I've been struggling to find something astrological to post about for a while now and it suddenly occurred to me that it would be interesting to look at the charts of people whose biographies or autobiographies I've read. Having just finished Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Tolkien, his chart seemed a logical place to start.
It's also an opportunity to explore some astrological sites on the Internet and see what they have to offer regarding astrological analysis of his chart. In the biography, there is no exact time of birth given, only this information from a letter that his father wrote:
I have good news for you this week. Mabel gave me a beautiful little son last night (3 January). It was rather before time, but the baby is strong and well and Mabel has come through wonderfully. The baby is (of course) lovely. It has beautiful hands and ears (very long fingers) very light hair, ‘Tolkien’ eyes and very distinctly a ‘Suffield’ mouth. In general effect immensely like a very fair edition of its Aunt Mabel Mitton. When we first fetched Dr Stollreither yesterday he said it was a false alarm and told the nurse to go home for a fortnight but he was mistaken and I fetched him again about eight and then he stayed till 12.40 when we had a whisky to drink luck to the boy.
Figure 1 a chart from Astro-Charts for Tolkien (with the birth time of 10pm - roughly midway between the two times mentioned above - being rated as as poor in terms of accuracy):
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| Figure 1 |
The associated aspects are shown in Figure 2:
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| Figure 2 |
Given Tolkien's obsessive attention to detail, the Virgo Ascendant seems quite probable. Looking at the aspects, what is most striking is the presence of Mercury, Moon and Saturn in 0° degrees of their respective signs (Capricorn, Pisces and Libra). The strong Mercury aspects (square Saturn and sextile Moon) are fitting, given his accomplishments as a philologist and author. The square can be associated with his painstaking research but also his difficulties in organising his work into a finished product. Additionally, Mercury is retrograde reflecting the deeply introspective nature of his writing.
The Piscean Moon is appropriate for his fertile imagination and also the importance of his own mother in his education. The Moon is also associated with the past and that was his focus in his study of languages and in the themes of his novel. The inconjunct aspect between Saturn and the Moon can be tied to the early loss of his mother. Tolkien was twelve years old at the time.
There is a chronology of the major events in Tolkien's life in the above biography which I've included below:
1892 3 January: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien born at Bloemfontein.
1894 Birth of younger brother, Hilary.
1895 Spring: Mabel Tolkien takes the two boys back to England, Arthur Tolkien remaining in South Africa.
1896 February: Arthur Tolkien dies. Summer: Mabel Tolkien rents a cottage at Sarehole Mill, Birmingham. She and the boys remain there for four years.
1900 Mabel Tolkien is received into the Catholic Church. She and the boys move from Sarehole to a house in the Birmingham suburb of Moseley. Ronald begins to attend King Edward’s School.
1901 Mabel and the boys move from Moseley to King’s Heath.
1902 Mabel and the boys leave King’s Heath and move to Oliver Road, Edgbaston. Ronald and Hilary are enrolled at St Philip’s Grammar School.
1903 The boys are removed from St Philip’s. Ronald obtains a scholarship to King Edward’s and returns there in the autumn.
1904 Early in the year Mabel Tolkien is discovered to have diabetes. She spends some weeks in hospital. In the summer she and the boys stay at Rednal. In November she dies, aged thirty-four.
1905 The boys move into their Aunt Beatrice’s house in Stirling Road.
1908 The boys move to Mrs Faulkner’s house in Duchess Road. Ronald meets Edith Bratt.
1909 Autumn: Ronald’s romance with Edith Bratt is discovered by Father Francis Morgan. Ronald fails to obtain a scholarship at Oxford.
1910 January: Ronald and Hilary move to new lodgings. Ronald continues to see Edith Bratt, but is then forbidden to communicate with her. March: Edith leaves Birmingham and moves to Cheltenham. December: Ronald wins an Exhibition at Exeter College, Oxford.
1911 Formation of ‘The T.C.B.S.’ Summer: Ronald leaves school. He visits Switzerland. Autumn: His first term at Oxford. Christmas: He takes part in a perfomance of The Rivals at King Edward’s.
