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  An inspirational tale as an antidote to complaining about personal woes comes from Melanie Reid, a Times columnist who has been tetraplegic since a riding accident in 2010.  She writes with humour and angst about the travails of a seriously disabled life. This week she talks about Martha Lane Fox, entrepreneur founder of the website Last Minute during the 2000s dotcom boom and now a digital expert in the House of Lords. She had a car accident in Morocco in 2004 in which she broke 28 bones, had a stroke and spent almost two years in hospital, enduring 47 operations suffering multiple orthopaedic and neurological trauma.

  Despite continued health crises and constant pain, she pushed herself to walk again, using poles. Recently she walked up Ben Nevis, the last of a personal three peaks challenge (after Snowdon and Scafell Pike) to raise money for four after-trauma charities. Her mother who made it halfway up, says she has no idea where her daughter gets her unbelievable drive from.

  Melanie Reid, 13 April 1957, no birth time, is a Sun Venus in Aries in a determined trine to Pluto in Leo; with Saturn in Sagittarius. Planets in all three Fire signs will undoubtedly help to give her optimism even in the face of extreme difficulty. Her Saturn is opposition Mars which is accident prone and her Solar Arc Sun Venus were colliding with that opposition when she had her accident.

 Martha Lane Fox, 10 February 1973, is a Sun Aquarius in an inventive trine to Uranus widely sextile Mars in Sagittarius. With an Air Grand Trine of Pluto trine Saturn trine Venus, formed into a Kite by Saturn opposition Neptune – making Neptune the driving planet. Her Mars is on the opposite side of the zodiac to her Saturn, too wide to be an opposition but hints of the same. Her Mars is also in an out of element square to her Mars which will give her do-or-die- determination.

 Around the time of her accident a tr Mars Saturn conjunction was square her Pluto; but what was most noticeably was tr Uranus square her leading-planet Neptune – and tr Neptune heading to conjunct her Sun in the aftermath.

 Intriguing that her Neptune is so strong.

  From a previous post July 9 2022 on Neptune’s extraordinary powers:

Ranulph Fiennes, the transglobe explorer accomplished superhuman feats in the coldest and highest regions of the earth; and after a heart attack in his late fifties ran seven marathons on seven continents in seven days. He’s a fascinating example of magical Neptune at work, not normally a planet associated with extreme endurance, but it is frequently highlighted in the charts of top level athletes who can cope with punishing training schedules.

  In a new film on his life Explorer, he talks of ‘inviting the ghosts’ of his father and grandfather into his head whenever he’s at a difficult spot. ‘Those times that I really wanted to give up, I [chose not to] because of the thought of shaming my father and grandfather. I would imagine them walking beside me, particularly when I had bad frostbite and was on my own.’

  What is extraordinary (or maybe not) is he never knew his father who died four months before he was born, from wounds inflicted by a mine in Italy during World War 11; or his grandfather who died in the Battle of Arras in 1917. Yet the image of them lives in his head as his guiding star.

  He was born 7 March 1944 12.30pm Windsor, and has a 10^th house Pisces Sun like other explorers, Sir Richard Burton, David Livingstone and Amerigo Vespucci. His Sun is square a 12^th house Mars Saturn in Gemini which would help with grit, courage, military discipline and the ability to withstand deprivation. He has a confident Jupiter Moon in Leo in his 3^rd which would also help in keeping his enthusiasm up; and his Pluto is exactly conjunct a ‘leadership’ North Node.  

  But what has always intrigued me is his 4^th house Neptune which is sextile Pluto North Node and trine Uranus. Many years ago I interviewed him for a media piece and explained the standard meanings of Neptune in the 4^th to which he took great exception. As he showed me out he said it was the one thing that was absolutely wrong so it always stuck in my head. A friend who had served with him in the army later told me Ranulph could never cope with the thought of his father dying in hospital from wounds. He wanted a father who had a glorious battlefield death.

  His father the war hero, was based on fact but in his absence became embellished with Neptune’s striving for the divine ideal into a mythical almost supernatural presence in his life.  

