The Peripatetic Astrologer
Travels in Japan and Scotland
Back
in the winter of 1992, six years after I'd left the United States to live
abroad, I purchased an Astro*Carto*Graphy map kit. A*C*G is the system
developed by the late Jim Lewis for analyzing astrological influences according
to location. I was sitting in my tatami-matted living room in Kichijoji, the
Tokyo neighborhood where I'd been living for four years, thumbing through the
interpretive booklet in search of an explanation for Saturn at the Ascendant —
my main influence in that part of Japan. "Here is where you
can rise to personal power over your life, seem older and more powerful to
others, but pay the price with physical aging and poor health," according
to the booklet. The native also "tends to hypochondria" and often
wears black.
I
looked down and, indeed, I was attired in the darkest of all colors: black
turtleneck, black stretch pants, and a black pullover sweater.
"Hmm,"
I thought to myself. "Maybe there's really something to this."
As
I tracked the various astrological influences throughout my travels during the
following decade, I became more and more convinced that there was indeed
something to Astro*Carto*Graphy. The theory behind Lewis's system is that
planetary influences are strongest when they are at the angles of a person's
natal chart. And because the angles change according to the time and place of
birth, location can significantly impact one's experience. The following is an
anecdotal account of how several planetary energies have manifested for me in
two different countries. This is in no way meant to be a definitive report but
is intended to be a sort of astrological travelogue: one person's global
perspective of the planets in action.
Tokyo:
The Psychic Kimono
For
many a Westerner, Tokyo is a land of Venusian delights — a never-ending series
of adventures in the discos and lavish restaurants of the city's neon canyons.
This
is far from the experience, however, of someone traveling through town with
Saturn at the Ascendant. To get a sense of what it is like to have this
"malefic" at the Ascendant, imagine how it would feel to wear a
Japanese kimono. Anyone who has ever been strapped into one of these things
(including myself) knows that, although a kimono is a joy to look at, it is
hardly a joy to wear. The process of getting into one requires two or three
people (to wrap the multitudinous layers and sashes) and a good 45 minutes to
complete. Once inside a kimono, don't expect to go anywhere fast, or to go anywhere
at all — it restricts movement in an unforgiving manner.
These
are the images of Saturn at the Ascendant: discipline, restriction, and what
Liz Greene calls the "educational value of pain."1 With Saturn at the Ascendant, Japan
was for me a place of hard, hard labor — a country where I worked on two
master's degrees and started a Ph.D. and a country where I also became deeply
involved in fundraising and charitable activities. (I have Saturn in the 6th
house in my natal chart.)
On
one level, Saturn indicates restriction and discipline, but on another level,
it functions as the keeper of the flame, the upholder of tradition and the
status quo. In Japan, one often hears the expression: "Deru kui ga
utsu" ("The
protruding nail must be pounded down"). This is a useful segue into my
next story — and a ready illustration of an Ascendant Saturn in action.
I
had been living in Tokyo for several years, when I accepted a full-time
position as an English teacher at a private girls' high school. It was
precisely the kind of job I'd been looking for, and I was psyched up about
doing the very best I could. After I'd been there for several months, I started
the school's first English-language speech club; my students did well in both
national and regional speech contests. The
students at the school loved me. The administration loved me. (I also have a
Sun-Venus influence in Tokyo, although it is not as strong as the Saturn
placement.) But after a time, it became painfully evident to me that the other
teachers did not feel the same way. In fact, I couldn't help but believe that
they hated me. They criticized me directly and indirectly at staff meetings and
left my name off social functions and other official lists. I complained about
this to a close Tibetan friend of mine, voicing my bewilderment at how I was
being treated.
"Yari-sugiru,
deshoo?" he
replied. "You're overdoing it, don't you think?" When I asked what he
meant, he answered, "You're trying too hard. You're doing too good a job.
They resent you."
"Sure,"
I said, "I'm working hard. But I'm not making a big deal about it — I'm
going about my work very quietly."
"You might think you're being quiet and
unobtrusive," he said, "but for the Japanese, you're coming on like
gangbusters. Don't try so hard, and they'll like you more!"
