Astrological Analysis of an Auto Accident

At 9:00am on Saturday, September 21, 1968 I waited for my friend Earl to arrive in his Oldsmobile to take us into town for a little fun. I was 16 years old and had recently moved to Guam from New York, a distance of over 7500 miles. I might as well moved to the Moon. I was doing well in Plattsburgh, New York, enjoying the glory and excitement that came with being in a rock band, The Individual Needs. I was missing my friends and loathing the hot, suffocating humidity of an island just 13 degrees above the equator. Earl and his mom were the folks who greeted our family at the airport and acted as the hosts to this strange and foreign land.

I've always loved music and took along a tiny Panasonic reel-to-reel tape recorder with rock songs I lifted off the local radio station. As we took off along the back roads of Dededo, Guam, we listened to Cream's "White Room." The day was beautiful and already quite hot, but I felt free, glad to get out of the house. Yes, there were seatbelts in those days, but I wasn't wearing one. Cruising at 60 miles an hour, life was good...until a hairpin turn suddenly appeared. Earl tried to take it without slowing down much and we ended up in the "boonies" as they call untamed land in Guam. I went flying into the windshield and broke it. My head rebounded as the car came to a quick stop. Blood gushed from my face, staining my yellow shirt. Earl was okay and was apologizing profusely. I got out of the car and tried to think of something funny to say to ease the calamity of the situation. But I couldn't. I remember looking into the side window of the car and seeing my face, all cut up from broken glass. As I looked at the deepest gash over my left eye, I could see some white. Hmmm, I thought to myself, that is my skull.

I was able to hitch a ride back home. I was more terrified of confronting my parents in this condition than I was of the condition itself. Surely, I would be grounded for the rest of the year and punished in other ways I thought. My father greeted my at the door and quickly went to get my mother so that we could all drive together to the hospital. I took a brief moment to change into a red shirt to better mask the blood that was still pouring from my face.

At the hospital I was cleaned and stitched up. Twenty-seven of them, I think. In addition to the gash above the left eye, I was stitched on the left side of my nose, on my left ear which was sliced in two, and behind the ear. My father made sure the doctors removed all the glass. My face swathed in bandages, I returned home.

It was only a few years later that I took up astrology, but not until recently, with the help of Systems' Approach to Vedic Astrology, developed by Professor VK Choudhry from Gurgaon, India, that I could understand the planetary factors involved in that horrible accident.

The chart on the left is my natal chart. I have Virgo rising which makes Mercury and Saturn rulers of my body and health in general. Both are weak, but Mercury more so because of its bad placement and combustness and affliction from the Sun, ruler of hospitals. Also the sixth house is afflicted by Rahu which brings unexpected catastrophes. I was in the main period of the malefic Saturn, ruler of my house of injuries, and in the subperiod of Mercury, also a ruler of transportation. The stage was set.

The chart on the right shows transits on the day of the accident. Both my main and subperiod rulers were in extreme infancy, under weak dispositorship, and Saturn was afflicting Mercury from the eighth house of accidents. Both were traveling slower than normal that day thus intensifying the effect. Mars, the ruler of the eighth house of accidents was afflicting the twelfth (losses and hospitals), third (transportation), and sixth (injuries) houses. It was also in mutual affliction with the natal lunar nodes. The transiting Sun also contributed to the accident by its placement near the ascending degree.

Since that day I had stopped wearing yellow believing that it was inauspicious. However, I since realize that as it is the color of Jupiter, a benefic in my chart, it prevented me from much greater danger to my body and possibly my life.