The coming together of Neptune Pluto in the past has produced megalomanic dictators (Attila the Hun, Tamerlane the Great, Stalin, Cecil Rhodes, Hitler, Mao Tse Tung), scandals (Dreyfus, Oscar Wilde, Panama Canal), great erotic art (the Kamasutra, Canterbury Tales, Burton’s Thousand and One Nights), and science of intangibles (alchemy, electricity, radio waves, x-rays).
400–420 in Taurus and Gemini; 892–919 in Taurus and Gemini with Saturn as well in 912; 1383–1411 in Taurus and Gemini; 1876–1902 in Taurus and Gemini.
Ebertin adds to its individual characteristics – clairvoyant visions and second sight, highly active imagination, self-torment, obsessions.
Pluto’s emphasis on sexuality and Neptune’s boundary-dissolving qualities produced some memorably complicated relationships. Of which Louis and Edwina Mountbatten, Edward and Wallis, Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson as well as Stanley Spencer (below) are but a few examples.
Lord Louis Mountbatten, (uncle of Prince Philip), 25 June 1900 6am Windsor, England, married the much wealthier Edwina, 28 November 1901 7am Romsey, England. She had affairs throughout the marriage, latterly including Nehru, doing little to hide them. He accepted them and even developed friendships with some of them – making them “part of the family”. Her daughter Pamela Hicks describes her mother as a man eater and a detached, rarely seen mother who preferred travelling the world with her current lover to mothering her children. Louis Mountbatten admitted: “Edwina and I spent all our married lives getting into other people’s beds.” He is also suspected of homosexual liaisons, some underage.
He was a Sun Cancer with his Gemini Moon in a possessive conjunction to Pluto in a needs-space opposition to an adventurous Uranus Jupiter in Sagittarius with Neptune also in late Gemini in an escapist conjunction his Sun and an anxiety-riddled opposition to Saturn. He had a see-saw chart so was endlessly searching for another half to give him balance. Edwina’s Sagittarius Sun was conjunct his Uranus for major differences and her evasive Moon Neptune in Cancer in an angry and elusive opposition to Mars in Capricorn collided with his Sun. She also had a rebellious Uranus opposition Pluto and an earthy Saturn Jupiter conjunction in Capricorn.
Both of them were a ferocious mess as personalities – and their relationship chart did not give much hope of a settled life with a composite Moon Pluto opposition Jupiter Uranus square Sun opposition Mars – a rolling tempest of a relationship.
The Duke of Windsor, 23 June 1894 9.55pm Richmond, gave up the throne to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson, 19 June 1896 10.30pm and subsequently stuck together in exile in what seemed to be an unhappy liaison. He had a Cancer Sun in an impulsive square to Mars, with a Pisces Moon and a 4th house Pluto, Neptune conjunction in Gemini conjunct Jupiter in his 5th house, with an indulgent Venus in Taurus – reckless, trapped by his lineage and a playboy. His 8th house Saturn was trine his Pluto Neptune Jupiter which could have been a stabilizing influence but instead seemed to have induced depression. Wallis’s late Gemini Sun and Venus fell in his romantic 5th as well as her Neptune Mercury in Gemini. She did have her upbeat Jupiter in Leo in his 7th house which would offer him support. But their relationship chart with its out-of-step Full Moon, never in tune with each other’s moods, would take its toll. Their composite Venus, Pluto Neptune fell in the composite 4th for a trapped, confused and extravagant domestic life.
Novelist and garden designer Vita Sackville-West, 9 March 1892 4.15 pm Knowle, England, married penniless diplomat Harold Nicholson, 21 November 1886, after a chaste engagement without so much as a kiss and thereafter they had an open marriage. Both had same-sex relationships before and during their marriage. She had the Neptune Pluto conjunction in Gemini in her 10th house giving her creative talent and influence and a tendency to control. Her Leo Moon was square Uranus hinting at a need for constant change. She also had an unstable Saturn in Virgo opposition Jupiter square an excitable Mars in Sagittarius which would amplify her need for excitement and constant travel.
