Marcel Marceau and the Sounds of Silence

On September 22, during his Uranus return at the age of 84, the great French mime Marcel Marceau passed away, stepping out of his physical cage and into Silence.

When I was a young boy in the 1950’s, my mother (an always ahead-of-her-time Sagittarian who loved to experience anything new and different) took me to see Marcel Marceau perform in Boston. I can still recall the perfume of a woman sitting next to me in the theater balcony, a scent which to this day somehow permeates my memory of Marcel Marceau. I fell in love with his magical, poignant performance, a fluid blending of universal compassion and clown-like fantasy. It was something that even--and perhaps especially--a child could grasp. When he felt his way out of a dark invisible cage only to discover another one containing it…trapped in a cage within a cage within a cage…my Sun-Pluto soul understood that perfectly.

According to his biography on Wikipedia,

Marceau created "Bip" the clown, who in his striped pullover and battered, beflowered silk opera hat — signifying the fragility of life — has become his alter ego, even as Chaplin's "Little Tramp" became that star's major personality. Bip's misadventures with everything from butterflies to lions, on ships and trains, in dance-halls or restaurants, were limitless. As a style pantomime, Marceau was acknowledged without peer. His silent exercises, which include such classic works as The Cage, Walking Against the Wind, The Mask Maker, and In The Park, as well as satires on everything from sculptors to matadors, were described as works of genius. Of his summation of the ages of man in the famous Youth, Maturity, Old Age and Death, one critic said: "He accomplishes in less than two minutes what most novelists cannot do in volumes."

Marceau’s performances were rooted in a rich theatrical history going all the way back to the ancient Greeks, but a number of modern mimes had their origins with Marcel Marceau. The 1966 Anontioni movie Blowup used the character of a mime to explore the differences between appearance and illusive reality.

Said to have been the inspiration for Michael Jackson’s signature moonwalk, Marceau had his Sun on the Aries Point—0° Aries, a cardinal degree which is one of the indicators of fame. His Mercury conjoined Uranus exactly in Pisces, the silently flowing water sign. Mercury can have difficulty expressing itself through normal channels of communication when in Pisces, and Marceau communicated best through the unconventional language of silent pantomime. I think that helps to show us that even "poorly placed" planets (Mercury is supposed to be debilitated in Pisces) can find interesting ways to express themselves, shine, and even excel.

He also had a powerful Aquarian Venus, which squared Jupiter and trined Saturn. Venus in Aquarius can signify a universal appreciation, human differences seen through a common lens. Through his Venus-Jupiter square, Marceau captured the human moral condition.

Marcel Marceau's Saturn was exalted in Libra, exactly opposite his Sun and trine Venus--to watch Marcel Marceau was to view an exalted balance of physical form and function. He also had a Mars-Neptune square, contributing to his imaginative use of physical action

Concidentally, another silent star, Charlie Chaplin, had a similar mix of planetary energies: Mercury opposite Uranus instead of conjunct, and a retrograde Venus square Saturn.

One would think that a famous mime might have a strong, Mercury-ruled Virgo or Gemini—a mime, after all, is supposed to mimic or imitate. Marceau does not have any planets in either of those signs, but the French astrology website AstroTheme shows an 8:00 a.m. birth time, which would give Marceau a Gemini Ascendant--and make Mercury his chart ruler.

Astro-Links: Astrologer Alan Oken on Libra

Astrologer Alan Oken has a monthly newsletter, published when the Sun changes zodiac signs. Oken has a spiritual approach to astrology that I like very much. He just wrote about Libra and discussed the spiritual natures of Libra and its ruling planet, Venus. I thought this part was especially beautiful:

…the exaltation of Venus, the zodiacal placement in which both this planet and its signs are raised to a higher level, a level where personal love becomes permanent, is Pisces. It is in the sign of the Fish that the unions, polarities, and ideals of Libra are washed in the waters of pure love, “the love that passeth all understanding,” the Love Divine in which we all have our breath and being. Does this mean that all personal love is a futile dream? Not at all. It is wonderful to love on the personal level and to cherish others with great passion. The lesson here is that eventually all personal love of passion eventually is bathed in the compassion of a greater Love and it is here that Venus truly waits for us and spins out her magic. Libra is the sign that brings about the situations of interpersonal attraction that lead eventually to an even greater union; the marriage of the personality and the soul. When this happens, the Spirit rejoices.


