Friday Bite 5 December 2025

A Poisoned Chalice

THIS IS GOING to be a mini-Friday Bite because I am in the middle of writing my twelve year-ahead forecasts, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty going on in the world worthy of astrological comment. Actually, I waited until today to start writing the 2026 Overview because I wanted to see what role the full moon in Gemini would play in global affairs, particularly the war in Ukraine.

In the last couple of weeks (since the new moon in Scorpio) diplomatic efforts to secure a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia have intensified. Today’s full moon, with its theme of closure and completion held the promise of such a deal but it also had the potential to up the ante. And we have no peace deal. What we have instead is President Putin doubling down on his maximalist demands, threatening to go to war with Europe and consolidating his position as India’s ally, which in turn strengthens Russia’s premium position in the developing new world order.

I don’t know about you, but I find something deeply offensive about Putin strutting about on red carpets in foreign countries while he continues to massacre the innocents in towns and cities the length and breadth of Ukraine.

Let’s back up. Over the course of the past fortnight Steve Witkoff and team Trump have been negotiating terms for the end of the war in Ukraine. Witkoff has travelled to Moscow six times in recent weeks and meetings between the US and Russia have been held in Saudi Arabia and Miami. And if it hadn’t been for the Ukrainian delegation turning up uninvited in Miami there would have been no consultation with Ukraine at all. The 28-point peace plan, nothing less than a Putin wish list – indeed, The Guardian revealed that parts of the plan appeared to have been originally written in Russian – was reduced to 19-points after the meeting with the Ukrainians so that by the time it was wafted in front of Putin there was no longer anything to talk about. According to Putin, speaking in Kyrgyzstan a week ago, Russia will continue to attack Ukraine “until the last Ukrainian dies”.

In February this year when Trump ambushed President Zelensky in the Oval office, we were shocked. No longer, apparently, was America behind Ukraine in its attempts to defend itself against an aggressor. Since then, the pendulum of support has swung back and to, but in the last couple of weeks it is clear that the United States believes the only way for the fighting to stop is to give Putin everything he wants and for Ukraine to surrender.

Of course, there’s a lot more to it than that.

Heather Cox Richardson is one of several journalists to have reported on the relevance of the “Mariupol Plan” to current US efforts to appease Putin. The “Mariupol Plan” was put together in 2016 after Russian operatives told Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, that they would help Trump win the election in exchange for Trump’s “looking the other way” as Russia took control of Crimea. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner (Trump’s son-in-law) thus headed out to Tuesday’s meeting in Moscow with the intention of offering Putin US recognition of Russia’s (illegal) annexation of Crimea and most of the four other eastern oblasts – Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

That puts rather a different complexion on it all, doesn’t it. And it certainly explains why the astrology looks like this.

The above chart of the full moon is set from the perspective of Moscow, but, of course, all the degree numbers are the same everywhere in the world; only the angles and the house positions of the planets change.

The full moon at 13 degrees of Gemini-Sagittarius precisely squares the nodal axis, so we know karma is in the mix. What happens at this time has a long and complicated past and the actions taken will set more karma in motion. The Saturn-Neptune conjunction (25 and 29 degrees of Pisces respectively) is conjoined to the United States IC and squaring Putin’s Mars in Sagittarius. The full moon itself flanks the US’s Ascendant-Descendant axis, trines and sextiles Putin’s Sun, picks up Russia’s Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, Ukraine’s Midheaven and Neptune, Zelensky’s Mercury (chart ruler) and Donald Trump’s Chiron.

It’s a very important full moon.

The Saturn-Neptune conjunction, which has been in play since the end of March and will reach exactitude on 20 February next year, is not only a portent of the end of regimes but it is a combination that rewards actions of the highest calibre and consciousness and punishes those of the basest. And the actions of Putin, with his Mars squaring the Saturn-Neptune conjunction, and the US with this duo conjoined to its IC – the roots of the nation and the foundations of the future – fall a little short of the highest calibre and consciousness. Putin’s aggressive actions (Mars) are likely to end in failure and ignominy while the US, under the Trump administration, is in danger of falling apart at the seams and certainly losing its integrity.

We may have to wait until February and the solar eclipse in Aquarius to see the ramifications of these developments.

Friday Bite 28 November 2025

Talking Turkey

“1861, Americans went to war to keep a cabal from taking control of the government and turning it into an oligarchy. The fight against that rebellion seemed at first to be too much for the nation to survive. But Americans rallied and threw their hearts into the cause on the battlefields even as they continued to work on the home front for a government that defended democracy and equality before the law.

And in 1865, at least, they won.”

Heather Cox Richardson, 27 November

I AM WRITING this Friday Bite on Thursday, which is Thanksgiving in America. This morning, I read a piece on the history of this special day by Heather Cox Richardson in her excellent substack, Letters from an American. She talked not only about the genesis of Thanksgiving in 1621 when the Pilgrims shared fowl and deer with the indigenous Wampanoags, but how the significance of the holiday changed during Abraham Lincoln’s presidency and the civil war that divided the nation, becoming a time to remember the lives lost in the pursuit of liberty and equality.

