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Spiritual Company Newsletter
By Steffan Vanel • Astrologer • Tarot Reader
Author of:
The Astrological Karma of the USA
Charles & Diana: The Inside Story: An Astrological-Karmic ViewNow on YouTube:
The Astrological Karma of the USA and The New Presidency
Bridging Heaven & Earth Show #238Steve Jobs: An Astrological Commentary
I confess to being a long-time Apple devotee. I purchased my first Macintosh computer, a 512k, in 1987.
When I heard of the recent death of Steve Jobs I could feel a, difficult to describe, poignancy in his passing.
I was, of course, curious to see what was his Astrological make-up.
Some of the details I can see are really only relevant on a personal level, and I will refrain from sharing them. And, yes there is the fiery Mars in Aries in tension with Uranus which will tend to create, as Hilarion says: “angry outbursts and fits of rage”
What speaks to me the most, however, when I look at his chart is the amazing synergy of quite different energies that enabled him to do what he did, to be who he was.
Steve Jobs had a Pisces Sun in harmony with Neptune, hence his search for spirituality in India, and his admission of his usage of LSD, and asserting that taking LSD was one of the two or three most significant experiences in his life. He credits those psychedelic experiences as a key factor in his ability to ‘think outside of the box.’
His Sun was also in the Sixth House, the house associated with the sign Virgo, the house of work, service and attention to details. Steve Jobs also had a Virgo Rising, adding to that practical, detailed capacity of application, not normally noted with the sign Pisces. This combination of imaginative, mystical Pisces and practical, detailed application of Virgo is one significant theme of synergy noted in his chart.
Steve Jobs also had a Jupiter/Uranus conjunction. Jupiter: expansive optimism, beliefs, and faith, combined with Uranian openness to the unconventional and heightened intuition. Uranus//Jupiter contacts are often found in the charts of so-called geniuses. Interestingly, a great hero of Steve Jobs was Albert Einstein, who was also a Pisces, with a Jupiter/Uranus aspect. Both men having their private mysticism, but enjoying the role of iconoclast.
Steve Jobs’ Uranus/Jupiter is in tension with the feisty Mars in Aries, as mentioned earlier, and in tension with Neptune and Venus, hence his noted ‘erraticness’ in earlier stages of his life.
The saving grace for Steve Jobs, and those who have benefitted from his efforts, is the harmonious trines from the Uranus/Jupiter to Saturn, bringing in a capacity for dedication, responsibility, focus, and discipline.
Jobs once stated:
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully”.
This is a positive Saturn speaking.
Saturn in positive aspect to Uranus, planets normally difficult to integrate (Saturn being the conventional, Uranus the unconventional), enables one to go between worlds, to bridge different realities, to be at home in the conventional, corporate world, and the unconventional bohemian alternative world.
When I listened to a commencement speech Steve Jobs gave at Stanford some years ago he told the story of how he dropped out of University after one semester. He then started to drop in on the classes he wanted to learn instead of what he was previously required to learn.
He took a class on calligraphy just because he wanted to. with no thought of ever benefitting in a practical way from it. What he experienced in that class, however, is what inspired him to create a computer that could reproduce fonts with flowing serif letters and proportional spacing.
This is Uranian freedom, Pisces/Neptunian imagination and artistic sensitivity, combined with Saturnian practicality and concrete manifestation.
It is these combination of factors which gave Steve Jobs the ability to both stay concretely engaged with the practical details, but at the same time always be aware of the bigger picture of what was going on in the outer reaches of the collective, whether it was the new developments in the music industry, the new potentials of cellular technology, or the new culture now spawning with the Ipad.
Knowing Steve Jobs was a Pisces, whom I always refer to as ‘closet mystics.’ I find it poignant to hear his comments on death. Knowing that, according to Hilarion, someone who is a Pisces is someone who went through an experience of emotional pain that was so great that they took their own life.
Additionally, I can see that Steve Jobs had a Pluto/Saturn square, with Pluto in the Twelfth House, indicating a very intense experience being carried in his unconscious memory of his most recent past life.
Knowing both of these factors make these comments from his Stanford Commencement address all the more poignant: (they were given at a time when his pancreatic cancer was in remission).
“This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept.
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
On a collective level I tend to feel that the era of technological transformation of society, which we have been experiencing in recent years, which Steve Jobs helped to shepherd into existence, is going to become less robust as we move deeper into the Pluto in Capricorn years, and the Uranus/Pluto squares in the years ahead, although I am sure the culture of Apple will continue to amaze and delight us for some time to come.
I believe we will be moving more into transformation of core structures of society and how we live on this planet. It seems somehow not inappropriate that Steve Jobs should leave from this earth plane at this time. His passing may be symbolic of the ending of an era as we transition into a new, as yet uncharted one.
Steve Jobs will always be an archetypal inspiration; a tripped out, iconoclastic, LSD taking, 60’s character who really made a difference in the material, corporate, and global world. The creative potential, social connectedness, and collective world vision he was instrumental in manifesting is his legacy and will be a large part of the infrastructure that will serve the coming transition from the Old Age to the coming New Age. And for this I am sincerely grateful.
Blessings,
Steffan Vanel
Steffan’s Spiritual Company Newsletters and ‘Starwise’ Monthly Forecasts are available by email on an annual, sliding-scale donation basis; from $10 - $50 a year.
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— Steffan Vanel Archive —
