THE ROYAL ECLIPSES

As someone pointed out on my blog last week, not only was Prince William born on an eclipse, but both his father’s marriages took place on eclipses – total eclipses! You start to think that maybe Prince Charles consults an astrologer. I wouldn’t put it past him, because he is quite an open-minded guy who goes his own way. It is very difficult to carve out your own life if you are a British Royal, but he has managed to do so. I’d put it down to his Leo Rising, which stands in contrast (in his case) to his conservative Sun and Moon in Scorpio and Taurus respectively. Leo-Aquarius is the axis of individuality, that enables us to break free of the expectations of everyone around us.

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Because Charles has Leo-Aquarius on his Asc-Desc, this tendency is basic to who he is. And to William’s Mum Diana, who had Moon in Aquarius opposite Uranus. Not so William, where I’d say it is just a part of him. Uranus the rebel (which rules Aquarius) is opposite his Mercury and Venus, so he can be quite individual/original in his thinking and his relationships. We have yet to see it in his thought (though Neptune will be activating that over the next few years), but by marrying a ‘commoner’ he has done something Uranian in his relationships. So that Uranus is active. But it only seems Uranian to William’s young eyes. Kate has a deeply conventional and ambitious chart (without strong contacts to William’s), and I think before long William will be wondering what he has done (though we probably won’t get to hear about it.)

Uranus will be squaring William’s Moon (wife) at 5 Cancer through to the end of 2012. Uranus is the awakener. I think Kate will change now she has got what she has wanted for so many years, and I think William is going to be wondering who he has married. The next 2 years are going to be difficult and unsettled for him in his marriage. You do not want to get married with a hard Uranus-Moon transit coming up (or Uranus-Venus for that matter.)

It is interesting that Diana died in 1997 as Pluto was finishing a hard transit to William’s Venus-Uranus opposition, and now he gets married as Neptune is finishing a hard transit to his Venus-Uranus. It connects the two events. And his Venus is also closely conjunct Chiron, so there is a wound here. His Mum’s death and the trauma of it have affected his choice of partner. He is seeking healing. It is unconscious, and Kate looks like she fits the bill. Put another way, if one of your parents is absent or dysfunctional or just completely unlike you, you may not learn how to relate to members of that sex, who to trust and who not to trust, and you may have to learn the hard way. Also, with Moon in Aquarius in a t-square with Venus and Uranus, Diana was deeply unconventional and unsettled and wanting to break free. It’s like William has instinctively chosen the opposite of Diana, because it was that desire to be free that resulted in her death. And, in the strange way that fate seems to work, William’s marriage may well end up with him feeling trapped like his Mum did. But how else do we learn?

Back to the Royal Eclipses. Eclipses are not as powerful as they used to be, because we now know when they are going to happen, and we don’t get to see most of them, either because they are only visible somewhere else, or if you are British because of the weather.

In earlier times they would have been an unexpected event that upset the basic course of nature, that plunged the world into semi-darkness during the day. How strange, how awesome, what are the gods trying to tell us, what great event does it portend?

Astrology has lost touch with the raw power of observed celestial events as it has retreated into the mathematics that makes those celestial events predictable. At the same time, a richness of symbolism has developed, facilitated by that predictability, which contains its own sense of awe and wonder. But it has kind of left eclipses, the most powerful event of all, as the poor relation. Eclipses are catalysts, often powerful ones, but they do not occur regularly enough or in short enough cycles to get the kind of attention and worked through symbolism that, say, the Uranus-Jupiter conjunction would receive.

That said, Bernadette Brady has done a lot for eclipses in her book Predictive Astrology. Eclipses come in Saros Cycles, which can last up to 1500 years, and the various solar and lunar eclipses that occur in a year will belong to a number of different cycles. So you have to go long-term historical to make sense of these series.

An eclipse cycle begins as a partial eclipse and builds over centuries into a total eclipse and then begins to fade again. So a total eclipse, when it occurs, has been growing for a very long time and has a corresponding depth and power to it. An eclipse, and particularly a total eclipse, that impacts your chart is going to have a very powerful effect on you.

So Charles got married on 2 total eclipses, which is an extraordinary bit of timing. These marriages really were/are about something. One way of interpreting an eclipse, which Brady uses, is to look at the chart for the 1st eclipse of that series, because that is how astrology works: it is about everything being contained in beginnings, which makes astrology a Scorpionic, rather than an Aquarian, art.

So Charles’ 1st marriage, which occurred on 29 July 1981, 2 days before the eclipse. This eclipse cycle began in 1639.

