Annual Profections in Childhood with Octavia E. Butler
A short musing on Octavia Butler and Astrology:
On the right is the cover of my favorite book of all time (at this time): Dawn by Octavia Butler. Octavia Butler’s work has been a guiding force for many in this era that feels like the apocalypse. She helps us envision the answer to “If we keep going the way we are, then…” This aspect of her work is what makes her so influential, but it also intrigues me because of the ways it can be connected to astrology.
In ancient times, astrology was especially used for prediction. Prediction in astrology necessitates a great deal of technical ability, but it also requires us to answer “if we keep going the way we are, then…” For example, an astrologer might see an upcoming transit of malefics to someone’s 7th house, but the context of knowing whether or not they’re currently in a relationship, or a business partnership, will allow for the ability to hypothesize what comes next.
What we know in the present helps us to contextualize what will happen in the future. Astrology and Octavia Butler both teach us this.
Unraveling Octavia’s Spiral
In this article, I’m going to use Octavia Butler as a chart example to show how I approach Unraveling the Spiral readings. In these readings, we use the houses of the chart and a timing technique called profection years which emphasizes one whole sign house per year of your life. I am using Octavia Butler as my chart example because she is my favorite author. But also, we know some things about her childhood. This is helpful because in a reading, I would talk a bit about the astrological connotations of the chart, and then I would ask the client how that resonates with their experience. Octavia has spoken about her childhood in various interviews so we have some points of reference to support this work. When I give this reading, we usually begin with the 6th house and work through the top half of the chart until the 1st house year at 12 years old. For this example, I’ll just work through from 6th to the 10th house. You can use Octavia Butler’s chart to the left and the diagrams below to follow along.
This chart is part of a worksheet I created to support reflection during the Unraveling the Spiral reading. You can use it as a tool to follow along while we interpret Octavia’s profection years.
All of these diagrams are for profecting from the ascendant.
This graphic is available for download on a previous blog post. The whole worksheet is available when you receive the Unraveling the Spiral reading.
6th House Profection Year: Age 5
We begin at age 5 with a 6th house profection year. The reason I like to begin at this age is because this is normally when we begin Kindergarten. Although many kids attend Pre-school, Kindergarten is often the first time that we encounter the strict structure of the school environment. This is a foundational time where we need to learn how to be more independent because we are away from parents much longer than we were at any other point in life. We learn that we must follow a schedule imposed by a “higher order” (the teacher or school schedule), which means that you need to eat lunch at the scheduled time, and not just when you’re hungry. This is a big learning experience for the body to undergo.
Octavia’s 6th house contains the sign of Sagittarius, which is ruled by Jupiter. Octavia’s Jupiter is in the 5th house, retrograde in Scorpio. Jupiter is her benefic of the sect, which means in theory that it is the planet that gives the most good. Jupiter is also averse to the house it is ruling/the profected house which creates a dissonance between where Jupiter wants to be and where it is, or where she wants to be and where she is. However, her Jupiter is being ruled by a malefic and detrimented mars. Her mars opposes her Jupiter in the 5th. This tells me that it may have been difficult to adapt to the school environment. She may have been a bit younger or older than her peers (summer birthday), or she may have felt a bit behind (Jupiter is retrograde). However, this could have been a year where she encountered some aspect of her creativity that would influence her life going forward. I say this because Jupiter is in the 5th house of creative endeavors. Jupiter is opposite Mars in the 11th house of friends and social groups. Octavia may have felt like she didn’t fit in with her class and the other students (mars in the 11th), but that she was able to find solace in delving into creativity. At this age, kids usually cannot read or write yet, but she may have found imagination to be her source of creative development.
Octavia says "I'm an only child. I had no idea how to get along with other children. And also, I was a strange kid who learned to stay by herself and make things up." In another interview she says “Kids punish you for this kind of thing, so even when I wasn’t alone, when I was around other kids, I still managed to be an outsider. So I guess my writing is at least partly something grown out of alienation.” At 5 years old, Octavia was likely not writing yet but we can assume that feeling isolated and alone allowed her imagination to develop. This is the effect of a profection year ruled by a benefic in the 5th that is not doing so well in terms of essential dignity. She felt alone and likely at times lonely (Mars in detriment in the 11th), but she used imagination (Jupiter in the 5th) to support her early childhood.
