A Study in Contrasts
Zip Dobyns
I haven’t been home much to read the newspapers, but I understand that they have been full of reports about Jeffrey Dahmer’s multiple murder victims. It is hard for normal people to understand a person who can torture and kill teenage kids. When we analyze the horoscope of such a person, it is important to always remember that the astrological patterns can be manifested in many different details depending on the individual’s choices. Astrology shows us the psychological principles. The details of the life depend on how we seek to satisfy these basic psychological drives.
I also have the horoscope of a Swiss man who is a dentist and scientists who discovered that he had psychokinetic powers. Like Uri Geller, he can bend spoons, start watches, and help people with spiritual healing. Of course there are many differences between the two charts, but there are also some intriguing similarities. Both charts show issues involving power but one person used his power to kill; the other is using it to heal. I could make this another challenge corner. Readers who would like to try their skills can judge the charts first and then read about the individuals.
Both charts have a sign of partnership rising with the Sun and at least one ruler of the first house in the seventh or eighth house. As I have written repeatedly, such individuals feel that their personal power is connected to others. They may compromise and cooperate to share the power. They may engage in healthy competition. Or they may help people. On the negative side, they may give in to please other people; they may try to keep all the power (a la Hitler); or they may retreat from closeness to feel safe. Dahmer chose the Hitler route—“if I get you first, I will be safe and reassure myself that I have the power.” Egger chose the healing path. “If I help you, I have proved that I have the power and I am using it constructively.”
Both charts also have Saturn-Vesta aspects; a conjunction for Dahmer, an opposition for Egger. Virgo-Capricorn mixtures can be so focused on the “job” that they lose sight of human feelings and consequences. The potential for “tunnel vision” can lead to ruthlessness (Jim Jones also had Vesta conjunct Saturn in Capricorn) or the individual can develop the ability to directly affect the physical world with the mind; what we call psychokinetic ability.
Both charts have the potential for power struggles with a grand cross that includes angles of the chart. Dahmer’s cross is in cardinal signs with the Aries Moon exactly opposite the Ascendant and closely square the Saturn-Vesta conjunction in Capricorn, more widely square the MC. Egger has a fixed cross with Mars in Leo exactly on the MC square the East Point in Scorpio, opposite the IC and more widely square Venus-north node-Ceres in Taurus, with the fixed signs in cardinal houses. Uranus in Aries in the fixed (Leo) house is also part of the configuration with octiles and trioctiles to the fixed sign factors.
But it is true that Egger also has more sextiles and trines while Dahmer has more one-seven and one-eight combinations, especially after P Mars moved into the seventh house. But Dahmer could have been a sensitive, intuitive teacher with his Moon on an angle, a Cancer MC, and a first house Neptune sextile Pluto and Jupiter and trine Chiron in Pisces in the fifth house of children. And Egger could have expressed his Juno on the Ascendant in Scorpio (which is so like Pluto) with his south node near it as power struggles rather than as self-mastery. I believe that character creates destiny and that humans create their own character and modify it from life to life. When the consequences of the character become too painful, we change, unless we are wise enough with the help of astrology or other forms of self-knowledge to recognize coming consequences and change before we reach the point of suffering!
