The "crackpot mystery in the half-light...."

An old article in "TIME" written in 1988, 26 years ago, by journalist and author Lance Morrow: "The Five-and-Dime Charms of Astrology" , is now available in full only via log-in. I mentioned the piece in a 2008 posting, recently checked the link and....hmmm....did more searching and found some extra quotes from the piece. Mr Morrow's words are worth another look, and a wry chortle or two. I admire his writing style if not entirely his feelings about astrology, though must admit I do have sympathy with some of his points. He began:

"Astrology has something frowsy about it. It comes to the door in hair curlers. It looks through the screen with squint-shrewd eyes. The caller who rang the doorbell stares in at crackpot mystery in the half-light, and senses there a kind of disreputable plausibility. The dogs on the porch get restless and slink away. A universe of surreal connections unfolds......."

I expected to feel incensed by the article, but was drawn in to read it from start to finish by the expert and entertaining writing style of Mr. Morrow.

"The American character alternates between Ahab and Starbuck -- the grandiose obsessive and the commonsense skeptic. Astrology plays to the Ahab. It offers a seeing of the unseen, and hears pitches of significance that the ear cannot detect. An elaborate counterworld whispers its order into the human mess."

You were getting a wee bit warm there Mr. Morrow!

Extra quotes from HERE; I'm not sure whether these ran consecutively in the piece itself, but I've run them together here anyway:

What next? A little magic. Astrology, a radiance in pink housecoat and mules, looking eerily like Shirley MacLaine, dances from the shadows, out the door, and floats into a previous life. That's entertainment.
Astrology was once a statelier business. ... Astrology had a sheer mythy size, a consequence that could make Caesar or Lear look up to the heavens. The skies were full of promises and dangers. In February of 1524, Europeans lived in terror that a conjunction of all the planets in the watery sign of Pisces would bring a deluge.

Astrology was the machinery of the universe. All the details of the world were wired to the vibrations of the heavens. The membranes of history thrummed to astral music. How cozy that stars and planets should intervene so intimately on earth. But in its modern incarnation, astrology has become both charming and ridiculous. Somehow the old portentous shrinks down toward the bathos of the fortune cookie and the UFO. The earth is not the center of the universe. Democracy has a hard time sustaining the cosmic drama -- the stars must busy themselves with the fates of hairdressers as well as rulers. Astrology degenerates to advice that runs on the feature page slightly to the left of Garfield and the Wizard of Id.

The Reagans' enthusiasm for astrology comes as a small, slightly goofy revelation, an old Hollywood side of them that has turned up in Washington, a detail endearing and unbidden and embarrassing. Ronald Reagan has always been a lucky man. Perhaps he and his wife find that the zodiac is a means to codify, organize and predict his luck. Movie stars are suckers for astrology, partly because their business is even less rational than the rest of American life. Great egos need great horoscopes.

The pedigree of astrology in ancient times had a certain splendor. But astrology has been intellectually weightless since Isaac Newton. Yet it accomplished a miraculous revival around the turn of the century. King Edward VII (Scorpio) and Enrico Caruso (Pisces) consulted astrologers. The '60s, the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, brought in the great age of astral tourism.

I cannot find it in my heart to dislike Morrow in the way I dislike Richard Dawkins or Randi and his clan of skeptics. Mr. Morrow would benefit greatly from having dinner with a select few astrologers and astrology bloggers (I'll be serving the wine and listening in to the conversation!) I guarantee that Mr. Morrow would be able, next day, to write an altogether different piece on the subject of astrology. He might even feel inclined to characterize it as something crisper, cleverer, searching for answers, rather than as a squint-eyed frowsy!

Lance Morrow probably wouldn't thank me for looking at his own natal chart again; suffice to say that he was born on 21 September 1939 , a War Baby like me, but born on the safe side of the Atlantic Ocean. This means he could have that somewhat grounding Earth Grand Trine in his chart - the one which tends to anchor our War Baby feet firmly on Mother Earth, preventing too many flights of fancy. We have been known to hover at low altitude on occasion though! His Grand Trine in Earth is more powerful than mine. His draws in Sun, Mercury and Neptune in Virgo trining Uranus and Mars in Taurus and Capricorn respectively. (My own comprises Neptune, Mercury and Uranus). Adding to the Earthy tone of Morrow's chart is Moon in Capricorn. It's really no surprise that Lance Morrow looks askance at astrology and New Agey stuff in general. The Earthy circuit of his Grand Trine is not conducive to the appreciation of things intangible.

