Astrology, Prediction and Comment

Now that the dust is settling, it seems that the late Polish President, Lech Kaczyński, must take a certain amount of responsibility for the plane crash which killed him, his wife, as well as a chunk of the Polish elite.  I would argue that this has much to do with the conjunction between the Sun and Uranus in his horoscope.

I’ve never actually met  Lech Kaczyński, though I did get within a few yards of him in early 2003, when he was Mayor of Warsaw.  It was during an exhibition in Warsaw’s Palace of Culture, that focused on the victims of Stalinism.

Lech Kaczyński was indeed a vocal critic of communism, and he had a distrust of the current regime in Russia.  In particular, he seemed to have a problem with the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin.

In 2008, during Russia’s war with Georgia, Lech Kaczyński, along with leaders from the Ukraine and the Baltic States, flew to Georgia, in a gesture of solidarity.

As the plane came into land at Tbilisi airport – Tbilisi being the capital of Georgia – the pilot took the view that the landing was too dangerous.  Lech Kaczyński disagreed, and told the pilot to land anyway.  The pilot refused, and took the plane to Azerbaijan.

So Lech Kaczyński had a reckless streak, and he was capable of meddling in things that he didn’t properly understand.

Let us also remember why Lech Kaczyński embarked on his last and fatal flight.  It was to commemorate the victims of the Katyn Forest massacre, which happened seventy years earlier, in which over twenty thousand Poles were killed.

The main commemorations had been a few days earlier, attended by Vladimir Putin and Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister.

For one reason or another Lech Kaczyński wasn’t invited to this commemoration, and it’s doubtful that he would have wanted anything to do with a ceremony that Vladimir Putin was involved in.  No, he wanted a Polish show, that the Russians had as little to do with as possible.

We can now start to understand the psychological background of the plane crash.  Lech Kaczyński was on a mission to commemorate the Katyn Forest massacre, on his own terms.  When the pilot came into land at Smolensk, he ignored the advise of traffic control to divert to Minsk or Moscow.  This would have spoilt everything – not just in terms of timing, but also it would have been an admission that the Russians had some control over the proceedings.

There is additionally the question of whether or not Lech Kaczyński pressurised the pilot to ignore the dangers, and land at Smolensk.  Even if Lech Kaczyński hadn’t directly pressurised the pilot, there was perhaps a culture where people did what they were told, especially on such an important mission.  After all, the pilot on the Georgia mission got some heavy criticism for playing safe, even though he was eventually awarded a medal for his conduct.

We really can see Lech Kaczyński’s Sun-Uranus conjunction at work.  This conjunction is very stubborn, and is not afraid of conflict.  The concept of independence is also an important feature of it.  He’s not going to get cuddly with the Russians, he’s going to have his own commemoration of the Katyn Forest massacre and he’s not going to divert a flight just because conditions on the ground are dangerous.

So I would argue that the Sun-Uranus conjunction, that was in operation at the time of Lech Kaczyński’s birth on June 18 1949, in some respects led to the plane crash that killed him.

Further evidence is provided by looking at the midpoints.

At midday on June 18 1949 the Sun was at 26 degrees 51 minutes Gemini and Uranus was at zero degrees 30  minutes Cancer.  So the Sun-Uranus midpoint was at 28 degrees 40 minutes Gemini.

At the time of the plane crash, on April 10 2010, Saturn was at 29 degrees 49 minutes Virgo and Uranus was at 27 degrees 55 minutes Pisces.  This means that both planets were making stressful, 90-degree aspects to Lech Kaczyński’s Sun-Uranus conjunction.

The midpoint between Saturn and Uranus, on April 10 2010, was 28 degrees 52 minutes Sagittarius – almost exactly 180 degrees from the midpoint of the Sun and Uranus on June 18 1949, that was at at 28 degrees 40 minutes Gemini.

We can therefore say that the full, malefic potential of Lech Kaczyński’s Sun-Uranus conjunction was manifesting on the day of his death.  Recklessness, stubbornness, and an independent-mindedness that was dangerous rather than noble.  As astrologers are so fond of saying, ‘character is destiny’, and sometimes that destiny can be disastrous.