1913 January: Ronald’s twenty-first birthday. He is reunited with Edith Bratt. February: He takes Honour Moderations and is awarded a Second Class. Summer: He begins to read for the Honours School of English Language and Literature. He visits France with a Mexican family.
1914 January: Edith is received into the Catholic Church. She and Ronald are formally betrothed. Summer: Ronald visits Cornwall. At the outbreak of war he determines to return to Oxford and complete his degree course.
1915 Summer: He is awarded First Class Honours in his final examination. After being commissioned in the Lancashire Fusiliers he begins training in Bedford and in Staffordshire.
1916 22 March: He and Edith are married. Edith moves to Great Haywood. June: Tolkien embarks for France. He travels to the Somme as a second lieutenant in the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers, and serves in action as Battalion Signalling Officer until the autumn. November: He returns to England suffering from ‘trench fever’.
1917 January and February: While convalescing at Great Haywood he begins to write ‘The Book of Lost Tales’ which eventually becomes The Silmarillion. Spring: He is posted to Yorkshire, but spends much of the year in hospital. November: Birth of eldest son, John.
1918 Tolkien (now a full lieutenant) is posted to the Humber Garrison and to Staffordshire. In November, after the Armistice, be returns to Oxford with his family and joins the staff of the New English Dictionary.
1919 He begins work as a freelance tutor. He and Edith move to 1 Alfred Street.
1920 He is appointed Reader in English Language at Leeds University, and begins work there in the autumn. Birth of second son, Michael.
1921 Edith and the family join him in Leeds, eventually moving into 11 St Mark’s Terrace.
1922 E. V. Gordon joins the staff at Leeds. He and Tolkien begin work on their edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
1924 Tolkien becomes Professor of English Language at Leeds University. He buys a house in Darnley Road. Birth of third son, Christopher.
1925 The edition of Sir Gawain is published. In the summer Tolkien is elected Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, and takes up the appointment in the autumn. He buys a house in Northmoor Road, and the family returns to Oxford early in the new year.
1926 Tolkien becomes friends with C. S. Lewis. Formation of ‘The Coalbiters’.
1929 Birth of daughter, Priscilla.
1930 The family moves from 22 to 20 Northmoor Road. At about this time Tolkien begins to write The Hobbit. He abandons it before it is finished.
1936 He lectures on Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics. The manuscript of The Hobbit is read by Susan Dagnall of Allen & Unwin, and at her suggestion Tolkien finishes the book. It is accepted for publication.
1937 The Hobbit is published in the autumn. At the suggestion of Stanley Unwin, Tolkien begins to write a sequel, which becomes The Lord of the Rings.
1939 Tolkien delivers his lecture On Fairy-Stories at St Andrews University. At the outbreak of war Charles Williams joins the Inklings.
1945 Tolkien is elected Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford.
1947 The Tolkiens move to Manor Road.
1949 Completion of The Lord of the Rings. Publication of Farmer Giles of Ham.
1950 Tolkien offers The Lord of the Rings to the publishing house of Collins. The family moves from Manor Road to Holywell Street.
1952 The manuscript of The Lord of the Rings is returned by Collins, and Tolkien passes it to Allen & Unwin.
1953 The Tolkiens move to Sandfield Road in the Oxford suburb of Headington.
1954 Publication of the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings.
1955 Publication of the third volume.
1959 Tolkien retires from his professorship.
1962 Publication of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.
1964 Publication of Tree and Leaf.
1965 Ace Books issue an unauthorised American edition of The Lord of the Rings. A ‘campus cult’ begins.
1967 Publication of Smith of Wootton Major.
1968 The Tolkiens move to Lakeside Road, Poole (adjacent to the town of Bournemouth).
1971 Edith Tolkien dies in November, aged eighty-two.
1972 Tolkien returns to Oxford, moving into rooms in Merton Street. He is awarded the C.B.E., and Oxford University confers an honorary Doctorate of Letters upon him.
1973 On 28 August he goes to Bournemouth to stay with friends. He is taken ill, and dies in a nursing-home in the early hours of Sunday 2 September, aged eighty-one.
