Astrology of Today’s News

The most offensive waste of money since the Beckham Peltz wedding or indeed the upcoming Boris Carrie country-pile splurge has ended with Rebekah Vardy losing her court case against Coleen Rooney. Two waste-of-space famous-for-nothing types squalling over leaked gossip of the sort which garners headlines on which both depend to bolster their vanity always seemed a pointless exercise.

  Running true to form, Rebekah Vardy is stamping her feet, blaming a flawed judgement and insisting she wasn’t wrong in her muddled testimony.

  Born 17 February 1982, she has a troubled, even harsh chart with an angry, anguished and aggravated Pluto Saturn Mars conjunction in Libra trine her Aquarius Sun and square her Venus and North Node in Cancer. Her Sagittarius Moon may even be sextile Mars Saturn and either conjunct Uranus or Neptune.

  Her life until she married footballer Jamie Vardy in 2016 appears to have been a train-wreck.  

Her parents divorced when she was 11 and she moved from city to city, was sexually assaulted by a family friend on a weekly basis for three years, which was dismissed by her mother leading to a rift, which left her homeless at 15. “I was made to feel like it was my fault.” She attempted suicide with pills and vodka.

She married first at 17, which fell apart after six months when she slept with singer Peter Andre, whom she later disparaged because of the size of his genitalia. A six year relationship with a footballer followed which ended acrimoniously, with him claiming she dumped him to upgrade to a wealthier type. He said as his parting shot that he showered her with expensive gifts, took out an “extortionate mortgage” on their Nottinghamshire home and lent her his Mercedes but nothing was good enough. “Becky liked the finer things in life. She wanted the biggest house on the street, expensive handbags,” he said.

  When she married Jamie Vardy neither his parents or Becky’s mum and stepdad attended. The groom’s family blamed Becky for causing the rift and mum Lisa said: “I don’t have anything directly to do with my son any more. It’s a shame and very sad.”

 She now lives with him in an eight-bedroom farmhouse, worth £3million, with an indoor pool, sauna, tennis court and gym, in between Dubai holidays staying at the Atlantis (a suite costs £1,800) and the Four Seasons (suites up to £14,000 a night.)

  Two psychological thoughts. One is that bad experiences don’t necessarily produce good people or result in a well-rounded, pleasant, compassionate temperament with a sense of decency and perspective.  The other is that abusive and dysfunctional nurturing in childhood produces individuals over-sensitive to criticism, even where it is legitimate, since it taps into their deep well of inner shame.

  She now has five children from various liaisons.

  Her present husband, Jamie, 11 January 1987, is a Sun, Mercury in Capricorn which squares her Mars, Saturn and Pluto which does not sound easy or harmonious; with her Jupiter in likes-money-Scorpio conjunct his Pluto – so hints of a wannabe power-couple ambition. Admittedly her Venus is conjunct his Sun which will help slightly.

  Their relationship chart has a possessive, controlling composite Sun square Pluto with an enthusiastic Mars Jupiter conjunction and an illusory Venus Neptune. He’s very welcome to her, frankly.

She will bounce back in 2023/2024 with tr Pluto square a Jupiter midpoint – she has a titanium-strength protective shield which will deflect anything that feels threatening. Kind of like Trump/BJ etc.

When “a professional life ruiner” ran into the “Erin Brokovitch of revenge porn” by flaunting her daughter’s private photos on an internet site he met poetic justice and a prison sentence. Another Netflix crime sleaze-a-thon “The Most Hated Man on the Internet” shines a spotlight on the antics of Hunter Moore, notorious in the 2010s for revelling in his bad-boy image, posting explicit photos of people (mostly women) without their permission. Pleas to remove the photos, were laughed off, with little recourse for those whose lives were upended, some driven to suicide.

  Charlotte Laws, 11 May 1960, turned Moore’s actions in posting unauthorized and unshared photos of her daughter Kayla into a personal crusade, contacting other victims and lobbying authorities until they took action. Along the way she was harassed, vilified and flooded with death threats. Luckily she’s a stalwart Sun Taurus square Uranus and trine Saturn in Capricorn with a confident Jupiter trine Pluto and risk-taking Jupiter square Mars, with probably a Scorpio Moon. Nothing much would push her off course.

