A variety pack — much of it from a year or more ago!
Jan 20, 2008 Here is an excerpt from a book I’m working on right now — at breakneck speed — the material is flowing as smoothly as the river of time — and I’ve written 70 pages in 3 weeks, so far! The concept of the book is “The New Species”: how powerful and notorious individuals cause such tremendous cultural and political change as to modify homo sapiens, and how astrology can identify the nature of any personality in-the-news. I will probably submit the book to Llewellyn soon. —Ed
The Genius of Leadership and Charisma: Napoleon
Napoleon Bonaparte, born August 15, 1769, had a Mars conjunction Neptune. This brought about a sensual love of experience, of romance, of magic. It let him take his armies (Mars) into distant, dreamed-of realms (Neptune). The first place he conquered was Egypt and this led to the translation of hieroglyphics, and the description and depiction of ancient monuments along the Nile, as well as France’s becoming a long-term Imperial power in other more distant parts of Africa. But this aspect also made him beloved by the people as a charismatic leader and savior. Everyone saw Napoleon with the eye of exaggeration and legend, not for the rather short and rather naïve young man that he was. This is the man who, at his coronation, took the crown out of the Pope’s hands and crowned himself Emperor, in a scene reminiscent of the matchless level of egotism of a Caligula or Nero.
Bonaparte’s Mars-Neptune in 11.46 and 8.46 Virgo respectively, was tied into a Grand Trine which had Uranus in 11.30 Taurus and Pluto in 13.35 Capricorn. Note that the Mars and Uranus were within 16 minutes of exactitude, so he was able to strike (Mars) unexpectedly (Uranus), and take his armies (Mars) on distant forays (Uranus). Obviously, using new weapons and new techniques (Uranus) was part of his success. He was able to harness French armies and repel Prussian and Austrian ones. What the Germans did to the French in 1870 (the Franco-Prussian War), and which in turn led to the First World War and then the Second World War, was based on what Napoleon did to both the minds and hearts of the French and the armies of the Prussians and Austrians, 65 years earlier.
Pluto’s addition as one point of the Grand Trine, or triangle, significantly added to the desire and ability to use and channel raw power. The Grand Trine makes what is impossible to many, seem almost too simple! Exiled on a small island in the Mediterranean, he simply decided to come back, and picked up an army of support along the way. The soldiers who ought to have intercepted and arrested him joined him instead. Such was the strength of his charisma. A person with a Grand Trine rolls on and on until he makes a mistake (the invasion of Russia) or meets an immovable object in his path (a larger, well-rested, better equipped, army).
French patriotism was stirred by the Mars-Neptune conjunction, since more romance (Neptune) than war (Mars) deserved was stirred-up in the imagination and subconscious (Neptune) of the people and in the army. The army (Mars) was ?under his spell? (Neptune) and only someone’s else’s army (or navy) that was under someone else’s charismatic control, such as the Duke of Wellington, fighting for the British monarch, could hope to defeat Napoleon Bonaparte. .
Would it have been better if Napoleon had never taken charge of France at all? Did his career cause more than a million deaths across the length and breadth of Europe, even places as far west as Spain, where the ravages caused by his occupying army were well-documented by Goya’s startling drawings, or as far east as Moscow? The ‘romance’ was ‘writ too large’ in his chart, and in his life His life was his chart, come true. It is hard to see a weakness in his chart, he is a one-man wrecking-ball. But why he should NOT have come to the throne of France, like a ghost of its former Kings who had so recently been guillotined in the Revolution, is because Mars and Neptune are both malefic planets. Mars is a planet of masculinity, but that includes what are the worst elements of masculine drives: wrath, violence, the need for conquest. It combines with Neptune, a planet of compulsions and obsessions, of fantasies writ large against the backdrop of a whole continent. The next time someone is born with a Mars-Neptune conjunction, made all the stronger by being the heart of a Grand Trine involving Uranus and Pluto, please don’t let him or her sit upon a golden throne and make decisions to conquer. The fate of Napoleon Bonaparte is the most horrible one possible for someone born with the need to have followers and make big decisions: He was exiled to a tiny island in the South Atlantic, a world away from his triumphs and his people, and there he soon died, a victim of a suffocating exile to a lonely rock in the ocean, a suitable end for a tyrant, a sad end for a ‘world-conqueror’.
Add Adolf Hitler to the Equation
Adolf Hitler, born April 20, 1889, has a dangerous chart indeed. His Moon and Jupiter are conjunct in Capricorn, and his Venus and Mars are conjunct in Taurus ? only 19 minutes of longitude apart, thus making it a very strong combination. Moon with Jupiter makes him seem the most benevolent of men, and practical in the extreme, saying the things that mattered and were good for German society and economy, since both Moon and Jupiter are in Capricorn, a most practical and workmanlike sign. Capricorn, however, is ruled by Saturn, which is a planet of death and decay, and thus destruction, and this rulership leads us to the position of Saturn in his chart, to 13.28 Leo, near the very pinnacle of his chart, the Midheaven, in the 10th House, where his works would become manifested. And from here, Saturn throws a dominating aggressive and violent ‘square’ (90 degrees) down to Hitler’s Venus-Mars conjunction! This means Hitler could seem to be a vigorous, virile, impassioned, fiery and yet charming leader because of the Venus-Mars conjunction. Venus (beauty) adds charm and attractiveness to the masculine and aggressive, militant, angry (Mars) side of his nature. Venus also gives a measure of luck and ‘getting by with things’, which allowed him to survive battle in World War I, picking up the highest war medal as a reward (Venus [commendation, prize] + Mars [on account of bravery in war]). But BOTH Venus and Mars’ are controlled like marionettes on strings by Saturn, sitting up there in the cat bird’s seat at the very Midheaven. Saturn’s influence on Venus corrupts the sweet nature of the planet of love. Love becomes pain and pain becomes sadism and/or masochism. Saturn has a much worse effect on Mars, it traditionally has been said to bring out by far the WORST side of Mars.. it turns the planet of battle and aggression into a vengeful, hateful, despicable killing machine. The great successful warriors of past ages epitomized a powerful Mars. Achilles, Odysseus, Hector, Caesar Augustus. But Saturn’s 90 degree angle to Mars destroyed any nobility and grandeur which war brought about into savagery, enslavement, destruction. Hitler was hard to stop because he looked so good to the German people. His Moon conjunction Jupiter and his Venus conjunction Mars gave him character traits and a public presence that made FOLLOWERS out of those who heard him speak. He could sway a crowd just like Napoleon could. The problem, of course, is that he could not be allowed to run rough-shod over the whole of Europe and then the world, and put into effect his long range Mars-Saturn square plans to destroy whole peoples and races.
