Mars retrograde in Leo and the Rise of the CEO Assassin
In times of monsters, folk heroes emerge. Mars stationing retrograde in theatrical Leo, en route to its second Pluto opposition, via the ongoing saga of Luigi Mangione.
“He was a realist; he expected nothing.
He calmly let himself be led to slaughter,
dreaming of a new order of things.
It was as if someone else lived in him;
a tamper of horses, a tree planter, a man with a bright face.
But he was not that man."
(Excerpted from Czelaw Milosz’s “The Assassin”)
I think we can all agree that the past week has been an L for “nothing ever happens-cels”. After a bit of an eerie lull after the election, Mars is making moves. Its retrograde through early Leo will see tension building all through December, with the second exact opposition to Pluto occurring on January 1st. The first opposition perfected at the every end of Capricorn-Cancer, casting a long shadow over the US election result and manifesting as a late victory for the Plutocrats. If Peter Thiel’s tweaked out recent interview is anything to go by, the oligarchs are experiencing their first taste of real human frailty: a dose of their own Plutonic medicine, which no amount of designer drugs can mask. In the meantime, Trump has stacked his cabinet with some 14 billionaires, prepared to strip America for parts and sell it to the highest bidder. Interesting times, indeed.
The momentum that propelled Trump’s victory was, for the most part, Pluto’s death rattle in Capricorn. But the real drama of the coming months will bear a strikingly different energetic signature. By the time Neptune and Saturn ingress into Aries next spring, and Uranus enters a sign as fast as light photons — Gemini — the new world order will be cooking with gas. I see Mars’ retrograde as a foreshadowing of the upheaval to come, particularly these oppositions lighting up the Aquarius-Leo polarity. And what a spectacle already.
As the saying goes, there are decades where nothing happens and then weeks where decades happen. The absconding of Assad from Damascus as a result of the rebel insurgency, South Korea martial law, France’s government collapsing, a major uptick in UAP and drone sightings in the skies over New Jersey, and then of course the dispatching of United Health Insurance CEO, Brian Thompson, by an assassin the internet has collectively decided is “baby girl” (more on this below). And we’re less than a month into Pluto in Aquarius.
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Mars began its tactical retreat in the sign of Leo on December 6th, making its heel turn in the first decan of this fixed fire sign. Saturn rules this decan, tempering the more show-boaty qualities of Leo — or at least focusing the blade of the spotlight on a specific, crucial monologue. It’s a place where we encounter a flaming serpent with a lion’s heads, where “fixed fire” lights the lamps of the spine in a kundalini-like wave of energy. The actor or the athlete, head held erect, has been preparing for this single, precise release of energy for years — potentially their whole lives.
This decan brings to mind the pressure of the audience’s appraisal or the countless hours of dress rehearsal before the curtain drops. The performativity of Leo in this decan is not merely “light entertainment”. With Saturn bearing down on this place, there’s a purpose, a finely-honed message, and an awareness of the collective catharsis that powerful acts of theatre can bring — whether on traditional stages or in the larger theatre of our world.
The Five of Wands is the card that rules this decan, an archetype of struggle, sport, and competition. The instability of this card means the spectacle is constantly shape-shifting, costume changes made in rapid time. In the Thoth, it is the flame of dispute, bringing to mind the Olympic torch that sacralizes those particular games beginning. So yes, there can be a ritualized dimension to the melee that unfolds in this card. A certain choreography sculpting its chaos, perhaps. If the Six of Wands, Leo decan 2, is the victory parade — presided over by Jupiter and its abundant laurels — we don’t get there without the struggle of this Saturnian decan. The 5 of Wands brings the Herculean trials that the hero (or anti-hero) actually cuts his teeth on. It’s the unfurling of their lore in real time.
This scene from the absolutely deranged and delightful technicolor spectacle, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, reminds me so much of the energy of the Five of Wands:
Mars in Leo, especially in its opposition to Pluto, also makes me think of the archetype of the “game criminal” in 18th century England. At this time, public hangings were a form of entertainment, with pamphlets being sold of the criminal's last poems or songs in prison (often forged). There was sometimes a frenzy after the hanging of the spectators clamouring for a piece of clothing, or even a section of the rope, to take home as grim souvenirs. Within the macabre festival atmosphere, the figure of the game criminal emerged, determined to meet this ghoulish turn of society and put on a show — to “die well”, and even dashingly, on their own terms. The criminal may go so far as to step off the ladder prematurely, effectively choosing their own moment of death. A last “fuck you” to the state-mandated termination of their lives. Andrea MacKenzie has written on this archetype:
“One of the most familiar, and certainly the most colorful, of all early eighteenth-century figures is that of the “game criminal”---the bold and dashing highwayman or street robber who dressed like a beau, drank like a lord, and went without tears or trembling to the gallows, cheerfully playing the leading role in that most famous of Augustin performances, public execution at Tyburne.”
