Helen Keller - medical example

[Jim Eshelman]

Helen Keller was born June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, AL. The most popular birth time for her is 4:00 PM, though the chart is formally rated DD quality data, since there is no direct source and there are slightly conflicting times in circulation.

This doesn't matter for the current post. With no birth time, the chart is already fascinating with its Gemini Sun and Aquarius Moon. It would be great if the chart for this most interesting and one-of-a-kind figure to have Uranus on MC in mundane square to Pluto setting (as the 4 PM chart gives), but that may not be so.

I'm interested in only two aspects, which exist for anytime of the day. They make a most interesting Sidereal medical astrology example.

Helen Keller spent all but the first year and a half of her life totally deaf and blind. this was caused by a disease in infancy which her doctors describe as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain." They're not sure what it was - it could have been an infection from a couple of different diseases. It's not clear if it was feverish (though I bet it was). It evidently attacked the nervous tissues affecting hearing and seeing.

For any birth time, Keller had two close hard aspect that describe this as well as anything you might want. One is Mercury square Saturn, 2°54' wide at 4 PM. The other is Mars square Neptune, 2°07' for that birth time. I don't think any astrologer who has looked at health matters at all would doubt that Mercury-Saturn and Mars-Neptune describe superbly the lifelong cutting off of powerful channels of communication with the outside world due to some infections illness that damaged her nervous system.

Oh, but it gets much better!

First of all - the lesser of two interesting things - these two aspects are closely linked. Notice that they are both squares and their orbs are nearly identical, 2°54' and 2°07'. This alerts us (without having to calculate) that there is a common midpoint. Calculating, I find that the specific pattern is that Mercury/Neptune is 28°53' Taurus and Mars/Saturn is 28°30' Taurus.

But here's the thing that got me to write this post: The original disease as an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain. These two squares reaches... from Cancer to Aries! Modern astrologers relate the stomach to Cancer and the brain (everything in the head) to Aries, though Fagan taught Siderealists that usually it works the other way around - we expect Capricorn and Libra to "rule" these body parts. But they do flip around. A different disease (like rheumatic fever) might have taken root in her joints (Cancer) or affecting her bowel or uterus (Aries). But this one didn't: It affected her stomach (Cancer) and brain (Aries).

Even with allowing ourselves this "we've always said it works this way" small fudge, it's still far better than the Tropical picture, where the same close Mercury-Saturn and Mars-Neptune squares stand out as indicating the event and its results, but the planets fall in Tropical Taurus (Saturn and Neptune) and Leo (Mercury and Mars). Taurus and Leo have nothing to do with the matter.