gestalt, but, in the diversity of
roles he has inhabited in his lifetime, the planetary configuration comes
shining through. As poet, playwright,
and as politician, perhaps the unifying thread that has connected these diverse
roles is Havel’s need for
transcendent meaning. Havel was born under a tight and significant Jupiter,
Neptune, Saturn t-square, and all t-squares create extraordinary psychological
tension and a need for integration in the individual psyche. With Jupiter as
the “apex planet” (or top of the triangle of this t-square configuration), the
search and quest for meaning, often considered Jupiter’s primary drive, is
paramount in Havel’s
psychology. However, beyond merely finding meaning, Havel’s ambitions lie in the need to find meaning through
reconciling the transcendent and the earthly, the unseen and seen, the
pragmatic and the divine. Astrologically speaking, the extraordinary stress
created by the Saturn-Neptune opposition force for Havel perhaps the fundamental predicament of the human
dilemma: the separation of heaven and earth.
In his poetry, plays, and politics, this
need for creating the ultimate bridge between the poetic ideal and the mundane
and commonplace has been arguably the great common denominator, the great
unifier, for Havel. In
the vein of the existential theater of Ionesco, Havel’s plays largely concern the meaninglessness and
absurdity of the communist state. Through irony and satire, Havel’s politically-charged dramas expose the fundamental
futility and irrationality of totalitarianism. Acutely aware of the alienation
and soullessness created by the state under which he lived, Havel gave his angst expression through his plays. The
theme of existential meaninglessness—Havel’s major
preoccupation—is thoroughly a motif of the Saturn-Neptune complex. A tight
opposition of Saturn and Neptune such as the alignment under which Havel was born throws the pragmatic, orderly, and
bureaucratic necessities of life (qualities of Saturn) against the ambiguity
and beauty of the soul (qualities of Neptune). Thus, the poetic, subjective,
and imaginal realms of Neptune are placed in strict dualism with Saturn’s
necessary and earthly limitations. The result of these planets in opposition
creates a psychological confinement, a jail of the soul. Havel’s Saturn-Neptune opposition creates a disposition
that is uniquely sensitive to the harsh and often cruel demands placed on the
human soul by the state. Moreover, the extreme and oppressive controls of the
Eastern Bloc were to increase the internal tension toward which Havel was predisposed.
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