Friday Bite 30 January 2026

The Sense of an Ending

 “An individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun” Kristi Noem, 24 January

“… I may have gotten some information wrong.” Kristi Noem, 28 January

“When we first entered the streets, there was hope that we could do something, and that Israel and the U.S. would help us… Now there is just death—so many dead.” “M”, Iran protester who did not want to be named:  Cora Engelbrecht New Yorker 29 January.

ANOTHER WEEK ANOTHER crisis. Hopefully, we are not becoming inured to daily doses of shock and awe because this trend is not going away any day soon. Sunday’s full moon is likely to bring more than one global situation to a head, with a potential strike on Iran being top of the list of possibilities.

First though, the key events of the past seven days that stand testament to the astrology of the times.

As if the fatal shooting of one American citizen exerting her right to protest and free speech wasn’t enough to urge the Trump administration to change its tactics in regard to the purge on “illegal and criminal aliens” in Minneapolis, on Saturday, a second American citizen was shot and killed by ICE agents on the streets of the city. Alex Pretti, a thirty-seven-year-old American intensive care nurse for the Department of Veterans Affairs was shot multiple times, despite the gun he was legally permitted to carry having already been removed by one of the agents. The response by the administration was immediate; Kristy Noem (Homeland Security Secretary) declared Pretti was “brandishing” a gun and had “arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and kill law enforcement…” and posts by the President, JD Vance and Stephen Miller followed in quick succession describing Pretti as a “domestic terrorist” and a “would-be assassin”.

After nationwide condemnation, Trump and the administration rowed back on their initial statements, Noem conceding that she may have “gotten some information wrong.” And by Tuesday, Border patrol commander, Gregory Bovino – he of the army great-coat beloved by the Nazis – had been transferred to the Mexican border and replaced by Tom Hoffman, the border tsar. And on Wednesday, two ICE agents involved in the fatal shooting were placed on administrative leave.

Governor Tim Walz who had been goaded into bringing the State National Guard onto the streets did so, but put them to better use handing out doughnuts and hot chocolate to observers and protesters. In so doing, he may have averted an even bigger crisis whereby the president would have invoked the Insurrection Act.

At first glance, there’s not a lot to see in the above chart for the moment Alex Pretti was fatally shot. The prevailing line-up of personal planets and Pluto in Aquarius is seen here in the twelfth house of shadows and secrets, and the ruler, Neptune, is conjunct Saturn in the first house sextiling Uranus. But those factors tell a story. The actions of the ICE agents were clouded in confusion – is that a gun or a phone? – and it remained for videos taken by onlookers to see that, contrary to the narrative adopted by the administration, Pretti was not brandishing a gun, and that he was already on the ground when he was shot. And while trigger-happy Uranus was trining Mars and Pluto and sextiling Saturn and Neptune, whatever the harmony of the angular relationships, you’re still dealing with a combustible group of planets.  Plus, the nodal axis was flanking the Ascendant, giving a nod to the eclipses of last September and those to come in February and March.

I looked at this line-up of planets in last week’s bite. Then, Mars was in Capricorn and the remaining personal planets in Aquarius; now there is a full complement of personal planets in Aquarius, conjoining Pluto. And by last Tuesday/Wednesday, Mars was exactly conjunct Pluto, so arguably, we are in an even more potentially transformational period.

Which brings us on to that “armada” of US aircraft carriers and warships now positioned in the Arabian Sea, and within range of Iran. Plus, at least a dozen F-15E attack planes have joined a fleet of jet fighters at an air base in Jordan – where they were last June in readiness for “Operation Midnight Hammer”.

Weeks before the United States attacked Venezuela and kidnapped former president Maduro and his wife, there was a build up of American warships in the Caribbean. During that time, negotiations were apparently taking place offering Maduro a “safe-passage” out of Venezuela, which he refused to accept. So, it isn’t difficult to see a parallel with the Iran situation. Ostensibly, the Trump administration is using threat-of-force to get the Iranian government to come to an agreement over ending its nuclear programme and its killing of its citizens.

