Planets and Fathers and Sons
You probably have heard the expression “the child is father of the man,” which comes from a poem titled “My Heart Leaps Up” by William Wordsworth. The poet was saying that the personality and the character of the child gives birth to the person that he (or she) becomes as an adult. But of course experience is involved as well, and a key part of most people’s experience in growing up is their father, or at least the person who played that role in their lives as they grew up. Both parents matter, of course, but here we’ll consider just the father, in part because of a famous case that involves three generations.
Let’s take an astrological look at a parent, a father, who had dramatically different relationships with his two sons, and consider both the parental roots and the astrological roots of those relationships. John Lennon was born on October 9, 1940, at 6:30 p.m. BST in Liverpool, England. As a member of the Beatles, and then a solo artist, he became one of the most famous singers and songwriters of the 20th century. During his all too brief lifetime, he fathered two sons: Julian, with his first wife Cynthia, and Sean, with his second wife, Yoko Ono. His relationship with Julian was said to be on the cold and distant side, yet with Sean he became a totally devoted parent, and was a househusband during his second son’s early years.
John, a Sun-sign Libra, was born with 19 Aries on his Ascendant, that his first son, Julian, understood that most kids were born out of a bottle on a Saturday night. While John and Julian’s mother Cynthia were dating, she got pregnant, and John married her, which was the proper thing to do. The improper thing to do was to put it out in the press where his muchignored son would see it, and after John’s tragic murder on December 8, 1980, Julian expressed his anger at his father by saying, “I’ve never really wanted to know the truth about how dad was with me. There was some very negative stuff talked about me … like when he said I’d come out of a whiskey bottle on a Saturday night. Stuff like that.” He also noted that there were more childhood photos of a fatherly nature with Paul McCartney than with his father.
