Cardinal Richelieu

Water takes four of his ten planets, fire three, earth two and a single one air, with five of the ten mutable. The element that would stand back and talk a thing over is down to one planet, in the chart of a man the record says ran a country for eighteen years. It also says Richelieu broke the power of the nobility and the Huguenots, and founded the Academie francaise.

Uranus is in three of the six closest contacts and it is the hinge of this chart. Saturn sits in mild friction with it at just over a fifth of a degree, order against revolt and frustration with rules that serve nobody; Mars sits in easy contact with it at three quarters, quick reflexes and an instinct for the unconventional move; and Venus at an awkward angle at nine tenths. A minister the record credits with breaking two established powers has the planet of refusal tied to limit, to drive and to taste at once, which is about as close to a job description as this chart offers.

Mercury sits sixty degrees from Neptune at three fifths of a degree, which is imagination available at no cost, and in a record whose last fact is founding an academy for a language, that is the contact worth keeping. The Sun sits at seventeen degrees of Virgo with Mercury at twenty six, the sign built on doing something properly, and sits in mild friction with Mars at under four tenths. The Moon answers from Pisces at twenty one and its sign is certain. This chart holds no closed figure of any kind.

He died in Paris on 4 December 1642, at fifty seven. Mars stood directly opposite its own natal place at a fifth of a degree that day, with Pluto sixty degrees from his natal Venus at under half and square his natal Uranus at the same orb, so the sky was working the one planet this whole chart turns on. The Moon was gibbous and ninety six per cent lit. That is the phase that refines, questions and improves, and rarely calls anything finished.