Marjorie

Brittney Griner, the US top basketball player and Olympic gold medallist has been handed a nine-and-a half-year sentence in Russia after she was pronounced guilty of smuggling and narcotics charges, having been found with vape canisters containing cannabis oil in February.  She had come to Russia to play club basketball during the US off-season and said she had made an “honest mistake”. There are indications she has fallen foul of ‘hostage diplomacy’ and she may be swapped for imprisoned Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout – known as the Merchant of Death.

  Born 18 October 1990 in Houston, Dallas, she is the daughter of a former Sheriff and Marine Vietnam veteran, and has had a standout sporting career since High School though with the odd violent outburst along the way. There were also domestic violence charges arising from her first short-lived marriage to fellow WBNA player Gloria Johnson.

 Griner is a Sun, Mercury, Venus and probably Moon in Libra so should be diplomatic. But she is also part of the triple conjunction generation with Uranus, Neptune and Saturn in Capricorn, which can produce great talent at the same time as erratic, unpredictable temperaments. Even more so in her case, because her Saturn Neptune sextile Pluto form a Yod focussing on Mars in Gemini. Such an apex planet Mars has difficulty in modulating anger and aggression and tends to be overly impulsive and to plunge recklessly into action.

  She also has a pushily-confident Pluto square Jupiter, which will give her a tendency to assume rules don’t apply to her.

 Her self-defeating 10^th and 16^th harmonic are both strong.

  She looks understandably devastated at the moment with undermining transits for a year or two ahead but that does not mean she’ll be stuck there – only that her life will take time to rebalance.

  Travelling to foreign countries assuming they have the same attitude to certain drugs, even prescriptions ones, is hardly sensible.

Pic: Lorie Shaull  

Nicholas Clegg has been one of the many oddities about Facebook and about as far removed from lost-in-cyberspace Zuckerburg as he could be. A bland Liberal Democrat UK politician, whose popularity plummeted when he was Deputy PM in a coalition government with David Cameron, he tapped into the FB money tree in 2018 as a senior executive and absconded to California. This year he was elevated further still to the top table, but is now returning to London, taking advantage of FB’s remote working culture, as have several other top brass.

  Murmurs are that all is not content in the Zuck kingdom. ‘Insiders claim the former boy wonder is increasingly unwilling to be challenged and ever-more irate that the outside world is not buying into his vision.’ And Facebook is now in a phase where growth has deserted them for the first time in history.

 Clegg has done well for himself with a £7m five-bedroom house in the USA, plus a salary of £2.8m, and shares in the company worth almost £10m after his recent promotion. But there may come a time when even shed loads of money are not worth being put in the stocks for FB’s misdeeds.         

 Clegg was born 7 January 1967 5.30 am, Chalfont St Giles, England, he has a Dutch mother, a half-Russian father and is fluent in Dutch, German, Spanish and French. His wife, Miriam González Durántez, a leading international trade lawyer, is Spanish. No surprise he feels European at heart.

  He has a money-oriented 2^nd house ambitious Capricorn Sun square an even more ambitious 10^th house Mars; plus an indulgent, superficially charming, sociable Venus opposition Jupiter.

 Mark Zuckerburg’s Jupiter is conjunct Clegg’s Sun Mercury – so good feelings and largesse follow. MZ’s Venus are conjunct Clegg’s Taurus North Node which also has financial resonances. Facebook’s Jupiter is also conjunct Clegg’s Pluto  and its’ Taurus North Node is conjunct Clegg’s NN as well. But for all the enthusiasm-raising and bank-account-boosting crossovers it is still a questionable connection with MZ’s Mars in Scorpio opposition his Taurus Sun sitting on Clegg’s Neptune.

  Their relationship chart has friendly feelings and also major differences which will erupt into the open in 2024/25 if not before.

 Clegg’s relationship chart with Facebook, 4 February 2004, hints at major stress between them from early 2023 to late 2024 which could be the parting of the ways.

  Clegg’s Facebook years have coincided with transiting Saturn through his lower profile 1^st quadrant since 2016, which he is slowly exiting and he may well be about to embark on a new career which might even include stepping back into the political arena in a couple of years.  

