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Paco Rabanne, the maverick fashion designer, dubbed the ‘second genius of Spain’ by Salvador Dali, who became known for his metallic ensembles and space-age designs has died. His geometric dresses fabricated from wood, plastic, metal and paper led the French press to brand him “Waco Paco” and Parisian traditionalists called him a fraud but Jane Fonda, wearing his creations in Barbarella, launched him to an international audience and his Paco Rabanne Pour Homme became the world’s bestselling men’s fragrance in the 1970s.

  He made paranormal pronouncements about his astral journeys and drew inspiration from what he said were past life visions. He claimed to have been an ancient Egyptian priest responsible for the murder of Tutankhamun; and a flying saucer pilot, a torturer during the Spanish Inquisition and an 18th-century Parisian courtesan. He predicted the end of the world would come in 1999 after the outbreak of a third world war in 1998. Though he was also also convinced that the Antichrist would arrive in 2005 and the golden age of Aquarius would begin in 2030.

  He never married, lived like a monk in a frugal and disciplined existence, in rented accommodation, never learnt to drive, had few possessions and lived for his work, giving away a good proportion of his earnings and did not smoke, drink or go to nightclubs.

  He was born 18 February 1934 in Pasajes, Spain with a possible 11.45am birth time though its accuracy is in question and I’d doubt it. His father was a Republican colonel who fought against Franco’s troops in the Spanish civil war, but was executed; and his mother was chief seamstress for Balenciaga in Spain. At the age of three Paco, living in a refugee camp along with the remainder of his family, survived the bombing of the village of Guernica by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italian forces acting at the behest of Spanish nationalists. The atrocity at Guernica, killing mainly women and children, was immortalized by Picasso in his outraged anti-war painting. The family fled over the Pyrenees into France and his mother  found work at Balenciaga’s Paris fashion house.

  As befits a maverick Paco had an Aquarius Sun alongside Saturn and Venus and North Node also imbued with revolutionary zeal. And a status-quo upsetting Pluto square Uranus (Moon) in Aries opposition Jupiter. He would not be short of confidence with Jupiter Pluto and delighted in rule breaking at least where fashion design was concerned. His Mars in creative Pisces conjunct Mercury opposed Neptune attracting him to a world of glamour and pzazz, even if his personal habits were austere.

  His 22^nd global-superstar harmonic is exceptionally strong and successful as is his leaving-a-legacy-for-history 17H and his spiritual seeking-and-searching and creative 7H.

  When aged 3 he was bombed at Guernica tr Uranus was exactly square his Venus and tr Pluto was square his Moon.

  I’d hazard a guess that he had to have had at least one outer planet if not several others in his 8^th house.

He certainly survived a terrible childhood and marked his own path in adult life with inspired determination. A trailblazer.

Pakistan is facing its worst set of challenges in its modern history with an economy on the brink of collapse, devastation wrought by climate change, a recent terrorist attack by Pakistani Taliban which left over 100 dead and the legacy of  decades of dysfunction, corruption and woeful governance by the country’s political elites. The global concern is that Pakistan is a nuclear state whose military has a history of meddling and they are effectively caught in a ‘debt trap’ by China, their biggest creditor.

  The Bank of Pakistan chart, 1 July 1948, is in dire straits with a car-crash Solar Arc Sun conjunct Mars exactly now as well as a financial-bubble-bursting Solar Arc Neptune conjunct their Jupiter covering the next few months. More jolts and tension from late May and an undermining slide picking up this May and intensifying through 2024 as tr Neptune squares the Uranus and then Sun Venus in Gemini.

  That echoes the Pakistan country chart which, if the start time is accurate at 9.30am Karachi, has a Midheaven due to catch the dissolving transiting Neptune square in 2024 as well. And earlier through this year tr Neptune is in a high tension square to the Pakistan Uranus; and tr Uranus will rattle the over confident Jupiter in Scorpio square Leo Sun from late April across mid year and on.

  Pakistan’s woes will extend through tr Neptune Saturn in Aries in 2025 square its 10^th house Mars so there won’t be any quick fixes.

