Month: April, 2014
Gemini Sun, Scorpio Moon: Wrestles with Demons, the Witch’s Brew ("Nightmares are the best part of my day . . .")
People with their Suns (identity) in Gemini will often come to be identified with their capacity for communication. Symbolized as a pair of twins talking to each other, Gemini Suns almost always have at least two personalities within them. If their Moon (emotional needs) is in Scorpio — the sign of the Criminal Deviant and the Depth Psychologist, the Sorcerer and the Spell-Caster — then at least one of their personalities will be characterized by some serious extremes. Astrologer Raven Kaldera calls Gemini/Scorpio the Sun/Moon pairing of “The Cloaked One” who “understands brutality and horror . . . who must go down to the darkness and wrestle his demons to the ground”. (Source) To illustrate: professional wrestler James Brian Hellwig is a Gemini Sun, Scorpio Moon. (Chart) He’s best known for portraying “The Ultimate Warrior”, a popular if controversial 1980s wrestling persona cloaked by face paint and characterized by seemingly demonic extremes. In true Gemini/Scorpio fashion Hellwig’s alter ego once explained, “Nightmares are the best part of my day”. (Source)
Linda Goodman warns her readers that when Gemini and Scorpio pair up they will often form “pretzels of intrigue” that are equal parts Merlin the Magician and Houdini the Illusionist. Together these two signs can “mix up a White Witch’s brew of happiness . . . one that can detect illusion from reality or discover that the two are interchangeable”. (Source) The combination will also “long to solve the mysteries that lie out there among the stars and the comets” she tells us. In 1990 Hellwig appeared on the Arsenio Hall show as his alter ego the Ultimate Warrior. The appearance was (of course) staged but, as the deeply concerned look on Arsenio’s face at 2:35 of this video indicates, he’s more than a bit nervous as to whether Hellwig is entirely clear on where reality begins and illusion ends. At the time, wrestlers routinely appeared “in character” on Arsenio’s show but none of them took their performances to the intense extremes that Hellwig did. Arsenio is a comedian, a good one, so he played the situation for laughs but it’s clear he’s not sure how to handle the whirlwind of interchangeable intrigue and pharmacological witchcraft that’s made its way onto his show. Similar to most of his in-character promos, Warrior explained to Arsenio that he was guided by the mysteries of the stars, the comets, and other mysterious cosmological forces from above.
Of course the mystery and intrigue that surrounded the Ultimate Warrior character was also a large part of his appeal. By the 1980s everybody knew wrestling was a choreographed show but Hellwig’s alter-ego was so convincingly strange that it was impossible not to wonder what about the man was an illusion and what was a reality, what was witchcraft and what was writing, what was a character and what was a cloak. Many Gemini/Scorpios end up grappling with similarly themed paradoxes about who and what they actually are, although few will sport the hellaciously well teased hair that Hell-Wig did.
The only wrestler of the last 30 years to rival Hulk Hogan in terms of popularity, Hellwig and his alter-ego were inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame on April 4th of this year. Three days later he was found dead by way of a “catastrophic medial incident”, believed to be related to his heart.
Gemini/Scorpios often love to talk (Gemini) about death, darkness, and the occult (Scorpio). During his career Hellwig made graphic descriptions of death a consistent theme in his promos and participated in numerous story lines involving witchcraft, voodoo, darkness, and the occult. When he retired from wrestling there were constant rumors that he had died, so much so that when the WWE announced his actual death many people assumed it was yet another rumor. Strangely enough, he did seem to foreshadow his own death during a monologue he delivered on WWE television the night before his passing:
Every man’s heart one day beats its final beat, his lungs breathe their final breath and if what that man did in his life makes the blood pulse through the body of others and makes them believe deeper in something larger than life, then his essence, his spirit will be immortalised.
