Astrology Explored

September 15, 2008
Brilliant. Sardonic. Humorist. Experimenter with prose. Award winning writer.

Times book editor David Ulin was in New York City for a National Book Critics Circle Board meeting Saturday.

“He was one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years,” Ulin said. He is one of the main writers who brought ambition, a sense of play, a joy in storytelling and an exuberant experimentalism of form back to the novel in the late ’80s and early 1990s,” Ulin said. “And he really restored the notion of the novel as a kind of canvas on which a writer can do anything.”

And:

He shot to the top of the literary world with “Infinite Jest,” a sprawling, ambitious novel with a nonlinear plot that ran 1,079 pages and had nearly as many footnotes.

David Foster Wallace was found by his wife, Friday night, hung by his own hand.

Thoughts on suicide from a man who’s already committed it, in Oblivion’s “Good Old Neon”:

I simply said, without going into anything like the level of detail I’ve given you (because my purpose in the letter was of course very different), that I was killing myself because I was an essentially fraudulent person who seemed to lack either the character or the firepower to find a way to stop even after I’d realized my fraudulence and the terrible toll it exacted . . . I also inserted that there was also a good possibility that, when all was said and done, I was nothing but another fact-track yuppie who couldn’t love, and that I found the banality of this unendurable, largely because I was evidently so hollow and insecure that I had a pathological need to see myself as somehow exceptional or outstanding at all times. Without going into much explanation or argument, I also told Fern that if her initial reaction to these reasons for my killing myself was to think I was being much, much too hard on myself, then she should know that I was already aware that that was the most likely reaction my note would produce in her, and had probably deliberately constructed the note to at least in part prompt just that reaction, just the way my whole life I’d often said and done things designed to prompt certain people to believe that I was a genuinely outstanding person whose personal standards were so high that he was far too hard on himself, which in turn made me appear attractively modest and unsmug, and was a big reason for my popularity with so many people in all different avenues of my life . . .” (173)

But Foster was a well known author, a popular teacher, a literary success. What would drive an intelligent man to take his own life?

From a spiritual perspective, for those of us that believe in past lives, we know that suicide is not a resolution, it merely prolongs the day of reckoning for long standing problems.
One client of Michael Newton, Phd., in the book “Destiny of Souls” describes a counseling session with his guides on the suicide of his previous life:

Once again you are here early and we are disappointed. Have you not learned the same test grows more difficult with each new life you terminated? Your behavior is selfish for many reasons, not the least of which is the sorrow you caused to those left behind who loved you. How much longer will you continue to just throw away the perfectly good bodies we give you? Tell us when you are ready to stop engaging in self-pity and underestimating your capabilities.

Many successful people feel as the character in Wallace’s story that they are frauds that will eventually be “found out”. Is this how Wallace felt about himself?

Wallace had three planets in the sign of Pisces, his Sun, Chiron and Venus, and four planets in the eccentric zodiac sign of Aquarius, and his moon either in the sign of Virgo or Libra. As an energetic, the Sun in Pisces is difficult energy for men in general. While our society expects men to be well defined in their goals and self confident in themselves and actions, Pisces men generally are neither. They are at heart mystics and seers, with an intuitive understanding of the workings of the Universe. On the other hand, they can have some strange fascinations and addictions. They like to work in the background without much attention focused on them. Many times they are misunderstood. They also can play the part of being misunderstood as well. When pushed too hard to take on well defined societal roles, they often feel put upon and play the martyr. Chiron, the planet of unhealing wounds, sat next to his sensitive Pisces sun. The interaction of these two planets produced a need to be the focal point of attention while at the same time being uncomfortable with the spotlight turned on him. It is a strange dichotomy that may have gnawed away at his sense of self.

With many planets in Aquarius, he would have felt constricted by traditional views and societal roles. His unconventional writing style, signified by Mercury in Aquarius, made him a literary legend. His Saturn in Aquarius sitting on that Mercury made him fear that whatever he was doing was not quite good enough. His Mars sitting along both of these planets would have fueled a driving need to keep working harder and longer to resolve his perplexity at his own dilemma. He needed to be different, to break new ground, but he was faced with the constant anxiety of his own worth.

With his moon most likely in Virgo, in stress aspect (inconjunct) his Jupiter he would have an overwhelming sense to do things perfectly. It is interesting to note as well, that according to one statistical study among deaths by one’s own hand, the zodiac sign of Virgo was shown statistically to be involved with deaths by hanging. According to Raphael’s Medical Astrology if Saturn elevated above the hyleg, the most prominent planet in the chart, this would also indicate a death by hanging. Saturn in Wallace’s chart is above all his planet’s except for Neptune,which does weigh in this particular equation. According the to astrology, Wallace was at high risk for death by hanging as was written into his birth chart.

We don’t have a time of birth, so we don’t definitively have his moon. However it is very likely that his moon at whatever position is making a significant energetic connection to that concentration of Aquarian energy. We know from news reports that he was on leave from his teaching position, but we do not know why. Not working in the broader community, alone with his work as a writer, and probably with limited social contacts all he had was his anxieties, playing over and over in his head. He needed relief from the anxieties plaguing him.

But was this an intentional suicide?

Not having a time of birth is very limiting and all we have is speculation. However, unless he was born at around 7:30 AM I think a very different thing happened. If he intentionally committed suicide, The Arabic Part of Suicide support a birth time of 7:30 AM. But that would give him a Virgo Moon and a Pisces ascendant. His facial features suggests an Aries ascendant which would also support a Virgo moon. As I said, all this is speculation, but with the Aquarian Moon, the North Node, and Neptune running over (transiting) his collection of Aquarian planets opposing his planet of accidents, Uranus, I think he was engaged in a very different kind of activity and lost control of the situation.

His loss is unfortunate for American letters and for our society as a whole.

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