July 10th marks the birthday of Tesla, a widely admired genius often lauded on the internet as the world’s ‘greatest geek.’ A Serbian-American inventor, engineer, physicist and an unsung creator of the electric age, Tesla discovered the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current machinery, and held over 700 patents. Although this busy visionary’s work fell into relative obscurity after his death in 1943, his popularity has resurged since the 1990’s.
Talk of Tesla sometimes reaches into the esoteric with the very exoteric implications of his life’s work for 'free energy' technologies. Many of Tesla’s inventions were diluted for patent by J.P. Morgan, Westinghouse, Edison and others — sometimes due to his indifference as to whether or not he received credit. In other cases, such business tycoons were not happy with Tesla’s impetus to give these technologies away to the public without much monetary concern.
Tesla was born with the sun sign Cancer, cardinal water sign and one which symbolizes ultimate receptivity to the Logos — in many ways the psychological principle of energy, active images and the languages derived from them. As wisps and wands of intuitive signals and creative fire move through the air, Cancer energy is like the cup catching them, a chalice of soulful instinct and careful listening.
With Saturn and a Venus-Sun conjunction in Cancer across the 3rd and 4th houses — all the 3rd in the Whole Sign house system — Tesla was very sensitive to his immediate environment. It seems he coursed with an innate openness, a deepening discipline toward turning the messages received into working manifestations. Yet a potential downside to this was a feeling of mental imprisonment that can accompany Saturn in the 3rd — an inertia and confinement to the letters of one’s calling, before and beyond connection to others. Famously celibate and hermitic, Tesla's lone wolf status was at once the seat of his genius — and perhaps also the quality of isolation that finally stopped his heart after a long and creatively fruitful life.
For example, depending on the degree point of the ascendant, if a person is born anywhere from a few minutes to a couple hours after sunrise, the sun will be in the 12th house — shining strong upon that individual with its suchness. Ascending planets bear a kind of martial momentum as they move through the 1st house to cross the eastern horizon, ascending to the 12th house from which they beam their valences directly with less terrestrial interruption. Whichever sign is on our 12th house, or whatever planet-sign confluence might be in one's 12th, we are filled to the brim with their messages — perhaps even undone by them.
from Astrograph.com ::
“In his autobiography, Tesla tells of the early workings of his mind in a description that we can only regard with wonder: he saw flashes of light that interfered with his physical vision; when a word was spoken, he would see the object so clearly that he had trouble distinguishing between the imagined and the real; in later years he would build a machine in his mind, run it to see where the wear was flawed and make whatever repairs and adjustments were needed — before he ever began his construction. At night in solitude, Tesla had an inner world of personal vision where he made journeys and studies, carried on conversations and met people that seemed as real to him as his outer world.”
Tesla was born with Jupiter in Aries in the 12th house, squaring his Cancer stellium. Jupiter, a planet of swelling grandeur; in Aries, a fiery (intuitive, electromagnetic) sign associated with electric charge; in the 12th house of inner life, dreams, self-dissolution. These living, breathing symbols aflame, squaring off with the watery openness of cancerian energy, point directly at Tesla’s openness to illustrious visions.
Jupiter in Aries in the 12th house — a dream fed by inner impetus and imagination, opposing the Moon and Mars with the South Node in Libra in the 6th — a heart flying with dreams of serving the people and society at large. The grand gesture of giving inventions freely for public good; perhaps even an at times aggressive or frustrated temperament surrounding anything impeding this desire. The service of one’s mind, one’s hands, and the humility in not primarily valuing personal acclaim.
A telling one-two is the position of Capricorn on Tesla's Midheaven (Medium Coeli or 10th house) in the Placidus house system, with Chiron in Aquarius in the 10th house (also the 10th in the Whole Sign house system). Just as the IC or 4th house is one's roots, home and inner ease, the 10th house is conversely the house of becoming, of career, the 'star directly above you.' Tesla made his first million by the age of 40, but gave up the royalties on his most profitable invention as a humanitarian gesture. Chiron, the sacrifice, in Aquarius, the novel breakthrough.
The unsung creator of the electric age, it’s fitting that Tesla was likely born with Pluto and Uranus in the 1st house — Pluto, the planet of 'transformative' life/death/rebirth motifs and Uranus, a planet associated with electric breakthroughs and technological innovation! In Taurus, a sign of building and manifestation, no less.
An interesting and mostly unrelated aside, the modern engineer, inventor and investor Elon Musk — founder of SpaceX and CEO / product architect of Tesla Motors — is a Cancer sun, Virgo moon whose grand air trine is more tightly aspected than Tesla’s. While these two people are quite distinct unto themselves, alive in different eras, both of them seem to display a fusion of these fertility signs’ earth-oriented sensibility for planetary health, with airy, humanitarian oomph — global visionaries of sylph-y genius.
As his fruitful life drew to a close, Tesla experienced the burden of different neuroses including a fixation on staying in hotels — perhaps a weight of Saturn in the 3rd? — acting out numerological obsessions like circling hotel blocks a specific number of times before entering. Curiously, it was the number 3 and multiples thereof that fascinated him. Lasting quirks of a visionary iconoclast. A dark, mysterious blend of vision and neuroticism characterizing a man who was perhaps the most elegant of history’s mad scientists.