Astrologer Jefferson Andeson refers to the Gemini Sun, Scorpio Moon pairing as the “Storyteller” whose “forceful and magnetic personality . . . projects an explosive image. You know where you’re going, even if nobody else does”. (Source) In Hellwig’s case, a good deal of his alter ego’s popularity stemmed from projecting as so explosive, forceful, and magnetic that nobody knew what he was going to do or where he was going to go once he hit the ring. The result for fans was, as Linda Goodman describes the Gemini/Scorpio pairing, a “White Witch’s brew” of utter excitement and total inspiration.
Gemini and Scorpio form what’s known as a “quincunx”, an inherently discordant aspect that results in extreme ingenuity, extreme instability, or a combination of both. The textbook Gemini/Scorpio will thus have to make constant adjustments between the radically different nature of their luminaries in order to maintain an even keel in life. According to Suzi and Charles Harvey, Gemini/Scorpio individuals will often wrestle with the disconnect between the highly communicative (Gemini) and deeply covert (Scorpio) sides of their psyche:
Your life seems to be a breeze until you start noticing the monsters from the deep coming up for air. Then life begins to seem more like an expedition across hostile territory than a jaunt to visit friends.
Wrestling with, and communicating your insights and the paradoxes of your deep inner experience is essential to your larger health and contentment. (Source)
In Hellwig’s case, he routinely described life in the WWE as more of an “expedition across hostile territory” than a jaunt with colleagues. His promos and, later, his YouTube videos make it clear he was very invested in “communicating his insights and deep inner experiences”, no matter how radically paradoxical they may have seemed to outside observers. As far as “monsters from the deep coming up for air” are concerned, it’s difficult to find a better example of that than the now infamous “Crash the Plane” promo he cut in the lead up to the 1990 installment of Wrestlemania:
Gemini is the sign of the Communicator while Scorpio Moons require contact with the dark and the taboo in order to feel themselves. The combination of communication (Gemini) about the taboo (Scorpio) means that many Gemini/Scorpios will experience censorship and/or seek to hide their whereabouts at some point in their lives. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is a Gemini/Scorpio whose battles with censorship and need to hide his whereabouts have been extensively documented. Hellwig was a professional wrestler billed from “Parts Unknown”, not a whistleblower hiding in unknown parts, but the above promo has apparently been censored from the WWE’s officially available library. A reason has never been given but it probably has something to do with the fact the story Hellwig tells about hijacking an airplane, disposing of its pilots, and sending it into a nosedive towards “parts unknown” bears more than a passing resemblance to the events of 9/11. The maniacal tone he summoned for the recording only adds to its multiple levels (Gemini) of creepiness (Scorpio).
South Node in Aries, North Node in Libra: Symbol of Past Lives in the Sign of Warfare, Symbol of Destiny in the Sign of Diplomacy, Partnership, and Dance
While a person’s Sun/Moon pairing describes their basic psychological disposition, it’s their Nodal axis that describes what they’re here to leave behind and what they’re here to learn. The South Node describes the “what they’re here to leave behind” side of the equation while the North Node describes the “what they’re here to learn” side. With his South Node in Aries, the sign of courage, confrontation, and self-preservation, Hellwig has spent many lives as, quite literally, a warrior. He came into this life naturally good at all things Aries: kicking ass, breaking free, fighting back, and looking out for number one. These are also ways he was most likely to self-destruct in this life. With his South Node in Aries, his North Node (destiny) is in Libra — the sign of of relationships, reconciliation, and relating to “the other”. The way of cooperation, not combat, was what Hellwig was really here to figure out.
Ironically, success in the world of professional wrestling is inherently a Libran style endeavor. That may come as a surprise to anybody distracted by the industry’s over the top camp and brutish theatrics. The reality, however, is that the best matches will be those where the two performers each attempt to make the other person look good. What the performers do has been compared to fantasy (Pisces), stunt-work (Sagittarius) or even acting (Leo) but, truth be told, it’s really akin more to partner dancing (Libra) than anything else. Randy “Macho Man” Savage, for instance, is a Scorpio with a stellium in Libra in his chart. (Article) When he passed away a few years ago a number of old wrestlers came out of the woodwork to say how fabulous it was to work with him, how he would always make “the other” guy look like a million bucks. Hellwig, with his North Node (destiny) in Libra (cooperation), would have been wise to emulate Randy Savage in this regard as much as possible.