Note: The picture image has been released into the public domain by its author, as noted on Wikimedia Commons.

Astrology Blog: My Wedding Horoscope

My wife and I just celebrated our wedding anniversary. We were married 22 years ago in Wailua, Kauai, at 10:00 in the morning, while the Sun was still in Virgo. Just the two of us, plus a minister, two witnesses, and a photographer.

The wedding event chart has turned out to tell its own story.

Several years after we were married, I got into astrology and did our wedding horoscope. I discovered that all the planets lined up on the left side of the horoscope (where the Ascendant is located and referred to, counter-intuitively, as the Eastern hemisphere in astrology). A strong preponderance of planets on that side of the horoscope is said to indicate a more self-reliant course in life. (A lot of planets in the other hemisphere, the side with the Descendant, shows a life whose direction is strongly connected with, and motivated by, others.) This total Ascendant-side planetary pattern was the story of our wedding--and, to a large extent, our marriage over the years.

The marriage was my wife’s second, my first. I was a bachelor with an emotionally rebellious streak (Moon square Uranus) and resisted marriage until I was in my late 30’s. Someone else I know with a Moon-Uranus square is just getting married for the first time—and he’s 50!

Neither Karin nor I really wanted a big, splashy wedding. We’d planned on getting married at the SRF Lake Shrine, near Los Angeles. It’s a beautiful spot and popular for weddings. But we soon found that our dream of a small, low-key wedding had mushroomed into a big affair, much bigger than either of us wanted. So with the understanding of both our families, we scrapped the original plans and just did it our way, choosing to get married in Hawaii all by ourselves. When we returned to the Mainland, both our families would have receptions so they could participate. My wife’s father—who appreciated informality and anything where he didn't have to wear a tie—was especially supportive of our “elopement.”

I'd lived in Hawaii a couple of times, and Karin had always wanted to go there. I looked forward to sharing the experience with her. We planned to get married on the island of Kauai after spending several days on Maui. We knew that the details could be worked out once we got there--in fact, we loved the idea of having the freedom to be more spontaneous. I’d checked ahead of time to make sure we had everything in order to legally get married once we arrived in Hawaii.

My wife chose a beautiful wedding dress in Lahaina, then we flew to Kauai and were married. After the wedding, we went out for lunch at a local seafood restaurant next to the Wailua River and then took a boat up the river to the romantic Fern Grotto. We were the only passengers in the boat. It was intoxicating. We could not have asked for a better--or more romantic--wedding. It was perfectly reflected in the wedding chart, where all the planets were on the "We'll take charge of our own wedding" side of the horoscope.

Our Scorpio Ascendant, Uranus-and-Saturn rising wedding chart also had an exact conjunction of Jupiter and the Part of Fortune. The crescent Moon was in the first quarter, denoting a new beginning. Venus conjoined the fixed royal star Regulus, which boded well for our marriage. The Arabic Part of Marriage (like the Part of Fortune, but for marriage) was in the 9th house--we traveled 2500 miles from home to get married in a tropical paradise.

Astrology Blog: Neptune in Aquarius and Internet Romance

Dell Horoscope has published my article, "Neptune's Dreamy Drama of Love: Wedded Bliss or Romantic Fantasy?" as their cover story in the new October issue. My article looks at Neptune’s role in romantic love, when love overflows the boundaries of the heart and we merge with another person. Included in my article is a look at how Neptune through the signs has influenced the culture of romance. I also used the horoscopes of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt to explore Neptune’s hidden passageways and the fine line between love and fantasy. Dell Horoscope can be ordered directly from Dell and is available at many news stands.

Although we usually think of Venus when we talk about love, Neptune relates to anything which causes our consciousness to overflow its normal ego boundaries. Neptune can be that “high” of falling in love and swimming in heart-currents. One thing I mentioned in my Dell article is that since Neptune entered Aquarius in 1998, there has been a surging trend in online dating and matchmaking sites. More and more people are meeting through Internet sites like eHarmony (founded in 2000) or Match.com and actually getting married as a result.

Along those same lines, I am reading a fascinating new book called Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes. The author, Mark Penn—a Democratic strategist currently working for Hillary Clinton—does a good job of “niching” modern popular culture.

