by Jim Eshelman on Fri Apr 03, 2015 6:18 am
Yes, I primarily agree with you about the cause. I'd measure it slightly differently, but I think you've identified the main pattern.
This chart has two pairs of foreground planets: Mars and Saturn are on either side of Eastpoint, and Moon and Venus are in mundane opposition just off the meridian. These are then connected by Moon's close square to Saturn and medium square to Mars.
So, one main pattern is: Mars and Saturn straddle the EP. This is certainly consistent with painful circumstances that require endurance, and general kinds of hardship. But the precision is even better than you cited: Contact with EP need to be measured in Right Ascension, and the Mars/Saturn midpoint is 0°02' from EP. (You measured it in PV. EP position is never measured in PV, but in RA. The PV position of the actual EP is exactly the same as Asc, i.e., 90° from MC.)
And then there is that Moon-Saturn, almost partile. This links to health difficulties.
I also think the luminary signs are relevant. Perhaps because this is Good Friday, when I read the description of the disease, I immediately thought, "Stigmata!" A Pisces Moon is going to have a tendency to deeply identify with some aspects of Christ, and an unconscious stigmata fixation is an easy expression of that. (Joni has always tended to bleed for people.) Libra Sun is the flip side: Libra's, despite their ultimate toughness, have a real psychological vulnerability to either pain (which they tend to try to avoid far more than most people) or disfigurement. (I've always thought this was not only the Venus and Venus vs. Saturn expressions, but also a shadow expression of what the ancient Greeks were trying to capture when they gave patronage of Libra to Hephaestus, an ugly and disfigured god of eruptions.)
PS - This is a good example of the Ascendant sign. I usually ignore the Ascendant sign utterly, because it's so much of a superficial, façade expression that one normally sees right through it. But, in that sense, it can reflect elements of someone's expressive style (something an astrologer almost never really needs to discern from a chart, since it's usually so outwardly, easily visible). Anyway, when Joni came back into the news I couldn't remember her chart, and thought to myself, "So, she's, what, a Gemini? Seems like a Gemini." She's not a Gemini Sun, she's a Libra. I was partly picking up the angular Pisces Moon. But I'll also hold to the Gemini expression, and she has Gemini rising. At heart, she's a Libra; her adaptive personality formation is Pisces; and the breezy, brisk, lilting style she wears on her cuff is Gemini. Of this sign when rising, Manilius wrote:
...The Births are happy, all their Parts refind,
And Arts enrich the Treasures of the Mind;
Ready their Wit, persuasive is their Tongue,
In Musick skill'd, and excellent in Song...