  I connected this to a story about Black Elk, the Lakota medicine man, who fought at Little Bighorn and survived the Wounded Knee Massacre, who was a Sun Sagittarius trine Neptune, 1 Dec 1863. During an illness aged nine he had a vision in which he was visited by Thunder Beings, figures like wise grandfathers, which marked him out as a shaman and healer. He said when he rode into battle in later years he kept his vision in his mind and emerged unscathed. The one time he let his vision slip a bullet got him in the shoulder.

  Neptune, when it isn’t dissolving into a puddle of indecision, drowning its sorrows in the bottom of a bottle or running a con, can create a fantasy of such potency it makes the impossible possible (sometimes).

  “All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”  T.E. Lawrence – had Neptune Pluto in the 10^th.

  Dreamers of the day like Barack Obama have Neptune on the point of a T Square.

  Major film stars often have marked Neptune – both Anthony Hopkins and Sean Connery have/had it in the 8^th. Projecting a powerful aura.

  Neptune is more kaleidoscopic and multi-faceted than most planets in its range of outcomes reflecting its dream spinner, shape-shifter energy.

With a government chart having Neptune on the Descendant conjunct shipwrecking Scheat and an 8^th house Uranus (Mars) conjunct the destructive star Algol, it is not surprising Keir Starmer’s administration has stumbled into a damaging run of self-defeating missteps.

 On the face of it a 10^th house with Moon, Sun, Venus in Cancer should have been a public relations dream but the downhill slide in popularity has been astonishingly fast. Tales of donors and freebies, bitter in-fighting in No 10 (shades of Dom Cumming) and the grim economic outlook, probably worsened by misguided financial decisions, has left Keir Starmer with his personal approval ratings down 26 per cent since the election.

  Of astrological interest is that Starmer’s Uranus in Virgo opposes the UK Pluto so he will have a status-quo upsetting effect, either disruptive or reforming.  More ominous and less ambivalent, his focal point Neptune (= can be idealistic but also unrealistic) exactly opposes the UK’s 8^th house Mars. That UK 8^th house Mars is due for a high-voltage jolt from Solar Arc Uranus conjunct Mars, exact in six months but in effect across the next year. It could bring a major natural or man-made disaster or a devastating financial hit. And it could be Starmer’s fuzzy Neptunian obsessions that provide part of the shock.

  Tory-tinged tales of freeloading are all the more surprising given Labour and Virgo Starmer’s sanctimonious utterances when in opposition. But as past revelations emerged he seems to have a track record of living well off freebies and expenses, substantially higher than others in a similar position. When Director of Prosecutions his expenses were three times higher than his successor on flights and chauffeured cars. He left that job with hefty pension benefits bringing him an average of £67,200 per year on top of his political salary.

  Although he has a bland, downbeat persona (Pluto Sun in Virgo on his Ascendant maybe) he does have that super-charged, messianic Jupiter Chiron opposition Sun Pluto which is the driving rod of his Water Grand Trine. Jupiter Pluto can bring an over-confident sense of ‘rules don’t apply to me’. In extremis it can also lead to a fanatical desire for power and has been associated with speculators and squanderers. Not quite what his image has suggested up to now.

  His Solar Arc Jupiter opposition Sun Pluto will collide with his Neptune within months and stay in contact for two/three years ahead – a Boris-type scandal perhaps. Plus his Solar Arc Mars conjunct his Sun Pluto in late 2025/26 running him into the buffers.

  Sue Gray, his chief of staff, is an irritation not just internally according to reports. but also to astrologers since she is remarkably coy about her birth date. A company check gives September 1957 making her Virgo or Libra with her Pluto at zero or one degrees Virgo catching the disruptive tr Uranus square come mid 2025 onwards. Once the advisers become the message they need to go. But the date may be iffy – there is some suggestion during the Irish Troubles that she was in the security service running a pub in ‘bandit country’ on the border. So it may be smoke and mirrors.

