Mark Zuckerberg: Trouble Child

On the matter of unchecked power, narcissistic hunger pangs and last week's Uranian checkmate that left the tiny tech titan in tears.

“Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit by taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left.” —Marshall McLuhan

“Move fast and break things.” —Facebook’s motto.

“People in a hurry cannot feel.”—Alan Watts

THERE’S AN OLD ADAGE WRITTEN BY SOME OLD PERSON that goes something like: “People have the rulers or emperors or presidents that they deserve.”

This bromide is troubling when you consider Mark Zuckerberg as the supreme ruler of the largest social network on the planet.

A social network that you—and 2 billion other people—are perhaps a member of.

And so it follows: What does his rulership say about you?

I’ll answer that question by launching a salvo at Zuckerberg’s horoscope. You can then poke through the shards to see which reflection best mirrors your own desire for attention.

Hungry Hole

Zuckerberg’s is one hell of a thirsty horoscope.

The definition of ‘thirst’ has undergone a distinct transformation in the age of social media, and it’s that interpretation that I’m using while considering the tech mogul’s birth chart.

An example: Have you ever encountered one of those Instagram feeds where the 7,548 photos posted are all selfies of the same person?

That would be one example of modern ‘thirst’.

On its own, that such a collection of images exists is disturbing. But that the owner of the account is incapable of registering their desperation is the more alarming revelation.

Social media has allowed (and fostered) this sort of mental derangement.

There’s no birth time available for Zuckerberg, but no matter, his complex arrangement of planets offers endless hours of analysis.

Glowing in the throb of a red alert is his horoscope’s cluster of Scorpio planets in opposition to a Taurus Sun/Venus conjunction.

This polarity calls to mind a beautifully wrapped birthday present (Venus/Sun/Taurus) that, once opened, reveals black empty space (Moon/Saturn/Scorpio).

This void is an effect not unlike Zuckerberg’s weird untenanted physical presence.

I can’t think of a public personage in recent history that generates such a visceral thud of impenetrability whenever I’ve viewed his or her photograph.

But Zuckerberg’s shields are up for sound psychological reasons.

I mean, as relates to his interiority, or ‘soul’—there doesn’t seem to be much there.

And what little remains would logically be guarded with the fierce intensity of a cornered beast. And so he does.

A conventional translation of Zuckerberg’s particular Taurus/Scorpio polarity would indicate an insatiable appetite for iron-grip control (Taurus) and a compulsion for Machiavellian power plays (Scorpio). This we’ve seen. No big news there.

But what shoves this Will to Power beyond the cliched ‘nothing is ever enough’ billionaire’s neurosis is the presence of the planet Saturn in the Scorpio grouping.

Invite Saturn to a party and what follows behind his black cape is a cavalcade of unloveable outcasts—Gollums and Little Match Girls.

Astrologer Sue Tompkins sums up this natal aspect (Saturn aligned with the Moon) by dubbing it, “Bleak House.”

Her Dickensian nod is an ideal fit when you consider Facebook’s endless parade of lawsuits that the social network is enmeshed in.

But there are more primitive, heartbreaking implications at work when the Moon/Saturn combination is viewed through the lens of childhood development theory.

Momma. Medea.

From a Freudian skew, the Moon/Saturn/Scorpio factor highlights a fraught emotional nexus in the first-year relationship between the mother and her newborn.

Where the infant (represented by the Moon)¹ is used as a kind of emotional dildo for the mother’s (Saturn) unfulfilled libidinal longings (Scorpio).

The infant becomes a stand-in for the excitement and emotional merging that has gone missing between husband and wife—the child’s mother.

This lopsided relationship has complicated implications for how the child matures into his own autonomy.

Because Mars and Pluto are also present in the stellium an Id-driven hunger—fueled by instinctive aggression—is in place, creating an impossible need or hole to be filled.

The psychoanalyst Melanie Klein wrote about this predicament in her description of the infant’s seeming ownership of the mother’s breast.

A war for survival rages—something akin to a parasite’s dilemma: Feed off of the host and be content with the sustenance received in secret. Or devour the host in her entirety—but lose one’s lifeline in the process.

Self-preservation becomes precarious. An impossible dilemma that over time becomes an imprint that colors the child’s approach to life as an adult.

And so the war for control that roils beneath Zuckerberg’s void-doid countenance is no picnic to manage.

A psychoanalytic friend of mine mentioned to me recently that Zuckerberg’s blast-eyed expression is usually associated with too-massive-to-manage childhood trauma.

This diagnosis is fitting, giving the Saturn/Moon/Scorpio’s suspicion of destructive forces that are, seemingly, related to ‘other’ (‘m’other).

When an infant is a stand-in for a mother’s unmet libidinal longings, the nourishing field that optimally infuses the breastfeeding experience is charged with conflict and confusion. Impressions that are impossible for the child to manage and discharge.

This battle is then focused (projected) onto the world accompanied by a lifelong compulsion to manage, monitor, and command circumstances (others) that might disturb or threaten one’s existence.

