Politics 30
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Martin Luther King, Jr.
1929 - 1968
American theologian
prophet & social change activist
U.S. Civil Rights leader
Leader of radical anti-poverty and anti-war movements
assassinated 4-April-1968
Note on time of birth: MLK's birth time is reckoned by his mother's statement of "high noon". BPL has rectified to 11:30 hrs.
Reasoning for the 11:30 hrs rectification: 11:30 hrs birth time places
gochara Rahu-Ketu on navamsha lagna axis at time of marriage,
marriage in a period of Rahu,
and first child in the subsequent Guru bhukti.
Assassination in Rahu bhukti
where Rahu occupies dhana bhava with Kuja;
and L-8 Kuja casts drishti upon swakshetra domain-8 containing Ketu.
Guru the Kharesha is rising in Asvini nakshatra; the Kharesha in lagna indicates an untimely, prescient, and often violent death.
Compare to other Mesha-lagna and Ashvini-lagna leaders:
U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln
Brihaspati in Asvini Lagna:
"Intelligent, generous, a leader and an excellent organizer.
Fearless and honest; will make a good writer, author, or translator of ancient knowledge.
Could be a philosopher and is keenly interested in comparative religion."
-- Shil-Ponde. (1939). Hindu Astrology Joytisha-Shastra. p 153.
Dominant House Lords (D-1 and D-9): Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Seven rashi-owning graha
Extra credit for being D-1 or D-9:
- lagnesha
- lord of Chandra
- lord of Arudha lagna
# of planets in His rashi, in radix (including Rahu/Ketu)
# of graha in His rashi, in navamsha (including Rahu/Ketu)
Total
1
0
1
2
0
0
3
3
2
0
2
5
0
1
1
2
1
2
1
4
1
4
2
7
totals
5
9
9
23
Dominant lords of Career lagnas (D-1, D-9 & D-10):
Martin Luther King, Jr.
This weighting includes dashamsha.
Grahas which play a dominant role in the personality AND also own key lagnas in the D-1, D-9, and D-10 will strengthen and direct the career.
(If the strong personality grahas do not show up in the career lagnas, the career will be modest.)
Primary career lagnas
1
Lord of the Navamsha of Radix L-10 - observe how this graha behaves in radix
Kuja
2
Lord of the Dashamsha of Radix L-10 - observe how this graha behaves in radix
Guru
3
Lord of 10th Navamsha - observe how this graha behaves in radix
Kuja
4
Lord of 10th Dashamsha - observe how this graha behaves in radix
Kuja
5
Lord of Dashamsha lagna (ascendant)
Chandra
Secondary career lagnas
6
Lord of radix Karmaa Bhava
Kuja
7
Grahas which occupy Karmaa Bhava
Surya. Budha
8
Lord of Yuvati bhava (10th-from-10th)
Shukra
9
Lord of 10th-from-Chandra
Kuja
10
Lord of Surya
Shani
Prophetic Vision suffers Lack of Support
MLK's Jyotisha nativity suggests a powerful & dignified military general, with a strong, optimistic Guru-driven initiative to win most of his battles -- and eventually win the war.
Ashwini Guru (padaa-3) in lagna, according to Behari: "You achieve intellectual and material growth. Much learned. Jupiter in this position confers much fame."
Yet one striking feature of MLK's career lagna lordships (see table above) is a "lack of support" from the grahas which own the essential career/public dignity lagnas. Shani specifically owns the lion's share of MLK's radix & navamsha grahas, but Shani supports almost none of the career lagnas that structure and support public life.
Shani is the dominant house lord in the radix, and the lord of essential radix domain-10. Shani does not rule any of the other career lagnas except the radix domain of Surya.
Shani should have provided the supporting friends, faith-based and political-loyalty communities, and special interest groups which should have propelled the career of MLK to a pinnacle of success.
Shani = the masses, the working class, servants, the common man, the government, large organizations, the rule of law and order, marketplace networks of association, rules governing social interactions, & great forces of social conformity including grand-scale movements into a new social order.
The Jyotisha nativity suggests that MLK lacked adequate support from working-class masses, and from networks & organizations within the greater society.
IMO his intellectually brilliant & hugely religious personality ended up, ironically, separating him from the lowest, most foundational structures of society. His message was so true and so empowering and so radical -- that people stopped understanding him.
MLK had Biblical-style "prophet-karma" of the "shoot the messenger" type, caused ironically by being too great a theological visionary and conceptual genius. He skipped over the "small stuff" of personal moral reality and catapulted into grand visions of non-violent social transformation. In the process, he lost the support of too many working people, who simply could not feel grounded & secure in what he was saying.
Compare to social change activism of Mahatma Gandhi
During the 20th-century freedom struggle in colonial India, the "revolutionary" lifestyle & ideas promoted by the prophet & activist "Mahatma" Gandhi, were absolutely sensible & familiar to the great mass of India's poor.
Like MLK, Gandhi was a deeply religious man who faced constant threats upon his life. Like MLK, Gandhi's vision was grounded in the profound spiritual integrity of truth.