1977 Publication of The Silmarillion, edited by Christopher Tolkien.
This chronology would be useful when looking at the transits and progressions in the chart but I won't go into any of that at the moment. Getting back to his chart, it would seem that his Mars in Scorpio can be associated with the great energy with which he approached his study of the old languages and with the depths to which his research led him. Mars is closely trine his Jupiter in Pisces (angular near the cusp of the seventh house if his chart is accurate).
The
Astro-Databank, maintained by www.astro.com, looks at the transits to his natal chart for the
death of his wife,
his own death and the
world premiere of The Fellowship of the Ring. There is also a
forum that discusses some aspects of his chart. Figure 3 shows the Astro-Databank chart:
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| Figure 3 |
The site
Astro Seek has an interesting feature that allows one to focus on the horoscope shape and doing that shows the importance of the Neptune/Pluto conjunction near the MC. It acts as a handle to the bucket containing the remaining planets (Chiron is excluded). This is shown in Figure 4:
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| Figure 4 |
The chart itself on the
Astro Seek site is quite clear and uncluttered as can be seen in Figure 5:
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| Figure 5 |
All the charts considered thus far have used the same time of 10pm. However, at
SKYSCRIPT.co.uk, a time of 11:22pm is used which still gives a Virgo Ascendant but places Saturn in conjunction with it. See Figure 6:
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| Figure 6 |
This SKYSCRIPT site also contains a detailed analysis of Tolkien's chart by Sue Toohey who is, to quote:
an Australian astrologer with a degree in history and philosophy. She is currently enrolled in a Masters degree, researching the history of astrology and religious thought. Sue also has a Homoeopathy degree, using awareness of all these areas to further her understanding of astrology. Her main areas of interest lie in traditional astrology and philosophy, seeking to understand how they contribute to our current appreciation of these disciplines.
The analysis links to the same Humphrey Carpenter biography referred to earlier in this post. Here is what she wrote:
John Ronald Reuel (J.R.R.) Tolkien was born in the closing years of the 19th century at a time when the rare conjunction of Neptune and Pluto was bringing fundamental changes to a society that had already experienced rapid transformation. He was a man whose contributions would forever impact on the course of English literature even though the full force of this impact would not be recognised until late in his life. He was a prolific writer but is best known by millions of people as author of Lord of the Rings, a fantasy trilogy set in the legendary place of Middle-earth at the end of a mythological third age when good and evil collided bringing with it the emergence of a new age.
Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa on January 3rd, 1892 to English parents. The name, believed to be of German origin, means 'foolishly brave' or 'stupidly clever'. His parents had travelled to South Africa in order for Tolkien's father, a bank clerk, to seek promotion, something he was unable to do in England. While on a trip back to England to visit family, Tolkien's mother Mabel, learned of the death of her husband. She and her two sons remained in England, living in the West Midlands. Four years later, she was to become estranged from her own family and the family of her late husband when she made the decision to convert to Catholicism. Tolkien, who was eight at the time, was to follow this religion with fervour for the rest of his life.
The exact birth time of Tolkien is not clear. A letter written by his father to the family back in England the day after his birth describes the event. "...Mabel gave me a beautiful little son last night. I fetched him (the doctor) around eight and then he stayed till 12.40 when we had a whisky to drink luck to the boy." A popular chart with many astrologers gives a rectified time of 11.22pm producing a Virgo Ascendant with Saturn rising.
There is no denying that Tolkien was strongly influenced by Saturn throughout his life. His Sun and Mercury are in Capricorn and Mercury is in an exact square to Saturn in Libra, the sign of its exaltation, bringing a strong Saturn emphasis to his nativity. He is most often pictured as an old man, there being virtually no pictures available of him as a younger person. In his obituary in the New York Times upon his death in 1973, he was described as a gently, blue-eyed, donnish appearing man who favoured tweeds, smoked a pipe and liked to take walks and ride on an old bicycle. He was a scholar of dead languages, leading a very conventional life in the Saturn ruled town of Oxford. He embodied the principles of Saturn seeing himself as a pessimist, suffering bouts of melancholy and despair and as someone who did not like progress.
