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Running Man:
The Astrological Schwarzenegger

by Bill Streett 8/16/01

Copyright 2003. All Rights Reserved

View Schwarzenegger's Chart

Since recently declaring his California gubernatorial aspirations, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s softer side has been the subject of many human interest stories. Articles surrounding his relationship with Maria Shriver, his romantic sentimentality, and his dedicated work with children have all surfaced to round out the action hero and former Mr. Universe bodybuilder. However, one has to question if all this softening of Schwarzenegger’s image is necessary, if indeed productive, for his mission to “pump up Sacramento.”

Lacking previous political office and any substantive, informed platform, it might be puzzling at first glance why Schwarzenegger is the ringleader of the colorful circus that is the race for California governor. However, with the California state budget running out of control, Schwarzenegger’s image of an invincible, determined action hero who has succeeded at every mission is highly appealing to the electorate. The play fits the part. If the Schwarzenegger we know from movies like Predator and The Terminator can apply the same amount of indefatigable ferocity and power his characters display, then, we assume, Sacramento will be run like a hyper-efficient economic machine.

The Saturn-Pluto Equation:

As recent media interest has shown, Schwarzenegger is a complex and private man. However, the core of Schwarzenegger and his action heroes—the fearless, unwavering men of steel with a lexicon to match—is what is getting current support in his bid for governor. This highly determined invincibility that we associate with the real Schwarzenegger and his movie characters can be seen primarily through one dimension of his astrological birth chart: a triple conjunction, or stellium, involving the Sun, Saturn, and Pluto.

Rare is a conjunction between Saturn and Pluto—it happens approximately every thirty-five years. More infrequent is a triple conjunction between the Sun, Saturn, and Pluto. When Saturn and Pluto conjoin the Sun, one’s conscious identity is informed by the fusion of the archetypes of these two outer planets. That is, the striving ego that yearns to actualize and manifest its potentials will be highly informed by the meanings, drives, images, and behaviors associated with a synthesis of Saturn and Pluto.

An image that perfectly captures the dynamics of Saturn and Pluto at work on the ego can be taken from the script of Schwarzenegger’s own life—sculpting the body at the gymnasium. Phyllis Firak-Mitz captures many dimensions of Saturn in her article ‘Saturn: Personal Trainer for Excellence.’ In the article, Firak-Mitz suggests that Saturn in the birth chart is not unlike a fitness instructor that challenges us with increasing resistance. Saturn is not only the part of our psyche that demands ever-increasing resistance but is the actual heaviness of the weights—the feeling of extraordinarily hard lead in the dumbbell or the experience of the unmovable weight in a bench press or squat. Saturn is the experience of futility of not being able to push out that last repetition in our weight routine, but it is also the ultimate ability to master and fulfill our dreams through long, hard, disciplined work.

We might experience young Schwarzenegger with his Saturn-Sun conjunction at the gym being extraordinarily disciplined with his workout routine. Through time, Arnold has a more toned and defined body. Gone is the excess fat from his body as every calorie he ingests is used efficiently, for a purpose, and for achievement. However, something is missing. Saturn provides resistance and weight, yet without power and force to match it, one will become defined and “cut” yet lack the massive physique of a power builder. Pluto is that missing element.

Fitness experts say that muscle—bulging, ripped muscle—is built through the actual tearing down of muscle tissue. This tearing down allows for the muscle tissue to ultimately regenerate itself and grow back larger and more powerful than it was before. We can liken this regenerative force to Pluto. The power, force, and intensity needed to match ever-increasing resistance in a weight routine are the provinces of Pluto. The look of a bodybuilding competitor in the throes of Plutonic force can be seen in the vein-popping, eye’s bulging, heart-pounding, howling, snarling intensity needed to overcome his previous personal best. As spectators of professional bodybuilding competitions, we are often doubly transfixed and repulsed by the bodybuilder’s near possession state, the look of someone who appears to be in a force of elemental and titanic intensity.

Without Saturn, Schwarzenegger is all primal intensity and raw, animal-like power and survival but lacking in restraint, discipline, focus, and rules. Without Pluto, Schwarzenegger consists of self-obedience and self-mastery but lacks intense desire and passion needed to consistently fuel his discipline and ambition for achievement.

At a very early age, Schwarzenegger set his ambition on becoming a world-class bodybuilder and a Hollywood movie star. Amazingly, both dreams came true. How does the Saturn-Pluto complex figure into Schwarzenegger’s ability to make his dreams a reality? On the positive side, the planetary combination can give an extraordinary, if not indefatigable, ability to withstand hardship, to overcome obstacles that most of us would cower under, and to stay disciplined by way of a sustained intensity that allows one to accomplish long-term goals. The Saturn-Pluto complex can move mountains and the pressure-cooking intensity of the configuration can help one to overcome nearly insurmountable odds.

