In the final chapter of
Gravity’s Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon furthermore presents us with a direct statement refering to
Slothrop’s birth sign (and Ascendant as well!) : ‘Shit that’s
what I get, havin’ a double Virgo fer a son…’ [699]
A double Virgo:
this is the starting point, the initial indication of the nativity of Tyrone
Slothrop. The second major indicator is the “ten thousand [days of] past
Slothrops.” How- ever, for reasons of his own, perhaps even to incite
people like me or other astrologers to undertake the task of unveiling the
credible nativity of Tyrone Slothrop, Pynchon gives neither the year, day, nor
the exact time of birth. Not that Pynchon necessarily gave much care to any
strict chronological system (Slothrop’s Tarot pointing also to mediocrity
in his chroniclers’ lives too!) [738], yet from the statements, hints, and
events in
Gravity’s Rainbow,
the time-question, determining the hour and minute of birth, is far less
difficult than determining the day and, to a certain extent, the year of birth.
Ten thousand Slothrops does give an age in August 1945 of 27 years, 4 months
and 16 days. However this chronology is (say “averaging!”) close
enough to deal with, but not to be taken to the decimal level.
We are directly informed that Tyrone Slothrop is a
double Virgo
born in Mingeborough, Massachusetts, Berkshire County, USA [26, 699]. Any
“double” sign means a birth time around sunrise, the Ascendant being
in the same sign as the Sun. The Ascendant is the key practical factor of any
horoscope as it sets the cosmic positions, the constellations, in relation to
earthly affairs and it further determines the individual Zodiac sign-positions
of the twelve houses. The Ascendant is the
gate
to the outer, social world, one’s own personal
calling card
! Taking the mean degree of Virgo (15th) this gives us a time span for sunrise
at the terrestrial co-ordinates of Berkshire, MA. between 5:13 a.m. and 7:47
a.m. A double sign does have two sides to it: either the Sun is placed in the
assertive
First House
or in the floundering
Twelfth House.
Believe me, including you sceptics out there, there is a
huge
difference between the First and the Twelfth House.
Beyond any doubt, I instinctively, intuitively, if you so wish, feel Tyrone
Slothrop was born after sunrise with the Sun in the Twelfth House (a messy
Virgo). In coherence with the theory of the use of binary opposites in
Gravity’s Rainbow
this position fits perfectly. According to age-old astrological principles
which have been passed on orally and in writing for more than five Millenniums,
Virgo rules the Sixth House, the opposite house of the twelfth, which in turn
is ruled by Pisces, the opposite sign of Virgo. We know he was assigned to the
ACHTUNG branch of PISCES which later was demoted to the
Twelfth House.
Or to translate this directly into Pynchonesque terms, we have
“Paperware” (double-Virgo Slothrop) in “Vaporware”
(Twelfth-House Pisces) – the typewriter in the psychic ward!
Here we have the first astrological polarity, literary cosmic binary, if
you’d prefer it in these terms, and an inverse polarity to boot (response
before stimulus)! There are of course many other binaries between Virgo and the
Twelfth House illustrated in
Gravity’s Rainbow:
“This World /Other World”, physical/psychic, control/synthesis,
technician/medium, clinic-spa/ garbage can, select/preterite, academic/natural,
orderly/messy, civil servant/counterforce to name the most obvious. These are
not just wishful manipulations on my part to startle you with astrological
“rabbits-out-of-the-hat,” but key characteristic traits of Virgo (the
academic, technician, civil servant, clinic worker, critic, pragmatic, sceptic
– all dutifully maintaining a structured realistic order) and the Twelfth
House (the medium, a psychic dreamer, the garbage can of the zodiac, the
naturalist, the fool, one of the faithful, transcendental synthesis – all
constantly threatened by anonymous invisibility, blind obedience, and
“self-undoing!”). If you don't believe me, just go ahead and look
them up in your favorite astrological textbook – of any western country,
culture, or language. They are basically all the same, and you may even find
many more fitting statements for a twelfth-house double Virgo.
