Yin Yang XIV
Chart for Kurt Cobain, born February 20, 1967, Aberdeen, Washington, data from birth record
He could be at war with the village that raised him and his homeland,
or perfect a skill to enamour his homeland,
and he did both.
There is an inclination toward the spiritual in Scorpio, the mysteries, and there are belief systems in Sag, and spirituality and belief systems played an important part in his upbringing.
He formed his own belief system about music, being true to the sound of the instruments, not cleaning it up for the radio.
Capricorn is in his fifth house and he was a rock environmentalist.
There is Pan in Capricorn, god of shepherds and the wild, companion of nymphs,
and there is Pan in Pisces, who gave a cry of panic when Typhon went after purity and innocence.
He chose Nirvana to be the name of his band, place of refuge.
He made a friend in high school with whom he could discuss topics that broke the boundaries of where he was raised, a friend from Croatia.
Chart for Krist Novoselic, born May 16, 1965, Compton, California, time unknown
The two would form the band Nirvana.
Krist was the bassist and Kurt the guitarist and lead singer.
There is pressure in living and pressure on the body in Kurt’s chart. Pluto Uranus ask that he break something down and create something anew in Virgo, and it involves his body,
and Krist brought Mars into his first house, increasing the pressure, adding discipline and drive.
Synastry chart for Kurt and Krist, with Kurt’s chart in the inner wheel
They practised and went on the road, and played in small venues,
derivatives of rock,
punk rock, grunge rock.
Music came first, expressing emotions through music, lyrics came second. With Mercury in Pisces, Kurt brought in words to accompany the music, words he’d written, heard, words that came into his head, anonymous.
They came to be known in the places Virgo rules, the fringes.
They found some success,
but the drummer was wrong, drummer one, two, three,
and in 1990, they recruited David Grohl.
Chart for David Grohl, born January 14, 1969, Warren, Ohio, data from birth record
David brought social consciousness, an awareness of others. His progressed Sun was at 15 degrees Aquarius, conjunct his natal Mercury, and he introduced social issues into their conversations.
What Kurt may have felt was his personal experience, his own disillusionment with the times, became the experience of others growing up in America.
Synastry chart for Kurt and David, with Kurt’s chart in the inner wheel
If Kurt was going to de marginalize grunge rock,
David’s Uranus Jupiter in Libra in a trine to Krist’s Venus Jupiter in Gemini
asked that it be turned into an art form with wide appeal.
youtube.com/watch?v=hTWKbfoikeg
The band counted on his personality,
his lyrics, his voice, and his performance, typhonic performance, becoming undone, smashing guitars, destroying equipment, purposefully not minding the gap in Pisces,
a gap away from Charon, the ferryman.
youtube.com/watch?v=pkcJEvMcnEg
Lithium was released in 1991, with his natal Sun at 1 degree Pisces and his progressed Sun at 24 degrees Pisces, conjunct Chiron.
Medicine man, offering his Piscean medicine.
Saturn in Pisces is in a trine to Neptune in Scorpio, and he offered a release from the expectations of his clan, dissolution.
He said things like,
he felt closer to the feminine side of the human being, more than he did to the male side or America’s idea of what a male should be.
youtube.com/watch?v=PbgKEjNBHqM
He said that he married his wife because he was compatible with her, and it didn’t matter if she was male or female, hermaphrodite or a donkey.
In Pisces, what he felt and what he smelled mattered more.
web.archive.org/web/20180616154032/https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/nirvana-inside-the-heart-and-mind-of-kurt-cobain-19920416
He was participating in what the Pluto Uranus in Virgo and Saturn in Pisces generation came to do, changing the culture, changing the order of things,
and he did it with the raw material at his disposal, creatively.
Music had been his place of refuge, place of rebellion, but with fame, it became work.
People wanted more. They asked him what his lyrics meant. They wanted more and they asked for meaning, for rationality, when he was in touch with the irrational.
There was not enough space in between, not enough time to let the words come in, and he did what other shamans do to reach the other side.
There was pain too. He said his singing, his screaming, his feelings, came from his upper abdomen, and that’s where the pain was centred.
In 1993, with his progressed Sun at 26 degrees Pisces, conjunct Venus, he invited Pat Smear to join the band, as a backup guitarist, to take some of the pressure off him.
Chart for Pat Smear, born August 5, 1959, West Los Angeles, time unknown
With Pat’s planets in Leo came the possibility of a new image for the band, and of slowing down and taking the time to heal.
But Kurt took his life the following year, with his progressed Sun at 27 degrees Pisces, touching Saturn.
youtube.com/watch?v=aWmkuH1k7uA
Enki wrote the rules for making beer
for the people he fashioned out of clay.
He and the goddess Ninmah got drunk one day and played a game of opposites. Enki made a man, and Ninmah made his opposite. Enki made Gilgamesh of the purest clay, god like, king, and put him to rule the city. Ninmah made Enkidu of the coarsest clay, beast like, wild man, and put him in the forest.
Enkidu became protector of the forest, cutting nets, smashing traps, filling up the pits left by hunters, and hunters had nothing to eat, and they went to the city to seek the advice of the king.
Take the prettiest dancing girl from the city, and let her tame him with a kiss, said the king, and that is what the hunters did.
They sat in a clearing and waited.
Enkidu could smell them and stayed away. He could smell the sweet notes of the dancing girl’s perfume and came close. The dancing girl motioned him to come closer, sit beside her, and when he finally did, she kissed him. He liked the feel of her kiss, and stayed for another, and another.
The hunters lit a fire and gave him food and taught him words.
Suddenly Enkidu missed the forest and left, but the forest wouldn’t have him back. He didn’t smell right. So Enkidu returned to the campfire and ate more food and learned more words.
When the dancing girl said it was time to go back to the city, she invited Enkidu to come, and he followed. People in the city were impressed to see such a man, as big and strong as their king, but coarse and unrefined.
When the king and the wild man met on the street, there was recognition, the kind of recognition that can lead to competition, and they lunged at each other, and wrestled and fought, bringing everything around them crashing down.
Chart for Roger Ebert, born June 18, 1942, Urbana, Illinois, data from birth record
He was an eighth house man. He was many things, but Venus, ruler of the Ascendant, puts him in Taurus, in the eighth.
She takes time to mature.
In the early days, she gave him a taste for hookers.
His friends used to wonder about his taste in women. Where did he find them?
They’re hired ladies, he said.
In 1969, with his natal Sun in Gemini, experimental Sun, and his progressed Sun at 21 degrees Cancer, maternal Sun, he teamed up with Russ Meyer and wrote the screenplay for
Why would he do that, asked a colleague.
Boobs, replied another.
rogerebert.com/reviews/beyond-the-valley-of-the-dolls-1980
He was a lover of literature, a man of letters. He perfected his arrangement of words and made them accessible to the general public.
There is learning in his chart and he took it to the movies. Over time, he developed a philosophy of movie criticism. Behind it was the awareness that movies were the most influential mass art of the twentieth century.
He would study a movie in the context of its genre, the age group that it catered to, and audience expectation.
At first, when he hated a movie, he hated it. But when he began to understand the power of his words, he would watch a movie twice if at first he hated it, to see if he’d missed parts that were worth mentioning.
In 1975, with his progressed Sun at 27 degrees Cancer, he won the Pulitzer Price for Criticism.
It was also in 1975 when they asked him to do a show with the movie critic across the street.
pulitzer.org/article/how-mad-helped-roger-ebert-win-pulitzer-prize
Chart for Gene Siskel, born January 26, 1946, Chicago, Illinois, data from birth record
He too was an eighth house man. The rulers of Pisces in the first house are in Libra in the eighth.
