Bill Gates

In the late 1960s, the mums at a school in Seattle held a jumble sale. They used the money to buy something odd. It was a clunky machine called a Teletype. It looked a bit like a big typewriter. It let pupils type orders to a big computer somewhere else.

One small boy of thirteen could not leave it alone. He learned to talk to the computer in a language called BASIC. He wrote his first program on it. It was a game of noughts and crosses that you could play against the computer.

What amazed him most was that the machine did exactly what you told it. Every time. No mistakes. If the game went wrong, the fault was in your code, not in the machine.

That boy was Bill Gates. He grew up to start Microsoft and became, for many years, the richest person in the world. Then he decided to give most of it away. Let's follow his life and look at his birth chart as we go.

A birth chart is a map of the sky at the moment someone is born. It shows where the Sun, the Moon and the planets were. Astrologers study the map and say it hints at what a person is like.

William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle on 28 October 1955, at about 10 at night. His family called him "Trey", because he was the third of his name. His dad was a lawyer. His mum sat on the boards of a bank and a big charity. He had an older sister, Kristi, and a younger one, Libby.

Your Sun sign is the star sign the Sun was passing through on your birthday. Bill's Sun was in Scorpio. Scorpio is the sign of the scorpion. Western astrologers say Scorpio is intense. Scorpio people are said to dig deep, keep their cards close and hate to lose.

Hating to lose fits his family well. The Gates home was full of games: cards, swimming races, a bat-and-ball game called pickleball. A visitor said there was always a prize for winning and always a penalty for losing. Bill was small for his age and was picked on at school. Yet at home he learned to compete hard.

The jumble sale money soon ran out. So Bill and his friends hunted for other computers to use. One company let them in. Then it caught them using flaws in its system to get free computer time. It banned them for the whole summer.

A flaw in a computer program is called a bug. When the ban ended, the boys made a deal. They would hunt for bugs in the company's programs. In return, they got free computer time. Bill went to the company's office and studied its code.

Here the chart has a good match. A chart is cut into twelve slices called houses. Each house stands for a part of life. Bill's Sun sits in the fifth house. Astrologers give that house to play, games and making things. For Bill, code was play.

His Sun also makes a square to Uranus. A square is a quarter of a circle, and astrologers say it brings tension that pushes you to act. Uranus is the planet of sudden change, new tools and rule-breaking. A boy who found the holes in a system, then got paid to fix them, sounds a lot like Sun square Uranus.

Then came a very sad day. Bill's best friend, Kent Evans, died in a climbing accident while they were still at school. Bill later called it one of the saddest days of his life. He turned to another Lakeside boy, Paul Allen. The two would soon change the world of computers together.

Your Moon sign is the sign the Moon was in when you were born. Astrologers say it shows your feelings and how you react when things happen fast.

Bill's Moon is in Aries, the sign of the ram. Aries is said to charge in first and ask questions later. An Aries Moon is quick, bold and impatient.

Bill got top marks and went to Harvard University in 1973. There he solved a hard puzzle about sorting a stack of pancakes. His answer stayed the fastest one for over 30 years.

Then, in January 1975, a magazine showed off a new home computer called the Altair. Bill and Paul wrote to the company that made it. They said they were working on a BASIC program for it.

In truth, they had not written a line of it. They did not even own an Altair. They just wanted to see if the company would be keen. It was. So they rushed to build the program in a few weeks. The test in New Mexico worked. That is about as Aries Moon as it gets: say yes first, then work out how.

Paul came up with the name "Micro-Soft", from microcomputer and software. Bill left Harvard to run it. He said that if it failed, he could always go back to school. He never did.

In 1980, the big computer firm IBM was making its first personal computer. It needed software to run it. Bill's mum had mentioned his company to IBM's boss. Microsoft got the job.

Bill made one clever choice. He let IBM use the software, but Microsoft kept the rights to it. He guessed other firms would copy IBM's computer. They did, and they all needed his software too. That is how a small firm became the biggest software company in the world.

On 25 June 1981 Microsoft was set up again as a new company, with Bill as president. On 20 November 1985 the first Windows came out. In 1986 people could buy shares in Microsoft. A year later, at 31, Bill was the world's youngest self-made billionaire.

