A Tale of Two Whistleblowers: Edward Snowden and Julian Assange

Last week I noticed that Eric Francis had written a blog on Edward Snowden, his birth time having recently come to light. I thought well I’d like to write something, but I’m not going to look at Eric’s analysis beforehand. So here goes.

My first impulse is to compare him to that other world-famous whistleblower, Julian Assange. I think I want a term other than whistleblower, because it implies that Snowden and Assange are heroes speaking out against wrongdoing, and I don’t think it’s as simple as that.

You can imagine the essay title: “Are there any circumstances under which it is right to reveal your country’s secrets?” Discuss in 900-1000 words. On my Facebook it is usually less nuanced: Snowden is a hero. No-one calls him a traitor.

Snowden revealed the fact that the US government is engaged in mass surveillance to a much greater degree than was known about. And that he didn’t want to live in such a country, which was why he revealed the info. He didn’t reveal the content of such surveillance.

This was very different to Julian Assange, an Australian who revealed American secrets en masse, and it was all content. What US ambassadors really thought of such and such a leader, details around agents in Afghanistan etc. And when confronted with the possible human consequences of his leaks, newspaper editors were shocked by Assange's coldness. The diplomatic cables: think about it, we may not like the US or Saudi Arabian governments or whatever, but peace is a fragile thing, and they are the governments we have, and to deliberately undermine the basis of communication between those countries seems to me very wrong. And it wasn’t even his own country, what business did he have doing that?

Assange has Sun in Cancer square to Uranus and trine to Moon in Scorpio. He is a cold, intellectual guy, but the wateriness of the chart suggests he is very emotionally driven and probably not very conscious of that either: his ideas about authority and the need to subvert it are rationalisations of a load of unresolved childhood stuff, I suspect. Like the fact that he lived as a child in a cult for a while where there were secrets. Moon in Scorpio. And now he reveals those secrets that the adults have. It may be as simple and as childish as that.

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This split from emotion is classic where Uranus is involved, where we see it in a square to the Sun. It gives genuine idealism, that can also be inhuman in its application.

As you can see, I have a definite view on Julian Assange!

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With Edward Snowden, it is less clear cut. Like Assange, he has Moon in Scorpio, so maybe he had childhood experiences around secrets that fuel him – but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

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But he is also very airy: Sun and Asc in Gemini. Assange has personal Air – Mars and Venus – but his basic nature is Water.

The birth time that Assange gives for himself is 3pm, which gives him Sagittarius Rising. If we go with that, then we have both Assange’s and Snowden’s personal expression – Asc – on what I call the Axis of Truth: Gemini-Sag. Sag tends to be more messianic than Gemini. But that is relative, for both have a Jupiter involvement with their Ascendants. Assange has Neptune-Jupiter conjunct Sag Asc, and Sun square Uranus; Snowden has Sun opposite Neptune and Asc opposite Uranus-Jupiter.

So in both cases not only do we see this ‘Axis of Truth’ but also Uranus – idealism, subversion of authority, breaking the rules; Jupiter gives a religious mission; and Neptune, which is what? We’ll come to that.

Not only is Snowden a double Gemini, but Mercury, the ruler of Gemini, is on his Asc opposite Uranus. I wouldn’t have given him a job in intelligence if I’d seen that Uranus, because Uranus finds it very hard to stay within the accepted rules. I might have given him a job as an agent working abroad, needing to find ingenious methods of spying. But even then, you’d never be quite sure if he was a double or triple agent, due to all that Gemini.

With someone like this, with all that Gemini talent, they can do an organisation a lot of good and then do it a lot of harm in a tricksy way, almost as if they are balancing light and dark, the 2 poles of Gemini.

And then Moon in Scorpio. Gemini-Scorpio is an even more tricksy combination. Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, also has Sun in Gemini and Moon in Scorpio. His Sun is conjunct Venus, and he is enormously popular, with the right joke for every occasion, he clowns around. And he has this darker side which keeps peeping through: Gemini has that anyway, but bring in Scorpio and you have it in spades. There are a string of incidents involving lying and extra-marital affairs and even one in which he appears to condone a violent act. And, I always feel, an element of the nasty right winger who will get the country up and running but who doesn’t really care about people.