On the more problematic end, the Saturn-Pluto complex can be the indication of someone so driven by insecurity and fear that they push themselves to extreme measures to ensure that they are a somebody. When discussing the Sun-Saturn-Pluto combination, astrologer Adrian Ross Duncan rightly notes in Astrology: Transformation and Empowerment, “These people have a real fear of disappearing into insignificance and a corresponding compensation to manifest the Self.”(1) The terminators, predators, and other annihilators that populate Schwarzenegger’s movies may have actually existed in Schwarzenegger’s psyche as a young man. Thus, the supposed destructive threat, internal or external, may have proposed to Schwarzenegger, “Succeed, young man, at a level of superhuman capability, or your existence will be terminated.”

Forging Schwarzenegger

Nearly everything that we first associate with Schwarzenegger is indicative of the Saturn-Pluto archetypal combination: the chiseled, massive body; the sparse, minimalist dialogue of his characters; the obsession with destruction and catastrophe in his films; the relentless, steely ruthlessness of the cyborg from Terminator; his personal fleet of armored civilian tanks, “humvies”; the threatening and intense penetration of his gaze in his earlier work. Even the titles of his most notorious films capture the epic graveness and mass threat that the Saturn-Pluto combination can generate: T2: Judgment Day, Conan the Destroyer, Total Recall, End of Days.

Given an orb of ten degrees, Saturn and Pluto formed a conjunction from late 1981 through late 1984. It was during this period that Schwarzenegger rose to prominence as a huge box office draw and laid the foundation for becoming one of the major players in the action film genre. Born under the Saturn-Pluto conjunction of the late 1940’s, Schwarzenegger, as we now know him, was forged under the Saturn-Pluto conjunction of the early 1980’s. Often individuals gain stature under the recurrence of alignments found in their birth charts—it is as if the individual becomes a vessel or magnet to contain and possess the energies for the collective. This was certainly the case for Schwarzenegger, as his two major breakout films—The Terminator and Conan the Barbarian—typify the Saturn-Pluto combination.

In The Terminator, we see how the compelling, evolutionary force of Pluto fuels the inhuman, callous side of Saturn to an extreme measure. In the film, we watch an indestructible, imperishable, and death-dealing man-machine fixated on accomplishing his mission on earth. In Conan the Barbarian, we observe how Saturn’s qualities of weight, gravity, stoicism, and shadow act upon the primitivism, eroticism, eye-for-an-eye retribution, and serpentine sorcery affiliated with Pluto. Heavy metal is to music what Conan the Barbarian is to film, and both exemplify the more destructive qualities of the Saturn-Pluto combination perfectly: sex, death, steel, fire, intensity, and the darkest pits of the human shadow. More than this brief analysis, however, images and memories evoked from The Terminator and Conan the Barbarian can often give a better sense of the Saturn-Pluto combination than these brief descriptors.

Since the Saturn-Pluto conjunction of the early 1980’s, Schwarzenegger has moved on to stretch his range in comedies, however, the successful formula of his earlier films are nearly always a guaranteed office draw. The heroic invincibility in the face of cataclysmic forces, the pounding intensity evoking the ominous threat of some sinister ‘other,’ and images of death and destruction all evoke prototypical Schwarzenegger films and the archetypal Saturn-Pluto experience.

The Political Saturn-Pluto

It is extremely seductive to say that Saturn-Pluto alignments in the birth chart associate with conservative or conformist political views. Any review of contemporary history demonstrates that collective Saturn-Pluto alignments tend to tip the political pendulum to the right. In times when survival issues are at stake or a sense of threat to security comes to the fore, the logical tendency is to hold onto the known and armor and defend what is one’s own. The last Saturn-Pluto opposition, in ten-degree orb from late 2000 through earlier this year, demonstrates this phenomenon. Moreover, in individual birth charts, a Saturn-Pluto configuration gives one a steely resolve to overcome one’s challenges and disadvantages. The Saturn-Pluto complex bolsters the American myth of self-determining, self-made success—the type of success that comes from overcoming one’s initial conditions without support, governmental or otherwise.

Schwarzenegger, a moderate Republican, demonstrates a tolerance and open-mindedness that goes beyond a strong Saturn-Pluto alignment. His pro-choice stance, tolerance of sexual preference, and, above all, marrying someone from the premier Democratic family isn’t the mark of someone terrified or threatened by difference and alternatives. That said, the Saturn-Pluto crucible does become apparent through his fiscal conservatism, shrewdness for affiliating with power, and his supposed right-wing stance on immigration laws.

(1) Duncan, Adrian Ross(2002) Astrology: Transformation and Empowerment. York Beach, ME: Red Wheel/Weiser.

Data:

Arnold Schwarzenegger
July 30th, 1947
Graz, Austria
4:10 AM

Source: Astrodatabank

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