In the port of Rotterdam, a cruise ship has been detained for five years, the Astoria, and recently the news came that the ship will finally be auctioned. When the Astoria was towed into port in 2020, it was the oldest cruise ship still sailing in the world, which once began its illustrious life as the “Stockholm”, built just after the war at a Swedish shipyard. The Astoria, which also sailed under many other names, has been nicknamed the “Ship of Death” because of the many accidents and misfortunes it had to deal with.
Sunrise
Of course, that makes you curious about the astrological side of the story, there are methods to make a chart of a ship. One of them is the chart of the sunrise on the day of the keel laying, the beginning of the construction of the ship, the exact time of the actual start of a construction can unfotunately never be determined. You can usually find the the day of the keel laying, but for the Astoria or the Stockholm that information was not to be found either, so we take the sunrise horoscope of the day of the launch and the christening of the ship.
Antares -Aldebaran
In that horoscope, it is immediately striking that the axis of royal fixed stars Aldebaran-Antares is on the MC/IC axis. These are very powerful purely martial stars, the Eye of the Bull and the Scorpion’s Heart are not very peaceful. It is the axis of dying and starting again, it is also striking how many times the ship has changed names! To see exactly how the martial energy of the two stars works out, you can look at the dignity of Mars in the horoscope and it is in detriment, so very vicious.
Mercurial
On the Ascendant is the mutable sign of Virgo, so the ship itself is Mercury, again indicating the many changes of name. But the ship Mercury also makes an opposition via antiscion with again that Mars in detriment. A direct connection between the ship and the planet of violence in detriment that is also Lord 8 of death, there you can see where the nickname comes from. The Astoria has a long history of collisions, violent storms and even mutiny and piracy. It is striking that the ship has survived it all, Lord 1 is of course very strong in his own sign.
In mundo
The other malefic also stands out, Saturn is in detriment and is Lord 6 of accidents and misfortunes, Saturn does not make a direct aspect via sign position ” in caelo” but but it does “in mundo” with Mars again. Saturn is as far from Cusp 11 as Mars is from Cusp 2 and that is an in mundo sextile, an equal house position that connects both malefics in detriment. Not nice. The Manzil, the Lunar Mansion completes the picture, it is the Dog-Cat Al Sad’ Bula, associated with destruction and loss. I wouldn’t buy this ship.