George Blake – duplicitous and deadly

George Blake, the British spy who worked as a Russian double-agent and sent many MI6 agents to their deaths, has died in Moscow.  He was sentenced to 42 years in prison after he was caught in 1961 when a Polish defector pointed to a mole but Blake escaped and fled to Moscow.

  He was born 11 November 1922 at 3pm in Rotterdam, Netherlands, with a Protestant Dutch mother and a Sephardic Jewish father, who had been a decorated WW1 officer and a naturalized British citizen. Blake spent his teens in Egypt where he was influenced by a Marxist cousin, studied Russian at Cambridge University, joined the Dutch Resistance during WW11, returned to the UK, joined the Royal Navy and was recruited by MI6. His intended marriage failed because of the family of the girl objected to his Jewish background and he was then posted to Germany and South Korea where he was captured and interned by the North Koreans in 1950. He was recruited there by the KGB and said what swayed him was the American bombing of defenceless Korean villagers. He also said later he had never felt British: “To betray, you first have to belong. I never belonged.”  

    Blake had a Water Grand Trine with legs in the two hidden houses which makes sense of an inordinately complicated, doubly deceitful spy lifestyle. The hidden house are secretive by nature and the Water Grand Trine would give him the ability to live within his own bubble. His wayward Uranus in the 12th was trine Pluto in the 4^th and trine Mercury Jupiter in Scorpio in the 7^th, formed into a Kite by Pluto opposition Midheaven – talented, focussed, successful in his own terms and lucky with such an emphasised Jupiter, which is further highlighted being on the focal point of a T Square to Mars in Aquarius opposition a Leo Moon.

  He’d be persuasive with Jupiter in his 7^th having an enthusiastic way with words and since it is prominent in his chart, it would give him the ‘good fortune’ to survive internment and then be able to break out of prison and make his way out of the UK and across the European border into the USSR.

  His 8^th house Scorpio Sun was square Neptune giving him an intense and obsessive idealism. He also had an inspirational and entrepreneurial and risk-taking Fire Grand Trine of Moon trine Venus trine Ascendant formed into a Kite by Moon opposition Mars.

  So his two driving planets off two Kites were his Midheaven and his Mars. Relocating his chart to Moscow put his Mars conjunct the Midheaven with his Moon in the 4th  – it would bring out his ambitious streak and also be a reassuring location for a settled domestic life.

  When he was turned during the Korean War, tr Uranus was moving across his IC pulling him away from his roots and his Solar Arc Uranus was about to cross his Ascendant, moving him into a defiant and rebellious phase of his life.

  Knowingly betraying and sending anywhere between forty and several hundred fellow agents to their deaths took a cold and ruthless streak no matter how he justified it to himself – and he had an unyielding Saturn square Pluto as well as a can-be-cruel Mars trine Mars. He also had a strong 18^th harmonic, common amongst serial killers; and a destructive 16H. His Pluto sat on the UK 1801 midheaven, so he did have the capacity to do damage; and his Pluto opposition the UK Sun and his Saturn square would give him no love for the country whom his father had embraced.

  But for all that he was an intriguingly complex man with a fascinating chart.