Friday Bite 9 October 2026

Smoke Without Fire

“Of course we’re going to do it at Fort Hood, and do it on a Thursday and we’re going to do it at 1 o’clock — which is when he [Major Hassan] did it — and it’s going to be soldiers with rifles executing the firing squad. It hadn’t been since World War II since we’ve done that.” Pete Hegseth, 8 October.

“What we’re seeing is an ongoing genocide and the displacement of the Palestinian people… that’s clearly racism.’  Zak Polanski, leader of the Green Party.

ALMOST AS SOON as I’ve posted the Friday Bite, I begin taking notes on the next major national and international developments so by the time I lift the lid on my laptop the following Friday, I can have reams of information. As happened this past week. Top of that list was the news that the United States had pulled all its bombers from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. Various reasons were given by the White House: according to Marco Rubio, there was “nothing to see here”, it was simply “a routine reallocation of resources” while JD Vance spoke of “an abundance of caution”. Not so the President who claimed the aircraft had been removed because of the risk of a drone attack ordered by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

It was the start of a busy week.

• 5 October: Andrew Mountbatten Windsor launched a legal challenge against Thames Valley Police seeking a judicial review over the lawfulness of his high-profile arrest and search warrants executed at his properties last February. This won’t make a difference to the charges against him but it could be seen as a win for the former prince. Later in the week it was revealed that King Charles had paid out of his own pocket a £1.5m repair bill that is owed by Andrew for the poor condition of his former home, Royal Lodge. The recent lunar eclipse at 4 degrees Pisces 57’ fell on Andrew’s Pluto and Charles’ Saturn. Karma, karma…
• 6 October: Christa Pike regained consciousness after being declared brain dead as a result of two failed execution attempts. She woke up angry and confused: “Where am I and who are you?” A Tennessee judge has ordered state officials to preserve all physical and digital evidence from the botched executions. As I commented in my last Friday Bite, there seems to be a greater purpose behind her ordeal, and as a Pisces with Mars and Neptune squaring her Sun, she may well become a martyr to the cause of the abandonment of the death penalty in the US.
• 8 October: Execution was in the news again, this time with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s announcement that the execution of Major Nidal Malik Hassan convicted in 2009 of the killing of thirteen people and the wounding of thirty-two others at Fort Hood, would be live-streamed. He is to be executed by firing squad on 3 December. Filming and releasing of videos of executions is more usually associated with terror groups, not western democratic super-powers, but then in this looking glass world, America under Trump bears little resemblance to its former self. Saturday’s new moon conjoins the United States natal Saturn, currently being opposed by Saturn, while the prevailing Mars-Pluto opposition is flanking the US nodal axis.
• 7 October: After the United Kingdom’s Green Party issued a statement equating Zionism with racism and Prime Minister Burnham condemned the take-over of the West Bank by Israel, the closing of the British consulate in occupied East Jerusalem, which had been planned in September, seemed entirely synchronistic. The consulate is to become a “UK Mission”.
• Last but not least, concerns have been raised over the death of a lab worker at a Siberian plague research institute. Russian authorities have yet to state definitively whether her death was caused by an “unknown type of pneumonia” or the plague. Given that we are in the season of Pluto – a waning Mars-Pluto opposition and Pluto stationary-direct – references to the Black Plague are not in the least surprising.

I WOULD NOT normally choose to write about something that smacks of pure conspiracy theory but there are elements of the recent disclosures regarding Meghan, Duchess of Sussex that I felt worthy of examination. According to various channels that purport to be for “entertainment purposes only” a certain Lucia Giuliano claimed on an Italian television talk show on Monday that she was the daughter of Meghan Markle. I can find no reference to any Italian TV talk show upon which Ms Giuliano was a guest, but rumours about a daughter born to Meghan when she was twenty-years old have been circulating for years. And more recently, a photograph of a birth certificate for the said Lucia has popped up with a verifiable number in the top right-hand corner.

And it is the date of birth for her mother Meghan Markle on that birth certificate that has piqued my interest. August 4, 1974.

Ever since Ms Markle arrived on the scene as Harry’s squeeze, the astrology has never quite fitted the brief. More specifically, the synastry between Meghan and Harry has made little sense. Think back to their engagement and the beautiful wedding, how in love they seemed and what a gift to the royal firm. And then there was the “Fab Four”. Within a few short years, however, the couple had left the royal family and set up a new life in California. And ever since it has been one betrayal after another. The impact Meghan has had on the monarchy should be reflected in the astrology, and it is not.

