Elon Musk has a lot of goals in life and is achieving them at a rapid pace. He has electrified the car industry. He is even automating the driving, making Tesla cars without steering wheel or pedals. (Note 1) He has developed the only humanoid robot that learns as it observes using AI – the Optimus. (Note 2) He has successfully developed a brain-computer interface – Neuralink – which ultimately can restore lost functionality like sight and hearing. (Note 3) He has developed and distributed in space the Starlink satellite system, making the internet available worldwide (for which Ukraine is eternally grateful for).
But his baby is SpaceX.
Getting to Mars
Musk wants to make humanity an interplanetary species, and to do this (in his view) rocket systems need to be developed, that can send large numbers of humans into outer space – and as a first priority Mars. So he has developed the SpaceX Starship. (Note 4) This is twice as big as the biggest rocket ever launched. Musk, who is notorious for announcing impossible deadlines, expects to get astronauts to Mars by 2029. He has also said he plans to die on Mars.
He probably will, and here’s why.
Elon Musk: June 28, 1971. 7.30 a.m. Pretoria, South Africa
If you want to get to Mars, perhaps Mars should be strong in your horoscope? Musk’s Mars is at 20.54 Aquarius. Age 12 Mars went retrograde by progression at 21.57 Aquarius, returning to its natal position at age 25. So for many years, Mars was not going anywhere, but remained in sesquisquare to the Sun (with an orb of 1 minute of arc at birth!). With Mars conjoining the 8th house cusp, that’s quite a violent indication. He was in fact badly beaten up by kids at school and went through extreme tests of resilience in the white macho South Africa of the 70’s and 80’s, exacerbated by his father, who had no sympathy for weaklings. No wonder he wants to escape Earth.
As Mars by progression goes retrograde it slowly, slowly conjoins the North Node in Aquarius – the colonization of space. The conjunction with radix and progressed Node happens at age 50-52 (in 2023), which of course spans the acquisition of Twitter and the first Starship launch. To actually get to Mars, it would be telling if Mars continued retrograde to trine Uranus at 9.26 Libra, but actually Mars turns direct at 11.52 Aquarius when Musk is 73 years old. However, as you can see in the graph, Mars does trine progressed Uranus from the mid- 2030’s to the early 2050’s.
Elon Musk progressions
That’s the time period when there will be successful missions to Mars, and as Musk will be 80+ at the end of this period, perhaps he will expire on the red planet. As transit Pluto conjoins his Mars from 2036-2037 that will be the first expedition. A key date is Mars stationary direct at 20.07 Taurus (square Musk’s Mars) in December 2037. That is when Mars is close to Earth. There may be a significant trip to Jupiter a little later, when Jupiter is stationary direct at 21.25 Leo (opposite Musk’s Mars) in April 2039.
Aspergers
People actually wonder whether Elon Musk actually comes from another planet, because he is a very weird individual. He was programming before he was 10 years old, and sold his first computer game when he was 13. As a child, he would space out for minutes at a time, and still does. One of his partners calls it “batch-processing” which is when a computer processes blocks of information in a single process. He is very rude, with no sense of how what he does affects others. He drives his workers through extreme processes, in what he calls surges. Either they are with him, or he will “accept their resignation”. He believes that 100 warriors can do things faster and better than 1000 ordinary capable workers. And he puts himself through the same process, sleeping under his desk, on the couch, on the roof – wherever his latest business project takes him. In this way he, and those who can handle working with him, do the impossible.
This is attributed to his Asperger’s syndrome, which he happily admits to, and which his several wives/partners attest to. This form of autism often produces highly intelligent and driven individuals, who are not restrained by worrying about how other people feel. However, Musk is not without empathy, which generally expresses itself in his concern for where the world is going to, and his pronounced attachment to his family and – er – 11 children.
Sirius
Musk moved to Canada when he was 17 (and then to America a couple of years later), as his progressed Ascendant moved from Cancer to Leo, activating his Saturn-Neptune opposition. His attraction to America is because his Ascendant at 13.29 Cancer is exactly on the USA Sun at 13.19, as is his Mercury. His arrival in the USA coincided with Mercury progressed on his South Node in Leo. America is where Musk lives out his destiny and finds fame and fortune. South Africa is, in the words of Musk himself, trying to kill him. (When he returned on holiday in the year 2000 he contracted a virulent malaria and very nearly died).