People are at their worst when stuck back in their South Node, at their highest, best, and most fulfilled when their doing things associated with their North Node. In Hellwig’s case, he was at his absolute best the night of Wrestlemania VI when he and Hulk Hogan (real name Terry Bollea) put on a performance that many consider the “match of the century”, one that is to the world of wrestling what Gone with the Wind or Avatar are to the world of film. Not coincidentally, the performance began with Hellwig and Bollea’s alter-egos standing face to face in a manner that actually bears a resemblance to the scales of justice, the symbol for Libra.
The storyline that Hellwig and Bollea acted out in the months leading up their Wrestlemania match was so enormously successful for the WWE in large part because the two men’s in-ring personas were 100% *equally* matched for each other. The fans at the time were split right down the middle in terms of their support, with many unable to make a decision about who they wanted to root for. Even WWE management gave up trying to decide which man was going to play the hero and which was going to play the villain. At the conclusion of the event the two men even hugged and held hands. So behind the big muscles, teased hair, wild outfits, and choreographed press-slams the whole thing was actually as textbook Libra as it gets.
Strangely enough, Hellwig signed his initial contract with the WWE on September 23rd, 1987 just as an eclipse in early Libra was hitting his North Node almost to the degree. Transiting eclipses to a person’s natal North Node are incredibly powerful events. In Hellwig’s case the contract he signed that day ended up not only shaking up the wrestling world but also gave him everything he would ever be known for in this life.
If a person’s life can be analogized to a journey, the South Node is where they start off and the North Node is where they (hopefully) end up. Hellwig passed just as he was beginning his third North Node return, a major astrological turning point that occurs every 18.5 years in a person’s life. Reports are that in the days prior to his death Hellwig had managed to make peace with the WWE and reconciled with a number of wrestlers he had been at odds with for going on 20 years. He even managed to bury the hatchet with Hulk Hogan, a man he’d been feuding with in both the imaginal world of ring and screen and the very real world of court cases and depositions since the 1990s. That’s good to hear because when a person’s North Node is in Libra, peace and reconciliation, not combat and warfare, are exactly what they’re here to seek out. This is true even when the person is the Ultimate Warrior himself.
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.
Introduction to the National Reconnaissance Office: "Meet the Night Stalkers"
Editor’s Note: this is excerpt #1 from a magazine length article entitled “Deep Cover, Deep Space: The Astrology of America’s Black Budget Space Program”. -Matt
By now you’ve no doubt heard of the National Security Agency (NSA), the massive intelligence agency whose astrological chart was the subject of the October/November 2013 issue of The Mountain Astrologer. Unless you make it a point to follow the world of covert operations you probably haven’t heard of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the NSA’s partner-in-surveillance that’s “in charge of designing, building, launching, and maintaining America’s intelligence satellites” according to its website. As far as the capabilities of these satellites, Gene Hackman’s character in the 1998 film Enemy of the State might have been on to something when he explains to the Will Smith character that they can the “read the time off your f—king wristwatch”. Forty years ago the NRO built a class of satellites capable of producing imagery with a maximum resolution of six inches or better, accurate enough to tell if somebody was carrying a lunchbox or not. (Source) The capabilities of today’s satellites are classified.
While it’s the NSA whose supercomputers are capable of knowing whether a person checks a magazine’s website or discusses its articles on the telephone, it’s the NRO whose unblinking “eyes-in-the-sky” are powerful enough to spot them coming back from their mailbox with the latest issue in their hands. The NSA is responsible for listening, the NRO is responsible for watching. Financially, the two agencies are essentially peers. Documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden indicate the NRO’s budget request for fiscal 2013 was $10.3 billion, just behind the NSA’s request for $10.8 billion. (Source) While it’s the NSA that’s been getting all the press lately, it’s the NRO that may be the more secretive of the two outfits. According to Professor William E. Burrows, author of Deep Black: The Startling Truth behind America’s Spy Satellites, the NRO operates “under a cloak of secrecy so tight that it is the blackest of all the nation’s covert intelligence related operations”. (Source) In short, it’s the biggest spy agency the 99% are still completely in the dark about.
