Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Nelson Mandela: aspects for long life, long exile, enduring legacy

Nelson Mandela's fixed stars explain the life he has lived in mythic terms. The fixed stars, as explained in Brady's Book of Fixed Stars, pinpoint vast influences at specific stages of a person's life: in childhood; in one's prime [around 25 to 65 years]; in the latter years; and at the base of one's life and as one's lasting legacy. Brady's handbook on fixed stars uses parans, i.e. the simultaneous angularity of the stars in the heavens during the 24 hour period of the day of birth with planets in our solar system. It is not necessary to have the time of birth, only the place and date of birth. However, knowing the time of birth reveals fixed stars on the angles, a particularly pronounced influence. Mandela has none on the angles at birth, but has parans of great emphasis in each stage - Facies from beginning to long after his life ends, Antares as a childhood influence, Bellatrix and Spica in his latter years.

In June 2003, I saw actor Barry Shabaka Henley in his own play, Jungle Bells, at the Mexican Heritage Theater in San Jose. He portrayed a homeless man, Alexander Pushkin, Martin Luther King Jr., and a Klansman. In the last scene, Henley shed the identities and broke the fourth wall to talk about his first trip to Africa. Granted a visit with Mandela, Henley said on the way to see him a cabbie talked candidly. The cabbie said, among other things, that peace such as it was would shatter the instant Mandela passed, that insurgents were holding back for the great man and nothing else, not for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission nor for nonviolence. Which of his ideals will live on is not determined by the stars; astrology is not strictly predictive. It's like a ballpark figure or an educated guess. Mandela's influence [we all know] is profound. Five planets in fixed signs [not the same as fixed stars] give his ideals and causes longevity. Two personal planets, Merc. in Leo and Moon in Scor., plus three transpersonal planets, Saturn and Neptune in Leo and Uranus in Aqua, indicate tenacity.

Antares, one of the Four Royal Stars of Persia, symbolizes intense, probing obsession. Linked with his Mercury and accompanied by the charisma-givng Vega, from chldhood it has empowered his intellect and speaking voice. He developed these skills early.

Mandela's HELIACAL RISING STAR, Capella, shows his guiding influence to be one of freedom and fairness.

In position as the HELIACAL SETTING STAR is Facies, a star of pure combative energy. Facies in a chart foretells success accompanied by a tremendous struggle, the mythic journey come to life. In this position, it anticipates the shadow of war, the darkness of cruelty or aggression in his life from its inception; the ANC advocated armed struggle against the apartheid regime. This led him to prison for 27 years.

PARANS - BY ANGLE [Calculations from Starlight 1.0]
[Boldface = particularly pronounced conditions in his life]

RISING - The symbolism of these stars will appear in his childhood, adolescence and young adulthood and become a part of his make-up.
Zosma as Jupiter is Culminating - The Angel of Mercy; to have compassion
Vega as Mercury is Setting - A visionary with a very persuasive voice, or charismatic ideas
Antares as Mercury is Culminating - Mental obsession with a subject or a person

CULMINATING - The symbolism of these stars appears in the prime of his life and become an intricate part of his career or vocation and any causes he espouses.
Alhena as Mars is Rising - To fight for one’s ideas or beliefs
Toliman as Mercury is Setting - Dedicated to spreading information - Circumpolar
Mirach as Jupiter is Rising - An insatiable appetite for the physical world, money or people
Ras Alhague as Venus is On Nadir - A person who expands the collective's options by increasing the information available

SETTING - The symbolism of these stars manifests in old age, the latter part of life, or at the end of life as the sum total of his life.
Aculeus as Jupiter is Rising - The outsider; to take a different point of view
Bellatrix as Jupiter is Setting - The historian or priest, a person who is more interested in people than money
Spica as Sun is On Nadir - A talented person, to have a gift

ON NADIR - These stars are very close in meaning to the setting stars and relate to legacy and how he is remembered.
Mirfak as Moon is Culminating - Thrill seeker, the lover of a good fight or challenge
Diadem as Jupiter is Rising - A generous person, or one who uses others
Altair as Sun is Culminating - A bold and determined individual
Vega as Mars is Rising orb - An imaginative, inventive person; or too idealistic
Zuben Elgenubi as Sun is Rising - A person with a social conscience
Facies as Mars is Rising - Endurance, physical or mental, for good or for evil

While the parans above show his special calling, gifts and mission, parans for the larger, slow-moving planets, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto [below] are active for people born during this period for several months. Nelson Mandela was born in a tumultuous time period.

