Feb 2011
Leaking at the Seams

This month we’ll get a cosmic lesson about leakage (Neptune), making me wonder whether the ongoing saga of WikiLeaks will take another turn. The explosive (Uranus) and taboo (Pluto) nature of this juicy international (Jupiter) drama has made Julian Assange a major star. This is what happens when somebody is plugged into the world moment.

As we will see, Assange is a Uranus-Neptune-Pluto figure. Natally and by transit, he represents the disruptive and uncontainable energies of the three outer planets, all of which threaten the status quo (Saturn).

The relationship between these three archetypes is hinted at by their placement in the solar system: Uranus, Neptune and Pluto all orbit beyond Saturn, the planet of law and order. Saturn governs that which is in-bounds; the planets beyond Saturn govern people, activities and ideas that are out-of-bounds.

Officialdom never knows what to do with outer-planet types. These folks are larger-than-life, and inspire intense reactions. They’re often vilified as evil and dangerous by some, and put up on a pedestal by others. Not unusually, the miscreant is demonized at first, and later transformed into a savior figure by history.

This is what happened to Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers back in the Nixon era. An arch-enemy of his government in the 1970s, he has been lionized ever since by peace activists, historians and artists. In a marvelous irony, the State Department – which is, even now, busy building a case against the Army private suspected of passing those cables to WikiLeaks – is actually promoting a documentary celebrating Ellsberg as a hero.

Neptune in Aquarius

Jupiter is back in Aries now, and it squares Pluto on Feb. 25th. The Neptune-Chiron conjunction has been with us for the past six years, and though it has technically finished peaking it is having another surge this month. Throughout February, Mars and Mercury in Aquarius are nosing into the territory occupied by Neptune (the three conjoin Feb 20-21) and Chiron, which moves into Pisces (spilling, spreading, undermining) on February 8th.

Neptune seeks to escape confines, like grains spilling out of a punctured bag, or water leaking out of a cracked vase. Neptune’s trajectory is from boundaried to unboundaried; from being enclosed to floating free. And Aquarius (ruled by Uranus) is associated with technology. Neptune in Aquarius puts together the archetype of unification and universalization with the sign of science, to create the infinite realm of shared ideas that is the internet.

With these archetypes being provoked by current transits, it is clear that if WikiLeaks hadn’t already been on the scene, the cosmos would’ve had to invent it. Or to put it a different way: though Assange created WikiLeaks, it was the Uranus-Pluto square and the Neptune-Chiron conjunction that created Assange.

World Outlaw

With the WikiLeaks scandal, we find cyber space having its first international showdown. Like in an old Hollywood Western, the corrupt sheriff figure (corporations, various national governments and militaries) is facing down the renegade outlaw (Julian Assange and his posse, including the mysterious group that calls itself Anonymous) as the world watches in real time.

The outlaw is symbolized in astrology by Uranus, which is square the Sun in the 9th house (publication) in Assange’s natal chart. This is the aspect of a Prometheus: the mythic maverick who stole fire from the gods to give it to mortals.

If you have this square in your chart, you probably colored outside of the lines in kindergarten.

Assange’s astrological profile fits into the Cardinal Crossroads transits like a hand in a glove. The epochal Pluto-Uranus square that is making the years surrounding 2012 so explosive aligns tightly with his natal solar square. With a chart like a Molotov cocktail and a karma with information dissemination, he is a personification of the celestial time bomb we have been calling the Longest Arm of the Cross.

The way astrologers got hold of Assange’s chart is of a piece with the rest of this remarkable drama. A tipster who asked to remain anonymous contacted The Mountain Astrologer Magazine with his birth time. The chart that came to light combines martyr imagery (Moon in the 12^th house) with a heavy dose of cloak-and-dagger stealth (Ascendant and Moon in Scorpio, Pluto opposing his Sun, and Venus in the 8^th house of secrets).

