Five Essays on Horoscope Analysis: Cezanne, Yeats, Joyce, Merton and Robespierre

The following essays provide a horoscope analysis of Cezanne, Jack Yeats, Joyce, Thomas Merton and Robespierre.

CEZANNE

Michael McMullin

Introduction

Picking up a recent book on Cézanne (Giles Plazy, 1990 ), which gives a good general account of his life and character, and also, in the course of it, a review of theories and opinions about him as a painter, I am struck by the vortices of verbage given off by the critics, whirling round and trying to grasp or define vaguely perceived features or processes of style, without an understanding of the essentials underlying them, or of their place in the history or ongoing development of the culture. Art is about truth (reality, in the sense of what is behind the façade and the conventional perception of the world), and is therefore esoteric, a kind of occult or mystical preoccupation. It cannot be understood on the level of conventional thinking; while astrology, on the other hand, is precisely the language of essentials. As Plazy says, "in painting the essential defies words". It also defies understanding until we can see it, which requires knowing what it is, or having some idea of the truth behind the phenomenal world. And this is exactly what Cézanne was getting at: "With a man as religious as Cézanne . . . painting was a means to penetrate the secrets of the world and to communicate with God." He strove, through "the shedding of the layers of consciousness, to arrive at the truth within . . . . to record the essence of things" (Plazy). He talks about the artist "remaining true to nature", but what this truth is eludes Plazy, like other critics, and he admits "the weakness of the theories developed in relation to (Cézanne's) work". We can only judge art by what it is saying (the truth it reveals), which is part of how well it says it; and this is exactly what is never mentioned by the critics, and for which one would have to go beyond accepted notions of reality. If Cézanne was engaged in the search for truth, this is the concern of all art worthy of the name. But it was also his own particular aspect of truth, and this is shown in his horoscope. He was perhaps born just at that time to contribute or re assert that aspect in the contemporary context of painting.

The dominant factor in Cézanne's character, as in his art, is Capricorn, and the qualities of this sign underly his style. He was born on Jan. 19th 1839, with Sun in Capricorn and Mercury also in that sign. His Ascendant is usually given as Scorpio, but this cannot possibly be the case. Döbereiner has rectified it to 17 Libra. To judge by Carelli's 360 Degrees of the Zodiac, the 19th degree would be eminently suitable and, going with this, the 23rd degree of Cancer for the M.C.; but in any case it has to be Libra, which is as strongly pronounced in his landscapes as are the general features of Capricorn.

Capricorn in Art

Wolfgang Döbereiner's Astrologisch definierbare Verhaltensweisen in der Malerie, though not so far translated into English, is a unique pioneering work in the application of astrology to art criticism, and is of the greatest value in helping us to understand the truths or the phases of truth that lie behind the different forms of artistic expression. In his concept of "The Way of Aphrodite", the forms of the material world separate out from "the open waters of the nameless in Pisces, in the depths of which all times and forms fall into one another, as with water, which constantly changes and yet remains unchangeable." We move round the circle in a clockwise direction, and in Aquarius "the substance of the forms and figures in the Neptunian condition are drained off to origins, on the way from the undetermined to determination, which will be carried further as time . . . as a form of isolation fitted into time" and consciousness.

In the articulation of painters of this sign the forms belonging to it rise up out of the unconscious, through drawing as when Paul Cézanne said that he was "seeking the prototype of the moving world", or thought that "everything we see in nature is not true and evaporates", and he wants "to give nature through art the appearance of enduring". He wants "to bring life together into the moment, and the same with space."

From Pisces to Capricorn the form of the individual thing does not count, only the reality, or here in Capricorn the definition, that comes into appearance by way of the individual form. The single thing is a means, an occasion for the essential to manifest; it is dispensable , it deserves consideration and care, but no sympathy.

In confirmation of some of the above we can note the following points made by Plazy about Cézanne's work in general:
He notes "the luminous aura" (see also below) . . . . "with which he wed volumes to volumes and he unified space".
He "transported the evanescence of the Impressionists to the plane of eternity. It never appears in Bracque and Picasso's Cubism . . . and it would be quite mistaken to trace the roots of abstract art through Cubism to him".
Plazy refers to Cézanne as a mystic, and says he sought to depict "the harmony of the earth" (Asc. Libra) "a motionless harmony, fixed in space for eternity".
"Form and colour are one". He drew with paint and brush Plazy refers to "the modulations of colour", and "the bond between mass and space". His greatest contribution was "depths through the use of colour".

The characteristics of style given by Döbereiner for Capricorn are:

* Fields of colour determine and form the space in the picture the opposite to Gemini.
* Figures, objects as particular things, occur as though imprisoned in the colour again the opposite to Gemini, in which colours occur in the particular things.
* The colour fields are related to one another without perspective, whereby on the one hand the impression is given of the spaceless with nearly transparent purity of being, and at the same time the impression of the timeless and unique, or once only.
* The figures emerge often imperfectly out of the colours.
* There is shown a restriction to a few colours, which stand in a relationship to one another of rhythmic repetition.
* The colour is unshaded, glowing or living in contrast to the poster like filling of the surfaces in Gemini.
* The outlines, like the brush strokes, are decided and comprehend the reality of the process, independently of the need of individual things to appear.


Horoscope Features

In Cézanne's horoscope nearly all the planets are below the horizon, or in the Northern Hemisphere, the fourth house and the second quadrant being epecially emphasised. This shows, as Tierney says, an inner focus, and a personally subjective and reflective character. Self absorbed, and "urges that require depth of experience. . . . The need to contact inner reality, to become aware of the root purpose for being, to seek personal meaning, or that which is fundamental in one's nature" (Sun in IV). "Self reflective and introspective, the need of security from within. Not for public affairs or the material aspects of life or social involvement. Withdrawal, and nurturing of one's environment. Able to identify with the less tangible and material aspects of life, and to put energy into unearthing spiritual realities."

Cézanne is of course an introvert sensation type, with Mercury rising ahead of the Sun, and the above characteristics exactly describe him, and are confirmed by Mars, the only planet above the horizon (Jupiter is very closely above or below the Ascendant) being in the twelfth house. Of this Tracy Marks says, in her booklet devoted to this house: "Not for public activity. Very self motivated; able to initiate his own projects and pursue them with energy and enthusiasm. Ability to begin anew repeatedly". Of Jupiter in the twelfth: "a rich and expansive inner life; faith in inner resources. Seclusion, meditation." Conjunct the Ascendant Jupiter is compatible with a religious nature.

These features are described by his biographers. He was "a profoundly solitary man", and had a "social maladjustment", and bohemian outlook. He "withdrew inside himself", and Plazy mentions "his native social hostility". While through painting he sought to achieve and express "a harmonious . . conception of nature", he was "haunted by religious and metaphysical convictions". While spending a certain amount of time in Paris and working there among the Impressionists, he never really fitted in, and eventually withdrew altogether to his native Aix, devoting himself to the landscapes there and the Southern light. The Sun in IV shows deep roots in his homeland, and also the creative potency of his later years; Neptune in IV the ability to absorb and reflect the atmosphere around him with Venus, Ascendant ruler, also in IV, and conjunct Neptune the perfect combination for mystical art. In conversations recorded by Gasquet we have the image of "a mystic intoxicated with his sensations, where emotion fades into the infinite in an attempt to rediscover the world in its virgin state".

There are four planets and the angles in cardinal signs, with five planets angular, showing a high degree of self motivation and independence, and, according to Alan Leo (Esoteric Astrology) an advanced soul. Uranus and Neptune are in mutual reception, in the fifth and fourth houses of creativity, and between them disposit the rest of the planets. Capricorn in general tends to be individualised, arduous and careful, zealous, diligent and patient, capable of industrious and persistent endeavour; very contemplative, reserved, deep and profound. Independent always, with a quiet self reliance and steady determination. Ill health can follow from despondency. With regard to this last, when he was 60 he had a period of painting skulls, and suffered from attacks of morbidity, was haunted by death; and in the latter part of his life was consumed by diabetes.

Cézanne was never satisfied with his painting and never felt he had succeeded in achieving what he wanted. His "disdain for any effort to please anybody but himself, such a firm belief in his own standards in the face of general incomprehension", was "underpinned by a permanent dissatisfaction with his own work" (Plazy). And "this modest, irrascible, solitary man, sometimes charming but more often disagreable, showed a rare tenacity of purpose in painting . . . " In all this we see the characteristics of Saturn square Uranus : Fitful, wayward traits, moody and sensitive (also Moon conjunct Uranus, and Venus/Neptune) to reckless and defiant. No thwarting of aims tolerated. The overcoming of natural obstacles, and a hard struggle. A strenuous worker. Some limitation is acutely felt, but there can be genius (Carter). Basically of course this aspect expresses a conflict between tradition and the new, and "insight is needed into what needs renewing and what keeping," in the words of Thomas Ring, and the aspect indicates a struggle to work out one's basic convictions without compromise, even when deviations from the norm are to one's disadvantage. There is also Sun trine Mars: enthusiasm for one's life task, practical skill in carrying it through against obstacles, often with a charge of self will. Uranus in V is "inovative", but those with this position "can never be satisfied with what they create" (Sakoian & Acker). With Moon conjunct Uranus we have perversity, great determination; independent and individual.


Parents and the Feminine

In the above aspects we have prominently figured, beside Uranus, both Saturn and Moon, which, in themselves the primary father and mother archetypes, here also represent the parents at the individual level, as rulers of tenth and fourth houses. To whichever end of this axis one attributes each parent, here there is a conflict between them in the form of Moon square Saturn, which also means between the masculine and feminine sides of the nature. Cézanne's father was only interested in business, and was authoritarian and unsympathetic to his son's artistic aspirations; but his mother encouraged him and there was a "complicity" between them. He painted several pictures of his father, reading the newspaper which was tolerated but ignored; while he never painted his mother. With Saturn in the second house, he was supported financially by his father, who was partner in a bank, and eventually inherited from him and became independent. But in his early life he underwent severe financial testing through him, and his sense of self worth must have been correspondingly tested. With Moon/Saturn one can conclude that his feminine side must have been repressed or inhibited, that there were emotional inhibitions, contributing to dourness; and it was certainly true that he had to endure much harshness, from critics, and frustration, both outer and inner, being consistently misunderstood. The effect on relationships can be guaged from Pluto on the Descendant, opposite Jupiter. But it may also be true that Moon/Saturn represents a struggle for the reconciliation of content and form, which would equally fit an interpretation given by Thomas Ring for Jupiter opposite Pluto, as the problem of the striving for higher meaning.

Cézanne could not bear any physical contact with people, which must be related to this complex; and this held also for eye contact. In his portraits "the sitter's eyes are rarely defined . . . as if he couldn't bear the gaze of his subjects" (Plazy). Sittings would go on endlessly, He "minimized the eye, emptying it of its sight" except his own in his self portraits. This has something to do with the reserve of Capricorn, which does not like to show its whole nature especially with Moon in Pisces, having an element of secrecy; but here there is undoubtedly more to it than that. Plazy refers to "the many blackened gazes . . . where the eyes were no more than cavities". As against that, his famous fondness for apples, in still lifes, seems to provide a compensatory element of convexity, replacing the eyes of his portraits. Plazy identifies the apple which, with the Mont Ste. Victoire was to become one of his dual obsessions as representing the feminine element in all its roundness, and perhaps connected with his mother. In his apples reds and yellows predominate, as against greens and blues in many of the later landscapes; and the theme of the Judgement of Paris had earlier occupied him, where Paris gives Venus the award for beauty by giving her the golden apple.

This whole question comes to the fore in Cézanne's treatment of the human body, particularly in the seemingly obsessive occupation with bathers. "He worked on the Grandes Baigneuses for almost ten years, without ever finding the centre" (this is a feature of Libra). These pictures show an absence of sensuality and 3 dimensionality; the figures are elongated like the trees framing them, there is no roundness in contrast to the apples. There is a predominance of a rather heavy blue, in sky and pond and all round, again in contrast to the apples with their warm and glowing reds and yellows, and the figures of the bathers have nothing of elegance "stiff movements, unwieldy figures" any more than the picture as a whole has anything to say to one. One gets the impression that the painter is struggling with some kind of inhibition or psychological problem within himself, that this is a diversion from or a blockage in his real work. According to Plazy, he is launched here on "a trajectory that could only lead to the annulment of the human figure, it was impossible for him to come to terms with it . . . he prohibited himself from seeing it". He rejects bodies; "to make the body disappear, thus to challenge the original sin which had always persecuted him this seems to have been Cézanne's great temptation". "His figures are awkward" another critic, Camille Mauclaire.

Yet these Baigneuses pictures are generally acclaimed as the pinnacle of Cézanne's achievement, the peak of his career, and as having "revolutionised art" and "heralding Picasso", and he is labelled as "the founder of modern art". This kind of statement is the stock in trade of criticism, in all the arts, and is conspicuous for its uncritical use of clichés and terms without bothering about their meanings. In the first place "Modern Art" might be Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract, Post Modern, and almost anything, and it is extremely denigrating to poor Cézanne to load him with all that. On the other hand picking out the Baigneuses for it is more correct than they realise, for this is his Moon square Saturn, and carrying this to its extremes leads to schizophrenia, essentially the theme, or the origin, of much modern art. There can be no relation between Cézanne's splendid landscapes and any of those developments, any more than in the case of Turner, who could with much more plausibility be called the founder of abstract art. It is at least satisfactory to find that Plazy states: As to Cézanne as the father of Cubism, this theory hangs on a single brief, rather ill fated and vague statement of his about a few geometric shapes the cylinder, the sphere and the cone that, besides, was made in reference to a conception of space promoted by the Renaissance. This is made clear in the rest of the statement so readily overlooked by those seeking to prove their point which reads, "putting everything in its proper perspective". Cubism may, with a great stretch of the imagination, be regarded as an imitation of the mirror like reflection and repetition of formal patterns and symmetry (a Libran feature) found in Cézanne's work, but it would be in a reductionist sense, and actually goes in the very opposite direction, towards materialism and the denial of meaning (Saturn inhibiting Jupiter). The "technique of multiple perspectives", pushed to an extreme in Cubism, is a good example of reductionism as mistaking a means for an end. It is the sense of time and space that enables consciousness to chop reality into separate pieces, and in Cézanne's case this process is at the stage of repetetive patterns (one can think of "fractals") which are not yet individualised or discriminated in much detail.