I
realized that there was a lot of truth in what he said. Those conservative
teachers trying to keep a renegade foreigner in line were Saturn at the
Ascendant talking. I was the alien who blundered in and disrupted the quiet
routines of the school. "In America, everything not expressly forbidden is
allowed," wrote Japan scholar Clyde Prestowitz. "In Japan, everything
not expressly allowed is forbidden." I was living in a Saturnine culture,
had a strong Saturn in my own natal chart (unaspected, opposite the Ascendant), and Saturn
was right on top of my Ascendant in Japan. To further complicate matters,
transiting Saturn was conjoining my Midheaven at that time. I was acting spontaneously in a land where spontaneous expression was
definitely not appreciated. It finally occurred to me that I should probably
imagine myself wearing a sort of psychic kimono. "Think how difficult it
would be to act or speak while wearing such a thing," an inner voice
admonished. "Then your life in Japan will be easier."
This
is also in keeping with something that Noel Tyl wrote about an
eastern-hemisphere emphasis in a chart: Planets clustered here represent the
need to protect the self. "The astrologer can expect the life to be
conditioned clearly and significantly around ego justification and
defense...." For
me, this has certainly been one of the by-products of having Saturn at the
Ascendant in Japan: It has made me much more guarded and mindful of how I
appear to others. It has made me think and rethink what I'm going to say or do
before I say or do it.
Interestingly, none of the ill-health effects attributed by Astro*Carto*Graphy to an Ascendant Saturn has ever manifested in me. On the contrary, during the decade that I've lived in Japan, I've maintained a rigorous exercise regimen: I spend one to three hours per day swimming, jogging, or doing yoga. My increased emphasis on health and well-being could also be the outgrowth of an ongoing Pluto transit through my 6th house; Robert Hand writes that this can indicate "complete physical regeneration," when handled correctly.
After
long, hard years in Tokyo, I finally learned some of the karmic lessons of
Saturn at the Ascendant, probably a very good thing for someone who has six
planets in fire in her natal chart: I could stand a little discipline and
restriction. Perhaps, the lessons I learned in Tokyo prepared me for what was
to come.
Ireland
and Scotland:
Ghosts,
Transcendence, and Transformation
After
immersing myself in an Asian culture for nearly ten years, I began longing to
know something about my Scottish-Irish roots. In 1994, I attended a Celtic
music festival in Tokyo that featured several bands from Ireland, and it was
love at first hearing. A couple of weeks after the festival, I bought a
mandolin and, after studying the music for six months, finally decided that I
must go to Scotland and Ireland to experience it directly (not surprising for
someone with Moon in Sagittarius). I'd soon arranged to attend a school of
traditional music in the Scottish highlands.
I
should have known that my experiences there would be profoundly different from
those in Japan: I have a Neptune-Pluto "crossing" (i.e., both planets
are angular) right in the heart of the Gaeltacht — the Gaelic-speaking region
in the West of Ireland, the soul of the culture. Although the influence of both
planets is strongest in Ireland, it extends up into Scotland, as does the reach
of traditional Celtic culture. Because Neptune proved to be my
dominant influence, at least during the time I was in Scotland, I'll focus my
discussion there and address Pluto later in this article.
In my A*C*G map, Neptune is at the IC through Ireland and Scotland. Although many people think of the IC and the 4th house as symbolic of one's home, family, and emotional roots, Steven Forrest writes of the IC and the 4th house as also signifying one's ancestral origins, one's tribe and clan. Forrest calls the process of becoming aware of these deepest 4th-house instincts: "practicing the presence of the ancestors," being able to sense their "comforting, supporting bones and dust" in the Earth, and creating a "sacred sense of the 'land'" as a result.
This
well describes my experiences in Scotland and Ireland — with Neptune's influence
(like the ocean) both dissolving and enlarging my conscious awareness of my
origins. Many remarkable experiences transpired there, but the one I'm about to
relate captures much of Neptune's magical presence at the IC.
