Friday Bite: 18 October 2024
Not a watershed but a milestone
Yahya Sinwar – Israel – Liam Payne – Harris – Trump
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” George Orwell, Nineteen-Eighty-Four
“We have many Azurasians in our room.” Donald Trump, 13 October. Prescott, Arizona
“If you don’t win, win, win, we’ve all had a good time, but it’s not gonna matter, right? Sadly.” Donald Trump, 15 October, Atlanta, Georgia
“At stake in this race are the democratic ideals that our founders and generations of Americans before us have fought for. At stake in this election is the Constitution of the United States…its very self.” Kamala Harris, 16 October, Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania
“A suicide bomber destroys himself. Yahya Sinwar strapped the entirety of Gaza to his body.” Franklin Foer, The Atlantic
THE FULL MOON in Aries may be behind us but its shadow will hover over the next fourteen days. Its signature was on the death of Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar. This not inconsiderable event had the capacity to change the course of the war in Gaza and set the stage for a cease-fire but, according to Prime Minister Netanyahu, “the war, my dear ones, is not yet over”. Rather than the watershed that the killing of Sinwar might have been, according to Israel’s leader, it was merely “a milestone”.
Yahya Sinwar was the architect of the 7 October attack. With his demise, Israel could be said to have avenged the deaths of all those massacred on that day in 2023. However, even if his killing had been enough for Israel to agree to a cease-fire, it was unlikely to have prompted Hamas to come to the table. Yahya’s brother, Muhammed, is almost certainly set to replace him, and he is, by all accounts, even more extreme.
What is curious about the killing of the near-legendary Hamas leader is that it was not the result of high-level Israeli intelligence but an accident. On Thursday, a unit of Israeli trainee soldiers came across a small group of Palestinian militants. They engaged in a firefight and three of them were killed. When they returned to the bodies some hours later, they discovered one of them had a striking resemblance to the Hamas leader. It was indeed Yahya Sinwar.
On Sunday, the Biden administration sent a letter to Israel warning that if it did not do more to boost aid into Gaza, there would be implications, most notably the stopping of US weapons transfers. (Israel has thirty days in which to comply.) However, the following day, an advance team and components of the Thaad Missile system, courtesy of the United States, arrived in Israel. This comes as Israel openly declares it is preparing to retaliate against Iran’s recent missile attack on the country.
Full moons breed closure and completion, yet they also bring simmering situations to boiling point. So, while this full moon had the capacity to inspire an ending of the war in Gaza and, potentially, the wider war in the Middle East, it has instead done the reverse.
Man’s free will is his great power tool.
In last week’s Bite I spent some time looking at the astrological signatures on nuclear power, and although this full moon has not presided over any kind of nuclear event, that doesn’t mean Israel’s plan of retaliation precludes an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. And we have two weeks to go to find out what that plan involves. As it is, the killing of Yahya Sinwar on the full moon could be described as “nuclear” for Hamas and certainly “empowering” for Israel.
FYI, the recent full moon at 24 degrees of Aries-Libra flanked Israel’s Ascendant-Descendant axis and squared its Midheaven. Going forward, during the week of 28 October, Uranus and Mercury will conjoin and oppose Israel’s Sun and both will square its Mars while Venus and Jupiter will flank Israel’s Jupiter-Uranus opposition. The combination of all these factors suggests an audacious attack intended to stamp Israel’s authority firmly on the region. Or is it a bridge too far and is Israel coming dangerously close to experiencing hubris?
The ratcheting up of tensions is not exclusive to the Middle East and is clearly an individual and collective response to these volatile astrological patterns. On Tuesday, North Korea blew up sections of inter-Korean roads and rail lines on its side of the border between South Korea. This action, which was in retaliation to allegations that South Korea had been using drones to spread disinformation about North Korea, provoked a rally of warning shots between the two countries.
The signature of this full moon, which squared the applying Mars-Pluto opposition and formed a cardinal Grand Cross, was also on the death of the singer, Liam Payne, a member of the disbanded boy band One Direction. Mr Payne died after falling from the balcony of his third-floor hotel room. In a call to the emergency services before he plummeted to his death, the hotel reported that a guest was “overwhelmed by drugs and alcohol and destroying his room”.
I was never a fan of One Direction but I can at least acknowledge a phenomenon when I see it. And I have been deeply affected by the death of this young man. He leapt to fame with the group when he was sixteen-years-old and spent over half his life as a mega-celebrity. Talented, much loved and admired, and the father of a seven-year-old boy, it is impossible to imagine the shock and loss it must be to all those that loved him.
