Christian Horner, Red Bull Formula One principal having just been cleared after an internal investigation into his behaviour towards a female colleague has been blindsided as a series of alleged messages were leaked. They were sent to 149 people involved in the sport. His wife, ex-Spice Girl Geri Halliwell is reportedly furious.
He was born 16 November 1973 and Geri 6 August 1972 2.30pm Watford, England. It is an odd match since she is a Sun, Mercury and Mars in Leo while he is a Sun and Mercury in Scorpio. Though his Leo Moon will help as will her Venus Moon in Cancer. His Saturn sitting on her Venus Moon will be a damper.
Their relationship chart has a possessive, passionate and controlling composite Sun Pluto opposition Venus and an irritable composite Mars Saturn conjunction which usually ends up with one partner gritting their teeth to make it work. There is an adventurous Jupiter square Uranus and the Venus, Sun, Pluto will make for a strong attraction. But it won’t all be plain sailing. Tr Neptune is just off the undermining square to the Saturn Mars conjunction and is aiming to square the Pluto Sun and Venus over the next two/three years so hints of disappointment abound.
He will be strong minded and stubborn with his Pluto square Saturn and trine Jupiter; with a high-adrenaline Mars opposition Uranus. But he is in charge in a super-speed sport so what can you expect?
“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Discuss individual instances without resorting to violence, intemperate language or stomping off in the huff. Why is it so difficult to admit that fanatical zealots, however unpleasant and destructive, might have a reason for their actions?
Trans activists are mutilating/brainwashing gullible children and undermining vulnerable women. Anti-trans activists are inflaming hatred and putting vulnerable transgenders at risk of attack. Why is there no middle ground? Have we lost the ability for complex thinking? There is only one truth and it is OURS.
This is a thinking-in-process ramble so bear with me – or skip to the next post.
If control of one rigid viewpoint is the issue it must involve Pluto? Maybe.
Psychologically speaking, complex thinking emerges as the child realises that neither parent is perfect which is a shattering blow as the idealized idol is toppled off his/her pedestal which accompanies an inner realization that I am both good and bad myself, can be nice and can be nasty all in the one personality. For some, a mature realization is not possible so they split – one parent (support system) stays shining white and the other is all negative. In parallel, the child (even in middle age) retains an overly positive self-image which admits to no shadow – I am great and you are NOT. Projection a la Trump is the coping mechanism. I.e. blame others for that of which I am most guilty. I’m all good so any bad (shadow) must belong to you. Life is always divisive, no shades of grey. Defending a fragile ego becomes a desperate and thus violent life and death struggle to stave off psychological implosion. No quarter can be given, no admission of any chinks in the argument to allow the opposing forces to gain the upper hand.
Part of the present inability to cope with nuance might be put down to a culture in regression, not just socially but psychologically, reverting to early immature patterns. But it has probably always been thus. Peasants have been notoriously prone to conspiracy theories throughout the ages. Mob rule flared up and dominated at various times.
In societal terms, one view imposed on everyone is fascist or totalitarian. Psychoanalysts have written about its mindset as did George Orwell with his chilling insights into truth twisting and totalitarian thinking.
From a previous post
‘Underlying the trans furore of recent years is a mind control battle over language – what is allowed to be said and what will be obliterated under an avalanche of hostility if it deviates from the proscribed party line.
Pure George Orwell. He says of the Ministry of Truth in 1984 “‘Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” The influence of language on people’s ability to think is one of the book’s most enduring themes as it focuses on the techniques of totalitarianism.
The Trumpian phenomenon of distorting reality and brain-washing true believers into the dictator’s version of ‘the truth’ was where this trend of abusing language became most noticeable. What it led to was a similarly virulent battle-to-the-death between not just opinions but two opposing mindsets, where victory for one means psychic implosion for the other. Ditto the Brexit argument – a complete inability to tolerate the other view.
So much of the transgender firefight is an argument at cross purposes. No sane or sensible person is anything other than sympathetic to people with gender dysphoria, but what appears to be at issue is the use of language. Those who have been hounded out of jobs have made statements about biology which would hardly seem inflammatory except in the present climate.’
One thought struck me contemplating psychoanalytic writings on the fascist state of mind, which seems like a leap, but bear with me. Christopher Bollas, a London analyst writes that such a state of mind “entertains no doubt or uncertainty”. Distortion of the views of opponents to render them less intelligible and credible is the first move. They have to be discredited because no separation of view is possible from the accepted one.
Janine Chasseguet Smirgel, a French analyst, echoed this thought “he who does not think as the group does is excluded, harassed, killed or declared insane.” She extended her argument, linking perversion (as in group sexual abuse of children) to such a state of mind. It is not to hand but my recollection is she talks of the regressed state of mind of such abusive perverts to involve an inversion of reality. Adults become children and children adults; and the sexes are interchangeable – girls become boys or boys girls or there is no distinction.