Changes in art forms and styles are automatically regarded as an advance, or an aesthetic evolution compared with what is earlier. But history, like all forms of time, is cyclic, and cultures develop to their optimum potential (high summer, or full Moon period, which is their classical period), and then decline and slowly disintegrate, like any organism; while their essential achievement survives, perhaps like a seed, and in a few prophets, and perhaps in the collective unconscious, to inform a succeeding culture or future age. During the waning phase, the capacity to create in a spiritual sense becomes progressively atrophied and a Saturnine rigidity sets in, together with a loss of values and of a motivating mythology. The Moon (the creative, and feminine) is in its dark phase. Only technology , and intellectualism, remain, the means have become the ends, and in a material and utilitarian age reductionism is the dominant theme, and art tends to reflect this, or to despair against it.



Cézanne's Landscapes and Impressionism

Besides apples and bathers, and, briefly, skulls, which represent perhaps the working out of personal problems for the painter, the other recurring theme in his late work is the Mont Ste. Victoir, which could be take as the symbol of the resolution of these problems, a positive convexity, in terms of his landscapes, the real apotheosis and final result of his career: the symbolical mountain of Capricorn. Impressionism was above all a rebirth of the function of sensation, after 18th century formalism in all the arts, and a reaction against the increasing intellectualism of the culture as a whole. An intense awareness of the sense world and its meaning is the foundation of symbolism; the perception of an underlying reality through and by means of the surface, the near view, is the extraverted approach, above all through colour, which involves water signs and feeling. This is most characteristically Piscean (Renoir), while Monet has properly a Cancer Ascendant, with Sun in Aquarius. (As Döbereiner points out, the horoscope usually attributed to him is based on a mistake between the figure 11 as eleven November, or as two February, II). Aquarius in another sense represents the first stage towards the dissolution of forms ("suspension of polarity") on the way towards (anticlockwise) or from (clockwise) water. Cézanne described Impressionism as "spineless", and reintroduced an element of form or solidity moving round the Zodiac in a clockwise direction into Capricorn. "Form and colour are one". He drew with paint and brush; line was superfluous ("there are no outlines in nature", he said), and he formed through "the modulations of colour". It has been described with some justice as "a sort of classical Impressionism" (Maurice Denis). There is also something in the idea of the transference of myth (symbolism) from religion to art, or a kind of pantheism (Zen influence). This has also been described as a "mystical naturalism".

In the landscapes the emphasis is on distance, unlike Impressionism on the whole, which is more concerned with surfaces and the immediate atmosphere. Cézanne was an introvert, and therefore interested more in the long view, the Promethean orientation. The forms and objects in the foreground and middle distance show volume and mass but not detail, as though only in the early stages of solidification. It is in these landscapes above all that the Libra Ascendant comes into expression. Döbereiner describes the following characteristics of Libra in painting:

The horizontal lay out of the picture, the arrangement of what is going on in it in horizontally receding repetitions of form, the symmetrical balancing of above and below, the proverbial reflection for the painter of heaven and earth.

*Symmetry and reflection seem to indicate that in Libra two worlds meet, that the likeness of the other world beyond the boundary of phenomena is found, and the existence of which is revealed not directly but hinted at by this repetition of and mirror reflection of present forms.

*Representations of the idea as correspondence or analogy. Similar forms can carry over onto all objects, as transmitters of leading patterns.

*The figures as idea motives or conceptions are without individuality or expression of life, therefore repeatable and of the same nature flat, shadowy or pattern like.

*The figures and objects are without a centre, that is, the movements do not proceed from the figure, but are determined by the balance of the picture space.

*The formally isolated objects have a common colour relationship, so that nothing stands out.

*The forming and unity of the picture takes place through symmetry and reflection in the sense of an even distribution without centre. Thereby the formal arrangement is carried out horizontally, the colour arrangement through reflection of foreground and background.

Some of these points are perceived by critics, as we have already seen, and Plazy mentions "the bond between mass and space", which "conserves solidity". Cézanne himself said: "Art is a harmony parallel to nature", and that he aimed "to introduce a sufficient quantity of blueish tones into our luminous reverberations, shown with reds and yellows, in order to give a sensation of air" (Libra).

Analysing one of the Mont Ste. Victoire pictures of which he gives in his book a reproduction, Döbereiner writes:

Alongside the dominant significators of Libra in the layout of the picture are those of Capricorn, in the overall merging of the colours, the unification of single particulars in the general movement of colour, the luminosity of the colours, the not emphasised perspective, as in the mountain set as a silhouette on the middle ground, whereby, in spite of the progression in the horizontally laid out picture from one side to the other, the stillness of the Real comes to expression, in which the totality suspends each single thing in its stillness.

It may be interesting from the point of view of the symbolism of this mountain to quote from Carelli's delineation of the 23rd degree of Cancer, which is very likely the Midheaven degree of Cézanne's horoscope:

An inborn drive to rise higher and higher, to step aside from the beaten track and to follow new, untried paths . . . . The need to soar may be taken in a literal (mountaineering, aviation) . . . or spiritual sense. In any case the danger of tumbling on the way is attendant upon this degree, as well as a manly daring and the chance of overcoming all obstacles at the end of the road, thus victoriously winding up the climb to the peak of glory or, in a humbler way, the scaling of a still untrodden mountain top.

The whole of the pattern will give a clue to the particular case. Anyway, the native is no common being, as he seems to dispose of always fresh energies and exceptional gifts; but he is unsteady and, at times, too rash. Great is his love of nature, irresistible his need to wander and open up unexplored territories . . .

Features of the Sun's degree, the 29th of Capricorn, are so much in agreement with this that I have to quote from this too:

This is one of the finest degrees of the whole zodiac . . . its highest prize lies in the inner stillness and enlightenment it confers. . . Even if poor and uneducated, the native will draw from an inborn, instinctive wisdom, an unerring insight into nature, its beings and its laws; if in a position to learn, he will delve deep into the knowledge of such laws and will be led to discoveries that will raise him into renown; but in any case, whether famous or obscure, he will prefer inner meditation and silence to the fuss of the teeming human masses. (Adriano Carelli: 360 Degrees of the Zodiac)


JACK YEATS

Michael McMullin

Introduction

Jack Yeats is a painter who has always strongly appealed to me since the 1940s his most prolific period, when I used to see his exhibitions in Waddington's gallery in Dublin. Even then, unfortunately, the idea of purchasing anything could not enter my head, being so far out of my reach; but perhaps I can pay tribute to his art in another way. In recent years my interest has increased and become more particularly focussed on this member of the Yeats family, to the extent that some of his paintings have a more direct and powerful effect on me than those of almost any other artist, and they seem to penetrate in a peculiarly immediate way straight into psychological reality one might say a transcendent reality, or into powerfully archetypal emotional realms. The painter himself said, in relation to art theory : ? I think these things are done by a sort of clairvoyance (for want of a better word)." Of old masters and painters generally he said: "Very few followed the truth . . . a difficult road for any man . . . as it is necessary for him then to approach that ideal state of a man knowing himself." 1

One of the most interesting and unusual things about Jack Yeats as a painter is that he did not really turn into the Jack Yeats I am talking about until 1923, at the age of 52 well over middle life, when his style metamorphosed into one completely different from that of his work up to that time. The change is quite comparable to that of a butterfly emerging from a caterpillar via a chrysalis. In fact at the chrysalis stage we read of "a temporary standstill in career". From 1916, after an illness, "something collapsed inside the artist". Sketches in notebooks are interspersed with concepts "in dream" or "half memory", even with whirling geometrical abstracts never done before; and he produced little for five years. 2 Such a two stage personality or double character suggests that light is likely to be thrown on the situation and the two contrary sides to the painter perhaps explained through an astrological study.


The Ascendant Sign

Jack Yeats was born on August 29th 1871, and so his Sun is in Virgo. His time of birth is not given in any literature I have come across, and so we have to deduce it from the evidence often a more reliable method than going by dubious records or vague recollections. In this case, when everything is considered, his Ascendant can only be in Sagittarius, which should become indisputable as we go into the correspondences both of his character and his painting with this sign; and there is reasonably strong evidence for assuming the fourteenth degree of Sagittarius, say 13.50, which gives a birth time of 2.27 pm, GMT, in London (*See note at the end).

I have always found that the delineations of rising signs by Alan Leo 3 are remarkably accurate. For Sagittarius we have: "Frank, open, honest and generous ; has more regard to actions than their results . . . ever ambitious of doing and achieving, not for the fruits of such action but for the imperative demands of a sympathetic nature." This exactly fits the character of Jack Yeats from his earliest days. He was the youngest of the Yeats children, and the one who was always cheerful and whom everybody liked even the dour Pollexfens, his mother's family, who had no time for art or culture. This was in sharp contrast to his brother the poet, whom everybody found difficult from the beginning. Jack remained always kind, hospitable and sympathetic to all, especially for example to children, whom he was ever ready to entertain, and when he lived in Devon he used to invent and stage elaborate puppet theatre shows for the local children, for whom he kept open house. We are told moreover that "he was up and doing rather than talking" (Terence de Vere White)5 . Alan Leo goes on: "there is a certain irritability caused by the double nature of the sign; but the manners are naturally gentle, and only brusque in the presence of enemies." There are some striking and often very amusing examples of this last trait in his biography. The natives of this sign are "ardent and have a sense of justice, feeling harshness to others as almost a personal injury. The nature is hopeful, joyous and youthful, even in age." This last is a characteristic that immediately stands out in reading of Jack Yeats. John Masefield, a close friend during his Devon period, referred to his "boyishness", and in many of his amusements, such as sailing toy boats on the nearby stream in Devon, and interests, especially all forms of sport, even boxing, circuses, Buffalo Bill, fairs and everything that was colourful and picturesque, one is struck by what seems a vein of naïveté. De Vere White mentions his fidelity, even in age, to childish games.

"Simple in living, he delights above all in his independence, and cannot bear restraint" (Leo). Jack was the most independent of the family, the first to leave home, and remaining the most detached, always keeping his own council. "Difficult to gauge; eloquent, visionary, often reclusive and devoted to study and research". His father told his sister that " he thought Jack possessed an impenetrable reserve that made him, though so outwardly friendly and amusing, virtually inaccessible". 4 However, "his nature was more accessible than W.B's and, if entirely self sufficient, he was not so self centred . . Jack Yeats was ever on the alert; he missed nothing" (Terence de Vere White).5 And while "W.B. was shy . . . he was also self conscious". " Jack was not". This makes it plain that, as their horoscopes show, the former was an introvert, the latter an extravert.

Still more significantly with Sagittarius: "Two very different characters are possible with this sign, one external and one internal, one bold and daring, the orther sensitive, impressionable and retiring. Difficult to know. Versatile, master of many branches of learning". Apart from this last observation, which was remarked on by people who knew Jack Yeats York Powell, professor of history at Oxford and his friend and a neighbour of the family during the early London days, called him the best educated man he had ever met 2 this dual character not only matches the two quite different phases of his life and work but leads into a study of the contrast between his Sun sign Virgo and the Sagittarian Ascendant as a key factor in his artistic career.


The Sun Sign

Independence is also a characteristic of Virgo, "special for its self containing qualities" (Leo). This was very marked in his career as an artist; he went his own way, did not associate with other painters nor with any 'school', trend or movement, but clung to his individualism. He seems to have dismissed all other painters, admitting only to an admiration for Goya. "The painter of the material thing that was, the painters of 'Fancy', and the 'picture' makers, are often curious and interesting but nothing more" he wrote in 1921 in a letter to Thomas Bodkin.. 1) Neither had he any time for "futurism and modern art".

With Sun in Virgo and Mercury following he was an extravert sensation type. In this case intuition (fire) is the inferior function, which may explain why, being relatively unconscious, the Sagittarius Ascendant was not fully realised in his painting until after the change in 1923. Having an Ascendant in the inferior function represents a certain dualism in the personality. Apart from the qualities of character described above, and some obviously Sagittarian associations such as a lifelong fascination by horses, on first coming to London from Sligo he told Thomas McGreevy "he found a totally different environment, but as in Sligo the objects of his attention were the horses" the first phase of his life was the "external? one, and more dominated by characteristics both extraverted and that one can associate much more with sensation and Virgo. "Yeats always believed", we read, " that paintings should be of incidents witnessed by the artist", and: "basically the early oils are descriptive paintings, just as the watercolours are . . . . an artist whose main gift is as a story teller". He has "a gift for dramatic narrative" and not only as a painter, for he sometimes could not make up his mind whether he was a writer or a painter, and actually said once that he ?wanted to be remembered for his writings, more than for his paintings?. This can be attributed to his Moon in Aquarius (air) in the third house, as well as to the Mercurial sign Virgo. At the end of his life he reversed this evaluation, and referring to a revival by the B.B.C. of his play "In Sand", said: "I wish they'd forget that stuff . . . They should remember me as a painter".

