Astrology, Prediction and Comment

Vladimir Putin has announced a new commander for Russia’s forces in Ukraine. His name is Army General Aleksandr Dvornikov. He was born in the Russian Far East on August 22 1961. We don’t have a time of birth for him. Here is his horoscope, with the hypothetical planets included:

Possibly the best thing about his chart is the Sun in Leo. The Sun is the ruler of Leo, and at the same time, it is conjunct Regulus, the royal star. Here is a person who has a strong sense of self, who is proud of his accomplishments. He will gravitate towards important people, and will have more than his fair share of good luck. The Sun is also conjunct the North Node and Uranus, so he has a nature affinity with dramatic and explosive events.

Furthermore, the Sun is exactly square the Mars-Saturn midpoint. This is a person who understands death and destruction, and knows how to mete it out. In Syria he was not averse to bombing cities to achieve his military aims, and in Ukraine we can expect the same thing. Interestingly, the Soviet Union’s most celebrate general, Georgy Zhukov, also had Sun square the Mars-Saturn midpoint.

We don’t know what Dvornikov’s Moon sign is – if he was born in the morning, before around 7.30 am, it would be in Sagittarius. After this time, Capricorn.

His Mars is in Libra, the sign of its detriment. However, having Mars in Libra doesn’t mean you can’t be a good general – Irwin Rommel had Mars in this sign.

Then there’s his Venus – in Cancer, opposition Saturn. Cancer is a sign that can be sentimental, but Saturn squelches is. We have a person who is able to control his feelings, and pursuade himself that the end justifies the means.

Additionally there is Mercury in Virgo conjunct Pluto. Aleksandr Dvornikov is not a fool, and he is capable of detailed planning. And if he looks at a problem for long enough, he can work out what needs to be done.

Finally, when Dvornikov was born the hypothetical planet Vulcanus was exactly square the Aries point. For most people this isn’t a big deal – it is a collective energy, that will have mininal impact. But if you are a senior Russian general, conducting a major European war, it becomes important. Witte and Lefeldt described the Vulcanus-Aries combination as “Power, might and force”. And that’s what Dvornikov is being hired for.

April 2022 kicks off with a New Moon, on April 1, at 7.24 am London time. Here’s the chart, set for London:
The New Moon is making a square to the Hades-Kronos midpoint, in Cancer. Hades and Kronos are slow-moving, hypothetical planets. Hades relates to death, as well as elimination and criminality. Kronos is government, authority and the power of the state.

It’s a time when governments will be doing bad things – working behind closed doors and getting rid of their enemies. I am not just thinking about Russia – the United States, the United Kingdom and Ukraine have the same propensity for evil.

Witte and Lefeldt, in Rules for Planetary Pictures, wrote the following about the Hades-Kronos pair: “Great baseness and meanness, poverty or want. Poor government. The basic formula  for a criminal on a big scale”. This is what the New Moon brings into being. Terrible behaviour, with governments being the ultimate crooks.

An important feature of the New Moon chart is a conjunction between Mars and Saturn. Set for London, the conjunction isn’t prominent. We would have to go further east for the conjunction to be on the meridian. We then find that Moscow has the Mars-Saturn midpoint on the Midheaven. If we run the lines down (Mars on the left, Saturn on the right), we come to Eastern Ukraine:

We already know that the Russians are changing their military strategy and are now focusing on this area, specifically the Donbas. Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, is off the Mars and Saturn lines. In the Mariupol New Moon chart the Midheaven is only three arcminutes from the conjunction with the Mars-Saturn midpoint.

In Rules, we read that the Midheaven on the Mars-Saturn midpoint represents “Grief. To suffer from separations or separating actions. Decease. Cause of death. Dying. Deaths of others that make a deep impression upon the mind of the native. One’s own death”.  So it does seem, in early April, that the situation is far from perfect.

We should also cast an eye over China and Taiwan – where Mars and Saturn are setting, at the time of the New Moon. Here’s the map, showing Taiwan constricted by the two lines:

In addition, early April sees the Nodal axis square both Mars and Saturn. This is more of the same… connections with other people have a deathly quality. It’s more appropriate to go to a funeral than a wedding.

But don’t worry, things can always get worse.

Time to demonstrate, once and for all, that astrology is garbage. Take two people, born on the same day of the same year, and show how their lives and legacies are miles apart.

Princess Diana was born on July 1 1961. Although Diana came from a wealthy background, she was unable to fully benefit from the academic opportunities placed before her.

She left school at 16, after failing her ‘O’ levels. These were exams that British 16 year olds took in the 1970s. In a British private school one would have expected even the least academic students to pass a couple of them. If she really passed none of them, that would have been extraordinary.

However, I know from personal experience that in itself passing exams gets you nowhere. Diana may have had no academic qualifications, but she was a great humanitarian, and was capable of being a trendsetter. She helped destygmatize AIDS, by publicly  shaking hands with an AIDS patient, without gloves. That might not sound a big deal, but at the height of AIDS hysteria it was an important and brave gesture. She also helped publicize the campaign against landmines, and just before her death she was photographed in a minefield in Angola, wearing a face shield and a protective jacket.

