Neptune/Fomalhaut/Deneb: Dissolving Walls

Image based on "Kristallobject, Objectivism, 8°36'44' 49°43'33'"

by Bodo Sperling (1952, Hanau)

This is the story of how our world has come to be where it is…and in part, why we don’t know where we’re going. I invite you to read if you are willing to confront your own emotional vulnerabilities.

To start with…it seems a trifle odd to pair the idea of Neptune, Fomalhaut and clarification in one sentence. After all, Neptune is most typically that which is nebulous. Or dream-like. Neptune is the ‘idea of the thing’ which evokes the feeling in our mind, whether that feeling is good or bad.

(And yes, that goes with the two fishes of Pisces. Have you ever thought of them as good fish/bad fish?)

Then there’s Fomalhaut. One of the great stars of the sky, since long ago times Fomalhaut has represented a promise of success if and where our aims (ahem..dreams of success) are not corrupt or corrupted, corrosive or corruptive.

But who’s to say ‘what’s what?’ Who is to say that your dream is corrupt? If, for instance, you corner the world market in rice (one of our planet’s most important food stuffs), if you do that fair and square, playing by all the rules in the book, how can that be corrupt?

Answer: this is Pisces we’re talking about. And Pisces is the most universal of the water (emotional) signs. Pisces is the common experience of being human and the common emotional sense of being human. Where that emotionality becomes universal, human become humane. And thus, beneath the skin (or scales, if you prefer) Pisces is never ‘just’ about us. It’s always about us and everybody else on the planet.

So if you corner that rice market, why have you bothered to do so? If you’re in the entrepreneurial mode, you have probably done that so as to make money.

But what happens if people can’t pay your price?

That sort of question is where Neptune meets Fomalhaut. Or more specifically, dissolving whatever barriers or walls you have built inside which would even begin to allow you to think that it’s okay for you to raise prices and make money when that means that anyone out there is going to starve because you want another penny on the bushel – that’s Neptune meeting Fomalhaut.

Where humane meets inhumanity – or if you prefer, selfishness or blindness or denial or (on the other side) fear or threats of inability to survive or feelings of helplessness…all those are Neptune meets Fomalhaut. For you, this may be about rice. Or about something else having to do with money. Because Pisces has a connection with toxicity and anything which ‘toxifies’ or ‘detoxifies,’ we can also throw in pollution, addiction, pharmaceuticals, the chemical and oil industries as a whole. Pisces being the premier sign of the ‘Jungian consciousness,’ the emotional side of health care also enters into this – which applies whether you’re talking about emotional reactions to health care, health care entitlements, the ‘entitlement’ of the health care industry, the cost of health care and the cost not having proper health care extracts on a person, from a family, from a society and so on.

Relationships of all types (personal, professional, spiritual, in-person, online, platonic, sexual, familial, etc.) enter into this discussion as Pisces is the sign which most touches on our desire to see relationships as one thing even if in reality, they’re another. Or should be.

We’ve been talking about this for weeks now. Mercury moved into Pisces in early February, and that opened the Neptune window to all sorts of flights of fancy…and the effort to escape realities. And the need to deal with realities, which is really what Pisces is about.

Pisces as a sign says feel your feelings and deal with reality anyway. In separating the two (represented by those two fishes headed in differing directions) we are reminded that life will not ‘allow’ us to totally deny either one. Those two fishes are tied together by an immutable cord, which represents the fact that life depends on both factual reality and an understanding and acceptance of not just our own emotions, but that everybody has their own emotional perspective.

It’s as important for them to understand their emotions as it is for us to understand ours. Unfortunately, being humans (yes, this is where we all sigh) we will all tend to want to correct the ‘other guy’ and stand on (and in) our righteous truth.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t fix the problem. OUR problem is not with them…it’s in being who we are. Or more precisely, who we like to think we are in our minds. Nobody gets up in the morning thinking they’re a bad guy. I don’t care who you pick as your nomination of Ultra Bad Dude, that Bad Dude doesn’t go to the mirror every morning and twirl their handlebar mustache (real or imagined) saying ‘ah yes…how can I be evil today?’

It’s a sobering thought too, that. But true. And what’s really tough is that even though we aren’t a UBD (Ultra Bad Dude) we still look at ourselves in the mirror and miss some of the flaws.

Those flaws are about recognizing our own emotional inconsistencies. And that’s at the core of Neptune conjunct Fomalhaut.

Mind you…as this post goes up, Neptune is just at 3 Pisces. And Fomalhaut is at 4 Pisces. Neptune won’t reach 4 Pisces until March 26, 2013. And in moving just less than a second of arc every day, Neptune will be at 4 Pisces until May 2, 2013.

And yes, Neptune will return to 4 Pisces even after that. In fact, this whole Neptune-Fomalhaut issue has been swimming up on us for some time now.

 A chart of Neptune's transit (in green) through Pisces

4 Pisces being the core of the issue, given that the standard orb of influence is 5 degrees, Neptune entered Fomalhaut’s orb of influence back in 2010.

Has there been much confusion since then? Yes. Has there been an upturn in upsetting events dating back to that time? Give or take the fact that this isn’t an ‘all-or-nothing’ perfect/imperfect world we’re talking about, I think the answer there is ‘yes’ in the Neptune-Fomalhaut (Piscean) sense. In other words, since 2010, more events, more situations, more conversations, more confrontations, more and more things have been forcing us to deal with who we are – really. At our cores. In our hearts. And where something we may feel doesn’t hold true for everyone, which gets back to that most difficult of Pisces truisms: just as I want others to accept my emotional truth, I have to accept that their emotional truth may be different.

WHY those emotional truths are different is the next step in the Pisces lesson. And since Neptune is going to be traversing Fomalhaut’s orb through 2016, apparently we still have plenty of time to learn all about it…(oh, yippee – right?)

And that leads to the next Pisces challenge: accepting that life is not perfect. It’s not that it isn’t ‘supposed’ to be pleasant…it’s just that life is life. When you watch nature documentaries and see a crocodiles rear up out of the river and grab a wildebeest by its nose, dragging the wildebeest down into the water where it will drown and be eaten, that’s the reality of life. Are you happy about it? Probably not. (And granted, the wildebeest is probably far unhappier, at least for a bit.)

But that is life. So…given that humans are at the top of the planetary food chain (give or take stray encounters with tigers, lions and crocodilians) what does that mean?

There are a million ways to think of this question and to answer it. Still…in the end the question becomes something akin to this: do we try, or do we not try? That applies to what we do. It also applies to the standards we hold for ourselves as people and in what we do – or don’t do.

There is no perfection – there’s only trying, or not trying.

(And yes, there is being trying, too…but that’s another perspective on parts A and B!)

And whether we ‘try’ or ‘don’t try’ when it comes to any given thing pretty much comes down to acceptance. Do we accept the status quo? Do we accept that we have likes and dislikes and that sometimes life isn’t the way we like it? Do we accept that life requires effort? Do we accept that life itself isn’t perfect?

Acceptance is a core Pisces ‘tool,’ if you will. And in accepting our feelings, whatever they may be about any given thing, the not running away from those feelings is Pisces Step One. Pisces Step Two is separating reality from the fantasy. And how do we define ‘fantasy’ in this case?  It could be a daydream. Or a wish. Or a sexual fantasy. Or entertainment as a fantasy distraction. There are romantic fantasies and fantasies of success.

