The Pre-Raphaelites – A Soul Group

The recent TV series has revived an interest in the fascinating group of artists known as the Pre-Raphaelites.  The accompanying biography by Franny Moyle, published by John Murray, and entitled “Desperate Romantics” is as gratifyingly profound as the TV series was superficial (though very watchable).  The book is in fact an Astrologer’s dream, giving dates and times of day for such detail as an annulment, a railway train caught, and episodes of paranoia.  You could happily spend a whole day printing out such charts.  If the Moon’s Nodes are the key to karmic entanglements, then the astrological evidence corroborates the picture of a huge set of triangular relationships within the group (at the last count 8), and that includes triangles of brotherhood as well as menages a trois.  I am hoping to blog about the more individual charts within the group, but for now would like to point out the role of the Nodes in securing the karmic entanglement  of some of the key figures which make up their story.  The lynch pin of the whole movement is Dante Gabriel Rossetti, painter and poet, who initially formed the brotherhood together with close friends John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt.  Hunt’s Pluto conjunct Millais South Node indicates a profound past-life link, and his North Node trine Rossetti’s Saturn showing a soul contract.  But their success and role in society also depended on the life of the critic and patron John Ruskin, whose own life story and psychology are sensitively explored in the book.  Within just these few central characters there are two triangles, which interlink.  There is the brotherhood formed by the the three painters Rossetti, Hunt and Millais, and there is a love triangle formed by Ruskin, Millais and Effie Gray.  Effie was locked in a difficult marriage for several years with Ruskin, and their natal nodal axes are reversed.  Dante Gabriel Rossetti (reliant for many years on Ruskin’s patronage) and Effie were born within 5 days of each other in the same year, and therefore Dante’s own nodal axis was also reversed with Ruskin’s.  This is the karmic kernel of the wider circle of triangles which notably included Rossetti’s link with William Morris and his wife Jane Burden.  The nature of these nodes may give a clue as to the wider purpose of the group incarnation, the most obvious reason being to promote a renaissance of the romantic philosophy, art and poetry.  Although Rossetti alludes to reincarnation in his poetry, I have never read of any concrete statements about his beliefs along those lines.  Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s North Node stands at 24 degrees 45 minutes Libra, Effie Gray’s at 24 degrees 59 minutes Libra, and Ruskin’s 23 degrees 46 minutes Aries (within a degree of opposition to Rossetti’s).  John Ruskin’s North Node in Aries (development of the individuality) is in his 3rd House, pointing to his career as a critic, and squaring his Mercury/Mars conjunction which again speaks of critique.  His patronage of the Pre-Raphaelites may be shown by his Venus in 11th House.   Rossetti’s North Node in Libra, one of the signs associated with the Arts, lies at the end of his 5th House of Creativity, reflective of his lifetime’s endeavours and achievements, both personal and in relationship to the group he founded.  Effie’s North Node is also in Libra, and she was an artist’s model, while also on a mission to fulfil herself through relationship or marriage (first to Ruskin, and then to Millais).  We do not have her birth time and therefore do not know within which house her North Node expressed itself.  Birth dates are available for most of the principal characters, and birth times are available for some.  Sadly there are no birth dates available for some of the artists’ models, such as Annie Miller and Fanny Cornforth.  However, Franny Moyle’s book yields a wealth of possibility for both astrological study and the study of interrelationship.