We then move to Victoria Nuland, also born on July 1 1961. She graduated from Brown University, an Ivy League institution, with a degree in Russian literature, political science and history.

Nuland has a track record of being involved in America’s overseas adventures. Between 2000 and 2003 she was US permanent representative to NATO, from 2003 to 2005 was a foreign policy advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney and from 2005 to 2008 was US ambassador to NATO. In the last two roles, she was able to canvass support for the US’s continuing inventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

From 2013 to 2017 Victoria Nuland was Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. Nuland knew a lot more about European and Russian history than Princess Diana ever did, and she must have realized how delicate Ukraine’s position was. An independent country, but one closely tied to Russia. Unlike most other East European countries it was not a member of NATO, and rightly or wrongly, Russia regarded Ukraine as being an part of its sphere of influence.

Victoria Nuland crashed into Ukraine like a bull in a china shop. She wanted to push back against Russian influence in the country, and in 2014 she cavorted with elements opposing the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych.

Nuland involved herself in regime change, and the ousting of Yanukovuych led to Russia’s annexing of the Crimea, and war in the Donbas. It was a situation that eventually morphed into Russia’s 2022 invasion.

We then have the question of how two famous people, so different from one another, share the same birthday, July 1 1961. Astrologers would argue that it is not enough to have a date of birth – you also need a time and a place of birth. Furthermore, you need to know the circumstances of someone’s life, including genetic heritage, because they show how the astrological signatures in a horoscope will manifest in the real world.

Let’s actually look at the horoscope, and see how this might work. Here’s Victoria Nuland’s chart, set for July 1 1961, at noon in New York:

We notice straight away that both Princess Diana and Victoria Nuland have the Moon in Aquarius. In a female chart the Moon sign is often more important than the Sun sign. The Moon in Aquarius is independent minded, and can break convention. With Princess Diana she didn’t entirely fit in with the established norms of the Royal Family, and as we saw with her handshake with an AIDS patient, she was able to challenge society’s fears and stereotypes.

You could say the same with Victoria Nuland. There is a tradition that civil servants behave in a particular way, and have a certain aloofness and impartiality. Her behaviour in Ukraine may have been a manifestion of the Moon in Aquarius, paricular as her Moon, like Diana’s, is opposition Uranus, the planet of earthquakes and revolutions.

Victoria Nuland and Princess Diana also have the Aries point in aspect to the Mars-Saturn midpoint. The aspect in question is 135 degrees, or three-eighths of the circle. Aries is connected with the world at large, while Mars-Saturn is connected with death and destruction.

In Diana’s case, Aries on the Mars-Saturn midpoint relates to her death. She died in the spotlight of media attention, and the reason she crashed was because she was trying to escape from the press.

In Victoria Nuland’s case, the symbolish was the same, but the results very different. She didn’t die in a car crash in a Paris tunnel, and instead she got to stir things up, and help create events that led to a huge amount of death and destruction. Victoria Nuland got involved in Ukraine, and had a hand in unseating the elected president. This in turn led to eight years of war, in the Donbas and beyond.

Cynics would argue that I am scraping the barrel trying to find parallels between Princess Diana and Victoria Nuland. I absolute understand this, but I would argue that astrology is just one piece of the puzzle, and you have to look at how the various pieces interact with one other. A princess and a civil servant will handle the Moon in Aquarius in very different ways!

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I held off on interpreting Volodymyr Zelensky’s horoscope. I had to consider my own biases, which might have clouded my interpretation. Also, it’s a powerful chart, and much more dramatic than that of Vladimir Putin. Indeed, if wars are decided by the interestingness of their leaders’ horoscopes, Ukrainian forces would be at the gates of Moscow by now. But interesting doesn’t necessarily mean good.

So here is Zelensky’s horoscope, set for 2.00 pm on January 25 1978, in Krivoj Rog, Ukraine:

I don’t want to dwell on Zelensky’s biography. He is the current president of Ukraine, and he has been much applauded in the West for his leadership and rugged resistance to the Russian invasion. Prior to being president, he was an actor and comedian.

I should also say that I have made no attempt to find out about Zelensky’s personality, aside from what I have gleaned from news reports.

When I look at a chart, one of the first things I do is consider the elemental balance of the seven traditional planets. Zelensky has three planets in Fire signs: the Moon, Mars and Saturn, all in Leo; one planet in an Earth sign, which is Mercury in Capricorn; and three planets in Air signs, which are the Sun and Venus in Aquarius and Jupiter in Gemini. Zelensky has no planets in Water signs.

This raises a polarity issue. Fire and Air are the positive elements, Earth and Water the negative ones. Six out of the seven of his traditional planets are positive. If we include Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, it is nine out of ten planets that are positive.

Another way of looking at a chart is through the Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable signs. The fixed signs are Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius. Five of Zelensky’s traditional planets are fixed: Sun and Venus in Aquarius, and the Moon, Mars and Saturn in Leo.

