Orcus on the MC: A Real Big Hitter

Recently I had a conversation with Nate, he had read “Orcus” and wanted to share his own experience. The book spoke to him, he said, and indeed as he explained his many perspectives I could only agree, he was deeply connected with a positive expression of Orcan energy.

One of the real challenges of writing the book was in attempting to explain the fundamentals of Orcus without making the picture appear too bleak and heavy. When a researching astrologer is looking through charts, the mind becomes attuned in an almost sympathetic manner to the most perfect expositions of the planetary energy. What this means in practise is that people who express the fundamental energy of Orcus in its most uncontaminated form are, rather necessarily, quite scary. When Orcus energy gets a grip on your life, you can suffer extreme experience, so the examples that found their way into the book were often case studies whose experiences had been exceptional, and therefore, whose experiences had often been exceptionally difficult.

When one of us mere mortals gets in the way of Orcus, the experience can be testing in the extreme, but only rarely does the experience not let us go. By contrast, some are seemingly doomed to go to the very last mile with Orcus and those people – Terry Waite, Princess Diana, Louis Braille, Helen Keller – leave in their wake a singularly compelling and often frightening narrative. That does not mean that everyone who has a strong affinity with Orcus will go to the same extremes, any more than those with Pluto strong approach the limits of Hadean experience, but these individuals who do go to the bitter end, give up, in their struggles, the distilled principles of Orcus’ painful energy. We who come after can apply Orcus’ lessons to our personal experiences and thus come to better understand our place within the great design, thankfully, without having to go so far.

One of the areas in which Orcus can find a positive and free expression is in the world of sport. As Nate related to me, this is a marvellous outlet for this otherwise rather polarising unconscious directive:

“Wow. I just got your book and am reading it now. I haven’t gotten to the Mars-Orcus part yet. But I’m reading the Pursuit section where you talk about athletes. I have Mars 10^th in Aries trine Orcus 2^nd. I won a national tae kwon do championship when I was 15. When I was fighting, I had a mode I called Kamikaze. I didn’t care how many times you hit me. I was going after you until I hit the ground. I was also, the ‘Enforcer’ on my rep basketball team.”

Nate in fact has a Grand Trine of Sun – Mars – Orcus, with Orcus ruled by Sun, Sun ruled by Jupiter in the team-focused 11^th house. No wonder he became the ‘Enforcer’ for his basketball team.

Wherever we are required to push ourselves beyond normal limits Orcus is in the signature. It gives us a drive, endurance and will to win that is more than the sum of the muscle, sinew and fibre which makes up our mortal frame. Orcus is the reason why it isn’t always the biggest guy that leaves with the Lonsdale Belt, or why one person ‘breaks’ under torture or the lonely rigours of ‘solitary’ while another seems to emerge from those experiences somehow stronger.

If you look at the two charts below you will immediately notice a profound similarity. They both have Jupiter with Orcus on the MC.

The first chart is that of Muhammad Ali, by secondary progression on the date of the ‘Fight of the Century’ (March 8^th, 1971), while the second is the progressed chart of ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson on the day he became the youngest heavyweight champion in the history of the sport. Both of these boxers, who made it to the very top of one of the most gruelling and physically punishing of all possible professions, did so under the auspices of Jupiter-Orcus progressing onto the Midheaven. Joe Louis too, possibly the greatest boxer ever to take to the ring, made his professional debut precisely as Orcus progressed over the MC.

Orcus progressing to the Midheaven is not usually so easy-going. In the chart below you see the progressed chart for the precise date that serial killer Ted Bundy was sentenced to die in the electric chair: would it be possible to imagine a more perfect – and chilling – manifestation of Orcus with Uranus on the Midheaven?

These are extreme examples, but they are, writ large, perfect delineations of the terrifying power of Orcus and his style of manifestation. When Orcus hits your Midheaven by progression (which is very likely to happen during your lifetime if Orcus is in the 10^th or 11^th houses, possibly also the 12^th or even 1^st) then you will experience a major change or event which will push you to your limit. It’s highly unlikely to be as extreme a limit as that experienced by those who totally embody Orcus energy – in good and bad ways – but it will be easily as profound and challenging as the same transit by Pluto. Indeed, Orcus is designed to help you find what your limits are, and how you react when you really get down to brass tacks. Can you face Orcus and keep your integrity?

Make no mistake: Orcus is a big hitter, and when he hits, you will feel it all the way to the bottom of your soul.

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