It
was late August 1995, and I had just finished a two-week workshop on
traditional Scottish songs at the Isle of Skye, a fairy-tale, windswept island
in the Outer Hebrides. I was taking a bus back to Edinburgh and decided to stop
overnight at a little town called Glencoe. This was not just any old little
town: It was the location of a brutal massacre that took place in the 17th
century; along with Scotland's defeat at Culloden, it was a decisive turning
point for Scotland in the loss of her independence to England. I knew this — or
rather I'd recently learned it at a lecture I'd attended on Skye — but being an
American with a very short memory, I had promptly forgotten it.
Oblivious
to the historical significance of the place, I hauled my rucksack off the bus
and checked into the Glencoe Hotel, a pleasant stone-and-clapboard building
just off the main road.
That
night I had a dream. Or what seemed like a dream. Actually, it was more like an
experience in a parallel universe, perhaps a dimension that the Celts call the
Twilight Time. Several fairies or kelpies, I'm not sure which, had come to
play. We were having a wonderful time — a bit too wonderful, probably, because
I was suddenly jolted out of this state to see a tall, foreboding figure
standing right next to my bed. It looked as though someone had thrown a dark,
burlap sack over his body — a bag that might have once held potatoes. He was
completely covered, and yet I knew that this was a man, or rather the ghost of
one. Fright coursed through my veins. I sensed no immediate danger from this
presence — I didn't believe he intended to harm me — but I knew that he was not
at all amused by the lighthearted frolicking going on in what he must have
considered his domain. I silently recited a mantra over and over again until he
disappeared. Once I had recovered from the shock of seeing my first ghost, I
managed to drift back to sleep. Those fairies and kelpies never did come back —
they were no fools.
When
checking out of the hotel the next morning, I thought to ask about ghosts at
the reception desk but decided against it: "I'll sound like just another
daffy American tourist," I thought. As I roamed around the village of
Glencoe that day, waiting for my bus to arrive, I was suffused with feelings
from the previous night's events — haunted by them — so real had they been.
It
was late morning, and I was browsing in a bookstore across the road, when I
stumbled across a book on the Glencoe massacre. I wondered how this might
relate to my visitation of the previous night. I bought the book and started to
learn more about that bloody night back in 1692. It took place during a time
when the clans of Scotland had become divided over whether to fight for
independence or succumb to the English. The MacDonald clan, one of the last
holdouts in the nation's struggle, had finally sent notice that they were ready
to surrender. Wanting to make a statement of defiance, they waited until the
very last moment — January 1, 1692 had been set as the deadline by William of
Orange, the reigning British monarch. The MacDonalds were thwarted in
delivering their oath of allegiance, however, by snowstorms and other
difficulties. Their oath, therefore, didn't reach the English magistrate until
the 6th of January.
Meanwhile,
the Campbell clan, firmly allied with England and age-old enemies of the
MacDonalds, failed to inform the king that the oath had been delivered at all.
William, therefore, instructed the Campbells to annihilate the Glencoe
MacDonalds, which they did in the middle of the night, after feigning friendship
in the days before the attack. Thus, 40 men, women, and children were killed;
the remaining MacDonalds died of exposure to the elements after fleeing into
the desolate, snowbound mountains.7
Surely
my "ghost" must have been one of the victims of the slaughter,
trapped between realms, unable to transmigrate to a better place.
But
that wasn't the end of the story for me. Three years later, in 1998, I was back
in the United States, working as a newspaper reporter and writing a feature
story on Scottish highland festivals in New England. I'd long ago forgotten
about that strange night in Glencoe; my only thought was to get the story
finished in time for the Friday edition of the paper. It was a glorious, late
summer afternoon, and I was wandering around the grounds of the festival,
taking notes and looking for an interesting lead. One of the many attractions
was a row of ancestry booths manned by representatives of the various Scottish
clans. Here was my chance to chase down my ancestry on my mother's side, I
thought. The family name, Renfrew, was a subdivision or "sept" of a
larger clan — this much I knew. So, I stopped into a tent with stacks of books
on the table and asked if someone could trace the name. "No problem,"
said a burly man in a kilt, flipping through the pages of a medieval-looking
tome. "Ah," he said, "here 'tis — MacDonald: Renfrew is a branch
of the MacDonald clan."
