Edward Snowden is a former CIA technical employee who is as you will probably now know is on the run in Hong Kong after leaking to the UK newspaper the Guardian that US agencies were secretly tapping billions of emails, mobile phone calls and internet histories. It appears that this has caused great embarrassment in the US, especially in making common knowledge the existence of the secret scheme, codenamed “Prism”. Snowden has currently disappeared, and has become US enemy suspect number one as the US authorities scour Hong Kong for some semblance of his whereabouts.
He was born on 21st June 1983 in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and is either a Sun Gemini or Sun Cancer (the Sun is on the cusp) with a Scorpio Moon that has a need to know everything. With that Sun on the Aries Point (initial degree of a Cardinal sign) there was also the likelihood of him having some notoriety about him. The Sun is opposite to Neptune making him quite a sensitive, impressionable and idealistic soul who can get lost in his own little world, in dreams and in fantasies. He has no planets in earth signs and this would not help him to keep his feet firmly on the ground and give him some much needed common sense. He is impatient with Sun and Mars together in Gemini and someone who is always on the go and also needing of information, and with these two planets opposed to Neptune combined with that intensely secretive and controlling Moon in Scorpio, the lure of working behind the scenes in a technical role for an security agency like the CIA represented by Mars here would have been compelling for him.
Edward has a risk taking Jupiter Uranus in Sagittarius opposed to Mercury in Gemini which to me screams freedom of information, and it also bestows on him a very exceptional technical and scientific talent. I am sure that this need for freedom and independence of information must have conflicted with the intensely private and secretive Scorpio Moon and the Sun/Mars opposition to Neptune in him. He has a very intense Saturn/Pluto conjunction in Libra the planet of justice and balance at the focus point of a wedge formation connecting to that Sun/Mars/North Node opposite to Neptune. This combination would have driven him to think of the consequences of the actions being taken in his work, and the kind of information that was being gleaned. You can almost see the conflict going on here inside him. He was contracted to work for the CIA because of the attraction of the type of work involved and the fact that he was good at what he did, but once inside the machine, his ambition (Saturn) and intense desire (Pluto) for justice and freedom (Libra) of what he believed in, would have worked away at him. The conflict was do you tow the line and hide something you intensely oppose, or do you spill the beans?
The tipping point on this came as transiting Pluto made an exact inconjunct aspect to his natal Mercury activating the opposition to Uranus and Jupiter, and the adjusting and separating aspect empowered him to go to the foreign (Jupiter) press (Mercury) about these internet (Uranus) secrets (Pluto), fulfilling his need for freedom (Uranus/Jupiter) of information (Mercury). Pluto was also making a quindecile to his Mars North Node conjunction where Jupiter was passing over, activating that wedge formation in his natal chart. This double hit initiated the action (Mars) that he took, he would have seen it as his destiny (North Node) to do so. It also prompted him to go overseas (Jupiter) and escape (Neptune) the US. Also notice that transiting Mars had been opposing his Jupiter and latterly Uranus and Neptune was squaring this conjunction, again impelling him to take a huge risk and tell the world (Jupiter) about the technological (Uranus) deception (Neptune).
If you put Edward against the US natal chart, the one I now use is the Act of the Confederacy chart of 15th Nov 1777, Edward’s chart and the action he took fits in incredibly well to it. We see his natal Saturn Pluto conjunction (ambition to work in powerful and controlling way) sitting in the US 8th house of secrets, control and change, square to the US Pluto in the hidden 12th house, the house of prisons, the place were he will eventually end up once he is caught.
His Mercury sits in the US 4th house of opposition at the midpoint of technological Uranus and the IC, the point of the chart which sits at the heart of the US nation and the homeland. His need for information opposes the Midheaven, the people running the country and the nation’s public reputation, and his Jupiter/Uranus conjunction which opposes his Mercury sits in the 9th house of overseas publications conjunct to the Midheaven. His Mercury also sits at the point of a Yod, connected to the US South Node and Mars conjunction and the US Mercury Saturn conjunction by two quincunxes. As I mentioned before transiting Pluto sitting on the Mars/South Node conjunction was activating that Yod, bringing a detrimental (South Node) action (Mars) about information (Mercury) that would affect the US administration (Saturn). Also you can see that his natal Mars/North Node is inconjunct and thus at odds with the US Sun and his natal Sun Neptune opposition sits square to the US Neptune. In his idealist way, he lifted the veil on the toxic deceptive world that goes on beyond the prying eyes of the US public.
