Boris Johnson, Philip Scofield, Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, Prince Harry – once shining stars in their respective spheres now brought low by their staggering lack of self-awareness and tendency to handout blame to others rather than ‘fess up to any missteps on their part.
Astrology though illuminating in its own terms about characteristics and temperament is not always a good diagnostic tool when it comes to psychological quirks. But it is worth pursuing in a week when Boris’s self-serving memoir emerged alongside disgraced TV presenter Philip Scofield’s reality castaway TV show on which he whined on about how he was not at fault for his downfall. He exited the screens when an affair with a young runner on the show came to light and is now blaming his sex offender brother’s record for his woes and claiming he was thrown under the bus by jealous colleagues.
A victim mentality often goes hand in hand with an inflated sense of superiority and an inability to take feedback. Victim mentality narcissists have a ‘persistent lack of personal responsibility, view themselves as powerless and at the mercy of others or circumstances, which absolves them from taking ownership of their actions.’
Narcissists have poor self-awareness due to cognitive distortions such as “I am always right” or “Others are jealous of me” and irrational thought patterns that reinforce an inflated sense of self. They avoid self-reflection by using defensive mechanisms like projection or denial. Projection involves blaming others for their flaws or negative emotions, while denial involves rejecting feedback that contradicts their self-perception.
Reviews of Boris’s book suggest it is ‘not the work of a great political memoirist, such as Churchill, Mandela or Obama. Its nearest competitor is Prince Harry’s Spare.’ A colleague from Boris’s early days suggested his difficult childhood with a depressed and hospitalized mother and gallivanting father, taught him ‘how to put on a brave, jovial face and play the clown at school and beyond, ruffling his hair and becoming first popular then populist. In turn, he became the master of satire, subversion and mockery; it perhaps made him too tough, uncaring and unkind.’
Looking across these five charts – various things stand out. Trump and Philip Scofield have Chiron conjunct their Jupiter which can lead to messianic tendencies, a feeling of being special, the chosen one and obsessed with having a vision to fulfil.
Prince Andrew has his Sun conjunct Chiron which suggests a wounding in the area of personal identity and ego, a tendency to create a false self to hide an inner confusion and emptiness. He also has his Sun opposition Pluto which will exacerbate his sense at times of being powerless. [Which he shares with Amanda Abington, whose complaints about her professional partner on Strictly Come Dancing were found to be overblown.]
Boris also has a strongly aspected Pluto (in the 12th like Trump) which may be another pointer to an inability to expose vulnerabilities or weakness in admitting mistakes lest total humiliation follow.
What four out of the five personalities share are planets in the 8th house. Boris has Mars on the apex of a yod there and Jupiter also in the 8th in an over confident opposition to Neptune. Prince Andrew has an 8th house Mercury on the apex of a yod. Philip Scofield has a super-charged Pluto (opposition Jupiter Chiron) in the 8th alongside Uranus and North Node. Prince Harry has his Virgo Sun and Mercury in the 8th. Trump has Scheat on the cusp of his 8th square his Gemini Sun and North Node opposition Moon.
Some similarities, some differences. Referring back to a previous post on the 8th house – The hidden 8th house – pulling back the veil. 16th November 2023
‘Transformation only happens if there is a considerable shift in an individual’s thought and behaviour patterns.’ The inner saboteur is an 8th house issue along with fixation. Ideas on how things ought to be are stubbornly held onto despite the 8th house being the one which should encompass the values of others.
The 8th is about being possessed where the 2nd is having one’s own possessions. Everything is defined by others. Committing to a partnership requires letting go individual values in order to create new shared ones. What is yours becomes mine and vice versa. A loss of control. The 8th is where we are confronted with our own issues.
If the second house has to do with control, then the eighth house has to do with lack of control which tends to lead to an attempt to hang tightly. There is a sense of permanence with the eighth house but only due to the monumentality of change. The individual has ancestral wounds that take not one generation but several to even begin to understand. Planets in the eighth house tend to work in super slow ways.
Having skipped through the harmonics of the above what is pertinent is that only one has a notable 12th harmonic which is the victim/healer harmonic (Scofield). Three have notable 13th harmonics which can point to a search for a solid identity. Four have ultra-determined 16th harmonics so letting go and being flexible is not their super power.
All five have strong 7th harmonics which on Vendla’s numerology interpretations is a spiritual number, imaginative and creative. A perfectionist. Also: too sceptical, critical, sarcastic, cold, self-centred, attracted to alcohol/ drugs and occultism.
No hard and fast answers. What is worth keeping in mind is that although narcissists are tediously draining to be around what lies underneath the overblown ego is a bottomless chasm of shame and, often worse, of nothingness. I remember years ago talking to a child psychotherapist who said certain children were so badly damaged all they had were their psychological defences and you dismantle those at your (and their) peril. Not that all narcissists come out of brutally traumatic beginnings but their defences are there for a reason – to prevent them falling into a total psychological collapse. Life can sometimes provide the impetus to reassemble the personality but it is not an easy journey.
Keir Starmer, has Narcissus square Asc. Ellis, narcissistic disorder, is square Asc;
Ranke, narcissistic disorder, in 8th, is sextile Sun.
The great star Sirius has relation to self-opinionativeness, self-esteem, and self-will.
Harry has Sirius opp Asc; Andrew has Saturn opp Sirius; Scofiled has Sirius 90 Sun;
Boris has Sirius square Asc.
