Terry Pratchett Mort

Friday March 13th 2015

Hilarious, cosy, and wildly imaginative, Terry Pratchett cheered a lot of people up. He died yesterday, but his Discworld series will undoubtedly be read by generations to come.

One of his greatest characters was Death himself, a rather comforting and kindly sort of person.

“Don’t think of it as dying,” said Death. “Just think of it as leaving early to avoid the rush.” — From Good Omens, The Nice And Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

Here is Pratchett’s chart — no birth time — with the transits on the day he passed over. Notice all the activity around 12-15°, including the transit of Jupiter over his Pluto-Saturn. With Uranus and Mars exactly trine his natal Saturn, you can’t help wondering if dying might have been like waking up.

Birth time unknown

Birth time unknown

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  1. Eleonora says:

    Hello Christina! He had Alzheimer, didn’t he? His natal mecury conjunct the ruler of mars. As I see it, these mars-mercury aspects are common triggers for Alzheimer.

    • Christina says:

      yes. He had early onset Alzheimer’s of a particular kind (?not sure of those exact details) & first of all outed himself as a sufferer at 58 and became a vocal campaigner for research.

      • Eleonora says:

        Mars rules iron, mercury probably rules aluminium. The connention of iron and aluminium in body seems to be the cause of Alzheimer. I know it is a bit off-topic, but anybody with strong mercury-mars aspects (and even mars in virgo or gemini, mercury in scorpio or aries) should inform themselves and be careful what they are consuming…

        • Christina says:

          Yikes, that’ll be me then. Actually, I’m increasingly interested in medical astrology, but it can be quite difficult to publish stuff because I don’t want to lead anyone in a false direction!

          I’m thinking of doing a survey here about flare ups of chronic conditions and whether people have noticed an astrological signatures.

          • PM says:

            Good idea on the med research, Xtina. Encouraging people to track may be the best way to go.

          • Eleonora says:

            Yes, it’s a good idea. Of course, it’s important to be very carefull with any madical statements or even advices, and I am still not 100% sure about the mars-mercury-theory, but eating less aluminium can’t be wrong. As I started the survey, I expected neptune and moon to be significant, but then it turned out to be mars-mercury. Which is nice of course, since I have the aspect myself. It’s only a predisposition, I think, and of course it’s only the theory, not a proof for anything.

  2. mimi says:

    North Node conjunct his Neptune – he’s gone to sleep forever !

    mimi

  3. isabellium says:

    Pratchett was huge for me. Between roughly 2/99 and 4/2013, I had far too many opportunities to struggle for survival, medically, physically, and psychologically. Terry Pratchett was the only author who was both funny enough to lift me, and real enough to meet me. There’s a deep undercurrent of “yes, life intransigently sucks, but we can damn well whistle as we go” in his work. In some measure, I owe him my life. Not the only one who does, I imagine.

  4. Locus Beatus says:

    Someone on the Asteroids page on FB mentioned the other day that her research indicated a relationship between Arachne and Alzheimers; following that we had a discussion on my own page about that. Sadly I have the indicators (and to prove it I can’t remember what they were! – other than that Mercury in had aspect was almost certainly involved, and iirc, NN as well).

    Prachett’s Arachne is at 17˚18 Leo, conjunct his Saturn by 2˚ and not much further from his Pluto and Mars, also both in Leo. It loosely squares his NN and even more loosely, his Sun/Mercury, all in Taurus. Transiting Arachne in Taurus was within 2˚ of his NN and 4˚/5˚ of his Sun.Merc. And from natal Arachne and Mars, there’s a square to Chiron in Scorpio, which in turn inconjuncts Pratchett’s Venus/Uranus in Gemini: how apt is that for a career writing fantasy fiction, cut short by an ‘Arachne-affliction’?

    And as ever Jupiter seems to have been the trigger for this death: in Leo, he was activating and augmenting all Prachett’s Leo bodies and their aspects, including his Arachne.

    I expect a google will find the link to the discussion on Arachne in the context of Alzheimers, or you could maybe start a new one… not that’s it’s information most people want to know, In my own case, living alone and having no family, I need to know so I can plan for this

  5. Locus Beatus says:

    Sorry about typos! Feeling very foggy-brained today…

    • Eleonora says:

      Ok, I hope I got it now. I am not sure about Arachne, but I checked Hypnos (there is an underworld river of oblivion in the greek mythology, called Lethe. There is no asteroid with such name, but Lethe is connected to Hypnos, and to Pluto of course). In nearly all charts (I checked around 20 different) secondary progressed Hypnos was conjuncting a planet AND aspecting the moon (memory) when Alzheimer appeared. Alternativly, it was conjuncting / aspecting the ruler of moon. In case of Terry Pratchett, it was his Saturn. His natal Hypnos conjunct Pluto.

      There is one more interesting thing… The orbit of Hypnos is not steady. It is a very fast asteroid, but it remains in zodiac signs gemini, cancer and leo, longer (about 3 years), and then it moves very fast through other signs (1 year). So, most of us have their natal Hypnos in gemini, cancer or leo. Consequential, the generations with pluto in these signs will be more prone to get the Alzheimer (especially pluto in cancer, because Hypnos is longest in this sign (the sign of memory).

      However, there is one more asteroid, called Aletheia. It was named after the river Aletheia, which is of course the antidote to Letha. It would be nice to see how that asteroid influence medical research.

  6. mimi says:

    I’m no doctor or expert, but I think it is important to keep in mind that there are so many different forms of Alzheimers disease / dementia.
    My eldest brother died 3 years ago of Alzheimers disease and my mother died in 2013 of arterial dementia.
    To me it would seem Neptune is the most important planet, giving its characteristics of blurring everything it touches. I found that while the body keeps on living it is the mind that very slowly disappears. Maybe it is a combination of factors like Neptune together with different asteroids or maybe even Mercury is involved. Who knows ??

    Christina, what are your thoughts on this ??

    mimi

    • Christina says:

      My thoughts are these:

      I’d be surprised if Neptune was not in there somewhere, but as you say there are different kinds of dementia. I also wonder about Neptune tr in partners and family members charts. It may be as if the sufferer becomes Neptune.
      Because of the range of dementia, it must be a combination of factors.
      I think Eleonora’s research sounds solid and she’s used 20 charts. I will take Hypnos into account now.
      I don’t have enough charts to do more research on Alzheimer’s specifically, but I’d like to do more research into medical conditions. A lot of medical astrology has relied on old texts without reference to modern stats.

  7. Locus Beatus says:

    Having for the moment recovered from my brain fog I remembered that it was the excellent Jeremy Neal of Chirotic Journal who wrote about Arachne and Alzheimers, and the main asteroid involved was Orcus (on which he has written a book). Jeremy is not prolific but he is very thorough in his research, and his thoughts on this topic well are worth consideration, so I don’t think they should be dismissed so easily. He uses several charts as examples.

    https://chirotic.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/the-astrology-of-oblivion/

    • Christina says:

      I agree about Jeremy. He’s not going to just make an assumption based on a feeling. He combines feeling and research. I like his writing very much.

      So do we now have Arachne and Hypnos in our sights for Alzheimers? I think so. Which means I need to find some charts of well-known people who have the illness.