Marjorie

An unseasonable tale of debauchery in high places is the BBC’s festive gift in the form of A Very British Scandal, relating the scandalous divorce and life of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll.  With an unedifying cast of well-heeled cads and bounders, it paints an unsavoury picture of what passed for high society amongst the Brit establishment.

  What is most extraordinary of all is the event packed life of the central figure of Margaret, whose 1960s divorce became the scandal of the century. She was born 1 December 1912 in Glasgow, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, had an abortion after becoming pregnant at 15 by a 17 year old David Niven; proceeded to have flings with Prince Aly Khan, an engagement to  Max Aitken, the son of Lord Beaverbrook; Glen Kidston, a married man who died in a plane crash, and Charles Fulke Greville, the Earl of Warwick. At 20, she married Charles Sweeny, an Irish-American golfer and stockbroker, who turned out to be pathologically jealous, making her a mystifying choice for a bride. She had three children and eight miscarriages during their ten year marriage. And a near fatal accident, falling 40 feet down a life shaft.

  She then married the dashing and impecunious Captain Ian Campbell, holder of the Argyll title and lands and paid for the restoration of Inveraray Castle, his family pile, despite him being a violent, vicious drunk. They were well-suited since she desperately wanted a son with him and having failed to conceive, planned to fake a pregnancy by padding her stomach and buying a newborn baby boy from Poland. Step two was to forge letters to prove sons from his first marriage weren’t his, to secure her place at Inverary.

He retaliated by suing for divorce, having found her stash of polaroid photos of sexual liaisons with an unknown headless man – widely deemed to be Duncan Sandys, the Minister for Defence or the actor Douglas Fairbanks Jnr. Having been the It socialite girl of her day she fell dramatically from grace being vilified by the press, betrayed by her friends and exiled from the establishment.

  She turned to psychics for guidance and was a client of Eva Petulengro whose later memoirs described her as “ a cross between a high-class whore and the wicked witch who gave Snow White the apple.”

  Her later years were a downward spiral of debt since she refused to give up her extravagant lifestyle, losing first her parents’ London home, then being evicted from Grosvenor House Hotel and finally, flat broke, being supported by friends and her first husband, dying in a nursing home at 81.

  A life of breathtaking selfishness and zero self-awareness – or maybe she didn’t care.

  She had an impulsive and adventurous Sun Mars in Sagittarius in a hard-edged opposition to Saturn; with a pushily confident and sharp-tongued Pluto opposition Mercury Jupiter in Sagittarius. Her Sun was almost certainly square her Virgo Moon which may also have been linked to her Mars and Saturn if an early morning birth – so she’d never know what she wanted and wasn’t well-served by either parent.

  It’s a chart that really needs a birth time and the standard signs of promiscuity or sex addiction – Venus Saturn or heavy Scorpio are missing. Though her Jupiter was conjunct her Venus/Mars midpoint which Ebertin describes as a ‘healthy sex relationship’ and Jupiter was square her Venus/Saturn midpoint which points to ‘illegitimate relationships’. Her turbo-fuelled Jupiter clearly magnified both of these.

She did have a tight, out-of-sign Yod of Uranus sextile Mars inconjunct Pluto which would give her a tendency to go to extremes, so moderation was never her thing.  Such a Pluto would make her manipulative and bullying, and while the positive attributes could have made her influential, the fall- out from mismanaging it would be severe. Tierney talks of self-destructive passions which would reduce the individual to a ‘frustrating level of obscurity and isolation.’

  It might explain why she refused to deal in private with the divorce, sparing herself the humiliation of a public trial. As one commentator said both she and the Duke had each other round the throat and weren’t about to let go. He equally had a control-freak Pluto.

  Her pleasure-seeking 9^th Harmonic unsurprisingly was heavily aspected; as was her self-defeating 16H.

  When she fell down the lift shaft in 1943 her Solar Arc Pluto was opposition her Uranus; and during her 1963 divorce her Solar Arc Sun was conjunct her Uranus – so rebellious, wayward Uranus was clearly a key planet, on one leg of the Yod.  Also around the divorce the transiting Pluto Uranus in early Virgo were squaring her Mars Sun and probably conjunct her Moon.

  Her pleasure-seeking 9^th Harmonic unsurprisingly was heavily aspected; as was her self-defeating 16H.

    Ian Campbell, Duke of Argyll, 18 June 1903, was a controlling, unpredictable and self-willed Sun Pluto in Gemini opposition Uranus square Jupiter (Moon) in Pisces; with a chilly Venus opposition Saturn; and an emotionally detached and critical Air Grand Trine of Mars trine Saturn trine Mercury. It was certainly no love match but their North Nodes were conjunct the other’s South Nodes so it was a karmic connection of sorts – both bringing out the worst in each other. And both of their self-willed Jupiter Plutos also clashed.