We
chatted about this and that, I thanked him and wandered off to the bagpipe
table. My jaw dropped at the prices of these instruments — the cheapest one on
display cost about $1,200. The man at the table (no kilt this time) was
explaining about bagpipe reeds when I suddenly gasped. He looked at me as if to
ask what I was gasping about, but it wasn't the reeds, of course; it was the
sudden memory of Glencoe and the ghost I'd met there.
"Oh
my God!" I said.
"Hmm?"
said the bagpipe man.
The
ghost at Glencoe — could he be one of my ancestors? I asked myself. The bagpipe
man was still peering at me quizzically, so I wrenched my awareness back to the
moment and did my best to appear interested in those reeds.
It
was as though I'd been rapped over the head by a Zen master's stick (or perhaps
the butt of a MacDonald sword). In that instant, I experienced a flash of
enlightenment about my past and my ancestry — in short, my 4th house — about my
loyalty to a group larger than myself, about an emotional and spiritual fealty
that transcended the ages. I am an American, with Gemini rising and six planets
in fire, including Sun in Aries — a testament to individualism if ever there
was one. But traveling through Scotland and Ireland with Neptune at the IC
enabled me to break free of that narrow awareness of my identity here and now
to something much broader and more profound.
As
it turned out, the A*C*G Pluto placement at the Ascendant was also immensely
relevant to the events in my life around that time: In 1996 and 1997, when I
was back in Tokyo, an eight-year relationship with an Asian man was coming to
an end. Pluto is associated with death, decay, and destruction; in keeping with
the energy of this planet, the breakup was wrenching and painful. It occurred
to me, much later, that seeing a ghost trapped between realms was part of the
lesson: to let that old relationship die, to stop hanging on — either to the
relationship itself or to the anger or humiliation of the breakup. Because
wasn't that what the Glencoe ghost was doing — hanging on to his anger about
the attack and, most likely, his thirst for revenge? What did my own personal
grief and humiliation amount to, anyway, compared to the suffering — the loss —
of an entire nation?
One
World
If
my experience is any indication, these Astro*Carto*Graphy influences seem to
work in more areas than just the place or country of influence. Rather, it's as
though the influence of, say, Neptune at the IC, although active in Scotland
and Ireland, transcends geography to touch my life at all levels and locations.
Thus, long before I'd set foot in Scotland, the process had begun. After all,
it was at the music festival in Tokyo that I had been turned on to Celtic
music. Similarly, it was in the United States that I learned of my ancestral
connection to the MacDonald clan — but in a way that extended back irrevocably
to that night in Glencoe.
There
are other stories to tell: a Pluto line through Bali, a Venus-Jupiter crossing
in Rio de Janeiro. But those tales will have to wait for another day.
References
Liz Greene, Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil, York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, Inc.,
1976, p. 10.
Clyde Prestowitz, Trading Places: How America Allowed Japan to Take the
Lead, New York: Basic
Books, 1988. (This book is currently out of print. The quoted passage is a
paraphrase of the text.)
Planets that don't make any Ptolemaic (major) aspects with other bodies in the
horoscope are thought by some astrologers to exert a strong influence: Like a
child who's being ignored at a birthday party, the unaspected planet makes a
lot of noise in order to be noticed.
Noel Tyl, Synthesis & Counseling in Astrology, St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications,
1994, p. 6.
Robert Hand, Planets in Transit,
Atglen, PA: Whitford Press, 1976, p. 481.
Steven Forrest, Lecture at Astro 2000, Denver, CO, April, 2000; personal communication.
This short summary of the massacre at Glencoe was culled from various books and sources. It is not meant to be a scholarly analysis. The Glencoe incident is a highly controversial chapter from Scotland's history; the rendering I present here could be said to be a Highlander's perspective on the attack.
Hard
Aspects between Venus and Uranus:
Fear
of Intimacy — or Quest for a Higher Love?
