A coward, criminal and murdering terrorist or an inspiring peace-maker? Opinions are sharply divided, as former Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland Martin McGuinness dies suddenly, between those whose families were on the receiving end of IRA violence and those who applauded his dramatic changeover to politician and negotiator for the Good Friday Agreement.
Born 23 May 1950, he left school at 15 and rose in his twenties to become an IRA commander who was prepared to bomb, kill and oversee atrocities to drive the British out. He spent two years in prison in the Irish Republic; but gradually switched over to a more political role and was key to bringing the IRA hardliners into the peace talks.
He was a Sun Gemini square Jupiter in Pisces; with his Jupiter opposition his ruthless Mars/Pluto midpoint. His Mercury in Taurus was square his Pluto, trine Saturn and Mars, so he was a determined debater.
During the long five year negotiations running into the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, his Solar Arc Uranus was conjunct his Pluto, pushing him along the transformation from a man of violence to one of political accommodation with erstwhile bitter enemies.
Matching his chart to the UK 1801 chart, there’s a clear struggle for power with his Sun square the UK Pluto; and his Pluto square the UK Mars, opposition Venus, square Neptune. That translates in the relationship chart to a combative composite Sun trine Mars, sextiling onto a struggle-for-the-upper-hand Jupiter Pluto conjunction. There’s also a revolutionary composite Uranus square Pluto, though that also hints at a relationship that would go through dramatic changes, which it certainly did. He even shook hands with the Queen, whose uncle Lord Mountbatten was blown up by the IRA in 1979.
Norman Tebbit, the former Tory Cabinet Minister whose wife was paralysed in the Brighton Hotel bombing in 1984 that killed five though not Maggie Thatcher who was the intended target, and a colleague of Airey Neave MP, killed in Westminster in 1979 by a car bomb, was fiercely critical of McGuinness today, hoping he was rotting for an eternity in hell. The Tebbit/McGuinness relationship chart has a Uranus opposition Saturn square Mars; and a Pluto square Jupiter Sun – so never destined to mellow.
“Sometimes Satan comes as a man of Peace”.