 Moore, 9 March 1986, is a Sun, Moon and Jupiter in Pisces (not conjunct) with his Sun square a high-wire, uncompromising Mars Uranus conjunction in Sagittarius and his Jupiter square Saturn. His Moon is likely trine Pluto, square Saturn, maybe sextile Neptune.  Without a birth time there’s not much indication of a driving sexual motive. Another campaigner against him said: “he didn’t care about destroying women’s lives, he just cared about content. He was an unempathetic asshole.”

  His strong Uranus would make him a disrupter, happy when he was causing waves. Both his pleasure-seeking 9^th Harmonic and his 18H are strongly marked with Uranus Neptune and his 9H with Saturn as well – it may be he was one of that emotionally-dead geek mentality who just wanted to make money or grab attention with zero empathy for anyone who might be tramped on in the process.

  As it was he ended up in prison  for “aggravated identity theft and aiding and abetting in the unauthorized access of a computer.”

 As an entertaining footnote, at one point Anonymous – an internet vigilante group comprised of highly-skilled hackers – targeted Moore, wiped his servers and backups of previous files, emptied his bank account and donated all his money to women’s refuges. His social security number was wiped. A death certificate was created, declaring him dead in the state of California, this invalidating his passport. Learning that he was still living at his parent’s house in Sacramento, Anonymous shipped hundreds of dildos to his address.  [Love it – shades of arch hacker Roddy in Mick Herron’s spook novels.]

  What goes around, comes around.

  It is a delicious irony that with such a flyaway Mutable chart he should run into a determinedly Fixed mama bear. Their relationship chart had a composite Sun Venus opposition Uranus – on different agendas. With a hostile composite Mars Jupiter trine Pluto.

 When he pleaded guilty in 2015 and was sentenced to two and a half years in prison tr Jupiter in Leo was conjunct Charlotte’s Uranus and square her Sun for relief. Jupiter was also admittedly trine his Mars Uranus but that couldn’t outweigh his First Saturn Return giving him a sharp grow-up message at the same time. He’s now out and lying low.

The closure of the UK’s only dedicated gender identity clinic for children and young people at London’s Tavistock clinic is a dramatic decision after an independent review, found it left young people “at considerable risk” of poor mental health and distress “.

It follows days after a barrister won part of a tribunal claim that she was discriminated against because of her objection to self-ID.

  The tectonic plates in the zeitgeist are shifting with the inexplicable mania force-fed into the cultural mainstream by the extreme transgender lobby finally being challenged effectively.

  In recent years Stonewall, having won its key lesbian/gay arguments by 2014, searched around for another reason to exist and landed on trans rights, which it proceeded to promote vehemently. At the height of its power, more than 950 organisations were signed up to its diversity training programme. Many/most have now exited. See previous post April 16 2022.

  But the Tavistock story has been on the go for longer.  18 years ago a nurse blew the whistle on the fast-track, ask-no-questions policy of shunting teenagers onto hormone treatment. Nothing was done and over the years numerous safeguarding issues were flagged, all discounted. A 2005 review raised questions about puberty blockers saying there was a lack of robust evidence for their use. More than 40 clinicians quit over a three year period, saying their concerns had been “shut down”.

   Allegations include that children are rushed to medical treatment, that doctors were “converting” gay children into thinking that they were trans and medics were failing to consider other mental health issues that vulnerable young people were suffering. Two Trans groups who were campaigning hard and appeared to have considerable influence at the clinic were Mermaids and the Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES).

  Both of those groups were set up in the mid 1990s – Mermaids 1995 and GIRES in 1997/1998 – as Pluto got under way in Sagittarius, 1995 to 2008. I’ve always associated Pluto in Sagittarius with narrow-minded fanaticism and to a degree is associated with Al Quaeda who emerged at the same time – extreme religious or political beliefs. Certainly dogmatic.

  Pluto is poised to shift sign for the second time since 1995 into Aquarius and there does appear to be an uprooting from the past. Pluto often accompanies a rise and fall, sometimes on the next sign change and sometimes the one after.