The chart of his death is an ode to Neptune. Not the Neptune that elevates and takes us to the stars but the Neptune that destroys reason and takes us to the depths through substance abuse. In his sound mind Liam almost certainly had no intention of ending his life, but fuelled by drugs, alcohol and an unquiet mind, he unravelled and fell to his death.
At that moment in time, all the angles were at twenty-nine degrees of the mutable signs – the crisis degree – and Neptune was rising.
Such a terrible, tragic loss.
WITH ONLY SEVENTEEN days to go before America decides its next president, the past seven days have been suitably intense for the two candidates and their vice-presidential running mates. While Kamala Harris submitted herself to a grilling on Fox News – a channel hostile to her and her cause – Donald Trump was enjoying listening to music in front of a crowd anything but hostile to him and his cause. The polls remain tantalisingly close with Harris leading in the nationals but not in all the swing states.
Every so often, if you peruse YouTube news channels, you will come across journalists who complain that the mainstream media is not covering Mr Trump’s declining cognitivity. The thing is, and I’m not a Trumpite, much of his inability to string together a sentence and follow a question could be a result of sheer exhaustion. And at seventy-eight-years old, running a presidential campaign is nothing if not exhausting. That said, is it really feasible for a man of declining energy to be an effective president for the next four years.
Mr Trump’s performance at a town hall meeting in Oaks, Pennsylvania on Monday was concerning. After two medical emergencies in the audience brought the meeting to a standstill, Mr Trump decided not to invite any more questions and instead asked for music to be played. There followed thirty-nine minutes of great tunes, from Hallelujah to No One Compares 2 U, with the former president swaying and bobbing on stage.
Seventeen days to go.
Friday Bite: 11 October 2024
Neptune’s Wrath
Earthquakes – Nuclear Power – Full Moon Aries
“Whoever attacks us will be hurt and will pay a price. Our attack will be deadly, precise and above all surprising, they will not understand what happened and how it happened, they will see the results.” Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, 10 October.
“Ask your government if the weather is manipulated or controlled. Did you ever give permission to them to do it? Are you paying for it? Of course you are,” Marjorie Taylor Greene, 7 October.
“You are going to die.” Mayor of Tampa’s advice to anyone thinking of riding out Hurricane Milton.
IN THE EVENT, Hurricane Milton turned out not to be the “storm of the century”, but it was pretty bad. Milton made landfall as a category 3 storm on Wednesday, just south of Sarasota in Florida. Ahead of it came thirty-eight tornadoes and winds of more than 120 mph. It generated a storm surge of ten feet, and eighteen inches of rain dropped on St Petersburg alone. Sixteen people lost their lives. Three million were left without power. Around 400,000 claims worth $10 billion are already being processed from Hurricane Helene. And that number could double.
At seven-ten on Monday morning, ceremonial protests began across Israel. It was exactly one year to the minute that more than 600 Hamas militants breached the border between Israel and Gaza and embarked on a series of coordinated atrocities and the taking of hostages.
One year later:
117 hostages have been released; 97 remain unaccounted for.
More than 1,200 Israelis have been killed.
More than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed.
More than 2,200 Lebanese have been killed.
More than 143,000 Israelis have been displaced.
More than 1.9 million Gazans have been displaced.
More than 2.1 million Lebanese have been displaced.
ON SATURDAY AT 22:45, the University of Tehran’s seismography centre recorded a 4.6 magnitude earthquake near the city of Aradan. Iran is one of the most seismically active countries in the world with fault lines crossing ninety percent of its territory. Earthquakes are thus common occurrences. However, at a mere ten kilometres below the surface, which is relatively shallow for earthquakes of this kind, and in the region of a suspected nuclear facility, coupled with the geopolitical tensions between Israel and Iran, speculation is rife that Iran has conducted its first underground nuclear test. Iran has made no comment and no radio-active fallout has been recorded.
Nonetheless, I thought the incident worthy of astrological examination.
I don’t believe we can establish whether or not Saturday’s 4.6 magnitude earthquake was caused by nature or nurtured in an underground nuclear test facility, but the event has a nuclear signature.
Neptune is conjunct the Midheaven and the focal point of a Kite configuration. We’ve seen this alignment before, most recently on the lunar eclipse of 18 September (25 degrees Pisces 41’). And, as you may note, this earthquake bears the imprint of that eclipse on its MC-IC axis. Eclipses have elastic timelines.
Let us leave the rising Mars squaring the Sun and Mercury out of the mix, although it is a violent, earth-moving type of aspect, and focus on the Kite. Uranus, Pluto and the IC form a Grand Trine, while Neptune conjunct the Midheaven (and opposing the IC) sextiles Uranus and Pluto creating the configuration. Here we have a beautiful picture of the three outer planets geometrically linked at the moment of eruption.
