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Pluto was transiting back and forth across JFK Jr's natal Sun in the year before his death, and it was square its own place and very close to the IC at the time of his death. Something inescapable was hunting him from within. The progressed chart is also eloquent; progressed IC was exactly conjunct progressed Jupiter, suggesting that the puer spirit longed for a way out of the conflict between his own personality and the inexorable demands of his inheritance. What is more peculiar is that this progressed MC-IC axis was in 14º 28' of Cancer-Capricorn, precise to the minute on his uncle Robert's natal Pluto at the IC - as though some strange identification was occurring between the living nephew and the dead uncle. Those who believe in simple tragic accidents may no doubt feel anger at the suggestion that there might have been something voluntary, something chosen about this sad death. I am not implying, if there were indeed a choice, that the choice was conscious. But the precision of such astrological contacts makes me wonder whether the family daimon - one dimension of which seems to reveal itself in the family charts through the Cancer-Capricorn axis - was at it once again. This repetition of planets falling within a few degrees in the same signs in so many of the family charts does not suggest a family curse. Rather, it suggests a family inheritance of a potentially creative kind, involving not only political shrewdness, tenacity, and leadership abilities, but also the profound emotional nourishment provided by close family bonds. However, it might also be said that the gifts of the Cancer-Capricorn axis was sorely misused in every generation of the Kennedy family. Global ambition that subsumes the personal happiness of individual family members, and a tyrannical clannishness that permits no freedom to move beyond the family circle emotionally, intellectually, professionally, or spiritually, may be interpreted as abuses of god-given talents. The Cancer-Capricorn axis, at its best, epitomises those values which preserve the loving container of the family as a basis for the structures of a lawful and stable society. If I were an imaginative ancient Greek, I might think of the goddess Hera, protectress of family and social bonds, incensed beyond bearing because her gifts were bestowed so freely and then used so irresponsibly.
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