Friday Bite 15 August 2025
Repeating History
“FINAL WARNING DONALD TRUMP—MAYBE THE MOST IMPORTANT WARNING IN HISTORY! STOP CHEATING OR CALIFORNIA WILL REDRAW THE MAPS. AND GUESS WHO WILL ANNOUNCE IT THIS WEEK? GAVIN NEWSOM (MANY SAY THE MOST LOVED & HANDSOME GOVERNOR) AND A VERY POWERFUL TEAM. DON’T MAKE US DO IT!!! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.” Gavin Newsom, Governor of California.
“He [Putin] won’t mess around with me.” Donald Trump
“Good stuff, not bad stuff, also some bad stuff for both… We’re going to change the lines, the battle lines,” Donald Trump on his plans for the meeting in Anchorage.
THESE FRIDAY BITES are intended to be an astrological narrative of the times in which we live, which is why I try to cover as many of the most significant events as I can each week. During the past seven days, I’ve been spoilt for choice – the National Guard on its way to protect the citizens of Washington DC from a crime wave that is, to all reports, in decline, five Al-Jazeera journalists killed in Gaza by an Israeli targeted strike, and the publication of a new biography of the Duke and Duchess of York, which threatens to expose financial corruption within the British royal family – but the noise drowning out all other news is the meeting in Alaska between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. And I’m going to start there.
THE MEETING BETWEEN the two presidents was announced last Thursday, and I briefly referred to it in my previous Bite.
The much-hyped meeting has been largely viewed as a masterstroke for Putin and a pointless exercise for the American president. (The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.) … Although Mars will be separating from the Saturn-Neptune opposition, and the full moon in Aquarius will be long gone, the chances of the Russian president opting for a cease-fire without pre-agreed concessions from Ukraine is slim at best. Another expression of this Mars-Neptune and Saturn alignments would be: shady deals.
As I write these words Trump and Putin are making their separate ways to Anchorage. The place chosen for this summit – the first between the two leaders since July 2018 – is deeply symbolic. Anchorage is roughly half way between Moscow and Washington, and Alaska was once Russian territory – indeed, many Alaskans retain their Russian heritage and speak the language. Thus, Anchorage could be said to be both Russian and American turf. Yet despite the symbolism of “meeting in the middle” the chances of a compromise are slim to the point of being negligible. And even if the two leaders agree on some parameters for a ceasefire, they remain subject to President Zelenski’s and Ukraine’s approval.
Throughout the week, I kept hearing the word Yalta in my head. Why Yalta, I wondered? It took until this morning and my research into the Yalta Agreement to understand.
In February 1945, Franklin D Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin met in Yalta (a small town in Crimea) to discuss the postwar re-organization of Germany and Europe. Over the course of seven days, the three men effectively carved up Europe without, it must be said, any input from the various countries involved.
Footnote to history: within weeks of Yalta, Stalin had broken his promise to allow free elections in Poland and was busy deporting and liquidising any Polish opposition. It took until 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall for Poland to be liberated from its communist stranglehold.
You see where I’m going. There is a large body of opinion that believes Ukraine will be somehow “carved up” during the meeting between Trump and Putin. Indeed, the American president has declared in full view of the cameras that we can expect some “land swaps”.
“I was a little bothered by the fact that Zelenskyy was saying I have to get constitutional approval… He has approval to go to war and kill everybody but he needs approval to do a land swap. Because there will be some land swapping going on. I know that through Russia and through conversations with everybody.”
Those words were uttered by Trump earlier in the week; by yesterday, his statements had become a little more muted while the administration was busy downplaying the likelihood of the get-together leading to a significant shift in the war: “If it’s a bad meeting, it’ll end very quickly. And if it’s a good meeting, we’re going to end up getting peace in the pretty near future… there’s a “25% chance” the meeting will not be “successful.”
Actions speak louder than words, and where Putin is concerned, he has not shifted one centimetre from his intention to claw back all the territory lost to Russia in the breakup of the Soviet Union. He sees it as his mission to bring Russia back to its former glory. He is after all the Great Redeemer. And it’s hard to see how any land swapping would work. Maybe Ukraine could swap the Donbas for Moscow or Zaporizhia for St Petersburg…
The above chart provides a picture of the summit and its potential outcomes. I have set it for 11:00 am local time, although the meeting could start a little later. However, even thirty minutes later the angles will hardly have changed since Libra, a sign of long ascension, is rising at the time. As it is, Mars at 5 Libra 32ʹ is exactly on the Ascendant while Jupiter is conjunct the Midheaven, in turn conjunct Venus, the ruler of the chart.
