Category: by Matt Savinar

Mars in Virgo: Planet of Fighting in the Sign of Duty and Service, Cleanliness and Competency, Health Consciousness and Holistic Routines

Mars is the planet of war. It symbolizes how a person fights, how they assert themselves. When a person’s Mars is in Virgo their modus operandi will be characterized by the Virgoan traits of precision and cleanliness, due diligence and detailed analysis, professional competency and technical wizardry.

Virgo is a great Mars placement for any job that involves fixing things by paying attention to the smallest of details. Brain surgeons, acupuncture doctors, nurses, forensic researchers, computer repair people, plumbers, and auto-mechanics often have this placement. Aviator Amelia Earhart has Mars in Virgo and she did much of the maintenance on her airplanes. (Source) Astrologer Sue Tompkins says Mars in Virgo “conjures up the notion of military service, ambulance driving, or involvement with organizations such as the Red Cross.” (Source) Prior to taking to the wild blue yonder, Earhart worked as a nurse’s aid for the Red Cross during World War I.

Mars in Virgo: Amelia Earhart as a Red Cross nurse's aid, 1917

While Mars in Virgo is great for nurses, analysts, and forensic researchers, it’s not such a good placement for chief executives. Barack Obama, for instance, has Mars in Virgo. Fittingly, his weapons of choice are the “Predator” and “Reaper” drones, two weapons which offer the illusion of precise, clean warfare. Mars in Virgo loves, loves, loves, checking things off their to do lists and, indeed, Barack Obama spends a great deal of time pouring over the details of his “disposition matrix”, better known as his “kill-list”. (Source) Analyzing loads of data and then killing the single bad guy in a “surgical” strike is completely in line with the modus operandi of Mars in Virgo albeit in a very sinister fashion. It’s also no where near as clean or precise as Obama and friends would have us believe.

Journalism is an area where this mercury ruled Mars can really excel since good journalism requires both forensic research and plenty of editing, two areas that Virgo is a natural at. Former Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings has Mars in Virgo. (Chart) Hastings had been working on an expose of CIA director John Brennan when his brand new Mercedes mysteriously exploded at a Los Angeles intersection in June 2013. (Source)

Mars is about to begin a 6 week transit through Virgo. It’s probably no coincidence that last time Mars transited Virgo in late 2011 and through the first half of 2012 an epidemic of detergent theft swept the country. To Virgo cleanliness isn’t just next to godliness, it darn near is godliness. From Yahoo News:

Police believe thieves are using the soap on the black market, which retails for $10-$20, to buy drugs. On the black market, Tide is often referred to as “liquid gold” and can go for $5-$10 per bottle. So why is Tide the only detergent being targeted? Authorities list several reasons: Tide is instantly recognizable because of its Day-Glo orange bottle; it is one of the most expensive brands of laundry detergent; and it does not have serial numbers, so it cannot be tracked. (Source)

What’s interesting from an astrological perspective is that the thieves were behaving a bit like forensic researchers (Virgo) in that they selected the one detergent that can’t be tracked due to lack of a serial number. Mars in Virgo pays attention to the details even when acting naughty.

On the upside, Virgo is probably the Mars placement most likely to read up on massage or acupressure techniques as these methodologies have so many health benefits, including many that are now being scientifically documented by way of double blind studies.

Virgo is the Mars placement most likely to suffer from a bit of nervous anxiety but also the Mars placement most likely to know which forms of yoga or vitamin regiments will help liberate repressed energies in a healthy and functional way.

Should they truly fancy you, they might even offer to do your laundry. (If they’ve really learned to use their Mars in Virgo skills, however, they sure as hell won’t be using Tide detergent regardless of whether it was bought on the black market or at the Big Box store. Mars in Virgo subscribes to the motto of “all natch-ah-ral, no chem-i-cal”. Tide is a detergent loaded with chemicals, not an all natural soap. A person expressing their Mars in Virgo in a mature fashion will either find a way to pay for the organic brand or make some up on their own using all natural ingredients:

Making your own is also a great way to save money. Mars (fighting) in Virgo (precision) enjoys balancing the checkbook almost as much as it enjoys cleaning the carpets.

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.

Virgo Sun, Aquarius Moon: The Mad Monk of Health Consciousness and the Forensic Researcher of the Far-Out, the Far-Reaching, and the Super-Freaky

Combine the health consciousness and analytical capabilities of a Virgo Sun with the instincts for breaking with “The Establishment” of an Aquarius Moon and you get a Sun/Moon pairing likely to be involved in reforming some aspect of society – maybe all of society – along precise guidelines. Astrologer Jefferson Anderson refers to Virgo Sun, Aquarius Moon as the pairing of “The Scientist” who is attracted to concepts far-out, far-reaching, and super-freaky:

Once you have found the field that interests you most, there is no end to your dedication. Your combination is ideal for scientific achievement, as you have analytical strengths and precision of the Virgo as well as the originality and pioneering spirit of the Aquarian. In addition to technological fields, you can excel in psychology, teaching, social activism, and exploring unusual areas such as astrology and the occult. (Source)

Health guru Paul Chek, founder and CEO of the C.H.E.K. Institute, is a Virgo Sun, Aquarius Moon. (Chart) Much of what Chek advocates for good health – organic food, natural forms of exercise, plenty of rest, contact with nature – are unlikely to seem foreign to people reading an astrology blog. When, however, they are compared to the chemically-drenched, greed-fueled hallucinations that comprise the consensus reality within modern medicine they may as well be of the “occult”.

Anderson writes of the Virgo/Aquarius individual’s professional aptitudes, “. . . your ability to detach yourself is ideal for altruistic pursuits such as nursing, medicine, and the clergy.” (Source) Chek is not a nurse or a member of the clergy but he could certainly be described as a “pastor of primal-fitness”, “nurse of natural movement patterns”, and a “monk of medical research” whose sense of spirituality is rooted in life-giving physical and nutritional routines.

Virgo/Aquarians will excel at discovering better, healthier ways to organize human society even if doing so puts them at odds with the moribund corruption of entrenched institutions or ephemeral emotionality of public opinion. This pairing has little patience certain species of humans that have proliferated during the last 50 years such as North Americanus Ignoramus Gigantus and Ass Clownus Corportatus. Astrologer Bill Tierney explains in his book All Around the Zodiac:

Together, Virgo and Aquarius foster an enlightened mindset that helps elevate community standards through educational and technological means, rather than purely by economic development.

. . . the combination of Virgo and Aquarius allows us to find progressive and practical outlets in which to use our brainpower, and hopefully in brilliant ways that will benefit timely humanitarian enterprises. (Source)

There is, of course, a downside to being so incredibly brilliant all the time. Virgo/Aquarius individuals can become excessively detached from human emotions, both their own and those of others. If it fails to keep these tendencies in check it can end up treating itself and its loved ones more like science experiments or specimens in a lab than real live flesh and blood humans.

Virgo Sun, Aquarius Moon: The Space Alien Scientist Extraordinaire

Speaking of specimens under a microscope and brilliant humanitarian enterprises, the Harveys offer two images as metaphors for the healthy expressions of this pairing, “Staring into a microscope, a scientist sees the past and future writ large . . . Aliens land and embark on building a new and improved world order.” (Source)

Both images happen to be excellent approximations of Paul Chek. While not a scientist by trade, has has spent inordinate amounts of time pouring over scientific journals and approaches his work with a distinctly scientific mindset. Likewise, neither he or the small army of practitioners certified by his institute him are actual space aliens. Their methods, however, represent such a departure from the status quo that to the uninitiated they may seem like space aliens who have embarked on building “a new and improved world order” of wellness. Here, for instance, are a pair of diagrams from the book Space, Time, and Self by Norman Pearson that Chek uses to teach his advanced students:

Virgo Sun, Aquarius Moon: The Space Alien-Scientist

Again, neither of the above diagrams have been downloaded from the databanks of a UFO but the typical cubicle dweller, pharmaceutical representative, or globo-gym goer would likely react to them as though they had been.