Fantasies are how we try out ideas we might like…and very much not like. The great argument out there about whether films or video games teach violence or sexuality is part of this discussion. For some people, they’re a way to try things out and decide that’s not for you. For some, they become an enticement, an invitation to substitute the ‘fantasy’ for reality.

That’s the problem. What the video game or movie industry has to say about it? That’s business. For the same entertainment giants who will ballyhoo their success with audiences to turn around and then say they have no ‘effect’ or ‘influence’ on their audiences is silly. I’m a second-generation entertainment person and I know why such companies do what they do, but it is a little silly.

Except for one thing: Hollywood (et al) is all about the business of fantasy. At some level, every form of entertainment is about projecting some image which you get swept away by. That’s fantasy. If you think the movie business is ‘glamorous,’ you think that because Hollywood has invested billions in creating that fantasy image. You may think the Academy Awards are all about glamor or popularity when they’re actually craft awards (which is why they often go in directions the public is outraged by!)

A photograph of Fomalhaut which shows the star's surrounding dust ring

(photo credit: Hubble, NASA-ESA-JPL, ALMA, University of Florida, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, April 2012)

As someone who has worked on films, trust me – there is nothing glamorous about getting up and going to work at 4:30 in the morning. There is nothing glamorous about working 14-16 hour days and 6-day weeks for months on end without a single two-day break. There’s nothing glamorous about working with a bunch of sweaty, dirty, tired, grouchy people in a run-down building where there isn’t even any air conditioning for ten and twelve hours a day when it’s 110 degrees outside.

And music isn’t any better. I’ve worked in music too. It’s a tough, tough business. There’s a reason so many people in entertainment get into drink and drugs. There’s a reason for all the broken marriages. But while the reality of that goes on, these industries also wear a veil of Neptunian imagery which people buy into…why?
Because they want to. Because it feels good. And that’s the ‘trick’ of Neptune. Hopes and dreams are wonderful. But when hope becomes expectation, or when we think the dream is the reality, that becomes a corruption.

Yes, all businesses have their corrupt corners – that’s business. But what I’m talking about here is our willingness to corrupt our own definition of reality.

That’s what Neptune/Fomalhaut is all about. When our ability to have a real life in reality becomes corrupted by some ‘vision’ or hope or dream, where we put up walls in our lives or in our heads or hearts against accepting the whole reality and nothing but the reality as reality (to borrow liberally from a well-known phrase), Neptune’s conjuncting Fomalhaut represents a period during which situations and people and life in general will set about dissolving those walls. And showing up our mistakes. And revealing the actual facts – sometimes not so gently.

The more removed we are from that reality…or from the understanding that reality is not just about us but universal, the more challenging the Pisces lesson is.

Another important point. Anyone born during these years is going to have Neptune conjunct Fomalhaut in their natal chart. And that means in their life, for a lifetime. Depending on other factors in the chart, this may suggest that child is someone capable of great discoveries. Or someone who will go on to make wonderful contributions to society.

Then again, it could describe someone who is constantly bewildered or disappointed by life. Or someone who tries to escape life itself, heaven forbid!

As soon as I say that, I know that any caring parent of such a child will want to try and shield them from every and any difficulty. But…wait! Is that good? Or will your shielding them instill a lack of reality about how life really works which will then become a difficulty for that child as they grow up?

Knowing the difference between your Neptune and that of your child – as a parent – is really important, especially as we go through this Neptune-Fomalhaut period (or should your child be born with Neptune conjunct Fomalhaut).

So a few words on that: are there books to cover this issue in particular? No, not that I’ve ever seen. There is a book called Planets in Youth which I believe is written by Robert Hand. But that isn’t going to cover Neptune-Fomalhaut as a combination, nor is it going to help with the issue of how the parent (who has their own Neptune issues) should deal with the child.

My first suggestion is that parents know their own Neptune so they don’t project their own unresolved Neptune (Neptune/Fomalhaut) issues. The better you are at sorting reality from fantasy and useful imagination from over-idealization, the better you will be able to help your child to do the same.

In other words, some of the monsters are not under your child’s bed – they’re in your parental head as indicated by Neptune in your natal chart. That we cannot teach that we do not know, means the parent who hasn’t taken on their own issues is less likely to be fabulous parents to their kids, no matter how much they love them.

Sad but true. Alas!

Life is life.

As an astrologer, I always suggest learning more. You can read here on the blog, or from other blogs or from books. You can attend conferences. You can take astrology classes. Or you can get an astrological consultation.

As pertains to consultations, just remember that accepting what you get told about your Neptune is going to be as hard as whatever your Neptune issues are.

Also – I know astrologers come in every price point and experience range. After over three decades in the metaphysical community I suggest treating your choice of astrologer rather like choosing a neurosurgeon. Who is going to open up your skull and take out your brain tumor? Would you choose someone who doesn’t have an MD?

About…oh, fifteen years ago now (time flies when you’re writing) big astrology groups around the world started certification testing. And while there are still a lot of astrologers who know their stuff but have refused to take the tests (generally on the grounds that tests only give you a basic benchmark and don’t assure an astrologer knows ‘everything’), again…don’t you want to know that your astrologer – like your neurosurgeon – has at least proven they know the basics?

There are a list of astrological organizations in the sidebar. Not everybody belongs to all of them and not everybody who belongs to them has taken or passed certification tests. But since we’re talking about Neptune (the ideal versus the illusion) here and Fomalhaut as a symbol of success which happens only where there is a standard of purity…I’ll suggest that when in doubt, you do some checking.

The Muse of Poetry

by Konstantin Makovsky (1886, oil on canvas)

As for fees, recognize what you’re paying for – and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Most astrologers have set fees for consultations. But the nature of that consultation (what it covers)? That’s probably negotiable. In this case, you might ask the astrologer if they would do a consultation on  Neptune/Fomalhaut – either in your chart, or in your chart as parent plus the chart of your child. Some astrologers will split a consultation between charts. Some won’t. When they won’t, it’s because you’re talking about two entirely different charts they have to do all the delineation of.

And a note on getting chart work on your children:  professional astrologers, tend to follow the ethics set up for medicine or psychology with regards to a child’s age. Example: where I live the age of legal ‘adulthood’ is 18. So if a parent of a 20-year-old comes to me wanting information on their child’s chart, I’m not going to be able to give them that without that child’s express permission since that child is now legally an adult.

If money is no object (or less than a critical concern, let’s put it that way!) the optimal is probably to ask for two consults - one for yourself, and one for your child. And then see if your astrologer will add comments to each consultation referring to the relationship between parent and child.

On that, there are two forms of relationship charts: the Composite and the Davison time/space chart. Having heard all the arguments and on this one, I’m just going to be an astrological stick-in-the-mud (which is hard, seeing as this is all about outer space) and say I don’t like a Composite chart for this particular use. Then again, not all astrologers know how to use Davison charts. So ask. Does your chosen astrologer use Davison charts regularly? If not, talk it through. Davisons can be a little tricky to delineate, seeing as they are not “about” a person, per se.

OKAY! That done, I return you to your regular bloggery programming….

Ideals, idols and idolatry are prime Neptune-Fomalhaut subjects. It’s been interesting (as an astrologer) to have watched the increase in ‘branding’ and ‘celebrities as authorities’ (on whatever) which has been on the rise ever since Neptune entered the zodiacal 4th quadrant back in 1984 or so.

Neptune’s passage through any sign serves to excite the ideal and exacerbate the downfall, which in the 4th quarter ‘worldly’ concept is very much akin to theme underlying George Orwell’s novel ‘1984.’ 

