The astrology of depression: Andrew Koenig

February 26, 2010 By

photo montage from CNN. Andrew Koenig, the son of Walter Koenig who played Pavel Chekov in the original Star Trek series, has been missing since February 14th.  He was last seen at a bakery in Vancouver.  Koenig is an actor who is best known as Kirk Cameron’s sidekick in the long-running television series “Growing Pains.”  Some of Koenig’s friends fear the worst, reporting that he had been depressed and fed up with his life in California. He sold all of his possessions and walked away from his home in Venice on February 4.

Koenig (8/17/1968, time unknown, LA CA)  is 41, the age at which transiting Uranus opposes Uranus in the birthchart, and because he is one of those “Uranus/Pluto” people who were born between 1962 and 1968, that Uranus opposition is particularly intense.  Briefly, Uranus is the planet of rebellion and revolutionary change, and Pluto, the planet of death and rebirth, presides over experiences that transform us from the ground up.  This cohort of people carry this archetype of revolutionary change within them.

The Uranus Opposition is a planetary cycle in which Uranus in the sky opposes Uranus in the birthchart.  It occurs at age 40-42, and is the most intense of the “midlife crisis” transits, generating an urge to break free of whatever is holding us back.  For this age group, because Uranus opposes not only natal Uranus but also natal Pluto, this time period is even more urgent and powerful and necessitates a letting go of the past in order to move forward into the future.

Pluto squares his Moon, or his emotions, and Andrew’s former landlord told TMZ that Andrew did not have a good relationship with his mother (the Moon often, but not always, represents the mother in the natal chart and Pluto is the planet of destruction, death and rebirth, emphasizing an intensely emotional nature).

He has also had a number of challenging planetary cycles over the past couple of years, including Saturn transiting not only his Sun but also his lineup of Virgo planets which can be quite stressful.  In addition, transiting Saturn and Pluto have been facing off in challenging aspects against Chiron in his chart, the planet of psycho-spiritual wounds and emotional pain.  As if that weren’t enough, transiting Chiron was opposing his Sun, bringing more of that pain to the surface so that it could be processed and released, and transiting Pluto has been in a square to the Sun in his progressed chart, adding a tremendous amount of intensity to his life and experience.

This would have been a difficult time for anyone, and unless you are on a path of emotional healing and spiritual development – and frankly, even if you are – this kind of planetary intensity can drive you to the wall where change must occur.  Koenig’s chart is short on water, the element that offers an outlet for the emotions, so the processing of emotions does not come easily to him.  With no water and this collection of planetary influences, he would have been at a loss to know how to handle all of the feelings that roiled within him.

US magazine reports that Koenig’s parents received a disturbing and direct letter from their son and contacted police immediately.

Unfortunately, astrology cannot tell us whether or not Andrew will be found.  For that we just have to wait.

Update 2/26: Andrew Koenig was found dead today in a park in Vancouver.  He took his own life, the victim of depression.

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Avatar Blues

January 25, 2010 By

I haven’t yet seen the film Avatar so I can’t comment personally, but evidently some fans are reacting with depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the film:

James Cameron’s completely immersive spectacle “Avatar” may have been a little too real for some fans who say they have experienced depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the film because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora.

On the fan forum site “Avatar Forums,” a topic thread entitled “Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible,” has received more than 1,000 posts from people experiencing depression and fans trying to help them cope. The topic became so popular last month that forum administrator Philippe Baghdassarian had to create a second thread so people could continue to post their confused feelings about the movie.

“I wasn’t depressed myself. In fact the movie made me happy ,” Baghdassarian said. “But I can understand why it made people depressed. The movie was so beautiful and it showed something we don’t have here on Earth. I think people saw we could be living in a completely different world and that caused them to be depressed.” …

“Ever since I went to see ‘Avatar’ I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na’vi made me want to be one of them. I can’t stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it,” Mike posted. “I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in ‘Avatar.’ “

read more here…

So is it the film Avatar that is causing this depression and despair at the comparison between the idealized Avatar world and our own dysfunctional planet?  Or is it the intense planetary cycles that are occurring right now that are creating these moods and experiences, resulting in a longing for an experience of something more liberating and magical?

