Hess, Engels, Marx: Trio of Radicals & Their Astrology.

Socialism. In the USA nowadays this word ranks alongside colonoscopy as something citizens would least like to experience. The fact is though, socialism is nothing more than an attempt to re-balance a system which has become too heavily weighted on one side - the side of the powerful and wealthy. If a system remains in just balance there's never a need for socialism or any similar isms. Just as colonoscopy can, in the right circumstances, be A Good Thing, so can socialism.

John Reed, Abbie Hoffman, Saul Alinsky, Emma Goldman have all been featured recently in posts here under the heading "US Radicals" who embraced socialism as an ideal. They, surely, were influenced by the writings of an earlier group of radicals originating in Germany: Moses Hess, Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx.The driving force behind all these radically minded individuals was a wish to correct imbalance and injustices heaped upon ordinary working people by the ruling and wealthy classes - whether these were in the form of royalty, dictators, land owners, wealthy capitalist employers or religious leaders.

In the 19th century, as the industrial revolution got underway, there was a lot of injustice and imbalance around! Of course, there had been just as much of it before then. As far back as history has been written, the ordinary man in the street or man in the field has been treated badly by those "above him". Serfdom in mediaeval times in Britain and Europe was much the same as African-American slavery in effect. As centuries trundled on, philosophy and radical thought began to trickle down......




Moses Hess, the eldest of today's featured trio to some extent influenced both Engels and Marx. He was born in Bonn on 21 June 1812, to Jewish Orthodox parents, soon drawn to philosophy and particularly philosophical socialism. Hess played a prominent role in transforming Hegelian theory by conceiving of man as the initiator of history rather than as a mere observer. He was reluctant to base all human destiny on economic causes and class struggle, and he came to see the struggle of races, or nationalities, as the prime factor of past history. He was responsible for converting Engels to Communism, and he introduced Marx to social and economic problems.








Friedrich Engels was born on 28 November 1820 in Barmen (now Wuppertal), Germany. His father had interests in textile mills in England. Already active in radical causes when he met Karl Marx in 1842, Engels was soon influenced by this man who he saw as a more original thinker than himself.

During the 1840s Engels spent a period working as a manager at one of his father's mills in the north of England. Shocked by the conditions working people were forced to live in, he wrote his first prominent work, "The Condition of the Working Class in England" published in 1844. For anyone who has no knowledge of working class life in 19th century Britain, there's an extract from Engel's writing on the Dante-esque scenes of Old Manchester at this website. In 1847 Marx was asked to write a document proclaiming the principles of communism; Engels collaborated and helped write the now famous Communist Manifesto. In 1850 Engels returned to England to run the factory of which he was now part owner. During this time he also provided assistance to the then poverty stricken Karl Marx who had been driven from Brussels for his revolutionary activity.




Karl Marx was born to Jewish parents in Trier, Germany, on 5 May 1818. He studied law and at some point was introduced to the writings of G.W.F Hegel. Marx was especially impressed by Hegel's theory that a thing or thought could not be separated from its opposite. For example, the slave could not exist without the master, and vice versa. Hegel argued that unity would eventually be achieved by the equalizing of all opposites, by means of the dialectic (logical progression) of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. This was Hegel's theory of the evolving process of history.

Marx met Moses Hess, a radical who called himself a socialist, and began attending socialist meetings organized by Hess. Members of the group told Marx of the sufferings being endured by the German working-class and explained how they believed that only socialism could bring this to an end. Marx had become a close friend of Friedrich Engels, who had just finished writing a book about the lives of the industrial workers in England. Engels shared Marx's views on capitalism and after their first meeting Engels wrote that there was virtually "complete agreement in all theoretical fields". Marx and Engels decided to work together. It was a good partnership, whereas Marx was at his best when dealing with difficult abstract concepts, Engels had the ability to write for a mass audience.

So, this being an astrology blog, it's appropriate to take a look at the natal charts of these three German radicals. Maybe there'll be an interesting link between them. Let's see.

Marx is the only one for whom Astrodatabank offers a time of birth, so the other two charts are set for 12 noon.








The planet most astrologers would expect to see prominent in such charts as these is Uranus - the rebel, the avant garde, the anti-status quo planet. The two younger men were born with Uranus conjunct Neptune (illusion, delusion, creativity) in Sagittarius - the sign of the philosopher. In the case of Hess, Uranus was in Scorpio, but would have been conjunct his natal Moon (inner self), either tightly or loosely, whatever his time of birth.

In Engel's case, as well as being conjunct Neptune, Uranus is also conjunct Mercury (communication "to a mass audience") and Mars (drive & energy)and in the same expansive Sagittarian cluster as his natal Sun (self).

