The Natal and Death Horoscopes of Sir Thomas More

Image: Hans Holbein [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

In the natal horoscope of Sir Thomas Moore we immediately see menacing Pluto near More's Career and Public Status Point, aka, the Midheaven, or MC. Because an unlawful execution for all eyes to see (MC) was his fate with the heaviest stain of plutonian brutality attached, we might call Pluto his fate master. Yes, power-grabbing Pluto the saboteur and assassin was at work providing perjured testimony against More. With all the draw or pull of plutonian vibes active covertly and/or openly in most any horoscope, it seems a vile culprit has been found and was indeed hiding in plain sight at MC all along.

One has only to consider Thomas More's era and high social position in government and church life to see an environment full of danger made worse by a willful king. And note that in his Death chart, below, transit Mars opposes his natal Uranus, an indicator of just that--danger and violent measures taken within the environment. Yet the monkish More chose the more worldly career path of politics, promoted a mythical island called 'Utopia' (published in 1516) based on Plato's account, and was generally active at the royal court and in legal, religious, and other fields of endeavor.

Fate and Karma Have Their Way: Reaping What Was Sown

For during his life the talented Sir Thomas acted as a lawyer, royal adviser, statesman, philosopher, sheriff - and judge, sending the unrepentant to executions of their own. Fatefully, he opposed King Henry VIII's divorce and refused to accept the King as supreme head of the Church. (As you know, Henry VIII was obsessed over wives who could give him heirs to his throne and his search was aided by a roving eye for beauty.) For his resistance to the King's wayward ways, Thomas More was arrested for treason on April 17, 1534, imprisoned (see chart with a difficult T-Square Sun-Saturn = Uranus + Neptune) for one year three months, and beheaded on Tower Hill, London, on July 6, 1535 at 9:00 am LAT.

The Natal and Death Charts of Sir Thomas More

Okay, I'll hush babbling for now and simply display the natal and death horoscopes of Sir Thomas More, son of Sir John More; born February 7, 1478 (OS; NS = Feb 16, 1478) with Sun in late Aquarius, Moon @14Ari39, and Ascendant 5Sag50. This makes Jupiter the hierophant-priest-guru and planet of hierarchical, codified religion, the ruler of his natal chart and a major determiner of his life.

And I suppose being an artist who scribbles, it cannot be helped that my notes are smooshed all over these charts. However, a non-scribbled version of his natal chart may be viewed at the link provided, above. Notice that his natal Vertex @23Cancer27 (VX = fated encounter; potential for death) is activated by Death Sun and shocking Uranus at 9:00 am, Tower hill, London. This points toward More's natal Sun-Uranus square of arrogance and willfulness - the upstart troublemaker could no longer be tolerated by the king!

Now here are the natal (upper) and death (lower) horoscopes of Sir Thomas Moore; various details are penned upon the charts, please enlarge; natal placements hit by execution transits are notated on the death chart:

Now AQ-Aries is an Air-Fire combination, a 'live wire' blend we would call it today! So with Thomas More's personality blend, Sun AQ-Moon Aries, we find an observant, astute, yet self-interested fellow with a disdain for hypocrisy, a rebellious streak, and an outrageous sense of humor. A prophet holding radical views, Sir Thomas More was a bit of a snob as befit his noble station in life. Yet as an original, More brought "a fierce moral integrity" to everything he did and as a "friendly egomaniac" wanted the best for everyone--and he would fight for it. More, it seems, did things his own way or not at all. He preferred practical answers that cut through the red tape of bureacracy and he respected the rights of others. In fact, the ideals of his contemporary social order called for the protection of individual rights "especially his"! Here, we see a foreshadowing of America's Enlightenment-era, reason-based Founders of the 1700s and the freedom documents they wrote to guide our country and protect the American people from governmental abuse of power.