Tolkien's Sun sextiles Mars and Jupiter and makes a wide orb sextile to Uranus. This suggests a man with an enormous amount of energy for his work, approaching this with enthusiasm and passion and a confidence in his ability to achieve whatever he set out to do. Throughout his life he was a prolific writer, producing several novels as well as articles and scholarly essays. Most of his academic work centres on the interpretation of myths and legends of the past, in particular, those of Norse mythology. The Sun is conjunct the fixed star Vega in Tolkien's chart and, according to Bernadette Brady, people influenced by this star are full of charisma and are touched by the underworld.
The writings of Tolkien have become indelibly linked with what could best be described as magical realism where, through his novels, he created a magical, dreamlike world full of heroic characters confronting a land of overwhelming fear and staggering mystical beauty. His intention was to create an imaginary world that was fundamentally authentic, or at least potentially existent. He did not want his readers to merely suspend their disbelief in hobbits and elves; he wanted them to believe in their possibility.
When readers chose Lord of the Rings as the greatest book of the century in a 1997 survey by British bookseller Waterstone's the reaction from critics was harsh. The Times Literary Supplement called it 'horrifying' and others were quick to judge this as a literary mistake. However, several other polls confirmed that, indeed, the popularity of this book was unsurpassed. In a further assault to the sensibilities of critics, not only was Lord of the Rings voted best book, a poll of readers on Amazon.com voted its writer 'Author of the Millennium'.
When he was twelve Tolkien's mother died as a result of complications from diabetes, a disease that was untreatable at that time. He had a deep attachment to his mother and would feel her loss intensely believing that no one had been more influential in the development of both his faith and intellect. He believed that everything he knew, he learned from his Catholic faith, and that he owed this faith to his mother. His Moon square Neptune/Pluto suggests the profound influence his mother had played in his life and the potential for a powerful sense of suffering over this loss.
After their mother's death, Tolkien and his younger brother Hilary were taken into care by Father Francis Morgan, priest of the Catholic Church to which they belonged. Their mother had arranged legal guardianship to ensure that the boys would remain in the Catholic faith and not be influenced by relatives after her death. Not only did Father Morgan provide the spiritual and intellectual support they needed, he also provided financial support from his own very meagre resources. The boys lived with an unsympathetic aunt and then at a boarding house while completing their schooling. It was there at the age of sixteen that Tolkien met his future wife Edith who was nineteen. Fearing that this relationship would interfere with his schoolwork and his religion (she was Anglican), Father Morgan forbade Tolkien to continue the relationship until he reached twenty-one. Being the serious and responsible person that he was, he obeyed this request stoically, not commencing the relationship again until many years later.
As a young boy Tolkien showed a remarkable gift for linguistics. He had mastered Latin and Greek and was becoming well versed in other languages, particularly ancient languages such as Finnish. In his later school years his close friends were a group of boys who met on a regular basis to exchange and criticize each other's literary work. They called themselves the Tea Club, Barrovian Society (T.C.B.S) and continued to meet regularly until 1916.
Like many other men of his age, Tolkien spent time serving in the army during World War One. This part of his life was said to have a profound impact on him, one from which he never fully recovered. Before he was sent to France, he and Edith married. They remained very close until her death in 1971 despite their religious differences. Venus in Tolkien's fifth house trine Neptune/Pluto in the ninth house reveals that this was truly an inspired love that went far deeper than a simple marriage.
Eventually sent to active duty, after only four months in the trenches, Tolkien succumbed to 'trench fever' a form of typhus-like infection. He was sent back to England where he spent the next month in hospital. Throughout 1917 and 1918 his illness kept recurring. He had periods of remission that enabled him to do home service at various camps and he was promoted to lieutenant. By the end of the war only one of his close friends from his Tea Club remained alive. It has often been suggested that Lord of the Rings was an allegory for the time Tolkien spent at war but he strongly denies this. There were many attempts to find allegory in his writings and this bothered him.
I cordially dislike allegory in all of its manifestations, and have always done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.
It was while in hospital that Tolkien determined he would study languages. He returned to Oxford where he had been studying as an undergraduate, receiving his MA in 1919. After graduation, his first employment was as an assistant on the Oxford Dictionary. Tolkien began his academic teaching career at Leeds University spending about four years there before moving back to Oxford. From 1925 until his retirement in 1959, he was professor at Oxford, ultimately becoming Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and a fellow of Merton College. It was during his early days at Oxford that the adventures of hobbits began to take shape.
