Month: April, 2013
Libra Sun, Capricorn Moon: “The Knight Rider”
(Photo: Trevor Paglen via YouTube)
Pair the Sun (conscious identity) in the sign of justice and fairness (Libra) with the Moon (unconscious instincts) in the sign of order and strategy (Capricorn) and you get a Sun/Moon pairing that is strategic, organized, and diplomatic, with a very well developed sense of liberty, justice, and fairness for all. To illustrate: using its premier date as its date of birth, the hit 1980s show Knight Rider is a Libra Sun, Capricorn Moon. (Chart) In the show David Hasselhoff portrays a former police officer recruited by the “Foundation for Law and Government”, a well-heeled social justice (Libra) organization (Capricorn) with its own in-house technology directorate loosely akin to Lockheed’s “Skunkworks” division (makers of stealth spy planes):
The show’s writing and plot-lines are pretty much standard Reagan-era pablum but its mysterious theme song and cryptic voice-over sure do provide a lot of sizzle. As the narrator tells us the show depicts “A shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist.” That’s actually a pretty fitting description for a chart with Pisces (mystery) Rising (appearance) and Neptune (illusion) on the Midheaven (status before the public).
Geographer-provocateur Trevor Paglen is a Libra Sun, Capricorn Moon whose taken more than a few real life “shadowy flights” into the “dangerous world” of black budget military projects that “do not exist”, at least not officially. (Chart) According to a recent profile published in the New Yorker, “Paglen takes photos of off-limits military installations such as Area 51, and of buildings, aircraft, and offices connected with the top-secret black world”. (Source) For his 2010 book Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon’s Black World he even traveled to Afghanistan to take photos of an infamous CIA “black site” prison known as the “Salt Pit.” Doing so without getting killed, jailed, or dying from exposure required pairing the legal instincts of a lawyer (Libra) with the physical stamina and capacity for self-preservation of a goat-herder (Capricorn Moon). The same can likely be said for what it took to take this photo of the NSA’s headquarters, which Paglen captured in 2014 and released into the public domain:
Paglen doesn’t ride around in a high-tech talking car that speaks to him but he does make use of the latest in high-tech photo-telescopic equipment to produce art that speaks volumes. Here, for instance, is a photograph taken by Paglen of an NSA listening post that captures communications as they bounce off the Moon:
The voice over to the Knight Rider theme describes the Michael Knight character as “a young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless in a world of criminals who operate above the law.” Paglen isn’t exactly “a loner” but by his own admission the confounding yet provocative nature of his art makes him a very difficult man to employ. (Source) He may not be on a literal “crusade to champion the cause of the innocent” but as one review of his books put it his writing is “impassioned, rigorous, relentless, and delivers eye-opening details” about a world of shadow entities that do operate “above the law.”
Speaking of “criminals who operate above the law”, Colonel Oliver North is also a Libra Sun, Capricorn Moon albeit one who is to Mr. Paglen what G. Gordon Liddy is to Robert F. Kennedy. (Chart) Astrologer Jefferson Anderson warns the Libra/Capricorn pairing to keep its Machiavellian tendencies in check or it runs the risk of “becoming just another Iago.” For those whose knowledge of Shakespeare has yet to fully expressing itself, Iago is the career soldier caught conducting his own illegal military operations in Shakespeare’s play Othello. (Source) When Iago’s operations are finally uncovered he states, “Demand of me nothing. What you know, you know. From this time forth I never will speak a word.” That’s exactly what Oliver North pleaded when his Machiavellian role in Iran Contra was finally exposed:
A key point that Paglen makes in his books is that classified operations are now such a ubiquitous part of the American economy that pretty much everything and everybody from restaurants and post-offices to lawyers and doctors to auto mechanics and computer repair people has an evil twin counterpart working in the “black world”. That principle appears to apply even to Paglen himself. After all, his evil (astrological) twin Oliver North is as well-known for conducting black budget operations outside the rule of law as Trevor Paglen is for illuminating them via his art.
About the Author:
Matthew David Savinar is a California licensed attorney, voluntarily inactive as of 2013. (State Bar #228957) He can be reached for questions, comments, or astrological consults via email: editor (at sign) hexagonastrology.com. He can be found on Twitter, SoundCloud, or via his YouTube channel.
