Friday Bite 6 June 2025
Big Beautiful Bombardment
“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.” Elon Musk, 3 June
“Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!,” Donald Trump, 5 June
“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Elon Musk, 5 June
“That any of us have to care about the messy breakup of these two massive narcissists—and that they both individually wield such massive power—is an indictment of our political system and further proves the poisonous influence of Big Money on our democracy.” Robert Reich, 5 June
AM I SCRATCHING my head trying to figure out what to talk about? Hardly. The challenge is what to leave out. So, where do I begin? Sunday, lunchtime, and Ukraine’s audacious drone attack on airbases inside Russia.
I have watched videos of the attack captured on camera by the Ukrainian drones, and the clocks display various times from 12:15 to 12:59. The strikes took place across a thousand-mile swathe of Russia, but since Moscow and Kyiv are on the same time zone and Ukraine is the protagonist, I’ve set the chart below from the perspective of the capital.
In order to accurately strike the aircraft parked on the tarmac, the attack had to take place in daylight. Operation, “Spiderweb”, probably began around noon, but since Virgo was rising slowly over the Ascendant, we’re only talking about a difference of 15 degrees from 12 noon when 5 Virgo was rising to 1:00 pm when 15 degrees of Virgo was ascending.
At 12 noon Uranus was culminating squaring a Moon-Mars conjunction in the twelfth house. (Could you have a more fitting picture of this audacious attack, which came out of nowhere and decimated a country’s military air capability.) Not only are the Moon and Mars squaring Uranus – the planet of revolution and the planet of technology; the planet of wake-up calls and explosive developments – but the conjunction makes significant connections with the charts of Ukraine, Russia, Zelenskyy and Putin.
I have drawn in the connections between the charts of the above and the horoscope of the attack. As you will see, the Moon-Mars conjunction fell on Zelenskyy’s MC-IC axis, squared Putin’s MC-IC axis and Pluto, squared Russia’s Venus-Pluto conjunction and opposed Ukraine’s Moon. Transiting Jupiter was conjunct Zelenskyy’s natal Jupiter (he is experiencing his Jupiter-return) while the Ascendant at the time of the strikes was on Russia’s natal Jupiter.
These connections inform us that this is not just any attack in a three-year-long war but a pivotal attack, and one that will almost certainly alter the trajectory of the conflict.
The United States has gone to pains to play down the damage perpetrated by the Ukrainian strike, as predictably has Russia, but painstaking research on the part of Jake Broe, whose channel I urge you to watch, reveals that at least 28-30 aircraft were definitely damaged or destroyed during Sunday’s attack, at a cost of approximately $4 billion to Russia.
In the wake of the Ukrainian strike, Vladimir Putin disappeared for three days. The Russian people heard from him on Wednesday in a televised address where he focussed primarily on the damage to railway bridges perpetrated by Ukraine. In response to Zelenskyy’s statement that were Russia to have agreed to a ceasefire, Operation “Spiderweb” would never have taken place, Putin called the attacks terrorist strikes and posed the question why Russia would hold peace talks with terrorists.
On Wednesday, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin spoke on the phone for over an hour during which the US president reassured his Russian counterpart that he had not been warned in advance of the Ukrainian strike. Commenting later on TruthSocial, Trump added, “President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields.”
Whether or not the massive attacks on several Ukrainian cities including Kyiv early this morning were that response we do not know. However, I think it unlikely. Certainly, looking at next week’s explosive cocktail of transits, all of which form a background to a full moon, I would suggest that response is coming within days.
The full moon in Sagittarius of 11 June, cuts across Zelensky’s Ascendant-Descendant axis and squares his MC-IC axis while Uranus at 28 degrees of Taurus is squaring his natal Saturn and Ukraine’s natal moon. Donald Trump is also in line for “the week from hell” since the full moon flanks his nodal axis and falls within a degree of his natal Sun-Moon opposition. Which, of course, means that full moon is a matter of days before his seventy-ninth birthday and the Big Beautiful Parade.
Speaking of which.
ON SATURDAY 14 June the US Army celebrates its 250th anniversary. It will coincide with the president’s birthday so he will finally get what he has long yearned for – a military parade. The day will be filled with festive events but the parade itself will begin at 6:30. Of course, I couldn’t resist setting up a chart for that moment.