 Their wedding chart, 22 March 1951, had a dominating, cruel Mars trine Pluto, an ego-clashing Mars opposition Neptune; and a high-tension, disruptive Sun opposition Saturn square Uranus.

  Not sure why this is worth pausing over but it is mind-boggling.

The Saturn Uranus square has been creating tensions and discomfort through 2021 and will continue through 2022. There was an exact aspect three days ago; it stays in orb through January/February and again July onwards until it makes one final exact aspect in October 2022 and by the New Year into 2023 is moving on.

 Ebertin describes Saturn Uranus as irritability and inhibition, tensions, kicking against limitations on freedom and separations. But also the power to endure and cope; growth of strength through overcoming difficulties and dangerous situations.

  The conjunctions of Saturn Uranus can bring golden ages, the foundation of empires and enlightened thinking, though extremist aspirations also creep in. The hard aspects tend to coincide with economic crises and often conflicts between opposites. Saturn, upholder of the prevailing tradition meets/clashes with Uranus the liberator, innovator, torchbearer for the future, symbolizer of sudden change and creative thought and catalyst for sweeping away outworn structures to make way for new possibilities.

  Andre Barbault has a helpful survey in his book Planetary Cycles: Mundane Astrology looking at the sweep of Saturn Uranus 45.5 year cycles over the past century plus. He nutshells Saturn Uranus as  dry, hard, a thirst for conquest, authoritarian power.

 He looks at the cycle from the Saturn Uranus conjunction of 1805 to 1852 as one when the USA consolidated its territorial ambitions, tripling in size. Then the next cycle 1852 to 1897 kick started capitalism with an economic and industrial revolution. This was hampered in the US at the Saturn Uranus square which oversaw the Civil War of 1861 and the unrest only settled when the trine came round five years later. The following opposition saw speculative disasters and by the square of 1885 there were imperialist tensions and rivalries around the globe.

 1897 to 1942, conjunction to conjunction, he categorises as imperialism to fascism and it follows the same pattern through economic crisis – square over 1930/31 as well as imperialist rivalries at the hard aspects.

  1942 to 1988 sees the USA take over as superpower; with the Korean War and Vietnam War on the hard aspects as well as political weakness with Watergate.

 The 1988 to 2032 Saturn Uranus cycle he calls Globalization. With the collapse of the USSR it ceases to be a bi-polar world. The 1999 square saw the dot com bubble bursting,  anti-globalization demos and a north-south economic divide. The 2008 opposition accompanied the economic super-crash.

  There is a risk of forcing historical events and shifts to fit the astrology but there is enough syncronicity here to make it worth pondering.  Standing back to see a larger pattern with the present turbulence as a passing two year phase can make it more bearable. The sextiles and trines, soft aspects, are always easier and we are moving towards the Saturn in Aries sextile Uranus in Gemini in 2025. This is the final staging post on this ‘Globalization’ cycle that started in 1988 and ends in the Saturn Uranus conjunction of 2032 in late Gemini.  

Spoon bender, watch-healer and charismatic showman Uri Geller, now living in his homeland Israel, has turned 75. He became famous demonstrating on television what he claimed to be psychokinesis, dowsing, and telepathy – describing hidden drawings and making watches stop or run faster, which he said he could do it through the strength of his mind. He became a  bete noir for paranormal debunker James Randi who claimed to have revealed Geller’s feats as stage magic tricks, but was himself a fraud.

  Controversy has dogged Geller throughout his career, at points sending him into eating disorders and withdrawal, but he claims to have acclamation from the CIA for his ‘remote viewing’ skills and to have been employed by mining companies to dowse sites for mineral deposits.

  My own sense is that Geller does have psychic skills but these by their nature are fragile and erratic abilities not well-suited to stage or TV performances, so there has to be an element of trickery to maintain audience appeal.

  Similar claims of deception have been made against healer Matthew Manning, who also claimed to have the ability to bend metal and affect electrical equipment.  What is intriguing is one striking similarity in their charts.

 Geller, 20 December 1946 2.30am Tel Aviv, is a Sagittarius with a Scorpio Moon. More significantly he has Saturn Pluto in Leo conjunct his Midheaven – in traditional astrology Saturn Pluto was the sign of the black magician, so deemed to have paranormal powers. He also has Uranus in the 8^th house which is the chart area of transformation, connected with alchemy, magic and occult practices as well as money and sexuality.   His 1^st house Jupiter Moon Venus in Scorpio square his Pluto will make him ultra-charming and persuasive.