Add ON. Waheed Alli, Baron Alli, born 16 November 1964, chief Labour donor, is a British media entrepreneur, who was made a member of the House of Lords by Tony Blair in 1998, the first openly gay peer in Parliament and one of the few openly gay Muslim politicians in the world. His mother from Trinidad and Tobago is Hindu and his estranged father from Guyana Muslim.

A Sun Neptune in Scorpio opposition Jupiter in Taurus square Saturn in Aquarius he was a more obvious ally for Blair whose Taurus Sun and Jupiter clicked with Alli’s entrepreneurial ambition.  With Starmer, Alli’s Mars is conjunct Starmer’s Uranus, Sun, Pluto in Virgo which could initially lend a spur to Starmer’s ambitions – but it is  fractious connection. Both have Venus in Libra which may be significant for a love of elegant living. Both have Neptune in Scorpio and Saturn in Aquarius so they will share certain similar aims.

  What is significant is their relationship chart with an overly-expansive Sun Venus opposition Jupiter with its hints of indulgence; and more so the composite yod of Saturn sextile Jupiter inconjunct Pluto. Chained together by a joint drive for power.

 There is also a composite yod in Alli’s relationship chart with Blair from a composite Sun sextile Saturn inconjunct Mars – so he’s clearly a pivotal figure in Labour leaders’ destiny.

Mohammed Al Fayed, formerly owner of Harrods and nearly Princess Diana’s father-in-law, who died last year, is now the centre of a sexual abuse scandal with allegations of rape and sexual assault being made by former employees.

  Ambitious for high honour and acceptance in the upper echelons of British society including in the Royal Family, Al Fayed courted Diana in her post-divorce days flaunting his conspicuous wealth with yacht, helicopters and private plane. Although she was wealthy by normal standards with £17 million from Charles on her divorce, she hankered after a billionaire’s lifestyle. And she knew Dodi Al Fayed as stepfather to William and Harry would cause maximum embarrassment to the Royal Family.

 Mohammed Al Fayed, 26 January 1929 Alexandria, Egypt, no birth time, was a Sun Aquarius square Jupiter in Taurus; with a hard-edged Saturn in Sagittarius opposition Mars square Venus in Pisces.  He also had a yod onto Neptune (Moon) in Virgo inconjunct Uranus sextile Sun. His afflicted Neptune was conjunct Diana’s Mars Pluto in Virgo (and her Leo North Node) in what could be seen as connecting him to her death (Mars Pluto) because of his delusional need to reach exalted status (Neptune).

 His Sun was conjunct Diana’s 2nd house Jupiter so money and his initial generosity would be a draw for her. His North Node in Taurus was conjunct Diana’s Venus for a good public relations offensive and her social charm would also offer a chance for him to expand his influence.

 Their relationship chart had a composite affectionate Sun Venus in an overly-excitable and argumentative square to Mars; with a fated yod of Uranus sextile Pluto inconjunct Saturn. If it had proceeded into a Diana Dodi marriage it would have ended in tears.

 When Diana was killed along with Dodi and Henri Paul in 1997 tr Uranus in early Aquarius was moving to conjunct Mohammed’s Sun and was exactly conjunct Diana’s Jupiter. For him a terrible jolt. For her the end game from tr Uranus conjunct her Saturn Jupiter conjunction – flying too high because of public adulation and cut down by Saturn’s grim reaper – as the ‘memento mori’ of Jupiter Saturn extracted its final revenge. As it did with John Lennon, JFK and others.

  Henri Paul, 3 July 1956 1am Lorient, France, the chauffeur, was a Sun Cancer, his birthday only two days after Diana’s, with a super-confident Pluto Jupiter in Leo square Saturn in Scorpio.  His Jupiter Pluto was conjunct Diana’s North Node, Mars and Pluto which looks like an unhealthily revved up link – and there was a yod formed by his Jupiter Pluto sextile Venus in Gemini inconjunct Diana’s Saturn, as destiny chained their fate together.

