You can’t get very far with astrology without being confronted by the fate or free will question.
Many astrologers, particularly Vedic ones would probably argue that much of our lives is fated. Modern western astrologers are more likely to claim that very little of it is.
My own view is that fate is not such a cast iron thing. We definitely have to experience some kind of symbolic fate at certain times of our lives, our transits insist on it, but we have room to guide and use their energies to our own greater benefit or to be unconsciously used by them.
Much of what we call our life is the way we respond to these planetary movements, not necessarily the transits themselves. This is why we study astrology, to try and get some kind of understanding of what the Universe requires of us at any particular moment, so we can go with the flow rather than fight against it.
But there are certain things in life that definitely are fated.
The comings and goings of important members of our soul group would come into this category.
If you think about it, this does make total sense. A child is born at exactly the right moment to the right parents in order to experience the themes their chart insists that they must.
The synastry and the shared patterns between them and their parents and siblings are critical to this because their early experience is so important in setting the patterns for their life.
This is the area that makes the study of The Astrology Of Family Patterns so important.
But if the comings are so clearly fated, so are the goings.
Humans have a fear of death, but perhaps part of that is because we don’t know when it is going to happen. If we knew for certain when it would be, we could perhaps understand that there is a reason for it being then and we could accept it more.
There have been many attempts to predict someone’s death from their astrological chart. Some have been successful, others not at all.
But I feel that to some degree this is looking in the wrong place.
A birthchart is about the conditions for this life. Once it ends, it is no longer functioning.
Transits to a chart are about new conditions, the point of studying them is to try and understand what the Universe wants from us as our life conditions change.
If that person dies, they will not be able to respond to these changing conditions, so the transits are not really aimed at them.
But they are at their loved ones.
So my understanding, and experience is that it’s much easier to see someone’s death in the charts of their close family members, particularly if all concerned are pointing to the same thing.
My mother had the Moon in late Aquarius, my three sisters all had either the Sun or Moon there as well.
Our family patterns indicate a strong Saturn in all of our charts. Mum died at the age of 93 as Saturn was transiting through late Aquarius.
One of the first people to offer her family patterns to my research was C.
C has a chart with two very distinct patterns.
The first is a 7th house Gemini stellium with a very tight Sun/Mercury/Jupiter conjunction, in trine with a Libra Moon.
So marriage and relationships would be the most important theme of C’s life.
The second is a T Square with Venus in Aries in the 5th house in incredibly tight opposition to a Saturn/Neptune conjunction focused onto an apex 8th house Uranus.
So as well as the relationship concentration, there is a powerful theme of loss as well.
C has extraordinary synastry with her eldest daughter.
Both have the Sun in the same degree of Gemini.
Daughter’s Moon is also in that sign, conjunct C’s Mars.
And in a fascinating mirror connection, C’s Moon is conjunct her daughter’s Mars
Their Ascendants are in exact trine with each other.
But bizarrely they both have Venus a mere degree apart, and despite being born in different generations, both have it opposite Saturn and another outer planet (C has Neptune, daughter has Pluto).
Note that Daughter’s Saturn/Pluto conjunction is in the 4th house, so it is obviously an inherited pattern.
I have calculated the chances of this level of synastry coming up by chance, it is over 4 billion to 1 against.
C’s younger daughter also has strong synastry, but obviously not as tight as her sister’s.
D2 has her Ascendant conjunct C’s Moon and D1’s Mars.
But perhaps the strongest feature is that her Moon at 22 Libra is exactly opposite C’s Venus and with D1’s Venus.
That Moon is therefore conjunct C’s Saturn/Neptune and D1’s Saturn/Pluto.
Her Moon is square to her ruling Venus as well.
So D2’s Venus forms a T Square with D1’s Venus/Saturn/Pluto and is conjunct C’s T square apex Uranus.
So we have this area 20-22 degrees of Cardinal signs that contains 3 Venuses, a Moon and a fair sprinkling of hard aspects with the slower movers.
So what would happen when both transit Saturn and Pluto hit these degrees with hard aspects from Capricorn?
In April 2019, C’s husband and the daughters’ father died.
Both Saturn and Pluto formed T Squares with C’s Venus/Saturn/Neptune pattern, D1’s Venus/Saturn/Pluto and D2’s Venus/Moon.
This would be without question the toughest transit that any of them would have had to face in their lifetimes to date.
