Mystery Chart No. 3 Revealed
Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2006 12:47 am
Caveat: This is long and reveals the name of mystery chart No. 3. If you do not wish to know the name at this time, don't read any further.
Boxer, wrestler, military man and performing artist have been suggested for our native and in one way or another all are accurate. Yet none is correct, Sun, lord ASC in the 9th is important, as our native is known for the use of his mind, or the ?higher mind? as contemporary astrologers call it. Pluto kept popping up but not in the way I expected. The man is a loner, but self-discipline was almost second nature ? sort of. His self-discipline was limited to his chosen field. The rest of his world, internal and external, was chaos, and likely still is.
The short phrase enfant terrible means ?frightful child,? in English and it describes our mystery native quite well. A prodigy who apparently never matured much beyond adolescence was indulged and excused by many because of his enormous talent for succeeding in a rather peculiar pastime: chess. Chess is military in nature, it is played one-on-one like boxing or wrestling, and it is performed for the entertainment of others, although few outside the chess world see it as entertaining, yet he succeeded, temporarily in creating a chess frenzy. Chess sets flew off shelves. Chess books were devoured. The United States Chess Federation?s membership swelled, and then it all went away, just like the man who started it. Our native is Bobby Fischer born in Chicago, but settling in New York shortly afterwards (he had little choice; he was very young). If there is an overlying theme in his life it is summed up in one word: obsession. This obsession led him to the highest title in chess, World Champion, and kept him from becoming a complete man and probably sent him to the dark world of madness he occupies today.
Since chess is something of an arcane subject, especially in the contemporary world of video games, and since high-level chess is not very well known much less understood in the outside world, Fischer became better known for his antics, his seemingly outrageous demands, and his overall boorish behavior. But if we look beyond the rudeness, and bizarre hate filled and frankly paranoid worldview, and get to the man, all that is left is his obsession with chess, an obsession that, according to all reports exists to this day.
In order to understand Fischer we?re going to have to understand the chess world, a shadowy place that is, among other things, a great social leveler. There was a time, and perhaps it is still so, that one could go to Washington Square in New York City?s Greenwich Village and see wealthy Wall Street executives poring over moves with chess hustlers and near vagrants. All that matters is the board. Coffee houses had paper chessboards constantly in use with broken, unmatched pieces, and especially in the cold weather months, they were good hangouts for those same hustlers. Chess fanatics all become obsessed at one level or another, and in some ways are a lot like astrologers. They buy books by the carload (it is said that more books have been written about chess than about all other games combined), study games endlessly, play all sorts of variations, such as speed chess, and unlike astrologers who are not in immediate competition, employ all sorts of off the board tactics to unnerve their opponents as state of mind is do important to victory.
Then there are the big leagues. International Chess (controlled by an organization with the French acronym FIDE) has a point system to determine the best players. In order to gain points a player must defeat opponents who have more points than they do. The higher ranked players lose some of their points to the player or players who defeat them. There are several titles within the system: Master, International Master, and Grandmaster (a title coined by Czar Nicholas II), if this hasn?t changed since I was somewhat involved in organized chess. There is only one title after Grandmaster and unlike professional boxing, only one person holds it: World Champion.
Chess wasn?t always this organized. The first official championship was held in 1886, but it was official because both participants said so. This was pretty much the way things were done until 1948. To try to grasp this world and our native, we?re going to take a cook?s tour of world champions and maybe one or two others. Beginning with New Orleans born Paul Morphy who claimed the title in the mid 19th century. Morphy?s mental prowess was considered so astounding that he reportedly memorized the entire Louisiana civil code and passed his bar exam at age 19. When the then self-proclaimed world champion, Howard Staunton, refused to play him, Morphy declared himself to be world champion, went home, gave up chess, and died crazy.
The next champion wasn?t much saner. Wilhelm Steinetz had to be taken from the insane asylum where he lived to matches and back again. He once claimed he could beat God and offered to play the Divinity over the newly invented telephone and give God odds to boot.
The next two champions were closer to normal. Emanuel Lasker was a mathematician and philosopher, but he didn?t believe in studying the philosophers who came before him instead he developed thought on his own. Unfortunately all he did was cover old ground. A perennial candidate for the world title at this time was Aron Nimzovitch who expressed a feeling all chess players have at times when he jumped on top of the table kicked the pieces all over the room and yelled at the top of his lungs, ?Why must I lose to this idiot?? We?ve all been there Aron.
Our next champion was probably the sanest of the lot, the smooth, urbane, handsome, and hugely popular Cuban, Jose Raul Capablanca. Capa was a chess machine. He claimed never to have read a chess book and relied instead on principles and native genius. He is routinely placed at or near the top of everyone?s all time greatest lists. Outside chess he was well read, educated and a fine baseball player with pro-like talents. He did occasionally show up late for matches, but not out of rudeness. He would run into the hall while pulling on a shirt or adjusting his tie as though he was still getting dressed. He was still getting dressed - having spent the night carousing around town and had just risen from the bed of a lady or two he met the night before. Heroes are made not born.
