Suicide (research article, Garth Allen)

[Jim Eshelman]

WHY SUICIDE?
by Garth Allen
Reprinted in American Astrology, July 1978

[After some preliminary remarks on suicide in general, and people's misconceptions concerning it, Garth Allen remarked that astrologers also tend to have "mistaken ideas" because "much of the traditional information about this particular subject is in error." In further journalistic setup, he touches on various ideas including fate vs. free will and the lack of real research previously into the suicide question. He also emphasizes the need to view this topic aprecesionally...]

Most important of all it proves beyond controversy what other studies have also indicated to be true. That very horoscope is affected by precession of the equinoxes, so that the amount of precession ensued since birth must be deducted from the longitudes of transiting planets if the exact time of the completion of an aspect is to be learned. Since it is certain that suicides are committed at the peak days and hours of exact aspects, the need for the slight correction of position becomes vividly clear as desirable in all astrological work. Direct use of the sidereal zodiac eliminates this amendment because the precessional factor is automatically accounted for and the true relationships between natal and transiting planets are seen at a glance.

Overcoming Pressure
[He gives appropriate admonishment that there is no "fatedness" of suicide. Some excerpts from this, which lead into a discussion of distinctions between transits and progressions:]

Let us start by laying down a corollary which is solid food for thought: Every human being experiences several times during an average lifetime the same type of planetary influences which lead a small percentage of people to do away with themselves… [M]any hundreds of those who continue to live, in fact, many to whom the thought of suicide may not occur during even the most distressing of personal crises, may be undergoing the same adverse pressures in their horoscopes. For every successful attempt, it is true that six or seven other persons tried to end it all but failed. But only a few, comparatively, broke under the strain of similar forces.

If a man commits suicide, he is really responding to a situation which in weakness he believes to be unbeatable by any other accessible means at the moment. Differences in the out-working of similar influences are due, naturally, to differences in people, in turn a matter of individual horoscopes. While this may sound so elementary to readers well versed in astrology as to seem unnecessary, it is mentioned because suicides are basically shown by transits to the natal and progressed horoscopes and not, according to our research, by progressions alone. This is strange. and not so elementary after all. A fundamental of astrology is that the progressed chart shows “acts of self" while the effects of outside agencies are the province of transiting planets. Our first instinct is to class suicide as purely an act-of-self, probably more purely so than any other specific behavior we could imagine... No social scientist of the modern world, be he psychiatrist, criminologist or sociologist, holds any quarter for the belief that man is a morally free entity, committing any act with absolutely willful intent…

A man is not born with the destiny to die by his own hand, any more than he is inevitably slated to succumb to smallpox. Astrologically, we can discern only traits and predispositions, together with probable events as a result of their performance in life, in the chart of birth. The several forces of environment and heredity determine to a greater extent, yes, great-er, the native’s lot in life. How these forces will affect him, however, is determined by astrological influences subsequent to the moment of birth…

The very fact that transits are the key to the actual event of suicide tells us that while the tendency may be prominent in the horoscope of birth, the precipitation of the act is really the result of outside pressures…

[Jim Eshelman]

Among the “surprises” of our study was our finding of several natal aspect-combinations of planets which, in terms of pro-suicide and con-suicide, were just the opposite in significance from what many might have expected them to be. Chief among, these paradoxical factors was the amazingly high incidence of Sun-Jupiter aspects, including sextiles and trines, balanced against the almost-zero score of the Sun-Mars team in our collection of charts. That no real contradiction is in the offing here we shall show in pointing out that the symbolism of these combinations fits perfectly what we know to be true about the personality and psychology of the typical suicide.

Sun-Jupiter
If you are the possessor of a major aspect of your natal Sun and Jupiter, you are familiar with the fact that it denotes a deep-seated sense of personal dignity. together with a “worshipful complex" of higher standards than society generally holds to. Sun-Jupiter types of people are “instinctively happy" persons who require little to make them glow with joyful feelings - a pastel sunset, an exuberant puppy, all tongue and wiggle, bounding into their laps, and such sights as that of a boy scout doing his good turn for the day. The ease with which such people can be “knocked for a loop” psychologically, however, is in direct ratio to the ease with which they can respond to the smile of a stranger on the street.