 On his relationship chart with Diana there was a composite yod onto the Moon with the Moon also on the focal point of a composite T square conjunct Scheat. Highly emotional and pulling public attention.

 He also had a yod link to Pamela Harriman with his Jupiter Pluto sextile Neptune inconjunct her Sun, Mercury Midheaven in Pisces.

 What a tangled web the fates weave.   Yods do seem to be one connecting factor.

 On the sexual allegations against Mohammed Al Fayed – a birth time would help though Saturn opposition Mars can be cruel and it squares onto his Venus. His Sun was also square his Venus/Mars midpoint which has been associated with promiscuity. His Uranus squared his ruthless Mars/Pluto midpoint; and his Pluto was in a hard, unfeeling opposition to his Sun/Saturn midpoint.

Pamela Harriman, daughter-in-law of Winston Churchill, described as a “European geisha” and “The Last Courtesan” was supposedly, according to a new biography, pimped out by her father-in-law (and Lord Beaverbrook) to seduce key Americans to ensure support for the UK war effort. She did bed W. Averell Harriman, Roosevelt’s representative in London and in later years married him. Though Pearl Harbour was more of a clincher than her charms.

 Having hitched herself at 19 to Randolph Churchill, “a drunken, debt-ridden, offensive adulterer,” she needed to find a diversion. After the war she rollicked through a series of affairs with Prince Aly Khan, Alfonso de Portago, Gianni Agnelli, and Baron Elie de Rothschild plus two marriages one to a Broadway producer. By the end of her life, Bill Clinton made her U.S. ambassador to France.

 Reviews suggest the biography is somewhat over-egged but her chart is interesting if only because her Sun, Mercury and Moon all in late Pisces are fairly current at the moment.  She had a tough Water Grand Trine of Mars in Scorpio trine Pluto in Cancer in her attention-grabbing 5^th trine Uranus Venus in Pisces, made into a Kite by Uranus Venus opposition Saturn in Virgo. She also had an upbeat Jupiter Neptune conjunction on her Descendant square Mars.  

  A hard, ultra-determined, courageous but not exactly nice person – she seemed to have had squabbles over inheritances in later life with her husband’s families.

She died of a brain haemorrhage aged 76 in 1997, collapsing in the swimming pool at the Paris Ritz and was fished out and given oxygen by Henri Paul, the intoxicated driver who later that year drove Princess Diana to her death. Tied into the zeitgeist to the end.

The Lebanon has had an illustrious history stretching back several millenia being a major centre under the Byzantine Empire and ultimately under the Ottoman Empire. In the colonial carve up after World War 1 it was handed as a mandate along with Syria to France, who made a botch of their ultimate withdrawal with 22 November 1943 being celebrated as the symbolic moment of independence though officially it happened on 1 January 1944.

   Subsequently this state, no bigger than Wales that has become “battleground for one of the defining conflicts of twentieth-century history. Throughout its short existence, it has been attacked, invaded, occupied or interfered with to serve the political interests of foreign powers, resulting a series of devastating wars and crises. To understand Lebanon’s history is to understand the history of the entire region – and, with the rise of Hezbullah, it has come to assume a disproportionate, dangerous power of its own. Iran and Israel now face each other in the hills of south Lebanon.” (Beware of Small States: Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East by David Hirst. Amazon).

 During the Civil War (1975-1990) there were invasions and military occupations by Syria from 1976 to 2005 and by Israel from 1985 to 2000.

 Hezbollah was established by Lebanese clerics primarily to fight the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Close ties have developed between Iran and Hezbollah. During the Lebanese Civil War, Hezbollah’s 1985 manifesto listed its objectives as the expulsion of “the Americans, the French and their allies definitely from Lebanon, putting an end to any colonialist entity on our land”.

 Both the Lebanon 1 January 1944 chart with its Uranus Mars in Gemini sextile Pluto inconjunct a Capricorn Sun; and the 22 November 1943 with its final degree Scorpio Sun and late Virgo Moon work reasonably well against subsequent events.

