Image: Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, available via Amazon.

Editor’s Note: the majority of this article is excerpted from “Astrology of the Central Intelligence Agency”, one of four features originally published in the Spring 2016 print edition of Hexagon. -Matt

The Sun symbolizes the conscious identity, and the Moon symbolizes deeper, more unconscious emotional needs. These are the two sources of light (energy) in a chart, and together they describe the basic psychological architecture of a person, project, organization, or company. The CIA has its Sun in Virgo (sign of competency) and its Moon in Scorpio (sign of covert operations). Both signs are associated with investigative work albeit in slightly different ways. Virgo is the CSI officer assigned to examine a crime scene, Scorpio is the deep cover agent assigned to infiltrate a crime syndicate. Virgo’s eye for detail makes it great at forgery, sabotage, and cyber-warfare — either committing it or spotting it. Scorpio’s sense for the hidden makes it great at blackmail, coercion, and espionage — either plotting it or untangling it. Virgo’s discreet nature means it excels at being seen without being noticed, similar to a company’s janitorial staff. Scorpio’s secretive nature means it excels at being neither seen nor noticed, similar to a company’s internal affairs department. For example, the 1975 film Three Days of the Condor is a surprisingly accurate portrayal of the Agency’s methodically (Virgo) investigative (Scorpio Moon) modus operandi. It stars Robert Redford as Joe Turner, a bookish CIA analyst (Virgo) working under the secret guise (Scorpio Moon) of the “American Literary Historical Society”, a CIA funded arts-and-literature organization:

Combine a Virgo Sun’s capacity for quiet anonymity with a Scorpio Moon’s need for secrecy and the result is a Sun/Moon combination uniquely suited for the world of high-stakes spy-craft. Astrologer Jefferson Anderson calls this the combination of “The Sly Fox” whose “intellectual bearing masks a deeply secretive inner nature.” (Source) Astrologer Raven Kaldera associates the Virgo/Scorpio Sun/Moon paring with the “Blood Moon” that “senses the call of the Underworld and feels instinctively that Power lies there.” (Source) On the Blood Moon “we study darkness,” according to Kaldera. Along these lines, most of what the CIA does involves intellectual analysis (Virgo) of a deeply secretive nature (Scorpio), almost all of which takes place on the sly, in the dark, and within the context of enormous amounts of power and more than a bit of blood. Looking through business documents, sifting through medical files, and pouring over satellite photos to find minor anomalies that may lead to larger conspiracies are the types of intensely intellectual (Virgo) deep cover work (Scorpio) that comprise the agency’s bread-and-butter competency.

For instance, analyzing stacks and stacks of insurance files may not seem terribly exciting but, in the capable hands of a Virgo/Scorpio, those files can be turned into a highly effective tool (Virgo) for espionage (Scorpio), one that can quickly discern a target’s most sensitive vulnerabilities. It’s not known by the general public but the CIA actually evolved out of the “Office of Strategic Services” (OSS), a World War II organization whose ultra-secret “Insurance Intelligence Unit” utilized mundane details found within insurance filings to determine who would live and who would die, which towns would be fiercely protected and which would be fire-bombed out of existence. According to a year 2000 Los Angeles Times article “The Secret Agent Insurance Men”, the agency’s insurance specialists:

Linda Goodman says the Virgo/Scorpio pairing excels at “understanding their individual assets versus their liabilities.” There is little-to-no publicly available information regarding the CIA’s use of insurance files in the modern day. However, given how effectively they were used to secretly discern targets’ assets versus their liabilities during World War II, it seems entirely reasonable to suspect “Secret (Insurance) Agent Men” are still operational in some capacity to this day. This is doubly the case since the CIA operates so many front companies, including proprietary airlines that wouldn’t be able to conduct their operations if they couldn’t get insurance.

It’s not unreasonable to suspect that the CIA has equally accurate intelligence on the status of U.S. industries, including the multi-billion dollar industry that is US electoral politics. For example, there’s a fascinating interview with Jesse Ventura circulating on the internet in which he recounts the time his presence was “requested” in the basement of the capital building shortly after he was elected governor of Minnesota. Once there he was interrogated by 23 members of the agency. He found the episode entirely baffling until he realized that all the questions they asked him were about how he got elected. He surmised that the intent of the meeting was to gather intelligence on trends in U.S. electoral politics, possibly to ensure that no similarly independent candidate manage to ascend to significant office in the future. According to astrologers Suzi and Charles Harvey, a metaphoric image for the Virgo/Scorpio pairing is “A zealous insect lover stands quietly in the bushes observing the mating habits of the praying mantis.” If Governor Ventura’s story is any indicator, it would seem the CIA monitors the voting habits of the American citizenry in a similarly zealous—and quiet—fashion.

[large snip]

The image you’re looking at is a photocopy of a driver’s license issued to CIA agent tried (in absentia) for conducting an illegal abduction in Milan. It was released by Italian prosecutors in 2005 and brought to wider public attention by author/artist Trevor Paglen through a series of art exhibits and his 2010 book Invisible: Classified Landscapes and Covert Operations. The agent’s real name is not James Thomas Harbison, that’s the name of the cover identity for whom the license was issued.

