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Eclipse on a fallen planet: Jupiter in Capricorn

Elizabeth Holmes is the founder and CEO of Theranos, a privately owned company that she founded in 2003 while a student at Stanford. Holmes dropped out of college when she was 20 to devote herself to the startup. She raised over $700 million from investors to fund the company, which was eventually (and temporarily) valued at $9 billion, leading her to be called “the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world.” (1)

Theranos is a blood-testing company, promising to have the technology to allow for painless, fast, and affordable blood tests that are easily available and accomplished with one single pin prick, one drop of blood. Theranos’s slogan: “One tiny drop changes everything.” (2)

The company started to be in serious trouble in October 2015 when an investigative report in the Wall Street Journal stated “that Theranos had probably exaggerated the reach and reliability of its technology.” In July 2016, among a host of other legal troubles (including a criminal investigation by federal prosecutors and the SEC), Holmes was banned from owning or operating a blood-testing company for two years. (3)

One writer observed, “From the day it became apparent that Theranos had gone to great lengths to hide serious issues with its blood testing technology, it wasn’t hard to predict that things would end badly for the much-hyped $9 billion startup and its iconic founder, Elizabeth Holmes. But I doubt if anyone foresaw it going this badly this quickly.” (4)

Holmes was born on February 3, 1984, in Washington, D.C. There is no known birth time, so I will look at her sunrise chart to get a broad sense of what we can see about such a spectacular rise and fall (albeit temporary, she’s only 32 years old).

Elizabeth Holmes
February 3, 1984
Sunrise chart, Whole sign houses, True node

Elizabeth Holmes, sunrise natal

Born with the Sun in Aquarius, she was always interested in science and encouraged by her family. “When she was about seven, she showed them drawings for a time machine; rather than dismissing her, they regularly asked how the project was going.” (5) (By 2014, Holmes held 84 patents and is credited as a co-inventor on over 100 patent applications.)

This striking creativity can be seen by Uranus in Sagittarius (12°43′) in close sextile to the Sun (13°51′). The Sun is also squared by Mars and Saturn in Scorpio, and there are four planets in Capricorn.

When she was growing up, her family traveled, as her father worked in the U.S., Africa, and China for government agencies doing disaster relief. Holmes had an early experience in China of starting a business selling a specialized computer program to universities. “It was at this point that I began to view business as a vehicle for making a change in the world. I had always assumed I would go into public service, but the idea of doing something good through business began to resonate very strongly with me.” (6) (The planets in the Capricorn stellium  — Jupiter, Neptune, Venus, Mercury — along with Uranus — are also parallel in south declination, increasing the potency of their connection.)

She was inspired to create Theranos at a very young age, when her uncle was diagnosed with skin cancer that spread quickly. “He died before Holmes was able to say goodbye. She wondered, What if an ordinary blood test could have caught the disease earlier? “My wish is that no person has to go through what it means to have to say, ‘If only I had known sooner,’ she says.” (7)

Along with Mars in its sign of rulership (and the chart’s final dispositor), and Saturn — the Sun’s dispositor — in Scorpio, Holmes was also born with Pluto stationed retrograde at 2°08′ Scorpio. The Scorpio planets (and Pluto station) are also strong features of what we know of her public biography. Not only is the company about blood diagnosis (Mars rules the blood), and inspired by a death, Scorpio is connected to wealth and power. She attracted enormous funds and her board of directors was composed of very powerful and worldly men. In a nod also to the stellium in Capricorn, the men on the company’s board were mainly those with “diplomatic or military backgrounds” (including Henry Kissinger and former Secretary of State George Schultz). (8)

Among the other echoes of Scorpio, Holmes was known for her “stealth” approach, developing the company in secret, without any peer-review of her products. This secrecy was in part what led to the company’s demise. (9)

So, what happened? Many astrological events transpired, of course — and I hope to see an accurate birth time one day — but we can see one dramatic picture: natal Jupiter is in Capricorn, the sign of its fall. Her very public troubles began in October 2015; there was a total lunar eclipse on September 28 at 4°38′ Aries, followed by a lunar eclipse on March 23, 2016 at 3°10′ Libra — both squaring natal Jupiter.

