When it comes to secrets, there is nothing like Water signs, who are famously silent. Scorpio keeps secrets best, and not even torture can get them to spill the beans. Cancers are loyal, and will never betray a loved one. Pisces may blab a bit, but they are masters of the smokescreen, and only another Water sign can decode their smoke signals.
Which makes Julian Assange, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, pretty good at his job. Born with Sun in Cancer in the 8th house, he is a person who likes to delve deep, a fact only strengthened by the Sun’s close trine to the Moon in Scorpio in the 12th house. Assange is a denizen of a secret world, and cyberspace and the dark web are the territories he inhabits, thrives in, and breathes life into.
It is when Water signs choose to reveal the secrets they store, that the trouble starts. And with Assange’s Sun exactly square Uranus, he is prepared to come with shocking revelations. His Sun/Uranus square conjoins USA’s Sun/Saturn square – which causes great discomfort to US Presidents and Congress, who watch helplessly as the revelations of WikiLeaks destroy carefully nurtured diplomatic relations.
Early Childhood
Assange has previously been a thorn in the side of the Australian government. True to his maverick tendencies, Assange formed a hacker group at the age of 16 called “The International Subversives”. A few years later he was arrested for amongst other things hacking into the Pentagon, but was released with a fine on condition of good behavior. The fact that his father left before he was born, and subsequent stepfathers also abandoned his mother, and that he had moved 30 times up to this point were seen as mitigating circumstances. His disruptive childhood indicates just how “subversive” the Sun in the 8th square Uranus can be.
Assange refers to his birth time as around 3 pm which gives an Ascendant in Sagittarius, which seems appropriate for a man who has travelled widely and receive so much international recognition on the one hand and opprobrium on the other.
Julian Assange: July 3, 1971. 15.00 Townsville, Australia AS 1.59 SG
Freedom and Totalitarianism
Neptune conjoins the Ascendant and Saturn in Gemini exactly conjoins the Descendant, so Assange channels the rare 35-year Saturn/Neptune opposition, which evokes a profound sense of isolation coupled with the feeling of being in a world opposed by authority figures who manipulate channels of communication. Of the Internet, he has said it is:
“… our greatest tool for emancipation, (which) has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen”
This concern with totalitarianism is reflected by the strongest aspect in his horoscope – Jupiter retrograde in Scorpio sextile Pluto within 8 minutes of arc. The Saturn/Neptune opposition keys into this sextile, which probably evokes a great need to reveal deception by fair means or foul.
WikiLeaks and the 2016 Election
Assange – as editor-in-chief of the whistleblower website WikiLeaks – is himself a master manipulator of secret information. He has admitted to intentionally disrupting Hillary Clinton’s campaign with a timed trickle of embarrassing emails from Clinton herself as well as her closest advisors, basically sucking the oxygen out of her presidency bid right up to the last days of the election. Clinton, who Assange claims advocated his indictment for treason, was considered by him to be a personal enemy, and in February 2016 he wrote:
“Hillary lacks judgement and will push the United States into endless, stupid wars which spread terrorism. … she certainly should not become president of the United States.”[
It should perhaps be mentioned though, that he also said that choosing between Trump and Clinton is like choosing between cholera and gonorrhea, so Assange was not a supporter of Trump either. Nevertheless, he was a willing dupe of Russian Intelligence during the 2016 election, who selectively supplied WikiLeaks with the mails which compromised the Democratic Party (and supplied none compromising other parties.) Assange freely admitted that the WikiLeaks website received information related to the Democratic Party and Clinton political campaign, but never received any information on Trump, and therefore “could not publish what they did not have”. (Note 1.)
Echoes of Watergate
It is quite possible that we have not heard the last concerning the Russian hack on the Democratic Party during the course of 2015 and 2016. The resemblance to Watergate is striking, although this time the break-in was virtual rather than physical, and the documents stolen of far greater volume. Watergate escalated during the trine between Saturn and Uranus, which is a 45-year cycle that repeats in 2017-2018. Clearly Trump is not going to instigate an investigation, but Congress might.
Rape and Molestation Charge
On the subject of gonorrhea, it is an unusually sexualized metaphor to use for Hillary Clinton, and as such reflects the most difficult and unconscious influence in his horoscope, which is Venus square Pluto straddling the 8th and 11th house cusps respectively. This aspect is his Achilles Heel, and it is no coincidence that his current exile in the Ecuadorian embassy in London is the result of sexual molestation claims by two Swedish women (he has Venus in Gemini), whose beds he shared. Venus also conjoins Ceres, which is like a mother/daughter complex, and both have a strong aversion to Pluto (who, as Hades, swept the daughter of Demeter, Persephone, into the Underworld, where he ravished her.)
