Summer Soltice with Walt Whitman & Charlie Parker

Walt Whitman's prose is as lovely as his poetry. He had natal Sun in Gemini by the way. His natal chart was covered in a 2008 post HERE.
This piece of his prose fits rather well on this Summer Solstice:

An Early Summer Reveille

Away then to loosen, to unstring the divine bow, so tense, so long. Away, from curtain, carpet, sofa, book—from “society”—from city house, street, and modern improvements and luxuries—away to the primitive winding, aforementioned wooded creek, with its untrimm’d bushes and turfy banks—away from ligatures, tight boots, buttons, and the whole cast-iron civilize life—from entourage of artificial store, machine, studio, office, parlor—from tailordom and fashion’s clothes—from any clothes, perhaps, for the nonce, the summer heats advancing, there in those watery, shaded solitudes. Away, thou soul, (let me pick thee out singly, reader dear, and talk in perfect freedom, negligently, confidentially,) for one day and night at least, returning to the naked source-life of us all—to the breast of the great silent savage all-acceptive Mother. Alas! how many of us are so sodden—how many have wander’d so far away, that return is almost impossible.

And - more pure class: Charlie (Bird) Parker with his version of Gershwin's wonderful Summertime.

Charlie Parker was born in Kansas City, Kansas, on 29 August 1920. Raised in Kansas City, Missouri, found fame in New York City as a jazz saxophonist. He's counted as one of the legends of that genre, died as a result of drug abuse at the tender age of 34. He had 4 personal planets in meticulous Virgo, opposed by maverick planet Uranus and Moon in Pisces (time of birth unknown, but the opposition of Moon is more than likely). I'd say that this opposition is key to both his musical genius and his inability to free himself from his addictions.

Parker's soaring, fast, rhythmically asymmetrical improvisations could amaze the listener; nevertheless close inspection shows each line to hold a complete, well-constructed phrase with each note in place. Parker's harmonic ideas were revolutionary, introducing a new tonal vocabulary employing 9ths, 11ths and 13ths of chords, rapidly implied passing chords, and new variants of altered chords and chord substitutions. His tone was clean and penetrating, but sweet and plaintive on ballads. Although many Parker recordings demonstrate dazzling virtuoso technique and complex melodic lines he was also one of the great blues players. (From a potted biography HERE)

Solstice Greetings!

HODGE-PODGE

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of unrelated items:


Mad as a Hatter: the origin of this phrase is interesting. One of several theories proposes that it relates to the days when hat-makers used mercury in their work.

Whatever the true origin of the phrase, the fact that over-exposure to mercury can affect the nervous system and brain is interesting, especially so because in astrology Mercury rules mental processes and communication, awareness, thought, the nerves, dexterity, speech.
(Illustration - The Mad Hatter by John Tenniel from Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland").

"Mercury used to be used in the making of hats. This was known to have affected the nervous systems of hatters, causing them to tremble and appear insane. A neurotoxicologist correspondent informs me that "Mercury exposure can cause aggressiveness, mood swings, and anti-social behaviour.", so that derivation is certainly plausible - although there's only that circumstantial evidence to support it.
The use of mercury compounds in 19th century hat making and the resulting effects are well-established - mercury poisoning is still known today as 'Mad Hatter's disease'. That could be enough to convince us that this is the source of the phrase. The circumstantial evidence is rather against the millinery origin though and, beyond the fact that hatters often suffered trembling fits, there's little to link hat making to the coining of 'as mad as a hatter'. "

From here

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Two snippets by 20th century astrologer Ivy M. Goldstein-Jacobson from her book "Here & There In Astrology"~~

Poem reflecting Venus, Uranus & Saturn in the 7th House

"I met her but a short time since
Yet knew at once that I
Would hold her ever in my heart,
And love her 'til I die."

And: Planets in Mutual Reception
(As Uranus and Neptune are at present, Uranus in Pisces, Neptune in Aquarius),

"Two rulers in each other's sign always see eye to eye.
It means they share and share alike, so nothing goes awry.
And even if they break a rule or some convention flout----
Whatever one gets into,
The other gets him out."

So...if Uranus (unexpected change) got us into this economic quagmire, will Neptune(creativity, imagination) get us out of it, I wonder? Alternatively if Neptune (oil) got us into it, will Uranus (change, invention) get us out?

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Further to my Sunday blog on Walt Whitman and his natal chart, here's one of his short poems, written in the 19th century. Its wisdom remains intact in this 2008 election season:

Walt Whitman's Caution ~~~

TO The States, or any one of them, or any city of The States,
Resist much, obey little;
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved;
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city, of this earth,
ever afterward resumes its liberty.

Walt Whitman

On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef
of the universes and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.

I wasn't familiar with Walt Whitman's poems when I lived in the UK. Having picked up a second-hand volume of his "Selected Poems" recently, I'm enjoying getting to know him.

The above poem, "On The Beach At Night Alone" is now a firm favourite.




Walt Whitman was born on 31 May 1819, on Long Island, New York. Astrotheme gives his time of birth as 1.45 am.



Gemini Sun trines Jupiter in Aquarius - Gemini the writer's planet, Jupiter the publishing planet - how well this harmonious link fits the paragraph lifted from a brief biography here :

"At the age of twelve Whitman began to learn the printer's trade, and fell in love with the written word. Largely self-taught, he read voraciously, becoming acquainted with the works of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and the Bible. Whitman worked as a printer in New York City until a devastating fire in the printing district demolished the industry. In 1836, at the age of 17, he began his career as teacher in the one-room school houses of Long Island. He continued to teach until 1841, when he turned to journalism as a full-time career. He founded a weekly newspaper, Long-Islander, and later edited a number of Brooklyn and New York papers. In 1848, Whitman left the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to become editor of the New Orleans Crescent. It was in New Orleans that he experienced at first hand the viciousness of slavery in the slave markets of that city."

There's a Grand Trine, a free-flowing very helpful link between planets in Fire signs in this chart too. Leo Moon to Uranus & Neptune in Sagittarius, to Mars in Aries - dynamic energy to aid the Air trine between Sun and Jupiter described above.


Walt Whitman's life wasn't the easy ride, indicated by the fore-mentioned aspects though. Saturn, Chiron and Pluto conjoined in compassionate Pisces form challenging square aspects to Neptune & Uranus. These aspects, between slower-moving bodies would have been present in the charts of most of a generation - possibly reflecting the difficulties and challenges of the Civil War.

"At the outbreak of the Civil War, Whitman vowed to live a "purged" and "cleansed" life. He wrote freelance journalism and visited the wounded at New York-area hospitals. He then traveled to Washington, D.C. in December 1862 to care for his brother who had been wounded in the war. Overcome by the suffering of the many wounded in Washington, Whitman decided to stay and work in the hospitals. Whitman stayed in the city for eleven years. He took a job as a clerk for the Department of the Interior, which ended when the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan, discovered that Whitman was the author of Leaves of Grass, which Harlan found offensive. Harlan fired the poet.

Whitman struggled to support himself through most of his life. In Washington he lived on a clerk's salary and modest royalties, and spent any excess money, including gifts from friends, to buy supplies for the patients he nursed. He had also been sending money to his widowed mother and an invalid brother. From time to time writers both in the states and in England sent him "purses" of money so that he could get by."

Finally, a quote from Walt Whitman which could be said to sum up his natal chart, its trines and its squares:

"Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?"