Rush Limbaugh was rushed to the hospital in Hawaii suffering severe chest pains while on vacation to play golf, but his doctors were unable to find anything wrong with them. He should have consulted an astrologer instead.
Rush Limbaugh (1/12/1951, 7:50 am, Cape Girardeau MO) is, of course, a conservative talk show host whose listeners are known as “dittoheads.” As astrologers, we often see the more extreme ideologies when there are inner conflicts between astrological signatures of conservatism (predominance of earth signs, Saturn) and signatures of liberal mindedness (air signs, Uranus). That inner struggle between safety and security and more innovative thinking often results in an individual who becomes dogmatic on the right wing, or angrily rebellious on the left.
This is particularly true for those of us who have strong squares between Saturn and Uranus in our chart such as my own compatriots from the early 1950s. Rush Limbaugh is one of those, with a nearly exact square between Saturn and Uranus, Aquarius, the innovator, is rising in his chart so in some ways you might expect Rush to tilt more to the left. But with the Sun in Capricorn and Saturn opposite the Moon, that conservative bent won the battle between the two ideologies. But more important, the opposition between Mars in Aquarius and Pluto shows an obsession with power that makes the conservative mind view much more comfortable than a more liberal perspective which Rush deems “weak.”
It is no secret that Limbaugh has been addicted to prescription drugs for some time. In 2003 he admitted his addiction to OxyContin and hydrocodone, and in 2006 he was arrested on fraud charges after he was found “shopping doctors” to write prescriptions for Lorcet, Norco and generic hydrocodone. Limbaugh’s aggressive exterior (he has Mars, the god of war, in the first house along with Jupiter, the planet that shows where think we should be King) belies a sensitive interior: he has a twelfth house Sun, with the Moon and Jupiter in Pisces. Both Pisces and the twelfth house relate to a longing for an experience of transcendence, either through god, through divine creativity or through alcohol and drug addiction.
In astrology, the Sun represents the physical heart (the emotional heart is ruled by the Moon), and where there are heart problems we often find planetary cycles involving the Sun in the birthchart. At the time of Limbaugh’s chest pains, and for the next few months, the Midheaven in his progressed chart was aligning with his Sun. When the progressed Midheaven connects with planets in the birthchart, there is often a significant effect of some kind; it typically signifies a major change or transformation. If there is a great pressure for change that meets with resistance, the body creates physical symptoms that mirror this pressure that has no release. In this case, with the Sun’s being involved, it’s not surprising that the pressure was felt in the heart.
This pressure was exacerbated by a transit of Chiron (wounding and healing) over his Mars (aggression) which culminated a couple of weeks before the hospital visit. There was also a lunar eclipse on the day he was admitted (December 31) that formed a tight square (challenging aspect) to his Mars. Mars is our aggressive instinct, and when we are feeling under pressure anyway and our Mars is activated, it requires a release of some kind. In Limbaugh’s case that seems to have manifested as this undiagnosed pressure around the heart.
Limbaugh is not the healthiest guy in the world, and this alignment of the progressed Midheaven with the Sun could be problematic over the next few months until that aspect culminates in early May.