So I think it is worth being circumspect around Edward Snowden. He has sacrificed himself – there’s Neptune! – and the understandable response of the authorities he has characterised as what happens when you “speak truth to power.” Snowden is young, he is just coming out of his Saturn Return – and he has certainly created a place in the world for himself, which is very Saturn Return, as well as idealistic Aquarian, the sign on the MC.

But that statement that he is speaking truth to power seems naïve and polarised and even a bit self-important. Governments need secrets. Corporations have commercial secrets, which they need to protect. Would it be ‘speaking truth to power’ to reveal them? And the same with governments. They need to be secretive, for example, if they are investigating criminal networks, whether it is bombers (not ‘terrorists’, which is a political term), drug importers, sex traffickers, money launderers, paedophile rings, illegal arms dealers, phishers, the mafia and the assorted cyber-criminals who are now using modern communication methods to advance their activities.

It is the government’s job to keep track of these people. The government is there to protect us from them, and would not be doing its job if it was not engaged in surveillance of this new electronic world that has opened up. If I start sending emails or texts with words like guns or nitroglycerine or child porn in them, I want a computer to pick up on that and pass it on to a person who can investigate further. I hope my government is doing that. Maybe the Edward Snowdens of this world don’t realise that there really are bad people out there, and always have been, who will do us immense harm if the government does not protect us, and that mobile phones and the internet are a way of organising themselves without detection – unless we have mass surveillance of those media.

It’s a choice of how we want to live, really. And it’s not a choice between government invasion of our privacy or a free society. It is a choice between mass computerised government surveillance and an increasingly dangerous society where criminals have much more power than they used to.

OK, so we don’t want our ‘privacy’ compromised. For some people that is much more of an issue than for others, some people won’t eg be on Facebook, not because they have anything to hide but because they don’t want information about themselves being picked up by google and governments.

It’s kind of understandable, especially if you are say more a private Scorpio than a tell-it-all Sagittarius. But remember what it was like even 100 years ago when most people lived in villages and everyone knew everyone’s business and if a crime was committed, there was probably a good chance everyone thought they knew who’d done it. Suffocating. I’d much rather today’s situation, where computers know much of my business and maybe a few people who I don’t actually know have looked through some of my stuff, maybe just because I am unwittingly friends with someone who is in turn unwittingly friends with someone dodgy on Facebook. But at least they won’t be GOSSIPING about me. 

That would be much worse. Living in a village and being GOSSIPED about because my hair is too long and I don’t work 9 to 5, and where I can’t advertise I’m an astrologer because that sad tosser in a skirt (the vicar) controls the local magazine (true) and where I could get suspected of crimes just for being different. (That said, it is also true that gossip is what makes life interesting.)

What Snowden revealed was the fact that much more surveillance of the US (and UK) public was going on than people knew about. I think he has probably done us a favour by doing that. It needs to be out in the open. But his reason for doing it is that he doesn’t want the surveillance to be happening to that extent. Quite possibly, he doesn’t want it to be happening at all, he seems like he could be that kind of idealist. Sun opposite Neptune, Uranus-Jupiter opp Asc. And as a double Gemini, he may change his mind in a few years.

Now let’s take the government’s side for a moment. We liberal, educated types can be anti-government, anti-authority in a way that is unthinking and in a way child-like. The US was even set up on an anti-authority/royalty basis (though they do seem to love William and Kate and don’t like Charles and many seem to have strong views on the succession) to an extent that it is very hard for its leader to actually lead, and where the anti-government feeling runs across the political spectrum in a way that it doesn’t in Britain. And where suspicion breeds suspicion.

But maybe the US government has some good reasons for engaging in domestic surveillance to the extent that it is, and some good reasons for not telling the public. Had any of us considered that?

And the reason is this: the mass surveillance necessary within the world of modern electronic communications has run ahead of the public’s willingness to accept such surveillance. So what should a government do? It is an urgent matter, for immense harm can and will be done in a short time by the various groups of people mentioned above. In the case of the US and UK governments, as Snowden revealed, they have gone ahead and engaged anyway with the sort of surveillance they thought was necessary. And I am grateful to them for that, I trust them because they have done that. This is the point at which I know I will lose quite a few subscriptions to my blog, but I know I can’t afford to think in those terms.