Another obsessive lier/denier has been forced to admit to being wrong and may have to pay a hefty price for previous ‘misspeaks.’ Conspiracy theorist and fake news promoter Alex Jones has finally testified that the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting was “100% real” and that it was wrong to call it a hoax. The parents of a child killed in the shooting are seeking at least $150m (£123m) in a defamation trial which goes to the jury imminently.

 He has portrayed the case as an attack on his free speech rights under the First Amendment but now says he understands t it was irresponsible of him to claim the shooting was false and that no children were killed. Twenty children and six adults were shot dead at Sandy Hook. Jones repeatedly claimed that the shooting was a ploy to push gun control measures and claimed it had been staged by actors and the media.

  Born 11 February 1974 in Dallas, Texas, he has provided support on his Infowars website for white nationalists, and has in the past disputed that Timothy McVeigh was responsible for the Oklahoma bombing. He said: “I understood there’s a kleptocracy working with psychopathic governments—clutches of evil that know the tricks of control”. He has been an avid Trump supporter throughout.

  He has an ideologue’s Air Grand Trine of Sun Jupiter in Aquarius trine Uranus (Moon) in Libra trine Saturn South Node in Gemini – strongly attached to dogmatic ideas and theories. His Sun Jupiter is also in an angry square to Mars in Taurus. Daddy issues which is par for the course with the paranoid-about-malevolent-government mob

  His Solar Arc Neptune has moved by Solar Arc to square Uranus on one leg of his Air Grand trine, thereby undermining the central pivot of his existence. Tr Pluto is also square his Uranus this year with worse to follow as tr Neptune squares his Saturn by 2024 for a panicky, uncertain time.

  Maybe it was always thus, but there does seem to have been a preponderance of public menaces intent on distorting our sense of reality in recent years. May they all get buried under the weight of their lies and delusions.

Add On: There is a possible birth time of 1.42pm which looks plausible. Duplicitous Neptune on the chart axis on the descendant square a 10th house Mercury in Pisces – with a ‘lucky’ Sun Jupiter on the Midheaven; and a grandstanding Pluto in the performing 5th plus a maverick Uranus.

The genocide of the Yazidi people by ISIL in Iraq in 2014 was only the latest in an estimated 72 such persecutions by Arabs and Turks over millenia. They are a minority group, indigenous to Kurdistan, with a monotheistic religion. The 2014 atrocity  saw over 5,000 Yazidis killed and thousands of Yazidi women and girls forced into sexual slavery, as well as the flight of more than 500,000 Yazidi refugees.

Nadia Murad, 10 March 1993, who now lives in Germany, was kidnapped from her hometown and held by the Islamic State for three months until she escaped. She is the founder of Nadia’s Initiative, an organization dedicated to “helping women and children victimized by genocides, mass atrocities, and human trafficking to heal and rebuild their lives and communities” . She and Congolese gynaecologist Denis Mukwege, 1 March 1955, who works with rape victims, were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for “their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.”

 Both are Sun Pisces and both have a strong Jupiter which latter would be essential to keep hope and optimism high when facing the worst of human nature.

  Her Sun Mercury are in a can-be-influential trine to Pluto and sextile and innovative Uranus Neptune in Capricorn. With a resourceful Jupiter Moon in Libra opposition Venus square Uranus Neptune. Her Mars in Cancer is trine the Sun and in an adventurous square to Jupiter and she has a tough, persevering Pluto square Saturn.

 Denis Mukwege, a doctor and pastor, who specialises in treating women raped by armed rebels and has faced assassination attempts for his work, is a Sun Pisces, with Saturn in conscientious Scorpio in an unyielding square to Pluto. Like Nadia he has a Cardinal T square involving Jupiter with his Venus in Capricorn opposition Uranus Jupiter in Cancer square Neptune and an adventurous trine to Jupiter Uranus in Cancer.

   His ‘healing’ 12^th Harmonic chart is strong.

Compassionate Pisces plus tough-minded Saturn Pluto and an idealistic, upbeat Jupiter.

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Nancy Pelosi has been accused of grandstanding and china-baiting in her swansong tour of the far east including Taiwan. The White House raised concerns about the visit and even Taiwanese locals are wary that she’ll cause unnecessary trouble. She has been incensed about authoritarian China since the Tiananmen Square riots were brutally suppressed in 1989.