 The Gender Identity Research Education Society was registered as a charity on 13 February 1998 which gives it an Aquarius Sun which is being given a sharp reality check by tr Saturn conjunct at the moment. Tr Saturn in Pisces will dampen its enthusiasm further in 2023 and put the brakes on its pushy-confidence by hitting the Jupiter square Pluto; plus it will sag under a devastating and confused tr Pluto conjunct Neptune in 2023/24.

  Stonewall, 24 May 1989, is also in considerable disarray with the Solar Arc Saturn Neptune conjunction in square to the Pluto last year and this; and tr Saturn pouring cold water on its Sun, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus in Gemini in 2023.

  What is puzzling is why the Tavistock Clinic should have gone so far astray since it used to be a renowned institution. Started in 1920 with its first child patient seen on 27 September it has a Libra Sun, and Mercury and Venus (not conjunct) with a super-strength Jupiter in Virgo, opposition an innovative Uranus in a healing Water Grand Trine to Pluto and a Scorpio North Node.

  Stonewall also has an emphasised Jupiter on the focal point of a Yod to Pluto sextile Neptune Saturn.

  When Jupiter gets it right it is a social force for good. When it gets it wrong it turns into a blinkered, narrow-minded zealot, arrogantly dismissive of any criticism.

Obviously anyone suffering from genuine gender dysphoria should be offered effective help and treatment as well as sympathy. Best estimates put number of transgender individuals in UK around 1% and much the same for the USA.

Add On: The British Psychological Society, 24 October 1901, will have had some members working at the Tavistock. The BPS social media feeds indicate both a no-questions-asked transgender stance (no pre-therapy required and under sixteens capable of giving medical consent to puberty blockers) and senior psychologists objecting to a ‘revered’ institution lending its’ name to such an activist agenda.  

  The BPS chart has a Scorpio Sun catching this October’s Solar Eclipse and the Lunar Eclipse hitting on its Mercury in Scorpio – so a challenging year at a crossroads with crises forcing a rethink. That is only the advance warning of tr Pluto square the Sun from early 2023/till late 2024 which will pull down old attitudes and structures and necessitate a rebuilding out of the ashes on the far side. It could even hint at the possibility of an internal ‘civil war. Not necessarily just on this issue but on general strategy. The Solar Arc Saturn is also conjunct the South Node at the moment suggesting it is getting dragged backwards.

  It was founded at the time of the revolutionary Uranus opposition Pluto which will have put it through several tumultuous periods in the past, though this is its first hard Pluto Sun transit.

 [I’m not great fan having first hand experience of where the BPS and other such organisations have been on the wrong side of history before on other issues.]

Please add below. Older posts under News on top bar.

James Lovelock much beloved by the environmental lobby for his Gaia hypothesis that the Earth is itself a living organism, has died aged 103. He was a brilliant but idiosyncratic scientist, who left behind a treasure trove of inventions and discoveries ranging from microwaves ovens he developed in the 1950s  to instruments detecting damage to the ozone layer from CFCs which were later banned. His Gaia theory was popularised by a series of books, and benefited from the catchy name suggested by his friend and neighbour writer William Golding, an improvement he thought on the original name, Earth System Science. The scientific community initially threw their hands up in horror but it gradually became accepted wisdom and he was described as “the most important and original scientific thinker in the world.

  Though he was not always enamoured of his fans. “The Greens have become so fanatical,” he complained in later life. “I feel the Green attacks on the airlines particularly half-baked; all this stuff about carbon footprints is hogwash. Greens can be such Nazis.” Although he is publicly associated with earth-centric activism, he had wide ranging interests and worked as a consultant for the Ministry of Defence, producing James Bond Q-type ideas.

  He was born 26 July 1919 2pm (biography) Letchworth, England into an inauspicious family and did not excel at school, though he invented from early on, including a working short-wave radio receiver from scraps of wire, jam jars and pencils. 

 His chart has two talented Grand Trines, one Fire and one Water. The Fire Grand Trine of a visionary Sun Neptune in Leo conjunct Jupiter in Cancer trine a Sagittarius North Node trine Chiron is a touch oblique but would certainly plug him into the spirit of the age and healing. Fire is inspirational, self-assured, attention-seeking and rarely doubts the rightness of their views.