   The previous Israel war with Lebanon from 13 April 1975 with Uranus at zero degrees Scorpio and a Pluto in Libra opposition Jupiter square Saturn has no real parallels instantly with the next warlike Saturn square Pluto not turning up until 2028. Though Israel’s future does look on high stress well into the next decade so it may come.

 There is a depressing sense of an unwinnable, ongoing and fundamental schism with deep historical roots that flares up from time to time, dies down but never goes away.

See previous post October 10 2023 on James Cameron’s book The creation of the state of Israel.

“The introduction of the Jewish State into the Arab heartland exalted many hearts and broke many more. More than anything in this century it was a triumph and a desolation. Full of high hopes it produced the most intractable conflict of our times.”   So wrote journalist and world affairs commentator James Cameron, in 1976. What follows comes from his excellent, dispassionate, lucid and brief book ‘The Making of Israel.’ The quotes are his.

Where it began.  Theodor Herzl a cultivated Viennese journalist outraged by the Dreyfus scandal when  a Jewish officer in the French army was framed on a treason charge lit a flame under the idea of a Promised Land where Jewish people could live free of persecution and hostility, funded by rich Jewish interests. Zionism was born with the First Zionist Congress held in Basel 29 August 1897.

   Chaim Weizmann, who later became the first President of Israel, joined. He was an eminent biochemist who gave great service to the British government during World War One. ‘It was he who extracted from the then British  Foreign Minister  through gratitude,  expediency, absent-mindedness, not one will ever know – the famous Balfour Declaration.’

 ‘It was ambiguous, elusive, provocative, but it was the springboard.’  To the Arabs it was an act of outright imperialism to wilfully dispose of the future of a territory to which Britain had had no rightful claim, without any consultation with the 92% non-Jewish part of the population. ‘To the British it was an afterthought, to Jewish people a green light.’

  During the British Palestine Mandate (1920 to 1948) the indigenous Arabs were constantly dispossessed from their land as the Jewish communities burgeoned. Conflicts grew and ‘Palestine becomes an arena of endless guerilla warfare.’ ‘The aspirations of the Jews and Arabs are irreconcilable.’

  Along comes World War 11 and the Holocaust. Jewish immigration is still strictly limited by the British to 1500 a month. In desperation illegal ships bring in more, including the Exodus carrying 4500 survivors of the death-camps, which the British Navy inexplicably rammed and returned to Germany on the orders of Ernest Bevin, the Labour Foreign Minister, whose dislike to the Jews was well known backed by the traditionally Arabist UK Foreign Office.

‘Almost every independent newspaper in the world  reported the Exodus with incredulous horror. Much of what happened in the Mandate must be considered against this dismal betrayal.’

  In Palestine sections of the Jewish community have decided violence is the only way to make a difference to their cause. The British Mandatory Authority are now exasperated. ‘No conceivable proposal that  suits the Arabs can possibly mollify the Jews.’ In 1947 the British government decides to toss Palestine back to the United Nations. The UN tries for partition which is turned down flat by the Arabs. ‘By now it is abundantly clear that no compromise any mortal man can devise is going to reconcile the Arabs to the legal existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East.’

  There are attacks and counter-attacks inside Israel, roads are blockaded and the massacre at Deir Yassin follows. Mass panic sends Palestinian refugees fleeing from their villages – 6000 from Tiberias, 40,000 from Haifa.

‘The stage is now ready for the culmination of the story, of a sick and sorrowful conflict, not between right and wrong, but between two forms of right and, maybe two forms of wrong.’

  In spring of 1948 there is no government and no mandate authority, the country was ‘a shifting mosaic of overlordships.’ ‘It is possible that there was no specific British intention to leave chaos behind them but is is sure that no particular effort was made to prevent it.’

  In the US the partition principle was accepted but with diminishing enthusiasm. The State and Defence department were against it because it could open the Middle East to Russian interference and jeopardise Arab oil. While President Harry Truman wanted to conciliate the domestic Jewish vote.

