Astrology, Prediction and Comment

There has been a huge explosion in Beirut.  So huge that you can see it on the earthquake maps, with a magniture of 3.3.  Of course I didn’t predict it, because I wasn’t looking.  If I had been looking, I might almost have got it, because in retrospect the signature was clear.  Maybe I wouldn’t have predicted a bomb, but there was clear evidence of violent and explosive events.

The explosion happened in Beirut, Lebanon, at 6.08 pm local time, on August 4.  The first thing one notices is that the planet Uranus is on the IC, with an orb of around 2 degrees.  Uranus is the planet of earthquakes, and this signature is classic.  The Hiroshima bomb, almost exactly 75 years ago, had Uranus on the MC.  The chart also has an exact square between Mars at 19 47 Aries and Jupiter at 19 44 Capricorn.  The astrologer Charles Carter regarded stressful Mars-Jupiter aspects as being the worst in the book, and this is a reminder that Jupiter’s influence isn’t always positive.  It expands everything it touches, and it is therefore symbolic of violent events.

What is really interesting about the chart is the hypothetical planet Zeus.  This planet is like Jupiter, but it is probably more wild and primal.  Alfred Witte associated Zeus with explosions and gunshots.  And sure enough, Zeus at 20 5 Libra, was closely aspected to Mars and Jupiter.  Indeed there is a T square – Zeus opposition Mars, squaring Jupiter.  It is this configuration that signalled the explosion, noting that Jupiter was exactly conjunct the Capricorn Ascendant.

For me this is the real importance of the chart.  It demonstrates that we can’t ignore Witte’s hypothetical planets.  The logic for using these planets is crazy, but time and again we see their power.

This week there was news of a grizzly killing.  Fahim Saleh was a tech entrepreneur, who was attacked inside his apartment block and cut into pieces.  At first it seemed like a sophisticated contract killing, but now the main suspect is his personal assistant, Tyrese Haspil.  Tyrese Haspil is accused of murdering Saleh, after embezzling tens of thousands of dollars from him.  The story goes that when Saleh found out about the missing money, he didn’t go to the police, but instead, according to the New York Times, “offered to arrange a way for his former employee to work off his debt in what amounted to a payment plan”.

So what about the astrology?  I don’t have the birth times for the two men, so I will have to set the charts for midday, for their dates of birth.  Fahim Saleh was born on December 12 1986, in Saudi Arabia.  I had to check this on his Facebook page, because some sources gave September 23 1986.  From what I have found on the internet, Tyrese Haspil was born on January 21 1999, in the US.  Here is Saleh’s horoscope:

Fahim Saleh was a Sagittarius, with the Sun, Mercury and Saturn in this sign.  He seemed to have been a typical Sagittarian.  He had lots of ideas, and he was interested in setting up businesses across the world, particularly in Nigeria and Bangladesh.  At the same time, he was very generous – indeed, his generousity towards his assistant may have cost him his life.

The energetic nature of his personality is further boosted by a conjunction between Mars and Jupiter, in Pisces.  There is a danger, however, that he took things too far.  And in terms of business, he may have been over-ambitious.  It is also worth noting that he had the Sun conjunct Uranus.  It is a conjunction that is dramatic and explosive, and things could have happened very quicky in his life.

His Mars-Jupiter conjunction is squared by Saturn.  In spite of all his optimism, there is a sense of frustration.  He couldn’t do everything he wanted, and at some level he may have felt blocked.  The Mars-Saturn square is also connected with death, and in terms of his murder on July 13 2020, we should be looking for triggering events.

On the day of his death, solar arc directed Pluto was at 13 degrees and 7 minutes Sagittarius, give or take 30 minutes, as we don’t know his time of birth.  This means that directed Pluto was aspecting the Mars-Jupiter-Saturn complex, by conjunction and square.  This suggests an intense, hidden and dramatic event.

Moving to the horoscope of Tyrese Haspil, we are dealing with an Aquarius:

The Sun in Aquarius is conjunct Neptune.  The Sun-Neptune conjunction can have a deceptive quality, and there can be a tendency to live a fantasy life.  At the same time, he’s lucky – the Moon conjunct Jupiter in Pisces is a great aspect.  In spite of having a difficult upbringing, he became the personal assistant of a successful entrepreneur.  .

Though the key aspect is the Mars-Saturn opposition.  Mars and Saturn are the death-pair, and Haspil has been charged with murder.  His employer also had a stressful Mars-Saturn aspect, and through their professional relationship the symbolism of the planets played out.  In fact, Haspil’s Mars-Saturn opposition aspected Saleh’s Mars and Saturn by semisquare and sesquiquadrate.  Put another way, Saleh’s Mars-Saturn midpoint was at 27 degrees and 7 minutes, Capricorn while Haspil’s is at 27 degrees 38 minutes Capricorn.  The midpoints are only 31 minutes apart, assuming a midday birthtime.

The linkage between the two Mars-Saturn midpoints is the key piece of synastry between the two charts, in the sense that it created the possibility of a fatal outcome.  And even if it turns out that Haspil is innocent, the connection still plays out, because their relationship will always be associated with Saleh’s murder.