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Brady’s interpretation using midpoints contains the following: “Unexpected events involving friends or groups place a great deal of pressure on personal relationships… the individual would be wise not to make any hasty decisions since information is distorted and possibly false.”

Well, Charles was really in love with Camilla, Diana didn’t know this – and Charles was maybe also kidding himself – and this put an intolerable strain on their relationship.

Charles’ 2nd marriage took place on 9th April 2005, the day after a total eclipse. This eclipse cycle began in 1103.

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This eclipse took place in Libra, opposite Pluto and on the Venus Mars midpoint. Brady says it all:

“A very sensual family of eclipses, ranging from sudden sexual passions and lust to birth and procreative drives. This series is not subtle, and can catch people off guard and confront them with their own very deep passions which may have been hidden for many years.”

Finally, we have the eclipse under which William was born. It was not total, in fact it is part of a series that ends quite soon, in 2036, having begun in 792.

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It is a coincidence that the Sun and Moon are just a few degrees off the eclipse under which William was born, but it does emphasise the importance of the cycle for him.

Using Sun-Moon-Jupiter on the Mars-Uranus midpoint, and Mercury on the Venus-Saturn midpoint, Brady says this:

“This is a difficult eclipse family, as its members bring unfortunate news concerning friendships or relationships. You will be dealing with ideas of separation or the ending of a union. However, although the picture may look glum as the eclipse takes effect, the actual results are quite positive. You will quickly grasp what has to be done and fast action can bring good results. The theme of this eclipse is action concerning personal relationships.”

We’ve dramatically seen the effect of this eclipse once already, with the death of Diana. It could equally well point to an ending with Kate, and that could be early in the marriage (“You will quickly grasp what has to be done” – combine this with William’s Uranus-Moon transit over the next year.)

There is the broader issue of the monarchy itself, because as Brady has pointed out, this series began 10 years before King Egbert, who was the first king to (briefly) unite England, came to the throne. So this eclipse series could end with some sort of ending for the monarchy, in 2036 + or - 10 years. There isn’t a big republican movement in England, and it seems unlikely that we would want rid of our kings and queens. But it’s perfectly possible that Scotland or Australia, for example, could do so. Scotland going republican would be a particularly big event, because it would suggest a break-up of the UK itself.

William and Not-So-Innocent Kate

I'm down with the lurg at the moment, but I can just about bring myself to comment briefly on the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton. He gave her Princess Diana's engagement ring. Bad move, and perhaps it would have seemed churlish to Kate to have said, "Very sweet of you, but no thanks, I'd like my own engagement ring. I don't want there to be 3 people in this marriage." (As Diana said about her marriage.)

As his Mum died while he was still young, no doubt William is seeking a mother figure, and that's OK because people bring all sorts of stuff to their marriages. Kate has Moon in Cancer so will be able to supply that need. What she doesn't need is to be carrying, through the ring, everything Diana stood for.

It is traditional to use the grandmother's, not the mother's, engagement ring, and you can see the sense in that, because it gives a sense of family and continuity in a much less loaded way.

Here's some of what I wrote 3 years ago when William and Kate had just split up (for 3 months, as it turned out):

People in the UK are divided about the monarchy, but perhaps less than they think they are, because the attachment to it runs deep. I’m in favour of the monarchy, not because I ‘believe’ in it, but because I think it takes some of the weight of projection off the Prime Minister. It seems to be part of human nature that we collectively assign semi-divine qualities to certain people and then worship them – and celebrities catch a lot of this, which many of them are only too happy to do – so the more we can take this off our political leaders so that they can get on with the job of running the country, the better. Though the USA broke with Britain and its monarchy 234 years ago, some of its roots are still here, and we can see that in the ongoing level of interest in Princess Diana – and even in ‘Fergie’, the ex-wife of Prince Andrew, who managed to get her own TV show in the USA.

Prince William is 24 years old and currently in the army, with which the Royal family has strong links. Before that he was at university for 4 years, where in 2003 he began a relationship with Kate Middleton, that lasted until a few weeks ago. It seems to have been him that ended the relationship. She was always portrayed as this straightforward middle-class girl who just happened to have met up with William at university, and for the last year or two the media had been endlessly predicting an engagement.

