Anthony Bourdain was well known for his journeys to far flung locations where he ate local specialties in often primitive conditions. His Sagittarius north node lies in the fifth house. In astrological language, that would be the quest on the stage.
My favorite Parts Unknown episode “Newfoundland” starts in the garage of two chefs eating fish stew and some sort of salted pig in between the raw wood walls and twinkle lights. These chefs show up in two other locations, a luxe dining experience beside a lake after a failed hunting experience and then Bourdain eats in their restaurant with actual cutlery. It feels like Boudain’s ultimate episode, he can’t seem to discover anything else.
Whether in Bhutan where the archery contest mimics the rituals of tailgating at a football game or throwing a tremendous amount of cooked shellfish out for a feast whether its a shellfish picnic beside some watercourse in a remote jungle or on a picnic table in Cajun country, you can’t escape the essential food culture of humanity. You can find that all back home. Going to the end of road in Bhutan to find a tailgating party is the absolute danger of finding yourself near the end of a superficial Sagittarius north node quest.
Sagittarius is best observed at the edge of a golden world. Finding answers (Gemini) is not what Sagittarius wants although that is the result of the quest. Whenever you are dealing with Gemini-Sagittarius, you are working with information either asking questions (Sagittarius) or finding the clues (Gemini) but this axis is more than just information it is about meaning. The more Bourdain got his answers the golden world dimmed step by step. Bourdain’s Mercury, ruler of Gemini, is conjunct the south node. He was very good at getting the answers to the question he was asking. So much so, he destroyed the meaning of Sagittarius he was meant to find. Jupiter conjunct Pluto in the first house. Destroying the quest.
The Parts Unknown show has recorded on video the picture of Anthony Bourdain’s ninth house. The ninth house is the spot in the natal chart to begin to understand the person’s idea of far flung places. The ninth house is the house of culture. This is the place where we begin to come together and create the quest of the broader community. Agriculture is the province of the second house which finds its ultimate expression in the eighth house. We cultivate food (Taurus) and share it with others (Scorpio). This action of this sharing builds the ninth house. I believe Ceres rules Taurus. Bourdain had an Aries Ceres in the ninth house.
Bourdain relied on his Gemini Mercury too much to truly discover the meaning of his chart. The real quest was the discovery of how the primitive provision of bread, food creates culture. It stared him in the face, over and over again, but he spent bare time on this critical element. In Bhutan, he found his way to the food and ended with votive offerings at a waterfall but missed the essential question his ninth house was set up to ask, how does the provision of food to others build the meaning in the communities he visited. This is always the danger of having a planet in any house. They give you so much energetic power that they can dominate your vision of the house. The proverbial straw in someone else’s eye becomes the rafter in your own. That’s a planet blocking your view.
Bourdain’s horoscope had him always see the primitive food in exotic locales (Aries Ceres in the ninth) but the real meaning of his ninth house was wrapped up in Pisces and Aries. The transition of the old system to a new system. The Aries Ceres blocked his vision when he missed the back story of the store keeper in Bhutan who had given up yak herding and given her yaks to her sister and instead tended the store because the party was intrigued with the experience of eating a fungus that had killed a caterpillar. There was a story there of new beginnings, a transition between Pisces and Aries. A transition the nation was undergoing. The Buddhists who had to compromise their religion to eat meat were moving to something else. For a man who told people he hated the show and his fans, he may very well have learned something from a woman who had abandoned the habits of her ancestors, and even her own youth to embark on something new.
In Newfoundland, he explored the closure of the cod fishery that devastated the province but did not dive into the depths of the transition. This fishery had sustained the community for five hundred years. Before the Europeans settled North America, they fished and set up fish camps to dry fish on its shores. These outports had defined Newfoundland culture. As the fish dwindled and finally the moratorium was instituted, some 37,000 people in Newfoundland lost their jobs. This set off a chain reaction of out migration, diversification and devastated the culture of the province which had been based on cod. Today, the government pays people to depopulate these outport areas. After a history of five hundred years, the outports are more endangered than the cod that underpinned them. This is the story Bourdain missed, the one he was born to tell. There he would have found meaning. Those outports were the edge of the golden world. Following even one community’s decision to depopulate and how it was faring culturally just might have given him a map to truth and meaning for his own life.
The ninth house are the places that you believe have meaning. It is up to you whether or not you will discover that meaning. For all the success of his shows, he focused on the food to the detriment of the meaning. The illusion of a love affair (Neptune in Libra in the third house) had briefly filled the void but with the revelation that his girlfriend was keeping company with someone else that had been ripped away. Everywhere he looked he had found potential teachers, people who had lost their old culture and were making a new one but he was trapped. He hated his show and his fans but he couldn’t imagine a different world than the one he inhabited. He has walked to the edge of the golden world but just missed it because his eyes were firmly fixed on the food in front of him. His life had no meaning and he had ignored everyone who had appeared to direct him. The pursuit of food in parts unknown may have made many Americans crave the great, entertaining stories he told but it didn’t provide Bourdain with the meaning he had craved.