It was the late 18th century when Pluto last travelled through Aquarius. The brutality of public hangings as carnivalesque entertainment is hard to imagine now. But let’s be honest: the corporate heist of America by the oligarchs is just another flavor of death cult. The fact that healthcare is a profit vector, with ordinary Americans having to choose between life-changing operations and bankruptcy, is setting the stage for an equally explosive season of Pluto in Aquarius to come. I truly believe that as long as people believe that they have redress of injustice, whether through courts, reform, or voting, they will generally choose non-violent options. But when the collective have absolutely no hope of changing things within the system, this is when vigilante folk heroes emerge. Whether it was Trump or Harris voted in last November, the health insurance companies would continue to crush human lives to create more capital. And US bombs would continue to rain down on Gaza. Same as it ever was.
The empowerment of the collective is absolutely a theme of Pluto traveling through one of the “human signs”, with potent new ideas and ideologies transforming society on a structural and systemic level. But this is also another epoch of Pluto answering to Saturn, the archetype of death and mortality. A planet who is about to enter the sign of its gruesome fall. Aries. This is the sign where the Sun is exalted and Kings are crowned — but when Saturn travels here falls of grace can afflict our most powerful figures. As we’ve seen in recent days, the power-balance is already shifting. Our corporate executioners, who have enriched themselves from the suffering and avoidable death of so many Americans for so long, are now feeling what it’s like to be hunted. Luigi Mangione, as the Claims Adjuster, is an avatar of the shift from death being controlled by the State to the common people taking Saturn’s scythe into their own hands.
We know how Pluto in Aquarius played out in France, as the reign of terror put some 16,000 French aristocrats and nobles to death by guillotine. The swift precision of this dispatching is very much in line with Aquarius’ rigidly ideological bent. The water bearer is visionary, progressive, oriented toward the collective — but in a way that’s often cold and inflexible. If any sign can choose violence as a revolutionary tactic, in service of a higher, collective good: it’s Aquarius.
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All of this is to say, Mars’ underworld journey brings the drama of 2025’s cosmic changing of the guard down to earth. Anytime cosmos’ warrior makes its heel turn, it often manifests as a distress signal of larger, subterranean tensions. Pluto’s new plot lines in Aquarius will unfold over decades but Mars is the canary in the coal mine. The depth charge revealing the true lay of our collective land — and where the fissures are forming. Whereas Mars in Cancer, taking on Pluto’s Goliath, was very much a soul-weary warrior in the sign of its fall, Mars in Leo finds itself in peregrine condition with full freedom to roam. It’s absolutely vigilante-coded with a dash of derring-do.
Anytime we’re talking about Leo, optics are at play. Luigi conjuring perfect chiaroscuro, while being shuttled into a police car, is a fascinating manifestation of this decan. The very fact of Luigi’s physical beauty is part of the potency of this moment. The New York Times, in a hilarious tell, has now issued an order to stop publishing his images in their coverage of the story (and yeah: the mugshots look like they could be painted onto a Grecian urn or minted onto a Roman coin of yore). But it’s also the picture emerging of a man who is socially adept, considerate, thoughtful, and well-liked. This is exactly what the establishment most fears. The CEO wasn’t murdered by a mentally-ill incel loner with a long list of other crimes. This was an Ivy League Italian-American tech-bro turned vigilante who decided “something had to happen” — even if a life full of promise would be sacrificed in the process.
It’s been fascinating pursuing the comment sections of alt-right, controlled opposition figures like Ben Shapiro and Tim Pool, who have predictably both sided with the CEO. Even their followers are turning against them, as it becomes increasingly clear who is funding these so-called "anti-establishment" figures. Even Elon Musk had to drop his edgelord schtick to Tweet that “actually guys, killing CEOs is not based” — his young child riding on his shoulders in every recent public appearance, notably. All of this is to say, anything that makes the billionaires of this world feel just a little more vulnerable — just a little more jumpy as they are shuffled from hotel lobbies into their private cars — is a very nice Christmas treat indeed.