The only major connections between the couple’s charts are Meghan’s Mars at 11 degrees of Cancer, which falls on Harry’s Descendant and her Midheaven at 11 degrees of Aries which squares his Ascendant-Descendant axis. Nothing else. As for Meghan’s connections to the Royal Family’s charts, her horoscope picks up none of the significant degree areas, which lie between 22 – 26 degrees of the fixed signs.

The possibility that Meghan was born in 1974 as opposed to 1981 could be the “smoking gun”. So, I set up a chart for the same date and time some seven years earlier.

I was disappointed. Initially. While there are more connections between the couple and links to the royal family’s charts, nothing seemed to stand out. However, as I dug, I found some treasure.

Since I have used the same time of birth, albeit seven years earlier, the angles of the chart are virtually identical. Twenty-four degrees of Cancer rises and 11 degrees of Aries becomes the Midheaven, forming the same connection to Harry’s Ascendant-Descendant axis. However, in place of Mars at 11 degrees of Cancer, there rests Saturn. Now that makes a lot of sense. Saturn represents stability but also control; it can be symbolic of a teacher and mentor, and it can indicate an older partner. The ties that bind with Saturn in this position are karmic.

In 1974, there was a T-square involving a Uranus-Chiron opposition squaring Venus, which is also conjunct Saturn. Uranus attached to the fourth house, often manifests as someone who feels she does not belong to the family she was born into, and her life becomes a quest to find her tribe and reinvent herself. Venus-Uranus squares reveal a propensity for divorce while the Venus-Saturn conjunction makes the pursuit of love hard work and disappointing, although once found, durable.

Mars at four degrees of Virgo is conjunct Harry’s Mercury, suggesting she has both an energizing effect on his thinking and communication skills, but also an irritating and aggressive one. That degree of Virgo is also Charles’s Saturn, and the degree of the recent lunar eclipse…

22 -24 degrees of Libra is another area that appears frequently in the charts of members of the royal family, and Meghan’s Uranus falls at 24 degrees of Libra, which makes a lot of sense when you think that she wasn’t just a breath of fresh air to the monarchy, but potentially the cause of its downfall and certainly a whole lot of hassle.

The Moon in the 1974 chart at 26 degrees of Aquarius, falls in the key degree area of the royal family.

The 1974 chart certainly has more to say about Meghan and her part in the story of the British monarchy, but unless and until the truth about Meghan’s past emerges, it remains pure speculation.

Let’s watch this space.

Friday Bite 2 October 2026

The Mars Effect

“If it comes to a direct attack on the Russian Federation — in this case we mean Kaliningrad, or maybe some other territories — of course, inevitably and immediately the question of Russian Federation using all weapons at the disposal of our country will appear on the agenda… We must realise that the ​moment ⁠when nothing can ‌be changed any longer may come very quickly and unexpectedly for everyone. The logic of escalating, ‌increasingly harsh retaliatory measures leads to ‌a fatal point of no return,” Vladimir Putin, 1 October

“The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in, with testosterone testing on top.” Pete Hegseth, 1 October

“Can we just ask about the debt? Just because the debt just reached $40 trillion.”

“Well, Biden just killed our country.” Time Magazine interview with Donald Trump, 28 September

“I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life. And that is with love.” Christa Pike, 1 October.

Monday was new year’s day for Mars as it crossed its northern spring equinox and began a new orbit around the Sun. Mars had just entered the sign of Leo on its way to oppose Pluto (Saturday) while Mercury squares up to both Mars and Pluto today. Mars, the planet of war, on the warpath! Mars represents many positive things – courage, leadership, incisiveness and passion, but it also puts its signature on confrontation and conflict. And I think the events of the past seven days adequately fulfil that promise.