With Moon in third he "reflects and is shaped by surroundings. The mind is imaginative, and there is a retentive memory".6 His first phase was focussed on the objective, outside world, with " the emphasis on character, landscape was secondary". This is also characteristic of the painting of the Italian Renaissance, based likewise on extraverted values, under the influence of the re discovery of Greco Roman culture. When Yeats converted to oils in 1908, he retains " the same strong outlines, filled in with flat paint" (one can think of the tendency of Virgo to definition and the discrimination of objects); and "the expected central character and a low horizontal background". 2


Virgo in Painting

It is of particular interest to compare the above observations with the characteristics of Virgo manifested in painting as given by Wolfgang Döbereiner:

In Virgo we see the compulsion to hold fast to the surrounding world in consciousness, to articulate it (over against its opposite, Pisces). In painting, the consciousness and clarity of line, the restraint of form and colour, aim at actuality that of perception and to admit as appearance only what is comprehensible as knowledge; the appearance becomes the pattern of consciousness. Virgo becomes frozen into the patterns of consciousness, imprisoned in knowledge . . . . Nothing should remain hidden to consciousness the impulse to illuminate life.

The figures remain in the dark foreground, and are separated from the background by barriers or chasms in clear perspective levels.

Orientation through the circumstantial phenomena, that is appearance and form as circumstances, in particular or characteristic situations, is the motivational theme of Virgo. The circumstances . . . lead to self experience and understanding. It is the fisher, at the borders of the personal" (Virgo is the last sign below the horizon of the chart) "bringing to land (consciousness) the riches of the a personal" .

The essential characteristics of Virgo are:

The pictures describe experienced events; not the concrete as such, without relation to one's own point of view.

The particular incidents in the situation are separated in perspective levels, the foreground dark, the background fully illuminated.

Figures are imprisoned in the layer of consciousness, are lifeless, as though frozen in their clear contours.

Sharply contoured lines, determining the colouring.

The colour has no life of its own, is not shaded in itself, but is governed by a clear contour and consists of different shades of a muted ground colour. The separate objects are distinguished without being allowed to fall out of an overall general colouring.


The Release of Sagittarius

Yeats returned permanently to live in Ireland in 1910, and around or just before that time converted to painting in oils, though his style did not yet change. First he had to go through that five year sterile, or incubating period from 1916 the chrysalis stage. In the Uranus 84 year cycle round the horoscope from the Ascendant, taking seven years for each house, he would have reached the Descendant (age 42) in 1913 and come above the horizon, or out of the personal phase of development. The sterile period, which was probably essentially a seven year period, preparing for a major change of level or transformation, took place therefore while traversing the seventh house, and the new period begins, or the imago emerges, in the eigth house. ( This exact pattern can be followed in the case of Beethoven, who had a comparable sterile period at the same stage, before emerging into his third, transcendent period in the Sagittarian eighth house, where Sun, Moon and Mercury are situated). With Jack Yeats there is a conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus in Cancer in the eighth house according to Döbereiner "the discoverer constellation" and in this 84 year progression he would have arrived at Jupiter in 1923, the year of his marked change of style. This is significant because Jupiter is the ruler of the Sagittarius Ascendant, while the Sun, though in Virgo, is intercepted in the ninth, the Sagittarian house, which here has Leo on the cusp; so that we can think of a strongly solar association with this ninth house, as well as its natural Sagittarius association, even though the Sun is in Virgo. Its being intercepted may mean that the ninth house realisation had to wait until the latter part of life, Virgo dominating up till then; while Saturn in the first house may have a delaying or inhibiting effect on the Sagittarian attributes of the Ascendant. Alan Leo says of Sun in Virgo: "Wisdom is to be born. The Virgin Soil, the spirit matter, which yields the most readily to vibrations passing through it from other signs". For Sun in the ninth house we read: "The intuitive mind is highly developed, giving visions of the future. A broad understanding. The capacity to perceive deeper meanings and patterns". Mercury and Venus are also in IX, in Libra, for further emphasis of this principle, while Jupiter, in Cancer, is in the sign of its exaltation. (A possible outcome given for Venus in IX is "meeting one's wife through art school", which was actually the case here; while Venus in Libra shows the aesthetic perceptions as highly developed and suggests art as a profession, as does its position close to the Midheaven of the chart.)

With his change of style in 1923 the outline vanishes, though colour is still conventional; in the 1930s "paint is used even more abundantly, ignoring the brush stroke" for the scoring knife. During the thirties however he painted little, but turned to writing. "Sligo" was published in 1930, when he would have arrived in the 84 year cycle at his Virgo Sun, and the late thirties saw most of his writing done, up to 1943 ("In Sand"), when he would have arrived at his Mars in Scorpio, which is sextile the Virgo Sun. His writing, which took place while traversing this sextile, may have been a case of "le violon d'Ingres": it is said that Ingres would disappoint visitors to his studio hoping to be shown his paintings by insisting instead on playing the violin to them, at which his abilities were comparatively indifferent. Scorpio is on the eleventh house, ruled by Pluto in the fifth, showing creative power; well aspected, this can produce "profound works of art inspired from higher levels of consciousness". Pluto is sextile Jupiter: "Divine Providence opens the way for creative self expression. Wisdom and insight".7 In any case the eleventh house, opposite the fifth, represents the transcendent pole of self expression, and in the 1940s proliferation returns, his "brush leaps into action and draws and draws". "A brush transcended at times". Pigment is squeezed direct onto the canvas, or worked with thumb and fingers (reminding one of Turner). His greatest paintings must certainly belong to the later 1940s and early fifties he would be at his twelfth house cusp in 1948, at 0 Sagittarius about 1950. This degree is the point of equidistance between his Sun and Moon, and appears in several progressed constellations to be a degree of special significance to him.


Sagittarius in Painting

The later style of Jack Yeats, especially from the mid forties, exactly matches the characteristics of Sagittarius in painting described by Döbereiner:

In general there is no before and after no present, but the unity of all things and times in the memory of Neptune begins to separate out into events . . . . There arises the dream like expression of Sagittarius, pictures which carry in them a world still immaterial and not consisting of things or objects, where colour is free, shining, without form, and condenses in great curves.

Recognisable characteristics of Sagittarius are :

1 Spaces are not integrated; surfaces and objects are laid out perspectively as separate parts, the perspective totality and its centre are missing as though before being assembled.

2 The separate perspective parts, which lack a common space, are without place, equal to one another in the suspended state of gravitation, so that they tumble, plunge and sway as though spaceless, as though in a dream, and in circling motions and curves seeking a center of orientation or integration.

3 The colours are powerful, shining and shaded in themselves.

4 The objects form themselves as though out of circling movements of the colour, which is looking for boundaries and centres. They build rounded and expanding forms.

5 The opening up of an unfamiliar life the direct vision into life.

The thing that strikes one most strongly in looking at late Yeats is precisely this dream like quality of the pictures. An example of a Sagittarian painter cited by Döbereiner is the Norwegian Edvard Munch, whose work also has this character, though the dreams there are those of approaching alienation. Yeats himself said in 1922 in a letter to Hone: "The artist assembles memories". "By 1920", writes Hilary Pyle, "memory and dream as mind states had become inseparable . . . Half memory for him meant a state where memory was stimulated and transcended by the imagination . . . . he allowed memory to develop and fluctuate . . . into a newly created and visionary happening." This was associated with "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (Mars in Scorpio). All that is equivalent to what Jung called "active imagination", a thing he encouraged his clients to practise, and which amounts to dreaming while awake. A passive state of mind is adopted, in which the unconscious can bring up images, and these are allowed to develop and given attention. The result is essentially the same as dreaming. The language of dream is that of symbol and archetype, which are unconscious patterns of reality, on a different level from the material one on which we normally think. This is also the language of art, which deals in this higher level of reality. In Döbereiner's delineation of Sagittarius and the ninth house we must remember that he is referring to his concept of "The Way of Aphrodite", in which forms, at first thought forms, gradually separate out from the ocean of universal unity (the Birth of Venus), starting in Pisces and the twelfth house. They emerge onto dry land, or material existence, as they proceed through the houses in a clockwise direction, through Capricorn, gradually becoming orientated in time and space. In the ninth house and Sagittarius this process is not yet complete, and the forms are not fully integrated into space, which does not happen until Libra. In dreams the same conditions prevail, and time and space are not finalised conditions as they are for the conscious and waking mind. In this archetypal world we are closer to reality than in our normal consciousness, and it is this directness and immediacy of the more real that comes through and is so gripping when looking at these paintings.

Another very striking feature is the liberation of colour. The vitality of the colours immediately jumps out at one, they have a life of their own, while also being part of the intense vision and movement of the whole. In fact the forms seem to condense out of the colours but only partially condense, as sometimes they seem almost transparent and not altogether separate and concrete, or not fully materialised. They are not objects, but still partly thought forms.

"Sickert" we read, "liked the dramatic figures in the landscapes".2 This phrase exactly hits the mark. There are nearly always figures, usually prominent in the foreground, and bearing the gist of the matter; sometimes one figure, often a horse, taking up most of the space. But at the same time they are equally landscapes. The figures are completely part of the same expression. The landscape is not just a background to the figures, but the figures condense out of it, as they do out of the colours. I don't know of any other painter of whom this can be said, and it seems a unique quality. Terence de Vere White reports: "Most painters", Yeats said, "begin with the foreground and work back"; he operated on the opposite principle. Brian O'Doherty, in an extraordinarily brilliant essay on Jack Yeats,5 arrives at very similar perceptions : "By refusing to grow up", he writes, "Yeats preserved his capacity to transform experience into myth and myth into experience." And, in the context especially of his play "In Sand", "Myth is proved superior to history". Myth is a ninth house association that is not commonly recognised. "The paint itself begins to become a mythic medium. . . . With a shock one recognises that Yeats has successfully identified his medium with his figures, his scenery, his theme, his country . . . " O'Doherty also notes other characteristics consistent with Sagittarius and the ninth house, such as: "One of Yeats' concerns was very much connected to the theme of travelling"; another was freedom.


The Symbolism of the Horse

The horse, especially the white horse, is a dominant theme in many of these late paintings. The horse, as well as being associated with Sagittarius and with both Jupiter and Neptune, is a symbol of freedom. There are two late pictures, one of a brown horse galloping, called "Freedom", and the other with a rider, "The Singing Horseman", which could be called "Joy". The brown horse symbolises instinctual vitality, and joie de vivre. The white horse has a spiritual or psychic significance, and can stand for a creative force, inspiration, or liberation from the body and the earth bound realm. There is a picture in the National Gallery in Dublin of a white horse heading down a dark leafy tunnel towards an illuminated opening beyond. Perhaps the most remarkable of all is the large canvas in the Hugh Lane Gallery of Modern Art, "There is No Night". Dating from 1949, this shows a figure, in riding boots, reclining in the foreground on his right arm, with the left hand lifted up in a welcoming gesture to a white horse, seen approaching from the middle background. The scene is night or just before dawn; and the figure recalls and has a posture similar to that of Michelangelo's Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, making a gesture with the same left hand to the spiritual realm, this time represented by a father god (Saturn), and the gesture has a more nonchalant air, being more one of parting rather than of enthusiastic welcome. There is a quotation from Jung, cited by Marie Louise von Franz, which can be applied most aptly to this picture of Yeats: " At the end of this cosmic age Vishnu will change into a white horse, and create a new world. This refers to Pegasus, who ushers in the Aquarian Age."

Freedom and Joy are closely related themes, perhaps interchangeable, and as the subject of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (and Schiller's Ode), anticipate the Aquarian Age. This will certainly not be ushered in by "Post Modernism", nor any of the schools of advanced schizophrenia considered as leading the field in modern art. The style of Sagittarius has some features in common with that of Pisces for example an independence of the forms from any particular present moment, and the way "figures and objects form themselves out of the flow of colours, are dependent on those colours, so that a flowing unity of surroundings and objects results " (Döbereiner). It is interesting therefore that the painter Oskar Kokoschka Sun in Pisces admired Yeats' work. It does nothing for Yeats on the other hand to quote Samuel Beckett as saying that he "brings light . . . to the issueless predicament of existence" (from the back cover of Hilary Pyle's biography), as if this statement meant anything at all it would mean that his work must be utterly worthless. Even if it might apply to his writings, for his painting the opposite is the case, and he brings light precisely to the real issues of existence. Yeats himself did not like Beckett's work, which he found "a moral" which basically means issueless.

Other Horoscope Features

Among other features of Yeats' horoscope we can notice that the Moon in the third house is sesquiquadrate to Venus in Libra in IX and close to the M.C., which seems to suggest the conflict between writing and painting. Venus is square Saturn: "the father was impractical", a thing that was certainly true; and a "failure" in the sense that he could never deal with the fact that he needed to make money from his work as a portrait painter. "The mother was Saturnine" a circumstance that was true with an equal singularity. The square from Saturn in the first house, in Capricorn, to both Venus and Mercury, and the sesquiquadrate from the Moon to Venus, probably account for the seeming pessimism and Beckett like quality of his writings, which would also be connected with the parents; while we may suppose that the mutual reception between the third house Moon and Uranus had something to do with their character as "Theatre of the Absurd". We find Saturn and Moon in the first quadrant, of the material world. Another association of Venus/ Saturn is: "The child may be strongly marked by one parent". Jack always pointed out that since his father was a painter it followed naturally that he himself should be one. This may also be implied by Neptune in the fourth house: "strong unconscious emotional ties with home and family". This position is also an indication of "intuitive feelings for the land and all nature", "a liking for water", and, one might say, horses : and "often deep spiritual longings which surface in the second half of life".7,6 Neptune is closely square Jupiter, which points to the relationship between Pisces and Sagittarius, and the fourth and the eighth houses: among other meanings, "a quick sympathy to all in need; much emotional content, often manifested in art. The sensitivity is very great. Other worldly, and does not notice barriers . . . The whole range of senses and emotions is infinitely enlarged." 8

The strong emotional content, especially in the later pictures, is conveyed in movement, skies, colour, and often in the subject matter and implications of the figures. This is what conjures up the word "romantic", though this word has a variety of misleading associations that do not apply to Yeats. Emotion implies vitality, aliveness and sensitivity, and feeling is one of the four psychological functions with which we cannot dispense and remain vital. The dream like quality of late Yeats invites the comparison which has been made to Joyce's work, but the rejection of feeling by Joyce invalidates this and puts Yeats on an entirely different level. Astrologically Mars in Scorpio shows great emotional intensity, and Jupiter the Ascendant ruler in Cancer will have something to do with it too. Mars is ruler of the fourth house, and disposits Neptune; while Pluto, in the fifth of creativity and ruler of the twelfth, disposits Mars, and is itself disposited by Venus, representing art, and ruler of the M.C., the final outcome.

