A Prophet with the Name
Zip Dobyns
I have heard reports of Elizabeth Clare Prophet for more than 20 years and have been eager to get her birth data, so you can imagine my delight when it was included in Lois Rodden’s Data News! She was born on April 8, 1919, at 11 A.M. EST in Red Bank, NJ. I had done a noon chart for her date of birth and knew that she had a strong Aries stellium with Chiron forming a grand trine to Neptune in Leo and the north lunar node in Sagittarius. I have found the grand trine in fire to be a common feature in the charts of Gurus. Fire is a key to self-confidence. “I have it folks. Here it is. I know what I want and I have the right and power to do it.” Jupiter conjunct Pluto also emphasizes the importance of faith in her life. Conjunctions are the strongest aspects, so any planet conjunct another planet within three degrees is given a little extra emphasis. I suspected that Prophet would have at least one of the fire factors in her first house and that they might also fall near other angles for added emphasis. All three corners of the grand trine involve faith in some form: Neptune, Sagittarius, and Chiron.
[Note: AstroDatabank has 1939, not 1919. See the Summer 1990 Asteroid-World and Sagittarius 1998 Mutable Dilemma.]
The chart more than fulfilled my expectations. Chiron is just past the MC, Neptune is conjunct the Moon (also in Leo) in the first house, and the node is in the fifth house so the fire emphasis is supported by the element agreement between the signs and the houses and the first house Neptune adds another identification with God to the one shown by Chiron in Aries. Then to say it “in spades,” P Jupiter is conjunct Prophet’s natal Ascendant for many years! As I have written many times, every pattern in astrology can be manifested in a variety of ways. I usually present the extremes of a polar principle, adding that the “safest” place is generally a compromise somewhere in the middle. In the case of the identification with God, the two extremes are the conviction that we ought to be perfect, and since we are not, that we are no good, versus the conviction that we already are the Absolute. The latter may be manifested as variations on feeling that we have a right to do anything we want or that we know final truth. The safer middle ground is an acceptance of our humanness, a goal of becoming more perfect, but also the ability to enjoy the journey toward final complete union with the Absolute.
In addition to the identification with God, Prophet’s chart has a strong identification with power. The MC and four other factors are in Aries in the tenth house, including Mars, the natural ruler of Aries, and the Sun which rules the Leo in the first house so becomes a form of letter one in addition to its normal association with letter five. That actually gives us the same message seven times, and when Prophet moved to Montana she added an eighth repetition since the tenth house Mercury became ruler of her Ascendant in Montana where she has Gemini rising. As with the previous one-nine and one-twelve mixtures, we can describe two opposite extreme for the one-ten combination. At one end, the individual says “my will is Law and I will make the world be the way I think it ought to be.” At the other end, the person feels that the world has all the power and tends to give up trying, feeling that he or she would only fail or fall short. If this self-blocking is continued, it usually leads to illness in time. My impression of what I have read about Prophet’s early life is that she started as many women do, by projecting her power into her husband and only discovering that she had it after his death. She is now clearly in a position of great power over her devoted followers.
I never met Prophet, or heard her speak, but I understand that she can be very dramatic, living up to her strong Leo including the rising Neptune-Moon and the twelfth house Jupiter which has progressed to the Ascendant. Readers may remember that Jupiter in the Gauquelin “power zones” was associated with actors and politicians. The power zones include the ninth and twelfth houses and ten degrees into the tenth and first houses. Verbal fluency is normal with the nodes in Gemini-Sagittarius, and both the signs and houses of the nodes are associated with teachers, writers, travelers, etc. The south node in Gemini in the Aquarius house suggests a lesson in handling the conscious side of the mind, the intellect. The node’s octile to the Ascendant and to the midpoint of Sun-Mercury/Mars along with wide squares to Uranus and Ceres in Pisces suggests that the lesson might involve a conflict between the rational, objective detachment of air versus the emotionality of fire and water. The chart is heavily weighted with fire and water, indicating a person with great emotional warmth. Saturn, our other lesson factor, is in Leo in the Taurus house. The lesson could involve the handling of money, possessions, pleasures or power. Saturn’s trines to the tenth house planets in Aries point to success in handling the world, but the fire-earth emphasis can lead to overdrive so the lesson might involve learning to relax and enjoy the world without having to run it.
Prophet was featured in the newspapers in recent months when it was reported that members of her Church Universal and Triumphant had built bomb shelters underground and were preparing to live in them. Prophet is a modern “channel” or “medium” to use the older term, who claims that Jesus, other religious leaders, and archangels speak through her. There is some uncertainty over exactly what she predicted, with reporters claiming that she prophesied nuclear war, the Soviet Union bombing the U.S., listing April 23, 1990 as the date on which 25,000 years of Karma would come due with the beginning of the apocalypse. Prophet insists that she only said that the time of danger began then. An alternate source said that her predicted danger period started at the end of December, 1989. Whatever the details of her predictions, the church move from Malibu, California to Montana began in 1981 when the church bought 33,000 acres of land near Yellowstone National Park. Since then, her followers have dug 45 extensively equipped bomb shelters, the largest capable of holding 756 people, and 2,500 church members are supposedly prepared to live underground for anywhere from seven months to seven years. They have also accumulated an extensive arsenal of weapons which are a source of concern to some of the local residents. Prophet’s current husband got into legal difficulties some months ago when he was picked up in the state of Washington for buying weapons under an assumed name.