In the fascist state of mind the past is destroyed with a future entirely of the narcissist’s own creation. Similarly the argument that the birth sex can be wiped out and that a future is possible of the individual’s own choice might be seen as a parallel – a narcissistic grandiose delusion. And given that it is a consequence of an absolutist mindset, it is difficult/well nigh impossible to budge. Which is not to say that those with genuine gender dysphoria are deluded – I am talking of the cultural mania for 47 genders etc. A narcissistic culture (the consequence of a self-obsessed psychology in the west since Freud etc) giving wing to its arrogance and detachment from reality.
What astrology might match such a mindset? In a previous discussion Uranus Neptune was mentioned as a possible factor in the present state of intractable arguments. In particular the 1990s generation, now in their thirties, who have Uranus Neptune conjunct in Capricorn. It is a feasible argument since Uranus Neptune was in place conjunct the North Node for the birth of the worldwideweb in 1991, which has undoubtedly played a part in the ramped up, howl-round debates on various subjects, allowing group-think to run rampant. Mermaids, the UK group aggressively promoting support for transgender children and Stonewall both emerged during the Uranus Neptune conjunction in the 1990s.
George Orwell himself had a wide Neptune opposition Uranus but also a rebellious Uranus opposition Pluto so arguably he might understand its risks more than most and rebel against them. The CIA’s Mind Control obsession in the 1950s/60s ran through Uranus square Neptune. Trump has his Uranus/Neptune midpoint conjunct his Pluto and the Brexit referendum has its Uranus/Neptune midpoint square the Sun.
Uranus combined with creative, spiritual Neptune has a positive side being inspirational in art, science and social thinking, with high ideals and soaring vision. What the combination can lack is common sense. With no Earth grounding and thus no limits, it can rise to magnificent achievements; or it can foster irrational fanatical thinking, so extreme that it misleads.
Fanatical repression is part of its story with the Spanish Inquisition set up in 1478 when Uranus Neptune were conjunct in Scorpio. During the most recent conjunction, fervent beliefs leading to fanaticism were clear in the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa (death threat) against Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, in 1989. In 1993 and 1994 two extremist cults hit the headlines: the David Koresh fundamentalist cult at Waco in Texas was besieged by the FBI, and deaths ensued; and there were multiple suicides and murders among Solar Temple cult members in Switzerland and Canada, who believed they would be reincarnated on Sirius.
Ebertin has Uranus Neptune as visionary and creative on the positive side – but also confusion, wrong ideas, onesidedness, peculiar psychic states, lack of emotional balance.
Uranus Neptune was not around for the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 30s so the absolutism of the present mindset may be more to do with a highly strung mental balance which will cling to its opinions even in the face of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.
Apologies for an extended ramble and jumble – Uranus Neptune fits. The psychology of a narcissistic culture fits. Chasseguet Smirgel’s notion of the inversion of sexes allied to perversion or a narcissistic grandiose attempt to become self-created won’t be popular – but there might be a smidgeon of an explanation in there for some of those who have leapt on the bandwagon. .
Reading Jane’s comments on Neptune in Pisces below previous post. It won’t have helped in its tendency to dissolve boundaries – and spawn surreal beliefs. It strikes me, to add a further messy thought – that fighting against a male female labelling to be free to ‘create’ one’s own gender has in contrary fashion led to an even greater proliferation of dogmatic labelling.
Below additional comments, added onto text for ease of finding later.
Add On: More on Uranus Neptune:
From Hugh: “In the period 1907-1909 Germany was shaken by a series of scandals involving cross dressing Prussian Generals and senior figures in the Kaiser’s government. This included the trials surrounding the Eulenberg-Harden affair and the bizarre death of General Dietrich Graf von Hülsen-Haeseler on 14 November 1908 who died of a heart attack while dancing in a pink tutu in front of Kaiser Wilhelm II and assembled guests. All this happened while Neptune in Cancer was forming an opposition to Uranus in Capricorn. The fall out from the scandals is thought by some historians to have impacted the way the German military was run and ultimately to have played a role in the run up to the outbreak of the First World War.”
From Jane: “Uranus-Neptune dynamics are interesting in all this. I looked up the famous, scandalous trial of “Fanny and Stella”, or Boulton and Park, who were arrested after a secret Met Police operation, as cross-dressing gay men. They were prosecuted for enticing others to commit sodomy, and the prosecution failed.
” As the trial of ‘the Young Men in Women’s Clothes’ unfolded, Fanny and Stella’s extraordinary lives as wives and daughters, actresses and whores were revealed to an incredulous public.
With a cast of peers, politicians and prostitutes, drag queens, doctors and detectives, Fanny and Stella is a Victorian peepshow, exposing the startling underbelly of nineteenth-century London.” (Fanny and Stella, the Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England by Neil McKenna).
