Abraham Lincoln – Astrology Report
In this analysis, we will be discussing Abraham Lincoln’s temperament, emotions, career, personal convictions as well as his marriage and relationships—all seen through the eyes of Astrology and Numerology.
Born on February 12th, 1809, just after sun up, Abraham Lincoln was born into and grew up in the midst of sheer poverty. Self-educated and endowed with an intellect that could quickly memorize information, he yearned to rise above the expectations his father had for him and be more than just a rail-splitter or farm hand.
Described as very ambitious (Capricorn Moon), his dreams (Neptune) were deeply connected to his success or failure as a man (Neptune in the 10th house of career). Neptune is in Sagittarius, signifying his love of justice, the proper execution and interpretation of the law. Neptune near the Mid-heaven or career sector, also shows that the chosen profession had something to do with serving others in a profound and emotional way (he was the Great Emancipator).
With the 9th sign of justice ruling his profession angle or sector, indeed, he was called upon to serve as judge in a few cases in his pre-Washington days when his close friend, who was a judge in Illinois, needed someone fair and impartial to fill in for him.
With his Sun in the very first house of his natal chart, and a Sun trine Mars aspect, this was a man who would undoubtedly stand out in a crowd and attract attention, which is invaluable as a politician. It also signifies a strong constitution and robust health. Lincoln was physically a strong man due to being put to work at a very early age in the fields of his father, and he enjoyed wrestling as a young man.
With his Sun conjunct his Ascendant, his natural leadership abilities came out when in the midst of a crowd. However, when it came to authority figures, it was his father, Thomas Lincoln, with whom he had the most trouble.
His Sun also squares his Saturn, which explains why his relationship with his father was so strained. Saturn symbolizes the father figure in a chart. The rift between them began when his father began to ‘rent’ him out to neighbors to work on their fields and taking the money for himself without sharing it with Lincoln who thought he was the rightful earner of that income. He also beat and whipped his son, something Lincoln never repeated with his own sons.
This aspect suggests that Lincoln felt that his father was unfair with him and therefore, he became hard on himself. He judged himself in a harsh manner and may have felt that the protection that his father should have offered was not there. Saturn brings discipline and in this his case Lincoln had to become his own father and use his own judgment as opposed to parental guidance when advice was needed.
His alienation from and anger toward his father, who he thought was unnecessarily strict with him, never healed. Lincoln did not attend his father funeral. When a Uranus born person, meaning a 4 person or Aquarian decides that someone should be cut out of their lives, they almost never let them back in. Aquarians are fixed by temperament and this also applies to their likes and dislikes.
With both Pluto and Jupiter also in the 1st house, he was both very intense sometimes as well as fun to be around at other times. When he rode the circuit as a lawyer, people couldn’t wait for him to come to their town so they could hear him share stories and hilarious jokes at their local taverns (Moon sextile Jupiter). He brought a palpable sense of community wherever he went. With a Capricorn moon position, his jokes were often at his own expense and this endeared him to many.
Jupiter’s position also tells us that Lincoln had a sense of what is morally right or wrong and in his case, he said that human slavery was immoral, unethical and wrong. Jupiter, the ultimate judge of situations, supports Lincoln’s belief, as did the world after he was killed.
A natural storyteller, born under the 3 vibration numerologically, speech was a very important element in understanding him. Communicating, sharing information and learning from as well as teaching people was crucial to his emotional well-being.
Lincoln’s birth number was 3 and his destiny number was 5.
Aquarius is the eleventh sign, and therefore is connected to humanitarian issues or issues on a global scale. In Lincoln’s case it was civil rights. The 11th house also rules friends. In many ways, Lincoln saw everyone as his friend and instantly put people at ease. This trait of his was remembered by the soldiers of the Civil War, who recalled him sitting with them, eating a plate of army beans and drinking a cup of army coffee, saying that it was better than the food he ate at the White House. Mary Todd, who was sitting next to him did not appreciate that comment for obvious reasons.
Saturn conjunct his Mid-heaven or career sector, meant that Lincoln had to really struggle in the beginning of his political career and many set-backs were endured by him. And that in whatever career his chose, he would be in a leadership position, serving as a guide to others.
His was a very unique persona, in that the same man who could be the life of the party one moment could also very quickly sink irrevocably into a deep depression. He called it being down in the dumps. His moon in Capricorn, Mercury square Saturn and his Saturn conjunct Neptune can shed some light on this distinctive trait of his and the possible reasons behind it.
