When the Cosmos Crashed the Cloud: The AWS Outage and October's Astrological Storm

Sometimes the universe has a wicked sense of timing.

On 20th October 2025, Amazon Web Services suffered a major outage that disrupted services globally, affecting millions of users across platforms including Snapchat, Roblox, Reddit, and Robinhood. The disruption began in the early morning hours and lasted approximately 15 hours, with reports on Downdetector hitting over 50,000 starting around 7:50am. Billions of pounds were lost. The internet—or at least a significant chunk of it—went dark.

For those of us who pay attention to the heavens, the timing was... well, let's call it provocative.

The Cosmic Configuration

The New Moon in Libra arrived on 21st October 2025 at 8:24am ET, marking a conjunction of the Sun and Moon at 28°21' Libra. This wasn't just any lunation. Just hours before the New Moon, on 20th October at 2:51am ET, Mercury and Mars formed an exact conjunction at 19°11' Scorpio—a rare alignment that occurs only every two years.

The New Moon squared both Jupiter in Cancer and Pluto in Aquarius, creating what astrologers call "wildcard energy"—a configuration known for bringing unexpected events and abrupt changes. The lunation also opposed Chiron in Aries, highlighting wounds around rejection and vulnerability.

And then there's Neptune. On 22nd October, Neptune retrograde crossed back from Aries into Pisces—its final visit to the sign for 165 years. The planet of illusion and dissolution, shifting between the pioneering fire of Aries and the oceanic depths of Pisces, right as the world's digital infrastructure wobbled.

Coincidence? Perhaps. But when you're an astrologer, there's no such thing as mere coincidence.

Mercury Meets Mars: The Cosmic Short Circuit

Let's talk about that Mercury-Mars conjunction, because it's a cracker.

Mercury governs communication, data, and all things technological. Mars is action, aggression, and—critically—disruption. When these two meet in Scorpio, the energy becomes probing, investigative, and relentless. Scorpio doesn't do surface-level. It digs deep, exposes what's hidden, cuts to the bone.

Mercury conjunct Mars transits give mental sharpness and decisiveness, but can also bring aggressive or defensive thinking with rapid response times that may lead to arguments or hostility. In the digital realm? Think: systems under stress, communication networks strained, infrastructure pushed to breaking point.

AWS identified the trigger of the outage as DNS resolution issues for regional DynamoDB service endpoints—essentially, a communication breakdown between systems. The network couldn't translate web addresses into IP addresses. Mercury (communication) and Mars (severance) in perfect union. The symbolism ain't subtle.

Gary from Cardiff, who runs a small cybersecurity consultancy, put it this way: "Watching that outage unfold felt like the internet equivalent of everyone trying to talk at once and nobody understanding a word." That's Mercury-Mars in Scorpio for you.

The Libra New Moon: Balance Lost

New Moons are beginnings, fresh starts, the darkest point before new light emerges. This particular New Moon in Libra was meant to bring balance, harmony, and reciprocity after months of chaos. Libra is the scales, after all—equilibrium personified.

Except.

With the New Moon squaring both Jupiter and Pluto, astrologers warned of exaggeration, excess, and unpredictable outcomes. Jupiter amplifies everything it touches. Pluto transforms, destroys, and rebuilds. When these outer planets create tension with a delicate Libra lunation, the universe tends to deliver something... memorable.

Around 1:30pm ET on 20th October, AWS began seeing early signs of recovery, with most services returning to normal by evening. The crisis peaked, then resolved, all within the 24-hour window surrounding the New Moon's arrival.

Balance disrupted. Balance restored. The scales tipped, then righted themselves. Very Libra, when you think about it.

Neptune's Liminal Moment

Here's where things get properly weird.

Neptune began its retrograde in Aries on 4th July 2025, and on 22nd October—just as the AWS crisis resolved—it slipped back into Pisces for its final retrograde lap in the sign for our lifetimes. Neptune governs illusions, boundaries (or lack thereof), and the dissolution of structures. Pisces is its home sign—oceanic, boundaryless, prone to confusion.

