Reprinted from the NCGR memberletter April-May2006_

ON FEBRUARY 12, 1809, THE IMMORTAL astral twins, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, were born under very different circumstances and on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Darwin, son of a noted doctor, was raised in an affluent and free-thinking environment in England, while Lincoln came into the world in a log cabin in Kentucky, the son of a backwoods farmer. In spite of marked differences, notable events and coincidences in their lives stand out.

In 1839, around their Saturn returns, Charles Darwin married his first cousin, Emma, and Abraham Lincoln met his future wife, Mary Todd. Both men suffered loss and death, notably the death of children in infancy and early childhood. Of ten children, Darwin lost five, while Lincoln lost three of his four children. Lincoln suffered from depression, and Darwin was in ill health for much of his adult life. More significant, in 1859 Darwin published his Origin of the Species, which undercut the very basis of creationism, while Lincoln began his campaign to become the 16th President of the United States, which he won the following year with 40 percent of the vote in a four-way race.

Lincoln's birth time was unknown until 1965, 100 years after his death, when personal papers were opened, revealing a notation in his aunt's diary that the child was born as the sun rose. This places Lincoln's Saturn-Neptune conjunction in his ninth house just past his midheaven (see p. 6), his Aquarian Sun in the twelfth house, and his Mercury-Pluto conjunction in Pisces, rising just beneath the ascendant. Before the information in his aunt's diary was discovered, many astrologers attempted to rectify Lincoln's chart. In 1949, the late astrologer Grant Lewi had already speculated that Lincoln had early Pisces rising, which probably was correct due to Lincoln's serious depressions and sorrowful countenance. Most astrologers though prefer to think he had the last degrees of Aquarius rising.

According to his biography, Darwin was born around 3:00 AM, giving him Saturn and Neptune rising in Sagittarius (Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist, London: Penguin Books, 1991). He grew up in an academic and affluent environment. His father was a wealthy physician, and he himself graduated from Cambridge University, intending to become a minister.

Lincoln, on the other hand, was self-educated and stated himself that he had only one year of formal education. Physically the two men were both lanky and over six feet tall. Both were profoundly serious, and photos show melancholy in their eyes. Lincoln endured many tragedies, and suffered serious bouts of depression, most notably following the death of his first love, Ann Rutledge, at the age of 22 from typhoid fever. He previously lost his mother at age nine, and his sister Sarah died in childbirth a decade later. He was haunted by the finality of death throughout his life. He stated that melancholy is a misfortune, not a fault and said that without his humor and jokes I would die for they are the vents of my moods and gloom. He said that books became his school and college.

That he was born with Saturn and Neptune in Sagittarius also attests to the fact that everywhere Lincoln went in life, he carried a book with him and could recite whole passages from Shakespeare and the Bible. He was inspired by the life of George Washington, who became a moral model for him (both men had Moon in Capricorn).

What was so significant about the celestial configurations on February 12, 1809 that two immortals should be born on that day? Perhaps most significant was the fact that Uranus stationed that day at 9° Scorpio, within three degrees of conjoining the Moon's North Node at 6° Scorpio. And as the Sun rose that morning in Kentucky, the stationary Uranus was in the afternoon sky in Abraham Lincoln's eighth house. Still stationary at sunrise, the planet turned retrograde by 2:30 that afternoon.

Charles Darwin was born earlier in Shrewsbury, England, and if he had Sagittarius rising, as has been speculated, then the Saturn-Neptune conjunction in Sagittarius was rising in his twelfth house, and stationary Uranus in Scorpio was placed in his eleventh house, appropriate placements for a man who has remained controversial nearly 200 years after his birth, because he chose to contradict the Biblical account of God creating the earth and everything on it in just six days.

The whole idea of evolution demanded a transformation of consciousness about the origin of man.The 22 year-old Charles Darwin left on his voyage to the Galapagos Islands as a creationist, and returned five years later with some doubts, for he was already considering the idea that a species changes its form to adapt to the environment. He never left England again after 1836, and never ventured far from his home in the village of Downe some 16 miles southeast of London. Darwin spent 22 years mulling over the informaton gathered during his five years on the Galapogos Islands, and researching his evidence before he was ready to write his conclusions in On the Origin of Species, which was published in 1859. (David W. Steadman, Galapagos: Discovery on Darwin's Islands, Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Press, 1988.)