His moon and Chiron (which signifies deep emotional wounding) are in the 12th house of dreams, karma and karmic reorganization, the subconscious and total emotional/psychological immersion. When he was blue, he really was struggling on many levels. The moon, which holds the maternal influence, also tells us about his mother, who tragically died when Lincoln was only 8 years old. Lincoln called Nancy hanks Lincoln his “angel mother”.
Often referred to as the most traumatic experience of his life, we can see that he carried it with him and relived it with disastrous consequences in his future life. He also lost his sister and a younger brother. The loss of his mother Nancy Hanks Lincoln was a primary wounding that just would not let go of him.
Many stories have been written about Lincoln’s first love, a beautiful and intellectual woman named Ann Rutledge. She died very young and caused Lincoln to almost have a nervous breakdown over her, as it must have brought up memories of his mother’s sudden loss.
It is said that Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd, hated hearing about her and refused to believe that he ever loved Ann. Ann’s brother corroborated their romance after Ann passed away. And yet William Herndon, Lincoln’s biographer, close friend and law partner from his Springfield, IL days observed that Lincoln thought about Ann often, if not daily and still grieved her loss.
Ann’s full birth data is gone forever, but I did locate her date of birth. She was born on January 7th, 1813, and her Sun was in Capricorn, while her moon sign was Pisces. This indicates that, at least at first glance, she would have been very compatible with Lincoln had they had been married.
Ann’s Capricorn Sun and Lincoln’s Capricorn moon were a beautiful astrological match. And Lincoln’s three Pisces placements in his own chart would have further aided their marriage, promoting sympathy for one another and helping them develop an intuitive side. Ann, numerologically, was a Neptunian 7 (her destiny number was 4 and ruled by Uranus, which found a link into Lincoln’s Sun sign Aquarius, the ruler of which is Uranus) and Lincoln was a 3. Her sensitivity would have caused her to understand him and his melancholy perhaps better than the woman he eventually chose to marry.
Mary Lincoln may have been good for Lincoln’s career, but for his emotional well-being, she couldn’t have been a more ill-chosen partner. Mary was a Sagittarius and Lincoln had this sign on his Mid-heaven, or career corner. Much higher up on the status ladder than he was, she brought connections with her as well as social acceptance and respectability, something Lincoln in those days did not possess.
Also, most significantly, Mary’s Cancer moon opposed Lincoln’s Capricorn moon, so while they were strongly attracted to each other, there were also those undeniable differences in their “opposite natures” as Mary put it herself, that became more pronounced as the couple began to mature and age together.
Mary’s lost her mother very early in life and she never forgave her father for remarrying so quickly after this loss. Her Cancer moon found a perfect surrogate father in Lincoln, who treated her with the same attention as a parent would a child. Later in life, she took to accusing the mild-mannered President of flirting with women, reverting back to the betrayal she felt when her father brought home her stepmother after her mother died. This jealousy continued until the end of the marriage upon Lincoln’s assassination.
With Mars in house of intimacy and psychological connections made through intimate contact, Lincoln had a rather violent married life. A little known fact about both Mary and Lincoln was that she was a highly emotional woman (Cancer Moon) who had a bad habit of screaming at (often in public and on the streets of Springfield with people watching) and physically hitting her husband. This began to occur after they wed.
The chosen weapon would sometimes be books, pieces of fire-wood or potatoes, at other times, she hit him across his face and drew blood from Lincoln’s nose, which was witnessed by a family friend during their days at home before the Presidency. (It seems he had not brought home the right piece of meat from the butcher.) He simply wiped the blood off his nose with a handkerchief and quietly went back to work at his law office where his friend followed him. When questioned about the turbulence at home caused by an irrational wife (negative effects of Cancer), which caused him to spend many a night sleeping at his office, Lincoln said that letting Mary have her outbursts did him “little harm and her, a lot of good.”
Where did this violence come from and it is visible in his astrological chart?
Lincoln had doubts about his upcoming marriage to Mary and broke off their relationship early on. They later reconciled and wed, but it was observed by close male friends that he insisted that he had given his word to her, and that is why he married Mary Todd. Aquarians are fixed by temperament, and it became a question of honor to him (Venus trine Saturn).
