As
Bill Clinton prepares to leave office, public affection
remains strong for the Leo leader. Only time can tell
if history will be as kind to him as it has been to
his favorite Aries founding father, Thomas Jefferson.
President
William Jefferson Clinton was defending his dalliance
with Monica Lewinsky and the subsequent cover-up when
our country’s most potent symbol of American values,
Thomas Jefferson, blazed from the pages of history to
bear witness to the fact that the primal urge has a
most distinguished presidential pedigree. When DNA proved
true the long-rumored intimate relationship between
Jefferson and his mulatto slave, it served to make Clinton’s
sins more palatable and sparked comparisons between
Clinton and the revered man who drafted the Declaration
of Independence.
Consummate
Politician and Charming Ladies’ Man
William
Clinton was born August 19, 1946, with a Leo Sun in
the Eleventh House and a stellium (group of planets
fused together) in Libra. Though his Sun foretold a
potential for leadership (Leo) in the political arena
(Eleventh House), it was his liberal (Libra) tendencies
that moved him into the White House, brought him close
to impeachment and make his place in history uncertain.
Mark
of a Ladies’ Man
Clinton’s
entire political career has been fraught with tales
of womanizing, and a quick look at all the Libra planets
in his birth chart tells why. Clinton was born when
Venus (feminine beauty, love and personal values), Neptune
(illusion and confusion), Mars (sex, lust, drive and
action) and Jupiter (opportunity) were in Libra, the
sign associated with harmony and balance in relationships.
This reveals that Clinton’s drive for cooperative human
interactions (Mars in Libra) and his ability to attract
and charm women (Venus in Libra) combined to create
strong sex appeal with a detached desire nature (Venus
conjunct Mars in Libra) and a need to satisfy those
desires in relationships (Mars in Libra).
Add
Neptune’s confusion and Jupiter’s opportunities to Libra’s
cool detached charm, then mix it all with a Leo Sun’s
need for romantic attention, and you have the makings
for a charming ladies’ man who has a sad weakness for
women and sex.
Living
the Great American Paradox
Thomas
Jefferson was born April 13, 1743, with an Aries Sun
in the Third House. This is appropriate for a man who
came to the White House not by political ambition, as
Clinton, but rather by virtue of his pioneering leadership
(Aries Sun) and the written expression of his intellectual
thinking (Third House) on personal freedom.
Unlike
Clinton, who has maintained an enduring political partnership
with his wife while involving himself in numerous shallow
sexual escapades, Thomas Jefferson’s relationships with
the opposite sex were much more complex and fraught
with pain, passion and paradox. His wife died after
only ten years of marriage, he was involved in a messy
affair with a married woman during his stay in France
and he carried on a forbidden relationship with his
mulatto slave Sally Hemings that endured for 38 years.
Venus
and Mars with Pluto: The Agony and Ecstasy of Life and
Love
Jefferson
was born with Venus (personal values, beauty and love)
in Taurus square (challenging) Mars (lust, drive and
action) in Leo. Taurus is a sensual, serene and artistic
sign of material abundance that wants to possess and
control what it loves and finds beautiful (certainly
expressing the values of an eighteenth century plantation
owner), while Leo is a passionate, spontaneous, playful
and generous sign that seeks the unabashed physical
expression of life and love.
Though
Jefferson believed passions constituted the true life
of man, he thought they must be kept under tight rein
in order to attain the serenity, tranquility, happiness
and right conduct sought by every man. He could not
deny his ardent passions and desires (Mars in Leo) nor
his enjoyment of sensual pleasures (Venus in Taurus),
and found himself drawn to the Epicurean ethic, which,
while admitting the reality and necessity of passion,
sought control through the exercise of reason. However,
his ardent nature (Mars in Leo), fueled on by the Aries
Sun’s need to do and have exactly what he wanted, often
overruled reason and resulted in actions that severely
challenged his comfortable aristocratic values.
Complicating
Jefferson’s character further, both Mars and Venus in
his chart are in a critical “relationship” with Pluto,
a powerful and transformative planet that unearths extreme
truths that have been denied.
A
Venus-Pluto opposition often reveals an individual who
sees either black or white with little concept of gray.
Jefferson aptly expressed this polarized aspect of his
nature in his belief that the two sexes (and the two
races) had separate functions to which they were genetically
adapted, and that they should not mix. Yet, with Mars
square (challenging) both Venus and Pluto, Jefferson
was unconsciously driven to actualize the ultimate truths
he refused to see.
Perhaps
in the passionate and enduring relationship with his
slave, Sally Hemings, and the children that relationship
produced, Jefferson created a visible merging of this
polarity that enabled him to realize the narrowness
of his original thinking on freedom and equality. Though
some of his writing seems to indicate a softening of
boundaries, at least in regard to slavery, neither history
nor DNA can tell us if Jefferson ever accepted or understood
the ultimate truths contained within his prophetic words
on personal liberty and the equal creation of all men.
How
Much is Too Much?
You
have to wonder why a nation would so vilify one president
for his indiscretions while forgiving and romanticizing
the other. Perhaps our perception was influenced by
the actual facts and details we were given in each instance.
As the Clinton saga unfolded, the world got every raw
and sexually explicit detail in the daily news, nothing
was left to the imagination. No actual facts or details
were ever documented on Jefferson’s indiscretions, and
with the help of transiting Neptune,
it was easy to romanticize Jefferson and his relationship
with Sally, as we imagined what it could have been.
However, take away this romantic notion and you find
that Jefferson, like Clinton, was a man of his time
who possessed extraordinary talents and abilities alongside
some very ordinary human frailties.
Notes
Transits
are contacts from the planets in the sky to planets
and sensitive points in the birth chart. Though Thomas
Jefferson died July 4, 1826, his birth chart remains
active and continues to receive transits.
In
1998, as transiting Neptune
touched Jefferson’s Ascendant, DNA findings were published
that confirmed Jefferson had indeed fathered children
by Sally Hemings. Neptune is a slow-moving outer planet
that will veil reality as it dissolves what it contacts.
In this case it was our long-held image of the great
man. Though the truth of Jefferson’s affair could no
longer be argued, Neptune’s arrival at the Ascendant
denied us a clear view of the man by veiling his image
in an elusiveness that brought more questions than answers.
It was this quality that enabled us to see him in a
softer light.
The
Ascendant is marked by the degree of the zodiac rising
on the horizon at the time and location of birth. Along
with the Midheaven, the Descendant, and the Inum Coeli,
it forms the structure of the birth chart. It is also
the boundary between the Twelfth House (what is hidden)
and the First House (what is readily seen). Symbolically,
it represents the mask, facade or image that we project
to others. Major transiting planets crossing the Ascendant
into the First House will greatly affect how a person
is perceived by others.