 Modern India, born at midnight into the 15^th August 1947 has planets at similar degrees but in different houses. It will be due a financial jolt when tr Pluto moves into Aquarius in late March and won’t find the tr Neptune Saturn square its Mars which is 2^nd house in 2025 beneficial. But on the whole won’t be quite so battered by the present influences as its neighbour.

A massive magnitude 7.8 earthquake and a string of aftershocks have killed hundreds, possibly thousands, and caused catastrophic damage in south-east Turkey and Syria. Only three earthquakes of magnitude 6 or larger have occurred in the area since 1970. This one set off a string of tsunami warnings across the Mediterranean, from Greece to Italy, where people have been warned to stay away from coastal areas. The epicenter region is home to millions of refugees and displaced persons, many of whom live in tents & makeshift structures. On the Syrian side of the border, there are more than 4 million people displaced by the civil war.

  The quake occurred just a few hours after the Leo Full Moon square Uranus which is significant since it triggered and repeated positions of the recent Lunar Eclipse chart of 8 November 2022. The Eclipse had a Taurus Full Moon conjunct Uranus with Saturn square – so it was an indication of turbulence ahead.

 Located to Maras, Turkey, the epicentre, the quake chart puts Saturn on the Eclipse Ascendant and Mars on the Eclipse IC – planets on the axis are always deemed to be indicators of major events. And it sparked off other Eclipse positions as well.

  Often Eclipse charts ‘produce’ effects or rather point to their timing months after the Eclipse date. Later New and Full Moons can be a trigger. Lunar Eclipses are often more descriptive than Solar Eclipses.  

  The recent Lunar Eclipse of Taurus Moon Uranus opposition Sun square Saturn also rattled up the Venus in Scorpio on the Turkey chart for an emotionally upsetting time.

Add On:

A previous 7.6 magnitude earthquake which occurred near Istanbul in Turkey on 17 August 1999, caused monumental damage and around 18,000 deaths. A maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme) was observed, marking this event as one of the most destructive earthquakes in the history of the region.

  The 11 August 1999 Solar Eclipse has a Leo New Moon opposition Uranus in Aquarius and square Saturn in Taurus opposition Mars in Scorpio – so was remarkably similar to this one.

  The mystery of the China surveillance balloon shot down over the USA which has caused a major diplomatic fallout is still unsolved. Was it a weather balloon which winds blew off course as Beijing claimed? It hardly makes sense as a spy craft, since with the proliferation of spy satellites and unmanned drones, such a balloon is largely obsolete. There is a thought that it was China’s way of putting Joe Biden on guard.

  Last November Biden and Xi at the Bali summit agreed to improve relations by having the Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visit, the first such invitation for five years. That has been summarily cancelled by Washington.

  The USA/China 1912 relationship chart indicates that a diplomatic freeze is likely with tr Pluto opposition the composite Saturn picking up from February 12^th (this month) on and off till late 2024. With bad tempered words through June 2023 and February 2024. And a nervy mood in July 2023 also extending on and off into 2024. The USA/China 1949 relationship chart shows much the same.

  That mirrors the Biden/Xi relationship chart which indicates a severe disruption now till mid March and again late April into early May. With aggravations peaking in May/July 2023 and February 2024. Tensions will run high through 2023 with further separations in 2024.

Biden has Neptune on the IC through Beijing on his astrocartography which does not suggest a military hotspot. His red-flag zones are Moscow and Iran.

  Fascinating facts: Spy balloons were first deployed during the French revolutionary wars and balloons operated by spies with binoculars were used during the American civil war to detect enemy troop movements. They were used more recently extensively during the cold war.   

Pamela Anderson, the Baywatch bombshell with a terrifying childhood and a rackety adult life of sex tapes, scandals, multiple husbands – boobs, blokes, animals and activism – is back centre spotlight with a memoir and Netflix documentary. She traces her path from Canadian rags to Malibu riches via the Playboy mansion. She was sexually assaulted by a female babysitter, raped by a family friend, gang-raped by her boyfriend and his friends — all before graduating high school. Her parents, in their teens when she was born, were “the local Bonnie and Clyde”.  Her wild father who once forcibly held her mother’s face to the cooker and drowned a sack of kittens in the river in front of her is forgiven for everything. This is no woe-is-me, Sussex-style misery memoir. She wrote it herself, “no ghostwriters, no collaborators or book doctors”.