  As time wore on Harry Truman, like the British before him, became exasperated at being pounded by constant pressure from the Zionists. ‘The Jews are so emotional ,’ he wrote, ‘and the Arabs so difficult to talk with that it is impossible to get anything done.’

  Truman dithered, his underlings put out conflicting messages, until eventually a school friend introduced him to Weizmann and he decided that he would look foolish to abandon his earlier acceptance of partition.

  A week before the British mandate ended there was still no certainty of a dominantly Jewish state although many Arabs had fled by this time. Various Arab armies stood at the ready including a Jordanian one backed by the British aiming to capture the areas laid down in the Partition for the Arabs.  There was a massacre at Etzion killed 70 Jewish settlers in retaliation for Deir Yassin. Two days before the mandate ended another Arab attack on a medical convoy killed 77 Jewish doctors, nurses and helpers. The British refused to intervene pointing to Deir Yassin.  At this point Jerusalem was under siege so the administration of the new country was moved to Tel Aviv.  On the day itself the British moved out and the Jewish government, under David Ben Gurion, declared itself in charge.

‘And no one lived happily ever after.’

James Cameron’s epilogue from 1976

“Three times in the last quarter century I have personally seen the endless tensions of the Middle East build up their content of hate and fear until it burst across the Israel-Arab borders, in one direction or another, leaving its predictable residue of triumph and defeat and sorrow and recrimination and solving nothing. Each time the world knew uneasily that the next time would be worse, and it was.  Each times the wounds were deeper and the scars more brutal. Each time the world protested this could not go on, while perpetuating the factors that made it inevitable.

 By and by a new generation will grow up in the Middle East, both Arab and Israeli, which will reject the role of pawns in the Power Game, refuse the importunities and persuasions of the strong and cynical, and recognize, as many voiceless patriots already recognize, that what is done is done, and that both sides must make a future together, if there is to be one at all. Amen.”

The versatile Alan Cumming has added yet another award from the recent Emmys to join his previous BAFTA Award, previous Emmy, Tonys and an Olivier. This recent accolade was for his hosting of the reality show Traitors, which is a tense psychological adventure competition where 22 strangers in a castle in the Scottish Highlands aim to complete a series of challenges as a team. Though within their ranks are three traitors secretly sabotaging their efforts.

 His career has had an extraordinary range from light-hearted comedy and musicals to heavy drama and Shakespeare in theatre and on Broadway, with a string of well-received movies and television series where he is best known for The Good Wife. He also sings, writes drama and has published several books including two memoirs – Not My Father’s Son and Baggage: Tales from a Fully Packed Life. A presenter, screenwriter, producer, director, cabaret performer, novelist and gay-rights campaigner.

  He was born 27 January 1965 8.20 am Aberfeldy, Scotland, with a tyrannical and abusive father, head forester on a Scottish estate, who did not believe he or his brother were his sons. Though a DNA test in recent years proved they were. He said that his difficult childhood taught him how to act by “needing to suppress my own emotions and feelings around him [his father] when I was a little boy”.

  What pulled him out of the damaging effects of a “feudal” childhood were firstly an upfront and boisterous Aquarius Sun is on his Ascendant giving him a bouncy, chatty image with his Sun in an optimistic and enthusiastic square to a communicative Jupiter in the 3^rd house in money-magnet Taurus. He also has a look-on-the-bright-side Sagittarius Moon exactly on his Midheaven suiting him for a colourful and wide ranging public career.

 He does have Uranus Pluto and Mars in Virgo all in his 8^th house suggesting a challenging psychological inheritance from previous generations, controlling and angry. Luckily his Uranus Pluto sits in a practical, business-building Earth Grand Trine to Jupiter and to Venus Mercury in Capricorn in his 12^th, formed into a Kite with Jupiter opposition Neptune – giving him talent, a practical approach to life and enough dreams from Jupiter Neptune to carry him away from his abusive childhood.

