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John Nash and the Sun in the Twelfth House

It’s not everyone who gets to have his life story made into a major motion picture and see himself portrayed by Russell Crowe, but John Nash was a special case. He was born with a brilliant, and yet seriously compromised mind. As a mathematician Nash was a singular talent and eventually won the Noble Prize. As man, however, he struggled with schizophrenia and the constant specter of mental illness.

John Nash’s recent death got me looking at his horoscope again, and at the placement of his Sun in the Twelfth House. (Click on the name to see the horoscope.) The Twelfth House might be called the dark basement of the horoscope. In traditional astrological texts is considered to be the house of prisons, hospitals and all things hidden. It is often equated with misery, confinement and self-undoing. According to this reading of this house, having your Sun, the source of your vitality and sense of self, placed there is not a good thing.

However, in the case of John Nash the Sun in the Twelfth was a most fortunate placement. With the Sun in the Twelfth we have to exercise the power of the Sun by going inward. We have to acknowledge and accept the limitations placed upon by the outside world, and apply our will toward mastering the inner functions of the mind, the body and the spirit.

Nash struggled for many years with his schizophrenia. It took him to some strange and unhappy places. He was hospitalized for a time and gives psychiatric drug. However, Nash felt these drugs were not helping him, so he sought to cure himself by consciously rejecting paranoid and delusional thinking. He found he could manage his thoughts by remaining true to the restrictions science and rationality.

In other words, Nash found a cure for his illness by going inward and mastering the workings of his own mind. He used the power of his Twelfth House Sun to free himself from the prison of mental illness.

I can only think of a few people with the Sun in the Twelfth who suffered with mental illness. (Zelda Fitzgerald is one famous example.) I can think of a multitude of people with the Sun in the Twelfth who found their place in the outer world by first exploring their inner world. Some had this journey forced upon them by illness or imprisonment, but most were turned inward by less dramatic circumstances. One way or another, it is a necessary journey for people born with the Sun in this house.

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