1: Song to the Stranger in Strange Lands
2: Heinlein’s Natal Chart
3: Saturn in Pisces
4: Chariklo and how Sci-Fi Envisions ‘Things to Come’.
5: The Hauntological Question
1: Song to the Stranger in Strange Lands
You quickly realise from Robert A. Heinlein’s novel Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) what all the controversy was about. The topics in its pages skip casually from free love, polyamory, water sharing rituals, telepathy, OBEs, cannibalism, the intertwining of corrupt politics and religions and journalism and the messiah complex. That’s quite a lot to pack into one story. The extended version published in 1991 contained the extra 60,000 words that the publishers had thought too controversial to publish back in 1961.
While not a main character there is an astrologer called Becky Vesant who gives advice to the leader of the one world government that has taken over the world. Major Douglas relies on this resident astrologer Becky Vesant, for predictions on how to proceed in life. This is uncanny as, written in 1961, it foresees the role that Joan Quigley played as secret astrologer to the Reagans during their time in the 1980s at the Whitehouse.
Quigley influenced world events that heralded the Perestroika period. It was Nancy who had Ronald’s ear and persuaded him to follow astrological advice, even warning him about the day of the attempted assassination. Vesant does the same for Major Douglas and his wife Alice, only 20 years in advance of it happening. In a similar scenario Becky Vesant’s astro-analysis is vital to Alice Douglas who then advises her husband Major Douglas what should be done about the man from Mars so Jubal Harshaw can intercede in his favour. Astrology has its uses even for top policy makers and Heinlein suggests a future where use of astrology is normalised and no longer needs to be hidden.
The book also contains some interesing speculation on what Mars-centric astrology might be like and how you might do a natal chart from that planet instead of from Earth. On terra firma horosocpes are all geo-centric with an option to be heliocentric. But Mars centric is pretty out there? So there is some thinking outside the box in the novel about possible horoscopes where Mars is the default circle and would not be marked in the chart at all.
The novel is a rich stew of visionary ideas mostly ahead of their time and it propelled Robert Heinlein to the list of top writers of the 20th century. Its original title was ‘The Heretic’ and the words ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ is a quote from the King James Bible, from Exodus 22.2. But ironically, in spite of its iconoclasm, it has achieved iconic popular status. It was given the Hugo award, and even was associated with the liberation movements of the 1960s and even became tangled up in the cult of Charles Manson and his followers who borrowed its ideas of living in communes and sharing lovers.
Putting aside the debate about whether Heinlein is still fashionable or not, there is still something important to learn from Heinlein’s book and that is to pose the question: where do the ideas on Earth originate? Who among us feels just like the man from Mars, like strangers here on Earth who see things differently from other humans? Do we really belong here or do we sometimes feel we are from somewhere else? Or to ask if we have been given a special mission to fulfil and if that should be our sole task? And to ask if it is true that,while we are in this world, we are not of it -as the famous Sufi mystical doctrine goes- then who are we really?
What occurs on Earth can appear insane, absurd, twisted, profane, evil, massively infested by parasitic energies, and what we witness during one lifetime is shocking travesty of the true potential of what it means to be an evolved ‘human’. You could be forgiven for thinking that Earth is the battleground for wars on the physical, emotional and metaphysical levels.
And who feels most alienated among social groups who might feel this existential anxiety about others? Chiron in Aquarius, especially if that is in the 7th house. Heinlein’s Chiron was in Aquarius which is how he can teach us about what happens to individuals in groups, as they either feel rejected as aliens or they descend into an orgy of groupthink. Someone has to be the sin eater and soak up all the ugly projections. People with this placement are the introverts and loners, people who don’t ‘fit in’. They have a troubled sense of belonging. Chiron has been in and out of Aquarius at various times, but retrogrades a lot, so double check where your Chiron placement is here. Chiron is in Aries at the moment chipping away at the existential angst people feel. Heinlein points to ideologies that sincerely intend to be for the good of all but that develop into dystopias- another quirky quality of Aquarius. is the imposition of their ideas on the rest of the world- always for the greater good.
Heinlein’s Chiron was in the third house so he was self conscious, sensitive to criticism, especially of his role as a writer, teacher, speaker and promotoer of ideas. One of his early stories in 1939 was called ‘Misfit’ about a mathematical genius who is poorly educated but whose quick thinking saves the day. He even coined the term ‘speculative fiction.’ He and his wife were oddballs and nudists just like William Blake and his wife, a tad eccentric. He wrote whole series of books for teens. e.g. Starship Troopers where the film is a parody of the book. He won four Hugo awards while still alive, which is the record, but also holds the record for being awarded Hugos posthumously. So mingling the Aquarius layer with the 3rd House, he wrote very sensitively about strange visitors and how alienating that can be because he most likely felt he was one himself from his own experience.