Elizabeth Holmes was born two days after the New Moon; the vigor (and potential for reinvention) inherent in a New Moon birth carries throughout life. Although she seems to be on a downward slope at this moment, Holmes has said: “If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. Never, never, never give up.” (10)

And besides, how can the world stay mad for long at a vegan who drinks “a pulverized concoction of cucumber, parsley, kale, spinach, romaine lettuce, and celery several times a day.” ? (11)

Footnotes and references:

(1) Biographical notes from Wikipedia: Elizabeth Holmes

Direct quote from Glamour: Elizabeth Holmes Wants You to Have Control of Your Health Info

(2) NY Times:The Narrative Frays for Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes

(3) Wikipedia: Elizabeth Holmes

(4) Entrepreneur

(5), (6), (7) Glamour: Elizabeth Holmes Wants You to Have Control of Your Health Info

(8) Wikipedia: Theranos

(9) A few recent headlines: Vanity Fair: Theranos’s Culture of Secrecy Comes Back to Haunt It

Fortune: Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Had the Chance for Redemption — and She Blew It

(10) Horatio Alger

(11) Wikipedia: Elizabeth Holmes
“According to a 2014 profile by Ken Auletta in The New Yorker, Holmes ‘lives an austere life’ in Palo Alto, California, where she has a two-bedroom condo. Holmes is a vegan, drinking ‘a pulverized concoction of cucumber, parsley, kale, spinach, romaine lettuce, and celery’  several times a day.”

10 Comments

  1. Egad. I have Jupiter retrograde in Capricorn–two strikes against it–unaspected, to boot. This is what astrologers like to call a “challenge.” An astrologer/friend who shares this same “challenge” once said “it’s like having two Saturns.” It is a fact that good luck has not put in much of an appearance in my life.

    • Hi Margaret,

      Take heart! Maybe you have a gift of showing us all how to thrive under what looks like adversity..;-)

      All best, thanks for reading..

      Mary

  2. Her personal habits and taste in food or new moon advantage offer nothing to redeem her actions. She put many people at risk and lied. Her Capricorn planets and fallen Jupiter and Scorpio placements did not do it, she did, by her own ambition and hubris. she may have desired to help people, but her ambition got in the way and blinded her. She may have modest personal tastes, but how does that offset what she did? I think a planet in fall doesn’t necessarily mean poor judgement. Often it can’t work with ease, and makes the person more conscious of their limitations and work to overcome them.
    It’s easy to rationalize all that Scorpio and Capricorn, but there are many people with similar placements who do not follow this description. this was very interesting to read, having been a great fan of astrology, until I started to consider Shakespeare and “the fault is not in our stars, but ourselves.”

    • Hi Linda,

      Thank you for commenting…I completely agree that a planet in fall is not always about poor judgement..all the planet’s possible manifestations are quite nuanced and depend on many factors..

      This blog was meant as a very general demonstration of a rather public and dramatic “fall”..(and an observation of stereotypical manifestations of Scorpio and Capricorn)….that’s the benefit and drawback of using public figures for examples…I chose not to speculate on her personal motivations (I don’t think I can fairly see that anyway) but can only see a moment in her public life.

      And yes, I agree, the planets are not at fault…we have choices and take actions (born, I think, from a complex interweaving of personal inheritance & history, soul’s intent, spiritual or philosophical view, etc…and many other, in my mind, intangible and mysterious factors that make our paths unique..)

      And, yes, a toast to the Bard..

      All best,

      Mary

  3. Capricorn doesn’t always indicate prosperity. Who knew! I admire and applaud her view that business can be a vehicle for making a change in the world… doing something good through business. Will be interesting to watch her in the future. Gotta LOVE astrology. I do want to know her birth time. (Might give her a call and, when I do, will let you know if I get her birth time.) Great insight, Mary. As always, I do enjoy your posts. Continued successes.

    • Hello Tanz,

      Yes, indeed,if you get a good time, let us know..
      And your kind words most appreciated..

      Continued success and best to you as well..

      Mary

  4. On Wikileaks now, it gives a different birthday: February 3, 1984 not February 4.

    • Hi juju,

      Thanks for noticing my typo…I labeled the chart Feb 4, but the wheel is set for Feb 3 (as I said in the text).

      Good eyes!

  5. Thanks so much, Mary, for sharing this chart & delineation of this interesting woman. Too bad we don’t know birth time but I have some tantalizing ideas based on her bio & planetary picture. I did catch her story on news. Must hunt down a picture of her & keep track of any more news to fill out more transits since by any assessment it’s powerful. ??

  6. Thanks for sharing this interesting bio & chart delineation highlighting Jupiter in Cap. Too bad about not having birth time, & given her Scorpio trio unlikely that it’s public bec. I have some tantalizing ideas based on her bio. We’ll have to see what else she’ll do. CBC did a short piece about her company Theranos. I can imagine more legal woes. Your article managed to tread professionally highlighting the planetary picture. ?


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