In the early days, he was acquainted with Hugh Hefner, and spent time at the Playboy Mansion and traveled with the Playboy clan.
Other people’s resources are in the eighth, and both him and Roger had a say about other people’s resources, their art. Over time they brought an awareness of the psychological impact they could have into their practice.
youtube.com/watch?v=p6KjMyyt9qM
They transformed movie criticism in America, made it a player in the movie industry.
Gene’s natal Sun is in Aquarius, conjunct Venus, in the twelfth. A Sun with a bird’s eye. Roger said that for Gene to give a thumbs up, he had to like the whole movie, and not just parts of it.
There is philanthropy in the twelfth, and Gene used his platform to support and raise funds for the Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, now named after him.
He graduated with a philosophy degree, and got a job at the Chicago Tribune in 1969.
The Chicago Tribune was across the street from the Chicago Sun-Times where Roger worked.
In 1975, with his progressed Sun at 4 degrees Pisces, they asked him to do a show with Roger.
People watched aghast as the two men, equally powerful, grappled each other, upturning street carts, barging through walls, scattering chickens, wild turkeys and goats, with neither getting the upper hand.
They prayed to the gods, to Anu and Enlil, Enki and Erra-
Not Erra!
What about Inanna?
They prayed to Inanna to make them stop, and watched the men fall on their backs, unable to continue, and eying each other from the corner of their eyes.
They had found their match.
youtube.com/watch?v=1lqaa9OSTj0
Something stirs when the Ascendant of one touches the planet of another, and something stirred in Gilgamesh and Enkidu.
They were too tired to fight, yet did not want to part, and Gilgamesh invited Enkidu to the palace.
There is hospitality in Jupiter, and Jupiter in Libra learns the art of hospitality, when to talk, when to let the other talk, and a friendship grew between them.
Gilgamesh spoke to Enkidu of his wish. He wanted to leave his mark on this earth, carry out a feat of courage, vanquish the unvanquishable.
I will help you, said Enkidu, and they went to see the diviner.
The diviner sacrificed a sheep. She studied the shape and colour of its intestines, and said, The coils of the colon resemble the demon Huwawa, guardian of Lebanon, land of the Cedar Forest.
Enkidu shook his head and said, That demon will suck our strength before we reach the forest. We will need protection.
The diviner offered him crystals for protection, but he shook his head again. They needed the protection of the lifegiver, the Sun god Shamash.
youtube.com/watch?v=FZhKlwWsEaU
Dreams came to guide them. A dream told of the weapons they would need, and they went to the forges to order their weapons, axes and swords.
Another dream told of digging a well wherever they stopped, to keep their water skins filled.
When they confronted the terrifying Huwawa, magnificent Huwawa, they were the size of ants. They held their water skins to the sky and made an offering of water to the Sun god,
and help came.
The Sun god sent the seven winds of heaven to cyclone around the demon, binding him and making it possible for Gilgamesh and Enkidu to vanquish it.
When the winds died down, they heard the song of birds, and they raised their eyes and saw the cedar tree they would carry back to the city.
What will you do with the wood, Enkidu asked his friend.
I will have cedar boxes made, with bronze clasps, replied Gilgamesh. Each one will hold a lapis lazuli tablet, and each tablet will be engraved with a story. The first one will tell the story of how you and I defeated Huwawa. One day I will build a new city wall, and I will bury the boxes in the foundation, for posterity.
He finished saying this, and they came to the old city wall, and standing on the wall was the goddess Inanna, Ishtar Inanna, goddess of love.
In 1980 Gene fell in love and married, and two daughters and a son would follow.
Chart for April 28, 1980
In 1980, his progressed Sun was at 9 degrees Pisces, and Saturn and Jupiter were transiting Virgo in his seventh house. There is something here about time and the order of things, and having the courage to take the next step. And also the awareness of being a participant in the culture
Uranus was transiting Scorpio in his house of wisdom, awakening him to the responsibility of clan.
Pluto was transiting Libra, conjunct his natal Jupiter,
and there can be influence in this conjunction,
a conjunction that lit up the t-square in his chart with Cancer and Capricorn.
He became sensitive to the portrayal of women, relationships and family in movies,
and he used his influence to warn moviegoers, especially the younger generations, and to discipline the movie industry.
youtube.com/watch?v=mRTi6xr-ZMc
In 1980, Roger’s progressed Sun was at 2 degrees Leo, conjunct Mars Pluto and his Midheaven in Leo, and he became one of the top reviewers in his country. Moviegoers trusted what he had to say. They counted on his top 10 lists.
rogerebert.com/chazs-blog/rogers-top-ten-lists-best-films-of-the-1980s
He could spot a hidden gem, single it out, and bring it out of the margins.
He looked for movies that said what had not been said before, then looked for the right words to describe them to his readers.
When will you get married, Gene asked him one day, and he said he hadn’t found her yet.
Aquarius is in his fifth house, and the rulers are in Gemini in the ninth, with Mercury and the Sun, and Uranus holds the lowest degree. She had to be someone who broke the mold in some way, someone he could relate with intellectually.
He met her in 1992, at the age of 50, with his progressed Sun conjunct Chiron in Leo, healing him. She was a businesswoman and an attorney, with children from a previous marriage, and black, everything his mother would have considered taboo.
He was an only child, and he once said that he would never have married while his mother was alive, afraid that she would disapprove of his choice.
vimeo.com/225930489?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=19551905
Gilgamesh too married late.
In an early version of the Epic of Gilgamesh, he consulted his mother when Inanna, standing on the city wall, asked him to be her lover.
He had already considered marrying her, in a ceremony with the high priestess of her temple, to dedicate his life to her in ritual.
Becoming her lover would divert him from his path of ritual duties.
His mother advised him to decline the honour, as tempting as it may be, and to offer gifts in place of himself.
In the later versions, in Tablet IV, he insults Inanna of the city wall. He calls her an oven that melts ice, a shoe that bites the feet of its owner. He lists her previous lovers and what became of them,
and the lovers he lists are the men who suffered her magic in Scorpio, the magic of Artemis, like Actaeon turned into a wolf for spying on her.
There is an underworld in Scorpio, the underworld of Ereshkigal, and Inanna would descend into the underworld, but before that, she raged at Gilgamesh’s insults, and asked her father Anu to release the Bull of Heaven.
She raged even more when the Bull was slain, and Enkidu cut off one of the bull’s haunches and hurled it at her to make her stop.
Such an act could not go unpunished, and the gods decided that one of the two must die, and in a dream, Enkidu said that he would die.
When he woke up from the dream, he fell ill.
In 1998, Gene fell ill.
It was the year Roger told Gene that he loved him. Something told him to say it now, before it was too late.
youtube.com/watch?v=K-hX5FepO3g
Gene kept the severity of his illness private. Venus in his chart guards his privacy.
Roger did the opposite when he fell ill, with the help of his wife, Chaz.
Aries is in his house of marriage, and she is fierce.
She says that she had to fight with him to stay alive, to carry on with his work and his public life. He felt self conscious about his appearance, and she helped him overcome it.
He fell ill when his progressed Sun was in the last degrees of Leo, and he gave this talk with his progressed Sun at 2 degrees Virgo, two years before he died.
With Venus, the ruler of his chart, in Taurus, his natal Sun in Gemini, and his progressed Sun in Virgo, he talks of his illness and surgeries, miraculous rescue, communication and technology, and marginality.
ted.com/talks/roger_ebert_remaking_my_voice
He says it is human nature to look away from illness. We don’t enjoy a reminder of our own mortality.