I see that in California Rodney Alcala has just been convicted of the murder of four women and a girl in the late 1970s.

He apparently has a high IQ and was a keen photographer.  In 1978 he was a winning contestant in a TV show called The Dating Game, in which he was ‘Bachelor Number One’.

Rodney Alcala has spent much of his life in prison, and in the late 1960s was convicted of attacking a child.

According to Orange County Sheriff’s Department, Rodney Alcala was born on August 23 1943.  This means that we don’t know whether he was a Leo or a Virgo – the Sun changed sign at 6.55 pm, Central Standard Time.  So he would have been a Leo if he was born before 6.55 pm, a Virgo if born after.  Here is his horoscope:

I’m not going to seriously speculate on whether Rodney Alcala is a Leo or a Virgo, though given the change-over time, there’s about an 80% chance of him being a Leo.  If you look at courtroom pictures of him, his long, grey hair is certainly very striking, more Leonine than Virgoan.

And whichever side of 6.55 pm he was born, the Sun was close to Regulus, the Royal Star.  This star puts people in the public eye, and at the very least gives them fifteen minutes of fame.  Hence his appearance on a popular TV show.

Looking at the details of Rodney Alcala’s horoscope, it’s interesting that he has got no planets in Water signs – in other words in Cancer, Scorpio or Pisces.

This perhaps tells us what kind of serial killer he is.  The Water signs are connected with the emotions, and people with no Water can sometimes be detached from other people’s suffering – indeed there can be a complete inability to empathise.

At the same time, Rodney Alcala has a close, 90-degree aspect between the Sun and Mars.  This aspect can be very violent, and it speaks of an inner rage, that very rarely gets revealed.  Yet when it does come out, there are terrible consequences.

There’s then the question of why Rodney Alcala chose to target women.  Well, in his horoscope Venus, the planet of women, is in Virgo, making a stressful aspect to Saturn in Gemini.  He might have been good at dating games, but his real life experience of women was probably very negative, and there must surely have been feelings of frustration and anger.  Yet his lack of Water made it very difficult for him to express these feelings in a normal way.

We can go deeper if we want.  All of us are emotional beings, and it’s through our emotions that we link with the various parts of our personality.  Where emotion is lacking, there’s a chance of disconnection, of different parts of the personality doing their own thing.  In this way the rage of Rodney Alcala’s Sun-Mars aspect could roar into life, all by itself.  And it couldn’t easily be stopped, because there wasn’t much in the way of emotional control – which helps explain why he killed so many people.

I’ll be honest. I’m not a dog person. In fact I don’t like animals, which is why I’m a vegetarian. I’ve childhood memories of getting asthma attacks because of dogs, cats and horses, and as far as I’m concerned humans and animals should be kept apart.

That doesn’t mean I’m nasty to animals. Far from it. If I see a large spider I’ll go out of my way to remove it, to a safe, spider-friendly place. Even though I suffer from mild to moderate arachnophobia.

That means putting a jar over the spider, without damaging its legs. Then gently sliding a piece of paper under the jar, and crunching the paper around the top, before turning the jar the right way up – so allowing me to take the offending arachnid somewhere safe.

My detached, Gemini relationship to the animal world seemed fine, until Saturn went into my Sixth House. Sorry about the jargon, I’d better translate that into English…

Gemini is a very human sign. A lot of Geminis don’t like animals. They’re too complicated, and I’ve heard another Gemini describe pets as being ’emotional furniture’.

As to the Sixth House, it’s a sector of the horoscope immediately below the Western Horizon. Traditionally it’s associated with small animals, from the size of a goat downwards.

Saturn is the planet of Karma, responsibility and spiritual lessons. So when Saturn moved into my Sixth House in 2007 – it stays here until around 2012 – I might have to deal with issues around small animals.

And so it happened. We were in Slovakia in the Spring, and my wife thought we should get a souvenir from this mountainous, Central European country.

A bottle of slivovica, the local plum brandy, would have been a good choice, but that just wasn’t good enough. It had to be a slovensky čuvač (pronounced choovach), the national dog.

Now, a slovensky čuvač is not to be taken lightly. It’s traditionally used by Slovak shepherds to protect their flocks from bears and wolves. Apparently it bonds with the sheep, and because of its white colour it merges with the flock.