As for the enlightened Thomas More, natural leader, "becoming subservient to the group" was never his intention. (Sun Sign-Moon Sign, Charles and Suzi Harvey). He was canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church in 1935 - 400 years after his death so there was one exclusive group of exalteds he joined whether he would have approved of a membership or not. Yet how curious that his Prenatal Solar Eclipse (PE) @23AQ22 is of the 2 South Saros Series with its theme of 'joining unusual groups and gaining a great deal from them '(Brady) - and so with the Pope's help, he did.

And though in life he promoted Utopian ideas, Sir Thomas never fully believed that there existed groups with the ability to make such ideas reality. After all, everyone knows that Plato's Ideal loses its perfection once brought down to earth. But being a man of his times who entered the earthly flux under the auspices of the Enlightenment/Age of Reason/new social order planets Uranus and Neptune in conjunction, More was an original Utopian, one of those born under this enlightening, awareness-producing pair of trans-personal planets...Science and The Spiritual meet, Faith and Reason shake hands. An unholy alliance, imho.

For as you know, the world now labors under a re-constellation, a 'new social order' of Uranus-Neptune which met again in Great Conjunction three times during year 1993. At or near '18 Capricorn' each time, their forces melded for the third and final encounter on October 24, 1993 which suggests a natal horoscope of a draconian, totalitarian 'new world order' (not what I believe Sir Thomas More had in mind for 'Utopia', do you?) with this Sabian Symbol for '18Cap' prominent for our times:

'18Cap' = "POLITICAL POWER: negative expression: smug or strong-armed paternalism." (Jones). And perhaps you noticed that transit Pluto has reached 18Cap more than once of late, and we are in a process shown by Pluto's Rx and Direct conjunctions with that degree so that a curious midpoint picture forms off and on: 1993 Uranus-Neptune = tr Pluto: the big picture must be followed, little option to do otherwise." (paraphrasing Noel Tyl, Solar Arcs).

And of course you know that later, Sir Francis Bacon was inspired by Thomas More's Utopia and penned his famous New Atlantis which ties in to the very earliest settling of America as the Utopian 'New Atlantis'. Or at least, that was the Baconian Utopians' basic motivation for investing in the founding and colonization of America. That, and making money, of course.

Now, for the first time on JCAstro, I am pleased to present a political ideology and ethics report analyzed by millennial astrologer Kevin Estes concerning the natal placements of philosopher and politician, Sir Thomas More:

Sir Thomas More

by Kevin Estes

Economics

Leftist - Ruler of Venus Mars semi sextile Neptune, South Node in 2nd house, ruler of 2nd house Saturn square Neptune, Venus sesquiquadrate Neptune

Rightist - Venus trine North Node, Mars quintile North Node

Fiscal liberal

Culture

Leftist - Moon trine Neptune and contraparallel 12th house cusp, ruler of Moon Sun in Pisces square Neptune, ruler of 4th house Moon semi sextile Neptune

Rightist - Moon quintile North Node

Cultural liberal

Pallas/Ethics

Libertarian - Ruler of Pallas Mars trine Sun and Mercury and quintile North Node, Mars parallel Sun, Pallas parallel Mercury and trine North Node

Authoritarian - Mars opposite Jupiter and semi sextile Pluto

Defensive Pallas

Fiscally and socially to the left, defensive Pallas - Left Libertarian

This describes him very well.

KE

Thanks, Kevin!

Kevin adds that Sir Thomas More's Pluto in Virgo/Mars in Libra suggests that his only strong belief system was his own judgment with left wing economics and cultural liberalism prominent as shown by a defensive Pallas. This is putting a long-ago man's beliefs into modern political terms, of course, but I do think such conclusions are worth taking under advisement, don't you?

Readers may wish to visit Kevin's two blogs, Left Wing Astrology and The Aquarian Paradigm, where more of his work is available, some of which is based on the theories of astrologer-musician Alan Lin with a focus on archetypal asteroid Pallas as a revealing indicator of one's ethics.