When Enkidu died, Gilgamesh was reminded of his own mortality. He was overcome with grief and with the fear of dying. So great was his fear, that he set out to learn the secret of immortality from Atrahasis Utnapishtim.
He traveled to the ends of the world to find him.
Utnapishtim told him the story of the great flood, how Enlil had been so pleased to see survivors that he granted him and his wife Saba immortality. He added that the gods would not grant Gilgamesh immortality.
Go back to the city, he said, and remember your friend. Go back and write of the adventures you shared.
Gilgamesh suffered, and Saba intervened. She said there was a plant that could not give immortality, but could bring back youth. Old-man-young was the name of the plant.
Hope returned to Gilgamesh’s eyes, and he dove to the depths of the ocean to find it.
Holding the plant, he made his way home. He could not wait to see the city and his people again. He would share the plant with the old before having some himself.
Before entering the city, he went to bathe in the river, and rested the plant on a rock. As he swam in the river, he thought of marriage and having a child, a child to carry his name.
Feeling refreshed, he walked back to the rock where old-man-young lay, and saw a snake eat it. The snake shed its old skin and slithered into the water wearing a brightly coloured new one.
Possible representation of Gilgamesh, grasping a lion with his left arm and a snake in his right hand. Assyrian palace relief, 713-706 BC
Chart for Sigmund Freud, born May 6 1856, Freiberg, data from birth record
He trained as a medical doctor, a neurologist, and participated in the debate about the structure of the nervous system.
At the time, microscopes were not powerful enough to see the miniscule gap between nerve cells, a visual that would give rise to the idea of synapses connecting nerves cells. Yet some believed that this was in fact what the nervous system was made of, individual cells, like other parts of the human anatomy. They were the neuronists.
Others believed it to be what was visible through the microscope, a continuous network of tissue. They were the reticularists.
Freud contributed drawings showing nerve cells in the lamprey spinal cord to the debate, siding with the neuronists.
He was trained to make closely observed drawings,
and he was learning to envision what couldn’t be seen, awakening Venus in Aries.
There are images in fire.
Freud’s drawing showing nerve cells in the lamprey spinal cord, 1877
His natal Sun is in Taurus, a practical Sun, and he could have continued in this vein, studying other organisms to contribute to the understanding of the human body,
but Pluto and Uranus are in Taurus, and they asked him to break something down and create it anew,
and Mercury can travel to the heavens, the earth, the underworld,
and there is a labyrinth in Taurus, beneath the palace at Knossos.
He developed an interest in neurological disorders, disorders of the mind, madness and hysteria. To navigate the field, he went looking for clues, with his natal Sun in Taurus and his progressed Sun in Gemini, conjoining his natal Moon,
ruler of Cancer, where the Lernaean Hydra protects the entrance to the underworld.
In 1885, Jean-Martin Charcot gave him a clue, hypnosis. A year later, Josef Breuer gave him another clue, the talking treatment.
They were clues that were drawing him away from neuroanatomy, and drawing him toward psychology and what he would call psychoanalysis.
A clue by Katia Roka, 1988
In late 1890, transiting Uranus, spirit of the times, made his entry into Scorpio,
and transiting Pluto and Neptune were in Gemini.
Freud took Breuer’s talking cure and added what he felt was missing, listening, listening to patients, listening for clues that would allow entry into their underworld,
unconscious mind, place of repressed memories.
He made mistakes and admitted to his mistakes. He first said that all hysteria stemmed from sexual abuse in childhood. He had a tendency to generalize, to make generalizations based on a small pool of patients, and sometimes only one.
Jupiter in Pisces can aggrandize the small, exaggerate, but he also gives great imagination, and with Venus in Aries, there is visual imagination, seeing with the mind’s eye what has no corresponding visual stimuli.
With Uranus transiting Scorpio, across from his natal stellium in Taurus, his attentions was drawn to sexuality and early childhood development.
He remembered the story of Oedipus who killed his father without knowing that he was his father, and married his mother without knowing that she was his mother.
He relied on this old story to touch on a subject that was taboo.
He spoke of a child’s rivalry with the parent of the same sex, a rivalry that grew out of desire for the parent of the opposite sex,
without knowing,
unconscious,
instinctual,
Id.
With his progressed Sun conjoining Saturn in Gemini, touching Venus in Aries and Jupiter in Pisces,
he introduced the Oedipus Complex to the imagination,
an idea that opened doors to questions, questions that Mars R in Libra pushed him to answer, and in answering them, to complete his sketch of the human mind, human psychology,
what lay beneath the palace at Knossos,
the Ego’s battle with the Id’s untamed passion and with the moralistic Super-ego or ego ideal.
To defend it, build on it, make it 3 dimensional,
He continued to interpret the divisions of the human mind throughout his lifetime, calling our attention to their fluidity, to variations from individual to individual, and alterations caused by diseases of the mind.
marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/at/freud2.htm
He added to the Oedipus Complex. He brought in the defence mechanism of repression, and of gender identification. In males, gender identification diminished the fear of castration by the more powerful father, as they were no longer in competition, and in females, it diminished penis envy as the mother didn’t possess one.
With his natal Sun in Taurus and his progressed Sun in Cancer, he revised and added to the interpretation of dreams.
youtube.com/watch?v=cb4gH7I226E
One day Louis Malle asked himself, What’s this whole thing about the Oedipus Complex?
Chart for Louis Malle, born October 30, 1932, Thumeries, data from birth record
When he read Freud, Freud’s Ascendant conjoined his Sun and Moon in Scorpio, and Freud’s Venus conjoined his Uranus in Aries.
He wondered if he could make a movie based on the Oedipus complex.
He sat down to write the script, and said that once he started, he didn’t stop. It wrote itself.
He called the movie, Murmur of the Heart.
rogerebert.com/reviews/murmur-of-the-heart-1971
Chart for Carl Jung, born July 26, 1875, Kesswil, Switzerland
youtube.com/watch?v=2AMu-G51yTY
He gave this interview in 1959, with his natal Sun in Leo and his progressed Sun at 24 degrees Libra.
He says that Freud saw people only in terms of their libido, whereas he sees people in a broader context, the context of history, breathing the ideas of those who came before and the ideas of their time, and he calls the air of ideas we breathe the collective unconscious.
He says that at the age of 11, while walking to school, he stepped out of the mist and became aware of himself, separate from others. I am, he said, with his progressed Sun at 13 degrees Leo, conjoining Uranus.
It was with his progressed Sun conjunct Uranus that he overheard a conversation his father had about the family’s difficult financial situation. His father was worried about him, his schooling-
He realized that his father was counting on him becoming self sufficient, and he began to apply himself to his studies.
A love of learning grew at this point, and he went on to study medicine. Then he did something unexpected. It was in 1898, when Jupiter began his transit through Libra. A book fell on his lap and he read the introduction. It was a book about Alienism, as psychiatry was then called, a book about assisting patients overcome their mental alienation.
With his progressed Sun at 24 degrees Leo, in a sextile to his natal Jupiter in Libra, he decided to change course. His friends couldn’t believe it. He had been offered a position by their professor, and he was going to give it up for a field that was nothing compared to medicine.
But it felt right.
He says that when he read the introduction of the book, he saw his two interests converge, the natural sciences and the humanities. There was room in psychiatry for Kant. There is collaboration in Libra, and it is a multidisciplinary sign.
With his progressed Sun in Virgo, he began working with patients who had schizophrenia, and he read Freud’s books, Studies on Hysteria and the Interpretation of Dreams.
He may not have considered his correspondence with Freud important enough to publish in 1959, but in the early 1900s, Freud was important to him. He was a father figure and a friend.