  For all his outer success he has not had it easy emotionally with a hidden Venus and a Moon square Saturn, a legacy from his early home life where his mother was unable to give him what he needed since she was as trapped as her children were.  

  His creative 5^th Harmonic is strong; and his victim 12^th even more so. What is intriguing is his 13^th Harmonic which is confident, enthusiastic, exuberant. That is the one which indicates “Upheaval, change and rebirth. Breaking with the orthodox. It requires adaptation to change to be successful.” Peter Sellers, the comedian had a strong 13^th harmonic giving him an ability like Alan Cumming to inhabit a variety of dramatic characters with authenticity.  

His 8^th house Mars in late Virgo is catching this week’s Lunar Eclipse revving up his engine and putting him into overdrive which will continue on throughout 2025 with the following eclipses at similar degree. He may need to keep himself in check or he’ll overdo the running around.

Another day and the tit-for-tat atrocities pile up. Hezbollah has blamed Israel for the death of nine people after the simultaneous explosion of thousands of pagers used by the terror group in Lebanon yesterday.  Thousands were injured in the attack, with 200 people said to be in a critical condition. Hezbollah said Israel would get its “fair punishment”.

  Previous posts lay out the detail: Israel & Hezbollah – the unhealable wound 25th August 2024 and Israel and Hezbollah – hope of peace receding fast – 1st August 2024.

 What was always mystifying, given the rolling carnage causing internal Israeli outrage and unease as well as international consternation was/is how undescriptive Netanyahu’s 29 December 2022 4.30pm Term chart is. A confused, indecisive Neptune on the Midheaven alongside an admittedly successful Jupiter Moon in the 10^th sextile Pluto Venus on the cusp of the 8^th with a hidden 12^th house Mars inconjunct the Sun in the partnership-dependent 7^th. It doesn’t immediately leap out as a crisis Term, nor indeed was there ever any obvious exit point.

 His own personal chart shares Mars at 26 degrees Leo with Trump, with the latter recovering from his second assassination attempt; and Netanyhau is now on war footing with Hezbollah and the Lebanon. Tr Uranus is now back squaring their respective Mars for a moment of high insecurity running on for several weeks and repeating next spring. Netanyahu also has his Virgo Midheaven triggered by yesterday’s Lunar Eclipses and next year’s early Lunar and later Solar Eclipses. And if his birth time is exactly accurate he has his Solar Arc Uranus conjunct his Midheaven in 2026, hinting at a change of career direction.

 Netanyahu’s relationship chart with Israel looks rattled in the extreme at the moment and undermined. Tr Neptune is square the composite Uranus now till early 2026; and tr Uranus is square the composite Mars, then the calamitous Mars/Saturn midpoint and the composite Saturn from mid 2025 into 2026.

 His Term chart has the tr Neptune Saturn conjunct the 10^th house Jupiter Moon from April 2025 on into 2026/27 which will undermine high hopes and confidence.

  There is nothing in the country/Hezbollah charts to suggest peace any time soon (see previous posts).

  Netanyahu’s continued political future which is vital to stave off corruption charges is dependent on a far-right coalition. A key figure is Bezazel Smotrich, the Israeli Minister for Finance – a hard-line, far-right zealot, a settler in occupied West Bank, illegal under international law, who supports expansion of Israeli settlements and opposes Palestinian statehood. Born 27 February 1980, he is a Sun Pisces opposition Mars Jupiter with a passionate Venus opposition Pluto. Those two oppositions are colliding by 2026 with the SA Mars Jupiter being conjunct his Pluto which looks unnervingly over confident. Indeed it may trigger in 2025 since that is when his Venus is being aspected. 

 His relationship with both Netanyahu and Israel look severely stressed as tr Uranus moves into Gemini mid 2025 onwards. He is a rabble rouser and won’t be easy to control.

The Afghanistan Taliban government’s increasingly repressive measures, described by one woman living there as Islamic fascism, are causing growing dissatisfaction among the Afghan population and continuing international isolation. Despite promises to the contrary when the USA withdrew in 2021, stricter morality laws have been enforced with girls and women banned from attending secondary school and university plus plus plus.