Of course, there will be abuses. The surveillance is happening anyway, it is here to stay, and the job of ordinary people is to press for it to be well regulated. In this sense Snowden has done us a favour (in the UK as well). Because the government felt it had to keep quiet about it, it meant the surveillance couldn’t be properly regulated. Even with good regulation, there will be abuses, even major systemic ones. The surveillance in a way is police work, and we know how corrupt police forces can get, and how you keep needing investigations which if we’re lucky have some sort of independence. But that doesn’t mean you do away with the police force, and I think it’s the same with surveillance.

As for the US bugging the EU and other countries, well I think they’re all at it, and it’s a case of all’s fair in love and war. First we heard it was the nasty Chinese stealing US commercial secrets, then we found out the US were themselves bugging the Chinese and EU, next thing we know it will be EU governments bugging the US and the Chinese and whoever else they can. This is a side issue, it’s international relations as usual. I don't think Snowden had the right to reveal what his government was up to in this respect.

And I also think he had no right to reveal the domestic surveillance, even though it may have done his country a favour. Or may not, who knows. I think if your government is out and out destructive like say a Nazi regime, then there is a case for that sort of betrayal. But America is in no way like that.

Governments are not just composed of idiots. Things happen for reasons, sometimes, frequently, idiotic things, particularly when the politicians are in charge. And issues are not clear cut. What Snowden did was a deep and serious matter. How many people did he consult before he did what he did? We don’t know of any. He has Sun-Mars conjunct in the 1st House, he acts on his own. With Moon in Scorpio, he certainly feels deeply. But does he think deeply? Not necessarily as a Gemini. In fact, he could be brilliant at rationalising his actions to suit what he feels, and with Neptune opposite his Sun, he may believe it. The Moon in Scorpio may be running the show, as indicated by tr Node passing over it right now.

If Snowden is allowed to reveal the secrets he’s not happy about, then surely everyone else has the right to reveal the secrets they are not happy about.

I can understand he doesn’t want that sort of mass electronic surveillance going on. But it’s not the one-sided issue he seems to present it as. There are good reasons for it, and we will all have our own viewpoint.

I think this is my big issue with him: what makes him think he has the right to take on his own a decision that affects all of us?

Maybe, though, there is a kind of fate at work. Gemini is the sign of facts (as opposed to their significance, which is Sagittarius). Snowden has Sun conjunct North Node in Gemini. There is something fated here around facts and information, that involves the collective (opposite Neptune.)

And the North Node is involved again by transit: it is about to conjoin his natal Moon in Scorpio. A time of reckoning around secrets, a theme of betrayal. And his Solar Return for last year has an applying t-square of Moon in Cancer, Uranus and Pluto. A betrayal (Pluto) of his homeland (Moon in Cancer). The astrology doesn’t tell us whether the betrayal is justified or not, we have to make those judgements ourselves.

I think it is hard with natal Sun opposite Neptune to know yourself without a broadened sense of who you are, maybe through an imaginative vocation, or maybe it is redemption through being a sacrifice to the collective. On a purely personal level, what Snowden has done is also part of his path of self-knowledge. An outer planet takes years, decades to start to understand. I feel there was a fated element to what Snowden did, like the collective needed someone to let it know what was going on. But I think it will take a long time for him to understand fully why he did what he did, and he may at times regret it.

I would like to know his personal history. Why the need to sacrifice himself (Sun opposite Neptune)? Were there secrets in his childhood (Moon in Scorpio)? It is like a Myth has hold of him that he is living out, and maybe the Fates ordained that. After all, he also has Uranus opposite Asc and Sun trine Saturn-Pluto: a lot of collective influence on his chart.

And, rather amazingly, a collective yod with Chiron in the 12th at the apex, Saturn-Pluto and Neptune at the base. Chiron is another planet of sacrifice and scapegoatery, and it's in the collective 12th House. Mars passed over his Chiron a week before the leaks were published on 6th June, showing the significance of this yod. Before that, the Sun passed over his Chiron on 20th May, the date he fled to Hong Kong.

