Jan Morris, the celebrated travel writer and author, well known as a transgender pioneer, has died aged 94. She led an extraordinary life, a cavalry officer during WW11, marrying and having five children, climbing three-quarters way up Everest to witness Edmund Hillary conquer it in 1953, and reporting in Egypt on the Suez crisis with details that led ultimately to Anthony Eden’s resignation as prime minister. And went on to be an acclaimed writer and historian. All this despite having been aware since she was three or four that she’d been born into the wrong body. She only started to transition in her forties and eventually underwent reassignment surgery, after which she wrote a well-received book about her experience – Conundrum. She remained attached to her wife and although they divorced they stayed together and formed a civil partnership.
Born 2 October 1926, no birth time sadly, in Clevedon, England, she was a Sun and Mercury Libra trine Jupiter in Aquarius and square Pluto – so not lacking in confidence or the ability to communicate with insight. What is most striking about her chart is a Fixed Grand Cross of Saturn in obsessively conscientious Scorpio opposition Mars in Taurus square Jupiter opposition Neptune and perhaps Moon in Leo. A Fixed Grand Cross gives immense endurance, perseverance and obstinacy – much like the Queen and David Attenborough both born in 1926. Mars Saturn has a military connotation and gives discipline and the ability to cope with tough conditions but also suggests an element of unfairness, even cruelty, in childhood. The Jupiter and Neptune would soften the effect. If it was an after noon time birth with the Moon is tied in, it would certainly make the feminine a major issue in life.
Her Venus in workaholic Virgo also opposed Uranus forming a Mystic Rectangle with the Saturn opposition Mars. Having three central oppositions in the chart she would have a constant struggle to balance the opposites in her temperament.
Her transition started fittingly enough on the Uranus Pluto in Virgo conjunction of the 1960s – Uranus Pluto pushes the boundaries back, and in Virgo, in particular in the area of health and medicine. But the time of her surgery Pluto had just moved into Libra and tr Uranus was just over the conjunction to her Sun – both bringing profound changes to her identity and life.
What an incredible woman. I knew of others who have that fixed T-square of cross of 1926 involving Saturn/Neptune/Jupiter and yes, along with the economic struggles of the inter-war years their early life was tough. It was the year of the General Strike in the U.K. and the introduction of martial law under Stanley Baldwin – so very Saturn in Scorpio (miners of course).
Thanks so much Marjorie. A very remarkable person indeed, and one who somehow evaded being placed in any box.