Astrology News Service

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Shocking New Years’ Attacks, 2025

January 4, 2025

By Sue Kientz

New Years festivities in 2025 were seriously marred by several deadly incidents in the United States and elsewhere. When these horrific incidents happen, people always want to know, why did this happen, and why now? While most give up on obtaining an answer, astrologers look up the celestial conditions to see what is going on. For this string of incidents, the configuration of greatest interest involves Moon approaching Pluto in Aquarius while both oppose Mars in Leo, as large asteroid Vesta and Dwarf Planet(1) Haumea oppose Dwarf Planet Eris.  Each point group lies 90 degrees from each other, forming what astrologers call a Grand Cross that represents enormous tension that begs to be released, and sometimes that release is not handled safely or well.

The first shocker that emerged was the New Orleans truck-ramming event(2) in the early hours of New Year’s Day. At about 3:15 a.m., a man in a white pickup truck turned onto Bourbon Street in the French Quarter and proceeded to mow down pedestrians. The driver, Shamsud-Din Jabbar,(3) purposely killed 14 and injured 35 others before being shot to death when he exited his vehicle, guns blazing. His previously recorded videos later explained his intent to conduct an ISIS-inspired attack on Americans. When he initiated his deadly rampage, the Moon (29 Capricorn), representing one’s emotional state, was conjunct Pluto (1 Aquarius), descriptive of that part of our psyche that is fearful of losing control, failing, being shamed by others, and both opposed Leo Mars, which can present as a lavish, extravagant fit of anger. Now add the bisecting opposition of asteroid Vesta (29 Libra), symbolic of tasks one must handle, messes to clean up, and therefore telltale marker of a disaster(4), conjunct Haumea (3 Scorpio), powerful symbol of the deep desire to change, heal oneself, fix things, and if thwarted, liable to self-destruct or even hurt or kill others, and this pair opposes Eris, representative of Other People, the not-self, convenient target for blame or to wreak anger against if one lacks compassion, self-awareness, or self-control.(5) Why would all this so intimately affect Jabbar? Because his Sun (2 Scorpio) and Venus (0 Scorpio) are conjunct the Vesta/Haumea end of the Grand Cross. His finances were a mess, a second marriage had ended (both represented by Venus), and with his business also failing, his life prospects (symbolized by the Sun) looked bleak to him, thus he chose to end his life in a horrific lashing out.

Just hours later, in Las Vegas, a Tesla Cybertruck exploded in front of the Trump Hotel International,(6) sending debris flying up into the sky, causing numerous injuries but no fatalities save for the truck’s driver who was found to have shot himself just after detonating the explosives in his vehicle. We know less about Matthew Livelsberger and his personal problems at present, but we do have his birthdate(7) and, similarly, we see Livelsberger’s personal planets involved with the Moon/Pluto-Mars-Vesta/Haumea-Eris high-tension figure: his Sun (29 Cancer), conjunct the Grand Cross Mars, is square (90 degrees) his Jupiter (28 Aries) on one side, and square his Pluto (7 Scorpio) on the other, creating a T-square of tension, fear (Pluto), and extravagant hopes and expectations (Jupiter). Livelsberger too has been terribly disappointed, broken, and crushed by his life, and chose to exit in a dramatic, public spectacle.

If astrology can represent such terrible incidents, you might ask, why would just a few of them take place? Why wouldn’t many similar disasters fill the news? The answer is, there were other incidents reported that caused death and injury in a sudden, bizarre way. Shortly before midnight New Year’s Eve in Honolulu, Hawaii, illegal fireworks misfired and killed three people and injured dozens(8), and this happened as the Moon (29 Capricorn) was in almost the identical position as when Jabbar was turning his car into a killing machine in New Orleans. And across the world in Montenegro, a bar fight led to a murderous spree by one of its participants, who went to various locations and gunned down 12 people(9) including friends and family members, ending it by shooting himself in the head. All this senseless death started as the Moon (3 Aquarius) was moments from the same position as when the Cybertruck exploded in Las Vegas. These are so extreme that they became news, but you can be certain that this Grand Cross caused many other, less dramatic and bloody but still upsetting and anger-filled incidents in all sorts of places. In fact, the Moon (28 Aries) hits another end of the Grand Cross this coming Tuesday, January 7, 2025, beginning noon PST, conjunct Eris (24 Aries), opposite Vesta (1 Scorpio) and Haumea (3 Scorpio), and square Pluto (1 Aquarius) and Mars (29 Cancer), so keep an eye out for trouble and see what the news reports on that day.

Title Image credit: Background image, The Scream by Edvard Munch, Public Domain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Scream.jpg ; symbols added by author: Eris (left icon), Mars (bottom), Vesta and H for Haumea (right), and Moon and Pluto (top).

Notes and References

  1. Kientz, Sue, “Dwarf Planet Basics,” Astrology News Service, 6 November 2024, https://astrologynewsservice.com/articles/dwarf-planet-basics/
  2. 1 January 2025, 3:15 a.m. CST, New Orleans, LA, “2025 New Orleans Truck Attack,“ Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_New_Orleans_truck_attack
  3. Jabbar, Shamsud-Din, 26 October 1982, Beaumont, TX, 7 a.m. CST used, X.com, https://x.com/Tom_Winter/status/1874504518156824606?prefetchTimestamp=1735965658970&mx=2
  4. Kientz, Sue. “Tidy Vesta Can Warn Us of Messy Disasters,” Journal of Research of the American Federation of Astrologers, vol. 15 (April 2015), https://moreplutos.com/articles/VestaCanWarnofDisasters-SueKientz_AFAJournalofResearch-vol15.pdf
  5. Kientz, Sue, “Eris, the Discomforting Other,” Astrological Journal, September/October 2014, pp. 35-40, https://moreplutos.com/articles/Eris-SueKientz_AstrologicalJournal-Sept-Oct2014.pdf
  6. 1 January 2025, 8:39 a.m. PST, Las Vegas, NV, “Trump International Hotel Las Vegas Tesla Cybertruck Explosion,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_International_Hotel_Las_Vegas_Tesla_Cybertruck_explosion
  7. Livelsberger, Matthew Alan, 22 July 1987, Bucyrus, OH, 7 a.m. EDT used, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_International_Hotel_Las_Vegas_Tesla_Cybertruck_explosion
  8. 31 December 2024, 11:59 p.m. AHST, Honolulu, HI, “‘War Zone Injuries’: New Year’s Fireworks Explosions Kill 3 in Honolulu,”  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/02/us/hawaii-fireworks-explosion-deaths.html
  9. 1 January 2025, 5:30 p.m. CET, Cetinje, Montenegro, “12 dead in Montenegro shooting,” https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2025/jan/03/12-dead-in-montenegro-shooting/

Sue Kientz specializes in astrology’s mid-sized planetary bodies, the largest asteroids and massive trans-Neptunian dwarf planets Eris, Makemake, Haumea, Sedna, and others discovered this century. Her experience researching the latter led to her book More Plutos, which received a 2016 eLit Award. More Plutos also addresses how resonance, fractals, and intuition can explain how astrology works. Sue argues that the dwarf planets are astrology’s great breakthrough, equivalent to what microorganisms did for medicine. She currently serves as Assistant Editor for the Astrology News Service.

Website: MorePlutos.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/MorePlutos

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