Prince Andrew, Duke of York is in trouble. Rightly or wrongly, the news headlines say he allegedly had sex with an under age girl. The story is unfolding rapidly, and it revolves around allegations by a young woman, Virginia Roberts, now 30 and living in Australia. She claims that as a 16 year old, she ‘worked’ for US millionaire Jeffrey Epstein as a sex partner for a range of prominent friends of Epstein, including Prince Andrew (more on this from the BBC and the Sydney Morning Herald)
Whether the allegations are true or false (or somewhere in between) Prince Andrew and his legal team are having to publically defend his reputation and deal with this ‘mess’.
Are there astrological indicators that this would be a troublesome time? Absolutely.
There are several techniques that support this. Firstly there’s his Solar Arc Directions for early January 2015, when the story hit the news. Solar Arc Directions are when we take the natal horoscope and move all the planets forward (‘directed’) by a certain number of degrees for every year of life, based on the daily motion of the Sun at the time of birth (or ‘solar arc’).
When planets by Solar Arc Direction line-up – form aspects with – the natal planets, then this usually indicates a significant life period for the person concerned.
In Andrew’s case, we have Solar Arc Midheaven (‘MC’ in the diagram below) lining-up with his natal Mercury, shown by the green arrow. And Solar Arc Mercury lining-up with his natal Ascendant, shown by the orange arrow. This is what is called a 90 degree dial chart, set for early January 2015. This special type of chart makes reading astrological connections easier.
So Mercury is prominent, and connected with the Midheaven (reputation, career) and the Ascendant (personality, how you ‘come across’ to others). Mercury, broadly, is about news, information, and communication. But negatively can denote fraud, deception, being ‘tricked’.
In his natal horoscope (or ‘chart’), below, Prince Andrew’s Mercury is in Pisces, in the 8th house. (chart data is from Astrodatabank.com). The 8th is traditionally an ‘unfortunate’ house (along with the 6th and 12th). Planets in unfortunate houses have a more challenging time than elsewhere in the horoscope. Pisces’ ruling planet is Jupiter, so we could say that Prince Andrew’s Mercury gets it’s ‘cues’ from his Jupiter. And Jupiter is in his Sagittarius fifth house. Depending on the context, this house is about pleasure, sex, enjoyment, games, and children.
It should be noted that plenty of people born on the same day as the Prince will similarly have Mercury in Pisces and Jupiter in Sagittarius. But which houses of the horoscope those planets reside in will be fairly unique to each individual.
So to summarise thus far: Prince Andrew’s having some difficulties in terms of his reputation and career (Midheaven), and his personality or ‘outward appearance’ (Ascendant). The difficulties are Mercurial in nature – to do with ‘he said, she said’, lies, communication and the media.
Taking this quick look at the situation one final step, we can look at January’s Secondary Progressions for Prince Andrew, below.
This is a slightly different system to Solar Arcs. The basis is the birth horoscope, but this time the planets move in their usual way (not ‘all together’) and every day after birth is correlated with a year of the individual’s life. So for someone who is 54 years old, we look to 54 days after their birth, and where the planets and other points were in relation to their natal positions.
Most planets 54 days after birth will be in similar positions to their location in the natal horoscope. But the Moon won’t, because she moves relatively quickly and traverses the whole zodiac in about 28 days.
Astrologers will typically look to the position of the secondary progressed Moon with considerable interest, because it’s ongoing connection with the natal (birth) horoscope and it’s change of zodiacal sign, often indicate times of change in the individual’s life, particularly in the area of emotional (Moon) undercurrents.
Interestingly, Prince Andrew’s secondary progressed Moon changed signs in late 2014, moving into Sagittarius, after several years in Scorpio. And just as this change of sign occurs, it forms a square aspect (‘lines up’) to his natal Sun in Pisces, shown by the purple arrow below.
Both Pisces and Sagittarius are ruled by Jupiter, so the Moon moving into one of Jupiter’s signs ‘enlivens’ the Sun and Mercury – brings them more into prominence.
Similarly to Solar Arcs, secondary progressed Midheaven (aka ‘MC’) now forms a square aspect to natal Mercury, shown by the green arrow. And the Midheaven is also in the sign of Gemini. And Gemini is ruled by … Mercury!
All of the above is a rather cursory look at Prince Andrew’s situation. But it should give you a sense that purely in sense of ‘timing’, this period of his life was likely to be a critical one, with a strong Mercury/Jupiter flavour, and one that would be very visible given the involvement of the Midheaven and the Ascendant.
UPDATE: April 2015. Prince Andrew has been excluded from further legal action in this case says the New York Times.
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