Part of the reason Engels and Marx got on so well has to be the placements of their natal Moons : somewhere in Virgo for Engels - more likely than not in trine with Marx's Moon/Sun in Taurus. Even if not in close trine, their common Earthy Moon would be a significantly compatible link.

If the time of birth for Karl Marx is accurate, then Aquarius rising defines him, and his ascendant degree is in harmonious sextile to Uranus, Aquarius's modern ruler. Taurus Sun conjunct Moon is something of a surprise - but what it does signify is a determined and stubborn nature, though Mercury nextdoor in its home sign of Gemini could lighten and loosen this quite a lot - at least in his communication style, while still retaining an inner entrenched position.

Lots of other chart factors could be taken as significant individually, but it was any link I was investigating - Uranus being the obvious one here.


Hmmmm -long post, so I shall skip a day - next one Friday.

"Alice", Charles Dodgson & Lewis Carroll

We saw Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland yesterday evening. The movie is an enjoyable sequel to the two classic tales, with input from Jabberwocky providing the "cherry on top". Will someone try putting The Hunting of the Snark on screen soon, I wonder? I recall there's already a partial soundtrack by Mike Batt stashed away somewhere. Speaking of soundtracks, the Alice movie could have been improved with a better score - it was noisy at times, tending to drown out dialogue. Other than that - no complaints!



So much has been written about Lewis Carroll, pen-name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, that it's easy to become bewildered. Views about his personal life have evolved as attitudes and sensibilities have changed, decade by decade. I somehow doubt that there's any truth in assumptions that he was a paedophile, or even harbored such desires. 20th century biographers and commentators tended to insert 20th century attitudes onto a Victorian personality.

Dodgson was a keen and talented photographer, in the days when photography was new. He mainly shot portraits - celebrities of the day: poets, actors, artists. He also produced a set of photographs of young children often in naked poses. This, together with his obvious affection for, and ability to appeal to, children via his writings, did a lot to fuel the rabid imaginations of reviewers, biographers and critics.

What can be overlooked in all the excitement bred by his vivid and whacky imagination, is that Dodgson was first and foremost an intellectual, a brainy individual with a flair for mathematics and logic. He wrote several books and papers on these subjects. He was an amateur inventor too. He taught mathematics at Christ Church college, Oxford, was an ordained Deacon of the Church of England, though never became a priest.

None of the above means that a leaning towards paedophilia was not part of his nature, of course - it could have been. Biographers who have more recently studied his diaries tend to edge away from that view. He apparently had many female friends who were certainly not children. At least one writer believes that he may have had an amorous extra-marital affair with the mother of Alice Liddell - the girl so many assume was his famous "Alice" - which he denied. The affair apprently ended badly, and his family, fearing scandal hid or destroyed any written evidence. His diaries disclose numerous close friendships with adult females, and males - which, again does not discount other types of sexual preference.

The truth will remain a mystery - and rightly so.

He was born on 27 January 1832 in Daresbury, England at 3:45 AM (Astrodatabank).
27 January is my own birthday - will that give me a pinprick of insight, I wonder?



Sun in mentally-oriented Aquarius, along with Jupiter and Aquarius's modern ruler Uranus, planet of the innovator, rebel, and all things unexpected. Now - had Uranus been elsewhere in the chart we might never have known a Lewis Carroll. Uranus cranked up the whacky, wonderful images which have delighted generations of kids and adults alike, in, for instance, his Alice tales, Jabberwocky, and The Hunting of the Snark . Sun and Jupiter alone in Aquarius might have given us a professor, a bishop perhaps, or a politician, but without Uranus's close connection to Sun, I doubt Lewis Carroll and his cast of characters would have ever seen daylight.

Jupiter in Aquarius with his Sun accounts well enough for his religious side, as do Mars conjunct Venus in Sagittarius. If Astrodatabank's time of birth for Dodgson is accurate, Sagittarius was rising, with Moon smack dab on the potent ascending degree (cynical as ever, I suspect a little bit of rectification might have gone on here). Sagittarius rules religion - appropriate to the churchy side of his character. When rising though, it mostly manifests as a cheery, ebullient personality which, by all accounts, Dodgson was not. I see him more clearly having either Capricorn or Scorpio rising. But that's just my personal opinion.

My favourite quote from Alice (I wonder why.....?)

Music Monday ~ Bix Beiderbecke

Last Christmas I bought my husband the Ken Burns DVD set of "JAZZ". His VHS tapes of the series were long ago lent out and seem to have found a new home. I'm sharing the enjoyment of watching the DVDs and learning more on a subject in which I'm something of an ignoramus.