When Neptune moves between Aries (fire, action, individuality) and Pisces (water, dissolution, collective consciousness), we can feel suspended between two worlds, forced to sit through periods of deep uncertainty.

Now consider what AWS actually is: the invisible infrastructure underpinning a third of the internet. We don't see it. We don't think about it. It's the Neptune of tech—the hidden realm that everything else depends on. When it fails, the illusion of seamless digital life dissolves instantly.

The outage stemmed from an operational issue at AWS's regional gateway in Northern Virginia, causing increased error rates and latency. An internal issue—hidden, unseen—that rippled out to affect millions globally. Neptune in its purest form.

The Wilfred Hazelwood Perspective

At Wilfred Hazelwood, we've always maintained that understanding larger patterns—whether in business, technology, or yes, the stars—gives us an edge when navigating uncertain times. This isn't about predicting the next outage by checking planetary positions (though wouldn't that be handy?). It's about recognising that moments of technological disruption often coincide with periods of collective tension and transformation.

Tech analyst Lance Ulanoff noted the confusion around why there isn't instant redundancy when something seemingly small or localised can have such cascading global impact. That's the Jupiter-Pluto square energy right there: small triggers, massive consequences. Systems pushed beyond their limits.

From a business continuity perspective, the lesson is clear regardless of your views on astrology: the dependency on AWS and cloud-based infrastructure creates single points of failure, sparking ongoing debates about more diversified and resilient cloud strategies. When one-third of the internet relies on a single provider, we're all vulnerable.

The Bigger Picture

Let's be clear: There's no evidence the AWS outage was caused by a cyberattack—it appears to have been a technical fault affecting DNS resolution. The engineers at Amazon didn't suddenly start consulting ephemerides before deploying updates. Technology fails for technical reasons.

But here's what's interesting: astrologers noted that with so many planets activated under the October 2025 New Moon, the energy felt scattered, unpredictable, and removed from regular reality. The spiritual meaning of this lunation emphasised finding equilibrium when everything feels off-balance, and the necessity of disrupting the usual way of doing things to find true peace.

In other words, shake-ups were cosmically scheduled.

Whether you believe planetary movements influence earthly events or think it's all bollocks, there's something compelling about how the symbolism aligns. Mercury-Mars for communication breakdown. Neptune's boundary-dissolving shift. Jupiter-Pluto squares amplifying small issues into global crises. The Libra New Moon's promise of balance only after disruption.

It's the kind of synchronicity that makes you wonder.

What the Stars (Might) Tell Us

The New Moon occurred at the 29th degree of Libra—the anaretic degree—which brings a messy vibe and need for immediate change. In astrology, the 29th degree is called the degree of fate. It's urgent, it's critical, it demands resolution.

The October 2025 New Moon astrology forced a decision in response to rising anxiety in an increasingly polarised world, offering two paths: retreat into security and control, or venture forward with tolerance and innovation.

The AWS outage, in this framing, becomes a microcosm. Do we continue building ever-larger centralised systems that can fail catastrophically? Or do we distribute, diversify, and embrace resilience even when it's less efficient?

Technology companies might benefit from asking themselves what astrologers have known for millennia: what happens when we put all our eggs in one basket and the cosmic weather turns stormy?

The Takeaway

The financial impact of the AWS disruption was estimated in the hundreds of billions of pounds. Airlines experienced delays, banks couldn't process transactions, universities couldn't access course materials, and cryptocurrency exchanges went offline. For roughly 15 hours, a significant portion of modern digital life simply... stopped.

And it happened as Mercury and Mars collided in Scorpio, as the Libra New Moon squared Jupiter and Pluto, as Neptune crossed the threshold between two worlds.

Maybe it's all just delicious cosmic theatre—the universe's way of keeping things interesting. Or maybe, just maybe, there's more connection between the heavens and our hyper-connected earthly systems than we'd like to admit.

Either way, next time there's a major planetary alignment, you might want to check your cloud backup strategy. Just sayin'.

The servers don't care about astrology. But sometimes, it feels like the stars care about servers.