The Birth and Death Charts of Adrian Carton de Wiart
I happened to encounter this curious little clip from a Joe Rogan podcast in which the guest talks about “the unkillable soldier“.
Watch this short excerpt and then read on:
This got me curious enough to bring out the astro-goggles. What would the astrological signature of an unkillable soldier look like?
The account of his life in Wikipedia paints a picture not only of a man of extraordinary courage and resilience, but also, interestingly, someone who was throughout his life frequently in the company of society’s elite.
The chart above is set for the Sidereal zodiac (Lahiri Ayanamsha), and since we don’t have a birth time, the picture is somewhat incomplete. Even so, it is no surprise to find an exalted Sun in Aries in a fairly close Sextile to Mars in Gemini. It is also somewhat eye catching that Mars is “out of bounds” and at relatively extreme declination (though to be honest I haven’t studied the consequences of this in any great detail, but it’s eye catching). Also, Saturn and Pluto are in close parallel which is suggestive of extraordinary tenacity and harsh conditions, such as one encounters in war.
I was initially almost surprised to find the Moon Conjunct Jupiter (even though we can’t be sure of the Moon’s degree without a birth time we can be sure it’s not very far from Jupiter), since this tends to indicate a person of refinement and not some sort of indomitable roguish warrior; but this was before I had read through the whole of Wikipedia’s biographical sketch. It all started making sense when I read about his high society birth and his many subsequent associations with nobility and leaders such as Winston Churchill.
That said, Wikipedia does recount that is was said of him that he was “a delightful character and must hold the world record for bad language”. This is, I suspect, at least partly due to Mercury being Conjunct Saturn and also Sesquiquadrate to Uranus, aided and abetted by Mars in Sidereal Gemini (the latter tends to enjoy impressing others with wit and wordiness when not tearing their own fingers off).
Now, you may or may not be aware that I have this theory that death charts (I mean, the chart for the moment of death) are no less revealing of a person’s character and biography than birth charts.
Again, unfortunately, we don’t have a time of death so we have no Ascendant and no Houses, but following the simple logic that the most prominent aspects in a chart tell half the story, it comes as no surprise to find Mars very tightly Conjunct Uranus in his “cosmic obituary”.
Sometimes a picture or two is, quite literally worth a thousand words. Note how precisely the “death chart” is readable in the same way you’d read a birth chart.
The following is from James Braha’s How to be a Great Astrologer: The Planetary Aspects Explained:
And see below the notes on Mars-Uranus from Reinhold Ebertin’s book, The Combination of Stellar Influences:
Death charts just keep on validating this idea that they’re just as useful as birth charts for understanding a person, albeit that they are necessarily retrospective.
In fact, this is quite a typical example of how Death Charts often tell the tale of a person’s life story more clearly and succinctly than birth charts. There is little more to add; Mars within less then 1 degree of an exact Conjunction with Uranus nails it perfectly.