posted February 05, 2007 02:50 AM              

Fascinated by this one. Your thoughts?

[data from IMDB, city could be incorrect -- post if you find a different city or time]

posted February 05, 2007 02:07 PM              

The moon conjunct RX Uranus opposing Sun and RX Mercury may indicate severe bipolar or schizophrenia. Since we don't have an exact birth time, I have be tentative re: the role of teh moon-Sun opposition here, but the RX Merc opposing RX Uranus is solid - a lot would depend on where the moon is exactly the understand the relationship of the moon and Sun with Merc and Uranus here. But for speculation's sake I'd say his moon was likely opposing his Sun, which alone doesn't mean much in terms of severe mental illness, but with RX Merc and RX Uranus opposing in orb or near-orb, I'd say that indicative of schizophrenia over bipolar. That his Merc's retro in Taurus factors in here as well. With a RX earth Merc being hit hard by RX water Uranus - I don't see a "cyclic" or "vascillating" to his mentality - I see "fractured" "drowning and "muddied."

That Venus-Pluto-Neptune tight stellium sextile Jupiter, semi-sextile Mercury and quincunx Uranus is pretty interesting. I think some astrologers call this a "boomerang" configuration - whatever you want to call it, it's intense and it's creates a look of stress on the "apex" (Uranus) and "trigger" (Mercury). Certianly a lot of creativity and imagination here, but very unstable. His creativity was a wide open doorway for his deeper psyche, which is probably why his art reflective his illness so well (this is very typical of art by schizophrenics and schizoid perosnality disorider). But for his ability to function socially, this would have been devasting - he couldn't "shut" that doorway to deal with more mundane things. Nor could he cope with the stress this very intense creativity imposed on his psyche. It's likely he lived ina constant state of imaginative thinking - he could never fully focus on the concrete, and perpetually interetwining his experience of reality with his imagination. In terms of mental illness, this configuration likely suggests grandiose thinking, mania, psychotic episodes, deep phobias, obsessive thinking, delusional thinking, paranoia, psycho-sexual issues, and extremely erratic, impusive behavior. His psycho-sexual impulses were intense, perhaps overwhelming, and very likely not "socially acceptable".

The disharmonious "boomerang" configuration with the Venus-Pluto-Neptune, Mercury Jupiter, and Uranus is pretty rare both in how tight the orbs (mostly) and in how many/which planets are involved. Interestingly, you can find usually "rare" combinations (not necessarily boomerangs - just unique or rare combinations) like this one, usually in tight orbs with tale-tell combinations of both personal and outer planets, in charts of people with very severe, very pervasive mental illnesses who do not respond well to current treatment. In Darger's chart, I believe this "boomerang" has a back-wash action - it should express its tension at its apex, RX Uranus, but the "trigger" is a RX earth Merc. I see this as "one step forward, two steps back" kind of action going on, as any effort release tension through RX Uranus likely resulting in a great deal of that tension falling back onto that RX Merc. It's likely that positive experiences or any help offered to him "backfired" in a ways that was more detrimental than helpful. Over time, this may have factored in how severe his illness eventually became.

While he did have a very traumatic childhood, I don't think that's the sole root of his illness. From his chart, I think the trauma compounded a predisposition toward severe mental illness, probably making it manifest much earlier than would have normally. Schizophrenia usually manifests by young adulthood, but for Darger, it seems it began manifesting earlier than that.

posted February 05, 2007 06:36 PM              

WARNING: Some of Darger's art depicts images of children that some people may find disturbing.
http://www.hammergallery.com/Artists/darger/Darger.htm

I wish I was better at chart rectification so I could narrow in on a birth time. Knowing the house cusps could tell us a lot more.

As for dumpster diving - it's stangely common for schizophrenics to dumpster dive or rummage throw other people's trash. I'm exctly not sure why. It's not always out of desperation or needs - it seems linked to "hoarding" behavior (where people collect compulsively and have trouble throwing things away), which falls on the obsessive-compulsive spectrum. Darger was a hoarder too.

Darger was selective in some of what he "hoarded" - it's likely several things he collected had meaning to him. Given the combined Pluto-Neptune energy here, I suspect whatever he salvaged from dumpsters or wherever else had profound, even magical meaning to him. He was taking something that had belong to someone else, and bringing it into his own world, like a connection to that other reality of other people. This seems to me that his was trying to engage reality, move outward with his art - that was his impetus. I suspect Darger had some awareness of his own illness, which added to his frustration. He may have spent his whole life looking for way out of the "labyrinth" of his illness. That's way I think he was so prolific with his art/writing.

Gemini, the sign for this Venus-Pluto-Neptune stellium, which is an outgoing sign that strives to engage and experience the exterior world. I suspect this stellium also falls in an outgoing house, most likely the 3rd or 5th, maybe 9th or 11th. Gemini is also the sign of the "trickster" - an mythical archtype of someone who figures their way out of problem by unconventional means, by "tricking" the system. People with strong Gemini (like me ) are by nature geared to finding their way out of a fix by their wits and creativity. I suspect Darger was like this too. His art and writing probably were earnest efforts to find his way out, to "decode" his own insanity, to make sense what was going on in his head. The problem was, the "fix" he was in was a pervasively severe mental illness that he never was able to out-trick or decode. Unfortunately it seems, the central disturbance in his chart caused by the RX Merc opposed RX Uranus probably always caught up the that Gemini trickster and cross him off before the exit.

Unfortunately in myth, the trickster epitomized by Gemini isn't always successful, and when a trickster fails, he usually ends up living out a very cruel fate as result. That appears to have been Darger's fate as well.