Harold, who later became a politician and then a journalist/biographer, had a Sun, Venus in Scorpio opposition Neptune Pluto so would feel the full brunt of the creative, erotic, confusion-inducing fates that oversaw his birth. He had several homosexual affairs and Vita discussed with him their shared homosexual tendencies They remained famously devoted to each other and wrote almost every day when they were separated because of Nicolson’s long diplomatic postings abroad or Vita’s insatiable wanderlust.
His Sun Venus fell in her 4th house and and was trine her Jupiter and Pisces Sun for a mutually supportive bond.
Their relationship chart was riddled with strained quincunxes – Saturn inconjunct the composite Sun; and Mars inconjunct the composite Neptune Pluto conjunction. Pieces that did not quite fit together. The Sun was also square Uranus – a union that needed a good deal of space and individual freedom. And the composite Moon may have been square Neptune Pluto – possessive and evasive. Somehow they made it work.
Nowadays seems unduly prudish in comparison.
ADD ON: An additional weirdness was Vita’s long passionate relationship with Violet Keppel-Trefusis, daughter of the favourite mistress of Albert Edward (“Bertie”), the Prince of Wales, who became King in 1901. He paid visits to her mother at tea time regularly until he died in 1910. Her father who was aware of the affair, was conveniently absent at these times.
Violet met Vita when she was ten and formed an attachment. On learning in later years that Vita was to be engaged to Harold Nicolson and was involved in an affair with Rosamund Grosvenor, Violet became engaged to Denys Trefusis to make Vita jealous. But because of Vita’s exclusive claim, and her own loathing of marriage, Violet made her husband-to-be promise never to have sex with her as a condition for marriage. As Vita and Violet cavorted together in the south of France gossip about their loose behaviour reached London. There then ensued a merry-go-round with two agitated husbands in pursuit, which climaxed when Harold told Vita that Violet had been unfaithful to her (with her husband Denys). Vita flew off the handle. Violet clung on via letters. And after to-ing and froing the affair ended and Vita stayed married to Harold.
The aristos at their worst.
Violet, 6 June 1894, London, no birth time, had a Sun. Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto conjunction in Geminis square Mars in Pisces – which was a whirlwind of over excitable chaos. Plus an indulgent Venus in Taurus; and an impulsive Mars trine Uranus perhaps trine a Cancer Moon.
Her Mars was conjunct Vita’s Pisces Sun for a spark of attraction though was also a recipe for arguments. Violet’s Venus was in opposition to Vita’s Uranus again hinting at the thrill of the unconventional but not a recipe for calm togetherness.
Their relationship chart did have an affectionate and mutually supportive composite Sun, Jupiter, Venus conjunction but it opposed Uranus for constant tensions and separations. There was also a Grand Trine of Mars trine Saturn trine Pluto Neptune hinting at a streak of unkindness, power-imbalance and considerable confusion.
All too exhausting.
ADD ON: Interesting that Vita S-W had a Taurus North Node and became one of the pre-eminent gardeners in the world with her husband in creating the Sissinghurst Garden. Traditionally Taurus NN have a powerful sex drive and tend to live out periods of intense emotional turmoil as they are pulled back into the Scorpio South Node. Moderation is lacking and they can be defensive in a hostile way if confronted. Reaching out for nature is what brings contentment ultimately. She was on her Nodal Return when she and her husband bought Sissinghurst.
Wow, what a roller-coaster this article and comments have been so far! I’ve even managed to manifest a reply to my question about a composite Full Moon!
“But their relationship chart with its out-of-step Full Moon, never in tune with each other’s moods, would take its toll.”
Thank you, everyone!
Dear Marjorie
I am finding everyone’s comments on Vita Sackville-West just fascinating, and indeed the poetic and grand romance of the love letters. I know relatively little about the astrology, please forgive me everyone, but can I just add this..
