Five hundred years ago, medicine and astrology went alongside each other. Any self respecting practitioner would include a horoscope in their diagnosis.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating a return to those days and would never suggest someone consult their astrologer before their GP for health advice.

However that doesn’t mean that astrology can’t be helpful in diagnosing the cause and timing, particularly of health conditions that are not commonly understood.

To quote the NHS website “Myalgic encephalomyelitis, also called chronic fatigue syndrome or ME/CFS, is a long-term condition that can affect different parts of the body. The most common symptom is extreme tiredness. The cause of ME/CFS is unknown.“

Recently I was contacted by a client whose life had ruined by ME. She had been an energetic extrovert with a successful career but was forced to give it all up by this illness and was unable to get out of bed for more than an hour a day.

“The first noticeable cracks in my vitality started in 2011 and 2012. 

On July 23rd 2012, after I had driven thousands of miles to relocate yet again for a post doctoral fellowship, I sat on the couch of the house I was to move into that day I arrived, and I just knew something broke in my body

A slow descent into worsening health 2012-2016. Those years I was still a workaholic, 10-12 hour workdays, functioning around 80% of “normal”, but beginning to slowly socially withdraw into hermitude and a very small circle from a more frenzied need for extraversion thus far in my life. 

March 2015 – glandular fever which I think worsens the already onset trajectory. 

Summer 2017. I resigned from a full time professor position at the university due to declining health.

After my academic resignation, my illness started becoming full blown that summer 2017.. that is the first major level of collapse/descent into the first layer of the underworld/abyss.

I was just about able to slave-drive myself with sheer brute survival impulse and grit into work Monday-Friday but collapse in bed in a completely silent pitch dark room (extreme light and sound sensitivity), feeling like I have a severe flu, pain, completely debilitating weakness and fatigue Friday evening until Monday afternoon. Every single weekend. Completely confined and isolated. I remain like that for years. 

January 23rd, 2020 Until that point, all my symptoms, pain, limitations had been purely bodily. 

On that date, my cognitive acuity/brain starts to get affected. Starting then, I develop intermittent periods of horrible cognitive dysfunction..aka “brain fog” (feels like a wild understatement to call it that) that last till today. In them, I feel like my brain is just a helium balloon flying, deralized, high, stoned, drunk, hung over, groggy, all sorts of symptoms.. (that are a core diagnostic criteria and defining feature of the illness as it progresses, as a neuroimmune illness). 

I gradually cut work from 2017-2023, each year doing less. 

I get Covid summer 2022, which severely worsened things with ensuing Longcovid. 

Around April 10th 2023, it feels like my brain, as a literal physical organ, physically “breaks” and my general health takes a flashing meteoric nose dive into the abyss over the next five months. 

The above cognitive symptoms/brain inflammation/brain asphyxiation sensations and affected function, etc become Nightmarish. Hellacious. Brutalizing. Torturous. 

I start to lose my ability to walk more than a few meters, etc. 

September 8th, 2023. After profound suffering trying to hold up just very part time work, but literally being bedridden in a pitch dark silent room for 21 hours a day to be able to work these 3 hours, I finally finally accept that I am disabled and terminate my work.

September 28th, 2023. – the illness is so severe, I have something akin to a near death experience 

And I have been bedridden 23 hours a day since.

Had to move back in with my family that Fall 2023 to care for me.

Things have been slowly but steadily improving, very thankfully, relatively speaking, in terms of how haunting the suffering of the symptoms are, (during “crashes”/or flares of the illness, it feels like I’m literally being crushed, pushed down, below the surface of earth/the living, and buried alive, clawing for life..and I know others at that severity who describe it very very similarly).

The suffering/symptoms has now abated by 70% I’d say more days than not, though I remain at like 5% of a normal person in terms of function/capacity, and I’m still homebound and mostly bedridden.

Some of the milestones in the improvement/upwards/”hopeful ascent??” trajectory: late November 2024 and again another burst upwards starting April 2025 and the last 7ish weeks have been especially marked with more days than not having ease, a sense of peace, wellbeing despite it all, wondering if I have made it out of the underworld and I’m slowly returning to life, and thus retaining hope for significant improvement one day.”

So can astrology shed any light on this case?