In the near future, Saturn will cross his Moon. This will be his personal adjustment to his new circumstances, particularly home (Moon). Scorpio/Saturn could describe prison, or that very Scorpionic country to which he has just applied for asylum, Russia. The North Node has yet to cross his Moon, so there is more to unfold in this story of the revelation of national secrets.

It is interesting trying to analyse the chart of someone whose destiny has become so irrevocably tied up with the collective. He is not eg a politician who has the choice to step out of that. I don’t think an analysis is possible without considering that collective dimension, which is so much like Fate. He will never have the free will which we in the West like to think we have, but which is so dependent on material security.

In a way it’s not as if he has done something terrible. He just said what a lot of us probably suspected anyway, but now we know it. It is, at the same time, one of the biggest intelligence leaks in history, and I don’t think one individual has the right to do that to his country. On the other hand, as I said, maybe the collective wanted it and that was the way it had to happen. His Asc-Desc axis lines up along the US Asc-Desc axis.

 I’m left with a feeling of ambivalence in a way that I didn’t feel with Julian Assange. But then Snowden is a double Gemini with Mercury Rising. The trickster rules his Sun and Asc. Mercury has this way of tricking us into a deeper awareness, of causing secrets to be revealed, and maybe in that sense Snowden is a tool of the gods, and his personal destiny is not that relevant.

Snowden is also of our times in the sense that Pluto in Capricorn has the straightforward meaning of government (Capricorn) secrets (Pluto), and with Uranus currently in square to it, this exposure is kind of inevitable – it is a collective awakening (Uranus) to the shadow side (Pluto) of government (Capricorn). And Snowden’s 2012-13 SR Moon hard-aspects this collective movement.

But shadow side doesn’t mean ‘wrong’. It just means not acceptable to consciousness as it now is. It therefore means that what Snowden has done is part of the collective coming to terms with this aspect of what the government does on its behalf.

The type of betrayal of secrets that occurred with Snowden and Assange is new (Uranus in Aries): it is not about betraying one country to another, it is about betraying governments to the public, letting the people in on what is done on their behalf, in a way making the public more responsible (Capricorn) for what is done in its name.

The US particularly seems both idealistic about its form of government, yet deeply suspicious of the actual governments that idealism produces. Astrologically, this is described by natal Sun in Cancer in square to Saturn in Libra, which the Pluto-Uranus square is starting to hard-aspect. This is the wider context in which Snowden’s – and Assange’s – actions need to be seen. It may not be about the US government ceasing to do what governments have always done, but of the people realising that and finding a way of coming to terms with it.

ASTROLOGY VS ENGLAND’S STATELY HOMO*

Stephen Fry - light entertainer, national treasure, famous gay and guardian of our liberal values - has recently spoken of last year’s attempt (at least his 3^rd) to kill himself.

And here is what he has said about astrology:

Astrology is absolutely and without reservation

the bullest of bullshit that ever there was… I hate astrology with a fervour that is almost frightening. 

More on this later. 

But first, a look at his chart. I easily find written chart interpretations boring, like a sort of worthy list, so I’ll try not to do that!

This is a midday chart (no birth time). He has Virgo Sun and Leo Moon. I have always put him down as a Libra Rising (with Venus-Jupiter in Libra close by) because of his pronounced charm and considerateness and general reasonableness and knowledge of culture. Also his tendency to put on weight! (Jupiter Rising/conj Venus). And his strong beliefs – as the above quote suggests – again suggestive of Jupiter Rising, or at least 1^st House.

Early in his career Scorpio John Cleese (of Monty Python) said to Fry: “Politeness will be your downfall.” This is Libran.

Like Libra, Virgo Sun also has the self-effacing quality which is so noticeable in Fry. But also he has Leo Moon. Being the Moon, it is not so obvious in his manner, but he has managed to be in the limelight ever since he left university 30 years ago. So there is a hidden drive/need there.

Which we also see in Sun conjunct Mars/Pluto and square to Saturn. Beneath the urbanity and modesty (Virgo-Venus/Jupiter) this is a chart of a man with strong drives. Sun conjunct Mars gives an ability to know what he wants and to get it (a very masculine quality), while the square to Saturn means he wants to reach the top, to master what he does, and that however much he does, it will never feel like it is good enough.