URANUS- Public opinion, Public expectations
Culminating when Phact is Rising - Seeking a new pathway, laws, or government
Setting when Aldebaran is Culminating - The population is asked to act with dignity and social awareness

NEPTUNE- The Hopes and Fears of the Nation
Culminating when Capella is Setting - Controversy over freedom and the rights of individuals

PLUTO- The Crises or the Changes that Occur
On Nadir when Canopus is On Nadir - Change of an establishment leader
Culminating when Canopus is Culminating - Change of an establishment leader
Setting when Betelgeuse is Setting - Benefits or breakthrough achieved in the wake of a disaster
Culminating when Denebola is Rising - A breakdown in the administration, or in the establishment's power
Setting when Rigel is Setting - The will of one person is imposed on society, a defiant act
On Nadir when Diadem is Setting - A lone sacrifice that can change a nation

b. 18 July 1918 2:54 PM, Umtata, South Africa
birth data from astrotheme.com

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Lena Horne: A long fabled life comes to a close

Lena Horne passed Sunday night, May 9, in NYC, at 92 years of age. Bless her feisty heart and stubborn integrity. She was a role model for women and blacks because she fought to break down the barriers holding both down. Transiting Pluto [finality, transformation] was on her Midheaven at 5 Cancer, opposite her n. Pluto at 4 Cancer and n. Sun at 8 Cancer. This vertical axis, the IC/MC, is the ancestral line. She has returned to the original families who freely travel across time and space. Her n. Sun/Pluto at the IC shows she came here with a mission to transform, and that she did magnificently. She moved society, herself, her family, her race in new directions, often meeting strong resistance.

It wasn't easy. Erin Sullivan says: "When one is born with even one of the outer planets on the angles, or conjunct or in hard aspect to a personal planet, then one's task on earth is exceptional and difficult." This chart contains six such aspects: Sun/Pl/IC/NN; Ven/Sat/Nep; Mo/Ur; Su/Ur; Mo/Pl; and Pl/Asc.

Ms. Horne was a Plutonian person, her sun in Cancer conjunct Pluto and Moon in Scorpio, in mutual reception [in the other's sign]. Also her moon is in the eighth house, Pluto's house, and Pluto is in the fourth house, the natural house of both Cancer and the Moon. This lady was ready for the teddy from jump street. Legend has it that when champ Joe Louis was her beau, she gave him a run for his money-with her fist no less. On Donna Cunningham's How Strong is your Pluto? , Ms. Horne gets 39 points, a rating of "strong indeed."

To be a Plutonian means alternating between being isolated and being immersed in obsessive relationships; at worst, being controlling, mistrustful, emotionally intense, bitter, vengeful. She has written about marrying second husband Lennie Hayton: "It was cold-blooded and deliberate. I married him [Lennie] because he could get me into places a black man couldn't. But I really learned to love him. He was beautiful, just so damned good. I had never met a man like him." The interracial marriage was kept secret for three years.
http://marriage.about.com/od/entertainmen1/p/lenahorne.htm

At best, as her words, deeds and devotion showed, she dedicated her Plutonian energies to healing from the bitterness and loss in her life, and became a natural healer and catalyst in the lives of people around her.

Aries rising and Mars, her chart ruler, in Gemini along with Jupiter, strengthened her second house. These influences give one a strong voice, throat power, fierceness-and a good income. She spoke/fought against racism in her profession and during the civil rights struggles.

Chiron, The Wounded Healer, is at 29.56 Pisces in Ms. Horne's chart. This last degree of the zodiac, called the weeping degree in some texts, takes in everything for reprocessing, just before spring breaks through at the Aries Point[0 Aries].

Her NYTimes obit said she "might have become a major movie star, but she was born 50 years too early." Her passing accentuates her mission as a forerunner because, at death, t. Uranus was partile n. Chiron. A reminder to those who are young, black and fabulous in the profession that their successes grew out of the sacrifices, indignities and devotion of those who came before them.

b. June 30, 1917, 11:45 PM, Brooklyn Heights, NY. d. May 9, 2010, NYC
birth data from astrotheme.com

Bobby Brown: High peaks, even deeper valleys


I recently saw a 2009 VH-1 special on Bobby Brown, the provocative entertainer and ex-mate of Whitney Houston. He peaked early, an international pop star at 15. "I'm not that old that I can't reach for the top again," he says in the special. Can he? Where is he in the life cycle? Has Bobby passed into an obscure stage?

Like Gail Sheehy's Passages [1976], which delineated major stages in the life cycle, astrology gives many ways of looking at charts to predict peaks and valleys. One way is to track the outer planets from Jupiter through Pluto. While transiting the top half of the chart, these planets keep one out in the world where one's light can shine. In the bottom half of the chart, one goes through what Grant Lewi called a period of obscurity. Since they are slow moving, each impacts our lives for long periods of time--years, decades.

