Well-known, highly respected and well-liked NBC commentator Tim Russert died on Friday a couple of months ahead of his exact Saturn Return. Saturn returns to its natal spot once every 28-29 years and when it occurs it’s time to re-evaluate our direction, and in his case his work and his health, because Saturn is in the sign of Virgo, the health and work sign. Evidently, he couldn’t do either in time. It didn’t help that Saturn was opposing Jupiter, which means it was suppressing the good luck planet, and Uranus had been opposing his Mars since May. This aspect indicates that an abrupt shock could occur and would be brought about if he was failing to pay attention to the need to change his work and health priorities. The article in Wikipedia claimed that he had diabetes, which is highly likely considering he was overweight. He was probably taking medication for it, but his diet may have included too many carbohydrates, which some doctors still believe are healthy for diabetics. Overweight individuals are particularly prone to a carbohydrate addiction. Uncontrolled blood sugar caused by carbohydrates can lead to many lethal ailments, heart problems being a major result.
Apparently, he’d just returned from a trip to Italy with his wife and son, who just graduated from college. Mars, the planet of anger and aggression had just conjuncted (in the same place as) his Pluto and squared his Sun, which indicates that he may have been subjected to some sort of intimidation. With his natal Sun square Pluto, it’s difficult discerning whether he was the victim of this energy or the victimizer, or perhaps both. In his article for the NY Times, Tiny Town: Washington After a Fall, Mark Leibovich wrote, “There is no shortage of politicians, beginning with Senator Hillary Clinton, who believed Mr. Russert could be bullying and prone to grandstanding at times, making excessive show of his top-of-the-heap position.”
The news reported that he’d just moved his 80+ year old father to a facility, which may have been very stressful for him. Another news story indicated that he had exhausted himself from overwork, another indication that he wasn’t paying heed to Saturn in Virgo. Unfortunately may have failed to pay attention to his limitations.
I’ve ruminated about Tim Russert and his chart the entire weekend and I can’t get past the notion that he was living too much on the surface of life and that, in the end, did him in. As a Taurus, he was, no doubt, very focused on material security, but the square to Pluto is somewhat troubling, indicating that perhaps he was too obsessed with his position grilling the movers and shakers and not paying enough attention to the darker undercurrents in his own psyche as well as in many of the people in Washington DC that he seemed to favor with his attention. Unlike Keith Olbermann or Bill Maher, I don’t think he was confrontive enough to really speak truth to power, particularly after 9-11. Other indications that he may have been too inclined to bury his head in the sand regarding the powerful include his apparently worshipful attitude toward the deeply flawed present pope. Writers have reported that he was very religious and he loved his Catholic faith but does that preclude a realistic view of the papacy?
Trying to come up with reasons for a death is often futile because we don’t know what really was going on a person’s life or mind before he or she dies. We can’t get at the information. But Tim was a reasonably young man so there is temptation to try to dig a little deeper. Consideration of astrological indicators helps us do just that. For example, had he lived, transiting Pluto, the sometimes brutal transformer, would have made an opposition to his Uranus (abrupt change) and square his Venus (relationships) early next year. Would his present marriage have withstood this difficult energetic pattern? Was he getting an inkling of this, already, at least subconsciously? With his Saturn Return had he gone as far as he could go in his profession without re-evaluating his direction? Perhaps it was just too difficult for him as a Taurus, the most fixed of signs, to make those difficult decisions. To follow the dictates of the soul and not the personality is often too frightening for many of us to even contemplate. Perhaps it’s more palatable for some to go on to the next plane.
Before I fell asleep on Friday night, I had a very strong impression that he was quite shocked by his death and he was most concerned about the reaction of his family. I hope his wife and son are managing to find some solace from the outpouring of grief from fellow newscasters and people in public life that got a fair hearing on his television program, Meet the Press, and loved and respected him.
