Obtaining a date of birth is relatively easy. All it takes is an identity card, or just about any other document, and sometimes, by chance, it turns up on the internet. Dizzy has access to all sorts of lists and tables, though I won’t elaborate here. But what really matters is the time of birth. That’s not recorded in the documents, and yet it’s the time that’s the real key to a Person. A Horoscope without the exact time is fairly worthless – we know WHAT, but we don’t know HOW and WHERE.
I tried explaining to the reluctant Dizzy that in the past Astrology was much the same as socio-biology is today. Then at least he seemed a little more interested. There’s nothing outrageous about this comparison. The Astrologer believes that the heavenly bodies have an influence on human personality, while the socio-biologist thinks it’s the mysterious emanations of molecular bodies that affect us. The difference is in scale. Neither of them knows what’s behind this influence or how it is transmitted. They’re really talking about the same thing, except that they’re using different scales. Sometimes I’m surprised by the similarity, and by the fact that while I adore Astrology, I have no respect for socio-biology at all.
In a natal Horoscope the date of birth determines the date of death as well. That’s obvious – anyone who has been born is going to die. There are many places in the Horoscope that point us towards the time and nature of death – one simply needs to know how to spot and connect them. For example, one has to check the transitory aspects of Saturn to the hyleg, and what’s going on in the eighth house. Also to cast an eye on the relative position of the Lights – meaning the Sun and Moon.
It is quite complicated, and it could be boring for anyone who isn’t an expert. But when you look carefully, I told Dizzy, when you join up the facts, you’ll see that the concurrences of events down here with the position of the planets up there are crystal-clear. It always puts me into a state of exhilaration. But the source of my excitement is understanding. That’s why Dizzy cannot feel it.
In my defence of Astrology I’m often forced to use statistical arguments, which I hate, but which always appeal to young minds. Without any thought but with religious zeal, young people believe in statistics. It’s enough to give them something expressed as a percentage, or as a probability, and they take it in good faith. So then I referred to Gauquelin and his ‘Mars effect’ – a phenomenon that seems bizarre, but the statistics confirm it. What Gauquelin did was to demonstrate that, statistically, in the Horoscopes of sportsmen, Mars – the planet of fitness, competition and so on – is more frequently found in one particular location than in the Horoscopes of non-sportsmen. Of course Dizzy made light of this proof, and of all the other evidence that he found uncomfortable. Even when I offered him a whole string of examples of predictions that had come true. For instance, concerning Hitler, when Himmler’s court Astrologer, Wilhelm Wolf, predicted ‘eine grosse Gefahr für Hitler am 20.07.44’, meaning great danger for Hitler on that day, and as we know, that was the date of the assassination attempt at the Wolf’s Lair. And later on, the same sinister Astrologer predicted impassively: ‘dass Hitler noch vor dem 7.05.45 eines geheimnissvollen Todes sterben werde’, meaning that Hitler would die a mysterious death before the seventh of May.
‘Incredible,’ said Dizzy. ‘How’s that possible?’ he asked himself, but then instantly forgot it all, and let his incredulity flare up again.
I tried using other methods to convince him, by showing him the perfect harmony between what happens down here and what’s going on up there.
‘Look at this, for example, look carefully – the summer of 1980, Jupiter in conjunction with Saturn in Libra. A powerful conjunction. Jupiter represents the authorities, and Saturn the workers. What’s more, Wałęsa has the Sun in Libra. Do you see?’
Dizzy shook his head dubiously.
‘What about the Police? Which celestial body represents the Police?’ he asked.
‘Pluto. It also represents the secret services and the mafia.’
‘Well, yes, yes…’ he repeated, unconvinced, though I could see he had a lot of goodwill and was doing his best.
‘Keep looking,’ I said, and showed him the position of the planets. ‘Saturn was in Scorpio in 1953 – the death of Stalin and the political thaw; 1952 to 1956 – repression, the Korean War, the invention of the hydrogen bomb. The year 1953 was the toughest for the Polish economy. Look, that’s just when Saturn rose in Scorpio. Isn’t that incredible?’
Dizzy fidgeted in his chair.
‘Well, all right, look at this: Neptune in Libra – chaos, Uranus in Cancer – the people rebel, the decline of colonialism. Uranus was entering Leo when the French Revolution erupted, when the January Uprising occurred and when Lenin was born. Remember that Uranus in Leo always represents revolutionary power.’
I could see he was finding it painful.
No, it was impossible to persuade Dizzy to believe in Astrology. Never mind.
Once I was alone and was laying out my research Tools in the kitchen, I felt pleased that I could keep track of these amazing conformities. First I deciphered Big Foot’s Horoscope, and straight after that the Commandant’s.
Generally speaking, the tendency of a particular Person to have accidents is shown by the Ascendant, its ruler and the planets in the Ascendant. The ruler of the eighth house indicates a natural death. If it is in the first house, it means that his death will be the Person’s own fault. Maybe he was a careless Person, for instance. If the signifier is connected with the third house, the Person will be aware of the cause of his death. If it is not connected, then the poor fellow will not even realise where he made the fatal error. In the second house death occurs as a result of wealth and money. In this configuration the Person might be attacked and killed for the purposes of robbery. The third house is typical for road and transport accidents. In the fourth we find death because of land ownership, or because of family, especially the father. In the fifth because of children, abuse of pleasure, or because of sport. In the sixth house we bring illness on ourselves through lack of caution or by overworking. When the ruler of the eighth house is in the seventh house, the cause of death is a spouse; that could mean a duel, or despair resulting from infidelity. And so on.
In the Commandant’s Horoscope in the eighth house (a threat to life, the house of death) we find the Sun, the body that symbolises life itself, but also a position of power. It is located in quadrature – a very difficult aspect – to Mars (violence, aggression) in the twelfth house (Murder, assassination) in Scorpio (death, homicide, Crime). The ruler of Scorpio is Pluto, and thus power may be to do with organisations such as the Police, or… the mafia. Pluto is in conjunction with the Sun in Leo. In my view, all this means that the Commandant was a very ambiguous and enigmatic Person, mixed up in various sinister affairs. That he was capable of being cruel and ruthless, and gained distinct advantages from his position. It’s highly possible that as well as his official authority within the Police, he had a lot of power somewhere else, within something secret and ominous.
What’s more, the ruler of the Ascendant is in Aries, which governs the head, and thus violence (Mars) is in direct relation to his head. And I also remembered that Saturn in an animal sign – Aries, Taurus, Leo, Sagittarius or Capricorn – portends a threat to life caused by a wild or aggressive Animal.