 She has been married six times, early on to the violent drummer Tommy Lee who sounds not unlike her father, delighted in Hugh Hefner and latterly dallied with Julian Assange.

  She was born 1 July 1967 4.08 am Ladysmith, BC, Canada, and has a 1^st house Cancer Sun below a Gemini Ascendant with a fiery Aries Moon. Her Sun is square a downbeat, forced-to-be-self-reliant Saturn in Aries and her Moon is in a fiery opposition to Mars, which is mercifully in her performing 5^th house giving her an outlet for her high energy and aggravation. Her upbeat Jupiter in Leo in her communicative 3^rd house will give her an ever-optimistic outlook.

  Her childhood home with a constantly churning and changeable Uranus Pluto in Virgo in her 4^th would be unnerving but her Venus also there hints at love amongst the chaos. Her Venus square Neptune will give her a forgiving streak if not good judgement about men.

  She seems refreshingly untouched by regret or blame – which makes a change.

Shamima Begum, the erstwhile teenage ISIS bride, stuck in a semi-secure detention camp in northern Syria with her UK citizenship revoked is as divisive a figure as ever as her story airs on BBC. A victim or a threat? Even journalists who know the territory and have interviewed her seem unsure. It is now eight years to the day since she left her mum at a London bus stop on a well-planned exit without a hint of where she was going. She passed through a smuggling network run by a spy for Canada, and lived at the centre of the Islamic State caliphate. Her two best friends have been killed, and her three children have died, two likely of starvation and one of pneumonia.

   Shortly after she arrived she was ‘matched’ with a husband, who demanded absolute obedience and she said it felt like ‘prostitution’. It was all the more savagely ironic since part of her reason in escaping the UK was to get away from her Bangladeshi immigrant mother who kept her tied down. She is evasive about how much she knew of ISIS savagery either before or during her time in the Middle East. Western countries are mixed about opening their doors to ISIS brides.  Canada has recently chosen to repatriate; the USA has been asking nations to do so; Australia has now taken some back. At present she is a stateless person, having had her UK citizenship withdrawn and she has never been in Bangladesh which might be a possibility.

  Born 25 August 1999 London, she is a confident Sun Virgo square Pluto – controlled and controlling – and trine an indulgent Jupiter in Taurus. Her Jupiter is tied into a plethora of Fixed planets square to Neptune with (Moon), Uranus in Aquarius opposition North Node in Leo, Mercury and Venus in Leo square Saturn in Taurus with Saturn opposition Mars in Scorpio. It is not an easy chart to warm to – can-be-vengeful, not overly sensitive, sharp-edged, very obstinate.

  Tr Saturn moving into Pisces will damp down her Sun and Pluto this year; and Uranus has two years to go before it clears her Fixed planets in a jolting and jangling ride that start several years back. She’s an uncomfortable mix with the UK since her Mars in Scorpio and Saturn in Taurus never mind Uranus collide with the UK’s Fixed planets.

 Even those who see her as culpable think she would be better in the UK facing British justice here.

 Nicola Sturgeon for reasons beyond comprehension has allowed herself to be tied in a knot over her sweeping changes to gender identification, allowing self-identification with no medical diagnosis. Only to be wrong footed when a male rapist, up on two charges, decided to switch from he to she and ended up in a women’s prison with an ensuing outcry. She is now saying, Nicola that is, that the he/she (formerly Adam now Isla) is “almost certainly” masquerading as a woman and has been transferred back to a male prison. Which renders the whole barrage of outrage aimed at the Westminster government for banning her new law a touch superfluous.

  She was never moving into a successful phase despite brave words on independence which came to nought with another ruling against a referendum. With tr Pluto aiming to oppose her Mars from late this March for two years she will be trapped, frustrating and enraging. Even before then tr Pluto opposition the Sun/Mars midpoint this month and next and on till late 2023 will have much the same effect.