George Orwell press photo in 1933 from the

National Union of Journalists (BNUJ)

Foresight? Maybe. Was Orwell an astrologer? I have no idea. What I do know is that George Orwell was born with an interesting configuration: Sun conjunct Neptune, Haumea, Deucalion, Charybdis and fixed star Mirzam.

 George Orwell

June 25, 1903 - Motihari, India - LMT/-5:39:40

(no time known, horoscope cast as Aries chart)

Sun/Neptune can be complete disillusionment, or tremendous insight. It can represent great inspiration or the ultimate in wet blanketing. Probably in George Orwell’s case we got a bit of both. Deucalion (finding the moral path) and the ‘keep at it/do or die’ quality of Charybdis describes both Orwell’s life and some of the themes in his writing. (Who doesn’t believe art doesn’t imitate life?)

The real ‘trick’ with Orwell’s chart is the addition of Mirzam and Haumea to this mélange. Haumea is a Polynesian goddess who in trying to chase youth (her ideal) does all variety of things…some good and some terrible – but all of which finally get her killed. Considering this is a goddess we’re talking about, immortality is a given, so ‘killed’ becomes more of the concept of killing or having some facet of our life be ‘killed off’…or in Orwell’s case, the sacrifice (killing) of individuality (how very Neptunian a fear is that!).

To all of this we add fixed star Mirzam, a star which is all about the potential which may be glorious…but which then again, may come to nothing.

Taken altogether, these themes are very ‘Orwellian,’ as we now say. Very…“1984.”

As I say that, maybe understanding exactly this point – and that 1984 was when Neptune moved into the zodiacal fourth quadrant is eye-opener for all of us about how ‘prophesies’ or prophetic writings work?

It may be interesting to some in our brave new world of Internet connections, social media and technology that when Neptune traversed fixed star (nebula) Facies in 1988, that year saw the ‘launch’ (if you can call it that) of the very first computer worm – from MIT, of all places. (Apparently MIT giveth and MIT taketh away…)

Then in 1991, when in the disruptive company of ‘let’s change things up here’ Uranus Neptune traversed Capricorn’s famously charismatic fixed star Vega (known for its powers of persuasive or inspiring speech) the Soviet Union dissolved.

In 2005, Neptune moved across the Aquarian cross-quarter point.

This move meant that Neptune had moved from the learning about (or ‘gathering information’) section of the zodiacal 4th quarter into it’s imperative to act section – which is embodied by the second half of Aquarius (by and large societal acts which can be reacted to but not totally controlled) and Pisces. ‘Control’ and the ability to have boundaries on ‘things’ became less sure even as our ability to have control and boundaries in our own lives – thanks to social media and many other factors, also became less “focused.”

So there was more hype, less surety. More assertions based on less (or no) facts and fewer ways to contain those statements, thoughts or acts based on what had been heard.

The Neptunian fog was getting thicker. 

2006 saw a lot of things happen. It was a bad year for airplane crashes. Twitter got launched. There were a lot of wars and a general feeling of elevated threat (i.e., loss of faith in social stability) as even the nations which weren’t fighting were doing a lot of saber rattling. During that year Neptune conjuncted Sualocin, a fixed star currently positioned at 17 Aquarius which I’m thinking we should spend more time discussing. (Yes, I’m thinking again – dangerous, isn’t it?) Sualocin is a star associated with ‘tantalizing mysteries’ and ‘deeper messages’ which need to be ‘teased’ out of the broad stroke information or rhetoric.

One good example of how Sualocin would work is the 2006 ‘demotion’ of Pluto to dwarf planet status. In astronomy, there was a bit of a fluffle. But in astrology, there was frothing – out of which came the decision that no label could change what astrology had already come to understand as the ‘power of Pluto’ in astrological terms.

But did anybody immediately recognize what Pluto’s being “demoted” in astronomical terms - changing its metaphysical meaning not a jot – meant with regards to the importance of other dwarf planets?

No. And as a matter of fact, that’s still being discussed (though everybody seems to be slowly coming around). But it took a while for astrology to ‘tease’ the important reality of other dwarf planet energetics out of the tantalizing debate concerning Pluto’s label.

That was Neptune-Sualocin in conjunction.

Fomalhaut is the next major star on the list. Currently at 5 Pisces, in being conjuncted by Neptune, Deneb’s strong shamanistic qualities, combined with Fomalhaut’s Royal Star message can be seen as the highs and lows of any sort of spiritual or emotional ‘belief’ you may have…or which is embodied by some organization in world society. The upswing in interest and research in the area of  parapsychology (i.e., ghosts), replete with the dotted line which leads us to conversations about parallel dimensions or things like cloning are all in this mix. We can expect great knowledge and great misuse of knowledge now. There will be those who proclaim they know but don’t, and those who know but who don’t see themselves as important in the grand scheme of things.

For individuals…in our everyday lives, it’s probably safe to be entertained by things but not as safe to be swayed entirely by what you hear.

That world economies have been struggling seems very much about Neptune-Fomalhaut. And yes, Neptune-Deneb, too. But it’s not just about the rich getting richer and poor getting poorer – it’s about our universal regard about money, earning and loss or ‘being entitled’ to anything means. In Piscean and Neptunian terms, sometimes loss is about teaching us what really matters.

As Neptune moves across Fomalhaut, it seems likely that we will see many financial ills shown up – both at the ‘wanting’ end and at the end populated by that group known colloquially as “the have’s” There’s likely to be an exaggerated flare-up of ‘stuff-ism’ and other forms of flagrant non-necessity, at the same time as we are likely to hear of things toxic and actual toxins, human need and human charity and kindness.

Seeing that Pisces is also the sign of royalties, annuities, pensions and old age finances, Neptune-Fomalhaut is highly likely to show up great strengths and weaknesses in the structure of these financial instruments and systems.

We’re also very apt to get hyped and lied to about them. 

Considering Pisces is the sign of sexual fantasies (as opposed to physical sexuality, which is Scorpio) we are likely to hear from everyone who is anyone in these kinds of conversations: medicine, religions, those who stand for abstinence, those who believe in polygamy and those who think sex is only about procreation - and what that means in terms of real life and human realities, as opposed to philosophy, spirituality or theory.

We’re likely to hear a lot about those who are all for sex of various kinds, right out past kinky into deviant. We’re likely to hear a lot about sexual psychology and the psychology of sexuality – the good and bad and speculative of it.

As Neptune’s movements move past Fomalhaut and center more on Deneb, certain convictions will come into question. ‘Being sure’ of something which you can’t prove may become less valuable than something less exciting but more functional, more…realistic.

In short, by the time this is all over we may learn to treat ourselves with more humanity – and therefore become more able to bear being more human in this world, and with each other.

Then again, instead of accepting and working through the lumps in life’s oatmeal, we may just ignore all the creaking and groaning until the roof falls in.

Reality occurs to each of us in our own way. That’s Neptune too, especially in the sense that at some point each one of us has to realize that individuality includes the right to be wrong. Yes, even at cost – and to think that you can ‘fix’ or love someone out of their ignorance or denial is a form of denial on our own part. 
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Marie Antionette: A Head of State, Lost

 The Dauphin of France's Coat of Arms

  

Once upon a time, a little girl was born in Austria. 

And because mommy was Maria Teresa, Empress of Austria, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia and ruler of all the Hapsburg dominions ...

 Emperess Maria Teresa in 1727 (at age 10) 

by Andreas Moelier

 

...and because daddy was Francis Stephen I,  Holy Roman Emperor of Austria and Grand Duke of Tuscany...

