A Marriage Made Where?

Written June 1982

Ok I know I am a novice at astrology but I do not understand why astrologers are gushing over the upcoming nuptials of Diana Spencer and Prince Charles. I see very famous astrologers writing that this is a marriage made in Heaven – the Prince and the commoner (although Diane’s family is far from common.) It is the fairy tale and I fear are caught up in the hoopla surrounding a royal wedding and shirking their duty as astrologers. Well some fairy tales have not so happy endings and I don’t see much that will lead these two to happily ever after!

On a very basic level – her Sun is square or in a difficult position to his Moon. (A square is when planets are 90 degrees from one another. It is a disharmonious placement – making accomplishments delayed or difficult to achieve.) That is never something you want in a romantic partnership. The Sun is our life force – our energy center. The Moon is the ruler of emotions and feelings. With these squared in the charts of two people, it shows that her way of expressing her vitality clashes with his emotional expressions. There are going to be constant frictions between how she wants to express herself and how he wants to guard his feelings. For a very public couple this is even more disastrous then if they were, a couple able to work out their issues in private and perhaps find a balancing point.

Speaking of Moon’s, Diana’s is in Aquarius and she has a Sagittarius ascendant. (The ascendant or rising sign is how we express ourselves to the outside world. It is a much more accurate assessment of a person’s persona than the currently in vogue Sun sign.) With these two placements, I can safely say do not believe what you read in the newspapers. This woman is no “Shy Di.” Moon is Aquarius, while a very compassionate placement, makes for very stubborn people. Aquarius are often ahead of the rest of the world in the way they think and that makes them less willing to listen to advice or take orders. They crave freedom and independence. Her rising sign is fiery Sagittarian, the natural performer. (More actors are born under the Sagittarius sign than any other.) Sagittarius, symbolized by the wandering archer is not a shy mouse. He wanders the world seeking truth. How can anyone with these two very personal planets in signs that demand freedom be cowed into a life of subservience to a monarch? If that happens, Diana will be miserable.

Charles Venus is in Libra in the 4th house – he does not want a young filly he is looking for a mommy! Venus is the ancient goddess of love – Venus is the key to finding romantic and sexual harmony. The 4th house is the place of home and roots and relates directly to the mother figure. Libra is a very co dependent sign – Librans are always looking for approval and praise from others. He needs someone to boost his fragile ego and protects him. He does not want to be looking after this young girl. He is looking for a mate who will make him feel safe and accepted and now he has the role of being the protector of a woman years younger. This is totally out of balance with what he craves romantically.

To make matters worse his Sun is square her Venus and her Venus is opposite his Sun! (Oppositions occur when planets fall 180 degrees from one another. Like squares, they are hurdles because the planets are actually pulling away at each other’s energy.) This illustrates two huge clashes – how can they be physically compatible when their Sun energy – their vitality – clashes with their romantic desires? This has to have some element of an arranged marriage – these two would never have a natural attraction to one another.

Mars and Saturn do a negative dance as well in their charts. These two are the components to astrological thunderstorms – hot Mars energy clashing with cold Saturn. Mars is the ancient god of war. It is all about fire and temperament. Saturn is the old lesson teacher – very cold and distant. Mars wants to explore the new and tame the wilderness. Saturn wants to sit in the classroom and write the lessons of life 100 times. When these two meet especially in a squared situation as we have here, it is a recipe for arguments. His Mars anger will boil over more than once in their marriage as he sees her not playing by his rules.

In ancient days the royal families of the world had astrologers in court charged with the casting the charts before auspicious occasions such as battles and marriages. It is too bad that practice has gone out of style and it is too bad that our current crop of astrologers are too concerned with being a part of the big day without saying what the stars clearly foretell for these two.


Updated 2008

I wrote this as a novice astrologer to give to friends and family. I did not know much about astrology then but still sensed the disaster in the making. As a Karmic astrologer, I can now expand on their charts using Soulsign Astrology* and illustrate not just how mismatched they were but why they met up again to do their karmic dance. There are no mistakes or coincidences in the cosmos and Astrology helps explain what, on the surface, seems absurd.