PS: Lance Morrow has written 14 books, the best known is probably
"Evil: An Investigation".

Arty Farty Friday ~ Wm. Butler Yeats ~ The Second Coming

Irish poet William Butler Yeats was born this day,
13 June, in 1865. His natal chart and brief biography are at astro.com. William painted in words - his father, John Butler Yeats, was an artist in the more traditional sense.

Rather than concentrate on the story of W.B. Yeats, his life and loves, I'll ponder upon one of his poems. This is a poem containing several memorable phrases which tend to pop up here and there, in quotation marks, in the work of other writers, so evocative have they become.

The poem: The Second Coming, written in 1919, published in 1920. The title could imply a Christian theme, but Yeats was a mystic and occultist, not particularly impressed by organised religion, including Christianity. The poem goes deeper.

When Yeats wrote The Second Coming the world in general was in a state of shock in the aftermath of The Great War (1914-1918). His own, Irish world, was in the throes of upheaval as Irish revolutionaries, many of whom he counted as friends and/or lovers, attempted to rid Ireland of centuries of British rule. Those facts indicate the poet's state of mind and emotions as he wrote. This poem, though, can be enjoyed like a painting from which each viewer draws a slightly different meaning, or like some modern song lyrics which, on the surface, seem nonsensical, but from which each listener is able to find their own meaning.

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The gyre, at the heart of this poem refers to something those keen on astrology's principles understand well - cycles - here further expanded to the form of an ever-widening sprial. The gyre reaches a point wide enough that a symbolic falcon flies beyond control of its keeper and becomes destabilised. Astrology's 2,100-year Ages fit the gyre imagery, I think.

Yeats had lived through the opening of the 20th century - 2,000 years from the birth of Christ - and speculated that a new "coming", or awakening, or major change of some kind, was to be expected, though not an exact repeat of the last one. I understand that Yeats' book A Vision details his beliefs in this direction.

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold": each generation might see a different reference there. Things going too far....too much excess, too much progress, too much control, too much technology, more and more until..... "mere anarchy" emerges (the word 'mere' is used here in its ancient meaning of pure and unadulterated).

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." We can all relate those words to something familiar today, to apathetic and passive citizens as against the overly intense on both sides of the political divide, for instance.

The second part of the poem proceeds to speculate "what next then?" The poet has a vision of what seems like the Sphinx in the desert, birds wheeling overhead, but representing what? Life as it was lived before Christ - a pagan world? Then darkness fell as Christianity emerged to bring about change? 2,000 years on Yeats expected another "coming", some as yet unknown event or "beast" to emerge and change things yet again, as Christ's coming had changed things last time around.

The "slouching" imagery indicates to me a slow, murky advance with no glorious overtures. I can easily identify that something coming, advancing slowly, while the best of us lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity; something which will, inevitably, change things for us all.

See? Time has given the poem a potential new meaning, something which Yeats could not have envisioned in detail. An original meaning is still there, but exists a little further back on the loop of that ever-widening gyre. As the gyre continues to widen still further, scenes change.

RUN AL, RUN !

What if Al Gore were to run in the 2016 presidential campaign? Oh my! Now that would ensure my support, and interest, which would have been yawning in a corner somewhere if the race were to be between Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and even, disappointingly, Elizabeth Warren and/or Bernie Sanders. Al Gore could get me going again! I seem to recall my urging him to "Run Al, run!" in 2007/8. There are around 20 archived posts mentioning him (see Label Cloud in sidebar).

Al Gore is a very wealthy man (something most detractors hold against him). CBS News estimated his net worth at around $200 million, a few months ago. That is puny compared to the combined $72 billion fortune of Charles and David Koch, but it's still a lot of dosh. Even so, Gore has always seemed more populist than elitist to me, and I do get the sense/instinct that he's genuine and sincere. I know he's no leftie - that, sadly, is a rare to unknown species in this country. I'm amazed that so many, even Democrats, in the US dislike Gore so vehemently. The minute his name comes up in an article, derision and hate oozes through threads of comment.

Today I feel like repeating part of what I wrote in May 2007 - so I shall, while keeping in mind astrologically that his natal Sun, at 10.55 Aries, was close enough to be involved in this April's Cardinal Grand Cross formation sandwiched between two eclipses, which could mean....well... something?

(Al Gore's natal chart is at astro.com HERE.)