 

 Francis I of Austria in 1745 (at age 37)

as painted by Martin van Meytens

....that meant that this little baby girl was a princess!

Her name was Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna, Archduchess of Austria, and she was born on November 2, 1755.

Marie Antoinette

And from the moment she was born, she was hardly ever alone! Back then, half the court was allowed into the Royal Bedchamber to watch the Empress give birth. It was something Empress Marie Teresa really didn't like. So in inimitable Empress style, she did away with it - the minute she would go into labor everyone would show up in her royal apartments and she would start having them royally shown the door. 

This wasn't actually the only thing this royal couple changed about Austria. Not particularly fond of pomp and circumstance and the hoidy-toidy of courtiers, when official things needed to be official they stayed official. But when situations didn't demand it, this Francis and wife Marie Teresa liked to dress more casually. They liked to have 'regular' folks around - not just titled members of aristocracy.

But that isn't to say they really 'mixed' with the outside world. Nor did it mean Francis and Marie Teresa weren't seriously into the business of monarchy. Francis was serious about keeping things basically pretty kingly and royal. And Marie Teresa? Of no mind to wait a couple of centuries for woman's lib and female equality, Marie Teresa went about building alliances and occasionally ticking off other countries royally - maybe just so she'd have more alliances to build and cement. It's hard to know with some monarchs.

And all that concreting of alliances - how did she do that? 

She did it in the time-honored manner of her day: by having children and finding "suitable" (politically advantageous) partners to marry. In other words, one big reason for having little princes and princesses was so she could marry them off and use them as living treaties and tokens of alliance with other nations.

How motherly, right?

And so ambitious was dear mamma that by the time Maria Antonia was born, she had lots of brothers and sisters...she was the fifteenth of sixteen children.

And though no one surely knew it then...she would, in the end, be by far the most famous of them all. If yes, for all the wrong reasons.

The story is rather fascinating. And it's actually very sad. It's about a time when rulers of countries didn't care about much about their people. If the people were okay enough to pay their taxes, that was in many (if not most) cases, good enough for 18th century royals.

The story is about a way of life where parents thinking of children as political tools and chattel was common and totally accepted. Did some think of their kids as the sweet, precious treasures we think of them today? Of course! Some people are simply born to be great parents.

But even those parents lived in a day when marriages were arranged. When it was common to think of the simplest forms of education as totally unnecessary. When parents could be commanded to turn over a child to a monarch who might in passing see them and decide they would make a handsome groom or maid.

Into this world Maria Antonia was born. And when she was born she was by all accounts healthy and cute - you know, your normal adorable baby!

From which cradled spot she grew up to be Marie Antoinette, Queen of France. Ill-equipped to understand the world around her, she lost her way and in the end, lost her head - the hard way.

It got cut off.

Marie Antoinette in French court dress
painting by Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun

 The story actually starts off in a very nice place - Castle Schoenbrunn, family seat of the Hapsburgs. This was the residence most favored by Francis, Marie Teresa and the sprawling family and court.

Castle Schoenbrunn - the Palace of the Hapsburgs 

where Marie Antoinette grew up

Yet even in such beautiful surroundings, life was far from perfect. For one, Maria Antonia's mother - the Queen - had little personal interest in her little one; her daughter would grow up to describe her relationship with her mother as one of "awe-inspired fear" with the accent on the 'fear' part.

Mother was far more interested in one of Maria Antonia's older sisters - Archduchess Maria Christina, who in sharing mom's birthday evidently got the typical astrological benefit most of us would think of as regal mom and royal daughter 'having some things in common.'

All this - the non-motherly mother part in particular - is etched in Maria Antonia's chart by an interception in her 10th house at the top of the chart...the 10th more and more being come to be seen by astrologers as the house of the mother, since mom is the one who generally sets the 'how we are to act in daily life' (Saturn-Capricorn) rules and standards for most kids.

Dad and 'the family' as a unit are 4th house...and with Maria Antonia, one's pretty much as bad as the other. Why? Because to have an interception in the 10th automatically means the other half of the interception will be in the 4th.

It's pretty much why bad parents come in pairs. Even if one's totally the monster and the other is co-dependent, they're still a pair. And to the child... even if they get married, figure out they can't STAND each other and divorce - to their children they are still (and eternally) mom and dad. In the child's chart, there are two bio-parents and that's that. 

So back to the mom/10th house thing. In this overbearing mother/10th house department we have an intercepted South Node. Given that the South Node is always 'the easy thing to do,' intercepted we have a picture of a child who not only is inclined to cooperate (as opposed to face possible consequences) but a child who pretty much has no other options. Whatever they are handed, they accept - good, bad, poor...or in this case royally rich and entitled, a status which set Maria Antonia apart from her world. That 'different' sort of life is her Uranus in 10, but again, it's intercepted - which makes sense. After all, she got born into a family which was already royal.

Last item in this interception...is Sedna, the symbol of our need for maturation, our struggle with becoming our own person regardless of what we are told by our parents, what our upbringing is/was - and in Maria Antonia's case, despite her having grown up in a family which didn't care about her first and last as a person, since obviously (at least to her mother) she was in part an asset to be used by the Royal State (her parents) as a means by which politics of the day could be advanced  and/or operated. 

With interceptions meaning 'there's no getting out of it' Maria Antonia had no way out of what she was born into and what she was born to be and become. She would never learn what the 'regular' world was about - which left her open to the criticisms of people dealing with life struggles Maria Antonia would never face or really understand.

Bottom line, Sedna in the 10th, here conjunct Uranus (her life "separate" from the real world) in an uncomfortable inconjunct with fanciful Neptune in the 3rd house of mentality gives us a picture of a Royal child...and in time, woman...who was charming yes. But realistic? No. Fully informed? Not hardly. Yet she was a royal female of her day...so what she need with maturity?

Some people still think that way. For them, we have articles - like this ARTICLE ON SEDNA.

In the end, Sedna will prove emblematic of Maria Antonia's downfall - and with the 10th and top house of the horoscope being our most 'public' house, well it should. We see her through a prism of history, through a kaleidoscope of our own feelings about privilege, isolation and a distant past we think of romantically and yet with some disdain.

But meanwhile, there was Empress Mom, a woman who thought so little (or infrequently) of or about her little princess that by the time she was 12 (and getting betrothed to the future King of France) Maria Antonia could barely read or write properly in German, her native language. She was evidently some better with French though - that being because French (not German) as the language of the Austrian court.

What she did learn were manners and things thought useful to women of the time...her carriage was graceful and she was an excellent dancer, her style much admired and praised. She was also quite  talented with the playing of the harpsichord and was often prevailed upon to play for others, who took great delight in the young princesses musical abilities, all of which were such positive manifestations of her Neptune in 3 - the ability of the mind to suspend conscious ego in the freeing of artistry and talent.

 Thought to be either of German or Austrian of mid-17th century

make, the harpsichord shown above is probably much like

that played by Marie Antoinette

(displayed in the Courtauld Gallery)

  
But all this was to change. 1761 and 1762 were both marred by the death of siblings by smallpox timed out in detail with oppositions by Jupiter and Uranus to Maria Antonia's 5th house Libra Jupiter (emblem of her well-heeled childhood and all her fun times as a child). With natal Jupiter conjunct Sabine, she had been both captivated in her captivity and forced into isolation from others - that being the Libra part. 

Smallpox put and end to that, and that the overarching transits here were Pluto (emotional transformations) sextiling her Midheaven (view of life) and opposing Maria Antonia's ill-placed Eris-Medea was the onset of reality.

