James Hillman was born on April 12, 1926 in Atlantic City at 10:20 am. He is Aries Ascending Cancer.
When he writes about himself: I am a son of Mars, he is well aware that destiny has assigned him a basic temperament, a possible daimon, which has been transformed over time by following the telos of his soul, but the consideration that the analyst makes is of considerable importance to us astrologers because it contextualizes the fact that somehow “his last book” speaks of his daimon. Obviously we don’t have a single planet, a single divinity, but there is like a basic trace, a common ground, on which all the other actors of the theme appear and interact. Analyzing Hillman’s theme we can assume that the Person/Mask (The X house and the sign of the intercepted Aries) put the categorical imperative of showing itself as a person who with firm conviction went beyond personal boundaries expanding (Mars is in the VIII house and is joined to Jupiter) and shaking his beliefs, his limits, looking for new resources (Neptune in the II house, opposite to Mars and Jupiter). Neptune is the governor of the X House, still a planet representing the Jungian Person/Mask. It is in the fracture between Mars and Neptune that the roots of idealism represented by archetypal psychology lie.
“My references are these fragmentary confessions and these distant images. The authority of the writer rests only on the thin red thread of the vocation. Which, astrologers would say, was already written in the stars: Pluto on the rise, Sun and Moon joined in Aries; Mercury also in Aries. According to tradition I am a “son of Mars”. Strange that what I suppose will be my last book lands on the shores of this theme, as has often happened to me, even in this case the presentation of my theme does not depend on personal experience, unless personal experience also means the ferments of the soul and not only the biographical contingencies. J. Hillman, A terrible love for war
The importance that the myth of Hades has represented in her life even only by talking about the book: The Dream and the Underworld, where a great interpretative-analytical and symbolic power is revealed. Hillman affirms of his Pluto/Ade ascending, together with the zodiacal element that represents the ego and in some cases also the primary function in terms of psychological types, makes us understand how he had fully experienced the symbols of his birth chart. It is an Ego that is not satisfied with uniqueness, but digs, goes beyond the Ego, to quote a work by Dr. Venicio Perilli, goes beyond itself, goes beyond Aries, a sign to which Hillman belongs and whose motto can be: I am the first. In the close dialectic between I and the multitude of others I, Hillman’s thought is inserted.
Note on the time of birth.
Not everyone knows that J. Hillman’s son is an astrologer and about the time of birth of his father we find on Astro Databank: <<In February 2018, his son Laurence Hillman writes: “I am a professional astrologer with 40 years of experience and I had many conversations with my father about his birth chart and time. I saw the handwritten note in the handwriting of his mother’s hand, which had the last hour of birth, the time of 10:20 a.m., with a Cancer Ascendant of 14 degrees and 27 minutes. Later in his life he began to accept this chart although, as Rick Tarnas points out, at first he was reluctant. “>>
