Adlai Stevenson II

Air takes five of his ten planets, with two apiece in fire and earth and a single one in water. Five of the ten are mutable and only one is cardinal. The Sun, Mercury and Mars sit inside five degrees of Aquarius. The record says Stevenson lost twice to Eisenhower and then, as ambassador to the UN, produced the photographs during the Cuban Missile Crisis and said he was prepared to wait for an answer until hell froze over.

Mars sits sixty degrees from Uranus at two hundredths of a degree, the tightest contact in the chart, and the reading is quick reflexes: acting well in an emergency, and an instinct for the unconventional move. The record names the emergency. Producing photographs across a table at the Security Council during the Cuban Missile Crisis is acting well in an emergency in the most literal sense that phrase has, and the orb is two hundredths of a degree. It is one of the closer fits in this project, and it was written for an angle rather than for a man.

Mercury sits conjunct Mars inside that Aquarius group at under two degrees, and the reading is quick and pointed: decisiveness, debating ability and wit, with the standing caution that the tongue is a weapon here whether or not it is meant to be. The record supplies the wit directly, in a quoted line about waiting until hell froze over, which is a sentence built to be remembered. Three planets inside five degrees of Aquarius, the sign built on not being told, is the structural half of the same observation.

The Sun sits in mild friction with Saturn at four hundredths of a degree, identity meeting a rule that will not move: self-doubt, delay, and the consolation that what is built under it tends to last. For a man the record introduces by two defeats, delay is the reading that meets the facts and the consolation is the one the record declines to confirm. His Moon sits on the sixth degree of Taurus at noon with Aries still possible, so it is left out. Neptune and Pluto were the two retrograde planets. He died in London on 14 July 1965, at sixty five. Venus stood in direct opposition to his natal Sun at fourteen hundredths of a degree that day and Uranus square its own natal place at just over a quarter. The Moon was full and ninety nine per cent lit.