  Nothing much budges her when she has set her plans with a substantially Fixed chart. She was born 26 March 1940 in Baltimore, MD, with a biography time of 3.10pm, which puts a formidable collection of Mars, Venus and Uranus in Taurus on her Midheaven opposition a Scorpio Moon. She also has Pluto in Leo square Saturn in Taurus and and 8^th house Aries Sun.

  Her Mars is conjunct the destructive Fixed star Algol so she’s a determined fighter and her Mars Venus Uranus are conjunct the China 1912 Mars Moon in Taurus with the China Saturn conjunction her Uranus. So not an amiable connection. Two formidable opponents.

  Her relationship chart with China 1912 is under discouraging, separating influences this year. The already fraught, suspicious composite T Square of Sun Venus opposition Neptune Moon square Mars is catching tr Saturn hard aspects this year and next with worse in 2023/24 as tr Uranus catches up to rock their boat further.

  The China/USA relationship chart is uncertain this year, scratchy in 2023 and still in bulldozer-meets-brick-wall gear – depressing and neither side compromising.

Her relations with Joe Biden are never easy at the best of times since her heavyweight Taurus planets clash with his Scorpio stellium. Her unyielding Saturn square Pluto sit on his Moon square Jupiter so she’ll douse his enthusiasm. Her Sun opposes his 10^th house Neptune so she’ll find him evasive and indecisive.

 Their relationship chart has a New Moon opposition Pluto = power-struggling. With an aggravated composite Mars opposition Venus square Saturn Uranus which is being chilled by tr Saturn hard aspects this year and next.

  If the Republicans take Congress at the Mid Terms she is expected to retire. And given her age that may happen whatever the outcome.  Pluto moving into Aquarius will shift the trajectory of her life as it opposes her Pluto and squares her Saturn in 2023/24 and moves out of her ‘performing’ 5^th house. 2023 is also the year of her Uranus Return.

PS. I use the 1 January 1912 China chart because it works better than the 1949 one.

See previous post on Taiwan 19 July 2022

Bernard Cribbins, a much-loved, and very funny, character actor has died aged 93, after an astonishingly full and varied career on stage and screen, with awards for his work in children’s television on Jackanory, The Wombles and more recently CBeebies as well as The Railway Children. He did vaudeville, knockabout comedy with Peter Sellers, West End farce and even found success in the pop charts, with two Top 10 novelty songs.

  He was born 29 December 1928 12.35am in Oldham, England into a poor family who suffered during the depression years so he left school at 13 and was pleased to be offered a job as assistant stage manager at the local theatre, which set him off on his 75 year career. He worked right through to his late eighties.

   He was an earthy, practical and ambitious Sun Capricorn in the communicative 3^rd house with an influential Pluto in his 10^th. His Sun was in a mischievous square to Uranus and a confident, lucky, talented Earth Grand Trine to an amiable 7^th house Jupiter trine Neptune. He had affectionate Venus in his 5^th house of children and entertainment, though he didn’t have any of his own, and it was in an enthusiastic trine to Mars in chatty Gemini in his vocal 9^th house. His Mars was opposition Saturn which would give him grit and discipline from a tough childhood.

  A wonderful mix of soft and hard, hard-driving and creative, friendly and controlling.

Pic: Mattbuck

The killing of the al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a drone strike in Afghanistan has been met with jubilation in the USA. He was Bin Laden’s second in command and is believed to have plotted the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen that killed 17 US service members, was an architect of the 9/11 and was indicted for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

   How relevant an event it is in the greater schemes of things isn’t clear, given that Al Quaeda is no longer the force it was and Zawahiri has been ill for some time, his duties undertaken by other younger members of the terrorist group.

Zawahiri, 19 June 1951, was a Sun, Mars, Mercury in Gemini square Saturn in Virgo so being undermined by tr Neptune hard aspects last year and this; with tr Uranus square his Pluto when he was killed.

  What is of marginal interest is that the Al Quaeda chart has an 18 degree Leo Sun, exactly in line for the explosive Mars Uranus North Node conjunction of the moment – whether that signals its death knell or a shift in a different direction isn’t clear. Though it will have dented morale, there’s no doubt.

  I’m searching around for a history-changing moment to accompany the rare Mars Uranus North Node coming together this week and the above may not be it. See post June 17 June 2022 – construction of the Berlin Wall, death of Mao, 1947 bombing of King David Hotel, Jerusalem, 1871 Germany unification.  

