Darrelyn Gunzburg
December 2006
Continuing on with the theme of Jupiter, a woman was named this week as the leading environmental campaigner of all time (BBC News, 1st December) and her Jupiter reveals a story. Rachel Carson (born 27 May, 1907 in Springdale, Pennsylvania) was honoured this week for her book, Silent Spring, written in 1962 in the face of the rising environmental disaster after World War II,
Carson’s background in biology and zoology and her love of writing found a happy marriage when she obtained a job writing radio scripts for the US Fisheries and Wildlife Service during the Depression. She wrote her first book, The Sea Around Us, in 1941, describing the struggle for life in the ocean, and whilst a critical success, it did not sell well. Two more books followed where she showed her rare skill of being able to write about complicated scientific information in moving, lyrical prose. The eventual success of The Sea Around Us finally enabled her to resign from government service in 1952 and devote herself to her writing.
Deeply disturbed by the profligate use of synthetic chemical pesticides after World War II, Carson began to pen her ground breaking work, Silent Spring.
Carson has Jupiter in Cancer (exalted) in opposition to Mars in Capricorn (exalted). One can suggest that this opposition is the engine room of her chart providing conflict, drive and determination particularly when we see that she also has Neptune and Uranus involved in the pattern. However, the Jupiter-Mars is the more personal side of this opposition, so let’s look at what stars are in paran to this key part of her chart.
Starlight says of Jupiter in paran with with the royal star Fomalhaut (see the Fomalhaut):
Charismatic, or to have a philosophical cause, and a love of the classics
And in paran with her Mars was Pollux in Gemini which is defined in Starlight as:
Expressing unpopular or even dangerous opinions
Carson’s desire to express a philosophical cause through her writing was indeed to prove both unpopular and a dangerous opinion. For big businesses who had interests in chemicals, reacted strongly to her suggestion in Silent Spring that the totally eradication of all insect life would result not only in the loss of bird life (hence the title of the book) but the breakdown of the entire environment. She was slandered and her scientific credentials were undermined and many other scientists dismissed her as an amateur, a hysterical spinster and a sensationalist.
Yet the book fired and inspired the public and within months, government policy was changing.
Because of Carson’s profound effect on all of us, I also had a look at her Jupiter through Starlight’s mundane parans which is a way of looking at a person’s relationship to larger global issues. (For those of you who own Starlight, simple select “Mundane Parans” under the Text 1 or Text 2 button). Rachel Carson’s Jupiter gave the following mundane parans:
Jupiter rising when Betelgeuse is rising: Being confident in actions
Jupiter setting when Acumen is rising: Risk-taking due to a social conscience
Jupiter on the Nadir when Fomalhaut is rising: The grand, or big vision
These need no additional comment but what I did notice, also under her mundane parans, was a star in paran relationship to her Pluto – Ras Alhague, the head of Ophiuchus and the great healer in the sky. Brady says of this combination in Starlight: “The wisdom of one influences many”. Indeed we have all benefited from the wisdom of Rachel Carson.
The results of the public’s response to Silent Spring was that Rachel Carson was invited to speak before a Senate scientific committee, and in 1972 the Government publicly accepted the risks that DDT posed to the environment and human health and its use was stopped.
Here we see the results of Carson being confident in her actions (Jupiter in paran with Betelgeuse), taking a risk and following her social conscious (Jupiter in paran with Acumen) and seeing the grand vision (Jupiter in paran with Fomalhaut), for it allowed her to express what may have appeared to be an unpopular position (Mars in paran with Pollux). Yet with the Royal Star Fomalhaut connected with her Jupiter, she was promised success as long as she does not manipulate her success for personal glorification.
Unfortunately Carson did not live to see the results of the change of government policy for she died from breast cancer 14 April, 1964, just two years after the book was published. Nevertheless her vision lives on and many are aware that it is as relevant today as it was when she wrote it.
