The Al Qaida operative and cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki has been killed in Yemen reportedly due to a US drone strike. Apparently he was at an Al Qaida stronghold with some companions when the strike occurred. He had been near the top of President Obama’s hit list, and looking at his natal chart with good reason. This was a seriously dangerous man, who was very innovative.
A quick look at his horoscope shows why. Al-Awlaki was born on 22nd April 1971 in Las Cruces, New Mexico, In the US. Yes, he was an American citizen of Yemeni parentage. He was a Sun sign Taurus with either a spiritually orientated Pisces moon or a go ahead Aries one. Because of the lack of an official birth time, something we will never know for sure.
Taurus is the maker and the creator, and this man made explosive devices. Clever ones too. This is the guy behind the toner cartridge explosive devices, which included the explosive PETN, a substance that cannot be picked up very easily by current airport scanning techniques. The base of this chart is a very nasty grand trine, with Pluto in Virgo technical skill in destruction, Saturn in Taurus emphasising the ambition to build things and the third leg of this grand trine is Mars in Capricorn which provides the motivation and the raging energy, this Mars effectively lights the fuse. Pluto made a very emotional and passionate opposition to the Moon and Venus. This is a man whose convictions ran very strong and very deep. Combine this opposition and grand trine with a peregrine Uranus (very independent, radical and technically orientated) which made a quindecile to Mercury (making his mind as sharp as a razor and very unstable) and you had a very, very dangerous individual. Both the faith planets, Neptune and Jupiter sat in religious Sagittarius, and he would have been very direct and outspoken with Mercury sitting in Aries. Is it no wonder that he actively preached terrorism?
The progressed and transiting planets for the past couple of days give a few main clues to why he met his fate right now. On the progressed chart, the transiting Moon was homing in on a conjunction with natal Pluto, lighting up the grand trine and the opposition. His progressed Sun and Mars were both trine to natal Uranus, so this was a very accident prone time for him. On the transits, transiting Pluto was trine his Sun so transformational and possibly associated with an easy death. Trines can make things happen, both very good and sometimes very bad. Transiting Uranus and Mars were both trine to the Jupiter/Neptune conjunction, which suggest and accident waiting to happen, almost lulled into a false sense of security, taking unnecessary risks. Maybe he was duped into dropping his guard for a day or two allowing the Americans to get him.
The killer aspect for me however, if you mind the pun, is one which is subtle, hard to spot but deadly. The transiting North Node was conjunct Al-Awlaki’s natal Vertex. The vertex is known in some circles as “Destiny’s Gate” a very, very sensitive part of the chart. In astrology, official description of the Vertex is calculated as being the point located at the intersection of the Ecliptic (path of the Sun) and the Prime Vertical, a plane that divides the celestial sphere into front and back. Yes, I can’t work it out either?? What I do know is that often when a connection is made by a transiting planet or in this case the North Node, it is quite simply a turning point in one’s life. Now the connection with the North Node is fateful because with Nodal connections you have little or no choice in what is going to happen. Fate takes it’s course. Celeste Teal in her wonderful book “Lunar Nodes” describes this connection as a time when one feels isolated, a time when you meet with destined encounters and experiences and also a time when one is “quite vulnerable to being hurt by others”.
It is so ironic that the bomb maker met his fate at the hands of a bomb he didn’t know was coming. He got his just reward. Karma showed by the North Node was played out to the full and thankfully, Al-Awlaki can do no more harm.