At age 22, when Darwin began his voyage, Lincoln worked on a river flatboat and as a surveyor, before moving to Illinois and discovering his talent for politics. By age 25 he won election to the Illinois legislature, and two years later began his legal career. Each spring and fall he journeyed for two months with fellow lawyers throughout the state of Illinois in the company of the circuit judge, trying thousands of small cases in the county seats. It was during this time, that Lincoln was recognized as a storyteller, and everywhere he went he made friends and developed a following.

Both Darwin and Lincoln were described by their friends as immensely likeable, and could show empathy for people in all walks of life. The two had Mercury in Pisces parallel Mars in Libra, a combination that gave them the ability to empathize with others and put themselves in other people's circumstances. Winston Churchill and Bill Clinton had Mars in Libra, which gave them the same gift, and Lincoln's rising Mercury conjunct Pluto in Pisces also contributed to his ability to make people feel he understood their problems.

Lincoln and Darwin had Moon in Capricorn, the same placement that produced such leaders and luminaries as George Washington, Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Queen Isabella of Spain, Charles V, Girolamo Savanarola, Bismarck, William James, Bronson Alcott, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Edison, Daniel Boone, Robert Kennedy, Indira Gandhi, and George Patton. The balsamic Moon was rising ahead of the Sun the morning Lincoln was born, an old Moon just two days before the new. The Moon was sextile Jupiter in Pisces, but square to a stationary Mars in Libra in the eighth house.

When Lincoln died, his Sun had progressed to 19° Aries, opposite a retrograde Mars at 18° Libra. The solar eclipse occurred two months after Lincoln's birth on April 14, 1809 at 24° Aries, notable because Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, 56 years to the day after the solar eclipse. He was born with the Sun trine a stationary Mars at 25° Libra, and 18 days after his birth Mars turned retrograde. Also notable is that Darwin died April 19, 1882, 17 years later but near the same date. These are the kinds of synchronicity that are seen in charts of astral twins, or even with persons born near the same time.

By 1844, Darwin was convinced that species are not immutable, an opinion markedly different than what he held earlier. He was anxious about where his thinking would lead, and even wrote to a friend that he was aware his thoughts on evolution were comparable to confessing to a murder. His wife Emma, a devout creationist, was tormented, thinking he would end in hell and that they would not spend eternity together. Darwin's ability to convert former opponents to his way of thinking is demonstrated by the fact that his colleague Thomas Huxley, originally a creationist, became his most ardent champion after On the Origin of the Species was published in 1859. A younger scientist named Alfred Wallace had come to the same conclusion as Darwin by 1858, and as a result Darwin rushed to complete his manuscript sooner than he had hoped so that he would not come in second.

Darwin wanted to develop his evidence thoroughly before presenting it to the world, knowing what an explosion his ideas would cause. He felt that survival did not depend on the fittest but rather on the most ability to adapt to environmental conditions. It was the philosopher Herbert Spencer who came up with the words survival of the fittest. The findings of the two naturalists, Darwin and Wallace were announced at the same time in July 1858 by the Linnaean Society, though neither man was present for the meeting. As a result little notice was paid until Darwin's On the Origin of the Species was published late in 1859.

Meanwhile in America, Lincoln had made his famous speech saying that this government cannot endure half slave and half free, and as a result was officially nominated by the Republican convention in Springfield, Illinois as their choice to succeed Stephen Douglas as United States Senator. Lincoln was able to thrust the image of the nation as an unfinished house in danger of collapse, and to express the hope that people in the North and South could live together peaceably in the nation their founding fathers had envisioned. He lost that election in 1858, but in 1859, the same year Darwin's book was published, Lincoln was optimistic about his future. In May 1860, the Republican National Convention met in Chicago. Lincoln was everyone's second choice with only Illinois and Indiana listing him as first choice. His three chief rivals Seward, Chase, and Bates, were household names, and more experienced and qualified than Lincoln. Yet one by one the states switched their allegiance, contributing to Lincoln's unanimous victory.

Lincoln's Aquarian ability to win friends wherever he went, and his avoidance of extremes led to this victory. The New York Tribune's image of a man who by his own character and genius had raised himself from being an uneducated and poor flat boatman on the Wabash River to the position of being the Republican candidate for President of the United States caught the imagination of the people.

On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States. His true political genius, however, was yet to be revealed as he meditated on how to hold the Republican Party together in the North, while at the same time not alienating the South. In December he offered his chief opponent William Seward the position of Secretary of State. He then proceeded to name all his major opponents for the Presidency as members of his cabinet. Thus he created the most remarkable cabinet imaginable made up of his disappointed opponents and convincing them of the necessity for them to all work together to preserve not only the Republican party but the union.