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Pisces Sun, Aries Moon: The Mystic, the Magicians, and The Men Who Watch the Moon
Editor’s Note: I’ve uploaded an audio/video version of this article to YouTube and to Soundcloud. -Matt
Pair the intuitive abilities of a Pisces Sun with the pioneering instincts of an Aries Moon and you get a Sun/Moon pairing that is equal parts sensitive poet (Pisces) and ass-kicking crusader (Aries). According to astrologer Jefferson Anderson this pairing will leverage its access to ethereal realms (Pisces) in order to ram its way through to the finish line (Aries):
Cunning, shrewd, and subtle, you know how to get your way through charm and subtle persuasion. That remarkable sixth sense of yours lets you know instinctively whom to trust and whom to avoid. In addition, your sharp mind is well suited to a career in engineering. (Source)
In the Medieval days the textbook Pisces/Aries might have been found putting their “remarkable sixth sense” to use in service of the King or Queen, advising them on “whom to trust and whom to avoid” as well who to single out for further surveillance, blackmail, or even who to eliminate. Today this pairing’s cunning intelligence and capacity for subtle persuasion are more likely be expressed via technological means or applied to innovative engineering projects. To illustrate: using the date of its establishment as its date of birth, the ECHELON network is a Pisces Sun, Aries Moon. (Chart) If you’re not familiar with ECHELON it’s the worldwide satellite surveillance and communications intercept network jointly operated by the United states, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. (Source) An engineering project of colossal scale, its official role is to inform signatories to the “Five Eyes” agreement “whom to trust and whom to avoid.” In effect, ECHELON’s intercept abilities gives these signatories the technological equivalent of an “uncanny sixth sense.”
According to astrologer Linda Goodman the Pisces/Aries pairing will “spend much time discussing secrets . . . including all matters of the occult, the esoteric or the metaphysical, such as astrology, hypnotism, astral travel, telepathy and the like”. (Source) ECHELON does not literally make use of astral travel, telepathy, or other occult methodologies but its surveillance and intercept capacities are so advanced they may as well be from the other realms. The people who operate the network do indeed “spend much of their time discussing secrets”, both political secrets and industrial ones. For example, former NSA analyst Wayne Madsen believes ECHELON has been used to conduct financial espionage on behalf of U.S. automobile companies. (Source) A number of high-ranking legislators have voiced similar concerns, mainly that the system has been used to steal secrets from uncooperative companies and provide them to companies willing to play ball with the “Five Eyes” organization. (Source)
The textbook Pisces/Aries can be incredibly imaginative in coming up with ways to absorb impressions while hidden away in their own private sanctuary. The ECHELON system, for instance, makes use of a phenomenon called “Moon Bounce” which according to author Trevor Paglen involves “capturing communications and telemetry signals from around the world as they escape into space, hit the moon, and are reflected back towards Earth.” (Source) In 2010 Paglen used advanced “limit” tele-photography techniques to capture this image of an Echelon listening post designed to make use of “Moon Bounce”:
Using its establishment date as its date of birth, the search engine “Shodan” is also a Pisces/Aries. (Chart) A recent CNN article referred to Shodan as the “scariest search engine on the planet”, describing it as “a kind of dark Google, looking for the servers, webcams, printers, routers and all the other stuff that is connected to and makes up the Internet.” (Source) What’s really scary is that Shodan also provides access to countless industrial control computers which run the world’s power grids, water plants, traffic systems, chemical factories, water treatment facilities, data centers, and at least one nuclear particle accelerator. (Source) In short, Shodan is to home based hackers what ECHELON has been to high level spooks:
Strange Coincidence #2: ECHELON and Shodan aren’t the only Pisces/Aries who’ve attained mythic status for the ability to intercept communications and/or hack into the grid. Steve Jobs is also a Pisces/Aries. (Chart) In the mid 1970s Jobs earned seed money for Apple Computer by selling what were known as “blue boxes”, small devices designed to make free phone calls by hacking into the phone system. The methodologies Jobs used were known as “phone phreaking” and were as imaginative and innovative as the intercept methodologies upon which ECHELON and Shodan are built. (Source) They were also totally illegal.