Sun-Jupiter aspects in horoscopes identify people who have such an automatic faith in the immortality of life - even though they are not necessarily aware of it in terms of soul-survival - that death seems to them to be but another experience and not the end of experience. Because they are emotionally oriented to their childhoods, in fact so decidedly that their friends often moan they will "never grow up," meaning they will never turn cut-throat in a commercial way, they have an escapist tendency when severe problems arise which cannot be coped with maturely. A psychologist would say that in a crisis they revert back to the juvenile stage of problem-solution reflected in the childish threat to “go out in the garden and eat worms.” That the population of Sun-Jupiter people has a significantly high suicide rate per capita is due to these tendencies and not to anything destructive in the influence itself.

The American poetic genius Hart Crane, novelist Lewis Browne, ambassador John G. Winant, capitalist George Eastman, and French Premier Boulanger, are exemplary notables of the past who were born with close Sun-Jupiter aspects and died by their own designs. In each case the reason was a disillusionment of their personal lifetime habit of wanting everything to be just dandy all the time. They found it too difficult to adapt themselves to the exigencies of reality and preferred another way out.

[Jim Eshelman]

Sun-Mars
A far more ‘destructive’ influence is that of the Sun and Mars in major aspect in the horoscope. Yet, of all the combinations involving the Sun, this one is singularly negligible in the picture of suicide statistics. The why and wherefore behind this shortage of Sun-Mars natal aspects should be obvious to the student with some background in the study of psychology.

Some people seek solitude when they are troubled greatly in order to collect their wits and think things through. Others faced with a problem make a dash for the nearest relative or dearest friend, as they feel the need of companionship and counsel whenever they are distressed or depressed. But medicine for the soul in which the aggressive compulsions of the planet Mars are dominant is, simply, action. Sun-Mars people can successfully attack a world of personal woe by smashing things, slamming the door, walking around the block a few times, or busying themselves with work. It is because of these traits that Sun-Mars types are rarely on the coroner's list as suicides. When troubled, they “take it out" on their environment, which includes their spouses and bosses, rather than themselves. Moreover, since Sun-Mars individuals are normally those who “expect trouble” in the routine of living, and are temperamentally armored against its consequences, little wonder is it that they rarely have a suicidal tendency.

Venus-Mars
Truer to our preconceptions, we found most Venus aspects ineffective one way or another with regard to suicide, with only the shortage of Venus-Mars formations being mathematically noteworthy. Natal Venus shows one’s pet fancies, just as Saturn signifies one‘s pet peeves. Hence, those with Venus in aspect to Mars take a natural pleasure in “life and the flesh thereof” and are not very apt to spite the soul by abusing the body. The reverence for the physical phase of living which characterizes the Venus-Mars types leads many of them to an avid interest in good health and many become physical culturists. People in whom an appreciation of the physical vehicle is strong are not likely to think disposal of the carcass is any kind of solution to their worries.

Mars-Pluto
Where Mars is concerned, aspects to the planet Pluto are strikingly numerous among suicides, while Mars-Satutn configurations are somewhat rare. Mars-Pluto natal influences instill in their natives a resistance to “playing by the rules” and reacting to situations in observance of the conventions of society. They have a tendency toward “taking the law into their own hands“ as a result of an inborn impatience with orderly procedures. Mars-Pluto vibrations imbue a sense of personal transcendence of civil law and social mores, and it is common to find such a person preparing to defend himself and his own against some outside threat rather than calling the police for proper protection. Naturally, because suicide is itself outside the pale of society's approval, there would be a gravitation toward it by Mars-Pluto types who can usually be relied on to be “different.”

Hermann Goering, the hefty Nazi air-force commander, stands as the most typical of our Mars-Pluto cases followed closely in this moot honor by industrialist, Henry Perry. A good many businessmen, having met financial difficulties, also fall in this category. Suicide because of business failure is so common that we often wonder how wholesome a commercialized society is if it is presided over by men who would rather kill themselves than live on a level with most of their customers and employees. Most of our cases, however, are of everyday personalities whose names would not be familiar to the average reader. Several suicides touched on by Charles E. O. Caner in his Encyclopedia Psychological Astrology are also Mars-Pluto natives.

Mars-Saturn
The reason for so few Mars-Saturn aspects in the horoscopes of suicides is clearly that people born with them “can take it.” They are not easily driven to give up in the battle of life and this perseverance in the face of heavy odds is reflected in our statistics.

