Salman Rushdie, the Indian-born writer who has been under threat of assassination since the Iranian fatwa was issued against him in 1989 after his Satanic Verses novel was published and was nearly despatched in 2022 has written a book about his latest near brush with death – Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder. He was stabbed 18 times at a literary conference by a Hezbollah-supporting Lebanese American who had only read two pages of his book but had been radicalized.
Rushdie whose Midnight’s Children won the Booker writes: “Art challenges orthodoxy. To reject or vilify art because it does that is to fail to understand its nature. Art sets the artist’s passionate personal vision against the received ideas of the time… Without art, our ability to think, to see freshly, and to renew our world would wither and die.”
He was born 19 June 1947 at 2.30am Mumbai, India into a Kashmiri Muslim family and has a New Moon in Gemini conjunct an outspoken Uranus; with Mars in his 1st house in ultra-determined Taurus in a risk-taking and can-be-opportunistic opposition Jupiter in Scorpio in his 7th. He also has an unyielding Saturn Pluto in Leo in his 4th house with his Pluto in a pushily-confident square to Jupiter. He is not short on self-belief or determination.
When the fatwa was announced against him around the time of the triple conjunction in Capricorn on 14 January 1989 his Solar Arc New Moon was exactly conjunct his 4th house Saturn, restricting his life thereafter as heavy security became necessary. His Solar Arc Pluto in the year that followed square his Uranus as his life turned upside down and continued in the years thereafter to square his New Moon; followed by SA Saturn square his Uranus and New Moon over the next decade. Tr Pluto was also moving to conjunct his SA Neptune and Jupiter as well in a couple of years to oppose his Mars for a trapped, infuriated two years.
In 2022 his Mars was again under assault from tr Saturn square his Mars with tr Uranus in Taurus adding its layer of tension.
By all accounts a talented writer though not always well remarked for his personality, he certainly has endurance and courage to survive and keep a high profile through 35 years of threats.
His creative 5th harmonic is strong; as is his global-name 22H. His victim/creative 12H and stubborn though can-be-self-defeating 16H is also marked.
Natal Jupiter opp Mars and Pluto conj Saturn weigh heavily always.
For all his wit he refuses to learn. ‘You reap what you sow’.
Interesting that he was born almost exactly a couple of months before Indian and Pakistani independence. That would mean that he would share his outer planets placement with those two nations. Obviously house placement and inner planets would be different.
It would be an interesting astrological exercise to see how closely his fate tracked that of those two nations, to see the effects of the shared planetary placements.
Yes I agree. I’m intrigued by the connection of one’s life to global events at the time of birth that one is affected by.
It’s what his Booker winning Midnight’s Novel was about – a fictional boy born at the exact moment of India’s independence on 15 August 1947.
I was amazed to see he’s now on his 5th marriage … but not that surprised with all those Gemini planets including venus in trine to neptune in libra. First one took place around the time of his Saturn return and lasted 11yrs. The subsequent ones haven’t lasted longer than 7yrs. Currently three yrs into this one.
Sun Moon Uranus in Gemini is not custom designed for the long haul. Plus Chiron in his 7th plus Saturn Pluto in his 4th – not an easy man to live with I’d imagine.
Like him, I have early Scorpio descendant with Jupiter in 7th (and Sag 8th). Always very intense wanting to get the most out of the relationship. But as I’ve got older, I realise I tend to lose interest in people when they can’t teach or show me anything new.
He was interviewed by CBS’s show, 60 Minutes and he said that he purposely did not include the name of his attacker because he spent enough time with his attacker.