess. So if this man got annoyed, he was quite capable of causing huge amounts of damage.
Furthermore, he was born on the day of a Full Moon, a Full Moon that was linked to this Mars-Jupiter conjunction. This means that Derrick Bentley was subject to emotional swings, and small events could be blown up into something very big.
When the shootings started, at 10.35 am yesterday morning (June 2), Mars was reasonably close to the Ascendant, opposition to Neptune. Mars-Neptune aspects are often about powerlessness – being in a situation where one doesn’t know how to respond. Under these circumstance, massive violence can seem the only way out.
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As a side note, the town of Whitehaven is close to Sellafield, Britain’s most famous nuclear reactor. In 1957, at the time of Derrick Bird’s birth, the reactor was called Windscale. And on October 10 1957, only two days after his birth, there was the famous Windscale Fire, which spewed radioactive material over the surrounding countryside. Prior to Three Mile Island, it was the Western World’s worst nuclear accident. One could then argue that early October of 1957 saw two disasters for Cumbria (or Cumberland, as it was then called). Firstly the Windscale Fire, secondly the birth of Derrick Bird.
Copyright © 2010 Archie Dunlop
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Hi there.
I featured you on the Astro Dispatch here:
http://www.astrodispatch.com/
Hope you get some hits!
Hi, Elsa!
Thanks very much for link. I’ll put up a link to your site on my right hand column.
Daily Telegraph today has a lot of info about it, including the observation that it was a quarrel about his seriously ill mother’s WILL !! 8th house ruled by pluto. What is the Lord of the Underworld doing in all this?
Annabel,
We don’t have a time of birth for Derrick Bird, and I’m not even a hundred percent sure I’ve got his date of birth right, in the sense that my only source is Wikipedia, and when I use Wikipedia I like to have a confirming reference. The only thing of real, immediate interest, aside from Mars being in the First House, opposition Neptune, is Sun square the Mars-Saturn midpoint.
What are you people doing? This man just killed over a dozen people and you’re debating whether or not his ’star sign’ reflects what he did. Besides, have some respect.
Tom,
Sorry to have caused offence, but I’m afraid this is the nature of astrologers and astrology.
Even the most fluffy, new age and humanitarian astrologers will analyse deaths and disasters within hours of them happening. There’s always a rush to find the exact time and date of the event.
Of course before the internet it was a private matter. The public at large didn’t know what astrologers were discussing at their meetings, and amongst themselves. With the internet, and websites such as mine, things have changed.
On a more serious note, in some cases astrology could potentially prevent disasters like this from happing. It’s difficult to tell with Derrick Bird’s horoscope, especially as I don’t have this time of birth, but in the case of the recent Polish air disaster, it’s quite clear to me that the pilot had a dangerous horoscope, and he should not have been allowed to fly such an important civilian mission.
Furthermore, there are many articles in the press analysing Derrick Bird’s personality. I take the view that astrology is an absolutely valid method of trying to analyse a person’s character, so are you saying that it’s disrespectful to analyse a murderer’s personality, until a significant period of time has passed since his or her crime?
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