Hitler fooled many for several years in the late 1930’s, such as Chamberlain and Stalin, into thinking he was relatively harmless or could be bought-off with another slice of the pie. Stalin thought he could make a partner out of Hitler and divided much of Eastern Europe with him, and thus avoid battle, never suspecting until it was too late, that Hitler had absolutely no use for the Slavic people of Eastern Europe, especially those who had decided to live under Communism, and would kill them all if he could. And he nearly did!
Those who opposed him were, literally, those who did not speak or understand German, and thus were immune to his voice and choice of words. Those in the Baltic States and elsewhere, were charmed by him and his ideas, as he made even his most depraved ideas (such as getting rid of the Jews) seem well-justified and praiseworthy. His ‘race’-spiel was, like the whole ‘eugenics’ movement, a sensible idea to those who listened to his voice. But it was a different matter for those who lived in countries he would eventually have wanted to conquer or control, and for whom his belicose as well as magical litanies remained unfathomable. All the sight of him conveyed was a possibly dangerous strutting dictator who had stolen the heart of a majority of Germans. Those who were beyond his spell, were thus immunized and capable, as well as motivated, to fight against his idea of ‘liebenstraum’, the ‘living space’ for the Aryan people, at the expenses of Jews, Slavs, Gypies, Communists, homosexuals, priests, — and who knows what other groups and minorities he would eventually have wanted to destroy if he’d had a chance, all for the sake of ‘race purity’. Thus, there is a natural easy-to-see limit to how successful any tyrant can be: the power of that tyrant’s enemies. He was pitting Aryans against non-Aryans. Fortunately for the non-Aryans, there were a lot more of them than there were Aryan peoples. And it must not be forgotten that the United States luckily joined the battle. The United States could only be despised by Hitler and his fellow Nazis. The United States was THE big ?melting pot? of humanity, where all peoples, all races, were learning to live and work together, and thus it was the very opposite of what Germany was going to soon symbolize ? the gas chamber. For it was in literal gas chambers in which people who were different (the disabled, the insane, the culturally or ethnically ‘different or ‘challenged’, would all soon face destruction!)
Made Visible Through Astrological Analysis
It is the planets, their signs, houses, and aspects, which often make the man or woman. It can, in the case of Napoleon, give charisma enough for a whole people to adore or be fascinated by someone… someone who might lead them down a pleasant garden path …to the collective guillotine. At some point in the future, astrology will be used to determine who should and should not govern an army or a government, to prevent any more Napoleons or Hitlers from coming to power and causing massive death and destruction. Unless a whole people seem to WANT an emperor (Napoleon) or a dictator (Hitler), a strong man, a very dangerous strong man, which is what French did in about 1800, and what the Germans did in 1933. It is natural that they did. The French had just gone through the worst turmoil in their existence…the brutal insanities and wild idealisms of the Revolution, and the Germans had accepted a humiliating peace in 1918. Both peoples were ready for a ‘strong man’ to guide them back to a feeling of optimum self-worth, a self-worth which unfortunately included the conquest of neighboring countries. And this brought about an even greater downfall than either country had suffered earlier. It is not good for any nation to be led by militaristic tyrants. Napoleon was a conqueror, but Hitler was also known, from the outset, to be a racist looking to ‘purify the race’ and throw off the shackles of other races and peoples. In that way he was much more dangerous than Napoleon, and his war was twenty times more destructive.
My contention is, our species is shaped by those great leaders who can maintain the trust and loyalty of the masses (Bonaparte and Hitler) enough to encourage and maintain great wars of conquest; and especially those few leaders among them who can dictate who lives and who dies (Hitler), because then the species truly can be changed to suit the whims of that particular tyrant. Thus someone like Hitler, who becomes the ‘darling’ of his country, is close to being the Queen Bee or Ant that becomes the focus and reason for existence of the country (colony) itself. Hitler even said that if they failed in battle, the German people were not worthy of him. He put himself above and beyond the all the individuals who made up his own people. That is what you would expect from someone who wishes to shape humanity in ways he determines best, and send his armies of conquest, upon a whim, (such as the invasion of Russia), much as a swarming army of tropical ants would attack a herd of cattle or an entire hive of wasps attack someone who stumbles upon the hive. The resemblance to other collective animal species cannot be overlooked . The human race is constantly in peril of undergoing massive change through the selective actions of a powerful tyrant who can change, not only society, but erase whole ethnic or racial groups. Since this has happened several times in the past, it is sure to happen again in the future, and the outcome of such destruction will be to change civilization, culture, race and ethnicity in so many ways that a new species can be said to have evolved.
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