A wolf comes, thinking it’s got an easy meal, then a čuvač emerges out of the darkness, having the advantage of surprise.

In practice the wolf will be slightly bigger than the čuvač, and a bear of course will be much bigger. However a predator will probably regard a fight with the čuvač as being too much effort, and in most cases will seek easier pickings.

As you will have now gathered, a čuvač is a completely unsuitable family pet, even though its advocates claim that it’s fiercely loyal and also very good with children.

If you’re an asthmatic, having a čuvač is suicidal. The animal’s got a thick, white coat, which it’s shedding the whole time. All very well for keeping warm in a mountain cave – it can sleep in temperatures as low as minus twenty degrees centigrade – but for indoor use, with allergic people around, it’s crazy.

When we drove up into the Tatra mountains to buy the dog, we weren’t thinking about my allergies. It was our four year old son we were worried about. What if he was allergic? We’d then have to take the dog back.

Higher and higher we drove, towards the mountainous border between Poland and Slovakia. In fact, the Tatras are part of the Carpathian mountains, that long mountain range that starts in eastern Austria and finishes in Transylvania.

There was still snow on the ground, and the road to the breeder’s compound had only very recently become passable. It was easy to forget the allergies, and to pretend one was in a Dracula movie.

In this light, the čuvač is most alert, and most aggressive, at sunset, when predators are most active. If the čuvač is silent, that’s a sure sign that the vampires are somewhere else.

We bought the čuvač, put her in the back of our battered Volvo estate, and returned to Bratislava, the Slovak capital. Half an hour into the journey I knew that I was allergic to the dog, because I could feel my lungs tightening. But it was too late to say anything.

I could have set up a horoscope for the precise moment we took delivery of the čuvač, but I forgot to take note of the time. Anyway, what really matters, from an astrological point of view, is the chart of the dog’s birth. And according to the breeder, she was born on the morning of December 13 2008.  Here’s her chart, set for noon:

This horoscope should indicate what kind of personality the dog will have, and will also give clues about the events in her life.

Though the variation of experience should be less than that of a human. Dogs have less choice than human – they can’t decide to be doctors, lawyers or artists. We also assume that they can’t have life-changing spiritual revelations.

Nonetheless, there is probably some value in looking at a dog’s horoscope.

The čuvač, being born in early December, is a Sagittarius. And it’s often said that Sagittarians do a lot of travelling.

Well, looking at the first year of the dog’s life, this would seem to be case. She was born in Slovakia, and was bought by foreigners, namely us. In April 2009 she travelled by car from Slovakia to Frankfurt, in Germany. There she was put on a plane to Seattle.

After spending a long Summer in the Pacific Northwest, she was put on a plane to Amsterdam, in Holland. Another car trip awaited her, through Germany and Austria and back to Slovakia.

So it seems that many of her life experiences have been typically Sagittarian. Yet if we go deeper into her horoscope, we notice that her Sun in Sagittarius is making a stressful aspect to Saturn in Virgo. This means that the dog could be vulnerable to depression.

She had a difficult first few months of life, several times being torn away from her home. And perhaps there’ll be times when she’ll feel that she can’t express herself.

Right now she lives in an apartment, in a city. This is not suitable accommodation for a large, mountain dog.

Yet the power of the Sun-Saturn aspect was most apparent over the Summer. It got triggered by a Saturn transit, and she came down with kennel cough – a contagious though not serious disease, that canines are very vulnerable to.

Which brings me back to my own problems. It’s kind of fitting that the čuvač is a Sagittarius – I’m a Gemini, and these two signs are opposite one another.

Also, her Sun is at 22 degrees Sagittarius, while my Mercury is at 20 degrees Gemini. So her Sun is opposition my Mercury.

The Sun is her vitality, her essential dogness, with all its dander and assorted allegens. My Mercury symbolises the lungs – because in astrology the lungs are ruled by this planet.

In other words she aggravates my asthma, in a big way.

So what do I do? Keep on taking the steroid inhalers and the antihistamines? Or do I get rid of her?

Getting rid of her is the logical solution. I remember as I child my father had bad asthma, and his doctor insisted that our dog be removed.

