Birth Charts Beyond Lifespan (1): Abbé Pierre’s Fall From Grace
The recently revealed facts serve as another example of a fascinating astrological phenomenon: a person's birth chart continues to resonate long after their life ends.
Last week, on July 17, at 14:45 Paris time, the French AFP news agency released a bombshell on X:
“Abbé Pierre accused in a report of sexual assault by several women, Emmaüs and the Abbé Pierre Foundation announce.” 1
This sad and shocking news concerns a figure whose prominence in France is comparable, in many ways, to that of Dorothy Day in the United States.
“The dissonance between Abbé Pierre’s image, his desire for justice and equality, and his behavior toward women creates an immense rift among those who admired him or admired his social activism,” says the independent report2 commissioned by the charities founded by Abbé Pierre himself.
I won’t delve too deeply into the above-mentioned ‘dissonance’ between these two contrasting images: on one hand, the lifelong campaigner for the homeless and poor, one of France’s most revered men; on the other, the elderly cleric who reportedly sexually harassed and assaulted female employees and volunteers from the late 1970s to 2005.
A character analysis of the late French Catholic priest, who died aged 94 in 2007, is beyond the scope here. Rather, these recently revealed facts serve as another example of a fascinating astrological phenomenon: a person’s birth chart continues to resonate long after their lifespan ends.
A Loved One’s Enduring Chart
I realized it personally when I found myself responsible for overseeing the exhumation of a loved one’s remains, more than two decades after their passing. The reason for this unsettling event was a common real estate issue in crowded cities: space needed to be made in the cemetery for the newly deceased.
On the day of the exhumation, I was nervous as I had to call to ask if the remains were found ‘in good condition’ – meaning the fleshy parts had properly decomposed. If not, the body would need to be reburied for a few more years. It felt like a Halloween moment in the middle of a summer heat wave.
I remember the Full Moon being right on top of my loved one’s Capricorn Sun on the day of exhumation, in a very tight orb. The beautiful, bright Moon was like a spotlight on the bodily remains, as their 8th lord of longevity and death. Sun is a karaka (‘significator’ in Vedic astrology) for bones. Mars in the sky, their lord of the 12th of endings, was tightly conjunct their ascendant lord, Jupiter, signaling the end of the body by heat. The person’s bones—deemed “in good condition”—were cremated shortly after.
Astrologically, the physical interaction with the remains aligned perfectly with the transits to the person’s chart at that time. It was as if their existence persisted beyond the breath of life itself. Despite the unsettling nature of dealing with cemetery procedures, I couldn’t help smiling at the aliveness of my loved one’s chart. It brought me a strange yet genuine sense of solace.
Back to Abbé Pierre, his chart also lives on, in this instance well beyond his bodily remains. This is about his reputation.
A Fall From Royalty
When a deceased person’s name, legacy, past sayings, and deeds suddenly become prominent in the collective consciousness for any reason, we do observe meaningful transits to their birth chart.
Over the years I’ve been noticing how these transits tend to show mind-blowing accuracy – provided the birth data is reliable – whenever the person’s existence in the collective consciousness shifts from dormant to viral in a matter of hours. This is what happened with the founder of the non-profit organization Emmaüs.
Looking at transits to Abbé Pierre’s3 chart on 17 July 2024, 14:45 Paris time, the first thing that catches the eye is the exact conjunction between Pluto retrograding into the first degree of Aquarius at 01AQ00 and Abbé Pierre’s natal Uranus at 01AQ01. It is accurate within one minute of arc!
The conjunction also falls on the natal chart’s 4th cusp of inner foundation, happiness, and home. With his natal Uranus there, the young Frenchman, the fifth child of a silk merchant, decided to follow his own way, breaking free from a comfortable life to become a monk. In 1949, as a Roman Catholic priest, he began campaigning for the homeless. Now, the Pluto conjunction tells a darker story of misuse of power, and the trine to Abbé Pierre’s Saturn correlates that to his authority.
However, outer planets transits to natal outer planets mostly have a generational effect. In a sense, this Puto-Uranus super-tight conjunction expresses the collective shock: Abbé Pierre’s specialness (Uranus) soiled by revelations of lust (Pluto).
Interestingly, the Pluto-Uranus superimpose, so to speak, occurs in the 5th sign from Abbé Pierre’s Libra Ascendant. According to the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, the most important text of Vedic astrology, “(…) children and fall from royalty are seen from the child house”, i.e., the 5th house. This indeed seems to represent the fall from grace of a true father figure for France and much of the Roman Catholic world.
But other significant transits were occurring at the time the shocking announcement was made.
Jupiter at 11GE39 was squaring Abbé Pierre’s Mars at 12VI01 in his 12th house of generosity and renunciation. Mars rules his 2nd house of possessions and his 7th house of sexual relationships, both of which he had renounced.
But the 12th is also the house of hidden, secret, or unconscious matters. Squaring Abbé Pierre’s Mars, transiting Jupiter, as his 6th lord of obstacles, enemies, debt, and subordinates, may signify a difficult secret revealed, one of a fiery nature (Mars) at that.
Thus, his former employees now expose the behavior of a man apparently unable to control his impulses and for whom celibacy seems to have become unbearable in his elderly years. He reportedly went around making sexual propositions and groping breasts4, to the horror of the women assaulted – and, now, of the world at large.