[Jim Eshelman]

Moon-Neptune
In addition to the Sun-Jupiter pattern already described, the most common earmarks of suicidal predilection are Moon-Neptune. Why this should be appropriate is clear from the fact that a powerful natal Neptune denotes a vivid sense of the dramatic. The aspects themselves are not suicide-prone. but they do color the thinking of their natives so that the threat or prospect of death by one‘s own effort takes on a real theatrical flavoring. [NB – I disagree. Moon-Neptune is especially prone to morbid and hypersensitive states of mind that, in the right [wrong] conditions came become inherently suicidal. - JAE]

We suspect that women with such aspects are especially susceptible to the pattern… Many women attempt suicide cautiously and with emotional fanfare in order to attract the attention of others… All these things add up to our guess that the role of Neptune in suicide is an indirect one in that it related to the poignancy of the scene rather than perpetration of the act. An afflicted natal Neptune is well known among astrologers as the sign of a persecution complex in poorly integrated personalities.

Mercury-Neptune
There was the famous case of Ruth Rockwell, the girl who deliberately leaped from an airplane over Long Island in l929 in order to “see what death was like" - a classic Mercury-Neptune type. Harvard’s beloved Professor Matthiessen, also a Mercury-Neptune native, surrendered to oppression born of attacks on his social and political views and stepped out of the window of a Boston hotel a few years ago. The sensational way chosen by the scientist Malcom Soule was even truer to the Mercury-Neptune flare for the dramatic. Born with a host of planets clustered around the star Lesath, marking the poisonous “sting of the scorpion“ in the sky, he injected a snake venom in his veins. Having lived a life so flagrantly unusual that his suicide seems anticlimactic, Norman Selby, the boxer known as “Kid McCoy" (who will be especially remembered by only nine of his ten wives, because he killed one of them) ended a fantastic life which had started when Mercury was in opposition to Neptune. We do not have the birth data of the Italian sweethearts who departed this plane together by the most unusual method we have yet heard of, but they both must surely have been Neptunian types of the first order. They bound themselves together with copper wire, tied the loose end to a rock and tossed it over a high tension line.

Moon-Venus
One of the surest safeguards against a suicidal tendency is to have been born with the Moon and Venus in aspect and in strong positions in the birthchart, for we found only two cases with a Moo-Venus relationship and these were in cadent houses. It hardly needs mentioning that such a natal influence is protective by virtue of the keen social sense which it bestows so that its natives rarely find their interest in others flagging enough to allow themselves to brood over their own difficulties. Such people are those who view their own ultimate passing in the light of how it will affect their loved ones rather than as a private disaster. Naturally, people so oriented mentally and emotionally could hardly entertain thoughts about suicide, no matter how serious some emergency in their lives could become. [NB – Moon-Venus is also nearly absent for murderers, so there seems to be a more fundamental preservation of life theme. - JAE

[Jim Eshelman]

Psychologists know that the actual act of suicide is but the climax of what is called the suicide process which is a gradual conditioning, a long-range preparation, of the individual for the deed, often without his realizing the trend. Astrologically, the suicide process begins at birth, with the endowment of personality traits like those we described. The progressed horoscope, mirroring the adaptation of each individual to his changing environment, is further conditioning. The literal “process” commences and grows with severe transits by the planets Saturn and Neptune to vital points in both the natal and progressed charts. But the act of suicide is never sponsored by progressions alone. The crisis itself is a matter of transiting pressures becoming so great that the last straw breaks the camel's back.

The crisis may be precipitated by a transit of Saturn in aspect to either the Sun or Mercury. preferably the latter. Oftimes, as in the case of lvar Kreugar, the Swedish financier and international swindler, the crisis is one of panic, when such short-lived transits as Mars to the natal Sun are in evidence. A common configuration at the crisis is Mars to Uranus in the horoscope, an influence doubtless furnishing the necessary measure of “nerve” to go through with it. Ruth Rockwell's “thrill suicide" happened under a Mars-to-Uranus and Uranus-to-Mars interchange. The Pasadena school superintendent who killed five associates before turning the gun on himself, albeit surviving his own wounds, did so under Saturn-to-Sun and Mars-to-Uranus influences. Another less-prolonged transit quite frequently observed is that of Mars to natal or progressed Mercury.

The central role of Mercury is noticeable in every case, doubtless because suicide is a matter of mental activity, a decision for action. Saturn to Mercury is a depressing, embittering influence. Mars to Mercury results in panicky, inflamed behavior. But Neptune to Mercury is the least tolerable for the suicide-inclined individual, for that influence scatters the wits, adds fuel to the fears which have already become a habitual way of thinking, and has the extra characteristic of enlivening whatever delusions of persecution may be stirring deep in the subconscious mind.