Their correspondence began in 1904, when Jung sent him an article he’d written, and they met for the first time in 1907. We do not have an exact date of their meeting, but on May 9, 1907, this is what the sky looked like.
Chart for May 9, 1907
Their romance lasted the years Uranus transited Capricorn,
a romance that influenced Jung’s eleventh house.
Jung embraced Freud’s ideas and was seen as the successor of the founder of psychoanalysis, the one who would lead the way.
But then he questioned Freud’s ideas. He found that Freud’s drawing of the mind was missing a key element, a lake of memories that connected man to history.
Friction grew between them, and when Jung’s book, The Psychology of the Unconscious, was published in 1912, their friendship ended.
Transiting Uranus in Capricorn had been trining Taurus, where Pluto can break something down, and Jung had been breaking down Freud’s theory of the mind and creating a theory of his own.
In 1912, Jupiter transited Sag. His natal Mars is in Sag and he defended his theory.
He pointed at Pluto in Taurus and said that man wasn’t born tabula rasa, subject only to biological impulses.
He pointed at Saturn in Aquarius and said that he believed there was an impersonal stratum in the psyche that connected man to a lake of memories, the collective unconscious.
He pointed at Jupiter in Libra and said he believed this because he had heard people with schizophrenia say things they couldn’t have known about the past, about religions of the past, when Helios was a god, and he cited examples.
He described schizophrenia as a lowering of consciousness, giving access to the unconscious, to the impersonal stratum in the unconscious.
In 1912, Uranus began his transit through Aquarius, the beginning of his Uranus opposition Uranus.
He defended his theory and became his own authority.
In Leo there can be a search for authority figures, a reliance on authority figures, until Leo finds authority in itself.
The Apotheosis of Hercules by Peter Paul Rubens, ca 1637
In 1914, with Jupiter and Uranus transiting Aquarius, he resigned as president of the International Psychoanalytic Society, and focused on his private practice,
in Leo in the sixth house.
He would always describe the collective unconscious as tying us to history, but there would also be derivatives.
He had an experience with transference at work, with a patient who transferred her feelings about her father onto him. He kept reminding her that he wasn’t her father, but she said she couldn’t help it. Jung reminded her of him. She described a dream where she saw him standing in a field of swaying wheat, golden wheat, cradling her.
He told her that the man in her dream sounded like a deity. Perhaps the dream was pointing to a value missing in her life, a value she needed to explore.
A dream, a value, an image.
He went on to describe the collective unconscious as being made up of images, instinctual images, and not intellectual constructs. They were numinous images, archetypal. The collective unconscious was an agglomeration of archetypes, the raw material of our mythologies.
He brought this into his practice, the search for a numinous image that would help a patient on their path to individuation.
Wheat field with Reaper and Sun by Vincent van Gogh, 1889
He said many things about the unconscious mind. In his later years he said that man could never know his unconscious mind completely. It was separate from the conscious mind, an autonomous entity, capable of independent action. In light it could be a creative force, and in shadow it could dominate human behaviour and cause disturbances.
The unconscious mind existed outside of space and time. It is where hunches and inner knowing came from, the hunch of what lay around the corner, the inner knowing of what was to come.
Mars in Sag is in a quincunx to Pluto in Taurus, and he couldn’t see it until he saw that he was breaking down man’s biology, the science of man, to connect him not just to history and his tribe, but to what lay outside the bounds of science, to the mysteries, to something greater than he was.
When they asked him if he believed in god, he answered, I know. Mars in Sag knows or doesn’t know, and he had enough proof to know.
vimeo.com/1614686
Through observation of his patients, he divided personality into two groups, extroverted and introverted, and further divided the two groups into four types, the thinking, feeling intuitive and sensation types.
But he said these were only skeletons, and what was missing was the flesh that made an extroverted thinking type different from another.
He said man reacted against being grouped, striving to find his own uniqueness and meaning in life.
In 1933, with his natal Sun in Leo and his progressed Sun at 28 degrees Virgo, he was offered a professorship in Zurich. He would continue his psychotherapeutic practice with his progressed Sun in Libra, but was sought after to teach and give lectures, and to comment on current events.
Because of his insights, many thought him a prophet.
Jung died in 1961, and in 2009, when his progressed Sun was at 14 degrees Sag, his illuminated manuscript, Liber Novus, was published. It is known as The Red Book.
Jung describes it as a record of his confrontations with the unconscious, which he tried to reach through induced hallucinations.
Aquarius is in the twelfth house, and it is here that in the evenings and on weekends he experimented with himself. He took medicine to access his unconscious mind, searching for numinous images..
They say he worked on the book from 1914 to 1930. It is not a spontaneous book filled with sketches, fire images. It is a laboured work of art.
Worried about his reputation, he did not publish it and neither would his heirs, until his progressed Sun was in a trine to Uranus in Leo, and in a quincunx to the Moon in Taurus.
He kept it in his office for colleagues to see, and now the public can see it.
youtube.com/watch?v=XOKKCJsYqMw
A public in the third house is anybody.
A public he never imagined he would have.
A public interested in the psychology of man.
A public interested in his friendship with Freud and the rupture with Freud, the crisis that ensued.
A public interested in him and his own individuation.
A public interested in his marital relationship.
The Moon rules Cancer in the fifth house, and it is here that he formulated his theory of the collective unconscious. It was the result of his studies and investigation, his work with schizophrenia, his analysis of Freud’s theory, the insights that Uranus’ transit through Capricorn brought him. There is history in Capricorn and a lake of memories in Cancer, universality in Aquarius and individuality in Leo.
He had ease to work on his theory.
Jupiter in Libra in the eighth house can speak of other people’s money, a large inheritance, his wife’s inheritance.
He was married to Emma Jung.
Some say she was the Hera archetype, never letting go of her man, despite the other women in his life
Maybe so. The ruler of the seventh house is in Cancer.
But she also brought Virgo wisdom into the marriage. He was a complex man. He described himself as having two and possibly more personalities. He was a shape shifter, like his theories that shape shifted in his attempt to grasp what had no weight or form or logic. She couldn’t always be everything he needed her to be.
He has the Sun in Leo and she has the Moon in Leo. There was an understanding between them.
Wherever Leo is in the chart, we can look for authority figures and be the authority figure someone needs, until they come into their own.
In Leo we are careful who we blame,
and there is forgiveness in the sign.
There is forgiveness in Le Fils.
The Dardenne brothers released their movie on October 9 2002, in Belgium.
There is apprenticeship in the story. The main character teaches teenage boys carpentry. He is the feeling type, sensation type too, introverted.
He is asked to take a new apprentice, and first he says no, and then yes.
He knows who the new apprentice is. Their stories converged in the past, but the new apprentice doesn’t know it.
When the new apprentice asks him to be his guardian, we are with Jupiter in Leo.
rogerebert.com/reviews/the-son-2003
Chart for May 14, 2023
The Lunar Nodes are in the Scorpio Taurus polarity,
and the spirit of the times is in Taurus. Mercury was retrograding in Taurus, and today he turns direct.
Mars is transiting Cancer, and Venus has joined him. They will be together in Cancer until Mars steps into Leo on May 20.
Jupiter is finishing his transit through Aries. He makes his entry into Taurus on May 17. In Aries he doesn’t always bring new beginnings. With Mercury retrograding in Taurus, he can bring a fresh look and deeper understanding.
Higher octave of Mercury.
He will soon exit Aries,
but on July 12, the nodes will change polarity, and they will be in the Libra Aries polarity,
preparing us for Neptune’s entry into Aries in 2025 – 2026.
Chart for Henry VIII, born 28 June 1491 (Julian calendar), Greenwich, data from birth record
Mars in Virgo in the first house can be preoccupied with the body.
