I read this morning of angry reactions from within the astrological community - particularly from one twelfth of it, perhaps! - that Facebook planned cryptocurrency is to be called ‘the Libra’ (see, for example, here). “In addition to the Roman unit of measure for weight that was associated with coins, the name”, according to the communications chief executive, “also comes from the astrological sign represented by balanced scales and partly by the French word ‘libre’, meaning freedom”. Interestingly, it’s already inspired the publication of astrological analyses in the conventional and otherwise astrologically hostile press, for example here in the Guardian.
I’m always intrigued when a company chooses an astrological name; sometimes this is done with apparent astrological awareness (‘Taurus’, the accountancy and financial investment firm in Christchurch) and sometimes not (‘Saturn’, telecommunications company; ‘Neptune’, a data-science company and a private investment company!). So let’s have a quick look at the chart from the announcement of the Libra. Do bear in mind, however, that this is not yet the chart of the Libra itself - this will arise out of the actual launch of the currency, said to be some time in 2020. So see this, perhaps, more of a conception than a birth chart. It still, however, may give us an interesting image of the impulse behind it, what themes it may be carrying.
But first, a quick note on this chart: after a pretty thorough search on the web I couldn’t pinpoint a stated time for the public release of the White Paper on the 18th June this year. The earliest time I could find - and which was on many news reports - was 02:00 PDT, timed, I suspect, for the beginning of the day in New York. I am locating the chart for San Fransisco, where the public launch was held that day. Another astrologer on the web used Geneva as the location, as the company is registered there, but I am more of the opinion that with this particular release we should be using the location of the creative genesis of the project rather than its legal home.
Interestingly the financially astute and authoritative signs of Cancer and Capricorn are strong, both by planet placements and for bring across the 4th-10th house axis. Yet the ruling planet, carrying something of the vitality or purposefulness of this initiative, Mars in Cancer, struggles in its fall and from challenging oppositions from a power-hungry Saturn and Pluto pairing. This doesn’t so much as hint but screams of defensive reactions from conventional institutions such as the banking community as well as national and trans-national political structures. However, with this Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Capricorn suggesting these being under almost terminal strain at the moment, could the Libra be yet another significant trigger to an enforced transformation of how we understand money moving around the world? And fascinating to see the total solar eclipse of early July falling on the IC, potentially exposing shaky foundations. I find this configuration fascinating, and worthy of a lot more analysis were I more sure of the birth time.
The only other planetary theme I would like to point out is the significantly placed rising Uranus. This slow-moving outer-planet, that has only recently moved into its 7-year transit of the money-linked earth sign of Taurus, carries themes of reform, radical changes of direction, reinvention, and technological innovation - all of which, being in Taurus, can be seen as applying to the sphere of finances in the Libra currency initiative. Perhaps we might see the Libra initiative of almost paradigmatic of this transit, given its evolution and release at its very early stages.
Links with Zuckerberg’s chart are made difficult by the absence of a known birth time, but the links with FaceBook’s (first trade) chart are interesting: the Uranus mention above will be moving through Facebook’s stellium of four planets in Taurus (including both the Sun and Moon) and the Midheaven over these coming 7 years, showing the importance of the Libra as a game-changing initiative for an increasingly unstable Facebook.
Oh, and two more things - I couldn’t help but notice that there are no planets in Libra in this chart! Only the cusp of the 8th house - the house of “other people’s money”! But also, in a subtle but delightful cosmic joke, the Sun here is in Gemini; the Sun in the chart for Gemini, a bitcoin started by the Mark Zuckerberg twin-nemeses Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, is in Libra! And isn’t in interesting how the logo has more in common with the glyph for Aquarius than Libra!
When I have more time, and are more sure I have the right release moment, I may add to the above interpretation. And I look forward to seeing what the first trade chart looks like when the Libra is finally released.