MIDPOINTS: CHIRON=VENUS/MARS

WHAT DO OPRAH, MICHAEL JACKSON, ERICA JONG, HENRY FORD, EDDIE IZZARD, KARL MARX, BENNY HILL, ALEISTER CROWLEY AND HERMAN MELVILLE HAVE IN COMMON? 

CHIRON=VENUS/MARS

Introduction

This article is part of a series of pieces about sex, including the Venus/Mars midpoint  mostly published in the Midpoint Corner of the Uranian Society website.

The Venus/Mars midpoint is arguably the most specific part of the horoscope for information about sexuality and sexual activity.  A planet at the natal midpoint describes a person's pattern of sexuality, or their partners, or a single life changing sexual event or partner.

The myth of Chiron is a good place to start: the child of a rape, feeling ugly and abandoned by both mother and father; refined and intelligent, skilled in healing, music and with animals, he was unique among the other centaurs, and--although he married and fathered children--a loner.  He suffered a mortal wound and chose to die a mortal death rather than experience the pain of the wound forever.

Chiron received bad parenting.  But he also had  a daughter (whose name was Melanippe or Arne) who was ashamed to tell him when she became pregnant.

So in keeping with the mythological character, the characteristics of an emphasized natal Chiron include: physical or psychological pathology, healing ability (perhaps more technical skill than comfort with emotion) loner/loneliness; insecurity about one's appearance.  When sexuality is involved, it may manifest as:

·        physical or psychological health issues--yours or your partner's.  This may have an impact on sexual activity or describe a partner with a pathology.

 .       sexual LONELINESS

·        doubts about one's sexual appeal

·        unique sexual desires; kinkiness

·        sexual abuse 

·        self destructive behavior e.g., precocious or promiscuous sex

·        harm resulting from sex e.g., scandal

·        disconnect or difficulty with connecting with one's sexual nature, particularly with a partner; sexual repression

There are a number of Venus/Mars configurations--even Venus=Mars by itself--that correspond with as many varieties of unusual sexual circumstances as there are human beings who experience them.  For a more complete overview, see "Sex in the Horoscope" in the Midpoint Corner.

CHIRON=VENUS/MARS IN THE HOROSCOPES OF ENTERTAINERS,  AUTHORS CELEBRITIES AND HISTORICAL FIGURES

OPRAH (7' orb)

Like Chiron himself, Oprah was conceived by parents who'd had a single sexual encounter and then abandoned her.  "I was sexually abused" by a cousin, an uncle and a family friend "from age 10 to 14, my resulting promiscuity as a teenager, and, finally at 14, my becoming pregnant".   Insecurities about appearing in public with her partner resulted in an obsession with her weight.  "I knew that when people would see us together that the first thing they were thinking was...'what's he doing with that fat girl?'"   She is dogged by rumors that she is gay.

Oprah has more than one planetary placement that corresponds with complex personal events and resulting issues:  Sun=Venus=Saturn=Vulcanus.

Several planetary combinations that include Chiron appear in the charts both parents and children where there has been abandonment or abuse.   Saturn/Chiron is not uncommon.  Sun/Chiron  or Venus/Chiron pictures aspects appear with some regularity.   Tina Turner and Art Linkletter, both abandoned children, have Sun=Chiron (135) and Sun=Venus=Chiron (less than 2 degrees orb) respectively. 

There's only anecdotal evidence for the Chiron=Venus/Mars midpoint picture specifically appearing in the horoscopes of fathers who didn't acknowledge their illegitimate children but it's dramatic and compelling.  Both Henry Ford and Karl Marx are said to have fathered sons whom they never legally acknowledged.  Ford had a closer relationship with that child while Marx's child was thought to have been adopted by Engels for Marx's convenience. 

