Reporting from the NCGR Conference in Cambridge, MA
Rick Tarnas, author of Cosmos and Psyche, is introducing the concept of humor and satire in the context of astrology. We’ve begun with the chart of his friend John Cleese, one of the elemental forces behind the British Monty Python comedy troupe. Rick notes that Cleese has a square between Mercury and Mars, which describes his aggressive, tense comic style.
But he also has Uranus in the aspect structure, giving a think-on-your-feet quality of inventiveness; which in this case combines with the assertive, competitive vibe: the mishap. Adding Uranus gives you the archetype of the trickster and the Prankster. Steve Martin, Woody Allen, Peter Sellers all have a Mars-Uranus aspect in the mix.
Cleese also has Sun-Saturn in opposition — the ability to never break irony; the ultimate straight-man. Sun-Saturn is pretty much the opposite of the Mercury-Mars-Uranus setup: deadpan, negative, constrained, contained.
He tends to begin his routines with a negative: “No it’s not,” “Your time is up,” and so on: a limit of some kind. He’s just shown us the Argument Clinic sketch from Monty Python.
Skipping ahead a few years, we got to see the Sex Education sketch from The Meaning of Life, the last Monty Python film. Note the incredible sexual tension of the Venus-Mars square, from Scorpio to Aquarius. In so many ways this chart is bursting with sexual energy — look at that 8th house! Imagine that much Aries in the 8th, with its feeling of being driven to find one’s identity in the midst of merging with others and uncompromising libidinal energy: SELF.
Check these clips out — and I’ll be back in a moment with a comment about Cleese’s minor planets, which touch on this point several ways.