About a month ago I read a magazine article about her background. It wasn’t a critical article, but I found it revealing. Her family are well-off and live in Berkshire, near London. They have a mail order business. It turns out that her younger sister has been going out with a ‘wealthy aristocrat’ and shares a flat with a son of the Duke of Northumberland and a son of the Duke of Roxburghe. The Middleton family are also applying to have a coat of arms. In this light, Kate’s involvement with Prince William doesn’t look so innocent. Nor does her decision to attend far off St Andrew’s University, which no one from England usually attends, but where Prince William just happened to be going. Her previous relationship also just happened to end at a point where William was single, and it was probably a case of “He chased her until she caught him.”

Not that any of this was probably very conscious in her, young as she was. Kate Middleton was born on 9 January 1982 (no birth time), and what stands out very strongly in the chart is Sun in Capricorn square to Saturn-Pluto and quite possibly making a t-square to Moon in Cancer. This woman thinks hierarchically through and through, a high social position is very important to her. And important to her family. She didn’t want to marry William, she wanted to marry a Prince, and she thought she’d landed one. Not that she would have seen it like that. She was also no doubt doing exactly what her family wanted and expected her to do, without anything needing to be said.

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Since university she seems to have fiddled around in London, having recently taken up a pseudo-job through family connections, but in reality waiting for her real goal to unfold: marriage to the Prince. Kate's chart also suggests the possibility of real achievement, rather than the mere pursuit of status, so you never know, this knock-back might change something for her.

Now 3 years later it turns out that they are engaged, I don't think that the power-seeking and status-seeking that is so clear in the chart will serve her well in the long term. It didn't serve Fergie well (Prince Andrew's ex), but she seems to have learnt something from it. The Royal Family is a particular tribe that, for better or for worse, is comfortable with what it is, and would not respond well to those who are there for 'aspirational' reasons. All the same, Kate will not yield now she is in there, and her chart suggests she will be the most powerful member of the Royal Family once she is Queen.

The word 'aspirational' has become a bit of a ghastly euphemism. By the way, the Navajo word for ambition means 'crazy about being rich.'

PRINCE WILLIAM AND HIS LOVE-LIFE

First of all, many thanks to Melody and Lynn for posting their blogs here while I was away. I've enjoyed reading them. I was camping for a few days at an organic farm on Bodmin Moor. The weather was crap, as it has been in England all summer. It's something to do with El Nino. But I did manage to read Tom Wolfe's novel "I am Charlotte Simmons", about a very bright country hick from the mountains of North Carolina, who goes to a posh university and who begins to flunk her grades, because she finds another way of being seen as 'special': dating one of the basketball stars. It starts off with her being terribly disapproving of sex and alcohol, and you think she might be starting on some sort of deeper journey of liberation, but no, it turns out that underneath it all this moralising country hick is just as shallow as all the people she once disapproved of.

Which brings me on to the subject of Prince William and Kate Middleton. These two split up 3 months ago and now they are back together again. As I argued in an earlier blog, I think Miss Middleton is on the make - like Charlotte and her basketball star - but I don't think she's aware of it for a moment, and nor is Prince William, bless him; and the media, for once, seem to think it would be going a step too far to say that Miss Middleton's motives are anything less than pure. I don't hold this against Miss Middleton, because there are thousands like her, and in certain backgrounds (like my own), this is seen as perfectly normal, even desirable behaviour.

One look at Prince William's transits, however, tells me there there is no way this relationship is going to last, not at his age.

Prince William: 21 June 1982 21:03 London UK

Prince William is currently going through the biggest period of change of his life so far. Pluto is currently conjoining his ASC at 27 Sag, and over the next few years will oppose his Sun and Moon in early Cancer. He is becoming a very different person, the Prince William of his adult years who we have yet to encounter. Not many relationships begun at a young age can withstand this sort of change: it is time to move on. More than this, William's Sun and Moon are in the 7th House of Relationships, so the Pluto transit will be particularly transforming this area of his life; and his Venus is at 25 Taurus, which Neptune will be squaring over the next couple of years - again transforming his love-life.

What is noticeable about William's chart is the degree to which relationships are going to define his life: Sun and Moon in the 7th, and a strongly aspected Venus, being closely conjunct Chiron and in a yod with Pluto and Neptune/ASC. Also, with Sun and Moon opposite Neptune, as well as Neptune Rising, it may be hard for him to find a full sense of himself outside of a strong relationship. This may be to some extent a weakness, but it may also be just how he is built. This may be why he is currently back with Kate: it is helping give him back his sense of who he is.