  Matthew Manning, 17 August 1955 4pm Redruth, England, has a heavily weighted Pluto conjunct his Sun, Mars, Moon and Venus; and Uranus, like Geller, is in his 8^th. Uranus, lord of the lightning flash, being the planet not only of insight, sudden change but is also associated with electricity, the internet.

  Most individuals with psychic abilities, able to tap into deeper layers of reality have planets in the 8^th. Since the regions they are able to contact lie beyond rational thought, they arouse great fear in the uber-logical –  who cannot cope with the notion they are not in control and that life is a good deal more mysterious than their boxed-in scientific brains allow for, hence the violent attacks. Which isn’t to say a good many psychics aren’t frauds, or semi-frauds and that you can launch space rockets by the power of the mind. But life on the edge has yet to give up many of its secrets.  

Helena Blavatsky, founder of Theosophy, also had Uranus in the 8^th and was similarly controversial during her lifetime, ‘championed by supporters as an enlightened Sage and derided as a charlatan by critics.’ Theosophy is a religious movement and part of the occultist stream of Western esotericism, drawing on Neoplatonism as well as Hinduism and Buddhism and has had a wide influence on other esoteric movements and the New Age.

  In addition to an 8^th house Uranus she had an influential/controlling 10^th house Pluto trine her Leo Sun. She was born 12 August 1831 2.17am Ukraine.

India is forecast to become sixth largest global economy leaving France and the UK behind, with GDP expected to grow by 9.5 per cent, more than any other large economy.

  What is marginally odd astrologically-speaking is that the Reserve Bank of India chart, 1 April 1935, indicates a fairly calamitous series of events coming up within six months as the Solar Arc Pluto is conjunct the Mars. While all influences can have a positive as well as a negative side, that one isn’t normally good news – trapped, scary, a dead-halt.

  Nor is PM Narendra Modi’s Term chart, 30 May 2019 7.04pm Delhi, looking too upbeat. The tough-minded and discouraging Saturn Pluto conjunction is moving by Solar Arc to close to exact within six months (like Boris Johnson’s) and tr Neptune is in a dented-hopes square to the Jupiter and Solar Arc Jupiter all through 2022.

   Modi has already lost his unyielding, strongman image, having had to repeal his controversial farm laws in the face of mass protests and unrest.  Analysts say the climbdown reflected anxiety about upcoming state elections which will be seen a midterm referendum on his government that will set the tone for 2024 general election.

  His previous draconian approach to dissent whether over the  catastrophic 2016 demonetisation policy, the crackdown in Kashmir, the anti-Muslim citizenship law or missteps during the devastating April second wave of Covid, elicited no apologies. Activists and critics are regularly jailed under terrorism laws, civil society groups have been hounded and shut down and protests are repeatedly met with force. So this reversal and public contrition is seen as a victory for democracy.

  The India chart, 15 August 1947 12 am Delhi, will have a shaky start to 2022 with tr Saturn square the India Saturn Pluto and India Midheaven through January which will be downbeat; and tr Saturn moves on to square the financial Venus into February and after that squares the Sun on and off till December which will be sobering and a reality check.

 That is followed by tr Pluto square the Solar Arc Midheaven from February, on and off till late 2023 Uranus, which will create substantial challenges and major questions about future direction. Tr Uranus square the Pluto Saturn will bring unrest and disruptions in April and then brings financial upsets as it squares the India Venus in May, moving on to square the Sun in 2023/24. None of which suggests seamless progress along the same track. Although the India Jupiter may prove a saving grace or at least a buffer against some of the above, bringing lucky breaks and expansion in 2023. Tr Uranus will be square the India Sun in 2023 up to April 2024 which suggests the next election will spring a few surprises.

 Narendra Modi’s personal chart, 17 September 1950, has a serious and determined Sun, Saturn Mercury in Virgo being undermined by tr Neptune in opposition throughout 2022 so it won’t be his favourite year.  Tr Uranus will hard aspect his ruthless Pluto in Leo square Mars in Scorpio from July 2022 right through the next election, so he may react badly to external pressures. And ditto this year with tr Saturn square his Pluto and opposition his Mars from March onwards all year which will hem in his more dictatorial impulses.

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The James Webb Space Telescope had a perfect launch on its  ‘voyage back to the birth of the universe’. It is planned to succeed the Hubble Space Telescope as NASA’s flagship mission in astrophysics and designed to answer unsolved questions about the universe. It will look further back in time than ever before to 400 million years after the Big Bang and will enable investigations in astronomy and cosmology, observing distant events and objects, such as the formation of the first galaxies, and providing detailed atmospheric characterization of potentially habitable exoplanets.