You’re ahead of me aren’t you. Where is the exact Mars-Uranus square? I’ve drawn a line between Mars and Uranus: Mars is perpendicular to the Ascendant-Descendant axis and Uranus is conjunct the Descendant. This is not the chart you’d choose for an event you hope will go off smoothly. Of course it is a celebration of the army, so you might expect Mars to be prominent, but the square to an angular Uranus is not ideal. Plus, the Moon is conjunct Pluto and would have been exact around one in the afternoon. Maybe the parade will pass without incident, but at the very least we can expect protests during the day and security needs to be super-tight for the parade itself. If I were advising Donald Trump, I’d make sure security was tighter than ever and that he was wearing a helmet and a bullet-proof vest.
THE US PRESIDENT is already under attack, and from his one-time best buddy, Elon. The war of words that broke out on Thursday was shocking. The opening salvo came from Musk who made known his feelings about the Big Beautiful Bill. By the end of the day the bitter exchange had descended into mud-slinging of the highest order. In what could have been the coup de grace, Musk posted on X:
Time to drop the really big bomb. Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT. (Musk provided no evidence for this accusation, although there has been considerable speculation about the president’s involvement with the murkier depths of the Epstein era.)
At the time of writing the back-and-to has stopped, but that doesn’t mean the feud is over. It seems Musk is determined to get rid of Trump. He has called for his impeachment and maintained the tariffs will cause a recession. But he’s dealing with Teflon Man, and I suspect Trump will see off Musk’s threats and live to gloat over the entrepreneur’s fall from grace. That’s if next week’s planetary fire and fury doesn’t get in the way. Then again, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the two were back in business together next week. As in Dallas, it was all just a dream, all just great television.
It was always on the cards that the two billionaires with billion-dollar egos would eventually come to blows. That it has taken six months is the surprise. You can certainly see the attraction between them – Elon’s Venus is conjunct Trump’s Sun-Uranus conjunction and Musk’s Sun is conjunct the president’s Mercury. However, the real problem is that they are both raging narcissists and two alpha-males cannot co-exist. Musk believes he should be president and was never content with being the power behind the throne. And Trump is president and won’t tolerate usurpers. It all had to end in tears.
Their composite chart puts the Sun in the eleventh house conjunct Saturn, which is a pretty good indication that their relationship is one of frenemies. Currently, Jupiter is conjunct their Sun-Saturn conjunction, which far from inspiring a celebration of their bond, has fanned their ingrained resentment and frustration with each other. Jupiter isn’t all good news, it can intensify and escalate the negatives.
To be continued…
Friday Bite 30 May 2025
Anyone for tacos?
One day after the nonprofit news site NOTUS discovered that at least seven of the studies cited in a new report from health secretary Robert F Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” commission do not exist, the report was quietly edited to remove at least some of the fiction.
A US plan for Gaza proposes a 60-day ceasefire and the release of 28 Israeli hostages alive and dead in the first week, in exchange for the release of 1,236 Palestinian prisoners and the remains of 180 dead Palestinians. Reuters, 30 May (Is it just me or does that say a lot about the war in Gaza…)
“China… has totally violated its agreement with US. So much for being MR NICE GUY! Donald Trump, 30 May
THANK GOODNESS FOR irony. Just in case you were puzzled by the image of a waving taco at the head of this Bite, TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) is an acronym coined by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong in reference to the US president’s chaotic policy-making, which was on full display again this past week.
To recap: on 2nd April – “Liberation Day” – President Trump announced that he would raise punitive tariffs on such countries as China, Vietnam and the European Union, only to pull back and delay their implementation until 9 July. On 12 May, he dropped the 145% levy on China to 30% after reaching a mutually satisfactory agreement with the superpower.
On Wednesday, in New York, the Court of International Trade blocked Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, ruling them illegal and “exceeding any authority granted to the president”. Its ruling is based on a clause in the Constitution whereby “The Constitution assigns Congress the exclusive powers to ‘lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,’ and to ‘regulate Commerce with foreign Nations’.’’ The Trump administration, however, claims that Congress invites presidents to set tariff rates as they please under the International Emergency Economic Powers act of 1977, which it invoked within weeks of Donald Trump’s inauguration.
On Thursday, an appeals court agreed to the Trump administration’s request for a temporary pause in the federal court’s decision on tariffs.
On Friday, the president announced that China had “totally violated” its agreement with the United States.
To date, the administration is embroiled in roughly 225 lawsuits, of which those launched by Harvard University have gained the most column inches. President Trump’s feud with the Ivy League institution seems almost personal, and it has been suggested by his biographer Michael Wolff that his failure to get into Harvard may have something to do with it. Since the opening salvo in early April when the administration placed a series of wide-ranging demands on the university, the White House has frozen billions in federal funding, threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status and attempted to place a ban on foreign students.
It is exhausting simply reading the above, let alone waking up each day and dealing with it all. Which is why, when you look at Trump’s natal chart and the forthcoming transits, you begin to question his ability to stay at the helm. Of which more shortly.
