THE APPROACHING SUN,MOON, PLUTO ANGLE: Israel, Palestine, Nepal and the British General Election.

ROBERT BLAKE – A murderer or an innocent victim?

THE APPROACHING SUN,MOON, PLUTO ANGLE

On Monday the sun in Gemini stands opposite Pluto in Sagittarius. On Tuesday, the moon does the same thing. And on Wednesday there is a full moon in Sagittarius. All these factors tend to bring simmering situations to the boil and they carry a very confrontational theme.

Clearly, these astrological factors are implicated in events of the last few days.

THE TEL AVIV NIGHTCLUB MASSACRE

The Palestinian suicide bomber who killed seventeen young Israelis and seriously injured sixty-seven others outside a popular Tel Aviv nightclub on Friday night (11.30pm local time) will bring major reprisals.

The Israeli Cabinet held a seven-hour meeting – unprecedented since it took place on the Jewish Sabbath – and emerged declaring Yasser Arafat directly responsible for the killings. Israel thus called off its self-declared policy of restraint.

Under these aspects we can almost certainly expect to see Israeli air strikes in response to this terrorist attack and although there have been previous air strikes, I believe we have seen nothing yet.

President Bush needs to become a much stronger presence in this conflict. At least when he invites the two opposing leaders to meet and talk, major hostilities are suspended. However, I fear he will opt for a policy of concerned distance. That rising Mercury-Pluto conjunction of his thinks long and hard before it commits to action. Likewise, his moon in Libra is a little on the dithery side.

Clearly in another response to these mighty and confrontational aspects, the Crown Prince of Nepal shot his parents and some other family members on Friday night, apparently in a row over his choice of bride.

Crown Prince Dipendra, twenty-nine years old (and obviously going through the mother and father of a Saturn Return!) was considered to be a wonderful person – bright, sensible and friendly.

The massacre has meant that the Crown Prince has been proclaimed King but since he is in a coma due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound, his younger brother has been declared regent.

This staggering event has left Nepal in a state of complete bewilderment. Utterly tragic.

THE BRITISH GENERAL ELECTION

I have been less than occupied with my country’s General Election, mainly because it seems to be such a foregone conclusion. Tony Blair and the Labour Party are, according to most polls, twenty-five points ahead of the Conservatives and it is hard to imagine what in the next few days could change the predicted landslide victory for Labour.

Still, all that Pluto activity will make a dent somewhere and even if that primarily means the Conservatives must rethink their policies, or more particularly consider turning to Michael Portillo to lead the party, Labour will have a moment of truth. Somehow, somewhere.

ROBERT BLAKE – A murderer or an innocent victim?

The news that the wife of actor, Robert Blake, had been shot at point blank range outside the restaurant where moments before they had been dining may not have been an internationally reported incident but it is certainly an intriguing incident.

For those of you who have not heard of Robert Blake this brief biography will fill you in.

BIOGRAPHY 

Robert Blake was born into a show-business family – his parents were a song and dance duo – but his childhood was far from happy. His parents divorced and his step-father beat him, his brother, sister and mother mercilessly. Blake claims he was abused sexually, emotionally and physically throughout his childhood.

He was expelled from five schools and drafted into the army when he was seventeen. He was rebellious, aggressive and resentful of authority – all of which contributed to a spell of time in an army stockade.

From the age of two Robert was appearing in films, most notably ‘Our Gang’ and ‘Red Ryder’. Once he was out of the army (1952) he returned to Hollywood capitalising on his childhood fame. Initially he worked as a stuntman but gradually began playing roles on TV. In 1975 he was cast as Baretta in the series of the same name, which rocketed him to stardom and gained him an Emmy in that same year. Robert is most highly regarded for his role in the film of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.

Despite the success of Baretta, he was the proverbial nightmare to work with – he ignored directors he did not like, frequently hired his wife, Sondra, as a guest star and behaved like a tyrannical dictator on the set. Thus in 1978, Baretta was cancelled - his marriage ended two years later.