Vita is to me, one of the greatest and most inspirational artists of the 20th century, through her exquisite garden design and extensive creative, magical and poetic writing on gardening. I found Vita Sackville-West via a library book on Sissinghurst many years ago, and now own every word she published including all the Observer articles she wrote which were kept by my beloved grandmother ( born 1899 ) herself a superb gardener.
Vita made me into the gardener that I am today, a pastime that I love and is a part of who I am through that early inspiration. I can imagine this is true for a lot of people, and aside from her colourful life, she must have been a very special person to have left such a gardening legacy. She and Harold created their garden together, it must have been part of their devotion to each other.
Best Wishes
Sally
Here is Violet Trefusis rectified chart. Moon on the MC for authors, Sun conj 9th with
Mercury therein gives novelist.
https://i.postimg.cc/xTC63TJ3/Violet-Trusis-Rectified.jpg
She died due to starvation from malabsorption. Trans Hades opposite Virgo on her
12th cusp gives malabsorption while Solar Arc Saturn, ruler of her 4th, endings.
opposed her 8th cusp of death, and inconjuncted her natal Sun.
M., is there anywhere that you could be found regarding perhaps doing a rectification of a horoscope?
A century earlier a fashion for intense female relationships was in place and the most talked about in England was that of Georgiana the Duchess of Devonshire and the live-in Elizabeth Foster. I suppose it could be latterly classified as a ménage, as Elizabeth slept with the Duke as well and married him after Georgiana’s death. She is, also, probably the true birth mother to the Devonshire male heir. All, a bit complicated with the Duchess being hyperactive and high-strung and Elizabeth needing to keep a roof over her head, as she was penniless.
Oh, the Dukedom of Devonshire brings us to two things we’ve been talking about here: marital unfaithfulness, in a marriage between the 11th Duke and the 11th Duchess, whose accent is the other thing, another pronunciation of a bygone age. She was one of the Mitford sisters and it’s as if I recall Marjorie mentioned them before…
Yes, Deborah Cavendish, laterally Duchess, was the youngest of the famous Mitford sisters. If they were literary characters you would say it was all too outlandish. Although, I think that would apply to everyone spoken about in regards to the post. Somehow my life seems so dull now….hahahaaa..
LOL! I often mention a drama-school professor who quotes Aristotle, who said you can’t put things in a drama people wouldn’t believe. Suspension of disbelief had its limits. Yet, as you rightly point out, certain life stories just wouldn’t be believed if they were a play…
Is there anything in particular about Britain that, it seems, pick almost any famous person from the past, either a celebrity, an artist, or member of the nobility, and most likely than not he or she had same-sex liaisons? It seems to (have been) so profuse.
Any other country that had this so freely?
The only other one coming to mind is perhaps Ancient Greece.
What is it about Britain (that caused this)?
@ EL Aznar What springs to mind is the old snippet of description of France as Athens, Germany as Sparta and Great Britain as Old Rome.
Not sure your universal assumption about Britain is justified on the basis of a few notorious examples, just consider all the French equivalents who favoured same-sex relationships; Jean Cocteau, Yves Saint Laurent, Baroness Nicole de Rothschild, Colette, Jean Paul Gaultier, Michel Foucault, Phillipe Duke d’Orleans, Simone de Beauvoir, etc etc.
Queer Theory has certainly taken hold in the West amongst some of the young who think there is more gayness than there is in reality. Perhaps that also has something to do with Neptune/Pluto erotic confusion.
Perhaps it is relevant that Queer Theory first appeared in academia in 1990 when Pluto was sextile Uranus conjunct Neptune.
I’m sure I was fairly reductive, because, of course, I had in mind that probably in Germany there was something a little like it. But then really? Not really, I believe. There is something very peculiar about Britain in this regard. Or maybe I’m imagining.
Certainly, we had Michelangelo, as Jane rightly points out down there, who Brian Sewell so much and so rightly fawned over.
