Friday Bite 19 December 2025

Money Now or Blood Later

“A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS,” Donald Trump, Truth Social, 14 December

“Our country is back, stronger than ever before. We’re poised for an economic boom the likes of which the nation has never seen.” Donald Trump, address to the nation, 18 December

THE TITLE OF my Friday Bite refers to the statement made by Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, at the meeting of European Union leaders who had gathered to discuss ways to financially support Ukraine in the war with Russia. Having ultimately rejected the idea of using the interest on frozen Russian assets to release funds, in the early hours of this morning, EU leaders reached agreement and pledged €90bn to Ukraine.

Much as we may want to remain positive in the face of Russian aggression, it is impossible to ignore the warnings those-in-the-know that war in Europe is no longer a possibility but a reality. On Tuesday, MI6 Chief, Blaise Metreweli, warned the UK that we were “in a space between peace and war”. She pointed to recent appearances of drones over airports and air bases and cyber attacks on infrastructure as examples of Russian hybrid warfare and grey-zone tactics. Her speech coming a matter of hours before Donald Tusk made clear that his words, “pay money today or pay in blood tomorrow” were not in reference to Ukraine but Europe.

And we have the astrology to fit these dangerous times.

The above chart represents the moment two terrorists, father and son, opened fire on men, women and children celebrating Hanukkah on Bondi Beach. They killed fifteen people, including a ten-year-old little girl and injured dozens. Yet in the midst of the horror there were incredible acts of bravery – an elderly couple took on one of the gunmen as he left his parked car, guns in hand – they died for their bravery – and a Syrian shop owner wrestled a gun from one of the attackers. And there were countless little acts of courage and selflessness.

Hours before, in Rhode Island, America, a gunman burst into an economics class at Brown University, killing two students and injuring nine.

Later that night, in Los Angeles, California, Nick Reiner, the thirty-two-year-old son of Rob and Michele Reiner, stabbed his parents to death.

Rage is the common denominator behind these acts of violence, and in towns and cities across the globe, shop assistants, hospitality workers, medical personnel, ambulance drivers and emergency practitioners must regularly deal with physical and verbal attacks by the public. Even those whose job it is to serve others are being assaulted by the very people they are attending to.

We don’t just have a flu epidemic to contend with but a pandemic of rage.

Mars, the planet of war, and the planet of passion, ambition, courage and strength, is currently “out of bounds”. What does that mean, I hear you ask. Simply put, we mostly locate the position of the planets in reference to the zodiac circle – one degree Pisces, ten degrees Leo and so on – but their position above or below the celestial equator – their declination – is also a way to establish where they are. When a planet’s declination (“latitude”) exceeds 23 degrees and 27 minutes, it is considered out of bounds. There are various theories as to how this affects a planet’s behaviour, but the general view is that they become out of control.

Which brings me back to Mars, the planet of war, which is out of bounds and presiding over acts of irrationality, violence and rage.

Another factor that is clearly playing a part in the conflict we are experiencing in one form or another, is the Saturn-Neptune conjunction. Over the past ten days this duo has been squared by Mars, and it will be followed by squares from the Sun, Venus and Mercury – in that order. As you may note in the above chart, Mars at 29 degrees of Sagittarius is exactly ninety degrees away from Neptune having just squared Saturn five days beforehand.

We are presently having a masterclass in the effects of this conjunction, which takes place approximately every thirty-six years. The lines between reality and fantasy are being blurred. Propaganda and conspiracy theories are rife. Earlier in December Putin informed the world that Russia had taken the Ukrainian cities of Kupiansk and Pokrovsk, only to have Zelensky fly to the area and prove Russia’s claims to be grossly exaggerated. And then we have the president of the United States addressing the nation on primetime television, not in regard to military action against Venezuela, as was rumoured, but spouting a litany of lies and distortions about his achievements.

And speaking of conspiracy theories and magical thinking, 3i/Atlas came the closest it will come to Earth at around six o’clock this morning. Maybe the earth moved somewhere on our beautiful planet but not here. While astronomers are united in their belief that this is an interstellar comet originating from deepest space in a galaxy far away from ours, and is at least eight billion years old, some pundits have suggested that it is a spaceship or at least an object that has been sent deliberately into our solar system by a superior intelligence.

This is the time of year we are reminded of the star in the east that took the three wise men to Bethlehem to honour the birth of Jesus Christ. These wise men were almost certainly astronomer-priests who considered the triple conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Pisces to hold great significance for mankind.

Signs in the sky. Portents of great magnitude. And here we are in 2025, with our very own mysterious interstellar object. Are we on the crest of a great awakening or is 3i/Atlas a warning of dark times ahead. I leave you to ponder on these things.

Happy Christmas to all.

