Soon after I started writing articles, I stopped worrying about who to write about. It became very clear that the Universe was telling me. Initially I was reluctant to do the astrology of Princess Diana’s death, because I was worried whether 17 years was too soon. But on my way to work I saw an absurd headline in the Express about Mohammed Al Fayed’s conspiracy theories and felt I had to put the record straight – Princess Diana’s Death – Why ?
So nowadays I just wait for a suitable subject to be presented.
And this morning, whilst I was running through about half a dozen different possible articles about Euro 2016, my attention was drawn to an article in the Daily Mail about Mary Portas, the Queen of Shops.
Now I have to make it clear that I am not an avid reader of the gossip columns of the Mail or the Express, but when an important astrology story has to be told, Capricorn Research is happy to sacrifice a few brain cells.
I am aware that many of my articles often require a fair amount perseverance from my readers, but this time I am asking for a similar sacrifice because it seems the simplest way to tell this story is to quote extensively from the Mail.
” No sooner had her son Horatio been born than Mary Portas picked up the newborn infant and placed him in the arms of his biological father….
If that were the crux of the story, it would be remarkable enough, but as Portas dramatically revealed last weekend, Horatio’s genetic father is, in fact, her younger brother — 52-year-old former bar manager Lawrence Newton.
When the Mary, Queen Of Shops star and Melanie, 42, decided to become parents together, it was to Lawrence she turned to ensure she also had a genetic link to the child Melanie gave birth to in September 2012.
But behind Portas’s revelation, which comes with the release of her new autobiography, is an even more remarkable story, one which stretches back nearly four decades.
For a start, the fashion guru, who is proud to be part of one of Britain’s most high-profile lesbian marriages, changed her name to Portas following her marriage to a man in 1990.
That marriage — which she has previously described as a happy one — produced two children who are now grown-up. She became a lesbian only in her 40s, when she met Melanie and fell for her.
But the unconventional circumstances of Horatio’s conception have their roots long before all this. They lie in the tragic childhood during which Portas was effectively orphaned at the age of 16 — and became a surrogate mother to Lawrence, now the surrogate father of her child.
When she and her brother first carried the baby into the West London sunshine outside St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, they could have been forgiven for reflecting on this extraordinary circle of life. Or as Portas puts it: ‘I now know that it could only ever have been Lawrence who was Horatio’s father.’
To fully understand those words, it is necessary to turn back the clock 40 years, to the days when the multi-millionairess retail and brand consultant was a feisty 16-year-old, harbouring dreams of becoming a famous actress and hoping to take up a place at RADA.
All that changed, suddenly and irrevocably, with the death of her mother, also called Mary, from meningitis in 1977.
While Portas’s three older siblings were already on the verge of leaving the family’s run-down semi-detached home in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, her grief-stricken father found solace with another woman — leaving Portas to care for 14-year-old Lawrence, to wash his clothes and feed him, while struggling to come to terms with her own broken heart.
The sudden loss of their mother — erroneously diagnosed with depression caused by the menopause even as she lay dying — was made worse by the reaction of their father who, having flung himself sobbing across their mother’s body, declared that there was nothing left to live for.
However, he swiftly replaced his wife with another one after meeting office clerk Rebecca at a widow and widowers’ social club.
He then sold the family home despite the fact that young Mary, who had barely left school, and Lawrence, still studying, were still living there. Both were made homeless, and Mary developed a fierce independence and self-sufficiency still so evident today. “
This is such an extraordinary story, that would send any self respecting astrologer scurrying for the 1960 ephemeris to see what was going on with the Moon. And it was this.
Capricorn Research does not have a birth time for Mary Portas but as is often the case, the noon chart works astonishingly well.
Portas is a Sun conjunct Venus in Gemini, showing her friendly, chatty always on the go style and has focused so much energy on the fashion world.
In fact the art of shopping could be seen as the Sun / Venus in Gemini, which could perhaps explain Capricorn Research’s aversion to it. The noon chart puts the Sun in the 10th which feels right for someone who has made such big strides in her career.
Both the Sun and Venus make a tight square aspects with Pluto indicating someone whose life generally and love life particularly will go through profound and dramatic upheavals and changes.
Pluto’s position on the Ascendant of the noon chart emphasises this even more powerfully.
But its the Moon that really draws our attention. It is in Cancer, and invariably people with this placing have family issues that dominate their lives to a much greater extent than the rest of us.
The Moon in Cancer is a powerfully strong emotional contact with the mother, but when it has difficult aspects with Saturn there is a great sense of loss. The maternal energy is often removed from one’s life or there is a restriction put on it, so that the person concerned has to find that strength in themselves.
Capricorn Research has a number of charts of women with an afflicted Moon in Cancer that have had to take over the role of the mother in their own family at a young age, looking after siblings because their own parents are unable to do so for one reason or another.
Mary Portas’ Moon is opposite Saturn.
This opposition creates a T Square with an apex Mars in Aries. The planet at the apex of a T square will always point to the results of the challenges that are implicit in the opposition of the other two.
Mars in Aries has to be the strongest indicator of a powerfully independent person, going their own way in life assertively and with tremendous energy.
In the noon chart, this Mars is in the 8th house of death, showing what happened to Mary’s mother.
But the most extraordinary thing here is the transits.
Mary’s mother died suddenly in 1977.
Pluto was in the T square in 1977 exactly opposite her Mars.
In September 2012, when Horatio was born, Pluto was back in Mary’s T square again, this time opposite the Moon.
As Mary herself put it ‘I now know that it could only ever have been Lawrence who was Horatio’s father.’ And Pluto meant that this had to happen in 2012.
Capricorn Research has 390 charts of Lesbians and the most common aspects are the conjunctions of Mars with Saturn at 202 % and Uranus 167 % of the expected figures.
Mary Portas has a very powerful T Square apex Mars in Aries in with aspects to both Saturn and Uranus.
Unfortunately I don’t have any other charts of lesbians who have had children using their brothers as birth fathers but I wouldn’t mind betting that most of them would have a Moon in Cancer / Mars / Saturn pattern. And that Pluto would be hitting it at the time.