The Ford "brothers", Edsel Ford and John Dahlinger resemble each other more than they do their father.  Ford was said to have his chauffer marry his mistress and built a palatial property whose worth far, far surpassed the financial resources of its occupants:  for his mistress who was an avid horse racer-- 2 racetracks a blacksmith shop and several barns; a refrigerated fur storage vault, a gatehouse, a lake and skating house, a greenhouse, gardeners quarters and servants quarters, and a secret entrance through which Ford could continue visiting his mistress.

MICHAEL JACKSON (1' orb)

Talented and strange in many ways, Michael Jackson had Chiron exactly on the midpoint of Venus/Mars (1' orb) as well as a wide square between Venus and Mars (4 degrees).   The Jackson 5 got their start performing in strip clubs.  At age 9, Michael was the youngest. "In of one of their early numbers, he was encouraged to leave the stage and crawl beneath the tables, looking up ladies' skirts, flashing lewd smiles".   As he began to mature "his father told him he was ugly. He was certain this was true: he felt his skin was too dark and his nose too wide" (*)  leading to an obsession with cosmetic procedures that had questionable results. 

His first girlfriend was with 12 year old Tatum O'Neill when Jackson was 17.  "She wanted to do everything and I didn't want to have sex at all." (**)  At age 21, he and 15 year old Brooke Shields's friendship was, Jackson remembered "romantically serious for a while...We had one encounter when she got real intimate and I chickened out. And I shouldn’t have."   On his wedding night with Lisa Marie Presley,  35 year old Jackson called a friend "in a panic" for "sex advice to make sure that Lisa was impressed with his 'moves.'" (***)Their 1994 marriage (lasting one year) made headlines like "Jackson-Presley Union Sparks Shock, Doubt, Laughs.", coming so soon after the 1993 allegations of sexual misconduct with a boy.  It should be remembered the boy had cancer, and Jackson was motivated to help.

Presley insists they had sex but never saw him naked or without make-up.  ‘The first time, she went to turn on the lights afterwards, he ran into the bathroom so she wouldn’t see his body. He emerged 20 minutes later, in full make-up and a silk robe...They were into role-playing games, although Lisa would never say who was playing what kind of role." (****) Like Jackson, Presley also had natal Chiron=Venus/Mars (1 degree 12' orb).  When they connected romantically in February 1993, her P. Chiron was opposite P. Uranus (1' orb),  just 2' from the Venus/Mars midpoint.   Also T. Uranus was conjunct T. Neptune, making a sesquiquadrate aspect with her N. Sun/Cupido/Kronos/Poseidon/Chiron picture.

Jackson's 2nd wife gave birth to 3 children but the couple never lived together and the children were said to have been the result of artificial insemination.

 (*) Pavia, Will (June 27, 2009). "A lonely life in reverse". The Independent

(**)Martin Bashir interview

(***) Chopra, Gotham (2009-06-26). "Writing Songs With My Friend Mike". Huffington Post

(****)TABORELLI, Michael Jackson Biography 

MATA HARI (9' orb)

Almost 100 years after her execution, Mata Hari's name is still associated with sexual intrigue and espionage.  The power she wielded over men became apparent at age 15, when her enchanted headmaster  pursued her, resulting in a scandal that forced her to leave school.  Dutch by birth, at age 18 she answered a personal ad placed by a 38 year old Dutch businessman living in Indonesia and they married within 3 months.  Shortly thereafter, she left her abusive husband who openly kept a concubine, but not before having 2 children who were infected with syphilis by their parents and later died of the disease.  In order to support herself, she became an exotic dancer, wearing nothing but jewelry and a bra--she was said to be insecure about her small breasts.  Photographs of her performances were used to take her children from her. 

Her nearly nude performances became a sensation in Paris, attracting wealthy and generous lovers all over Europe--including  German politicians.   When WWI began, her travel began to attract attention.  Finally detained, she claimed to be working as a spy for the French but was convicted of passing military secrets to the Germans and shot.   Her guilt was disputed,  but documents uncovered almost 60 years after her death, verified she was recruited by the German in the fall of 1915, when  the SR contained  Chiron (and Cupido)=Venus/Mars.