Friday Bite 12 December 2025

A Looking Glass War

“The Trump administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the [Ukraine] war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition,” US National Security Strategy, 5 December

“This obsession with infallibility and conviction that everything Europeans do stands head and shoulders above the traditions, norms, and laws of the rest of the world is among the reasons why President Trump and his associates increasingly speak about a profound crisis within the EU and the fact that it is heading in a direction that is clearly at odds with the realities of a multipolar world.” Sergey Lavrov, 10 December, Moscow.

“The majority of European Union countries take a frankly destructive stance on the Ukrainian issue. Having invested any political capital they may have in waging war on Russia through the hands and bodies of Ukrainian citizens, they continue in hopeless political blindness to entertain the illusion of somehow defeating our country. As the president [Putin] emphasized, we do not intend to go to war with Europe, we don’t even entertain such thoughts, but to any hostile steps, including the deployment of European military contingents in Ukraine and the expropriation of Russian assets, we will respond. And to this response, we are already prepared.” Sergey Lavrov, 10 December, Moscow.

“The UK and other allies must prepare for the scale of war our grandparents or great grandparents endured… We are Russia’s next target… time is not on our side… Conflict is at our door.” Mark Rutte, Secretary-general NATO, 11 December

WE ARE LIVING in a world of double-speak in which those with the least humanity and integrity have the loudest voices. Listening to Sergey Lavrov speak at Government Hour at the Federation Council of the Federation Assembly in Moscow last Wednesday, I almost believed that Europe was aggressively threatening Russia’s borders and bent on backing the neo-Nazi government currently in power in Ukraine – a government Donald Trump had had to remind that it had obligations under international law to protect human rights…

We are in a looking-glass world where the opposite is the reality.

This week’s Friday Bite is once again truncated, and for the same reasons, but I did want to go on record and say that we are at one of the most perilous points since the end of World War II. There have been others, most notably the stand-off between Russia and America over Cuba in 1962 and when the Soviet early-warning system detected an incoming missile strike from the United States, which was the result of a computer malfunction (1983).

As Lavrov said, Russia has no wish to go to war with Europe but it is watching and waiting for signals that it may have to marshal its forces. The UK and Europe most certainly don’t want to go to war with Russia. However, in this Neptunian climate where actions are so easily misinterpreted or unintended events happen, it is easy to see how war can start by default.

The above chart represents the time Sergey Lavrov began his speech to the Federation Council on Wednesday, and it serves to display the alignments we are living under. Mercury was within minutes of an opposition to Uranus while Mars had just squared Saturn and was on its way to square Neptune. Neptune had just turned stationary-direct. (You see what I mean about a Neptunian climate. Neptune may be the planet of the divine but it is also the planet of illusion-delusion.)

Mercury and Uranus were making their third and last opposition to each other since 29 October. During the past six weeks intense negotiations have been taking place on a peace proposal for the Ukraine-Russia conflict. First, we were shocked by the leaked discussion between Steve Witkoff (Trump’s special envoy) and Yuri Ushakov (Kremlin advisor) that revealed the symbiosis between Russia and the United States administration. It was nothing less than treasonous. However, with the recent publication of the US National Security Strategy, it is clear, written in black and white, that this administration’s sympathies lie with Moscow, not Ukraine. And this week, Lavrov was unequivocal about Russia’s intentions should Europe take further steps to support and protect Ukraine and its Eastern borders.

You may note that the Mercury-Uranus opposition is squaring the Moon in Virgo, which synchronistically is Russia’s natal Moon.

Between now and the beginning of January, Mars, Venus and Mercury will square Saturn and Neptune, so this climate of suspicion and anxiety is going to persist. And we must simply wait and see who, if anyone, is going to blink first.

You may also notice that the Cradle formation that we have seen several times this year is in charge yet again: this alignment is made up of three sextiles (Uranus sextile Neptune-Saturn sextile Pluto) and an opposition (Mercury opposition Uranus). A cradle serves as a resting place for a baby; symbolically, something as yet not fully-formed is being cradled.

I may have already mentioned this, but Neptune, Uranus and Pluto have been in this mini-grand-trine formation before, albeit in different signs: Uranus was in Gemini, Neptune in Libra and Pluto in Leo between 1941 and 1945, almost the entire span of World War II. And while this does not imply that we are indeed heading into another world war, the times we are living through resonate with the division, conflict, fear and anxiety prevalent in the nineteen-forties. Even the rise of neo-Nazism and the constant references to Hitler are a resonance with that era.

On 21 December, Ascension Day and the Winter Solstice, they will be gathering to witness Earth’s ascension to a spiritual fifth dimension. People will be celebrating and experiencing the dawn of the New Earth Consciousness. We can but hope that this divine energy reaches and lifts up those who are in earthly power over our destinies, and instead of marching irrevocably to war, open up a real pathway to peace.