Mary Todd Lincoln - Can We Find the Real Person?

This April is the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and while some people think of the battles and the military strategy, I am always more interested in the people involved. One of our more fascinating historical figures is Mary Todd Lincoln, a woman who I feel we will never really get to know because she has been defined through the prism of so many others prejudices for more than a century.

The closest we can get to the “real” person is to look at her birth chart but even that is shrouded in some mystery. Most astrologers use 6:00 PM as the time of birth. When I researched it the closest I got was an entry in a Bible stating it was a “rainy early evening.” For sake of discussion, I will use the 6:00 PM time but keep in mind, the fast moving bodies, Moon, Mercury, Venus – can move a lot in fifteen to thirty minutes.

This chart shows her Moon in Moon Child in the 12th house. I would tend to think this is off, because Moon in the 12th would be someone who would keep their feelings to themselves. Mary was not known for this! (This is another reason I think she was born a bit later.) Moon in Moon Child people are often ruled by their emotions. Added to this is that her rising sign – how she presented herself to the world – was also Moon Child. Her Moon and her rising sign were both Moon- driven so I am sure that the stories that she was highly emotional and given to outbursts followed by depression were correct.

What grabs my eye even more than that was the Stellium (five or more planets) in the 6th house. (Again this could have straddled the 6th and 7th if her birth time is later.) She clearly had many planets in the 6th house the house of health. Mars and Uranus both in the fire sign of Sagittarius in the 6th points to someone who has mercurial rages. You are mixing male fire energy and Uranian lightening – that is combination for flare ups. The theory that they were driven by headaches and other medical conditions is proven by this sixth house placement.

This Mars/Uranus conjunction is sitting right on top of her Sun/Neptune conjunction. Sun and Neptune makes us unaware of our true selves. Neptune is the great obfuscator and gives everything have an air of unreality. When Neptune is tightly conjunct our life force, the Sun, a person has a hard time learning or facing who they are.

This is a classic definition of the historical Mary Lincoln – highly emotional, prone to rages, someone unaware of their public persona – out of touch with reality of the day. However, there is much more to this very complicated chart. In my next blog we will explore her Capricorn Venus – do you see the attraction to the Saturnian, dour looking Lincoln? However, it is her Moon and Lilith conjunction and her Aries North Node in her intercepted 11th house that I believe will give us a more rounded look at this highly complex woman.

Her ninth house (the house of spiritual seeking) is also jammed packed and highly charged with Chiron, Pallas Athena and Saturn there all in Pisces, the sign that connects us to the cosmic consciousness. Today she might be a spiritual leader. Then she was ridiculed for having séances in the White House.

Few people in the 19th Century looked beyond the flighty, emotional woman. Why bother, she was after all just a woman? Worse, she was a woman with a rebellious streak and a calling to be a leader at a time when those traits would be castigated. How easy to use her emotional short comings to keep her inner drives from being realized.