Two feisty Mars Jupiter Libran women are in the news today. First is Carole Cadwalldr, the Observer/Guardian journalist, who has won the Foreign Press Association media award for her reporting on the links between Cambridge Analytica, the UK’s pro-Brexit campaigners and Donald Trump presidential election team. This on top of several previous awards, including the Orwell journalism prize.
Born 10 October 1969 in Wales, she has an exact Sun Jupiter in Libra – confident, communicative – and square Mars in Capricorn, adding high-octane fuel to her pronouncements. Her Uranus and probably Mercury and Moon are in Libra; with her Mercury in a forcefully persuasive conjunction with Pluto, which is excellent for deep research.
All that go-getting impulsiveness can have its uses since it has the energy and initiative to start new projects and take the risks needed to achieve success. Though it can over step the mark at times with too much enthusiasm and too little forethought.
The other – sadly – is Baroness Trumpington, a grande dame of the House of Lords who has died at 96. Born 23 October 1922, she had a similar last degree Sun Jupiter conjunction square Mars in Capricorn; with her Mercury Saturn in Libra square Pluto, so not one to hold back when making her opinions known.
The Telegraph obituary says: ‘Built to last, forthright and formidable, Jean Trumpington made up for any lack of intellectual brilliance with a capacity for hard work combined with down-to-earth common sense and an engaging habit of telling jokes against herself.’
She grew up in an upper-class family, worked in Bletchley Park during WW11, married a schoolmaster and worked in local politics. She was a stately six foot tall with a deep voice matured by cigarettes which she smoked from aged 10 to 79.
Stories about her are legion and funny if you read her obits in the Guardian and Telegraph.
Maggie Thatcher also has a Mars in Libra square Jupiter tied into Pluto – so it clearly gets you places.
Others with Mars Jupiter squares are/were: Henry VIII Of England, Helmut Kohl, Julia Gillard, Indira Gandhi, Marie Curie, Edwin Hubble, Brad Pitt, Robin Williams, Gwyneth Paltrow, Diane Keaton, Kathy Bates, Burt Reynolds, Mae West, Johnny Carson, Robbie Williams, Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole, Chuck Berry, Madeleine’ McCann’s Abduction. The last of these highlights Mars Jupiter’s opportunistic side and was tied into Uranus for a sudden shock as well.
Loving the niceties about Libran women (don’t get to hear much!) – I have a Tsquare – Libra Sun/Mars (trining my Moon in Aqua) squared by Jupiter in Cancer + Sat/Nep/Ura in Cap. It’s been a tough slog, but I can sense my time will come as I move past my first Saturn return!
One thing about Carole Cadwalldr that’s very present on that chart is her low threshold on bullying with all her Libra and Mars in Sadgittarius. I think it’s not usual for British to call out bullies, you are supposed to keep a stiff upper lip about it. Her Twitter timeline is actually quite telling, she get many “wellmeaning” pieces of advice to tone it down from British after engaging with likes of Andrew Neil. Her foreign followers, who don’t know Andrew Neil (I recognized his face, but have a very faint idea on who he is beyond that), only read his words and have just as hard time understanding how his behavior is acceptable to BBC as Carole.
Baroness Trumpington was a grande dame par excellence. Her life story reads like a novel. Born to a British father and an American heiress who then lost her fortune in the Great Depression, she described being poor as “having to go to the Ritz on a bus”. Land girl to the “priapic” (her words) former Prime Minister Lloyd George during the first few years of the war, her skill with languages meant that she worked at Bletchley Park during WWII. After the war, she moved to New York, where she lived in a posh area in Manhattan and was known for dancing on tables after work. She met and married an Englishman on leave after the war, who went on to become a headmaster at an all-boys school.
She recalls how, having a fear of water, she was required to carry the awards past the school swimming pool. Having delivered the awards, she proceeded to dive into the deep end, clothes and all and the teachers and students dived in to help her out. Apparently, her husband refused to talk to her for three days after that. But she never had to carry the awards again. She was mayor of Cambridge in 1970/71 and took the title of Trumpington, the area in Cambridge where Corpus Christi College is located, when she joined the Lords. Her surname being Barker, it was thought that a Baroness Barker (as in “barking mad”)would not be right for the Lords.
She was health minister under Thatcher and one of the few who would tell Thatcher if she disagreed with her. She became famous when past 90, another peer referenced her age in a debate on WWII veterans and she flicked him the “V” (the British equivalent of the middle finger) in the Lords Chamber. She jokingly remarked that he (the other peer) became famous after that.
She subsequently appeared on HIGNFY, with a 24 year old Jack Whitehall presiding and proceeded to take the mick of him (very gently).
Just a few days before her death, she was invested with the Legion d’Honneur.
She did not just live her life well, she did so magnificently and fully. It is given to few to have a full life like this.
Search on Twitter for “Baroness Trumpington” or “Lady Trumpington” for some fabulous stories for her direct manner of speaking.
It is telling that amidst all this Brexit news, the death of a baroness, who had never reached a level higher than Parliamentary Under-Secretary (junior minister) for Health, at 96, unremarkable in itself, was trending on Twitter in the UK yesterday. She brought laughter or at least a smile to people’s faces.
Here’s another debunk of the conventional wisdom of Libra ladies being (just) demure flower arranging types! Even “back in the day” many Libra ladies had a way of making it in the Men’s World.
Liz Greene always said that Libra was the crossover sign – women’s body with a man’s mind and man’s body with a more feminine approach. Libra ladies can be v trenchant as they mature.
Don’t female Librans tend to have progressive, egalitarian fathers? From my own experience (Libra, Virgo rising) my father was very pro-woman, making a point of telling my sister and I that we can imorove on anything a man can do and that he preferred working with women.
Libra females in my experience tend to be close to their fathers, less so their mothers. Look at Maggie T – she idealised her less than salubrious pa and barely mentioned her mother. And I’ve known others like that.
I was brought up by a Libran father and he was v keen on women’s independence.