At the weekend we watched an episode with detail about Bix Beiderbecke and his music. Noticing that he was born with Sun in Pisces I decided he'd be a good subject for Music Monday this week.

Beiderbecke, a legendary figure from the time known as "the jazz era": 1920s. He lived fast (on alcohol) and died young, aged 28, in 1931. He played piano probably before he could walk, had a naturally acute musical ear. Although he composed several pieces for piano, he had never learned to read music efficiently. Bix taught himself to play the cornet, eventually achieving a distinctive bell-like tone, different from anything else heard then. His parents, though, didn't support his draw towards a career in music, but he followed his heart anyway, against their wishes. He became one of the first white musicians to embrace jazz and execute it on a comparable level with his many black, African-American counterparts.

Jazz had been an exclusively "black music" 'til Bix and his peers came along. The sad and ugly aspect of this was that in the USA, in those days, white and black musicians were not allowed to play on the same stage or in the same band. Such a lot was lost in those dreadful years of segregation in the USA.

There are countless pieces about Bix Beiderbecke's life available on-line. Some variation in detail occurs within the legend that has inevitably grown up around this mucician since his untimely death. I enjoyed an article by Will Layman: The Gap, a paragraph from which sums up the pertinent points sufficient for this post:

Bix is arguably the prototypical jazz legend: a young guy with a horn who skipped school to dig his heroes in speakeasies and then was kicked out of school. He made some records and headed to New York where he was hired by the biggest band in the land. Then, tragically, he lived too hard and fast, slowing himself down with alcohol. Spiraling downward, he died in a rooming house in Queens after a final drinking binge at the tender age of 28.
In the middle of it all, however, were a series of gorgeous and singular cornet solos that transfixed fans, created generations of imitators, and even won the respect of older legends—indeed, Louis Armstrong himself dug Bix.

There is little hint of what the guy was like personality-wise, apart from his alcoholism, which reportedly reached a stage serious enough to bring on delirium tremens, with its confusions and hallucinations. I did find a brief clue to his nature here:

By all accounts, Bix was a kind, gentle, and generous man. He was an individual of few words, introspective, and unconcerned by the superficial details and demands of daily routine. Music was the all-consuming focus of his life, the essence of his being; and in music, he wrought his everlasting legacy.

Bix Beiderbecke was born on 10 March 1903 in Davenport, Iowa at 7 AM (Astrodatabank)



First thing I notice is that he had no planets in Earth signs to provide a touch of "grounding" to his nature. I always like to see a wee bit of Capricorn, Taurus or Virgo, as a kind of anchor, in the chart of anyone in show-biz. Bix had no such anchor. His Pisces Sun and Jupiter with Sagittarius rising (Jupiter rules both Pisces and Sagittarius) would account for him being seen as gentle, kind and generous. Pisces is famously introspective too - that covers all the factors mentioned in the quote above.

There are a couple of oppositions Saturn/Moon and Venus/Mars in this chart. These could be seen as symbolic of some inner conflict - perhaps that with his parents: in astrology Saturn represents the father and Moon the mother; Venus the feminine, Mars the masculine.

Uranus, planet of invention and the avant garde lies on his ascendant, the most potent point on the chart. This is a clear reflection of Bix's draw to jazz - the new musical genre of his times. If jazz has a planetary representative it simply has to be Uranus! Jazz is eccentric, inventive, and to the uninitiated onlooker can seem, at times, just plain peculiar and unexpected - in other words, typically Uranian.

Mercury(mental processes) in Uranus's rulership, Aquarius lies in sextile to Uranus providing the link which brought this eccentric musical style to the surface for Bix Beiderbecke. Usually, I'd look for links to Venus when investigating music in a chart, but in this case, Mercury and Uranus seem more appropriate.

One of the things I like about jazz, kid, is I don't know what's going to happen next. Do you? ~ Bix Beiderbecke

Playing Sorry

Are we there yet?

There's still a week to go before the equinox when we get truly vernal, but the USA puts its clocks an hour forward today so....









Spring is like a perhaps hand
by e.e. cummings

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.



Born 14 October 1894 in Cambridge Massachusetts, at 7pm.

"Whimsical and experimental, E.E. Cummings was a popular American poet of the early 20th century. Cummings' first published work was his 1922 novel The Enormous Room, based on his time in a French prison camp during World War I. He became more widely known as an avant garde poet, thanks to his unconventional use of typography, syntax and sometimes scandalous (at the time) choices of words and topics. He had a fondness for scattering words unevenly across a page, and liked to spell his own name as e.e. cummings, leading generations of college students to remember him as the guy who didn't capitalize his own name. "
From Answers.com

There, in a very small nutshell, is the biography of e e cummings. It's a small nutshell, but it pinpoints salient parts of his personality to be seen in his natal chart (click on it to enlarge) :


Mercury conjunct Uranus in Scorpio - look at the adjectives in the bio above - avant garde, unconventional, uneven (Uranus), scandalous at the time (Scorpio) - in relation to his mode of writing (Mercury). It's classic. Love it!