“She had to deal with mild dyslexia, as well as having an intensely shy personality. As a result, she struggled to form friendships and was often the target of bullies.” (ThoughtCo).”But a lot of my reason for writing it came when I was in preschool, when my mother used to take me to work with her.” (In MotionMagazine)
7th House Year, 6 Years Old
The next profection year is the 7th house at 6 years old. This profection year at this age can be when children begin to learn to make friends. This is the first time as children that we encounter the top hemisphere of our chart. The top hemisphere relates to the external experience, and our entrance to this external experience is through the other.
For Octavia Butler, the 7th house year is ruled by Saturn in Leo. This is an encounter with another detrimented malefic, but this one is the in-sect malefic and it is more comfortable in a day chart. Saturn in Octavia’s Chart is conjoined with Pluto in the second house. This is a dark house and is said to be the Gate of Hades, an entrance to the underworld. Saturn has a trine to the midheaven and a sextile with Venus. We can see this as a light in the tunnel to follow, with Venus in the 12th house in Gemini guiding.
Saturn’s connection to Pluto also indicates larger themes of society involving large-scale destruction and overturning. Saturn wants to compost the waste that Pluto creates.
There aren’t many direct quotes from this age, but we can assume that Octavia continued to be introverted and keep to herself. An article states “At times, she accompanied her mother to her clients’ homes, where her mother was often treated poorly by her white employers.” This connects us to experiencing the 7th house through the eyes of Saturn in the 2nd conjoined with Pluto. I would imagine that Octavia began to see her difference from others in the world at this age and had the impacts of segregation thrust in her vision. The 7th house is angular and thus, the things that may have been known before this year become more stark.
However, at this age kids begin to learn to read. Even if they are not able to read independently yet, they are exposed to a great deal of stories through illustrations and being encouraged to look through books. I think this can be indicated by Saturn’s sextile to Venus in the 12th in Gemini who finds beauty through getting lost in a different world. She talks often of daydreaming and making up stories in her head, and this could have been the outlet Saturn needed at this time.
8th House Year, 7 Years Old
As you can see on the graphic above, I often associate this year of childhood with learning about death. This may be the first time a child encounters death closely, whether through the death of a pet or a family member. For Octavia Butler, this is very descriptive of her experience as her father died when she was 7 years old.
This profection year is Aquarius in Octavia’s chart. This means that we are again turning to Saturn as the ruler of the year. I would imagine that both of these years of her life were somewhat difficult and isolating, and may have further driven her to be introverted and explore her inner worlds. It seems that Octavia’s mother had to work while she was a child, but especially after her father died, her mother was responsible for earning the money for the family which was very difficult. This gives us an eye into what the 8th house means to Octavia: how do resources change when there is loss? Saturn is in detriment in the second house of resourcing. This age could have been a stark understanding of what it means to feel under-resourced.
As was mentioned during the previous Saturn-ruled year, Saturn’s connection to Venus provides support through a creative mind with stories to tell and worlds to make. “She often made them up while sitting on the porch at her grandmother's chicken farm, in the High Desert town of Victorville, Calif., where she dreamed about animals. The drawings of horses that illustrated one of her early stories are on the walls at the Huntington.” (Npr)
9th House Year, 8 Years Old
At this age, kids are honing their reading and writing abilities and they’re able to get lost in an imaginary world. During the 9th house year, this could be a child’s first big trip, or they may have their first introduction to religion at this age.
For Octavia, the 9th house contains Pisces and is ruled by the Jupiter in the 5th house that we discussed during her 6th house year. This year would have activated some of the difficulties that started in the beginning of school like bullying and feeling left out. We can see this because the time lord again for this profection year, Jupiter, is in an opposition to Mars in her house of social groups.
However, as we saw in the 6th house year, imagination and introversion are sources of engagement and growth during this time. Escaping and “traveling” through books would have become impactful during this year.
One difference between this year and Octavia’s 6th house year is that Jupiter, the ruler of the year, can see the profected house and its domicile of Pisces. From Scorpio and the 5th house, it is in a trine to the 9th. This tells us that the beneficence of Jupiter had a greater ability to express itself and use its resources.
“She spent the bulk of her time at the local library, reading and, eventually, writing. She found a passion for fairy tales and science fiction magazines, begging her mother for a typewriter so she could write her own stories.” (ThoughtCo) Its unclear whether this happened during this profection year, but we can also make a connection between the 9th house and publishing. I didn’t automatically prescribe this topic for the 9th house during childhood, but I’ve also begun to realize that there is a version of publishing that begins as a child as you learn to share your creative work with others. For Octavia, this could have also meant becoming more “official” by beginning to write on a typewriter and having more confidence in her writing.
