23 October 2020

Let’s start with a couple of clichés:

The apple does not fall far from the tree.

The sins of the father are visited upon the children.

The first needs little explanation, but the second can be interpreted in a variety of ways, primarily that children bear the burden of their father’s sins, but also that children repeat the sins of the father. Either way, the roots of Ghislaine Maxwell’s disgrace lie in an albatross of a father complex.

On Thursday, 23rd October in New York, a court document containing detailed information about Ghislaine Maxwell and her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was unsealed. Among the other files unsealed was one covering claims of child sex offences made by Virginia Guiffre. Although an alleged abuser is not named in the deposition, the events related to an unidentified individual bear a close resemblance to those involving Prince Andrew.

The Epstein scandal may have been eclipsed by the coronavirus pandemic, but it has been quietly simmering away since July 6, 2019 when New York financier, Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on federal charges of the sex trafficking of minors. Five weeks later, he was found dead in his jail cell, apparently by his own hand.

Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s alleged partner in crime, disappeared immediately after his arrest and was herself arrested almost a year later on 2nd July 2020. Prosecutors allege that between 1994 and 1997 Ms Maxwell helped groom girls as young as fourteen years of age; she also faces two charges for perjury.

There have been many documentaries and countless articles and interviews covering the sordid goings-on in Epstein’s empire, so I’m not going to cover the background to Ms Maxwell’s arrest. Suffice to say, Epstein’s appetite for underage girls, the extent of his sexual depravity and the famous names who hung out with him are the stuff of a Hollywood blockbuster. Rather more seriously, they have the power to bring down other empires.

So, who is Ghislaine Maxwell and how did a woman from such a privileged background end up procuring young girls for a seedy financier?

Ghislaine is the daughter of the late disgraced press baron, Robert Maxwell. Her father died on the 5th November, 1991 after falling off his £15 million yacht, Lady Ghislaine, moored off the coast of the Canary Islands. Weeks after his death a £450 million hole (approximately £900 million today) in the pension funds of his companies came to light.

Ghislaine was twenty-nine years old at the time – quite the Saturnian coming-of-age – and with the British government seizing the family’s assets and rendering her penniless and jobless, she headed to the United States where she was adopted by the rich, the famous and Jeffrey Epstein.

The history of the Maxwells reads like a Greek tragedy. Robert Maxwell, one of seven children born to Jewish parents in the Czechoslovakian village of Slatinské Doly (now in Ukraine), he escaped Nazi occupation by fleeing to France, but lost his parents, all his siblings and most of his extended family in the Holocaust. He married Elisabeth Meynard, a French academic, in 1945, and by 1961 had produced nine children, two of whom died in childhood.

Ghislaine was the youngest, and by all accounts her father’s favourite, however, Robert was a bully. He called out his wife and children, humiliated them in public, and veered from being Santa Claus to Stalin on a weekly, if not daily, basis.

Ghislaine was born in Paris on the 25th December, 1961 at 3:20 in the afternoon. She has Gemini rising, the Sun, Mars, Mercury and Saturn in Capricorn and the Moon in Leo, conjunct the IC in opposition to Jupiter on the Mid-heaven.

Before I go further, take a look at the grouping of the planets. They are all in the western hemisphere. Chart-shapings and hemisphere-bias are two simple yet effective means of interpretation. When all the planets occupy the western hemisphere, an individual tends to be a victim of circumstances. Hellen Keller, whose planets also occupied the entire western hemisphere of her natal chart, became deaf and blind at the age of nineteen months – her story famously told in the film The Miracle Worker. Fated, perhaps, to live life in an institution, instead, she became an author, political activist and lecturer. The point being that such an ineluctable fate can become the route to transformation. 

Whether you succumb to your fate or overcome it is a matter of character and spirit.

The jury is out as to whether Ghislaine will ever turn her life around, and, clearly, the first step must be to atone for her actions. Perhaps during the considerable time she will almost certainly spend in jail, she will find the strength of character and spirit to do just that. However, at this point in time, I’m sure she feels every bit as much a victim as the young girls she played a part in victimising.

Which smacks of Neptune.

A key factor in Ghislaine’s chart is indeed the position of Neptune. Neptune in Scorpio is at the apex of the Moon-Jupiter opposition and the MC-IC axis. In this way, Neptune helps or hinders Ghislaine’s journey through life. Her family (the roots of life) as portrayed by the IC and the Moon in Leo, are in thrall to Neptune’s other-worldly qualities, as is her life-direction/place in the world/career (as depicted by her MC and Jupiter). But all that shimmers in Neptune’s world is not real and true and often very dark and dangerous, thus when this planet is in a dominant position, loss, betrayal, fantasy, delusion, depravity, deception, addiction and escapism are to be encountered on life’s journey too. If only to reject them when they appear.

With the Sun and Mars in Capricorn – the two primary masculine principles – the father figure looms large in a little girl’s life. Ghislaine adored her father. Upon hearing of his death, she was inconsolable, decimated, lost. Throughout his life, wherever she was and whomever she was with, she referred to him as “My Daddy”. Yet, as super-heroic as he was to her, he was nonetheless a bully, someone she was driven to please and placate, as indeed was her highly intelligent, elegant and sophisticated mother.

And where might her father’s Neptune be? In Leo, bang on Ghislaine’s Moon and squaring her Neptune while his Jupiter in Scorpio conjoins her Neptune. He was a magical, spell-binding figure to Ghislaine, yet one she feared. It was a pattern deeply ingrained in her psyche and explains why she attached herself to charismatic, heartless and deeply corrupt Jeffrey Epstein.

You don’t have to ask why she sank to such depths, procuring young girls for Epstein and participating in depraved sexual acts. She did so to please and placate him. Ejected from the safe and pampered Maxwell nest, she found a home in Epstein’s golden circle. Remaining in it was a matter of survival. No doubt, she convinced herself that somehow what she did was in the name of love. At the age of twenty-nine, thrust out of paradise, she lost her moral compass in the search for a haven.

We cannot be sure what the Neptune connection with Epstein might have been because we do not have a time of birth for him. But it wouldn’t surprise me to discover Epstein had Scorpio rising, none too far from her natal Neptune. As it is, Epstein’s Jupiter opposed her Neptune and his nodal axis squared it. There are other significant connections and patterns in the synastry between Ghislaine and Epstein, but for the purposes of this Friday Bite, we shall remain fixed on Neptune.

We should not be surprised that as Saturn returns to its original position for the second time, Ghislaine finds herself answering for her actions. Chickens have come home to roost. The piper will be paid. What remains to be seen is just how many famous names will join her in the hall of infamy.

We shall visit this sordid saga again.