Walter Benjamin

Three of his ten planets sit in fire signs, three in air, three in water and a single one in earth. Earth is the element that holds a position and stays in it, and there is almost none of it in the chart of a man the record says died fleeing the Nazis. Benjamin was a German critic.

The Sun sits at twenty three degrees of Cancer with Venus further back in the sign, and the Moon sits on the third degree of Aries, or Pisces a few hours earlier. Cancer keeps everything it is given; Aries goes at the thing directly. For a critic, a Cancer Sun that lets nothing go is the placement doing the work, because the trade depends on having kept everything you ever read.

Mercury sits directly opposite Mars at an orb of zero, exact to the arcminute, which is as exact as this project ever reports. Speech and drive at perfect opposition, with the full width of the chart between them, is an extraordinary thing to carry, and in a writer it is the configuration that turns every sentence into an argument with itself. The Sun sits square Jupiter at a fifth of a degree. Venus and Mars were the two retrograde planets.

He died at Portbou on 26 September 1940, at forty eight. The Moon rules his Cancer Sun, and that day it sat conjunct that Sun within nine tenths of a degree while the Sun itself stood opposite his natal Moon at just over one. Neptune sat on his natal Saturn within an eighth of a degree, and Uranus made easy contact with the same planet at under half. The Moon was at its last quarter and thirty two per cent lit, which is the phase that rethinks the whole premise rather than the details.