Pablo Casals

The Moon sits on the eighteenth degree of Gemini and Jupiter on the eighteenth of Sagittarius, opposite each other at a tenth of a degree, and the Moon's sign is certain. Earth takes four of his ten planets, fire three, water two and a single one air. The record says Casals found the Bach cello suites in a Barcelona shop at thirteen and practised them for twelve years before playing them in public, and that he refused to perform in any country that recognised Franco.

The Sun stands at an awkward angle to Pluto at a third of a degree, and the reading is identity in a power struggle: confrontation with authority, compulsion that overrides judgement, and periods where a person feels they must be entirely remade. A cellist who declined to play in any country that recognised a particular government turned a career into a confrontation with authority and then kept it there for decades, which is the first clause of that reading with a passport attached to it.

Mercury sits in mild friction with Venus at a third of a degree, about as hard an angle as those two can make, and the reading is a tendency to say the agreeable thing rather than the accurate one. The record contradicts it completely. A man who refused to perform across most of Europe on principle was saying the least agreeable available thing, repeatedly, at professional cost, and where a chart and a record disagree this flatly the record is the side with the evidence. Mercury also sits in easy contact with Pluto at half a degree, depth without strain: strategy, persuasion, and an unusual tolerance for uncomfortable information.

The Moon opposite Jupiter at a tenth of a degree is the tightest contact here, emotional overreach: promising more than can be delivered, and faith that outruns the evidence, and twelve years of private practice before a first public performance is the opposite of overreach by any measure available. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were the three retrograde planets, and a T-square closes on Pluto using Mars and Uranus. He died at San Juan on 22 October 1973, at ninety six. Mars stood conjunct his natal Neptune at fifteen hundredths of a degree that day and Mercury opposite his natal Pluto at a third. The Moon was balsamic and thirteen per cent lit.