While Stranger in a Strange Land may not be the greatest of literary achievements, it is regarded as one of the best Science Fiction novels ever written and the best Heinlein ever wrote. That all makes for a racy novel full of questions about why society on Earth is the way it is. It is written in satirical vein, so it is quite comical in parts, almost picaresque. It is about a man Valentine Michael Smith, born in Mars, who is a hybrid half human. He has special powers of telepathy, going out of body, able to teleport thigs, people, clothes, and have deep emotional understanding. He lands on Earth and has to learn its history and psychology all from scratch so his viewpoint is innocent and objective- at least at first.
But he learns quickly and becomes the messiah of his own religion of free love. He is compared to a Prometheus stealer of fire- so that’s a stand- in for Uranus and the genius that bestows. They way he looks at the humans he meets is without judgement like a tabula rasa- until he ‘groks’ them and begins to understand. This word ‘grok’ originated in Heinlein’s book yet has multiple and profound meanings: to get, to dig, to asborb, to drink, to know fully, to understand, to consume, to eat, to identify with and so on.
The novel reveals such a lot about our time in the 21st century and the issue of how religions create the chains on the human mind and where they are mingled with politics and sex i.e. where political movements act like substitutes for religion and where sex is repressed and/or sublimated unconsciously. This is especially true for people who are lost and vacuous, without any inner spiritual compass, or who have strayed away from the religious tradition they were born into. State policies and laws take on the guise of evangelical and theological dictats to be blindly obeyed, and the appeal to what is the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ way to think is put down to which knee-jerk emotions are triggered and not to any facts or to any enlightened reasoning process. In another lesser known novel ‘Orphans in the Sky (1964) there is a massive spaceship and all humans aboard truly believe that it is the living extent of the entire universe as they have never actually been to the edges of the ship.
2: Heinlein’s Natal Chart
Heinlein’s birth date has a synchronous number theme as it has 7-7-7 recurring. He was born on the 7th of the 7th month, July, 1907. He was born in the sign of Cancer where he has a stellium of planets opposing the conjunction of Uranus/Mars in Capricorn. This axis is cardinal so he never lacked initiative drive and energy to get things done in an original way. He was very productive and energised and had a fertile imagination. What’s neat is that in traditional rulerships the chart is ruled by Mars- the planet with which he was so associated.
He had Scorpio on the Ascendant so his intense eyes and his probing into psychology is one of the most obvious features to notice about him and that intensity is reflected in his work. Cancer as a sun sign is so full of heart and intution and craves security as they try to make their home in the world. But they know how to hold on and create their nest- he got into real estate and silver mining. There is a lot of wisdom too as Jupiter is exalted in Cancer and he certainly was a fount of ideas and speculations about the world. And he has Jupiter in Cancer.
This Sun/Neptune in Cancer opposite Mars/Uranus in Capricorn is as heavyweight aspect and reveals a lot about the inner tensions within him. He could be feisty and argumentative at times, not always easy to know. Mars is exalted in Capricorn so mingled with the genius of Uranus organises the world just in an overly structured way, containing any innovations. But at the same time productive. They are both in retrograde motion so he often corrected his course and adapted his political views throughout his life. The Sun and Neptune is waves of inspiration coming in in the sublunary world of Cancer, of shifting dreams and intuitions.
Mercury in Leo tends to be bold and very persuasive.They speak with authority but from the heart. Mercury here does not hold back. However, Heinlein trained himself to overcome a stammer by consciously delivering speeches in a controlled and rather awkward manner. The unaspected Mercury in Leo might point to this difficulty speaking, as well as the already mentioned Chiron in the third house, but also to his runaway success being the first Sci-Fi writer to hit mainstream sales lists and be so highly regarded as an influence. Leo is the storyteller, and it is there in the 9th house of philosophy and higher learning, but Mercury is not retrograde in this chart. It has only a semi-square aspect to Pluto. It has no other major aspects so perhaps it struggled on its own in that fixed fire sign and there’s a sense that all his characters are heroic in some way, enacting that collective story of the struggle to individuate. To the accusation that Science Fiction can be written without much science, Heinlein believed that science fiction must be written with a knowledge of science just like historical fiction must be written with a knowledge of history. So he was the first to make the ‘science’ accurate and plausible.