But what about Spain? Because I was going to go for maybe this happened in the countries of Western Europe, even though probably certain Asian countries were riddled with same-sex love stories over the centuries of real life and art.
It’s just a guess, but I think, probably, a very small proportion of all humanity, East, West, North and South, is gay. Liberal democracies have loosened the old social mores so it’s a bit more visible in the West, the more liberal the more visible.
EA – if you feel like delving into an academic study, “Los Invisibles” a History of Male Homosexuality in Spain 1850-1940 is free online at White Rose Research Online. It covers the complicated history of all the different Spanish laws, medical definitions, social implications and so on.
For women, for example, there’s the story of a Spanish couple, Elisa and Marcela, which was made into a film in 2019. They managed to marry each other in a Catholic ceremony, with Elisa disguised as a man. You may imagine the ensuing scandal. They escaped to S America in the end, but I don’t know what happened to them otherwise. Their marriage happened on 8th June, 1901, with Uranus 14 Sagittarius opposing Pluto 17 Gemini. Neptune was at the very end of Gemini, moving into Cancer in the July – always an interesting moment of transition, when an outer planet changes signs. There is quite a history of same-sex marriages involving two women, in various countries. Sometimes they managed to get away with it, but we have records of those who were discovered of course.
In John Berger’s 1967 book about a country doctor, ‘A Fortunate Man’, the doctor describes visiting an old couple living in a cottage to treat the wife. When she lies down and lifts her dress for the examination it’s apparent she’s a man. Nothing was said, the doctor examined her/him and wrote out a prescription.
Thank you Claire. There’s something rather moving about that story.
Relationships were often defined differently in the past, as was sexuality in all its complexity. We use categories today that simply didn’t exist then, but were provided by the sexologists of the 19th and 20th centuries. Intense and passionate same-sex friendships also existed, some platonic, some not. The prevailing religious culture, and the laws of each nation also varied in definition, and in how often they were used to prosecute individuals. Romantic, physical relationships between women, for instance, were never illegal in the UK. And despite male homosexuality being illegal, it existed as a sub-culture that most people knew about.
If you’re wondering about different locations, you might consider investigating the Italian Renaissance for some famously brilliant gay men!
Only a stray thought since I am no expert but might it have had something to do with Protestant UK as opposed to Catholic France/Spain. My recollection from Sarah Dunant’s novels about a mythical Italian convent in the later 16th century was the inquisition/Jesuit punishment for male homosexuality was brutal – one of the nun’s brothers was hauled in for same.
Yes I think religion certainly has a lot to do with it. In France, the Penal Code of 1791 abolished any punishment for male homosexuality. That’s the Uranus opposition Pluto revolutionary era, and includes the Bill of Rights in the USA that December. The Netherlands, though, had a kind of Calvinist Protestant society, with some Catholics. They were very anti gay men and women for a very long time.
Most of the men you mention went to public schools like Eton or Harrow, where they admired the ancient Greeks and tried to emulate them. Especially the way the Spartans initiated a special boy companion to sex and the ways of the world. So homosexuality and child abuse would have seemed natural and the preferred choice. Despite this many chose to marry because it was the expected norm.
As for the women, it would be expected that close same sex friendships would happen, though not necessarily sexual ones. Certainly it was an age when female boarding schools thrived, and perhaps a certain amount of imitation of what went on, in the other schools was to be expected. Whether they would have chosen such a preference without any of them being initiated into it is unknown. Though I suspect there would be some. Certainly for a man and woman to marry in the knowledge that no intercourse will take place implies a pact of some kind designed to thwart their families and societies’ expectations and aspirations.
You might like to check out Hollywood’s ‘lavender marriages’, Linda. Many unions there were designed to cover up the fact that either, or both, parties were gay!
I have read quite a bit on the subject. There were ever so many of them. Some of them even had children.
Yuck. How do you know so much marjorie?
Marjorie, you should do a reading on Princess Louise the daughter of Queen Victoria.