Al Gore has a Sun/Neptune cardinal opposition in his natal chart - Sun 10.55 Aries, Neptune 11.39 Libra. In "Planets in Aspect" published 1974, Robert Pelletier says about this aspect (among other things which seem irrelevant in this case)

"You are afraid of challenges because you doubt your own capabilities. When threatened you tend to back off and allow others to benefit from opportunities that you saw as obstacles........." AND
"Direct your goals towards fulfilling some important social responsibility."

In a post of June 2006, around the time "An Inconvenient Truth" hit movie screens, astrologer Mary Plumb wrote:

"Many astrologers over the years have noted the dignity inherent in Gore’s Aries Sun in mutual reception (and trine) to his Mars in Leo. May that warrior-like nature help keep us moving towards a better future of passion and activism for the earth."

I add my voice, and my hopes to Mary's, with this quotation from a respected American statesman of the past:"We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on it's vulnerable reserves of air and soil, all committed, for our safety, to it's security and peace. Preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and the love we give our fragile craft." (Adlai E. Stevenson)

Run, Al, run!

And in 2014, I'm still writing, with even more insistence than before:
Run, Al...run!!

Gemini and Planet "Z"

Carl Payne Tobey (1902-1980) was one of the few astrologers who strove to validate his astrological claims via dedicated research. Today's post relates to something I noticed when glancing through what he had to say about zodiac sign Gemini in his book Astrology of Inner Space. He was also a mathematician, and sometimes described as an iconoclast - a person who criticizes or opposes widely accepted beliefs and practices. That characteristic originally drew me to his writings. One of his proposals, or speculations, was that, because the ancient system of two "rulers" per zodiac sign didn't sit well with him, in his estimation two planets beyond Pluto - he called them "Y" and "Z" - could provide single "rulerships" for Taurus and Gemini, the two zodiac signs still sharing "rulers", with Libra and Virgo respectively. I'm putting inverted commas around "ruler" because I'm not sure it gives us the exact idea we ought to have. I think it was Robert Hand who once wrote that "ruler" in this context has more to do with the foot-rule kind of ruler than a king or dictator.

Tobey's feelings about "Z" and Gemini began to surface when he noticed that some clients he refers to as "Gemini people" were often mistaken by him as "Pisces people". He kept noticing a definite "compassionate side" in them, something he didn't easily associate with the sign Gemini. I assume he was referring to Sun signs Gemini and Pisces, which leads to my initial wariness of his proposal.

The author goes into too much detail to copy here, but suffice to say that he came to the conclusion that perhaps the true "ruler" or "co-ruler" of Gemini is "Z" - out there in the far distant reaches of our galaxy. He speculated that "Z" could have been in the Watery sign of Pisces at the time he and most of his clients with this puzzling Gemini/Pisces flavour came into the world. "Geminis of my own age seemed very definitely to have the necessary Pisces characteristics."

Tobey then proceeded to take notes about persons born in different years and deduced that by the mid 1960s "Z" must have been close to the end of Pisces, about to enter Aries. He had worked on his file of notes for 30 years, but hadn't mentioned his work on it to others. He then began seeing things in his client "Gemini people" he didn't recognise - again : a restlessness professionally, in marriage, and in many areas of life.
As he ends the chapter :

"The data suggests the possibility that "Z" is not too far into Aries as this is written (early 1970s), and that it will be in Aries for the rest of most people's lives. If so, all the new Geminis born after the late 1960s will be an entirely different breed, will be pioneers, and will use their talents in an entirely new way.
This is highly speculative but will give students something to study and test........."

I half like Carl Payne Tobey's theory, and most of his writings in general, yet as already said, I balk at this "Geminis" label. What immediately sprang to mind as I read chapter XIII was that many people with Sun in Gemini have planets (especially Mercury and/or Venus) in the adjoining sign, Cancer. Cancer, with its emotional sensitivities could be mistaken for a "Pisces feel" could it not? Perhaps Mr Tobey cross-checked the natal charts of his clients for this possibility, and others, such as Moon in a Water sign or Water sign rising or a cluster of planets in a Water sign - but if so, it isn't mentioned in his book.

I'm not sure what to think about "rulerships", there's a recent related post, Ruling Principles, on the topic. Although the two signs per "ruler" thing seemed rather too convenient, it did work most of the time, possibly due to the elemental factor: Aries the Fire/Cardinal side of Mars, Scorpio the Water/Fixed side; Taurus the Earth/Fixed side of Venus, Libra the Airy/Cardinal side, Capricorn the Earth/Cardinal side of Saturn, Aquarius the Airy/Fixed side...etc etc etc. If planets discovered in more modern times were interpreted only when in aspect to personal planets (any of them), things might have remained somewhat clearer, and possibly more reliable. Astrologers will be astrologers, they do love to play around with the pieces, and that's not always a bad thing.