Clearly a major talent, Blake, somewhat in the style of Robert Downy Junior, became a victim of his own inner demons. He drank, took drugs and generally behaved badly. After the demise of Baretta he went on a self-destruct trip of Herculean proportions but managed an equally impressive come-back in 1981 with five TV movies, three in the role of detective, Joe Dancer.

In 1986 he walked away from show-business again and

‘into his own private wilderness for seven years… [he contemplated and worked through the pain of his childhood] his drinking, his fights and thirty years of therapy and wondered why he had not killed himself or someone else. When he came to some sort of compromise with his anger he once more knocked on the [doors of Hollywood]. In 1993 he was cast in the CBS thriller, Judgment Day.

On 11 January 2000 he married Geminian, Bonny Lee Blakely and their daughter, Rose Lenore Sophia was born the following month on 6 February.

EVENTS THAT LEAD UP TO THE MURDER

On 5^th April 2001 Bonny and Robert had dinner at a Hollywood restaurant. They returned to their car together but Robert, realizing he had forgotten his gun, went back to the restaurant to retrieve it, leaving Bonny alone in the passenger seat of their Dodge Stealth. In his absence Boony was killed by a single shot to the head.

Robert was initially not considered a suspect but within a few days he became the LA Police department’s prime suspect. And this remains the status-quo to date.

BONNY – A SUITABLE CASE FOR  MURDER

Robert’s wife was clearly no ‘little woman’. It has emerged that she has been married one hundred times, allegedly as part of a series of scams. (Apparently Bonny would lure men into sending her ‘gas money’ to visit them by sending them nude photographs of herself.) According to friends her greatest wish was to marry a famous man. Before achieving her ambition with Robert Blake, she scored a near success with Jerry Lee Lewis, who, for some strange reason, appears to speak well of her.

By all accounts the relationship with Blake is not your average marriage. In the prenuptial agreement she had to agree not to conduct any of her business dealings at the home, nor discuss in front of Robert any aspect of her ‘work’. And while Robert obviously adores his baby daughter, judging from his telephone conversations with Bonny (all of which she recorded) he almost loathed her and could be fairly said to sound menacing towards her.

It has also emerged in recent days that Bonny feared for her life – hence the gun Robert carried with him at all times when they were together.

(And I suppose with one hundred ex-husbands at least one of them has an axe to grind.)

COULD ROBERT BLAKE BE A MURDERER?

  
ROBERT BLAKE: 18 September 1933, 08 30 am, Nutley, New Jersey.
(Click For Enlarged View)
Data Supplied by Astrodatabank

THE SUN IN VIRGO IN THE SECLUDED TWELFTH HOUSE

Now, in my long years as an astrologer I have seen countless people with twelfth house suns and despite this area of the chart being labelled the ‘house of incarceration’ not one of them has seen the inside of a prison cell. However, twelfth house suns are complex, especially when they are in complex sun signs, like Virgo.

And since we are on the subject of twelfth house myth-understandings in my experience it is far from the case that twelfth house ‘people’ are introvert and shy many actors and celebrities have their sun in this area. Yes, twelfth-housers may suffer from deep conflicts about who they really and prefer to hide behind a mask but nonetheless they are capable of living very public lives and enjoying the fruits of their success in terms of material acquisitions and ‘celebrity lifestyles’.  (Take a look at Madonna’s chart – another twelfth-houser and with a rising Virgo moon.)

But back to Mr. Blake.

We know from his biography that he is a deeply troubled guy. He had a lousy childhood and he was victimized.

Victims and saviours tend to have Virgo/Pisces themes in their charts. And Robert with his sun and moon in Virgo – the latter in Pisces’ natural house - has the perfect astrological set-up for living out this role in real life.