The flip side to being so vividly imaginative is that this pairing is often “led into situations so mysterious, so intertwined with intrigue and half-truths that even a Ouija board couldn’t get to the bottom of the whole mess” according to Mrs. Goodman (Source) A case could be made that Jobs’ original ‘blue boxes’ were, in effect, the technological equivalent of Ouija Boards: primitive motherboards designed to conjure free phone calls from Ma-Bell, the vast copper-wired, analog-era, super-entity that was to denizens of 1970s corporate telephone systems what communications deity Papa Legba was to practitioners of Haitian Vodou. In a 1994 interview Jobs described the process of using the primitive blue boxes to control hundreds of millions of dollars of telephone infrastructure as being akin to a “powerful form of magic”:
Using the date of its establishment as its date of birth, the “President’s Working Group on Financial Markets” aka the “Plunge Protection Team” (PPT) is another Pisces/Aries associated with forms of conjuring. (Chart) Created in 1988 by President Reagan, the PPT is officially tasked with “maintaining investor confidence”. (Source) How the PPT accomplishes this is as “intertwined with intrigue and half-truths” as the inner workings of ECHELON. For example, while the PPT is thought to have played as direct a role in managing (manipulating?) the 2008 financial collapse as Steve Jobs played at Apple you’d probably need a Ouija board, tarot cards, a few “blue boxes”, and the modern day equivalent of a witchdoctor or two to discern the specifics of the group’s interventions:
Astrologer David Wells says this pairing’s “strength lies your magic, an intuition that knows how to drive through life.” (Source) Astronaut Gordon Cooper is a Pisces/Aries whose intuitive ability to manually drive the Faith 7 spacecraft saved both his own life and, quite possibly, that of the U.S. Space program. (Chart) Unlike later missions the Faith 7 was designed for fully automatic control with no input from the occupant. In other words, there were no instruments on board which would have allowed Cooper to take control of the craft even if he had wanted to. This became a major problem when the capsule experienced a near total power failure during its 19th orbit around the Earth. By the 20th orbit all readings of altitude and orientation were lost. By the 21st orbit the capsule’s automatic stabilization and control systems had failed completely. At that point Cooper was, for all intents and purposes, a dead man careening through space.
Cooper, tapping into that Pisces/Aries capacity for innovation, literally “hacked” into capsule’s engines and took control of them manually. Using his understanding of star patterns, his wristwatch, and calculations he wrote out on the capsule’s window with a number two pencil he successfully estimated the correct pitch for re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. According to NASA, “Cooper’s cool-headed performance and piloting skills led to a basic rethinking of design philosophy for later space missions”. (Source) Following his retirement from NASA, Cooper attempted to expose the truth about UFOs. He also contributed to the book In the Shadow of the Moon, an appropriately titled work for a Sun/Moon pairing as willing to adventure through the ethereal realms of the unknown as Pisces/Aries.
About the Author: Matthew David Savinar is a California licensed attorney (State Bar #228957), voluntarily inactive as of June 2013. He can be reached for questions, comments, or astrological consults via Twitter, YouTube, SoundCloud, LibSyn or this site’s contact page.
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Cancer Sun, Scorpio Moon: The Shaman, the Snake, and the Witchdoctor
Image: Kurt Russel as “Snake Plissken” in Escape from New York, available via Amazon
Pair the protective nature of a Cancer Sun with the clandestine instincts of a Scorpio Moon and you get a Sun/Moon pairing that is private and instinctual, mysterious and intriguing, dramatic and passionate, extremely cunning and nearly impossible to read. Other Cancers stay close to the seashore, this one swims with the sharks. To illustrate: using its release date as its date of birth, the 1981 cult classic film Escape from New York is a Cancer Sun, Scorpio Moon. (Chart) Astrologer Jefferson Andersen refers to Cancer/Scorpio as the pairing of “The Cobra” who is “not the timid, insecure, and introverted Cancer one so often reads about”. (Source) Amazingly, the name of Kurt Russell’s anti-hero protagonist in Escape from New York is “Snake Plissken”. He even has a tattoo of a cobra on his stomach:
This pairing is profoundly tuned in to deeply hidden undercurrents and is thus rarely wrong about the true direction of any human endeavor, whether on the political stage or in one’s private life. Cancer/Scorpio may not be psychic but it’s certainly prescient. The plot for Escape from New York is a great, if disturbing example of just how well-calibrated Cancer/Scorpio prescience can be. Written by director John Carpenter nearly 30 years before the events of 9/11, the film’s opening scene depicts terrorists hijacking an airliner and then flying it into a New York City skyscraper. In the film’s 1996 sequel a right wing Christian fanatic seizes the U.S. presidency, launches a global war against Muslims, outlaws gay marriage, and turns the homeland into a police state. (Sound familiar?) Astrologer Jacqueline Bigar says this pairing often “knows what is coming before it does”. (Source) Yeah, I’d say so:
Cancer is the sign most attuned to family, clan, and country while Scorpio is the sign most attuned to matters of a secretive nature. The combination is one of the few which is willing to probe those family (Cancer) secrets (Scorpio) that one simply does not talk about. In Escape, Mr. Plissken is tasked with retrieving the U.S. nuclear launch codes, which are the national version of unspeakable family secrets.