Sun in Virgo is a self-critical sign, and if you add in the conjunction to Mars-Pluto and the square to Saturn, you have at worst an aggressive (Mars) self-hatred (Virgo-Pluto) based on self-doubt (Saturn/Pluto) that can be suicidal (Pluto).

Moon conjunct Uranus gives a separation from his feelings, an emotional instability, which is also the source of his original wit. This separation from his feelings, in the sense of what genuinely nourishes, is reflected in behaviour earlier in his career, where he used to stay up most of the night playing computer scrabble while consuming large quantities of vodka and cocaine – he says he did not realise at the time that this was not normal behaviour!

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I think Saturn in its square to the Sun is a bit of a key to Fry’s chart. Sun-Mars-Pluto in Virgo will usually tend to have troubles around self-hatred and disempowerment, and at best this stellium propels the individual into an inner journey of facing demons and finding deep resources within. Saturn at best can help with this journey, for Saturn is a guardian of solitude, he is the walls of the hermit’s cave.

But Saturn seems more naturally associated with the world, particularly in a society such as ours, where it is activity rather than contemplation which has the highest value.

With Sun square Saturn it is very hard not to think of oneself primarily in terms of one’s place in the world and to value oneself according to that place.

Fry is known for his relentless hard work which, in my opinion, is not associated with an artistic quest for depth, which could redeem him. Broadly speaking, he seems happy standing still: being the same sort of light entertainer over decades, and driving himself very hard at it.

Here is a guy who is unusually talented and cultured, but who I always feel is skimming over the surface of himself, avoiding depth both personally and artistically.

So I understand his Saturn as providing an escape route, through hard work and success, from his own demons. It is textbook, and as an astrologer you see it all the time. A classic example is the US, which also has Sun square to Saturn. Here we also see the almost overwhelming drive to work hard and ‘succeed’. But the inner dimension of its Cancerian Sun is hard for it to access: look, for example, at the struggle the US has had with healthcare, looking after its own people, in a way which in Europe we take for granted.

So in the case of Fry, as with many Sun square Saturns, the escape from oneself through work and reputation leaks. Others can see it. And in Fry’s case, it’s as if the whole enterprise is always threatening to collapse. As he said, he can be presenting the TV programme QI quite affably, while underneath he is feeling “I want to fucking die.”

About 7 years ago Stephen Fry made a 2 part Documentary in which he spoke about his manic depression, what is nowadays called bi-polar. He was very open about it, it was a moving documentary and I’m sure did a lot for people who suffer from the condition. He talked about the ‘mania’ on the one hand, how it was like being with the angels, he could stay up for nights and be tremendously productive and creative. And then the suicidal depression, looking at himself in the mirror and abusing himself verbally - piece of shit, cunt etc, that is what he calls himself. And he had one guy there (who had also tried to kill himself) saying that he wouldn’t want to give up his manic depression, because all the years of terrible despair are worth it just to experience those moments with the angels.

I wrote about it in one of my early blogs, and it was noticeable how Fry thought of his condition purely in bio-chemical terms. There is, it is said, something wrong with the chemistry of his brain that needs fixing. That may be the case, but it doesn’t exclude other ways of looking at it. Look at how much of his condition I was able to draw out of looking at his chart. Regardless of brain chemistry, there seems to be a dimension to this problem, involving escaping from his demons through work and reputation, that seems obvious from his life and his chart.

And from his transits. I know of 3 of his suicide attempts (for a Virgo, he doesn’t seem to be very good at it!) from when he was 17, 1995 and 2012. When he was 17, in 74-75, Neptune was between 6 and 10 Sagittarius, hard aspecting his Sun-Pluto-Mars-Saturn complex. In 1995, Pluto was entering Sagittarius, again making the same hard aspect. I’d been wondering since I wrote my last piece on Fry in 2006, what would happen when Neptune entered Pisces and again made a hard aspect to those planets, and then I read about his suicide attempt from last August.

