Monthly Archives: March 2025

Genesis of a Scoop

On March 11, 2025, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic magazine, a left-leaning publication, received an invitation to a Signal group chat from U.S. national security advisor Mike Waltz.  On March 13, on the verge of a total lunar eclipse, he was added to the group.  Surprised it wasn’t a hoax, Goldberg read text discussions by top national security officials about a planned attack on Houthis in Yemen.  To his surprise, he found it was real on March 15, when the attacks were carried out on schedule.

How was the journalist privy to the news?  Of course Mercury was about to turn retrograde.  And the eclipse at 24 Virgo was right on Goldberg’s Sun and Mercury.  But there are many other astrological correlations.

Jeffrey Goldberg was born on September 22, 1965 according to Google, in a tumultuous year featuring Saturn in Pisces opposite the Uranus-Pluto conjunction in Virgo.  People born in 1965 may be faced with instability and even upheavals in their lives from time to time.  And Saturn is a singleton the editor’s chart, making its influence more important in timing and events.

Goldberg’s Sun and Mercury in Virgo are classic placements for a reporter, writer and editor who needs to communicate the facts.  (We don’t have a time of birth, but the Sun is in Virgo all day.)  Jupiter in Cancer, the sign of its exaltation, is also an excellent placement for publishing, helping him assertively reach out for news as it squares his Sun.  Venus, Mars and Neptune are all in Scorpio, known for research and ferreting out the truth.  Mars conjunct Neptune sextiles the Virgo planets, and Venus trines Saturn.  So there is some interference with the major oppositions, with outlets for the opposition energies.  Goldberg’s Moon is in Leo, giving him a sense of pride and more leadership ability than all the Virgo placements might suggest.  In interviews, he gives a low-key, matter-of-fact Virgo report with a dignified Leo presentation.

The events that unfolded are a good example of hard aspects activating events.  We wouldn’t have necessarily thought they were “lucky,” but they proved to be so for the journalist.  Goldberg was added to the chat group on March 13 at 4:28 p.m. according to USA Today’s timeline.  Aside from the eclipse, the transiting Ascendant squared his Mars and conjoined his Moon, allowing him entry.  Jupiter in Gemini squared his natal Saturn-Uranus-Pluto oppositions, creating a big story.

Transiting Saturn had recently trined the editor’s Mars and opposed his Mercury and Sun; certainly his experience and long time in the industry were responsible for his phone number being on Mike Walz’s list in the first place (nearly 60, Goldberg recently experienced his second Saturn return).  Neptune also nearly exactly opposed his Sun (3 minutes approaching), and this certainly represented an error but also a revelation.  (Natal Neptune has mainly flowing aspects.)

But as a startling and unexpected story, we have to look to Uranus.  Transiting Uranus was close to trining Goldberg’s dignified Mercury, with a boost from Mars in Cancer, which trined his Scorpio planets and sextiled his Uranus and Pluto in Virgo.

It’s nice that so many tried-and-true astrological themes are present in this story.  But it’s even more interesting to see how Goldberg’s natal planets were activated by hard aspects, perfectly in keeping with appropriate astrological motifs, but in a way that perhaps we wouldn’t have exactly forecast.  Then again, Uranus isn’t called unpredictable for nothing!

Goods of the Dead

I always feel that Evangeline Adams introduced me to genealogy.  Her Pluto conjoined my Moon, and as I researched her life, I uncovered many government and church records that provided key information about her.  After that, I more easily researched other families as well as my own.  Pluto unearths things and can be relentless in its action.  It kept me focused on genealogy research for a long time.

The National Archives had their records center on Varick Street in downtown Manhattan in the 1990s, and I spent some time there.  It was a quiet, library-like setting with helpful clerks.  You’d first search for a name in Soundex listings, which phonetically accommodated different spellings.  That would lead you to particular Census records, all originals scanned onto microfilm.  As I scrolled through the wide microfilm rolls on the big old microfilm viewing machine, it was exciting to find Evangeline and her family in Andover in 1890 and Boston in 1900 Census records.

Chatting with an adopted woman who was searching for her birth parents, I realized that I could find my own family records, too.  I returned another day to find my father’s family in Manhattan and Brooklyn and my mother’s in central New York in the early 20th century.

With home-loving Cancer on my fourth house cusp and its ruler, the Moon, prominent in the first, I’ve always found family stories compelling.  But I think that Saturn in the 9th trine my Ascendant gives me the ability to find old records.  To my mind, Saturn, ruling old things and permanence, as well as the Moon, are key significators for genealogy.

I still remember an old astrology book describing Saturn careers having to do with “goods of the dead,” one of those ultra-specific key phrases that left me shaking my head.  It wasn’t until I was in my forties that I took a part-time job with an estate lawyer.  He had Saturn in Cancer and handled wills and court proceedings for heirs,  marshaled decedents’ assets and distributed them.  Goods of the dead, I realized one day with a start.

But the best part of the job for me was access to Ancestry.com, which helped us create family trees and prove family relationships in court.  I did much of the genealogical research for many estates over fifteen-plus years, regularly proving ancestry to first cousins of the decedents.

I was in the Kings County Surrogate’s Court record room one day waiting for the clerks to bring me another old file, when I realized that some of my own ancestors’ records might be there, too.  Transiting Pluto was close to conjoining my Saturn at the time, and it opened up an entirely new set of records to me.  I quickly looked in the old fashioned card catalog and found the index card that was created when my great-grandfather died in 1936, and the clerks pulled the file.  My grandfather had been the executor, and it was fascinating to see the will, so similar in language and format to that used today, with all of my grandfather’s siblings’ information and releases included.  Saturn also relates to consistency and tradition, which still exists in many court papers and proceedings.

Saturn rules our ancestors, and the Moon relates to our family connections.  Both also have to do with cemeteries, another wonderful place to dig up family history.  We found a photo of my great-grandmother on the family monument she had purchased 100 years ago in Holy Cross cemetery in Flatbush, just a few miles away.

These, too, are what they used to call “goods of the dead.”  Some of the old associations are still valid today.