And once reality began imposing its chilling effects on her life, life would never be the same - which is exactly what Pluto does in astrological terms: the emotional experiences we undergo during Pluto transits change us, forevermore.

Smallpox would plague the family from 1761 through 1767, killing two of Maria Antonia's siblings and afflicting the formerly robust health of her mother.

Even more important than all this however, was the death of her father. Francis, Holy Roman Emperor of Austria, dies in 1765 when his daughter Maria Antonia is only 12 years old.

Astrologically, this is again Jupiter, which would have reached its first return point when Maria Antonia was 11.6 years old. That's the end of the first major period of human grown - self realization, we might call it.

That this loss was her father and that it was an enormous blow to the still young girl is told to us by the Solar eclipse of that summer hitting the bottommost point in her chart - the IC or Nadir. Her inner, foundational world had been blown apart. Neptune sextiling her Ascendant tells us she felt helpless and confused.

And that Eris (discord) was also trining a natal Vesta, signature of service, which is in this little girl's chart positioned right close to that IC/Nadir if on the 'I need to think in these terms' side? 

It all made perfect sense as mom took the reins of state into her imperial, Empress hands.

 Empress Marie Teresa of Austria in 1759 (at age 38)

as pained by Martin van Meylens

In a world of politics forged by marriage and with mom needing to cement alliances with Russia, Naples, Parma and Austria's enemy France in the wake of the Seven Years' War, the timing was perfect. For those times, Maria was all the woman she needed to be to be profitable (Jupiter) to others (Libra) by who she could be made to swear to serve both at a national and familial level (Vesta/IC).  

So it was that as a Lunar Eclipse hit Maria Antonia's Sedna (her maturity point) and Uranus (sudden changes) - both of which are 'captured' (intercepted) in her 10th house of marriage and all worldly, social doings, the mom so emblematic both of Austria as a sovereign state and so much in charge of Maria Antonia's rather 'intercepted' life...mom made all the arrangements: Maria Antonia would be married off to her second-cousin-once-removed, Dauphin Louis Auguste of France. 

As a little token of same, a miniature was painted of the future bride and sent off to the prospective hubby...

 The miniature portrait of the barely-teenaged Maria Antonia

which was sent to Louis to show him his future bride

- painting by Joseph Ducreaux

What young Louis August said when he saw the tiny painting of his future wife isn't recorded (or at least admitted to). There is in fact, every chance that he didn't even pay much attention to it, being far more interested in hunting, lock-smithing  and playing with model trains.

Whatever the case there however, as the North Node (that we have to do) came into position to sextile (interact with) Maria Antonia's learning-what-I-like-to-do Jupiter, obligation (North Node) won out and Maria Antonia obliged by allowing (sextile) herself to be married (by proxy) to Louis - who was physically still in France.

It must have been an interesting affair. Maria had just finished three months of oral surgery. Given there was no such thing as anesthesia as we know it in that day, she must have been happy to turn up and get the nod of approval from French representatives - the French having required this dental repair as part of the marriage deal, proving that France was ever a place where good looks were not only in fashion, but pretty much de rigure.

Thus with a 'beautiful and straight' smile, Maria Antonia went into a the Church of the Augustine Friars and, with brother Ferdinand standing in for the far-away Louis Auguste, she was married.

And thus she became Marie Antonette, Dauphine of France. 

Delivery to the French was made in early May under a shower Uranus transits showing Marie Antonette to be nervous, curious, being made to deal with strangers and probably above all, being made to leave all she had known.

Already married to him, Marie meets Louis on May 14th...

 Louis Auguste, Dauphin of France in 1776 at age 20

- painting by Joseph Siffred Duplessis

 ...and from there they proceed to a grand ceremonial wedding at Versailles...

 

 A modern panoramic picture of the central palace

which is Versailles - photo credit: Samuli Suomi

....after which off they go to the Royal Bedchamber, where the marriage is (of course!) supposed to be consummated.

Signified by 'this is what I was brought up to be' Vesta/IC conjunct a reluctant Cancer Mars, Marie probably wasn't enthralled with the prospect of sex with her new husband. And considering that as many a report would bear out he was less tickled than most with the idea of sex in general, it isn't surprising that the couple failed to...rise to the occasion in setting about their 'royal duty' to begin making heirs.

And that's where much of the troublesome rumors which would in time spout, grow and flourish all  started.

But for a time, the French populace was at least pretty happy with their new Dauphine. When Marie made her first royal appearance at the Tuileries in Paris, even royal watchers nodded in approval. With the occasion marked on her chart by a Lunar Eclipse conjunct Pluto, Eris, Tantalus and Medea, Marie herself probably thought it all a bit much, if something she knew she had to endure with as much grace, charm and enthusiasm as could be mustered.

And yet...that same set of symbols - the intense surge of sudden adoration (Pluto/Eris), enchanted admiration and love (Tantalus/Medea) - all that the  public suddenly felt for their new princess, those were exactly the qualities which would eventually turn on her. In the end, Pluto/Eris would be the violent loathing of the crowd, demanding her execution. Tantalus/Medea would accuse Marie of terrible crimes - everything from siphoning money off to her homeland of Austria to threesomes with ladies of the French court and even incest with her son, the one charge Marie Antoinette respond to by refusing to respond directly saying: "If I have not replied it is because Nature itself refuses to respond to such a charge laid against a mother."

But all that was still years away. In the meantime, there was the French court to deal with. Though she wasn't herself fond of the current king's powerful mistress Madame du Barry and though the King's own daughters hated daddy's mistress, Marie Antoinette knew that she had best be courteous.

Madame du Barry, mistress of King Louis XV

- portrait by Francois-Hubert Drouais

So as Pallas squared her Sun on New Year's Day 1772 she knew (Pallas) that she needed (square) to say something and be polite if merely to preserve herself (Sun).

And though the polite remark 'there are a lot of people at Versailles today' was certainly begrudged, it broke the ice. Du Barry was placated, the King calmed down and in time, Marie figured out that not all powerful women were as bad as her mother.

Another form of Pallas square Sun, yes: we face the challenge and through the challenge learn better.

Yet there was still the problem of no royal intimacy. To ease her feelings of rejection - and with a Sagittarius Juno in the 6th conjunct the critical 29 Sagittarius 7th house cusp we may assume one of Marie's problems (at least to begin with) was sheer sexual ignorance (Sedna intercepted in 10 as her mother having failed to properly educate her daughter in 'womanly matters') - to ease her feelings, Marie Antoinette took to gaming and gambling...and increasingly to indulging herself in pretty clothes and a 'pretend' land where she could have what she imagined a 'normal' life.

The pretty clothes matter has long been expected of royal women...and when they are loved, all eyes devour such beauty with rapturous pleasure! But when things get bad? Then every royal woman in history has been accused of excess. It's just the way things work and this double edged sword in Marie Antoinette's chart is perfectly pictured by her intense (critical degree) Gemini Ascendant - specifically that it's ruled primarily by a Sagittarian Mercury in the 6th, if also colored by Neptune fantasies from the mental 3rd.

Mercury is highly functional in the 6th, if very hasty and 'over-the-top' in Sagittarius. So when things were good for Marie Antoinette, she was the darling of the court and populace. But once people turned against her...?

This is all made worse by her Mercury being conjunct Ixion. So yes, excess will be required of Marie Antoinette, and yes, that helpers, servants and the court egged her on? Mercury as symbol of communication in the 6th house of helpers, service people and subordinates  would be the court supporting her...and gossiping behind her back, too! Throw in Ixion and we get the image of someone who was taught from birth that was actually part of her job to look better than the rest (thanks, mom).