Illustration of astrologer is by Scott Gustafson


(References to Carl Payne Tobey in past posts can be accessed via clicking on his name in my sidebar.)


Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).

Music Monday ~ DELIUS & ASTROLOGY

Frederick Delius, a composer I knew little of, but found reading about his life and work absorbing, especially when his interest in astrology came into the picture, briefly. He wasn't born around this time of year, but he died on 10 June, in 1934, so tomorrow will be the 80th anniverary of his death.

Delius, a Yorkshireman, born into a wealthy wool-merchant's family in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England on 29 January 1862. He was never a Yorkshireman in spirit though, possibly due to his parental roots in Germany. He lived and worked across Europe and in the USA. Germany, France, Scandinavia, Florida and their landscapes all eventually filtered their influences into his music. He had to struggle to follow his passion to be a musician, the career in his family's business, desired for him by his father, did not appeal to young Delius.

From brief bio by Alexander Carpenter at All Music.com

Delius, however, wanted to study music, and though his father did not approve of music as a profession, he did not discourage music-making as a pastime; thus, Delius was allowed to study the violin and the piano. To his father's dismay, he also spent much of his youth sneaking away from school to attend concerts and opera performances. When he completed school, he went to work for his father in the family business. In 1884, he left England for Florida, where he worked on a plantation as an orange grower. While in Florida, he began studying music with Thomas Ward, a musician and teacher from Jacksonville. Delius proved to be a failure as an orange grower, and began supporting himself as a musician. In 1886, his father arranged for him to spend a year and a half studying music in Germany at the Leipzig Conservatory. Though Delius would later insist that he learned very little of importance during his stay in Leipzig, it was there that he met Grieg, with whom he forged a lifelong friendship. Grieg convinced Delius' father to allow the young man to become a composer, and Delius, with the support of his formerly reluctant father, soon moved to Paris and began living the life of an artist.

Once in Paris, Delius began composing in earnest, and towards the end of the nineteenth century had already completed two operas, Irmelin and The Magic Fountain. In the first decade of the twentieth century, Delius married the painter Jelka Rosen and produced a number of important works....... His music was well-received throughout Europe, and Delius was quite successful up until World War I, when he was forced to leave France for England. Despite his renown in continental Europe, Delius was virtually unknown in his native England, and his stay there was marred by financial difficulties. After the war, Delius returned to France, where the syphilis he had contracted in Florida gradually caused him to become paralyzed and blind. Ironically, as Delius became increasingly infirm, his fame began to spread. This was due in large part to the efforts of English composer Sir Thomas Beecham, who championed Delius' music and organized a Delius Festival in 1929. ..............Towards the end of his life, Delius was made Companion of Honor by King George V of England, and was awarded an honorary degree in music by Oxford University. Before his death, Delius was able to hear his music over the radio and on record, but these accomplishments paled before the terrible deterioration of his health, and he died in seclusion.

The composer's interest in astrology came to light via a list of biographical events HERE:

1892: Widens his circle of both smart (mainly lady) friends and members of the Scandinavian artistic community based at Molard’s studio in the Rue Vercingetorix in Montparnasse. Acquires an interest in astrology and occultism.

Then I found this by Adrian Corleonis at All Music

..................Delius entered the fabled decade of the 1890s embracing the life of a bohemian artist, living on the outskirts of Paris and consorting with a fantastic array of artists and eccentrics. By the opening of the 1890s........Gauguin, Mucha, Munch, Strindberg, Florent Schmitt (whom Delius engaged to make piano transcriptions of his operas), Jean Richepin (demimonde poet and Chabrier's sometime librettist), Richard Le Gallienne, and Gérard Encausse were boon companions. Under the pseudonym Papus, the latter was an intrepid negotiator of the occult crosscurrents rife through the 1890s and into the twentieth century. Satie wrote music for Papus' Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix and in 1894 Encausse published Anatomie et physiologie de l'orchestra, co-authored with Delius. Always industrious, by 1893 Delius had all but abandoned composition to throw himself wholeheartedly into the study of astrology and was soon casting horoscopes for friends. Strindberg was a student of alchemy and claimed to have performed alchemical transmutations, though it is also known that (like Gustav Meyrink) he took literally the alchemists' enigmatic direction that the Philosopher's Stone -- the agent of transmutation -- is "found in filth" and delved in ancient water closets. Delius opera The Magic Fountain, which occupied him over 1893-1895, is, not coincidentally, concerned with a quest for the Fountain of Youth.........Summer excursions in the Norwegian mountains provided bracing relief from this decadent hothouse, reflected in the sense of vast distance, Nature's mysterious quietude, and heroic derring-do beneath clear sunlit skies palpable in "Over the Hills and Far Away".