Virgo Sun, Aquarius Moon Astro-Twins: Paul Chek and Weston A. Price

People with the same Sun/Moon pairing (“Astro-twins”) often bear a impossible to dismiss resemblance to each other even if they’re obviously not related by blood. Virgo Sun, Aquarius Moon natives will often display dignified quarkiness, charming bookishness, and intellectual brilliance in their physical persona. Take a look, for instance, at Paul Chek and Weston A. Price who also happens to be a Virgo Sun, Aquarius Moon. (Price’s Chart)

Virgo Sun, Aquarius Moon: Weston A. Price and Paul Chek

A dentist by profession, Price is primarily known for his theories about the relationships between nutrition, health, and physical fitness. Like his astro-twin Paul Chek, much of what Weston Price advocated was at odds with what the medical establishment’s profit driven status quo. Both Chek and Price approached health with the mindset of a modern scientist even as they both studied the lifestyles of primitive people and embraced many of their life-giving ancient practices.

Interestingly enough, Chek has studied Price’s work extensively and incorporated a good deal of it into his own teachings. (Source) He’s even spoken at the yearly conference that now bears Price’s name:

Margaret Sanger, the pioneer of planned parenthood, is a Virgo Sun, Aquarius Moon who once said, “No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body.” (Chart) Sanger was referring to women’s reproductive rights when she said that but the same can be said of both genders’ ability to control and own their own physical and spiritual health. Sanger, despite holding distinctly unpalatable views regarding race, did make huge contributions to the field of women’s reproductive rights. Price and Chek have made similarly significant contributions to the fields of nutrition and physical health. That all three are Virgo/Aquarius natives should come as no surprise. At its highest expression this pairing will strive to be of service (Virgo) to all of of humankind (Aquarius) by combining their capacity for detailed research (Virgo Sun) with their need for rebellion against oppressive aspects of the status-quo (Aquarius Moon).

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 II, "Through a PRISM, Darkly")

Continued from Part I

By now you’ve heard about “PRISM”, the NSA surveillance program so all encompassing it can “watch your ideas as they form”, to quote Edward Snowden’s assessment of its capabilities. What you probably haven’t heard about is a database and pattern recognition program by the name of “PROMIS”, the circa 1982 granddaddy progenitor of today’s mass surveillance systems. Why haven’t you heard about PROMIS before? There’s a number of reasons not the least of which is journalists who get too deep into the story have a nasty habit of turning up dead, usually under very suspicious circumstances. (Source) An astrological consideration of PROMIS is certainly in order at this time because, as an early 1990’s Australian news program “A Current Affair” describes it, the PROMIS saga revolves around “spying on a scale never before imagined”:

Using the date of its creation as its date of birth, PROMIS is a Pisces Sun, Gemini Moon. (Chart) Astrologer Linda Goodman observes that Pisces “absorbs people’s feeling and emotions like a psychic sponge” while Gemini “always wants something to read.” (Source) As explained in a previous article, this pairing can get so good at connecting, collating, and cross-indexing subtle impressions from the psychic world (Pisces) with data driven perceptions from the information world (Gemini) that he or she will seem to sense your thoughts before you do:

When the intuitive abilities of a Pisces Sun are combined with a Gemini Moon’s need for constant communication the result is a Sun/Moon pairing that’s adaptable, versatile, hyper-flexible, and hyper-aware. This combination is often something of a savant when it comes to languages, whether spoken or symbolic, ethereal or technological.

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 can do. 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.

According to astrologer Bill Tierney, “Pisces seeps into a situation’s hidden layers to uncover less visible facts” while “Gemini’s job is to spot, observes, and articulate”. (Source)

Short for “Prosecutor’s Management Information System”, PROMIS was originally intended as a federal case management tool. Designed by former NSA analyst Bill Hamilton, it worked by reading and integrating a wide variety of previously non-compatible databases into a single elegant, searchable, private proto-Google. This enabled the prosecutor to peer into previously “hidden layers” (Pisces) of a case to “uncover less visible facts” by “spotting, observing, and articulating” (Gemini) all the actions of the defendants, witnesses, arresting officers, judges, detectives, and defense lawyers in all their previous cases. (Source) When all that information was cross-collated and analyzed it became easy to predict which defense attorney and/or which judge was going to take which course of action in which case with what degree of probability. A legal strategy that might have taken months or years to research and develop before PROMIS could now be decided upon in nano-seconds. For the attorneys with access to it, PROMIS was, in effect, a micro-processor powered crystal ball.

Intelligence agencies quickly realized that with a few modifications PROMIS could be altered to quickly cross-collate and analyze a target’s bank deposits/withdrawals, credit card transactions, insurance files, stock investments, book purchases, phone calls, geographic movements, as well as those of all their associates out to several degrees of separation. When all of that information is overlaid with data from reconnaissance satellites, surveillance cameras, and license plate readers the resulting dossier is astonishing in its thoroughness. Investment banker Catherine Austin Fitts, the Assistant Secretary of HUD during the Bush I administration, has said the film Enemy of the State is a good approximation of what these systems were capable of back around 1992. Today the systems are run not by humans sitting in front of terminals but by automated, artificial intelligence powered super-computers that compile high detail, low-cost, real time dossiers on the entire population, not just selected troublemakers. (Source) What’s depicted in Enemy of the State is thus more than a generation out of date but if you fast forward to 00:48 of this scene you’ll at least get a decent, if fictionalized, visual reference for how invisible (Pisces) connections (Gemini) can be discerned with PROMIS progeny:

According to LAPD narcotics detective turned investigative reporter Michael C. Ruppert, by the turn of the millennium the system had mutated into an automated, algorithm driven Hydra, with a computerized “head” invisibly (Pisces) peering (Gemini) into every database and through every camera on the planet 24 hours a day. (Source) In other words, how modern government surveillance is less “FBI agent listening in on your phone calls” and more “All Seeing Eye, Version 2.0”:

What would you do if you possessed software that could think, understand every language in the world, that provided peep holes into everyone else’s computer “dressing rooms,” that could insert data into computers without people’s knowledge, that could fill in blanks beyond human reasoning and also predict what people would do – before they did it? You would probably use it wouldn’t you?

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[My source] described an actual physical point in space, further out than ever thought possible and now used by US satellites. This distance is made possible by PROMIS progeny so evolved that they make the original software look primitive. [From there], everything would be visible in terms of measurable and predictable patterns – the ultimate big picture.

[large snip]

Once its power and advantages are demonstrated, most corporations, banks or nations are eager to be a part of the “exclusive” club that has it. (Source)

There are, of course, perfectly legal and reasonable uses for PROMIS. According to Bill Hamilton, it’s now routinely used to by banks, insurance companies, and law enforcement to spot everything from identity theft to insider trading to insurance fraud to tax evasion. By 2007, the technology had advanced to the point that credit card companies could even predict which married couples would get divorced with a 95% plus rate of accuracy just by running their credit card transactions through AI-powered “data waterfalls”. (Source) That’s more accurate than most psychics (Pisces), no matter how many inquiries (Gemini) they make.

The software’s predictive abilities come alive via the power of what’s known as “block modeling”, a process IBM pioneered beginning in the 1980s when it began building computerized models of its own employees. (Source) (It’s now called “dimensional modeling”) How it works: let’s assume a person is so unique that they’re one in a million. That means there’s 350 other people with their exact psychological profile just in the United States alone. Even the most unique person’s thoughts can thus be predicted with a high degree of accuracy based on what the other 349 people in their respective data “block” have done or thought in similar situations. If an agency or corporation can data mine all of a person or community’s emails, phone calls, google searches, banking records, etc, then automatically compare and cross-analyze those against the same data mined from all the other persons and/or communities in similar “blocks” the resulting psychological profiles start to get extraordinarily granular. The software is so powerful that, according to a 1991 Vanity Fair article, journalist Danny Casolaro was murdered for his investigation into it. Dubbed “the Octopus conspiracy”, the story even made an episode of the television series Unsolved Mysteries. Fast forward to 4:07, you’ll even get to see Bill Hamilton, the man who developed PROMIS in the first place:

Astrologers Suzi and Charles Harvey tell us the Pisces/Gemini pairing has internal “lines of communication” which are used to “keep a running commentary on people and situations” (Source) That’s exactly how PROMIS works, by accessing every “line of communication” imaginable to keep running, real-time dossiers (“commentaries”) on not only people but also entire governments, organizations, neighborhoods, corporations, communities, ecosystems, families, and financial markets. According to a UK Register article entitled “War Games on the Grandest Scale”, the Pentagon has been utilizing PROMIS like systems to build virtual reality computer simulations of all 6.5 billion people on the planet since 2007. The system, called the “Sentient World Simulation” is, for all intents and purposes, a psychic (Pisces) data exchange (Gemini) — one that can predict the likely actions of an individual or community years before they’ve even thought to take them. That sounds like something out of a futuristic science fiction movie but it’s actually already decade old technology. According to a recent PBS article, in the early-to-mid 2000s the National Security Agency developed a computer system called “AQUAINT” (Advanced Question Answering for Intelligence), an artificial intelligence powered black box agents can query to find out what person X thinks about subject Y. (Source) AQUAINT is, in effect, a psychic surveillance system — one whose lineage can almost certainly be traced back to the PROMIS software originally designed by Bill Hamilton and stolen from his company INSLAW.