Mata Hari's fearless, libertine and far flung sexual exploits were also evident  in her traditional chart  in which Uranus was elevated and  Jupiter was rising in Scorpio rising, square to a conjunction of the Sun and Mars in Leo in the 9th House and opposite Pluto in Taurus in her 7th House.

ALEISTER CROWLEY  (Venus conjunct Chiron, T- Square with Mars/1 degree 32' orb)

Black magician and self proclaimed "Beast" whose sacred spiritual  sacraments included  sexual practices engaging as many partners of all ages and both sexes as time would allow.  Certain  "Sex Magick" practices  in his books, such as oral and anal sex, were considered  deviant during his  lifetime in the Victorian era (when even a man kissing another man was a convictable offence) while other practices, such as rape ("Some of the most passionate and permanent attachments have begun with rape") and   necrophilia ("justifiable in some exceptional cases" (*)a.c. Magick: Liber Aba) and eating the partner's feces, remain aberrational even to the 21st century sensibility.   

 In the 2nd half of 1888 and early 1889, 13 year old Crowley had P. Chiron=Venus/Mars exactly.  He was said to lose his virginity at around age 14 by seducing a parlor maid on his mother's bed and contracted gonorrhea shortly afterward, but there is only one source that specifically refers to his activity during the precise time frame when the progressed aspect was exact.  Written by an astrologer who--based on Crowley's physical proximity to the murders as well as  aspects of Mars, Saturn and Uranus--concluded  that Crowley was the real Jack the Ripper, serial murderer of prostitutes.   Read for yourself:  Click here: Jack the Ripper a.k.a. Aleister Crowley or try Http://bookoflaw276.tripod.com/crowleyripper.html.  Crowley--a student of astrology himself-- also wrote an astrological analysis of the murders. 

 (*)A.C. Magick: Liber Aba

BENNY HILL (10' orb)

The Benny Hill Show's bawdy brand of humor was hugely popular in the 140 countries where it was shown, but castigated by feminists and ultimately banned by British TV chiefs as unsuitable for family viewing.  Labeled the "comedy of regret"(*) Hill's character was a dirty older man with his pants around his ankles, ogling and chasing partially clothed women. 

In reality "Benny was not someone who touched other people much...He was shy and continually disappointed by sex"(**).  His professional downfall was the result of dipping into his personal collection of pornography and sex aids--said to have been worth millions--for a sketch featuring him assaulting a policeman with a huge purple penis, actually an African antique.

Hill's chart also contained a Venus/Mars square (1 degree 11' orb) as well as Saturn in Scorpio square to sun in Aquarius (1 degree 57' orb).

* Anthony Burgess

*The Truth about Benny Hill by Andrew Collins

Text

EDDIE IZZARD (7' orb)

Heterosexual transvestite Eddie Izzard describes himself as a male lesbian and a male tomboy. Now age 51, he's had a 3-year relationship with a woman which ended 10 years ago.  "But try as I might, I just can't fancy a man...I am constantly trying to access my whole girl side, trying to define what my sexuality is all about...I haven't got the answers. It is still a bit confusing...And I know that some sections of society find me abhorrent."   He's been beaten by men for wearing a dress.   "In girlie mode, I will get hassled. I have to be able to fight or attack or respond"(*).   Aggressive  in work ('in your face') and hiatus (he ran 43 marathons in 51 days),  but in the pursuit of someone to whom he attracted  he admits “No. Well, I don’t know quite what I do...relationships, they’re a f***ing minefield... I don’t trust being ‘in’ love".(**) Izzard also has Chiron=Venus/Saturn. 

Some of Izzard's other chart factors: Mars and Saturn conjunct in Aquarius, Pluto less than 1 degree from the Virgo Asd. and  the 7th house Moon in Pisces is inconjunct Uranus--it's only aspect. His mother died when he was 6 years old, but he began dressing in women's clothes 2 years before then.