The book, co-authored by Delius and Dr Gerard Encausse aka "Papus", published in 1894 by Chamuel, Paris is hard to find these days. Reference to its content state that the book attempts to assign elements/signs/houses to the different sections of the orchestra and their combinations. (See HERE)


NATAL CHART



I've used the data from astro.com, giving birth time as 9:00AM with a "C" rating - not 100% reliable but it'll do for now.

A search threw up some paragraphs relevant to Delius from astrologer Liz Greene's book The Astrological Neptune and the Quest for Redemption.

I shall not expand on that, other than to say Ms Greene didn't mention his interest in astrology, possibly because the book's focus was on Neptune. So I shall mention it.

I think, due to my own experience, that Delius felt a draw towards astrology via his Aquarius Sun and Mercury, further strengthened by the fact that his Sun was in harmonious trine to Aquarius's modern ruler Uranus in Gemini. The Moon/Neptune sextile mentioned by Ms Greene helped too, as well as (if birth time used is near correct), his Pisces ascendant. These Neptune/Pisces elements drew him towards the mystic, which, I guess, brought him into contact with others who knew of astrology.

(This post went on a bit longer than usual, so it'll stand for Tuesday as well).

LOOK IN

Something interesting to peruse -





A collection of wonderful satirical illustrations by Pawel Kuczynski - there are even more from the same artist around the net. Three samples:

ALSO this video: an invention with great possibilities, if not now, then later.


And...Spurious Correlations offers several chuckle-worthy correlations. I don't know how factual these are, but they're fun. Think how many of these we might be able to construct using astrological stuff....if we had some useful data that is.


Finally...I noticed this vintage photograph among husband's collection at Flickr and for some reason, with tongue in cheek, the planets sprang to mind. "Why?" I hear a passing reader ask.

Look - The sun has got his hat on (front right), Moon in the dark above looks outward ready to move quickly. At centre back - cannot miss Saturn standing adamantly straight, unmoved and sure. To Saturn's left there's Jupiter always ready for a journey, scanning the route.
Next to the Sun are sweet pretty Venus, and open-mouthed Mercury. To Mercury's right - has to be Mars looking determined and a bit grim. The two young outliers to left and right have to be Uranus on the left and Neptune almost too far out to see on the right. (Click on image for a bigger version.) See?

Arty Farty Friday ~ Charles Rennie Mackintosh & Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a longtime favourite of mine. Back in the UK I had framed posters and prints of his work around my bedroom walls. He was born exactly a year after famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, my post on both men and their natal charts is HERE. I've lifted the Mackintosh portion for today's post so's I can add some information including the chart of Charles' artist wife Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh.

First, a reprise on Charles Rennie Mackintosh, - his birthday anniversary falls tomorrow, 7 June. Biographical detail is at the Wiki link, also HERE, so I will not repeat the bulk of it.

Mackintosh found many and diverse outlets for his talents: watercolours, posters, furniture design, architecture, interior design. Such diversity is fitting for a Sun Gemini individual. While Frank Lloyd Wright is famous for his dramatic architectural work, the talent of Charles Rennie Mackintosh shines most brightly from his exquisite interior design and artwork. He did design houses, and buildings such as the Glasgow School of Art, notable in their own way, and more traditional in design and proportion than those of his Gemini contemporary across the Atlantic.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh blended the sinuous organic style of Art Nouveau and and the simplicity of Japanese form to create something unique. His architecture remained truer to Scottish tradition, his interiors didn't. Sadly, his talent didn't bring the accolades he deserved in his own lifetime. In "The Mackintosh Style" by Elizabeth Wilhide the author remarks that:

"Sheer bad luck, professional setbacks and misunderstanding conspired to provide Mackintosh with what has been described as 'a tragically small range of opportunities'.

A proud and difficult temperament only made matters worse and gave a sad inevitability to his decline. What began so brilliantly ended in self-imposed exile, near-penury and almost critical eclipse."

Mackintosh died of cancer at age 60.

It is poignant and ironic to note that Charles Rennie Mackintosh's furniture and artwork now sell for millions of pounds/dollars, yet at the time of his death his entire estate, which comprised the contents of two studios, was assessed at 88 pounds ($136.40). Mackintosh buildings were being demolished as late as mid-20th century, whereas today they are prized for the treasures they truly are.