@Marjorie and others, do you know of anyone, including any prominent people, who have been able to overcome their narcissism and “reassembled” their lives in a constructive way to live productive, non-damaging lives?
Both my late mother and sister were narcissists. For my own survival I often cut off contact with my manipulative mother. I didn’t see my elder sister, who had a well-developed jugular instinct for attacking me, for 37 years and spoke to her only twice during that time. We did reconnect, got together and spoke regularly for about a year before she died.
It is amongst the most difficult of the neuroses to treat – mainly because narcissists assume they are more intelligent than the therapist, don’t need fixed since they are perfect the way they are and are resistant in the extreme to feedback.
A breakdown to break through is usually the only way which can come from a major life crisis but it can be risky since they may have no inner core from which to rebuild a saner personality.
Sorry about your family. It is tough when those closest turn out to be the problem.
Almost impossible for people with personality disorders (of which narcissism is one branch) to overcome it. You can only heal when you start to accept responsibility and whatever a therapist uncovers, they will always find a way to blame someone.
The half of the world who are neurotic thrive in therapy because they love taking responsibility and get on with fixing it.
I’m tempted to think there is a Pisces-Virgo thing going on there which makes some sense with 12th-6th houses where the latter is about making the self whole before one tries relating. As someone with strong Neptune, I have often felt it is not my place to impact on others or the world; when I was younger this tipped over into blaming everyone for everything when life went against me; but I had enough neuroticism in my chart that once handed the right tools I began to sort myself out.
will Keir Starmer soon be added too
Marjorie, my understanding of Narcissism is that it is related to early inadequate bonding experiences with parents–particularly the mother. Mary Trump speaks of how Donald’s mom–her great aunt–was ill and unavailable to him when he was about 2. In Donald’s case, he had his brutal father as the only available parent. I don’t know the situation with the others mentioned in your post but what do those types of family connections look like in these examples? (I forgot which houses are related to mother-child and father-child relationships.)
Narcissism is shown by placement of asteroid Narcissus. Narcissistic Disorder is
show by placement of Ranke, Ellis or Rousseau.
Boris J. has Narcissus conj his 8th and sextile his MH; Ranke is exactly on his Asc;
Rousseau is exactly on his IC.
Scofield has Narcissus conj his Moon and sextile his Asc. Ranke is exactly on his IC.
Trump has Rousseau on his Desc; Ellis is trine his Jupiter.
Prince Andrew has Ranke square his Asc.
Prince Harry has Narcissus sextile MH from 8th; Rousseau is square his MH
Ranke, Ellis, and Rousseau are scientists who wrote papers on narcissitic disorder.
I would never vote for Boris again (mayor of london) but I still sort of like him. Not so much the others. Maybe it’s our shared Libra ascendant and Scorpio Moon. Prince Andrew has the same Moon but none of the charm.
Has anybody here any knowledge of the Lurianic Kabbalah? It is difficult to say if the original teaching or the teaching that would nowadays be considered traditional and normative means to say the same, but some teachers of Kabbalah, who might be genuine or might not, say that, if I understand it correctly, in order for you to achieve something you have to become a vessel for that. If a vessel cannot contain enough Light, if it is not expanded enough, then the materialization of a certain desire won’t happen.
That looks very similar to me to the thesis that in order for you to grow – or for your world to change – you need to change your mindset. Could one say that if you change your thoughts about your situation – your situation changes? Perhaps.
But the difficult thing here, and the gist of it, is how do you change that mindset? If you are aware you are not of right mindset for a wish of yours, have you already changed? Or is it just the beginning? And then there are various theories, so many of them I would say quite nebulous and difficult to put into practice, from repeating positive thoughts, or correcting negative ones with the positive ones immediately when the negative ones arise, or doing it with movement, of any kind, I think, it’s so difficult to put it all into action. Or maybe I deceive myself.
So when people happen around you and they behave in a way you might not approve of, you have to wonder how much of that is conscious, how much unconscious, should you judge or excuse it, and it becomes complicated really fast. Sometimes so many things seem to be driven by a force you can’t really put your finger on or something to that effect. I don’t know if I explained myself right.
You explain very well. I am fascinated by the Kabbalah teachings.
Marjorie’s excellent post suggests that astrology has deep psychological value, which it does when properly understood. I have a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in my chart at 25 Cancer partile Pluto at 26 Leo, all in the 8th house. The 4th house can be about trauma inflicted in childhood, the 8th is often about multigenerational or multi-lifetime (if you believe in such things) baggage, and the 12th about spiritual sublimation and release of suffering through compassion for ourselves and others.
Chiron in my chart at 28 Capricorn is exactly square Neptune at 28 Libra in the 10th, conjunct Mercury at 0 Aquarius, opposite the Jupiter-Uranus and inconjunct Pluto as well as the Moon at 28 Leo. Perhaps Chiron has brought self-awareness by being widely conjunct the Sun at 20 Capricorn. I certainly felt the pain of existence most of my life, and almost ended it, but this has changed in recent years as now the outer planets are working over all the key elements of my chart.
I considered my mother a narcissist (Moon-Pluto square Saturn and Lilith at 19 and 23 Scorpio), but not irretrievably so. Deep-seated anger against her has finally dissipated. Transiting Uranus square Pluto is a surprising and refreshing new beginning, becaue Buddhism has taught me to let go. It also helps to have a wife of 40 years who has her own Chiron conjunct my North Node, and other planets aligned with my chart.
Finally, I did feel the temptation of the messianic or martyr complex, but turned away from it because it was narcissic and self-destructive.