Uranus, Neptune and Pluto all place their signatures on the nuclear age. The development of nuclear science began in the mid-to-late 1800s, just after the discovery of Neptune, and continued apace in the 1930s after the discovery of Pluto. Uranium was discovered in 1789, and named after the planet, which had been discovered seven years beforehand.
Uranium, Plutonium and Neptunium “sit” together on the periodic table (Neptunium coming between Uranium and Plutonium) and all three are capable of producing a nuclear explosion.
While most of us are familiar with Plutonium’s and Uranium’s role in nuclear devices, Neptunium not so much. It is usable in nuclear weapons, although no country has done so, and it is mainly known as a bi-product from nuclear reactors and Plutonium production. Nonetheless, it is part of this unholy trinity, so to speak.
Uranus, Pluto and Neptune tend to be in key positions at the time of nuclear events.
The outer planets take us to a new level in terms of knowledge and consciousness, and now, as they unite in this minor Grand Trine (a trine of three planets made up of two sextiles) or Small Talent Triangle, we can expect significant developments regarding all things nuclear. Already we’ve had Vladimir Putin threatening to “go nuclear” should any western nuclear power assist “aggression against Russia”, and then there is the constant threat posed by the fighting in Ukraine close to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
The dropping of the first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 was a milestone. As you may note, the Sun was conjunct Pluto, Uranus conjunct the Midheaven (and Mars). Mars and Neptune were the “head” and “tail” of the Bundle shaping. The Moon-Saturn conjunction occupies the degree of the total solar eclipse which took place a month earlier.
When Reactor Number Four exploded and caught fire at the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine, the resulting radio-active cloud spread over vast areas of Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Europe. At the moment the reactor exploded, Uranus was rising, the Sun was exactly opposed to Pluto, two days after a total lunar eclipse (4 degrees Scorpio 03’), and there was a rising Mars-Neptune conjunction.
The 9.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Japan’s eastern coast on 11 March, 2011, was so powerful it shifted the Earth off its axis and triggered a tsunami which wiped entire towns from the map. 18,000 people were killed. The wave flooded the reactors of the Fukushima power plant, leaking radiation across a large swathe of Japan.
Here, in this chart, Neptune is angular, which reflects the watery aspect of the disaster. Uranus is part of a seven-planet stellium in Aquarius, Pisces and Aries. Pluto is at the apex of a T-square involving a Jupiter-Saturn opposition. The nodal axis, incidentally (the point at which eclipses occur), was not only on the degree that makes its appearance all too often at eruptions, but is also Japan’s natal Moon (28 degrees Gemini 41’).
As I was putting together this part of the Friday Bite, it was announced that the Nobel Peace Prize had gone to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese anti-nuclear weapons group.
Synchronicities abound! More seriously, with a full moon set to take place next Thursday amid a cluster of aspects we can only describe as tense – explosive might be nearer the mark – I don’t think we can entirely rule out a natural disaster or a man-inspired atrocity in the second half of October.
I REFERRED BRIEFLY to this full moon in my last Friday Bite since it is close to Kamala Harris’s natal Sun-Moon opposition and squaring Donald Trump’s Venus-Saturn conjunction, not to mention the exact Venus-Uranus opposition, which is squaring the US Moon and Donald Trump’s natal Mars. All of which portends an event that will have a major impact on America and the forthcoming election.
As we can see from the chart of the full moon, it forms a Grand Cross with a Mars-Pluto opposition, and since I have set the chart from the perspective of Washington, this configuration falls on all four angles. However, the Grand Cross is present for all countries and all people, albeit in different parts of the horoscopic circle.
If there was a single world to encapsulate this astro-scape, controversial would cut it, although we might describe it as earth-shaking. Someone’s going to fall off their perch.
If we look back at the preceding eclipses of 18 September (lunar) and 2 October (solar) both of these have already played into significant developments of the past three weeks, not least Iran’s 180-missile attack on Israel and Israel’s ground offensive in Lebanon. We have lost some great, great names, not least Dame Maggie Smith, and, of course, there have been typhoons, hurricanes and floods that have wreaked untold disasters.
I cannot see with my psychic eye what these many and varied forthcoming events will be, but I have laid the groundwork astrologically-speaking in this week’s and last week’s Friday Bites and my recent videos FULL MOON IN ARIES and SOLAR ECLIPSE IN LIBRA (Watch the videos on my Youtube Channel).
It’s going to be a wild ride, and we’re probably going to lose some riders along the way.