It is also worth noting that the Sun in semisquare to Jupiter, besides underlining the Virgo/Sagittarius contrast, gives a "youthful, boyish freshness; and a dislike of grooves,? and a proneness "to ignore authority and convention" (Carter). Finally there are three quintile aspects, for what they are worth: between Mercury and Ascendant, and Mercury and the Ascendant ruler Jupiter again a double Virgo/Sagittarius connection; and between Venus and Uranus, once more a writing/art relationship, since there is a mutual reception between Uranus and the Moon in the third house.

Brian O'Doherty heads the essay referred to above : "Jack Yeats : Promise and Regret", and identifies these two themes as leading ones both in the work of the painter and in Irish History, no less than in Ireland as a myth. We could see them as the polarity between the ideal and the real, and in Yeats' horoscope between fire and earth; between Sagittarius, with Neptune also in a fire sign, in the fourth house of home and country, of which it is probably the ruling planet and the Saturn/Virgo influence, of confrontation with the conditions of life in the material world (2nd house and 6th) and the disillusionment this often entails. These two poles seem to find expression in his painting and in his writing repectively.


*Note: The delineation of this degree by Adriano Carelli (The 360 Degrees of the Zodiac) is my starting point:

14° SAGITTARIUS

SYMBOL: A master holding an open book in a very untidy but not uncomfortable room.

The native will set his shoulder to the wheel in anything he undertakes and will be able to give his intelligence the full support of splendid gifts, though intelligence itself is not specifically bestowed by this degree, which will grant only endurance in mental pursuits and eagerness in learning. This will be crowned by an excellent memory, a creative and harmonious imagination and a fine literary style. Little as other aspects hint at an outstanding mind, the native will emerge as a master in his own line, even a great master. There might be a suggestion of stiffness about him, something dignified and formal which will impair his popularity. But there will be no pettifoggery in him; on the contrary, there will be an outward carelessness and an inward bent to enjoy the robust pleasures of life. . . . . Departure from the beaten track may be a cause of unpopularity for the professional writer, which may apply to the non writers as well.

Appendix

It may be of interest to note some significant progressions and transits marking important events in the artist's life, especially those tending to corroborate the lay out for the horoscope assumed here.

First of all I should like to point to the recurring emphasis of 0° Sag., which is the midpoint between the Sun and Moon, and for some reason seems to be associated with death:

Secondary progressions:

1900 death of his mother p.Mars is at 0.06 Sag. (Mars is ruler of IV as mother)
1947 " " " wife p.Moon " " 0.03 "
957 his own death p.Sun " " 0.42 "

One Degree Progressions (day for a year):

1922 (Feb.3rd) death of his father Venus is at 0 Sag. (Venus is ruler of the M.C. )
At this time transiting Saturn is stationary retrograde on 7.20 Libra, and is conjunct the M.C. in
November.
1957 (March 28th) at his own death, Saturn is conjunct the Ascendant, at 14.17 Sag., being S.R. on the 25th.

The following is a selection of mid point configurations involving the angles of the chart, with the planets and points progressed one degree for each year in question; the delineations are from Ebertin's Combination of Stellar Influences:

Death of mother, 1900

SA=SU/NO: Separations
SA=ME/AS: Inhibitions. Sadness, talking about separations, moment of saying goodbye.
NE=UR/AS: Sudden sad experiences.
NE=NO/MC: Mourning and bereavement, a grievous loss.
MO=SA/AS: Separation of female persons. Depression caused by environment.

Married, 1894

AS=NO/MC: Harmonious living together, one's own emotional attitude to others. Establishment of one's own home. Associations based on inner understandings.
MA=MO/AS: Ties with the marriage partner.
MA=JU/MC: Abundant creative powers, clarity of purpose. A happy physical love life. Gaining the love of another by effort, getting engagement, successful cooperation.

Came to live in Ireland, 1910

AS=JU/NE: Sharing great hopes with others. The inclination to live in an unreal world ( but here Neptune rules Ireland, so we could read: to live in Ireland)
AS=UR/MC: Sudden adjustment to new circumstances or conditions of life.
JU=MC: Fluctuating circumstances, changes in style of living. Attainment of successes. Consciousness of aim and purpose.

Death of father, 1922

AS=SU/SA: Separation.
SA=ME/MC: A melancholy disposition. Separation, mourning.
MO=MC: Deep sentiment and feeling.

Change of Style, 1923

MC=JU: Consciousness of aim or objective in life. Ability to make good or rise successfully in one's career. Gaining a new position. Changes in one's style of living or occupation.
UR=NO/AS: (My own interpretation Sudden change into true AS Sagittarian style.)
UR=MO/MC: Motherhood, birth. An unusual emotional state. (N.B. MO/MC = one's own soul; the inner experiences of life.)
MO=MC: Appreciation of spiritual values. The objectives of life are deeply rooted in one's own soul.
AS=MO/MC: An emotional attitude to one's environment, the comprehension of other people's spiritual needs.
VE=MC: A harmonious nature, a sense of beauty abd art. (N.B. VE is MC ruler.)
M=SU: Individuality, goal or object of life. Individual progress or advancement.

Death of Wife, 1947

VE=SA/AS: A depressed expression of feeling and of love. Voluntary separation.
MO=SA/AS: Similar. Separation of female persons.

Own Death, 1987

AS=NE: Lack of resistance and stamina, inability to maintain one's place in the world.
SA=SU/JU: Loss of good fortune, possessions; illness.


References

1. In a letter to Thomas Bodkin, quoted by Hilary Pyle in her biography of Jack Yeats.
2. Hilary Pyle: Jack B. Yeats, 1989, p. André Deutsch. All biographical quotations and information not otherwise attributed are from this biography.
3. Alan Leo: Astrology for All
4. From: The Prodigal Father: The Life of John Butler Yeats, by William M. Murphy, Cornell University Press, 1987.
5. In an essay included in: Jack B. Yeats, A Centenary Gathering, edited by Roger McHugh and published by the Dolmen Press in 1971.
6. Howard Sasportas: The Twelve House .
7. Sakoian & Acker: The Astrologer's Handbook.
8. Charles Carter: The Astrological Aspects. ( Note: These characteristics are given under "harmonious" aspects; but, as he says, the effects of the "inharmonious" ones are often difficult to distinguish, and here Jupiter is exalted, and Neptune angular, suggesting a more positive influence.)

The extracts from Döbereiner on both Virgo and Sagittarius in painting are translated from his Astrologisch definierbare Verhaltensweisen in der Malerei.



Jack B. Yeats: chart using a birth time of 09:29, August 29th 1871,
London 51N32 0W06 – Koch Houses


JOYCE

Michael McMullin

Introduction

It is a common practice of astrologers when commenting on the horoscopes of figures prominent in public or cultural life, to accept uncritically the current collective opinion about these, and then to make out, usually by vague and specious pronouncements, that the astrology confirms everything one is taught in school. We all know that it is possible , by selecting suitable meanings for various factors, to put up a show of proving almost anything by this method; and if the original horoscope is particularly obtuse in demonstrating what is expected of it we can always resort to fantasising by means of marginal and tenuous techniques, such as playing around with mid points and "harmonics". But this does not help either truth or astrology, and does not avail of astrology's potential for revealing the truth. This resides in the basic factors of the birth chart, and learning to understand them, whereas importing a hundred other minor factors and inventing obscure techniques is only a form of escapism and of dodging the real issues. And real issues are never as public opinion would have them.

If we cannot expect average astrologers to be able always to form their own judgements to be, say, art, music or literary critics, we can expect them to have certain spiritual values and an integrity in relation to astrology itself. A case that has been interesting me for some time, for various reasons, and on which I have been coming to certain conclusions, is James Joyce. Just recently and within a short time span someone proposed to me in Canada that Finnegan's Wake is "the greatest book ever written"; and I had my attention drawn to a chapter in Working with Astrology , by Michael Harding and Charles Harvey, this particular chapter being on Joyce and by Michael Harding, in which it is taken as indisputable dogma that he was "the greatest writer of this century", who "changed the course of English literature". In coming to my own conclusions on Joyce's work I became interested in looking at his horoscope, and comparing the one with the other is my object in this essay.

Joyce's birth chart

Joyce's horoscope shows an extravert thinking type, with Sun, Venus and Mars in air (thinking), but otherwise a very large component in earth signs, including the Ascendant, its ruler Saturn, Jupiter and all the outer planets, four of them in Taurus. Besides this there is an overwhelming majority of points (8) in fixed signs, only the Ascendant (Capricorn) being cardinal, and Mercury, Mars and Uranus mutable. This can be summed up in Tierney's characterisation of a fixed T Square apex Saturn: "Intensely purposeful, willfully unyielding to the nth degree. Desires to control and manipulate." (from Bil Tierney's Dynamics of Aspect Analysis ).

Earth corresponds to the sensation function, that is sense perception of the material world and orientation towards matter most basically so in Taurus. Here, as well as four other planets in Taurus, we have Sun, Mercury and Venus in the second house, with its Taurus meanings as it were a sevenfold emphasis of the Taurus principle. On top of this a strong emphasis of the first quadrant, the Causa Materialis , if we remember Döbereiner's interpretation of the quadrants. A heavy emphasis on Taurus, especially if extraverted (Mercury rising after the Sun) is characteristic of materialist philosophies or political systems for example Hobbes, Marx, Lenin and Stalin, all of whom have 3 5 Taurus planets, including the Sun (except Hobbes), below the horizon. Bertrand Russell too has Sun and four other planets in Taurus, though he was an introvert and has them in the seventh house.


James Joyce’s horoscope – rectification based on father’s statement of 6.00am (see notes)
February 2nd 1882, Dublin 53N20 6W16, 6.11am LMT. Koch Houses.


The most striking feature in Joyce's chart is the triple conjunction of Saturn, Neptune and Jupiter, the last two close to the I.C., Jupiter directly on it. Pluto is also in Taurus, ten degrees further on. Neptune is between Saturn and Jupiter and, at 1348' Taurus, almost exactly square the Sun, which is applying. I find in all the examples I know of those born during a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in earth that Saturn is the stronger and overpowers Jupiter; that is sensation overpowers intuition (earth versus fire), or matter obscures spirit in their view of life or philosophy. While it is also true that everyone born at the turn of 1881/82 had these particular four planets in Taurus, including Leopold Stokowski, with six planets in the sign, Virginia Wolf, whose chart is very close to that of Joyce, except for house placements, we are talking here in the context of the collective psyche of the period. Picasso, born a little over three months earlier, had them in the tenth house, and a recurring theme in his work is the sacrifice of the horse (Jupiter/Neptune), in the bullring, to the bull of materiality. This is obviously also the theme of the crucifixion, leaving out the animal symbols but keeping to Jupiter/Neptune as archetypes of spirituality, and replacing the bull by Saturn, the main archetype of matter, and of the Fall. The very glyph of Saturn, with the cross of matter on top of the soul, is equivalent to this four fold conjunction in Taurus.

With a Capricorn Ascendant Joyce's ruling planet is Saturn. If I may quote Liz Greene on Capricorn (from Dynamics of the Unconscious , p.120) what she says is relevant to my theme here:

"Capricorn is not predisposed to see a world full of inherent meaning pointing toward some profound spiritual goal. It is the mortality of the world that Capricorn sees its limitations, its inherent struggle, the very fragile nature of life, and the extreme vulnerability of the human animal ... So Capricorn's selective perception does not register the inner meaning of an experience; it registers the experience as confirmation of the human condition. This is an essentially pragmatic and rather melancholy perspective ... the sensation function, rather than intuition."

Joyce has secondarily an emphasis on the second quadrant, especially the fourth house, the source of one's lunar, psychic and emotional energy, which comes from the unconscious. One can refer the second quadrant to the personal unconscious. Jupiter here is the ruler of the 11th and 12th houses, the unconscious itself or the collective unconscious, and Neptune has this association naturally as the 12th house principle and god of the oceans. In Joyce's chart Neptune, and Jupiter, are co rulers also of the third house of associative thinking, and writing, and Neptune, with Saturn, is actually in it. This configuration strongly suggests a fixed obsession (Taurus) with personal and material memories, of background, home and early life, which cover or submerge transcendental issues. In fact Joyce's writing never got far away from this obsession. The close square to the Sun, in the second house of the material organism as such, of this overall configuration does suggest moreover the danger of his being submerged or overwhelmed by the unconscious as Jung diagnosed, a latent schizophrenic. As it was, alcohol was the lesser evil, or provided a less dangerous outlet.