The writer has been a participant in numerous astrological research projects and has scrutinized the work of other productive workers in this field for several years. He has seldom encountered a ‘deviation’ as amazing as the frequency with which transiting Neptune makes major aspects to natal or progressed Mercury in the charts of those undergoing the suicide.

[Jim Eshelman]

Demonstrating how nearly exact such aspects can be for the exact date and hour of the event is the classical case of the former Defense Secretary, James ForrestaL Neptune by transit was only seven minutes of arc from being exactly trine Forrestal's radical Mercury when he made his fatal plunge! The Swiss Miss described by Carter, who wanted to forget her troubles did so by taking poison when Neptune by transit was only one minute of arc, held in the case of Walter Roenger, baseball coach of the University of Illinois and former Cardinal star, who slashed his throat and wrists while Neptune was one-sixtieth of a degree from a perfect conjunction with his progressed Mercury. Henry Perry shot himself when the sextile of Neptune to his progressed Mercury was within 0°26', and Malcolm Soule’s rendezvous with the needle took place when a sextile of Neptune to radical Mercury was within 1°38'. Just recently a young man in Santa Ana, California, born with Mercury trine Neptune, shot himself while Mercury and Neptune were opposed in the sky itself, and transiting Neptune was closing in a sextile of his progressed Mercury within seven minutes of arc. (A sidelight: “The unsolved mystery of Starr Faithfull,” the girl whose watery death in 1931 created a sensation, is less enigmatic in view of the fact that transiting Neptune was opposing her progressed Mercury within 0°34' when she disappeared.)

The repetition of this pattern leaves absolutely no doubt but what this influence is the secret to the kind of adverse vibration under which many a vulnerable temperament has buckled. But the average person living a normal span of years undergoes these same influences several times without resorting to the rope, the razor, or gun! This means, of course, that the influence is not suicide-aimed itself, but that a few - only a handful in the population - respond to it by going to such extremes....

[He concluded in a motivational pick-me-up spirit of indemnifying people against states of mind that might lead to suicide.]

[Jim Eshelman]

Thanks for posting that.

Neptune, and Mercury.

Mercury and Mars were associated with alcoholism in another of Bradley's studies. Suicides are often more than a bit tipsy at the time of death, and I can't lay hands on the exact figures just now, but I believe alcoholics are at heightened risk of suicide.

Sun-Jupiter, including trines. Trines are static. More rigid thought patterns, maybe?

[Jim Eshelman]

On static... notice the reference to TRANSITING trines and sextiles. I've said several times that the ONLY study I know that validates transiting trines and sextiles is this one - one on suicide. I suggest that this is consistent with my basic assessment of trines and sextiles. They normally aren't worth watching because their nature is static - non-expressive in action. But in the case of suicide, their presence paints a psychological state where inability to do anything is a specific part of the mind-state.

[Jim Eshelman]

I read this post quickly but its good stuff.
In support of it I do have nMercury-Neptune and nMoon-nNeptune both partile and squares and I have only a few times considered the idea in foggy detail in my mind and then soon I though of how much it just doesn't make sense to end your own life. And in no way am I suicidal because of a few past vague mental negativity. Also I have contracting natal aspects for or against the act such as Sun-Saturn with sun in Sagittarius-a Jupiter sign.
Personally I have an few ways of dealing with strong stress. One is my foreground mars type of giving everyone shit, another Venus-Mars in diet and exercise, sexual release, meditation, yoga. Another is mental understanding of compassion and big picture, another is communicating effectively, accepting reality cause meds do work and another is acting vulnerable by venting and crying. My more preventive measures are probably Sun-Saturn, Moon-Mercury, Moon-Saturn. Venus-Mars. Idk both the more apparently venting and mental preventions blend all together.
So the transits or progressions of mercury and neptune must be triggers along with natal aspects pro or con suicide. Of course I am just double talking here.

[Jim Eshelman]

James, if you think that's good stuff, you really want a copy of Taking the Kid Gloves off Astrology. There's one on Amazon for under $14 right now. Looks like a booklet. Don't be fooled. Teeny tiny print, every sentence has meat in it.

[Jim Eshelman]

Personally I have an few ways of dealing with strong stress. One is my foreground mars type of giving everyone shit, another Venus-Mars in diet and exercise, sexual release, meditation, yoga, mental understand of compassion and big picture, communicating effectively, accepting reality cause meds do work and another is acting vulnerable by venting and crying. My more preventative measures are probably Sun-Saturn, Moon-Mercury, Moon-Saturn. Venus-Mars. Idk both the more apparently venting and mental preventions blend all together.
So the transits or progressions of mercury and neptune must be triggers along with natal aspects pro or con suicide. Of course I am just double talking here.

