Tiger Woods gets caught with his trousers down

The Sun newspaper led today with a picture of Tiger Woods and the quote: “I’ve let my wife down, I’ve let my family down (and I’ve let my trousers down).” The Sun can be appalling as well as having a kind of genius, and it’s certainly not going to put up with hypocritical sentiment of the “I’ve let my wife down” variety. Americans are very good at that sort of hypocrisy, the English not quite so, partly because it is not so bad to have an affair over here, although it’s getting that way: the new Puritanism that has come in the wake of the so-called ‘sexual revolution’, for which I think American feminism is largely to blame.

Anyway, Tiger Woods has been enjoying himself, and he is now claiming to be ashamed of that. He evidently has a taste in models: his wife and 3 mistresses (so far) all look like models, and the trouble is that he is married to one of them. It would be OK if we didn’t happen to live in a monogamous culture (and let’s not absolutise our system), rather than a polygamous or polyandrous one (like Tibet).

The American philosopher William James once had a dream in which the central problem of existence was revealed to him. Waking up, he feverishly wrote it down lest he forget it by the morning. On reading it later, he found he had written:

‘Higamus hogamus, women are monogamous
Hogamus higamus, men are polygamous.’

There you have it!

The first place to look when considering someone’s romantic life is the planet Venus, and Woods has it in Scorpio. Scorpio is, in a way, the most primitive of the signs, or at least the sign that is least ashamed to be ‘primitive’. Scorpio is a sign of desire, of raw desire, and in Woods’ case this does not sit well with his respectable Sun in Capricorn. Hence the hypocrisy. This is also expressed by his Virgo ascendant. Virgo is a sign that is discerning about practical things, and this makes it a sign of ethics. But in their humility and control of their behaviour, a lot can get damned up.


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So here we have this controlled, respectable Capricorn with Virgo Rising. And Mars and Venus let him down, which is classic. Wood’s Mars is in two-faced, tricksy Gemini, conjunct the US Mars, so it is a very American sex-story.

And Woods also has Mars conjunct MC opposite Moon conjunct IC. So there is a tension between his public pursuit of sex, and his strong need for a family life. At the same time, his Moon is in expansive Sagittarius, so it is possible that in his heart of hearts he would like to have several wives and families!

Back to Venus in Scorpio. What the women look like is clearly the main factor for Woods, or they wouldn’t all be models. This is the raw, physical desire of Scorpio, and there is nothing ‘wrong’ with that. His Mars, which also describes his desire nature, is in Gemini, and here we see Gemini at its most superficial and glittering.

Both Scorpio and Gemini have a strong relationship with the ‘shadow-side’, that which we would rather not acknowledge about ourselves, that which we are, rightly or wrongly, ashamed of. If you claim to be at ease with your shadow, then that is not your shadow. Scorpio cannot help but be that ‘shadow’, and Scorpio’s path, in a way, is about bringing air and objectivity to it. Gemini, on the other hand, needs to encounter the shadow, to be honest about the murky motives behind the glittering persuasiveness.

Woods’ sexuality seems in a way to be functioning at quite a primitive level. It is a sort of Achilles heel for him. Here is a man at the pinnacle of his society, clean-cut and respectable and respected, but actually it is like Animal Farm where at the end you see the boars in human clothes. He is grabbing the prettiest women (as society sees them) and fucking them, as his high-status allows him to do. I don’t see a moral problem with that in itself, and nor does Scorpio, though not telling the model he happens to have married is, I think, ethically more problematic.

Scorpio, however, is able to function at a deeper level than this. Scorpio is all about depth and intimacy, where the physical looks are increasingly less the issue. Woods’ Venus is at 28.32 Scorpio, and Neptune will be exactly squaring it all of next year. The transit has already begun, and the trouble has begun. Woods will have a different Venus in a year or two. Scorpio is a sign of power, and Woods is using the power that society gives him to pull lots of women. His Venus is (widely) conjunct North Node in Scorpio, so the issue of how he uses power in relationships is very important.

Scorpio is a sign of secrets, and up till now Woods has kept this side of himself out of the public gaze. Neptune has dissolved that secrecy, which means that he won’t be able just to carry on as before. He’ll have to work out what is important to him, for it will destroy his family life, his sense of home and intimacy. At the same time, with his wife seeming to be out of the same stable, so to speak, as his mistresses, that relationship may end also as Neptune does his work.

All this came out when Woods crashed his car into a fire hydrant the other day after an argument with his wife. Uranus was stationing, conjunct his Descendant in Pisces. His Moon (wife) is in fiery Sagittarius, which Uranus has been squaring. So there you have it: the accident (Uranus) involving a fire (Sag Moon) hydrant (Uranus in Pisces)!