I was reading an article in The Guardian about the psycholigical dimension of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s alleged offence. Some people in France are taking the view that the pressure was too much for him, and on an unconscious level he deliberately sabotaged his bid for the French Presidency. In other words, consciously he wanted to be President, but unconsciously he took action to escape the responsibility, which is why he deliberately sabotaged his political career.
As The Guardian put it:
If he is found guilty, some suggested an unconscious drive to self-sabotage by a man who couldn’t bear the power that had been foisted on him – his wife and all around him so wanted to see him become French president next year that he might have been unable to cope. Serge Hefez, the French psychiatrist, compared the Strauss-Kahn saga to the head-butt of the football hero Zinedine Zidane, which ended France’s World Cup dream of 2006. If true, it was about the unbearable pressure of rising to the top, he suggested. All agreed that the image in France of DSK as a serial-seducer whose friends claimed he “loved women” was totally different from someone committing violent sex attacks, which could be psychologically linked to having low self-esteem, hating yourself and hating others.
I love this kind of analysis and I am sure that in many cases it applies. Someone is on the brink of success, in a particular area of life, but it’s not their true destiny, so they take action to destroy everything they’ve worked for.
Personal Destiny – the case of Jeffrey Archer
An example of someone who probably wasn’t destinied to be a front-rank politician is British novelist Jeffrey Archer. His horoscope shows this very clearly. He has the South Node of the Moon in the Tenth House, which I’ll briefly explain what that means.
In astrology the two points in space where the path of the Moon crosses the path of the Sun are known as the North and South Nodes of the Moon. The North Node, where the Moon crosses from South to North, represents the path we should be following, while the South Node is the path of least resistance – it’s what comes easiest to us, but it represents the past and not the future.
The Tenth House is all about career and status, and it also has a special association with politics. This means that someone with the South Node in the Tenth House will feel a natural affinity with politics, and they’ll find it easy to get elected and make a name for themselves. However it’s too easy, because it represents the past – for example, a previous incarnation, if you believe in that kind of thing.
If we look at Jeffrey Archer’s career, he made at least three attempts to get involved in front-rank politics.
At the age of twenty-nine he was elected to the House of Commons, but less than five years later, in 1974, he left parliament, on the verge of bankruptcy. He had put too much money into a bad investment, and was forced to switch careers, from politics to writing.
In 1985 he got back into the political limelight, becoming deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. However he soon resigned, after it was alleged that he had given money to a prostitute. He won a libel case, but the damage had been done. And as it later turned out, he committed perjury during his libel action.
In 1999 Jeffrey Archer was chosen to be Conservative candidate for Mayor of London. But soon afterwards, his perjury was revealed, and in 2001 he received a prison sentence.
To me, this is personal Karma in action. At key times in Jeffrey Archer’s life, when he moved into mainstream politics, his path was blocked by events created by himself.
Collective destiny
Looking at Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and the situation is very different. In his horoscope he has the North Node of the Moon conjunct Mars in the Tenth House. The North Node is the place he should be going to, while Mars is in the planet of assertion and drive.
This means that Strauss-Kahn was absolutely right to be involved in politics, and by aiming for the French Presidency he was moving in the direction of his fundamental destiny. Under these circumstances, we wouldn’t have expected him to sabotage his own political career.
However we have to be aware that personal destiny has its limits, and when you’re a politician, or a passenger on the Titanic, wider trends can intervene. It was the destiny of the Titanic to sink, and if you looked at every passenger’s horoscope, you would have expected most of them to have had an uneventful trip. In the case of politicians, they can influence which way the world goes. Thousands of people’s lives and destinies can be affected, and the fate of whole nations can be decided.
Strauss-Kahn, as Managing Director of the IMF, could influence what happened to the European currency. He could also recommend that a country such as Latvia, that needed IMF aid, cut its public spending; this would in turn lead to massive pay cuts for Latvian public employees. If he had become President of France, he would have dictated French economic, domestic and foreign policy. His decisions would have had an impact not just on France, but also on the European Union.
Given all this, it’s not enough to have a great chart to become French President. And it’s certainly not enough to have the North Node in the Tenth House. No, you have to be the right person, at the right time, at the right place. For some reason the Universe found it unacceptable for Dominique Strauss-Kahn to be French President, so it created a situation whereby his fundamental destiny was disrupted. Perhaps the Euro was supposed to go in a direction that it wouldn’t go in if the Managing Director of the IMF wasn’t disgraced. Or maybe the French nation had a particular destiny, that couldn’t be fulfilled with Strauss-Kahn as its President. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with his ambitions, or his policies. It’s just that they’re out of step with the times.
Why?
Fifth Republic’s Sun: 11 degrees 12 minutes Libra
Saturn at the time of Strauss-Kahn’s alleged offence: 11 degrees 9 minutes Libra
Strauss-Kahn’s Moon: 3 degrees 1 minute Aries
Uranus at the time of Strauss-Kahn’s alleged offence: 3 degrees 20 minutes Aries
We then have the question of why the Universe did what it did. It would arguably have been much simpler if Dominique Strauss-Kahn had had a massive heart attack and died. However from a collective point of view that might have been too dignified. The scandal and humiliation of his arrest could cause real damage to the European cause. Maybe also, there was some aspect of the French psyche, relating to women, that needed to be released into the open through a process of national heart-searching.
In this light, as I pointed out in a previous article, on the weekend of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s alleged offence, Saturn in the sky was exactly conjunct the Libran Sun in the horoscope for the French Fifth Republic, set for October 5 1958. Some big event had to happen in France, that would bring the country down to Earth. The fate of the individual is nothing compared with the fate of a nation, and Strauss-Kahn was the fall-guy.
Perhaps the Universe realised that women were Strauss-Kahn’s weakness, and at some level he seemed to know what was in store for him. At the end of April, weeks before his alleged offence took place, he said that he imagined ‘a woman who had been raped in a car park and who was offered between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Euros to make up such a story’.
He knew the risks, yet he couldn’t prevent the events from unfolding. As Saturn moved onto the Fifth Republic’s Sun, Uranus moved onto the precise degree of his Moon, at three degrees Aries, and he had the fateful encounter that destroyed his career.
Whether this encounter was consensual or not, whether he’ll be found guilty or innocent, it doesn’t really matter. His actions wrecked everything.
It’s tempting to use that famous maxim, ‘Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.’ However I don’t think it was anything personal – I think it was more a case of ‘Those institutions the gods wish to destroy they first make their leaders commit acts of madness’.
So it’s in this sense that Dominique Strauss-Kahn is innocent. Whether he is legally guilty or innocent, he was put in a situation where he probably couldn’t help himself, and ironically the fact that he was politically powerful made the situation worse. Because in this world, the greater one’s power, the more interest the Universe will take in you, and the more likely it is that the Universe will sacrifice you, for some higher, strategic purpose.