On the wings of Aquarius, William Shakespeare's works are enjoying a revival. But did the magic of Shakespeare ever leave us? Three hundred years later, his works are never old. Indeed, an entire publishing industry thrives off his plays that have been translated into numerous languages and performed on countless stages. No other writer's plays have matched the popularity and appeal of Shakespeare, Why? Because no other author has spoken to our souls, individually and universally. In Juliet and her star-crossed lover Romeo, in Mercutio, in Portia, in Hamlet, we see glimpses of ourselves, as true today as in Shakespeare's London.
In studying Shakespeare, certainly the greatest poet and dramatist the world has ever known, his eloquence and wit, the profundity of his characters and the grandeur of his work don't gel with the simple figure of the playwright from the little village of Stratford-on-Avon. We can't help but conclude the author to be another of greater genius and background. Someone who knew the ins and outs of palace life, who possessed political and military savvy, a deep knowledge of the sea, as well as a deep understanding of human nature and divine destiny.
The Elizabethan Age, a high point in English culture, has been called the Age of Shakespeare and Francis Bacon. And yet, I for one am convinced that Bacon, the immensity of whose genius it has been said has proved a sore trial for his biographers, was indeed the playwright as well as the scientist, politician, lawyer and writer. In Bacon's own words, he rang the bell that called the wits together.
Even as the pyramids in their geometry hold the code of sacred doctrine, so Bacon's works as well as those of William Shakespeare hold in cipher the true nature of Bacon's identity. This cipher was decoded in the 1890s, in two distinct ciphers, a word cipher and a bi-literal cipher embedded in the type of the original Shakespearean folios. They tell an incredible story, revealing that Bacon should have been by rightful inheritance Francis I, King of England. The decoded tale tells of a secret liaison between Robert Dudley, Lord Leicester and Queen Elizabeth I. The child was born four months after a secret wedding took place. Francis was brought up by foster parents, Sir Nicholas and Lady Anne Bacon. At age 15 the Queen revealed to him his true roots, but commanded him to tell no one upon threat of death. The supposed Virgin Queen fearful of the loss of her title and Francis potential popularity and power kept him dangling with unfulfilled promises until her death in 1603, thus shrewdly eliminating a potential rival. Bacon was born with Pluto at 8 degrees Pisces in the 1st house (self) square (challenge) the Moon (Mother) at 10 degrees Sagittarius in the 10th house (career).
A true Aquarian, (Sun and Rising Sign in Aquarius) Bacon counted his friends among the mighty and the common. Even his enemies, which were considerable, recognized his genius. Aquarius, sign of Brotherhood, is said to contain the potential of every virtue and vice inherent to man. Thomas Carlyle wrote that Bacon was in some measure converse with this universe at first hand.
Bacon made his mark through tremendous literary and scientific works. He was, in his own words, ... fitted for nothing as well as for the study of Truth: as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the resemblance of things..., and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their subtler differences. Being gifted by nature with desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and to set in order.
Entire societies have formed to give Bacon his rightful due. This is not my purpose. Bacon surrendered fortune and fame to posterity. But as an astrologer, we will extract from the great works of Shakespeare an understanding of the nature of destiny and fortune. Supposing Bacon as the true author, the circumstances of his life, the immensity of his genius and the dual ambitions that braided his life, the potential greatness he surely aspired to, the surrender he eventually made, give us a sharper perspective.
Who can control his fate? This was a question Elizabethans were keen on studying. Queen Elizabeth sought out the astrologer Dr. John Dee, a controversial figure (1527-1608) whose dark prediction regarding her sister Mary Tudor proved true, and commanded him to elect a favorable date for her coronation. It is said that he gained the confidence of the Queen who sought out his counsel on weighty matters, such as the Armada crisis. When James I succeeded her to the throne, Dee's relationship to the crown was severed as James believed him to be in league with the devil. Today we ask ourselves, who can control his karma? Shakespeare affords us much food for thought.
We all know the story of the star-crossed lovers in Romeo and Juliet, whose love is doomed by the ancient feuding of their rival families. Hearing his beloved Juliet is dead, Romeo shouts out, Is it even so? then I defy you, stars!
Shakespeare also made light of astrology as did his contemporaries. The comic astrological references in his works suggest an audience familiar with astrological concepts and lingo.
