When I was in London last August, I became curious about the biography of Queen Victoria and I fell in love with her birth chart – her astrological “horoscope.” I followed it through her life, her love for Albert, the various ups and downs of her reign, and I visited her monuments, palaces and gardens to get a feel for who she was.
Please – let me say this first: I am no historian of the Royal family! Nor do I know all the history about what really happened between Queen Victoria and the man she eventually called her “Munshi.” I also realize it was a relationship just begging to be deconstructed and analyzed within the context of colonial rule and all the nine yards of what that implies…But…
As synchronicity would have it, I noticed a similarity between the Queen’s story and the sky now in terms of evolutionary astrology. It just seems suggestive to me of what – maybe, just maybe - some folks might be experiencing, if their chart is being stimulated by the current sky – the middle of January, 2020.
Most of my astrology friends know that this week there is a rather rare conjunction, Saturn and Pluto, a phenomenon that happens about three times a century, happening now in the sign of Capricorn. Queen Victoria was born in 1819 during one of these rare occurrences; she has Saturn and Pluto conjunct in Pisces in her 11th House in her birth chart.
Now there is much one could say about Queen Victoria’s chart, yet alone about her long reign and what was happening in her life astrologically. Most telling is the fact the Queen was a “triple Gemini,” born on the New Moon in Gemini, when the luminaries (Sun and Moon) were just over the horizon, in the Queen’s 12th House.
Anyone who has ever been intrigued by the life of Queen Victoria knows she expressed many “Gemini” qualities; she loved to learn, wrote correspondence constantly during her entire reign, and had a natural curiosity (which she shared with Prince Albert) for facts and invention.
With a stellium (a bunch of planets) in the 12th House, and Pluto, Chiron and Saturn conjunct in the 11th along with Jupiter in the 10th, Victoria was clearly a lady defined by public duty that required a loss of self in her role within the institution of the monarchy.
Her Pluto, Chiron and Saturn together suggest a wound and blockage, a Piscean sensitivity, to her need to let go and abandon ‘self,’ due to her office and responsibilities, and with the difficulties she experienced with father figures (Saturn) early in her life. Given the conjunction is in the 11th House, perhaps, later in life, she might be able to claim that wound and make it part of her personal power.
Cut to 1887, the year of the Queen’s Jubilee (she was 68). Queen Victoria met an Indian servant, Abdul Karim, who eventually became her close confidant, advisor and teacher. Astrologers sometimes look at a technique called ‘solar arcs’ to help a person work with their evolving self – who they are becoming. The summer the Queen met Karim, whom she later called her “Munshi,” the Queen’s natal Pluto, Chiron, Saturn conjunction had reached - by solar arc, exact by degree in her chart – the Queen’s natal New Moon (Sun and Moon conjunction).
The Gemini heart and soul of Victoria were being given a chance by the universe to transform (Pluto) the wound (Chiron) and move her into a more mature voice of the elder monarch (Saturn), a Queen more openly accepting and respectful of India’s diverse and unique heritage.
The Munshi offered Victoria a chance to see the world differently, to embrace Indian culture, to try cuisine in the form of exotic curries, and to learn Urdu – a difficult task she apparently seemed to love. She was not only exploring what Indian culture had to offer, but was experiencing and growing into a new level of acceptance, an acceptance of a people very different from her own.
I must say my own Gemini Moon just loved seeing her lesson books filled with Urdu script – known as Hindustani at the time – in a special exhibition at Kensington Palace this past summer!
Needless to say, the Queen’s new understanding and open acceptance of what was seen as an “inferior” culture was not well received – by Royal family, staff, and essentially her whole household…
Eventually, a few years later, solar arc Saturn, Chiron and Pluto reached the Queen’s Gemini ascendant – her rising sign, how she “dawns on the world” - her close friendship with Karim Abdul created escalating tension, opposition, and stubborn resistance (Saturn) and power struggles (Pluto) from the Royal court. Even her own son, heir to the throne, questioned her sanity, refusing to see beyond the commonly-held perceptions of colonial subjects, the set notions due to the racism in British society at the time, of what most English people believed about the people of India.
Can we see such challenges faced by Queen Victoria as a lesson for our own times? Of course, the current Saturn / Pluto conjunction occurs in a very different sign – Capricorn – but perhaps we can take a look at these archetypes together as a moment of potential – approach it with a willingness to work hard and with discipline on personal transformation, despite the obstacles we may face.
Maybe it might help to consider how this conjunction hits our own birth chart. Because let’s face it; our friends and family so often don’t want to see us change. They like the picture of us they have come to know. The Queen met that power of resistance and she embraced Karim anyway. A relationship fraught with colonial overtones, certainly…But I sure do respect her courage.