ON TUESDAY MORNING, Elon Musk’s third space baby, the biggest and most powerful launch vehicle ever built, took off from Boca Chica in Texas. It flew further than its two predecessors but sprang leaks and spun out of control before re-entering Earth’s atmosphere and breaking up. Undaunted, Elon Musk vowed to “pick up the pace”, planning a launch every three to four weeks.
The following day, Musk announced he was to leave his government role as a top advisor to Donald Trump and head of DOGE (Department Of Government Efficiency). It was surely no coincidence that his decision came shortly after he had openly criticised the president’s Big Beautiful Bill, which he described as a “massive spending bill” and one that “increases the federal deficit and undermines the work of DOGE”.
His departure was not a surprise. It had been a question of when not if from the get-go. And his comments about the BBB were almost certainly the tip of the iceberg, and tensions between him and the president had been building for some considerable time. His fall from grace was something I had forecast in my year-ahead and have discussed periodically over the past few months.
The astrology is Beautiful.
At 7:37 on Tuesday morning as Starship III lifted off, 19 degrees Gemini was rising; Mercury, the ruler, was placed at 3 degrees of Gemini, squaring the Pisces Midheaven. The chart itself gives no indication of a failed mission – in fact it’s rather a good chart — and, of course, in many ways the launch was a great success. Mercury may be sandwiched between the Sun and Uranus, which suggests instability and unpredictability, although Uranus is the planet of space travel, and take-offs are explosive, so it could just as easily reflect the nature of the event. What is special about this moment are the connections it makes to Elon Musk’s natal chart.
Musk’s natal Saturn is placed at 1 degree Gemini and opposed to Neptune at zero degrees of Sagittarius and Jupiter at 27 degrees of Scorpio. Thus, Mercury at the time of take-off was conjunct his Saturn and opposed to the Neptune-Jupiter conjunction. And 19 degrees of Gemini is Elon’s natal Venus.
Since Uranus is currently almost exactly opposite Musk’s natal Jupiter (which in turn is conjunct Neptune and opposing Saturn) the simultaneous fall to Earth of his SpaceX spaceship and his departure from the Trump administration are a picture-perfect representation of his downfall.
And for good measure, progressed Uranus (by solar arc) is conjunct natal Neptune and progressed Mars conjunct Chiron.
Maybe downfall is too strong a word, but however you spin it, his deepening unpopularity within the administration, the effects of his purges, which have not only decimated government departments and ended livelihoods but also cut life-preserving funding in foreign aid, have all conspired to damage his superstar status. Even his once great Tesla company has suffered through his association with Donald Trump and his various political shenanigans.
Jupiter-Neptune combinations are often present in the charts of those with great charisma, those who experience great good fortune and do great things for the world – the stars, the philosophers and philanthropists amongst us. However, they are also present in the charts of grand deceivers, those who lack a moral compass, and who abuse wealth, power and privilege. Jupiter-Neptune people are in danger of flying too close to the sun.
That transiting Uranus is currently opposed to his natal Jupiter, thereby triggering the conjunction to Neptune, is the very definition of a wake-up call. At heart, Musk is probably a philanthropist, someone who wants to make the world a better place, but his ego has got the better of him and he’s veered terribly off course.
This is his come-to-Jesus moment.
And so to President Trump.
As I said earlier, the pace and the stress of the presidency cannot be good for a young guy, but for an elderly man, it is hardly life-affirming. In two weeks’ time, Trump will be seventy-nine and he will be celebrating his birthday on some difficult aspects. Born on a full moon – a lunar eclipse no less – just prior to the day there will be a full moon on his nodal axis while the transiting Mars-Uranus square will be conjoining his natal Mars. Not only are these highly volatile influences in play, but by solar arc progression Neptune is conjunct his Moon and opposing his Sun while progressed Pluto is squaring his natal Venus-Saturn conjunction.
You could say, in regard to the full moon repeating the full moon at birth, that President Trump has fulfilled his destiny, you could say he has come full circle, and you could also say, in reference to the Mars-Uranus square triggering his natal Mars, that a short, sharp, shocking development is part of the story.
Trump is not known as the Teflon president for nothing. He’s escaped two, if not three, assassination attempts and countless attacks on his liberty and reputation. He has managed to beguile people of power and influence and persuade a good number of sensible Americans that black is actually white. (Or maybe that’s not an ideal example given the complete dearth of people of colour in his administration.) So, there is every reason to suppose he can glide effortlessly through the sort of transits that would fell another individual.
Still, what just happened to Elon – his come-to-Jesus moment – may not be as far off as we might think.