So on each occasion of attempted suicide either Neptune or Pluto has been hard-aspecting Fry’s Sun-Pluto-Mars-Saturn, activating his ‘demons’ – if you like, a call to consciousness, a call to go into those depths. And each time it seems to have overwhelmed him.

Until he was in his late 30s, Fry used to describe himself as ‘asexual’. With Sun and Mars in Virgo, the virgin, a sign of celibacy and ‘purity’, this could have been for real, except for the square to Saturn, which suggests inhibition around his sexual drive (Mars). He seems to have been sort of gay all along, and the guy who played Robbie Ross to Fry’s Oscar in the 1997 film Wilde reckoned playing that part awoke Fry to his real nature – a film which in my opinion emphasised the sexual side of Wilde’s life at the expense of his artistic side. But the word ‘gay’ doesn’t seem to suit Fry, it’s a modern word and he’s kind of a not-quite-camp throwback who likes making dirty jokes about lubricants.

The sign of Virgo can be both restrained/inhibited and moral/moralising on the one hand and excessive/orgiastic on the other. (Virgos make great hypocrites!) Fry has both of those sides. Virgo is also a sign of health. And Fry has mental health issues in which he swings between depression and mania, in a way the 2 sides of Virgo.

Personally, I am ambivalent about the diagnosis ‘bi-polar’. There’s probably something in it, but I also think mainstream psychiatry is a pseudo-science that has been additionally corrupted by the profit-motive of the pharmaceutical industry. These diagnoses are a cover for the fact that psychiatrists don’t really know what is going on (but which some people nevertheless seem to wear like a badge), and into this cocktail of ignorance are mixed drugs whose chemical effects are far from understood, but which we are persuaded produce more acceptable behaviour.

As an astrologer, I’d suggest that Fry needs to find some way of being with his demons, understanding what’s behind them, and I know that would be far from easy, and I’m not sure I’d succeed myself if I was him. But the chemical approach of dampening it all down seems to me like the opposite of a solution, unless you see the problem in terms of correcting faulty brain chemistry. I’m sympathetic to drugs providing relief from an unbearable mental condition, but I think it de-humanises and diminishes us to see the problem as primarily one of chemistry.

So now for Fry on astrology. I will quote again:

Astrology is absolutely and without reservation the bullest of bullshit that ever there was… I hate astrology with a fervour that is almost frightening.

So first of all, I’m going to try not to take this personally, and remember that I quite like Stephen Fry. I’m interested in the statement on 2 levels: (1) The way in which it is OK to dismiss astrology, which is cultural (2) the vehemence behind it, which is personal to Fry.

If I was to dismiss light entertainers or gays the way Fry dismisses astrologers, people would rightly think I had issues. But if I lived in a Taleban-ruled country, or even Puritan England of a few hundred years ago, light entertainers would be banned, and gays would probably be hung. Fry is also of part-Jewish descent. In another society, he could so easily be vilified for a number of reasons, and he must be aware of this.

I expect Fry is proud of his tolerance and decency towards minorities, but when it comes to astrology, the mob mentality towards anyone different seems to take over. It’s Lord of the Flies stuff. And I expect he is quite unconscious of this.

I’m trying to remain calm.

Astrology was vilified by the Church as a competitor in earlier centuries, and nowadays it is vilified again as an insult to the God of Reason. Fry is a creature of the 18^th century 'Enlightenment', whose “purpose was to reform society using reason, challenge ideas grounded in tradition and faith, and advance knowledge through the scientific method. It promoted scientific thought, skepticism and intellectual interchange and opposed superstition, intolerance and some abuses of power by the church and the state.”

In Fry's words: “At a time when the achievements of the Enlightenment are questioned, ridiculed, misunderstood and traduced by those who would reverse the progress of mankind, it is essential to nail one’s colours to the mast as a humanist.”

There’s his Jupiter again!

It is this movement which informs many of today’s values, and from which comes the modern opposition to astrology. As an astrologer, I can see both sense and limitations in that statement of the Enlightenment’s values. But as ever, it is not the ideas themselves that are the issue, so much as the way people hold them.

And in my view, the modern belief in reason is often held just as blindly and intolerantly as the medieval Church’s belief in God and the Bible. Ironically, the ability to doubt is found today more within religion than in science. Look at the Church of England!