In the weeks before the Eclipse at the winter solstice, astrologers were speculating that a juicy international drama would bubble up from the Mars-Pluto conjunction leading up to the Full Moon. It was during early December, when transiting Mars (attacks, criminality) was opposing Assange’s natal Venus (women) — which rules his 7th house of (open enemies) — that he was arrested for actions which in the Swedish legal system constitute rape.

Perhaps the most telling thing about the WikiLeaks affair is that Assange was at first tut-tut-tutted-but-tolerated by the officialdom — back when he was only embarrassing governments. But the minute he took on the banks, his powerful enemies moved in for the kill.

Sky Mirrors

If we see the patterns in the sky as mirrors of the lessons humanity is slated to learn, we will be able to watch the world’s big, splashy dramas from a healthy distance. This way, we will not only be safe from distress and reactivity, but we will deepen our wisdom.

To consider Assange’s role from this distance is to understand some of the key themes of our era. One of these is the breakdown of old models of governmental and military authority. As the Pat Tillman case and Bradley Manning’s leaks (Neptune and Chiron) have made clear, old-fashioned establishment stonewalling isn’t working as well as it used to. Pluto in Capricorn (containment) and Uranus in Aries (popular defiance) are threatening the conventional entitlement protocols that world leaders have used for as long as we can remember.

Assange become a mythic figure, very quickly. Individuals who assume larger-than-life public significance are, archetypally speaking, no longer merely persons. Their characters and actions take on a dual meaning: On one level they are human beings with character traits, like anyone else, whose personality and learning curve can be delineated from their horoscope; and on another level, they are walking embodiments of the cosmic energies that make the era what it is.

As the repository of myriad collective feelings and ideas, Assange symbolizes many things right now. He has become a hero to one group of observers, comprised of hackers, free speech advocates, anti-corporate and anti-militarism activists et al. And he is a villain to another group, comprised of companies like PayPal and MasterCard (and sites like Twitter, that depend on advertisers like PayPal and MasterCard), as well as patriotic homeland-security enthusiasts (like Sarah Palin) who live in the nations whose dirty secrets he scooped. He is a loose cannon, and thus a security risk – if by “security” we mean the ability of governments and militaries to control how much information is known by ordinary people.

The fact the WikiLeaks episode means many things to many different observers is a testament to its importance as a multifaceted symbol, and one that is still evolving. As products of a cyber age, Assange and his website are changing the rules of international relations. He has inaugurated a global cyber-warrior dynamic, whose latest victory is the Facebook-and-Tweeter-driven revolution in Egypt (discussed in my lecture “Uranus Squared“). He is the star of our first postmillennial spy caper: waged not with bombs and cyanide but with stealth hacking.

WikiLeaks is proving powerful enough to embarrass superpowers (the US, China) and prompt Fox pundits to propose that Assange and his staff be assassinated. We know Uranus (revolution), Neptune (universalism) and Pluto (evolution) are winning when the status quo gets this worried.

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Notes:

“The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers” was selected in mid-January 2011 to be one of the 18 films that will tour the world this year as part of the State Department’s “American Documentary Showcase” program.

The Uranus-Neptune conjunction of the early 1990s established the internet as the primary symbol of this archetype for the modern age.

Assange has Saturn in Gemini opposed to a Jupiter-Neptune conjunction.

TMA’s Mary Plumb writes: “[We] felt that the circumstances through which we got the information, and some other details, suggest that this is an authentic time. Our source clarified what s/he saw: ‘The birth record (is) from the registry which has appended to it a copy of the birth certificate but the hour was not on the certificate but on the record in the registry files.’ Because of ink that was a bit smeared, there is a question of whether the time of birth was 2:05 pm, 2:06 pm. or 2:08 pm on July 3, 1971, in Townsville, Queensland, Australia (19S09 146E48).”

According to astrologer Eric Francis, his hacker name was ‘Mendax’, which means splendide mendax, or ‘nobly untruthful.’