One short section of Microtrends is devoted to what Penn calls “Internet Marrieds.” The perception of online dating, he says, has changed and is now considered a very acceptable way for singles to meet. One in four singles, he writes, “use the 1,000 or more dating Web sites out there…The previous venues for finding mates…are being replaced by where the new generation is to be found—at the office, and on the Internet.” Penn notes that, so far, most marriages which grow out of Internet matches seem to be stronger than average.

We can probably look for Neptune’s passage through Aquarius to continue the merging of romance and DSL connections.

Astrology Blog: Pluto in Capricorn and Digital Privacy

Pluto in Capricorn, just months away, is likely to bring a heightened awareness of the fragility of our own privacy—along with government or corporate attempts to misuse private information. Pluto is the modern ruler of Scorpio, a sign associated with secrecy and privacy--qualities which can be strengths in many Scorpios, who often possess a silent, steadfast depth. But when Pluto transits a whole sign, the negative side of that sign is often made visible in the world, culture, and society. Pluto does not mind probing the darkness, and it can focus in on things which are hidden.

Capricorn, on the other hand, is ruled by Saturn and is associated with government and business. The sign of the mountain goat is noted for being able to alertly scan the environment for tactical information. That can be positive or negative, depending on how it is used. A successful business must be able to “read” the outer world and make nimble, strategic adjustments quickly in order to compete and achieve its goals. When combined with Pluto, though, this can lead to corporate attempts to succeed by probing a consumer’s private information.

Many phone and cable companies now bundle their services. My own phone company, Verizon, offers a digital package of DSL internet, cable TV, and wireless phone services. Companies like Verizon and Time Warner have positioned themselves to keep valuable and detailed databases which track an individual’s website visits, TV viewing habits, phone calls, text messages, and even e-mails. Given the amount of supposedly private time many consumers spend online, using a cell phone, and watching TV, Verizon and Time Warner probably know more about some people than their own closest friends or spouses. A lack of government oversight has also contributed to the expanding power of businesses to peer deep into our homes and private lives.

Here’s an excerpt from a recent L.A. Times article, “Your Loss of Privacy is a Package Deal”:

…for anyone who has the wherewithal to read Time Warner's 3,000-word California privacy policy, you discover that not only does the company have the ability to know what you watch on TV and whom you call, but also that it can track your online activities, including sites you visit and stuff you buy.

Remember all the fuss when it was revealed last year that Google Inc. kept voluminous records of people's Web searches, and that federal authorities were demanding a peek under the hood? Multiply that privacy threat by three.

Internet, TV, phone -- it's hard to imagine a more revealing glimpse of your private life.

"All your eggs are in one communications basket," said Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego. "If a company wants to, it can learn a great deal about you -- and it probably wants to."

More often than not, it'll also want to turn a fast buck by selling at least a portion of that info to marketers.

All leading telecom companies are aggressively pushing these bundled service plans after investing billions of dollars in high-speed digital networks. For consumers, the upside is often a hefty savings compared with acquiring the same services from multiple providers.

The downside is that you're making intimate details of virtually all your network activities available to a single company—and possibly government officials….

…There are red flags to be found in each telecom provider's privacy policy.…That's not to say Time Warner or any other service provider is reading people's e-mail or invading users' privacy in any other way. The point is, they're explicitly saying they could….

…At least you don't have to worry about these companies knowing things about you after you take your business elsewhere, right?

Wrong.

Near the very bottom of Time Warner's privacy policy, the company discloses that it maintains personally identifiable info about people "as long as you are a subscriber and up to 15 additional years."

This is just the tip of a huge Pluto in Capricorn iceberg. By law in California, where I live, consumers are allowed to opt out of a company’s use of personal information. Having a Sun-Pluto conjunction, I am usually pretty obsessed with opting out. Whenever possible, I make sure my name gets removed from mailing lists, credit card applications, marketing directories, etc. According to the Times article, Time Warner requires subscribers to opt-out in writing, but neglects to include one important feature in its opt-out notice: a mailing address.

Note: Photo is from Wikimedia Commons: "Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License..."

Kings of Leon and Venus Retrograde

What happens when you combine the following ingredients?