When Jefferson Anderson wrote in 1978 that the Pisces/Gemini pairing is “actually several clever individuals inside of one and can play any part in order to get what you want” he had no idea just how accurate he was. (Source) The ability of PROMIS progeny to manipulate any database (“play any part”) makes them extremely effective at enabling subtle manipulation of both groups and individuals, from Wall Streeters to whistle-blowers, multi-national corporations to localized protest movements. Suffice it to say, it’s a excellent tool for blackmail and intimidation. Those old school J. Edgar Hoover tactics, while still useful, are crude child’s play compared to where PROMIS progeny really shine. When integrated with the latest advancements in neural networking and parallel processing they can perform not only surveillance but also intervention in the systems being monitored: cell phones, power grids, court systems, oil rigs, research facilities, traffic lights, automobiles, stock markets, email accounts, tax and regulatory records, anything computerized. (Source) Whoever wrote the 1992 Robert Redford film Sneakers had such a detailed understanding of PROMIS software’s capabilities that it’s amazing the movie was even allowed to be made. In one particularly chilling scene, Redford’s team realize the software can be used not only for theft and espionage but to do things like artificially shut down parts of the power grid or even to crash passenger jets by manipulating air traffic control systems:

As coincidence would have it, PROMIS dervied software was on the computers of the FAA, NORAD, the Secret Service, and the White House the day of the 9/11 attacks. (Source)

Using its original air date as its date of birth, the classic Twilight Zone episode “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” is also a Pisces/Gemini — one whose plot bears more than a few similarities to the PROMIS software saga. (Chart) In the episode space aliens on a secret mission use advanced technology to manipulate a town’s electrical and telecommunications grid, plunging the residents into a frenzy of paranoia, suspicion, chaos, and violent scapegoating. A 2002 reboot of the series replaced the team of invading space aliens with a secret Pentagon unit tasked with stoking people’s fears of terrorism.

PiscesGeminiPhoto

In the epilogue to “Monsters” Rod Serling stated, “The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs, explosions, and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts . . .” Unfortunately, as events of the last decade have made clear, the mass weaponization of our thoughts is no longer something confined to the Twilight Zone.

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.

Aquarius Sun, Virgo Moon: The Truth Seeker

(Photo Credit: Everett Collection/Shutterstock)

Combine an Aquarius Sun’s radical inventiveness with a Virgo Moon’s instincts for clear thinking and forensic research and the result is a Sun/Moon pairing that will not only seek the truth but will actually find it. Astrologer Bil Tierney says this pairing is “not afraid to be exposed to knowledge and will not tolerate censorship.” (Source) To illustrate: using its registration date as its date of birth, the website Declassification-Engine.org (DCE) is an Aquarius Sun, Virgo Moon. (Chart) The site has some similarities to Julian Assange’s brainchild Wikileaks but with one big difference: the DCE traffics only in publicly available documents that have already been declassified. What makes the DCE unique is that its proprietors have developed radically advanced technologies (Aquarius) that can actually decipher (Virgo) the parts of declassified documents so often censored behind black bars. Exactly how they do this is beyond the technological understanding of this astrologer but Wired Magazine recently published a lengthy profile of the DCE so if you’re curious about its methods — and Aquarius/Virgo is always curious — then that’s a good place to start.

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Image: Declassification Engine

Astrologer Stella Hyde says Aquarians make for great data miners while Virgos make for great crime scene investigators. (Source) While the folks behind DCE are by no means political radicals, it sure seems their data mining (Aquarius) techniques could potentially be used to discern (Virgo) evidence of crimes committed in the name of national security but hidden behind those ubiquitous blacked out redactions.

Using its registration date as its date of birth, the website ShadowStats.com is also an Aquarius Sun, Virgo Moon. (Chart) According to a San Francisco Chronicle profile of the site, ShadowStats is “a one-man crusade to expose official economic data as grossly misleading at best and, at worst, a pack of lies.” (Source) One of the key research findings repeadtedly published on the site is just how cooked the government’s official unemployment numbers are. According to ShadowStats, the U.S. unemployment rate is generally 250-300% higher than what the government says it is. Many of us have suspected this to be the case but ShadowStats has utilized advanced technologies (Aquarius) and forensic research (Virgo) to actually prove it.

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Image: ShadowStats.com

Aquarius/Virgo makes for a great analyst and loves to study curious phenomenon so here’s a very curious phenomenon that a number astrological analysts have come across in their studies: the character traits of an actor’s signature role(s) will usually match the characteristics of their Sun/Moon pairing, often to an uncanny degree. To illustrate: actor Marc Singer is a Aquarius Moon, Virgo Moon. (Chart) Singer is best known for portraying truth-seeking (Aquarius) journalist (Virgo) Michael Donovan in the ground breaking 1983 miniseries “V”. In particular he’s most remembered for a pair of scenes widely considered to be two of the most shocking moments in television history. In the first scene he climbs aboard the alien mother-ship and finds out that the Visitors are not the benevolent humanoids they’ve been passing themselves off as:

In a later scene he comes to find out that the real reasons the Visitors have traveled across the galaxy are not to seek our assistance but to steal the Earth’s water and abduct humans for use as food back on their home planet. According to astrologers Suzi and Charles Harvey, a metaphoric image for Aquarius/Virgo combination is “Aliens extract human genes to breed the human race on a planet of superior design.” (Source) That’s a spooky accurate approximation of the Visitors’ conspiracy to use humans as food back on their home planet uncovered by Singer’s truth seeking alter ego Mr. Donovan.

What’s really spooky about the original “V” is just how how similar the modus operandi of the Visitors was to the modus operandi of the Bush/Cheney regime. Just substitute “water from Planet Earth” with “oil from Iraq” or “laundered drug money from heroin soaked Afghanistan” and the plot of V offers an excellent approximation of the actual agendas behind the various wars initiated since 9/11. The mysterious epidemic of deaths among microbiologists during the Bush/Cheney years even parallels the disappearance of scientists depicted in V. The Bush/Cheney regime may not have planned to use humans as food but their friends on Wall Street have certainly been eating Americans out of house and home. What’s equally spooky is that the only journalist in the mainstream media principled enough to call Bush/Cheney out for the fascist reptilians that they are was Keith Olberman who, like Marc Singer, is also an Aquarius Sun, Virgo Moon. (Chart)

Cancer Sun, Virgo Moon: The Sports Technology Specialist and the Self-Made Lab Savant

USA Today is reporting that the CIA has finally acknowledged that Area 51 actually exists. (Source) The establishment date for Area 51 is a bit hard to pin down but after doing a good deal of research my best guess is it was “open for business” on July 22nd, 1955. This makes it a Cancer Sun, Virgo Moon. (Chart) Cancer is the homebody of the zodiac who likes to stay fortified from the outside world while Virgo is the precision oriented analyst known for being obsessive about their work. According to astrologer Bill Tierney the textbook Cancer/Virgo is “keenly attentive to details” and excels at “keeping everything well-maintained”. (Source) Area 51 was originally established by the CIA as a fortified base (Cancer) to perform keenly detailed maintenance (Virgo) on its U-2 spy plane. At least that’s the official story. The unofficial story is that it’s where the government keeps space aliens housed (Cancer) for research purposes (Virgo):

We’ll probably never know for sure what goes on at Area 51 but these mission patches from projects or units associated with the base courtesy of geographer Trevor Paglen may offer some clues. The patch on the upper left comes from “The Ghost Squadron”, a unit who (supposedly) fix the actual “black helicopters” we’ve heard so much about. The latin on the patch translates as “A Secret Squadron . . . From Deep in the Night . . . Don’t Ask Any Questions.” The patch on the upper right comes “a test squadron for classified prototype aircraft and advanced concept technology demonstrators” according to Paglen. (Source) Nobody’s been able to figure what the bottom two patches pertain to exactly although there’s been wild speculation on the net that the “Green Door” one has something to do with rooms in which “trans-dimensional portals” are kept locked away. More likely it’s related to military intelligence:

CancerVirgoQuad2

Author Tim Ferriss is also Cancer/Virgo. (Chart) Ferriss has built up a huge cult following by performing medical experiments on himself as futuristic, freaky, and in some cases as frightening as anything that goes on at Area 51. Stem cell injections, blood letting, brain wave analysis, “polyphasic” sleep experiments, exotic smart drugs imported from European pharmacies, etc. are all in day’s work for Ferriss. A 2010 article in Wired Magazine referred to him as a “self-made lab rat”. (Source) Here, for instance, is a talk he gave at the 2011 South by Southwest Film Festival on what he calls “Hacking the Human Body”. Ferris recently showed off various brain-monitoring probe devices he likes to wear during a recent appearance on the The View television show:

As you can probably infer from Ferriss’ OCD tendencies, Cancer/Virgo can be a bit of a hypochondriac but also makes for a great doctor, health guru, or sports technology specialist. Linda Goodman writes of the Cancer/Virgo’s bedside manner:

This pairing can create a powerful healing vibration. These two, when they join their auras, hands, and hearts in any sort of mutural venture, possess the magic to cure many of the mental, emotional, and physical ills that plague all Earthlings. (Source)

Mr. Ferriss may be a bit of an oddball but he has made it his life’s work to produce very useful, well-researched information in regards to holistic weight loss, athletic performance, sexual enhancement and other matters of great interest to all Earthlings. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the work of his fellow Cancer/Virgo Dr. Max Jacobson, the doctor who served as President Kennedy’s personal physician (drug dealer). (Chart) If Ferriss is the Dr. Jekyll side of the Cancer/Virgo equation then Dr. Jacobson represents the Mr. Hdye side. Jacobson had Kennedy so loaded up with amphetamines, painkillers, and steroids that the Secret Service, with tongue firmly in cheek, famously referred to him as “Dr. Feel Good”. Jacobson is the subject of a new book by Richard A. Lertzman and William J. Bines:

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Image: Skyhorse Publishing

Ferris got his start in the nutraceuticals industry and does advocate low-dose anabolic steroids for certain medical conditions if used under the strict supervision of a physician. The original name of his best selling book The Four Hour Workweek was “Drug Dealing for Fun and Profit” — a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact he made his first fortune promoting dietary supplements designed to enhance brain function not totally different than some pharmaceutical drugs. Ferriss is something of a controversial figure in the fitness world but at least he’s advocating holistic programs designed to nourish (Cancer) health (Virgo), not destroy it.

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.

The premier issue of Hexagon, now shipping:

Pictured Above: Matthew Savinar, Novalee Truesdell, and Carrie Davoli on the premier issue of Hexagon

Scorpio Sun, Pisces Moon: The Cloak and the Chameleon, the Symbol and the Subterfuge, the Code Which Shall Not be Cracked and She Who Casts No Shadows

Scorpio is the sign of the Covert-Op and the Deep Cover Cop, the World Wide Vampire Slayer and the Witch Goddess in Chief, the Psychologist Emeritus and the Sorceress Semper Paratus. When a person or project has their Sun (identity) in this clandestinely inclined sign they will come to be identified with psychology, intensity, or deep level research. According to astrologer Judy Hall, Scorpios are naturals in “silent-but-deadly” professions such as experimental science or submarine surveillance. (Source) To illustrate: using its establishment date as its date of birth the Tonopah Test Range, aka “Area 52”, is a Scorpio Sun. (Chart) Area 52 is the younger, much more secretive sister of the infamous “Area 51” base. This Area 52 mission patch, obtained by way of geographer Trevor Paglen’s book Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes, suggests the base is home to occult projects, secret technologies, and silent-but-deadly aircraft that are to the year 2013 what submarines were to the year 1320:

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Mission Patch from Tonopah Test Range aka “Area 52”, the sister base to “Area 51” (Image Source: Trevor Paglen)

Sitting 120 degrees from Scorpio is Pisces, the sign of Psychic and the Seer, the Mystic and the Mist, the Specter and the Spook. Pisces shares Scorpio’s attunement to the mysterious but whereas Scorpio seeks out the unspeakable, Pisces seeks out the unfathomable. Scorpio digs deep, Pisces dissolves boundaries. Scorpio susses out the taboo, Pisces puts the taboo in a trance. Judy Hall says Pisceans do best in professions that involve intuition, illusion, or imagery as well as any endeavor which requires connection to the ocean, be it the actual ocean or the oceanic realms of the unconscious. (Source) When a person’s Moon (emotional needs) is in this elusive sign they need to be involved in matters hypnotic, intuitive, illusory, or mystical in order to feel emotionally nourished. For instance, physicist Russel Targ is a Pisces Moon. (Chart) Targ has published more than a 100 papers on plasma physics, laser applications, and electro-optics but is best known for co-founding the Stanford Research Institute’s remote viewing program. Under Targ’s leadership, the SRI spent 23 years and $25 million investigating psychic spying methods for the CIA and other U.S. spy agencies. (Source)

Combine the secretive nature of a Scorpio Sun with a Pisces Moon’s affinity for the hypnotic realms of the unconscious and you get a Sun/Moon pairing that is imaginative, mysterious, and deeply in tune with all that is hidden. This pairing is quite capable of communicating information without speaking or speaking without communicating information, both of which are survival skills when you lead a life filled with subterfuge as Scorpio/Pisces often does. For instance, Claus Von Stauffenberg — the German military officer who was executed for attempting to assassinate Adolf Hitler — is a Scorpio/Pisces whose life was filled with more subterfuge than a Tom Clancy novel. (Chart) If you’re not familiar with Von Stauffenberg’s story he was portrayed by Tom Cruise in the 2011 film Valkryie.

Jefferson Anderson calls Scorpio/Pisces the Sun/Moon pairing of “The Sponge” whose ability to absorb energy from the environment “allows it take on the color of its surroundings like a chameleon”. (Source) To illustrate: using its launch date as its date of birth the U.S. government’s “Advanced Technology Observatory Platform” (ATOP) project is a Scorpio Sun, Pisces Moon. (Chart) Almost nothing has ever been officially disclosed about the ATOP project but between its astrological chart and clues found in its mission patch we can make some educated guesses as to its capabilities. For starters we know that since we’re dealing with a Scorpio/Pisces entity what’s not shown in the patch is more important than what is shown. Additionally, astrologer Stella Hyde says Scorpio makes for a great secret agent while Pisces makes for a great escape artist. (Source) We can thus deduce that the ATOP project might have involved some sort of technology which would allow a secret agent (Scorpio) to make his or her escape (Pisces):

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Image Source: Paglen.com

According to Linda Goodman the Scorpio/Pisces combination of signs is associated with deeply subtle, very covert forms of movement. When paired together they take on “an other-worldly ability to navigate the invisible realms that connect people on psychic levels” she writes in her book Love Signs. (Source) It’s unlikely that ATOP has anything to do with the invisible realms of the psychic world, at least not on the literal level. It may, however, have something to do with technology that absorbs light from the surrounding environment in order to produce optical invisibility, not unlike what a chameleon does. In other words, a cloaking device. At least that’s what some informed observers such as Mark Pilkington, author of Mirage Men: An Adventure into Paranoia, Espionage, Psychological Warfare, and UFOs seem to think it might be. As Pilkington explains in his 2010 article on the mystery of ATOP patch, “today’s radar-evading drones are carefully optimised to blend in with the sky and to avoid casting shadows.” (Source)

Marie Curie is another Scorpio Sun, Pisces Moon known for handling dangerous material. (Chart) She won a Nobel prize for her pioneering work with radiation, also an “entity” which also casts no shadows. Something similar can be said for the infamous “Men in Black” (MIB), the ominously dressed government agents thought to show up at people’s door to intimidate them into silence should they learn too much about extraterrestrials. The concept of the “MIB” was popularized by the comedic film franchise starring Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith but they’ve been rumored to exist in real life since the 1956 publication of the book They Knew Too Much. Nobody knows for sure what the truth is about the real MIBs but many UFO aficionados seem to think they originated with the U.S. Air Force’s Air Intelligence Service Squadron (AISS), a classified unit established shortly after World War II. According to a recent article in Air & Space magazine:

Perhaps the most famous AISS unit (relatively speaking, for a secret organization) was the 4602nd. With 19 detachments spread across the United States, the 4602nd was, like other AISS units, officially responsible for “rapid exploitation and field analysis of downed enemy aircraft and uniformed personnel.” But the unit was soon tapped to investigate reports of unidentified flying objects in conjunction with Project Blue Book, the Air Force’s UFO inquiry. Some buffs insist that the legendary “Men in Black” figures who supposedly harassed UFO witnesses were from the 4602nd. (Source)

Using its establishment date as its date of birth, the AISS is a Scorpio/Pisces organization. (Chart) Even if reports of UFOs and “Men in Black” are the product of imagination or fiction, the AISS still fits the profile of a Scorpio/Pisces organization as they are tasked with top secret missions (Scorpio) to capture crashed enemy airmen — individuals who can be thought of as the modern day equivalent of escaped ghosts (Pisces Moon).

