The Turning Points Series:
Radio, film, and television have made the rapid explosion of celebrity possible. Rare is the individual who can handle the inflation and subsequent roller coaster ride. Equally difficult to handle is the influx of sudden wealth and the loss of a private life. By studying the impact of celebrity on the pop icons of our culture, we can more easily discern the hand of fate. Elvis, Brando, Garland, Bob Dylan, Teddy Roosevelt, Marilyn, and Orson Welles have been the subjects of a series of seminars I’ve led on Turning Points over the past few years. These “turning point” moments are analyzed to illustrate the characteristics of such moments as shown by progressions, solar returns, and transits. The purpose is to illuminate moments of profound change so that the reader can identify such moments in a client’s life and provide the client with a long-term perspective on the process of transformation in their life. The life of Elvis Aaron Presley is a prime example.
Fifty years ago, around 9:30pm on July 7th, 1954, Dewey Phillips aired a pre-release song by an unknown 19 year-old plumbing supply truck driver. The response was immediate and overwhelming. The song was played 14 times in a row. Over five thousand requests came in to hear the song. The singer was hiding in a theatre, too nervous and shy to be in public when his first real recording was played. His mother had to find him when Dewey called for an on-air interview that same night. Listeners couldn’t tell if the singer was black or white. Pop music and pop culture were forever changed. Rock and Roll was born. Elvis, the King, had arrived.
At 9:25pm on July 7th, 1954 the twenty-sixth degree of Aquarius was rising and the M.C. was in Sagittarius approaching Elvis’s natal ascendant. His natal Saturn, ruler of Sun, Mercury, and Venus, lies at 25 Aquarius 45. Venus and Pluto were conjunct in the 24th degree of Leo in exact sextile to Neptune and had just set in the west. Saturn, ruler of his natal Sun, Mercury, and Venus, is stationary direct. Transit Neptune is also stationary direct and lies in the 24th degree of Libra making a cardinal cross of his natal T-square. (His T-square involved the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Uranus, Pluto, Saturn, and the Moon.) Within a month transit Uranus conjuncts his natal Pluto in the same cardinal cross.
A year before, in the late spring of 1953, Saturn and Neptune began the long conjunction in 20-22 Libra that lasted until late August. Elvis made his performing debut at the Hume High School talent show in April and was so well received that an encore was requested. His rendition of “Old Shep” was reputed to have brought tears to the eyes of his teachers. Elvis had connected with his first audience and confirmed his talent. Neptune and Saturn’s conjunction at the release point of his natal T-square pattern had begun to manifest its tremendous potential for collective transformation. Saturn can give form and substance to the imagination of Neptune; for Elvis it toned down the “wild man” of his natal Uranus in Aries squaring Pluto in Cancer to a more socially acceptable, sometimes charming, level. This transit pair resonates with his natal Capricorn Sun in trine to Neptune, his most elevated planet. He could begin to assume his role as an American Dionysus leading his young followers out of the button-down repression of the 1950’s into the sexuality and abandon of rock and roll.
In July 1954, Neptune again energized the release point of his T-square by stationing direct exactly on it. In the 1950’s powerful radio stations broadcasting from unique subcultures were breaking down barriers in music. Television was moving into living rooms with a similar effect on cultural boundaries. But radio was the most Neptunian influence: it’s invisible, omnipresent in car and home, and could emerge from the background of a moment like an emotional musical score. The early 1950’s saw Saturn and Neptune conjunct, squared by Uranus, and sextile to Pluto in an historic configuration. The collective unconscious violently intruded into the culture. School children practiced hiding from atomic attack under their desks in “duck and cover” drills. McCarthy rode the wave of anti-Communism and fear. The Rosenbergs were sacrificed to the same terrible demon. B-horror movies like “The Thing” and “Creature from the Black Lagoon” expressed the growing awareness that uncontrollable forces had been unleashed in the world. The Korean War segued into the Cold War. The globalizing energy of the outer planets assaulted Saturn’s boundaries and status quo.
Elvis’s natal chart fits this historic pattern like a puzzle piece. His natal chart has several accidentally dignified planets ready to resonate with transit conditions. His natal T-square was charged and ready for Neptune’s release into the airwaves. A month later, in August 1954, his record’s instant popularity led to stage performances, and on stage Elvis quickly learned that his unconscious sensual movements had an equally powerful response. He began to take conscious control, Capricorn style, over the powerful energy flowing between him and his audience.