  She will muster up her bravado with tr Pluto square her Jupiter through this year but it won’t outweigh the negatives and with tr Neptune undermining her Pluto in Virgo from this March into 2024 she will feel disempowered and it runs alongside a disaster prone tr Neptune square her Mars/Saturn midpoint

  Tr Uranus will also upend her rigid Saturn in Taurus from late this May and then square her Midheaven from mid August this year which will force a change of career direction – and those run on into 2024 as well.

  Her popularity appears to be fading even amongst her own supporters and it looks as if she has shot her bolt and is running out of road ahead.

  Her latest Term chart, 13 May 2012 9am has a lacklustre Neptune on the Midheaven (never a good sign for an administration) and the Saturn square Uranus which is now closing the square to exact this year by Solar Arc which will give rise to eruptions, tensions getting out of hand and divisions within the ranks.

ADD ON:  Born 19 July 1970 3.16pm Irvine, Scotland, she had a dental nurse mother and an electrician father, both of whom were experienced by her as fairly Martian, argumentative and competitive types. She has a Sun Mars conjunction  square Jupiter and a Moon opposition Mars. Her mother in particular was controlling with mom’s Pluto sitting exactly conjunct Nicola’s midheaven and their relationship chart has a composite possessive Sun Pluto conjunction. The composite Moon and Neptune are tied into the Sun Pluto in aspect which would inculcate soaring ambition to her daughter. The same is probably true of her father since Nicola has her Sun trine Neptune and sextile Pluto inclining her towards enormous goals in life.

  According to wiki Nicola was a quiet child, preferring to sit with her head in a book than talking to people”. She described herself as being an “austere” teen who’s style tended towards goth, adding that “if you see pictures of me back then, you would struggle to know whether I was a boy or a girl”.

  She married when she was 40 having known her husband for 7 years – he’s a Sun Sagittarius square a volcanic Pluto, Mars, Uranus in Virgo with an Aquarius Moon like Nicola. It seems to be a supportive and affectionate though workmanlike bond. It will go through a period of disruption from this July onwards, perhaps from outside causes.  

She does seem to like tilting at windmills but also has a capacity for attracting a cult-leader style adoration from her supporters. According to them she can do no wrong.

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Political connections, high finance and allegations of accounting fraud and share manipulation have collided in a debacle that has wiped over $100 billion from the share price of the company owned by Indian tycoon Gautam Adani, recently estimated as the world’s third richest man. He is much associated with Indian PM Narendra Modi and his attempt to sell £2 billion of shares has roped in a London investment firm with Jo Johnson, Boris’s brother, as a director – who has just resigned. This comes only weeks after Johnson’s resignation from the UK advisory board of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange – not his best year.

  Hot denials all round after US-based investment firm Hindenburg Research published a report accusing the Adani group of decades of “brazen” stock manipulation. The Adani Group responded by calling the report “a malicious combination of selective misinformation and stale, baseless and discredited allegations”. The share sale has been called off.

 The opposition in India has been demanding answers from the Modi government, accusing the government of forcing India’s premier life insurer and its biggest state-run bank to invest in Adani’s stocks, thereby “endangering the savings” of millions of Indians.

  Gautam Adani, 24 June 1962 5.14am (Indian astrologywebsite) Ahmedabad, India, was a school and college dropout who moved into trading and prospered. On this birth time he has a lucky Jupiter Moon in Pisces in his 10^th house opposition a pushily-confident Pluto which forms the driving rod of a creative Water Grand Trine of a Cancer Sun trine Midheaven and Jupiter trine Neptune. He’s also got a risk-taking Mars in acquisitive Taurus square Uranus and a Fixed T Square of Venus in flamboyant Leo opposition Saturn in cool Aquarius squaring onto an escapist, idealistic, evasive Neptune in his 5^th house which rules speculation.

  He was trapped in the Mumbai Taj Hotel shootings on November 2008, when tr Uranus was exactly conjunct his Moon which sounds as if his birth time is feasible.

