Virginia Woolf, 25.01.1882, 12.15 GMT , London, Died 28.03.1941
(source: Lois Rodden's Astrodatabank)
Virginia Woolf was one of the most innovative writers of the early 20th century. The stream-of-consciousness technique, pioneered by Marcel Proust, through which her protagonists move seamlessly from their inner preoccupations to perceptions of the world outside with its expectations or iniquities, and her challenge to gender conformity, continue to exercise our minds a century on.
Born on 25 January 1882, just after midday, Adeline Virginia Stephen had Sun in Aquarius on the MC exactly square stressed Saturn in Taurus behind cusp 12, Moon in Aries sextile Mars in Gemini in the 1st house, and a full 12th house in Taurus containing Jupiter conjunct Neptune and Pluto joining Moon and Mars to create an "eye and ear".
With her angular Sun and Martian Moon she must have found it hard to accept the limitation of home tuition for girls while her brothers headed to Cambridge. The square between Sun and Saturn was challenging in a predominantly green chart and her life alternated between periods of being queen of the intellectual vanguard in Bloomsbury and bouts of mental illness. Early sketches and photographs of her portray a fragile woman with an intensely interesting face.
The deaths of her mother in 1895 and her father in 1904 triggered breakdowns. Notice the long green quincunxes that surround the centre of a chart whose ratio is 5 green to 4 blue to 3 red. The daughter of biographer and critic Sir Leslie Stephen was extremely sensitive and to any kind of turbulence. Two years later, as the Age Point crossed Uranus, her brother Thoby died. All this loss and upheaval led her to move to the heart of Bloomsbury where her literary career was to flourish.
Take a look at the reverse dominant learning triangle from Jupiter in Taurus in the 12th square Mercury in Aquarius in the 10th quincunx Uranus in Virgo on the cusp of the 5th completed by a trine from Uranus to Jupiter. Here we can appreciate her need not only to re-evaluate the inner landscape but also to devise a method of creative communication that pushed out boundaries and developed new literary forms. The clockwise direction of the learning figure meant that progress was slow and there were many false starts as she, like her characters, struggled for perfection and authenticity in her endeavours. We know that her books were worked over numerous times.
Is there a four-sided figure in this chart? Yes, there's a surfer stretching from the "eye and ear" on the "I" side to Venus in Capricorn on the Low Point of House 9. With a halfway semi-sextile from Moon to a transpersonal planet (Pluto) it may not be 100% valid according to the strict rules governing more unusual aspect patterns. Nevertheless we can envisage her surfing through the waves with her exceptional sensitivity to the forces of the environment and a profound sense of justice that obliged her to take the side of the underdog in an effort to maintain equilibrium. The surfer is a self-controlled and individualistic figure. Even so, its four-sidedness betrays her need for security just as her dominant and smaller learning triangles illustrate her need for relationships.
She married Leonard Woolf at the age of 30, when her Age Point was on the 6th cusp, opposite the 12th, and he provided her security. Low Point Venus, weak in sign at the end of Capricorn, conjunct Sun, square Moon and trine Mars struggled to find expression. Her marriage was almost certainly platonic and the love of her life was Vita Sackville-West. Woolf's strong animus is related to the Aries Moon in aspect to all three assertive planets. Then, with an ambiguity often associated with Aquarius, she agreed with Coleridge that great minds are androgynous. Nevertheless, she was not an independent, self-surviving woman and North Node in the 6th House close to the DC, which forms a learning triangle with Sun and Saturn, highlights to the importance of her marriage partnership along the existence axis.
Although Pluto remained undiscovered until Woolf was 48 years old the planet's presence in the 12th House is of great significance in her chart. She was acutely sensitive to the trauma of war and she transformed some of the new discoveries of depth psychology into literary form. Of particular note is the exact blue star formed at the crossing points of Venus trine Pluto, Uranus trine Jupiter and Moon sextile Mars.
Woolf's lack of planets in water signs contrasts with the full 12th house. Since childhood, when the family used to visit St Ives, the inexorable rhythm of the waves had been a continual source of fascination. She also took an interest in cosmology and had a telescope set up at home.
On 28 March 1941, while living on the South Coast away from the bombing in London, Woolf made her final bid to return to the primordial sea. It was not her first attempt at suicide but this time she intended to be successful. Leaving a suicide note, she wrote: "I feel certain that I am going mad again: I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and can't concentrate." Her Age Point was coming up to sextile Neptune in the 12th and with that blue star releasing its vibrations through Jupiter and Pluto in the 12th we can conclude that this was a peaceful ending.
Sue Lewis Dip. API
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