There are a couple of oppositions - Sun and Moon, Mars and Saturn, close enough to blend into one big opposition Sun/Saturn in Libra opp. Moon/Mars in Aries. A broad interpretation of the complex aspect could be: a restless soul, charming but determined, not always at ease within himself. Venus, planet of the arts in its home sign of Libra trines creative Neptune and powerful Pluto in Gemini : an Airy boost to the imagination!

Another US Radical ~ Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman was born on 27 June 1869 in Kovno, Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire. She emigrated to the USA, with her sister, in 1885 and found employment in a New York clothing factory. Soon after her arrival in the states an uprising of workers in Chicago resulted in the execution of four anarchists, who came to be known as "The Haymarket Martyrs".

They had been prominent trade union activists leading the struggle for an eight-hour day. Framed for a bombing, the authorities hoped that this would scare off the emerging trade union movement, especially its anarchist component. The international outcry which followed these executions on trumped up charges helped to shape Emma's radical and anarchist ideals, which lasted throughout her long life..............

Emma Goldman was a formidable public speaker and a prolific writer. Her whole life was devoted to struggle and she was controversial even within the radical and anarchist movement itself. She was one of the first radicals to address the issue of homosexuality, she was a fighter for women's rights, and she advocated the virtues of free love. These ideas were viewed with suspicion by those who placed their faith in the cure-all solution of economic class warfare and they were denounced by many of her contemporaries as "bourgeois inspired" at best.

To mainstream Americans, Emma was known as a demonic "dynamite eating anarchist". She toured the States, agitating and lecturing everywhere she went. She was hounded for much of her life by FBI agents and was imprisoned in 1893, 1901, 1916, 1918, 1919, and 1921 on charges ranging from incitement to riot to advocating the use of birth control to opposition to World War 1.

A self proclaimed anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, assassinated President William McKinley in 1901 and this event unleashed a massive wave of anti-anarchist hysteria throughout the States. Emma was blamed for his action and was forced into hiding for a time. She was deported from the United States, Holland, France, and was denied entry to many other countries. None of this daunted her, she began publishing 'Mother Earth' magazine in 1906 and was very active in the No-Conscription League. (Link)

Emma Goldman died in 1940, and though exiled for many years, her body was allowed back into the USA for burial in Chicago, not far from the graves of the "Haymarket Martyrs".

Whole books have been written about the life of Ms Goldman - it's impossible to cover it sensibly in a brief blog post, but there's enough information in the extract above to get an idea of this lady's character.

Here's her natal chart set for 12 noon. Astrodatabank has a 3pm time of birth, but it is categorised as "DD" - dirty data, and unreliable. That time puts her natal Moon in mid-Aquarius with Scorpio rising. I'll rely on a 12 noon chart to point out some interesting factors.



Most significant of all is rebel planet Uranus conjunct Venus, in the midst of a cluster of personal planets in Cancer. Cancer isn't the first sign that springs to mind when considering an anarchist whose life's work consisted of fighting the system - the status quo. When Uranus is closely involved though, all of Cancer's homely cuddly sentimentality goes out the window. Her natal Moon would have been in Aquarius whatever time she was born, and more likely than not in scratchy aspect to either her Sun/Mercury or Venus/Uranus in Cancer. Aquarius and Cancer are not best pals of the zodiac, any aspect between them is going to be scratchy at best - accounting for her less than typically Cancerian nature - as portrayed to the public, at least.

Mars in Virgo on one side and Jupiter in Taurus on the other form harmonious sextiles to Uranus/Venus. Saturn in Sagittarius could well form a sextile to Moon which then links Moon and Saturn via two quincunx aspects to Uranus, forming a Yod. Astrologers consider that the "energies" of the sextiled planets emerge via the qualities of the planet at the apex of the Yod - in this case, what could seem more appropriate : Moon (inner self) and Saturn (career) emerging through Uranus (rebellion)?

Arty Farty Friday ~ C.M. ("Cash") Coolidge

Cassius Marcellus Coolidge ("Cash" for short) - you might not recognise the name, but I'll bet you've seen at least one of his paintings and seen or read about one of his innovations.