Zelensky, with all his positive, Fire and Air planets, is someone who creates and initates. I don’t think he just passively responds to events. And it does seem that he has taken ownership of the War, and how it is presented to the outside world. In this light, there is some similarity between him and Winston Churchill. Like Zelensky, Winston Churchill had six out of seven traditional planets in Fire and Air signs. They also both had their Moons in Leo. The two men lead from the front, and had a sense of the dramatic.

The Fire-Air emphasis in Zelensky’s chart gives us an idea of how he operates. As an Aquarian, he is independent-minded and stubborn. Yes, he considers the facts, but he also has a strong sense of his own rightness. At the same time there is an intuitive side to him, where he intuits what is correct without having to think about it.

But he has no planets in Water signs. He may be a performer, but sometimes he can be overly dismissive of the emotional atmosphere. And I think, with his Aquarian Sun conjunct Venus, he is able to emotionally detach himself from the suffering going on around him. Perhaps this allows him to make hard decisions, but he nonetheless has to be careful.

There may be a literal manifestation of his lack of Water. Ukraine, in choosing Zelensky as president, may lose its coastline. At the moment the Russians are moving Westwards along the Black Sea coast, presumably with the aim of reaching Odessa. This would make Ukraine effectively landlocked. Whether such a capture of territory would be sustainable is another matter, but right now the promise of Zelensky’s horoscope is being lived out.

Zelensky’s ascendant is Gemini. The ascendant is the image he presents to the world. Someone who is flexible, who can move from one thing to another with relative ease. This impression is strenghened by the presence of Jupiter in Gemini. This is what helped him be a comedian and actor. It also lightens up his chart, through its aspect to the Sun-Moon midpoint.

This is important. When you do a chart, you should always check to see if there is a planet aspecting the Sun-Moon midpoint, because this planet is likely to be very prominent. The aspects you should use are conjunctions, oppositions, squares, semi-squares and sesquiquadrates. And you should use one degree orbs.

Zelensky’s Sun-Moon midpoint is at 11 degrees 25 minutes Scorpio, and his Jupiter is at 27 degrees 9 minutes Gemini – meaning that he has Jupiter sesquiquadrate the Sun/Moon midpoint. This makes him larger than life, and gives him a sense of fun and a sense of humour.

Yet Jupiter is not the strongest planet in Zelensky’s chart. That honour belongs to the Sun. On the face of it this is surprising, because the Sun is in its detriment in Aquarius. But the Sun is in the right places: it is in a daylight chart, it is above the horizon and it is in a masculine sign. Furthermore, the Sun is in mutual reception with Saturn in Leo – the two planets are in signs which each other rule.  To make matters even better, the Sun is in close conjunction to benefic Venus, and Saturn is conjunct Regulus, the royal star.

The picture I am getting is someone tough and uncompromising, who is also able to think through the sitatuion. The Gemini rising may appear flexible, but it is possibly just a front. And because Zelensky is Ukraine’s leader, his horoscope rubs off on his country.

This has a cost. Ukraine, by standing up to Russia, has endured catastrophic destruction. It is a country that won’t bend, and this reflects the fixity of Zelensky’s horoscope. And if Ukraine does lose the war, I think it will be a sudden collapse rather than a gradual decline.

I should also point out that Zelensky’s Mars-Saturn midpoing is at 14 degrees 32 minutes Leo, which is semisquare the Aries point. The Aries point is the world at large, while the Mars-Saturn pair is associated with death and destruction. When you have a politician with the Aries point on the Mars-Saturn midpoint you have the possibility of unacceptable destruction.

As far as what is going on in Zelensky’s life right now, if you’re interested you already know. I would nonetheless like to mention his solar return, set for January 25 2022, in his place of birth:

It is a clean and descriptive chart. Mars is risining in Capricorn, the sign of its exaltation, and the Moon in Libra is close to the Midheaven. Mars is the planet of war, it is rising, and we therefore have the signature of a successful war leader. The Moon is the public, it is on the Midheaven, and that’s the signature of someone getting a lot of public attention.

While all this is going on, Saturn is moving through mid and late Aquarius. Aquarius is the sign of Zelensky’s Midheaven, so it is not surprising that he has been doing so well at his job. While Saturn can be problematic, in Aquarius, a sign of its rulership, it performs well. Matters are further helped by the fact that Zelensky’s annual profection, starting on January 25 2022, is covered by Aquarius, and is therefore ruled by Saturn.

Yet I am wondering if Mars might spoil the party. On March 6 it entered Aquarius, and it stays there until April 15. It causes a huge amount of aggravation, both to Zelensky and Ukraine. His life will certainly be in danger – I know, I’m stating the obvious here, but the astrological signature is there. We also have a Mars-Saturn conjunction on April 5.

I suppose if Ukraine and Zelensky can survive in tact until April 15, they may be over the worst. But that’s a big ask, and I am wondering if Ukraine really did the right thing choosing a president with such a powerful chart. Indeed at best it might be a case of the operation being successful, but the patient dying.