Henry VIII’s life was marked by a preoccupation with his body and his bloodline, the bloodline of the Tudors.
Not right away.
In the beginning he was the spare, and quite content about it. Neptune in Sag gave him a feeling of uprootedness, the liberty to explore other cultures and languages, and to put his life at risk with contact sports. The Sun in Cancer across from Uranus in Capricorn gave him a rebellious nature, the mind to question the laws of his homeland, the mind to think for himself.
His brother’s death in 1502 changed everything. It was the same year transiting Pluto made his entry into Sag and took away his freedom. Roots, he said.
His natal Pluto is in Libra, and in Libra there are many things. There is measurement and precision,
and the ability to draw people’s attention, like Halley’s Comet can draw people’s attention to the heavens. He would draw people’s attention to the rights of man, the right of a king to secure his bloodline through multiple marriages.
We can break boundaries wherever Sag is in the chart, and he broke boundaries in the fourth house,
boundaries imposed by the Pope and the Roman Church that prevented him from leaving heirs.
The ruler of the fourth house is in Gemini in the tenth, the work he came to do,
and he came to rescue the monarchy.
There is rescue in Gemini, and Henry VIII rescued the monarchy by differentiating the Roman Church from the Church of England.
His natal Sun is in Cancer in the eleventh house of the groups we belong to, and he belongs to his homeland, founding father of the England we know,
former king and first head of the Church of England,
maker of laws,
allowing a king the right to secure his bloodline.
The Moon, ruler of Cancer, is in Aries in the eighth house, house of other people’s money. He took possession of all the assets of the Roman Church for the homeland and the Church of England.
But there are many layers of meaning to every house, including the eighth.
In 1509, age 17, he married his brother’s widow, Catherine of Aragon, and was crowned king. His natal Sun was in Cancer and his progressed Sun at 1 degree Leo, conjoining Mercury. A time of initiation.
16th century woodcut of the coronation of Henry VIII of England and Catherine of Aragon showing their heraldic badges, the Tudor rose and the pomegranate
Chart for 24 June 1509, date of Henry VIII’s coronation, timed to match his rising sign
A public that would focus on his body and his eighth house, his sex life, his breaking of taboos, his excommunication, his crimes, his obsession with children, male heirs, and his crises. His married life was beset with miscarriages and stillborn children.
Only one of his children with Catherine reached adulthood, Mary.
His father had asked him to marry Catherine, and he carried out his father’s wish before he was crowned king.
But seeing her unable to give him a male heir, he may have thought that god was punishing him. They say he quoted from the bible when he asked the Pope to annul his marriage, If a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an impurity; he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.
The Pope refused to annul his marriage, and his battle with the Roman Church began.
The seventh house of marriage in his chart is in Pisces, and the rulers are in the fourth house and the tenth. Catherine had been home to him, loved by the people, but he sent her away so he could marry Anne Boleyn.
He married Anne in 1533, with his natal Sun in Cancer and his progressed Sun at 24 degrees Leo, in a sextile to Gemini and in a trine to Sag.
People worried about holy retribution as Anne walked pregnant down the aisle.
The second marriage is seventh from the seventh house, in Virgo, a more demanding house than Pisces. Mars in Virgo squares and trines, and has ties to Aries in the eighth house.
The Moon in Aries is a passionate moon.
There is Medea in Aries, priestess of Hecate, who did the unthinkable for love.
He did the unthinkable for the rights of kings,
for a son.
Not all at once.
He first gathered round him trusted advisers who laboured on his behalf, Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer who married him to Anne.
She gave birth to Elizabeth, followed by a stillbirth and miscarriages,
and he must have felt betrayed because she was beheaded.
In 1536 he married Jane Seymour, Piscean wife. She gave birth to Edward, Henry’s only legitimate male heir, before she died.
Grief. He would be buried beside her.
In 1540, with his progressed Sun at 1 degree Virgo, he married Anne of Cleaves, but the marriage was never consummated. They say he agreed to marry her when he saw her portrait, but when he saw her in real life, he was disappointed and the marriage was annulled.
Venus, stepping into Gemini, gave him a taste for women who caught everyone’s eye, and the Moon in Aries asked that they be passionate, loyal and creative.
If we put Anne of Cleaves in the house of the fourth wife, it throws the Pisces Virgo pattern off.
If we leave her out, the woman he married next would enter Virgo and be beheaded, as Catherine Howard was.
Then came Catherine Parr who did not conceive. But with Parr, Henry passed an act that returned Mary and Elizabeth to the line of succession. He was married to her until he died in 1547.
He had a jousting accident in 1537, and they say this was a turning point in his life. The accident left him with an ulcerated leg, and his athletic body grew heavy, and his character disintegrated.
Hilary Mantel points out that such things can happen when one suffers from chronic pain. She knows because she suffered from chronic pain.
She also brings up the hypothesis that Henry may have had a blood type called Kells positive. It would explain why a healthy child was followed by stillbirths and miscarriages.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n04/hilary-mantel/royal-bodies
In Henry’s chart, Virgo rules the body, and the ruler is in Leo.
She says that if the kells positive hypothesis is true, then it makes the history of his reign, not a moral tragedy, but a biological tragedy.
She says that the efforts of the wives, the politicians and churchmen didn’t avail because a genetic lottery was in operation.
They availed.
youtube.com/watch?v=T8RyGgTbdnE
Chart for Hilary Mantel, born 6 July 1952, Glossop, UK, time unknown
Penelope was at her loom for ten years, keeping all distractions at bay, while Neptune took Odysseus from one adventure to the next.
Penelope and the suitors by John William Waterhouse, 1912
The suitors claimed that Odysseus had been shipwrecked, and she should marry one of them.
She would marry one of them when she finished weaving the shroud for her father in law, she said.
She unravelled it at night, while her son Telemachus slept,
and weaved it anew at day. Loyal, industrious.
Penelope unravelling her web by Joseph Wright of Derby, 1784
Hilary Mantel unravelled Thomas Cromwell and weaved him anew in her Wolf Hall trilogy. She began writing it in 2004, and the last book was published in 2020, two years before she died.
She wrote it with her natal Sun in Cancer and her progressed Sun in Virgo.
They are books that have had an effect on her homeland and culture.
She had wondered about Cromwell, how the son of a blacksmith from Putney rose to become Henry VIII’s chief minister, the villainous Cromwell. When she decided to write about him, she spent much of her time in libraries.
Her books are historical fiction. They are grounded in history, but she says that history is filled with silences, and that’s where fiction comes in, or historical imagination, as she calls it.
The more she read about Henry’s reign, the men around him, the prejudices of the men around him, the more she understood why Thomas Cromwell had become the villain.
She stepped into Henry’s time, the context of his time, and suddenly found herself inside Cromwell’s head, filling in the silences,
weaving words.
Athena teaches the women to weave by Peter von Cornelius, 1808
Athena, goddess of wisdom, war and weaving.
Protector of Odysseus.
She offered Athens an olive tree, and Neptune offered a salt spring, and Athens chose Athena’s gift, and it sparked a rivalry between them.
Athena tried to get Odysseus home, and Neptune kept him wandering.
Hilary Mantel could have kept wandering, but Saturn is at a lower degree than Neptune in Libra, in her house of contracts.
They say that she married her husband, divorced him, and married him again. Structure, the dissolution of structure, and the triumph of structure.
They say he was a geologist when she married him first, and he would come to assist her when she married him again.
Chart for 6 July 1952, timed
She wasn’t brought up in a traditional home. One day her mother’s lover moved in, and her father allowed it. They occupied the main bedroom, while her father slept on a couch. They lived this way for four years, until the day her father disappeared. She never saw him again. Mantel is her stepfather’s name.