Coolidge was born to Quaker parents, staunch abolitionists, somewhere between Antwerp and Philadelphia in New York state, on 18 September 1844. At that time Uranus was in Aries, by the way - transiting the area it's about to trundle through again for the next seven years.

This guy (self-portrait, left) was jaw-droppingly versatile. His resume includes: founding a bank, founding and running drug stores, founding a newspaper, painting signs, helping on his parents' farm, became Town Clerk, involved with Masonic Temple, received a patent for a device to collect fares from street cars.....and then there was painting.....

He started sketching in childhood, took a few formal art lessons later on, drew cartoons for local newspapers and had established a reputation locally before his doggy paintings were commissioned. He earned money as a "lightning cartoonist", which involved making quick sketches of people in front of a paying audience. Cash also illustrated several books.

His dog paintings date from the turn of the century. Mainly purchased by cigar companies and used as advertisements and freebies. Brown & Bigelow, an advertising firm, commissioned a series of dog paintings for use on calendars and memorabilia. Coolidge eventually painted 16 versions of dogs getting up to humanistic (predominantly male) pastimes: poker, pool, racing etc.

Yet another of Coolidge's brainwaves resulted in a patented invention he called Comic Foregrounds. These things are now classed as antiques, I guess, but I do remember them in fairgrounds when I was a small child. Life-sized portraits with holes where the head should be. Customers put their heads through the hole and are transformed, for a photograph, into a strong man, beautiful woman, or part of a fantasy scene. Coolidge made hundreds of different paintings for these foregrounds, started a mail order business selling them and provided income for his later life.

As if that's not enough diversity - there's more! He planned and wrote an opera titled King Gallinipper, its theme: eliminating a mosquito epidemic (New York and New Jersey were experiencing one at the time.) He designed costumes and scenery too. The opera was produced and staged. He wrote two other comedies, A Western Heiress and Le Moustique in 1885, possibly never produced on stage.

Cassius was a bachelor until age sixty-four. He married Gertrude Kimmell (29), in 1909. Quite honestly, could he possibly have found time for love in his younger years considering his career history? He died, aged 89, in 1934.



With that much versatility, I'd expect a good spread of planets around Coolidge's natal chart (no bundles or emphasis on just one or two signs), some clear input from Aquarius and Uranus (mental energy, innovation), as well as the usual Venus and Neptune creativity being strongly represented.

Time of birth isn't available, so rising sign can't be calculated. Moon, though, would have been in Sagittarius (sign ruled by Jupiter) somewhere between 10 and 24 degrees, and more likely than not was in harmonious sextile to creative Neptune in quirky Aquarius.

There is a reasonably good spread of planets. Sun and Mars are in Virgo - often said to be the sign of the workaholic. It would seem that Coolidge was, indeed something of a workaholic, from the number of enterprises he tried to get off the ground - he certainly seems to have been energetic and tireless (Mars) in his efforts in all kinds of directions.

Mercury in arty, Venus-ruled Libra is in harmonious sextile to Venus in showy Leo.

Opposing his natal Sun is expansive Jupiter, strong in its own sign of Pisces, and conjunct inventive Uranus (which though in the next sign, Aries, is still close enough to be termed conjoined). Here is the Uranus input I expected, and it's magnified by Jupiter. Right nextdoor is business-driven Saturn in its traditional rulership, mentally-driven Aquarius, lying in helpful sextile to its modern ruler, Uranus. Key here, I think, is the way Jupiter (expansion) and Uranus (innovation) link in to key elements of the chart - Sun and Moon.

Astrologers' Words of Wisdom # 3

Words of Wisdom #3 consists of extracts from Thinking about Thinking by Jayj Jacobs. Since I first found this piece years ago, I go back to read it often. These are some of the wisest words I've found, and can be applied inside or outside astrology.

Here are some of my current thoughts about thinking. I invite you all to think about where and how they apply to recent conversations, to astrology in general, to (western/global) society as a whole, and to life as a process.

Bad thinking is bad for astrology. Bad thinking, or not thinking, is bad for everyone.

If one accepts anything without question s/he is not thinking.

If the premise is not grounded in factual or experiential reality the conclusions are meaningless. That's the classic GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out. Jacobs' GOGI Corollary is: If Garbage came Out, then Garbage went In.

If the precognitive mindset is impervious to contradictory input one is not thinking. That's prior opinions blinding one to reality.

If one thinks they know everything, and have nothing to learn, relearn or unlearn, then they have stopped thinking.

Knowledge can be divided into what you know, what you know you don't know, what you don't know you don't know, and what you know that just ain't so...............

Anything said about opinions can be validly said about beliefs.

Opinions are not facts. Opinions about facts are not facts. Opinions are not experiences. Opinions about experiences are not experiences.