Of course it can.

But not if your approach is sign based.

Sun in Capricorn, Moon in Leo, Aquarius rising would be a description of someone with a strong robust constitution, someone with a great deal of stamina and the ability to keep going whatever was thrown at them.

It would in fact be quite a good description of the high achiever that X was before ME.

My advice to anyone trying to read a birthchart is not to treat it as a collection of separate placements, but to look at it as a pattern.

Because the main driving themes in someone’s life are the interrelationship of the planets.

If we do this first we can see that 9 out of 10 of X’s planets are contained between the 9th and 1st houses. This would suggest that she is largely driven by themes around her career and her own personal expression.

This chart has a Bucket shape, where one planet operating in a different hemisphere is the handle and the others are the container.

A couple of years ago, I wrote this about Prince Harry’s chart

“One intriguing pattern is that of the Bucket where all the planets bar one are contained within one third of the chart but that planet would operate like a handle.

This singleton planet is very strong and would strive to dominate or impose its will on all of the other ones.

In a way it can act like the apex planet of a T Square but the difference here would be that where that planet is likely to point to the direction in life that the native would inevitably and naturally be drawn to, the handle planet of the Bucket would pull the person in a completely different direction to the one that they would naturally choose.

If 9 planets are all heading one way and another is very strongly demanding the natives attention in an opposing direction that could have a very powerful impact on their life.

The classic idea of a bucket is that a strong handle enables the whole instrument to be carried along thus allowing it to safely contain what it is carrying.

So although an astrological Bucket handle planet would appear to require a great deal of attention in a direction contrary to the person’s own, respecting the demands of the handle would allow the person to get on with their life in a productive way.

But what happens if the bucket was held upside down with the handle pointing downwards ?

Presumably everything contained in the bucket would fall out.

The Bucket handle Moon in Harry’s life exerts a tremendously frustrating pressure on him, pulling him away from everything in life that he wishes to achieve.”

As the Moon is in the 4th house, it’s clear that the thing that empties Harry’s bucket is his family.

X was born less than 4 months after Harry, so like him she would have the nine planets contained within the same signs and houses.

The only possible floater would be the Moon.

The difference between them however is that while Harry’s Bucket handle Moon is largely well aspected, X’s is not.

And its area of focus is the 6th house of health.

There is also a powerful square aspect with Pluto, suggesting a traumatic change in X’s health would occur at some point in her life.

But the most important theme in this chart is the Yod pattern.

A Yod is based on two planets that are in sextile (60 degrees) to each other and both are quincunx (150 degrees) to another.

In some ways the apex planet of a Yod is similar to that of the T Square in that it focuses the energy of the pattern strongly onto the house that it is in.

A Yod, however is less common than a T square.

As they both involve three planets, there is no reason for this to be the case, but it is generally accepted that the orbs for a quincunx should be between 2-3 degrees whereas a square would be 8-10.

So the chances of a quincunx occurring in a chart are about 1/3 of that of a square..

The Moon here is the apex of the Yod.

The Yod or Finger Of Fate, as it is sometimes called is often seen as a karmic pattern, indicating a pre-ordained path in life. 

Aspects take their qualities from the natural relationships between the signs that they connect from.

So trines are said to be easy, flowing aspects because they involve two planets operating in the same element (ie Aries and Leo, both are Fire), so planets in trine with each other are likely to want similar things.

Square aspects are said to be difficult and challenging because they involve two planets operating in different elements (ie Taurus and Leo) but with the same quality (Fixed), so planets in square to each other are equally determined in their desire for different, even conflicting things.

Sextiles are said to be sympathetic because they involve two planets which, while operating in different elements, have compatibility (ie Taurus and Cancer – Earth and Water) so they can support each other.

Quincunxes are recognised as demanding because they involve planets that are five signs apart which not only want different things but do so in ways that are incompatible (ie Gemini and Scorpio – Mutable Air and Fixed Water).

In a Yod, the planets that make up the base have a similarity of purpose, but they form extremely challenging aspects with the apex planet.

A Yod suggests that the person needs to learn specific lessons and overcome very tough challenges in the area of life represented by the focal planet. 

The quincunx is often associated with health issues, because as it is 150 degrees, it resonates with the angle between the Ascendant and 6th house.