She says that she couldn’t step out of the house without people asking her what was going on inside, and who slept where.
There was so much rumour and gossip around them.
Her natal Sun Uranus Venus in Cancer are in a sextile to Jupiter in Taurus, in the house of resources.
In the books she read, she paid attention to the rumour and gossip around Thomas Cromwell. Rumour and gossip carry the prejudices of a society.
She began writing when she and her husband lived in Botswana in the late 70s early 80s, with her progressed Sun in Leo.
It is also in Botswana that she consulted medical books to figure out what was wrong with her, why the migraines she had suffered since childhood, the chronic pain all around her body, everywhere except her feet.
She found the answer. Endometriosis.
When she was back in England, the diagnosis was confirmed and she had surgery, and they removed her reproductive organs. She wouldn’t be able to have children.
She gave herself to writing, to her creations, her characters.
She found that when she developed her characters, she unconsciously became them. The words she wove were their words,
and that’s when the nightmares came.
Throughout her life, she experienced the paranormal. She tells of a haunted house her family lived in when she was a child, with ghostly apparitions and sudden drops in temperature. The paranormal was something familiar to her and something she most feared.
With her progressed Sun in Leo, she wrote about people like herself, in touch with the paranormal, psychics and mediums,
and at some point, she realized that when the nightmares came, they were an indication that her work was going well. She had touched the essence of her characters, the nadir, and was giving them expression.
She made fear part of her work.
In the Wolf Hall trilogy, the characters are historical. The work demanded study, and she began to study the life of Thomas Cromwell when transiting Pluto touched her natal Moon in Sag.
Chart for 19 May 2004
There is a portal in Sag, the pull of the galactic centre, curiosity to know what lies beyond, the courage to break limits and know the truth, reveal the truth, a truth to live by.
She went back to the sources.
With her natal Mars in Scorpio, she peeled off the layers that had been added to Cromwell through time, and studied the original documents, records and letters to get to the truth.
Jupiter joins Sag with Taurus, and there is historiography here.
Her Moon in Sag touches Libra, and there is something Libra knows that she understood. We cannot escape the mentality of our times. The principles we are brought up with influence how we see others, how we see the past, how we judge the past.
Her natal planets in Cancer, in a square to Saturn in Libra, pushed her to break the boundaries of her time, and to participate in the mentality of the times of Henry VIII.
She began to write and to bring Cromwell back to life.
He didn’t come alone. Hundreds of characters came with him, but he was her guide.
There are images in fire, and when she read about his life and the life of those he brought with him, she saw them.
Gory times, burnings, hangings, beheadings, spilt blood.
When the nightmares came, she welcomed them.
She wove the images into her story. With her planets in Libra, she wrote a visual story, filmic, a story that could be turned into a play, a TV series.
Saturn was transiting Cancer when she began to write her trilogy. The last book was published when a grand stellium was transiting Capricorn, the sign of her Midheaven, where her natal Chiron is.
Chart for 5 March 2020
She finished filling in the silences and became an authority in the period of time that was Henry VIII’s reign.
The ripples her books sent did not change the history of her country. They do not rise above to judge or see the outcome.
They stay on the ground, with the characters. There is gravity in Capricorn.
She unravelled one man and wove him anew, the man we stand behind when we read the books. We look over his shoulder to see all that happened from the time he was a boy until he died. He wasn’t the villainous Cromwell anymore. She changed a cultural perception.
After she killed him, she walked around her house feeling cold, and wondered why. She realized that it was because his body was growing cold. She said that over identifying with a character could destabilize one’s core.
She said that a writer writes about things or people that touch them in some way, consciously or unconsciously, and Thomas Cromwell must have touched her in some way. We do not have his date of birth, Nobody, but he may have been a solar Aries, her Odysseus.
The king led her to him.
He touched her first, consciously.
His natal Sun touches hers in her lake of memories.
One day in 2004, she was thinking about her surname, how it had no connection to her body. It told her nothing about her genes or her blood. It separated her from her family tree, her roots. Just then, Henry VIII popped into her mind, his preoccupation with passing on his surname to legitimate heirs. She felt his regret. What for? For sending Cromwell to his death.
In 1530, Uranus made his entry into Cancer, and in 1533 Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn.
He fulfilled his father’s wish when he married Catherine of Aragon, and during his Uranus opposition Uranus, he broke free and married Anne.
He was about to turn 42.
His mid life crisis contributed to what he’d never really intended to do, separate England from the Church of Rome.
He broke free and his homeland broke free. He created something new, something that strengthened England’s borders, the country’s autonomy.
There is creation in Capricorn. It is where Enki-Ea fashioned people out of clay to serve the gods, and where he wrote the laws to govern them. Purposeful creation. Of the earth. Lover of mankind.
There is creation in Cancer. It is where Hera breastfed Hercules, and when she sensed who he was, the son of Jupiter with a mortal, she pulled him away, and from the spray of milk that came from her breast, the milky way was born. Creation that came from hurt, emotions. In the sky. Queen of heaven.
youtube.com/watch?v=7CQeVLDs8m0
Chart for Isaac Newton, born January 4 1643 of the Gregorian calendar (December 25 1642 of the Julian calendar), Woolsthorpe Manor
There is soliloquy in Capricorn. It is where Enki-Ea spoke to a wall of reeds, and told of a flood to come, and the preparations needed to prevent the thread of life from breaking.
Soliloquies to process things. Soliloquies to figure things out. Newton may have delivered his in the fourth house. His mother said he was born an hour or two after midnight, and from 12 am until 2 am on January 4 1643, the rising sign was Libra. In whole signs, Libra in the first house.
Chart for January 4 1643, Woolsthorpe Manor, 2 am
He is described as someone who found himself, his talents, by being pitted against another. He became a top student as a form of revenge against a schoolyard bully.
He is described as someone who didn’t take criticism lightly. He raged and sought to publicly humiliate his critics.
Achilles dragging the body of Hector by Franz Matsch, 1892
He went to Cambridge in 1661, with his natal Sun in Capricorn and his progressed Sun at 1 degree Aquarius in his fifth house.
Like others, he questioned the traditional teachings at Cambridge, and read Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes. But he kept his questions private, in a notebook. He did not want to call attention.
He lived in a period of time that is called the Scientific Revolution, a time that was leaving behind a philosophical view of the world, and leaning toward a mechanical view, seeking to understand the mechanics behind matter and motion.
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge was established the year before he went to Cambridge.
Chart for the Royal Society, born November 28, 1660, London
His natal Pluto is in Gemini, and Pluto was still transiting Gemini, questioning, breaking things apart to see how they were put together, how they worked, and testing theories to see if they held true.
Saturn in Scorpio asked for mastery of the mysteries,
and Jupiter in Libra asked for a place where learned men could gather to present their findings and debate.
The spirit of the times was open to new laws.
Atlas holding the celestial globe by Guercino, 1646
In 1656 and early 1657, transiting Uranus in Capricorn conjoined Newton’s natal Sun in direct, retrograde and direct motion.
This was the time when his mother pulled him out of school to take care of the farmlands she inherited from her second husband. Her first husband, Newton’s father, died 3 months before Newton was born, and when he was 3 years old, she married again.
The school principal tried to persuade her not to. Newton was a good candidate for university. But she pulled him out anyway, and when she held his chart one day, she got a shock. His natal Sun in the fourth house did not root him. On the contrary, it asked for freedom.
She watched him read a book under a tree when he was supposed to be watching the cattle, and put him back in school.