In addition, besides Jupiter’s aspect to Mars, it is also in a trine with Mercury in Cancer in Octavia’s first house. This would complete a grand trine between the profected house, the ruler of that house in Scorpio, and Mercury in Cancer. This bridges between the first, fifth, and ninth houses and therefore initiates a bridge between the self, creativity, and imaginative publishing. This is the beginning of Octavia learning that her work should be shared and that her storytelling is a large aspect of her self identity, even if it began as a response to the martial difficulties she encountered through her peers.
With Jupiter in the 5th square to her moon in Leo in the second, we could also speculate that the influences religion became clearer to Octavia during this age and paved the way for her using religion as an inspiration for her writing.
10th House Year, 9 Years Old
The 10th House year is generally a time when kids begin to reflect on ideas of popularity and recognize their place in the society that they inhabit. For kids, this often means questioning what they want to be when they grow up, or becoming more interested in their self image and how they’re viewed by others.
Octavia’s time lord for the 10th house is Mars. I’ll go deeper into this in a moment, but for now I want to point out this synchronicity: “She knew she wanted to write science fiction after seeing a 1954 B-Movie, Devil Girl from Mars, at age nine. She recalled in interviews that two things struck her after seeing it, “Somebody got paid for writing that story!," and "Geez, I can write a better story than that!"(WomensHistory). So at this age, Octavia watched a movie about her time lord, and this is how she decided what some of her life goals were.
Mars in Octavia’s chart is the out of sect malefic, which means that this year would not have been the most enjoyable. Mars is also in detriment in Taurus, so it is moving slower than it would prefer and it doesn’t have the resources it needs in the 11th house of friendships. However, this Mars also makes a sextile to Mercury in Cancer in the 1st house which we discussed during the previous profection year. Mercury is a sect mate to Mars so their conversation brings a strategy to the way Octavia expresses her Mercurial nature.
Mars is also involved in the square with the Moon in Leo. The Moon is the exaltation ruler of Mars, so it is telling Mars how it wishes to be lifted up to a higher stature. The Moon in the second house, making a connection to the ruler of the 10th is Octavia exclaiming “Somebody got paid for writing that story!” but then realizing that she could do it too, and find her version of success.
Throughout these houses, we are slowly beginning to view Mercury from different angles before we finally encounter a house that contains or is ruled by Mercury. This shows us the way that Octavia is refining and gathering knowledge as she develops her creative writing abilities throughout childhood.
For now, this is all of the houses we will work through but you can see how each planet in her chart takes on an aspect of her life and childhood. As we work through each house, these themes become very apparent. As we also saw between the 6th and the 9th house in Octavia’s chart, there are themes that repeat throughout the chart both because of rulers of the houses, but also because of the aspects to those rulers. This is not only repeated through these ages in childhood, but can also be connected to those profection years in adulthood.
Sources
Bates, Karen Grigsby. “Octavia Butler: Writing Herself into the Story.” NPR, NPR, 10 July 2017, https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/07/10/535879364/octavia-butler-writing-herself-into-the-story.
Prahl, Amanda. “Biography of Octavia E. Butler, American Science Fiction Author.” ThoughtCo, ThoughtCo, 27 Nov. 2019, https://www.thoughtco.com/biography-of-octavia-e-butler-4776509.
Rothberg, Emma. “Octavia Estelle Butler.” National Women's History Museum, https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/octavia-estelle-butler.
Sanders, Joshunda. “Interview with Octavia Butler.” Interview with Octavia Butler by Joshunda Sanders - Art Changes / in Motion Magazine, 14 Mar. 2004, https://inmotionmagazine.com/ac04/obutler.html.
“SciFi Buzz Octavia Butler.” YouTube, YouTube, 18 Feb. 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP9sGbLVw04. Accessed 7 July 2022.
Shirlee, director. Octavia Butler. YouTube, YouTube, 2 Sept. 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSALAtiN6vI. Accessed 7 July 2022.
Recommendations for more about Octavia Butler
Chloe Margherita has recently written about Octavia Butler and astrology on her substack
adrienne maree brown’s work is always a shining light! Octavia’s Parables is a lovely podcast to reflect on what Octavia’s work means to the collective
Octavia’s Brood was published by an anarchist publishing company with short stories inspired by Octavia Butler.
I will add more to this if I find more resources, but of course Octavia’s own books are the best place to start! Please email me if you want to be on this list! I recommend starting with Parable of the Sower or Wild Seed, but Dawn and the Xenogenesis series is my personal favorite :-)