Thanks Marjorie. What a collection! I noticed you mention Sir Richard Burton. What an extraordinary man, and almost his birthday on 19th March. He had the Neptune/Uranus conjunction (1821) in Capricorn, and a Pisces stellium. I’d been looking at the Neptune/Pluto of 1893 in relation to the Independent Labour Party, as posted elsewhere, and wondering what it had brought. Such a fascinating group of people too. I have some ancestors from that era who lived quietly in a rural menage a trois for decades – two men devoted to one woman, who ran everything. There may have been much more of this than we think, much of the 19th and early 20th century social history was hidden beneath a stifling blanket of ‘respectability’ but was actually very far from it in reality!
Vita and Virginia had some intense aspects and generally their whole synastry seems that way on first look.
Mars (Vita) opposition Mars (Virginia), Venus square Venus, Venus square Sun, Moon opposition Sun, Moon square Saturn, Vita’s Neptune–Pluto conjunction on Virginia’s ascendant, Sun opposition Uranus, Uranus square Sun, Mercury square Mars, Saturn square Mars – the list seems endless. 0_0
The composite: Sun conjunct North Node square Neptune, Saturn square Uranus, and Jupiter square Saturn. Moon in Gemini.
Vita and Violet: Sun (Vita) conjunct Mars (Violet) – “It is possible for this relationship to be aggressively sexual because the Mars person is attracted to the physical and emotional characteristics of the Sun person”. Explains those letters in part… 0_0 Moon square Venus and Uranus, Sun square Sun and Neptune.
Composite: Grand Air Trine of Neptune–Pluto trine Saturn trine Mars.
Sun conjunct Venus conjunct Jupiter in Taurus!
I haven’t found Violet’s birth time, but there might be an unaspected Moon in the Composite, in the capricious and moody sign of Cancer, that seems to only square the Aries North Node.
There’s also a partile explosive Mars square Uranus in there.
Wow, thank you so, so much for this! I will have to read and re-read it in depth.
As I was discussing Vita Sackville-West, whom I adore and who fascinated me, with Virgoflake yesterday, and Violet Trefusis, I bumped onto an article on TheMarginalian.org website titled “The Breathtaking Love Letters of Violet Trefusis and Vita Sackville-West”, and my jaw dropped.
I find them so passionate and amazing, they are almost bringing back my faith in real love even in today’s atmosphere and state of affairs in human relationships.
Just take a brief look at these two inserts:
“I am in the act of asking myself if I ought to reply to your question? A question furthermore most indiscreet and which merits a sharp reprimand. Reply, don’t reply, reply! Oh to the devil with discretion!
Well, you ask me pointblank why I love you… I love you, Vita, because I’ve fought so hard to win you… I love you, Vita, because you never gave me back my ring. I love you because you have never yielded in anything; I love you because you never capitulate. I love you for your wonderful intelligence, for your literary aspirations, for your unconscious (?) coquetry. I love you because you have the air of doubting nothing! I love in you what is also in me: imagination, the gift for languages, taste, intuition and a host of other things…
I love you, Vita, because I have seen your soul…”
”My days are consumed by this impotent longing for you, and my nights are riddled with insufferable dreams… I want you. I want you hungrily, frenziedly, passionately. I am starving for you, if you must know it. Not only the physical you, but your fellowship, your sympathy, the innumerable points of view we share. I can’t exist without you, you are my affinity, the intellectual “pendent” to me, my twin spirit. I can’t help it! no more can you! … We complete each other…”
What struck me most is perhaps the line “I love you because you have the air of doubting nothing!” It’s as if I had that impression of Vita, but haven’t uttered or formed it verbally in my mind. I find it something really typical of many members of the aristocracy.
To think that this Neptune–Pluto in Gemini fascinated me ever since I saw it and that I got to see the day you write about it is so amazing, and I am so thankful, to you and the Universe.
I would also add, I now see, “I love you because you have never yielded in anything; I love you because you never capitulate.” to that “doubting nothing” thing and wonder what in her chart gave her that.