House for an Art Lover








Glasgow School of Art
















Born in Glasgow, Scotland UK, on 7 June 1868 - no time known- chart below set for 12 noon.



His Uranus/Mercury conjunction reflects the avant garde styles he presented to what must have been, at times, an astonished public. His designs were fresh and new, like nothing seen before in traditional Scottish circles. I've often thought that he was born at least a couple of decades before his time. I guess having Uranus so close to a very personal planet like Mercury can do that to a person!

Sun is alone in Gemini. Mercury/Uranus and Venus lie in sensitive Cancer. A serious Capricorn Moon would have been somewhere between 6 and 18 degrees.

The probable (can't be sure without time of birth) opposition between Uranus/Mercury in Cancer and Moon in Capricorn suggests an internal struggle which could have made his temperament seem "difficult". The Mars/Pluto conjunction in Fixed sign Taurus could also reflect a somewhat stubborn or awkward nature. Sun is tightly sextile (helpful aspect) Neptune in Aries (creativity), but Jupiter is square (challenging) Mercury/Uranus - is this a possible source of his lack of lucky breaks and opportunity?

There's a loose Grand Trine linking Jupiter in Aries to Saturn in Sagittarius to Venus in the last degrees of Cancer. Jupiter, Venus and Saturn are three helpful planets for an artist/architect to have within a linked circuit - technically this is a Fire Grand Trine indicating a go-getter, initiator, but Venus has slipped just off the Leo leg, and lies still in Cancer. Maybe a symbolic indication of the slipping away of the fame to which he was justly due, within his lifetime.


MARGARET MacDONALD MACKINTOSH

Margaret was born on 5 November 1864 in Tipton, near Wolverhampton, England. The family later moved to live in Scotland. She met Charles around 1893, while she and her sister Frances were studying at the Glasgow School of Art. They married in 1900. Margaret was described as a woman who was totally original in looks and style. She had no poses, great masses of coppery burnished hair, above a broad brow and quiet eyes. Charles and Margaret seem to have achieved that elusive wonder "a match made in heaven". It's warming to find at least one among the marital detritus of the art world in general.

Margaret's sister, Frances married Charles' friend Herbert MacNair, they formed the group known as The Glasgow Four, and became pioneers of what was later termed Glasgow Style. Both sisters' names remained in the shadow of their famous husbands, but whereas MacNair destroyed most of Frances's work after her death, Charles Rennie Mackintosh acknowledged and revered Margaret's work and her contribution to his own creativity.

Margaret's watercolour paintings had influenced in Charles' own creative development, and she collaborated with him on many of his decorative and architectural projects. After 27 years of marriage, and not long before he died, Charles wrote to Margaret: You must remember that in all my architectural efforts you have been half if not three-quarters of them. He had often been heard to express the opinion that, while he possessed talent, his wife had genius. In 1914 the couple settled in England, living in Chelsea, London 1916-23, then in Port Vendres in the French Pyrenees from 1923 to 1927. Margaret died in January 1933.

A few examples of Margaret's work, then a look at her natal chart.

 Opera of the Winds. Gesso panel created for the front of the piano for Fritz Waerndorfer's Music Room in Vienna.

 Decorative panel, White Rose, Red Rose

ASTROLOGY

Both charts are here for easy comparison. Both are set for 12 noon as no times of birth are known.

Margaret, born 5 November 1864, Tipton, UK

Charles, born 7 June 1868 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK

The pair probably shared a Capricorn Moon, though we cannot be absolutely certain about Margaret's without a time of birth. Their natal Suns, without the aid of some other commonalities could have meant these two would never have felt an attraction to one another, but his Sun at 16 Gemini, linked to her Mars at 17 Gemini; his Saturn at 1 Sagittarius, to her Jupiter at 2 Sagittarius and Venus at 11 Sagittarius. These links must have combined to forge a strong enough astrological compatibility to manifest in a happy working partnership and idyllic marriage. A nice piece of evidence against jumping to conclusions about compatibility on Sun sign alone!

MULTIPLICITIES

Among the contents of a box of second-hand astrology books I bought on E-bay years ago was a slim, large format soft cover volume, published in 1951 by the American Federation of Astrologers: The 360 Degrees of the Zodiac by Adriano Carelli. I wasn't blown away by the content, or the author's style, as he puts each of the 360 degrees of the zodiac under a microscope, but I did like one of the lengthy footnotes at page 9. It enumerates and calculates the enormous variety of combinations available from which a natal chart can be composed. So, being mathematically challenged myself, as well as too lazy to copy-type it all, I scanned it. (Please click on images to enlarge).





