You might have seen in the news recently that actress Natasha Richardson died on March 18th, 2009 from a head injury while skiing. With the sincerest respect towards her and her family and friends, I’d like to show what a remarkable example her death is of planetary period activations.

In Hellenistic astrology every planet is associated with a particular number, which is called its minor period. They are based on regular recurrences, such as how many Earth years are coincident with how many times a planet conjoins the Sun, among other things. The minor periods of the planets are as follows:

• Sun – 19 years
• Moon – 25 years
• Mercury – 20 years
• Venus – 8 years
• Mars – 15 years
• Jupiter – 12 years
• Saturn – 30 years

These periods can be used as timing devices. If you have two planets in aspect, then you add up their minor periods, and the aspect eventuates in that year.

Natasha Richardson^[1] was born when Mars and Saturn, the two malefics, were in opposition to each other, as indicated by the thick black line.  This generally indicates the potential for something notably destructive to occur in the person’s life, but a closer examination is needed to determine what exactly is being destroyed, and to what extent it is actually destructive.

In her chart, the Sun (red) and Venus (thinner black) were sandwiched in by aspects from Mars and Saturn, while also making figures to the Moon (gray). The Sun and Moon are the givers of one’s all, and Venus has a special role in this chart of being the ruler of the 1st, the basic indicator for her essential vitality. This means that the three planets in the chart that support life are all configured with the destructive planets, without intervention from the benefics.

This very nasty configuration lay dormant in the chart until Mars and Saturn were activated. Mars (15) + Saturn (30) = 45. She died at age 45. The accident occurred one day after Mars ingressed into Pisces, the sign opposing Saturn in Virgo, a sort of recurrence of her natal Mars-Saturn opposition. I would have thought it would have occurred closer to the actual Mars-Saturn opposition, but it appears the ingress of Mars into the opposing sign of Saturn was enough.

Although this sounds crudely simple, it can actually get a lot more complicated. Hellenistic astrologer Vettius Valens advised not just looking at the combinations of planetary periods, but their ascensional times as well, and the halves and thirds of the activation time. It ends up being a lot to look at, and is undoubtedly in desperate need of research. However, this tragic event was such a powerful example of the possibilities of this area of astrology, I felt like it needed to be read.

.Endnotes

1. Natasha Richardson, May 11th, 1963, 5 pm, London, England, Source: http://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Richardson%2C_Natasha

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Tags: Natasha Richardson, planetary periods