The Astrology of the Kennedy Curse Part II

Rose Fitzgerald, the Kennedy matriarch, was the original carrier of the curse but it lay dormant in her natal horoscope. Her asteroid Atreus is conjunct the Descendant and Moon of the Kennedy-Fitzgerald wedding horoscope. The asteroid Atreus tests for piety. Piety meaning respect for the gods. The House of Atreus is notorious for a lack of piety having descended from Tantalus who killed and served his son at a banquet he held for the Olympian gods. The Kennedy curse takes the form of a piety test with public consequences, good or bad. The curse is described in a learning triangle chart pattern by the asteroid retrograde Gemini Atreus (piety test) square the Virgo Midheaven (public consequences) with sextile and semi-sextile to Cancer Saturn-Pluto (♇♄).

It was her husband, Joseph Kennedy, and their marriage who awakened it and swept it into the House of Kennedy. Joe Kennedy directly initiates the curse crisis with his natal Neptune-Pallas-Pluto conjunction (♇⚴♆), yet Rose exerts a subtle influence on the reaction to the unleashed crisis.

Some famous events that have occurred have not been recognized as the curse because the outcome was not negative. Seen as a gift from the gods, no one suspects that it is the choice made by Kennedy family member that dictates the outcome. Seen from this perspective, the curse is much more active in the family than one might expect. John F. Kennedy’s PT-109 boat was cut in two, exploded and eventually sunk, yet he survived and saved his crewmates earning a medal and reputation as a war hero. That was equally an outcome of the curse in the same way the lobotomy of Rosemary Kennedy was. Consequences are based on the native’s familial virtue when confronted with the test.

Kennedy Curse Origins

The Cancer Saturn-Pluto conjunction describes the glyph of Perseus (♇♄) . It probably dates back to the rape of Princess Nest ferch Rhys ap Tewdwr (Tudor), the matriarch of the Fitzgerald clan, by Owain ap Cadwgan, a prince of Powys and her maternal second cousin. This beautiful young woman was kidnapped, possibly made the mistress to a royal prince who later became King Henry I of England, and later married off to a powerful aristocrat and afterward was abducted with her children and raped by Owain. He took her to Ireland. She is said to have told him she would stay with him, if her children were returned to their father, which he did.

Later, after a lot of fighting against Owain’s father, she was returned to her husband. She has been called Helen of Wales. After her return, Owain was fighting as the king’s ally when another ally of the king, Nest’s husband Gerald of Windsor, took the opportunity to kill Owain. This seems an opportune time for the curse to have entered the Fitzgerald familiy. Could the dying Owain have cursed the descendants of Nest and Gerald?

The only thing that can be seen from the potential abduction chart shows the archetype of the time was the Leo Neptune – Aries Pluto. Fighting to be royal. A highborn noble woman so beautiful she possibly had a child with the English king’s brother, who became king himself, and daughter to a Welsh king and mother who was herself the daughter of another Welsh king. Married to a powerful lord. She was a prize that many men wanted. In 1093, when her father was killed with him fell the kingdom of the Britons. In 1109, the end of the nodes were ending their move through Taurus-Scorpio associated with power and wealth. No matter how beautiful or not she was, it is likely the prize Owain ap Cadwgan was seeking, was a claim to her father’s beautiful kingdom.

Helen of Wales

The sacking of Troy occurred when the Spartans came to take back their queen Helen of Troy or Helen of Sparta. The face that launched a thousand ships. Helen’s Spartan husband, Menelaus, is one of the sons of Atreus. Helen is the daughter of Queen Leda of Sparta who was seduced by Zeus in the form of a swan. Helen is born from an egg. One of the most ancient myths, it is an Indo-European myth.

The Kennedy-Fitzgerald wedding chart alludes to this myth in the retrograde Aquarius Uranus on the Sabian symbol “a child born of an eggshell”. This Uranus is ruling the bride. Rose Fitzgerald is represented in the wedding chart by the Descendant ruler, the retrograde Aquarius Ceres in the third house. Rose is the daughter of a politically powerful man and is a woman of means. Aquarius not only alludes to the family’s immigration from Ireland but, in America, the status of the family is no longer Leonine but has taken on the character of the common man, Aquarian.

Rose Fitzgerald’s Role in the Curse

While her husband is busy setting off the tests and generally failing them consistently due to his lack of good virtues, Rose would attempt to influence the direction their children would take. Joe Kennedy was an adulterer, greedy, willing to destroy other people’s lives to make a buck, a renown coward and vainglorious. He had three planets in Virgo, the Sun, Moon and Mercury. Virtue is the calling card of Virgo but virtue can be positive or negative, in which case it is called vice. Joe was a man of vice. Rose was a woman of piety.

