Graham Greene's Horoscope, and Much Else . . .

Reflections on Graham Greene's Horoscope and much else . . .

"The objects of God's creation reflect one Mind."--Mary Baker Eddy

I am reading Graham Greene's The Honorary Consul. Hard going. I find it as dull as a complex detective novel. Not much human interest so far. Unsympathetic, peculiar characters. Oddly enough at this point, early in the book, I find Dr. Humphries, who is not really a doctor but is one of the three English persons in a town in Argentina north of Buenes Aires, the most sympathetic, just because he seems honest I guess. The others are devious. Or drunk or . . .

Graham Greene is a mixed bag. Didn't he write a story about a dead baby in a suitcase? He found that amusing? I found it so utterly repulsive that I almost decided to read nothing more by him.

Libra, the sign, can go bad. It went bad in Truman Capote. It can become perverse, and I mean really perverse not in a humorous but a truly offensive manner. Greene is supposed to be a religious writer, a Catholic, by some, but then you find that he wrote three "Catholic novels" in which he appeared to be a believer, then seemed to reject his faith, then seemed to not know what he believed. Libra can be a sign of indecision. I am not sure what good it is. Oh, Jimmy Carter is a good Libra individual. So was Eleanor Roosevelt. So was Ike Eisenhower.

Maybe Greene bends over backwards (a Libra position) to see both sides of everything and that is why he seems like a chameleon. By being sympathetic to all of his characters who are opposed to one another he becomes sympathetic to none. But in The Power and the Glory he overcame that problem at least for one novel. Some think it his best work.

His horoscope is "splash" shaped. Maybe that is why people can read into him whatever they want (as they can with Libra also, sometimes, as in T. S. Eliot). His degree-symbols, or that of his sun, make him a proficient critic and analyst who wants to warn people of dangers. He enters the fray because he sees he must. This corresponds to the political elements of his novels, which are disturbing because they bring out the difficulty of winning a war or a political dispute or legal battle when both sides are wrong or partly wrong. He took politics seriously and wanted to "enter the fray" as a gladiator but his Catholicism offered an easier way out, the path of Grace.

I see now that his Mars symbol is "A wolf carrying away a lamb" according to Charubel. That explains the baby in the suitcase. Greene, you ought to be ashamed of that story.

But of course in The Power and the Glory the priest protagonist was accused by the Communists of being " a wolf carrying away" the lambs of the populace, while in fact he was the lamb ultimately carried away and killed by them. So Greene at his best can be on the side of the lamb not the wolf. But he sees the wolf and has to warn us to be wary.

Yet the Borelli-Sepharial symbol for his Mars (at 0 Virgo) is quite different, "A festival or occasion for the assembling together of villagers in gala costume." This too is evident in everything he writes. The local color of his tales is brought out in a way which keeps us grounded in cultural differences. The degree gives "a strong taste for pleasures of various kinds, luxuries, festivities. It promotes friendships and good fortune; the native will be much esteemed for his convivial spirit." Well, something has kept people reading Greene's novels over the decades. Even when themes are serious and destinies dire, the occasions surrounding them can be colorful and enjoyable to ponder.

A day later, I have finished the Honorary Consul. It is resonating in my memory and it may be too early to say a lot that is veridical about it.

Doctors. Greene's stories have doctors. Very simply, horoscopically: He has both Mars and Mercury in Virgo, a punctilious health sign, and Venus in Scorpio, which can be a sign of surgery or clinical medical work of any kind---not always, but often. Eduardo Plarr in this novel is a doctor and his relations with his patients and his remedies are prominent in the story. When he makes love to a woman he does it almost clinically; he first touches Clara with whom he "falls in sex" (not love) because she says her stomach hurts. Greene's chart has a very close, nearly exact sextile between Mars and Venus--good for sexual relations of all sorts, but Venus is in Scorpio and Mars in Virgo, the two medical signs. Sex and medicine are mixed up in Greene's mind and in those of his characters.

The closest square or opposition, called the Dynamic Aptness, is Greene's Mercury in Virgo square his Pluto in Gemini. The formula reads "an inquisitive approach to obsession." At one point Plarr thinks, "I am not in love with Clara. I am in an obsession with her, it appears. What is that?" He is perplexed about it. Here Greene is, without knowing it, explicating one way in which his Mercury-square-Pluto-as-Dyanmic Aptness functions. Plarr can't get Clara out of his mind (Mercury) and is obsessed with her (Pluto) but does not feel love for her, which would be indicated by Venus or Jupiter or Neptune most usually.

Greene, and therefore his characters, are of course capable of love. Otherwise his novels would not be as successful as they have been. His Venus in early Scorpio is not only sextile Mars, very erotic, but sextile Uranus and trine the moon and Neptune. All this might depict a covert, unusual sort of love which sometimes comes off as gruffness. Venus is not comfortable in Scorpio. She is "in her detriment" in that sign, for she is "enthroned" in Taurus the opposite sign. His characters are bitterly self-examining, often; they go to confession, or want to, and the Catholic rite of confession is almost exactly what Venus-in-Scorpio means: You feel guilty of something or ashamed of it. Of course there is the sacrament and absolution, for Scorpio is a water sign, washing away one's sins. And yet oddly it seems there is never any end to this process and at worst it can be like picking off a scab so the wound bleeds again. In The Honorary Consul the major characters, near the climax, celebrate Mass together, but it is performed by a priest who has determined to kill one of those in the room for political purposes which he thinks are righteous. The harshness of Venus-in-Scorpio can be very ugly, a version of contempt. Greene is wise to lift it, when he can, to a sacramental level. When it is not so lifted it is merely mean-spirited, as in Plarr's attitude to his mother, and her attitude to his father, and on and on.

The other close aspect of Venus in Greene's chart is her opposition with Jupiter. This comes out in The Honorary Consul in the long theological discussions. Love (Venus) is mixed with philosophy or theology or politics (Jupiter). In short: When Venus opposes Jupiter, lovers disagree about these things. They have differing religions or one is devout and one atheistic. Their political opinions go in opposite directions. Yet love is there, somehow, trying to survive these differing attitudes and approaches. Most of Greene's stories have this element. The "whisky priest" in The Power and the Glory has to try to avoid capture by the Communists who want to kill him because to them his religion is counter-revolutionary and evil. In The Honorary Consul, the ex-priest who has become a political rebel has long conversations with the man he is planning to kill, about his religion and what it means to him. This is Venus-opposite-Jupiter with a vengeance, because of Venus's location in Scorpio, the sign (sometimes) of death, guilt, and recrimination.

People born with an emphasis in both Libra and Scorpio, like Greene, are condemned to be judges, to judge, to weigh everyone in the balance. What a horrible fate. Greene does it all the time in his novels, directly or, most often, indirectly, or his characters are judging other characters and there is no end to the moral legalism and the political legalism and the religious legalism.

Yet there is more than that in Greene's chart and I consider him at his best a saintly writer. At his worst he gets lost in the legalism and loses sight of the grace. Or perhaps he is embarrassed to emphasize grace, and hopes that we the readers will pick up the few hints of it he tosses at us in the midst of the tragedy. He seems the shy would-be priest who is embarrassed by his religion but hopes we will get some of it by osmosis.

--H H H 

 / C P