Ursula von der Leyen has been confirmed by a slim vote to replace Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the EU Commission, though it has left a sour taste – at home in Germany amongst her critics and in Brussels at yet another Franco-German stitch-up.

Her term starts 1 November this year which gives a divisive Sun opposition Uranus on the Midheaven, hinting at a radical change of direction. But there’ll be a stream of setbacks, mishaps and missteps with an argumentative Mars in the 3^rd square Saturn Pluto in Capricorn. Plus an over-hopeful, head-in-the-clouds Jupiter square an 8^th house Neptune which might point to financial mismanagement.

Born 8 October 1958 (see previous post July 3 2019) she’s a Sun Libra on the focal point of a mini-Grand Trine to an innovative Uranus trine Saturn; with an ultra-determined Mars square Pluto. She is widely thought to be a European federalist and anti-Brexit but her policies are difficult to pin down.

Her chemistry with Boris Johnson will be exceeding scratchy since both have the never-say-die Mars in Gemini square Pluto with, in Boris’s case, Uranus and Saturn added in. Her Saturn is also opposition his Sun Venus – so his boyish charm won’t work. Their relationship chart has a differing-agenda, disruptive composite Sun Mercury Uranus conjunction; and the hostile Mars square Pluto.

Her relationship chart with the UK is no better with a power-struggling composite Sun Pluto and a combative Sun opposition Mars which is being stressed by tr Pluto till late 2020. Mind you it’s not as complicated and aggravated as her interface with Donald Trump – with another tussle-for-the-upper-hand Sun Pluto and an explosive Mars Uranus square Saturn and Neptune.

The EU don’t look too charmed either with a composite Mars opposition Pluto in that relationship chart so there will be objections to her control-freakery.

Her own chart indicates one major triumph around 2021 when her Solar Arc Pluto is conjunct her Jupiter; but there’s a run of Neptunian disappointments and swamps between now and then; and Saturnine setbacks towards the end of her term.

Her term chart looks exceedingly jangled in 2020 with tr Uranus opposing the Sun and moving towards a major blockage around 2022 as the Mars moves to close to the square to Pluto by Solar Arc.

Scotland has overtaken the USA as the drug death capital of the developed world. Fatalities rose in 2018 after a 27 per cent increase to almost 1,200, three times the UK average, and 50 times higher than Portugal, which decriminalised drugs in 2001. The biggest increase was in users aged 35 to 54 with the sharpest increase in the intake of benzodiazepines known as “street valium”. Amazon evidently sell pill presses which can churn out thousands of pills an hour.

Unemployment in Scotland at 3.3% is close to the lowest on record and 0.5 lower than the UK.

Scotland has never been the healthiest of places especially in Glasgow, part of which is the effect of economic deprivation, but that alone won’t explain higher levels of heart disease, cancer etc. Alcoholism and depression tend to be associated with countries in the northern climes – Russia, Scandanavia etc – and Scotland. Scottish teeth are fairly rotten (to which I can testify) and I always assumed it was too much sugar in the diet along with less calcium in the water.

Of the charts for ancient Scotland:- the 16 March 842, 25 March 1005 and 25 November 1034 all have strong Neptunes. The 842 chart with Mars opposition Saturn Neptune square Uranus (Moon) in Aries with the Sun at zero degrees Aries. The 1005 chart has an Aries Sun Venus square Neptune. And the 1034 has a Sagittarius Sun, Mercury Jupiter square Neptune; with Neptune on one leg of a Yod sextile Mars (Pluto) in Capricorn inconjunct Saturn. Neptune can explain some of the tendency to escape through the bottom of a bottle or off on a drug high. But the UK also has a strongly aspected Neptune and isn’t affected in the same way. Though admittedly the UK Neptune is not tied into the UK Sun.

The rise in Scottish drug deaths has come since the late noughties when Pluto moved into Capricorn and has since been wending its way round all the Cardinal planets, so it has been a strenuously challenging time on the Scotland charts. But that’s just a wild guess.

The Portugal experience is clearly the one to pursue.

That Trump is racist is hardly new news given his track record from way back being sued by the Federal Government for discrimination against persons of colour in rental properties with his father; and more recently his Charlottesville reactions and pandering to white supremacists. The silence from the Republican Party has been deafening and shaming over this recent spat telling congresswomen of colour they should go ‘home’. It’s reckoned because the GOP share similar views and they also think they are a vote catcher.

It’s a pact with the devil which will start to unravel in 2020/21. Trump’s relationship chart with GOP February 1854 has tr Neptune squaring and dissolving the ties-that-bind Pluto from late April into 2021; followed by a confused, disastrous tr Neptune square the Saturn in 2022/23 – so a long drawn out phase of counting the cost of the tainted deal. His relationship chart with the 1856 GOP also hints at an undermining of the connection and aggravation from early 2020 onwards with tr Neptune square the composite Pluto and tr Pluto trine the Mars through 2021 as well.