   His creative, healing Water Grand Trine of Uranus trine Pluto trine a Scorpio Ascendant would allow him to live in his own bubble of reality which with a status-quo upsetting Uranus trine Pluto would help in introducing new ideas.  His Mercury in Leo conjunct Saturn opposed Uranus which would also give him a sharp, outspoken approach. He was definitely a think-out-of-the-box type

  He also had a Mars Pluto conjunction in Cancer which is ultra-determined though it would give him a tendency to catastrophise as well. His 2006 book Revenge of Gaia predicted average global temperatures will rise by 8C and that much of the world will be uninhabitable by 2100. Scary.

  His global reputation 22^nd harmonic is strong as is his leaving a legacy 17H. His most notable is his breakthrough-genius 13H which makes sense. His creative 5H and 7H are also well aspected.

Athletics wunderkind Sydney McLaughlin blew away superlatives when she broke her own world record in the 400-meter hurdles at the World Athletics Championships in Oregon. What is fascinating and not a little sad is that she was born within days of the exceptionally high-stress 1999 Leo Solar Eclipse. Winning was expected of her from an early age, coming from a notable athletics family, and she didn’t disappoint. Though there is a suspicion that her robotic manner hides a good deal of internal strain and robs her of satisfaction for her achievements.

 She was born four days before the eclipse on 7 August 1999 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, no time sadly. This makes her a Sun Leo conjunct the North Node exactly opposition Uranus which is exactly square Mars in determined Scorpio opposition Saturn in Taurus. That makes a tight Fixed Grand Cross which tends to create inner frustrations of considerable magnitude. It goes along with extreme levels of endurance and dogged persistence, especially with an over-disciplined Mars opposition Saturn.

   Her restless Gemini Moon may give her a yearning to be free of the constraints of an implacable training schedule. Her Venus in Virgo is in an indulgent and sociable trine to Jupiter in Taurus and a passionate square to Pluto. Her Jupiter is also on the point of a T Square to Neptune opposition Mercury which will contribute to her strong religious faith but will also tug her in the direction of seeking pleasure.

  Her father Willie McLaughlin, 19 February 1963, was a notable athlete in his day and an early driving force in her life. He has a not dissimilar chart with Mars in Leo opposition Saturn square Neptune; as well as a pushily confident Pluto opposition Jupiter. Their relationship chart has a ‘fated’ Yod of Pluto sextile Neptune inconjunct the composite Sun so grandiose ambition is what fuels their bond though they have divergent aims. Being hothoused in the same space will give rise to aggravation. The composite Mars trine the Sun and opposition Saturn square Neptune suggests a mega-complicated turmoil of conflicting pressures – as is often the case with a demanding parent who pressures a child to excel and then gets envious when they do.

  Her Sun square Saturn will give her a sense, which she has expressed openly, of nothing ever being good enough.

  Her relationship with her father will be disrupted through 2023/24 with tr Uranus conjunct the Sun and opposition Uranus and tr Neptune opposition the composite Mars.  This coincides with difficulties on her own chart in 2023 when her Fixed Grand Cross has moved by Solar Arc to hard aspect her Pluto which suggests a life-changing crisis of one sort or another.

She recently married a former NFL player Andre Levrone Jr, 9 March 1995, who has some dissimilarities with her father. He is also a Sun Pisces, with both having Mars in Leo in a sparky connection to her Leo Sun. Andy is more down beat than her Sun Jupiter father having a Sun Saturn conjunction in Pisces. He does share a Gemini Moon with Sydney which may help.

  Their relationship chart has a controlling composite Sun square Pluto and a publicity-attracting though not mutually supportive Mars Neptune hard aspect.

  There’s a price to pay for rare talent which can be exceptionally high.

Pic: jenaragon94

A Hollywood fantasy of a perfect marriage was the aura bestowed on Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward’s fifty year journey of bliss together until his death in 2008. Scratch the celluloid image and what emerges is a more realistic picture of his alcoholism and her resentment at having her superior talent downgraded to a secondary role as mother and wife.

 Actor/director Ethan Hawke has compiled a six part bio-doc, “The Last Movie-Stars” based on material assembled from an unpublished memoir of Newman’s at the insistence of the children who wanted their mother’s contribution and sacrifice made clear. Joanne Woodward is still alive but suffering from Alzheimers.   