In the summer of 1928, Tolkien was grading some papers. Coming across what he considered to be a particularly dull paper, he found a blank page. Through some inspiration that he didn't understand, he wrote the immortal words 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.' Tolkien was to later explain that when he saw those words his response was to do some investigating. He determined that he had better find out exactly what hobbits were and why they lived in a hole in the ground. This was the very beginning of what was to become one of the most successful enterprises in English literature. Transiting Uranus in sextile to Tolkien's natal Pluto brought with it the capacity to make some profound changes.
In Tolkien's nativity, Mercury in Capricorn exactly squares Saturn, which is in its exaltation in Libra. This describes perfectly his career as a philologist and his passion for old languages. He was deeply knowledgeable in old and middle English and other old long-forgotten languages. Not only was he master of languages, Tolkien often created his own. He had done this since childhood, creating languages along with the mythology to support them. In fact, Tolkien explains that he wrote his novels as an outlet for the languages he created rather than creating the languages for his novels.
The invention of language is the foundation. The stories were made rather to provide a world for the language rather than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows. But of course such a work as 'Lord of the Rings' has been edited and only as much language has been left in as I thought would be stomached by the readers. I now find many would have liked much more.
Another expression of the close Mercury/Saturn square in his natal chart is that Tolkien spent years revising and editing his works, finding it difficult to be satisfied. Even after it was finished, he was often critical of what he saw as many mistakes. Rather than considering what he had achieved, he saw where he had failed. In an interview in 1971 on the BBC he says,
I wrote the last in about 1949 - I remember I actually wept at the denouement. But then of course there was a tremendous lot of revision. I typed the whole of that work out twice and lots of it many times, on a bed in an attic. I couldn't afford of course the typing. There's some mistakes too and also it amuses me to say, as I suppose I'm in a position where it doesn't matter what people think of me now, there were some frightful mistakes in grammar, which from a Professor of English Language and Lit are rather shocking.
The first volume of the trilogy The Fellowship of the Ring was published on 29th July 1954, the day of a New Moon. A solar eclipse had made a conjunction to Tolkien's natal Sun earlier that year. Transiting Jupiter was trine Tolkien's Jupiter and Uranus at the time of the book launch, signifying the success that was to come. The other volumes, 'The Two Towers' and 'The Return of the King' were published the following year.
In 1965, a pirated paperback version of Lord of the Rings was published in the United States. This brought a new generation of readers, not only due it its availability but because of the press that was generated due to a protracted court case. Transiting Pluto was opposite Tolkien's natal Jupiter at the time, a transit that can warn of legal difficulties. However, transiting Uranus was trine his Sun turning this into a fortuitous and exciting opportunity. He became successful beyond anything he had ever imagined bringing the financial security that had eluded him all his life.
When the book became extremely popular, transiting Saturn was square to Tolkien's Neptune and Pluto. Even though success was welcomed, it was also a time of difficulty for Tolkien who described the enormous pressure from people who expected him to fulfil a role that he was not available to fill. There was a perception by readers of the book, largely college students, that Tolkien was a part of the counter-culture they related to rather than the conservative, older person that he was. He was later to recount stories of repeatedly receiving phone calls from the United States at 3am asking him to explain certain parts of the book.
Tolkien is often credited with inventing the sword-and-sorcery epic that has become so popular today. However, he viewed his role somewhat differently. Like Isaac Newton (also a Capricorn) who saw himself as rediscovering what came before rather than creating something new, Tolkien saw himself as heir to a grand tradition rather than author of a new one. His Capricorn respect for the traditions and history of old was expressed time and time again in his novels and the characters within. Tolkien believed he owed so much to the writers who lived centuries before him.
However, the Sun/Uranus sextile in Tolkien's nativity brought illumination, stimulating his imagination in a very unique way. Tolkien always believed his characters arrived from an unknown source rather than being creatures he produced himself. He followed their stories until they led him to discover who they were. When the hobbits arrived at the 'Prancing Pony' to discover a hooded, roguish-looking man smoking in a corner, Tolkien was as surprised as they were. The stranger turned out to be Aragorn, heir of kings, not because Tolkien chose to create such a character, but because that's who he was.
