The Jungle Book has hit the cinemas, a remake from the old Rudyard Kipling short stories about Mowgli, the man-cub reared by wolves in India. Kipling was a prolific writer,– The Man who would be King, Gunga Din etc – a Nobel Prize winner aged 41, and exceptionally popular in his day. His poem IF -‘If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs’ – is much quoted.
His reputation has risen and fallen depending on the times since he was so quintessentially a symbol of British imperial rule in India during the Raj.
Born 30 December 1865 in Bombay/Mumbai, India at 10pm, he was sent, as was the custom, to England aged five to be fostered out and educated. He was bullied and mistreated for six years before being removed. He returned to India for a decade as an adult.
His Sun Jupiter in Capricorn opposed a 10th house Uranus squaring onto Neptune on the cusp of the 8th – so traditionally patriotic, but also a maverick and creative, with the capacity to project a powerful image out into the world. His Sun Jupiter was conjunct the UK and the India 1877 unification charts so he was close to both countries.
His 10th house Gemini Moon opposed a 4th house Mercury Mars Venus in Sagittarius – so again attached to home and family but also conflicted. He also had a tough Saturn in Scorpio opposition Pluto. His daughter died aged six and he lost his son in WW1, after which he became reclusive.
His leaving-a-legacy-for-history 17th Harmonic was strong.