But unlike MLK, Gandhi was all about ancient ancestral "roots". He taught and practiced a lifestyle of intentional simplicity. Although the organized consequences of his spiritual-political movement based on poverty, simplicity, and reflection were indeed tremendous, the fact is that his teachings and their application were utterly elemental. Just about everyone *understood* what Gandhi was trying to accomplish. They might not have agreed with his style or his goals, but it was almost unbearably obvious how powerful Gandhi's return-to-basics message really was.
The "radical" nature of Gandhi's message was not about "taking" power per se, but rather about "reclaiming" power that had been lost through negligence, distraction of modern life, and wandering away from traditional roots. He preached not catastrophic social upheaval, but rather individual return to the core of one's deepest, unswerving inner strength through the practice of absolutely austere, extremely simple, traditional values.
A tremendous emphasis on stamina, repetition, resistance, and austerity marked Gandhi's most powerful & influential years. Gandhi's public personality & his appeal to the great masses is a splendid example of Shani in full liberation mode.
Thus despite many threats upon his life, Gandhi remained in his body and retained his social-change leadership role until an advanced age.
King's external political agenda of mass action "taking" material power, through radical economic change, was not much different from Gandhi's slow-and-steady campaign for India to "take" political and economic control of its own nation.
The difference was in the level of foundational (Shani) individual moral grounding in the "taking" process.
Due to the terrible alienation of slavery, King did not have access to knowledge of his people's most ancient lifestyle & traditions. There was little historic power available to "reclaim" except the basic entitlements to life, liberty, and happiness given in the USA Constitution. (Economic entitlements are not specified in the USA Constitution and Bill of Rights.)
His largest constituency, African-American Christians, lacked the profound blood connection to ancient rituals and the land that Gandhi had used as a fulcrum for poor Indian empowerment. King's people held a passionate Christian faith, which might have formed the substance of individual moral grounding in the group movement. Unfortunately, however, King's primary scriptural authority, the Christian gospels, specifically disfavor money and material attachment. (Think Jesus, overturning the money-benches i.e., "banks".)
King therefore had little historic moral authority to demand that poor Americans be permitted to "take" economic power. It was a beautiful egalitarian vision, but it was not well grounded in Christian scripture (cf. Gandhi's "satyagraha") nor in fundamental cultural "roots".
King became increasingly convinced that poverty & prejudice in America were the product of a massive, fixed social structure that was greater than any one individual. In his quest to heal the poor, he stopped being primarily concerned with individual salvation, and focused his great genius on strategies for mass-movement, revolutionary political change.
That is where King parted ways with longer-lived saintly advocates for the poor, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa.
He eventually moved away from moral, scripture-based argument and into an intellectual, radical ideology of material wealth redistribution. Thus his brilliant vision of the new social order became spiritually ungrounded & unsupportable, and King was tragically destroyed.
From a Jyotisha view, this narrative is largely encompassed in the "tale of Kumbha-Chandra-in-domain-11". See below.
Chandra-Kumbha/11 = Purvabhadapada, padaa-2
Lord of the Navamsha = Lord of Dashamsha = "Destiny" = Chandra
"Your thinking is not "normal"- it may be extreme in some way that others commonly don't share. Family life is strained & there is no peace of mind.
You will generally work for large enterprises like the government, or big business. You are likely to be connected with other countries at different times, either in thought or trade. To make money in life, you will find yourself working very hard."
this reading in progress, please check back
L-8/L-12 Guru Mahadasha - age 0-8
1929-1937
Childhood
L-10/L-11 Shani Mahadasha - age 8-27
1937-1956
Shani/Rahu:
marriage = June 18, 1953
gochara Rahu-Ketu crossing navamsha lagna, Maraka-Karka
age 24, named pastor at Dexter Ave. Baptist Church, Montgomery AL
Shani/Guru
Ph.D. diploma, June 1955
first child = Nov 17, 1955
L-5/L-12 Budha Mahadasha - age 27-44
1956-1973
Budha/Budha
1956, year-long Montgomery bus boycott
King arrested * his house bombed
"this campaign ...ended with a United States District Court ruling in Browder v. Gayle that ended racial segregation on all Montgomery public buses" [wikipedia]
1957, founded Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Budha/Ketu
1958: "while signing copies of his book "Strive Toward Freedom" in a Harlem department store, he was stabbed in the chest with a letter opener by a deranged black woman ... and narrowly escaped death."
Ketu in domain-8 drishti from [knife-wielding] Kuja
Budha/Chandra
Civil Rights act of 1964 [July 1965] - public achievement for social change, under L-10 Chandra
Budha/Kuja
Voting Rights Act of 1965 [Aug. 1965] - continuing expansion of civil right campaign and personal recognition, under L-1 Kuja (although there is an underbelly to Kuja as L-8 when Kuja/Rahu occupies makara domain-2)
Budha/Rahu:
assassinated by gun-fire, age 39, 4-Apr-1968
Rahu occupies maraka domain-2 yuti L-1/L-8 Kuja
(this reading in progress; please check back)
updated: 28 September 2008
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