What happens when Venus, Goddess of Love, combines with Uranus, a planet associated with revolution, lightning-fast change, and quirky individuality? One outcome is that the Venusian need for intimacy gets blasted out of the water.
A study of this planetary combination, especially the hard aspects, reveals a need for space and sporadic detachment in the realm of intimate relationships. As an astrologer living abroad for the past 20 years, I have had many opportunities to observe the pairing of these two antithetical energies in the charts of clients and friends in international marriages: 58 percent of people in committed mixed-culture relationships in my files have Venus in hard aspect to Uranus (22 out of 38 charts).1
And this makes sense. If Uranian contact with the planet of love creates a need for space, what better way to accomplish this than by marrying someone from a different culture? The frames of reference in such unions are so different that there is far less common ground than in more conventional couplings.2 People with Venus–Uranus have the comfort of companionship without too much closeness — a kind of virtual intimacy that allows them to be in relation but without the emotional identification that is part and parcel of intimate bonds.
As I started to examine this phenomenon more carefully, I found corroboration from many places: celebrities and public figures in international unions, as well as Venus–Uranus pairings in which space was created in other ways — by vast differences in age, for example, or by disparities in education or class. In this article, I'll explore some of the guises taken by Venus–Uranus by looking at the charts of famous people with this aspect.
Let's start with Academy Award–winning director Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich, Traffic) who has Venus in Sagittarius squaring Uranus in Virgo (see Chart 1, **wherever). Soderbergh's first film was sex, lies, and videotape, a fictionalized account of his early twenties. The film focuses on the main character Graham, a drifter who has returned to his hometown to confront painful memories of a failed relationship that involved a betrayal by his best friend.
Graham has a rather unconventional hobby: videotaping girls talking about their sex lives, a pastime that occasionally includes the subjects disrobing for the camera. He never gets involved with any of the girls, mind you; his own rules permit him only observer status. Graham's avocation, both the making and viewing of the tapes, is a sorry substitute for intimacy — something he's avoided since the breakup with his college sweetheart.
The structure of sex, lies, and videotape provides an encapsulation of the Venus–Uranus dynamic: The realm of relationships (Venus) can be painful. To create distance, Graham employs a video camera (Uranian technology) as a sort of intermediary. In this way, he can vicariously experience the intensity of relationship without risk or vulnerability.
Graham’s nomadic existence is conspicuously Uranian. He lives out of his car and washes up at filling stations. In this, we witness Graham’s extreme quest for freedom and his inability (or refusal) to commit to anything or anybody. Another facet of Venus–Uranus is revealed in the uniquely autobiographical nature of the story. While Soderbergh has admitted that he most identified with Graham (not surprising, given that Graham is the "filmmaker"), he has also said that each of the three main characters (Graham, Graham's best friend, and Ann, his friend's wife) represent different aspects of himself. This is another expression of Uranian detachment: the innate ability to take a step back and view oneself from afar, which in this case involved Soderbergh splitting himself into three.
Other variations of Venus–Uranus detachment occur in the chart of Katharine Hepburn, who had Venus in Aries squaring Uranus in Capricorn (see Chart 2, **). Although married briefly at the beginning of her career, she rarely lived with her husband. The union quickly dissolved as Hepburn's career took off. The love of her life was Spencer Tracy, an actor with whom she made nine films and shared a 27-year relationship that was never given the conventional imprimatur of a marriage license.
Many thought that this was due to Tracy's Catholicism: The actor was married, and the Church forbade divorce. However, even if Tracy had divorced his wife, he and Hepburn never would have tied the knot. If they had, the marriage probably wouldn't have lasted — it would have been too close; there would have been no escape hatch. Indeed, the need for an emotional escape hatch is a classic manifestation of Venus–Uranus. It is the back door that permits a speedy exit (if only mentally: "well, he could always go back to his wife …") and prevents the relationship from becoming too claustrophobic for the free-spirited Uranian soul.