According to astrologer Grant Lewi, this pairing “can see right through people, maybe better then they can see themselves”. (Source) The ability to see through people while remaining (nearly) invisible endows this pairing with the capacity to see things hidden out of sight and hide things that are seen in plain sight. To illustrate, sculptor Jim Sanborn is a Scorpio/Pisces. (Chart) He’s best known for creating the encrypted Kryptos sculpture at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. In true Scorpio/Pisces fashion, Sanborn placed four coded messages within the Kryptos sculpture, each of which is a mystery hidden in plain sight. (Source).

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Sanborn’s Kryptos statue (Image Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikipedia)

It took 8 years for one of the CIA’s cryptanalysts to decipher three of the messages, one of which happens to nicely sum up the Scorpio/Pisces approach to life, “Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion”. If you’re wondering what the word “iqlusion” means, it turns out Sanborn included misspellings in the messages to add an extra layer of subterfuge to the Kryptos mystery. (Source) Scorpio/Pisces can be sneaky like that.

Twenty years after the first three Kryptos messages were deciphered, the fourth remains a mystery.

Kryptos may be Sanborn’s most famous sculpture but some of his others, such as the Cyrillic Projector located at the University of North Carolina, are just as riveting:

Astrologers Suzi and Charles Harvey say one of the Scorpio/Piscean’s greatest strengths is the ability to “capture the imagination” while “evoking a mysterious atmosphere”. (Source) Sanborn’s Kryptos statue has captured the imagination of a generation of cryptanalysts, both amateur and professional, while his other statues have made his name more or less synonymous with the “ability to evoke a mysterious atmosphere”. Here, for instance, is a Sanborn sculpture outside M.D. Anderson’s library at the University of Houston courtesy of Flickr member “MeltedPlastic” that is both captivating and mysterious:

UH Library Sculpture

Many of Sanborn’s sculptures make use of what a Rhizome.com article calls “eerie luminescence”. (Source) While few Scorpio/Pisceans will necessarily become sculptors like Sanborn, many will be attracted to lagoons, full moons, and other haunting landscapes which are both eerie and luminescent.

Hilary Clinton is probably the world’s most (in)famous Scorpio/Pisces. While Sanborn is known for placing hidden messages inside the Kryptos statue he was hired to build at CIA headquarters, Clinton is now (in)famous for hiding email messages in a private server she had built, possibly to elude the prying eyes of three letter agencies like the CIA.

Like his fellow Scorpio/Pisces Marie Curie, Sanborn is fascinated by invisible forces of nature such as radiation. In a sculpture entitled Critical Assembly, Sanborn included a disassembled sphere that had been designed to hold the nuclear payload of plutonium and uranium — glowing substances which Marie Curie actually carried around in necklaces she fashioned, a habit which ultimately led to her death.

Sanborn probably hasn’t ever made a habit of carrying radioactive materials around in necklaces like Marie Curie but for his sculpture Terrestrial Physics, he did recreate a fully functional particle accelerator. When working on the sculpture he managed to achieve nuclear fission, albeit at a low level. (Source) He also seems to have exposed himself to naturally radioactive uranium ores for his Uranium Autoradiograph Series. (Source) Few Scorpio/Pisces will go so far as to handle materials that are literally radioactive the way Curie and Sanborn have but many will end up working with issues that are psychologically, socially, or artistically radioactive.

This pairing’s affinity with the death, danger, and the dark undercurrents of the occult means it’s also going to lean towards the paranoid side. For instance, in an interview he gave with the Washington Post Sanborn described the extremely secluded nature of his art studio, “I needed 15 acres, minimum, to insulate myself . . . I have video cameras, threatening signs, whatever it takes.” (Source) That Sanborn would go to such extremes to protect his privacy makes perfect sense. Of the 144 Sun/Moon pairings, Scorpio/Pisces might be the one most likely to subscribe to the philosophy of “It’s not paranoia when they really are watching you” — a philosophy that recent events have proven is no ghost story.

About the Author: Matthew 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, Spreaker, Soundcloud, or his contact page.

The premier issue of Hexagon, now shipping:

Matthew Savinar, Novalee Truesdell, and Carrie Davoli on the premier issue of Hexagon

Pisces Sun, Scorpio Moon: The Blackbird

Symbolized as two fish swimming amid the depths of the ocean, Pisces is the sign of the Psychic and the Seer, the Mystic and the Mist, the Specter and the Spook. People with their Sun (identity) in this sensitive sign are often identified with their ability to move in and out of unseen realms as naturally as a fish moves in and out of ocean currents. Pisces’ orientation to the non-material means it’s also the sign most likely to simply disappear from the radar of general society, whether for tragic reasons or more strategic ones. Astrologer Linda Goodman warns her readers that once a Pisces disappears, “Don’t try to use your binoculars to spot them. Binoculars don’t work in the Deep”. (Source)

Even Pisceans of neither the human or aquatic persuasions will possess the ability to disappear into “the Deep”. To illustrate: using its deployment date as its date of birth, the CIA’s most secretive reconnaissance satellite — a multibillion-dollar device codenamed “Misty” — is a Pisces Sun. (Chart)Instead of reflecting light as other satellites do, Misty is equipped with technology that allows her to simply vanish into the blackened depths of outer space. In other words, binoculars don’t work on a Pisces like Misty, just as Linda Goodman warns. The closest anybody has come to photographing this elusive bird is satellite tracker Marco Langbroek who says the glint in this image is the decoy satellite (“USA 144”) the CIA launched to throw people off the (non-material?) tracks of Misty’s twin sister “Misty #2”:

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All Pisceans posses the capacity to disappear “into the deep”. (Photo Credit: Marco Longbroek)

What’s even more Piscean (spooky) than Misty’s disappearing act is that she’s programmed to avoid detection by anybody who develops the ability to spot her. (Source)

Sitting 120 degrees away from Pisces is Scorpio, the sign of the Shaman and the Spy, the Sorceress and the Spell-Caster, the Investigative Detective and the Investment Banker, the Covert-Op and the Deep Cover Cop. It’s symbolized by three animals – the scorpion, the snake, and the eagle – each a deadly predator capable of surviving in the most hostile of environments. People with their Moon (emotional needs) in this passionate sign are actually nourished by intense situations that would have less resolute souls running into the night.

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Scorpio is symbolized as the Snake (Photo Credit: IStockPhoto)

Astrologer Raven Kaldera associates the Scorpio Moon with the myth of Hecate, the mysterious witch goddess who “passes back and forth between the depths and the night fields like a creature of caves who only comes out after dark”. (Source) To illustrate: using its release date as its date of birth the 1981 cult film Escape from New York starring Kurt Russel is a Scorpio Moon. (Chart) The film is a fictional work but its intensely subterranean atmosphere is an accurate projection of a Scorpio Moon in his or her natural habitat. Like Hecate herself, Russel’s character “Snake” is considered a criminal, is very much a creature of the night, and is widely assumed to be dead. He doesn’t fly around on a silent broomstick like the witches associated with Hecate but he does arrive in the underworld by way of a silent glider, which can be thought of as the modern day equivalent of a witch’s broom. In true Scorpio Moon fashion he even sports a tattoo of a cobra on his stomach:

Pisces and Scorpio have a good deal in common. Both signs are naturals when it comes to camouflage and cloaking, madness and mysteries, the haunted and the hidden. There are, however, some key distinctions between the two that should be highlighted. Pisces, the most paranoid of signs, automatically assumes the sexy looking person friending them on Facebook must be an FBI agent. Scorpio, the most secretive of signs, is the sexy looking person friending Pisces on Facebook. Superstitious Pisces calls upon their spirit guides before making any big decisions. Super-suspicious Scorpio runs background checks on the Piscean’s alleged “spirit guides”. Pisces spends time in deep reverie, Scorpio in deep research. Pisces sees dead people, Scorpio handles dead people’s financial affairs. Pisces can spend days wondering the latent nightscapes of its dreams Scorpio can spend a lifetime rooting through the catacombs of its psyche. Pisces pours over the quatrains of Nostradaums, Scorpio internalizes the works of Machiavelli.