The first step in Soulsign is to look at past lives. These are not always linear. Although we humans prefer to think of time as a steady progression, Einstein has proved that time is much more elastic. Therefore, when I speak of past lives it doesn’t mean the immediate past life. It could be a series of lives from long ago that have left over issues that the person must now address, or it can mean there are outstanding issues from a life back in antiquity and one from the last time around that are dealt with in this go around.

To examine Diana’s past lives that influenced this one we look to Pluto. Her Pluto is in Virgo in the 9th house. Pluto is always the messenger of the soul’s desire both past and present. With Pluto in Virgo, a sign ruled by Vesta the ancient goddess of service and duty (characterized by the Vestal Virgins who kept the temple flame burning), her soul wished to experience a life (or several ones) in precise and dutiful service to a greater cause. Precise and dutiful come from Virgo – the mistress of hypercritical analysis. This service would be in areas of the 9th house – spiritual awareness, a traveling to experience various cultures and religions. The 9th house is all about learning and accepting the rituals and riches of various cultures and seeking a cosmic spiritual truth.

That is a soul level now we see how this plays out in the incarnated state – when we move from the spiritual level to the physical plane. For that, we look to the South Node. (Nodes are not planetary bodies; rather, they are mathematical points. The North and South nodes so instrumental to karmic astrology are the points where the Moon's orbit intersects the plane of the ecliptic, the path it takes around Earth.) Her South Node was in Aquarius in the 3rd house that influences our communications and thought processes. Aquarius is a highly evolved forward thinking sign that brings compassion toward the human situation. Aquarians often get involved in group activities that work toward bettering the plight of the downtrodden.

Combining the soul’s desire and the realities of physical incarnation we see her past lives as ones in which she was a very caring and compassionate person who communicated through the written or spoken word about the plight of others and instructed people how to be in service to something larger than themselves. A missionary looking to better those she encountered, a religious pilgrim, an anthropologist or simply a woman who held her community up to a higher standard of humanitarianism – who didn’t let them get away with ignorance, cruelty and hatred.

It is interesting to note that her Moon is only 3 degrees away from her South Node. This is a tight conjunction. (A conjunction is when two planetary bodes are within one to eight degrees of each other.) With both in Aquarius, this adds an extra dimension of humanitarianism. This is person who led with her heart not her head for better or worse and one who emotionally attached to the work she did. She clearly felt everyone’s pain. The shadow or difficult aspect of Aquarius is stubbornness and an unwillingness to listen to advice. So regardless of what others suggested she plowed along on her path convinced she was in the right.

Past life memories engrain themselves on our soul. We might not readily remember the circumstances of these lives but we clearly have a cellular memory of what we have experienced. So in this lifetime, her Diana incarnation, she brought forward her compassion and caring for the downtrodden and willingness to instruct people about the less fortunate and what they could do to make their lives better as well as the Aquarian stubbornness.) However, here is the trick the universe loves to play on Mankind – well, one of them anyway. We cannot live our current lives – engrossed in the past. The soul desires to move on.

So what was Diana’s soul desire in this life? Why did her soul desire to come back in 1961? For that, we look at the Pluto Polarity – the opposite of her Pluto placement – and that is Pisces in the 3rd house. Again, we have an emphasis on the 3rd house – communication and thought processes – so it is clear she did not fulfill all she needed to do in terms of communicating her feelings to the world. (I have a feeling she sort of accomplished that this time, don’t you?) Pisces is the martyr – they really do feel like they must suffer – but on a larger scale, Pisces connects us to the cosmic consciousness – the God concept. Therefore, the soul wished to experience itself as a communicator of some essence of cosmic knowledge. Can you see that evolve as she did use her world pulpit to speak against AIDS, land mines and other injustices, but also took on the role of the martyr? She communicated the sense of being a sufferer and even her death has been seen by some as a form of martyrdom to the Royal Family. She also had a spiritual aspect and led many people to become more active in humanitarian causes.