As you will see, I have drawn in the major configuration that is presiding over this hugely significant event. The Envelope formation is made up of a Mystic Rectangle and two Kites: one with Mars and the Ascendant-Descendant axis as its central strut and the other with a Mercury-Pluto opposition as its lynchpin. All three of the outer planets are engaged, as is Saturn, underscoring the history-making nature of the event.
The oppositions are the key; the first, the Mars opposition to Saturn and Neptune, is made even more powerful by its presence on the Ascendant-Descendant axis: here we find deception, unrealistic hopes, devious manoeuvres, betrayal and treachery. Both leaders will surely be concealing their hands and endeavouring to find and play on each other’s weaknesses, but there is also a sense of futility in this opposition, possibly even a hint that greater forces are in motion and resistance is pointless. What is interesting is that Trump’s Neptune is five degrees of Libra, so this opposition is playing on his own ability to deceive and to be deceived.
Illusion-delusion.
The second opposition – Mercury opposing Pluto – epitomizes tough talking; no-holes-barred discussions, power struggles, manipulation and use of the “dark arts”, not least bribery and blackmail. This opposition is ruthless, and although there is talk of a meeting with Zelensky to follow, I think we can be fairly certain that the Ukrainian president isn’t going to take the carving up of his country lying down, no matter how pretty the package in which it is wrapped.
My instincts are that even if Putin and Trump emerge from the meeting with smiles on their faces and talk of a route being laid down for a ceasefire, the war in Ukraine is far from over. What cannot be sacrificed at any cost is Ukraine’s ability to militarily defend itself or its future as part of NATO.
What is so interesting, even uncanny, is the similarities of today’s astrology with the Yalta meeting.
Talks between the three leaders went on for a week but they were begun on the eleventh of February and so the planetary alignments of the day presided over the outcome of the summit some six days later. And what do we find but a similar Envelope configuration made up of two oppositions and a Grand Trine, with almost the exact same opposition between Mercury and Pluto, although in reverse, as the central strut of one Kite and a Venus-Neptune opposition as the linchpin of the other.
Eighty years on, and we can look back and see the successes and the failures of the decisions reached at that meeting. We now know that Stalin had no intention of keeping to the agreement regarding Poland, and indeed there were other promises broken by the Russian leader, and so we must also know that his successor will do the same.
I called this Friday Bite Repeating history, the reason being: Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Friday Bite 8 August 2025
Folie de Grandeur
“Having survived Russiagate, Hillary Clinton, two impeachments, four trials designed to put him in jail, and two assassination attempts, it’s unlikely the current situation will be much of a problem.” Former house Speaker Newt Gingrich to Jonathan Lemire (The Atlantic) on Donald Trump and the Jeffrey Epstein saga.
“There are certain signals, and we also have an intuition, that perhaps a freeze in the conflict – I don’t want to say the end, but a freeze in the [Russia-Ukraine] conflict – is closer than it is further away… There are hopes for this.” Donald Tusk
“We want the population to be free of Gaza and to pass it to civilian governance… We want to liberate ourselves and liberate the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas.” Benjamin Netanyahu
AS I PUT together this Friday Bite, Mars is within minutes of opposing Saturn and Neptune. This aspect has been forming since 26 July, and it has presided over some deeply disturbing events. With Mars, the planet of action, connecting with Saturn, the planet of constriction, and Neptune, the planet of diffusion, it is as though the structures that have supported us for decades are being eroded by circumstances over which we have no control. And this is being reflected in Nature – earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis – the weather – floods, storms, landslips, fires – politics in general and geo-politics in particular, and in our own lives. In response, we have either given up and put our trust in celestial/galactic powers coming to the rescue or become inured to the travesties of justice, the despotism of leaders and the plight of the suffering in a good two-thirds of the world.
The reason I look to the United States so often in these articles is not only because it is the most powerful nation in the Western world, and what happens in America doesn’t stay in America, but also because so many of the developments that occur there are illustrative of this Saturnian-Neptunian erosion of old structures and values, and the fear and anxiety raised by what will replace them. What makes this process even more powerful and intense at this point in time is the connection between the Saturn-Neptune conjunction and Uranus and Pluto.