I just wanted to clarify my previous article on the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction.  As I have discussed, Jupiter and Saturn are moving towards a conjunction, which becomes exact on December 21 2020.  The world is moving towards recession and depression.  It would have happened without COVID-19, but the virus accelerated the pace.

Jupiter and Saturn are important planets when considering the business cycle, because they embody the principles of expansion and contraction.  From the Earth’s perspective, there are periods in their orbit where they go backwards, and this means that their angle of separation doesn’t move in a straight line.  From the perspective of 2020, the year started with Jupiter and Saturn moving steadly towards the conjunction, and on May 19 they reached their peak closeness, at 4.68 degrees.  This was a local minima, and from May 19 the planets started moving further apart.  We can therefore see the period from January 1 to May 19 as being the first phase of the disaster, with the world and its economy moving to the brink.

From May 19 to August 30 Jupiter and Saturn are moving apart.  In many quarters there is a feeling of relief, that the world is now recovering.  This particularly applies to the markets, but people in general are thinking that they can get back to work, as the situation normalizes.  However, it’s a zone of false optimism.  After August 30 Jupiter and Saturn move rapidly towards their December 21 conjunction.  It is at this stage that it becomes clear that there is no recovery, regardless of COVID, and that we need to prepare for the absolute worst.  And after December 21 we’ll start to discover what the absolute worst really is.

We’re in a new paradigm, right?  The stock market is going to keep going up, because central banks are going to keep printing money.  This is the new normal, and we can keep ploughing our money into the markets, with no risk of losing.  We also had a new paradigm in late 1999 and early 2000.  The dot coms changed everything, and the internet was here to stay.  Crazy valuations were OK, because the future was great.

I’m not an economist, so maybe I have got it wrong.  This time it might really be different.  However, the stock market fervour in 2020 seems very similar to 2000.  Everyone was a stock market genius, provided they had the guts to plough their money into the lastest hot stock.  And it is all happening while Jupiter and Saturn are working their magic.

In astrology Jupiter and Saturn are the Great Chronocrators, the rulers of time.  Jupiter is the principle of expansion, Saturn the principle of contraction.  Every 20 years they make a conjunction, and this can have a big impact on culture and economics.  Looking back to 2000, there was a conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn on May 28, and to understand what went on, we can graph the angular separation of the two planets:

This graph is for the first half of 2000.  The black line is the angular separation of Jupiter and Saturn.  At the beginning of the year the angular separation was around 15 degrees, and on May 28, when the planets were conjunct, it was zero.  Through the first months of 2000, as the planets moved closer together, the stock market raced higher.  Then, on March 10 2000, the NASDAQ index of technology shares peaked.  That’s the horizontal red line.  We can see this in tabular form, where the second column is Jupiter’s position, the third column Saturn’s:

The two planets were 8.75 degrees apart when the NASDAQ peaked.  The index then declined, on and off, for three years. This means that as the planets came closer together, the markets became increasingly vulnerable to a shock.  Jupiter, the planet of expansion, was running into Saturn, the planet of cold reality.

Moving on twenty years, we can look at Jupiter and Saturn’s angular separation over the course of 2020:

As in 2000, Jupiter and Saturn started 2020 being around 15 degrees apart.  Through until late February the NASDAQ was rising, and then, with Jupiter and Saturn 9.5 degrees apart, it peaked, and continued falling for a month.  By the time it stopped falling, the two planets were seven degrees apart.  We then have the question of why it stopped falling, when Jupiter and Saturn were moving closer and closer together, reaching their peak proximity on May 19, at 4.68 degrees.  I think part of the reason was that in the short-term, the move was never going to complete.  The rate at which Jupiter and Saturn were approaching each other was slowing down, and from May 19 onwards they started moving further apart.  Also, the activities of politicians and central bankers was enough to avert a more serious crisis.  This underlines the fact that although humans can’t avoid their fate, they can often postpone it.

Right now, in July 2020, Jupiter and Saturn are moving further and further apart.  This is why many people believe that the crisis is over.  The pressure on Jupiter is dissipating, and the NASDAQ is moving to new highs.  However, it is rather like a horror file.  There is always a stage in the film when the heroine feels she can relax.  She has escaped the supernatural monster, and things can return to normal.  And that’s the point where the nightmare starts all over again, only this time it is ten times worse.  When we look at the graph, we see that in the late summer Jupiter and Saturn have a peak distance from one another, and they then pick up speed, culminating in a conjunction on December 21.  Here’s a table, showing the point of maximum distance:

On August 30 2020 Jupiter and Saturn are at the point of maximum separation.  After August 30, we have the final run-up to the December conjunction.  August 30 is a Sunday, and in the US it is a week short of Labor Day.  This is the moment that things start getting serious, when it may be difficult to stave off the inevitable.  August 30 is also the start of the crash season – the autumn being the most dangerous time of the year for the stock market.  At this stage I am not going to make any detailed forecast, but I do thing that the twists and turns of the Jupiter-Saturn cycle provide the mood music for the economic and social drama that’s unfolding before us.