Virgo is the Sun sign most likely to prefer working in quiet anonymity while secrecy is a deep seated emotional need for any person, organization, or “entity” with their Moon in Scorpio. Mr. Harbison is not an actual “man in black”, the license looks the way it does because it was photocopied. However, metaphorically an image of an anonymous (Virgo) man in black (Scorpio) is an excellent approximation of the CIA’s Sun/Moon pairing. Furthermore, Virgo/Scorpios tend to be very smart dressers even when they’re involved in very dirty work. In the above image, for instance, you might have noticed how neatly the agent’s tie is tied.

Both Virgo and Scorpio are associated with health, with Virgo clocking in as the zodiac’s resident homeopath and Scorpio doing time as the zodiac’s resident psychologist. The Harveys tell us that this combination makes for something of a health fanatic. Along these lines, the CIA is considered the world’s premier intelligence agency when it comes to gathering “medical intelligence.” (Source) For instance, during the 1950s, as part of Operation Artichoke, the Agency collected information on medical issues such as hypnosis, morphine addiction, and LSD. (Source) The operation that located Osama Bin Laden in the lead up to his (alleged) assassination in 2011 was hidden within a vaccination drive organized by the Agency. (Source) According to a recent Mother Jones article, the Agency has detailed files on the health (Virgo) secrets (Scorpio) of numerous world leaders. (Source) Similarly, many of the agency’s proprietary weapons have been designed to effect precise (Virgo) forms of death (Scorpio) by attacking the target’s health. During the 1970s, a Congressional investigation revealed that the Agency had developed a “heart attack gun”, numerous videos of which are now circulating on the internet.

The Virgo/Scorpio pairing is “unbeatable at detective work, whether in trying to solve a crime, uncover a mystery of science, or probe deeply into a troubled psyche”, according to astrologer Bil Tierney. (Source) In true Virgo/Scorpio fashion, the CIA has proven to be largely unbeatable at probing people’s minds—both the minds of regular citizens and the deeply troubled psyches running many of the world’s largest governments and most powerful corporations. Its most well-known program for probing minds was “MK-ULTRA,” a Cold War-era program staffed in part by former Nazi scientists who were recruited during the waning days of World War II. According to a recent summary of the program published in Wired magazine, “the CIA’s Technical Services Staff launched the highly classified project to study the mind-control effects of LSD and other psychedelic drugs, using unwitting US and Canadian citizens as lab mice.” (Source) The program’s most ambitious goal was the development of a “Manchurian Candidate,” a mind-controlled automaton-servant (Virgo) who would kill on command (Scorpio). It’s unknown if the agency succeeded in developing such a soldier, but we do know that one of the 20th century’s most notorious murderers was the subject of MK-ULTRA experiments. During his time as a Harvard undergraduate, a then 17-year-old Ted Kaczynski was subjected to experiments by Dr. Henry Murray that involved severe verbal and psychological abuse. (Source)

Discreet Virgo, the craftsperson and artisan of the zodiac, micro-manages projects down to their smallest details and precise, split-second timing. Astrologer Stella Hyde says Scorpio’s ideal job is a ‘professional assassin’ who ‘spurns the bread-and-butter gangland contracts for the edgy intrigue, secrecy, and destabilizing political fallout that comes with top-class, globally significant, grassy-knoll-style eliminations.” (Source) The CIA has a long history of conducting precision (Virgo) eliminations (Scorpio). It masterminded the elimination of Mohammad Mosaddegh, president of Iran, in 1953, and the coup that ousted President Allende of Chile on September 11, 1973. It famously spent over 50 years trying to assassinate Fidel Castro in Cuba. The Agency is considered by many to be the prime suspect in the artisan-crafted, precisely administered (Virgo) grassy-knoll assassination (Scorpio) of President John F. Kennedy in retaliation for his attempts to limit the power of the military-industrial complex.

The CIA’s arguably craftiest (Virgo) covert operation (Scorpio) of all begun to take shape in the mid-1970s. It was at this time that the agency’s affiliates in Latin American law enforcement agencies begun relaying back intelligence gathered on a disturbing new drug trend: Peruvian and Bolivian psychiatrists were being inundated with zombie like patients addicted to smoking “basuco”, a coca derived paste with pharmacological effects identical to what would later come to be known as “crack” cocaine. (Source) hat the profits from cocaine importation were used to fund the CIA’s allies in Central America a decade later has since been exhaustively documented in books such as Gary Webb’s Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion (1998), Alexander Cockburn’s Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs, and the Press, and highly regarded documentaries such as American Drug War: The Last White Hope (2007) and Freeway: A Crack in the System (2014). The Agency even defacto admitted it had been involved in these matters in its own 1998 Inspector General’s report while Colonel Oliver North’s diary included ledgers documenting import of large sums of cocaine. Rob Bonner, a federal judge and former head of the Drug enforcement Agency, went on the 60 Minutes television news show in 1996 and said in no uncertain terms that his agency had caught the CIA involved with the importation of massive amounts of cocaine.