  They were two of the last surviving members of the Lee Strasberg-trained generation, who had full lives apart from acting with his race car driving, her intellectual pursuits and both of their philanthropic activities which involved giving hundreds of millions of dollars away.

  They married after Newman extricated himself with difficulty from an earlier marriage at a point where Joanne Woodward Woodward was the bigger, more respected star – “The Three Faces of Eve” and “The Fugitive Kind” – but that went onto the back burner with her marriage. In later years she said if she had her life over she wouldn’t have had children. It affected her career negatively but not his. She was also infuriated by Newman’s oft quoted comment on infidelity of why he would go out for hamburgers when he had steak at home – since it reduced her, she complained, to a lump of meat.

He was born 26 January 1925 6.30am Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and was a Sun Aquarius with a Pisces Moon. She was born 27 February 1930 4am Thomasville, GA, and was a Sun Venus in Pisces with an Aquarius Moon. Astrologically that is always  described as the ideal cross over – Moon to the other’s Sun.

  Both have filmic Neptune in the 8^th which fits with the ability to project an iconic image. Though there are downsides as well. On the face of it they avoided the worst traps of an 8^th house Neptune in financial mismanagement/deception and the inability to commit emotionally. There’s a suggestion from the doc series of a strong sexual connection which I can’t pin down, astrologically or what was inferred. Neptune can give the urge to merge completely but isn’t usually thought of as a lust-driven energy.

  Newman had a fast-driving Mars in Aries in his 3^rd. And he had a confident, charming Jupiter, Mercury, Venus in Capricorn opposition an intensely possessive 7^th house Pluto which is where he’d get his penetrating and powerful charm from. He had a creative Water Grand Trine from a hard-working Saturn in Scorpio trine Uranus trine Pluto, formed into a Kite with lucky Venus, Jupiter, Mercury as the driving planets; though his Sun also squared Saturn giving him insecurities about his abilities.

 Joanne Woodward was a charming and artistic Sun Venus in Pisces with the tough Saturn in Capricorn opposition Pluto square Uranus of that 1930 generation – used to hardship, innovative and forward thinking. Her creative, playful Jupiter in the 5^th would give her the urge to perform and for all her protestations she would be good with children. Her focal point Jupiter squaring her Sun Venus as well as her Neptune would support her charitable drives and her social activism. She has two inconjuncts – Mars in Aquarius to Pluto and Jupiter to Saturn so she would have unresolved strains and tensions in her life.

  Neither of their Moons are well integrated into their respective charts which would produce a sense of disconnection and vulnerability.

  Their relationship chart had a composite Sun Moon conjunction which gives a feeling of more-whole-when-together; and with the New Moon opposition Neptune there would be disappointments but they fitted each other’s patterns. The composite Neptune is on the focal point of a Yod to Mercury sextile Uranus Jupiter – fated/meant to be together. A smidgeon of passion from Venus inconjunct Pluto and an energised Mars Jupiter close to a risk-taking Uranus – it wouldn’t be dull.

  Their wedding chart from 29 January 1958 encapsulates the whole picture sublimely – the Sun close to Venus for affection opposition Uranus and square an ethereal Jupiter Neptune North Node. Well-designed for what became an almost mythical marriage. There was also an aggravated, irritable Mars Saturn conjunction which often occurs with a relationship where one partner has to sacrifice a good deal and that trines Pluto – so there was a dark underside of anger and resentment.

 Ethan Hawke, 6 November 1970, is an unashamed fan of Newman’s and his Sun, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury in Scorpio fall on Newman’s Midheaven, 10^th house and Saturn. Hawke also has an Aquarius Moon. So he resonates to much of Newman’s energy and career.  

  Having written astrologically about the Woodward/Newman marriage over the years it is fascinating and reassuring to have the real story brought out – since the astrology never described the apple-pie heaven that the gossip-magazine narrative reflected.  

Daphne Du Maurier, the supreme weaver of gothic romantic horror tales, never goes out of fashion, despite being dead for over thirty years. Her most famous Rebecca novel was recently re-created on film as well as lauded for its 80^th anniversary, with documentaries and biographers constantly fascinated by Du Maurier’s extraordinary life, talent and temperament.