 Development began in 1996 for a 2007 launch with a US$500 million budget but delays, cost over runs and several possible cancellations along the way, ended up with a $10bn (£7.5bn) budget and the launch on 25 December 2021 from Kourou spaceport in French Guiana at 12.20pm UTC.

  The chart isn’t quite as well tied together as the Hubble Telescope launched on 24 April 1990 12.33pm Merritt Island, Florida, which has two talented Half Grand Sextiles.

  But both charts oddly have their respective Suns at a 4 degree Earth sign – Hubble in Taurus and Webb in Capricorn. Hubble has the North Node at 12 degrees Aquarius and Webb has Saturn at 11 Aquarius. Both have the researching, communicative Mercury at roughly the same degree Earth sign.

  Not sure what all this adds up to and I confess I have not the remotest idea how telescopes manage to time travel backwards but it will be interesting to watch.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace prize winner, has died aged 90. A contemporary of Nelson Mandela, he was was one of the driving forces behind the movement to end the policy of apartheid enforced by the white minority government against the black majority in South Africa from 1948 until 1991.

  He was born on 7 October 1931 in Klerksdorp, no birth time, with a Methodist preacher father who had a drink problem. He had the notably tough, resourceful and innovative Saturn in Capricorn opposition Pluto square Uranus of the time opposing his Libra Sun and Venus, so he was custom-built to make a difference. His Jupiter in upbeat Leo (and Moon) squared an ultra-determined Mars in Scorpio and trined Uranus so he wouldn’t be scared to take risks.

  He always said his motives were religious and not political and he didn’t believe in violent protest. After Mandela became South Africa’s first black president in 1994, Tutu was appointed by him to a Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up to investigate crimes committed by both whites and blacks during the apartheid era. He was also credited with coining the term Rainbow Nation to describe the ethnic mix of post-apartheid South Africa, but in his latter years he expressed regret that the nation had not coalesced in the way in which he had dreamt.

 He had a reforming and capable 5^th Harmonic; a well-aspected ‘seeking soul’ 7H; and an encouraging leaving-a-legacy-for-history 17H.

  When the new South Africa was born on 27 April 1994 11am in Pretoria, his rebellious Uranus fell on its Midheaven fittingly enough. His Mars was conjunct the South Africa Jupiter for a confident new beginning; though his Pluto opposition the SA Uranus Neptune in Capricorn might have given pause for concern as he grew increasingly concerned about the direction the country went in later years.

Happy festivities – I hope everyone has some fun despite the panic and confusion around. Stay safe and well.

  The Red Kite in mythology is sacred to Isis, the sky goddess of magic and wisdom, and integral to the quest for resurrection. In Shakespeare’s time they were as common as crows, scavenging round London for food and stealing clothes off washing lines. In the 20^th Century they were on the edge of extinction until a reintroduction programme brought them back to rural skies in abundance.

  Above the fields beyond where I live now on the edge of Cambridgeshire, they swoop and soar in groups of a dozen or more. With a five foot wing span they are quite a sight.   

Joan Didion, the literary icon who chronicled the fragmentation of 60s and 70s American culture in her reporting and was a successful screenwriter and novelist as well has died. The 1976 film A Star Is Born was one of her credits and she won the Pulitzer Prize for The Year of Magical Thinking about her own grief following the death of her husband.

Critics said of her:

“In her view she lives in a world of people moved by strange, conflicted, poorly comprehended, and, above all, devious motivations which commit them inevitably to conflict and failure.”

“She was perfectly matched to the times, with her slightly paranoid, slightly hysterical, high-strung sensibility. It was a perfect conjunction of the writer with the moment.”

“Everywhere she went she found the identical set of circumstances: looming chaos, an atmosphere saturated with dread and absurdities described by unwitting participants in clichéd language indicated by quotation marks.”

“She always seems to be writing on the brink of a catastrophe so awful that her only available response is to withdraw into a kind of autism.”

“I have a theatrical temperament,” she once told an interviewer.

  Born 5 December 1934 5.55pm Sacramento, California, with an Army Air Corp father she was constantly moved around as a child and had a fractured education. None of which stopped her winning a Vogue essay prize at college and subsequent Vogue magazine job. She married John Gregory Dunne, another journalist, who moved with her into movie writing and fiction.

  She did have a workaholic, driven and quite tortured chart. Her New Moon in Sagittarius fell in her hard-working 6^th house conjunct her Venus and square a creative Neptune. But it is her Mercury in penetrating Scorpio which is spotlighted with a trine to Pluto and sextile to a 4^th house Mars, square Saturn in Aquarius and inconjunct Uranus. She was not a lady who saw life through rose-coloured glasses or took it lightly. Her Jupiter in the performing 5^th house was sparsely aspected with one sextile to Neptune. Such a Jupiter tends to be less sociable, tending towards an ivory tower temperament and more weighted down by life.