Capa would lose his championship to a man who was once accurately described as an obscenity scrawled over a masterpiece. Alexander Alekhine. He was a drunk, abusive and had severe psychological problems. He once showed up for a match hopelessly inebriated and urinating on the floor. Unfortunately for his opponents he played drunk better than they played sober. After briefly losing his title to a true gentleman, Max Euwe of the Netherlands, he won it back all the while steadfastly refusing to give Capablanca a rematch, despite it being a precondition in the title match he won. Capa died at the age of 54 of a stroke and Alekhine followed him in death four years later at the same age.
The chess world was in chaos and the system that is more or less used to this day was developed. This was the beginning of the Russian hegemony of chess; one Russian after another took top honors. Chess was not only the national pastime of Russia it was state sponsored giving their players a huge advantage over players from other countries. It became a propaganda weapon as well, during the cold war. The rest of the world?s players had to scrounge out a living doing something in order to survive. Some drove cabs, some gambled, some became clergymen. Very, very few outside the Soviet Union could make enough on chess alone to live.
Soviet champions were no less colorful than those of the past. There were people like Botvinik, who never met a man he couldn?t insult, Tal a man who played chess like the three musketeers played at swords, Petrosian, who easily wins the title of world?s most boring player, and finally a thoroughly decent fellow and ultimately the first Russian to play for the title against a non-Soviet player, Boris Spassky. It was into this World Wrestling Federation for the mind that the brash bad boy from Brooklyn, Bobby Fischer, a high school dropout with an IQ estimated at over 180 entered and bulldozed his way to the wildest world championship of all time in August, 1972, Reykjavik, Iceland. After which, his life swirled deeper and deeper into paranoia.
Tony mentioned early in life primary directions. Little is known for certain of Fischer?s parentage. One man is generally acknowledged to be his father as his name is given on Fischer?s birth certificate, but my reading indicates that this may be in doubt. One source claims Fisher?s father left his family in 1945, perhaps coinciding with Pluto?s direction to the ASC. Fischer?s paranoia doesn?t permit research into his family background.
In the nativity, the Moon, imagination, a requirement for fine chess play, is in the sign of her exaltation at the top of the chart. Jupiter in Cancer (exaltation), natural ruler of the 9th, disposits the Sun in the 9th, but is posited in the 12th and is retrograde, works against the native. Mercury, the rational mind is usually well placed in Aquarius but in this case is afflicted by being conjunct the south node and posited in the 8th house of death. Something will die, and it will be Fischer?s rational mind.
There are those who believe he possesses enormous self-confidence. During the Spassky match he was implored to spend time studying an adjourned position by his second. After all Spassky had 35 (that?s right thirty-five) grandmasters in Iceland and in turn they had contact in Russia with many more. Fischer had himself and two others. He replied, ?Analyze what? The guy?s a fish. Let?s go bowling.? The ?fish? is always listed in the top 20 players of all time and usually in the top ten. Fischer won.
Others insist his stalling tactics are an indication of deep seated fear that he will be exposed as less than he thinks he is. His ego couldn?t stand that or so goes the argument.
If we go to the solar return for 1972 we do not see, or I don?t see, so much the culmination of his life?s work and his finest achievement, winning the World Chess Championship on September 1, but rather the beginning of the end. The angles of his birth chart repeat themselves and are fairly close in degree to the natal chart indicating a significant year. Venus who occupies the MC in her detriment in the nativity again occupies the 10th house, but this time in her domicile ruling the 11th house of ambitions, hopes, etc. He realized his hopes of being World Champion, but ominously on the ASC ? DSC axis lie the nodal axis with the malefic south node on the ascendant. If the south node is where you get hurt, on the ASC the native hurts himself. The part of fortune also occupies the 10th in a Moon sign (Taurus) indicating great fortune, but also occupying the 10th is the lesser malefic, Mars in detriment. The honors will not last. Notice, too, that shortly before his victory, Bobby underwent his first Saturn return.
Since his 1972 victory Fischer has been a recluse. Moving from place to place perhaps emerging on Internet chess sites incognito. At least those are the legends. In what must be the ultimate nightmare for a paranoid, he was arrested for bank robbery in Pasadena, CA, in 1981. He fit the description of the bank robber, but rather than admit who he was, he used a false name complicating matters. He did not commit the crime and once it was learned who he was, and he could account for his whereabouts at the time of the robbery he was released, whereupon he wrote an article about his torture at the hands of the police. Had he been up front with them; he probably would have been released shortly after his arrest.
He played a re-match of sorts with Boris Spassky in 1992. Fischer still claims to be world champion on the grounds that he never lost the title. Spassky, reportedly needed the money, so he went through the charade. The match was held in Yugoslovia and Americans were forbidden to travel there at that time, but Fischer did anyway. He won the match, which produced a couple of seriously high level games, but was mostly uninspired. Spassky was ranked 95th in the world then, and falling. You have to be in top physical as well as top mental condition to play at a consistently high level, not to mention keeping up with the advancements in the game.