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Pisces/Scorpio is attracted to the occult (Photo: Astrology, A New & Complete Illustration of Occult Sciences by Ebenezer Sibly)

Pair the cabalistic leanings of a Pisces Sun with the clandestine instincts of a Scorpio Moon and the result is a Sun/Moon pairing that — if it isn’t already obvious — will be drawn to death, danger, and the dark undercurrents of the occult. Some of these undercurrents will be located in waters that are literally of the occult, others will be found in the equally fascinating realms of high finance, deep politics, covert operations, or psychological research. To illustrate: using its release date as its date of birth the 2013 movie Phantom is a Pisces Sun, Scorpio Moon. (Chart) The film stars David Duchovny as a former KGB agent on a submarine mission cloaked in mystery. The film’s tag line “You’ll never see it coming” is an excellent approximation of the Pisces/Scorpio approach to life:

Pisces Sun, Scorpio Moon is the pairing of the Phantom
Pisces Sun, Scorpio Moon is the pairing of the Phantom

Bil Tierney says this pairing is able to “intuit, almost psychically, things going on inside others that seem anything but obvious to the outside world”. (Source) Possessing such finely honed senses is a survival skill when you swim not with the fishes but with the barracudas as this pairing does.

Just like a submarine on a mission cloaked in mystery, human Pisces/Scorpios always keep their real plans concealed.

According to Jefferson Anderson, “this combination can produce spiritual and artistic individuals, or it can result in criminally inclined personalities”. (Source) According to Stella Hyde, dark-side Pisceans make for great pirates and fraudsters while dark side Scorpios make for great drug barons and masterminds. (Source) Mitt Romney is a Pisces/Scorpio who earned hundreds of millions of dollars while working as a financial pirate-baron at Bain Capital. (Chart) His primary role there seems to have been masterminding the destruction of companies by loading them up with labyrinthine forms of debt obligations as toxic as any form of street drug. Even Howard Stern of all people has described Romney as having a criminally inclined personality, “I’m not sure Romney shouldn’t be in jail . . . he was such a monster . . . to me he’s a demon” Stern explained on his show after learning about the necromantic tactics Romney utilized while heading up the night crawlers at Bain:

According to Grant Lewi, many Pisces/Scorpios have a “morbid interest in death and the fate of the dead”. (Source) If you’re wondering what’s behind that look in Romney’s eyes it could be that, according to a 2012 Huffington Post article, he started Bain with money from families tied to South American death squads.

If Mitt Romney is an extreme example of this pairing’s potential for corruption then novelist John Steinbeck is an example of its potential for compassion. (Chart) Best known for writing The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck documented the despair experienced by people on the receiving end of the financial black magic spells cast by Romney’s Great Depression era predecessors. Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is a Pisces/Scorpio who once said “Know how sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong”, an approach to life John Steinbeck was quite familiar with. (Chart)

According to astrologer Jacqueline Bigar, the emotional ecosystem of the Pisces/Scorpio individual can be likened to a “case of rushing white water with tumultuous depths”. (Source) In a best case scenario the tumultuous depths of this pairing serve as a source of tremendous emotional depth. In a less favorable scenario these depths conceal serpentine creatures that are best left undisturbed and unprovoked. To illustrate: if you’ve read through this site’s archives you know that I often analyze the natal charts of dark side entities ranging from American International Group and the Federal Reserve to the CIA and the NSA. There is only one company from the so-called “black world” whose work so seriously spooks me that I feel it’s best to refrain from posting their chart or disclosing their name other than to say that using its date of incorporation as its date of birth this company is a Pisces Sun, Scorpio Moon. In true Pisces/Scorpio fashion, the nature of what this company does is so haunting that even seasoned members of the intelligence community are reported to keep a safe distance from its dominion.

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For Pisces/Scorpio what’s unseen is more relevant than what is seen. (Patch: U.S. Navy black project, Image: Paglen.com)

According to astrologers Suzi and Charles Harvey, the Pisces/Scorpio pairing “can see right through anyone” but will often compensate for its tremendous interest in the mysterious by swinging “into very heady areas, such as math and computing”. (Source) Along these lines, the “company with no name” utilizes extremely advanced forms of math and computing to develop technologies that can see right through people in a manner akin to what a witch, warlock, exorcist, or voodoo doctor can do. Linda Goodman says the Pisces/Scorpio combination of signs is capable of telepathic communication across “the third and fourth dimensional levels of life and death” which, for all intents and purposes, is what this company specializes in. (Source) It’s my suspicion that at least some of the occult technologies depicted in the reality based spy thriller series The Activity are developed by this company although that is only conjecture on my point:

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Image Source: Image Comics

(Editor’s note: if you’re curious about the acroamatic origins of The Activity you’ll want to check out the following article: Sagittarius Sun, Scorpio Moon: “The Widow Maker”)

On the upside, Pisces/Scorpio’s adeptness with the shadow world endows it with tremendous perception, intuition, and an instinctive feel for pathos. Bil Tierney says this pairing has “an otherworldy ability to navigate the invisible seas that connect people on almost psychic levels”. (Source) It thus makes for a fantastic psychologist, particularly one who uses alternative methods to pull people back from the most nightmarish of emotional abysses. Even the “company with no name” has a division tasked with retrieving ghosts from hell-like realms, at least in a manner of speaking.

If Pisces/Scorpio has an animal totem it’s the blackbird, a mysterious creature that Druid mythology associates with the magic of unseen worlds according to medium Matthew James:

The blackbirds iridescent black plumage holds the energies of mysticism and magic. Their singing puts the listener into a sleep or a trance which enables him or her to travel to the otherworld. It was said to impart mystic secrets. Those with this medicine often have a hypnotic influence on others as well as an uncanny ability to move between the seen and unseen worlds with clarity. They make excellent shamans and trance channellers. Blackbirds are timid and prefer their own company over the company of others. In humans shyness and insecurity in group settings is common. Vulnerable to outside influences those with this totem need to remember to clear accumulated influences from their energy field on a regular basis. (Source)

Pisces/Scorpios can also be hypnotic, magnetic, and incredibly sexy but don’t be misled, their otherworldly appeal often camouflages pain as deep as the ocean itself. Elizabeth Taylor, arguably the most hypnotically beautiful star of the last 100 years, is a Pisces/Scorpio whose turmoil filled personal life is well documented enough that we need not rehash it here. (Chart)

Pisces/Scorpio is attracted to the taboo, a tendency that often gets it into trouble, but this means there is also the potential to express heartfelt sympathy for people considered off-limits or subhuman by the rest of society. Taylor, for instance, raised a tremendous amount of money for HIV and AIDS-related projects at a time when Congress was giving serious consideration to quarantining those with the disease. (No joke) These days being seen on the HIV charity circuit is quite fashionable among the Hollywood crowd but back in the early 1980s celebrities were terrified to be associated with the disease. Given the context of that era, Taylor’s efforts took enormous emotional courage. At its best, Pisces/Scorpio can be a sinner or saint. During her heyday many in society viewed Taylor as a sinner for having married six men seven times. However it’s difficult not to see her as far more saintly than sinful given the compassion she exhibited to those in such dire need.

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.

Aquarius Sun, Capricorn Moon: The Revolution Will Not be Leaderless

The Aquarius Sun, Capricorn Moon combination is a great one for anybody involved in large scale social movements as it combines the humanitarian identity of an Aquarius Sun with the strategic instincts of a Capricorn Moon. Astrologer Bil Tierney writes of this combination’s social leanings:

Those of us with these energies highlighted in our charts are very much activists at heart . . . We’re willing to become involved in community affairs by supporting groups and organizations that bravely advocate fresh ideals that challenge mainstream thinking and social conformity. Our sense of civic duty is usually strong . . . (Source)

Abraham Lincoln and Rosa Parks are both Aquarius/Capricorns natives who exhibited very well developed “senses of civic duty” coupled with the “brave advocacy of fresh ideals” regarding community affairs.