Another space-making mechanism for Hepburn was her career. Acting was the real love of her life; it provided both distraction and insulation from the emotional entanglements of intimate human relations. We see a reflection of how the artistic process can create distance in the chart of British novelist Iris Murdoch, whose Venus in Virgo opposes Uranus in Pisces (see Chart 3, **). Murdoch's "life of secret creation," according to her husband, John Bayley, kept her preoccupied with "anything and everything except me" and created a "sympathy in apartness" in their marriage.
"I was living in a fairy story," wrote Bayley in his best-selling book, Elegy for Iris, "the kind with sinister overtones and not always a happy ending — in which a young man loves a beautiful maiden who returns his love but is always disappearing into some unknown and mysterious world, about which she will reveal nothing."3 Here, the Venus–Uranus insistence on space was facilitated by Murdoch's commitment to her art — and all the psychic energy that commitment entailed.
Venus–Uranus: One Door to a Larger World
Although Venus denotes relationship, it would be a mistake to think that the influence of Uranus is confined to the realm of interpersonal relations. Hard aspects between Venus and Uranus often indicate a detachment from intense emotions in general. In Katharine Hepburn's case, the template of Uranian detachment was set in adolescence when her older brother Tom hanged himself; Katharine was the first to find him. This event was part of a tragic family history: Hepburn's maternal grandfather and, later, two uncles on her father's side also committed suicide. In her memoir, Hepburn described the family's reaction to her brother's death. After the initial shock and the funeral, neither the suicide nor her brother were ever mentioned again. "[My mother] never said 'I'm going to the cemetery'," Hepburn wrote. "Neither did Dad … They simply did not believe in moaning about anything … they moved on into life."4
The Hepburn family's refusal to linger on the intense emotions accompanying the tragedy was true not only in the case of Katharine's brother but for all the suicides. In fact, as the years passed, the family was loath to acknowledge that these deaths had ever taken place.5 Here, we see detachment from extremely intense feelings: grief over the loss of beloved family members, bewilderment and confusion over what motivated the suicides, even possible guilt over what the family’s role in them might have been. All this was swept aside, banished from consciousness.
Small wonder, then, that Hepburn learned to distance herself from her deepest feelings. When it was clear that Tracy would never divorce his wife, Hepburn said fine, she'd never wanted to marry anyway. When she was fired several times in the beginning of her career, she didn't cling to hurt and rejection. "There I was. Fired again," she wrote. "And very badly thrown. Get busy — get busy."6 Get busy: With Mercury closely opposing her Ascendant, perpetual motion and busyness helped to provide the detachment that Venus–Uranus craved.
In the final analysis, the only outlet for Hepburn's intense feelings was her career. This is a bit ironic, since her career also discouraged her from investing too much emotional energy in her relationships. But that is just the point: Acting was safe; those were other people's feelings she was portraying on screen, not her own. Perhaps part of Hepburn's greatness as an actor lay in the fact that those feelings were very much her own — feelings that had been exiled from her daily life.
In the sphere of the everyday working world, one might think that this level of detachment could spell a fear of intimacy. But that is too simple. What we're seeing with Venus–Uranus is not so much a fear of intimacy as a transpersonalizing of what otherwise would have been purely individualistic urges. Uranus, with its tendency toward emotional detachment and its eye on the bigger social picture, transforms the solely personal concerns of Venus into something much larger.
One could say that Venus–Uranus is an antidote to the unbridled emotionalism of the Me Generation, which exalts the personal above all else. Of course, both sides — the absolute detachment of Venus–Uranus and the self-indulgence of the Me Generation — are unhealthy extremes. But given the lopsided nature of our consumer-oriented culture, it might be that Venus–Uranus provides a needed balance. In any case, the Uranian accent on the social is in sync with Hepburn's feelings about that very self-oriented activity of the 20th century: psychoanalysis — something she termed "wild self-indulgence."
To be sure, the antipathy for introspection suggested by such a statement can have its shadow side, but this same detachment can open the door to larger worlds. Far from creating merely a fear of intimacy, in highly evolved cases the transpersonalizing energy of Uranus can lead to the quest for a higher love, an Aquarian "love affair" with humanity that makes mundane intimacy pale in comparison.