Trump’s relationship with the USA chart is stretched to breaking point with underground rage surfacing with tr Pluto opposition the composite Mars right through 2019 till December 2020.

Of the four Congresswoman who make up The Squad, whom he suggested should go back from whence they came, three were born in the USA and the fourth is a naturalised American. All are feisty and well capable of looking after themselves. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a Sun Mars in Libra with Jupiter in Cancer opposition the triple conjunction in Capricorn. Ilhan Omar is also a Sun Libra conjunct Saturn Jupiter and Pluto as well, with Mars in flamboyant Leo in a volatile square to Venus Uranus in Scorpio. Ayanna Pressley is a Sun in Aquarius square an immoveable Mars in Taurus, with an Air Grand Trine of Jupiter in Aquarius trine Saturn in Gemini trine Uranus. Rashida Tlaib is a Sun, Saturn, Mercury, Venus in Leo.

They are all strong women unlike the submissive Trump wives, two of them also immigrants. His relationships charts with all The Squad are at cross purposes with inflammatory and argumentative composite Mars strongly marked, especially with AOC and Rashida.

Nancy Pelosi has also had her problems with them as she attempts to pull the Democrats into line not always successfully. Pelosi is not that easy a personality herself with an Aries Sun Jupiter. Four planets in Taurus including Mars on Algol and an unyielding Saturn square Pluto. She does have a tussle for the upper hand with AOC but the interface with Ilhan is more scratchy and won’t get easier. Both Ayanna and Rashida chafe at the bit and dislike the controls Pelosi exerts over them.

Computer pioneer and codebreaker Alan Turing will feature on the new design of the Bank of England’s £50 note. He was the technical genius behind Britain’s successful efforts to break German codes in World War II and was a mathematician, logician, computer scientist. His “Computable Numbers,” 1937, is considered one of the outstanding scientific papers of the 20th century, a blueprint for what would become the electronic digital computer and his “Universal Turing Machine” was an ancestor for the entire information age.

He got a posthumous apology from PM Gordon Brown for his treatment as a homosexual. There is now a suggestion that his supposed suicide in 1954 might have just been a chemical accident.

Born 23 June 1912 at 2.15 am London (his mother told Charles Harvey) he did have Uranus in its own sign, scientific Aquarius, exactly conjunct the Midheaven which sounds spot on. Though others placings in his chart are marginally puzzling. He had Cancer Sun, Mercury and Gemini Pluto Venus in the 2^nd which rather suggests an obsession with money which doesn’t emerge from biographical details.

Genius-level mathematicians usually have very strong Neptune oddly enough and his Neptune in the 3^rd house of thinking and communication was on the focal point of a T Square to a Moon opposition North Node. But it still seems strange to contemplate a fuzzy 3^rd house Neptune as being the driving force to world-changing ideas. His only earth planet is Saturn in Taurus in the 12^th sextile Uranus MC (= inventive) and sextile Neptune (= intuitive and creative).

His seminal paper on computable numbers would be written during the highly creative Saturn opposition Neptune of the mid-1930s. His time at Bletchley Park during WW11 saw him in his first Saturn return and had tr Uranus and Saturn trine his Uranus Midheaven, conjunct his Gemini Ascendant, square his Solar Arc Uranus MC and opposition his Jupiter. So good for flashes of intuition and a significant moment for him in his career.

When he died from cyanide poisoning on 7 June 1954 it was thought he made his suicide look deliberately accidental to protect his mother, though media stories are now promoting the notion that he mistakenly ingested the cyanide from a sloppy experiment.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it was suicide since he had tr Pluto conjunct his Sun/Moon midpoint that year which can be pretty anguished plus tr Uranus conjunct his very emphasised Neptune which would make him exceptionally highly strung; and tr Saturn in a career-setback square to his MC Uranus. On top of that he had tr Neptune, tr Uranus and tr Saturn all hitting Mars midpoints which would make him feel undermined, highly aggravated and depressed.

There’s no way of knowing but the fact that he appeared together to friends and colleagues is hardly a guide. People have an extraordinary way of hiding their deeper agonies from those around.

He had a good many creative quintiles and septiles in his chart. His craftsman 5^th Harmonic is especially strong and talented with an Air Grand Trine formed into two Kites. His ‘wild genius’ 7^th Harmonic is also rock solid with a Fixed Grand Square involving his Midheaven and the North Node – so tying him into the zeitgeist. His obsessional-idea 11^th Harmonic and making-a-mark-on-history 17^th Harmonic (like Steve Jobs) are also strong.