The problem for people who advocate new ideals as effectively as some Aquarius/Capricorns do is that they often end up getting attacked by those who seek to preserve the status-quo. Of the 144 Sun/Moon pairings this might be the one most likely to get raided by the SWAT team or hauled off to prison for their efforts at challenging oppression. To illustrate: internet mogul Kim Schmitz, aka “Kim Dotcom”, is an Aquarius/Capricorn. (Chart) He’s best known for creating the site Mega Upload, which for a long time was the world’s most popular file hosting site. More importantly, he had apparently developed an entirely legal way for artists to get their music out to the world while getting paid but all without the need for large record companies to be involved. He was just about to deploy this new project in January 2012 when (“coincidentally”) he was raided by 70 members of the SWAT team and hauled off to prison:

If the raid seems a bit out of proportion that’s because it was. In fact it was so heavy handed that 18 months later a New Zealand court ruled it illegal and Mr. Dotcom to be released from prison. (Source)

Investigative reporter Mike Ruppert is another Aquarius/Capricornwho knows more than a few things about what the “Powers That Be” will do silence individuals who advocate new ideals. (Chart) Mike was working as an LAPD narcotics investigator during the 1970s when was recruited by the CIA to be involved in the drug trade. He refused the agency’s advances and attempted to go public with what he had been exposed to. For this he was at shot at and forced out of the police force despite possessing a service record of the highest order. (Link to Full Bio) Mike recounted these experiences, including his 1996 televised confrontation with CIA director John Deutsch, for the documentary American Drug War. If you want your mind blown make sure to watch at least the first 30 seconds:

Mike’s never been raided by the SWAT team like Mr. Dotcom but in 2006 his office was broken into and his computers destroyed beyond all repair after he published an in-depth expose of the Pentagon’s cover-up of Pat Tillman’s murder.

The character traits of an actor’s signature role(s) will usually match the characteristics of their Sun/Moon pairing, often to an uncanny degree. To illustrate: actor Michael Ironside is an Aquarius Sun, Capricorn Moon. (Source) His breakthrough role came in 1983 when he portrayed CIA contractor turned worldwide resistance organizer Ham Tyler in NBC’s “V”, the groundbreaking miniseries originally intended as a fascist allegory. In this scene he repels a squadron of fascist space alien storm troopers who’ve come to carry a group of human resisters off to an internment camp:

Obviously few, if any, Aquarius/Capricorns will ever face off against an army of invading space Nazis like Ham Tyler but his line, “Without proper leadership, you’re gonna get hung out to dry. Now we’re organized and we have a plan” is an excellent approximation of what the Aquarius/Capricorn pairing is fundamentally all about. Aquarians are inherently oriented to making plans based on the “30,000 foot” view of events while Capricorn Moons have an instinctual understanding of how to organize & lead large scale enterprises. (Note: In the time since I originally posted this article, the bulk of Ironside’s dialogue has been edited from the above clip.) Ironside so effectively projected the Ham Tyler character into the imaginal world as a highly-organized strategist with little patience for lightweights because that’s the highest expression of the Aquarius/Capricorn combination in the real world.

Were Ironside younger and of a different ethnic background he would be a natural at portraying his fellow Aquarius/Capricorn Fred Korematsu, the Japanese American citizen who was forced to become a fugitive when he refused to be placed in an internment camp by the United States government during World War II. (Chart)

This pairing will often express interest in how new technologies and social networks (Aquarius) can be utilized (Capricorn) to liberate people from oppression. At the time of his arrest Mr. Dotcom’s new project was set to leverage the decentralized nature of the internet to liberate both artists and fans from the clutches of the record companies. For a number of years Mike Ruppert ran a social networking website which connected people looking to break free from the mindless fascism that is modern consumer culture. Even Michael Ironside’s fictional alter-ego Ham Tyler brings with him new, high-tech tools which were to be utilized in the liberation of humanity from fascist space Nazis.

People with the same Sun/Moon pairing often bear a resemblance to each other even if they don’t look related by blood per se. In the latest installment of the Terminator franchise Ironside portrays General Hugh Ashdown, the leader of the human resistance against tyrannical cyborgs:

Now compare the above photo of Ironside as Ashdown delivering a message from his base of operations with this photo of Mike Ruppert delivering a message from his base of operations and try not seeing the basic thematic similarities:

Mike Ruppert at his office circa 2010
Mike Ruppert at his office circa 2010

Astrologer Jefferson Anderson tell us that Aquarius/Capricorn natives, “often have a gleam in their eyes that hints at either genius or madness.” (Source) Whether taking on the multinational record companies like Kim Dotcom, refusing to sit in the back of the bus like Rosa Parks, resisting internment like Fred Korematsu or blowing the whistle on CIA narcotics trafficking like Mike Ruppert, you’d have to be a bit “mad” to speak truth to power the way this pairing often does.

Cancer Sun, Aquarius Moon: The Time Traveler

(Image: Back to the Future, available via Amazon)

Pair the waxing and waning of a Cancer Sun’s emotionality with the zappity zap zap of an Aquarius Moon’s instincts for the alchemical and you get a Sun/Moon pairing that is off beat and exciting, more than a bit eccentric but never, ever boring. Few others can match this combination’s determination to explored the innovative and the imaginative, the experimental and the visionary. Cancer Sun loves the past and Aquarius Moon loves the future so this is probably the Sun/Moon pairing most likely to invent a time travel machine. To illustrate: using its release date as its date of birth the film Back to the Future is a Cancer Sun, Aquarius Moon. (Chart) From his good intentions to his oddball eccentricity, the Doc Brown character portrayed by actor Christopher Lloyd is as archetypal a Cancer/Aquarius as you’ll find:

Astrologers Suzi and Charles Harvey tell us that Cancer/Aquarius has a real talent for “reading signs and symbols”, particularly those that come to them in dreams. (Source) In Back to the Future the idea for the “Flux Capacitor”, the device which makes time travel possible, comes to Doc in a dream.

Cancers tend towards being timid but not this one. With its Moon in the sign of mad science and futuristic style this Crab channels its emotional shrewdness into exploring the most far out corners of the human experience. More than a few Cancer/Aquarians live their lives according to the motto of “Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads”, to quote Doc Brown’s line from the end of the film.

Sitting 150 degrees away from each other, Cancer and Aquarius form what’s known as a “quincunx”, an inherently discordant aspect that requires two radically different signs to reconcile the irreconcilable. Consider some of their differences between to see just how discordant things can get when they meet up: Cancer is the sign of clannish attachment to family, Aquarius is the sign of cerebral attachment to ideals. Cancer hates change, Aquarius loves shaking things up. Cancer is the sign of social shyness, Aquarius the sign of the social network. Cancer’s idea of a great vacation is spending a week watching old movies at Grandma’s house, Aquarius would rather spend a week doing lord knows what at Burning Man. About the only thing they have in common is concern for the downtrodden as astrologer Bill Tierney explains in his book All Around the Zodiac:

Cancer is sympathetic toward the helpless or whatever is in need of special protection from harm. It’ll go on the defensive to shield the weak and the vulnerable from attack. Aquarius is famous for its humanitarian concern for the plight of the downtrodden, the socially alienated, and all misunderstood rebels and rejects of society. It seeks to socially validate the worth and uphold the freedoms of all such underdogs, protecting them from further abuse. Thus [this pairing] feels the urge to assist and support those in dire need . . . (Source)

There is one other thing they have in common: both moon beams (Cancer) and lightning strikes (Aquarius) have mystical, magical, marvelously enchanting qualities to them. The combination of moonbeams powered by lightning strikes results in a person or project that can be utterly ingenious to the point of seeming magical. When this pairing reaches out to help those in dire need it will deliver assistance of a charged, surprising, or visionary nature. In Back to the Future, for instance, Doc Brown renders assistance to Marty by jiggering up an ingenious way to harness the power of a lightning bolt, which provides the power necessary to send him zooming back (Cancer) to the future (Aquarius). The effect on the emotions of in-theater audiences was so magical that the film was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Back to the Future is, of course, a fictional film but there are more than a few real life instances of Cancer/Aquarians pulling off similar feats of ingenuity when helping people in dire need. To illustrate: using the day of its establishment as its date of birth, the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) is a Cancer Sun, Aquarius Moon. (Chart) The NESC’s official job is “to ensure the safety and mission success of NASA’s high risk projects” but when the need arises they lend their technological expertise to projects outside of NASA. For instance, it was the NESC that designed the capsule which rescued the 33 Chilean miners who found themselves trapped nearly 2,300 feet beneath the surface of the Earth back in August 2010:

