Evil, insanity and scapegoating are a toe-curling trio selected by Liz Greene for a seminar, collected into a reissued book – The Dark of the Soul: Psychopathology in the Horoscope. It sounds like a niche subject of interest only to true crime aficionados but there are insightful thoughts on many standard chart aspects which will ring a bell as well. Plus the fact that psychopaths are not all serial killers. Many operate as senior managers in business and the less murderous variety are to be found in families and amongst friends.
Psychopaths are 80% male, most suffered childhood abuse and often have a psychopathic parent. Their characteristics – grandiose self-worth, low boredom threshold, cunning, lack of remorse and empathy, parasitic lifestyle, lack self-control, lack of relatedness, don’t accept responsibility.
Moon aspects to Pluto, Saturn, Uranus don’t come out well. A Pisces Moon opposition Uranus Pluto is highlighted as an indication of Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh’s instability stemming from his relationship with his mother – a fear of engulfment sits side by side with a fear of abandonment; smothered then abandoned, repeat. He is also marked up by his Jupiter square Neptune giving him messianic tendencies.
Charles Manson is another example of a Moon in hard aspect to Uranus and Pluto. His mother was a prostitute who was imprisoned and he ended up in an orphanage. Moon Uranus, she remarks, disengages from personal hurt to focus instead on a universal context; while Moon Pluto destroys. Astro research on violent criminals indicate many have Moon Saturn or Moon Chiron.
Uranus Chiron Saturn occur with frequency amongst psychopaths.
The myths behind madness are explored including a comment on Uranian madness reflecting “a cosmic vision of perfection.” Uranus, the god, condemned/rejected his earthily children because of their ugliness. Which I confess I had never considered as an attribute of Uranus before but could be pertinent to the Aquarius shift ahead. Uranus, the castrated god, always being considered as anti-biology.
The seminars initially took place during the Yugoslavia carnage in the 1990s, a reminder that war and savagery are on a constant loop as is scapegoating the ‘different’ other.
Scapegoats in mythology were sacred, healing agents for a society to expel sins. In modern examples, the scapegoats whether in a neighbouring people or an individual within a family are made to feel inferior but in reality are seen as a powerful threat to stability. For countries, fighting battles outside the borders leads to internal cohesion. In families, a child who sees the emperor has no clothes and threatens to disrupt the social glue will be scapegoated.
Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader, ultimately charged with war crimes was a Sun Leo square Saturn with a Moon Chiron Pluto conjunction. Self-important yet harbouring self-doubts plus unhealable emotional damage from childhood. Both his parents committed suicide in later life so it must have been a depressed atmosphere for him as a child. Barbra Streisand also has a Moon Chiron Pluto so there are positive ways of living it out though it has clearly left its mark on her downbeat approach to life.
The scapegoat syndrome inclines towards Sun Chiron, Sun Saturn, Moon Pluto and Moon Neptune.
No great conclusions at the end since all these aspects appear in the charts of normal, law-abiding sorts but there is a wealth of astrological insights to be gleaned amongst the mythology and psychology.
“Sun Saturn says I’m not good enough, I’ll do something to make them approve of me.” Sun Chiron says: I’m not good enough and I never will be. They will always hate me whatever I do.”
Except for the south node (in Pisces), there’s no water in Slobodan Milosevic’s chart.
Ugh, I have Virgo Uranus/Mercury/Pluto opposed my Pisces Moon/Chiron.
Depending on house system, either the 3rd/9th axis, or the 2nd/8th. Oh, yeah, Scorpio Neptune at the end
of my 4th house, is the apex of the T square, Leo Sun opposite Aquarius Saturn.
Hey marj, have pisces stellium in 1st house opp uranus pluto venus in virgo in 7th house. Mars in libra 8th house. I’m a jumble of nerves. Cannot stick up for myself either.
Very interesting Marjorie
I have a lot of these aspects – Sun trine Chiron, Moon trine Chiron and Neptune, Moon in aspect to Saturn, Uranus AND Pluto…. (I have that Chiron-Uranus opposition, too).
I am not a serial killer…
However, quite recently I have come out of decades of denial and finally recognise that a person very close to me almost certainly has a serious personality disorder (I’m not a psychologist, and this person has not been assessed by a psychologist, so I know one has to be careful with dishing out labels, but this particular person in my life fits every description I read of this particular disorder). They are not quite sociopathic, but graze very close to it – it seems to me.
I am entangled in a legal/financial bond with this particular person, and what has struck me as I have been plotting my escape, is how I have found myself feeling devious and cunning… not liking it, and not wanting to really admit that I too have the ability to behave in the exact same way as the person I am trying to escape from. I would argue that I am doing it for self protection and for the protection of some others – needs must – but even so, it is weird to recognise the same behaviour in myself.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. We are all capable of everything. I have a very Pluto heavy chart, so learning to accept my shadow side (which we all have) and give her a seat at the table, instead of resisting her, pushing it down and telling myself I’m bad for having thoughts/feelings we label as negative, has been extremely freeing.
Apparently the peak period for US serial killers was between 1970 and 1990 with 1986 marking the highest number. I think this may in part have something to do with the generational influence of the Chiron-Uranus opposition which ran more or less continuously from 1950-1989. Many of the perpetrators would have been born under the Pluto Leo influence. Pluto in Virgo and Neptune in Scorpio may have highlighted the victims. No surprise the peak year was when Pluto was in Scorpio.
Yes, Hugh I read something similar. Iirc the peak was those born in the immediate post war years and I’ve also read a theory that these sons were born to war-traumatised fathers and mothers who struggled to cope as a result. I think from our position in history we easily forget the impact that collective trauma and upheaval six solid years of warfare can have upon the psychology of human beings. Of course we now have much better detection technologies as well as the advantages that cctv has brought to detection.
It has always struck me that the Neptune in Scorpio years were the perfect hunting ground for the likes of Savile, etc and that many of his victims were born during that era.
@Hugh Fowler, Doesn’t the 1950-1989 period overlap with the free-love movement / sexual revolution of the 60s-70s and the beginning of the AIDS epidemic? Both seem to fit with Pluto in Leo as well.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goldman-free-love/
Perfect. Jesus Christ is another example.
Perfect
‘Sun Saturn says I’m not good enough, I’ll do something to make them approve of me.” Sun Chiron says: I’m not good enough and I never will be. They will always hate me whatever I do.”‘
Great stuff – I have both!
It’s a good read, as you say Marjorie for anyone with an interest in the psychology of criminals and possible astrological signatures of ASPD. I remember her saying that of all aspects, Moon trine Chiron appears frequently in the charts of psychopaths. I have this aspect in Scorpio/Pisces and it’s exact. Always been fascinated by psychopathy – which I understand has a genetic component – and the hows and whys.