“Why You Will Marry The Wrong Person”

Friday November 2nd 2018

This amusing and insightful talk by philosopher Alain de Botton is a wonderful demonstration of a Sagittarian at full throttle. Brilliant, of course, persuasive and wide-ranging, offering tons of good advice — also, overwhelming and a bit of a know-it-all.

I’m posting today for several reasons. First of all, Venus, the planet of love, has just slipped backwards into Libra, the sign of relationships. So maybe we should all be considering why we choose who we choose.

Secondly, Jupiter is sitting right on de Botton’s Neptune at 29° Scorpio today. That’s a deeply imaginative Neptune. We don’t have de Botton’s birth-time, but his Moon is within a few degrees of an opposition to that Neptune — in practical Taurus, naturally. So it’s no wonder that he loves to give practical advice about a subject that’s seemingly boundless. You could call what he does “applied philosophy” — what a perfect notion for a Sun Sag/Moon Taurus.

Note also Mercury (thinking) and Pallas (wisdom) in earthy Capricorn — more structured practicality. And this talk was given at some kind of corporate event, I think.

Thirdly, we’re on the verge of Jupiter’s entry into Sagittarius, so we’re all going to need to be philosophers in the coming year.

Here’s his chart. For a bit of fun, see how much you can hear the chart in this talk. Note that around 16 minutes he says good lovers are teachers — well, he would say that wouldn’t he!

With the correct birth time from Rollan McCleary’s records.

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  1. FAye says:

    Love Alain – thanks for that!

  2. Denise says:

    I was with him until the end, when he said “and this, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.” Really? “Gentlemen”?

  3. 44 and counting says:

    Yep I tend to agree with him on all this.

    My venus rx reading has been Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Mastery of Love. It covers some of this stuff and really the big takeaway is that you can only bring your own best self into a relationship and see whether the other person does as well.

    All in all, it’s a crapshoot. I went back through all the weddings I’ve attended and about half of them have already ended.

  4. Geerte says:

    I agree with him, great talk. Thank you! His Uranus 7th house, thinking outside the box about relationships, shows clearly here 🙂

  5. Alain de Botton was born at 2.5 pm in Zurich on 20/12/1969 with 14 Taurus rising. I as good as know because looking back I find that’s the horoscope with commentary for same that I gave A de B when he visited Melbourne where I was then living many years ago.

    It’s so long ago now (15 years or more) that I must confess I forget whether I had corrected the time from what he gave me when I’d originally asked him. If I did, it wouldn’t have been by much – he would need to have had Taurus rising. As I even told him, he looked terribly like someone I knew who had the same sign rising. Not that such things meant anything much to him, his wife appreciated the job more, because A de B himself is an atheist who doesn’t give a bar for astrology and its element of fate. It was rather remarkable he’d agree to have any chart done and it’s possible he found what I demonstrated a bit disagreeable because I had included asteroids like Proust (his first bestseller was on Proust) demonstrating how they exactly registered and timed in his life. It’s not quite the thing he would want to believe or hear. In more recent years he has written “Religion for Atheists”, so he is conflicted on the beliefs subject like many Sags, though it almost seems he is atheist in a sort of filial loyalty to his late alienated and severe Jewish father; his sister, not of his beliefs here, was sad and incredulous her father could never believe anything. I think one can see some of this mixture of religion and father conflict in the chart with the sun square Pluto.

  6. mimi says:

    I had not time to hear this video before, but I can only say I fully and totally agree with him on the subject of love and why people get attracted to each other. Thank you.

    mimi

  7. 44 and counting says:

    Turning the point around, I once read something that stated that the people who had happy longterm marriages had one quality in common. It was that they thought their partners were ‘perfect’, they didn’t have any complaints about them. They weren’t suppressing any irritation or complaining about the other behind their back, they just actually liked everything about their partner.

    Anyone who has fallen in love will know how you can find certain qualities in a partner endearing yet when you finally fall out of love those same qualities become irritating. Somehow these couples were managing to maintain the “being in love” stage.

    Astrologically that seems a very neptunian quality. The ability to perhaps idealise, but also accept the other person for who they are and not have expectations they be a certain way.

    But there’s also a virgo quality of making the effort to maintain the love through little acts of kindness and care. In effect serving the other person and their needs, attending to the details to make sure everything runs smoothly. Love is after all, as much a verb as it is an adjective.