A travelling man
Mayor Becker is a a locomotive temperament type with an Grand Trine in Earth — starting with his Moon at 12 Capricorn 16 in the first house to Neptune in Taurus in the fifth and complete with Venus in Virgo in the ninth. It is amusing to see a man who was so enamored with flying, as an earth based train, but it does explain why he bravely resurrected personal airmanship after the Knute Rockne debacle 10 years earlier: he had a vision of people wanting to go places.
Becker’s ascendant is 07 Sagittarius 06. gets the keyword of “Hazard,” which E.C. Matthews as the most materialistic symbol of the Sagittarian sphere; we noticed the same. He does not explain it further than that, and I suspect he picked it up from Sepharial. Checking there, we again get the keyword of “Hazard” and the write up of “two men playing cards together, because one is given to the hazards of speculation and the other is just agreeable.”
Must be, as the Mayor, bet his life on the safety of airplanes and got everyone else to agree. His Sagittarius rising gives him a strong Jupiter in his chart, found in the fifth house the sign of gambling and speculation and giving him the gift of salesmanship. That Jupiter makes a virgintile aspect 1 This is one the Keplerian aspects that divides the zodiac in two a twentieth. Jones coopted this aspect into his Sun’s orb and thus nullified it. Typically it has come to be “appropriation” or the idea of one planet appropriating the (slower planet) virgintiles. Thus here it would say Becker has enthusiam for modern technology and was a strong booster of it. to Uranus in the sixth –or technology in the service of humankind.
The Asteroid Connection
His Moon is barely conjunct the Asteroid Aeris – a proxy for airplanes and flying — that falls on the second house cusp and it is a tad more than the 12.5 orb Marc Jones allows; still we will give it to him. Opposite the eighth house cusp (Cancer) exactly, and sextile Cancer’s Lord (Mars) in the tenth, Aeris wraps his dreams and aspirations into a nice aspect, showing the force of locomotive personality that would validate both Senator McCarron of Nevada and Charles Lindbergh despite the Knute Rockne’s fateful flight on the joys and safety of flying.
That he would be so enthusiastic is not usual considering his Jupiter is at home its native Sagittarius in the 12th, conjunct his ascendant. Via a translation of light, it is also conjunct the fateful flight of Icarus, Daedalus’s boy who flew too close to the sun and paid the price. Asteroid Justitia for Justice is in the eighth house, and he was a barrister, and Asteroid Luisa for St. Louis emphasizes the point that his lot and his home town were heavily entwined. Between the two is Uranus square the Sun in the eleventh and now the Icarus story seems too poignant to be ignored.
Live and let die
Becker is quoted, “Gentlemen, you can die only once, and we all must die sometime.” Stockton Rush, the CEO of Oceangate, made the same comment as though channeling Becker, “if you want to be safe don’t get out of bed.”
And in response to what would happen to the City, if he should die, Becker said “If anything should happen to me, I’m leaving an able man to step into my shoes.” Alas, he and nine others did take an earth-bound tumble, the very next day on on July 31, 1943, and Aloys P. Kaufmann, the President of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, got the job.
Kaufmann was the last Republican mayor of the town. He died of natural causes in 1984.
Footnotes:
- 1This is one the Keplerian aspects that divides the zodiac in two a twentieth. Jones coopted this aspect into his Sun’s orb and thus nullified it. Typically it has come to be “appropriation” or the idea of one planet appropriating the (slower planet) virgintiles. Thus here it would say Becker has enthusiam for modern technology and was a strong booster of it.
