The astrology of the Troy Davis execution

Despite the efforts of Pope Benedict, former President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former Congressman Bob Barr (R) and former FBI Director William Sessions, Troy Davis (born October 9, 1968, time unknown) was put to death for the murder of police officer Mark MacPhail in 1989.  At the time transiting Saturn was sitting on his Sun.

Mr. Davis’s innocence was widely proclaimed, not only by his supporters but also by seven out of the nine witnesses that testified against him at trial.  Mr. Davis’s case is not the only one where an innocent man has been put to death for a crime he almost certainly did not commit.  The Innocence Project has a long list of convicted felons who were later exonerated, and here in North Carolina where I live the entire State Bureau of Investigation has been under investigation for errors ranging from incompetence to actual criminal behavior.

There are some interesting connections between the  chart of Mr. Davis and the (Sibley) chart for the United States.  The US chart contains an opposition between Saturn (testing and achievement) and Chiron (wounding and healing) that denotes the need of the nation to pay attention to the wounds that it inflicts on itself and others.  Saturn sits in the tenth house of the US chart, the house of the governmental body, where the “body of law” (Saturn) becomes of paramount importance at the expense of the truth, which we see with the presence of Neptune (illusion) in the ninth house of truth and ideology.

Mr. Davis  had an opposition of the Sun to Saturn, and his Sun sat on the Saturn of the US chart, with his Saturn sitting right on the US Chiron.  Mr. Davis was a man of peace:  Venus ruled both his Libra Sun and his Taurus Moon.  He was likely extremely insecure with retrograde Saturn (self-doubt) opposite his Sun, and with retrograde Mercury (mind and communication) opposite retrograde Saturn he probably had difficulty in school, perhaps with learning disabilities.

Neptune (creativity and confusion) opposed his Moon which generally suggests a daydreamer, yet his Mars was in Virgo which tends to suggest an individual who is eager to serve and help others.  Individuals with strong Neptune placements in the chart often find themselves scapegoats during their life since there tends to be confusion surrounding the personality.

There is nothing in Mr. Davis’s chart that would suggest violence or criminal behavior, but there is also nothing that would lead an astrologer to predict that he would end up in this kind of horrific situation.  At the time of his arrest his progressed Mars was exactly conjunct progressed Pluto within nine minutes, an extremely tight conjunction, which could lead an astrologer to predict that something significant would soon occur that would involve dealing with issues of violence or power conflicts.  In addition, his progressed Sun was in an exact quincunx to the lunar nodes, again suggesting that something big was likely to occur.

It appears that this event will have significant ramifications for the United States as a nation. If we look at the US (Sibley) chart at the time of Mr. Davis’s execution (September 21st, 2011 at 11:08 pm in Savannah Georgia), the ascendant of the execution chart sits right on the descendant of the US chart.  The ascendant/descendant axis in a national chart has to do with the way the nation defines its identity (ascendant) through the way others are treated (descendant).  The United States is in a 30-year Saturn Return cycle right now, and Saturn in the execution chart is exactly square to the transiting Moon which is in its own sign of Cancer, the sign of feeling and emotion, reflecting the desperation felt by Davis’s many supporters as they tried to stave off his impending murder.

This national acceptance of executing people for whom there is at least a reasonable doubt and despite DNA evidence that would exonerate them is a cancer on the soul of the nation that must be healed.  I tend to try to take a broader view of these situations, and I do believe that sometimes individuals enter into a spiritual contract to become the face of a problem that needs to be witnessed, and perhaps this is the case of Mr. Troy Davis.  I hope that his death is not then in vain, and that his growing numbers of supporters do not fall back asleep and avert their eyes when this happens again, as it almost surely will.