Auntie Sagittarius

As the Sun visits each sign of the zodiac I often get to thinking about people I've known who either typify that sign or fly in the face of tradition and remain mavericks to their Sun sign. Sun is currently in Sagittarius. This is the sign of the eternal optimist, a sunny, happy-go-lucky individual given to excess of one kind or another, who will philosophise or take off travellin' at the drop of a hat, and can occasionally be found with foot in mouth, due to a tendency to be blunt. This is a favourite sign of mine, yet Sun Sagittarians I've known well can be counted on less than the fingers of one hand - on one finger, in fact! Maybe for some reason our paths just don't cross, or maybe it is that although I like the idea of Sagittarians, the feeling's not mutual and I don't appeal to them. I think I did appeal to this one though:

My mother's sister, my Aunt Lil' (Lilian) was a Sun Sagittarian, with Venus conjunct Sun. Perhaps I inherited my own Venus in Sag. from her. In her youth she had the Sagittarian draw towards adventure, left home as a teenager to join the ATS ( women's army) during World War2. She met and married a guy in the forces who hailed from her hometown. Curiously, for reasons I never understood, the marriage wasn't accepted happily by either set of parents. I suspect it was a matter of that demon "class" (or assumed class!) Though a rocky union, it did last until "death did them part" in the late 1990s.

I knew Aunt Lil' best during the early years of my life, then during the later years of hers, in between we didn't cross paths often. She and my mother had one of those strange sisterly love/hate relationships, which made for long periods of estrangement and a few affectionate interludes, mainly in their later years. Oddly, my two cousins, Aunt Lil's son and daughter, seem to have the same love/hate relationship going on as their mother and aunt did. Sometimes I'm glad I was an only child, it does at least avoid that kind of heartache.

Aunt Lil's Sagittarius-ness showed in her warmth and sense of fun, but it could often be drowned out by two personal planets in intense Scorpio: Mercury and Jupiter. I never did receive her negative side, because I think she loved me quite a bit. She often said I reminded her of herself! Others in the small towns where she spent all her years often saw her as a little eccentric - probably a reflection of her natal Mars in Aquarius. A Grand Trine in Water signs linked Uranus, Pluto and Jupiter natally. She did suffer, as she used to describe it, "with nerves", throughout her life. Now I can see that her warm Saggitarius Fire was in constant battle with Scorpio and a Watery circuit of the Grand Trine. Stereotypical Sagittarius she was not, yet its qualities shone through, especially in later life. Aunt Lil' died at Christmas, 2005, when thankfully her son and some of her grandkids were around her, but sadly I was 5,000 miles away.

Though my experience of this sign, apart from my own Venus in Sagittarius has been scanty, I do appreciate, from afar, some natives of the sign: the incomparable Frank Sinatra, and Tina Turner; the late lamented comedian, Bill Hicks; author Bill Bryson; writer/cartoonist James Thurber; and astrologer Jonathan Cainer populate my personal roll-call of long-time Sagittarius favourites.