The Moon in Pisces trine Mercury and square the Neptune/Pluto conjunction shows Tolkien's ability to be responsive to the collective and to express it in a way that resonated with the spirit of the time. He was able to reflect the collective recognition of the conjunction, expressing it with his words in a powerful way. Neptune and Pluto are in the 9th house, the house that rules religion. There has always been an attempt to find something deeply spiritual in Lord of the Rings and many see it as an eschatological work. Tolkien called the gospel account the "eucatastrophe", the happiest of all tragedies, because it satisfies the human heart's deepest yearnings, including the desire for an epic mythology. It was through Lord of the Rings that he was attempting to create a mythology worthy of these qualities.
Saturn trine Neptune/Pluto shows Tolkien's belief that somehow he had a responsibility to confront the realities of what he saw as the new era of modernity. While he disliked what the 20th century had become, he did not resent living in it. At one stage in Lord of the Rings, when someone complains about living in such difficult times, Gandalf responds that everyone who lives to see such times also finds it difficult. However, it was not for them to decide but rather to decide what to do with the time that is given. For Tolkien, that reason was to express God's will through a new myth that reflects the story of Christ.
There has been continuing debate as to whether Lord of the Rings can best be described as a work of pagan origins or whether it is representative of Christianity. Tolkien was deeply Catholic and while he disliked intensely the attempt to see his work as allegorical he considered that it was a manifestation of his own faith. He thought that his purpose in writing Lord of the Rings was to give England her own myth believing that myths such as King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table were not strong enough in their own right in the same way as those of the Norse myths. He wanted a myth that embodied the highest ideals and spiritual beliefs that he aspired to through his trine of Venus to Neptune/Pluto.
There are truths that are beyond us, transcendental truths about beauty, truth, honour, etc. There are truths that man knows exist, but they cannot be seen, they are immaterial but no less real to us. It is only through the language of myth that we can speak of these truths. We have come from God and only through myth, through story-telling, can we aspire to the life we were made for with God.
J.R.R. Tolkien died on 2nd September 1973 at the age of eighty-one. Transiting Saturn was squaring natal Saturn and opposing Mercury, once again bringing together two planets that are strongly reflected his work. Jupiter was trine Neptune/Pluto, square Uranus and had recently made a conjunction to Venus. Mars, which was on his eighth house cusp, was opposing natal Uranus. Saturn, conjuncting Tolkien's Midheaven, reflected the culmination of his life's work. Coming into the world with Saturn rising, he embodied the spirit of the planet throughout his life, leaving again as the planet culminated. When asked a couple of years before his death how he thought he would like to be remembered - for his academic achievements or Lord of the Rings he replied, "I shouldn't have thought there was much choice in the matter. If I'm remembered at all it will be by 'The Lord of the Rings.' Won't it be rather like the case of Longfellow? People remember Longfellow wrote Hiawatha, quite forget he was a professor of Modern Languages."
In 2001, twenty-eight years after the death of Tolkien, New Zealand film director Peter Jackson successfully transformed The Fellowship of the Ring into cinematic reality. A few months earlier, a lunar eclipse had made yet another conjunction to Tolkien's natal Sun while Jupiter made its fourth return to the position it was in when the book was first published. As the movie opened in cinemas around the world, Jupiter was opposing Tolkien's Sun, and Neptune was exactly trine his Neptune/Pluto conjunction, ensuring that movie audiences would discover the same mythical quality in the movie that generations had found in the book. Thirty years after his death, and fifty years after the book was published, the final instalment of the trilogy was released. The movies, like the book, have been a phenomenal success, bringing new admiration for the works of Tolkien and ensuring, as Tolkien predicted, he will be most remembered as the man who formed a magical world and invited us to trust in its existence.
The
Oxford Astrologer has some interesting comments to make on Tolkien's chart as well:
I still get a small thrill when I walk past number 20 Northmoor Road after dropping my kids off at school. Half a century ago, JRR Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings in that unprepossessing suburban house.