It's not surprising, is it, that attempts to either validate, or discredit, astrology prove so very difficult?

Senator Elizabeth Warren - What Next?

Something Senator Warren said earlier this week began a mini-flurry of wonderings regarding a possible presidential run in 2016. I've always admired her style, but in view of current doubts about Senator Sanders' true loyalties, and the fact that Senator Warren voted, along with Bernie Sanders, to confirm David Barron to a seat on the First Circuit Court of the United States, I shall have to give this more thought and caution. I've become wary of placing trust in any politician beholden to the rot-riddled establishment Dem. Party.

Elizabeth Warren's career, presidential potential and natal chart have come up in four archived posts spanning 2010 to 2013 - another look:


Wednesday Women - Elizabeth Warren (11 August 2010)


Elizabeth Warren (20 July 2011)


Elizabeth Warren and 2016   (28 Jan 2013)


Next Exit 2016?  (14 Oct 2013)

Bellona, Goddess & Asteroid

 Standing Bellona by Andrea Schiavone (c. 1535)

We can never go far before bumping into yet another Roman festival! Today, June 3rd was celebrated in ancient Rome as the festival of Bellona, goddess of war, identified variously as wife, sister or companion of their war god Mars. Bellona is usually shown wearing a plumed helmet and armor, armed with sword and spear and carrying a shield; sometimes she carries a flaming torch.

"She is described as loud and active, barking orders or war-cries, Her weapons clanging as She runs. She is credited with inspiring violence, starting wars, and goading soldiers into battle; Virgil described Her as carrying a bloodstained scourge or whip. She was believed to make wars and battles go well for those who invoked Her."

(For more see HERE)

Bellona was sufficiently honoured in Rome to have a temple dedicated to her on the Capitoline Hill. Meetings relating to foreign wars were conducted there.
More at Wikipedia
(Illustration from HERE.)

There's a large main belt asteroid named after Bellona, it's #28 in the asteroid list. It was discovered by R. Luther on March 1, 1854; the name was chosen to mark the beginning of the Crimean War.

Using Astrodienst's Extended chart Selection it's possible to discover where Bellona lay at one's time of birth. When I was born it was at 22 Capricorn conjunct my natal Mercury within a degree. What that could mean, if anything, would be to add an energetic Mars-like flavour to the mix. But there are so many asteroids spinning around, I doubt there's much astrological significance other than the curiosity of it all.

On 31 May 2014, if my cack-handed research is correct Bellona was at 19 Aries, so ought to be feeling right at home! (See here.)

Music Monday ~ Sir Edward Elgar - Pomp & Graduation

Sir Edward Elgar was born this day,
2 June, in 1857, in Worcester (pronounced, Wusster) England, the city lies somewhere between Stratford-on-Avon and the Welsh border, in the county of Worcestershire famous for.....sauce.

In Britain, lyrics added to one of his compositions have caused it to become a secondary national anthem (Land of Hope and Glory), while in the USA the same composition is played routinely as students walk their graduation walk across a stage - a fact which shocked me to the core when I attended the graduation of one of husband's grandsons. See Tom Reeder's blog for detail on origins of that "theft".

Edward Elgar, son of a piano-tuner, became self-taught composer of numerous grand marches, a couple of symphonies, and some chamber music. He is, these days thought of in far more affectionate terms than he ever was in his own day. Many of the elite of the music world, back then, despised him and all his works. He probably didn't help himself by his attitudes. From what I've gleaned during internet searches, it appears he was something of an enigma - how appropriate that he should have composed the Enigma Variations! He was described as "rude, prickly, artistic, Bohemian, aspiring to nobility". (BBC Talk)

A long essay by Dr David C.F. Wright, "Elgar Unmasked" has him pegged as a rather nasty, somewhat perverted womaniser. I shall not quote from that piece due to a rather severe copyright notice at its end. I suspect there's too much vitriol within it, though, for it to be 100% reliable, even if there is a sliver truth in there.

Elgar was knighted before he was 50, awarded the OM (Order of Merit), became Master of the King's Music, a baronet and GCVO (Grand Cross of the [Royal] Victorian Order [knight]). And he pulled strings to try to get a peerage. Seems he was an adept social climber! However, he was also a "mercurial outsider" (appropriate description considering he was born with Sun in Gemini, ruled by Mercury!)

