So passive, so placid, so receptive, so mutable, so conservative, a sign as Cancer cannot be expected to accord with the active, violent, creative, determined, revolutionary rays of Uranus. It will tend to dissolve his violence. rather as water mingles with sulphuric acid, generating fierce heat perhaps for a moment, but leaving a diluted substance, the qualities of both, for good or evil, quenched and dissipated. Yet there may in favorable conditions be found a modification and expansion of the force, just as some violent perfume needs to be spread out into a greater volume before the olfactory nerves can perceive it with pleasure. We shall then expect to find the power of Uranus neutralised by Cancer, and whether this leaves a residuum potent and yet pleasant will depend (far more than in other signs upon the Ascendant, and upon the dignities and aspects of the lord thereof, and upon those of Uranus himself.
We shall certainly not expect to discover many people who have revolutionised their age. who have dominated their contemporaries in any radical manner. We shall not expect any real strength of will, any true masterfulness of temperament.
The facts bear alit this prognosis. There is Savonarola, to take out best available example first, but his Uranus is in 29 degrees, and its influence extends therefore to the cusp of Leo. In his case, moreover, Aries is rising, with Mars exalted in Capricornus; and his Uranus is trined by Jupiter. Mars is weakened by the conjunction of the f!.loon, but the square of Saturn adds determination, and somewhat embitters the configuration, while Mars, being in the tenth. house, dominates the entire figure. There is therefore, much force in the personality; the temperament is directed to religion and confined within those limits by the aforesaid trine of Jupiter who is in his own house, Pisces, just above the horizon.
In 28 degrees is the Uranus of Byron, and here, too, perhaps Leo has something to say in the matter. But Cancer is rising and its lady the ~loon is in close conjunction with Uranus. The temperament is therefore harmonious within itself, but easy-going, pleasure-loving, artistic, sensuous, eccentric and mutable. The power of the character comes rather from Mars – in his fall on the cusp o f the Ascendant. This configuration seems admirably to describe the best and the worst of the poet. Strong-willed and self-willed he was, yet unable to persist in will; he was at once weak and violent, stormy and querulous; with all his advantages and his talents, his rank and his reputation. he died a disappointed man, having sought in vain that victory which comes only from virtue.
Another hot-tempered individual was Queen Elizabeth I. whose Uranus is with Saturn. Lord of the Ascendant, Capricornus. in the house of marriage and of public enemies. Here is a fatal opposition of personality and temperament. The whole substance of her ,will was bound up in the seventh house, and arrogant and masterful as her personality was, she could never secure dynasty. In spite of all the glories of her reign, its true essence and tragedy – and the tragedy “Of England, the beginning of her decline and fall was her failure to save her house. From a Tudor to a Stuart, from a Stuart to a Guelph, from a Guelph to a Coburg, is a decay longer drawn-out, yet no less certain than the downgrade in Imperial Rome from Augustus to Tiberius. to Caligula. to Nero.
There are two other persons of importance in their day who have this position of Uranus: Alfred Harmsworth and Rudyard Kipling, both journalists, one in the wholesale and the other in the retail business. Kipling has Uranus on the very cusp of his Ascendant, and unquestionably there was never a more self-supporting personality. He struck an excessively definite note, and rose at times to extraordinary heights. He is the only author who has really succeeded in understanding and portraying the ruling class of England. The conjunction of Sol and Jupiter, and that of Mercury, Mars, and Venus, have much to say to this; but this is a digression, the point here to be emphasised is the unique personal note struck by Uranus in the Ascendant, and its resolution in artistic form by the fact of that Ascendant being Cancer.
With Harmsworth, the case is different. Jupiter is rising in Sagittarius, and the Uranus in Cancer becomes of secondary importance. It merely tics him down to a method, that of working upon the people, by publicity. The suddenness and fierceness of his schemes is determined by the rising sign.
Sir David Wilkie is a good example of this position. Gemini is rising, and its lord Mercury weakened by the opposition of Mars, so that the influence of Uranus in Cancer comes out strongly. Uranus is in trine to the Sun, confirming the artistic predisposition conferred by Cancer. Thus he was a sensible successful painter, with a fine sense of beauty, but with nothing in him to set the Firth of Forth on fire.
With him we may place Sir Henry Wood, a good, capable, conservative conductor, who would have been as faithful had fate placed him on a street car as in a concert hall. Gemini is rising; Uranus on the cusp of the third house, and Mercury is squared by Jupiter. It is (he same cause, a weakened personality, with the same effect, the undisturbed action of the placid Cancer mentality. Four planets in Pisces confirm the tendency to expression in artistic form.
Another example is the Tsar Nicholas. Virgo is rising, as passive and quiescent as Cancer itself, and Mercury is in close opposition to Saturn. Venus is in almost exact conjunction with Uranus in the tenth house. From such a configuration what good can be expected? The native happened to be born to the throne of all the Russias. Oh, unfortunate nation, to be punished with so weak a ruler at a time when a Caesar or an Alexander could hardly have averted the impending catastrophe.
Our last example is Madame Steinheil. In this nativity Aquarius is rising, but (here are no less than five planets in Aries, all just under the Ascendant, and the lord Saturn is trine from the tenth house to all of them in general, and Neptune in particular. Here then is the insatiable ambition, limitless and indomitable, except that being in the fifth house, it gave her the temperament of pleasure, and laid down the lines along which she worked to aggrandise her vaulting personality. Saturn in the tenth house laid his scythe to the root of her tree in the very season of its blossoming.