Johannes Mehserle, BART Police Shooter

Johannes Mehserle is the ex-Oakland BART Train police officer who killed a hand cuffed man in the back on New Year's Day. I wrote about the incident a few days ago. Mehserle has been charged with Murder and has surrendered to Oakland Police.

Can't vouch for its accuracy, but Mahalo.com and a SFGate.com article have listed a birth date for Mehserle. The chart is really incredible from an Astrological point of view. According to that website and the article which is available at this link:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/06/BAK61540MH.DTL:

Johannes Mehserle
b. Jan 5, 1981 (no place given)(probably wrong birth date so maybe scroll down and read about the similarity between this incident and the Stanford Prison Experiment).

Sun 16 Capricorn; Moon most likely Capricorn; NN 11 Leo

If this is correct, Mehserle was 3 degrees away from his Solar Return. And the Solar Return would involve a conjunction of the Sun to Mars and Pluto. According to the SFGate article, the shooting happened, Mehserle's wife gave birth to a Son and Mehserle had a Birthday. Wow. Mars can indicate violence, but it can also indicate having a Son.

If this birth date is correct, Mehserle is a Double Capricorn. On bad days this can indicate an overbearing streak and authoritarian attitude. On the other end of the Capricorn spectrum, this can indicate a heavy Karmic side involving intense lessons concerning guilt and shame, difficult lessons. Capricorns tend to have to play by the rules because they often can't get away much. The Leo North Node could repeat the Bossiness theme and Mars conjunct South Node could further emphasize this along with an impulsive streak that acts before it thinks.

Chiron squares the Nodes and Mars. This indicates some kind of wounding wound up in one's destiny with fighting and aggression. The Mars energy and the Saturn energy in this chart seem to have found a common ground in the police profession but in this case they are bringing out each other's bad side.

Mehserle's chart has two conjunctions which are exact to the degree: Venus-Neptune in Sagittarius and Jupiter-Saturn in Libra. These are pretty friendly aspects overall. The Venus-Neptune could get carried away especially in Sagittarius. Mehserle may have had a little bit of a hang over from too much partying the night before. The (natal) Jupiter-Saturn conjunction is conjunct the 12th house cusp to the degree of the event chart (Placidus). Jupiter-Saturn represents Society on a Social Level and its placement in Libra, sign of Diplomacy and Peace Making, is pretty bizarre. 12th House, though, represents Self-Undoing, Institutions like Jail and Martyrdom so perhaps this particular event seems to have brought out a streak of this. Mehserle's refusal to speak infuriated the public which has evolved into rioting on at least two occasions. 12th House often simply can't explain its actions.

Mehserle is caught in a lot of Cyclic Return activity. He is probably just past his 2dary Progressed Lunar Return and is heading in to his Saturn Return. This is significant since both his Sun and Moon disposit to Saturn. He is also going through his Nodal Opposition, a time of extreme confusion and having one's world turned upside down. If this is a true birth date this chart is really amazing because the Nodal Axis for the event was crossing the IC/MC axis which represents opposition between the Public and Authority. Interesting that these points are represented by the Moon and Saturn in one's chart as well. And the chart shows someone with strong Saturn-Moon contacts.

If Mehserle were born early in the day his Moon would have been getting hit by the Sun-Mars-Pluto transiting conjunction on the Aries Point. That's a highly emotional aspect. Bob Marks, who has done extensive research on the astrology of murderers, has pointed out the significance of Mars-Moon combination in violence. (www.bobmarksastrologer.com) He has also found how common Capricorn Moon is in murderers (which isn't the best news for those of us who have the natal aspect ourselves.)

I've listened to Malcolm Gladwell's book (either Tipping Point or Blink, can't remember) where Gladwell discusses research that has examined a sort of Mars-Moon-Pluto hormone effect in police officers which can lead to brutality. There's a chemical reaction that can happen which causes them to go into some sort of brutality mode if not checked. Astrology sure would have been useful to the police department in this case because Mehserle was in line to completely lose it around these dates.

Also interesting is the mutual Venus-Neptune conjunctions between the natal chart and the event chart. The conjunction in the natal chart is in Sagittarius and is in Aquarius in the event chart in the 4th house. Venus in the event chart rules the 7th House so I associated it with the Victim, Oscar Grant, but it certainly looks like the killer is indicated as well. These aren't planets I would associate with committing police brutality unless it's through some sort of gas or inaudible, invisible vibe. What's even more interesting is the fact that they both square the Uranus placement of the other. Mehserle's natal Venus-Neptune is apex to a t-square of the Saturn-Uranus opposition. One possible explanation could be the amount of video filming that was done at the event and the Internet "conviction" by the public.

The natal chart shows an unaspected Uranus in Scorpio indicating that for Mehserle, impulse and shock run deep and can bring on crises. Uranus is in a sign for 7 years so this is a generational planet showing general social consciousness. in this chart the Uranus energy can't flow with the rest of the planets of the chart so sudden crises could tend to ball up for this guy (if this is his chart). Progressed Mars is now squaring this Uranus which heightens the volatility and impulsiveness for Mehserle over the next few years. His nervous system will be under assault something which a double Capricorn already would struggle with due to deep perceptual abilities and difficult self-expression. Hopefully, he is not living with the rest of the prisoners in the jail.

By some sort of coincidence I was reminded here of the Stanford Prison Experiment which I studied on this blog a while back. This case for me seems to be about uncontrollable rage and police brutality rather than racism and this is what the Stanford experiment was about. A psychologist at Stanford University hired ordinary men to conduct a study on behaviors that occurred within a prison environment. Half were assigned roles as prisoners and half were assigned roles as prison guards and they all knew they were play acting their roles. Within a day the prisoners were rioting. The experiment, originally planned to last 14 days, was ended after 6 because the prison guards abused their authoritarian roles and became abusive.

I compared the charts between the New Year's incident and didn't find any significant similarities at first. But, I did find similarities between Mehserle's supposed birth chart and the Stanford experiment transits. The Leo-Aquarius nodal axis shows up in his natal chart and the Stanford Prison Experiment which took place between Aug. 14 and Aug. 20, 1971.

The NN for the Stanford Prison Experiment was at 15 Aquarius conjunct Mars 17 Aquarius Rx. This Nodal Axis is on the IC/MC of The BART Station shooting with NN at 10 Aquarius.
And Mehserle's Nodal Axis was on top of this. And he was going through his Nodal Opposition.

To add fuel to the fire, so to speak, Mehserle's natal Mars is at 5 Aquarius conjunct his South Node is at 11 Aquarius (NN at 11 Leo) which adds the violent streak.

(The Sun was conjunct Venus in the Stanford Prison Experiment and this was passing over the South Node at the time of the Stanford Prison Experiment.)

I talked about Mehserle's "alleged" (might as well use that word) volatile Uranus in Scorpio at 29 degrees. In alignment with that point, there was a huge transit aspect during The Stanford Prison experiment with Jupiter 30 Capricorn conjunct Neptune 1 Sagittarius and opposing Saturn at 6 Gemini. The Moon was in Taurus and passing through Gemini during the beginning days of the experiment so was setting off those points.

(If the Stanford Prison Experiment had been conducted during a Jupiter-Neptune trine maybe the prisoners would have gotten along.)

At any rate, going even further, way too far probably, down the line, we can look at the publication date for The Lord of the Flies. This book deals with the same type of brutality. It was published in 1954 while the NN was in Capricorn. This means that it was probably being written 1-2 years before while the NN was in Aquarius. Good time to observe the behaviors of people abusing authority in mass group settings, I guess.

In conclusion, all I can say is, boy, the Police really need to pay attention to Mars transits.