One of his many predictions in his books aside from flying cars, water beds, calling television ‘the babble box’, and multiple screen readers for instant tele-communication was that if you learned Russian, you were an optimist, but if you learned Chinese, you were a pessimist. He lived through the Cold War period. But he was also aware that this pessimission versus optimism could go in reverse. His wife Ginny learned to speak Russian and for a long time he considered himself a socialist aiming for fairness in society, though that shifted towards the end of his life towards a more militaristic type of libertarian conservatism. His Mercury in Leo is actually conjunct the asteroid named Russia and in his astrocartography map, the Sun/Jupiter/Neptune Uranus/Mars axis runs right through Moscow.
Jupiter is well placed at 20° of Cancer as mentioned and incidentally conjunct the asteroid Zeus doubling down on the Greek and Roman versions of that archetype. Did he act like the King of the gods? You could say so. He certainly trusted his gut and acted as spiritual mentor to many. Heinlein was known to be generous in a Jupiterian way, very benevolent. He mentored Ray Bradbury who praised him for it, and even loaned money to Philip K. Dick when he needed cash. The phrase Heinlein invented was to ‘pay forward’ which suggests a belief that everything is connected and energy moves in circles- the idea of what goes around comes around. So he encouraged the people he gifted to pass that on to others, not back to him, in whatever form that took. This is Jupiterian magnanimity which loves to bestow money and opportunity- to help people grow personally and to for them to take advantage of their circumstances.
3: Saturn in Pisces
In Heinlein’s chart Jupiter is trine to Saturn in Pisces offering a slightly more positive spin on the Saturn there, a kind of blessing. But in August of 2024 collectively have Jupiter square Saturn-which is expansion then retraction which is to say, freedom with a few restrictions. We are already seeing clamp down and talk of more lockdowns. This will continue on and off until June 2025. There will be three exact opening squares- the first is on August 19th, a dramatic day astrologically and then again on December 24th 2024; and again a third time on June 15th 2025. The tension here asks us to question beliefs and test any commitment we may have to those beliefs so it could see a challenging period of push and shove where people are obliged to persevere against the odds, wrestle with doubts, or see clearly where their chances lie but be held back in other areas of life.
Heinlein has Saturn in Pisces at 27° which links him this period as Saturn moves through the sign of Pisces (from March 2024 to2026) and brings its spiritual challenges the messing up of boundaries. Saturn, which is all about boundaries creates tension with its sojourn in Pisces. Neptune dissolves boundaries but Saturn reinforces them. Which is stronger may depend on your individual chart. They are both in Pisces at the moment with Neptune at the anaretic 29°– which is the season grand finale of all that has been corroding the world while Neptune has been in Pisces since 2011.
Saturn is currently at 17° but will reach 27° at the end of April/beginning of May 2025. This will be just before it joins Neptune at the zero ‘world’ degree point of Aries at the end of May 2025 and that heralds both a grand climax and a major brand new beginning rolled into one. We can expect major changes. Heinlein’s position of Saturn is interesting as Saturn will reach this point in April of 2025. This is the beginning of what is known as Gandanta in Indian astrology.. It is where planets shift from Water signs into Fire signs and that allows karmic knots to be unravelled- but not without some trouble. Perhaps we should take note of Heinlein’s views which may be increasingly relevant during this time as the need to unravel the knots is greater than ever. But this will be a tense and potentially turbulent time for all of us.
Stranger in a Strange Land was published on June 1st 1961 when Heinlein was 54. He had begun publishing stories just after his first Saturn return in the late 1930s. He had passed through both his Uranus and his Chiron return by this point so perhaps feeling wise and confident. Stranger in a Strange Land became the first science fiction novel to become a mainstream best seller. It was a tremendous success selling over 100,000 copies. The transiting Moon was activating his Mars Uranus conjunction in Capricorn and therefore opposing his Jupiter in Cancer. Transiting Jupiter in Aquarius- that’s publishing of science fiction in a nutshell-was opposite his natal Mercury in Leo, highlighting the creative tension of the story teller. But transiting Mercury in Cancer was conjunct asteroid Psyche conjunct the Sun, and square to Neptune in early Scorpio intensifying his insight and ability to entertain. Critics said he had bitten off more than he could chew. But that did not stop its massive popularity impacting the sixties head on.
