Cancer Rising, Libra Moon / Part 3 of the Astrology of Mel Gibson

Mel is a Capricorn (a born executive, an ambitious and hard worker), with Cancer rising (a family man, someone to whom home and hearth are essential to life), so that's a challenge already. It's kind of a schizo way to have to live. He is literally torn between the two halves of himself: the ambitious, successful, money-making, A-list actor and Hollywood Power Exec, and the family-loving guy with an emotional need to create children, either of his body or mind. Mel has lost both of the things that are most important to him in the past couple of years--his family and his career.

In the human body, Capricorn rules the knees, and sooner or later, every Capricorn must bend his. I'm just going to bluntly tell you because it's true, that Capricorns think they run everything, and that no one can do anything as well as they can do it themselves. They have a tendency to take over everything in their path. Sadly, for them, unless they come to realize that they do not run the universe, that something much greater than they runs the universe, then the day they will be driven to their knees is somewhere in their future. For Mel, that future is now.

The moon is the ruler of his chart because it's associated with Cancer, the sign on his Ascendant, affectionately referred to as the rising sign.

 

The rising sign is the outer part of ourselves that we show the world. It's our physical form, the first and lasting impression we make, and our personality as a whole. It's a kind of mug shot. Until his DUI, Mel’s mug shot portrayed him as a family man who loved his wife. Often. That was our Cancer-induced perception of him.



This place on the chart often indicates "you, in this place, at this time," when the moon traverses it like a second hand on a clock.



Mel's moon in Libra, the sign of relationships, makes it dignified, or very strong. He needs another person to balance him, to bounce things off, to be with. The moon represents his emotional needs, and how he feels about women, particularly his mother, his wife, and his lover. He was born to be married and to be a father. His deepest and innermost self requires it. Do you need a refresher?



The moon occupies his 4th house, directing his emotional needs and attention to his home / family/ domestic matters / issues with mother, women and children / foundations and early childhood memories / and his ultimate ending.

FUN FACT: The moon is often prominent in the charts of writers and alcoholics.

Use this link to skip to A Pisces Midheaven / Part 4 of the Astrology of Mel Gibson

A Pisces Midheaven / Part 4 of the Astrology of Mel Gibson

Mel has Pisces on the Midheaven, the place that represents his career, reputation, and direction in life. It's a place of both fame and notoriety, of honor and dishonor. Pisces, which is ruled by Neptune, is a sign of creativity: of acting, writing, directing, drawing, imagining, painting, music and magic.
But Neptune is the planet of illusion, delusion, deception, confusion, seeing things that aren't there, and not seeing things that are. It represents water and oil, liquids, bodies of water, and vast open spaces like oceans and skies and space. The Gulf Oil spill is a prime example of a Neptune affliction.

{Neptune may represent snowy mountains, too, but that's a theory that needs more data.}

Neptune has dominion over alcohol and drugs, disappearances, and conspiracies. That's why they can seldom be figured out. There's always some clue missing.




Mel's Neptune, the planet with the majority control over his direction in life, is also in his 4th house of home, family, domestic matters, real estate, and beginnings / endings, along with his moon. The 4th house shows us his foundations --peekaboo--and early life, as well as a partial view of his ultimate demise.
That's a very watery, boozy, cocaine kind of place.



Neptune doesn't get full control of Mel's career, reputation and direction, however. He has an interception in his chart. That's when one house swallows up one whole sign, and little bits of the following and preceding signs. At some latitudes, it can swallow up two whole signs, but the closer we move toward the poles, the whole chart begins to fall apart and is unreadable. An interception that falls into one house also falls into the opposite house. It's caused by an irregular curvature of the earth.









Old school astrologer Noel Tyl, a former opera singer, an authoritative sort with a voice like God, who happens to be a champion of my favorite astrologer, Jeffrey Wolf Green, wrote on the subject of interceptions:

"Interpretively...interception has little significance."

[From the glossary of "Teaching and Study Guide to the Principles and Practice of Astrology, by Noel Tyl; Llewellyn, 1976; page 706]

I disagree! Interceptions are like blinking neon arrows that point and flash an urgent message: Pay Attention Here.

In my experience, the intercepted houses are always a driving force of the person's life, almost like a secondary Midheaven. A huge amount of what happens to him can be described by the houses and signs involved. Esoterically, they, and any planets they contain, indicate lessons failed in a previous life that must now be repeated in an intensified course. And here is a prime example of that theory in action. Which two houses in Mel Gibson's chart are intercepted? The 10th (career, reputation, honor / dishonor) and the 4th, (home family, domestic issues / foundations / endings / and all those Oedipus complex / personal, private Madonna / Whore issues he’s having to very publicly (10th house) deal with right now.