Stealth by hook or crook

The literalism of Taurus is classic. At its most devolved it plays out like this: If I can control and dominate my world—(which for each of us is an extension of our own bodies)—all will be well.

It’s easy to see how Zuckerberg’s predicament translated into his adult relationship with his environment.

Several years back, for privacy, he spent millions of dollars to purchase all of the homes in the neighborhood that surrounded his property. He then left those homes vacant. Or demolished the dwellings completely.

In 2021 Zuckerberg spent 25 million dollars on personal security.

Currently, he is in the process of gobbling up huge swaths of land to seclude himself on the island of Kaua’i. Not satisfied with what he’d already amassed, hundreds more acres were purchased last year.

All of this symbolically ups the bar on his ability to protect and shield himself from life.

But it’s an impossible conundrum to remedy as we all carry facets of the Dark Mother (Saturn) somewhere in our soul. There’s no escape. Not enough money to placate the inner void.

Mammon’s Entitlement

What amplifies (and complicates) Zuckerberg’s unresolved psychological predicament is the grotesque levels of wealth at his disposal.

Which is made dangerously freakish, in an authoritarian ‘I will rule the world’ sort of way, by his unprecedented arrangement with Facebook. Where he is the corporation’s founder, CEO, Chairman, and controlling shareholder.

A megalomaniacal stranglehold on a supposedly public company, fitting the Moon/Saturn/Mars configuration in his chart.

This was wealth that—ironically enough—was achieved by accomplishing the very thing Zuckerberg fears most—invading other people’s privacy.

Human beings do bizarre things when all taboos and restraints are banished from their lives.

Perspective is lost and a retreat into the private fantasies within one’s inner sanctum begins to dominate and inform one’s cosmology.

An example would be the entertainer Michael Jackson, who over time was surrounded by opportunistic sycophants who aided and abetted the destruction of his financial world as well as his physical form (natal Virgo Sun conjunct Pluto).

In the end, with nothing left to control or deconstruct, Jackson pulled off his greatest performance and relinquished his shell into Pluto’s black-hole void.

With minimal adjustments to his physical body—just a garden variety Napoleon complex related to his height (that’s donned with a Julius Caesar haircut)—Zuckerberg turns his desire to dominate and control onto the external world.

Psychologically, this focus transforms, over time, into the underpinnings of an authoritarian sociopath.

The Bardo Bargain

As mentioned above, the planets Mars and Pluto in Zuckerberg’s chart (doubly potent in the signs they rule) amplifies the deprivation associated with the Moon/Saturn conjunction.

This indicates a demand for nourishment and attention that I associate with the Hungry Ghost realm.

Hungry Ghost is a term I’ve borrowed from the Tibetans and their descriptions of the bardos—those alleged worlds we pass through after our death.

As Chögyam Trungpa pointed out in his seminal book Transcending Madness, we each experience the dream-like bardos, each with a unique landscape and affect, while we’re alive.

Hungry Ghosts are depicted as creatures with necks as thin as a strand of hair and mouths no bigger than the eye of a needle. But with gigantic bellies that are impossible to fill—a hunger that is constantly thwarted by circumstance.

For years I’ve had fantasies of Margaret Keane, the queen of giant-eyed waif portraits, taking a turn at depicting Zuckerberg.

Picture it: those flying saucer-sized eyeballs dominating half of her canvas. Forget NFTs, a physical painting like that would sell for billions in bitcoin.

It is said that if a Hungry Ghost moves towards a tree laden with fruit by the time the ghost arrives all of the fruit has rotted and fallen to the grown.

I flashed on Zuckerberg’s Blight Touch amidst all of the hoopla surrounding the renaming of Facebook to Meta last year.

News that was followed by Zuckerberg’s announcement that he would invest 10 billion dollars to facilitate the creation of his new virtual world, the Metaverse. ²

A world Zuckerberg will facilitate, regulate and rule.

Meta(mucil)

Not surprisingly, the notion of the Metaverse is stolen (rarely does Zuckerberg have an original concept) from science fiction.

But when evoked by authors in various sci-fi stories, the Metaverse became a stand-in to highlight a failed world.

Brooke Gladstone writes:

“When Facebook changed its name to Meta, after the Metaverse, many were quick to identify the term’s origin: Neal Stephenson’s 1992 cyberpunk classic Snow Crash. But the novel hardly paints an optimistic future—runway inflation, collapsed governments, and a maniacal media magnate who uses the Metaverse to destroy people’s minds. It begs the question: did Zuckerberg misread it?”

This is the most determined Hungry Ghost-driven goblin in the not-world.

I mean crippling democracies and behavior modification run amok have been Facebook’s stock and trade since the platform’s inception (as an incel-inspired website to rate college women on their hotness-or-notness) some 15 years ago.

Why should we think anything would be altered or have evolved in the new Meta world?

Oh, well, but—yeah—uhm, Uranus

What astrologer, cognizant of Zuckerberg’s natal chart, could have been surprised by what ensued for the corporation once Uranus entered Taurus in May of 2018?

The years that followed were clogged with a non-stop flow of exposes.