The copper mine that “The 33” were trapped in was essentially a relic of extractive industries that go back (Cancer) to the 1800s while the NESC’s capsule was as futuristic (Aquarius) a piece of machinery as anything sent on missions to space. The miners were, in effect, trapped in the past (Cancer) while the NESC’s quick thinking got them back to the future (Aquarius). Doc Brown used the “flux capacitor” to get Marty Mcfly back to his family, the NESC used the “Fenix” capsule to get the Chilean miners back to theirs:

Capsule

While the NESC is a non-political division of NASA, the textbook Cancer/Aquarius will express considerable interest in political causes, particularly those which defend the rights of the helpless and the powerless. Astrologer Jefferson Anderson writes of this pairing:

With your scientific bent of mind and wild imagination, you may pursue a technical or scientific career, although your strong social consciousness could lead you into the political, legal, or humanistic endeavors. (Source)

Given their wild imaginations, some Cancer/Aquarians will manage to create a career for themselves in which they combine their “scientific bent of mind” with a career in the political or legal world. To illustrate: using the date of its establishment as its date of birth, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a Cancer/Aquarius. (Chart) If you’re not familiar with the EFF, they’re the San Francisco based legal non-profit which has taken on some of the most important technology related civil liberties cases of the last 25 years. (Source) A quick look at some of their promotional posters will bring you up to speed on the organization’s modus operandi:

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The EFF is a Cancer Sun, Aquarius Moon

The EFF has never attempted time travel or to rescue miners trapped in primordial conditions but they have taken on the NSA’s attempts to turn the U.S. into a surveillance state, a dire situation as fraught with peril as taking on the forces of nature themselves.

Cancer/Aquarius men will often be attracted to groups like the EFF which endeavor to save the world while Cancer/Aquarius women will often express a desire to mother the world with every bit as much energy as they mother their own children. Noel Tyl says this is the pairing of “the humane aristocrat” who can be very innovative when it comes to social service. (Source) To illustrate: Princess Diana is a Cancer/Aquarius who is still loved to this day for being the ultimate example of a “humane aristocrat”. (Chart)

One of this pairing’s greatest strengths is its capacity to genuinely feel other people’s pain while remaining enough detachment to actually help them. Princess Diana is best known for her work to ban landmines, an insidious weapon of war that doubles as a deadly curious attraction for young children. Landmines also happen to be a very darkly Cancer/Aquarius weapon as they are often left over from past wars (Cancer) yet kill and maim people indiscriminately deep into the future (Aquarius). It thus makes sense Princess Diana was so aghast at their utilization that she made eliminating them her life’s mission. According to Wikipedia, “It was during this campaign that she was accused of meddling in politics and declared a ‘loose cannon'”. (Source) Cancer/Aquarius does tend towards eccentricity but in a world where ever greater numbers of people find themselves in dire need of assistance we could use a few more emotionally sensitive (Cancer) eccentrics (Aquarius) like Princess Diana.

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.

Gemini Sun, Scorpio Moon: The Computer Disk Crypto-Magickian and the Special Agent Storyteller, the Hushmail Hashishiyyin and the Ubuntu Nosferatu

(Photo Credit: Citizen Four film, available for purchase at Amazon)

Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who leaked information about the NSA’s “PRISM” surveillance program, has his Sun in Gemini (communication) and his Moon in Scorpio (secrets). (Chart) As explained in a previous article, both Gemini and Scorpio “are associated with spy-craft, smuggling, and special operations albeit in very different ways.” Gemini is the information broker who traffics in flash drives, Scorpio is the power broker who traffics in secrets. Gemini is the system-admin op who knows where the phone lines are buried, Scorpio is the deep cover cop who knows where the bodies are buried. The Gemini/Scorpio pairing thus makes for a great investigative reporter who uses their mental dexterity to unravel high level criminality, a cunning double agent who plays multiple sides of a complex conflict, or a fiction writer whose spell-binding stories leave you mentally (Gemini) horror-struck yet also intrigued (Scorpio) and loving every minute of it. Snowden has mentally horror-struck the NSA and, while the agency is probably not loving him for it, most of us in the 99% sure appreciate what he’s done. He’s expertly played multiple sides of a very complex situation and lived not only to tell his story but even be portrayed by Joseph Levit Gordon in Oliver Stone’s blockbuster film Snowden:

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 demons to the ground”. (Source) During his time amid the darkness of the NSA, Snowden came to understand the brutality and horror of the surveillance state. In Citizen Four there is even a scene where he literally cloaks himself so as to avoid any electronic demons that may have infiltrated his hotel room.

Astrologers Suzi and Charles Harvey write of the Gemini/Scorpio pairing, “Your life seems to be a breeze until you start noticing the monsters from the deep coming up for air”. (Source) Snowden’s life certainly seems to have been a breeze until very recently. Back in March 2013, he was living with his acrobatic dancer girlfriend on the breezy island of Hawaii earning six figures working for NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. (Source) Then he decided to take on the NSA, the ultimate “monster from the deep”, and is now a high profile enemy of the state hiding in Hong Kong and attempting to come up for air in Moscow.

According to astrologer Stella Hyde, Gemini is the sign of the “Street Magician” while Scorpio Moons are nourished by highly dangerous jobs such as “Vampire Slayer”. (Source) Snowden’s unprecedented exfiltration of data from the NSA is, in effect, the technological equivalent of a massive street magic trick, one that has served to thoroughly slay the public’s confidence in the vampire that is the surveillance state.

If, as per James Bamford’s books on the history of the NSA, the NSA’s Scorpio/Gemini Sun-Moon pairing can be likened to a “Puzzle Palace” or a “Shadow Factory” then the Gemini/Scorpio pairing can be likened to “a riddle wrapped in mystery inside an enigma” to quote Winston Churchill. Gemini is duality while Scorpio is secrecy so anytime you see these two signs paired together there is a high likelihood that multiple (Gemini) layers of concealment (Scorpio) are afoot. This is because each sign’s ruling planet excels at disguising itself. Gemini is ruled by Mercury, the fast moving planet of mixed messages and multiple personalities. Scorpio is ruled by Pluto, the deep digging Lord of Hades whose cap of invisibility allows him to operate undetected. At its best the combination of duplicity (Gemini Sun) and depth perception (Scorpio Moon) makes for a person who can get to the bottom of mind-dizzying complex situations. It can also indicate somebody who finds themselves living in circumstances that require extremely quick movements (Gemini) within bottomless pits (Scorpio), like something out of one of those old Choose Your Own Adventure children’s books except with decidedly more malevolent plot-lines.

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Image Copyright: ChooseCo

People with the same Sun/Moon pairings often have biographies that share uncannily similar themes. To illustrate: author George Orwell is a Gemini Sun, Scorpio Moon just like Ed Snowden. Orwell is best known for writing 1984, the book which famously envisioned a dystopic future characterized by a ubiquitous surveillance state, a future that Snowden’s leaks have made clear is now a reality.

Mars Conjunct the North Node: Medals for Bravery

Snowden’s Mars (planet of fighting) is conjunct (merged) with his North Node (point of destiny), an aspect that astrologer Celeste Teal associates with “being awarded medals for bravery.” (Source) His Mars/North Node conjunction is in Gemini so the bravery indicated by this aspect was likely to involve Geminian matters such as communication, computer disks, and data-sharing. This Mars receives a trine (supportive contact) from a Saturn–Pluto conjunction in Libra, the sign of justice, in his 5th house of self-expression; this aspect is associated with “battling the powers that be,” according to astrologer Adrian Ross Duncan. Snowden is unlikely to win any medals of bravery from the government for his efforts, but no reasonable person doubts the enormous courage it takes to battle with the powers-that-be running the NSA.

As for what lies ahead for Snowden, with his North Node in Gemini he’ll need to tap into the fast-moving, quick-thinking nature of the Twins to the maximum of his ability if he wants to stay out of the catacombs of the U.S. justice system. As he knows all too well, these days the hills really do have eyes.

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, his first YouTube channel, his second YouTube channel, SoundCloud, LibSyn or this site’s contact page.

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