Themis: Justice the goddess of Sagittarius

‘Themis who counsels straight’ (Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, 18)

Themis, Supreme Court of Queensland, Brisbane. Kiki 1196. Public Domain

Themis is the ruler of Sagittarius. She both prophecies and speaks the truth to power. She was the Titan goddess of divine law and order, traditional rules of conduct and laws of justice and morality, of respect for the gods, the rules of hospitality and good governance, the opening and closing of meetings and assemblies. She represents Justice, who is often shown blindfolded holding the scales of and sometimes a sword.

Speaking truth to power is dangerous and has always been so, especially when the powerful are invested in the military industrial complex.

Dealer in truths: Chelsea Manning: 17.12.1987. (no time) Crescent OK.

Another aspect of Sagittarius is truth bearing, many political activists are found in this sign, this is due to her ruler Themis, (Jupiter) who demands justice and truthfulness. Speaking truth to power.

‘I want people to see the truth.’[i]

Chelsea Manning, a trans-woman was a responsible for the greatest leak of classified data from the US army. She had a very difficult childhood, the child of two alcoholics and possibly suffering from foetal alcohol syndrome, born a boy she knew at an early age she was female and was subject to bullying at school and later in the army. Her Moon, Mars, Pluto conjunction in Scorpio shows again the hell that many Scorpios go through at a young age, which colours their choices in later life.

Freedom is the keyword for Sagittarius, they demand freedom to roam, to think, to share, to explore and woe betide anyone who tries to rein them in. Although we don’t have a birth time for Chelsea, we can see she has a stellium in Sagittarius of Mercury, Saturn, Sun and Uranus all closely conjunct. She would be bursting to speak her truth, (Mercury), with forensic accuracy (Saturn) it may even become her life’s work (Sun) and she would relish stirring things up a little (Uranus). We don’t know exactly where her Moon is but in any case it would be either conjunct that powerful Pluto ruler of Scorpio or the equally dynamic Mars in Scorpio. This is a warrior chart, no surprise then that she joined the army. Scorpio also shows secrets, so her Scorpio would have discovered the war crimes and her Sagittarius impelled her to speak about it to the whole world. I do think a mention of Uranus here, I believe Uranus is happy in Fire signs, and what would be more radical than to join the army and then expose their dirty secrets and at the same time assume your trans identity, and all the while be fearless in the face of massive pressure and bullying.

‘Sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society.’[ii]

Gifted in mathematics and computing, Chelsea joined the army as a way of coming to terms with her gender identity. While working as an intelligence analyst she was horrified at what she encountered in Iraq. The video of July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike where innocent civilians were massacred, shocked her and she leaked it,

‘The most alarming aspect of the video to me was the seeming delightful blood-lust the aerial weapons team happened to have. They dehumanized the individuals they were engaging and seemed to not value human life, and referred to them as quote-unquote ‘dead bastards,’ and congratulated each other on their ability to kill in large numbers. … For me, this seemed similar to a child torturing ants with a magnifying glass….I believed that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information contained [in the leaks], it could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan.’ [iii]

Looking at her transits, we see the same themes reappear. Between April 2010 and April 2011, she sent over 91,000 documents, some classified, some not, to an anonymous contact at Wiki Leeks, believed to have been Julian Asange. In April 2010 Uranus was at 28′ Pisces conjunct her North Node, while Saturn was at 28′ Virgo conjunct her South Node. The Nodes show where our lives are leading and what we have to do in this life, clearly her Stellium in Sagittarius which does include her Sun was triggered. Uranus is the radical and iconoclast, Saturn the Lord of Karma. Both planets exposing the hypocrisy of the Government and the army. In May 2010, Jupiter was at 28′ Pisces conjuncting the North Node, opposite Saturn, conjunct Uranus, while Saturn was opposite Uranus. Jupiter and Uranus continued to transit the North Node and each other until January 2011. Jupiter, truth, the law, and maybe Wiki Leaks itself expanded and amplified the effects of Uranus. Finally, in April 2011, Chelsea had her Jupiter return at 19′ Aries.

Chelsea was arrested and court-martialed in July 2013, the North Node was transiting across her Pluto, Moon, Mars conjunction in Scorpio between 12-15’degrees, showing the might and violence of the army and government, at the same time Saturn was at 5′ Scorpio and might well have been conjunct her Moon as we don’t know the exact time of birth. Her Scorpio planets were triggered by her trial, she was sentenced to thirty-five years in a military prison for espionage among other things, she escaped the death penalty, which was a possible outcome. So, in a sense she was ‘lucky’.

‘Once you come to realize that the co-ordinates in these records represent real places, that the dates are our recent history and that the numbers represent actual human lives – with all of the love, hope, dreams, hate, fear and nightmares with which we all live – then you cannot help but be reminded just how important it is for us to understand and, hopefully, prevent such tragedies in the future.’[iv]

She was imprisoned from 2010 until 2017 when her sentence was commuted by President Obama on January 17th 2017 . The same planets were triggered again. Transiting Uranus was conjunct Jupiter at 20′ Aries, transiting Jupiter was opposite her natal Jupiter at 19′ Libra the month before (20th December 2016). Finally, and most importantly it was her Saturn return, almost exact, Saturn was at 23′ Sagittarius 01, her natal Saturn is at 23′ Sagittarius 47. Bang on in other words.

More info on Themis in the book, available here.

In a letter to President Obama, requesting a pardon, and read out before sentencing at her trial, she wrote,

‘It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at this time I realized that (in) our efforts to meet the risk posed to us by the enemy, we have forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue human life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability.’[vii]

‘Chelsea Manning’s most famous leak is arguably also Wiki Leaks’ most famous leak, so it’ll top this list. That would be the notorious Collateral Murder video, showing U.S. air crew gunning down unarmed Iraqi civilians with an enthusiasm that couldn’t be matched by an eight year-old winning a five-foot-tall stuffed animal at the county fair. They murdered between 12 and 18 innocent people, two of them Reuters journalists. Zero people have been arrested for the collateral murders.’ Lee Camp [vi]

‘The release of the files brought to our doors the atrocities our governments carried out through media. It is my strong belief that this is the true essence of an activist… It is my great shame I live in an era where people like Julian Asange, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and anyone willing to open our eyes to the atrocities of war, is likely to be hunted like an animal by governments, punished and silenced.’ Mairead Maguire [viii]

But her troubles with the law and the Government were not over. In 2019 she was summoned to appear before a Grand Jury to testify against Julian Asange. She refused to testify and was imprisoned for contempt of court between March 8th 2019 and March 12th 2020. During that time, Pluto was transiting her natal Venus in Capricorn (22′-24′ Capricorn). It may be that her descendant is a Venus ruled sign, either Libra, giving her an Aries Ascendant, or Taurus making her Ascendant Scorpio. Certainly her loyalty to her colleague was tested to the extreme, but then, Capricorn is another sign that insists on ‘doing the right thing’.

I have tremendous admiration for her courage, standing up for what you believe in is hard, returning to prison again cannot have been an easy thing. One thing about Sagittarian idealism, is that they imagine the world is with them in their fight for justice, but sadly it rarely is. The corruption is too deep and people often do not care about ‘Others’ or ‘the far away’.