Faustian themes

The position of Mercury in Pisces, Neptune's sign, confirms all this: apart from imaginative writing and a vivid imagination, this gives a photographic ability to visualise thoughts and memories, and the possibility of being "trapped in memories" . This whole constellation and its associations is a well nigh perfect picture of Finnegan's Wake, as a vast dream, in which the unconscious has broken loose, and like the ocean floods over the sea wall of conscious and rational thought, or the bounds of the ego (Saturn). The following is a quotation from myself in another place:

"The Wake is a kind of chaotic nightmare in which the whole of history can be found scrambled, and one of its leitmotifs is the Fall most mundanely, the hod carrier Finnegan falling off a ladder. But it is a Fall from which there is no getting up and no resurrection. It is the reverse of symbolism, which perceives the divine in everything; these 624 pages of gibberish aim at reducing the whole of history to the commonplace. Like 'Faust' it is plunging into the dream of history, but it always abuts in H.C.Earwicker (Here Comes Everybody) and the language of the utterly banal. Not the other way round; it does not, like Faust Part II, lead into the realm of the archetypes. In Finnegan's Faust there is no Mephistopheles, but it is Mephisto who is writing it, the spirit of reductionism. The logical consequence of this is Beckett, who reduces all life to a couple of tramps satirically waiting for 'Godot', or another who lives in a garbage can."

The Faustian theme may also be suggested by Pluto in the fourth house, and Scorpio on the M.C. In fact the Taurus Scorpio axis is relevant to Mephisto; it is the main axis of Freud, the author of modern reductionism, and Goethe's own Ascendant was Scorpio. Far from "changing the course of literature", this work is completely unreadable; one cannot imagine starting at the beginning and reading it through. I used to say that one could open it at random at any page and be sure of a laugh; the unceasing polyglot punning is often very amusing. But as a signpost of the course of literature it points to a dead end. It has been translated into French, and if I had to read it I would choose that version, which cannot but be more intelligible. When we have unreadability pointed out to us by academics as a hall mark of the greatest writing of the century, then we can be sure that Mephisto has finally taken over this whole culture.

In the sense that it does in fact ridicule this culture and make an ass of its concepts and very system of language, it has a certain Mephistophelian appeal, and that character was never lacking in wit. Joyce has with justice been compared with Rabelais, even if a mostly opaque Rabelais. "An iconoclastic thinker" yes; but hardly a creative one.

Michael Harding dwells on Joyce's relation to Jung, which is very significant. He points out that both had Sun square Neptune, nearly exact. Jung disliked Neptune; his whole life was dedicated to bringing the unconscious into consciousness, to integration as opposed to dissolution, and to clear thinking the Saturn principle was very strong in him. Both men probably had Capricorn rising. But Joyce was overcome by Neptune, in the form of drink, and Capricorn was a one way route to the banal; which shows how the same archetypes can appear in very different contexts, or on different levels. Goethe's Faust made a life long impression on Jung when he read it as a young man, and it was he who pointed out the reductionist thinking of Mephistopheles; Thomas Mann too represents him, in Dr. Faustus , as the prototype of banality. Jung refers in Mysterium Conjunctionis to Ulysses, "a book which E.R.Curtius has not unjustly described as a work of Anti Christ. But such products spring more from the spirit of the age than from the perverse inventive gifts of the author. In our time we must expect 'prophets' like James Joyce." Thomas Merton described Joyce's appearance as suggesting a rather seedy bank clerk, and Michael Harding refers to the "highly original entrepreneur hiding behind a dull grey suit". It depends on one's premises. Merton's bank clerk actually behaves like one in life, and the original enterprise consists ultimately in reducing all life to a dull grey suit "the dull grey of spiritual nihilism" (Jung). "A transformative style of art" is quite the opposite of what this is. He includes in it everyone he has come across; Harding quotes Joyce himself as saying: "As soon as I mention or include any person in it I hear of his death or departure or misfortune".

Jung, writing of Freud in his Historical Setting, says: "like James Joyce, his literary counterpart, Freud is an answer to the sickness of the 19th century. That is indeed his chief significance. For those with a forward looking view he offers no constructive plan . . . . " Jung wrote a brilliant essay on Ulysses, at the request of a publisher. He writes of "the suffocating emptiness" of the book: "It not only begins and ends in nothingness, it consists of nothing but nothingness." And of its "visceral thinking", "cerebration reduced to mere sense perception"; and the "cold blooded unrelatedness of his mind". There are no values: "Everything is de souled, every particle of warm blood has been chilled, events roll in icy egoism". "All from the seamy side of life, and so chaotic that you have to look for thematic connections with a magnifying glass. And there they are, first of all in the form of unavowed resentments of a highly personal nature, the wreckage of a violently amputated boyhood". Nevertheless he concludes that it is probably a salutary purgative for the collective psyche of its time "an earnest endeavour to rub the nose of our contemporaries in the shadow side of reality".

The detachment of consciousness and lack of feeling pointed out by Jung can be assigned astrologically to Sun and Venus in Aquarius in the 2nd house. This house is normally where we enter into the world of polarity, in the sign Taurus; we take leave of it in Aquarius, in the 11th house, and become detached from or elevated above the emotions, having experienced all the other houses before this and gone through what life has to offer, or what we have to offer life. Here these signs and principles are inverted; detachment where one ought to become rooted in basic values, and consequently the mere observation of the sense world, with nothing in the 4th quadrant where one should have completed the journey and transcend or rise out of material and emotional entanglements. "Visceral thinking" and "cerebration reduced to mere sense perception" would be a suitable description of Aquarius in the second house, the house of the organism as such. Mercury is there too, but in the first degree of Pisces. The Sun in the 2nd house also implies the stock piling of all these sense data and knowledge as one's main assets and capital.


Comparison with Salvador Dalí

It is very instructive at this point to compare the horoscope of Salvador Dalí (1904). In this case the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars are in Taurus, but in the 11th house, so that we have Taurus planets in the Aquarian house, instead of the other way round. Here we transcend material values. In addition there is an overwhelming emphasis of the fourth quadrant (Causa Finalis), with eight planets in it. As is frequent with painters, Cancer is rising, with the Moon in Aries in the 10th. All this confirms Dalí's own viewpoint, expressed in his statement: "There can be no intellectual greatness outside the tragic and transcendental sense of life: religion." He also referred to "the spiritual famine of this post war period, which has mortgaged all its hopes on bankrupt materialistic and mechanical speculations." (Ramón Gómez de la Serna on Dalí.)

Dalí was an extraverted sensation type (Taurus), and this fits the statement by Gómez that: "It was essentially on the object as Breton said that surrealism had fixed its lucid gaze in recent years." Freud too was an extraverted Taurean, and this statement fits him, as Jung pointed out. With Freud's Scorpio Ascendant depth psychology he was certainly the father of surrealism. The exact square from Saturn in Aquarius in the 8th to Dalí's Sun in the 11th spells out both the "tragic and transcendental sense of life" and the crucifixion symbolism, of which he may have been the greatest exponent in art, especially in the picture in the Glasgow gallery inspired by St. John of the Cross.


Salvador Dali: May 11th 1904, Figueras Spain 42N16, 2E58 8.30am GMT Placidus houses



Joyce and feeling

With Joyce, Sun square Neptune in the 4th may reveal an initial highly emotional nature. According to the recent biography by Peter Costello, Joyce finally detached himself from feeling at the time of his still born child, in August 1908. In the Uranus (84 year ) cycle he had arrived at Pluto in his fourth house, and Saturn by one degree progression was on his fifth house cusp; and Mercury similarly, ruler of the 5th, was square Mars. On the last page of F.W. we read: "First we feel. Then we fall".

The whole question of feeling is also bound up with the T Square between Moon, Venus and Saturn, with Saturn at the apex. With Moon square Saturn we can infer the suppression of the feminine again the main motif of the Faust myth. The entire feminine side is limited; there can be hardship, especially in early life and late; having to endure harshness and lack of emotional satisfaction; ill health; the mother is unfortunate. With Venus square Saturn, sacrifice of happiness to an ideal or vocation; life hard, ill health, poverty, the father a burden; fidelity, but often very cold in some part of the nature, and a hardness. Moon opposite Venus Joyce's family life was disastrous, and his daughter Lucia had to be committed to an institution in 1934. In terms of midpoints, PL= MO/AS: "A disharmonious relation to the women in one's environment. Personal relationships with tragic consequences" (Ebertin). These positions can also be associated with depression.

For a thinking type feeling has to be the inferior function, which means less differentiated and more associated with unconscious complexes and with the shadow side of the personality. Here the two most feminine planets in opposition to one another and in square to Saturn are a perfect illustration of the Faust theme, and of the second half of western civilisation. The first part of Faust ends with Faust's failure to persuade Margaret to leave her prison; the Moon in the 7th house, square Saturn, may represent the wounded and denied feminine part of the psyche encountered in or projected onto the outside world, but never realised in oneself.

The only planet in a water sign (the feeling function) is Mercury, and this is quincunx the Moon and in a dissociate square to Pluto, the ruler of the M.C. one might say sold out to Mephisto; while Neptune, the planet of higher feeling (soul), is exactly square the Aquarian Sun. Saturn in the 3rd house an inimical early environment; compensating for communicational insecurity; left brain, materialistic thinking (1). Uranus in the 8th can be seen as a detachment from emotional commitment; this can also be associated with sexual experimentation and scatology. (Harding mentions letters to Nora, his wife, that are hard, anally pre occupied, and pornographic. The Moon is semi square Uranus.)

Jung also wrote a short essay on Picasso, with whom he compares Joyce ("his literary brother"), and who likewise is an academic sacred cow (Taurus), "the greatest painter of this century". "It is the ugly, the sick, the grotesque, the incomprehensible, the banal that are sought out not for the purpose of expressing anything, but only in order to obscure; an obscurity, however, which has nothing to conceal, but spreads like a cold fog over desolate moors; the whole thing quite pointless, like a spectacle that can do without a spectator". He is very interesting on Picasso's "blue period" from a psychological point of view the descent into the underworld, or the darkness of the unconscious (Sun and Mercury in Scorpio), in which "Picasso changes shape and re appears in the underworld form of the tragic Harlequin". The descent into the underworld is associated with the descent into ancient times, as in the second part of Faust. Jung says: "Seldom or never have I had a patient who did not go back to neolithic art forms, or revel in Dionysian orgies". "The journey through the psychic history of mankind (F.W.) has as its object the restoration of the whole man, by awakening the memories in the blood". It is interesting to observe that before assuming the mantle of deliberate obfuscation the early work of Picasso, as can be seen in the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, is pure kitsch; and in the same way the first book of Joyce, Dubliners, contains only one story that is not pure nothingness and wholly boring, and that one is on the subject of the wounded and rejected feminine. (But according to Peter Costello Joyce produced only masterpieces!) A nostalgic look after this rejected feminine forms the concluding pages of both Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake, perhaps with an eye to the last verse in Faust.

Exactly the same progression from kitsch to obscurity can be seen in the work of Schoenberg, who can be considered the musical brother to both of the above, to complete a trio of muses. Twelve tone music which was not even invented by Schoenberg consists of pure intellectual manipulation of an inconsequent sequence of tones, which can be picked out of a hat, without any tonal centre or point of reference exactly like Ulysses, where "there is no acutely conscious human centre, an island surrounded by warm heart's blood, so small and yet so vitally important" (Jung). While Cubism, the main gimmick of Picasso, is a perfect symbol of pure materialism, of dissociated Saturn become an obsession: four is the number of Saturn, and of matter, and a macro manifestation of Cubism can be seen in the New York skyline where all three of these artists have found their centre of devotion.

Notes

1.) This last I take from Howard Sasportas, the Moon/Venus/Saturn correspondences mainly from Charles Carter.



Appendix

Michael Harding has nothing to say about the accuracy of the chart he has for Joyce, which gives the Ascendant as 6°30 Capricorn. I have 9°16, which means a birth time of 6.11 am, and though there is not much difference, I have found a substantial number of progressions to the angles which confirm this layout, and which may be of interest:

One Degree Progressions:

December 1931 Father died: MA 90 MC
January 1941 Own death: UR 0 MC

Secondary Progressions

June 16th 1904 "Bloomsday", met Nora Barnacle: pAS 0 VE
September 12th 1912 Finally left Ireland: pMC 90 UR
February 2nd 1922 First copy of Ulysses: pMC 150 PL, 180 MA (ruler of 3rd house)
pMO 0 AS, pAS 60 pJU
February 2nd 1939 First printing of Finnegan's Wake: pAS 90 VE
January 14th 1941 Death: pMC 120 JU, 120 UR, 60 pME; pAS 0 NE

Solar Arc Progressions (with delineations by Ebertin)

Bloomsday, June 16th 1904
JU & MC = VE/AS: Happiness in love. Union with another through bonds of love.
UR = AS: Rearranging one's environment, changing one's residence, new contacts suddenly.
AS = MA/NO: Personal association. A sex union. Comradeship.

Left for Trieste, October 8th
AS = SA: Defective connective tissues or organs; chronic functional disturbances of the sense organs. The tendency to segregate or separate from others.

Finally left Ireland, September 11th 1912
MC = UR: The tendency to go one's own way in life, extraordinary or unusual objectives or aims in life. A sudden rearrangement of one's circumstances.
MC = MO: Great aspirations. Changing life objectives lead to many changes in life.

First copy of Ulysses, February 2nd 1922
AS = ME/VE: A talent for the establishment of social contacts.
AS = MO/NO: Acquaintanceship with women. (NO destiny).
MO = SU/AS: Fruitful activity in conjunction with others. Association with women.
(Note: Ulysses was first published by an American woman in Paris)

Finnegan's Wake published, February 2nd 1939
MA = AS: Forceful attainment of success.
AS = NO: The power of memory, in a more subconscious manner.
MO = NE: Similar. Also, in biological terms, eye diseases.

Death, January 13th 1941
UR = MC: A sudden turn of destiny.
AS = ME/UR: Accidents, motor damage.
MC = MA/SA: Mourning and bereavement (death).
Other positions: MA = PL; MA = SA/UR (a forced release, injury, accident); SA = SU/PL (separation by a higher power); SU = SA/UR (same as previous); SU = PL (danger to life, separation by Providence); NE = PL (throwing in the sponge).