The solar return for Elvis in 1954 shows Pluto in Leo rising in opposition to a 25 Aquarius Moon. This Moon is on the highly charged point that conjuncts his natal Saturn and his progressed Venus and Mercury. The Moon is also trine to Neptune in the third, and in quincunx and mutual reception with Uranus in the twelfth. Pluto rising in a solar return indicates a brush with death and transformation. In Leo, ruled by the Sun in opposition to Uranus from sixth house to twelfth, the focus is on finding a vocation, or rather a vocation finding Elvis. The 7th house Moon brings him before the public and, ruling the twelfth house, the moon aspects and channels the powerful outer planet configuration. His natal Capricorn stellium of the Sun, Venus, and Mercury has reformed on the sixth house cusp in opposition to Uranus – pointing to a surprise or radical occurrence with energy flowing from the Moon ruling that same Uranus. With Taurus on the MC and Venus in the sixth house stellium, a personal talent like singing is a possible factor in his changing public stature. Finally, Saturn and Mars are conjunct in Scorpio on the IC. This raises the question, “Where do I belong?” It also clearly marks a break with his past and defining a new home or foundation.
Also in the late spring of 1953, the progressed Moon in his tenth house in Libra made the exact trine to the progressed conjunction of Mercury and Venus in the twenty-third degree of Aquarius. (Note that the Moon is conjunct the transit Saturn – Neptune in Libra.) This progressed Moon’s tenth house position focuses Elvis on his public status, pushing him in effect onto the stage with the trine allowing an easy flow of energy with the public for an unknown singer. During the year he performs numerous one-night stands continuing to extend himself into the public eye despite his native Capricorn shyness.
By July 7th, 1954 progressed Mercury and Venus were still conjunct, well within orb, and closing on his natal Saturn. His progressed Ascendant was at 29 Sagittarius 12 on 7 July 1954, about to change signs and enter the influence of this natal Saturn linked to the personal planet pair in Aquarius. His progressed Moon was making a Last Quarter square from Scorpio to his progressed Sun. These are indicators of a life turning a corner and leaving its past behind. The progressed Ascendant changes signs at roughly 30-year intervals, maybe 3 times in a normal life. This alone indicates a major change in self-presentation in the native’s life. Sagittarius in Elvis’s chart is ruled by Jupiter in Scorpio in the twelfth house, hidden and buffeted by unconscious forces and receiving energy and family karma from Pluto in his eighth in Cancer. The shift to Capricorn, ruled by Saturn in Aquarius in his third puts more control in his hands and shifts the underlying energy to Uranus the super-rebel in Aries in his fifth house of self-expression.
In less than eighteen months, Elvis would go from supporting his family on a truck driver’s income to a living in a new home, buying his mother a pink Cadillac, and more money than he knew how to spend. He had a contract with RCA Victor and was headed for his film debut.
Elvis was born into extreme poverty; Vernon and Gladys Presley were living in a crudely constructed, unheated shotgun shack with outdoor plumbing far on the wrong side of the tracks. His twin brother Jesse was stillborn but Elvis maintained “contact” with his brother all his life, prayed to him, and spoke with him in dreams. With Saturn in Aquarius exactly quincunx Pluto in the eighth in Cancer and conjunct his Pisces moon, the family situation is not only impoverished but points to serious problems.
Many people with Uranus involved with Saturn or the Moon or Uranus with MC/IC placement have to assume a parental role in the family. They often re-enact the castration myth of Kronos overthrowing his father, Ouranos, the archetype of generational conflict. Elvis’s father never took up his responsibilities as father and provider. He was a great disappointment to his little Capricorn boy. Vernon was sent to Parchman prison for check forgery in the sale of a pig. Later the Presleys moved to Memphis because Vernon was run out of Tupelo for bootlegging. Although Elvis is an extreme example, the Uranian lack of fathering often begins the individuation process. The pain and confusion of a troubled childhood can open the native up to non-standard life choices in later years.
Elvis experienced his mother through his Pisces Moon as a sensitive, sometimes mediumistic, person who insulated herself from her harsh reality with alcohol. His intensely emotional and clearly Oedipal relationship with her is seen in the tight quincunx between Saturn, conjunct his Pisces Moon, and Pluto in Cancer in the eighth. Elvis shared a bed with her in the unheated shack while Vernon was banished to the sofa. Elvis became family breadwinner as soon as possible; he worked two jobs in high school. Not only does this relationship color all his personal life and interactions with women, since Saturn rules all his inner planets, but the underlying aspect pattern also points to a potential death-rebirth experience in life when Pluto is activated.