Let’s look at Charles’ past lives. Interestingly his Pluto is in Leo in the first house. So his prior soul’s desire – why his soul wished to incarnate in the past – was all about being the ruler. Leo the lion, the king of jungle vibrates to the energy of the adored, beloved ruler. The first house is our outward persona – it expresses how we present ourselves to world. His soul wished to experience itself as the beloved, fear and adored ruler – the king of the jungle.

His South Node is in Scorpio in the 4th house. Scorpio deals with transformative power – personal power – the power to get to the root of problems and turn them around. The 4th house is a mother energy. It is the house of roots and home life. Poor Charles, the first thing that comes to mind when I see this is that he had many lifetimes of being the female head of a home based community – a high priestess or mother superior – the ruler of a female based society. It doesn’t look like he handled his power too well, however. We don’t have too look too far to see that his life is bit difficult made so by shall we say – rather strong willed difficult women? (If I were to do a total analysis of his chart, I would spend a lot of time of the stellium in his 4th house and the complications each bring. A stellium is 4 or more planetary bodies in one house. It is safe to say that he has been playing with this female control issue for a long time and hopefully it has now come fully to a head and he can move on.)

His current soul’s desire – his Pluto Polarity – is in the 7th house in Aquarius. If the first house is all about one’s self – the 7th is all about other people. His soul wishes to experience itself as a source of humanitarian group work (from Aquarius) in all of his personal dealings with others (7th house.) If you study Charlie’s life, you see that he has tried to do that. His North node – is in Taurus 10th house. Taurus deals with the Earth and possessions, and the 10th house is the house of career and public persona that vibrates to the father energy. He has been a leader in “green gardening” and Earth conservation and has spoken out against the horrors of modern architecture and the blight it leaves on our cities.

Astrologically, there is something fascinating in both the charts of Diana and Charles. In both charts, the houses that have their North and South nodes are intercepted. (Interception means that there are two astrological signs on the cusp of one house. The cusp is the entryway to each astrological house.) Both of them have a great deal of karma to overcome from past lives and misused energy incurred while pursing their soul’s desire. In other words, the soul had a pure idea but when they incarnated they allowed human foibles, greed, anger etc. to interfere with the work thus incurring negative karma.

Charles’s busy 4th house has Libra on the cusp but it is intercepted by Scorpio and his 10th house –is also intercepted – this one by Taurus. This indicates life as leader for the prestige for the public adulation rather than for the good of the community. He did not develop the proper communicating skills and was not willing to share himself with his people. He (I should be saying she because he was female in many of these incarnations) liked the trappings but not the heavy duties involved with leadership. He kept people at arm’s length and did not care for the suffering of the masses.

Diana also had her dose of karma with intercepted 3rd and 9th houses. She had great communication skills and misused them for frivolous chatter. She stymied what could have been a great pursuit of knowledge and wasted it on the pursuit of useless information – gossip, etc. As I mentioned earlier, she did not use the great gifts that she had.

Both of these people then had the chance to be leaders in past life – to direct people toward good service and teach and lead and both people wasted their skills. She chose a quick, somewhat painful path to rectify this situation. Charles seems to be a more laborious trail and we don’t yet know if he can somehow redeem himself as a gracious and beneficent leader of people. There is an old saying that you have to live 10,000 lives with someone to sit next to them on a subway this go around. How many lifetimes do you need to create a marriage like the one those two had? Untold I am sure: their respective South Nodes come in contact with the others personal planets (Sun, Moon, Mars, Venus and Mercury) several times so it was safe to say that while he was lounging around his palaces pretending to be ruler and she was wandering the world gossiping instead of teaching people they interacted more than once. However, this was a grudge match – I am more inclined to believe that the gossip she was spreading was about his ineffectual rule and as humans do she each carried the cellular memory of these battles into this life. Could he have banished her or had her killed in the past? Could her gossip have brought down his rule?

Let us hope that before her death they were able to come to some sort of mutual respect. Still there is no doubt that they each piled up a ton more of negative karma toward each other so stayed tune folks, this battle will start again in a lifetime coming soon!