The great love affair between Leonard Cohen and Norwegian Marianne Ihlen, which marked both their lives, though they weren’t physically together for long or faithful to one another, has been immortalised in a new cinema-release documentary Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love, directed by English film-maker Nick Broomfield. She was the inspiration behind many of his songs – So Long, Marianne; Hey; That’s No Way to Say Goodbye; Bird on the Wire – his muse and lifetime love, yet their relationship was chaotic and painful and ultimately short-lived.

They met in the early 1960s when Cohen was writing poetry on the Greek island of Hydra which was home to an émigré community of bohemians, artists and lotus eaters, with everyone having affairs with everyone else. Cohen then moved to New York to start a musical career which took off. She ultimately went back to Norway and married into a settled bourgeois life, though the Cohen connection was always there. They died within three months of each other in 2016.

Cohen was born 21 September 1934 6.45am Montreal, Canada and she 18 May 1935 in Norway. Her Taurus Sun was a good earthy fit with his Virgo Sun; and her Scorpio Moon was probably trine his Pluto for a possessive crossover. But there is less of a connection than I would have expected to find.

Their relationship chart did have a composite transformational Sun Pluto conjunction which makes for an intense connection and one that changes both of them, though it needn’t necessarily last for ever. There was also composite Sun and widely Venus opposition a North Node square Jupiter which would bring luck and good feelings.

Pic: Gorupdebesanez

Petty spite drives so many of Trump’s decisions and none more so than when setting out to destroy Obama’s legacy – what Kim Darroch, the former UK Ambassador, described as ‘diplomatic vandalism’ in the case of the Iran deal.

Whether Trump is motivated in this instance, by naked racism or by envious resentment or bitter enmity – or a mix of all three – it’s a character flaw that dominates his life and actions.

There’s no doubt that Obama presses all his hot spots especially his can-be-malign 12^th house Pluto on which Obama’s Leo Sun sits. Obama’s reforming Uranus is also conjunct Trump’s bombastic Mars in Leo and square his Midheaven; and Obama’s intense 8^th house Mars squares Trump’s Sun Uranus and Moon – so it is a volcanic, inflammatory interface.

There can be positive aspects to having a 12^th house Pluto but in an unenlightened personality it is a dark energy, obsessive and driven by primitive emotional responses.

Their relationship chart has a high-tension, disruptive, differing-agendas composite Sun Mercury Uranus square Saturn opposition Neptune – which will bring out knee-jerk and fanatical responses. Obama must have the self-control of a saint not to respond. There’s also a chained-together by circumstance Saturn trine Pluto; and an emotionally ratchety Moon opposition Mars square an exaggerating Jupiter.

There’s no indication that the sour feelings will die down anytime soon. If anything they will gear up in 2020/21 as Trump attempts to emulate Obama’s two terms.

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Heidi Klum, former model and businesswoman, was married secretly this February to Tom Kaulitz, rock guitarist with the German band Tokio Hotel. She’s sixteen years his senior with a chequered emotional past including two marriages and four children, the last three with Seal.

Born1 June 1973 11am Cologne (astrotheme) she is a New Moon in Gemini with Saturn Venus Mercury also in Gemini – with all her Gemini planets in a high-energy square to Mars in Pisces, on this birth time on the 7^th house of relationships, and trine an independent-minded Uranus and trine Jupiter in Aquarius. She’s very Airy, emotionally detached, adventurous and scattered with 7 Mutable planets.

Her new husband born 1 September 1989 6.20am Leipzig, Germany (astrotheme) is almost the complete opposite with a New Moon and Mars in Virgo and the triple conjunction of Uranus, Saturn, Neptune in Capricorn. He’s very earthy, rooted in the real and material world as well as being rebellious, volatile. He has the Jupiter in Cancer opposition to his Capricorn planets, trine Pluto and sextile his Sun, so he’s talented, lucky and quite a whirlwind himself.

He does have Venus and Mercury in Libra which will connect with her Gemini planets, though her Uranus is conjunct his Venus so she’ll tend to jump backwards at times; and his Mars is square her Saturn and Moon which could get scratchy.

Their relationship chart, birth times being sound, has a composite New Moon which is good, making them feel more whole when together. With a Water Grand Trine of Sun Saturn Uranus which could produce a healing-bubble for them both; and an attention-demanding, entrepreneurial Fire Grand Trine. With a power couple Jupiter opposition Pluto square Sun, though that could turn into a power struggle at some point, fighting for the upper hand. Plus passionate Venus sextile Pluto and sparkling trine to Uranus. And a showbizzy though perhaps ego-clashing Mars Neptune conjunction.