• a stellium of Mars, Saturn, and Pluto in Libra
• a Capricorn Sun
• a Moon-Neptune square
• Venus retrograde in Aquarius square Jupiter in Scorpio

For one, you can get a charismatic and handsome rock singer of smoldering intensity who wears tight, tight jeans, makes girls go “Ooooohh!” and writes great, rough, beautiful songs with flip-side outlaw topics like male impotence (the sweetly tender song, “Soft”), transvestites (the passionate, over-the-top, knock-out “Trani”), and assorted cultural renegades. The particular rock singer with these planetary signatures is Caleb Followill (on the right in the picture) of the band Kings of Leon, who I saw perform last Friday night at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles.

For all their subverting of standard rock song topics, Kings of Leon put on a rollicking good show, with the crowd on its feet and dancing for much of the band's performance. This concert, at the opening of their American tour, took place just a few hours before Venus went from retrograde to stationary direct in Leo—a great time to see a rock show. Does Kings of Leon have their own astrologer, or are the heavens just smiling on them?

About a year ago, I went to see Bob Dylan, and the opening act was a group called Kings of Leon. I’d never heard of them but liked them a lot, bought their recent CD (Because of the Times) and then earlier ones, and pretty much fell in love with this Southern Memphis rock band. They have also built a following by opening for U2, who apparently gave them lessons in “How to be Rock ‘n’ Roll Super-Stars.”

Their songs are always on the move, going somewhere. They have a peripatetic, mercurial quality. That might be because Kings of Leon is comprised of three brothers (now all twenty-something) whose father was a traveling Pentecostal preacher, and their boyhood lives were spent on the road, driving around the South in a purple 1988 Oldsmobile. The band name is a family tribute. The Followill brothers’ father and grandfather were both named Leon (a cousin is the fourth member of the band).

Kings of Leon’s music is a complex American rock hybrid of the grass-roots spiritual and the dangerously profane.

Their lead singer, songwriter, and the onstage focal point is Caleb Followill, who has Venus retrograde. Venus retrograde happens for only 40 days every 18 months, and being born with this planet during its retrograde cycle is rare. Only 5-7% of us have got Venus retrograde in our horoscopes. Anne Massey, in her wonderful book, Venus: Her Cycles, Symbols, and Myths, writes that, “With the retrograde periods, we take a journey into the underworld—our subconscious or unconscious mind—encountering hidden or forgotten truths about ourselves.” This also says something fundamental about the song lyrics Caleb writes. They have an unconscious, impressionistic, opaque, seeking quality, and on some level his words seem to be seeking half-forgotten truths.

Anne Massey also connects the 40-day retrograde period of Venus with “that biblical reference when Moses wandered in the desert, and the temptation of Jesus…”; and, “A person born with Venus retrograde may feel a strong sense of disconnectedness—not belonging anywhere.” This sense, born perhaps from being traveling preacher’s sons, comes through in almost all of Kings of Leon’s songs.

Caleb’s Venus will turn direct by secondary progression in about four years. It is already moving very slowly and powerfully in his secondary progressed chart. It make a direct station (i.e. a “stop” before it starts moving forward instead of retrograde) just as it hits Caleb’s natal Sun. He could get married then. He’ll be 29 and his Saturn return will also be happening. It’s also possible that he may break away from his band at that time or at least do some solo work. Massey writes: “Once Venus moves direct by progression, there tends to be newfound freedom to try other things.”

Caleb's retrograde Venus squares his Scorpio Jupiter. And he's got a powerful Mars-Saturn-Pluto stellium. When he sang “Trani,” a six minute-plus song portrait about a modern American exile and which builds slowly to its passionate conclusion, Caleb dashed his microphone stand to the stage at the song's climax. He then wandered in circles while the last guitar chord still rang, doubled over as though he'd been punched in the stomach, dazed and momentarily lost on the stage, overcome by his own intensity. Suddenly, he realized it was over, stood up, waved to the audience with both arms, and with his family walked off the stage.

Notes: I got Caleb Followill's birth data from Wikipedia. The photo was taken at a European concert earlier this summer and has been given to the public domain.

Jack Kerouac

Someone once wrote that

the only people that interest me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing ... but burn, burn, burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'

He was an unknown beat writer when those words were published, but after On the Road hit the bookstores, Jack Kerouac went from an anonymous someone to become the world’s most famous narrator of restless, liberated energy and boxcar trips to somewhere, man.

Wednesday marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of On the Road, Kerouac’s story of a freedom-obsessed group of friends who, in the words of biographer Ann Charters, “rushed back and forth across the country on the slightest pretext, gathering kicks along the way…and if they seemed to trespass most boundaries, moral and legal, it was only in the hope of finding a belief on the other side.” On the Road became part of a broader generational challenge to the conformity of the 1950’s.