Virgo is the sign most likely to work as a clean-up person or in a corporation’s customer service department while Scorpio Moons often reside in underworlds, be they emotional underworlds like those found throughout the halls of psychiatric hospitals or political underworlds like those found throughout the corridors of global finance. Not only did the agency’s foray into cocaine importation generate money for covert operations in Nicaragua, it also delivered profits for the CIA’s real customer: Wall Street investment consortiums and other underworld entities who snapped up inner city real estate for pennies on the dollar once the crack epidemic had cleansed the targeted neighborhoods of their residents. (Source)

Virgo is ruled by Mercury, the planetary patron saint of journalists, while Scorpio is co-ruled by Pluto, the Lord of hades whose cap of invisibility allows him to operate undetected. The combination is thus excellent for journalism (Virgo/Mercury) conducted in secret or under a cap of invisibility (Scorpio/ Pluto). The CIA has a long history of working with journalists (Virgo) under the cover of darkness (Scorpio). Michael Ruppert writes in his 2004 book Crossing the Rubicon:

Despite official denials, there is little reason to doubt that the Agency still plays a role in shaping what does and does not get published in newspapers and/or broadcast on the airwaves. For instance, a 1987 article published in LA Weekly magazine posits that the American Broadcast Company (ABC) may have been indirectly seized by the CIA when Capital Cities Communications purchased it in March 1985. (Source) According to the Weekly piece, Capital Cities had deep ties to the intelligence community while the CIA’s challenge of ABC’s broadcast license lowered its stock value—just in time for Capital Cities to purchase the network at a bargain rate. Soon thereafter, the network’s programming was taken in a conservative direction that was “subtle but apparent”.

More recently, documents obtained by The Intercept in 2014 revealed that Ken Dilanian, a prominent national security reporter for the Los Angeles Times, had “routinely submitted drafts and detailed summaries of his stories to CIA press handlers prior to publication.” (Source) Around the same time, German editor Udo Ulfkotte admitted having published articles written by CIA operatives working as journalists (Virgo) under what’s called “non-official cover” (Scorpio), not unlike what we see depicted in Three Days of the Condor.

Virgo Sun, Scorpio Moon: The Scholarly Super Fox and the Smartly Dressed Detective

Fortunately, not all Virgo/Scorpios will apply this pairing’s intellectual acumen (Virgo) and psychological prowess (Scorpio) to inciting mayhem, manipulating the media, or conducting wide-ranging international murder-for-hire schemes. Pulitzer prize-winning UCLA professor Jared Diamond is a Virgo/Scorpio. He’s best known for applying his intellect (Virgo) to solving mysteries (Scorpio) such as what causes once-great human societies to collapse into chaos, an issue he explores masterfully in his 2005 book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Educator Maria Montessori is another Virgo/Scorpio. While the CIA was applying its intelligence (Virgo) and psychological savvy (Scorpio) to developing programs of mind control, Montessori was applying hers to the field of child development. Using its debut date as its date of birth, the 1960s hit show Mission Impossible is also a Virgo/Scorpio. The show was based on a CIA-esque outfit called the “Impossible Mission Force”. It was known for its smartly dressed cast and tightly written scripts (Virgo), all set amid an atmosphere of espionage (Scorpio). Like their real life Virgo/Scorpio counterparts at the CIA, the members of the “Impossible Mission Force” accomplish their objectives through the use of subtlely effective (Virgo) yet totally secret (Scorpio) methods. Each week their methods of choice would be previewed in the show’s famously compelling opening montage.

Reading through the Mission Impossible plot summaries it’s clear the show’s writers were inspired by some of the CIA’s most clandestine operations of that era. The 1969 episode “The Brothers”, for instance, was clearly based on the CIA’s 1956 overthrow of Iranian president Mohammed Mossadegh. The series also included an episode entitled “The Astrologer” where the Impossible Mission Force manipulates a target’s fascination with astrology in order to track him down. I seriously doubt the CIA or any other intelligence agency is using astrology in such a fashion these days but astrology was the basis of some bizarre psychological operations during World War II. (Source)

Using its premier date as its date of birth, the 1997 film Gattaca is a Virgo Sun, Scorpio Moon. (Chart) The film takes place in a futuristic society whose genetic based caste system is enforced by way of advanced surveillance technologies, some of which appear not all together different than what the CIA is rumored to have in its arsenal.

The film’s protagonist, a member of the lowest genetic “caste”, adopts a clandestinely obtained identity not to conduct an overseas abduction operation but to go on a mission to space. Given the ubiquitous nature of genetic surveillance in his society his goal is essentially an “impossible mission” – the exact sort of thing that a Virgo/Scorpio is capable of accomplishing quietly (Virgo) while hidden in the shadows (Scorpio).

About the Author: Matt Savinar is a California licensed attorney (State Bar #228957), voluntarily inactive as of June 2013. He can be reached for questions, comments, or consults at his contact page.