And having had the French literally have this drilled into her with all that dental work prior to the marriage probably didn't help. The 6th being the house of health and Mercury/Ixion thus also the critique of her natural teeth would have hurt Marie Antoinette's confidence. Even once her teeth were fixed that sense that she could at any moment become the object of criticism...and that she had been sent from where she was accepted into this land of critique to do the job of being married to Louis?

It all had to be a terrible emotional stew from which came desperate (Mercury-in-Sag) efforts to 'fit in' and 'measure up' and of course the inborn sense of entitlement that her 'job' (station in life) gave her the right to dress in finery and so as she pleased.

Which was all well and good...until it wasn't, that is. And once it wasn't, then the gifts of office became the Queen's arrogance, sense of entitlement and  extravagance with the public treasury.

It all would have been made vaguer, grander, more lustrously beautiful and ultimately more obscene for her, for all who beheld her and for those who simply loathed her with Neptune - the ideal against the disappointment - in the mental 3rd. What had begun as her mother's neglect to teach Marie Antoinette to be intelligent instead of immature (Sedna) and fanciful (Neptune) became the combination; an immature inability to cope with life's realities.

For more on Ixion, CLICK HERE. We all have one, after all.

This was also the time when Marie Antoinette developed her own retinue - her "posse," in today's terms. Given that platonic relationships are very much symbolized by ego-denying Neptune, to have Neptune in the 3rd would also suggest a whole cadre of friends which filled her hours, says and thoughts.

Unfortunately however, such friendships in a land of suspicion could also be taken otherwise - which they were. Later, the very friendships with women of the court who helped Marie Antoinette learn French ways and wile away the hours in the absence of anything real to do would turn into wild accusations of lesbianism.

Was she bisexual? That would see a hard thing to think, considering Marie's in-built fear of women (starting with her mother) and the Scorpio Venus ruling her house of fantasies.

Conjunct her Sun, Medusa (the fearful truth) and Kallisto (carnal cravings) in the 5th house of childhood, it's to be imagined that every part of Marie Antoinette wanted to be anything but her mother. Mother had been to her nothing if not a dominant female and mistress of abandonment edged mightily in control over Marie Antoinette's youngest years. Men? Men she probably mistrusted as well but then again, if you had to pick one, with Marie Antoinette men were probably the far, far preferred gender.

A whole other way to look at the layout of Marie's chart would be to use it to see her mother's life. And if looked at in that light, the chart of Marie Antoinette suggests that her mother (the Empress) was herself was emotionally compromised in the sexual arena. Perhaps dominated if not out-and-out brutalized by her husband? Perhaps. But that would mean the great Empress loathed and feared the man to whom she delivered sixteen children!

Could that be? Actually, yes. And if you ask why, one very large reason for acquiescing would be because of a threat coming from the religious realm. Question: as Holy Roman Emperor, did Francis  threaten to excommunicate and damn Marie Teresa's very soul?

We'll probably never know. But Marie Antoinette's chart says it could have been so.

What we do know is that as summer 1775 was coming into flower and the societal/social Lunar Nodes were  returning to where they were when Marie Antoinette was originally born, Louis XV fell ill. He died in May and on June 11, 1775, Marie Antoinette's husband was made King.

This didn't make much difference to the marriage, however. And Louis seemed perfectly okay with things as they were, gifting his wife with the Petit Trianon - a little present from the husband King, as it were...

 The gates of Versailles' Petit Trianon, where Marie Antoinette

would try to recreate the magical surroundings of her youth

Was this love or trying to keep his wife out of the way on Louis' part? Maybe a bit of both. Marie Antoinette certainly humored Louis' 'who me, bed you?' stances. and no matter what the French tabloids said about "l'Autrichienne" (that Austrian woman!) Louis was quite adept at avoiding anyone his wife suggested might be suitably appointed to just about any post you can name.

And about that nickname from the press? When things got bad it (probably predictably) morphed into something a wee bit harsher: l'Autruchiennenne - with the change of one vowel (the middle 'i' to a 'u') 'that Austrian woman' became ostrich (autruche) + bitch (as in female dog: chienne).

Never let it be said the French aren't artful about and with their language!

As for the child(less) situation, that became more problematic when in 1775 a sister-in-law gave birth to a widdle tiny baby duke - who, unless Louis and Marie got busy might well become the next King of France.

With Saturn (life's requirements) square (challenging) Marie Antoinette's Chiron (things I know I need to do that I don't quite know how to get done) and Jupiter (childhood) opposing (facing) natal Eris in 6 (discord in one's responsibilities), Marie plainly knew The Deed needed doing. But how to entice a husband more fond of trains than French lingerie to her bed?

On his side, Louis had his own 'headaches.' Not only was France still reeling under war debt from that Seven Years' War (with Austria) which his wife's mother had decided to tar-paper over in part by marrying France's son to Austria's daughter, but then there was this pesky thing going on with Great Britain's north American colonies. Given a long-standing animosity between Britain and France it was a no-brainer - France was going to side with the colonists, future Americans though they may be. France was good at holding off on critiquing other countries for everything from fashion to bad cooking and they could wait where the colonies were concerned too.

So France was a busy place and already much wracked with national debt by the time the latest Austrian Holy Roman Emperor (Marie's brother Joseph) shows up for a visit in April 1777.

Emperor Joseph II of Austria

painting by Anton von Maron

And who knows what got said, too. But with Jupiter (knowledge) connecting with Marie Antoinette's North Node (what needs to be done) and Ceres (what we must do to bring in the harvest) and necessity-provoking Chiron both in a face-off opposition to her Moon (womanhood and/or money and/or family), something about this visit got the ball(s) rolling, as come May of 1778 the Ceres harvest was on Marie's agenda and her Ascendant - she was confirmed as being pregnant.

The first child was a daughter: Marie Therese Charlotte. And with a solar eclipse on Marie Antoinette's Ascendant at the December 1778 birth (thus on her daughter's Sun-as-life) point, it's not to be shocked that the daughter would go on to get caught up in the French Revolution, nor that during birth Marie Antoinette collapsed in (yes) one of those packed 'standing room only' boudoirs full of people wanting to see the Royal Birth even though the mother was hemorrhaging at the moment.

Solar eclipses having a record for unfolding as lengthy, three year transits, it's unfortunate if not surprising to hear that Marie then miscarried in 1779, lost her own mother in 1780 and in October 1781 finally gave birth to the long-desired son: Louis Joseph Xavier Francois.

Everyone heaved a big sigh - a son...a future king had been born! And yet, you'd think someone would have asked (or listened to) some court astrologer: the birth of this son - like that of Marie Therese - had been marked by an eclipse. This being a Lunar Eclipse cross-collateralized little Louis' chart about as distinctly as the Solar Eclipse had marked his sisters chart. Maybe even more so, since he was the child marked to be King and the Moon is always the sign of populace and homeland - and it would be Louis' homeland and populace which came to hate him so, though still a child he was when all finally went up in flames.

And there is the point that with the Moon representing the body's absorption processes, a Lunar Eclipse around the time of birth often signals problems with a little one's health. This would be seen with Louis Joseph, who was never a very sturdy child.

Mom meanwhile, must have been missing home, since she started doing what her own parents had done: de-formalizing the court. Marie Antoinette wanted out of the heavy make-up and was done with the big hoop-skirted gowns, favoring something more of the countrified look she'd seen growing up.