(*) Who Iz (sic) Eddie Izzard? Alison Boshoff Daily Mail, Tuesday July 15, 2003

(**)Eddie Izzard. com

 

CHIRON=VENUS/MARS IN LITERATURE

From writers of trash to the classics, an author's horoscope is an interesting lens through which to study planetary combinations which are likely to symbolize titles, contents and characters  as if they are 'real life' events and people.

Erica Jong  (6' orb)

With the publication of Fear of Flying, Jong became the "Queen of Erotica" giving voice to sexual liberation in the early days of the women's movement with her story focusing on sex and lots of psyhotherapy, of an awful marriage to a psychiatrist and an affair with a therapist.  Published in 1973 when P. Chiron was exact with N. Venus/Mars, the novel coined the term 'zipless fuck' to describe a sexual encounter between two strangers with no emotional involvement or ulterior motive.  

Her daughter's autobiographical memoir Sex Doctors in the Basement provides a glimpse into Jong's personal life from the vantage point of a 7-year old "watching my mother saunter around au natural, past the pictures of naked lesbians around...the trauma of listening to my mother call my stepfather a 'horny Boy Scout'...it still haunts me to this day"; and the Drs. Kronhausens--sex doctors living and working in the basement of Jong's home--whose anti-aging treatments attracted celebrities and included sharing bodily fluids with them.

Authors Toni Morrison and Edna Saint Vincent Millay actually use the word 'wounding'-- precisely the word associated with Chiron-- in the context of sexual activity.

Toni Morrison (36' orb)

Toni Morrison's recollection of her first encounter between black and white people was  her father assaulting a white man who appeared outside their apartment--assuming the man had come to molest his daughters.  Apart from that incident, the only evidence of Chiron=Venus/Mars in her intimate life is the attribute of the loner.  She left her husband while pregnant with their 2nd child, and in the subsequent 50 years, never remarried or even had a personal relationship--apart from with her children--that was known to the public.  

Nor are sexual issues the centerpiece of her work, but whatever sexual behavior there is, is described in critical studies as  "taboo, abusive...violent...perverted...sadistic...dehumanizing...traumatic"  *.   Deviant sexuality such as rape, incest, pedophilia and bestiality  symbolizes  a sick society. 

Here's one example:  Sula, the main character in the novel named for her, has inherited her mother's "addiction to casual sex"* .   But while her mother enjoys  sex and is tolerated even by their wives of all the men with whom she's been, Sula experiences "a loneliness so profound"** as well as the contempt of her community.   When she seduces her closest friend's husband, destroying their marriage and leaving the friend devastated "The wound she inflicts is something which Sula is unable to comprehend."*  Another character returns from WW1 suffering permanent physical and mental injuries "never touched...never caressed" but "walked about with his penis out (and) peed in front of ladies and girl children." (*)

(*) SEXUALITY IN TONI MORRISON’S WORKS Birgit Aas Holm)

**Sula 

EDNA SAINT VINCENT MILLAY (7' orb)

"America's foremost love poet"(*) the work of Edna Saint Vincent Millay reads like an 'erotic biography' (**). She had an 'intoxicating effect on people...of all ages and both sexes" and she married because "She was tired of breaking hearts and spreading havoc". (***). 

Images of physical pathology abound in her work.  The very words associated with Chiron are applied to love.

This love, this longing...
Will glut, will sicken....
The wound will heal, the fever will abate(****)

Here is a wound that will never heal
Being wrought not of a dearness and a death
But of a love turned ashes and the breath(****)

She is at turns injured...