Opinions, if not grounded in facts or experiences, are prejudices. That makes them bigoted preconceptions. 'Pre-conceptions' come before thinking has occurred; holding to them means one is not thinking.

Opinions and preconceptions are below stereotypes in a cognitive hierarchy. Stereotypes are pretty low, (and dangerous), but at least they are based in a grain of truth, since blown out of proportion.

Everyone has a right to their opinion. Having an opinion, even having the right to an opinion, does not make the opinion right.

No one is qualified, by reasons of knowledge & experience, to form an opinion about everything. Everyone faces something about which they are not qualified to form an opinion. Some are not qualified to form an opinion about anything. That stops very few people from forming an opinion.

It is bad thinking to credit the opinions of jerks, students, amateurs, the minimally competent, or anyone else, in the face of a contrary declaration by a virtuoso or a master -- in that field. It is also bad thinking to assume that only recognized experts have valid insights.

Confidence is unrelated to correctness. Certainty is not the same as accuracy.

Facial Likeness

Facial features can be arranged on a human being in a limited number of ways, so it's surprising that we don't notice more look-alikes. Outside of family resemblances, which are to be expected, there aren't too many people with facial likenesses strong enough to confuse us. There are a few though - I came across an instance recently. We happened upon an episode of Boston Legal, when surfing TV channels. We couldn't decide whether one of the characters was being played by an actor we knew from Eureka. "He's broader", I kept trying to convince myself...."the Eureka guy is slimmer built....but....erm...he could have put on weight for the part".

Colin Ferguson who plays the sheriff in Eureka, and Mark Valley of Boston Legal and Human Target - and, I think, Fringe were the two who originally had me confused. As I was drafting this post about them and looking for photographs, I noticed another who could be added to this particular look-alike list: Joel Gretsch of The 4400

From the top: Colin, Mark, Colin, Mark, and Joel.







Astrologically, appearance is said to relate mainly to the rising sign - though I would guess that Sun and Moon signs, or any sign heavily emphasised or strongly placed on an angle, could also influence looks. I've personally come to recognise a limited number of astrology-related facial/physical features in people I've met. Gemini:wiry or skinny, bony face; Capricorn/Aquarius/Saturn: a definite look with regular features (hard to describe in words); Cancer: round face, tending towards chubbiness; and of course the famous magnetic Scorpio eyes, and the lustrous Leo hair.

Anyway, without times of birth, and therefore without knowing rising signs and Moon placement for the three guys mentioned, it's not possible conduct a proper investigation into whether astrology has any bearing on their facial likeness. Their birthdates are as follows:
Colin Ferguson - 22 July 1972, Montreal, Canada
Mark Valley - 24 December 1964 Ogdensburg, NY
Joel Gretsch - 20 December 1963, St. Cloud MN.

I've compared 12 noon charts for the three and can find only one point of (almost) convergence. This occurs in the few degrees at the end of Sagittarius and beginning of Capricorn, between 28 Sag and 2 Cap.: Colin Ferguson has Jupiter at 00 Capricorn, Mark Valley has Sun at 2 Capricorn and Joel Gretschen has Sun at 28 Sagittarius. If their rising signs were anywhere around that area it'd be amazing!

There's a non-astrological possibility for the likeness too, though I've no evidence to support it: Scottish ancestry. The look they share has a definite Scottish flavour.

War Movies ~ Hurt Locker ~ The Victors

So a movie about war won this year's Oscar for best film. Its director won the award for best director too - Ms Bigelow is the first female director to be so honored- that's definitely good news. Mystic Medusa wrote about Bigelow's astrology yesterday, so I won't bother to repeat it.

As for the movie - I haven't seen Hurt Locker yet, and am not sure I want to see it having read the synopsis and reviews. The idea of movie makers' bank accounts growing fat by depicting, as entertainment, our most current version of man's inhumanity to man makes me feel decidedly queasy. War movies depicting history are slightly more acceptable - as long as they don't glorify the horror of war in a juvenile gung-ho fashion.

The only movies with a war theme I've been able to stomach can be counted on one hand (and still have fingers left over): The Great Escape, From Here to Eternity, and the best and least lauded of all, Carl Foreman's The Victors.

It's ironic that a movie like Hurt Locker can win an Oscar in 2010, while, in the early 1960s The Victors was more or less blacklisted. It had certain sections cut out of it after preliminary screenings - sections never to be seen again......presumably because they were too anti-war, or "anti-American". I've noticed a few less than complimentary reviews still available on-line, written by then contemporary US film critics.

