Friday Bite: 7 MAY 2021

RUDY GIULIANI – IN A BIT OF A PICKLE

I don’t usually begin my Friday Bites with a chart, but on this occasion I will. And I’m going to ask you a question as you gaze at it.

Would you trust this man to sell you a second-hand car?

Would you trust this man, period?

With Neptune on his Ascendant and a Sun-Uranus conjunction in Gemini, this is surely the Machiavelli of the second-hand-car business, although he has taken his Mercurial talents into politics, where they have been equally well-served.

Rudy Giuliani, former Mayor of New York and, more recently, former president Donald Trump’s personal attorney, is in the news because on Wednesday, April 27th at 6:00 in the morning, Federal investigators entered his home and office in Manhattan. The raid was part of an ongoing criminal investigation into Mr Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine. This unfortunate incident is one of many to have dogged the former 9-11 hero in recent months, not least the press conference held in front of a warehouse during which trickles of black fluid extending from his hairline ran down his face. His fall from grace, while not meteoric, has been precipitous.

As Mayor of New York in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, his zero-tolerance policy became a model which other cities across the world adopted, and his leadership in the wake of 9-11 made him a national hero, if not an international one. But in recent years his image has been tarnished by his efforts to protect and promote Donald Trump, specifically his efforts to dig up dirt in Ukraine on President Biden’s son, Hunter, and his exertions to overturn the result of the 2020 US election, not least by sending out rallying calls to the masses gathered at the Capitol on January 6th 2021.

While the search warrants issued in April’s raid are not in and of themselves proof of any wrongdoing by Giuliani, they required enough evidence of a crime for a Judge to approve them – lobbying the US government at the request of a foreign official without disclosing it to the Justice department would be a crime, were it to be proven.

Letter of the law notwithstanding, Giuliani is in a bit of a pickle, and his only way to avoid a prison sentence may be to offer information to the Justice department of a deeply embarrassing nature to the former president.

The recent raid – deemed “unfair” by Mr Trump – is not the least of Giuliani’s problems. He is facing several costly lawsuits – one involving his ex-wife and another from Dominion Voting Systems for pushing conspiracy theories alleging the company engaged in massive fraud in order to assure President Biden won the election. He is reported to have cut back on his staff in an effort to conserve funds, and it has to be a concern that the millions owed to him by his former boss are never likely to materialize.

Every person with Neptune rising is not a Machiavelli. Some respond to the higher calling of this mysterious planet and become great artists, missionaries, healers and visionaries. But Giuliani has been in the public spotlight for decades and we have had many opportunities to witness his deviousness, his duplicity and dishonesty, as well as his finer qualities -magnanimity, courage and commitment. (You don’t get to pick and choose your Neptunian package – along with the visionary, selfless stuff comes the potential for escapism, addiction and subterfuge. You may even become a sacrificial lamb. In other words, you may get thrown under the bus.)

The astrological reason why Giuliani has reached the pinnacle of success and not frittered away his Neptunian gifts is that he has an equally strong Saturn – conjunct the Mid-heaven and squaring Neptune. Saturn helps manifest the promise of all that ingenuity, vision and charisma. However, there is a limit as to how much you can get away with when Saturn is on your Mid-heaven, and if you are proven to be a liar, a fraud and a criminal, the punishment will be steep.

Saturn and Uranus are two planets of concern in this developing story.

On 27th April, as Federal investigators entered Giuliani’s home and office, transiting Saturn (12 degrees of Aquarius) was squaring his natal Mercury (the chart ruler) and the Moon in Scorpio opposing it. It was the day of that all-powerful full moon. The Sun at 7 degrees of Taurus was squaring his natal Mars-Pluto conjunction. (Giuliani is noted and feared for his temper, which surely has its roots in this difficult conjunction.)

Uranus will reach Giuliani’s Mercury (his chart ruler, and the ruler of his mid-heaven) on June 8th, two days before a solar eclipse hits his Saturn-Uranus mid-point, and roughly a week before the second Saturn-Uranus square. Saturn will be in retrograde for this meeting with Uranus, so the sword of Damocles currently hovering over his head may not fall until November-December when a much more powerful lunar eclipse hits his natal Venus and the third and final Saturn-Uranus square connects with his natal Mercury.

You may remember, I pointed out that were Donald Trump to change his strategy on and around the time of the June eclipse last year, the outcome of the election could change. He didn’t. And we all know what happened. And Giuliani is in the same position this June as all the aforementioned alignments kick in. If he acts in the correct manner – and I’m not sure what that might involve – those more difficult alignments in the autumn can be mitigated.

At the moment, he has some protection from his progressions: progressed Venus is conjunct progressed Jupiter and his progressed Sun is conjunct Jupiter but they have a lot of work to do to buffer all the other challenging transits.

This difficult late Autumn passage may not, of course, be related to the investigation into the Ukraine affair, but the other aforementioned cases, however it’s not going away any day soon. The even more troubling transits for Giuliani come in 2023 when Neptune will square his Saturn and Mid-heaven, Uranus will be opposing his Moon-Jupiter conjunction and Saturn in Pisces will be squaring his Sun and Venus. I suspect this is when the piper will have to be paid.

Despite strong assurances from his son, who in an interview on CNN recently stated that his father “had represented the president [Trump] in good faith… did everything on the up and up… and was a man of integrity”, there are louder voices suggesting that he will indeed be “thrown under the bus” by Mr Trump and will assuredly give up to the “authorities” everything he knows to save what little he can of himself. Maybe not immediately, but eventually.

I find it very sad that this once much-loved figure has fallen so low, and so late in life. We all run into situations that smack of fate and feel we have no choice other than to take the course of action we did, but we expect more of our heroes. Perhaps, ultimately, what Giuliani is guilty of is the frailty of being human. Then again, maybe it is just plain greed.

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