Biography of an Industrialist
Britannica vers. 11 is typically first-rate, giving more incisive information than the online watered down version, but sometimes, as in the industrialist Henry Ford, they leave you wanting, wondering how they ignored him as he was reaching his height when they started the edition in 1908. Instead for a brief biography, we turned elsewhere using the New York Times, book review for this abbreviated biography
Ford built his first car, the “Quadricycle Runabout” in the Summer of 1896. It had a four horsepower engine and could reach 20 mph. He sold the car for $200.00 to finance the production of his second car in 1898. He incorporated Ford Motor Company on June 16th, 1903 capitalizing the manufacturing with $100,000 from 12 stockholders. With that money, Ford produced 1708 cars the first year. In 1908 he brought out the Model T. A car for anybody and everybody. In 1914 he announced a plan for profit-sharing, and then an unheard of $5.00-a-day minimum wage so they could afford what they made.
When the United States entered the war in 1917, his plants switched to war production.
Efficient production line methods enabled him to cut costs of his products during simultaneously increasing wages so that his employees were the highest paid in the industry. In 1926 with the popularity of the Model T waning and almost 15,000,000 units sold Ford’s son Edsel, now President of Ford pushed the company to design and build a new car.
What evolved was the “Model A.” First shown in Dec. 1927 to the general public. The Ford Motor Co. produced about 4,500,000 Model A’s before adding the V8 engine in 1932 and calling it the “Model B.” When the United States entered World War II, Edsel converted all his plants to war production as his father had done previously for World War I.
Edsel Ford was president of Ford Motor Company until his death on May 26th, 1943 at the age of 49 when his father at the age of 80, took over the presidency of the company until September 21st, 1945 when Henry Ford II, Edsel’s eldest son, took over the position. Henry Ford, the undisputed father of the automobile, died in Dearborn Michigan shortly after that on April 7th, 1947. He was 83 years old.
Henry Ford, the undisputed father of the automobile, died in Dearborn Michigan, near where he had been born, 83 years earlier on April 7th, 1947.
Charts
We have two different times and thus two different charts for Mr. Ford. The first is from Aleister Crowley in his Complete Astrological Writings that cites a 2:30 in the afternoon birth in Deerfield. The second is from Marc E. Jones in his Sabian Symbols and their use in Astrology that cites 7 am. They are both marked and colour coded . Download the Jones Henry Ford Chart here.
The major difference is, of course, the Ascendants. Crowley puts Ford at 28.31 Scorpio making his Midheaven 15 Virgo. Jones puts Ford’s ascendant at 1 Virgo and the Midheaven at 25 Taurus and Uranus in the Tenth House while Crowley puts Saturn and Venus in the House of Honour. After thoroughly viewing both times and charts, we have decided to go with Aleister Crowley’s chart (the map in green).
Henry Ford a life force
A lot of our decision is based on Mr. Ford’s Temperament Type, a locomotive, that with Crowley’s time of 2:30 PM puts his ascendant at 29 Scorpio and exact to the Fixed Star of Toliman in Alpha Centauri, that happens to be the bright star on the Centaur’s foreleg and suggests endurance and speed. The imagery of the Father of the Automobile heavenly aligned with the Centaur intrigues us as it did Crowley; the imagery is hard to pass up.
This puts his 28.08 Mars, conjunct the Fixed Star Regulus, in the Ninth House of Long Journeys, transportation, and speculation. As Sagittarius, a Centaur is the natural Lord of the Ninth House, this makes his Mars square his Ascendant giving him a steely backbone that would not back down from the automotive cartel that tried to stop his nascent cartel or the unions that tried to destroy him in the 1930’s. Eventually, in the latter case, he forced into submission by FDR’s government, but not after a long and bitter strike.
His Part of Fortune is at 02.23 Gemini in the Seventh House emphasizing the importance of getting along with partners and others, which has the symbolism of the Garden of the Tuileries (Paris France) of self-confidence and authority that brings men social position and wealth. The keyword for this degree is Luxury.
Saturn in the Tenth House is opposite Neptune in the Fourth suggesting that Ford’s desire to make a name for himself also created a service that was able to help his fellow-man by helping them create Luxury for themselves by uniting hard reality (Saturn) with idyllic dreams of faraway places (Neptune). Saturn though is Lord naturally of the Tenth House, and often here, like the Robert Hulseman chart of Solo Cup, we find that Ford worked all aspects of the automotive manufacturing business, learning the trade from the ground floor up and improving it as he saw fit. This made him realize the importance of giving his employees better pay than other manufacturers to first buy their own goods, and two because he understood that a laborer ill-paid resents their toil and the spirit of the car, if not the actual assembly, is impoverished.
On an off-note, Dr. Mitchell Gibson in his book Astrological Signs of Mental Illness, mentions that Ford’s Uranus degree would have made him dyslexic. Anyways, a happy belated birthday to the Father of the Automobile, Henry Ford.
