(You are not lost-the next 10 or so paragraphs have nothing to do with the above chart. I’ll get to Boethius after this rant about Rousseau.)
I’m back, and transiting mercury, that little devil, is trining my natal mercury in Aries. The sun is currently in Virgo, so putting all that info together means transiting mercury can only be in Leo; in other words good luck getting me off my soap box. Here goes…
So, as per the Confessions of an Astrologer post I am trying to make myself read Rousseau. Ugh!!! I made it through The First Discourse and am now trying valiantly to wade through the second. Only thinking about guys getting picked off by snipers as they wade through rice paddies on the far side of the earth, or dying in moon suits while disarming IEDs in Afganistan, makes me stop feeling sorry for myself as I plow through this Cancer native’s hypocritical tripe. (Now, for you people innocent of the vocabulary of astrology, what I’m doing now is a perfect example of natal mercury in Aries inflamed by transiting same in Leo; even though I’ll regret this later I’m spilling it all and won’t stop till after I’ve hit the publish button. That’s Aries!)
I try to pick at the sides like a healthy guest forced by courtesy to eat food overly rich with cream and sugar, that is I go to the Stanford on line encyclopedia of philosophy, where I might get a more objective view of this …man of letters… who should have just gotten a job and earned an honest living instead of writing about how the world would be better if everyone would just work and earn an honest living. The Stanford people present a fine overview of his life and work, but I just can’t get with the program.
So I take my dog for a walk; she is so cool, she loves me so unconditionally since she thinks she needs me so completely, which I guess she does. I hate having to bathe her, and worry about her legal status (rabies shots, leash laws) and I’m just not into being responsible for other lives, so I really appreciate how her needy love has forced/challenged me to be a more responsive person.
On the walk I think if I had money to throw away on one of those people that hypnotizes folks to go into the past (another example of firey☿-I have ‘thrown away money’ on a past life therapist and had a very enlightening experience, but that wouldn’t support the argument I’m spewing right here) anyway I would ask to be taken to the desk of Mr. Jeanne Jacques as he is writing and thump him upside the head every time he writes the word ‘patriot’ or ‘virtue’. That’s a lot of thumping and I start to feel like I’m getting control of the situation as I think about all those satisfying thumps. I would say for every thump. “Get a job!” Thump.
“Get your baby back from the orphanage where it is sure to die!” Thump.
I’m starting to feel better. Thank God for souls and past life regressions.
Now I can be a little more objective about this: Taurus should have no problem getting along w/Cancer (Me Taurus/Rousseau Cancer). There are other things (which I won’t list here) in my chart which I use as my excuse for having so much trouble w/Cancer. (When I got pregnant at an advanced age I feared by my calculations that the baby would come out a Cancer, and was very relieved when the woman at Planned Parenthood got her little wheel-of-life out and predicted a birth date in Gemini. Ok, a Gemini is flighty but it’s better than Cancer.)
I’m going to lose my few Cancer friends. I don’t deserve them anyway. But I need them. They teach me about love and how people help each other out. They teach about forgiveness. They teach that feelings are real and though we should not always act on them we should always trust them. So forgive me Cancer natives, but this guy’s just pissed me off with his talk about utopian states where every body loves each other and obeys the laws and it’s all so blissful and orderly I want to set off a bomb.
2 pages and I’m not even started.
Let’s see. What’s next?
Cancer and government. It was the anniversary of Pluto in Capricorn that got all this started. I had to read Rousseau because his career took off, (and he fled Paris soon after) when transiting Pluto entered Capricorn which means it was opposing his natal Cancer sun. Big daddy government (Capricorn) and the children or obedient, happy citizens (Cancer). Cancer is water and as such needs something to give it form, to contain it, to direct it-citizens need government like a river needs banks to take it to the sea.
So, Ok I guess I’ve just got too much fire under my butt right now to swallow his recipe for social bliss; which brings me to my hero of the month and I suspect for many years to come- I think this guy is bigger than Jesus, Ancius Boethius.
Ahhh. I’m going to go wash some dishes before proceeding with the good part.
So the chart at the top is of a moment I picked as a possible time for when Boethius was in prison- we only know it was 524 or 525. We have his year of birth (480AD) but no date. Pluto, the year of his death, was about 14°♐. I chose a date following the conjunction of sun with mars in Scorpio, which I think is a time any astrologer would expect a leader to come under the influence of corrupt forces. I picked Dec 16 because mercury was in Sagittarius reflecting the mental anguish tormenting him on death row; but it was coming up on Jupiter, so we got that soaring work of genius where he records his conversation with Philosophy. What a heartbreaking, but truly inspired end to a well lived life.
I chose 4:30 in the morning to show mercury rising, his mental anguish being transformed by action in the first house.
In The Confessions of an Astrologer post of a couple weeks ago I included the paragraph about “The whole of this earth’s globe” to present documentation that people knew long ago that the earth is a globe which occupies a minimum of space in the vastness of the universe. I don’t know about education for everyone else, but I was taught that Columbus sailed to America to prove that the earth was round; it has been a valuable eye opener to read ancient writers like Ptolemy and Boethius and discover that people way back when knew a lot more about the real world than I realized.
Last of all I am including a chart for the year Boethius was born. I hope people will note
Saturn coming up behind Neptune in Libra, the sign of diplomacy. I always mention when I do charts for people born around 1952 (when Saturn and Neptune were again conjunct in Libra) that their generation grew up to be the most serious about civil rights for all members of society, and as a group they emulate that ideal in cooperative marriages.
All accounts portray Boethius's marriage with Rusticiana, the daughter of his adoptive father, to have been a happy union. He was a man blessed richly in life and left the world a great work of philosophy to repay his good fortune, even after Fortune had abandoned him and left him to die at the hands of corrupt statesmen...
Rousseau was just a wussy wanna-be intellectual that should have gotten a job, which probably bothers me because I’m afraid that’s what I am. Wait a minnit! I do have a job. Whew!