The alleged sexual episodes took place in late 2010, when Assange was invited to stay the night. He has portrayed one of the women, who he is accused of raping, as someone who virtually stalked him, which fits nicely with the Venus/Pluto imagery. Anglo-Swedish astrologer Mark Beal, who has access to the birth dates of the women concerned, points out that this woman has a Mars/Venus conjunction in Leo opposing his Mars… so there was plenty of attraction there. (The other woman had Venus conjoining his Mars!)
The Progressed Mars/Venus opposition
It is interesting to note that Assange’s Venus has progressed in 2010 to 14 Leo just before conjoining his South Node, whilst his progressed Mars had retrograded to 16 Aquarius, going on to oppose Venus on the nodal axis over the subsequent two years. It was in this period that Assange left Sweden to be subsequently arrested in London and finally in 2012 seek asylum in the Ecuador embassy. This extraordinary planetary combination indicates the fated nature of these unfortunate sexual encounters, evoked by the opposition by progression of Venus with his rather cold and remote Mars. Probably, the conjunction of Mars with the Node in Aquarius, which at the time of writing is completely exact to the minute of arc, indicates the sanctuary this cyber warrior has found in the untouchable status of a foreign embassy.
Working in Isolation
That Assange has now spent four years in a small self-contained area of the Ecuador embassy in London comes as no surprise considering his chart, which has the Moon in fall and intercepted in the 12th House. It’s a prison cell of sorts, but for someone who travels in the hidden corners of cyberspace, it’s a life.
For those interested in harmonic horoscopes, Assange’s Moon conjoins Mars, Saturn and Mercury in the 7th harmonic, which suggests he can discipline himself to do the work he needs to do, as long as there are open communication channels. And with Mercury at 24 Cancer – yes, exactly the position of US Mercury – in trine to Jupiter in Scorpio, he works well and fluidly, streaming all those secrets, which were never intended to see the light of day, onto the international arena. Nothing will stop him doing that; he is good at it and he does not care what the consequences are, because the big picture as he sees it, is that enemy forces are manipulating truth and illegally gathering information.
WikiLeaks
Assange formed WikiLeaks in 2006, at the age of 35, when the Saturn/Neptune opposition repeated once more.
WikiLeaks. October 4, 2006 5.54.19 GMT San Mateo, CA. AS 28 38 GE
For this work, he has received many awards on the one hand, and the threat of execution (for treason) on the other. WikiLeaks is here to stay, it would seem, and the Moon in Pisces in the 9th house shows the leak of international information, whilst its trine to Mercury in Scorpio reflects the toxic nature of the information. The Sun in this chart precisely activates Assange’s Sun/Uranus square, and Saturn is on his MC exactly opposing his Mars. Pluto in Sagittarius is square the Moon’s Nodes, which is an appropriate symbol of the tremors that shake the intelligence community and the resulting chaos.
Cyber Politics and Paranoia
Assange is a complex character. He is a fearless rebel with a mission, with phenomenal skills in mastering secret communication. He has inherited from his absent fathers and restless mother a clear inability to make satisfying or deep relationships, which is why women so far have been his nemesis. He is also a deeply sensitive soul, who has sacrificed his freedom for a cause. He has alienated a lot of people – some his friends – not least when the bail put up by English supporters (about £300,000 – nearly half a million dollars at the time) was forfeited because he refused to stand trial.
However, Assange was probably justified in avoiding both Swedish and British justice. The arm of USA justice is long and powerful, and his fears that he would be extradited to the USA were real. Considering what has happened to previous whistleblowers, like Chelsea Manning, who was sentenced to 35 years for releasing military material to WikiLeaks, caution was advisable. Assange did give himself in to the police in December 2010, where he had to spend 10 days in solitary confinement.
Assange arrest: December 7th 2010. 9.30. London AS 5.04CP
The horoscope for his arrest is quite alarming, with the Moon and Mercury conjoining Pluto and the Ascendant exactly, and it is not difficult to imagine the communication lines of US and British intelligence humming, when he turned himself in. It was fortunate perhaps that the Ascendant ruler of this chart was Saturn, exalted in Libra in the 9th exactly sextile the Sun, which is a powerful indicator that right was on Assange’s side, and that he had friends with influence. In this chart, we can see that Pluto conjoins the North Node, which resonates with Pluto square the Node in the horoscope for WikiLeaks. Clearly Pluto/Node combinations show the world of secret information.
Assange will live and die a cyber warrior. Although his Mars in Aquarius seems only to be aspecting Uranus remotely, Mars moves retrograde at age 8, finally moving direct at 11 Aquarius, where it dwells for many years in trine to progressed Uranus. He is a man with a destiny, and that destiny is as a fighter for freedom whilst he lives life as a refugee.
Adrian Duncan. December 16th 2016
- Information from Wikipedia (Search “Assange”). If 1% more people had voted for Clinton in either Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania or Florida, she would have won, so there is quite a strong likelihood that Russian interference did affect the election result.