Welcome To Penny Thornton's Astrolutely.com EU Server DE

DIANA, IN MEMORIAM
It is ten years ago precisely that Diana, The Princess of Wales died. And in memory of her life and death I thought it appropriate to include a few thoughts here on Astrolutely.com. They come in the form of a chapter in my book, Starstruck.

More Details

Penny Thornton Accepts These Credit / Debit Cards

STARSTRUCK* Chapter VII (Page 2 of 7)

DEATH OF A PRINCESS

In the afternoon of the 2nd September, I picked up Dominic from his new school in Midhurst. There were no smiles, merely a quivering lip, and as soon as we turned the corner onto the Fernhurst road, a small volcano began to erupt. His first day had not gone well. He informed me that he was not returning and that I had ruined his life. This stream of outrage continued unabated far into the evening. He refused all offerings of his favourite snacks, indeed he turned down food of any kind, and eventually locked himself in the bathroom, leaving Kimberly, Alex and myself to make cooing sounds to him from outside the solid pine door. And still the telephone rang. At ten pm, an exhausted twelve-year-old came out of his cave, and accepting a mug of hot chocolate, climbed up to his bunk bed announcing "I'm not going back. This is the worst day of my life."

As I tucked him up in bed I said to him: "You know, Dom, what do you think David Beckham would do if he'd had a lousy day on the football pitch? Decide to give up the game, or go back the next day, vowing to win? -I received a sleepy "Mmm", which I took to be an appreciation of my wisdom. Years later he was to explain that he had heard what I'd said, but it made no difference. He remained in his black hole to which I had consigned him by tearing him away from the school he loved and the friends he'd known almost all his life. Nevertheless, he went back to Midhurst the following morning. I cancelled all my working plans in London for the day and waited anxiously for a call from the school, which much to my relief never came. When I picked him up later that afternoon, he emerged from the school grounds with a group of boys, laughing and joking. He never looked back. You see, that's a double Sagittarius for you - all tears and tragedy one day, adventure and high jinx the next.

But while that late summer thunderbolt had struck Dominic a glancing blow it had delivered a mortal wound to Diana. And it had come in the form of a solar eclipse.

Stargazers in times past - and we're talking centuries ago - considered eclipses to be the harbingers of dreadful events, but with the rise of depth psychology in the early Twentieth Century astrologers became less enthralled with the concept of fate and more inclined to view the horoscope as a map of the psyche. Maybe too, because such strides were being made in medicine and science, the human race seemed less vulnerable to the vicissitudes of nature - we were more able, perhaps, to dictate our own course. And in keeping with this sense of growing omnipotence, eclipses lost some of their lugubrious lustre. However, I have continued to treat eclipses with respect. One only has to look back on some of the most momentous events in British royal history to see the signature of an eclipse therein. Take, for instance, the abdication of Edward VIII on 10 December 1936, some three days before a solar eclipse in Sagittarius, the death of George VI and the accession of Queen Elizabeth II on 5th February, 1952, four days before a lunar eclipse in Leo, and the separation of Diana and Charles on 9th December, 1992, on the actual day of a total solar eclipse in Sagittarius. So with the solar eclipse of the 2nd September, 1997 falling on a crucial part of Diana's horoscope, I knew an event of some magnitude was on its way.

To be precise this eclipsed new moon fell on her Mars-Pluto conjunction, a significant enough astrological event on its own, but throughout 1997 transiting Pluto had been angling that self-same point. And Mars-Pluto conjunctions do not have the best of reputations in astrology.

Almost every living person will have one or more 'difficult' aspects in a horoscope: it is the harsh angle which inspires the painful experiences that make us or break us, in much the same way as the discomfort caused to an oyster when a piece of grit gets into its shell eventually results in a pearl. And, of course, there would have been hundreds of people along with Diana born on July 1st 1961, who shared the same Mars-Pluto conjunction, none of whom met their demise in a traffic accident. Yet Diana's Mars-Pluto conjunction was the source of much that was painful to her in life, it was both the route to her triumph and her tragedy.

As I explain in Chapter five, the planets and signs do not make us who we are and they do not dictate what happens to us: they reflect who we are and mirror our experiences. Each of us will respond in subtly different ways to any one planet, point or sign, the defining factor being a combination of our basic nature, our upbringing and our experiences - life is not so much what happens to you, but what you do with what happens to you. Thus, the proximity of Mars - a planet correlating with aggression, ambition, desire and courage - to Pluto, whose keyword is transformation, showed that Diana had the potential to be powerfully changed by acts of bravery or by acts of treachery. I had discussed this idea with her during one of our meetings, and had this to say about it in Synastry, written in 1981, "(Mars-Pluto) presents a violent theme and suggests the likelihood of exposure to dangerous situations..." and in With Love From Diana , written in 1994, ..."I did consider that [Diana] would be the focus of a violent attack, whether this manifested as intense criticism or a physical assault, even some kind of assassination attempt." Clearly, the courage of the Mars-Pluto conjunction manifested in her crusade against land mines, yet the self-destructive quality of this aspect lay at the heart of her bulimia, and it was also at the basis of her 'suicidal' approach to more than one relationship. No one can generate as much passion as someone with a Mars-Pluto conjunction, and no one can muster more hate, revenge and self-loathing.

Thus, in 1997, as Pluto made its way to and fro this volatile conjunction in her natal chart, Diana's life in tandem veered to extremes: while she found passion and love with Dodi Fayed her public image took a nose dive - never before had she received such hostile criticism in the press, it seemed as if her star were in free fall. Diana when threatened always went into attack, and it was no doubt this pugnacious aspect that compelled her to utter her famous remark to the gaggle of journalists and photographers gathered on the shores of the Mediterranean, watching her frolic on the Fayed yacht, Jonikal, in the July of that same year: "You're going to get a big surprise with the next thing I do." This statement has been largely interpreted as her intention to convert to Islam and marry Dodi Fayed but it may simply have been an impulse driven comment designed to tantalise, with no clear plan behind it. Tragically, the world was not just surprised by what happened next but rocked on its axis.

Chapter VII, Death Of A Princess

Online Version (Page 3 of 7)

.pdf Format (54Kb)