This position is highly favourable for Uranus, for his great energy is set to honest constructive work. One can immediately instance such empire-builders as Napoleon, Cecil Rhodes, and Wilhelm II: and on the higher plane, we find two persons who actually invented new theogonies, which philosophy declares to be the highest creative work possible to the human intelligence. We refer to Dante and Swedenborg, whose conceptions of Hell still hold sway over the minds of great masses of men. Such empires endure long after earthly thrones have crumbled.
Swedenborg has Sagittarius rising, and his Uranus is on the cusp of the fourth house: Dante has Gemini rising, and Uranus well above the horizon in the twelfth. Both these signs are far from material, Sagittarius more mystical, Gemini more intellectual; and accordingly we differentiate between the types of work which they were able to accomplish.
Wilhelm III has Cancer rising, and accordingly he is blamed by his own subjects for that obstinate devotion to peace which delayed (and thus made more uncontrollable, ultimately) the outbreak of the Great War.
Rhodes’ has Sagittarius rising, with Jupiter its lord just above the horizon; Swedenborg’s Jupiter was exactly trine to Uranus, emphasising the religious bias; that of Rhodes is squared by Neptune, which would tend to remove those qualities from Jupiter, and bring out his force on more terrestrial lines.
Napoleon had Libra rising, and his Uranus is in the seventh house; but Libra and Taurus are sympathetic through the fact that Venus rules both; and Venus is sextile to Herschel ,and culminating. There lies the explanation of his extraordinary sense of justice; the Code Napoleon ranks with the laws of Manu and the Li-King as supreme among legislative efforts.
Yet another example of Uranus in Taurus is the Prince Imperial; but for reasons indicated in another place, the life itself was cut short, and its will consequently aborted.
Tom Mann has this planet in the Ascendant, but Aries is on the cusp. The two signs are contrary in nature, so there is a lack of harmony. His will-force is occupied entirely with Taurus in its lowest form, that of labour; the sextile of Neptune to Uranus lends eccentricity to the ideas involved, and Aries rising makes the temperament violent and abrupt. Uranus thus assumes its most explosive form, and the result is an ignorant and unbalanced agitator.
A superficially most dissimilar case is that of Charles I. Here Leo is rising, and Uranus is un the cusp of the tenth house, always a dangerous position for a malefic, Leo gives the good-heartedness characteristic of that unfortunate monarch, but Neptune rising made his temperament unstable. This combined with the obstinacy of will shown by Uranus in Taurus, gave a disposition which could only bring about disaster.
Here is a very cognate example in Asquith, whose obstinate patience (and nothing else) has kept him at the head of a most unruly majority in the House of Commons. Here Cancer is rising, making him tactful and pliable on the surface; Uranus in the house of Friends enables him to conceal beneath that apparent amiability a determination of steel.
A case of very similar persistence in a woman is furnished by Lillie Langtry. In a feminine horoscope one naturally expects to find the venereal side of Taunts brought out fully, especially as Libra is rising. So the career is marked as singularly successful; the constructive form is able to develop itself without too great hindrance, especially as the Sun is rising, sextile to Jupiter. No doubt this aspect determines the character of the object of her will; for example, had Saturn and Luna been in the Ascendant, she might have become a worker among the poor.
Finally, we have a large group of “‘filers. We may pair for convenience Bernard Shaw and Havelock Ellis,! i1 The Uranus of the latter being in the third house caused his mind to occupy itself with very unusual subjects; Aquarius rising gave a scientific turn to the personality, the result we know.
Shaw, with Gemini rising, has Uranus just above the eastern horizon: the unusual character of the man is thus made emphatic; but the moon, on the very cusp of the Ascendant, makes it vacillating and even self-contradictory. Gemini rising adds to the airy lightness of the personality, and conceals the tremendous driving force of Uranus, For beneath the mask of easy wit and paradox, Shaw has done more to upset conventional ideas than any other man III England, except Swinburne, since Shelley.
Among novelists we have Guy de Maupassant and Mabel Collins. It is hardly too much to say that the former created the ‘short story’ in France. Here is Virgo rising, with Venus on the horizon in conjunction with ~Mars. This violence of passion, with Uranus in the eighth, presaged his melancholy and appalling death; but before this effect could take place on the physical plane, it must first produce that miraculous labour whose fruit is still so sweet in OUT mouths.
With this we may compare the horoscope of Oscar Wilde. Here Uranus is again too near the tenth house to make for permanence. Virgo rising has its lord Mercury near the opposition of Uranus; a careful consideration of the differences in these dispositions will mark most significantly the variation of his career from that of the great French writer. But we must once more point out that Uranus in Taurus cannot fail; Wilde’s work, shallow, insincere, and stolen as it was, yet produced a tremendous, and we are bound to admit, a not altogether desirable effect upon the younger generation, especially among the half-educated.
There is also Mabel Collins, who did much to make the success of the theosophical movement by some rather interesting writings. As in the case of Lillie Langtry, Libra is rising; but Saturn being in exact conjunction with Uranus, Venus trine to them and Neptune sextile with Jupiter in the Ascendant, the career is less material; the direction of the will is more to power of a subtler and more permanent sort.
Lastly, we have two very singular poets, Coleridge and Philip Bourke Marston. The former has Sagittarius rising, which adds its element of shy suddenness to the personality; it is refined and beautiful like a deer. Uranus in the fifth gives that mystic tinge which is the essence of the beauty of his poetry, but alas! when it worked down to the material plane made him the slave of his pleasures. The pre-Raphaelite poet [Marston], on the other hand, has Leo rising, and was generous, frank and free. Uranus in the ninth house gave another kind of mysticism. Both these men, were, however, strongly determined by Uranus in Taunts. Their work is patient steady and constructive. Coleridge had it hampered by the exact square of Jupiter, and the blindness of Marston no doubt prevented his will from coming to full flower; but the determination in both cases, is most evidently there.