Philip II of Spain

Air takes five of his ten planets, with two apiece in fire and earth and a single one in water, and six of the ten are mutable. Mercury, Venus, Uranus and Jupiter fill eleven degrees of Gemini, the sign built around knowing things and passing them on. The record says Philip the Second of Spain ruled an empire on which the sun did not set, sent the Armada against England, and processed state papers personally at a desk in the Escorial for forty years.

Four planets in the sign of information, and one planet in the element that would register what any of it cost, in a monarch the record describes sitting at a desk reading paperwork for forty years. That is as close as this set comes to a chart and a record describing the same room. It is a resonance and not a mechanism, and the forty years are the record's own number.

Jupiter sits sixty degrees from Saturn at under four tenths of a degree, growth that holds: sound judgement about risk, and a career that accumulates rather than spikes. The Sun sits a fifth of the way round from Neptune at the same orb, imagination available at no cost. The Sun itself sits on the last degree of Taurus and Mars on the first of Sagittarius and retrograde, directly opposite it at just over a degree and a half, drive and identity arguing. His Moon sits on the third degree of Libra at noon, with Virgo still possible, so it is left out.

He died at El Escorial on 13 September 1598, at seventy one, at the desk the record names. Mars stood in easy contact with his natal Uranus at thirteen hundredths of a degree that day, with Pluto sixty degrees from his natal Mercury at half and Mercury itself at that same angle to his natal Mars at the same orb. The Moon was gibbous and ninety six per cent lit. That is the phase that refines, questions and improves, and rarely calls anything finished.