• In the early hours of Sunday morning, a farmer noticed three white vans and several balaclava-hooded men acting suspiciously in the area around Fairford airbase in Gloucestershire, England.  She phoned the police to alert them to the activity. (American B52 and B-1 bombers loaded with munitions have repeatedly taken off from the base on missions to Iran since the war began in February.) Five men were arrested but released on bail the following day, much to the concern of the Trump administration, if not many of us. It transpired the vans contained petrol but no explosives and apparently one of the arrested men had also phoned the police in the early hours of Sunday morning. The mystery just got deeper and deeper. Yes, it was a potential terrorist attack and there was some evidence that Iran was behind it, but not enough and nothing to explain what the “terrorists” actually had in mind. On Thursday a sixth British Iranian national was arrested on suspicion of preparing a terrorist strike.
• On Wednesday on a Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv the co-pilot attacked the captain in an attempt to seize control of the 737. The severely wounded captain managed to open the cockpit door and passengers were able to overpower the attacker. Pilots travelling on the plane as passengers landed the plane safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. Benjamin Netanyahu immediately claimed the attacker had undergone Islamist radical indoctrination, but so far no official reason for the attack has been given.
• On Wednesday, Christa Pike, a Tennessee woman given the death sentence for murdering a classmate in 1995 survived two doses of a lethal injection. The execution was suspended and she was taken to hospital where she remains in critical condition. Pike’s sentence continues to be controversial as experts have accused her legal defence of failing to present mitigating evidence at her trial. Pike was raped by a neighbour when she was eleven and attempted suicide the following year. In the months leading to her arrest (then seventeen years old) she was removed from the family home after her mother’s live-in boyfriend physically and sexually abused her.
• On Wednesday, Russia launched its largest attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure since the spring. Earlier, the Russian president had addressed the Valdai Forum of International Russia experts in Moscow effectively maintaining that nothing was off the table were a NATO country to attack Russian territory.
• On 1 October, the Trump administration announced that it would exclude the UK, France and the Baltic countries from a NATO gathering in Poland next month to discuss the future of NATO. Other countries who did not receive an invitation are also big defence spenders and play key roles in the alliance, leaving their diplomats confused as to why they are being frozen out. (I think we know the answer to this: President Trump has made very little secret of his aim to abandon the international order which the United States and Western/European countries put together after World War II.)
• On Monday, Time magazine published an interview with Donald Trump in which he refused to rule out using the Insurrection Act before the midterms, demolishing the Kennedy Centre and annihilating Iran.

THERE WAS NOTHING particularly difficult about the Flydubai’s take-off from Dubai International airport on 30 September unless you take into consideration the Sun in Libra trining Uranus and Pluto and opposing the Saturn-Neptune midpoint creating one Kite configuration and a Mars-Pluto opposition generating yet another, plus a T-square formed by the Mars-Pluto opposition and Mercury. But we have to remember that these alignments were affecting every flight taking off at roughly that time – flights which encountered no incident whatsoever. However, two hours into the flight when the assault began, that picture had changed. Now, Venus was rising in Scorpio and at the intersection of the Mars-Pluto opposition.

Venus has been a planet of interest to me in recent months, largely due to her presence at the start of conflicts both in the past and present. I looked into her role not only as the goddess of love and all things pleasurable and harmonious, but as the deity of war in many mythological traditions. It may be in Venus’s gift to right wrongs and to see that justice is done, and although this might be best achieved in a court of law or in mediation, sometimes you have to go to war.

Venus rising at the moment of the attack reveals that this was indeed an act of war, perpetrated in this case by an Omani national who was prepared to die for a greater cause. (He may just be a suicidal maniac, of course.) Mars, which squares Venus has just culminated and is in one of Gauquelin’s key positions for top athletes. Over the years, I have noticed that Mars (and indeed other planets) assume greater power in this area of the horoscope as well as they do ten degrees above the Ascendant. That Mars, the old ruler of Scorpio and Pluto the modern ruler, are opposing each other and squaring the Scorpio Ascendant and Venus adds more than a spritz of symbolism to this potentially deadly incident in the skies. Given that the attack was foiled and the plane landed safely may owe much to Jupiter’s position six degrees from the Midheaven.

We do not have a time of birth for the woman who survived her execution, but she is a Pisces with Mars and Neptune squaring her Sun. She thus resonates with the themes of sacrifice and suffering and may well become a martyr to the cause of the abandonment of the death penalty in the United States. Christa has a close Jupiter-Saturn square, which has, among many factors, a connection with justice, affairs of state and law and order. Her destiny, we might say, is to become the agent of change. At this point in time her progressed solar arc Uranus is within two minutes of opposing her natal Mars, not only presiding over the most extraordinary escape from death but thrusting her firmly into the global spotlight.

I hope she comes through her life-saving treatment because somehow I feel she does not deserve to die for an act driven by passion (in this case jealousy) when she was too young and too damaged to control her actions. A life sentence maybe, but not the death penalty.

“I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life. And that is with love.” Christa Pike, 1 October.

A lesson in love in the time of Mars.