There can be few people in the western world who haven't heard of the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, or played it themselves. I haven't exactly calculated how many steps I am removed from the actor, because for me the game ends when I say my mother's maiden name is Bacon.

The game was invented one January night in Pennsylvania in 1994 by three college students, Craig Fass, Brian Turtle and Mike Ginelli. Having nothing better to do, and having just seen Bacon's 1984 movie Footloose on TV, they theorized he must have worked with everyone in Hollywood and set about devising a game to prove it. What the game eventually proved, after being translated to computer speak in 1996 by Brett Tjaden and Glenn Wasson, computer science doctoral candidates at the University of Virginia, was that Bacon could be connected to any other Hollywood identity in the last 15 years by a factor of four moves or less. Talk about well connected. Throw any name at the Oracle of Kevin Bacon and it will come up with links from your choice to the actor. In fact, it's said the only name that has stumped the oracle is Lassie, and that may only be because the dog star wasn't in the data base.

Lassie is actually only three degrees away from Kevin Bacon—she worked with Elizabeth Taylor, who is two. Obviously, all this is too intriguing for an astrologer to pass up, especially one whose mother's maiden name is Bacon.

What is going on here? Bacon was born on July 8, 1958. One glance at his chart gives a possible clue to this phenomenon. The North Node is the point I look at for connections. While it is variously described as the path we must follow in this life and the point at where good karma is earned, I have found it most active in meetings. If it is activated by transit, progression or in a solar return, the result is invariably a meeting with a person or a group that becomes significant in the life. Depending on the planet and its aspects, the connections can be good or not so good. Aspects of Venus, for example, invariably lead to friendships or love affairs.

The whole world is Bacon's friend, it seems, so where is his natal North Node? In Libra, the sign ruled by Venus. Not quite six degrees away is Jupiter. With the North Node at 27 Libra 49 degrees and Jupiter at 22 Libra 17, that's close enough to six degrees for me. Jupiter in aspect to the North Node indicates many meetings, many connections, and in Libra, assures they will be mostly pleasant. Let's fast forward to that snowy night in January, 1994 when three college students were looking for something to pass the time. They happened upon Kevin Bacon.

At that time, in Bacon's chart, his progressed Venus was applying a square to his natal North and South Nodes. Progressed Jupiter, at 26 degrees Libra, was coming up for full conjunction with that natal North Node. By transit, Saturn was trining that same natal North Node, and Pluto, from the sign of Scorpio, was exactly semisextile to the natal North Node in Libra. Even his solar return (for 1993—as the game was devised in January 1994, halfway between returns) had Mercury squaring his North Node from Cancer, while the North Node in his solar return chart was trining natal Uranus. And where was Jupiter? Six degrees of Libra. Two years later, when Brett Tjaden, of the University of Virginia, and Glenn Wasson designed the Oracle website, Bacon's progressed Jupiter had moved to within a degree of his natal North Node. Now, as I write this, his progressed Jupiter is inching into full conjunction with the North Node. This game is going to get bigger.

According to Anne Oldenburg, who interviewed one of the game originators Brian Turtle for USA Today, Turtle said, "I guess the stars were aligned just perfectly that night."
Indeed, they were.