Rose was a Fitzgerald and although her family has not been traced to any particular historic figure, the Fitzgeralds are a well known Norman family who had become Irish. They were the earls of Desmond and the next door neighbor to the kingdom of Ormond, the lands of the Kennedy family. The two families had a common enemy, the Butlers. The Irish Kennedy family had lost out to the Norman Butlers while the Norman Fitzgeralds had an ongoing feud with them as well. As the Kennedy family was fallling from the heights they had reached, the Fitzgeralds were soaring ever higher. Today, the Irish Parliament meets in Leinster House, the ducal palace of the Fitzgeralds.

In the Marriage horoscope, Rose is represented by the retrograde Aquarius Ceres in the third house, she is an heiress of a divided possession. She came into the marriage with the influence and wisdom of her father, “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald one-time Congressman and Mayor of Boston, and her religious beliefs. The Marriage horoscope opens in Scorpio and that means the partners are not equals. Joe Kennedy is seeking to share his wife’s possessions. This marriage was one in which Joe Kennedy would see his status increase due to the higher status of his wife. There are many famous Fitzgerald heiresses who became Countesses. In 1951, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy was ennobled by the Pope Pius XII as a Countess of the Holy Roman Church. While Joe Kennedy was running around conducting affairs with movie starlets and the hired help, his wife was trying to raise a child of outstanding character.

In the marriage chart, Joe’s Pluto and Rose’s Ceres are in a tight quincunx aspect. Unfortunately, Sue Tompkins compares the quincunx aspect to a nagging element of discomfort. In her book, Aspects in Astrology she compares it to losing your job and coming home to find the kitchen needs to be redecorated. It is not the pressing concern just a nagging issue that adds stress and tension. The values Rose stood for are that nagging issue during the curse trial. Not only did the Kennedy children face a difficult trial but they essentially receive a side helping of not measuring up to their mother’s values.

Rose’s second eldest daughter, Kathleen, married a Protestant Lord. Rose didn’t approve. When Billy Hartington is killed four months after the wedding, Kathleen eventually begins a relationship with a womanizing Protestant and married lord. Rose did not approve of this either. In 1948, Kathleen Kennedy and her beau Earl Fitzwilliam were killed in a plane crash.

Kathleen’s love affairs are driven by her natal Jupiter-Neptune conjunction in Leo. She was on a quest to become Leonine. She married the Marquess of Hartington, the heir to the Duke of Devonshire, against her mother’s wishes. After his death, she had an affair with the married Earl Fitzwilliam which was also against her mother’s wishes. Worse than just a Protestant, the man was married and also a playboy. The only thing that both men appeared to have in common was they both were Protestant and had aristocratic titles.

Kathleen’s retrograde Jupiter-Neptune conjunction created a fantasy of nobility. As a Capricorn Venus, she loved status and the trappings of the aristocratic life. This wasn’t about money but about the landed aristocracy. Her wedding had featured a Taurus Sun and a Libra Moon. Heirs and marriage. Kathleen’s wedding also placed the transit Leo Jupiter in opposition to the Kennedy-Fitzgerald wedding retrograde Aquarius Ceres, the planet representing Rose Fitzgerald. Kick’s quest to become an aristocrat put her into opposition to her mother.

The Kennedy curse is active in the Hartington wedding chart but it activates Kathleen’ retrograde Virgo Saturn. Past virtue test? Kathleen fails her curse test because her Saturn suggests her public reward would be recognition of her discipline and duty. Instead, the air plane carrying her and her married lover smacks straight into a mountain. Failing to internalize Saturn’s mountain of discipline an external mountain reaches up into the sky to create the obstacle that was not found within. For a family that must exhibit piety to the gods, abandoning your family’s gods not once but twice and in the second attempt with such flagrant disrespect to the family’s Catholic belief system was probably the most elementary failure of the entire lot.

She was a disappointment to her mother and of no real consequence to the Kennedy story. Unlike Rosemary, who was the victim of her father’s vanity or Joe Jr. who was killed in action in a dangerous and futile mission which at least obtained some small measure of honor, Kathleen died in a plane accident as an adultress who was trying to get her lover to divorce his wife and leave his thirteen year old daughter. Venal. Only her father attended her funeral and the family went on and basically forgot her. The Atreidae women aren’t known for their faithfulness and loyalty to the family and they don’t inspire loyalty and faithfulness from their family in return.

And the curse rolls on. The next group of follow on effects will be explored in Part III of the Astrology of the Kennedy Curse.