The NRO has been referred to as America’s “other” space program, a black budget version of NASA whose Corona, Hexagon, Jumpseat and Vortex missions are to the Gemini and Apollo missions what Mr. Hyde is to Dr. Jekyll. The mission/morale patches featured throughout this article, originally brought to public attention by geographer Trevor Paglen in his 2008 book I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon’s Black World, make it clear that, unlike NASA’s space missions, the NRO’s operations are not intended for public consumption.
While the three vipers in this patch are believed to represent the NRO’s Trumpet class of satellites that have orbited the planet since the 1990s, they also offer a good approximation of the reaction you’ll likely elicit should you mess with a Virgo’s filing systems:
Of the 16 intelligence agencies that comprise the American surveillance state it’s the NRO whose work is likely to be of greatest interest to practicing astrologers. Our jobs are not all together different. Astrologers utilize the position of the stars to discern the meaning of events down here on Earth while the NRO utilizes crafts lofted to the stars to accomplish the same goal. The satellites managed by the NRO go through phases just like the heavenly bodies that we astrologers study. (Source) The information we discern by studying the stars on behalf of our clients is often of a highly confidential nature, the same is true for the information the NRO discerns on behalf of its clients. Finally, both astrological reconnaissance and satellite reconnaissance require advanced knowledge of highly technical information that often mystifies the non-initiated.
Excerpt #2:
Cancer Sun, Aries Moon, Part II: Storming the Bastille and Repelling the Stormtroopers, the Spirit of Resistance and the Special Operations Executive, the Survivor and the Stay at Home Force
With the masculine side of the psyche (the Sun) in the most feminine of signs (Cancer) and the feminine side of the psyche (the Moon) in the most masculine of signs (Aries), the Cancer Sun, Aries Moon individual often possesses an instinctive understanding that men and women, while different, can fight just as effectively as one another. To illustrate: British Major-General Colin Gubbins is a Cancer Sun, Aries Moon. (Chart) During World War II he was head of Britain’s “Special Operations Executive” (SOE), also known as “Churchill’s Secret Army”, a clandestine organization which waged unconventional warfare inside Nazi occupied territories. According to historian Sarah Helms, “Gubbins was the first to secure permission, albeit unofficial, for female operatives to be sent behind enemy lines. He saw no reason why women could not do the job of secret agent as well as men.” (Source) Gubbins’ secretary would later recount, “he would not countenance any form of discrimination against women”. (Source)
Cancer is ruled by the Moon while Aries is ruled by Mars so Cancer/Aries people will often express in a manner similar to a Mars/Moon aspect. Astrologer Sue Tompkins says people with these aspects in their charts “are very quick to smell danger and thus cultivate speedy reactions and responses – the kind of reactions that can save lives . . . they may continually behave or believe as if World War III is about to break out.” (Source) This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In Gubbins’ case, he was one of a handful of British officers in Poland during September 1939 when the Nazis rolled in and set off what became World War II. Fortunately he was “quick to smell danger” and, utilizing the “speedy reactions” that are a Cancer/Aries hallmark, managed to procure a false passport which enabled him to escape back to Britain. Doing so probably saved his life.