  Tr Saturn in Pisces will put a damper on his influential and over-confident Pluto from this June onwards and then his Midheaven, Jupiter, Moon in 2024. Even earlier he’ll be in for a shock from this May with tr Uranus conjunct his Mars which also extends into 2024. Overall 2024 looks like a serious swamp moving into 2025.

  Jo Johnson (Lord J of Marleybone!!) born 23 December 1971 London shares with his brother Boris all the hallmarks of his bulldozer father. Stanley is a Sun Mars in Leo square Uranus with Jupiter Saturn in Taurus. Boris has Uranus Pluto opposition Saturn square Mars. JoJ has Mars in late Pisces opposition Pluto square a Capricorn Sun; with an ‘adventurous’, risk-taking Mars square Jupiter; and an Air Grand Trine of Pluto trine Saturn trine Venus, formed into a Kite by Pluto opposition Mars. In many ways even more driven by competitive ambition than Boris.

  He was a politician serving as a Minister under David Cameron and latterly in his brother Boris’s cabinet until he resigned and was elevated to the House of Lords. After his retreat from politics he moved into business and writes as a journalist for the FT.

 He’s into a car-crash phase of his life starting with a disastrous tr Pluto square his Mars/Saturn midpoint from this month on and off till late 2024; a devastating tr Pluto conjunct his Mars/Neptune from late March also until late 2024. Plus plus other less desirables. And he has not even reached tr Neptune Saturn in Aries hitting his Sun and Pluto in 2025. Cataclysmic.

  It’s not sure that Narendra Modi will be pulled into this whirlpool but he does have an undermining tr Neptune opposition his Virgo Sun and Mercury this year – and a disruptive, destabilizing tr Uranus square his Pluto in late April early May which few weeks is also flagging up on his Term chart as a financial shock.   

Dr Phil McGraw’s controversial advice talk show, which started with Oprah Winfrey’s help and attracted a deluge of lawsuits and scandals is ending by his choice. Critics say the show went too far in pursuit of entertainment by exploiting vulnerable people and taking advantage of their problems to boost ratings.

  He was born September 1, 1950 7.15pm in Vinita, Oklahoma, and holds a doctorate in clinical psychology. He co-founded Courtroom Sciences, Inc. (CSI), a trial consulting firm which provides services in US litigation psychology, jury selection, witness training, and depositions. The TV show Bull is based on his experience and he is credited as one of the creators of the series. He assisted Oprah Winfrey in her Texas beef lawsuit in the 1990s and was invited to appear weekly on her show, before launching his own on September 2002.

  He does have a hard-working Virgo Sun in his 6^th house of health and Saturn also in detail-oriented Virgo on his Descendant. But what dominates his chart is a heavyweight, hard-driving and financially-focussed 8^th house Mars in Scorpio opposition a Taurus Moon in the 2^nd square Pluto Venus in Leo in his 6^th house. One complaint made of him was he lacked compassion and that T square certainly does not suggest a sentimentalist.

  His Dr Phil Show launched on 16 September 2002 when there was a ruthless Mars square Pluto and a Virgo Sun square Saturn in Gemini – so fairly similar to his own chart.

  Oprah Winfrey, 29 January 1954 4.30am MS, also has a strong Pluto opposition Mercury square Mars in Scorpio in her chart – a testament in part to her difficult start in life.

 Jerry Springer, 13 February 1944, who started the agony-aunt, problem-exposing trend in top rated shows in 1991, has Pluto conjunct a ‘leadership’ North Node on the focal point of a trine between Uranus Mars and Neptune; with Pluto opposition Mercury – controlling, opinionated, keen on excitement.

  Dr Phil’s chart does indicate a fair amount of disruption with tr Saturn last year tr Uranus this year pounding on his  Fixed T square. Tr Uranus is opposition his Mars now and moving on to square his Pluto Venus before mid year. Plus  a dissolving tr Neptune square his Midheaven this year as well.

  Maybe it is symptomatic of the end of an era as the culture shifts away from humiliation TV.  Hopeful thought.