You will be very - VERY - interested in the murder article I'm currently typing, which is primarily a study in frustration tolerance and stress management aspects. At the very least, you will have some real surprises against your ideas about Venus-Mars.

[ChiefQuail]

recently I have read some post regarding suicide attempt and turns out that these are caused by a pressure. I must say people who are not capable of handling stress like this are needing attention and help, the question is how are we suppose to see their problem if they kept it and if they are not willing to discuss it with us how can we help them to ease the pressure they gotten.

[Jupiter Sets at Dawn]

the question is how are we suppose to see their problem if they kept it and if they are not willing to discuss it with us how can we help them to ease the pressure they gotten.

We're not supposed to. People choose whether or not they want to discuss something and who they want to discuss it with. Anything else is a violation of personal autonomy and nobody will listen to us if we do that.

[Veronica]

Among the “surprises” of our study was our finding of several natal aspect-combinations of planets which, in terms of pro-suicide and con-suicide, were just the opposite in significance from what many might have expected them to be. Chief among, these_parad_oxical factors was the amazingly high incidence of Sun-Jupiter aspects, including sextiles and trines, balanced against the almost-zero score of the Sun-Mars team in our collection of charts. That no real contradiction is in the offing here we shall show in pointing out that the symbolism of these combinations fits perfectly what we know to be true about the personality and psychology of the typical suicide.

Sun-Jupiter
If you are the possessor of a major aspect of your natal Sun and Jupiter, you are familiar with the fact that it denotes a deep-seated sense of personal dignity. together with a “worshipful complex" of higher standards than society generally holds to. Sun-Jupiter types of people are “instinctively happy" persons who require little to make them glow with joyful feelings - a pastel sunset, an exuberant puppy, all tongue and wiggle, bounding into their laps, and such sights as that of a boy scout doing his good turn for the day. The ease with which such people can be “knocked for a loop” psychologically, however, is in direct ratio to the ease with which they can respond to the smile of a stranger on the street.

Sun-Jupiter aspects in horoscopes identify people who have such an automatic faith in the immortality of life - even though they are not necessarily aware of it in terms of soul-survival - that death seems to them to be but another experience and not the end of experience. Because they are emotionally oriented to their childhoods, in fact so decidedly that their friends often moan they will "never grow up," meaning they will never turn cut-throat in a commercial way, they have an escapist tendency when severe problems arise which cannot be coped with maturely. A psychologist would say that in a crisis they revert back to the juvenile stage of problem-solution reflected in the childish threat to “go out in the garden and eat worms.” That the population of Sun-Jupiter people has a significantly high suicide rate per capita is due to these tendencies and not to anything destructive in the influence itself.

The American poetic genius Hart Crane, novelist Lewis Browne, ambassador John G. Winant, capitalist George Eastman, and French Premier Boulanger, are exemplary notables of the past who were born with close Sun-Jupiter aspects and died by their own designs. In each case the reason was a disillusionment of their personal lifetime habit of wanting everything to be just dandy all the time. They found it too difficult to adapt themselves to the exigencies of reality and preferred another way out.

its always one of those things that is hard to talk about. Yet when someone lays your soul out like this you cant help feel comfortable to trust that when you say, "yup thats me" you will be accepted for being a living embodyment of this aspect.

Many times through my life have I run away, and many times I have also thought to just end it all. My unwavering understanding of the immorality of life makes it a futile irrational action though, and one that I do now see as a childish reaction in which my inner self is needing attention and I dont know what else to do but something drastic.

I would bet that the high rate of sucess is due in part to that "worshipful complex" and the simple fact that if a person with this aspect does not learn how to keep thier ego in check and stay grounded, the attention seeking child makes a choice to just get on with the next stage.

I would like to stick up for my hometown hero George Eastman who also shares this aspect and did follow through. He lived a long and full life before he finally ended his, and the manner in which he did die was in local legend, as simply a note left saying "My work is done, why wait."
His aspect brought forth a very child like persona, and through that child like curosity he brought the science of imaging to new heights.

[Jupiter Sets at Dawn]

George Eastman was in severe pain from a spinal disease the last two years of his life, it was not going to end, and it was getting to the point where there was nothing that could give him relief.