A Far, Far Better Thing (Millard example)

[Jim Eshelman]

Billy, December 17, 1973, 8:39 AM EST, Portland, ME

Billy... seemed a healthy child, well nourished at the age of six months... there was no evidence of anything amiss... His mother became afraid that she would lose him in an accident [like an earlier child] if she took him out, and some time after I last saw him, she began to keep him in his room. The other children went to school, but he was left at home. He was never let out. Sometimes his youngest brother threw beanbags and toys at him, and he was covered with bruises. He did not learn to walk very well, because he was not encouraged to get out of his crib. He seemed forlorn and forgotten. His only friend was his young uncle Leon, who doted on him. This was extremely strange, because Leon was generally regarded as a no good bum, a delinquent, and always in trouble with the authorities. Every Saturday he came to the house to take Billy out. He bathed him, dressed him in clean clothes, and took him out to eat.

The neighbors had a very good idea of how things were in the household, but no one said anything, since they were afraid of the violent temper and the gun of Billy's father.

Leo worried a good deal about Billy. His sister wanted to adopt him, for she was childless, but in spite of the poverty of the family, they would not hear of it.

In 1976 there was a general tightening up of eligibility for food stamps, and Billy's family was told that they were no longer eligible. Matters went from bad to worse. It seemed that Billy was not getting enough to eat, and he became thinner and did not look at all healthy. Leon became more worried.

At Christmas... Billy was not allowed out of his room, and this enraged Leon... Finally, the outbreak came on January 30 at 3 AM, when Leon broke down the door of the house, picked Billy up, and charged down to the police station with him, shouting, "This is a case of child abuse. Do something!" The police had Billy admitted to the children's ward of the hospital, and he was found to be close to death from starvation.

It is hard to believe, but this three-year-old child, who had weighed eighteen pounds at six months, now weighed nineteen pounds. His hair was very thin and sparse. He was very small, and tottered as he walked, from weakness due to disuse of his muscles. He has a bone age of eighteen months. Curiously enough, he was friendly and out going, and chattered away to anyone who would listen. He seemed to crave company. A special volunteer was given to him for the sole purpose of providing tender loving care. He was fed, and gained five pounds in two weeks. At the end of this time, he was placed in a foster home where he is living happily... His family misses him, and his mother has tried hard to get him back. The judge, however... has decided that his home is not safe for him, and he will never be allowed to live there again....

[Jim Eshelman]

My analysis: Several things in this chart are obvious compared to this case history, and some are not. One obvious thing about the history is that Moon is in partile conjunction with Pluto in Virgo. Both Moon-Pluto and Moon in Virgo are connected with childhood abuse, and it certainly is an unusual childhood. With this partile Moon-Pluto conjunction and a moderate Moon-Saturn square (but over 4°), we would suspect loss of or separation from the mother - which ended up being true. But Moon is also exactly trine the one angular planet, Venus, so the boy was charming, passive, kind-tempered, and perhaps protected. (Venus-Pluto is part of the isolation profile.)

Houses align closely with his circumstances: Sun is in 12H, Moon in 8H. There isn't a clearer house-themed profile for someone who is isolated nearly to the point of being hidden. Other house placements make a lot of sense in terms of the basic story.

One thing I find fascinating - which fits closely, but not in any way I might have expected. Billy has a close Mars-Uranus opposition remotely background. I would have picked this as his primary health aspect. The real meaning is that there are strong Mars-Uranus traits with much inward pressure to express, but the expression is denied somehow, the urge to be Mars-Uranus in behavior blocked. We expect health vulnerability from this because such a powerful blocked energy often erupts in a health issue. The actual outcome, though, is that his mother obsessed that if she let him go outside like other children, he'd die in an accident (like one of her earlier children). She might have been right, in fact; but she was the agency of suppressing and blocking this potentially accident-prone aspect which, indeed, was a big part of his early life.

I wish the Moon-Saturn were stronger, though the Moon-Pluto (and well-aspected by Venus) tells most of the story anyway; and, in the end, the urgent intervention of a doting uncle saved him. The only other background hard aspect is Mercury-Pluto (mundane square) and, again, this isn't a factor in what we know happened to him.

Bottom line, I don't think this is an actual medical case. In medical astrology, I am looking for areas of vulnerability that cause the body to break down or its functions behave incorrectly to produce illness. Billy didn't actually show any signs of innate weakness: In fact, he survived the neglect or abuse remarkably well. (Sun is weak: Vitality would be expected to be low, though Sun to Mars-Uranus adds strength.)

Instead of a medical case, I think this is a case study in tragic early treatment of someone who turned out to be really healthy and probably survived all of this because of that.

The uncle, btw, was born October 15, 1957. His Virgo-Gemini luminaries locked well with Billy's Sagittarius-Virgo lights. Their synastry is most interesting, with the uncle's Mercury-Mars-Jupiter conjunction (especially Mercury-Jupiter) on Billy's Zenith. His Uranus also opposed Billy's Jupiter almost to the moment: He was ultimately a saving grace. There is more, if you want to look.