T.S.Eliot in the House(s)

Found this cool quote a couple of weeks back on Christopher Coppola's Blog (www.christophercoppola.com):

Where is the knowledge that is lost in information? Where is the wisdom that is lost in knowledge?

–T.S. Eliot

Information = 3d House, Mercury, Gemini
Knowledge = Mercury (Jupiter, Aquarius)
Wisdom = Jupiter, Sagittarius, Sun

According to Rex Bills the Rulerships for Eliot's statement are mostly covered by the 3d-9th House Axis with some information coming in from the Leo-Aquarius Axis. Mercury & Jupiter are definitely required. The Aquarius influence didn't surprise me at all but the Sun rulership did. No one really equates Sun-Leo with Wisdom anymore it seems. Well, I personally just think of blonds at the beach. I guess I always equate Wisdom with Saturn, maybe in non-western cultures with Virgo.

Then I got sick and spent a lot of time in bookstores spreading my germs all over stray books. In a book of writings by the poet Rumi (don't have the title of the link) I found a small essay/poem that compares Solar Wisdom with "Lightning" Intelligence which I assume is more Mercurial and Uranian. When you think about it, the Greeks wouldn't have developed Democracy if they hadn't chosen the God of the Sun, Apollo, for their main God.

Then I found this quote: "The web of just acts holds the world together, making it golden." by Rabbi David of Lelov (from 18th-19th century). There's something so clean about all this Solar Energy. I always struggle with the negative side of Uranian and Neptunian intelligence; there really is a loss of innocence there and things are falling apart. I'm not saying that Solar Wisdom can stand on its own in a perfect world because I think it's too Simplistic but I do think that we could try to integrate it a little more into the Uranus-Neptunian brains that seem to dominate right now. (Whew, you can tell my lungs are clogged and I'm not getting enough oxygen these days.)

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Looking at T.S. Eliot's chart in what I hoped would be a quick chat. Not possible, his Sun trines the Neptune-Pluto conjunction in Gemini that occurred back in the 1880's in his chart. He was born to really take you out of your orbit. Jupiter & Mercury rule his 3d & 9th House cusps respectively so one can see how there could be an endless loop of trying to communicate ideas and knowledge. And Mercury rules a conjunction of Neptune & Pluto. Those planets account for the idea of getting lost or of losing one idea into another.

Thomas Stearns Eliot
Sept. 26, 1888 7:45 am St. Louis. MO

Sun 4 Libra; ASC 26 Libra; Moon 15 Gemini; MC 30 Cancer; NN 27 Cancer

Four planets plus the Ascendant in Libra, almost all in the 12th House. Now that's a Poet.

Eliot's Sun, Uranus, Venus in Libra are in H12 with Mercury in the 1st House conjunct the ASC and squaring the Moon's Nodes crossing the 9th (NN) and 3d Houses. Now that's a Poet's Poet.

What else could he have been but a poet? Would you trust a guy with this chart to work on your carburetor? This is the generation that invented the carburetors, but with a chart like this I wouldn't expect them to be able to fix a damn thing. I've read that Eliot also shared some of the negative prejudices of his age, sexism and anti-semiticism. Am not sure exactly how.

Eliot was born during the Neptune-Pluto conjunction in Gemini of the 1880s. He has this conjunction in his 8th House along with his Moon and opposing natal Mars and Jupiter in Sagittarius in the 2d House. These are in trine/sextile to his natal Sun. Jupiter rules the 3d House. Mercury rules the 9th House. Jupiter rules Journeys. Neptune rules getting lost. No wonder the guy was asking questions about how one type of intelligence gets lost in another in a never ending loop. I've started reading some of his poetry now and you really can get lost into wherever he leads you. It's delightful, like watching a cat unroll a ball of yarn. Just when you can't understand an idea he starts playing with words like an old Irish drunk and draws you back in again.

Eliot's last work The Quartets, is actually almost accessible if you read it from an astrological point of view. The Quartets share a common theme about understanding Time. Eliot had Saturn in the 10th House. That's good: 10th House and the Midheaven can indicate what you're known for. I read that Eliot considered this to be his best work.

The Poem is available to read here: www.ubriaco.com.

Each Quartet is divided into 5 sections, a number associated with the Venus transits, Pentagrams and the Golden Mean. This is definitely an expression of Eliot's own chart where Venus rules half the planets, the chart itself and is final dispositor.

A Quartet, of course, is a grouping of Four. And each Quartet is related to an Element:

"Burnt Norton" - Air

Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance

"East Coker" - Earth

In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth...

There is some great imagery about using dance to keep rhythm as a way of understanding time. That's earthy. I've been told that Rock Musicians seem to have strong Earth in their charts. This is earthy as well, although I don't think Rock Stars would appreciate that no ecstacy is allowed:

To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstacy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.

And then how is this for a description of Capricorn?

"Old men ought to be explorers."

"The Dry Salvages" - Water

Great lines leading up to this at the beginning of the poem.

The river is within us, the sea is all about us.

Astrology comes up here as it ought to in a poem about Water:

V

To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits,
To report the behaviour of the sea monster,
Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry,
Observe disease in signatures, evoke
Biography from the wrinkles of the palm
And tragedy from fingers; release omens
By sortilege, or tea leaves, riddle the inevitable
With playing cards, fiddle with pentagrams
Or barbituric acids, or dissect
The recurrent image into pre-conscious terrors-
To explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams; all these are usual
Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press:
And always will be, some of them especially
Whether on the shores of Asia, or in the Edgware Road,
Men's curiosity searches past and future
And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint—
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,

"Little Gidding" - Fire

Certainly some Jupiter, Mars, Sun influence in talk about Exploration:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;

A Literal description of the Aries Point here:

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart's heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing
The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time
But not in time's covenant. Now the hedgerow
Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom
Of snow, a bloom more sudden
Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,
Not in the scheme of generation.
Where is the summer, the unimaginable
Zero summer?