Since it is highly unlikely that the mullahs will agree to anything of the kind, plus the promise the American President made to the Iranian people to come to their rescue, Trump is left with only one option. To attack. And the more surgical that attack can be, the better for the Iranian people and the rest of us.

It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to find US/Israeli fighter jets attacking strategic sites in Iran in the early hours of Sunday morning. Thirteen degrees of Leo-Aquarius is within one degree of Iran’s Sun (in the chart of Khomeini’s return to Iran) and conjoining the Ascendant (in the chart of the Islamic Republic). The full moon, set from the perspective of Tehran, places Uranus on the Descendant, which is symbolic of a surprise attack by an “open enemy”. And even if Sunday does not turn out to be D-day, the full moon, which presides over the end of chapters, has a two-week timeline until the solar eclipse of 17 February.

Also in the full moon mix are the “peace talks” still ongoing between Russia, Ukraine and the United States. That they are continuing is a good sign, although it is hard to believe that Putin will give up his demands over the Donbas. All wars eventually end, and maybe each time that prospect is dangled in front of us, the end draws nearer.

And, for now, I think that’s the best we can hope for.

Friday Bite 23 January 2026

Red Rags and Red Flags

Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”

 “The United States is treated very unfairly by NATO. I want to tell you that. When you think about it, nobody can dispute it. We give so much, and we get so little in return.” Trump, Davos 21 January

IF EVER YOU wanted proof that astrology works, you only have to look at the events of the past seven days and the planetary alignments under which they took place. We may not have a scientific framework for astrology, but the fact that we astrologers can look at alignments such as those presiding over this current period and anticipate events of great magnitude is evidence of something more than coincidence. I have been looking at this second half of January – and beyond – for many months and discussing its potential for history-making events, and unless you have made a point of removing yourself from what is happening on the world’s stage, more than one tipping point has already appeared.

Let’s start with the crisis that threatened the very fabric of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). Over the weekend, President Trump informed the Norwegian prime minister by letter that he no longer felt obligated to help Norway, Denmark nor any other European country come to that, since he had been denied the Nobel Peace Prize. He followed by ramping up his rhetoric on acquiring Greenland, first threatening force to obtain the territory and then slapping swingeing tariffs on European countries and the United Kingdom. By the time the US president arrived at Davos for the annual World Economic Forum, the fur was not just flying but causing breathing problems! Not to make light of the situation.

NATO came into being in 1949, some three years after the end of World War II. The alliance, which is made up of European countries, Great Britan, Canada and the United States, was intended to maintain stability, security and peace in the West. And for seventy-six years it has done just that. Enshrined in its foundations is Article 5, which states that should any member state be attacked, the others will come to its defence.

Only once in those seventy-six years has Article 5 been deployed. And that one time was in 2001 after the attacks on America (9-11). The then United States president, George W Bush called upon all those who were “with America” to stand up and be counted. And NATO stepped up to the plate. European, Canadian and British troops rallied behind America, fighting side by side with US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. All 28 member states sent troops to Afghanistan and during the course of the twenty-year war, an estimated 3,500 NATO soldiers lost their lives and nearly 2,500 US service members were killed.

Which becomes even more germane given that in the last twenty-four hours President Trump stated on television that “We have never really asked anything of them [NATO]. You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan or this or that. And they did. They stayed a little back, little off the front lines.”

On Wednesday, as Mars, Mercury, the Sun, Venus and Pluto lined up within seven degrees of one another, NATO leaders, among others, gathered in Davos to hear what Donald Trump had to say about the developing crisis over Greenland. The American president spoke for one hour, eleven minutes and forty-eight seconds, during which he not only dropped the threat of military force in Greenland and tariffs on Europe and the United Kingdom, but managed to insult pretty well everyone in the room from Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, to Emmanuel Macron of France and the entirety of NATO.