The universe is not rational, it just IS. Rationality is something which we use to describe the universe, but which we easily also ascribe to it: the idea that the Universe is rational is a superstition, no less than a literal belief in God and the Bible. Just look at quantum physics, the universe at its most basic, a place where reason breaks down.

So the modern position of thinking we are open and tolerant and reasonable, unlike the close-minded, intolerant, superstitious medieval mind is full of ironies, because in its own way the modern mind is just as closed and intolerant and superstitious.

And one of those intolerances is for astrology (and homeopathy,  animism, psychics, the paranormal, Uri Geller, fairies, tarot…) which offends the idea of a rigidly rational universe. If it wasn’t these things, it would be something else. It’s the nature of the rigid mind-set to have things you are dismissive of.

It is hard to see this intolerance unless you are on the receiving end of it. What Fry says about astrology, vehemence aside, may seem quite reasonable and not intolerant to a lot of people. Rather like the Sunni friend who said to me in a calm and reasonable way that Shias aren’t real Muslims. Intolerance is often hidden behind a reasonable, decent civilised manner. It wouldn’t surprise me if the members of the Spanish Inquisition were rather like Stephen Fry: learned, considerate, well-meaning people who were sincerely trying to save heretics from eternal damnation. Richard Dawkins also comes to mind.

But identifying yourself as on the side of the good is a dangerous thing. It makes you feel like you are one of the good guys, but it also sets you against what you consider to be not good. A lot of policemen are like this, you can see it in the way they are.

What I think we are dealing with is the collective shadow, in this case of the Enlightenment mentality. The collective always has a shadow, and if you are part of it – which we astrologers and other minorities are – then you are in a privileged position to see it, or at least certain aspects of it.

Progress in consciousness is not about becoming one of the nice guys that Stephen Fry aspires to be: it is about seeing the shadow in the collective and more importantly in oneself as part of that collective. Only then can individual consciousness emerge. Establishment figures like Fry and Dawkins tend to be blind to the shadow or they probably wouldn’t be part of the Establishment.

And in this case it is the shadow side of reason and science.

But Stephen Fry doesn’t just scoff at astrology, he hates it, he demonises it. I have to assume that in him there is a deep fear of the irrational, or else why would he be like this? It’s not as if astrologers are pursuing him in the street and beating him up.

They are doing him no harm at all! This is a sure sign of a projection. And Fry, with his demons and suicidal tendencies, is desperately clinging onto reason in a very Virgoan way, putting his opposition to astrology in moral terms that do not add up. “It is a senseless delusion that does not even have the benefit of being harmless fun. It is a harmful bore. Harmful to the human spirit, harmful to the dignity and wonder of the real universe and the real power of the mind to think for itself.”

So I think Stephen Fry is an upstanding member of the church of reason, which has its own fears of the irrational. But he is also a fundamentalist within that church. And just look at him: he swings between mania and depression, keeps trying to kill himself, and then opposes astrology for being irrational!

Incidentally, I found another quote by him which I think is very revealing: “The Greek myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from heaven and who gave to his favourite mortal: man. In other words what the Greeks were saying is that we have divine fire, whatever is divine is in us, as humans. We are as good as the gods. The gods are capricious and mean and foolish and stupid and jealous and rapine and all the things that Greek mythology show us that they are.”

I don’t know where to start in unpicking this twisting of the myth of Prometheus. But the whole point around it is hubris, the hubris of Prometheus who was scornful of Zeus in his stealing of the fire. And that what we have is a gift from the gods, from unseen powers, and astrology teaches us this and more, that we need to honour the powers of the unconscious. And this is exactly what Stephen Fry cannot do, he says the fire belongs to the humans not to the gods, that we are masters of our destiny. And that in a way is why he continually finds himself, like Prometheus, chained to the Caucasus having his liver pecked out.

What’s fascinating is that it’s as if his own unconscious has shown him a myth that can redeem him, even though for now, being a very clever man like Prometheus, he has twisted its meaning into its opposite. And it’s a very Enlightenment interpretation, one that I don’t think the text justifies.

 

*As Quentin Crisp, who wrote ‘The Naked Civil Servant’, referred to himself.