Nadya Suleman And Her Children, Part One: The Superfluous Six

This is the first of two blog entries about Nadya "Octomom" Suleman and her fourteen children. For those of you who don't have the time or patience for detailed astrological analysis, I present a brief astrological joke:

An Aries walks into a bar. You got a problem with that, pal?

Now, the analysis. For those of you who want to play along at home, complete birth data for Nadya and the kids is here.

If you want to see what a person's relationship with their parents is like in a birth chart, there are three places to start: the 4th House and 10th House (and the planets ruling them) and aspects from the mother's chart to the child's Moon. It might be a mistake in any individual case to read too much into any one placement or aspect, but Nadya Suleman gave us enough babies that we could start noticing some patterns... even before the octuplets. Since we don't have a time of birth for Nadya, I'm going to toss out any aspects to or from her natal Moon, which is somewhere in Leo (a noon birth would put the moon at 24 degrees).

Elijah:

4th/10 rulers: Mercury and Pluto

Elijah's chart has a debilitated Venus in Aries as the ruler of the Third House... speech and communications. That, plus a retrograde Neptune in the 12th near the Ascendant, and Mercury conjunct a debilitated Jupiter in Gemini (both closely opposed by Pluto) makes him the most likely candidate to be the "mildly autistic" child with a speech problem.

Mercury opposes Pluto, conjunct Jupiter, no other major aspects. Pluto is trined by Venus in Aries (debilitated). Surprisingly, no planets in Nadya's chart make any significant aspects at all to either Elijah's 4th or 10th rulers.

Nadya's Mars sextiles his moon, her Venus opposes it, and her Neptune squares it. Also noteworthy: Elijah has a prominent Moon-Saturn square.

Amerah:

4th/10 rulers: Moon and Saturn

Moon is trine the Sun and sextile the Midheaven, but is squared by Mercury and Pluto, which oppose each other and are conjunct the Nodal Axis. Saturn is conjunct Mercury, and thus is square Saturn, opposed by Pluto. So: some difficult 4/10 issues there.

As with Elijah, Mom's Venus weakly opposes Amerah's Moon, Mars gives a weak sextile, and Neptune squares it.

Joshua:

4th/10th rulers: Venus and Mars

Joshua has an interesting Venus: at 27 degrees Leo, it is conjunct both the natal Sun and Jupiter within a degree, which is pretty powerful. Also noteworthy: that pile-up is in the first house, and is not aspected by anything else in the birth chart. Combine this with Uranus and Mars at 1 and 7 degrees Pisces (conjunct the older siblings Moons, so undoubtedly they get on each others nerves a lot) in the 8th House, and it paints a very interesting picture of the parent-child relationship. Powerful? Yes. Stable? Nope.

The natal Moon at 1 degree Gemini only gets two aspects from Mom's chart: a conjunction with the South, a square from Venus, and a weak opposition from Mom's Neptune.

Aidan:

4th/10th rulers: Venus and Pluto

Aidan has a strong Venus at 22 Pisces, conjunct the Sun (which is iffy) and trine Saturn (which is solid, but Saturn is debilitated in Cancer). Unfortunately for Aidan, that fairly strong Venus is closely squared... by Pluto in the 12th House.

Natal Moon at 10 Gemini only receives two major aspects in the birth chart... a weak trine from Neptune in the 1st House, and a tighter square from Uranus at 7 degrees Pisces (note how that portion of Pisces keeps showing up in these charts). This can often result in digestive/dietary problems (a common issue with autistic children) and combined with a third house ruled by a void of course Mars in Capricorn, makes Aidan my educated guess to be the second autistic child of the lot.

How does Nadya's chart interact with Aidan's moon? One major aspect only... her Neptune opposes his moon.

Finally (whew!)... Calyssa and Caleb, born two minutes apart:

4th/10th rulers: Venus and Pluto.

At first glance, Venus and Pluto look strong in these charts. Venus is in Libra and Pluto is trine Saturn. But they do square each other... weakly, but it's there.

Also: I'm going to break one of my own rules about generalizing too much based on a single placement. These children have a 12th House void of course Moon in Capricorn receiving no aspects other than a square from Mercury, and is ruled by a debilitated Saturn in Leo. If that isn't a strong astrological signature for depression, I don't know what is.

...And speaking of depression, there are only two major aspects from Mom's chart to the twin's Moon -- an opposition from Mom's Sun and Saturn in Cancer (Saturn within five degrees, the Sun weak at almost ten degrees), and a close square from Mom's natal Uranus. All of which is very... depressing.

Ouch.

In all fairness, it would be wrong to look at any single mother/child astrological comparison and declare it to be a "bad" relationship based on one or two difficult factors. Lots of people have good mothers who still get on their nerves, and lots have difficult maternal relations with no immediately obvious reason. But when you have six charts to look at (or fourteen in this case) and you see the same sorts of things over and over again... it's hard not to leap to some less-than-flattering conclusions about the mother.

Coming soon: we'll have a look to see if throwing an additional eight babies into the mix helps things or not.

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