There is a LOT going on for william in the area of relationships, and it is going to be fascinating watching it unfold over the coming years. It is not quite so common for men to be defined by their relationships, but it looks like William will be. As was his mother, Princess Diana, who had Venus one degree off William's at 24 Taurus. And, interestingly, as was his great-great uncle, Edward VIII (Duke of Windsor), who in 1936 abdicated the throne for an American divorcee, Wallis Simpson: he had Venus at 23 Taurus (unaspected, so it was hard to integrate into the rest of his life), and Sun at 2.20 Cancer, bang on Prince William's Sun-Moon midpoint.

Duke of Windsor: 23/6/1894 21.55 London UK

In terms of major aspects to planets, Prince William's Venus merely makes a wide, out-of-sign opposition to Uranus, so again it is not unlike the Duke of Windsor's unaspected Venus. And they both have star quality. The Duke of Windsor as a young man made royalty sexy, and so does William (Prince Charles may be guilty of many things, but not this particular sin!)

With Sun and Moon in conservative, family oriented Cancer, Prince William feels at home in the circumscribed life of the Royal Family (an institution which the playwright David Hare once described as "a very expensive way of being cruel to a small group of people.")

And what might this yod to Venus mean? With outer planets at the base of the yod, I think that one meaning is that Prince William's love life is fated to be circumscribed by the demands of the collective. The conjunction of Venus to Chiron suggests that he will experience this as wounding, and for him there will be resonances of his mother's marriage (Diana's Venus being conjunct William's), and the unbridgeable gap between his parents. What Diana did not understand was that her marriage took place in order to meet a collective need, as royal marriages have always done, and it is therefore naive to expect personal fulfillment, but by the same token perfectly acceptable to have lovers.

Prince William does not have the chart of a rebel, although with his weak Venus-Uranus opposition, he may wriggle a bit against the sort of marriage expected of him. With Aquarius Rising, and Mars in Aries square to his Sun, the Duke of Windsor had a lot more rebellion in him. But being so family oriented, and marriage oriented (7th House Sun and Moon), the traditional type of royal marriage may be very painful for William.

With Neptune Rising in Sag, Jupiter on the Midheaven, and his mother's Venus, we will all come to love William. He will be able to live comfortably within the tradition he has grown up in - not necessarily a sin! - and will be very focussed on his wife and family. But with Venus conjunct Chiron, there may be a secret heartache of not being free to marry who he wanted. At the same time, being so Cancerian, he will really try to make his family work.

PRINCE WILLIAM

Today's blog is also being posted at astrodynamics while Lynn has a short vacation. As she is American, and as the Queen has just visited the US (obliging George Bush to hold his first white tie dinner), I thought I’d say a few things about Prince William, the Queen's grandson and second in line to the throne. If he lives long enough, he will become King.

People in the UK are divided about the monarchy, but perhaps less than they think they are, because the attachment to it runs deep. I’m in favour of the monarchy, not because I ‘believe’ in it, but because I think it takes some of the weight of projection off the Prime Minister. It seems to be part of human nature that we collectively assign semi-divine qualities to certain people and then worship them – and celebrities catch a lot of this, which many of them are only too happy to do – so the more we can take this off our political leaders so that they can get on with the job of running the country, the better. Though the USA broke with Britain and its monarchy 231 years ago, some of its roots are still there, and we can see that in the ongoing level of interest in Princess Diana – and even in ‘Fergie’, the ex-wife of Prince Andrew, who managed to get her own TV show in the USA.

Prince William is 24 years old and currently in the army, with which the Royal family has strong links. Before that he was at university for 4 years, where in 2003 he began a relationship with Kate Middleton, that lasted until a few weeks ago. It seems to have been him that ended the relationship. She was always portrayed as this straightforward middle-class girl who just happened to have met up with William at university, and for the last year or two the media had been endlessly predicting an engagement.

About a month ago I read a magazine article about her background. It wasn’t a critical article, but I found it revealing. Her family are well-off and live in Berkshire, near London. They have a mail order business. It turns out that her younger sister has been going out with a ‘wealthy aristocrat’ and shares a flat with a son of the Duke of Northumberland and a son of the Duke of Roxburghe. The Middleton family are also applying to have a coat of arms. In this light, Kate’s involvement with Prince William doesn’t look so innocent. Nor does her decision to attend St Andrew’s University, all the way up in Scotland, where Prince William just happened to be going. Her previous relationship just happened to end at a point where William was single, and it was probably a case of “He chased her until she caught him.”

