Car maker Volkswagen is in trouble with regulators, following the scandal that their diesel engined vehicles are fitted with software that would ensure it passed emission testing, but the rest of the time it would ignore those settings and pump out a lot more pollution.
Volkswagen intends to recall the 11 million vehicles affected by their scam, and refit them with the correct equipment to ensure emissions compliance.
What can astrology tell us about this crisis for the car maker? By looking at the ‘birthday’ of Volkswagen and treating it as a natal horoscope, we get a few useful insights into why this crisis is occurring now.
According to Wikipedia, Volkswagen was founded (or ‘born’) on May 28th, 1937. It’s current headquarters is Wolfsburg, Germany. Wikipedia also states that the emission scandal emerged on September 18th, 2015, following an announcement from the US Environmental Protection Agency.
So what astrological factors are at play? Let’s take a look Volkswagen’s Solar Arc Directions for September 18th, in relation to a horoscope set for May 28th, 1937 (at noon, because we don’t know the birth time).
There are three significant things going on here. Firstly, Solar Arc Directed (SAD) Jupiter is conjunct natal Uranus (blue oval, above). Jupiter expands and enlarges while Uranus is often reversals, upsets and sudden change. It can also indicate innovation, both positive and negative. Taken together this planetary combination is about an ‘increase’ or a very noticeable reversal or sudden change for the company.
Secondly, there is SAD Venus to natal Neptune (red oval, above). What this might mean is not entirely clear, in part because we don’t have an accurate birth/founding time for Volkswagen. If we had that, then we could look at house rulerships and that would give more detail. However, Neptune typically indicates illusion, delusion, lofty ideals and vagueness. Venus is generically about desire, beauty. A possible reading of this combination the ‘deception’ underlying this car maker that sells desirable cars.
Thirdly, and it’s more to do with the ‘recent past’, is SAD Pluto to natal Uranus (green oval, above). This combination is more about the past year, since the aspect is separating (moving away from being exact by degree). And Wikipedia notes that alarm bells started ringing about the emissions issue about a year ago, when regulators started discovering the issue. Uranus, as I’ve said, is about sudden change, reversals, changes of fortunes, the unexpected. And it’s connecting with the natal planet associated with power and force, Pluto. So this combination points to a sudden, powerful upheaval for the company.
In summary, we can look at the horoscopes of businesses and organisations in a similar way that we look at individuals’ birth (natal) horoscopes, and see how things unfurl during a lifetime.
What’s noticeable here is that the emissions scandal coincides with three significant connections between Solar Arc Directed and natal planets. At the very least, this is a period of critical events for the company, and the planetary energies involved give a flavour as to the nature of those events.
Uranus is involved in two of the three connections, and that reflects the apparent ‘suddenness’ of what has been revealed publicly, although the deception has been going on for some time. But it is only now that Volkswagen is called to account in a very public way, one that could end up having a huge impact on their brand – it’s reputation, share price (it fell at least 20% once the news broke) and public perception.
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