Astrologers Charles and Suzi Harvey describe the Cancer Sun, Scorpio Moon pairing as resonating with souls trapped within “psychotic underworlds”. (Source) You’ll be hard pressed to find a better example of people trapped in a “psychotic underworld” than this scene from Escape from New York:
According to Kurt Russell’s commentary on a special edition DVD version of Escape from New York, that scene set the emotional tone for the entire film. I’d say it gives you an extreme but fundamentally accurate idea of the type of situations that a Cancer Sun, Scorpio Moon person tends to find themselves in.
This is arguably the Sun/Moon pairing par-excellence for emotional courage. According to the Harveys, its fearless pursuit of what lays in the shadows makes it an excellent psychologist, shaman, or (financial) witchdoctor:
You are brooding emotion incarnate . . .
You love suspense and mystery, and are drawn to understanding and grappling with the dark side of life . . . you have something of the detective and the psychoanalyst in you . . . You truly come alive when you have been given a search warrant to look inside a troubled mind (or bank account.) (Source)
That’s a pretty good approximation of the Snake Plissken character. His disposition is certainly of the “brooding” persuasion and he definitely grapples with the dark side of life, both the dark side that is the police state government and the dark side that is life on the island of New York. He isn’t given a search warrant to look inside a troubled mind but he does get marching orders to go inside the deeply troubled recesses of a society gone mad.
Being so tuned to the darker dimensions of life, Cancer/Scorpio often possesses a darkly wry if under-appreciated sense of humor:
Both signs are also masters at navigating (subtly manipulating?) the unspoken currents of human psychology. It’s thus fitting that we’re left in the dark over how Kurt Russell’s character lost his left eye. Allowing the viewer’s imagination to conjure up what the back story of that eye patch might be results in a malevolently heroic shadow around Russell’s character that no amount of special effects could have generated.
Speaking of “malevolently heroic” types . . . Wikileaks mastermind Julian Assange is a Cancer Sun, Scorpio Moon whose real life biography bears an uncanny resemblance to the fictional biography of the Snake Plissken character. (Chart) Plissken’s mission in Escape entails the procurement of “leaked” state secrets not unlike what Assange’s job with Wikileaks entails. Assange’s icy disdain for the establishment is a close cousin of Plissken’s snarlingly contempt for it. Plissken is wanted for “moral crimes against the United States” while Assange may become one of the most wanted men in U.S. history should the Department of Justice get its way. Swap Plissken’s eye patch and gun-slinging prowess for Assange’s laptop and computer hacking skills and the two are near mirror images of each other.
Using its establishment date as its date of birth, the United States Secret Service is also a Cancer Sun, Scorpio Moon. (Chart) Cancer is the homebody of the zodiac known for their attachment to home, family, klan, and country while Scorpio Moons are emotionally nourished by situations where the line between life and death is a thin one. The Secret Service is essentially an agency of highly protective homebodies (Cancer) tasked with going on secret operations (Scorpio). Like the Snake Plissken character we meet in the Escape films, two of their primary missions include protecting the president and securing the U.S. nuclear launch codes.
Unknown to most of the public, the Service is tasked with far more than just their protective duties. Originally organized under the Department of the Treasury, the bulk of the work the Service does involves the suppression of counterfeiting, money laundering, identity theft, and other financial crimes. (Source) Recall that the Harveys write of the Cancer Sun, Scorpio Moon individual, “You truly come alive when you have been given a search warrant to look inside a troubled mind (or bank account).” (Source) That’s about as good a one-sentence summary of the Service’s law enforcement duties as is reasonably possible. It’s also a good summary of Assange’s duties at Wikileaks as he didn’t “truly came alive” until he begun taking on the “troubled minds” running some of the world’s most powerful banks. Even the Snake Plissken character got his start in psychological underworld that is the banking industry as the opening scene in original, uncut version of Escape has him robbing the Atlanta branch of the Federal Reserve, an institution that is almost certainly run by some very “troubled minds”.
While they’re obviously on opposite sides of the law, Assange and the Secret Service both spend a lot of time navigating the darkest geographies of the human experience. Strangely enough, Assange’s first high-profile target at Wikileaks was the dark geography that is the Church of Scientology while the Secret Service’s first high profile target back in the 1860s was the dark geography of the Ku Klux Klan. (Source) Both organizations have been characterized by former members as psychotic underworlds loaded with unspeakable family secrets. Other Sun/Moon pairings may “go where no man has ever gone before” but, as the trailer for Escape from New York so aptly puts it, only Cancer/Scorpio has the emotional courage to “go in where nobody has ever gotten out.”
