The Astrology of Big Oil: Rex Tillerson, Exxon Mobil, and the 2029 Neptune Shift
My Personal Houston Vortex, the Boom-Bust Cycles, and Making Sense of All This Mess
This past week I spent a little time each morning before my school day reading about the history of ExxonMobil Corporation. Call it a hunch, or maybe it would be less interesting if it wasn’t for the fact that the Exxon headquarters is less than a half hour away from my home, but the ups and downs of oil and gas industry seem to be on everyone’s minds lately.
Like many Houstonians, my family was subject to the larger economic forces that tied Houston to the boom-bust cycles of oil and gas. I have seen this directly impact families, including my own. When gases prices are high, Houston benefits, people move in, growth booms. When gas prices are low, Houston enters a bust cycle and oil and gas companies tend to lay off workers and regular Houstonians struggle, housing and job markets drop. In the early 1980’s when Houston’s economy tanked due to these global economic realities, my dad lost his job at a small energy management firm and we were forced to relocate back to New England where my parents came from, for better jobs and a new start.
So, Houston and I have a love-hate relationship. I have left three times. The people I love are here and that is always what brings me back, but I have never “loved” living here: there’s the hurricanes, the humidity, the traffic, the flood-prone streets, the over-developed commercialism, and the boom-bust cycles that make it a temporary home for waves of global gypsies, like my grandparents. But Houston has some sort of black hole vortex power that always sucks me back in no matter my trajectory or escape velocity. Even though I have left three times, I have also returned three times, each time for very different reasons but always involve the bigger economic forces beyond my control.
As an elementary school teacher, I can readily admit my general ignorance when it comes to the complexities of geopolitics. However, I am beginning to think that maybe everyone should take a broader and deeper interest in understanding how the oil and gas industry works and how it is driving our current global crisis with regard to Israel, Russia, Venezuela, and Iran. Oh yeah, don’t forget Europe and the entire rest of the world too, messing with pretty much everyone’s day to day livelihood. This includes regular people like teachers and not-so regular people like astrologers. But, there is always the hope that the more informed we can become, the more we can exercise some form of autonomy, voting with our wallets or our feet.
For the three decades I have been Houstonian and a teacher I have taught the children of oil and gas execs like Exxon employees in both public and private schools: the children of geologists, highly paid oil and gas administrators, and engineers, all the way to children from lower-income families, children of the men who work the off-shore drilling platforms and for piping companies who are subject to extremely “seasonal” ups and downs of the industry. This has brought me at least a few glimpses of how people’s lives are impacted by the ups and downs of big oil.
Anyone can read Exxon’s history in Wikipedia which gives a broader overview of the federal anti-trust history all the way back to the Rockefellers, revealing the now hundreds of billions of dollars at play. It gives a sense for the magnitude of global impact that just this one company has which sort of speaks for itself. Though I do the daily work of teaching young people to be better readers, writers, and thinkers, another thing I do now is look for the correspondence in astrology to make sense of the world and my place in it. It just gives me another view besides what “they” tell you. Whoever “they” is to you.
In looking at the “astrology of big oil” I was intrigued to find that this week (yesterday, actually) marked the eight year anniversary of the Rex Tillerson’s split with Trump administration over the Iran deal and Tillerson’s exit from the first Trump administration back on May 8th, 2018. Tillerson was the former head of Exxon and the man who Trump named Secretary of State. This eight year anniversary of course marks the Venus opposition to the natal Venus in the Exxon chart. [Astro Note: I used the date of Exxon’s 1973 brand formation which could be taken as November 1, 1972 or January 1, 1973 (I used a noon time) as a natal chart for the Exxon company entity and include that chart at the end of this Substack.]
Many other possible dates may exist for creating an “Exxon natal chart” due to the long and complex history of this company. But I feel that the US public recognizes the “Exxon brand,” and so I took this date of its brand reformation as its current iteration as an entity. Branding relates to Venus, because it symbolizes the relationship of Exxon to the public, but this can also be related to its public valuation since Venus=values. The Exxon brand formation is officially linked to January 1, 1973, because this was the date that the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey officially dropped its regional brands—Esso, Enco, and Humble—and began nationwide, unified marketing under the new "Exxon" name. 1 Also, according to the New York times article in my footnote, “On this date, the company formally merged its domestic subsidiaries into the parent company, which was renamed Exxon Corporation.”2
When I checked the charts for Tillerson’s exit against Exxon’s chart it showed this Exxon-Venus opposition. Give a quick listen to this 3 minute segment from a CBS interview, which I now find almost comical because it discusses the “values split.”
One thing I also noticed too was that if we take Neptune to represent “oil,” then there will be perhaps a big change for Exxon in April of 2029. With Jupiter conjunct Exxon’s natal Uranus there may be some opening or shift, however once transiting Uranus reaches Exxon’s natal Saturn it may face some new challenge when it reaches 15 Gemini, which incidentally is 1 degree from the 14 degree Saturn of the WTC disaster on 9/11. I think other astrologers may find it interesting and worthy of a deeper look at the Venus and other cycles of Exxon and the relationship to the US and world economy, topics far beyond my depth.
Here is the “natal chart” of Exxon I used.
Here is the comparison to the future unknown event date of April 6, 2029, when Neptune crosses the ASC of Exxon. Since Neptune is trine the natal Moon here and also trine its natal Neptune, it would seem a “good event” for big oil/Exxon. Note the transiting Uranus however, applying to conjunction with Saturn.
History of ExxonMobil. (2023, November 1). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ExxonMobil
Smith, W. D. (1972, October 25). And Now the Esso Name Is History. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/10/25/archives/and-now-the-esso-name-is-history-the-esso-name-is-history-now.html?smid=url-share