I’ve often wondered if there were something particular about Oxford, this damp, introverted, ancient town of scholars, that particularly encourages the invention of other worlds. Is there something about living in this riverine place where the Isis, the Windrush, the Cherwell and the Thames mingle, that makes one’s imagination expand? Or does the bone-chilling damp make one desperate to be elsewhere?
I wonder this walking down Northmoor Road, because it’s not just JRR Tolkien who lived and worked and dreamed here. Lewis Carroll sent Alice down the rabbit hole from his rooms in Christ Church; C S Lewis imagined a faun with an umbrella walking through Narnia here; Philip Pullman dreamt up Lyra; Diana Wynn Jones conjured Chrestomanci.
This is a Capricorn town according to the Renaissance astrologer William Lilly, who was a frequent visitor to Oxford, so the city is ruled by father time himself, Saturn. And it’s certainly the heart of the British establishment, and old, and stony, and rule-bound and full of ritual – all Saturnian things. Scholars are keepers and measurers of time.
But Capricorn is not a sign we associate with flights of fancy. On the contrary, Capricorn is about keeping it real.
I suppose you could argue that one thing these authors have in common is the consistency and realness of the world’s they create. Middle Earth, Narnia, Chrestomanci, the rabbit hole – all make sense within their own rules. Middle Earth is so clear that I think most readers would recognise it immediately if they were transported there.
C S Lewis (Sagittarius), Lewis Carroll (Aquarius), Philip Pullman (Libra), Diana Wynn Jones (Leo): each has invented and explored other worlds, imagined with such detail and conviction. Then there’s JRR Tolkien himself. It’s his birthday today (Jan 3).
Here is his chart (referring to the 10pm chart - my comment).
And what a perfect chart for a fantasy writer. He has a writer’s signature – Virgo rising, Gemini on the career angle. Both signs are ruled by Mercury, the communicator: Virgo edits, Gemini tells stories.
Then there’s the beautiful grand trine in intellectual air. At the top there’s Pluto (transformer) conjunct Neptune (fantasy) approaching the Midheaven from the religious and philosophical 9th house (which incidentally also rules publishing). Pluto-Neptune surely shows dark vision. His generation would have seen two world wars, which were enough to make anyone see through a glass darkly.
Venus (art) joins the grand trine from Aquarius, a sign that’s brilliant at seeing invention and seeing how ideas fit together. And Saturn (exalted in Libra) gets things done from the first house. Saturn in the first works hard, but with that trine it’s productive.
Mercury, the storyteller, is also in productive Capricorn, squaring the Saturn. It’s interesting that this is another 0° Capricorn planet. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Capricorn is the sign of the shaman. Previously, I was writing about singers with this placement pulling music from the bowels of the earth. Here we have an author pulling stories out of Middle Earth.
Mercury is neatly sextile the Moon. Although the birth time looks suspiciously rounded off, I’d guess the Pisces moon is right. It fits with the huge imagination and also with the devoted father and husband. Apparently, he adored his family.
It’s interesting to see Uranus in the house of talent. It’s the planet of genius and eccentricity, of course, and you’d expect it to be strongly placed, which it is, striking sparks off nearly all the other planets. No one would have thought that a children’s book could be so culturally significant or so darn lucrative. The second house is income too. I expect Tolkien was pretty surprised by the amount of money he made. He’d be even more surprised if he knew how much his legacy was worth.
In case you were wondering, when the films came out in 2001-2003 his chart was very active. Yes, charts carry on telling working post mortem. On his birthday in 2001, Jupiter was transiting his Neptune-Pluto Midheaven; he became, if possible, even more famous. Saturn was on his North Node, a time of destiny. Neptune was exactly trining his Uranus, a flood of money. And Pluto was on the IC – his legacy was transformed.
I wonder if Peter Jackson consults an astrologer for these things, because when The Hobbit movie is released in December this year, guess what, Jupiter is going to be right back up there tickling Neptune-Pluto under the chin again. Jupiter works in 12-year cycles remember. What’s more Neptune will have moved into Pisces, conjuncting Tolkien’s moon. Something about this movie is really going to feed into the collective mood of our times. The story will speak to us even more powerfully than it ever has before.
