Where Is Carol? — A Missing-Person Case Study

Parsifal the Scribe
5 min readOct 1, 2024

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AUTHOR’S NOTE: Carol Gemmiti, a 66-year-old Florida woman with dementia, went missing from Ossipee, New Hampshire on Friday, October 27, 2024. Numerous searches were performed over the week-end but nothing was found so further efforts were temporarily suspended on Monday, October 30. I decided to tackle this case by performing a horary astrology analysis and two tarot readings. I usually don’t do this so soon after a disappearance, but — unless she is being hidden by someone — the number of nearby spots where she might conceivably turn up is small, and the searchers would certainly have covered all of them before giving up for the time being. (First a note about the horary chart: I don’t use the three “trans-Saturnian” planets or the minor “Keplerian” aspects in my traditional astrology — it’s entirely Ptolemaic — so you won’t see them mentioned here.)

The astrological horoscope has Capricorn on the Ascendant, which generally means that the Significator for the enquirer will be Saturn. Since there is no independent Querent here and I have no clue what her relationship is to any of the interested parties, I’ve assumed that the missing woman is asking about herself so I looked for the location of the 1st-House ruler. Saturn is both retrograde and intercepted in the 2nd House of the chart, which is the house of small movable objects (usually inanimate) and personal resources like money and valuables. Saturn is trine to Sixth-House Mars, but the latter is in its fall in Cancer, so no benefit will accrue from that aspect.

Ascendant-ruling Saturn is in the “maimed” sign of Pisces, implying that her physical well-being is somehow compromised (beyond her dementia, that is). Since Saturn rules the bones and Pisces governs the feet, I’m contemplating whether she has a broken or sprained ankle; furthermore, Pisces is a “mute” Water sign, so Saturn isn’t announcing her whereabouts (a notion that is reinforced by Saturn’s retrogradation and interception).

The “natural” ruler for all missing people is the Moon, which here is in Virgo in the 8th House of shared resources such as bequests, endowments and taxes, as well as death. The Moon is closely opposed to and separating from Saturn (that is, they are dialed into the same polarity), so either one will serve, but since a human being is not a “small inanimate object” and Saturn is seriously afflicted, I’m going with the Moon, which — although it is also intercepted — is trine to the Ascendant, making me think she could still be mobile.

The Moon’s position suggests that she is now located to the West of her last known location, but that area is close to a lake and the water is also not far away to the East and North, so the only way she could have walked any appreciable distance is southward down the peninsula (although she could certainly be submerged in the water in any other direction). Both the Moon and the Sun are above the horizon, implying that she is visible, and the Moon in Virgo applying to conjunction with its dispositor (Mercury) and the Sun in early Libra gives the impression she will be discovered before long, assuming the search teams don’t become starved of resources by the applying square to Fifth-House Jupiter in Gemini (sign of its detriment) that intervenes as the last major aspect before the Moon leaves Virgo.

However, all of this is going on in the 8th House, which could very well mean that she won’t be found alive. The Moon has neither essential nor accidental dignity in Virgo, so there is no help from that quarter. Choosing Saturn instead shows her to be situated toward the East-Northeast, and there is nothing but water there as well (but see the second tarot reading for another perspective on this point).

If there is any hope here, I’d say it lies with the condition of the Moon.

I performed my “Train to Nowhere” missing-person spread using the Queen of Swords as the Significator. It showed up in the seventh sub-stack, suggesting that she is in a nondescript location and may be with other people. (My first thought was that she stumbled onto a homeless encampment, but the vicinity doesn’t seem like one where such a habitat would be tolerated.) The environs are predominantly upscale residential housing (Ossipee Lake Shores), and the majority of the houses occupy lakefront property with boat-docks. However, there does appear to be a sizeable wooded and lightly-populated area in the middle of the peninsula with a long driveway leading into it where she might have wandered without being seen.

Barring that, some distance to the South the landscape looks to be swampy. The three cards leading up to the Significator are all Water cards, strongly implying that she could in fact be in the lake or the bog. The card following is the reversed 2 of Disks, indicating a change of mundane circumstances; maybe she dragged herself out but could get no further (as in “stuck in the mud”). Going strictly by this spread, my personal belief is that she either drowned or perished from exposure.

Retro-Thoth Tarot, privately published (card backs); Thoth Tarot card faces, copyright of US Games Systems Inc, Stamford, CT

Next I performed my astro-tarot location spread, still using the Queen of Swords as the Significator. It indicates a northerly direction, once again running into the “water obstacle,” and there are two reversed Water cards following it to confirm that assumption. The last card is the Devil, which shows that her present status is being misconstrued in some way; along with the reversed Water cards, this conveys the idea of mistaken assumptions or “barking up the wrong tree.” I notice that to the Northeast there is a narrow ribbon of water separating the peninsula from the mainland. If she can swim, she may have gone over there, necessitating an expanded search radius. Although both male court cards in the Thoth suit of Cups make an appearance in this pair of spreads, I don’t think they reflect foul play in either case (unless the Devil has a hand in it), while the reversed Priestess argues for a significant degree of concealment.

Thoth Tarot, copyright of US Games Systems Inc, Stamford, CT

Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on October 1, 2024.

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Parsifal the Scribe

I’ve been involved in the esoteric arts since 1972, with a primary interest in tarot and astrology. See my previous work at www.parsifalswheeldivination.com.