Dracula – bringing the undead to life

Dracula, the novel by Bram Stoker, published on May 26 1897, started a genre of gothic horror vampire books, comics and fantasy movies that still send a shiver down susceptible spines today. The original has lurid tales of blood-suckers who transform their human victims into the undead, a term Stoker at one point considered for the title. It wasn’t a best-seller in its day only becoming famous in later years.

Stoker, born 8 November 1847 in Dublin, no birth time, was a civil servant and theatre critic who became actor Sir Henry Irving’s personal assistant and manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London. He was friendly with Oscar Wilde and was thought to have been a closet homosexual whose anguished inner conflicts led him to begin writing Dracula only weeks after Wilde was sent to prison.

Stoker was a New Moon in Scorpio sextile Jupiter in Cancer; with a rebellious Uranus Pluto in Aries and a creative Neptune Saturn conjunction. But what marks out his chart as different is a Yod of Saturn sextile Mars in Taurus inconjunct Venus, which would give him the potential to make a contribution to Venusian creative activities.

When Dracula was published his Solar Arc Sun had moved to square his focal point Venus, triggering the Yod onto a new path; with tr Uranus Saturn in Scorpio conjunct his Solar Arc Venus. Although he made little money from it and in his latter years was poor, it did establish him after his death as a household name. His leaving-a-legacy 17^th harmonic was strong as was his writer’s 21H.

Dracula was published with the Neptune Pluto in Gemini of the time in place with the Sun in early Gemini. Neptune Pluto is associated with the supernatural and has blood-drenched associations as well given its presence during Attila the Hun’s reign of terror and the barbarous 20^th Century leaders born under it – Hitler, Mao etc. Count Dracula isn’t quite on their scale but he’s murderous enough.