The strength of the Saturn will help to give longevity and two grand Trines have to be positive but it’ll require a fair amount of adjustment to make it work. The wedding chart of 22 February this year wasn’t too great with Saturn Venus Pluto opposition Node square Uranus. That looks subject to rolling changes and crises; with an explosive Mars Uranus and a head-in-the-clouds Jupiter square Neptune.

Meghan Rapinoe, the US women’s football superstar appears to be fireball, regarded as the Muhammad Ali of her sport and a ‘walking protest’ on everything from equal pay to gay rights and protests against racial injustice. Thousands of women across the US are evidently now adopting her tough-pixie, pink, butch hairstyle. She’s managed to get up Piers Morgan’s nose and Donald Trump’s so she’s not doing badly.

Born 5 July 1985 in California, she’s a combative Sun Mars in Cancer in a tough-minded trine to Saturn in Scorpio. Her Saturn is in a cool opposition to Venus in Taurus. Her Mercury is in an intense square to Pluto and an outspoken trine to Uranus. And she has that odd top-notch athletes’ mid Aquarius Jupiter. A force to be reckoned with.

She has a very marked global-star 22^nd Harmonic.

Prince Andrew, erstwhile good friend to Jeffrey Epstein, has relied on respect for his mother, the Queen, to get him out of manifold allegations of consorting with the corrupt, financial and otherwise, in the past. But he may not manage to avoid fallout from Epstein’s trial on sexual offences with minors since he was so obviously part of the social circle.

What is striking about Andrew’s chart at the moment is not only tr Neptune conjunct his 8^th house Mercury this year – sliding secrets out in the open – with one more exact hit mid August till late September this year. But more significantly tr Pluto is moving to square his Midheaven from early 2020 for two years. This brings a critical turning point in career or direction in life, will tend to lead to dented status and reputation as Pluto tears down old structures and to provoke hostility and resistance from others. It can also have health implications and given that both tr Saturn and tr Pluto are now moving through his 6^th he will be under pressure on the fitness front.

His relationships with both daughters and his ex- and still-living-in wife Sarah indicate a raft of panicky moments from late this September right through till February 2020 as tr Neptune in his hard aspect to the composite Jupiter on Sarah and Beatrice’s relationship chart and the composite Sun on Eugenie’s.

Prince Charles is known not to get on with Andrew, which brotherly rivalry apart, is supposedly because of concern about Andrew’s questionable associations damaging the monarchy. Their competitive composite Sun Mars conjunction in the relationship chart is being severely rattled by this months Solar Eclipse and their composite Uranus by the upcoming Lunar Eclipse. And it moves into even more disruptive times from early 2020 with tr Pluto opposition the composite Uranus – so there will be even more fallout next year.

The same is indicated on Andrew’s relationship chart with the Queen, though given her age, it should be treated with some care. Tr Neptune is square the composite Saturn from late March 2020 with major ructions and ruptures from late May onwards as tr Uranus rattles the central Mars Midheaven opposition Pluto.

It’s mystifying – astrologically speaking – as to why he’s regarded as the Queen’s favourite since their charts aren’t wonderfully compatible. With the exception of his Pisces Sun matching her Venus in Pisces, everything else is at cross purposes. Her Saturn is conjunct his Moon, his Saturn is opposition her Pluto, his Mars Venus square her Sun, his Uranus is conjunct her Moon and Neptune opposition her Mars and square her Saturn MC. If anything he’s a disruptive force in her life though his Pluto does fall in her 8^th suggesting she feels trapped in some way by him.

Their relationship chart has a volatile, argumentative, needs-space Grand Trine of Mars trine Uranus trine Moon (Neptune), formed into two Kites by Mars opposition Pluto and Moon Neptune opposition Sun. It suggests a relationship that is power-based, very tied together though not by affection, but by who holds the reins and is also built to a degree on an illusion with such a strong Neptune. It was severely shaken by the previous kerfuffle that saw Andrew lose his trade envoy official role. And what’s coming up will have an even greater fallout.

Add On; Further thought on Andrew’s chart. He does have a Yod onto an apex planet Uranus in the 1^st inconjunct Mercury sextile Saturn. Such a Yod tends to produce a personality that is wilful, rebellious and can be lawless, since convention will be kicked aside. It can be a trailblazer in a more evolved individual, but its intolerance and disruptive behaviour tends to cause rifts in their environment. This year the two legs of the Yod are being pressured by transits – his Saturn Return and tr Neptune conjunct Mercury. Usually fated changes of life’s direction occurs when a Yod is under pressure.

There is another sort-of Yod of North Node sextile a Scorpio Moon inconjunct his midheaven, which will be challenged by tr Pluto square his MC in 2020/2021.