Lincoln met Mary Todd in 1839, the same year that Darwin married his cousin Emma. Abe and Mary seemed to all who knew them exact opposites. Born December 13, 1818 into an affluent Kentucky family, Mary was vivacious, intelligent, and sociable. Her Sun in Sagittarius conjoined both Uranus and Neptune, and all squared Pluto in Pisces. Initially he was attracted to her passionate nature, and they shared his love of books and poetry. Like Lincoln, she lost her mother at an early age, and her childhood was desolate because of the hostility and severity of her stepmother. As any astrologer would guess from Mary's birth chart, she had an unstable personality, swinging from warm and outgoing, to quick-tempered, volatile, and even depressed.

Among other difficult aspects in her chart was a square of Mars in Sagittarius to Saturn-Pallas in Pisces. It is well known that as the date for the marriage drew near, Lincoln had doubts. He suffered severe depression over breaking the engagement, and the fact that he had hurt Mary deeply. The winter of 1840-41 brought one of Lincoln's dark bouts with severe depression, made worse by the fact that his closest friend Joshua Speed moved back to Kentucky. His friends reported that once again Lincoln was suicidal in his depression. (Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005, pp. 94-100.)

Meanwhile Mary had no doubts about her desire to marry Lincoln, and her friends worked to bring them back together. On November 4, 1842 they were married, and nine months later their first son, Robert Todd Lincoln was born. Mary always believed wholeheartedly in her husband's destiny, and proved an asset in his political life. She tutored him in manners and clothes. Like Jacqueline Kennedy, she dedicated herself to redecorating the White House by bringing good taste and elegance to the much neglected old building, despite the Civil War raging. Like Lincoln, she was interested in the occult. Both Abe and Mary suffered deeply over the death of their son Willie in 1862 of typhoid fever.

Lincoln himself had a prophetic dream shortly before his death. In his dream he went from room to room of the White House and heard muffled sobs. He arrived at last in the East Room to find a catafalque on which rested a corpse whose face was covered. Around the body were stationed guards. Who is dead in the White House, I demanded, he said. The President was the answer. But Lincoln also insisted it was not him but some other fellow who had been killed. This story was reported by Lincoln's old friend Ward Lamon . Yet he seemed determined not to acknowledge that this dream of his own death was one he took seriously.

Darwin and Lincoln both abhorred the institution of slavery, and Darwin himself was an avowed abolitionist. An environmental historian at Princeton University teaches a course about Darwin in which he links Darwin's doubts about Christianity to his troubled concern about slavery. Darwin wondered if God was indifferent to the suffering not only of humanity but of the mistreatment and cruelty to animals by mankind.

As we approach the bicentennial of the birth of these two remarkable and immortal men in 2009, it is Darwin's contribution to the way mankind views the world and the meaning of life that is still being hotly debated. The discussion of creationism vs. evolution, as propounded by Darwin, is bound to get even more heated. A Darwin exhibit is now showing at the Museum of Natural History in New York City, and will come to Boston's Museum of Science in Spring, 2007. In a letter on display in this exhibit, Emma Darwin asks her husband, May not the habit of scientific pursuits of believing nothing until it is pro-ven influence your mind too much? And Darwin replies When I am dead, know that many times I have kissed and cried over this.

Many believe that his mysterious illnesses later in life were brought on by his guilt over his rejection of the Biblical story of creation. Will we ever really know the answer?

Birth Data Abraham Lincoln, February 12, 1809, 7:20 AM LMT (approximated time), Hodgenville, KY, 37N34, 85W44. Source: From aunt's diary that child was born as the Sun rose. In personal papers opened in 1965.

Charles Darwin, February 12, 1809, 3:00 AM LMT, Shrewsbury, UK, 52N43, 2W45. Source: Biography (see below). Regarded as DD, dirty data by Astrodatabank.

Bibliography Baslen, Roy, Ed., Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Piscataway NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990. Desmond, Adrian and Moore, James, Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist, London: Penguin Books, 1991. Goodwin, Doris Kearns, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005. Steadman, David W., Galapagos: Discovery on Darwin's Islands, Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Press, 1988.

In addition to the above books, much of the information in this article was culled from a variety of sources including letters from the Darwin Exhibit at the Museum of Natural History in New York City, which were quoted in the Boston Globe; cover story on Lincoln in Time magazine, July 4, 2005; and cover story on Darwin in Newsweek magazine, November 28, 2005.

© 2007 Frances C. McEvoy
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