Margaret Thatcher

We are moving, slowly and painfully, from one era to another, as Uranus makes a series of 7 squares to Pluto. As I was writing this, news came through of Margaret Thatcher’s death. That certainly symbolises the end of an era. People generally love her or hate her, even now, 22 years after she left power. I didn’t hate her. I didn’t like her, and wouldn’t have wanted her round for dinner, but I think she did a basic housekeeping job that needed doing, that only she had the ruthlessness to do. The books needed to be balanced, and power taken from the unions. She wasn’t kind, she was patronising and simple-minded, but I think in politics you can need to think in black and white terms to get a job done. She saw herself as on the side of good against evil, just as Tony Blair came to do.

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Saturn rising in Scorpio, co-ruled by Mars and Pluto in square to each other, and Sun in square to Pluto: there is the ruthlessness and the fight to the death. Darth Vader. With Pluto/Scorpio, purging is the theme, and being nice is a luxury. Some politicians have called her a 'force of nature', which is very Scorpio. That connection to 'gut instinct' gives unusual strength. I think it's hard not be impressed by that sort of force of character.

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When she came to power in 1979, Pluto was conjoining her Libra Sun, and that set the tone for her premiership. Pluto went on to conjoin her Saturn/Asc towards the end of her time in office. With Tony Blair, Neptune was the theme: the spin, the religiosity and the eventual reputation as a liar.

With natal Neptune conjunct her Midheaven, people saw what they wanted to see - or what she wanted them to see. With Moon there as well, it is a good placement for connecting to the public, which she certainly did: everyone seemed to feel strongly about her. And so much of it was and is projection: she is either the Redeemer (David Cameron: "She saved the nation") or the devil incarnate ("Ding dong the witch is dead"). Classic Neptune stuff.

Towards the end of her time on power, she lost her touch: like Blair, she no longer felt she had to court the public. Moon in Leo conjunct MC: the 'royal we'. When her son had a child, she announced "We are a grandmother". That was the point at which some members of her cabinet felt she had lost it. Like Reagan, I suspect she had early Alzheimers while still in office, because of the increasingly intolerant, black and white way she saw things.

Thatcher had a couple of classic transits around her death: Neptune conjunct IC (‘the end of life’) and Saturn Return in the sign of Scorpio. And one that perhaps only she would have had, Uranus in Mars-ruled Aries exactly opposite her natal Mars: there goes a warrior, for better or for worse.

Maybe I'll leave the last word to Giscard D'Estaing, President of France at the time, who said; "I do not like her. She is not a man and she is not a woman."