Readers of these pages will have come across many charts of murderers. The taking of someone’s life is an act that is so horrifying but also so distinctive.

Whatever else they have done in their life, they have also killed someone. They could be anyone from a member of royalty to a road sweeper but they would be known as a murderer. And we would expect someone who commits a murder to have that clearly announced in their charts. The more frequently they commit the act, the stronger the indications in the chart will be.

The charts of murder victims however are much more difficult to spot. This is because a murderer is a murderer, but their victim in many cases is someone who was leading their own life in their own normal way, but for one horrendous moment in time when they happened to be in the wrong place.

It is still the case that being a murder victim would be indicated in the chart but it is harder to find.

The victim of a serious crime like rape or attempted murder would inevitably suffer for the whole of the rest of their life, so it would have a major impact.

But it is not fundamentally what their life was about up to that point, so it doesn’t necessarily come up in relation to their Sun, Moon or Ascendant.

One clear example of this kind of chart is Phyllis Cottle.

Phyliss Cottle was an American victim of assault and battery of the most vicious and brutal manner. She was abducted, raped and stabbed her in both eyes. Her assailant attempted to kill her but she escaped. She was left legally blind after the attack.

When we see a chart with a Sun, Mercury, Venus, Ascendant combination in Libra, this is not the kind experience we would expect. What we would expect is a stunningly attractive woman well versed in the arts of love and able to attract all kinds of beautiful people and experiences.

Its true that if this conjunction was seriously receiving difficult aspects, we could believe that her attractiveness would get her into trouble and draw a violent response from others, but the only aspect it gets is an opposition to Jupiter. This opposition might suggest a tendency towards extravagant appetites, but in no way would it indicate the kind of experience that Cottle went through.

The darker events and themes in a person life are more often linked with the Moon than the Sun. The Sun is simply the conscious, daytime stuff of our lives whereas the Moon rules the unconscious night time experience.

Cottle’s Moon in Aquarius is as far removed from the viciousness of her attack as her Libra stellium. Its only aspect is a square to Uranus. Uranus is in the 8th house, but even so its nowhere near describing her ordeal.

There is something however, that explains it as clear as day. If there’s one thing that Capricorn Research has learnt in 35 years, its to always focus on the T Square. If this aspect pattern involves the Sun or Moon, everything becomes very simple. Even if it doesn’t, focus on it anyway.

Phyliss Cottle had a particularly nasty T Square based on an opposition between the two most violent planets in astrology, Mars and Pluto.

Even with this opposition, the generally benevolent nature of Cottle’s chart would surely save her from the torture that she experienced, but the final word comes from the planet that forms the apex of the T Square.

Saturn is the one planet that you would not want to have involved with Mars and Pluto. The apex planet in a T Square focuses the energy of the opposition and will invariably show the results of the tension between the two planets.

So an act of extreme violence caused by an opposition between Mars and Pluto has the Saturnian result of causing a lifetime’s suffering for Phyliss Cottle.

Saturn’s house position is very interesting, it is at the end of the 7th house of relationships and very close to the 8th of death.

There is rightly no indication in the reports of the incident as to how or why Cottle was in the car of her assailant in the first place. Her chart seems to suggest that it may have been for what we shall delicately refer to as Sun / Venus / Ascendant in Libra opposite Jupiter, 7th house purposes.

The fact that Saturn is only two degrees away from the 8th house cusp shows just how close she came to death at the hands of her assailant.

The fact that it is at the end of Aries and the end of the 7th house, could also have something to say about the impact that the assault might have had on her future love life.

When Pluto is natally involved in a T Square, the turning point in the person’s life will come when it makes the only transit of their life to another point on the same pattern.

Cottle was attacked in March 1984 when the transiting Pluto had transformed the T Square into a horrendous Grand Cross making probably the toughest astrological transit known to man.

Pluto was square Mars, square its own position and opposite Saturn at the time of the attack.

All the reports about Phyliss Cottle were that she was an amazingly strong woman who resisted her assailants applications for parole for the remainder of her life and who dealt with her difficulties with extraordinary courage and fortitude.

Another example is Janis Coulter who was an American escort of a group of New York students in Israel when she was killed in a bomb blast. Janis converted to Judaism after studying the faith of her grandmother. She took a job in New York with Hebrew University, a job that allowed her frequent trips to Israel. She had made a lunch date to meet a friend at the cafeteria at Hebrew University when she was caught in the terrorist bombing.

Again if we look at the Sun and Moon, the chart gives no indication at all of her fate. Her Leo Sun’s only aspect is opposite the Ascendant, the Moon is conjunct the Midheaven and in square to Mercury , so no suggestion of being a victim of a terrorist bombing.

Coulter’s Moon is in Sagittarius at the Midheaven which is a fine indication of someone whose career requires them to travel abroad.

Mars is in the 8th house of death but on its own and unaspected is hardly likely to cause her to be killed in this way.

Again the thing that caused it was the T Square.

Janis Coulter had an extremely close triple conjunction of Venus, Uranus and Pluto in Virgo in the 7th house which was opposite Saturn. The two most explosive planets are Uranus and Pluto.

She was obviously in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it was her Venus that plut her there. Venus is the planet that rules having a nice pleasurable time and in the 7th house it suggests the sharing of this with someone else, possibly someone with whom she was having a relationship.

So Venus in the 7th house points to a lunch date with a friend. But this Venus finds itself in the middle of a terrorist bombing, caught in between Uranus and Pluto. The result of this was that she met her end ( Saturn ).

The opposition focuses by T Square onto an apex Jupiter in Gemini, pointing to the fact that she was only in Israel in the first place because she was travelling ( Jupiter ) with a group of students ( Gemini ).

The transits as usual confirm the story. In 1996 Pluto was conjunct Coulter’s Moon as she converted to Judaism, the faith ( Sagittarius, 9th house ) of her grandmother ( Moon ).

But her fate was sealed by Pluto’s only transit to the T Square in her lifetime. Just as in Phyliss Cottle’s chart, Pluto had formed a Grand Cross pattern with her T Square and was square Venus, Uranus, Saturn and Pluto itself in 2002. Given the closeness of the aspects, anyone would be fortunate to come out of that still alive.

The difficult aspects in murderers charts seem to be generally squares and also connected to the Sun or Moon or Mars. So the act of murder is something that they themselves commit and it is an essential part of what it is to be them.

Victims seem to be more the result of difficult opposition aspects which suggests that it is something out there in the world that happens to them.

In Capricorn Research’s collection of 553 Murder Victims the most common aspect is the Venus / Pluto opposition which scores 151% of the expected figure.

So is there such a thing as victim mentality ? The answer is probably yes and no depending on what we mean. Whenever there is any discussion of something like victim mentality, it seems to imply that there was something about the person concerned that attracted the crime that was committed against them. Immediately this suggestion invites all kinds of understandable objections as if victim was somehow responsible.

This is obviously not the case but it does raise an issue that is much more appropriately dealt with if one’s world view is astrological. We all carry the seeds of our own destiny with us, not because of any intrinsically positive or negative characteristics of our own, but simply because we were born at a particular moment in time and this is what the Universe demanded of its representative of that moment.

This might lead to another question of why some souls have to live on this earth with a Mars / Saturn / Pluto T Square and others get off relatively lightly. There is no answer available to that one although Capricorn Research suspects that it might have something to do with the idea that only certain types of evolved souls would be strong enough to cope with it.

Its difficult stuff to deal with, but an understanding of the astrology of it can be of help.