Pope Francis and the Madonna

I bought some astro-dice off Amazon recently. There are 3 of them, one for the planets, one for the signs and one for the houses. And you ask a question. Or you raise an issue. And the throw of the dice will help you talk around it. I threw them a few nights ago, being in a bit of Aquarian ‘outsider’ self-doubt. The dice gave me Moon in in Aries in the 2^nd House. Feel (Moon) the value (2nd House) of how you want to do things, your own fresh vision (Aries.) And that turned it around for me. A week later I suddenly feel like I’ve got a lot to say.

But that’s not what this piece is about. It’s about that ultimate insider, the Pope. The 9^th House in a chart is religion, universities, travel, legal matters. And you often find a planet there in the charts of religious leaders. And that planet says something important about the nature of their religious leadership.

The Pope’s predecessor Benedict, as well as the Dalai Lama, have Saturn in the 9^th. A classic placement for a conservative religious leader. The Dalai Lama seems to be one of the good guys, but in his public role he will stand up for the tradition, like the time in San Francisco when he condemned homosexuality when he was put on the spot. Pope John Paul II, Benedict’s predecessor, had Pluto in the 9^th. Under his leadership the paedophile priest cover-up was legitimised, and there were persistent rumours that his predecessor, John Paul I, who only lasted a couple of months as Pope, had been murdered.

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The new Pope, Francis I, has an empty 9^th, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be there. How many people with successful careers have an empty 10^th House? Lots. You can look to other factors, and in the case of the 9^th House we can look to the planet and sign associated with the House, Jupiter and Sagittarius. And Francis has Sun conjunct Node in Sagittarius conjunct Jupiter in Capricorn. And the ruler of the 9^th, Neptune, is square to the Sun. And Jupiter is also opposite his Ascendant and trine his MC.

Houses are not the same as signs. You can, however, see them as the inner and outer faces of the same thing, signs being inner and houses being outer. And inner and outer are not rigidly separate categories, in fact they are profoundly interconnected, at a deeper level they are the same thing. Otherwise how could the planets (outer) describe our inner states? I think it’s a matter of emphasis.

So this is a guy with a strong ‘spiritual’ quest, a search for meaning: Sun in Sag conjunct Jupiter. With Jupiter in Capricorn, he is likely to pursue his quest through traditional, institutional means. And with Sun conjunct the North Node, this quest for meaning is absolutely central to who he is, it is where he learns what he needs to learn, and life will have a habit of throwing him in situations where the issue is forced. Like being Pope!

Sun in Sag conjunct Jupiter and square to Neptune. He has both Jupiter and Neptune impacting powerfully on his Sun-Node. Both look to the absolute, but with Jupiter it is philosophy and ideas and doctrine, whereas with Neptune it is experience, it is mysticism. So he has a mystical streak in him, but Jupiter is more powerful, being also the dispositor of his Sun. So he is more of a doctrine man than a mystic, and Jupiter in Capricorn makes him quite traditional.

But he has another side to him: Moon-Venus in Aquarius square to Uranus on the MC. That is powerful and unconventional. His Sun-Jupiter can be quite rigid and doctrinaire, but Moon-Venus gives a pronounced feminine quality, a deep capacity for sympathy and artistic sensibility. It is kind of the opposite to having a Sun-Mars conjunction, the 2 masculine planets. (Advice: never argue with a Sun-Mars!)

His Moon-Venus is also in Aquarius in the 7^th, and when I first saw it, and the placement of Uranus, I thought we have an unconventional Pope here, but because of his doctrinal conservatism, I was left puzzled.

But now he has done it. A few days ago he announced “Who am I to judge gays?” He still considers homosexual acts to be a sin, though not the orientation. But it’s still amazing coming from the mouth of a Pope. I’m not sure it’s possible to read gayness from a chart, though one might expect Aquarius-Uranus because it is unconventional, particularly 77 years ago when the Pope was born. So he may be speaking for himself.

 When I saw his Moon-Venus I also thought I bet he’s a worshipper of the Madonna, and then I found it in Wiki: ”In Germany he saw the painting Mary Untier of Knots in Augsburg and brought a copy of the painting to Argentina where it has become an important Marian devotion.”

Looking through his life, there isn’t the same dirty background that his predecessors had. Pope Benedict, as Cardinal Ratzinger under Pope John-Paul II, was not just his doctrinal enforcer but masterminded the cover-up of paedophile priests.

There is an allegation that Francis could have done more to help a priest who had been imprisoned and tortured during the Dirty War in Argentina (his country) during the 1970s, but who knows, it was such a difficult situation to be in, and the reports about him generally are much more favourable in terms of who he helped in those times. What is striking about Francis is his genuine sympathy for minorities and for other faiths, he really does seem to respect them, and he’s willing to go out on a limb like a true Aquarian. The ‘gay’ announcement is in line with his previous history.

So this Moon-Venus in Aquarius square Uranus-MC is going to strongly influence his Papacy, allowing for radical action while softening and humanising the religious nutter side of Sun-Jupiter! The Moon is also the chart ruler, adding to its prominence. Aquarius gives a political, airy edge to the Moon-Venus, it can stop it being sentimental. So this is the type of Papacy I think we will see: one that is on the one hand quite traditional, but also one with heart, one that is human, and one that will reform the Church. 

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In his Progressed Chart, the Asc is about to change sign into Scorpio and gradually move into opposition with Uranus. So he will be personally prepared to address the darker issues facing the church, and to take radical action. In the coming years, the Prog MC and Pluto will approach each other, meaning that over time he will be able to translate this personal expression (Prog Asc) into results within the church.