So someone with a bucket handle planet at the apex of the Yod pattern in the 6th house is going to be plagued by serious health problems.

The other planets that make up the Yod can go some way towards describing the kind of problems that they will experience.

Venus in Pisces sextile Neptune has an exceptionally sensitive but also mysterious quality that cannot be pinned down.

ME has a destabilising, disintegrating effect and it seems to be impossible for health professionals to discern a cause or even any kind of effective treatment for this condition. Sufferers are often left to themselves to explore alternative methods to ease their difficulties.

They are often dismissed as being hyper sensitive or told that their problems are “all in their mind”.

This is a particularly dumb response, because everything that exists is all in our minds.

But all of this fits very neatly into Venus in Pisces/Neptune symbolism.

In any pattern that involves a slower moving planet, its transits, particularly those to other points in that pattern are extremely important.

Unless X lives to be over 100 years old, transit Neptune would not reach her Moon, so the only conjunction it can form is with the other member of the Yod, Venus.

Neptune was conjunct Venus and quincunx the Moon in 2011 to 12.

On July 23rd 2012 when X’s body broke, transit Neptune was retrograde at 2.34 Pisces, exactly quincunx her Moon, reinforcing the natal aspect between the two of them.

The gradual deterioration that followed over the next few years coincided with Neptune conjoining her 1st house Venus and Mars in Pisces.

The other aspect that the Moon has is the tight square with Pluto.

Transit Pluto conjoined her Sun in 2017 when the illness forced her to resign her post as a University professor.

Interestingly she described this period in a very Plutonic way as a “descent into the first layer of the underworld/abyss”.

Note that X’s Sun is on the cusp of the 12th house, so Pluto’s transit began a period of isolation from the world that got progressively more severe as the illness became more debilitating.

In January 2020, with Saturn conjunct her Sun her X’s conditions started to include brain fog and mental deterioration.

The year 2023 was especially difficult because Saturn had joined in the Yod as it transited the early degrees of Pisces.

“September 8th, 2023. After profound suffering trying to hold up just very part time work, but literally being bedridden in a pitch dark silent room for 21 hours a day to be able to work these 3 hours, I finally accept that I am disabled and close my practice.”

On that very day Saturn was at 2.55 Pisces, exactly quincunx X’s Moon. Since this transit she has been bedridden for 23 hours per day.

Over last few months there appears to be an alleviation in her symptoms, even though she is still mostly confined to her bed and functioning at 5% of that expected of a normal person.

This is possibly due to her current transits.

Pluto is now opposing her Moon, so some kind of change in her condition would be expected.

On its own, that transit would not be an optimistic one.

However Saturn and particularly Neptune are about to form trine with X’s Moon.

As her ME is caused by Neptune’s difficult quincunx to her 6th house Moon, this trine by transit is the most favourable one that it will make in her lifetime, so the hope is that will bring some opportunity for progress.

X has left no stone unturned in her search for remedies over the years, but perhaps as Neptune and Pluto aspect her Moon she will find something that alleviates her symptoms and allows her to live a relatively normal life again.

Maybe there are herbal remedies related to Neptune or Venus in Pisces that could be helpful.

But an astrologer five hundred years ago would have been just as nonplussed as the medics today, because they would not have known about Neptune or Pluto.

Posted on August 24th 2025

YOU CAN BOOK YOUR OWN PERSONAL ASTROLOGY CONSULTATION HERE

HAVE YOU BEEN HERE BEFORE – ASTROLOGICAL REGRESSION AND PAST LIVES

YOUR PAST AND PRESENT FAMILY PACKAGE – UNDERSTANDING THE PATTERNS

TREAT YOURSELF – REMEDIES INDIVIDUALLY TAILORED TO YOUR BIRTHCHART AND TRANSITS

PROGRESSED LIFE SUPPORT – WHEN WILL YOUR SOULMATE BE COMING ?

WHAT’S HAPPENING MAN ? USING HORARY TO ANSWER ALL YOUR QUESTIONS

HOW TO CHANGE YOUR FATE – USING ELECTIONS TO ENSURE THE BEST POSSIBLE OUTCOME FOR EVERY VENTURE