AUTHOR’S NOTE: I won’t go into the anecdotal details of this missing person case, but I wanted to mention the fact that three different assessments of the situation – a revealing horary astrology projection and two tarot readings – produced remarkably consistent results. A teenager has been missing for nearly two years and the search has now become a recovery mission. (All card images are from Ciro Marchetti’s Tarot Grand Luxe, copyright of U.S. Games Systems Inc, Stamford, CT.)

The querent is not related by blood to the missing individual, so I turned the horary chart to reflect that the boy’s mother, a friend of the inquirer, is the interested party and therefore becomes the “surrogate querent” in the “turned” 1st House. (Friends are described by the 11th House and the Moon – natural ruler of lost people and animals – is in the 11th House, lending symbolic weight to this assumption.) Thus the 11th House of friends becomes the mother’s place and the 3rd House (fifth house from the 11th) represents the son. The 3rd House is occupied by Gemini and its ruler Mercury (aka “Lord of the 3rd”) is located in Virgo (Mercury’s other sign of rulership) in the “radical” (as-calculated) 6th House of the chart. (Backing away briefly from this line of thought, it is also significant that Mercury, Sun and Venus are all in the son’s “turned” 5th House with Leo on the cusp; these are the house and sign of “partying and good times,” which could have set the stage for the disappearance.)

In natal astrology, the 6th house is the house of small animals and Virgo is the sign of agriculture; putting these together I came up with the idea of a farm that is home to small livestock as one place to look for the boy’s remains. Mercury was directly opposite the Ascendant, suggesting that the spot is to the West of his last known sighting and some distance away. The Sun immediately preceded Mercury in this “sunset” chart, making me think that someone close to him was instrumental in his disappearance and is concealing something.

Hasty Mercury in the “mercurial” Earth sign of Virgo and just below the western horizon implies a “quick-and-dirty” shallow burial. Mercury is also widely trine to Jupiter in the bucolic Earth sign of Taurus in the radical 2nd House of material concerns, which becomes the “turned” (and therefore “hidden”) 12th House for the boy; this is the house of large animals that hints at horses also being present. Mercury is involved in a loose Earth Grand Trine with scientific Uranus and subterranean Pluto, giving the impression that subsurface detection technology and earth-moving equipment could be necessary if the “shallow burial” assumption doesn’t hold true; there is even a reference to “mines” in the literature. Admittedly, some of this is a bit of a stretch (and more than a little impressionistic) but when looking for synchronicity in cold cases anything can be a sign.

Next I performed my “Train to Nowhere” missing-person spread to examine the boy’s current status. The Significator (the Page of Coins) landed in the tenth “car” of the train, which I title “the Cattle Car” and give the definition of “Kept with animals; in the country.” Reinforcing this second iteration of the theme and the idea of a shallow burial, the 4 of Wands appears reversed following the Significator. About this card A.E. Waite says “country life, haven of refuge, a species of domestic harvest home, repose;” while these are generally positive meanings that the reversal doesn’t overturn, the connotation here is sinister. Furthermore, in Renaissance tarot the suit of Batons (aka Wands) represented agricultural pursuits. The Tower preceded the Page of Coins, which I took to mean a traumatic event, possibly a fall, as a precursor to the boy’s vanishing while Strength and the Ace of Coins – both reversed – at the beginning offer the premise of his being in a weakened state at the time. Finally, the 2 of Swords at the end clearly shows that nobody’s talking.

Finally, I did my “astro-tarot location” reading, and the Page of Coins again showed up in the 6th House, an indication of “slightly North of West.” The 4 of Wands reversed remained next to the Significator followed by the Hermit reversed, indicative of remote isolation, and the 4 of Swords, a sign that could not be any plainer: it shows a knight in repose atop a sarcophagus and means “rest after struggle.” The King of Coins reversed could be the person who knows something about the property and is staying “below the radar” or it could describe the landowner who is being kept in the dark. Aleister Crowley called his version of this card “Lord of the Wide and Fertile Land,” noting that it is associated with Virgo and is “thus greatly concerned with agriculture.” The 5 of Wands at the end could portray strife between the parties involved in the disappearance, or possibly between those engaged in the search and the King of Coins, the reversal of which implies “stonewalling.”

Summation:

There are numerous references in these readings that point to an agricultural “country” setting as the location of greatest likelihood for discovery. The “Train to Nowhere” tarot outlook provides a plausible scenario as to “what happened” and the “astro-tarot location” results support the horary chart regarding “where to look.” Since the search has already covered the most likely local sites, the implication is that it must now go farther afield.