 Marie Antoinette wearing a "plain muslin dress"  critics considered highly 'improper' for any queen to be wearing - painting by Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun

Marie Antoinette in the garden wearing another

'informal' dress, flanked by her children Marie-Therese

Charlotte and the Dauphin, Louis Joseph

- painting by Adolf Ulrich Wertmuller

Apart from the 'plus' of having given the nation an heir and the 'minus' of her departures from approved fashion, Marie Antoinette had other troubles too. Brother Joseph, for instance, had provided some sort of assist in the 'get on with the having kids' thing only to then go off and stir up military trouble against French interests.

And in a world where gossip was caloric intake, that wasn't good for his sister Marie Antoinette - to say nothing of what was actually going on (as evidently demonstrated in correspondence) between Imperial Bro of Austria and Queenly Sis of France. Joseph accused Marie of being politically inactive and therefore highly ineffective - for his purposes, of course. And she replied that she was not privy to the King's political views, nor was it advisable to be seen as being influential: "Would it be wise of me to have scenes with his (Louis') ministers over matters on which it is practically certain the King would not support me?" 

No, Marie Antoinette saw her role as being more about raising her children, seeing to their education and when she could, retreating to her little hameau - a real village hamlet created amidst the gardens of the Petit Trianon complete with a mill and a dozen cottages.

  Belvedere, one of the hamlet 'cottages' set amidst

the gardens of the Petit Trianon

When she wasn't busy watching village bread being baked and overseeing her children's lessons, the Queen was reading historical novels and indulging her 'scientific interest' in hot air balloons. She was fascinated by the philosophy of Rousseau and Inca  culture, sought out tutors in English and even began a pen-pal sort of correspondence with the Duchess of Devonshire - no doubt discussing the making of good cheeses and such.

But her children remained Marie Antoinette's greatest focus. As 1784 rolled through, the health of her son the Dauphin was hardly robust and Pluto squaring Marie's Sun told a tale of her concerns for his health. And, if truth probably be told, her health if he didn't survive, which considering the times was a very real consideration.

So she and King Louis got busy again, and as March 1785 was just about to end, son Louis Charles was born, probably to great joint parental elation. With Sedna square Eris (immaturity challenging discord) Marie cooed over her new little one and the wrong ears heard: questions began to fly as to exactly who the father of this new little royal actually was.

The other side of Sedna - that of feeling separate and separated from the life you really want - is probably all about Marie Antoinette's happiness at her second son, a far healthier boy than the first. She may have also longed for a big family like that she grew up in. Manifesting oftentimes as the wishes and hopes we cling to without really realizing how to achieve them, Marie Antoinette spent most of her fairly short life trying to find or construct somewhere she felt 'at home.'

She probably never did, never could and didn't know how to even get there. Virtually confined by royal privilege from birth, hers was probably the quintessential life in which happiness could not be really felt because she had no toil or basic challenges to use as a baseline. So when Louis Charles was born she celebrated by buying a chateau, intending to give it to her children.

The French public took note - for all the wrong reasons. The country was in debt and the Queen was buying a chateau to give to baby children?

Then of course came the infamous 'Diamond Necklace Affair' - a little debacle which had everyone buzzing that the Queen was trying to defraud the crown jewelers, regular Frenchmen just trying to do an honest job. True or not true, the image of Marie Antoinette was souring; that she was even part of the French royal scene was becoming more and more of an irritation to the people.

 The Jebuton reproduction of the famous 'diamond necklace'

which so contributed to the marring of Marie

Antoinette's reputation with the French people.

After the necklace affair, things got no better. In 1786 a daughter - Sophie Helen Beatrice - was born, and died within the year. 

The French monarchy was dying too. Between internal strife, external politics and an inability to pass fiscal reforms the very ship of French state looked ripe to sink.

All this was happening as yet another Solar Eclipse was hitting Marie Antoinette's chart. This time positioned at her Ascendant, it did was Solar Eclipses do, brought about a 'breakdown.' And on the Ascendant, this would be a breakdown of all she would try to be and do - and a breakdown of everything she got involved in.

Could that be a good thing? Possibly yes. If your chart is well formed and the Ascendant is well ruled and well aspected, we might think you were going to do a great deed. Even cure some rancid disease. But this just wasn't the case in Marie Antoinette's case: with a critical degree 29 Gemini Ascendant ruled by an  overblown Sagittarius Mercury sitting with the entitlement 'limited vision' of Ixion in the 6th house of responsibility? The natal position/rulership combination is a bomb. Then along comes the solar eclipse, which inserts a fuse into said bomb.

Then we add in Eris (discord) opposing Marie Antoinette's Part of Fortune: everything happening to disrupt (Eris) what she has to do in the moment (Part of Fortune). PLUS Neptune was trining her Eris - a signal of Neptunian veils as situations (or mindsets) which made it nigh unto impossible for Marie Antoinette to recognize the full and nasty scope of what was going on - or how she was making things worse for herself. That Eris, goddess of discord was also in this moment in trining league with the Queen's calculated Lilith - the emblem of societal disapproval? AND that Saturn (responsibility, government, one's times and time in life) were peaking, hitting the most public place in Marie Antoinette's chart?

This is the match being struck and applied to the fuse shoved deep into the bomb. It was only a sizzling matter of time before the blast would come.

And come, it did. On July 14, 1789 the French people rebelled. A mob stormed the Bastille.

 The Storming of the Bastille

- painting by Jean Pierre Houel

Did Marie Antoinette know her time had pretty much come? Pluto (emotional transformation) was squaring Marie Antoinette's calculated Lilith - the Black Moon of negative public opinion. Pallas (knowing) was united Eris (discord) - as was Ceres, the symbol of what we have sown, so do we reap.

 Maybe she saw herself as one of the causes of the revolt. More likely she saw herself as exactly what she was - a product of excessive times for some and impoverished privileges for others which had finally run its course.

On October 5th, the mob descended on Versailles. The King and Queen were escorted to Paris and locked up in the Tuileries. And there they stayed while the country raged and virtually tore itself apart fro two long years until in June 1791, the family tried to escape.

It didn't work. Vesta opposition Pluto on Marie Antoinette suggests she either was or felt betrayed by those sworn to serve her - and within 24 hours the Royals were back in custody. Political opponents called for the end of the monarchy in France, insisting that people so cowardly as to run should hold no power.

The Revolution surged on. A new constitution was adopted on September 3, 1791 - with Marie Antoinette hoping it would fail. All she knew was the rights and life of royalty; she thought democracy unworkable. Maybe, she thought...just maybe it was all going to be okay. Her brother Leopold II was now Emperor of Austria. Maybe he would find some way to quash those nasty revolutionaries!

 Leopold II, Emperor of Austria, with his family

- painting by Johann Zoffany

 Holy Roman Emperor Francis II (son of Leopold II),

who succeeded his father in March 1792, just in

time to receive France's declaration of war

- painting by Ludwig Streitenfeld

Alas, no. An aggressive politician in his own right (never mind what so often proves true when it comes down to family affection versus historical power), Leopold was more interested in how to possibly use French unrest to his (national) advantage rather than anything else.

To make things more complicated, Leopold dies just as hostilities are whipping into a froth. So it's his son - Francis II - the latest Holy Roman Emperor of Austria who is sitting in the royal hot seat when in

April 1792 France declares war on Marie Antoinette's native country.