You loved me not at all, but let it go;
I loved you more than life, but let it be.
As the more injured party, this being so,
The hour’s amenities are all to me—
The choice of weapons; and I gravely choose
To let weapons tarnish where they lie;
And spend the night in eloquent abuse(*****)

...and careless with other peoples' feelings:

 "I loved you Wednesday,

–yes–but

what Is that to me?" (******)

Millay also had the South Node in Scorpio

* "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed" by Daniel Mark Epstein

** her own words in response to "when, where, and under what impulsion" she wrote)

(***) edmond wilson

(****)Fatal Interview

(*****) You Loved Me Not But let it Go  

(******) Thursday

HERMAN MELVILLE (24' orb)

Modern scholars analyze authors who lived hundreds of years ago through a contemporary lens--and  particularly from a sexual standpoint.   Melville is one of the most psycho-sexually analyzed of the classicists-- and repressed sexuality and particularly repressed homosexuality-- is a common conclusion, at least about his characters and possibly Melville himself.  His marriage was unhappy in the extreme. Letters from Mrs. Melville's brother refer to Melville having "ill treated" her.  She was "convinced that her husband is insane".(*)  Wife beating and emotional abuse motivated both his and her families to suggest a feigned a kidnapping to remove her from the marriage. (**)

Romanticized relationships between men abound in his work and--and even in his personal life.  When he first met Nathaniel  Hawthorne, he was moved to review Hawthorne's work anonymously, posing as a southerner, when he was actually from New York:

"A man of a deep and noble nature had seized me in this seclusion. . . . The soft ravishments of the man spun me round about in a web of dreams. . . . dropped germinous seeds into my soul. He expands and deepens down...and further and further shoots his strong New-England roots into the hot soil in my Southern soul." (***)  He dedicated Moby Dick to Hawthorne, but the friendship lasted barely 2 years.

Writing of 18th century life at sea, much of his work alludes to close relationships between men.  In Moby Dick, he likens men sharing a bed to a married couple: "there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say...Thus, then, in our heart's honeymoon, lay (he) and I--a cozy, loving pair...Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found (his) arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife. For though I tried to move his arm—unlock his bridegroom clasp—yet, sleeping as he was, he still hugged me tightly...(he) pressed this forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said henceforth we were married."  (****)

Loneliness and repression are often symbolized by Chiron pictures, including Chiron=Venus/Mars.  Nowhere is repressed sexuality and its consequences more  blatent in Melville's work than in his final novel Billy Budd.  A "handsome sailor.. the feminine in man... a fine specimen of the genus homo, who in the nude might have posed for a statue of young Adam before the fall", Billy is well liked by all but his speech defect leads to an accidental crime for which he's convicted and hanged.  The severity of the punishment is attributed  to the repressed homoerotic feelings Billy provoked in his accuser.  "An uncommon prudence is habitual with the subtler depravity, for it has everything to hide".  He'd had his eye on Billy from the first "sometimes (the accuser's) melancholy expression would have in it a touch of soft yearning, as if (the accuser) could even have loved Billy but for fate and ban". (*****)

His lesser known novel Pierre, published when T. Chiron stationed square to N. Chiron and on the Venus/Mars midpoint, includes the characteristic rhapsodizing of lusty asexual male relationships ("friendship revels for a while in the empyrean of a love which only comes short by one degree, of the sweetest sentiment")  (******)  but primarily deals with problematic fallout from a heterosexual union--  illegitimacy and incest.  Pierre marries his half-sister, the illegitimate and orphaned child of his father.  Interestingly, When Melville's own son was born, Melville accidentally identified own mother on the birth certificate as the mother of his son.

Whether he was gay or not will always be speculation, but what is undeniable  is Melville's preference for men and distaste for women

"What sort of genial men were these? But best of comrades, most affable of hosts...His wit and wine are both of sparkling brands... being kept in most bachelor-like particu-larity, no part of London offers so agreeable a refuge.the most tender concern for each other's health: the very perfection of quiet absorption of good living Also, you could plainly see that these easyheartedmen had no wives or children to give an anxious thought " . (*******) 

"This is the very counterpart of the Paradise of Batchellors... Devil's Dungeon Paper Mill, long abandonment and decay"  A woman "turned upon me a face pale with work, and blue with cold; an eye supernatural with unrelated misery....at rows of blank-looking counters sat rows of blank-looking girls, with blank, white folders in their blank hands, all blankly folding blank paper...."Tartarus of Maids"  (********)

