Chiron and the "Big 4" : Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

In Woolf’s chart, Chiron is located at 17⁰ Taurus 37’ in her 12^th house and the closest aspect he forms is a square to Mercury at 18⁰ Aquarius 03’ (orb 0⁰ 26’).

 I personally found the fact that, in this particular chart, Chiron makes such a strong connection with Mercury to be extremely interesting, because it is true that, for Woolf, mental illness and creative expression were inextricably tied together creating a vicious cycle where her artistic creation, writing, played the role of both the cause and the cure.

Placed in her very emphasized 12^th house of anguish of mind and personal fears, Woolf’s natal Chiron accentuates the theme of her mental condition, of the “demons” she suffered from – visual and acoustic illusions, nightmares, insomnia, anorexia, melancholy, depression. Those “demons”, that “unhealable wound” depicted by Chiron’s placement was a situation Woolf could not escape from, and of course what eventually led her to suicide. Her 10^th house Mercury on the other hand, undoubtedly describes her work as an author. Not only, as in any chart, does it show how one communicates, in any possible way, including writing, but is also the ruler of the 5^th house in Woolf’s chart, and thus an indicator of her creative, artistic production, of what she “gave birth to”.

Further examining the author’s mental illness’ connection with her work, reveals a complicated “relationship” between the two. Woolf’s biographer, Alessandra Lemasson, mentions that the author had “confessed” having written her second novel, Night and Day, aiming at “keeping away the illness”. In her Diary, Woolf described her work as her only reality. She could understand that writing was the only way she could distance herself from everything else, the only way her experience of the world and of herself could be structured, and organized and have sense. 

Virginia insisted that creation made her feel alive and helped her psychologically, she saw a ‘healer’ in it, whereas for her husband, Leonard Woolf, it was the ‘wounder’ and for this reason he tried –most often unsuccessfully- to convince her to write only an hour per day. The strange thing is that they were both right. Because, on one hand, not doing anything increased for Virginia the danger of losing touch with reality, of being drifted away by illusion. And the fact that she eventually committed suicide when she could not longer see any point in writing, easily leads to the conclusion that being creatively productive was actually what postponed –for many years- her fatal decision. On the other hand however, and this was where Leonard was right, all of Virginia’s depression crises that led to the need for medical surveillance, coincided with drafting her books. The reason for this was that she left herself being too carried away by the writer’s need for solitude, which is of course common among intellectuals but in her case became more dangerous.

There are several other aspects of Woolf’s life that could be added to what was above mentioned and that can most probably be associated with her Mercury - Chiron connection. One example could be that the author’s “unhealable wound”, her mental illness (Chiron in the 12^th) had partly its root in the sexual abuse she suffered from her brothers (the square to Mercury). Let’s not forget that the 12^th is the house where we find the skeletons kept in families’ closets. Those ghosts from her past tortured Woolf for all her life (Chiron) and undermined her mental health. 

In 1939, she made an effort to heal herself with an autobiography, an almost psychoanalytical book (Mercury) about her family but it was too late. 

Another way Woolf’s Chiron-Mercury connection could have played out is by depicting her brilliance as an author, which was of course what made her stand out and defined her (a Chiron theme underlined both by Demetra George and Sue Tompkins in Asteroid Goddesses and The Contemporary Astrologer’s Handbook respectively). 

Finally, I wanted to mention that, to me, and as Mercury is also Woolf’s chart ruler, its aspect to Chiron is probably indicative of the fact that Virginia did never manage to accept herself just as she was, especially as far as her sexuality was concerned. This is a theme that will be further analyzed bringing asteroids into the picture.

In Woolf’s chart, the “Big 4” Asteroids are placed –by sign and house- as follows: Ceres is located at 2 ⁰ 27’ Aquarius in the author’s 9^th house; Pallas at 21 ⁰ 45’ Capricorn again in the 9^th house; Juno at 5 ⁰ 30’ Capricorn in the 8^th house and, Vesta at 5 ⁰ 27’ Taurus in the 12^th house. 

It is obvious from the above mentioned that, only Vesta and Juno of the four asteroids, form close (up to 2-degree orb) major aspects to Woolf’s Lights and natal planets. To be more precise, the aspects formed are “partile” aspects as all planets and asteroids involved are at 5 degrees of the signs they are placed in: Vesta conjuncts Saturn in Taurus and squares Sun in Aquarius whereas Saturn is also trined by Juno in Capricorn.

Virginia Woolf was a self-contained woman; freedom of thought, but also sexual freedom like hers, very rarely characterized other women of her time. Let’s not forget that she was raised in Victorian England. She was considered a feminist, she was one of the first women authors to doubt male superiority, before getting married she used to work teaching other working women, and some years later she fought for London Society for Women’s Service. Moreover, Woolf was one of the first members of the Bloomsbury Group, an intellectual circle of young, revolutionary minded writers and artists. All these could be seen as her free-minded, unconventional, independent, avant garde Sun in Aquarius playing out. 

However, there was one thing Woolf never dared to do, and that was to live with another woman, something that – as some of her biographers believe – would have helped her lead a happier life. Most of the male members of the Bloomsbury Group were homosexuals, and there were also several lesbian couples in the circle. One would expect that living in the -without taboos- micro-society of Bloomsbury, would have allowed, would have helped Woolf express her homosexuality and truly, fully incorporate it into her way of life. Yet it didn’t. Woolf’s Sun-Saturn square can of course be indicative of a fear, an inhibition, to express her true self. It seems though that it was a very particular part of herself that she tried to oppress, her sexuality, and this is what makes the involvement of Vesta in this picture with Sun and Saturn more interesting. 

According to Demetra George, a 12^th house Vesta is alone enough proof for sexual fears and inhibitions, a theme underlined by the asteroid’s stressful square to Sun – George writes about “frustrations and denials in sexuality”. The Vesta – Saturn conjunction could of course be one indication of Virginia’s dedication to her work – not only was she a prolific writer, but she actually lived to write (and writing was what gave her reason to live as analyzed) and in a sense she was “sacrificed” for writing (she denied psychotherapy for example fearing she would lose her inspiration). But Saturn always speaks of fears and restrictions and his conjunction to Vesta probably illustrates once more the theme of Woolf’s oppressed sexuality. Despite being open-minded enough and belonging to a group that could have supported her in expressing herself, Woolf chose to remain a “prisoner” of herself and her guilt mostly, but of her upbringing and era too. Denying her homosexual tendency, she decided to get married and fell into deep depression afterwards. Until her suicide, she maintained a sexless marriage with Leonard who was more like a friend, like a brother to her. Her two homosexual affairs with Mansfield and Vita West unfortunately came very late in her life and not without guilt (I am not sure whether her relationship with Mansfield was a physical one but at least it was one step towards admitting her homosexuality). 

The Juno-Saturn trine could – to me – be descriptive of one aspect of Virginia’s relationship with Leonard Woolf. Although not physical, their relationship was long-lasting, loving, and supportive but mostly – and this is associated both with Juno’s connection to Saturn and with her placement in Virginia’s 8^th house – it produced Hogarth Press, their successful publishing company that attracted the crème de la crème of the time’s writers, their “offspring”, the child they didn’t literally gave birth to. The Woolfs did not have a usual marriage, but they managed to work together as business partners (Juno-Saturn) and build something “concrete”, something that lasted.

See also: Femmes Celebres sur le Divan by Catherine Siguret