Marie Antoinette, by now, is well vested in being French - the reasons for which were like as not still clustered about her feet reading books and playing with their expensive, royal toys. But her image suffers nonetheless. The French see her at that Austrian woman and with France now at war with Austria, she's one of THEM. 

To make things worse, Louis is still (of course!) fighting for his royal rights (not to mention his Royal Life)...during that summer, as French troops are getting their French fannies handed to them by blisteringly feisty Austrians, Louis vetoes several measures which might have helped the army - but which would have done so at cost to royal power.

Saturn - restrictions, governance, punishments, earning what you get (good or bad) and the reality of Reality - was at that point squaring Marie Antoinette's natal 8th house Saturn. Always a symbol of her difficulties with others, now it manifested in the public blaming her for her husband's choices as Parisians (and others) start calling her 'Madame Veto.'

On June 20th of that same year came the next literal blow - a terrifying mob breaks into the Tuileries. Louis is able to appease them, but just barely and only temporarily. The mob returns less than a fortnight later and forces the family to seek refuge at the Legislative Assembly. That sanctuary lasts barely an hour an a half - the Swiss Guards are massacred and the family is removed from what has been  relatively genteel house arrest in the Tuileries to the unpleasant realities of harsh confinement.

Trining Marie Antoinette's Midheaven - her image of the world - Neptune's famously awful power to symbolize the dissolving and dissolution of things we think so real marks this terrible time.

A week later, with cries of the Queens selfish lack of consideration for everything French being shouted in the streets, the family's attendants are taken away for interrogation, forcing Marie Antoinette to - for perhaps the first time in her whole life - take care of herself and her family. Sedna is at Marie Antoinette's South Node: her having had an 'easy time' hits home with a literal vengeance as she learns her dear friends and faithful household companions have been killed. Their heads are impaled on pikes and paraded outside the prison windows.

On September 21st, the end of the French monarchy has arrived. Pallas (wisdom) conjuncts Marie Antoinette's Sedna (our unwillingness or incapacity to grow up). Was she scared? Yes - very. But like as not, she also didn't yet conceive of what others could think of doing to her.

She soon learned. Separated from his family, Louis was charged with undermining the First French Republic and found guilty. He would be executed in January, 1793 at age 38 - guilty of having been born the son of a King.

Eris - discord - conjuncted Marie Antoinette's reality (Saturn) the day her husband was killed. It was also the day when the North Node would once again conjunct it's natal position...the same signal which had marked Louis' coronation.

Did she love him? Servile Vesta, positioned at Marie Antoinette's foundational IC, on that day merged with Venus - all which is brought to us and made real in our life. He had become her world...and now Louis was gone.

Once King Louis was dead, there was a debate about what to do about his wife and children. Ultimately, eight-year-old Louis Charles was taken from his mother and given into the care of a cobbler. Neptune trining Marie Antoinette's Ascendant was the disappearance of her love, her connection with hope, and probably her faith in life itself.

On August 1st she was taken from the tower and assigned to the Concierge as Prisoner Number 280. Uranus inconjuncted Saturn...change was rejected for resignation. The Queen was done fighting.

The Revolutionary Tribunal of October 14 was greatly a joke. Conducted by misogynistic Jacobians, it was mostly a moment to accuse Marie Antoinette of everything from sending money to Austria to plotting the death of a rival Duke to orchestrating the massacre of the Swiss Guards to incest with her son.

There was some protest - and some unexpected support from commonplace women who in the end recognized that Marie Antoinette was simply a woman...not some royal ghoul.

But the cards had been dealt, the trial's outcome rather surely pre-determined. On October 16th, after only two days of proceedings Marie Antoinette was declared guilty. Her keepers arrived and cut off all her hair, she was put in an open cart and driven across the city and at 12:15pm, Marie Antoinette was publicly executed in the Place de la Revolution - today's Place de la Concord.

An odd statement that...as a word, 'revolution' is a very long way from 'concord.' The former is violent and bloody, the latter intellectual and peaceful.

But then, if there's anything mankind doesn't like to think about, it's just how inhumane humans can be to other humans in the name of goodness and equality.   

 Today's Place de la Concorde...then,

Place de la Revolution (Paris, France)

  

Marie Antonette's first son - the presumed Dauphin of the discarded monarchy - died in prison at age 14. He was guilty of nothing except having been born a royal son.

Marie-Therese Charlotte, Marie Antoinette's daughter, was finally turned over to Austria in a prisoner exchange. She married and died childless in 1851.

Originally tossed into unmarked graves, the bodies of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were exhumed on January 18, 1815 and given a fitting Christian burial at the Basilica of St. Denis.

 Originally a Benedictine monastery, the Cathedral of

Saint-Denis became the final resting place for

Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI during the 

Bourbon Restoration. 

photo credit - Beckstet/2005

 

Two last pieces of business before we close here. One is the famous 'let them eat cake' comment attributed to Marie Antoinette. Often quoted as an 'example' of how foolishly silly and uncaring she was, this seems an odd judgment considering Marie Antoinette probably had little idea (if any) of what it meant to live hand to mouth or count your pennies.

Beyond that, there appears to be no real evidence that she ever said such a thing. The original statement is this - it comes from the writing of Rousseau: 'Enfin je me rappelai le pis-alle d'une grande princess a qui l'on disait que les paysans n'avent pas de pain, et qui repondit: Qu'ils mangent de la brioche.'

Even if you don't speak French, it's easy enough to see that while there is a reference to 'princess,' no 'princess' is actually named. With Rousseau (like many philosophers) being prone to fanciful scenarios we are left to wonder. 

But cake? 'Qu'ils mangent de la brioche' does not mean 'let them eat cake' - brioche is a bread (and yes, I speak French).

  Et voila - brioche!

The very last thing...a perhaps sobering concept: the story of Marie Antoinette revolves in her personal chart greatly around the symbol of Eris Discord. And this is more than apropos when one thinks of the French Revolution - it was bloody discordant indeed!

Don't know enough about Eris? CLICK HERE.

And if we look to the dotted line between Marie Antoinette and the Revolution, what we see is France: a nation which had expended so much on war that it couldn't afford to exist. In the end, the government imploded not because France the nation was conquered from without, but because it became  undermined from within, collapsing under its own overextended weight.

That's in the end how Eris works. Eris is not about what others do to us or who they are and whether we like them, believe them or believe as they do, it's about our ability to be either rational and not discordant - or the very embodiment of rationally discordance: the person willing to risk personal discord in the name of social/societal equanimity and equality.

Eris has an orbital period of 557.438 years. Granting this is a global transit, it seems worth contemplating that a quarter Eris cycle after America won its independence was when the world went into WWI. And that one quarter Eris cycle after the French Revolution brings us to the date of America's Great Depression - an event which like the recent economic downturn  was felt around the world. And how a quarter Eris cycle after Civil War and the United States launched its assault on Iraq.

Granted - the world is a naturally erratic place. But it seems just as obvious that Eris and its cycles matter.  Are we all pawns...? Or are we willing to accept that (to paraphrase the Bard...) the discord lies not in our stars, but in ourselves?

As this blog posts....it's November 2, 2010, the 255th anniversary of Marie Antoinette's birth. She probably wouldn't want us to lose our head over anything - so let's not.

Instead, let's wish her well and thank her for having left us the legacy of a life story which, in teaching us something, perhaps makes us all her children of spirit...which might be a gift to her as in the end it seems obvious that Marie Antoinette did very much want to be the good and caring mother her own mother wasn't to her.

And the lesson? There may be much to think about, but maybe the most important point is how privilege matters not at all if we have no idea what privilege really means.

Or is.