Toward a Higher Love
Princess Diana is a case in point. It might seem odd at first to link her with the detachment of Venus–Uranus. Diana was the archetypal Cancer, someone always crying out for intimacy and throwing quite a few tantrums when Prince Charles rendezvoused with Camilla. Diana's well-publicized eating disorders were further evidence that those very personal Cancerian needs were not being met. How could one possibly associate the Venus–Uranus dynamic with her?
But right at the center of her chart is Venus in Taurus at the focal point of a t-square — in the 5th house of romance, no less — with Uranus in Leo opposite the Moon (see Chart 4, **). This is all the more poignant because the Moon, the ruler of that very sensitive and needy Cancer Sun, is in freedom-loving Aquarius. Distance was built into her intimate relationships from the beginning. It's no surprise that "fate" paired her with a man twelve years her senior and worlds apart in education (Diana's formal schooling stopped when she was only 16).7
In fact, Diana had considerable needs for space (including a Sagittarius Ascendant) that ran counter to the yearnings of her Cancer Sun. In the first years of her marriage, Diana did not own this facet of her being, choosing instead to project her needs for independence onto others. It was Charles who was pulling away, Charles who was unfaithful. Years later, when she was able to form a significant bond, it wasn't with a fellow Brit or even a Westerner, but with someone from a culture profoundly different from her own: Middle Eastern–born Dodi Fayed. In him Diana had finally found the safe intimacy she'd been seeking all along.
Even before she achieved this, her Cancer Sun was not forgotten. Princess Di manifested the purest expression of both the Cancerian need for closeness and the Aquarian need to be socially significant through her humanitarian work with AIDS patients, the homeless, and victims of land mines, to name a few. Here is the higher love inherent in both Aquarian and Uranian placements.
We see this same Aquarian impulse in Katharine Hepburn's parents, both of whom were social crusaders: Her father was a surgeon and a pioneer in the fight against venereal disease; her mother, a suffragist and an early advocate of birth control. It was as though Hepburn, in her detachment from her own feelings, was saying: See? These social issues are the most important things, not my petty, personal concerns.
The Venus–Uranus quest for a higher love can be seen in clearer relief in the chart of Catholic contemplative Thomas Merton. Although Merton didn't have an aspect between these two planets, his chart is permeated with both Uranian and Aquarian energies: He had five planets in Aquarius, including the Sun and Aquarius-ruling Uranus (see Chart 5, **). Most important for understanding the breadth of Uranian influence in Merton’s chart is the networks of rulerships, where Uranus disposits every planet, including Venus.8
Like Hepburn, Merton learned early on what it was like to lose a loved one — and how to distance himself from the pain of loss. When he was six his mother died, and his father passed away ten years later. From then on, Merton was shuttled back and forth between relatives, residences, and countries. (His parents had been expatriates in Europe.) Then, while he was still a student, his closest caretaker passed away.
At that point, Merton embarked on a profligate existence: Cut loose from every parental restricting factor, the young man was now free to indulge his every whim and desire. He was in and out of relationships, the details of which he refused to recount in his famous memoir, The Seven Storey Mountain, suggesting that they were too sordid. With all that Aquarian and Uranian energy, it was no wonder: He was thrashing about, trying desperately to free himself from earthly constrictions. What Merton ultimately learned was that no amount of rebellion could satisfy the Aquarian urge for liberation. "It would take me five or six years to discover what a frightful captivity I had got myself into," he wrote of those "lost" years.9
At age 23, after a number of spiritual experiences and awakenings, he converted to Catholicism; then, at 26, he denounced secular life and entered a Trappist monastery. He called his monastic existence, which was devoid of the intimate relations of family life, "the four walls of my new freedom."10
Merton described the Aquarian–Uranian impulse for a universal love in his book, New Seeds of Contemplation: "A man cannot enter into the deepest center of himself and pass through that center into God, unless he is able to pass entirely out of himself and empty himself and give himself to other people in the purity of a selfless love" [italics mine]. Passing out of oneself, emptying oneself: Here is the influence of Uranus — the lightning bolt of electricity that jolts one onto a higher level of awareness.11
Selfless love, finally, is what Venus–Uranus contacts are all about; this love shies away from exclusive emotional involvement with the one perfect partner and, instead, seeks out an intimacy with all of humanity.
