Combustibly

I bought a junk store book while away last week: The Buchwald Stops Here, it's a collection of Art Buchwald's newspaper columns: "...observations about the body politic and impolitic in the Jimmy Carter age - incisive, outrageous and downright hilarious"...the blurb on the cover says. I wouldn't go that far, from the little of it I've sampled, but then I wasn't here in the Jimmy Carter age. Anyway, what the book did was to encourage me to trawl through my posts to discover whether I'd posted about Mr Buchwald in the past. I hadn't featured him exclusively, but I did include him in the following post hauled out from March of 2007. The post was a follow-up on one a few days earlier, which is linked in the first sentence.

I've had a fairly lazy bee in my bonnet about Via Combusta from first reading about it. (Via Combusta includes degrees between 15 Libra and 15 Scorpio - there are, from some sources, variations on the exact degrees). Clicking on "via combusta" in the label cloud in the sidebar will bring up other relevant posts.

The re-airing follows:

Continuing the line of thought from Saturday's post, I've been doing more research regarding planets in the (supposed) Via Combusta degrees, specifically in charts of journalists, commentators and authors who regularly express highly critical views on politics and politicians. I've checked a few more natal charts and come up with the information below. These degrees certainly seem to contain some extra "fire", which could be utilised in many ways, I guess. The journalistic slant presented itself quite by accident.

As in most things astrological, there is no single theory about Via Combusta - where it is/was, why it has/had an unfortunate connotation. Some sources explain that the Via Combusta's reputation stems from the allegedly malefic, or unfortunate, fixed stars in the same area. But...there's the problem of precession. Is Via Combusta still where it used to be? I think that depends on whether the effects observed by the ancients stemmed directly from fixed stars, or from some other "cause". I prefer to think that there is something special about that section of space, and its relation to Earth. In ancient times the area was identified by the fixed stars lying within it - perhaps now it is just space.

In Skyscript's Glossary of Terms we are told that :

Al Biruni wrote of it: "The combust way is the last part of Libra and the first of Scorpio. These two signs are not congenial to the Sun and the Moon on account of the obscurity and ill-luck connected with them and because each of them is the fall of one of the luminaries. They also contain the two malefics, the one by exaltation (Libra, Saturn) the other by house (Scorpio, Mars)." This may be a very ancient aphorism, originating from the period when 15 Libra corresponded with the autumn equinox.

Whatever the reasons for the bad reputation of this stretch of our zodiac, I shall keep an eye on it in future. If the area has special significance for the Sun and Moon in horary astrology, then I'd conclude that there has to be something special about it in general. Could it be simply that these degrees carry a more concentrated version of accepted Scorpio traits ?

I don't see the common thread, observed in the named individuals, and in the three females discussed in Saturday's blog entry, as exactly unfortunate, or malefic. A tendency towards maliciousness, perhaps. An overly passionate desire to get points across, deeply held opinions with a need to express them in exaggerated fashion - yes! Unfortunate only for the objects of their commentary.

For much of 1925 Saturn hung around the Via Combusta degrees of Scorpio, it was a fertile time for the birth of acerbic journalists ! (Assuming that Via Combusta "The Burning Road" stretches from 15* Libra to 15* Scorpio.)

Gore Vidal

Born 3 Oct. 1925. West Point, New York. (SATURN 12*SCORPIO)

Art Buchwald

Born 20 Oct. 1925. Mount Vernon, New York. (SUN 26* LIBRA, MERCURY 5* SCORPIO. SATURN 14* SCORPIO)

Nat Hentoff

Born 10 June 1925, Boston, Mass. (SATURN 8* SCORPIO)

William F. Buckley

Born 24 Nov. 1925. New York City. (MARS 7* SCORPIO)

Pat Buchannan

Born 2 Nov. 1938, Washington DC. (SUN 9* SCORPIO)

Bill O'Reilly

Born 10 Sep 1949 New York City. (VENUS 25*LIBRA)

Rush Limbaugh

Born 12 Jan. 1951, Cape Girardeau MO. (NEPTUNE 19* LIBRA)

Michelle Malkin

Born 20 Oct 1970 Philadelphia PA. (MERCURY 22* AND SUN 26* LIBRA, JUPITER 12* SCORPIO)

Others, who are not journalists:

Martin Gardner (well-known skeptic and author) Born 21 Oct. 1914, Tulsa, Oklahoma (SUN 27* LIBRA, MARS 15* SCORPIO)

Dennis Kucinich (presidential candidate) - 8 Oct 1946, Cleveland, Ohio. SUN, MERCURY, JUPITER AND MARS ALL IN VIA COMBUSTA.

Other presidential candidates -Hillary Clinton has Venus and Mercury there, Barrack Obama has Neptune there, John Edwards has Neptune and Saturn there.

[A 2016 addition: Bernie Sanders has Venus there.]

(The illustration at the top of this post (from a book cover) is a Jack Davis cartoon of Art Buchwald, who died in January 2007.) [Adding that Jack Davis died this year, 2016]