But it could also have been entirely predictable from the moment C came in to this world 66 years earlier.
Also given the unique synastry that exists between C and her daughters, this is event was incontestably fated.
As was their coming together in the first place.
There is no birthtime available for C’s husband.
He has an Aries stellium. His Sun is conjunct C’s Venus, D1’s Venus and square to D2’s Venus ( and opposite her Moon).
On top of that his Moon/Mars/Mercury is exactly opposite C’s Libra Moon and trine her 7th house Sun/Mercury/Jupiter.
Despite the 6 year age difference, they both have important Aries planets in opposition with Neptune.
His North Node is exactly conjunct her 7th house Sun
This synastry alone would say that these two souls were fated to be together.
They married in October 1973.
Transit Pluto was at 5.08 Libra, exactly conjunct C’s Moon (5.05 Libra) and opposite husband’s Moon/Mars/Mercury.
On top of that transit Saturn was at 5 Cancer squaring all these placements.
And transit Jupiter was at 3 Aquarius forming trines and sextiles with them. Jupiter formed a Grand Trine with C’s Moon and her 7th house Sun/Mercury/Jupiter.
And that was just the transits.
Progressions in astrology is the method that brings soulmates together. The chief significator of this would be the connection between the progressed Sun and the natal Venus.
It’s important to know that most people would only have one major progression of these two in a lifetime, some might manage two.
It would be even more significant in C’s case because Venus is her 7th house ruler and is very strong by aspect.
When they got married, both of them had the same progression – Sun sextile natal Venus
Hubbie also had progressed Moon conjunct natal Venus.
C becoming a mother was a massive turning point for her with transit Uranus exactly opposite her Sun.
This is powerfully reflected in her daughter’s chart (D1) as she has the Sun (at the same degree as C’s own) in exact opposition to Uranus.
It was also C’s Saturn Return triggering the natal pattern opposite her Venus.
Both transit Saturn and Pluto were opposing C’s Venus when D1 was born.
When you remember that D1 has Venus in exactly the same degree as her mother, that is just another extraordinary part of their 4 billion to 1 synastry.
But given that transit Pluto would only make one more aspect to these placements in their lifetimes and that also occurred with Saturn as well being square to their shared Venuses when husband and father died, the chances of this occurring by any form of chance or coincidence are astronomically small.
Given the extraordinary synastry between C and her eldest daughter, it would be interesting to see if any of this would be passed on to the next generation.
D1 has two children (D2 doesn’t have any), a son and a daughter. The pattern seems to be particularly strong in the female line.
Mind bogglingly we have another Gemini, with her Moon exactly conjunct her mother’s Moon (18 Gemini) and her grandmother’s Mars (15 Gemini), but that’s only a very small part of it.
Remember C has a Venus/Saturn opposition and so does D1, so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that C’s granddaughter also has it.
C has the Saturn end in the 5th house of children, D1 and her granddaughter have Saturn in the 4th house of parents.
C also has a Venus/Neptune opposition. D1 has Venus/Neptune trine. GD has Venus/Neptune square.
Of course this inherited theme is likely to be even stronger for C’s granddaughter as she has the Sun and Moon involved as well as part of a Grand Cross also including Jupiter.
And granddaughter’s Uranus is exactly conjunct her mother’s Venus and her grandmother’s Venus.
Where does all this come from? Could we trace some of these themes further back in the family?
Yes of course we can.
Remember that C has a Venus/Saturn/Neptune pattern.
Her own mother has one too. Venus in her Mum’s chart is conjunct Saturn at the apex of a T square with her Sun.
The T square is based on an opposition between Jupiter and Neptune.
Despite her being born 90 years later, all 5 planets involved in this pattern are present in her own great granddaughter’s Grand Cross.
When writing about astrology, I have to say I find it difficult to express completely mind-blowing and gobsmacking evidence that is constantly right in front of our eyes.
Having Sun, Moon, Mercury and Ascendant in Capricorn, I lack the descriptive tools to go anywhere close to doing justice to it all.
This is why I often use statistics and chance occurrence to try and convey the scale of it all.
C’s family synastry is incalculable but easily in the realms of trillions to one against.
So fate or free will?
We might have freedom of choice in the day to day events of our lives, but when it comes to births, marriages and deaths, it’s already written on our CV.
Posted 18 Jun 2024
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