However they do say that dogs are for life and not just for Christmas. The čuvač is a breed that develops attachments at an early age – that’s why if you want it to look after your sheep, you keep it in the sheep pen, pretty much from the moment it’s born.

Now that the dog is one year old, it’s too late to get rid of her. She’s made her attachments, and I’m one of them.

This underlines that old principle, that we must take responsibility for our actions. If the dog has been bought she has to be kept, even if it wrecks my lungs.

There is also a question of destiny. Right now, it’s my destiny to have a dog. I don’t know why, but that’s the way it is.

I therefore have to suffer for another twelve or thirteen years, until the dog dies. But because of her pedigree she hasn’t been spayed, and I’ve got a feeling that her super-allergenic descendants will be sniffing at my freshly-dug grave.

Sorry to report on another death, but in the UK it’s a big story. Jade Goody was an ordinary, working class girl, whose appearance on Big Brother transformed her into a celebrity. She was known for her forthright language as well as her apparent ignorance of well-known facts. For example, she thought that Saddam Hussein was a boxer.

While appearing on the Indian version of Big Brother last year, she found out that she had cervical cancer. The disease had already spread, and it soon became clear that she was dying. Even then, she was not afraid of cameras and publicity, and in her final months the media circus continued. She got married with a morphine drip attached to her wedding dress, and she and her two young children were baptised in a hospital chapel.

Jade Goody died yesterday, at the age of twenty-seven, and whatever one thought of her, there can be no doubt about her bravery. How many people could have handled that level of publicity, with death staring them in the face?

Jade Goody was born on June 5 1981, which makes her a Gemini. The sign Gemini can manifest in two, very different ways. Some Geminis can be deep thinkers, who take the world they live in very seriously. For example Jean-Paul Sartre, the French existentialist philosopher.

Yet other Geminis are apparently quite superficial, and they often do very well in the media. They flit from one thing to another, not taking anything too seriously. They’ll have lots to say, about lots of subjects, but there isn’t a great deal of in-depth knowledge. This aspect of Gemini seems to best fit Jade Goody, though of course one has to be careful about making generalisations.

As for Jade Goody’s horoscope, I haven’t got a birth time, so it’s difficult to make sense of it – especially as both Venus and Mars changed sign on her birthday, so I don’t know which sign either planet is in.

However if we want to understand the real importance of Jade Goody, we don’t have to worry about all this. Because we’re looking at things from a collective rather than individual point of view.

Jade Goody was born at the time of a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction, which took place in Libra. The sign Libra is very sociable, and she was an exemplar of her generation, marked for fame.

As an aside, only a few months before her birth, on the other side of the Atlantic, Paris Hilton was born, with this same Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Libra. The two women might have been born into completely different worlds, but they shared the same astrological signature. And it’s interesting that both of them, fairly or not, have been labelled as being famous for being famous, the two shock-troops of celebrity culture.

Jupiter and Saturn have a twenty-year cycle – so there’s approximately 20 years between successive conjunctions. On May 28 2000 these planets formed a conjunction, and less than two months later, on July 14 2000, the first UK series of Big Brother started. The stage was being set for Jade Goody’s success, and in the summer of 2002 she was a contestant in the third series, and her ascent to stardom began.

So what’s really going on? Over the last decade and more there’s been something in the cosmos that’s been pushing and promoting celebrity culture. And this has created the tantalising possibility that by being ourselves, without having any obvious talents, we can be famous.

One manifestation of this trend was reality TV, and in particular Big Brother. We then saw particular individuals being caught up in this cosmic trend, and Jade Goody became its personification. She didn’t win Big Brother in 2002, but she caught the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times, and she become incredibly successful.

Unfortunately Jade Goody’s position had its disadvantages. She was arguably a pawn of the cosmos, and part of her role was to reflect the ebb and flow of reality TV. And on the day she died Jupiter and Saturn were exactly 150 degree apart – according to the BBC her death was at 3.14 am, on March 22 2009, and thirteen and a half hours later, at 4.46 pm, the 150 degree angle was formed. This angle is unfortunate, and it represents two things that on the surface have little or no connection. On one hand the triviality of reality TV and the frantic search for fame, and on the other hand the absolute seriousness of death and dying.