This year, Thanksgiving comes at a similarly divisive period of American history. On the eve of Thanksgiving, two members of the National Guard were shot, a short distance from the White House. The suspect, an Afghan national who fled the Taliban in 2021, is in custody. In consequence, the administration has stopped processing immigration applications from Afghanistan.

Clearly, it’s not just America that is going through a troublesome time. Not only is the war between Russia and Ukraine raging, but the Palestine-Israel conflict is far from over and then there’s Sudan, Congo, Myanmar, and so it goes.

Here in Blighty, Chancellor Rachel Reeves finally revealed her much-speculated-upon budget, and its content proved as lacklustre as its author. As the government continues to struggle with balancing the economy and the disparate needs of the British people, it seems inevitable that heads will roll, including those of the prime minister and the chancellor. Whether these resignations occur before the winter solstice or in the volatile period between 20 January and 28 February is open to question. However, I believe neither of them will be in office by the next general election.

On Wednesday, a fire that engulfed an apartment complex in Hong Kong has been deemed the worst in more than half a century. It appears bamboo scaffolding surrounding the complex is to blame for the speed and spread of the fire, which has so far killed 128 people and injured 79. Two hundred are missing.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg, global financial news and analytics provider, published a transcript of two phone calls, one between Trump special envoy, Steve Witkoff and top Kremlin advisor, Yuri Ushakov, and another between Ushakov and Kremlin aide, Kirill Dmitriev. Witkoff is heard advising Ushakov on the tactics Vladimir Putin should employ in negotiating a peace deal with Donald Trump. The content of the conversation in and of itself is shocking, but what is even more shocking is its timing.  It took place on October 14, two days before the telephone call between the American and Russian presidents and three days before a meeting between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump failed to offer Ukraine the Tomahawk cruise missiles it had previously hinted that it would.

Witkoff has no previous diplomatic experience which may explain his naivety, but on the face of it his actions are nothing less than treasonous. Russia is the aggressor, not Ukraine. And Ukraine is the fortress that stands between Russia and Europe. Since World War I, the United States has stood shoulder to shoulder with its western partners but even if you put a positive spin on the actions of Witkoff and conclude that all’s fair in the pursuit of peace, it cannot be in the best interests of the western world for its most powerful nation to be supporting the cause of an authoritarian state seeking only to expand its anti-west influence.

I’m not going to take Witkoff’s chart apart, suffice to say we do not have a time of birth therefore we’re missing a lot of important detail, however some significant factors will remain regardless. Most notably, the generous Sun-Jupiter opposition – he is a charmer and an adventurer – and the Mars-Pluto square and the Mercury-Saturn square – the latter aspects revealing him to be a man with a mind for detail and someone you don’t want to cross. He is far from naïve. He’s been around the block more than once and would never have become the billionaire that he is without a nose for bull***t. So, in regard to his recent actions with the Russians, he knew what he was doing. And he’s backed the wrong horse. And with Uranus heading back over his natal Mars and squaring Pluto, and transiting Pluto opposing Uranus and squaring Neptune, he’s going to pay the price for his treachery.

Thanksgiving was the deadline set by President Trump for Russia and Ukraine to respond to Trump’s 28-point peace plan (recently reduced to 19 points). That has come and gone, although there are signs of progress. On Tuesday, a Ukrainian delegation that had held talks with U.S. officials in Abu Dhabi appeared to tentatively support the basis of the U.S.-backed peace plan — though key details remained unresolved – while later the same day Zelensky said “Kyiv was ready to advance the peace framework”. Then on Thursday, Putin let it be known that Moscow was “ready for serious discussions” about the draft proposals. “We’re getting very close to a deal,” said Trump.

What do all these developments have in common? They have taken place under this formidable astral canopy that has held sway with various moving parts for much of 2025.

The above chart is set for zero hours on 27 November from the perspective of Washington, DC. The familiar Kite configuration is in play: Jupiter sextile Uranus sextile Pluto (mini grand trine); Jupiter trine Mercury/Venus trine Saturn/Neptune (grand trine): all strung together by an opposition between Mercury/Venus and Uranus.

Try not to set too much store over what a Kite configuration means, the important factor is that all the planets involved are resonating with one another, therefore making a huge sound and exerting a powerful effect. That we think of kites as marvellous things, fun things, is to forget that their flights rarely last long and they end with a vertiginous dive to the ground.

This configuration remains in play for all of next week, and forms the background to the full moon in Gemini on the 4 December.

The “new” configuration in the above chart is created by the full moon, which is closely square the nodal axis (the point at which eclipses occur). And 13 degrees of Gemini-Sagittarius falls within a degree of the Ascendant-Descendant axis of the United States. Thus, this full moon with all its attendant themes of closure and completion and crisis points, is going to make quite an impact on the United States and its government.

I would like to believe that next week’s full moon will prove to be the signature on the end of the war between Russia and Ukraine, however, it could just as easily symbolize an escalation of hostilities. Personally, I can’t see how Russia will agree to anything less than the demands it’s been making for the past three years and ten months. But we’ll see. And although I have focussed my attention here on the full moon in reference to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, it could also play into other critical developments in America.

We are seeing history in the making, and a dark one at that.