Spokesmen for the church have said that they will only go underground if there is nuclear war, but some of the teen-aged children of church members have run away, fearing that they would be forced to live in the shelters and not wanting to go. An extensive article in the Los Angeles Times on March 29, 1990 described the local friction in Montana between non-church members who sympathized with the children and would help them leave their parents and the local authorities who said that even if the children rejected their parents’ religious beliefs, the parents had jurisdiction over them as long as they were not abusing them.
There were interesting secondary progressions in Prophet’s chart during the early months of 1990 as her P Moon crossed her local (Montana) MC and opposed natal and then P Saturn. The church property is near Livingston, Montana, so I have calculated local house cusps for those coordinates. P Saturn was conjunct the Montana IC when Prophet chose that area for the church’s refuge. The placement fits going to that area to learn some kind of karmic lesson. P Juno (which is much like Pluto) has been conjunct Saturn for some years and it reached the local IC in December, 1989, in time for the potential April countdown. The combination of eighth house P Moon, local MC axis, Saturn and Juno does fit the fear of power struggles and violence, but targeting Russia as the source of the danger seems doubtful. The P Moon opposition to P Saturn ended about the end of April, and I presume that the church members are still above ground. Other aspects which could support the fear of power struggles include P Mercury conjunct Pluto which started in the fall of 1989 and P Mercury octile Saturn starting in early March 1990. As a key to the conscious mind, Mercury can indicate worry and conscious plans. P Mars reaching the twelfth house cusp around September 1989 points to action connected to unconscious faith, whether the faith is positive or weak so that the individual is fearful. One potential for combinations of letters one and twelve is faith in personal action rather than in a Higher Power. Building bomb shelters would fit that attitude. The unconscious faith was also highlighted at the time of the move to Montana since P local Ascendant had just finished a conjunction with P Neptune. I don’t know the date in 1981 when the Church moved, but I assume that the pattern was present while the land was bring inspected and purchased.
Other aspects in the year of the move included P Sun sextile natal Sun and Mercury, P MC square P Uranus, P Mars square Ceres, P local East Point conjunct the natal Ascendant, and P Venus conjunct the natal Moon and Juno. There were also the usual appropriate asteroids. P Montana started a conjunction with Prophet’s local Ascendant in the spring of 1981. If the church property is slightly west of Livingston as a map in the Los Angeles Times pictures it, the aspect could have started just a little earlier. P California is currently on Prophet’s local Ascendant as she receives publicity in California. P Elizabeth was in a grand trine to the north lunar node and Chiron when she made the move. It is now on P Neptune and natal Apollo, highlighting the area of faith and prophecy, but the combination is also octile the local Ascendant. P Apollo, a Greek god associated with the Sun (fame and power) and with prophesy and art, is conjunct P Juno and the midpoint of natal and P Saturn as well as octile natal Jupiter and P Hiroshima. P south lunar node has held a conjunction with natal Hiroshima for many years. P Russia was just coming to Jupiter at the beginning of 1981 and it was octile Saturn, fitting her fear of Russia. At the same time, P Jupiter was on natal Nemesis. P Moskva (Moscow) has been conjunct Prophet’s natal MC for several years and it is now on Chiron, suggesting a confrontation between faith (Chiron) and the potential enemy. P Aten (another Sun god for fame and power) is currently conjunct Prophet’s local P MC along with Dodona. The latter was named for a Greek shrine where priests issues prophecies partly involving the interpretation of the rustling of oak leaves. Natal Dodona was not prominent but currently P MC sextiles it. P local MC, P Aten, and P Dodona have all been opposite natal Winchester until recently. We have found Winchester associated with guns but the possibility remains that it might also be connected to religion or education. All three would fit Prophet’s church since it is a religious institution which has founded and operates its own school and it has collected many guns. The three factors in one Taurus are also all currently trioctile natal Michel (Mikail).
We can see the potential for psychic ability in Prophet’s natal chart with all three water planets in aspect to each other, with both Moon and Pluto aspecting Uranus, and with Uranus and Pluto in water signs and houses. Pluto is also conjunct the East Point which is an auxiliary Ascendant. I have not had enough experience with Chiron to judge whether its position on an angle is another possible key to psychic activity but it certainly puts extra emphasis on the issue of faith. Prophet had as asteroid named Pythia at 0 Taurus, sextile Uranus and square Juno as well as opposite Winchester, so it was brought into the network of the water planets. The priestesses who uttered the prophecies at Delphi, the most famous of the oracles in ancient Greece, were named Pythia. Another famous center for prophecy in the ancient world was located in what is now the Libyan Desert and was named Siwa. Prophet has had P Uranus on natal Siwa for most of her life and P Siwa on the MC and then Chiron in recent years. There is always more that might be said, but the important thing is to have the chart to be able to watch the years ahead as some millenarians wait for Armageddon, whether in bomb shelters or in hopes of being rescued by flying saucers, others wait for the financial system to crash, and others look for the promised golden age.