Saturn is transiting Bobby's 8th h. stellium. With Saturn being aboveground [top half] for the next nine years, his pain, passion and progress will play out in the public arena. Progress: Saturn's transit of his n. Pluto at 24 Virgo coincided with his reality show evolution into a country and western singer, a successful public transformation. Pain: a death rumor went viral so fast in April he had to refute it by speaking out.

Eighth house transits change us for good, leaving us bereft because we have to give up someone or something. In his case, his marriage ended, he was homeless and broke, and he gave up drugs. With four planets [Moon, Pluto, Uranus, Jupiter] in his 8th h., he has a smoldering, heartbreaking sensuality. The latter three planets trine his 1st h. Mercury in Aquarius, so he can speak, sing and write this sensuality in an utterly unique way.

If you look at the green lines in his chart, you can see something like a narrow pyramid. This is called a yod. A yod involves at least 3 planets (or angle: MC/IC or Asc/Desc). Two will be 60 degrees apart; each of them will be 150 degrees from the third. His Virgoan Moon and Scorpio Mars are sextile. The third planet in Bobby's chart is Saturn in Aries in the third house.

Gail Sandra Klein asserts that the yod typically leads to chronic (unfinishable) situations, like illness, neuroses, habit formations which, because the energy must find continual release, result in creativity. In other words, Mister Brown will have this energy percolating all his days, and music is the way he releases it.

Saturn is also the ruler of his chart since he has 16 Capricorn rising. What?! Bobby Brown, incorrigible, law-breaking, pelvis-twisting, drugging, wild wild Bobby Brown has strong Capricorn influences? Aren't those type of people conservative, stick-in-the-mud, law-and-order, upright citizens? Yes, they are, and now that he's given up drugs, he has a chance to let this side unfold. Drugs obscure the real person. People with strong Saturn influeces are hard workers. He was an international star in his teens because he started working and touring [and doing drugs] that early.

In the VH-1 special, Bobby said, "I'm gonna be the bad boy probably forever."
He's chosen, he said, to be the bad boy only in performing and to use his prerogative to live "without dope, without drugs."

b. February 5, 1969, 5:21 AM, Boston, MA
birth data from astrotheme.com

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Star Jones: fading into oblivion?

In August 2003, Starlet Marie Jones had gastric bypass surgery, losing 160 lbs. Her lies of omission and commission to conceal the operation lost Star her spot on The View. She thus lost a high-profile job, a husband and 160 lbs. after the operation. But did she lose? Was her weight loss a gain?

Like snakeskin shed, the 160 lbs. came off over three years, as another person emerged. This is about the time of a Saturn transit through a zodiac sign. Which spot was Saturn transiting in Star's chart? Star has Cancer rising.

Wow! Saturn crossed her Cancer Asc., 6.18*, on July 23, 2003, and transited through her first house until June 26, 2005. Saturn touching the Asc. follows a 14 year cycle of tremendous development and outer progress. Its descent into the bottom half of the chart coincides with WEIGHT LOSS! She had the bypass on Aug. 19, 2003.

Annie Heese at CafeAstrology.com writes about this transit: "We concern ourselves with how we come across to others on a personal level with Saturn here. Our physical body becomes a focus as well... it is a time when we see our bodies quite clearly. This is an excellent time for beginning health regimens, diets, and the like, simply because it is a time when we look in the mirror and see ourselves clearly—not what we want to see. Our outlook on life changes to a more serious, responsible tone...this transit acts to transform your self-confidence in such a way that you question the source of your confidence to date, and discover a more solid base for pulling up inner strength. Saturn here acts to rip away the superficial. Illusions about the self, the body, and personal abilities will no longer be tolerated."

Star reached a point where she could no longer be fat. It wasn't healthy, she's said. Star's dramatic weight loss was blown up by her fame.

The aspects in her natus/transits should reflect Pluto [transformation], and Neptune [deception, concealment, confusion, scandal] also. Pluto's long transit of her sixth house of health and employment began Dec. 18, 1995; it will wind up on Jan. 30, 2011. In 1995, Star, working as Inside Edition's chief legal analyst, led that show's coverage of the O.J. Simpson murder trial. That coverage led her to fame, wealth and an impressive TV career, quite a transformation from being an attorney/prosecutor. During this 15-year transit, her star [pardon the pun] has risen and dimmed, but she remains a public figure.

Bob Marks, at bobmarksastrologer.com says that "Pluto’s effect, as always, is to clean things out. Yes, things get reborn wherever Pluto goes, but they have to decay and die first."