* * * * * * * * *
Before closing, I'd like to offer two caveats: Don't think that someone with hard aspects between Venus and Uranus doesn't have "personal" feelings; that is not the case. Merton keenly experienced sorrow after the death of his parents; for Hepburn, deep feelings manifested in the love and loyalty she felt for her family, her grief over her brother, and her abiding affection for Spencer Tracy.
We see a touching vignette of the depth of Hepburn's feelings in an anecdote told by a journalist who interviewed the actress at her home when she was in her eighties. Toward the end of the interview, Hepburn was giving the writer a tour of her house. As they walked downstairs, the writer spied a picture of Spencer Tracy and mentioned that Tracy had been his mother's favorite actor. At this, the great actress, normally so steely and matter of fact, began to cry. Tracy had died two decades earlier, but Hepburn’s feelings about him were still raw and astonishingly close to the surface. Back on the first floor, Hepburn summoned her assistant to talk to the visitor, at which point she pulled herself together and offered him lunch.12
The deep feelings were still there, all right. Among the gifts of Venus-Uranus is the ability to take a step back and feel those intense emotions as if from a distance.
Now for the second caveat: Despite the good points of this planetary combo, we must beware. The emotional detachment that can result from Venus–Uranus can be used as a weapon when handled in the wrong way. Individuals who are utterly detached from their emotions can become rather contemptuous of people still struggling to get their own impulses and feelings under control.
We see an example of this in Soderbergh’s movie, sex, lies, and videotape. Toward the end of the film, Graham the filmmaker is confronted about his bizarre hobby. "Why are you doing this? Are you going to answer me?" demands Ann, one of Graham's former subjects, who grabs the camera and points it at him. Graham resists but Ann refuses to back down. Still aiming the camera his way, she says: "I just want to ask you a few questions. Like why do you tape women talking about sex, huh? Why do you do that — can you tell me why?"
"I don't like the turning the tables thing," he says lamely, cowering in the corner.13
Not many people do. And not many people like having their feelings met with seeming indifference. It's natural to have emotional needs and reactions. The greatest mystics and theologians, while preaching transcendence, all agree that the foibles resulting from those illusory emotions are essential to human beings and part of what makes our lives on this Earth so precious. The extreme detachment that can result from Venus–Uranus can be off-putting for those on the receiving end and ultimately dehumanizing for the owner. Perhaps the optimal expression of this planetary combination is a serene detachment from one's emotional impulses, linked with compassion for those who have not yet mastered their own.
References and Notes
1. The subjects in this informal study were (a) married, or (b) in committed relationships of one year or longer, or (c) involved in two or more relationships with people from foreign countries. Of the 22 people with Venus–Uranus contacts, 16 had squares or oppositions, four had trines or sextiles, and two had quincunxes.
2. The dynamic of distance in intimacy is relative to the cultures involved. An American married to a Canadian or Briton will experience less cultural dissonance than, say, an American married to a Japanese.
3. John Bayley, Elegy for Iris, Picador USA, 1999, pp. 44–45.
4. Katharine Hepburn, Me: Stories of My Life, Random House, 1991, pp. 63–65.
5. "Remembering Kate/The Hepburns," People magazine, commemorative issue, 2003, pp. 6–7.
6. Hepburn, Me, p. 166.
7. Andrew Morton, Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words, Simon and Schuster, 1998, pp. 183, 295.
8. Venus is in Sagittarius, which is disposited by Jupiter; Jupiter is in Aquarius and disposited by Uranus, which is also in Aquarius and thus the final dispositor of the chart.
9. Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain, Harvest Books, 1998, p. 94.
10. Ibid., quoted from back cover.
11. Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, A New Directions Book, 1961, p. 64.
12. Philip Hoare, "Portrait of a Lady," in The Independent (London), July 1, 2003.
13. Steven Soderbergh (director), sex, lies, and videotape, Samuel Goldwyn Home Entertainment video, 1990.
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