In All's Well that End's Well, the heroine of the play, Helena, the orphaned daughter of a physician, dialogues with Parolles, a follower of Bertram with whom she is in love:
Hel.: Monsieur Parolle, you were born under a charitable star.
Par.: Under Mars, I.
Hel.: I especially think, under Mars.
Par.: Why under Mars?
Hel.: The wars have so kept you under that you must needs be born under Mars.
Par.: When he was predominant.
Hel.: When he was retrograde, I think, rather.
Par.: Why think you so?
Hel.: You go so much backward when you fight.
Par.: That's for advantage.
Hel.: So is running away, when fear proposes the safety; but the composition that your valour and your fear makes in you is a virtue of a good wing and I like the wear well.
Parolles departs and Helena, contemplating her love and design to gain Parolles by curing the King, muses:
Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky
Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.
In King Lear, the Earl of Gloucester falls into a trap set by his wicked son Edmund and banishes his faithful son, Edgar. Believing Edgar masterminding a plot to kill his father the King so that he might inherit half of the King's fortune, Gloucester ruminates:
These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us; though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects; love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in cities, mutinies, in countries discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked twixt son and father. This villain of mine comes under this prediction; there's son against father; the king falls from bias of nature; there's father against child.
Edmund, believing Gloucester to be steeped in superstition replies:
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behavior, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers of spherical predominance; drunkers, liars and adulterer by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on; an admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the dragon's tail and my nativity was under ursa major; so it follows I am rough and lecherous., Tut, I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.
Again in King Lear, the Earl of Kent explains how it is possible that the humble and true Cordelia could be so different in character from her two sisters even though they were born of the same parents: It is the stars.
The stars above us, govern our conditions;
Else one self mate and mate could not beget
Such different issues.
The discussion of the relationship between destiny as fated by the stars and free will comes up again in Julius Ceasar in these famous lines:
Caesar: Men at some time are masters of their fates;
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
In Twelfth Night, Sebastian warns Antonio to leave him:
"my stars shine darkly over me; the malignancy of my fate might, perhaps, distemper yours;"
In the same play, the steward Mavolio, foolishly believing his mistress to be in love with him delights:
"I thank my stars, I am happy! and Jove, and my stars be praised!"
Shakespeare's characters often struggle to understand fate and the role of man in forging his destiny.
In the tragedy Hamlet, the young Danish Prince learns through the ghost of his recently departed father that the King died an untimely death, was poisoned by his brother who sought not only his throne but also his wife. His father's spirit commands, If thou didst ever thy father love, Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder! Hamlet recognizes his duty, but laments his fate and destiny. The time is out of joint:
"O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!"
As if to say, the time is out of joint, the astrology is not favorable, I'm not ready for this fate, karma, mission, which so suddenly falls upon me.
Hamlet, a man wrestling with his destiny, considers, in his famous To be or not to be soliloquy, whether to escape his fate through suicide, but concludes that the nature of the next world being unknown causes us to bear the whips and scorns of time.
Shakespeare was very aware of men living in the tides of time, of the importance of catching cycles, as he was of the nature of the tides and the seas. Hamlet contemplates his fate too long rather than acting swiftly and decisively. The result is not only his uncle's death to which he is sworn but also that of his mother whom he loves, Ophelia, his beloved, her father and brother and his best friend.
In Julius Caesar, Brutus, in discussing strategy with Cassius remarks:
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune...
In 1572 a comet, a nova or new star appeared and astrologers and astronomers alike made all sorts of predictions. One of the first observational astronomers, the Dane Tycho Brahe predicted that through its influence a male child would be born in Finland in 1592 who was destined for a great career but who would die as a result of religious strife. This forecast is usually linked (although two years off) with the birth of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, a fighter for protestantism who died in the Battle of Lutzen in 1632.
Henry the VI performed in 1592 to 1594, opens with funeral of Henry V.
Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!
laments the Duke of Bedford,
Comets, importing change of times and states
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars
That have consented unto Henry's death!
So, is our fate predetermined by the stars? Bacon's life and indeed his astrology itself pointed to strife from the moment of his birth. Bacon wrote at the close of his life, Lastly, even if the breath of hope which blows on us...were fainter than it is and harder to perceive, yet the trial (if we would not bear a spirit altogether abject) must by all means be made. For there is no comparison between that which we may lose by not trying and by not succeeding...There is hope enough and to spare, not only to make a bold man try, but also to make a sober-minded and wise man believe. A true message for our time.