In 1660, when Jupiter began his transit through Newton’s first house, his maternal uncle recommended him to Cambridge, and Newton was accepted the following year.
In between his BA and MA degrees, the university shut down for two years because of the plague, and Newton returned home. They say that it was during this time that Newton soliloquized, and lay the foundations for his work on optics, calculus, and the laws of motion.
When he was finishing his MA degree, his professor, who was retiring, recommended that he be the one to succeed him. Newton lectured on optics, and made a reflecting telescope that got rid of chromatic aberration. It caught the attention of the Royal Society.
In 1672, with his progressed Sun at 12 degrees Aquarius, Newton volunteered a paper on optics to the Royal Society, and a leading member criticized it. His name was Robert Hooke.
Chart for Robert Hooke, born July 28, 1635 of the Julian calendar, Freshwater, England, data from news report
Aquarius is in Newton’s fifth house of romance and creativity, and our favourite things. It is through the fifth house that friends get to know us. There is intimacy here, and in Newton’s chart, there is the need for privacy. His Nadir is in Aquarius,
and his natal Venus, ruler of the first house and eighth house.
When he volunteered his paper on optics, he opened the door of his fifth house, and put himself in a vulnerable position. Like Patroclus put himself in a vulnerable position,
and Hector killed him.
Achilles lamenting the death of Patroclus by Gavin Hamilton, 1760
Achilles raged and went on a killing spree, and the River Scamander complained to the gods that his waters were chocking with corpses.
Newton’s rage has been described as irrational, flaming and abnormal. Venus and Mars rose in him to protect his work, his creation, his love. They put him in crisis mode and he went into isolation and perfected his work,
because whatever fault it was that Hooke had pointed out was true.
He presented a second paper in 1675, and the same scenario repeated itself, but he managed to control his rage and there were apologies.
He retreated again, and they say that this was his alchemical period, the time when he experimented with the elements, sociable elements and unsociable elements, the attraction and repulsion between particles of matter. He would merge this study with the mechanical view of the world to analyse planetary motion.
When word got out that this is what he was doing, Hooke began a correspondence with him. He too was interested in the subject.
It must have felt intrusive. Hooke’s natal Sun asked to see Newton’s fifth house, his Nadir, and Hooke’s natal Jupiter must have felt intimidating.
All it takes is one person to trigger the characteristics of a sign, and Aquarius is the most socialized sign in the zodiac. In Aquarius there are systems without a centre, systems that develop with the input of others.
Newton reluctantly agreed to the correspondence, and there was a back and forth between them about the path a body would take if it dropped from a tower. Newton said it would drop to the centre of the earth, and Hooke said that according to his theory, the path would be elliptical.
There were things Hooke said that helped Newton make corrections to his own theory of orbital dynamics,
Relief of Mercury in Olomouc
but Newton went farther than anyone had before.
In 1686, with his natal Sun in Capricorn, and his progressed Sun at 27 degrees Aquarius, conjunct his natal Venus, he sent the manuscript of his book, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, to the Royal Society. In it were his three laws of motion and his law of universal gravitation. He laid the foundation for Cancer to fly.
They say Hooke cried, Plagiarism! But Newton had made references to Hooke’s messages. He gave credit to everyone his work was built on. And everyone knew that the mathematical precision of his formula, tested and re tested to hold true to the infinitesimal fluxion, the word he invented for derivative, was his.
His progressed Sun was conjunct Venus,
in a t square to the Gemini Sag polarity. His Principia was the culmination of his studies. It opened doors to a new reality.
in a trine to the Moon in Cancer. It brought new understanding of the world to the world, a formula everyone could use, written in a universal language.
Not everyone believed in a force that acted at a distance, and not everyone understood it,
but in time, Gravity would be institutionalized.
He was having his Uranus opposition Uranus at the same time that his progressed Sun entered Pisces. It was a time when he broke free from his cloistered life and became Warden of the Mint.
All his contracts gave him freedom. In Cambridge he had the freedom to choose the subject of his lectures. And all his contracts tied him to the eighth house. He would go after counterfeiters as Warden of the Mint. They say he disguised himself as someone who frequented taverns and prosecuted 28 counterfeiters.
In 1703, with his natal Sun in Capricorn, and his progressed Sun at 14 degrees Pisces, conjunct Jupiter and Saturn, he became president of the Royal Society.
There is Enki-Ea in Capricorn, he who sees into the depths.
Newton had seen into the depths and become the authority in his field.
He had a following. Young British scientists studied him and called themselves Newtonians. They would be the ones to occupy teaching positions at the universities and spread his laws.
Enki-Ea flanked by fish-cloaked apkallus (priests) sprinkling water from the abzu, spreading his laws, Assur, Iraq, 7th century BCE
Newton never married, but he was close to his step siblings and their children. Around this time, his niece Catherine came to live with him to be his housekeeper. She was like a daughter to him.
They say the Sun in the fourth house can give a long life, and Newton lived a long life. Both Catherine and her husband took care of him during his final years.
He died peacefully in his sleep in 1727, at the age of 84, with his progressed Sun at 8 degrees Aries, close to the point of Ketu.
There can be sacrifice in Aries, and in his chart, Aries is in the seventh house. Sacrifice for Arete in Taurus in the eighth.
He studied motion and matter, and meddled with the alchemical arts
He studied the past
In solitude
To offer perfectly balanced equations.
youtube.com/watch?v=RG9TMn1FJzc
His funeral was attended by nobles, scientists and philosophers, and his monument is particular to him.
His correspondence with Hooke was in late 1679, early 1680, when the spirit of the times was in Aries, and Jupiter was transiting Taurus.
Chart for May 29, 1680, timed to match Newton’s chart
Uranus was transiting Aries, where we can take a leap of faith, where we can sacrifice.
Jupiter was transiting Taurus, bringing him a gift.
Neptune was transiting Aquarius, accentuating the qualities of the sign, qualities that Hooke helped trigger in him. Systems without a centre. The ability to rise and see with a bird’s eye. Universality. Purity.
Pluto was transiting Cancer. Pluto began his transit through Cancer around the time Newton’s telescope came to the attention of the Royal Society.
Saturn was transiting Cancer. With Pluto, the structure of the heavens was changing.
There is Argos Panoptes in Cancer.
The peacock complaining to Hera by Gustave Moreau, 1881
Purity in Aquarius and Argos across from his natal Sun in Capricorn.
He never married and stuck to high morals. An unblemished reputation.
He accepted Jupiter’s gift.
His gifts don’t come easy.
Chart for Jeremy Bentham, born February 15, 1748, London, UK, date without time of birth
He belongs to the history of ideas, specifically, Utilitarianism. He came across it with his natal Sun in Aquarius, and his progressed Sun conjoining Venus in Pisces.
His stellium in Aquarius is a demanding stellium. When his father held his chart, he saw his little boy as lord chancellor, and the pressure was on.
He was 21 when he was called to the Bar, and soon after, he decided that the practice of law was not for him. He preferred legal theory, and when he came across Utilitarianism, he found the anchor he needed to release the pressure of the stellium.
He would merge Utilitarianism with his Panopticon.
The idea for the Panopticon was born during a visit to his brother in Krichev. His brother was an engineer supervising many workers. He wished that he could supervise them in a more efficient manner.
“How?”
“Have them in a circle, all around me.”
A Roman amphitheatre flashed through Jeremy’s mind.
“A Roman amphitheatre just flashed through my mind.”
“I don’t want them playing soccer! Next thing I know they’ll bring their kids to work!”
“You could modify it,” said Jeremy, taking out charcoal and a sketch pad from his sac. “See? Each one in their own module, and you in the middle of the field, with one of those telescopes in vogue.”