Black Madonna

Another area of progress, due to his Moon-Venus, is likely to be women. I never quite know what to make of the Dark Moon (the other focus in the Moon’s elliptical path around the Earth), but it is at 8 Scorpio in Francis’ Chart, forming a t-square with Moon-Venus and Uranus. I heard someone describing it recently as women’s repressed sexuality, that really they have more desire than men and are only monogamous because they are conditioned to be. There’s something in that, though I don’t entirely agree with it. But in the context of the Church, Francis’ Dark Moon in Scorpio, his Black Madonna, seems at this stage to be about moving the church towards equal status for women, and to some extent taking their point of view - he does, after all, have a Moon-Venus conjunction, he's probably more feminine than most women..

“In one of his most important speeches delivered in Rio, Francis described the church in feminine terms, saying it would be “sterile” without women. Asked what role he foresaw, he said the church must develop a more profound role for women in the church, though he said “the door is closed” to ordaining women to the priesthood.”

So it’s a bit like the gay thing, move forward a bit, but not too much. Political. And maybe that’s what he believes as well, who knows.

For all its mutability, Sagittarius at its worst is the sign of the religious fanatic and fundamentalist. And fanaticism and fundamentalism are the norm for the Catholic hierarchy, but we can neglect to think that because of the walls of normality and respectability with which it is surrounded.

And let’s face it, there is a load of tosh you need to believe if you are to get anywhere in the Catholic Church. And Francis is no doubt an ardent believer in most of this tosh. As an educated Sagittarius, he knows philosophy, enough not to fall for this nonsense. And I think there is a battle between his Sun and his Moon (even though they do not aspect each other.) His Sun has him believing nonsense like it’s OK to be gay as long as you aren’t sexually active, and that women shouldn’t be priests (though why any sane woman would want to be an RC priestess I don’t know.) Whereas his Aquarian Moon, in its conjunction to Venus, in the 7^th and ruling the Asc, takes people as they come, has deep sympathy for people as they are and modifies his doctrinal thinking accordingly. And I think the interfaith thing he has comes from his Moon.

So he is this mixture, but then which of us isn’t? He is the child of Italian immigrants to Argentina, he was born in 1936 to a Catholicism that was nearly 2000 years old. And for all its faults, it gives you faith in something that is beyond the banality of the world that science reduces us to, it has deep roots, and with all its saints there is a polytheism there which goes back to Roman times, and with its forgiveness of sins, well you can enjoy yourself, do what you want and then just do a bit of penance. It is quite different to Protestantism. With Sun in Sag and Moon in Aquarius, Francis is probably highly intelligent, intellectually at any rate. But it’s probably those emotional roots (Moon conj Venus, Scorpio IC) and the presence of faith (Sun-Jupiter) which have done it for him, swayed him into accepting some absurd beliefs.

But overall, who is worse off, the nihilist who can justify logically everything he thinks, or the believer in tosh who has a deep emotional experience of the numinous? Actually, I think tosh isn’t quite the right word, because it assumes that the believer takes the Bible story literally, and any myth taken literally is tosh. But if you don’t take it literally, take it as real, yes, see it with your inner vision like Blake did, then Adam and Eve, and God creating the world in 7 days, have quite a lot going for them. At least you can turn them into an inner vision, which you can't with our modern Creation Myths, the Big Bang and Evolution. Though I’ve had a bit of a go using astrology – Pluto as the immense power behind the Big Bang, Neptune as the Universe dreamed into being, Uranus the creative spark that lit the touch-paper.

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There is a bigger picture. The Christian Era began at midnight on 1 Jan 0001 AD. The Sun was at 9.30 Capricorn, square to Mars at 11 Aries. Mars shows the evangelical, crusading, Holy War element in Christianity. Onward Christian Soldiers. Capricorn shows its deeply conservative nature, its ability to build a lasting tradition. Capricorn is also the sign of the Spirit crucified on the Cross of Matter – and the esoteric meaning of this is the need to unify spirit and matter, rather than seeing matter as a limitation, the exoteric meaning. This is why Capricorns at best are magicians, shamans: they bring spirit into matter and things happen, how did he pull that one off? It is the source of their talent.

Sun in Cap conjunct Dark Moon: there is the repression of women on the one hand, and the grudging admittance via the Virgin Mary.

And the Christian Sun is currently being conjoined by Pluto, which only happens every 240 years or so, and is the biggest transformational transit possible. 2 cycles ago, it brought about the Reformation, and it doesn’t get much bigger than that.

A Pluto transit brings out underlying issues that have been building up, the unacknowledged ‘shadow’. 500 years ago the transit caused a split in the Church. That isn’t what is happening now in the Catholic Church (though it has created one in the Anglican Church over the gay issue.)

The shadow it has brought out is the way the Catholic Church has historically treated children, women and gays, and I think would continue to do so, unless it had come up against societies where this behaviour is no longer acceptable. Make no mistake, the Church is only looking at its abuse of children because it has been forced to do so from outside. And the same for the relegation of women and the denunciation of gays.

So the wider context in which Francis has become Pope is that the Church is at the end of a transiting conjunction from Pluto to its natal Sun. And that is a time when change can happen. The issues have been raised and denied and to some extent addressed. And now we see a Pope with on the one hand a traditionally minded Sun-Jupiter, and on the other a revolutionary and very human Moon-Venus-Uranus, starting to make official inroads into the church’s historical position. He seems to have the chart for the job. He will bring about change, but within the limits that are acceptable to himself and to the Church. The fact that the Cardinals elected him suggests that though change has been forced from without, a seed of something genuine has nevertheless been woken from within, which is classically what Pluto does.