  She was born 13 May 1907 4pm London and on the surface had a gilded life with a famous actor-manager father, a actress mother and a wealth of creative talent passed down from grandparents and uncles. She  married “Boy” Browning, a much be-medaled army officer, called the “father of the British airborne forces”, who was also an Olympic bobsleigh competitor and after WW11 became an aide to Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh.

  But she was reclusive and agonisingly shy, not close to her three children. She spoke to an early biographer of an incestuous relationship with her ‘violent alcoholic’ father and later relationships with actress Gertrude Lawrence amongst others.

  She had an emotionally intense, secretive 8^th house Taurus Sun and three planets in her ‘publishing’ 9^th house – an imaginative Jupiter Neptune conjunction and an influential Pluto. Her Jupiter Neptune opposed an explosive Uranus Mars conjunction in Capricorn which squared widely onto Venus in Aries in her 7^th. She would be highly-strung, rebellious, drawn to a showbusiness career and to romantic melodrama, though lived out in an oblique way.

   She always said she was split between her masculine and feminine sides. She described herself as “half-breed”, female on the outside “with a boy’s mind and a boy’s heart” and was clearly from her novels conflicted about sexuality. The heroine Rebecca is an animal, a devil, a snake, “vicious, damnable, rotten through and through”. She’s destroyed because of her poisonous sexuality.

   What would not make her life easier is that both parents were born with Pluto in Taurus which was conjunct her 8^th house Sun, so she would be trapped and over-controlled growing up. Her father does look like a monster, 26 March 1873, since his seductive and manipulative Venus Pluto in Taurus opposed Mars in Scorpio squaring onto Jupiter in Leo – he’d be a narcissistic bully. There would be fraught sexual undertones to that relationship whether anything happened or not with his Venus Pluto conjunct her 8th house Sun and his Neptune conjunct her 7^th house Venus.

 Gertrude Lawrence, 4 July 1898, had her Mars in Taurus conjunct Daphne’s 8^th house Sun with GL’s Venus in square which would spark an attraction though at a deeply unconscious and difficult-to-control level. GL’s Cancer Sun was conjunct Daphne’s Neptune Jupiter and opposition her Uranus Mars – for a half-uplifting, half aggravating chemistry.

  Their relationship chart was startling with a fiercely passionate and possessive composite Sun, Venus, Pluto conjunction but again that made an explosive opposition to  Uranus and squared onto a high-wire, chaotic Mars so was not designed to survive long term.

 Her husband, Boy Browning 20 December 1896, had a chart with some similarities to King George V1, born a year earlier. Browning was a Sun Sagittarius with a power-packed conjunction of Neptune, Mars, Pluto in Gemini square Jupiter in Virgo. His Mars was conjunct Daphne’s Pluto and his Saturn Uranus in Scorpio opposed her Sun – not an ideal match though their relationship chart does indicate affection along with a tendency to constant disruptions and upheavals. He eventually had a nervous breakdown in 1957 when tr Pluto was squaring his Saturn Uranus in Scorpio and retired from public life.

A complicated woman with a complicated life whose writing talent meshed with the culture. Her writers 21^st Harmonic was well marked.

Scottish poet Robert Burns with a world-wide reputation was a “hot mess” according to actor Alan Cumming who is launching a new dance show to strip away the biscuit-tin image of the heroic ploughman-poet and a man of the people.  Burns was a pioneer of the Romantic movement, a source of inspiration to the founders of the French and US revolutionary movements, a cultural icon in Scotland and the “people’s poet” of Russia.  His “Auld Lang Syne” is sung the world over at New Year and his “A Man’s a Man for A’ That” became totemic in communist Russia; with lovers yearning for “My Love is like a Red Red Rose” “Ae Fond Kiss”. January 25^th Burns Day is celebrated by the Scottish diaspora the world over.

