If you have any interest in current affairs, you’ll know that some very nasty things are happening in Syria. The Syrian government, under the leadership of President Bashar al-Assad, is putting down a popular revolt with appalling brutality, and the siege of Homs has been a particular focus of global revulsion.
One wonders, logically, what the Syrian leadership are thinking. If you were running a country, and you were so unpopular that your people were rising up against you, wouldn’t you just leave? You certainly wouldn’t want to kill people by the thousand, especially if they were non-combatants, such as young children.
This makes one wonder about Bashar al-Assad. When I read his biography, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. He is the second son of Hafez al-Assad, a long-serving president of Syria, who was known for his brutality. It was his older brother Bassel that was being groomed for the top job, and Bashar was allowed to get on with his studies, which was just as well, because he wasn’t interested in politics. He qualified as a doctor, then moved to London to study ophthalmology – in other words eye medicine.
This fits with Bashar al-Assad’s horoscope. He was born on September 11 1965, making him a Virgo, and Virgoans can make very good doctors. They have a natural understanding of the human body, and they notice every detail. So if you had an eye problem, and were treated by Bashar al-Assad, I am sure that you would be in good hands.
Furthermore, al-Assad’s Sun in Virgo is making a favourable aspect to Mars in Scorpio. Mars functions very well in Scorpio, and in astrology it’s the natural significator of surgery. So if he had practised as an eye surgeon, he would have been just the man to cut out your cataracts.
Unfortunately it didn’t work to plan. In 1994 his brother Bassel was killed in a car crash, and Bashar had to switch his attention to politics. This perhaps illustrates the sense of duty that’s so common to Virgos. His brother was dead, and he had to abandon his vocation in favour of his family’s wishes. Then six years later his father died, and he quickly became president.
So one of the problems of being a Virgo, from a moral point of view, is that you often do what is expected of you.
Take Nazi general Wilhelm Keitel, who was also a Virgo. Hitler told him to institute a policy in Nazi-occupied territories called ‘nacht und nebel’, or ‘night and fog’. This was the policy of arbitrarily arresting thousands of people, and often executing them, or sending them to concentration camps. It was a policy that was designed to intimidate, and Keitel efficiently put this policy into action. Later, when Germany lost the war, and Keitel was in the dock at the Nuremberg Trials, he infamously said that he was just following orders. Typical Virgo, doing what he is was told, and losing sight of the moral picture. His excuse didn’t save him from the hangman.
I suspect that Bashar al-Assad is in a similar situation to Wilhelm Keitel. He may be president, but he is not necessarily the one calling the shots. There are powerful figures in the Syrian hierarchy who have no qualms about using brutal repression, and being a Virgo, al-Assad feels a need to do what he is told, and be his father’s son. The fact that he was trained to heal people rather than acquiesce to their killing gets explained away in the line of duty.
Copyright © 2012 Archie Dunlop
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