Geniuses rarely make for amiable human beings and Leo Tolstoy, whose towering achievements in writing War and Peace and Anna Karenina, which remain two of the world’s best-known novels, was no exception. His wife’s diaries published a few years back tell of a cruel and difficult man, indifferent to his family, endlessly critical, who forced his wife to breastfeed all 13 of their children despite the agony it caused her.
Despite being suicidal (and homicidal) at times, she helped him with his novels, copying out War and Peace several times. Indeed it has been said she was pivotal to his success as a novelist. She wrote: “If he had one iota of the psychological understanding which fills his books, he would have understood the pain and despair I was going through. I am to gratify his pleasure and nurse his child, I am a piece of household furniture.” She loved his talent and loathed the man.
When he married aged 34, he presented his 16 year old bride with his diaries, recording his multiple past sexual liaisons with prostitutes and servants.
Born 9 September 1828 GC 10.52 pm(unverified) Tula, Russia, he had a New Moon and Mercury in Virgo in his 4th house, so was a communicator though also self-sufficient with all of Virgo’s nit-picky tendencies at home. He also had ambitious and argumentative Mars conjunct Neptune in his 7th house of marriage which was trine his Sun and more significantly square a control-freak 10th house Pluto, suggesting a need to dominate and possibly also a need to undermine a marriage partner to whom he was not fully committed. He would be driven by anger and frustration. His Venus was conjunct a cold Saturn both in wannabe-important Leo and both in an unyielding, bleak trine to Pluto. Venus combined with Saturn Pluto can have leanings to perversion, which would be amplified by his Uranus in the 8th, giving him a need for sexual experimentation. His Uranus was also in a can-be-domineering and autocratic opposition to Saturn and Venus. A very complicated man emotionally. His mother died when he was two and his father at nine and he was brought up by relatives.
Sophia Tolstoya 22 August 1844 JC (OS) Moscow, was also a Sun Virgo, in her case conjunct Mars, with a Taurus Moon. Her Uranus Jupiter were conjunct his 10th house Pluto so her vitality would be instrumental in helping in his career. Though her Saturn was in his 8th conjunct his Uranus. Her Venus in Cancer was conjunct his Saturn. So they blocked each other out emotionally and sexually.
Their relationship chart was eye-blinkingly difficult with a cruel-treatment composite Mars opposition Saturn square Venus opposition Neptune – very one sided, with one partner being used as a doormat plus all the uncommitted Neptunian stuff plus an insensitive Mars Venus. There was also a Yod of composite Sun sextile Node inconjunct Pluto – suggesting a transformative and important relationship which changed both of their lives irrevocably.
There were no choices in those days for women but it sounds like the narcissist trap – too exciting to leave, too bad to stay.
“There were no choices in those days for women but it sounds like the narcissist trap – too exciting to leave, too bad to stay.”
Wealthy, urban Russian women like Sophia Behrs definitely started to have all kind of choices by the 1860’s. We tend to think of Imperial Russia as a very backward place, when, in fact, women there had already had a kind of legal economic liberty “frontier” women in English speaking World started to acquire in the 1880’s there for almost hundred years.
Therefore, I think that what we have here is, first and foremost, completely twisted Sun Virgo couple dynamics. I don’t know what it’s about two Sun Virgos together, but there are several examples of truly horrible family dynamics with them that I can think of. One common theme is that a younger girl is completely swoon over by an older man with abusive traits they don’t see and/or fail to issue. Result, two people who do a lot of good to other people being incredibly horrible to each other. And yes, I do have this in my family, too.
Dear Marjorie, what about Theresa May? Is there ANY chance whatsoever of getting rid of her any time soon? I’m getting very desperate for any hopeful news there.
And so say all of us. It’s a kind of weird stasis, like having a dead man at the wheel, set to auto-pilot. Just keeps going but with no sense of direction or purpose. Everything on her chart is failure, blockages, losses now and ahead. Nothing much shifting till last day of March then if anything it worsens for her thereafter.
I faintly remember when everyone was tearing their hair about Tony Blair, it wasn’t too obvious when he’d go. And it dragged on and on.
I think the same is true with Trump, too. Things just keep piling up. And seems odd, astrologically, since there are no Retrogrades, at the moment.
I know, seems very Piscean somehow -stuck in a quicksand or a sea fog, yet never quite falling over. Maybe it is something to do with Saturn Pluto – caught in a vice that won’t let go.
I remember the very moment I heard that Thatcher was going, I was at school and a group of children ran out of the building to excitedly announce it to the whole playground. We couldn’t believe it, we all thought she’d never go.
I noticed a lot of our former leaders have planets in the late 28 or 29 degree, particularly Mercury or a VOC Moon. These seem to be the ones with premierships that drift on into a sort of dead zone, do you see any correlation? I’m not sure about Heath and Callaghan, though maybe that was a different sort of dead zone.
Baldwin – VOC Moon 29 Virgo (Unknown source)
Chamberlain – Mercury 29 Aquarius
Churchill – VOC Moon 29 Leo, Neptune 28 Aries
Eden – Mercury 29 Taurus
Heath – Mercury 28 Gemini
Callaghan – VOC Moon 27 Cancer
Thatcher – VOC Moon 28 Leo
Blair – Jupiter 29 Taurus, Mercury 26 Aries
May – Mer 28 Vir, Sat 29, Nep 29, Plu 29 (Poss VOC Moon)
Cameron maybe qualifies with a Mars at 27 Leo
PM without late degress
MacDonald
Macmillan
Douglas-Home
Wilson
Major?
Attlee?
Doreen Virtue and Tolstoy be damned.What about Meghan?
She has been in the news of late.
Nothing to add to recent posts.