Pat Robertson, the televangelist, who has died at 93, is notable not just because he turned God into a cash machine. But more damagingly he spearheaded the intrusion of religion into the Republican Party and US politics, which has led to the present day furore over abortion, gay rights and racism. He saw Trump as God’s plan for the USA and as such no secular election could overthrow him.
He is blamed for Newt Gingrich’s rise in the 1990s and the GOP’s scorched-earth political warfare backed up by conspiratorial thinking about the evil liberal cabal they were fighting against. He later blamed cultural liberalism for 9/11 and abortion policy for Hurricane Katrina.
He was born 22 March 1930 in Lexington, Virginia, no birth time, with a militant Christian mother Gladys who told him God had a plan for him. He racketed around, married ten weeks before the first child was born, skipped military service in Korea, failed the bar exam and was ecstatically ‘saved’ from depression by a Baptist missionary. His wife thought he was drunk. On the orders of the Lord he sold the family furniture, abandoned his eight months pregnant wife, to attend a religious camp in Canada. His wife put his actions down to his being a “religious nut” with “schizoid tendencies”. But she remained with him.
He founded the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), the fifth largest cable TV programme network system in the US. Various financial criticisms loomed thereafter including about his diamond mine in the Congo, none of which dented his popularity amongst the faithful. After a failed run for the presidency he became a GOP kingmaker.
Latterly he was ranting and raving with fundamentalist fervour about feminists being “anti-family lesbians”, gays “demonic” and non-Christians “termites” and predicted the world would end in 1982 or 2007.
He was a Sun Aries with Uranus Venus conjunct in Aries on the focal point of a T Square to Pluto opposition Saturn (Moon) in Capricorn. A focal point Uranus can be a trailblazer and catalyst for change though not always for the better. Determined to upset the status quo it produces an aggressive reformer.
He also had a Mutable T Square of a publicity-attracting Mars in Pisces opposition Neptune squaring onto an over confident Jupiter in Gemini.
The combination of the depressive Saturn Pluto and the pumped-up Jupiter would give him a precarious mental balance.
The other factor in his chart is the Taurus North Node which usually brings wrangles over money throughout life as well as issues around sexuality.
He certainly was karmically intertwined with the Republican Party – or if you prefer, was destined to be connected. The 12 October 1853 GOP chart has its Pluto conjunct his North Node and his Jupiter is conjunct their North Node. They gave him gravitas and kept the money rolling in and he gave them a recipe for winning.
It is less obvious why (astrologically speaking) he became the spark which sent the USA down the raging, holier-than-thou (maybe) anti-liberal road which peaked with Trump. When Reagan moved into the White House which was around the time of religious politics becoming embedded (I think) Pluto was then in the final decan of Libra. Thus it was the marker for the final quarter of the Pluto cycle before it slide towards the Return this year.
Depending on which side of the argument you are, this could be an indication of the USA in decline, slowly subsiding into brain mush before the necessary reconstruction as Pluto moves into enlightened Aquarius. Though the demented prayer-lobby would no doubt see the advancing liberal movements as the decline rather than the reverse.
It has always seemed to me an extreme oddity having abortion and gay rights etc centre foreground in a country that holds itself up as a liberal democracy.
Maybe Pat Robertson’s passing is a sign?
My mother was born 21 March 1930 in Cardiff. She struggled with mental health all her short life. My father (a doctor with a delusional tendency to think he could rescue damsels in distress) after her suicide at the age of 40 said she was schizophrenic. Personally, I always thought she had an undiagnosed bipolar disorder because when she was up she was great fun and when she was down she locked herself away in her room. Although obviously some things will be different, clearly many of the aspects will be the same.
I rectified his chart to 1:25:14 pm, Ascendant 00Leo36. Sun in a 9th House stellium, religion
Click on the link below for his death triwhee, natal, solar arc, transits. Enlarge triwheel.
https://i.postimg.cc/3J5MhM9T/Bobertson-Death-Triwheel.jpg
Loving the synchronicity of his death, Boris’s resignation and Trump’s federal indictments. Somebody’s taking out the trash. Did Venus moving into Leo opposing Pluto kick this off?
Would love to see how this lot intersect astro-wise.
Me too.
Also he ran for president in 1988. It seems as if the mainstream press has largely ignored him for the past 20 years. Like Trump, he was genius at self- promotion. But he wasn’t getting the attention he used to get.
His father was a long-time Democratic senator from Virginia. When I was a child growing up there, he was viewed as the slightly more moderate of two but definitely a member of the Byrd Machine, led by senior Senator Harry Byrd, a staunch segregationist and, in retrospect, racist. A. Willis Robertson, his father, wasn’t a Bible-thumper like his son.
Pat Robertson was far more extreme than his father and, in my opinion, a genuinely evil man.
Marjorie, it is so interesting about what you said about Robertson’s karmic relationship with the GOP in light of the timing of his death with Trump’s indictment.