 (*) Letter from Elizabeth Melville's brother dated May, 1867

(**) Elizabeth Renker "Melville, Wife-Beating and the Printed Page" American Literature Vol. 66, 3/1994

(***) Herman Melville, review of Hawthorne's "Mosses from an old Manse" Literary World, August 1850

(****) Herman Melville Moby Dick
(*****) Herman Melville Billy Budd
 (******) Herman Melville Pierre

(*******)Herman Melville "Batchollers of Paradise"  

 (********) Herman Melville "Tartarus of Maids":

LESS KNOWN BUT NO LESS INTERESTING

LEE MILLER, PHOTOGRAPHER (6') As a child she was the nude subject of her father's photography, raped and infected with gonorrhea by a family friend and then counseled by a psychiatrist not to confuse sex with love.  Stunningly beautiful, she was a Vogue model at age 20,  photographed by the likes of titan Edward Steichen.  She was unaware when he sold her photo to Kotex, making her the first live person to appear in an ad for sanitary napkins.  A scandal erupted and ended her modeling career.  She brushed herself off  and left the US for Europe, where she met another 20th century art titan--Man Ray--who became her mentor and then his lover.  She remained his  subject and muse long after she left him, pining, and eventually became a well known photographer herself.

Miller's horoscope also contained Venus conjunct Saturn in Pisces (2 degrees 43' orb) and close to a conjunction with Admetos.  Venus=Saturn/Admetos (1 degree 10' orb)


ANGELICA GARNETT (17' orb)

When she was born, her future husband  observed "Its beauty is the remarkable thing...I think of marrying it; will it be scandalous?".  At the time, David Garnett was 25 years old and the lover of her natural father--whose identity she didn't learn until she was 17.  As the niece of Virginia Woolf, Angelica grew up among the Bloomsbury glitterati.  Her novel/memoir The Unspoken Truth  recounts the Bloomsbury custom of sharing lovers, regardless of age or sex. 

When their romance began, Garnett's wife of dying of cancer.  Born with Natal Uranus=Venus/Mars, David was sexually experimental and imaginative in a number of ways.  Best remembered for his fantasy novel Lady Into Fox, about a man's wife who suddenly turns into a fox.  He continues to dress her and play cards with her--until she mates with a wolf.  "Was his wife not unfaithful to him, had she not prostituted herself to a beast?"  When she gives birth to wolf pups, he became especially close to the one he named Angelica.  The book four years before Garnett's future wife Angelica was born.

Lewis Carroll separates from Liddel family and his close relationship with their children (6/27/1863)

SR contained Chiron=Venus/Mars

P. Saturn=Mars/Jupiter 1' orb

Leonardo Da Vinci
SR for arrest involvement with prostitute 4/9/1476
Chiron=Venus/Mars
(natal Venus/Chiron=Aries and Sun
natal Chiron=Venus/Saturn)

John McAfee software giant N. Chiron=Venus/Mars
Likes women to poop in his mouth DOB 9/18/1945 no TOB

SHIRLEY CONRAN author of "Lace" includes sex using fish, I think.

Harry Reems porn actor "I always played the doctor" N. Chiron=Cupido=Venus/Mars

When Peter Sellars died, it was from too many poppers during sex.  He had P. Chiron=N. Venus/Mars, exactly.

MICHAEL HUTCHENCE SR WHEN HE DIED OF AUTOEROTIC ASPHYXIATION

John Ruskin SR for unconsummated marriage Chiron=Venus/Mars (64)

Chiron=Venus/Mars

Bernard Boursicot, the westerner depicted in M. Butterfly. Had an affair with a man for many years, thinking he was having sex with a woman.

(DOB 8/12/1944 8pm Vannes, France)

P. Chiron=Venus/Mars Peter Sellers has 8 heart attacks while preparing for sex/took poppers

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