A Pisces Moon often indicates life lived in imaginary idealized reality. Emotional experience and women are held up to impossibly high and sometimes contradictory standards. Gladys projected her own dreams of fame as an entertainer onto Elvis; his fans projected their own ideal of the sensitive rebel on him; living up to these ideals ultimately proved impossible.
In addition to the Aquarius Saturn and Pisces Moon influence, Elvis’s Capricorn stellium is one end of a five planet T-square that squares Uranus in Aries and opposes Pluto in Cancer. This T-square linking the personal planets with the outer planets creates the potential for metamorphic change when triggered. Uranus in Aries in the fifth yearns for a radical self-expression. This pressure from the deep unconscious was clearly felt by the young Elvis. Elvis the boy identified himself with comic book character Freddy Freeman who could transform himself from a crippled teenager into Captain Marvel, Jr., a super boy. Elvis told his cousin Earl he believed he had a “super boy” within him waiting to burst forth. He dyed and styled his hair as a teenager to heighten his resemblance to the cartoon character. The cape and high collar of his later stage costumes copy the costume style of the adolescent super hero. Elvis put Captain Marvel, Jr.’s lightning logo on his private jet and worn it around his neck as symbols of his “marvelous” transformation.
The second house emphasis on voice, talent, money, and personal power is clear from the Capricorn stellium with Venus accidentally dignified on the highly charged last degree. Venus also trines the MC and is midway between the Part of Fortune and the Moon’s nodes. The Part of Fortune in the 2nd shows a natural solar-lunar functioning to develop his own resources and talents.
Note the unusual number of planets reinforced by house position: Venus in the second, Pluto in the eighth, Mars in the tenth, and Jupiter in the twelfth. This suggests that external conditions would enhance and amplify natal energies: the world was receptive and resonated with his native energy.
The point is often made that Elvis’s Sun sextiles his ruler, Jupiter in the twelfth house, which indicates that he had a talent to illuminate the collective unconscious sexuality using his Scorpio Jupiter, literally his thrusting pelvis.
Finally the public found Elvis with his tenth house Libra Mars as a beautiful sexy young man. His Mars sextiles his ascendant and squares his Sun. More strong energy flows to this accidentally exalted Mars from its ruler Venus which is accidentally dignified and trine the MC.
Conclusion:
All of us go through changes as our life unfolds. Some of these changes are gradual curves, shading slowly from one influence into another. Some are short-lived and periodic like the 2-3 year pulses from the progressed Moon. And sometimes changes pile up, outer planets become involved, and we reach a turning point where our life dramatically shifts. Rarely do our lives transform as radically as Elvis Presley’s did in 1954 and the succeeding years. But we can study extreme examples of change, like Elvis and others, to identify the characteristics of a major turning point and then be able to predict them as we study the long-term time landscape for our clients. Our clients need to have the current moment put into perspective and understand if they are emerging from a period of extreme evolution, in the ebb-tide a year or two before such a change, or on a plateau of relatively steady evolution.
Although most of us have clients whose lives have undergone profound change, the information we can share is anecdotal and essentially private. There are many public figures whose lives and birth data are well documented and whose lives exhibit moments of massive upheaval. Marlon Brando, who left us last week, was a relatively unknown New York stage actor in 1947. On December third at 8:00pm, he opened in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” having won the part over Burt Lancaster and John Garfield among others. When the curtain came down, he received a standing ovation for over half an hour for his portrayal of Stanley Kowalski. His anonymity had ended; so had sleeping on sofas and cadging meals between small parts. American acting was forever changed. A year later he’s in Hollywood and two years later his name is on everyone’s lips when the film version of “Streetcar” is made.
Bibliography:
The Inner Elvis, Peter Whitmer, Hyperion, 1996
Elvis, Albert Goodman, McGraw-Hill, 1981
The Boy who would be King, Earl Greenwood & Kathy Tracey, Dutton, 1990
The Ultimate Elvis, Patricia Jobe Pierce, Simon & Schuster, 1994
Last Train to Memphis, Peter Guralnick, Little Brown & Co, 1994
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