Pluto Travels through the Mind
The transformation that is taking place in Americans' attitudes
toward mental health is very exciting. Of course, as an
astrologer, I see this as the result of Pluto, the planet of
transformation, moving slowly through the polar signs of Gemini
and Sagittarius. These two signs deal with the workings of the
mind.
One of my clients devoted her life to a study of the mind. When
she was in high school, she fell in love with a very nice boy.
His parents were against the liaison because she was not of the
same religion. They dated for 3 years but were forced by family
pressure to end the relationship. He "lost his mind". The last
time my client saw him was a visit to a mental hospital where he
had been committed -- labelled incurable. "What is a mind that
you can "lose" it?" she thought. Thus began a lifetime journey
for her to settle this question to her own satisfaction.
The much acclaimed film, "A Beautiful Mind" has been the first
of many recent films to take a new look at the mystifying
territory of "the Mind". The mental disintegration of
mathematical genius John Nash is explored with interest and
sensitivity.
Nash wrote a 27-page dissertation, "Non-Cooperative Games", in
1950 when he was just 21 years old. Eight years later he was
diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. In 1970 the disease went
into remission and in 1994 John Nash was honored with the Nobel
Prize in Economics.
Nash claimed his mental condition was due to living on the
"ultralogical plane" and breathing "rarefied air" not meant for
mere mortals. Nash believed this permitted him to make unique
contributions to his field. He was not so sure that being normal
was the way to go.
I attended a high school in the Midwest with over 4,000
students. It was in another era, and our school was divided into
sections according to how smart we were. The academic pecking
order was no secret.
The "gifted" on one extreme and the "educable mentally
handicapped" (henceforth, EMH) on the other, flanked the vast
"average" majority which included homecoming queens,
cheerleaders, football captions and others equally blessed with
normalcy. The three groups were segregated from each other
during the school day.
Kids from all three learning groups were mixed together in study
hall and I noticed that the two extreme groups - the gifted and
the EMHers -- seemed to meet somewhere in the middle. They were
more like each other than either was like the normal.
This is a phenomenon of polarity. For example, hot and cold are
both degrees of temperature. Dry ice, a temperature extreme, is
so cold that it burns. It really seems hot. In this context, the
saying "when hell freezes over" really makes sense.
Both the gifted and the EMH groups were fidgety and restless.
Both were socially ill at ease and amazingly un-self-conscious
for high school. Both groups tended to "read aloud", mumbling
words or moving their fingers across a page as they were
reading. And, I'm sorry to say, both groups were chosen with
equal degrees of victimization to endure the teasing of the
average group in the middle.
An astrologer notices that the amount of mental energy surging
through the circuits of the gifted mind does not leave much to
focus on the physical world. As with Nash, these people tend to
live in a rarefied atmosphere and don't often "touch down" to
the mundane world to take care of things like dandruff, acne and
body odor.
In the case of the EMH students, one suspects disrupted mental
circuits, dead ends and hot wires, to speak descriptively. The
charts of both gifted and educable mentally handicapped are
indistinguishable save for the focus and grouping of planets so
common in the charts of the gifted (called Stelliums or more
correctly Stellia). Without this grouping, they would be as
"scattered" mentally or mentally "undone" as the EMHers.
Another characteristic of gifted charts is an afflicted
Ascendant. What results from this is that many gifted people are
unable to make a positive first impression. If you will pardon a
play on words, they do not speak well for themselves. Is it any
wonder they escape to the higher realms? Or is it because they
escape to the higher realms that they make such a poor first
impression? (Fortunately there are plenty of people in this
world who can see beyond first impressions.)
The Ascendant describes the way you appear upon first meeting,
including the way you talk and process information from your
environment. The genius Albert Einstein may not have talked
until he was 3 years old. Winston Churchill, another genius, had
a lisp and failed often in school when something didn't capture
his interest. According to his official biographer, Churchill
was believed to be physically repulsive to his own father. Of
course this is entirely subjective and unjustified, if you look
at photos of this great man as a baby. But life behind the
Ascendant of an astrology chart IS very subjective and the outer
world will confirm to the expectations embodied in the chart.
No one would argue that world renowned Stephen Hawking is a very
compelling example of this phenomenon. Hawking, who suffers from
Motor Neurone Disease or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, the
complications of which have made it impossible for him to speak
at all (tracheotomy), is quoted on his website
(www.hawking.org.uk) as saying, "One's voice is very important.
If you have a slurred voice, people are likely to treat you as
mentally deficient."
Often in the charts of the educable mentally handicapped, the
afflicted Rising Sign characterizes a physical condition which
has led to mental problems or an approach to social situations
that reflects an inability to process and respond to social cues
such as proper distance, appropriate gestures, chat style, and
so forth.
Sometimes mentally deficient individuals simply do not
understand or care how their physical body connects with the
social stratosphere. I once read an article about a retarded
couple who had a baby that kept slipping out of the carry seat
because her well meaning but borderline retarded parents simply
could not remember to strap her in. Please remember that I am
being descriptive, not critical.
What happened to John Nash? Did the bundling pull too tight and
break the circuits? Was too much mental energy sent through the
circuits at one time because of the tremendous rate of vibration
of his brain? Were emotional and psychological territories
starved for energy and left to atrophy like a limb with
gangrene? Nash's own words are as descriptive and "poetic" as
these