  The USA/Al Quaeda relationship chart is being triggered this year by the Eclipses and under immense pressure in 2023/2024. It’s difficult to see Al Quaeda rising from the grave but there may be other ripple effects yet to be seen.

The England Lionesses victory over Germany in the EURO 2022 final has sent fans into a delirium of joy with hopes that women’s football is finally becoming established as a force to be reckoned with. Encouraging more schools to offer equal access to football and pressure for more Premier League clubs to allow their women’s teams to play in their main stadia will be key aims.

  The first women’s football league was established in 1969 so the foundations have been laid over the past fifty years.

   Looking across a few key players and coaches what is significant is a constant smattering of determined Scorpio planets and in three of them Sun Neptune conjunctions. Neptune often occurs in top athletics though it seems counter-intuitive.

   Chloe Kelly, 15 January 1998, the forward who scored the winning goal, is a Sun, Venus, Neptune in Capricorn, with an energetic and upbeat Mars Jupiter in stubborn Aquarius. She is the youngest of seven siblings and honed her game playing against five older brothers in the local caged pitch.

Hope Powell, the former coach who progressed the game for women, 8 November 1966, is a Sun, Venus, Neptune in Scorpio.

 Baroness Sue Campbell, 10 October 1948, former chairman of UK sport is also credited  with the advancement of the women’s league. She is a Sun conjunct Neptune in Libra with a super-determined Mars in Scorpio and mercury also in Scorpio.

  The present coach, Sarina Wiegman, 26 October 1969, is a Sun Scorpio opposition Saturn in Taurus with a do-or-die determined Pluto trine Mars, sextile Neptune.

 Ella Toone, 2 September 1999, a forward, a confident and controlled Sun Virgo trine Jupiter, square Pluto with Mars in Scorpio. She comes from a sporting family and at school excelled at every team sport – table tennis, tennis, netball, hockey, cross country athletics.

Leah Williamson, 29 March 1997, the team captain, is a self-reliant Sun, Saturn, Venus in Aries trine Pluto, sextile Uranus Jupiter in Aquarius. She started football very young, and is now studying accountancy part-time.

A ray of sunshine to uplift gloomy spirits. Nothing like a sports victory to blow away cares.

Two trailblazers for equality and civil rights in the USA have died. Bill Russell, the NBA great who marched with Martin Luther King Jr, and in 1966 became the first Black man to hold the role of head coach in a major US sport. And actress Nichelle Nichols, one of the first black women to be featured on American television in a non-subservient role when she played Lieutenant Nyota Uhura in the original Star Trek series.

 Both were motivated by the rebellious, status-quo-upsetting and progressive Uranus square Pluto of the early 1930s in their charts.

  Bill Russell, 12 February 1934 11.15am Monroe, Louisiana,  was born in the racist, segregated south but moved to California when he was 8. His parents were supportive and taught him not to respond to racist taunts which were the norm throughout his life. He had an ambitious chart with a 10^th house well-organised Sun, Saturn and North Node in Aquarius trine an enthusiastic Jupiter; with a charming Venus conjunct his Midheaven and Moon, as well as an ambitious Mars in ‘dancing’ Pisces. His Mars Mercury in Pisces opposed Neptune in his sporting 5^th house. Just as significant was a super-confident and extra-lucky Jupiter opposition Uranus square Pluto in his 3^rd. A focal point Pluto is often ahead of its time and can attract resistance and hostility.

  In 2010, President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honour, for his athletic accomplishments and his advocacy for human rights.

Nichelle Nichols, 28 December 1932, no time, Robbins, Illinois, was a creative Sun Capricorn trine Neptune with her Neptune in a showbizzy conjunction to Mars and square her Venus and Mercury. She initially wanted to be a singer and dancer but was given the  Star Trek role. She considered leaving at the end of the first run but a chance meeting with Martin Luther King changed her mind. He said ‘You simply cannot abdicate. This is an important role. This is why we are marching. We never thought we’d see this on TV.’ She later saw it as a role model for black people, but also for women with ambitions to become astronauts or scientists.

  She had the Pluto square Uranus perhaps tied into her Capricorn Moon so was destined to be a catalyst for change.

  Her Pluto was sextile an exuberantly confident, energetic and lucky Mars Jupiter in Virgo.

It still staggers me reading about what they had to live through and the unimaginable and ingrained prejudice they faced, which has not exactly disappeared.