I saw the movie back in 1963, in England. I've never forgotten it. My husband had neither seen nor heard of it, so not long ago I went about trying to find a VHS or DVD recording of the movie. I found one, probably a bootleg, and the shortened version. Even in its less than ideal quality the film impressed my husband enough to be keen to find a recording of the full-length original somewhere. No luck so far.

It's inevitable that British and Europeans have different perspectives from Americans on World War 2, or had, in the 1960s, when it was still fresh in many memories. People in the USA have never had bombs raining down upon their cities, night after night. In what one sour critic described as "a mawkish scene" towards the end of the movie, when George Peppard's character is waiting for a 'bus in a northern English back street, in the rain, a kindly family invites him into their home to get dry and have a cup of tea (naturally!) Peppard chats with the family and asks a youngster about his Dad, who is away in the army. "What does your Dad say about the war", he asks. "He says he doesn't like it." A simple, unaffected, underplayed exchange, but it said so much.

Music Monday ~ Ry Cooder

Another Sun Pisces musician featured today: Ry Cooder. He's more "a musician's musician" than one widely known or remembered by the general public. I know him only from the Academy Award nominated film Buena Vista Social Club, which didn't really focus on Cooder, but on a group of Cuban musicians. Ry Cooder, though, is held in high regard by those in the musical know:

Cooder is a virtuoso on virtually every string instrument, from Mexican tiple to Middle Eastern saz to Hawaiian "slack key" guitar, but is mostly known for his country-blues-style mandolin, electric and acoustic guitar, and slide guitar..... one of the masters, an icon among session heroes. His solo explorations of the roots of rock and world music are extraordinary, resurrecting both known and obscure songs from country blues and Dust Bowl folk music, and mixing tropical calypso with Civil War camp songs, gospel, R&B, Tex Mex, and early rock 'n' roll classics. He even explored the roots of jazz, vaudeville, ragtime, and urban bop. Some of his finest recordings are movie scores for films including The Border and Paris, Texas. Today he is once again in the charts with the critically acclaimed album of Cuban music he produced, Buena Vista Social Club. Link.

An interview reported in the UK's The Observer newspaper reveals more of the real Ry Cooder than I found elsewhere. A couple of extracts:

Cooder doesn't like to dwell on the past, can be cranky, cantankerous even; on the walls, there is nothing to suggest that this is one of the most influential figures in the history of contemporary popular song. No old photographs posing with Captain Beefheart or the Rolling Stones (Cooder played on Let it Bleed, but fell into a dispute with Keith Richards, who confessed he took him 'for all that he knew', over ownership of the 'Honky Tonk Woman' riff); no gold discs commemorating his string of classic Seventies solo albums such as Chicken Skin Music; no framed guitar from the soundtrack sessions for the Wim Wenders movie Paris, Texas, the most feted of several film scores he wrote in the Eighties; nothing to mark his ground-breaking collaborations with Malian bluesman Ali Farka Toure or Hindustani musician VM Bhatt in the 1990s, never mind his work with Cuba's Buena Vista Social Club, whom he helped rediscover and produce. Put it to Cooder that he's nothing if not versatile and he says genially: 'Well, I'm sort of an osmotic fellow.' .......................................

.................It is no surprise that someone who thinks music took a wrong turn with the advent of the Beatles - just as his own story started - should place such value on a lifetime's knowledge. He talks fondly about the Buena Vista gang, describing his time with them as 'like going to school'. Cooder broke the Trading with the Enemy Act to record in Cuba and was prosecuted and fined $25,000. Only through an act of clemency invoked by President Clinton on his last day in office was he allowed back into the country with a one-year licence to carry out more recordings.

'Yeah, Clinton did good,' he says. 'But he also ushered in the era of Nafta, the North American Free Trade Area, which made Juarez, Mexico, the murder capital of the world, with women raped for their pay cheques. That was another nail in the coffin of workers' lives.'

Never mind the 'RepubliKlans' - the Democrats today are 'a bunch of cowards, chickenshit,' he says.

The antithesis of most rock stars, Cooder has always shunned the limelight and after the release of his Get Rhythm album in 1987, it had seemed he would never make a record under his own name again. 'That's the thing that surprises me about these two new albums,' says Nick Gold. 'Not that he made them, but that he's singing on them, exposing himself in that way.'

Born on 15 March 1947 in Los Angeles at 2.05 AM (Astrotheme).