  Her writer’s 21^st Harmonic was exceptionally strong; as was her genius/breakthrough 13H; and successful if not always happy 19H.

  Her husband John Gregory Dunne, 25 May 1932 8am Hartford, CT, a Sun Gemini with Aquarius Moon, was a cool companion so not a match of passion. Although they stayed married for forty years it was by no means and easy match with a composite Mars Pluto square Uranus in their relationship chart. Though there was also a creative composite Sun opposition Neptune which may have allowed them to gloss over the rougher patches.

Further thoughts from reviewers to better understand how her chart manifested:

“She was, famously and by her own account, diffident, brittle, runtish, prone to migraines, afraid of the telephone.

I brought her biscuits and, handing them over at the door, she looked down at the package as if I’d passed her a rattlesnake. It’s an effect of chain-reading Didion that small moments become overburdened with spurious meaning and, recalling that scene, it seems to me that when she looked back up at me, it was with an expression that indicated, simultaneously, she was touched by the gesture and that, if we were honest, we might also acknowledge it as gaucheness amounting to lunacy.”

“Joan Didion was 5 years old when she wrote her first story, upon the instruction of her mother, who had told her to stop whining and to write down her thoughts. She amused herself by describing a woman who imagines she is about to freeze to death, only to die burning instead. “I have no idea what turn of a 5-year-old’s mind could have prompted so insistently ‘ironic’ and exotic a story,” she later wrote. “It does reveal a certain predilection for the extreme which has dogged me into adult life.”

“The case for the prosecution has been her snobbery, self-absorption, humourlessness, conservatism and overweening privilege.”

“I don’t know what falling in love means,” she told her husband. “It’s not part of my world.”

She wrote: “I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package,” she once wrote. “I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”

Pic: David Shankbone.       

Russia is fast winding up to become the west’s bogeyman again as it masses military might and nuclear capabilities in the Arctic in a bid to secure its northern coast and open up a key shipping route from Asia to Europe, as well as pose a threat to Northern American coastal areas. It has also scaled up its military resources on its Western border with Ukraine and Eastern Europe, with Putin warning NATO/USA to back off. The EU has also allowed itself to be hemmed in by Putin over the indispensable Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline which will be effective leverage to stop any EU repercussions against his military forays.

  His 4^th Term chart always did have an air of ruthlessness about it with a composite Mars Pluto in Capricorn in the 6^th, which as I recollect is a mundane house ruling the armed forces. That conjunction won’t move to exact by Solar Arc until 2023 but is ramping up with tr Pluto conjunct the Mars now and through 2022. That last can also accompany a sense of being trapped which may reflect the internal situation in Russia.

  Through 2022 tr Uranus will conjunct the Putin’s Term Sun from late May onwards for sudden changes of direction which will go along with luck and an adventurous/risk-taking streak as tr Uranus is also opposition the Jupiter.  It sits on the Jupiter from July to mid October, returning in 2023. So it’ll be a pro-active year. Where his grip on power moves into a shakier patch will be in 2023/2024 with tr Pluto square the 10^th house Uranus.

  The Bank of Russia, 13 July 1990, does look stressed this year from May onwards with a catastrophic tr Pluto square the Mars in 2023/24 to fall in line with other global central banks. Economic pressures may unsettle Putin’s plans.

  The Russia 8 November 1917 2.12 am chart will be depressed in January with tr Saturn square the Sun and then Mercury; and rocked by tr Uranus in opposition from late April onwards into early 2023 so a year of sudden lurches, jolts and changes.  These roll through into 2023 with tr Uranus square the Uranus next year as well. Nothing will be settled.

  The Russia 8 December 1991 chart is showing odd ripples of discomfort but it is really 2023 when it gears up for a major turnaround, with a hint of a financial bubble bursting late in 2022 as well.

  Relations with the USA will be stressed and undermined in 2022/23. That shows up on the relationship charts with both old and new Russia with tensions running on until the 2025 planetary shift of Neptune and Uranus into new signs. Ditto with NATO.

  With Ukraine the high-pressure years with Russia will be 2023/2024. Though the Ukraine chart itself is having a confidence-denting 2022 from May onwards.

  There will be ripples of discontent and perhaps a reset of diplomatic ties with the EU and Germany in 2022 with tensions and disappointment running on till 2024.

  The USA is the most obviously perturbed by Russia.