"A tall, thin man with his bully moustache, the countenance of an ascetic atop a footballer’s body—the son of a piano-tuner, completely self-taught, “from harmony to fugue,” an early biographer wrote, hurried and self-divided, always in and out of love with music, always tossed between exuberance and despair, and forever obsessed with ciphers, riddles, and word tricks, not to mention his passion for “public mysteryfication,” as music critic and his longtime friend Ernest Newman put it.

He was keen on, and fairly expert in the use of, ciphers. He once wrote a note in cipher to a lady friend nicknamed by him Dorabella, "consisting of 87 glyphs unevenly spread over three lines. It contained 24 different symbols that featured one, two, or three cusps or curves. The glyphs were tilted in what appeared to be eight various angles. In a glance it gave the sense of seagulls, or sheep, or bits of stubble. Dora looked at it, couldn’t figure it out, put it in a drawer, and didn’t draw it out again for 40 years."

See here
..........Julian Lloyd Webber, an acclaimed cellist, and younger brother of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber:

has come to see the cipher, and all the other aspects of Elgar’s affinity for mystification, as the heart of the brilliant composer. “I think he set out to intrigue and puzzle people, knowing that they would talk about him—at the time the works were written and also long afterward,” “There was also a mischievous side to him. He liked playing tricks on people, and one of those tricks might have been to send that poor girl that thing that was completely undecipherable and he knew it.”

(See here and here.)

The end of the Great War (in 1918) brought a backlash. Elgar was regarded in influential quarters as a sentimental jingo mindlessly celebrating empire and war, a view promulgated in an influential (and notorious) article by E. J. Dent. Critics characterized his music as overblown "loose, baggy monsters," incoherent as a three-volume Victorian novel. This colored Elgar's reception for decades. To his friends he came over as a jovial companion, fond of making puns and playing practical jokes., who might have been puzzled by the Elgar who said he always knew God was against art, lost his religious faith and said of the First World War: "The men and women can go to hell - but my horses! Let God kill his human beings but - how can he? Oh, my horses."
Knowledge of the complexity of Elgar's personality, with its tendency towards manic depression, led to an appreciation, only rarely perceived earlier, of the anguish and loneliness to be heard in much of the music, especially in the symphonies, the violin and the cello concertos and The Music Makers.
"Stately sorrow" and "heroic melancholy" are phrases rightly applied to his music and they can be heard in most of it

From the UK's Telegraph.



Does Elgar's natal chart match up to what I've discovered above? I haven't used the time of birth that's available at Astrodatabank because it has been rated DD (very unreliable). The 12 noon chart below is sufficient for a quick look.

 Hat-tip to blog HERE

Hmm. Elgar's chart reminds me of Sir Stanley Spencer's - a 2-sided personality indicated by clusters of planets in adjoining signs making up the bulk of the chart. In Elgar's case Gemini and Taurus vie for attention, with Saturn getting in on the act from Cancer in semi-sextile (30*)to his Sun/Mercury/Mars stellium. Moon out on a limb somewhere in Libra is the main outlier, Neptune in Pisces, oddly doesn't have a lot to do, unless it happened to have been close to the ascending degree or mid-heaven, which can't be known without a time of birth. I'd have expected Neptune to be prominent, especially in view of Elgar's love of ciphers and mystification.

Gemini's eloquence and social fluency and a hint of Trickster too, along with artistic gifts from Taurus and Libra, on the surface would seem like an abundance of goodies - yet Elgar had trouble, it seems, in coping comfortably with this blend. Repeating from one of the quotes above:

....hurried and self-divided, always in and out of love with music, always tossed between exuberance and despair, and forever obsessed with ciphers, riddles, and word tricks, not to mention his passion for “public mysteryfication...

Gemini = Mutable Air, Taurus = Fixed Earth. Narrowing it makes the conflict more understandable, and with Saturn chiming in from Cardinal Water sign Cancer, the mix became too much to handle, at least some of the time, resulting in what outsiders saw as described in that quote.

Without a reliable time of birth to assist, further insight evades me.


Here is another of Elgar's well-known pieces, it's the Ninth Variation of the Enigma Variations and is titled "Nimrod" after the biblical reference to Noah's great-grandson of the same name who was a gifted hunter. It pays tribute to Elgar's great friend Augustus J Jaeger (whose surname in German translates to 'Hunter') who managed to keep Sir Edward's hopes up while he was still trying to make his mark on the world of music.
(More detail HERE)

I've chosen a video with more interesting "cosmic" visuals than watching members of the orchestra. The piece is played here by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. I find it "goose-bumpy"!