The Ebola virus outbreak of 2014 that originated in Guinea was something of an initiation for me into the mysteries of eclipses. I had been anticipating the solar eclipse of 3 November 2013 throughout that year with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation, since it was set to occur close to my ascendant, and being conjunct Saturn, it looked quite ominous. I expected it to be significant for me personally, and in principle at least, globally.
I remember well the day of the eclipse. I was attending a Permaculture conference in South Africa and, having spent months wondering about the eclipse, I was very conscious of the moment the eclipse was at its peak, and indeed something very strange occurred during those very minutes. Quite suddenly all the children in the area where upset and writhing on the ground. All over the place bewildered parents were simultaneously trying to comfort their children who were behaving as if they were having seizures of some kind. Then, within about 15 minutes or so, it was over and everyone carried on with what they had been doing. I don’t believe anyone there was as aware as I was of the fact that this extraordinary event had occurred at a very distinct and significant moment in time.
It seemed to me that apart from witnessing this bizarre reaction in the children at the conference, not much else of moment had occurred. However, in retrospect, considering that the eclipse occurred close to my ascendant and not far from my brother’s Moon, the fact that my mother died less than a month prior to the eclipse is another significant event on a personal level. I wasn’t aware of any major developments on the global stage around that time, and so this much anticipated eclipse faded into the background of my astrological musings and investigations. Back then I hadn’t fully grasped the extent to which eclipses cast their shadows both before and after the event, and I was also not yet in the habit of looking at transiting triggers to eclipses subsequent to their actual occurrence.
In March 2014, as I recall, news of an Ebola outbreak in Guinea was causing a stir in the world and astrologers were posting various theories about it. Many were casting charts for the moment the news broke, but these charts and the rationale behind them struck me as unconvincing, but I didn’t have any better ideas.
Then someone posted some general information about the Ebola virus in an Astro-Medical Facebook group that made a reference to the incubation period of the virus, which can be up to three weeks. Although one would think it’s obvious, that reference to the incubation period got me thinking that we needed to look further back for the astrological catalyst of the epidemic. Then I remembered the sinister looking Saturnine solar eclipse of 3 November 2023 that I had been so preoccupied with, and lo and behold, there it was poking me in the face: the point of maximum eclipse was directly above Guinea where the outbreak occurred!
It is my understanding that, subsequent to the 2014 Ebola episode, researches attempting to trace the origin of the outbreak have determined that it started late in 2013. I don’t believe this was understood when the news broke in 2014.
Fast-forward to August 2014: Transiting Mars crossed the eclipse degree and the crisis seemed to spike in intensity. The weeks that followed were the peak of the epidemic. It also happened that in that month I developed an extremely severe kidney infection (bear in mind that transiting Mars was then crossing my ascendant as well as the eclipse degree). It would be no exaggeration to say that I nearly died. As an aside I find it fitting that the eclipse occurred in sidereal Libra, and that Libra is associated with the kidneys.
Although some medical personnel working in the zone where the epidemic was most virulent who contracted Ebola were evacuated to Europe and the USA for treatment, there were to my knowledge no cases of members of the general public becoming infected or mingling with the general populace outside West Africa, except for a certain man named Thomas Eric Duncan.
He presented himself to a hospital in Dallas, Texas, with early onset symptoms of Ebola on the 25th of September 2014. He had travelled to the USA some days earlier from Liberia where he had been exposed to the virus on the 15th of September when he assisted an infected person to get to hospital.
See the diagram below. We don’t know what time he was born, but a chart for noon places Duncan’s Moon pretty much exactly conjunct the solar eclipse of 3 November 2013! He died on the 8th of October 2014, on the day of a total lunar eclipse. Duncan himself was born a few days before a solar eclipse.
That’s not all. While the solar eclipse of 3 November 2013 was culminating in Guinea at its peak, it was at that very moment rising in Dallas!
I wrote one or two posts and articles on my initial discoveries, possibly around April of 2014, and these enjoyed a measure of acknowledgement in the astrological community. I also presented some lectures in which I shared these findings. Apart from the fact that the eclipse of 3 November 2013 occurred close to my ascendant, Mercury in the eclipse chart is conjunct my natal Mercury, to the degree. It was almost as if I was tuned into that eclipse to such an extent that I would become something of a spokesperson for it, and with that Mercury connection in particular, I would write about it and articulate facts of observations about it in relatively great detail. This idea is somewhat borne out by a curious event that occurred sometime in 2017 or early 2018.
I entered into a casual conversation with a young gentleman at a bar in South Africa who just happened to be standing next to me. A bit of polite neighbourly small talk. He mentioned that he was a microbiologist and that he had just come from Central Africa where he was doing some work or research on zoonotic diseases; that is diseases that are transmitted between different species, of which the Ebola virus is an example. I was intrigued and I told him that I was an astrologer and that I had done some astrological research relating to the Ebola outbreak in Guinea. His eyes lit up and he blurted out, “are you Fidler?”
Well, that was one hell of a surprise! Turns out he and colleagues had read some of my work, because they made it their business to read everything that was written on the topic, even though I assume they would have had no way of evaluating or utilizing the astrology.
So, when I heard recently that there was a new outbreak of Ebola in Central Africa I couldn’t help wondering if a recent eclipse might be implicated. Well, at the time of the solar eclipse of 17 February 2026 the Saturn/Neptune conjunction (which is certainly a signature of “sickliness”) was a mere quarter of a degree from exact, and it happened to be right on the MC (and square the ascendant) in the region of the Democratic Republic of Congo where this recent outbreak has emerged. It is my understanding that a spate of cases of Ebola infection, including a number of deaths, occurred around the end of April and early May 2026, just weeks after transiting Mars crossed over the Saturn/Neptune/MC conjunction of the eclipse chart for Mongbwalu, DRC. It seems plausible to speculate that this trigger from transiting Mars could have stirred the outbreak into active manifestation, and allowing for a period of incubation of the virus, it would make sense that a sudden surge of cases would come to light late in April.
It may be worth paying attention to 8-9 June when Mars will be semi-square the Saturn/Neptune/MC conjunction, and then around 19-20 August when transiting Mars squares the Saturn/Neptune conjunction.