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.
Pisces Sun, Gemini Moon: The Source Code, the Spook Loop, and the Psychic Surveillance State (Part I/II)
Pair the intuitive abilities of a Pisces Sun with the communicative instincts of a Gemini Moon and you get a Sun/Moon pairing that’s adaptable, flexible, versatile and likely to be something of a savant when it comes to languages, both spoken and symbolic. At its best this pairing can reflect what is going on at unseen layers (Pisces) by connecting, collating, and cross-pollinating (Gemini) information from a variety of realms all while remaining opaque, obfuscated or totally obscured if it so wishes. To illustrate: using its premier date as its date of birth the 1972 movie Solaris is a Pisces Sun, Gemini Moon. (Chart) In the film a psychologist is dispatched to a remote space station to investigate why the crew have all gone insane. It turns out that the oceanic planet the station is orbiting is a sentient entity capable of manipulating, mimicking, and mirroring the crew’s hopes, dreams, loves, and fears back at them:
Pisces is associated with diffusive invisibility while Gemini is associated with multiple identities. The combination can thus ply its trade while remaining opaque, obfuscated, obscured or even disguised as something innocuous, similar to what a chameleon does. In the old days it made for a great witch (or warlock). In the modern day it makes for a great computer hacker. William Gibson, the writer who coined the phrase “cyberspace” in his 1984 novel Neuromancer, is a representative Pisces/Gemini. (Chart) His novels typically feature computer hackers, renegade CIA agents, ubiquitous surveillance systems, and other techno-occult themes that amount to spook (Pisces) loops (Gemini).
Pisces/Gemini films will often touch on the similar themes to those explored in Gibson’s novels. To illustrate: Using its premier date as its date of birth the 2011 film Source Code is also a Pisces Sun, Gemini Moon. (Chart) The “psychic” entity in Source Code is not a sentient planet but a sophisticated computer system that enables whoever’s plugged into it to experience life through the eyes of another person. Jefferson Anderson says the Pisces/Gemini pairing is actually “several clever individuals” inside of one who is “willing to play any part” to accomplish their objectives. (Source) In effect, that’s exactly what the computer system in Source Code allows the person plugged into it to do. Technology like that may (or may not?) be the domain of science fiction but the textbook Pisces/Gemini will be a natural at sensing the energy in their environment. Sometimes they’ll be so good at absorbing impressions they might not know whether their thoughts are their own or those of somebody else, a phenomenon that the protagonist in Source Code struggles with:
Paranoid Pisces is the sign most likely to have an unlisted phone number. Multifaceted Gemini is the sign most likely to have ten cell phones, each forwarding you to another cell phone (or two). The Pisces/Gemini combination is thus very difficult to track down – and for good reason. To illustrate: using the date it was filed as its date of birth, the Pentagon’s “Operation Northwoods” is a Pisces Sun, Gemini Moon. (Chart) If you haven’t heard of Northwoods before, it’s a 1962 plan by the Pentagon to stage terrorist attacks against the American as a pretext for an invasion of Cuba. Part of the operation including hijacking commercial airliners full of passengers. Northwoods was approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff but outright rejected by President Kennedy when it was presented to him. Declassified in 2001, ABC News first brought it to the public’s attention just a few months before 9/11 when reviewing James Bamford’s book Body of Secrets. (Source) You can read the document in its entirety here.
There are all sorts of wonderful things about the Pisces/Gemini pairing but one of its primary liabilities according to astrologers Suzi and Charles Harvey is a tendency “to live according to an ever changing relative morality.” (Source) If a Pentagon plan to stage hijackings in order to gain support for an illegal war doesn’t count as a chilling example of “relative morality” I’m not sure what does.
Former Prime Minister of Britain James Harold Wilson is a Pisces Sun, Gemini Moon. (Chart) During his four terms in office Wilson was the target of a number of actual clandestine operations, each of which was nearly as devious as the plans laid out in Operation Northwoods. At one point Wilson was the target of a planned coup to oust his administration in favor of an unconstitutional “emergency government” spearheaded by various right wing business magnates. (Source) Pisces/Gemini can be very quick on its feet, with the ability to perceive the multiple, parallel layers of a situation. These are the exact traits it takes to successfully stage false flag operations but also the traits necessary to stay one step ahead of them.
About the Author: Matthew David Savinar is a California licensed attorney (State Bar #228957), voluntarily inactive as of June 2013. He can be reached for questions, comments, or astrological consults at his contact page.
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