This degree is where the brightest star in the night sky – Sirius – is to be found. This is prominent in the night sky in the Southern Hemisphere, where Musk of course was born. Sirius at Musk’s birth was at 13.41 Cancer. It is known as the Dog Star and is said to be of the nature of Jupiter and Mars. It gives honor, renown, wealth, ardor, faithfulness, devotion, passion and resentment, qualities which Musk possesses in abundance. It could also be that the powerful emphasis on Sirius is what makes Musk think of humanity as interplanetary.
Family and Children
Musk’s maternal grandparents were adventurers who launched 12 expeditions piloting their own plane trying to find the Lost City of the Kalahari, and they often took Musk’s mother Maye along with them. Maye pursued a 50-year career in modeling and entrepreneurship. Musk’s father was a bit of a rogue, whose life had many ups and downs. He had an emerald mine until he lost it, drove around in a Rolls, until he lost that, and ultimately alienated his family through his extreme beliefs, not least in conspiracy theories about Democrats, Covid etc.
At university in California, Musk met Justine Wilson, who he married in 2000, when his IC progressed was on Jupiter (and sextile Pluto). This was also the time when he was bought out of the company he formed – PayPal – and in 2002, when eBay acquired PayPal Elon Musk made $180 million, subsequently investing $100 million in SpaceX and $70 million in Tesla as his progressed Descendant went over radix Mars.
If 2002 seems like a good year for Musk, it wasn’t. Elon and Justine’s first child was born, and died at just 10 weeks of age of sudden infant death syndrome. (Descendant on Mars in 8th House). They later had twins via IVF – Griffin and Vivian. Two more children were born before they split up in 2008. Vivian came out as transgender in June 2022, adopted her mother’s last name and declared:
“I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form”.
For Musk, a Cancer with Cancer rising, that hurt.
Clearly, Saturn in opposition to Neptune in the 5th house of Musk’s natal chart shows a great deal of sorrow connected with children. Musk believes that one of the many existential threats to humanity (along with Artificial Intelligence and fossil fuels) is the falling birth rate, so he likes propagating. Jupiter is also in the 5th house, and its exact sextile to Pluto shows, it seems, propagation at an exponential rate. He often fathers children two at a time.
In 2020 he has his first child with the performance artist Grimes (Claire Elise Boucher) who he named X Æ A-Xii. He really loves X, and takes him everywhere, including board meetings where he sits playing on the boardroom table. X learned to count early, but backwards: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… because he had watched so many rocket launches with his father.
He has subsequently had two more children with Grimes: Exa Dark Sideræl (normally called Y) and Tau Techno Mechanicus (Tau). Between Y and Tau, Musk had twins with Shivon Zilis, who runs Neuralink, via surrogate, which disconcerted Grimes, but did not ruin her relationship with Musk.
That’s 11 children … so far.
Love
Musk has Venus at 19.23 Gemini on the 12th House cusp trine Mars 20.54 on the 8th House cusp. Although cripplingly nerdy and shy as a kid, being a zillionaire does mean that he has a certain allure. This aspect in air signs, with the unusual house placements shows a detached attitude to relationships, and some kind of belief in free love. His first wife, Justine, who is an accomplished writer, complained about the social get-togethers she had to attend, where tech bros had their babes hanging on to their arms, and interesting conversation was hard to come by. When she left, Musk gravitated towards younger, but successful, women.
After the divorce, Musk had significant relationships with Talulah Riley (who he married, divorced, and remarried, then divorced), and Amber Heard. Riley was a pleasurable experience, but Amber Heard, described as toxic by Elon’s brother Kimbal, was traumatic for Musk who went through a bad year recovering from her in 2018. He is currently with Grimes, who describes their relationship as follows:
“There’s no real word for it. I would probably refer to him as my boyfriend, but we’re very fluid. We live in separate houses. We’re best friends. We see each other all the time… We just have our own thing going on, and I don’t expect other people to understand it.”
That’s a pretty good description of what it is like to live with Musk’s unusual Mars-Venus trine.
Rockets and Cars
As mentioned earlier, when Musk’s Descendant progressed conjoined the North Node in Aquarius and subsequently Mars, he founded Tesla and SpaceX. He was rich from the sale of PayPal, but he then bet everything on the success of these companies. He was involved on every level, micromanaging engineering processes and often sleeping on the factory premises. Launching rockets as a private company was not easy, and permission from authorities was hard to come by. This meant he had to ship everything to a remote Pacific island, and launch trial rockets from there. His first three launches exploded shortly after takeoff.