(4037 words)


THOMAS MERTON: AN ASTROLOGICAL STUDY

Michael McMullin


Introduction

Thomas Merton (b.1915 d.1968) is an interesting figure of our time, perhaps a key figure in some important respects, and his writings addressed a great need and must have had a considerable influence in the spiritual vacuum and period of disillusionment following World War II.

Born in the South of France, his American mother died of cancer when he was six, while his father Owen, who was English, was a painter (Neptune in the 10th), and was constantly on the move, painting in different landscapes and environments, and changing residence between France, England and America. Thomas was put in boarding schools of different degrees of unpleasantness, the first in the France (the worst), then in England where he stayed with relatives, and sometimes also with his grandparents in America. In practice, he was more or less an orphan, and his mother, while he had her, was not very functional in a truly maternal sense, being rather cold and intellectual, and a perfectionist. When he was 16 his father died, also of cancer. After attending a minor English "public" school he spent a more or less dissolute year at Cambridge University, which he disliked, and then returned to America and enrolled in Columbia, living with his grandparents. His grandfather died in 1936, when he was 213/4, and this led to a nervous breakdown.

While at Columbia he lived a very social and extraverted life among a circle of friends, thoroughly a young man of the world of that time, living it up with beer, parties and an addiction to jazz, as though trying to compensate outwardly for an emptiness within. He was much impressed and influenced by, and also formed a lasting friendship with Mark van Doren, whose lectures he attended in English literature.

In 1938, working on a post graduate thesis on William Blake, he was led to the idea of art as a mystical and contemplative understanding of the world. This was the start of a change on a deep level of being. Uranus was now transiting his 8th house (since April 1937), Jupiter the fifth, Saturn transiting the Descendant (since March 1938), and progressed Moon conjuncting Pluto in the ninth house. On November 16th of this year he was baptised a Catholic. From this on he changed his life style completely, and decided to become a priest. He does everything whole heartedly. In 1941 he entered the Trappist monastery of Gethsemane in Kentucky and dedicated himself to the contemplative and enclosed life, in an extremely strict and ascetic order, to live under absolute submission to authority and in abnegation of all personal freedom, in a medieval life style that denied the least concession to physical comfort or even reasonable bodily needs and adequate diet.

This is interesting for an Aquarian, with Sun and four other planets in Aquarius, including Mercury and Mars, and, closely conjuncting the Sun, Uranus, the final dispositor of the chart. Even the Moon's North node is in Aquarius, and all this group is in the 5th house, except Mars which is in the 4th; so that we have here a concentrated emphasis on independence, freedom, on self expression, leadership, and all the 5th house associations with the sign Leo. On top of that the Moon is actually in Leo in the 11th house opposite, associated with Aquarius: a liking for society, love of approbation and the desire for distinction and being in the lime light.

Venus, the ruler of the Ascendant, is in the 3rd house putting oneself on display (Döbereiner), communication, in this case through writing. In Sagittarius, the kind of writing is specified. The symbol of Uranus and Aquarius is the flight of a bird, soaring among the clouds; in contrast to the life in the monastery with its interminable hours of "torturing boredom" (standing in choir), with its monotony and lack of stimulus or affirmation, contact or encouragement. These were the terms in which Merton himself began to refer to it after 7 or 8 years; to the "nothingness" of the life, where "the lack of privacy became at times a kind of torture". He felt himself in "the belly of the whale", and began to show "disquieting neurotic symptoms", and suffered a health breakdown the first of a succession of such.



Thomas Merton: Jan 31st 1915, 9.45pm GMT, Prades 42N37 2E 26 Koch Houses


Merton's 'See Saw' chart pattern

Merton's horoscope falls clearly into the "See Saw" type, in which there are two groups of planets in opposite halves of the chart here in opposite hemispheres, more or less opposing one another, with three empty houses on each side separating these groups. This represents "a world of conflicts, of definite polarities" (Rudhyar); and this is set against the Uranian and Aquarian theme of the suspension of polarity (Döbereiner). There are three opposition aspects, while there are also three conjunctions, another contradictory feature of this chart. The opposition signals generally a confrontation with the outside, either a pulling apart or an awareness; it is an aspect of relationship, or projection. The conjunction on the other hand "prompts an intense need for self relatedness", and" an inclination to withdraw back into the self, somewhat unconsciously, and consolidate the energies for the purpose of complete assimilation, before initiating them upon a new level" (Tierney). It is "highly self contained" and "has difficulty compromising" even apart from the fact of the fixed signs of two of these conjunctions. If the planets integrate well, it gives "a singleness of purpose and self sufficiency", concentration, strength of character and will, and a sense of identity, making an individualist (a Leo). And while the Moon in Leo confirms this, its position in the 11th (Aquarian) house represents the opposite polarity a warm and creative engagement in life and at the same time detachment.

All these contradictory features of Merton's psyche as well as his career are summed up in the Sun Moon opposition: a profound conflict in the psychology, often a distinct cleavage, one side of the nature being divorced from the other; incompatibility of inner and outer. At some time trouble with the opposite sex (see later). Often considerable mental powers; stands alone, at variance with the common stock (Carter). Ultimately the Full Moon can mean awareness and illumination. Rudhyar designates 8 lunation types, and of this one he writes: theoretically, objectivity and clear consciousness resulting from relationships, ... What was felt (Leo) is now seen (Aquarius). This may mean a revelation or illumination, and normally some kind of fulfillment .... "Relationship means everything to the person of the full moon type, or else he repudiates all relationships except those with an ideal or 'absolute' character."

The last sentence is quite remarkable in view of Merton's career. Technically he was an extravert (Mercury rising after the Sun), and overwhelmingly a thinking type (six planets and Ascendant in air signs). Yet he dedicated himself to the contemplative life, and not only that, but to the apophatic tradition, in which the soul must be "wholly introverted: not running out through the five senses into the manifoldness of creatures, but altogether within and harmonised in her summit" (Meister Eckhart). Here, "in the midst of the silence there is spoken in me a secret word." This is the same tradition as "The Cloud of Unknowing", and of St.John of the Cross, and seven points in air and the Ascendant ruler in the 3rd house seem difficult to reconcile with it. On the other hand the complete lack of earth signs (sensation) may be compatible with "not running out through the five senses", and the strong second quadrant and 5th house emphasis with the cultivation of the inner life.

The water element as Merton's inferior function

In terms of the psychological functions, the opposite polarity to thinking is feeling, and consequently when thinking is the superior or most conscious function (Sun in air), feeling has to be the inferior function, the fourth factor, the most unconscious, and the one that has to be integrated to achieve wholeness. Feeling is associated with the element water, and in Merton's horoscope the only two planets in water signs are Neptune and Pluto, both in Cancer, and each the upper and outer pole of one of the three oppositions. At the pole of the third is the Moon, close to the South node, and though it is in Leo it is the pre eminent symbol of the feeling nature, the feminine, and the maternal; and it is the dispositor of Neptune and Pluto. Close to the nodal axis it often points to a mother complex. This whole configuration is the clearest indication of the basic psychological cleavage and the task of inner reconciliation and healing that underlay and motivated Merton's life, and compelled him, to whatever extent unconsciously, to adopt a seemingly self negating and self contradictory way of life, through which, or in spite of which, he nevertheless reached his goal and fulfillment in the end.

With Cancer on the M.C. we can imagine that the attainment of this goal, the final result of his life, was linked to coming to terms with the Moon and the feminine principle, and transcending the emotions (Moon in 11th). It was just this feminine side that was wounded in early life, and the source of unconscious conflicts. Merton has Chiron also in Aquarius, and of this position Melanie Reinhart says: "We have perhaps transferred onto our belief system an attempt to win love from a cold and distant parent." Also: "may be critical of and reject society", and "a potential gift for balancing the opposites". Of Chiron in the 5th house she says: "spontaneity crushed during childhood; inner journey of self discovery seeking the inner child; or suffering through a child (see below); "through suffering we can become wise and redeem the kingdom." The focus on this theme is embodied in the close opposition of Venus to Saturn. This is in fact the "point of focus" of the chart, which is defined by the closest square or opposition (Marc Jones). In Carter's delineation of the hard aspects of Venus and Saturn we find: sacrifice of happiness to an ideal; life hard, often ill health, loneliness. The father may be exacting (he refused to listen to the child's urgent plea to be taken out of the school in France where he was so unhappy); the mother may be Saturnian ambitious and aloof and this seems to have been the case. Her early death then deprived him of a mother altogether. With Capricorn on the I.C., Saturn in Gemini would represent his mother, opposed to Venus, the anima image. (That Merton had an inner or unconscious resentment of intellectual or cerebral women came out towards the end of his life in his correspondence with a woman theologian, Rosemary Ruether.). True peace and joy is difficult to attain, says Carter of this aspect. It is bad for any female partner, there may be a difference in social status, and/or misfortune to the partner.

Guilt and sacrifice

This last observation is literally true in Merton's case and seems to have been what drove him eventually into the monastery. During the year he spent at Cambridge he was responsible for the pregnancy of a working class girl, who gave birth to a son. The mother and baby afterwards went to London, and were killed in an air raid. There was trouble over this with Merton's guardian, a Harley St. doctor, who had to pay compensation, and the whole affair haunted him afterwards. The feeling of guilt for having fathered a child and abandoned child and mother made him need the sacrifice of external life, sensual and social, of career, travel, family, etc. "He feared the claustrophobia of the enclosed life, yet because he feared it so much it seemed that he must make that particular offering" (1). "It is something that definitely demands a whole life of penance" (Merton). He fears physical discomfort and ill health. While "part of him needed to 'keep clear', and dreaded emotional involvement" (Aquarius) "there has always been this profound instinct to keep clear, to keep free" (Merton) he also needed "to have the security of a home" and "he needed structure of a fairly rigorous kind" (Saturn is retrograde). He needed too "to feel special, chosen, loved", and success as a writer and to make a mark in the world (Moon in Leo) (1). He never really accepted the sacrifice. In 1949, the year he was ordained to the priest hood, his neurotic conflict over the guilt issue became painfully evident. This was the beginning of an inner turmoil or "earthquake", and a growing psychological disturbance. It manifested also in a health breakdown, and he had insomnia since 1947. He wrote of "a contemplative who is ready to collapse from overwork" (1948). There seems to have been little time for contemplation. He felt the monastic resolution had not worked, felt ill and suffered from writer's block. He felt a growing resentment of authority (Mars in Aquarius), which brought him to his biggest struggle with it and disillusionment in 1955.

Solitude

At the same time the boredom and deprivation of monastic life forced him to turn inwards, and also opened up the sensual beauty of the natural world. In his essay "The Cell" he charts "a route downward through loneliness and acute boredom to the place where a man or woman, deprived of diversion and the constant affirmation of others, begins to doubt his or her identity". Then "the moment of truth" is possible to "know God". And "a new independence toward other human beings".

With recovery from his health breakdown he became aware of the problem of solitude. The loneliness of the monastery, the lack of friends with anything in common the rest of the community were peasants the bad taste of everything, made him encounter "the terrible loneliness within". "The way out of loneliness is solitude" (Monica Furlong). "Solitude ... is a deepening of the present ...", a looking within and a realisation of the self a pivotal discovery for an extravert. "The peace I had found", he wrote, "the solitude of the winter of 1950, deepened and developed in me beyond measure." This after rest and recuperation in the infirmary at Louisville. Chiron is conjunct the North Node: must take seriously the inner life and urge for individuation (Melanie Reinhart).

Between 1950/1960 "all his illusions about the religious life and much else were stripped from him". With the loss of identity "he found a new identity in the last eight years of his life". He went through the desert to do this. With this new independence (11th house) "he learned the careful art of showing private compassion". "Compassion is proportionate to detachment" (Merton), a thought deriving from his studies of Buddhism (2).

Saturn/Pluto in the 9th

In all this we see the Saturn/Pluto conjunction in the 9th house, which is one of the salient features of the horoscope, and the most elevated. The description by Liz Greene of this combination, in her book on Saturn, is so exactly accurate and to the point in Merton's case one would think it was based on him that one cannot but quote it in some detail:

"Both planets lead the individual into darkness, and both carry the suggestion of wisdom through suffering and purification through ordeal by fire ... In a sense Saturn guards the entry to Pluto's realm for it is the collapse of external values which leads eventually to the burning ground ... These figures are connected, and both in turn are connected to the figure of the wise old man whose dark face is the Devil. These figures all pertain to the educational value of the experience of pain, and they are immediately evident when we observe that it is only the man who has lost everything who understands that he is not what he has lost but something much greater ... These are psychological processes, stages of the growth of consciousness.

"The usual quality evident in the individual with a Saturn Pluto contact is obsessiveness. There often seems a carefully organised and deliberate movement towards some destructive experience." Often there is enforced separation or loss. It is a learning of detachment through pain; the obsession often occurs in the area of the house where Pluto is found. He has to learn mastery over the emotional nature. Saturn is "the inclination toward an identification with form and subsequent disillusionment, isolation and awakening." There is "an opportunity for a great depth of self knowledge ... Something within the individual usually drives him directly into experiences which tear away everything he desires and which forces him into self examination until he is able to find a centre which stands outside the world of emotional attachment." Often first he tries to over compensate by living lightly on the surface of life; but "the psyche is directing itself toward ... a journey into the depths." With Saturn/Pluto he "will not permit himself to get away with anything." The ego must die, for rebirth into a new centre for consciousness.

This is also associated with peak experiences, in which one is catapulted into a new level of awareness. He may be near or coming out of a psychological breakdown. "Reaching limits of emotional endurance, he gives up desire." Consciousness is set against the forces of the unconscious; it is the equivalent to the alchemical nigredo.

With regard to Saturn in the 9th house, Liz Greene writes: often a finely tuned sense of justice and great sensitivity to the plight of humanity; an inner urge to direct spiritual experience; and the struggle between inner values and outer. A number of other points about this placement coincide with those quoted above.