The ability of religions to control the minds of the masses is a theme in Stranger in a Strange Land. And the man who almost invented a religion – Scientology- just to prove that he could was L. Ron Hubbard, born just a few years after Heinlein in 1911. Hubbard was Heinlein’s friend for many years as originally he too wrote science fiction stories that were more about people than science and had a philosophical bent. He was a Pisces who also had a conjunction of Uranus and Mars in Capricorn, and like Valentine Michael Smith he created a cult (Jupiter, Neptune and the Sun in a grand water trine) and there lies a whole other story for another article.
But their relationship blew hot and cold- they fell out for a while- but generally cordial and respectful and did not preclude accurate psychological assessment of each other. How did Heinlein come to know this forger of a new age religion of Dianetics and Scientology? In the same way that Heinlein also knew Jack Parsons, rocket scientist, occultist and acolyte of Aleister Crowley. Henlein moved in those cirlces. In Heinlein’s letters it emerged that Heinlein warned their mutal friend John Arwine about Hubbard. He said “I think you could easily find yourself in some sort of a jam if you let him get too close to you at this time.” Heinlein indicated to Arwine also that Hubbard planned to be a ‘big operator. So even in the late 1940s he could foresee the development of Scientology into the mass cult phenomenon it has become.
Hubbard was perhaps the model for Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land though some say Harshaw has many qualities of Heinlein himself although he was meant to be much older than the writer. Many of Heinlein’s characters have courage, vision, are self-reliant or are critical thinkers – they never start out in life as losers. They often like to deconstruct the traditional views and demolish preconceptions in order to consider other alternatives. Harshaw is the classic example of an ultra-articulate and outspoken maverick and contrarian (Prometheus-Uranus) who has the confidence of his own mind and does not care what others think. He is an intimidating force to be reckoned with against the governments and religions of the day.
4: Chariklo and How Sci-Fi Envisions ‘Things to Come’.
Many have asked if Heinlein was some kind of mystic. It is true that his Sun is midway between Neptune and Jupiter in Cancer and those two planets together massively expand all religious and spiritual feelings that take the life purpose of the native into the beyond. He was known to be very interested in Neo-Platonism, the Hermetic tradition and the work of P.D. Ouspensky. Perhaps he was mystical, but if so, that manifested in a very modern practical way. His regular hobby when not writing was as a stone mason- again pointing back to Saturn in Pisces. If he was a mystic, he was someone fully embodied in the world: in the world, but not of it. There’s no mystic rectangle in his chart to corroborate the purely mystical. It is certain however that he incorporated mystical ideas into his work along with the philosophical perspective.
He considered all religions as equal and pointed to the fact that they all contain the same core truth. This is one of the major themes of Stranger in a Strange Land where characters regularly say ‘Thou art God’ and feel each others’ souls. Many look to aspects between Mercury and Uranus to suggest the native is a Science Fiction Writer (his Mercury is in Leo and Uranus in Capricorn) – the Aquarians are an obvious choice- or just a well placed Mercury in Gemini or Virgo, or Uranus in a water sign. He has none of these obvious signatures, but that intense opposition he has between Mars/Uranus to Sun/Neptune may be enough to suggest rapid self development to higher states of mind or elevated sense of purpose.
But this is where asteroid Chariklo has something to offer. Her name means ‘graceful spinner’. She was the wife of Chiron in mythology possibly herself a centaur but also named as a nymph. She was the daughter of Apollo and Oceanus. Asteroid Chariklo orbits between Saturn and Uranus and radiates the clear light of being. She is a healing presence, and so quite mystical. Wherever she appears in the chart would be indicative of visions, or near-indefinable spiritual qualities such as a healing presence. Heinlein himself had asteroid Chariklo in Pisces at 20° and Chariklo activates the objective ‘ground’ of being in an already very spiritual sign.
However, Chariklo is not limited to being a radiant presence. Zane Stein and others have linked her to Science Fiction writers as one of her associations is the ‘envisioning of things to come’, something it behooves us all to do. In Heinlein’s chart Chariklo is 7° from Saturn, which is a wide orb, so we can only claim they are ‘co-present’ in the sign, but Chariklo is sesquidratrate to Mercury, trine to Jupiter and square to Pluto which establishes her as a strong influence in the chart.
Other examples of Chariklo in the charts of Sci-Fi writers are:
- Arthur C. Clarke had Chariklo trine/sextile his North and South Nodes;
- Ray Bradbury had Chariklo directly opposite Mars;
- Philip K. Dick has Chariklo conjunct Mars, square Uranus and sextile Jupiter.