Mary, who was herself very emotionally volatile, had trouble adjusting to the life she had built with her husband. But Lincoln treated her with the utmost gentility. With his Uranus squaring his Ascendant, it must have taken a lot of his energy in making sure that the marriage did not break up, because this aspect shows a person who will not tolerate being told what to do, how to wear his clothes and which fork to use at the dinner table.
The decision to free three and a half million slaves did not come easily to Lincoln and he agonized over the right course to take for months. Aquarius is reluctant to move if the course ahead is unsure, but if a decision has to be made, it will be made when no one expects it and will come out of the blue. Plagued by incompetent generals political game-playing in Congress, and even within his own Cabinet, Lincoln had few supporters. It was during the time of the terrible Civil War that Lincoln became despised on both sides of the war.
With Pluto in the first house of his chart, he knew a radical change was coming and that it would end up changing the face of the nation completely. This was thanks to Pluto, a planet that brings about change on a deep, unseen level. The change first occurred inside of Lincoln himself (1st house), and only then did he give it a structure that the country could accept.
Lincoln’s dream life was particularly telling. With Neptune (ruling oceans, seas and all bodies of water) on his Mid-heaven or profession sector, they often involved the element of water where he was sailing rapidly toward an uncertain shore in an indescribable vessel, not really knowing what to expect. Uranus is interestingly in his 8th house of death, in his case sudden, unexpected death caused by sometimes hidden, sometimes open enemies. Mars also in that 8th sector denotes a death which is caused by fire (Mars), in this case, a bullet from a pistol fired in extreme anger (Mars rules anger). Mars’ position shows us that his death would be a most violent one and that he, as the victim would have no chance to react or protect himself.
Lincoln’s young 26 year old assassin, whose performances he came come to greatly admire, shot him from behind, never giving him a chance to see his attacker. It is noteworthy that Venus-ruled stage performer, John Wilkes Booth once received a note from an audience member after a particularly good performance on stage. The note was from Lincoln and read that the President wished to meet with the actor privately and congratulate him on his work that night. Lincoln was an avid reader of Shakespeare’s tragedies and poems (He often carried around books of poetry in his coat). The actor refused to meet him, proudly stating that as a supporter of the South and the rebellion, he had no interest in meeting the President. The 8th house, also known as the death house that contains both Mars and Uranus in Lincoln’s natal chart is also a Venus-ruled house like Venus-ruled Booth.
The planet Pluto, which is in Lincoln’s 1st house, signifies a power that is not human and yet, is extremely volatile, uncontrollable and potent. Ruling the 8th house of death, regeneration and rebirth, Pluto has a special significance in this analysis as it is placed in the house that shows Lincoln himself, his identity and sense of who he thought he was, as opposed to the 7th house, which rules anyone who is not us, rules ‘the others’, including our enemies who in this case, are not hiding, but approach us in the open, in front of people.
The planet of death itself, both metaphorically and physically, Pluto sought to shake up the very foundations of the country, without thought to how many men died, so that millions could breathe free. Pluto used death (of soldiers and Lincoln himself) to unchain three and a half million men, women and children from a life that they equated to a daily death. It used killing to liberate and recreate an entire section of the population. It forcefully pushed and goaded and destroyed a selfish mindset that glorified the disgraceful institution of slavery and once the war was started by the South by firing on Fort Sumter, Pluto was in his element. The tradition of human bondage was broken and history was rewritten as a result.
There was a conjunction of the planets Mercury and Pluto at the time of Lincoln’s birth, and it is interesting to note that the very same conjunction occurred when he lay dying. Pluto in this case would mean that he had set about to annihilate (Pluto) the cruel and inhumane injustice of human slavery from the face of America. Mercury, or his ideas and thinking pattern, caused an assassin to shoot him in the middle of a crowded theater with his wife sitting 2 feet from him. Pluto and Mercury show us that Lincoln died (Pluto) for his ideas (Mercury).
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln created a gigantic, gaping wound in the psyche of the nation, similar to what the nation went through when President Kennedy was taken by another assassin’s bullet. He was a visionary, a poet and a daring thinker in a time when his thoughts were so forbidden that he knew that someday it would cost him his own life. Which is why he has been chosen as the first president to be featured and analyzed in this section.
Other Presidients to be featured in this section are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and John F. Kennedy. Stay tuned!