Here’s what Tolkien wrote in his poem Mythopoeia, which is a defence of myth makers, fairy tales, and story tellers of all kinds. (I would include astrologers,) I think this may have something to do with the effect the movie will have.
Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things not found within recorded time.
It is not they that have forgot the Night,
or bid us flee to organized delight,
in lotus-isles of economic bliss
forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss
(and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,
bogus seduction of the twice-seduced)
Hmm, sounds like our times does it not.
He believed that stories, in particular myths and fairly tales, show us truths far more profound than any so-called fact. Tolkien’s vision was grand and deeply spiritual (Jupiter in Pisces). Perhaps he needed the solidity of this place to keep his feet on the ground while he allowed his mind to grow as big as a whole universe.
Figure 7 shows a nice caricature of Tolkien taken from:
http://planetwaves.fm/mercury-direct-j-r-r-tolkiens-history-of-the-world/:
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| Figure 7 |
On the Planet Waves site, Eric Francis waffles on for hours in two podcasts about arcane planets and obscure astrological points and their influence on Tolkien's chart. He also touches on other topics. He's well-spoken and lucid but I gave up after half an hour. The links to the two podcasts are
first podcast and
second podcast. He is making use of a 9pm chart which shows Leo rising and Chiron ascending.
As I have already explored in the essay “The Red Book and the Red Book: Jung, Tolkien, and the Convergence of Images,” C.G. Jung and J.R.R. Tolkien simultaneously underwent profound experiences of the imaginal realm, transformative encounters with the deep psyche that became the prima materia for their lifeworks. While I have previously analyzed the synchronicity of the two Red Books through the parallel images, symbols, and stories brought forward by each of their authors, I have not delved too far into the significance of their synchronic timing. Jung’s and Tolkien’s deep imaginal experiences both began around 1913 and continued until the end of that decade, although the particular vein of creativity set in motion during that time lasted for each of them until the close of the 1920s.
The primary experiences of active imagination for Jung were from 1913 to 1917, but his Red Book period is considered to have lasted until 1930, when he left off inscribing and illustrating his imaginal encounters onto the pages of the Liber Novus. Nearly simultaneously, from 1912 to 1928, Tolkien was illustrating The Book ofIshness, his sketchbook that contained a series of visionary drawings and paintings. The early years of this project were the most abundant, but he continued intermittently to add fantastical images until the end of the 1920s. Meanwhile during the heart of those years, from 1916 to 1925, Tolkien was primarily dedicated to the composition of his mythology, the great cosmogonic cycles that narrate the creation of Arda and the First Age of the world.
Why is the synchronic timing of Jung’s and Tolkien’s imaginal experiences important? Is it simply another coincidence? Or does it intimate some deeper, more profound implication concerning the nature of human existence in the cosmos? One hermeneutic method of unpacking the significance of this timing is archetypal astrology, which reveals the underlying archetypal patterns of the times through the correlated positions of the planets. When two or more planets come into geometrical alignment, the correlated archetypal energies can be seen unfolding multivalently in human and worldly events for the duration of the alignment. When the slower-moving outer planets of Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto align with each other, whole epochs of history, lasting years to decades depending on the configuration, reflect the relevant archetypal qualities in myriad ways.
Archetypal astrology provides a lens that can shed new light on our understanding of Jung’s and Tolkien’s experiences during this time period. By looking at the world transits during the years of their imaginal encounters we will be able to see the larger archetypal gestalt in which these experiences were emerging, while touching on Jung’s and Tolkien’s natal charts will illuminate the archetypal patterning of their individual psyches and how this may have further shaped the character of their experiences. Furthermore, we will look at the unfolding personal transits Tolkien and Jung underwent during their Red Book periods, honing in on several significant dates throughout this time, to see how the same world transits interacted with their unique birth charts, indicating differing modes of creative expression for the same archetypal energies.
Apparently, The Hobbit was also called The Red Book of Westmarch and so the reference to the two Red Books. The PDF is an interesting read, focussing on how the two men were affected by the opposition of Uranus and Neptune, the conjunction of Saturn and Pluto, the conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus, and the conjunction of Neptune and Pluto. I won't go into any of the details here as this post is already rather long.