As I wrote last October, the conjunction of Chiron (wounding and healing) to Neptune (yearning for spiritual connection) in the sign of Aquarius (idealism and a desire for social justice and revolution) has been inspiring deep experiences of old grief to erupt into our conscious mind where they can be resolved and released.  Chiron and Neptune are nearing their exact conjunction for the first time since last summer.  With Chiron in Aquarius, the experience of wounding that Chiron reveals has its origin in the disappointment of our ideals and our yearnings for the perfect world – the Age of Aquarius of myth and legend.  The addition of Neptune adds a layer of delusion and magic as well as a powerful awareness of where we are disconnected from our souls.

We also have the second phase of the square of Saturn (depression and isolation) to Pluto (death and transformation) to contend with now, and the combination of these two planetary combinations can be quite intense, whether you see the film Avatar or not.

One poster in an Avatar forum wrote this:  ”When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed … gray. It was like my whole life, everything I’ve done and worked for, lost its meaning,” Hill wrote on the forum. “It just seems so … meaningless. I still don’t really see any reason to keep … doing things at all. I live in a dying world.”  This quote is so Saturn/Pluto – the world has lost its meaning and we are challenged to keep going and to find new meaning in our lives.

The purpose of these planetary cycles is not to make us miserable but to cause us to go deeper.  Life may have lost its meaning for us, but that’s because we are being urged to seek beyond the superficial; beyond the mundane and ordinary.  We don’t need to go to Pandora for this experience – the magic lies within.

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The Joy of Sadness

January 18, 2009 By

You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.

– Chinese proverb

crows

A post in Beth Owl’s Daughter about Seasonal Effective Disorder started me thinking once again about the way our culture attempts to medicate all emotional reactions out of its citizens (and thank you Beth for that wonderful proverb!!).  She writes:

When I was many years younger, I used to be hit hard by what later came to be known as SAD – Seasonal Affective Disorder. As Autumn proceeded from its kaleidoscopic colors into rusts and browns, and finally into Winter’s endless grays, my own spirits would slump accordingly. As the days grew darker, my moods followed along, bringing bouts of tears, withdrawal, and lethargy. By the time I crawled into late February, I would often be struggling with outright despair.

But, thankfully, that changed. Perhaps, it was in part that I fell in love with a man who truly revels in the cold time of year. And maybe as I got older, my hormonal changes helped. But the truth is that, long before I was perimenopausal, my Autumns and Winters were beginning to pass without loss of emotional equilibrium.

Was it just coincidence that this shift was in synch with the deepening of my Pagan spiritual practice? As I attuned myself to the seasons of the Earth, and embraced the cycles of life and death, growth and surrender, rather than dreading the darkening of the year, I learned to love it.

Don’t get me wrong. … I am well aware that for many people, it is a very painful and serious problem.

But I wonder if there could be any correlation between SAD and our culture’s insistence that we ignore the natural waxing and waning of the light. Could winter depression be exacerbated by our refusal to allow ourselves, in the ways we might individually need to, to harmonize with the rhythms of the seasons?

Instead, I seek the beauty of the short days, I am grateful for the cold winds, and I embrace the silence. Nature Herself teaches us how to live in rhythm, and by following Her guidance, we might, in fact, be much less sad.

read more here...

I too am well acquainted with depression, having been born with Saturn conjunct my Sun.  During my first Saturn Return (which was complicated by a sensitive Chiron transit) I couldn’t stop crying for about three months as all of the pain I had suppressed for the first 30 years erupted with a shocking intensity to the surface.  If this had occurred a few years later my friends would have rushed me to the doctor for medication, and I would never have been cleansed of all that darkness.  Fortunately I was never really suicidal during this period or more serious measures would certainly have been called for, but I do consider this one of the more important healing processes of my life.