Robert has also been a drinker and a drug user and he has generally abused his physical and psychological health. All good twelfth house stuff. He has also sent himself into the wilderness to commune with his demons. (Very twelfth house.) Yet he has also risen from the ashes more than once. (Now doesn’t that should like Scorpio?)

VENUS AND MARS IN SCORPIO

Venus and Mars are both in this powerful water sign. And people who have personal planets in Scorpio experience huge ups and downs in life. This is a sign that sinks to the depths from where a great purging takes place; the energy then generated by this process pushes them back up to the surface – often to greater heights than before.

Scorpio people need periodic lows to recharge their powerful emotional and creative ‘engines’. But to onlookers it seems as if these individuals press their self-destruct button too often and for no good reason.

Much of Robert’s ability to come back again and again stems from the Scorpionic content of his chart, most particularly his Mars. Mars is not only a masculine principle (the sun being the other) but it is clearly the dimension of his personality that he operates through most.

Take for example this section of the brief biography above:

… [he contemplated and worked through the pain of his childhood] his drinking, his fights and thirty years of therapy and wondered why he had not killed himself or someone else. When he came to some sort of compromise with his anger he once more knocked on the [doors of Hollywood]. 

Pure Scorpio.

LOW SELF-ESTEEM AND A STRUGGLE TO ACHIEVE

Robert’s Mars forms a 90 degree (square) angle to Saturn – a classic ‘baddy’ in the astrological repertoire. Mars in more traditional astrology is known as the lesser malefic  while Saturn is referred to as the greater malefic. So to have these two planets at any angle to each other is not the greatest. At best Mars-Saturn individuals have tremendous staying power, determination and the ability to fight long and hard for what they want. At worst Mars-Saturn types are cruel, aggressive and ruthless. Most people, however, fall between these two extremes and experience intense frustration and opposition to their plans, their needs and their efforts. Mars-Saturn people beat themselves up more often than they do anyone else.

Robert’s tendency towards dictatorship on the set is a classic knee-jerk reaction of Mars-Saturn. Being told what to do, denied his needs and rights, brought back feelings of his impotence as a child. What else could he do but use his muscle any which way he could.

Clearly, the combination of

1)      his painful background,

2)      a twelfth house Virgo sun – a very self-contained sign

3)      a moon-Neptune conjunction in Virgo – a conjunction that breeds intense romanticization of the female yet an underlying sense of being abandoned and rejected by them. (And we only have to look at the way his mother behaved to see why he experienced abandonment and rejection.)

4)      Uranus in the zone of relationships – a penchant for hooking up to women he cannot have or women who are very different from the norm

5)      and the Mars-Saturn square, which makes him very unsure of his real value and power as a man

 would make it very difficult for him to find happiness in love and marriage.

But are such factors enough to make him kill his wife?

COULD ROBERT HAVE MURDERED BONNY?

Clearly, Robert did not gun down his wife – he was in the restaurant at the time. But, as the police suspect, he could have hired someone to kill her.

But judging by his chart I find it very difficult to believe Robert Blake would do such a thing.

History tells us that he has reacted hotly and violently in the past – but I cannot find any information about his using other people to do his dirty work for him. He is very much the lone wolf. He doesn’t trust people and you would have to trust someone implicitly to get them to commit murder for you.

I can believe that Robert would have killed Bonny in a fit of rage and frustration. But I do not believe he planned and plotted her murder in this way. Robert is a damaged man but he is not a man to murder in cold blood.

Yes, those Scorpio planets make him an arch-manipulator, the twelfth house sun enables him to move in mysterious ways and his Virgo planets give him the intelligence to mount a super-plan. But this kind of murder? No.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Given my addiction to Court TV in America I have become only too aware how vulnerable you are if your next of kin is murdered. I have seen more than one husband/wife of a murdered spouse accused of their murder and found guilty by the jury. Even when, much of the evidence – forensic and otherwise - points away from the defendant.

Copyright © 2001 Penny Thornton