This pairing often alternates between being intensely reclusive (Cancer Sun) and intensely combative (Aries Moon). Gubbins appears to have been no exception this tendency. Ladislas Farago writes in his book Burn After Reading: The Espionage History of World War II that “Gubbins was the forgotten man of the secret war, the least known chief of the secret service and this by his own choice.” (Source) Ironically, if you’ve ever seen a James Bond film you’re more familiar with Gubbins and his secret organization than you may realize. According to Brian Lett, author of The Top Secret History of 007, the “M” character in the James Bond films — most recently portrayed by actress Judi Dench — is based on Gubbins while the agency Bond works for is based on the SOE. (Source)
Astrologers Suzi and Charles Harvey tells us that a metaphoric image for Cancer/Aries people is “a suffragette takes to the barricades in aid of her cause”. (Source) According to the BBC, agents working under Gubbins were “responsible for storming the heavy water plant at Vemork, ending the Nazi atomic bomb program.” (Source) Gubbins wasn’t literally a “suffragette” but he was way ahead of his time when in regards to women’s roles in the workplace while storming Hitler’s atom bomb plant surely counts as an example of somebody “taking to the barricades in aid of a cause”.
In light of these operations, it’s worth noting that the storming of the Bastille in France occurred when the Sun was in Cancer and the Moon in Aries. (Chart) Cancer/Aries can be a very pugnacious, combustible combination but in times of great oppression some pugnaciousness and combustibility may be just what’s needed.
Astrologer Jefferson Anderson warns that Cancer Sun, Aries Moon has a tendency to “burn bridges”. (Source) That’s usually a bad thing but not always. The folks who stormed the Bastille certainly burned some bridges, both figuratively and literally, while Gubbins’ men who stormed the Nazi heavy water plant no doubt burned a few also.
In addition to running the SOE, Gubbins was also tapped by Winston Churchill to organize and train Britain’s “Auxiliary Units”. These units were comprised of civilians who would form the final line of resistance should the Nazis succeed in destroying the British military and occupying mainland Britain. (Source) The secrecy surrounding the Auxiliaries went beyond that of even “classified” operations, with their existence remaining unknown to the public until the late 1990s. In 2002 the History Channel produced a documentary about Auxiliaries so harrowing that simply watching it will fire up both the emotions (Cancer) and the adrenalin (Aries):
The Auxiliary Units were also referred to as “The Stay at Home Force”, a fitting name for a network organized by a Cancer/Aries like Gubbins as Cancer is the Hermit who prefers to stay at home fortified against threats while Aries is the Hero who prefers to use force to repel them. The Auxiliary units were provided with hidden, underground cubby holes (Cancer) which were stocked with food and weapons (Aries). About 500 of these underground bases were constructed, some of which are still in existence 70 years after the war ended.
Like all Cancer pairings, this one has strong maternal instincts. According to astrologer Jason Fleming, Cancer/Aries is the Sun/Moon pairing of “the general who leads the troops into battle, but also is acutely aware of and sensitive to their emotional state”. (Source) Along these lines, Gubbins is reported to have put enormous energy into preparing the men and women serving under him for their missions, above and beyond what duty required. (Source) In some ways this made his job even more difficult since SOE agents, because they did not wear uniforms, would be treated by the Nazis as spies. Those who were captured were thus shipped to concentration camps, including the infamous Buchenwald camp. (Source) Running such enormously complicated, emotionally exhausting, yet totally secret aspects of the war took an enormous toll on Gubbins — something that his eyes more than hint at in this photo:
When the Sun is in Cancer and the Moon in Aries, the result is what’s called a “Waning Quarter Moon”, a phase of the Moon that is associated with a “crisis in consciousness” according to astrologer Dane Rudhyar. (Source) Raven Kaldera calls this the “Survivor’s Moon”, one that is associated with emotional shell shock and psychological burnout if not what today we call “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” (PTSD):
The Waning Quarter Moon in Aries finds the Soldier burned out after many years of battle, and coming home to put back together the pieces of his shattered body and mind. The continual years of war have stressed his courage and nerves to the breaking point, and he can no longer fight. The rest of his life will be spent with the pain of these wounds. He returns home, a shell-shocked creature who has given his entire self to battle, and no one cares. Even if he lives in a place where fallen soldiers are treated well, people do not understand the horror he has seen. They expect him to get over it in due time and not to spend hours cowering in the bushes, reliving his trauma. When he can’t, they see him as weak, which is a deep insult.