Sadness serves a purpose – it speaks to us and tells us that our soul is longing for something unexperienced.  In our culture, we shun death, sadness, mourning, despair.  Instead, we search for the “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” a clean slate where we can forget about anything painful that will disturb our medicated bliss.  But in doing so our lives become so sanitized – so soulless.

As I wrote myself in an earlier article:

This is not to say that periodic use of medication isn’t helpful for people going through difficult times. But simply medicating ourselves because we’re sad isn’t going to help us get to the heart of the issue that is creating the sadness. Saturn cycles create depression and isolation, but the time spent alone in sadness that Saturn requires helps us to become stronger internally and better equipped to handle other difficult times. Pluto cycles can create depression at the loss of control we feel as our lives are turned upside down, but if we medicate ourselves we may miss the exhilaration of the regeneration that we are sure to experience on the other end.

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An untimely death

July 1, 2008 By

Vphoto from modelimago.com

Ruslana Korshunova was a beautiful young woman who seemed to have everything going for her until she plunged to her death. Although friends said she appeared to be “on top of the world,” her web postings tell a different story, saying she felt lost and as if her heart was being “stomped all over.” Her death came two days before her twenty-first birthday. (Astrological chart here.)

One of the mysteries of astrological profiles is why two people with the same psychological dynamics will take very different roads. Perhaps it’s the environment they find themselves in; perhaps they make different choices. In any event, although we can see the seeds of difficulty in Rusiana’s chart it presented challenges that were no more difficult than those faced by many of us.

Ruslana was born with the Sun in Cancer – exceptionally sensitive and emotional, family would have been very important to her. Cancer is the sign that rules our family connections and geneaological roots, and there is often a strong affiliation to the tribal identity. Mercury was in Cancer in her chart, as was Mars, so the Cancerian influence was very strong. Ruslana was sending money home to her family in Kazakhstan. She was drafted into the fashion industry after a modeling agency spotted her photo in a magazine on the Kazakh club scene at the age of 15. It’s hard to imagine that she did not miss her family, no matter how glamourous her life became.

We don’t know Ruslana’s time of birth so we can’t pinpoint her rising sign which would tell us more about the way she lived her life, but we know that she had the Moon in Virgo, which is not comfortable with any big show of ego or pride, and requires a fair amount of security in one’s life. Combined with the sensitive Cancerian nature, hers is not a personality that would have been particularly comfortable with a great deal of attention. Her Cancer Sun was in a stressful aspect (opposition) to Neptune (illusion and deception), suggesting a difficulty for her to establish any kind of identity (Sun) for herself. Neptune/Sun people are often very malleable in their younger years and often are called on to sacrifice themselves for the sake of family or career. Neptune/Sun also can confer an ability to slip in and out of roles easily because of the lack of a clearly defined Self.

We can see in Ruslana’s chart a desire for more freedom in her Aries Jupiter (expansion and confidence in the sign of the warrior) making a square to her Cancer Mars (anger and desire). Jupiter in her chart also made a trine to Uranus (rebellion and radical change) which reveals even more of an independent streak that had been fed over the past few years by a harmonious transit of Pluto (transformation) which created huge changes in her life.

Still, the Virgo Moon tends toward depression, and Ruslana also had Saturn retrograde in her chart in a challenging aspect to her Moon. Saturn is the voice within us that tells us we’re not good enough so that we will work harder and become successful, and when retrograde (meaning it appeared to move backwards from our perspective on earth at the time she was born) that negative voice is internalized and becomes very self-critical. Ruslana would have always felt that she was not good enough and needed to work harder and do more – yet the combination of Mars, Jupiter and Uranus in her chart would have created pressure on her to flee and become her own person. Despite the glamorous travel and money of the modeling world, there is little freedom and this would have been very difficult for Ruslana.

In addiiton, Rusiana’s Venus (her relationships with others and her own self-esteem) was tightly conjunct Chiron (wounding and healing), signifying painful relationships with those she loves. This planetary combination was also opposed by Uranus, the planet of radical behavior that sometimes in the difficult aspects like this can reveal trauma, in this case coming through relationships (Venus). Her relationships would therefore likely be complicated and perhaps even abusive on some level.

