Horoscope Tony Hayward, Chief Executive BP: The US and a Neptunian spill

Tony Hayward the chief executive of BP finds himself in an unenviable position. Tony Hayward personifies BP – and his beleaguered face – is one that many Americans love to hate and who can blame them? An executive who is insensitive enough to say “I want my life back” – while ordinary Americans are living with the consequences of the worst environmental disaster in US history, is surely asking for problems. Though no exact birth time is available for Tony Hayward, we do have a date:  May 21 1957, Eton, UK.  I have chosen a Sun rising chart. The horoscope speaks volumes… but more than that, the chart resonates with current transits in the the horoscope of the USA, namely the passage of Neptune over the Moon. But let’s first look at the horoscope of Tony Hayward:

If born early in the morning, Hayward would be a Taurean. But which ever way you look at it, Mercury is an issue. Whether he likes it or not, Tony Hayward is the mouthpiece of BP – and here Mercury is in Taurus.  Mercury in Taurus people are normally pragmatic, they are slow to react, but here Mercury aspects Mars, in fall in Cancer. “I want MY life back”  is a stinging Cancerian plea. Mars might be sextile Mercury, but this sextile forms the base of a YOD to Saturn. The issue is responsibility Tony! Venus is on the midpoint of Mars/Mercury and opposes Saturn – which explains the pained look on Tony Hayward’s face. Mars is currently also picking up the transitting South Node of the Moon – as is the USA Sun – release of emotions.  The nodes always carry a sense of shared destiny and here it is a shared sense of personal loss. Cancer itself, suggests the womb, and the sea is the birthing place of life on our planet.

But the Moon (at 27 deg. 21 Auqarius) on the midheaven of this Sun rising chart is more than a little intriguing, because it reverberates with the current transit of Neptune over the Moon in the horoscope of the USA (Moon at 27 deg 10 Aquarius). While many astrologers are convinced that oil falls under the rulership Pluto – many others side with Neptune. I fall into this latter category. The first oil well in the US was dug by Edwin Drake – on Aug 23 1859  (source Ottowa Citizen newspaper). This was just 13 years after Neptune’s discovery. Neptune is suggestive of the mysterious, elusive quality of oil, our mythical dependence on it as an energy source and our un-yielding quest to find it. Crude oil has a huge gas exponent which is why  natural gas and oil are extracted together. Petroleum is also the raw material for many chemical products, including pharmaceuticals, solvents, fertilizers, pesticides, and plastics. It was in fact a a bubble of methane gas that caused the explosion that signalled the beginning of the Deep Water disaster. So while Pluto undoubtedly rules the big bucks and the development and interests of large multi-national companies, oil itself, is for me a Neptunian product.

On a much more deeper level, Neptune however does seem to be evocative of loss on a deep soul level. Neptune is linked to suffering but also to the idea of redemption. Barack Obama has his radix Sun, in close square to Neptune – and this oil spill could in some mysteriously Neptunian fashion be linked to his own “manifest destiny”. Though many in the US feel underwhelmed by Barack Obama’s Oval Office speech, future historians might view the committment Barack Obama made to search for new forms of fuel and energy supply, and to end the US dependency on oil, as being a major turning point in US history.

Elizabeth Hathway, DFAstrolS, QHP