Not that any of this was probably very conscious in her, young as she was. Kate Middleton was born on 9 January 1982 (no birth time), and what is screaming out from the chart is Sun in Capricorn square to Saturn-Pluto and quite possibly making a t-square to Moon in Cancer. This woman thinks hierarchically through and through, a high social position is very important to her. And important to her family. She didn’t want to marry William, she wanted to marry a Prince, and she thought she’d landed one. Not that she would have seen it like that. She was also no doubt doing exactly what her family wanted and expected her to do, without anything needing to be said. Since university she seems to have fiddled around in London, having recently taken up a pseudo-job through family connections, but in reality waiting for her real goal to unfold: marriage to the Prince. Kate's chart also suggests the possibility of real achievement, rather than the mere pursuit of status, so you never know, this knock-back might change something for her.

So it may be that William has had a lucky escape, even though he might not yet see it like this, and the experience may help him avoid the mistake his father made in marrying Diana: Charles was under pressure to produce an heir, and Diana was aged 20 and clueless (like many of us at that age) about what she was doing.

Prince William was born on 21 June 1982 at 21.03 in London, England. His chart is striking, with a Sun-Moon conjunction in Cancer on the Gemini Desc opposite Neptune Rising in Sag. With this chart, William will have unusual abilities to involve himself with others in a compassionate and nurturing way. Relationships with others, whether with a big or small ‘R’, will be central to him, they will be how he comes to know himself. With Jupiter on the Midheaven trining his Sun (a charmed aspect for a King), he will probably be very popular and loved by the people – “the people’s prince”, in the way that Tony Blair called his mother "the people’s princess" after she was killed. Like his mother, he has Sun in Cancer and Sag Rising, and he will have the burden of being not just William but also Diana’s son, Diana resurrected.

This is pointing to his Neptune Rising, which may make it difficult for people to see him as he is. Amongst other things, they will see Diana. And while his Sun-Moon in the 7th will on the one hand be his path to self-knowledge, Neptune Rising is also saying that he can lose himself in his ability to involve and give himself to others.

The next few years will be defining for him, as Pluto first crosses his ASC (this year) then opposes his Sun (next year) and then opposes his Moon (2010). We don’t yet have much idea of who William is – and nor does he, probably – but we certainly will in a few years time. It is not the chart of a soldier (unlike his younger brother Harry - see my posting of 1st May - who has Sun in the 8th square Mars in Sag), so he probably won’t stay in the army for very long. What William HAS been good at so far is staying out of the public eye (relatively speaking) and leading as normal a life as he can before he is drawn into public life: he clearly has some idea how to use his Neptune Rising to his advantage, as a cloak of invisibility.

Prince William was also born on an eclipse. Eclipses occur in series, known as Saros Series, that run for up to around 1400 years. The first eclipse in the cycle sets the character for the whole cycle, so Prince William’s life will reflect this first eclipse, which occurred on June 24 792AD at 6.03 GMT. This chart has a Sun-Moon conjunction (naturally) at 6 Cancer, close to William’s Sun-Moon conjunction at 0 – 5 Cancer, emphasising William’s connection to this series.

In her interpretation of the chart for this series, Bernadette Brady says: “This is a difficult eclipse family, as its members bring unfortunate news concerning friendships or relationships [me: or family - Cancer]. You will be dealing with ideas of separation or the ending of a union. However, although the picture may look quite glum as the eclipse takes effect, the actual results are quite positive. You will quickly grasp what has to be done and fast action can bring quick results. The theme of this eclipse is action concerning personal relationships.”

The aspects Brady uses for her interpretation are: Sun-Moon-Jupiter conjunct Mars/Uranus midpoint; and Mercury conjunct Venus/Saturn midpoint.

The death of his mother Diana in 1997 indicates that Prince William is indeed connected to this eclipse series, and we may see it in action again if his brother Harry goes to Iraq, which any good astrologer would advise him against. (Listen, Harry!) Next year not only does William have transiting Pluto opposing his family-oriented Cancer Sun, but Pluto will also be squaring his 3rd House cusp – siblings – at 0 Aries.

This Saros Series is coming to an end. It began in 792, around the time of what was arguably the beginning of the British monarchy (King Ecgberht in 802 AD). It will end in 2036, when William is 54 years old, and the monarchy as we know it may end around then, particularly if we consider the interpretation given above for the series (“ending of a union.”) On the other hand, the eclipse chart also suggests the ability to “quickly grasp what has to be done and fast action can bring quick results.” So William may successfully adapt to the changes.

I have taken my eclipse material from Brady’s ‘The Eagle and the Lark’, published 1992 by Weiser.