René Descartes

Of his ten planets, six sit in fire signs, three in earth, one in air and not one in water. Air is the element of thought itself in this reading, which makes a single planet a remarkable allocation for the man the record says gave philosophy its starting point. Descartes also gave geometry its coordinates, and the record says he died in Stockholm after Queen Christina insisted on lessons at five in the morning in a Swedish winter.

The Sun, Mercury, Jupiter, Uranus and Pluto all sit in Aries, five planets across nineteen degrees of the sign that begins things and does not wait to see them through. Aries is the first sign, the starting point of the whole circle, and a philosopher whose contribution was to find a place to start from carries half his chart there. Mercury sits on the final thirteen minutes of it, about to cross into Taurus. The Moon answers from Taurus itself. For a philosopher whose published work had to start from somewhere he could not doubt, half a chart in the first sign of the circle is the reading that fits.

Jupiter sits conjunct Uranus at under four fifths of a degree, scale fused to the planet that overturns the arrangement, which in a man the record credits with giving philosophy its starting point is the aspect that fits. The Sun makes an easy skill of its contact with Mars at seven tenths. Saturn and Neptune were the two retrograde planets, and nothing here forms a named pattern.

He died in Stockholm on 11 February 1650, at fifty three. Mars rules his Aries Sun, and that day it sat in easy contact with his natal Venus nine hundredths of a degree away from exact, while Saturn stood conjunct that same natal Mars within a degree and a quarter. The Moon was at its first quarter and seventy six per cent lit, the phase that acts decisively. The Sun had reached Aquarius, air, the element his chart had almost none of.