By Milky Way Maid
(I started this article
several weeks ago and finally hurried up to finish and post it now, in August.
Well, now the movie is rather old news, but I thought it’d be fun to look at
the main character, Mrs. Graham.)
I have been enjoying
repeated viewings of the new film “The Post” starring Meryl Streep as Katharine
Graham and Tom Hanks as Ben Bradley. Probably because the film covered a
pivotal year in the lives of Graham and the newspaper, I decided to run a natal
chart for Graham plus a solar return chart for the year 1971, when the issues
surrounding the hunt for and publishing of the Pentagon Papers determined
whether the Washington Post would grow or shut down.
Lacking an exact time
of birth, I ran a noon chart for Graham. Her birth data is on record as June
16, 1917 in New York, New York. I ran a Placidus chart.
NATAL
CHART
|
ASPECT
|
SOLAR
RETURN CHART
|
Mars-Mercury at 1-2 deg. Gemini
|
Conjunct
Opposite
|
Venus at 5 deg. Gemini
Neptune at 1 deg. Sagittarius
|
Sun at 24 Gemini
(trine Uranus at 23 Aquarius)
|
Trine
(conjunct)
|
Mars at 18 Aquarius
|
Jupiter at 27 Taurus
|
Conjunct
Opposite
Trine
|
Saturn at
29 Taurus
Jupiter at 28 Scorpio
Pluto at 29 Virgo
|
Saturn at 29 Cancer
|
Sextile
Trine
Conjunct
|
Saturn at
29 Taurus
Jupiter at 28 Scorpio
Juno at 26 Cancer
|
North Node at 10 Capricorn
(opp. Venus at 8 Cancer)
|
Square
Square
|
Uranus at 9 Libra
|
If you have read my
article on late degrees, you will quickly recognize the placement of the planet
Saturn in late Cancer as an indicator of a family business, inherited by the
subject. In this case, Graham’s father Eugene Meyer owned the Washington Post
and handed over the business to Graham’s husband, Philip Graham. Not until
Philip’s untimely death did Katharine take over the business that really was
rightfully her – and which in my opinion she was born to run.
[By the way, Eugene
Meyer bought the newspaper in a bankruptcy auction in 1933. The presence of
Jupiter in late Taurus might be a family signature of a benefit from a
bankruptcy action, which winning the auction certainly was. ]
The film portrays
Katharine as having great difficulty speaking up for herself until when amid
the pressures not to publish the Pentagon Papers, she finally finds her own
voice in time to order their publication. So it is a bit surprising to see an
argumentative Mars-Mercury conjunction (in Gemini) in her natal chart!! Perhaps
that energy was channeled into her early reporting career. The conjunction is
opposed by Neptune, which makes me suspect that Neptune might be near her
Ascendant. Neptune placed near the Ascendant can make one very quiet, nearly
mute, especially in childhood.
- The solar return Venus and Neptune activate issues of expanding (Neptune) the financial support of a more aggressive and active journalistic presence (Mars conjunct Mercury).
- Solar Return Mars trined Katharine’s Sun, making her dig in her heels in the legal fight to print the Pentagon Papers. This became more exact with the later controversy over the Watergate investigation.
- Solar Return Saturn, Jupiter and Pluto all aspected Katharine’s natal Jupiter, expanding the paper’s influence nationally and greatly raising its prominence.
- Solar Return Saturn, Jupiter and Juno all aspected her natal Saturn, which also tended to give her the ambition (Saturn) to invest in and assign the many man-hours of investigative work to cover the stories that begged to be told.
- And Solar Return Uranus helped throw light on those stories in unexpected way, helping the paper (and Katharine) grow into the major voice that it became in national news.
The movie “The Post” is
not only a good film about journalism history; it also shows a pivotal slice of
time in the personal and professional growth of one brave lady, Katharine
Graham.