- Ursula le Guin had Chariklo trine to Mars and square to both Uranus and Mercury.
- J. G. Ballard had Chariklo conjunct his Juptier and Pluto;
- Samuel R. Delaney has Chariklo conjunct the Moon and sextile to both Pluto and Chiron.
- Gene Rodenberry, creator of Star Trek, has a prominent Chariklo square to his Sun.
- Even L. Ron Hubbard has Chariklo conjunct his Mars/Uranus in Capricorn.
Knowing all this in the charts of these writers should give us a new appreciation of the meaning of Chariklo and why we should never underestimate the wife of Chiron as she shares his gift of prophecy by being able to see into the future i.e. she is a sci-fi visionary.
5: The Hauntological Question
Just to mention a few other issues in his life: regarding Heinlein and his health. He had a severe bout of peritonitis in the early 70s. This is the layer around the stomach which is astrologically linked to the zodiac sign of Cancer. It took a long time and many operations to recover from.
Bear in mind he was born in 1907 pre-WWI, so his views on women and gays tended towards the traditional but he voiced diverse views through the mouthpiece of various characters in his work. this debate is treated relatively fairly in a video by Daisy X Machina. Let’s just say he was of his era in some ways, yet way ahead of in others. People are nothing if not contradictory and of their time, and Heinlein, despite his visionary abilities, was no exception.
Regarding the claim that Charles Manson (Scorpio) used the book for his hippy commune of shared lovers, this could also be exaggerated. It has passed in to urban legend and the association is damaging. It as if to say that Stranger is merely manual for cults to spawn serial killers. Manson was not even literate and had very little use for books. His aim was to write songs and be like the Beach Boys, but it is possible he may have had Heinlein’s novel read aloud to him by his followers. He may have heard talk of its contents. Evidence is anecdotal though it’s a testament to the broad influence that Heinlein had across culture, much more wide ranging than any other Science Fiction writers.
One of Heinlein’s stories was made ito a film called Predestination (2014). It was based on the story ‘All You Zombies’ about gender bending and time travel. But Stranger in a Strange Land has oddly enough never been made into a film – perhaps there is no director bold enough to take it on? The role of Valentine Michael Smith would most likely have suited David Bowie. Some suggest he got ideas from Heinlein for the concept of Ziggy Stardust. But there are clearer similarities with the experience of Valentine Smith to Thomas Jerome Newton in Walter Tevis’s story ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’ (1963).The director of the film, Nicholas Roeg (Leo) cast Bowie as the alien from Althea because of his unusual appearance. Both stories show that strangers in a strange land suffer this hard lesson that the ways on Earth can totally corrupt and entrap a purer soul. You don’t have to be from Mars to feel this too. There is a flavour of Icarus here, of ascending too high, only to fail, of overestimating your chances of success but being blessed with talent and genius that can become easily exploited usually by vicious-minded humans. So the story is a fall from grace, like that of Lucifer, the fallen angel.
Tevis was another Pisces like Hubbard, and the weirdest thing is that asteroid Icarus is conjunct the planet Mars in Tevis’s chart at 29° Capricorn/0° of Aquarius! And Hubbard’s Icarus is conjunct his Sun in Pisces. Heinlein’s Icarus is conjunct this very same Saturn at 27/28° of Pisces. Is it the signature of some grand fall from grace born of over-aspiration?
The feeling I get when reading Stranger is hauntological like a painful nostalgia for a future potential that has been somehow stolen from us, all the things that the world could be free from bankers, religions and useless beliefs. It proposes that there is a world where good can flourish, until of course it is rubbished by hatred and envy and unjust agendas working against that goal- so perhaps that’s not the one we live in? It’s the Chiron in Aquarius theme again making acutely painful any relationship we have to other humans and the ideas they project as right or as the ‘only’ ones.
Heinlein died on May 8th 1988 on a Venus return, Neptune opposite natal Neptune and Saturn square Saturn. Uranus and Saturn were conjunct in early Capricorn.
There is so much more to Heinlein than just one book and this has merely scratched the surface. He was the embodiment of deep waters where the profundities are all there if you care to look hard enough. Plus in 2024 he has lost none of his relevance as a storyteller of some clout.
“And so it was I entered the broken world
To trace the visionary company of love, its voice
An instant in the wind (I know not wither hurled),
But not for long to hold each desperate choice!”
from ‘The Broken Tower’ by Hart Crane
© Kieron Devlin, Proteus Astrology, August 12th, 2024, All Rights Reserved.
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