More crises

Merton was often on the edge of breakdown, and from 1955 on he passed from one crisis to another, both of health and vocation. In 1948 James Fox had become abbot of the monastery, and between him and Merton there was an on going personality conflict. He was restricted even in correspondence, all letters were read by the abbot, sometimes not sent on, and his writings were of course all censored. He was constantly on the verge of changing to a different order, where he could find the solitude and contemplative life he desired, such as the Carthusians or the Camaldolese in Italy. He wrote to the Vatican in this regard. His abbot, Dom James, was uneasy, and was determined he should not leave. In a letter to archbishop Montini (later Pope Paul VI) he said: "Father Louis (Merton) in himself ... is very dynamic, more extrovert than introvert " (italics mine). Near breakdown again in 1959 Merton wrote "I felt it necessary to change my situation and go elsewhere"; transiting Uranus was conjunct his Moon. Under constant provocation from the abbot, he nevertheless felt a compulsion to submit. The abbot accused him of being neurotic, but Wygal, the psychiatrist in Louisville, said he was "one of the least neurotic personalities I have known". In 1960 the abbot at last allowed him a hermitage, in the woods near the monastery. Merton realised he was a born writer, as a fundamental vocation. He wrote about "The Silent Life", but himself had the compulsion towards communication and self expression. Chiron is conjunct Mercury exactly in his natal horoscope (a position he shares with William Blake): powerful and sometimes compulsive communicators. Sharp and intuitive mind, able to get to the heart of the matter. May be able to stand mental conflict and embrace paradoxes (Melanie Reinhart). "He was now sharp", says Monica Furlong, "sometimes bitter", and "he thought and questioned with enormous vigour". He was critical of the policies in the monastery. An awareness of change in the Church itself coincided with an extraordinary inner development, and great reserves of mental energy. He began a wide reading, including even Jung, became interested in world affairs (having entered the monastery in disgust with the world and to renounce it), and underwent a sudden intellectual liberation. (Progressed Moon was now on the Descendant, Pluto entering the 12th house in transit, and Saturn opposing Pluto.)

Around this time he became passionately involved in anti war movements particularly the Vietnam war, and in the issue of nuclear armament; but the Church refused to take a stand on these questions and vetoed any publications which did so. In 1964 he was writing to Naomi Burton, his literary agent, re the ecclesiastical censors: "It certainly wrings the last drops of alacrity out of one's obedience and one's zest for the religious life ... it may have turned out a monumental mistake." And: "I have always been more dependant than I realised ... " and that he was "getting in so many ways disillusioned with the Order and the Church even." He may be an individualist, but is not really at heart a hermit, and afraid of real solitude. Rosemary Ruether detected in his letters "a cry of help for community." In 1965 ill health was particularly bad, with skin trouble, etc., and he felt "an exasperation bordering on bitterness with the Order and others in the monastery." He began a correspondence with Rosemary Ruether, a very sharp lady theologian, who did not let him away with anything; and even in 1967 (Jan.) was said to be starting a critical period of doubt about his monastic vocation.

Merton as a writer

The reader of the well known works of Thomas Merton would get no idea of this history of hardship, inner turmoil, struggle and conflict the only clue being perhaps a certain recurring defensiveness of monasticism and dogma that suggests a need on the author's part to keep re assuring himself. When one does know of the conditions in which he chose to immerse himself it is hard to imagine how he could have produced these works. He was allowed only two hours a day in which to write, read proofs, and do all the correspondence and business connected with publishing. He had set out to become whole heartedly a monk, with a romantic view of monasticism, but "the writer would not let him be a monk in peace". This conflict too. His early works relayed this idealist view, and The Seven Storey Mountain , published in 1948, a year after Seeds of Contemplation , was a huge success and became an international best seller, breaking records in this respect. "There was enough of Pop's (his grandfather's) shrewd instinct for commercial success in Merton for him to have hit on a formula that his readers could not resist" (Monica Furlong). The times were favourable, and there was a rush of applications to enter the monastic life. His mind covered a wide range of subjects, and he also wrote poetry; but the main theme of his writings, and of his life, was contemplation, which he also called meditation, or "the search for God". Underlying all the outward conflict and bodily afflictions there is a consistent and purposeful spiritual development which ultimately makes Merton a leading figure of his time and a guide for humanity, a philosopher of the transition into the Age of Aquarius. A very profound and surely the best study of this development, through the medium of his works, is the book by Father William H. Shannon, who teaches religious studies in Rochester, New York, and is director of the Thomas Merton Society of Rochester. Published in 1981, it is entitled Thomas Merton's Dark Path , from an unpublished manuscript of Merton's originally entitled The Dark Path, and later The Inner Experience. This refers to the apophatic tradition of contemplation, of seeking God in darkness and passivity, or the void (like Buddhism), and Pluto in the 9th house.

Integration of ego and Self

The aim of all meditation, East or West, of all spiritual paths, is the integration of the psyche, what Jung calls individuation. It is the integration of conscious and unconscious, of ego and Self, or of the 'false self' and the real self, or the spiritual ground of being. This theme runs through all Merton's writings on contemplation. In astrological language this is the Sun Saturn polarity, and in Merton's horoscope these are in sesquiquadrate aspect. In Christian thinking there is a built in dualism of self vs God, and the personification of God is, as Merton later understood, what distinguishes Western mysticism from Eastern. On an unsophisticated level this is a confrontation of self will with god's will, a struggle of wills rather than an integration, a question of submission. In this case "God" represents Jehovah, another dimension of Saturn. This is duty, law, authority, the collective consciousness, the Freudian super ego. And self will or ego is also Saturn, or individual consciousness. Later on, and on a deeper level, God is represented by Christ, a dimension of the inner Self or universal spirit with which the real self is originally at one. Christian terminology however makes it difficult to escape a dualistic way of thinking, and polarity is the precinct of Saturn. One must not give "God" an ego. Father Shannon points to a dichotomy running through Merton's thinking between dualism and non dualism, until the period 1964/1968, when he became familiar with and influenced by Eastern religions. In the end: "You have to experience duality for a long time until you see it's not there" (Merton 1967). "In this respect I am a Hindu"; "you have to see your will and God's will dualistically for a long time".

In Eastern religions the issue is to get rid of the ego and return to unity with the universal spirit. The word "God" in our sense is not used, so there is no tendency to personification; while individual "gods", such as those of the Hindu pantheon, are universal archetypes, like those of ancient Greece, or like the planets. With us however the development of consciousness, and individual consciousness, requires a synthesis or integration of ego and self. Individuation means not negating the ego but enlightening it. Individual consciousness and ego structure predicate one another and are retained, but they are to be illuminated, made aware of and guided by the real self a synthesis of Sun and Saturn, of which the archetype is the Wise Old Man.

This means arriving at the right balance between self and ego, our task in life, but extremely difficult of achievement, and requiring life times of discipline and suffering of many kinds, of thought, contemplation, effort and gradual understanding of the difficulties and obstacles we create for ourselves, and which are mapped out in our horoscopes. We have to learn to get rid of self importance, that is attachment to the ego, but while retaining its structure or personal integrity. For this the severe course of subjection to the Order and of self denial undergone by Merton evidently was productive in the end, but required a great deal of individual stamina and strength of character to survive. One has to get rid of pride, but yet retain one's creative integrity, and it is extremely difficult to learn where to draw the line. For this it is often useful to have to learn to deal with tyrannical regimens or difficult individual relationships with what are referred to in one of Castaneda's books as petty tyrants. One can only do so successfully when fully free of self importance, and at the same time having attained to an independence and emotional immunity born of objectivity and detachment. This technique is referred to as stalking.

Merton's last years

During the last four years of his life Merton became deeply interested in Zen and Eastern mysticism generally, which helped him to transcend all forms of dualism and emerge into a true religious universality (Jupiter in Aquarius). He resolved the opposition between his 5th and 11th houses and achieved the Aquarian transcendence of duality, or "suspension of polarity". In 1968 he took part in a Spiritual Summit Conference of world religious leaders in Bangkok, and visited and talked with a number of spiritual masters, including the Dalai Lama. On this level the different religious traditions meet and are talking about the same reality. As a representative of the Christian West Merton was here in the avant garde of his own tradition and probably had a significant influence for spiritual renewal in this. It is especially interesting that he also represented the Cistercian Order, which was linked with an undercurrent of esoteric universalism going back to the beginning of the twelfth century and the Crusades. At that time St. Bernard of Clairvaux became the foremost spokesman for Christendom, and his uncle André de Montbard was one of the founders of the Knights Templar in Jerusalem. St. Bernard presided over their inauguration in 1127 and helped to draw up their rule, discipline and dress, which was based on that of the Cistercian Order. The Templars had close links with Judaism and Islam and themselves aimed at a certain religious universalism. The building of the Gothic cathedrals was connected with this whole movement, and with the Temple of Jerusalem. An even more mysterious order also associated with André de Montbard and prominent nobles seems to have been behind that again, and connected with the transmission of hermetic philosophy through the centuries. Thus Thomas Merton in several ways completes a full circle from St.Bernard.

On Dec. 2nd he visited Polonnaruwa in Ceylon, and seeing the huge Buddha figures there, one seated and one reclining, he had a peak experience. He wrote: "I know I have seen what I was obscurely looking for. I do not know what else remains, but I have now seen and have pierced through the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the disguise." Not long after this, on Dec.10th in Bangkok, after giving a talk to a gathering of Christian monks and nuns, his life was consummated, one might almost say, in a Uranian death by electrocution, from an electric fan after having a shower.

Sakoian and Acker say of Mars opposition Neptune: "If otherfactors confirm it, this opposition can bring about a peculiar and mysterious death". In any case Neptune in the 10th house speaks of a spiritual achievement as the final result: a life of sacrifice (or sacrifice as an act of love), a career behind the scenes, spiritual leadership; of being idealised by the public and capturing the collective imagination; representing a collective force of the time.

In Herman Hesse's Narziss and Goldmund Narziss says to his friend:

"A monk's whole life may be spent in learning Hebrew; or he may live to annotate Aristotle, to decorate his cloister church, or shut himself up and meditate on God, or a hundred and one other things. But none of these are final aims. I neither wish to multiply the riches of the cloister, nor reform the order, nor the Church. What I wish is to serve the spirit within me, as I understand its commands, and nothing more." This means fulfilling his individual destiny or dharma, as laid out in his horoscope.

When Merton was in the plane on his way to the East, he wrote in his diary: "We left the ground I with Christian mantras and a great sense of destiny, of being at last on my true way after years of waiting and wondering and fooling around." And: "I am going home, to the home where I have never been in this body." (2)

Among the Tibetan Buddhists he met on his journey in India was Sonam Kazi, actually a Sikkimese, who told him: "One meditates on the mandala" (for which one can read horoscope) "in order to be in control of it ... One is able to construct and dissolve the interior configurations at will. One meditates not to 'learn' a presumed objective cosmological structure, or a religious doctrine, but to become the Buddha enthroned in one's own centre."

Notes

(1) The biographical details and quotations not otherwise attributed are from Monica Furlong's biography of Merton. (Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd. London 1985)

(2) The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton. (New Directions, 1975)


ROBESPIERRE

Michael McMullin

INTRODUCTION

Reading Carlyle on the French Revolution, I happened also to be reading Alan Leo's Esoteric Astrology, in which he gives us the horoscope of Robespierre. He gives no source or even birth date, but observes that "there is little doubt but that it is the correct one". After assessing certain features myself I agree with him. I became interested in comparing it with the character of the man as depicted by Carlyle, and the part he played in the Revolution, and the more I looked into it the more revealing this became, and the more remarkable and instructive, one might say classic an example this horoscope showed itself to be.

I have no other source for Robespierre's nativity, but from Carlyle's mention of his approximate age in May 1789 (under 30), and comparing the planetary positions with those of other examples around the implied time, I conclude that he was born in early May of 1758, and that Pluto (not given by Leo) was probably at 24 Sagittarius. An added interest therefore lies in the comparison with the present transit of Pluto through this sign, and the fact that there are many social and historical features bearing comparison between then and now.

Alan Leo remarks that "historians differ in their statements as to the character of this remarkable man"; but that "we have an unbiassed record in his nativity from which we may judge his character and motivations". His own judgement of these however is quite different from Carlyle's, who bases his entirely on the recorded statements of contemporaries; and from mine, using more recent developments of chart interpretation, and especially the psychological dimension.


HIS CHARACTER IN HISTORY

With certain points made by Leo we can agree. Jupiter in Sagittarius on the M.C. " to it alone can we attribute the rise of Robespierre from obscurity to historic fame". He became in fact the ruling tyrant of the Revolution, whose word was law, and to oppose whom in any way, even to making a mild suggestion, was a sure ticket to the guillotine. This Jupiter on the M.C. is conjunct Pluto in Sagittarius fundamentalism, and death. He became an agent, or an angel of death, not only to real enemies or opponents of the Revolution, but to all around him, to anyone wavering in the slightest from fundamentalism (or his will), even to any general losing a battle. This is contrasted with his earlier history, when as a young lawyer in Arras he made many successful pleadings and wrote prize essays (Mercury in Gemini in 3rd), which brought him into politics "for which only Moon in Aries fitted him" (Leo). He was promoted by his local bishop to be judge of his diocese (another dimension of Jupiter in Sagittarius), and fulfills this "until a culprit comes whose crime merits hanging; and the strict minded Max must abdicate, for his conscience will not permit the dooming of any son of Adam to die." Here I am quoting Carlyle, who goes on: "A strict minded, strict laced man! A man unfit for Revolution ? Whose small soul, transparent wholesome looking as small ale, could by no chance ferment into virulent alegar, the mother of ever new alegar, till all France were grown acetous virulent ? We shall see! " He notices him first at Versailles in 1789 among the deputies of the new National Assembly: "But now if Mirabeau is the greatest, who of these Six Hundred may be the meanest ? Shall we say that anxious, slight, ineffectual looking man", of greenish complexion (Madame de Staël). " A strict, painful mind, an understanding small but clear and ready"; "favoured by official persons , who could see in him an excellent man of business, happily quite free from genius." "A thin lean Puritan and Precision: 'This man' observes Mirabeau,' will do somewhat; he believes every word he says.' "

Alan Leo in his Astrology for All delineates Sun Moon combinations, generally with great accuracy, and of Sun in Taurus/Moon in Aries he says: Strong personalities. Impulsive, headstrong, too dogmatic. Persistance, tenacity, exactitude, abilities not under rated. Plenty of reserve of power behind the force expended; nearly always succeed in their purposes. Stubborn desire to make others conform to their requirements. Prefer their own methods, enterprising and independent, sometimes wilfully wrong headed. Fitted for positions of prominence and responsibility. A determined will; desire to excel. Able to organise.