Kerouac's life became an extended metaphor for the search for personal transformation, frequently accomplished through drugs, alcohol, and frenetic motion. I read On the Road during my senior year in high school and was fascinated with its romantic, vaguely anarchic, outlaw tales of American highways, train-hopping, and drinking.

Kerouac was a Pisces Sun, which often describes a person who is searching or seeking for meaning beyond the self. Pisces is ruled in traditional astrology by Jupiter, but its modern ruler is Neptune. Both planets really describe Jack Kerouac's life, which was marked by an exploration of morality, travel, and consciousness-expansion.

Kerouac’s 6th-house Aquarius Mercury was ruled by Uranus, also placed in the 6th house. The liberty-loving 6th-house Uranus forms part of an incredibly powerful t-square. It is opposite his rising Virgo moon. Kerouac’s a double Virgo and, with Uranus opposing his Virgo Moon, he helped to loosen the prevailing 1950’s morality. Kerouac’s Uranus also squares his Sagittarius Mars—all that mutable energy looking for a place to go! When a planetary pattern like a T-square also hits the axes of the chart (the Ascendant/Descendant or the Midheaven/IC), as it does in Kerouac’s horoscope, it takes on even greater significance.

Carolyn Cassady, Kerouac’s intimate friend, was an astrologer. Her husband, Neal, was the prototype for the main character in On the Road. Carolyn Cassady did a posthumous astrological reading of Jack Kerouac’s horoscope. For those who are interested, it’s titled “An Astrological Reading,” and it is Appendix Two of Kerouac: A Biography, by Ann Charters. Cassady wrote that Kerouac’s 6th-house Mercury in Aquarius signified “the pleasure he gained from a migratory life.”

Kerouac was born March 12, 1922, 5:00 PM EST, in Lowell, Massachusetts. His birth data comes from Ann Charters' Kerouac biography and is listed in Lois Rodden's Astro-Data II. Presumably, Carolyn Cassady had Kerouac's accurate birth time when she did his horoscope.

Uranus-Neptune and Virtual Out-of-Body Experiences

The August 24 issue of Science magazine had an article titled, “Out-of-Body Experiences Enter the Laboratory” (they require a subscription or one-time payment to read the article). The New York Times subsequently described this rather amazing development in “Studies Report Inducing Out-of-Body Experience.”

I feel this experiment is part of a larger trend involving extra-sensory advancements using technology. Recent experiments have also enabled brain waves to directly control a robot. These developments seem to be connected to the Uranus-Neptune mutual reception, which began in 2003 and will continue until 2011, as well as the 1993 Uranus-Neptune conjunction.

Neptune involves states of consciousness which overflow the boundaries of ego and everyday consciousness: meditation, drugs and alcohol, dreams, feelings of unity and oneness, Samadhi. An out-of-body experience has strong elements of Neptune—one is literally flowing out of one’s own body.

Uranus is technology, and the out-of-body experiences described in these articles are induced through technology. Here’s what the Times reports:

Using virtual-reality goggles, a camera and a stick, scientists have induced out-of-body experiences — the sensation of drifting outside of one’s own body — in ordinary, healthy people, according to studies being published today in the journal Science.

When people gazed at an illusory image of themselves through the goggles and were prodded in just the right way with the stick, they felt as if they had left their bodies.

The research reveals that “the sense of having a body, of being in a bodily self,” is actually constructed from multiple sensory streams, said one expert on body and mind, Dr. Matthew M. Botvinick, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Princeton University.

Usually these sensory streams, which include vision, touch, balance and the sense of where one’s body is positioned in space, work together seamlessly, Dr. Botvinick said. But when the information coming from the sensory sources does not match up, the sense of being embodied as a whole comes apart.

The brain, which abhors ambiguity, then forces a decision that can, as the new experiments show, involve the sense of being in a different body.

The research provides a physical explanation for phenomena usually ascribed to otherworldly influences, said Peter Brugger, a neurologist at University Hospital in Zurich, who, like Dr. Botvinick, had no role in the experiments. In what is popularly referred to as near-death experience, people who have been in the throes of severe and sudden injury or illness often report the sensation of floating over their body, looking down, hearing what is said and then, just as suddenly, finding themselves back inside their body.