By this time Tesla was really struggling. His wife had a car accident, which was a bit of an epiphany for her, and she wanted out of the marriage. The financial meltdown started as Pluto entered Capricorn in 2008, and Musk was on the ropes. He had run out of money, SpaceX had not yet successfully launched, and Tesla, which at this point had only produced the fast but expensive Roadster, needed investment or else it would go under. Neptune was transiting his Mars in this period, and it seemed his dreams were crashing to earth.
Then, on September 28th 2008, the Falcon 1 rocket successfully launched, and the rest is history. Jupiter was exactly on his Descendant opposing Mercury when this took place. NASA, which no longer had any capacity to launch astronauts into space, awarded SpaceX a multibillion dollar order for delivery to the Space Shuttle. SpaceX developed the first reusable rocker booster, which could return and land vertically, and by 2023 SpaceX was launching four times as much material into space than its comparable rival, the Chinese government.
Chief Twit
The acquisition of Twitter, which took place with an initial offer on April 14th, 2022 and, after many regrets and attempts to renegotiate the offer, finally on October 27th 2022, seems to be the latest manifestation of Musk’s addiction to risk. Everyone he was close to tried to persuade him against it. Even Musk wanted to pull out when the enormity of what he had done dawned on him. Tesla shareholders threated to sue, because of the collateral damage that could happen to Tesla.
Musk believes in absolute free speech (in theory) and he felt strongly that Twitter was being run by the left-wing woke elite, who had a policy of banning people, who theoretically had the right to say whatever they wanted. Musk imported engineers from SpaceX and Tesla to streamline the Twitter administration. 80% of employees were fired. Advertisers, who contributed to the bulk of Twitter’s revenue began abandoning the platform, fearing, with some justification, that Twitter was becoming toxic. Tesla’s stock lost over 50% of its value within two months.
At this point progressed Mars was retrograde at 14.52 Aquarius conjoining the progressed North Node at 14.34 Aquarius. His progressed Midheaven had reached 18 degrees Gemini, closing in on Venus at 19.23 Gemini – very appropriate for the acquisition of a communication network. Mercury, which had turned stationary retrograde at 10 Gemini in 2018 – a time of enormous pressure with the delivery schedule of the Model 3 Tesla – was now at 9 Gemini hovering around his natal Moon at 8.14 Virgo. Vox Populi – the voice of the people.
Musk likes everything to do with the letter X. He established X.com in the late nineties, when it was renamed to PayPal. His goal with Twitter, now rebaptized as X, is to make a platform like WeChat, which is an everything platform, where people can chat and make transactions large and small. Many people think that Musk will fail with X, and even he has threatened to let it go bankrupt. But can a man who has single-handedly revolutionized space and the auto industry really fail? Personally, I’d be buying shares in Tesla and X, formally known as Twitter, expecting success in the long term. (Note 5)
The World’s Richest Man
Looking at Musk’s birth chart, you would expect powerful indicators to illustrate his success. The primary influence is the exact Jupiter-Pluto sextile. When Jupiter and Pluto combine harmoniously, there is an opportunity to acquire riches at an exponential rate, then to risk losing it all, then to bounce back and get richer still. In Musk’s case Jupiter and Pluto point to his Midheaven in a Finger of God pattern, which is one indicator of professional power and riches.
Then, the position of Mercury and the Ascendant on Sirius and the US Sun, is a great indicator of genius, with the sextile of Mercury in mutual reception to the Moon in Virgo, shows organizational talent and the ability to drill down into great detail. Of course, his unfeeling communication, characteristic of Asperger’s, is probably reflected by the Sun and Mercury’s square to Uranus in the 3rd House, but this is also part of his genius. The creative use of electricity may well be related to Mars in Aquarius at the midpoint of, and biquintile Mercury and Pluto… that is surely the signature of autonomous driving of electric vehicles.
Will Musk ever fall from grace, abandoned by the planetary gods? He is a man who knows his demons and suffers from them, but lives his life at such a pace, that they never get a grip. He’ll be tweeting – sorry X-ing – from Mars within about 20 years.
Adrian Duncan
October 11th 2023
1. Tesla without steering or pedals: https://youtu.be/NKEisvnVo8g?si=DDa993trqRDMAogR
2. Optimus robot: https://youtu.be/D2vj0WcvH5c?si=Od2Bqbyuzvn3KiZv
3. Neuralink: https://youtu.be/6FJIrin9hbc?si=4w6P5fwXXgO0GOih
4. SpaceX Starship: https://youtu.be/_krgcofiM6M?si=NK1DyO-jhCqvnfhk
5. Information about Musk has been drawn from the highly recommended biography “Elon Musk” by Walter Isaacson