The Survivor’s Moon is a time of anguish and healing of deep wounds. Up until now, the Aries mystique has been about finding bravery in the face of great odds, an untouchable confidence that allows the Aries Moon to succeed at all kinds of frightening things.
On the Survivor’s Moons, we confront . . . . anguish over betrayal inflicted on us by Fate, or God, or the Universe, or Society. We confront our helplessness in the face of that pain — perhaps we fantasize that we might have been able to stop [it from occurring], however irrational that might be, but even our fantasy fails at the onslaught of reality’s pain.
This is the most difficult Aries Moon of all to bear. People born on the Survivor’s Moon often endure some kind of serious trauma in childhood . . . . (Source)
We don’t know much about Gubbins’ childhood but we do know that he experienced some serious trauma in regards to his own children — the sort of trauma that a parent may fantasize about having been able to stop, however irrational that might be. His oldest son, Michael, was killed in 1944 while serving as an officer in the SOE’s Italian division. Historian Gary Kamiya recalls how Gubbins found out about his son’s death:
The duty officer at Baker Street that weekend, who did not know Gubbins very well, saw the telegram announcing Michael Gubbins’ death. He marked it “Deepest Sympathy” and placed it at the top of Gubbins’ intray. Gubbins came in early that Monday morning to prepare for an important meeting with the Chiefs of Staff, so neither his assistant or secretary was there to soften the blow. Gubbins picked up the telegram himself. (Source)
The death of his son made it nearly impossible for Gubbins to carry on, no doubt in part because the men and women serving under him were the same age as his own children. Grief-stricken, he would later visit grave sites in Italy, “fruitlessly hoping to find a trace of his son”. (Source) When the war ended in 1945 he collected a series of medals for his exemplary service and retired in seclusion to the Island of Harris. Surrounded by nature, he sought to recover from what he called “the long years of dreadful night”. (Source)
Kaldera tells us that of all the Aries Moons, the Waning Quarter Moon associated with the Cancer/Aries pairing is the one most likely to exhibit a sense of empathy, the type of empathy that can be learned only from scars — ones that are emotional (Cancer) as much as martial (Aries).
If you enjoyed this article you might also enjoy:
Virgo Sun, Scorpio Moon: The Praying Mantis and the Mission Impossible (The CIA)
Scorpio Sun, Gemini Moon: The Coffin Makers and the Code Breakers (The NSA)
Contact Matt Savinar for a Consultation
Copyright Matthew David Savinar 2013
Taurus Sun, Taurus Moon: The C.I.A. and the O.G.D. (“The Cash Investment Agency and the Original Girl Detective”)
(Image: Film Boyz-N-the-Hood, available for purchase via Amazon)
Taurus is the sign of resource accumulation. It’s symbolized by the bovine, a symbol of wealth dating back tens of thousands of years. In the old days Taureans were often found in hands-on professions that made use of the Earth itself. The “baker, the butcher, and the candlestick maker” were likely all Taureans. In the modern day, Taurus is the sign of the asset appraiser, the real estate tycoon, the luxury car dealer, the investment broker, the mutual fund administrator, the wine collector, and the cigar aficionado. To illustrate: rapper Busta’ Rhymes is a Taurus who famously penned “Pass the Courvoisier”, an impassioned ode to the top shelf cognac that is this sign’s drink of choice according to Rob Marriott and Sonya Magett. (Source)
Not all Taureans are necessarily wealthy like Mr. Rhymes but most will have a tangible appreciation for the finer things in life. Even “baller on a budget” Taureans are likely to experience dinner at the Four Seasons or a trip to the Bentley dealership as something akin to a religious pilgrimage.
Taureans of the vegan or yogini persuasions may eschew overtly opulent creature comforts for ones that are sustainably correct but still quite luxurious. The more bohemian versions of this sign will pass on the Courvoisier in favor of designer Kombucha while trading in reservations at the Four Seasons for organic meals from the Whole Foods corporation. Actress turned New Age icon Shirley Maclaine is a good example of this type of Taurus. I don’t know if she owns any luxury cars but she does claim to have encountered UFOs–high end, intergalatic forms of transport that are to the Age of Aquarius what Bentley Continentals are to the age of the automobile.