Uranus in Cancer was square Neptune in Aries when the trial began, 9th May, 1871. Sun conjunct Pluto , trine Mars in Virgo suggests the event’s power over the general public at the time.
By the time of a trine between Uranus in Virgo and Neptune in Taurus, the Cross-Dressing Ball, at Temperance Hall, Manchester caused a huge scandal in the autumn of 1880 – with police raids, numerous arrests, but in the end the participants were simply bound over to keep the peace, rather than going to prison as some critics would have preferred.”
NEPTUNE IN PISCES:
Reading Jane’s comments on Neptune in Pisces below previous post. It won’t have helped in its tendency to dissolve boundaries – and spawn surreal beliefs. It strikes me, to add a further messy thought – that fighting against a male female labelling to be free to ‘create’ one’s own gender has in contrary fashion led to an even greater proliferation of dogmatic labelling.
Jane: Wrestling with Neptune in Pisces here – yes, I’m nailing jelly to the wall! However, musing on what Hugh said about Mercury I thought of Dionysus – androgynous, shape shifting, and called ‘twice born’ because in the myths he is born from his mother, who was killed, and then Zeus, his father – sewn into his father’s thigh during gestation. An Eastern god (foreign to the Greeks) of theatre, wine, and ecstasy, he was brought up as female. His mythic female followers, the Maenads, tore men and animals to pieces in fabled frenzies of worship that symbolised the adult Dionysus’ own dismemberment and subsequent rebirth at Eleusis. Dionysus is one of the dying and resurrected gods in various myths. He was worshipped in the Middle East, and according to Tacitus was once god of Jerusalem.
There is an interesting (long and dense) article by Gary Crawford (garycrawford.net) on Dionysus and Pisces which cites a number of authors who have explored the Dionysus theme – including Joseph Campbell, Liz Greene, Richard Tarnas and others.
“The many layers of duality found in Pisces can also be found in Dionysus, as Liz Greene and others have noted how he embodies concepts such as redeemer/victim, savior/devourer, yin/yang, intuition/reason, sacred/profane, creative genius/madness, and passionate love/passionate anger. Yet instead of trying to rationalize this duality, separate the concepts into a bi-polar analysis, we can remember that Dionysus is whole and embodies these concepts integrated together within his holistic self, not separated. To Liz Greene, the idea that Dionysus embodies an “ecstatic unity with natural, undying life” and a “seeking of union with the divine” that paradoxically mixes “the holy with the vicious and sadistic,” can be explained through his connection to Pisces because in the sign of the fish “these two opposites live side by side” and “each generates the other,” much like the interplay between good and evil.”
VirgoFlake:
“Jane, fascinating about Dionysus. The deity was portrayed by the Ancient artists as feminine, youthful, long-haired and beardless unlike the other Olympian Gods who, with the exception of Apollo are depicted as muscular with full beard. In Euripides’s ‘Bacchae’, the deity appears as a feminine stranger, a kind of priest as the straight-laced patriarch Pentheus, a stickler for law, order and logic interrogates the god who he sees as a dangerous threat to the state. Attempts to imprison the god are futile, since Dionysus is a god and has the power to shapeshift.
Pentheus’ outlook is particularly rigid, but at the same time, there is part of him that is intrigued and fascinated by these women who are able to abandon themselves through wine, ecstasy and mania. Dionysus devises a plan in orderthat Pentheus can climb a pine tree and spy on the Bacchae and persuades Pentheus to dress as a woman, with long skirts and a wig. In fact in the play, Pentheus is quite entranced and engrossed at his own transformation, even delighted. But henceforth, Pentheus is an unknowing sacrifice. While the Bacchantes are in a state of wine-induced mania, his own mother mistakes him for a young mountain lion and the women tear his body limb from limb, decapitate him and his mother brings his head back to the palace, while still hallucinating and under the influence of the god’s power.
The shapeshifting, the mania, the ecstasy, the taking of wine as ritual as well as the fluidity of gender and the abandonment of gender roles in this myth is essentially and undoubtedly Piscean and Neptunian. As you say, it’s worth re-reading Liz Greene’s chapter on Pisces in her ‘Astrology of Fate’. But it’s also interesting that a strictly patriarchal society such as Ancient Greece was fascinated by the female experience. In the myth of the prophet Tiresias for instance: he is on Mount Cylene when he comes across two serpents copulating. He strikes the snakes with his stick and in the process offended Hera (which, let’s face it wasn’t difficult – she was rather thin-skinned!) and she turned him into a woman. As a woman Tiresias became a priestess of Hera, married and had children, but after seven years of service, Hera changed Tiresias back into a man. Both the Greeks and the Romans embellished Tiresias’s time as a woman and Tiresias becomes a kind of liminal figure, a link between man and gods, male and female, blindness and sight, the earth and the underworld, the present and the future.”