  Yet his short life was anything but straightforward and well-organised. He was born 25 January 1759 in Alloa, Scotland, unverified time of 7am, with a farming father, who could never get it together, moving the family constantly from one disaster to the next, home-schooling the children in a sporadic fashion. Burns grew up damaged physically by the deprivations of his childhood and in his adult life was constantly getting knocked over by carriages, falling off his horse and scrabbling around financially; with a chaotic and ramped-up love life. His first child was born out of wedlock, one lover tied of typhus, seven of his 12 children also died. He struggled with poverty, illness and mental issues all his life. Deemed bi­polar he dealt with deep depression though it didn’t stop him lurching from one affair to the next.

He became an exciseman to keep his family afloat, which involved being out in bad weather, exacerbating his already fragile health. When he developed a heart complaint, he was recommended as treatment to “take the waters”. Walking into the freezing cold Solway Firth up to his neck killed him at  37. He died the same day a son was born.

  He had a humanitarian Aquarius Sun which fits his ‘brotherhood of man’ egalitarian views; and he also had the revolutionary Uranus in Pisces square Pluto in Sagittarius as he threw his support behind the promoters of the approaching liberal and socialist uprisings in France and the USA. His  Sun was conjunct a Venus Mars conjunction, which is often the sign of an over-active libido. His Jupiter in Capricorn on his Ascendant would bring him confidence and luck. If his birth time is accurate and it may be there or thereabouts, an 8^th house Neptune makes sense of a poet with a superstar reputation.

  When he died tr Saturn moving through his 6^th house of health was opposing his Moon and Pluto. And both his Progressed Moon and Solar Arc Jupiter were in hard aspect to his 8^th house Neptune forming a T Square – perhaps a hint of the richness of the creative legacy he left behind.

  Relocating his chart to Moscow puts an honoured Jupiter in the 10^th so it would be a success zone for him with an influential, communicative Moon Pluto in the 9^th and a social-influencer Sun, Venus, Mars in the 11^th.

 His world-wide reputation 22^nd harmonic is heavily aspected as well as his leaving-a-mark-on-history 17H.

  Alan Cumming, 27 January 1965, may well feel a resonance with him since he has an Aquarius Sun conjunct Burns’ Venus and both have a Sagittarius Moon and Saturn in Pisces. Burns had a Uranus square Pluto and Cumming has a Uranus Pluto conjunction. Nice symmetry.

‘To a Mouse’.

Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,

O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!

Thou need na start awa sae hasty,

Wi’ bickering brattle!

I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,

Wi’ murd’ring pattle!

Elon Musk, top of the global Midas list at $220 billion has flatly denied having an affair with the wife of Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, who is down at No 8.  The pair are old friends and Brin lent Musk $500 million to prop up Tesla in the early days. According to friends (WSJ) Brin filed for divorce in January, weeks after he learned of the brief alleged affair. His about-to-be-ex-wife, a former yoga instructor, is reportedly seeking $1 billion from the split, a fraction of his $95 billion fortune. Brin apparently has sold his personal stake in Musk’s companies.

  Musk is having quite a year what with the Twitter spat, welcoming a second child with his girlfriend in March; and before that twins with an executive at one of his companies last November.  He now has nine children.

  Allegations and firm denials – the astrology won’t prove it one way or the other. But what it does flag up in neon lights in Musk/Brin’s relationship is an almighty struggle for the upper hand. Musk may have crashed at the Brin pad in the early years but there is considerable underlying hostility between them. Musk’s Cancer Sun is conjunct Brin’s Saturn South Node so he will stir up Brin’s vulnerabilities and hit him on a raw spot. Musk’s Saturn also opposes Brin’s Neptune and maybe Moon for a downer as well.  

  But it is the relationship chart which is an eye opener with a do-or-die-determined power-struggling composite Mars opposition Pluto square Jupiter. Pluto square Jupiter can move mountains if a couple pull together but once they separate down their own individual paths, it becomes a tussle for the upper hand – and a battle to see who can come out on top.

  Their composite Venus will catch the August 1 transiting  Mars Uranus North Node square exactly which may rattle a few heart strings. And their relationship will go from bad to worse over the next three/four years with tr Pluto tugging at one leg of the Mars Pluto Jupiter T Square and then an undermining tr Neptune conjunct the Mars and in hard aspect to Jupiter and Pluto in 2025/26. There won’t be much in the way of good feeling left after that.     

Life up their in the mythological heights is a gift to keep us entertained.