His passion for old photographs

My husband has always been a keen photographer. His other loves, sketching, painting and writing tend to come and go, but photography has been a constant. He has a large number of boxes filled with his produce over the years. As well as taking photographs he collects old ones, from discarded collections to be found in junk stores and antique shops. He feels a visceral connection to old photographs, says they "speak to him". He's not usually so esoteric - I have to add. He'll tolerate astrology with a slightly cynical countenance, but that's the extent of his interest in the unexplained. His attachment to old photographs seems special, to me.

He has a collection on Flickr, and occasionally posts some of them on his blog along with Flickr members' comments. There's a good example of his passion for his hobby in the comments copied to his blog "Thinks Happen" this week - SEE HERE. Scroll down through the comments to his long response near the end of the string.

Husband is happy for me to waffle on about his natal chart, and whether I can spot some aspect or placement which ties in with the above.

He has Sun at 1* Aries, Mercury at 29* Pisces and Saturn at 26* Pisces, so those three personal planets, within a few degrees of each other, form a stellium, even though they are not all in one sign. The mix of Aries and Pisces has always been apparent to me in his nature - I used to think it was a "cusp thing", in a way it is. Pisces' ruler is Neptune and Neptune connects to photography. (His Moon and ascendant are both in Leo, for basic background.)

Analysing a particular attraction to collecting antique photographs: Neptune, as I said, connects to photography, Saturn connects to age, and antique items, as does Capricorn. Collecting, I suspect, connects with Jupiter and Saturn -(the inclination to collect many items of a particular kind and give them structure - Saturn.) In the days of LPs (long-playing records) he was an avid collector of those - he still has them all, in their thousands. Collecting seems to be one of his natural traits.

I notice that there is an aspect pattern in his chart which links Neptune in Virgo with Saturn and the Pisces-led stellium, Jupiter in Capricorn and Pluto in Cancer. The pattern is known as a Mystic Rectangle formed by a pair trines and a pair of sextiles forming the rectangle, and two oppositions crossing inside it.

Here it is:



"A Mystic Rectangle will always be in the same polarity, either masculine (Air and Fire) or feminine (Earth and Water). This is another "soft" aspect pattern in that it does not generate friction, discomfort or a need to take action. What a Mystic Rectangle does offer, however, is an extremely strong sense of balance and structure, of harmony between the four planets involved. Finding this balance is not a given, it will still take conscious effort and awareness.."
See here

Each of the aspects which form the Mystic Rectangle has a part to play:

Jupiter in Capricorn sextile the mainly Pisces (ruled by Neptune) stellium links the urge to collect with Sun(self) and Saturn (age and old items, and structure).

The Neptune in Virgo/Pluto in Cancer sextile is generational, and found in the charts of many in the same age group, so isn't as significant, but because here it's linked into the pattern, it serves as a symbolic conduit aiding the flow, also bringing neat and organising Virgo into the mix - organising is also involved in collecting.

The trine between Jupiter and Neptune reflects a harmonious connection between photography and collecting.

The trine between Saturn and Pluto, will appear in charts of a group of people of similar age, but it does bring the passion of Pluto to the age/antique, structure link with Saturn.

The two oppositions between Jupiter/Pluto and Saturn/Neptune add dynamic crosswise pulls to the harmony of the outer rectangle - signifying energy, staying power and determination to keep on keeping on with the hobby from which he finds so much satisfaction.

I'd say that the ingredient mix in that aspect pattern, the Mystic Rectangle, contains everything necessary to produce a collector of old photographs.