His chart has a striking pair here. Jupiter and Pluto sit side by side in Leo, less than one degree apart. Astrologers call two planets this close a conjunction, which means they are joined. Jupiter is the planet of growth and good luck. Pluto is the planet of power. Astrologers say joining them can bring huge, world-sized goals.

Even better, they sit in his second house. That is the house astrologers give to money and what you own. If you only look at one thing in his chart, I'd make it this pair.

Bill was not an easy boss. In the early years he checked, and often rewrote, every line of code his company made. He once read a 500-page plan in one night and wrote notes on every page.

In meetings he asked harder and harder questions. He would snap things like "that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard". Courts later ruled that some of Microsoft's business tricks were unfair to other firms.

Astrologers might point to his Moon. It faces Mars from across the chart. Astrologers call that an opposition. Mars is the planet of drive and anger. Moon opposite Mars is said to give quick feelings and a short fuse.

Your rising sign is the sign that was coming up over the eastern horizon at the moment you were born. Astrologers say it is the first face you show the world. Bill has Cancer rising. Cancer is the crab, hard on the outside and soft inside. Astrologers say Cancer rising cares deeply about home and family.

In 1987 he met Melinda French at a trade fair. She had joined Microsoft a few months before. They married on 1 January 1994 on a golf course in Hawaii, and had three children. Years later they divorced, but both kept working on their charity for a time.

His chart has one more pair to look at here. Venus and Saturn sit close together in Scorpio. Venus is the planet of love. Saturn is the planet of slow work and of promises kept. Astrologers say Venus with Saturn takes love and duty very seriously.

In 2000 Bill and Melinda set up the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with $5 billion in shares. It grew into one of the largest charities in the world. It pays for vaccines and fights diseases such as malaria and AIDS.

In 2006 Bill said he would step back from Microsoft. On 27 June 2008 he handed over his daily jobs there. From then on, the charity came first.

On 9 December 2010 Bill, Melinda and the investor Warren Buffett signed what they called the Giving Pledge. Each promised to give away at least half of their wealth over time.

In 2015 he warned that the world was not ready for the next pandemic. A few years later, COVID-19 arrived.

Chinese astrologers give each year an animal. Bill was born in the year of the Wood Goat. Chinese astrologers say Goat people are kind, calm and like to help others. That side of him showed up more and more as he got older.

They also look at the day you were born, which they call your Day Master. Bill's Day Master is yang Water. Yang Water is said to be like a big river or the sea. It is strong, always moving and hard to stop. That is a fair picture of a man who reads The Economist from cover to cover every week and keeps chasing new problems.

Numerology finds meaning in numbers. To get your Life Path number, add up the digits of your birth date until one digit is left. Bill's is 4. Numerologists say 4 is the builder. It is the number of plans, systems and steady work. Software is a kind of building, one line at a time.

The planets far from the Sun move very slowly. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto can take years to cross one sign. Astrologers compare where they are now with the planets in your birth chart. They call this a transit.

When the first Windows came out in 1985, Pluto was sitting right on his Sun, less than one degree away. Astrologers say this happens rarely in a life and brings deep change in who you are. For Bill it came the year he turned 30, with a product that made his name.

His wedding day in 1994 had Pluto making a trine to his rising sign, almost exact. A trine is a friendly third of a circle. Astrologers say a trine to the rising sign can bring a calm, deep change to your life at home.

In 2008, when he handed over his Microsoft jobs, Saturn was making a sextile to his Sun. A sextile is a friendly sixth of a circle. Astrologers give Saturn to duty and to growing up. Stepping back to take on new work fits that.

And on Giving Pledge day in 2010, Pluto made a sextile to his Sun, while Uranus made a trine to his rising sign. Astrologers would call that a sky for a big, freeing turn. The table on this page shows the full sky for each date.

Bill Gates's story started with a jumble sale and a clunky machine. It went on to change the computers most of us use every day. Then it turned toward vaccines and saving lives.

You can look at your own chart the same way. Find your birth date, time and place. Look up your Sun, Moon and rising signs. Then think of one real thing you have done that fits each one, the way Bill's Aries Moon fits a boy who said yes before he was ready.

And find your own Teletype. It is the thing you cannot leave alone, the one you would happily get banned for. Start there.