We don’t know the exact degree of Ruslana’s Moon without a birth time, but it’s very likely that she was born in the morning and transiting Saturn had been passing over her Moon over the past few months, creating a sense of heaviness and depression. Saturn was preparing to make a square to Saturn in her birth chart which is accompanied at the age of 21 with a square of transiting Uranus to Uranus in the natal chart, a time that accelerates our pursuit of individuality and freedom. In addition, in two months Ruslana’s Sun would have progressed into Leo where she would have had more energy within her to begin to express herself and her own needs.

The real tragedy is that the drama of Ruslana Korshunova was hidden so deeply that no one around her could witness it and give her the support she needed to hang on until the crisis moment had passed.

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Heath Ledger: A posthumous genius

June 21, 2008 By

It adds fuel to the tragedy of Heath Ledger’s early demise that his work in the latest Batman film is garnering reviews that call him the greatest actor of his generation. Although his death was considered accidental, the quantity of (legal) pharmaceutical drugs in his body indicate a troubled soul desperate for relief.

Heath Ledger was determined to win fame through serious acting and not by capitalizing on his “pretty boy” looks. He won an Oscar nomination for his breakthrough performance in Brokeback Mountain, and won critical acclaim in his character performances in other films. He dated Naomi Watts for two years before apparently settling down with Michelle Willliams when their baby was born in 2005. They ended their relationship in 2007 and were often photographed by paparazzi in various arguments.

Although Ledger had a fiery Aries Sun, his astrological chart shows that he was an extremely sensitive individual. His Moon (emotional needs and nature) was in the sign of Cancer which rules emotions and moods. Mars (drive and aggressive instinct) was in Pisces where it tends to blur our desires and make it difficult to achieve them, and so was Mercury (mental functions) which shows an extremely empathic and delicate individual.

Both of these planets have been stressed by cycles Pluto over the past two years, creating upheaval in his life and likely dredging up (Pluto rules the Underworld of the psyche) old emotions and thoughts that were problematic. Venus in Ledger’s chart was also in Pisces, showing that he was a romantic and yearned for relationships (Venus) where he could connect totally with his mate. However, Venus was opposite the planet Saturn which can be cold and critical, indicating that he never felt that he was good enough for his partners.

Saturn in his chart was retrograde which intensifies the effect even more and suggests that he was most critical of himself. It is difficult for someone with a fiery Aries Sun to have so many planets in water signs in the birthchart since that fire is not able to be easily expressed. This sometimes leads to depression and an inner rage. Ledger was in the middle of his Saturn Return at the time of his death. This is an event that happens to all of us when we’re about 28-30, and Saturn in the sky returns to the same degree as Saturn in our birth chart. This is a time of either great stress or great achievements, and sometimes both.

For someone who is innately self-critical, the Saturn Return can be a very difficult time when all of our dreams and longings are blocked by the Lord of Time (Saturn). Saturn can be a severe taskmaster, and these two years are best spent in hard work and struggle for achievement which can then be rewarded. Some people experience their greatest success during these periods. But many others instead struggle against the Taskmaster’s pressure to grow up and face the next stage of our life, and for these people the Saturn Return is difficult indeed.

Because Ledger’s Venus made a tight aspect to Saturn in his chart, Saturn affected Venus during the Saturn Return which culminated in November of 2007 (he probably started feeling it in October as Saturn approached his Venus and natal Saturn), coinciding with the period immediately following his breakup with Michelle Williams in September of last year. At the time of his death, transiting Mars made a square to Mars in his chart, perhaps the irritating influence that pushed him over the edge. It’s such a tragedy when someone so young takes their own life, never realizing that time is the greatest healer.

At the time the Batman movie came out last week, transiting Jupiter (abundance and opportunity) was making an exact trine to the North Node in Ledger’s chart. The North Node is a signpost that points to our destiny, and a transit of Jupiter to the North Node often brings about a significant event that aligns us with a successful traverse of our life’s path. This is a fitting conclusion to the short life of Heath Ledger.

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