  An Afghanee woman anonymously described the government there: “It controls everything from what we wear and where we go and most importantly, what we are allowed to think. Women are denied education – removed from all areas of life, our voices and presence erased from society. Democracy and human rights are completely ignored. Thousands of innocent children are being educated in Taliban’s schools to become adversaries of women’s rights, democracy, progress and freedom. Through extreme religious indoctrination, they are being shaped into a serious threat to the entire world.”

  There are hints of rebellions and disruptions ahead with transiting Uranus upending the Afghanistan 19 August 1919 12am Kabul chart at the moment and more so through 2025 with tr Uranus square the Sun, conjunct the Moon and square Uranus. The population (Moon) may well have reached its tolerance limits. The Venus in Virgo is also catching the running Pisces/Virgo Lunar and Solar Eclipses right through into early 2026. And the Solar Arc Neptune will be in an undermining square to the Sun by 2025; at the same time as tr Uranus is square the Saturn from mid 2025 into 2026.

Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada who took over as Taliban Supreme Leader on 15 August 2021 also has Venus in late Virgo on his Term chart being triggered by the eclipses running on for nearly two years. His Term chart has a yod onto the Sun from Neptune sextile Pluto hinting at an erratic approach to stamping its authority and identity – and that is being jolted by tr Uranus square the Solar Arc Sun now and into 2025. Though it is a chart with a strong Jupiter which can bring undeserved good luck.

 The original Taliban Afghanistan government of 4 April 1996 is also showing signs of uncertainty and considerable unrest ahead with tr Neptune (Scheat) conjunct the Saturn in final degree Pisces with Solar Arc Uranus square the Pluto in 2024/25 and tr Pluto conjunct the Uranus in 2026/27.

It’s tempting though not always helpful to be optimistic about positive changes lying ahead. But with the Afghanistan chart having a yod of Mars sextile Venus inconjunct Uranus – and the Uranus getting a sharp elbow from transiting Uranus from mid 2025 onwards there is no doubt the country will be shifted force majeure onto a new path.

I have never understood religious fundamentalists’ fear of women rolling right back to the mediaeval Vatican. Extreme Neptune misogynists.

Disaster by water is being experienced with a vengeance in eastern Europe with several deaths from flooding and an entire Polish city being told to evacuate. With transiting Neptune and the Fixed star Scheat both falling close to this week’s Lunar Eclipse in Pisces it highlights the nature of Scheat associated with misfortune, floods, shipwrecks and drowning.

For some, Scheat can bring increased creativity https://shorturl.at/uB0XE but the downside is notably evident at the moment with the Bayesian sinking still being investigated and now devastating weather.

 The Lunar Eclipse set for Nysa, the evacuated Poland town, has Uranus closely conjunct the Midheaven suggesting jolting changes – with the Moon Neptune in the 8^th. [You are evidently not supposed to use houses for eclipse charts but very often disaster eclipses have strong 8^th house planets.]

  The Poland 24 August 1989 1.05pm Warsaw chart has Mercury in Virgo close to the Eclipse causing mental strain and chaos.

  Natural disasters sometimes are the forerunner to a stressful period of transition in the years following and the Poland chart hints at a tricky time ahead with tr Uranus square the Virgo Sun from mid 2025 as the same time as tr Neptune Saturn start to square the Uranus – and in future years square the Saturn, Neptune.

 The Poland 10 November 1918 chart has its Mars in final degree Sagittarius being undermined by tr Neptune square now till early 2026; with a disruptive tr Uranus square the Saturn opposition Uranus, also through till early 2026.

 Donald Tusk’s prime ministerial chart of 13 December 2023 10 am Warsaw had a lacklustre Sagittarius Sun and Moon square Neptune – which are catching not only this week’s Lunar Eclipse but also next March’s Lunar Eclipse and the October Solar Eclipse for a crises-strewn term.