Following his speech, the American president met with Mark Rutte, the Secretary General of NATO, which resulted in a framework for the future of Greenland. While neither gave details of that framework, it is thought to be modelled on a “sovereign base area” as in Cyprus where British military bases are regarded as British territory. In this way, while Greenland will retain its sovereignty, the US will increase its military presence on the island, placing missiles at its bases, while European forces will ramp up their defence of the surrounding Arctic region.

As we can see from the above chart, Pluto is all over NATO at the moment. Transiting Pluto is squaring its Ascendant-Descendant axis and approaching the IC while solar arc Pluto is conjoining the Ascendant. Waiting in the wings is transiting Uranus, which is set to square NATO’s Sun for the third and final time in mid-May.

Pluto spells transformation, although I think reformation is a useful word here. When we see Pluto so heavily accented in a chart, the potential for an entity to be reformed or reinvented is presented. In the case of NATO, ever since the American president made it clear that the alliance isn’t punching at the correct weight, efforts have been made to increase defence budgets (which is clearly a good thing), although it seems this isn’t enough to quell Donald Trump’s disdain for the alliance, which is obvious from his recent comments on NATO troops not being in the front line of the Afghan war. So, I think while this Greenland hurdle may have been overcome, others loom, and NATO is likely to be put to the test and its Article 5 deployed for the second time in the months to come.

Thursday was another busy day for the American president. He and other leaders signed up to join his Board of Peace, which first and foremost relates to the future of Gaza, however, what it simultaneously represents is an alliance of leaders and countries who appear to be of a similar, not exactly democratic, mindset: Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Hungary and Russia are among the signatories.

Thus, the Board of Peace has come into being under this extraordinary planetary line-up. If nothing else, this alliance gives the new world order a little more shape and texture, which is something we might expect from a Sun-Mars-Mercury-Venus-Pluto conjunction in Aquarius.

And into this potent mix comes yet another potential international crisis: Iran. Yesterday, President Trump announced that “a massive armada” of American ships, including the USS Abraham Lincoln and multiple guided missile destroyers, were on their way to Iran. This came shortly after Mr Trump threatened to “wipe Iran off the face of the Earth” should it try to assassinate him.

Also under this celestial canopy, today Russia, Ukraine and the US are meeting in Abu Dhabi to discuss a peace deal. And they do so as thousands of people in Kyiv remain without heating in sub-zero temperatures due to Russian strikes. According to Steve Witkoff and the American president a deal is “almost there” with just one sticking point remaining. However, that sticking point is the size of the Grand Canyon: the Donbas.

“I believe they’re at a point now where they can come together and get a deal done. And if they don’t, they’re stupid — that goes for both of them,” Donald Trump.

It is hard to believe that Ukraine will agree to handing over the remaining 20 percent of the Donbas region it still holds, which is what Russia has consistently demanded as a condition of any kind of peace deal. Zelensky for his part has consistently maintained that he won’t give the region to Russia. What is different on this occasion, however, is that the United States has proposed that the Donbas – Ukraine’s industrial heartland – becomes a demilitarized and free economic zone in exchange for security guarantees for Kyiv. So, there is a teeny-weeny chance of a breakthrough.

And this is something to bear in mind when looking at the current astrological patterning. Transformation (Pluto) is a neutral concept. Situations can be transformed through both dreadful events and by marvellous developments. Days ago, the prospect was raised of Europe going to war with its partner, the United States, and in-so-doing NATO would have collapsed. But crisis became opportunity and a new plan is now in motion.

I have talked a lot about 2026 as a whole being a year of crisis and opportunity, on both an individual and collective level, and this is just one example of many to come. When this theme came up on the Astrology Hub last Wednesday, Amanda Walsh reminded me that there was a Chinese character for just that, and I thought I would leave you with my hand-drawn version of that hànzì.

Let us imprint this image on our unconscious minds.