Reports of egregious Facebook scandals, alleged criminality, and Orwellian violations of privacy and mind control. Many of which had potentially fatal aftereffects for ‘users’ of the network.³

The cherry on top? The collusion between Zuckerberg and Donald Trump that handed Trump the presidency.

Add to this the slow but steady erosion of democracies across the globe, attrition directly related to Facebook’s hegemony of the Internet, and, well, yeah—a fast forming shitstorm.

As mentioned above, Zuckerberg’s unprecedented financial control over Facebook makes his corporation a literal (Taurus) expression of his own ontology (Sun.)

And so, not surprisingly, as Uranus inches towards his Sun in Taurus, and activates an opposition with his chart’s Achille’s Heel (Saturn in Scorpio), the karmic blowback is bound to be astronomical. (Literally, Facebook’s stock crash last week broke all historical Wall Street records).

Although I dislike making astrological predictions, I would venture that this initial Uranus contact is simply a ‘coming attraction’ for all facets of the Zuckerbergian universe. A sort of personalized, internalized, zap-paced version of Disaster Capitalism.

This would mean his symbiotic relationship with his family—and by extension, his corporation—is about to be reconfigured in radical, shocking (Uranus), and unforeseeable ways.

I mention the word symbiotic again because analyzing the ‘personal’ planets that animate the Taurus/Scorpio polarity in Zuckerberg’s birth chart (with an on-spectrum and un-aspected Mercury in 29 degrees of Aries) there is no true expression of autonomy in Zuckerberg’s life.

It’s as if he never differentiated into adulthood, nor developed the moral conscience that attends maturing.

His fantasies (and his unlimited wealth that allows each whim to be funded) are those of an adolescent, a grown man drifting through arrested development.

For an ASD Tauri like Zuckerberg, baseline thinking is always literal and rarely includes nuance. So a feeling like: “Well, I’m the richest person on the planet” doesn’t include the rejoinder: “But I feel vacant and impotent.”

Why mama?

Like Alexander the Great, who it is said cried when he had no more worlds to conquer, Zuckerberg (who appeared in tears at last week’s employee meeting—where he confirmed his company’s debacle) has done what Alex could only have dreamt of: Created a new world to conquer and rule.

Uhm, we’ll call it the Metaverse. Because cool!

Because—ugh.

Just the term ‘Metaverse’—oy—it fits into the entire ethos of our culture’s tech titans (Bezos, Musk, Thiel). Namely: “Earth isn’t enough. I must dominate the farthest, widest dimensions of space. Both literal and virtual.”

But, enough about Mark. Let’s talk about you

Disclaimers related to Facebook’s toxicity are akin to the mile-long fine print Big Pharma churns out in tandem with their latest chemical invention. “May cause internal bleeding, erectile dysfunction, early-onset dementia, blah blah.”

But most Americans respond with: “Shut the fuck up and let me pop the goddamn pill—I’ll take my chances.”

The same kind of denial is in place every time you log on to Facebook.

“I know social media is a poisonous shithole, but I gotta post my daughter’s new baby pics.”

This begs the question: Why then do billions of souls still remain married to the social network?

Because Zuckerberg knew intimately, instinctively—albeit unconsciously—the power of thirst.

Your thirst.

His own appetites granted him the perfect mix of dark magic and tech geek savvy to create a gizmo that supplied an endless supply of narcissistic titillation.

In closing, here’s electro-prophet Marshall McLuhan again:

“The only people who have proof of their sanity are those who have been discharged from mental institutions.”

Isn’t it time to hit delete and return to sanity?

If Zuckerberg’s upcoming Uranus transits offer him any opportunity it will be a recovery of his humanity through the experience of shattered ambitions and scorched pride.

A return back to embodiment—to Earth—rather than endowing the creation of a new fake one.

This should be his wish.

Make it yours too.

Love,

Zuckerberg-Caesar collage by FW © 2021

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What strikes you most about Zuckerberg’s horoscope? And how are you framing the upcoming Uranus transits?

I’m keen to hear your two cents (or five dollars) worth of questions, insights, diatribes, or possible defenses.

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1. Over the years I’ve come to confirm the accuracy of Swiss astrologers/psychologists Bruno & Louise Huber’s astrological reinterpretation of infancy. The Moon is associated with the child and the mother, in the sense that symbiotically mother and child are, to the child’s undifferentiated consciousness, inseparable. This leaves a lifelong imprint on the psyche. The Sun is still aligned with the paternal matrix, while Saturn, the form-building process of life, is aligned more with the mother as experienced through the differentiated consciousness of the mature child.

2. Not surprisingly, after portions of the Metaverse were made available to Occulus users last week, a woman participant was groped and raped just moments after entering the inane electronic circle-jerk. As recurring cycles go, this bit of news is fitting when you consider the first iteration of Facebook was a makeshift website that rated various college campus women’s fuckability and comeliness (or lack thereof—that group of females was then compared to various farm animals).

3. “According to Facebook's own research, 13 percent of British teenagers, who thought about suicide, were driven by Instagram.” —Manish Raghavan