He is made Public Accuser in the Paris Department, and becomes high priest of the Jacobins; "the glass of incorruptible thin Patriotism, for his narrow emphasis is loved of all the narrow." Holding forth in the hall of the Jacobins Club the old Hall of the Jacobins Convent: "More insupportable individual, one would say, seldom opened his mouth in any Tribune. Acrid, implacable impotent; dull drawling, barren as the Harmattan wind. He pleads in endless earnest shallow speech . . . "

ASTROLOGICAL CORRESPONDENCE

A striking feature of his horoscope is the overwhelming emphasis on the first quadrant, containting six planets, including Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus and the ruler of the Ascendant (or the two rulers, Saturn and Uranus, both in the first house). Tierney says of this: Self motivated and personal, subjective. Independent yet psychologically disconnected; egocentric. Self centredness increases with stress aspects (the double square of Sun to Mars/Neptune, the square of Mercury to Saturn, semi square Sun Uranus, sesquiquadrate Venus/Mars, and square Uranus Pluto all the stress aspects are focused here). Lone wolf disposition alienating, not encouraging intimacy. Also a self made individual. personal focus and effort leading to success in an independent manner. Water is sensitive to the unifying process, and is naturally absent from this quadrant; but if found suggests self support, nurturing own needs rather than those of others. Lack of sympathy and understanding of others. More reactive than reflective. (Saturn and Uranus are intercepted in Pisces).

Of the Northern hemisphere emphasis (everything here except Jupiter/Pluto) he says: Self absorbed, life lived from an inner viewpoint. Reluctant to attract attention, keeping in the background. Security within is needed. Regardless of social involvement, is not a person who will put personal, gut level needs aside, these must always be appeased first. Detachment does not come easily.

On August 10th, 1792, in the general uprising and insurrection in Paris and storming of the Tuileries: "Robespierre lies deep, invisible for the next forty hours; and some men have heart, and some have as good as none, and not even frenzy will give them any" (Carlyle).

To glance over some of the positions and aspects:

Mars in Leo gives a quick temper and aggressive attitude. Authority in manner, able to control others, may rise to position of authority. Leadership, self confidence. Competetive; strong, undeviating beliefs and opinions. Wants to dominate others, and believes in own infallibility.

Mars conjunct Neptune: A tendency to act through subterfuge and secrecy; and a tendency towards treachery, either on one's own part or that of others. According to Carter, vanity, lofty aspirations tending beyond the possible. Soaring ambition. Bitter disillusionment often follows from bright beginnings.

The conjunction is close to the Descendant, with the implications this brings with regard to personal relations and public enemies, is trine Jupiter on the M.C., and also, as Alan Leo points out, in mundane square to it, since both are close to angles. The trine has implications of religious pretensions enjoys acting the evangelist; propagandist. Mingled with Neptune, aspirations towards the grandiose. He announced that: "In overturning superstition we did not mean to make a religion of Atheism", and one of the last public demonstrations he organised was on June 8th 1794, when a great public display and holiday festival (this was the New Sabbath in the Revolutionary Calendar) was held in the Tuileries gardens, to announce and celebrate a new religion, with Robespierre as prophet. He has made the Convention decree the "Existence of the Supreme Being", and likewise "ce principe consolateur of the Immortality of the Soul". Carlyle describes it : "See, accordingly, how after Decree passed, and what has been described as 'the scraggiest Prophetic Discourse ever uttered by man' Mahomet Robespierre, in sky blue coat and black breeches (made specially for the occasion), frizzled and powdered to perfection . . . O seagreen Prophet, unhappiest of windbags blown to nigh bursting, what distracted Chimera among realities art thou grown to !"

The Mars/Neptune conjunction is square the Sun:
Sun square Neptune: seldom realises own motives, thinks himself saint when really gratifying self approbation. Craving for something great. Preaching.
Sun square Mars: Wants to lead crusades and seek the reformation of everyone (save self). Desire to contradict, seems incapable of agreeing. A compulsion to fight something. Common in those occupied with politics; also common in criminals (Carter).

Venus in Aries is in its detriment, and tends to be self centred, Saturn in the first house can be austere and cold, and want to work for prominence, power and status. Any limitations encountered tend to lead to frustration and hostility, and scheming. While this is to look on the worst side of it, Saturn is square Mercury, and in Pisces: the latter position is not generally good, is unfavourable for occupation, reputation, and can incur opprobium and disrepute; critics and enemies can lead to downfall (Alan Leo). According to Sakoian and Acker, this position can indicate that one is trapped in memories; an overactive, fearful imagination, leading to neuroses or paranoia.

Mercury square Saturn is the most revealing and significant of the aspects here: This can indicate cunning, one full of suspicion; hardness. It is common in tyrants and narrow minded, narrow sympathied persons, who see only one rule and like to enforce it rigidly and universally. A liking for disciplining people. It can lead to downfall. Aloof manners, blunt behaviour. Often much fear the fear that tyrants feel, that drives them to their brutalities. Shyness and retiring is also noticeable (Carter).

Pluto in the tenth house, according to Brunhübner, gives such types as the ruler, the dictator. "There is a tenacious striving towards power and independence, a great urge to have respect and independence, must have freedom for himself; an enterprising spirit, resolute in appearance, brutal, self assertive, dictatorial. The social operations are often strange and peculiar. . . . These types are endowed with a certain immunity. All attacks upon them rebound. It is almost impossible to satisfy them or to maintain friendship with them. They are always aggressive but cannot endure aggression themselves. They desire to be on top at all times and maintain their prestige." He gives Robespierre as an example, confirming the house position. We may notice also that while Pluto is in Sagittarius in the tenth, Pluto is ruler of the ninth, with Scorpio on the cusp, thus duplicating the Pluto/Sagittarius association, and the conjunction with Jupiter giving it in triplicate; thus a triple inflation of the Pluto/Scorpio principle of death, or triple combination of death and judgement (ninth house).


Robespierre was more than once accused in the Convention of dictatorship, and nearly got extinguished; but the Girondins were too faint hearted and allowed him a week's grace. By November 1793 his word is law and the Convention is completely cowed. Any protest or opposition gets guillotined. There are successive purges of its members, even of Jacobins, and then Camille Desmoulins and Danton himself fall victim, for trying to moderate the Terror. Danton said: "We should not confound the innocent with the guilty", and he and Camille proposed the formation of a Committee of Mercy. He would not defend himself or take precautionary measures, saying: "they dare not." Robespierre and Danton arrived inevitably at confrontation. "One conceives easily the deep mutual incompatibility that divided these two: with what terror of feminine hatred the poor seagreen Formula looked at the monstrous colossal Reality, and grew greener to behold him; the Reality, again, struggling to think no ill of a chief product of the Revolution; yet feeling at bottom that such chief product was little other than a chief windbag, blown large by Popular air; not a man, with the heart of a man, but a poor spasmodic incorruptible pedant, with a logic formula instead of a heart; . . . full of sincere cant, incorruptibility, of virulence, poltroonery; barren as the eastwind ! Two such chief products are too much for one Revolution" (Carlyle).

Indictments cease to have any plausibility; the Revolution has become suicidal and self devouring. Danton said, in prison on April 5th 1794: "Robespierre will follow me; I drag down Robespierre." At last in July of the same year the still surviving members of the Convention begin to wake up to their position, and towards the end of that month, in self preservation, the Convention confronts and indicts him. After a night of chaos in Paris, Robespierre and his immediate henchmen and supporters are themselves guillotined on July 28th 1794, ending the Terror, and not long after the Revolutionary régime itself becomes obsolete.

The Psychological Dimension

We have seen up to now that the horoscope closely matches the description given by Carlyle of Robespierre's character and destiny. That tenth house conjunction of Jupiter and Pluto is isolated above the horizon, as a unit constitutes a singleton, and the focus of a funnel pattern; as it were the focal point of destiny. He is a figure head for the Abyss let loose from the collective unconscious "Arachne webs . . . of Fury, Terror and Suspicion" (Carlyle) and propelled up to preside over massacres, anarchy and the Reign of Terror. But, let us not forget, having started out as a young judge of the diocese too scrupulous, if not humane (Sun square Neptune ?), to condemn a fellow man to death, and preferring to resign his appointment. This is usually interpreted as an innate idealism, which therefore underlay the rest of his career, and this may have been true up to a point, and led him to espouse the cause of the Revolution. But it does not explain his transformation into its presiding demon, if not monster; rather, it is completely incongruous with this. To explain it we must look at the chart in its psychological dimension, and this is what makes it particularly interesting.

With Sun in Taurus we have a sensation type, Mercury rising well behind the Sun in Gemini showing an extravert. The Sun is the only feature in an earth sign, while we have seven points or planets including the M.C. in fire. Mercury and the Ascendant are in air, and the two Ascendant rulers, incongruously and intercepted, in water. This means that, with only the Sun in the superior function, we have an overwhelming preponderance of six planets and M.C. associated with the inferior (unconscious, undifferentiated) function, fire, representing intuition, the opposite polarity to sensation. This is a situation unique in my experience, and immediately suggests a swamping of the conscious mind by unconscious forces. Saturn, as co ruler of the Ascendant and intercepted in the first, is also ruler of the twelfth house of the unconscious, as well as being in Pisces, the natural twelfth house sign, suggesting even more irresistibly a submergence in the unconscious.

A sensation type is not at home with ideas : "a Robespierre without an idea in his head" is quoted by Carlyle from Condorcet, a contemporary witness. In pathological conditions: " Repressed intuitions begin to assert themselves in the form of projections. The wildest suspicions arise . . and anxiety states gain the upper hand. . . . The whole structure of thought and feeling seems, in this second personality, to be twisted into a pathological parody: reason turns to hair splitting pedantry, morality into dreary moralising . . . and intuition, the noblest gift of man, into meddlesome officiousness, poking into every corner; instead of gazing into the far distance, it descends to the lowest level of human meanness" (Jung).

Alan Leo interprets the wealth of fire planets as "enthusiasm", but here, especially when fire happens to be the inferior function, it is better described as a conflagration, amounting to manic inflation. The horoscope depicts with exceptional clarity a manic depressive, and what we learn of Robespierre's behaviour exactly fits this.

We can associate the square of Mercury to Saturn especially with the depressive phase, along with Saturn's sign position; and Moon is parallel to Saturn, strongly reinforcing this. Robespierre's behaviour during June/July 1794, avoiding people and wandering in the fields, conforms to a depressive mood swing. During the phase of manic elation, megalomanic fantasies and feelings of 'godliness', as well as frustration at not being able to get things done in an instant, or at any opposition, are characteristic, while paranoia is frequent in both phases of the mood swing. 1

Manic depression is associated with a regression to the symbiotic stage of infancy (6 12 months) and its autistic and sadistic tendencies. There is no distinction between good and bad, or self and other at this stage, or inside and outside, the only awareness being of one's own compulsions and instincts; in extreme cases fixation at this stage is manifest in certain kinds of criminals, such as Rosemary West. "The infantile ego of the manic depressive reveals itself in his remarkable vulnerability, his intolerance towards frustration, hurt or disappointment". There is a splitting of the personality, a stage of manic denial and a circular return of of the denied in the depressed state "the splitting processes of the autistic phase". The origins of this in a regression to the birth trauma has been revealed in the work of Melanie Klein, and these psychological processes were well known to and copiously illustrated by the alchemists. 2

In Robespierre's case Mercury as ruler of the I.C. would represent the mother, and the fourth house (personal unconscious), and its square to Saturn, ruler of XII, triggers the collective unconscious; while for those who prefer to think of the M.C. as the mother, we have its ruler conjunct Pluto (the Terrible Mother, or Dual Mother archetype), in square to Uranus, in either case involving the Ascendant and the process of birth.


References:

1. Coping with Depression and Elation, Dr Patrick McKeon, Sheldon Press 1986.
2. Alchemy, Johannes Fabricius, Diamond Books, 1994.

ADDENDUM:

It is worth noting and quite remarkable how Carelli's delineation of 24° Aquarius, the Ascendant given by Alan Leo, fits Robespierre:

24° Aquarius

This influence confers a bright mind, but carries something tragical in itself and spells mishap. The rest of the horoscope will have to say whether the native is himself the author or the victim of such bad luck. But whether evil or ill fated, the native will be an unhappy being anyhow, unable as he is to grasp the meaning of his own actions. According to what the stars say, he may lack partial or total moral sense or prudence. He will get into trouble unconsciously in any event, and will realise his plight when it is too late.

The physique inclines to weakness, as does the mind. I said there is a remarkable intelligence. I may add, this is not in keeping with all the rest. However, the chance of distinguishing oneself in some branch of science is not ruled out; the native is even likely to attain renown, though it may be in a good or bad sense.

One of the examples given is Louis Deibler, executioner, whose Sun is on this degree.

(Adriano Carelli, The 360 Degree of the Zodiac)
(3223 words)