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The astro sleuths on Reddit have already uncovered a birth date for Luigi (no time of birth unfortunately). If the data is sound, this would make Luigi a Taurus Sun with Mars — in its fall — closely conjunct his Sun. That applying Mars cazimi feels crucial. The ancients imagined the cazimi as a moment of fiery rebirth: the planet is permitted to slip into the golden temple of the Sun, to bend the ear of the king (or to get close enough to fulfill another mission). In the sign of Taurus, Mars answers to Venus, but she’s in the sign of Aries in Mangione’s chart. This mutual reception feels like an impossible loop. The ruler of his Virgo Moon, which would very much be preoccupied with systems of health, is in a Mars-ruled sign too. So much of this chart pivots on a Mars that’s in Icarus-mode, irresistibly drawn to the Sun even as its wings waxen joinery melts.
Uranus has been shaking up his very sense of self and purpose for the past few years too, further activating his Mars and its desire to do something tangible. To take matters into his own hands. What also struck me about his chart was his Mercury at 19 degrees of Aries, where we experienced a total solar eclipse last April: the “Great American Eclipse”, no less. This eclipse felt especially loud, considering its position on the exaltation degree of the Sun: a real king killer. This eclipse has accelerated the downfall of our most powerful solar figures, from rap moguls to Biden’s dropping out of the election race to the recent ousting of Assad. What made this eclipse even more intense was its conjunction with Chiron, the wounded healer, almost to the arc second.
As a digital footprint emerges in real time, it sounds like Luigi suffered some sort of surfing accident earlier this year that further exacerbated his back issues and potentially lead to sexual impotency too. He appears to have vanished into thin air for months after, no longer in contact with his family or friends. I wouldn’t be surprised if the accident occurred around that April eclipse, exactly conjoining his Mercury. The ruler of his Mercury, Mars, is in the sign of its fall, combust the Sun, making this planet a potentially weak point in his chart. He also just went through his nodal opposition and progressed New Moon, two pivotal turnings in young adult life that set the stage for the Saturn return. His Saturn is in Aries as well, yet another planet that finds itself in its fall in Luigi’s chart (echoing, perhaps, the conspiracy theories about his role as a CIA plant, a fall guy, as it were).
But it gets even more uncanny. The USA itself is in the midst of its Chiron return (which was exact just days ago), the Great American Eclipse in April further intensifying this transit. Over the course of this year, Chiron has slowly retrograded back to the same degree of the eclipse, where Luigi happens to have his natal Mercury. With his messenger in the sign of Aries, channeling the open wounds of Chiron, the gunshots were the message: the bullet casings engraved with “deny, defend, depose”. A desperate cri-de-couer capturing the pain, rage, and hopelessness of this powder-keg moment in America.
I cannot, in good faith, condone murder as a revolutionary tactic (I’m also not shedding any tears over a CEO who built his McMansion off the death and financial ruin of thousands of Americans). But like so many, I sympathize with the plight of this young man and the hopelessness that must've brought him to this moment of self-sacrifice. The only personal planet in his chart not connected to Mars — a sign connected to martyrs — is Jupiter, a wellspring of healing and inspiration in its watery domicile of Pisces. I’ve never witnessed such a powerful meme consensus, in my own tenure as a chronically online elder millennial, than what has cohered around “beautiful Luigi” in these past weeks. But this empowered Jupiter is also cordoned off from the rest of the chart… judging by the limited picture we have now without a time of birth.
Jupiter is a planet that creates great tents of social cohesion. Part of Luigi’s natal promise was to break down walls. And I think we’re seeing this in the larger class consciousness emerging online, just in time for Jupiter’s season. Though I have no idea if Luigi’s actions will grow into a larger movement, it has been cathartic to witness the dissolving of our illusory culture wars, which the elites have wielded for so long as a weapon of distraction. I don’t think there’s a person in America who hasn’t suffered, or has known somebody impacted, by these ghoulish insurance plans. This moment of solidarity, across party lines, could be a signal of where the tide is turning in 2025’s profound cosmic sea change to come. In times of monsters, anti-heroes have a way of emerging — for better or for worse.
And let’s not forget the ingress of Saturn and Neptune into Aries, where they will finally make their exact conjunction in February of 2026. Whatever sign Neptune lodges in offers clues as to what we venerate as a culture, as well as the ways we delude ourselves. Martian violence, aggression, and war will be fuelled by new waves of spiritualism and idealism. In terms of the deification of Luigi and the archetype he represents, I think we’re only seeing the beginning.
Or to quote Rimbaud: “Little eve of drunkenness, holy! were it only for the mask with which you gratified us. We affirm you, method! We don’t forget that yesterday you glorified each one of our ages. We have faith in the poison. We know how to give our whole lives every day.
Behold the time of the Assassins.”
Brilliant
Whoa! Extraordinary article. Thank you!