It's not Sun, with Mercury conjunct Mars in Pisces that stood out for me when I first looked at Cooder's natal chart, it was Capricorn Moon in 12th house, which reflects his apparent dislike of celebrity and its trappings. 12th house has connection to Pisces, of course - last sign, last house in the chain. There's been a lot of twaddle written about 12th house, extrapolated from a) its position on the backside of the horizon, and b) its connection to Pisces/Neptune and all the delusional foggy dreaminess they represent. The explanation of 12th house that rings most true to me is that when emphasised by the presence of natal planets, the person will have, and need to keep, a very private side to their nature - working alone, being alone, is no problem to them. Perhaps, had Ry Cooder been born at a different time of day, his name would have been much better known by the public in general, perhaps then he'd have wanted it that way - as it was, he didn't!

A Grand Trine in Air linking Venus in Aquarius, Uranus in Gemini and Neptune in Libra provides a harmonious circuit of the mentally-oriented signs, representing quick wit, social concern, and artistic talent.

Another, looser Grand Trine links Sun, Jupiter and Saturn. I like the trine from Sun (self) to Jupiter for Ry Cooder. Jupiter represents expansion and travel, foreign countries....he seems forever drawn to explore the music of other cultures and nations, doesn't he? This might seem to be in conflict with his withdrawn 12th house Moon, but while physically travelling, Cooder does seems to retain an inner (Moon) sense of personal privacy.

Cooder's Pisces-Capricorn blend is a rather good one for a musician, it allows his creativity full-rein while keeping his feet firmly on the ground.

Paris, Texas.

Going back to Okinawa

Rahm Rumor

There's a rumor around that President Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel may be "on the way out". Internet or any other rumors are, more often than not, fabrications, but still, they provide food for thought and grist for t'mill. I rather wish the President would take Michael Moore up on his recent offer (see here) to take Mr. Emanuel's place!

I can find no time of birth for Rahm Emanuel but the 12 noon chart below will suffice to investigate possibilities of a move in the near future.




Transiting Pluto will be close to his natal Saturn towards the end of this year - from Fall onward. That could well indicate some kind of transformation in his professional life (represented by Saturn).
Interestingly, back in the summer of 2008, during the run-up to the General Election, transiting Saturn was close to his natal Pluto - so the upcoming transit is a reversal of sorts. Hmmm. Food for thought indeed!

We shall see!

Another US Radical ~ Saul Alinsky

Some writers and commentators who lean right-ward politically used to offer it as A Bad Thing that President Obama (and Hillary Clinton) were once inspired and influenced by the views and writings of Saul Alinsky. From what I've gleaned about Mr Alinsky's views, I see it as a great pity that Clinton and Obama weren't even more deeply influenced by them than now appears to be the case.

When I read and post about US radicals of yesteryear: John Reed, Abbie Hoffman and Alinsky, I'm inwardly yelling, "Where are their counterparts now, when this country, soured by the greed of corporations, badly in need of a fresh direction, needs 'em?"


From Who2Biographies

Tough, pragmatic and a lover of humanity, Saul Alinsky pioneered a method of helping poor and working-class people organize themselves to improve their communities. Combining urban social theories he had learned at the University of Chicago with street smarts he had earned growing up in that city's Jewish ghetto, Alinsky first worked in prisons and as a juvenile delinquency researcher. Then, starting in crime-ridden Chicago neighborhoods in the late 1930s, he helped unions, churches and other social groups unite and win everything from jobs to streetlights and garbage collection. He would immerse himself in the neighborhood, listen to ordinary people's troubles and needs, assess where power lay, and empower previously divided groups to seek common goals by standing up to government and corporate machines. With financial backing from department-store heir Marshall Field III, he established the Industrial Areas Foundation, which helped him extend his work to several U.S. cities. He had little patience for militants, Communists or dreamy liberals, saying he was a community organizer because he believed in American democracy and because "I can't stand to see people pushed around."

Ironically - very ironically - factions on the far right of US politics now seem to have started following Alinsky's Rules for Radicals themselves in organising their so-called Tea Party movement. ("Can the Right Imitate Saul Alinsky?")

I'm interested to look at Saul Alinsky's natal chart. He was born in Chicago on 30 January 1909. I can find no time of birth for him so a 12 noon chart has to suffice. Rising sign and Moon degree will not be accurate.



Woweee! Now here's a chart that fits like a glove! Sun and Mercury in intellectually-driven Aquarius; but more significant is rebellious, revolutionary Uranus tightly conjunct Venus, in pragmatic Capricorn.

Natal Sun sextiles business-like Saturn in go-getting Aries on one side and energetic Mars in expansive Sagittarius on the other.

Unless born in the very first minutes of 30 January Moon would have been in communicative Gemini, somewhere between 1 and 12 degrees, and quite likely in harmonious trine to his Aquarius Sun.

I'd say that little lot is a recipe for exactly what manifested in Saul Alinsky.