As for Neptune, Star suffered through being publicly ridiculed-the downside of fame. She'd built her rep as a straightshooter, then got caught in a lie, a Neptunian situation. She concealed the gastric bypass until admitting it in the September 2007 GlAMOUR magazine: "How had I allowed myself to get to 307 pounds?" But many could not overlook her deception, including former boss Barbara Walters.

Where was Neptune transiting her chart? She announced she was leaving The View on June 27, 2006. Neptune had just begun transiting her 9th house. Thus, it had just finished her 8th house transit. Eighth house transits involve loss. Often it is only when a planet leaves the eighth that we are aware of what we have had to give up. Star lost weight.

But Neptune takes its sweet time. She will continue to integrate the new self and the loss of her old person, as she has called it. Neptune occupies her 9th house from Feb. 28, 2007, until Feb. 29, 2020, at which time it contacts her Midheaven.

Transiting Neptune over natal Jupiter, Chiron, Mars and Mercury during this 13-year period assures that her expertise, commentary and candor, fortified by stronger self-esteem, will bring even more controversy and sensationalism into her life, whether her own or legal affairs she covers.

Star isn't going off the public radar anytime soon.

b. March 24, 1962, 11:30 AM, Albemarle (NC)
birth data from astrotheme.com

Friday, May 7, 2010

Grand Trines, anyone?


This chart has been a great lesson for me. When I first started studying astrology, I glorified the grand trine. Oh, what I would have given for a grand trine. I watched my friends and associates who had them. I thought they had gold. Well, come nigh four decades, and I see that trines can be gold-plated. People with grand trines get in comfortable situations--housing, relationships, jobs--that can last for years. With this chart [of a female, P.] comfort and safety influence her more than ambition.

Although she is bright and capable, P. goes through long periods of unemployment-four, five years. Her Sun/Mercury combo in the 6th h. pulls in a complex set of aspects which are mostly problematic. Sixth house suns are work-oriented; they express themselves through work. When P. is working, usually in tax or accounting offices, she's punctual, pleasant and productive. Out of work, her 6th house influence shows in her spotless kitchen, routine cleaning, fussing over her two sons and a 12-year-old cat. A 6th house trait is a love of animals.

But look at the geometry of this chart; you can see a kite, i.e. a grand trine + a sextile. The grand trine is three planets or groupings 120 degrees[*] apart; the kite is formed with a sextile [planets 60* apart] forming the string. The tension comes from the opposition formed at the string; in P.'s chart, Uranus-Pluto are conjunct in the 12th h. [behind-the-scenes, isolation, confinement, solitude] opposing Mercury and, by translation of light, her Sun in Pisces.

Noel Tyl sees the grand trine as "self sufficiency, self-containment...the separation from relationship because of the self-containment" (Synthesis and Counseling 285). He sees this self-sufficiency as a defense mechanism.

P. expresses a desire to work, almost a guilt at not having to work for years at a time. She works periodically, relying on a rent subsidy and public assistance, part of the 6th/12th house polarity: work/welfare; independence/dependence. Tyl atttributes this "defense mechanism" to a tough childhood, where one had to protect against a hostile or unstable environment. P.'s parents were drug addicts; she was rescued at age seven and raised by loving grandparents.

Floridian astrologer Hiroki Niizato says the "defense mechanism is necessary even in adulthood, if one is destined to face tough opposition from others in the course of his/her journey for fulfillment." P.'s life choices have dismayed her family. Yet she is a leader among her friends who've made similar choices.

Her Mercury/Pluto opposition shows her obstinance. P. made up her mind that she was different from the relatives who raised her. They were readers, so she decided to hate reading. They went to college; she went twice but left each time after a year. Kites want to fly high even if early on they meet resistance.

Pluto and Uranus conjunct in the 12th house, a generational aspect since the two planets are slow-moving, is the apex or string of P.'s kite. I'm waiting and watching this generation. What are they going to do with this powerhouse of a conjunction? Robert Hand's take on it: "They will be very eager and restless for change, but at the same time patient enough to learn how to really bring it about. They will undoubtedly have a very powerful impact on everyone in society."

Already, this generation has endured a powerful recession, 9/ll, crack, herpes, AIDS, two Gulf wars-and this in just four decades of living. Baby boomers got through rock n roll, R & B, the British invasion, the cold war, the sixties, Vietnam, the civil rights movement, the assassinations of the sixties, before mellowing out at the end of the century. How will P. and her peers, born in the late sixties in a period of intense social upheaval, endure?

In many European countries, unemployment compensation is much higher than in the U.S. and lasts for several years longer, and workers have health care in flush and not-so-flush times. Who knows? Perhaps P. is a forerunner of a populace which has to learn how to live with permanent unemployment. Perhaps her kite is flying high.