With the moon intercepted in the 4th house, Mel withdraws emotionally. His feelings of rejection are intensified. Intercepted in Mel's 10th house / Midheaven is the sign of "Me first!" Aries. Aries is a very assertive, sometimes aggressive sign. They're take-charge-git-'er-done kinds of people. They tend to stomp all over the places and people upon which even angels fear to tread.

Mars is the ruler of Aries. It's also a co-ruler with Pluto of the sign Scorpio. Mel's Mars, a/k/a the Penis Planet (sex, sports, recreation, procreation, blood, scars, wounds, tools, weapons, wars, anger, hostility, impulses, and a bunch of others I respectfully refer to as “dick things”) is in sexy, smoldering, intense, passionate Scorpio.



It's conjunct (that's fancy astrology talk for "right next to"), his natal Saturn, the planet that gives weight and concrete form to whatever it touches. Saturn is also the planet that rules his sun sign, Capricorn. Both planets are in Mel's 5th house, the house of children and creativity (the child of one's mind). The 5th house is the house of entertainment, including such things as movies, theater, hobbies, games, vacations, recreation, love affairs and recreational sex.


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Use this link to skip to Mad Max / Part 5 of the Astrology of Mel Gibson  (The URL is wrong, by the way. It saved as Mad Max Part 3. But the link is right.) 

Winding Up Mel's Meltdown / Part 6 of the Astrology of Mel Gibson

Here's what was going on in Mel Gibson's chart on the day the news broke that tapes existed of his abusive behavior. The chart for the transits was made for July 9, 2010, at 5:59 p. m., the time I heard about it online.

First, so you can follow along, here's his natal chart again. It should be familiar to you by now.

Below is a chart made for the time that I heard about the tapes. It's the same as if I held a camera up to the sky and took a picture. Or better yet, began shooting a video, because unlike the chart above, which is frozen in time, this picture moves clockwise:

What? You thought it was really going to turn? You have to make it turn. Follow along, okay? Here's a little magic. I'm going to combine them. Let me know if I go too fast for you.

Voila! Now the natal chart is on the inside, and the transits (where the planets were that day) are on the outside. It makes it very easy to see what was going on in his chart.

The outer planets take a long time to move through their cycles. Pluto takes an average of 246 years to go around a chart just one time. It takes Neptune 164. It takes Uranus 84. There are some places in everyone's chart that those planets are never going to reach in our lifetime. In fact, they move so slowly that sometimes it appears they're moving backwards. We call it "retrograde," and those planets have a whole new set of "rules."

When a planet takes that long to move through a chart, imagine how important it is, if and when, it makes an aspect to a natal planet. Y'all, don't get all tweaked about aspects. They're easy. Think of a chart as a pool table with rounded corners. Two balls kissing is a conjunction. The cue ball at one end, and the 8 ball at the other, is an opposition. Or the cue ball centered at one end, and the 8 sitting just in front of either side pocket is a square--90 degrees. Sextiles (nothing to do with sex on the floor), are 60 degrees. That would be sort of like the cue ball being in front of the right pocket, and the 8 ball being half way between the near-left corner pocket and the left side pocket. And a trine would be similar, except the 8 ball would be twice as far away...say near the rail between the left side pocket and the left corner pocket at the far end of the table. 120 degrees. Easy shot, right?

One of the aspects that's giving Mel hell right now, is the same one that's causing a lot of us hell. If you were born at the tail end of the Baby Boomer generation--mid 1950's to early 1960's--when Pluto was in the last degrees of Leo, you're in the same boat with him. If you were born later than that, you're not off the hook. Your time is coming. Pluto is the planet of extremes, so it's both a generational influence, and the most personal one: the journey our own soul is on.

So while we as a generation may lose something--like our way of life as we know it--we will likely lose something unique to us, as well. A person. A place. A thing. Something that has helped to define us will be removed. It depends on where Pluto is in our chart, and which house it rules. In Mel's chart, Pluto represents his soul's need to disseminate information, which is filtered through his Scorpio-ruled 5th house of creativity and entertainment. Along with spreading information, Mel likes to spread his wild oats. The 5th house is the house of children. Will he only lose the love child, or the others, as well? If this aspect is happening in your chart, too, don't forget that Neptune can rule spirituality, as well as addictions and conspiracies.


Neptune isn't working alone here. The asteroid Chiron is adding to the mix. Our losses will be painful. They are, or will become, the scab that keeps getting picked, the echoing thought in the future that this is the milk we wish we hadn't spilled. It will become one of our greatest regrets in the realization that time cannot be turned back, and it is too late; some things cannot be undone. And we will learn from that. Besides being the wounded, Chiron is the teacher.






Sorry, the eclipse came and went before I could get all this posted. It took place July 11, 2010 at 12:42 PM PDT..
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Use this link to skip to Mel Gibson Got a Big Surprise / Part 7 of the Astrology of Mel Gibson