“I see,” said his brother.
“It would make a good correctional facility, wouldn’t it? Multiple levels, with a tower in the centre, the guards’ tower.”
“I hear the motherland’s having trouble with prisons. Maybe something like this would help. How many guards do you think it would need?
“Well, it depends. If the inmates can’t see inside the tower-“
“One! Just one all-seeing guard instilling a correctional eye inside every inmate. Like we have the eye of god inside us.”
“I’ll call the area around the tower The Chapel.”
“What about the whole facility?”
Io, Argos Panoptes and Mercury by Pinturicchio, 1492
Jeremy went to visit his brother in late 1786, with his progressed Sun at 3 degrees Aries. He stayed for two years working on his theory of the Panopticon. He must have like it there.
During this time, transiting Pluto was in Aquarius and transiting Uranus was in Cancer.
In his chart, Pluto digs in Scorpio. On the surface, there is clan in Scorpio, the ties of clan, the protection of clan. Beneath the surface, there are mysteries, the mysteries of the mind.
He developed a Utilitarian philosophy based on increasing happiness and reducing pain, different in every person, and nothing that could be measured statistically.
They thought him naive.
His natal Uranus in Aquarius asked that he take one thing that made most people happy, one thing that most people had in common.
His legal background was particular to his time and place, so when he heard people say that the one thing was natural rights, an image of the American Revolution flashed through his mind and he shook his head. Natural rights were too broad, they could be abused, they could bring down governments, bring anarchy.
Property made most people happy. Ownership. People needed laws that secured property. If a few weren’t happy with ownership, the laws would help re direct them.
All laws were correctional laws.
If there was abundance and a few did not have enough, taxes could be introduced without causing too much pain, to give the few what they needed.
Pain had to be monitored, because excessive pain was the cause of evil.
His natal Venus is in Pisces, natural ruler of the twelfth house, house of faraway places, where we rest and recover, find refuge and seclusion, house of exile.
Sign of raw material.
He applied Utilitarianism to his theory of the Panopticon.
Venus is in a trine to Pluto in Scorpio and Neptune in Cancer,
water,
psychology.
His design was Aquarian. All inmates separate but together, working for the common good. There would be a spiral pump for them to pump their own water. There would be hand operated looms.
But the design of the tower would influence their psychology.
The feeling of being watched at all times, creating self regulation.
Transiting Pluto was in Aquarius and transiting Uranus was in Cancer, and his overall design, of ideal perfection, as he described it, was intended to bring people back into the fold, efficiently.
In 1789, with his progressed Sun at 6 degrees Aries, conjunct his natal Mars, he returned to London and hired an architect to draw the plans.
In 1791, he published ‘Panopticon, or The Inspection House.’
He followed it with a proposal to the English government, to build the Panopticon and appoint him as governor.
He drafted the Panopticon Bill, and his commentaries tell of his concern with the welfare of prisoners after they were discharged. He would be held responsible if they went back to a life of crime, and so he gave the government the responsibility of a welfare structure to prevent this from happening.
It was a structure made up of existing institutions, but he expanded their roles, and gave magistrates new duties.
He made good use of what was available.
Chart for Jeremy Bentham, timed
The project never materialized. The excuse given was that the land he had chosen for the Panopticon could not be obtained. It was rising in value and the owner wouldn’t sell.
But they say the real reason was because his voluminous Bill was a Trojan Horse for law reform.
While his progressed Sun was in Aries, he continued to work on the Bill, adding to the structure that would support it. In doing so, he released ideas ahead of his time, ideas that minded the gap in marginality.
youtube.com/watch?v=0XqFHeynFwM
In 1811, with his progressed Sun at 28 degrees Aries, he received compensation from the government, and it freed him. He closed a chapter in his life and moved on to other Utilitarian concerns. He was 63 years old.
He never married, but he was not chaste. The ruler of the fifth house is in Pisces, and they say he fell in love passionately. The ruler of the eighth house is in Aquarius, and he wrote about the things that made most people happy. The ruler of the twelfth house is in Aquarius too. He was an explorer.
Resourceful man.
theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/26/sexual-irregularities-morality-jeremy-bentham-review
His father left him an inheritance that gave him independence and allowed him freedom of thought. But he was self conscious. He knew what not to publish.
By the time his progressed Sun reached Taurus, he was considered the father of Utilitarianism. He called his followers disciples, and among them were doctors.
He died in 1832, age 84, with his progressed Sun at 18 degrees Taurus, across from his Midheaven and Saturn in Scorpio.
He left his body to Dr. Thomas Southwood Smith, to be dissected in a public forum.
The Anatomy Act would pass a month after his death, and his body was the first body to be given to science, almost legally.
Standing over his body, Dr. Smith praised his friend, and said that even in death, he sought to promote his principles of utility.
It was a triumphant moment for those who shared his principles.
Chart for June 6, 1832, timed to match the rising sign of Jeremy Bentham
Minding the gap of the body.
Transiting Saturn was conjunct his natal Moon, and Saturn can cut in half. The dissection caused controversy in particular fields, specialized fields, judicial and medical. It caused controversy among apprentices.
Controversy can give rise to discussions that can prepare us for what is coming, precipitate what is coming.
A week before he died, he went to see the doctor.
“I don’t want to die, Tom. There’s still a fire burning inside me.”
“You’re in good shape, Jeremy. Carry on!”
“Something tells me my time’s coming.”
“If I had the elixir of life, you know I’d give it to you.”
“To be young again. pause To be born again. pause Resurrect me, Tom.”
“What do you mean?”
“After you dissect me, sit me up in a chair. Make me omnipresent, like the tower of my Panopticon.”
“Well, I could preserve your bones-“
“Could you arrange them in a chair? Hold them up and dress them in my black suit?”
“I suppose I-“
“Before you do, sever my head.”
“Whatever for!”
He took eyes made of glass from his pocket and handed them to Tom.
Juno receiving the eyes of Argos for her peacock by Peter Paul Rubens, 1610
“Glass eyes-“
“For my desiccated head. To lay on top of my bones. Have you ever desiccated a head?”
“Never.”
“Try not to botch it.”
Chart for Dr. Smith, born December 21, 1788, Martock, UK, untimed
Jeremy’s Ascendant conjoins the doctor’s Sun Mars in Capricorn.
Romance.
Not that kind of romance.
The kind that creates art, and with the stellium in Aquarius in Jeremy’s chart, it was eccentric art, out of the box,
with a good dose of Enki humour.
They were men who made good use of what they had.
When they were together, Uranus in one chart opposed Uranus in the other. Rebellious together, breaking free from being The Doctor and The Father of Utilitarianism. It brought out the child within.
They commemorated their friendship with Jeremy’s auto-icon.
The bones turned out okay, but the doctor botched the head. So he commissioned a wax head for the bones, and rested the botched head on the ground, between Jeremy’s legs. He kept the auto-icon in a glass case in his consulting room until 1850, and then gifted it to University College London.
The students have never tampered with the bones. Capricorn rules the bones and there is gravity in the sign.
Aries rules the head and the head began its journey the way journeys begin in Aries.
Hera disguised herself as an old woman and Jason helped her cross the river. He lost his sandal and entered Iolcus with a limp
Students from UCL’s rival, King’s College London, kidnapped the head. They demanded a £100 ransom to be paid to the homeless charity ‘Shelter.’ UCL bargained the ransom down to £10, and the head was returned.
But its journey continues.
cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-tuesday-edition-1.4320308/why-philosopher-jeremy-bentham-s-severed-stolen-and-poorly-preserved-head-is-back-on-display-1.4320319
Valley of Signal