When a person, organization, or agency has both their Sun (conscious identity) and Moon (emotional needs) in this sign they will be doubly oriented to all things Taurus: high priced art and high end clothing, fine wine and gourmet food, luxury cars and lavish jewelry, bank vaults and gold bullion, dead presidents and dolla’ dolla’ bills. Astrologer Jefferson Anderson says this pairing “has an instinctive feel for money and management and does well in business, banking, and economics”. (Source) According to astrologer Jason Fleming’s article “Zodiac Mixtapes”, theme songs for this pairing include “Drop a Gem on Them” by Mobb Deep and “Paid in Full” by Eric B and Rakim. (Source) Singer Kelly Clarkson is a Taurus/Taurus whose dropped so many musical gems that she is now one of the most fully paid entertainers of her generation.
However, should this pairing turn to its dark side it goes from being good with money and a natural at management to being possessed by greed and obsessed with gettin’ paid. The rap song “Bitch Betta’ Have My Money” by rapper AMG offers a good approximation of what happens when the Taurean orientation to resource management goes from noble to nefarious. According to astrologer Austin Coppock, the plot of the film Blood Diamond starring Leonardo Dicaprio is another example of what happens when the Bull’s fear of poverty metastasizes into pursuit of a “Cursed Coin”. (Source) Michael Douglas’s “Greed is Good” speech delivered in the film Wall Street stands out as yet another example.
In addition to being oriented to resource accumulation, the Taurus/Taurus pairing will often find his or her way into covert operations and clandestine arrangements, which are generally considered the domain of Scorpio — the sign opposite to Taurus. This is because, according to Berkeley based astrologer Linda Rose, when a chart has both the Sun and Moon in the same sign the entity will often express as the opposite sign. I suspect this “kick-over” phenomenon observed by Ms. Rose is some type of psychological compensation mechanism similar to what happens in traditional Chinese medicine when one meridian is so overloaded with energy that the person hyper-expresses the characteristics of the opposite meridian. Regardless of the exact mechanism behind the phenomenon it does seem to track reality with a high degree of consistency. To illustrate: Wall Street financier Bernie Madoff is a Taurus Sun, Taurus Moon whose obsession with money (Taurus) led him deep into a series of shadowy underworlds (Scorpio). (Chart)
Just how shadowy (Scorpionic) were the circles Madoff was running in? According to investigative reporter Wayne Madsen, Madoff’s operation may have had some type of link to the Central Intelligence Agency, one of the most Scorpionic (secretive) outfits on the planet. (Source) A number of informed commentators in the business world have suspected Madoff was investing cash (Taurus) money (Taurus) on behalf of drug cartels — organizations which traffic in the Scorpionic trades of addictions and assassinations. (Source) Madoff wasn’t “the baker, the butcher, or the candlestick maker” but he was a banker, a broker, and may have been laundering money for international cocaine makers.
Obviously not all double Taureans will express their capacity for deep cover operations (Scorpio) in such a predatorial fashion. For instance, using its premier date at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival as its date of birth, the movie Boyz N the Hood is also a Taurus Sun, Taurus Moon albeit one whose central character is to Bernie Madoff what Hans Solo was to Darth Vader. (Chart) It’s one of the few films that hints at a connection between finance (Taurus) and covert operations (Scorpio), which it does when Laurence Fishburne’s character Furious Styles (a financial broker) explains who is and is not involved in the high level bankrolling of the cocaine trade:
Astrologers Suzi and Charles Harvey say this pairing excels at offering “straight from the shoulder” observations and “calling a spade a spade”. (Source) This is exactly what Fishburne’s character does in the above scene when he observes of the crack epidemic, “How you think the crack rock gets into the country? We don’t own any planes. We don’t own no ships. We are not the people who are flying and floating that shit in here . . .” Bernie Madoff was a Wall Street financial adviser (Taurus) likely in league with the drug cartels and/or intelligence agencies (Scorpio). The Furious Styles character was a financial adviser who understood the drug cartels were making money for Wall Street banks (Taurus) and/or intelligence agencies (Scorpio). They’re both double Taureans expressing as Scorpios although obviously only one of them would you want moving into your neighborhood.
