All the mystery charts are about very famous people.
The hints towards the solution are based on the analysis of the heliocentric chart, so they are a good way to learn astrology and heliocentric astrology in particular.
The hints are added to this page progressively and the solution will be given on Sunday.
Enjoy yourselves!
Here is this week's chart:
Wednesday - Hint 1:
This is an extremely interesting and complex chart. First of all we note that Mercury is in Aquarius and Saturn is in Virgo: as Saturn is Mercury's dispositor (ruler of Aquarius) and Mercury is Saturn's dispositor (ruler of Virgo), these planets are in mutual exchange, a powerful combination that acts as a conjunction.
Mercury in Aquarius gives originality of thought and a propensity for invention, while Saturn in Virgo leans towards conservatism. The Aquarius social awareness, which often tends towards rebelliousness and revolutionary attitudes, is therefore strongly mitigated by Virgo's conservative orderliness.
Saturn is in 8th-house aspect to Mercury: this is the fascinating part of this chart, as the native managed to find a very positive outlet for a normally difficult aspect.
Usually a planet in 8th-house aspect to another will act as destroyer of the aspected planet (in this chart the aspected planet is Mercury). However, our Mystery person used another meaning of the 8th house to deal with this aspect. The 8th house signifies, among other things, hidden matters, and all that is not normally visible and must be brought to light. As Mercury receives the aspect, the hidden matters are related to the intellectual, mental sphere.
There is however one trait of our character which is more in line with the difficulty of the 8th-house aspect: although extremely successful, Mystery suffered from an overpowering shyness. This is how Saturn (contracting force) limited an otherwise extremely strong Mercury (communications).
Thursday - Hint 2:
Pluto is in 10th-house aspect to Saturn and in 5th house aspect to Mercury: Pluto therefore has a double effect on this person's mentality because, as we have seen in Hint 1, Saturn is Mercury's dispositor.
Pluto's core meaning is elimination. Elimination can come in many forms, including destruction and/or death and acts bringing on destruction and/or death: crimes.
Interestingly, Pluto as apex of the Mercury-Saturn-Pluto triangle reinforces the meaning of the 8th-house aspect between Mercury and Saturn: crimes are often hidden matters and the 8th house's destructive properties are similar to Pluto's eliminating force.
Pluto's aspect to Saturn in this chart means that work (Saturn) must focus (10th-house as duty) on elimination (Pluto).
Pluto's aspect to Mercury is a creative product aspect (5th-house aspect): death and crimes are a creation of this person's mind.
Friday - Hint 3:
Pluto, the apex of the Mercury-Saturn-Pluto triangle, is positioned in Gemini: Gemini is a sign related to communicating. One form of communicating is writing.
As mentioned in Hint 2, Pluto is in a 5th-house aspect (trinal aspect) to Mercury, which is a creative product aspect, so we can infer that this person writes creatively about death and crimes.
This same Mercury-Pluto trine also gives self-confidence (see Muhammad Ali). The self-confidence that Mystery lacked because of the Saturn aspect to Mercury (the shyness) was counterbalanced by an ability to write with great confidence.
There is another powerful trine in this chart and it's a 5th-house aspect again: Neptune is in trine to Venus. This aspect confirms creative (5th house) artistic (Venus) talent (Neptune).
There is a stellium in Aquarius: a stellium is a conjunction between three or more planets and this chart features a powerful conjunction between Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter. This means ideas (Mercury), artistic skills (Venus), action (Mars) and success (Jupiter's expanding qualities) are all linked together. This stellium is responsible for Mystery's enormous success.
Saturday - Hint 4:
In 1920, Mystery's first detective novel was published, although Mystery had written the book a few years before: transiting Neptune in Leo went exactly opposite natal Jupiter. This transit is the perfect example of how oppositions are not necessarily bad at all.
An opposition is generally a challenge, but this challenge can simply come in the form of a relationship or an agreement, contract, etc.(a 7th-house aspect).
Jupiter, the planet of expansion, signifies publishing among other things - Jupiter is the natural complement of Mercury: Jupiter publishes what Mercury communicates and in Mystery's chart Mercury is conjunct Jupiter.
As natal Neptune in Gemini is trine Mercury in Aquarius, natal Neptune's trinal benefic influence extends to Jupiter, even if the orb is too large for a direct trine between Neptune and Jupiter. As the natal relationship between these planets is positive, transiting aspects by Neptune to Jupiter will also be generally positive even if the aspect is a challenging one, such as an opposition or a square.
At the same time as Neptune's transit to Jupiter, Pluto was transiting at 7° Cancer. Pluto represents the 'crime and detective' nature of the book, so why did a technically bad aspect, such as the 6th-house aspect between transit Pluto and natal Mercury (placed at 6° 57' Aquarius), turn out so well? The reason is found in the natal triangle between Mercury, Pluto and Saturn: these planets strongly interact with each other and produced, as we have seen, the native's interest in death and crime. With Pluto transiting at the same 7th degree as the natal planets, albeit in a different sign, the interaction is replayed thereby reinforcing it.
But there is also another reason why Pluto's transit was beneficial: at 7° Cancer, Pluto went into a 11th-house helper aspect to natal Saturn and Saturn not only generally represents work, but is also the dispositor for Mercury (and for the entire stellium in Aquarius), therefore Pluto in good aspect to Saturn was indirectly beneficial also to the stellium in Aquarius, and specifically to the Mercury-Jupiter conjunction.
Sunday - Solution
This was the chart of Agatha Christie, the best selling author of all times after William Shakespeare. She wrote over 80 novels and her books have sold over 3 billion copies worldwide.
This incredible success can be seen in the already mentioned stellium in her chart, along with the trine by the Neptune-Pluto conjunction. Neptune and Pluto gave the creativeness to the stellium, while the planets making up the stellium itself explain her life story: Mercury (communicating and writing) conjunct Venus (artistic skills) conjunct Mars (action) conjunct Jupiter (success and publishing).
We can imagine however, that the most important ingredient in this success was actually the Mercury-Saturn-Pluto triangle, which gave the criminal, death flavour to her novels. If it were not for Saturn in that difficult 8th-house aspect to Mercury, Agatha would not have had a keen interest in mysteries (8th house) and we can surmise that if she had written a different type of novels, she would never have had all that success.
Copyright 2006 Maddalena Cecchinato