The commissioned report states, “The victims were employees, volunteers from some of their member organizations or young women in Abbé Pierre’s personal entourage”.5
The Jupiter-Mars square and its connection to the employees speaking after years of silence is reinforced by the Moon’s position in the sky at the time of the announcement to the world.
At 14:45, Paris time, the Moon at 06SG02 had just crossed Abbé Pierre’s solid Jupiter, also in Sagittarius, at 05SG33. Again, staff members (Jupiter, as 6th lord, signifies them) are going public (Moon) through a report (transit occurs in the 3rd house of communications).
More stunning, however, is the accuracy of the transiting Moon to Abbé Pierre’s Mercury, standing at 06VI11, next to Mars, also in his 12th house of generosity, renunciation… and secrets.
At 14:45 Paris time on 17 July 2024, the Moon was less than 10 minutes of arc away from making an exact square to Abbé Pierre’s exalted Mercury. That amounts to about 20 minutes (of an hour). I wonder if that was the time it took to go viral.
“I need it”
By themselves, these two squares to planets in the 12th house (transiting Jupiter square Mars and transiting Moon square Mercury) aren’t enough to make Abbé Pierre’s guilty as charged, so to speak. They do signify, for sure, the appalling circumstances of that moment in time concerning that person: posthumous allegations made by staff members and the media, general dismay, and so on.
Concerning the most difficult connotations of the 12th house, Deborah Houlding warns us not to jump to conclusions – at least not too fast:
Remember that every chart has a 12th house and 12th house ruler, and the need to heed its indications as a warning of care is determined by the chart as a whole. We must also differentiate between moral intention and external circumstance – does the Sun in the 12th house show an inclination to hide the truth or determination to seek it in the darkest corners where others wouldn’t dare to look? Does it show a sense of isolation or a proclivity for seclusion? (D. Houlding, The Houses: Temples of The Sky)6
This is where the Vedic astrology technique of the ‘Laajitaadi Avasthas’ proves useful. These types of ‘avasthas’ or planetary conditions show how fulfilled or unfulfilled planets are in the pursuit of their goals. Mars rules the 7th house of sexual relationships for Libra Ascendants like Abbé Pierre. And Mercury is an enemy to Mars, according to the natural relationships between the planets in Vedic astrology.
In Abbé Pierre’s chart, not only Mars is standing in his enemy’s sign – Virgo – but he is also conjunct his enemy, Mercury. And what’s more, it’s an exalted, powerful Mercury. Sadly, the result is a very ‘starved’ Mars – ‘Kshudhita’ in Sanskrit. In other words, what we have here is a deeply unhappy, frustrated ruler of the 7th house of sexual relationships, on account of renunciation (Mercury as the 12th house ruler).
One woman told the investigation: “I walked up to him to shake his hand. He tried to pull me towards the window. I told him ‘No, Father’. He told me, ‘I need it’. I said: ‘No’, and he left” (from the above-mentioned report, page 6, translated in a France 24 news article).
As far as the charities founded by Abbé Pierre are concerned, the credibility of these women was never questioned. “We believe them, we know that these intolerable acts have left their mark and we stand by their side,” Emmaüs stated.7
Other Clockwork Transits
Other meaningful transits were going on when the explosive news hit. To list a few, telegraphically:
– The Uranus-Mars conjunction going on in the sky in Taurus, within one degree of each other, and another degree away from Abbé Pierre’s 8th cusp. Something unexpected (Uranus) regarding passion, assault (Mars) triggers a crisis or a legacy issue (8th).
– Mercury (12th lord) at 21LE50 transiting the Ascendant lord Venus (also the 8th lord) at 21LE01, less than two days before. Secrets (12th) revealed spark off a crisis around his personality (Asc lord). Information (Mercury) concerning pleasures (Venus).
– Neptune at 29PI52, retrograding to square Abbé Pierre’s Pluto at 29GE31. It will be exact on August 11. A generational sense of loss and disillusionment on account of revelations of lust.
As we see, while Abbé Pierre passed away in 2007, his chart is very much alive these days. One may even disapprove of the above interpretations, but it is impossible to ignore the accuracy of these transits.
We know the chart doesn’t dissolve with the body. But for how long does it keep on living? For as long as some of that person’s energy stamp stays in the world’s consciousness, with its louder and quieter moments?
Charts of very well-known people will always be fascinating to study regarding any posthumous astrological transits that may happen to them. Albert Einstein’s chart, when gravitational waves were directly observed in 2015, a century after he predicted their existence, is another nice example – a topic that we’ll explore further in Part II of this article.
But if we follow this reasoning to its conclusion, it suggests that even for a long-deceased anonymous person, whenever they are present in the collective consciousness – say, when someone at a family gathering mentions an ancestor who went to war – some transit, even a ‘shy’ one, would be happening to that ancestor’s chart.
I can’t really verify that myself, as I know little about my ancestors. Can you? Have you observed transits to your late relatives charts at special occasions? Feel free to share.
Featured image – Abbé Pierre photographed by Studio Harcourt Paris, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- AFP News Agency tweet on July 17 2024 ↩︎
- Independent report by the Egaé group, a firm specializing in violence prevention ↩︎
- Abbé Pierre’s chart on the Astro-Databank ↩︎
- France 24 news article – Abbé Pierre, France’s best-known humanitarian priest, accused of sexual assault ↩︎
- Reuters news article – Late French priest Abbe Pierre accused of sexual abuse, charities say ↩︎
- The Houses: Temples of the Sky, D. Houlding, 2006 (Goodreads) ↩︎
- Reuters news article ↩︎