Taurus Sun, Taurus Moon: “Better have my suspicious activity reports”
Bernie Madoff and the Furious Styles character portrayed by Fishburne in Boyz are far from the only double Taureans whose lives have occupied the nexus between cash-money (Taurus) and careers in which suspicion (Scorpio) is the currency of the realm. To illustrate: using its establishment date as its date of birth, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is a Taurus Sun, Taurus Moon. (Chart) If you haven’t heard of FinCEN before, it’s a bureau inside the United States Department of the Treasury that “collects and analyzes information about financial transactions in order to combat money laundering, terrorist financiers, and other financial crimes” according to Wikipedia. Much of what FinCEN does revolves around the collection and analysis of “suspicious activity reports”, which banks are required to file anytime a customer makes a financial (Taurus) transaction that appears suspicious (Scorpio). According to a paranoia (Scorpio) inducing 1993 Wired Magazine article entitled “Big Brother Wants to Look at Your Bank Account”, FinCEN’s capacity to track the flow of money (Taurus) is of tremendous interest to spy agencies like the CIA (Scorpio):
“The risk of the CIA getting its hands on this is serious – we know the kind of unscrupulous people who populate the spook world,” said a Washington-area private investigator who conducts many legitimate financial investigations for a CIA-linked firm. “This kind of financial data, when coupled with other information like a person’s credit history, could be used for blackmail, bribery, and extortion,” said the investigator, who has a military intelligence background.
DTS could present an inviting mechanism for quieting unwanted dissent or for defanging an unruly congressional leader bent on exposing some questionable CIA operation. Although still in its embryonic stage and in spite of the looming privacy obstacle it will inevitably confront, FinCEN is seen by many in the government as the catalyst for a powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing, global, financial-tracking organization. (Source)
Speaking of “quieting unwanted dissent” and “defanging unruly political leaders”, it was transactions recorded by FinCEN were what revealed New York State governor Elliot Spitzer had been availing himself to the services of the $4,000/night “Emperor’s Club” VIP call-girl operation. (Source) It’s probably just a coincidence that shortly before Spitzer’s call-girl payments were made public he had announced plans to go on the warpath against Wall Street’s biggest banks and their partners in crime inside the Bush administration. (Source)
Unfortunately, outside of Wired’s 1993 article, there’s been very little written about FinCEN since it was established over twenty years ago. The agency does, however, get a brief mention in the 1998 spy (Scorpio) film Enemy of the State where a federal agent orders a “FinCEN workup” on the Will Smith character:
Taurus is great at keeping things short and simple so here’s a short if over-simplified way to understand FinCEN: it is to your bank accounts and business filings what the National Security Agency is to your email accounts and telephone calls.
Taurus Sun, Taurus Moon: “The Original Girl Detective”
Update 3/23/17:Using the character’s debut date as her date of birth, Nancy Drew of the famous mystery novels is also a double Taurus. (Chart) The Nancy Drew character was entirely fictional while the Furious Styles character may as well have been 100% real given the events depicted in the film. Yet as double Taureans expressing as Scorpios the two characters do have something in common: both are naturals at getting to the bottom of who or what is bankrolling (Taurus) the criminal conspiracies (Scorpio) being carried out in their local neighborhoods.
Taurus/Taurus people generally do well financially and both the Boyz N the Hood film and the Nancy Drew series have been enormously successful at the box office and bookstores respectively. Like FINCEN, Drew’s worth a lot of money (Taurus) but has made her stock-in-trade the compilation of “suspicious activity reports” (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.
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