The speed, volume and intensity of the transformation taking place in the United States makes it difficult to keep pace with each and every piece of the dismantlement and restructuring process. We may know about the National Guard taking over the streets of Los Angeles; we may have heard about the deportation of 200 Venezuelan immigrants to an El Salvadorian prison. We may also be aware of the Democrat Texas state lawmakers who fled the state this week in order to prevent the redrawing of district boundaries in favour of the Republican vote; and we could know about the firing of the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor because Mr Trump didn’t like the figures, but you may not be aware of the day-on-day erosion of checks and balances on governmental democracy that are undermining America as a democracy.
You may not have come across The Washington Post’s report (31 July) that The Smithsonian National Museum of America had removed references to Donald Trump’s two impeachments from an exhibits section related to presidential scandals. Nor may you know that earlier this week, it was discovered that the Library of Congress had deleted two sections (9 and 10) of Article One of the Constitution – sections that cover the rights and duties of Congress including its control of DC, its power to make laws, the stipulation that no money can be used by the government unless Congress approves it, the requirement that no president can accept gifts from a foreign government and the specification that only Congress can levy tariffs.
Apparently, the deletion of these parts of the Constitution was an “administrative error”.
We may think of coups as involving physical attacks on government buildings and officials, we rarely see them taking place in the form of assaults on the truth and historical record.
TWO IMPORTANT DEADLINES are to be met on this Mars-Saturn-Neptune configuration. As the hands on the Great Historical Clock of America reached midnight, Trump’s tariffs came into effect, and tomorrow the deadline set for Russia to reach a cease-fire with Ukraine will have arrived.
“IT’S MIDNIGHT!!! BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN TARIFFS ARE NOW FLOWING INTO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA”
On Thursday, it was announced that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin would meet next week in order to discuss Ukraine. The much-hyped meeting has been largely viewed as a masterstroke for Putin and a pointless exercise for the American president. (The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.) President Zelensky will not be at the meeting, nor will any European leader.
Although Mars will be separating from the Saturn-Neptune opposition, and the full moon in Aquarius will be long gone, the chances of the Russian president opting for a cease-fire without pre-agreed concessions from Ukraine is slim at best. Another expression of this Mars-Neptune and Saturn alignments would be: shady deals.
And so to Israel and Gaza.
EARLY FRIDAY MORNING, the Israeli government approved a plan to expand the war in Gaza by taking control of Gaza City, a decision that went against the recommendations of the Israeli military. There is talk of Israel walking into a trap.
I’m not going to weigh in on the wisdom of Netanyahu’s plan to take over Gaza, but for the record I will list its five objectives:
1) The disarming of Hamas.
2) The return of all fifty hostages, twenty of whom are believed to be alive.
3) The demilitarization of Gaza.
4) Israeli security control over the enclave.
5) The establishment of an alternative civilian administration that involves neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority.
That this is happening within hours of the Mars opposition to Saturn and Neptune, and the full moon in Aquarius, tells us a lot about the potential results of Israel’s decision to take over Gaza. Shady deals notwithstanding, at the very least this configuration and the larger ones of which it is part (see last week’s Bite and my video on the full moon in Aquarius). suggest a misjudged decision, if not a folie de grandeur.
As you will see in the above chart, I have hand-drawn the connections in this chart with planets and points in the charts of Palestine, Israel and Hamas. That they make such powerful connections underscores the significance of this moment to the future of the nations involved and a twenty-six-mile stretch of land called Gaza.
With transiting Uranus currently on Hamas’s Ascendant and Jupiter, a rupture of some description is on its way. The terrorist group is likely to splinter and reform. As for Palestine, the people of Palestine, the people of Gaza, with Mars conjunct their natal Mars and opposed by Saturn and Neptune, their future remains bleak. Displacement and suffering continue. Although with Uranus sextiling this combination, release is a possibility. As for Israel, with Pluto opposing its natal Moon, it is the homeland and its people that will pay the cost of its government’s folly.
It also occurred to me that the situation in Gaza is Chironic in nature. Chiron represents the existential dilemma, the problem we can’t fix. And the conflict between Israel and Palestine has been raging for decades, if not centuries. I shall explore this connection in future Friday Bites. For now, it’s a case of watch and wait.