He hid in Japan for five years and managed to avoid detection. He cannot return to the US. If he does, he will be arrested for violating the executive order that forbid traveling to Yugoslavia. No small thing either. The maximum sentence is ten years and he is said to owe the US government $3.65 million and 10% of his purse from the 1992 Spassky match. He?s had a few girlfriends and even a wife, and he fathered a child he rarely sees. After decades of defending his repulsive and hate filled behavior, the US Chess Federation finally gave up on him when he publicly applauded the attacks on 9/11.
Fischer?s hate is in the same class as his chess. He is forever blaming ?the Jews? for everything and everyone he doesn?t like is a Jew including, probably to their surprise Bill Clinton and both Presidents Bush. He?s expressed admiration for Hitler particularly his single-mindedness, and dismissed the Holocaust as fiction. The possibility of the long ago trip to Yugoslovia being forgotten is remote as he called George W. Bush borderline retarded. There are some things you just don?t do when you need a favor.
His hate might be a problem, if he had the wherewithal or even desire to do something about it. He doesn?t, and was always on friendly terms with Jewish chess players. Fischer himself is Jewish. One chess player said if it weren?t for chess, he would be a dangerous psychopath. The world does not need a dangerous psychopath with an IQ in the 180s. Perhaps from afar, and being less hate filled than he, we can see him for what he is, not merely an enfant terrible, but a pathetically ill man as much worthy of our pity as our scorn.
Further Reading: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/798934/posts
Bobby Fischer Goes to War by David Edmonds and John Eidinow, Harper COllins 2004
Also the man who probably understands the chess world as well as anyone is Reuben Fine, a prominent Freudian Psychologist who was once a legitimate candidate for the World Championship. He had to make a choice, chess or psychology and chess lost. He wrote a book that I have not read, but I'm sure is good: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship.
A decent chronology of Fischer's life can be found at :
http://www.chess-poster.com/great_players/fischer.htm
Unless the reader is certain that the author has a strong grasp of the chess world, take what he writes with a grain of salt. Not all of Fisher's demands were unreasonable although to the uninitiated they may seem that way.
Boxer, wrestler, military man and performing artist have been suggested for our native and in one way or another all are accurate. Yet none is correct, Sun, lord ASC in the 9th is important, as our native is known for the use of his mind, or the ?higher mind? as contemporary astrologers call it. Pluto kept popping up but not in the way I expected. The man is a loner, but self-discipline was almost second nature ? sort of. His self-discipline was limited to his chosen field. The rest of his world, internal and external, was chaos, and likely still is.
The short phrase enfant terrible means ?frightful child,? in English and it describes our mystery native quite well. A prodigy who apparently never matured much beyond adolescence was indulged and excused by many because of his enormous talent for succeeding in a rather peculiar pastime: chess. Chess is military in nature, it is played one-on-one like boxing or wrestling, and it is performed for the entertainment of others, although few outside the chess world see it as entertaining, yet he succeeded, temporarily in creating a chess frenzy. Chess sets flew off shelves. Chess books were devoured. The United States Chess Federation?s membership swelled, and then it all went away, just like the man who started it. Our native is Bobby Fischer born in Chicago, but settling in New York shortly afterwards (he had little choice; he was very young). If there is an overlying theme in his life it is summed up in one word: obsession. This obsession led him to the highest title in chess, World Champion, and kept him from becoming a complete man and probably sent him to the dark world of madness he occupies today.
Since chess is something of an arcane subject, especially in the contemporary world of video games, and since high-level chess is not very well known much less understood in the outside world, Fischer became better known for his antics, his seemingly outrageous demands, and his overall boorish behavior. But if we look beyond the rudeness, and bizarre hate filled and frankly paranoid worldview, and get to the man, all that is left is his obsession with chess, an obsession that, according to all reports exists to this day.
In order to understand Fischer we?re going to have to understand the chess world, a shadowy place that is, among other things, a great social leveler. There was a time, and perhaps it is still so, that one could go to Washington Square in New York City?s Greenwich Village and see wealthy Wall Street executives poring over moves with chess hustlers and near vagrants. All that matters is the board. Coffee houses had paper chessboards constantly in use with broken, unmatched pieces, and especially in the cold weather months, they were good hangouts for those same hustlers. Chess fanatics all become obsessed at one level or another, and in some ways are a lot like astrologers. They buy books by the carload (it is said that more books have been written about chess than about all other games combined), study games endlessly, play all sorts of variations, such as speed chess, and unlike astrologers who are not in immediate competition, employ all sorts of off the board tactics to unnerve their opponents as state of mind is do important to victory.
Then there are the big leagues. International Chess (controlled by an organization with the French acronym FIDE) has a point system to determine the best players. In order to gain points a player must defeat opponents who have more points than they do. The higher ranked players lose some of their points to the player or players who defeat them. There are several titles within the system: Master, International Master, and Grandmaster (a title coined by Czar Nicholas II), if this hasn?t changed since I was somewhat involved in organized chess. There is only one title after Grandmaster and unlike professional boxing, only one person holds it: World Champion.
Chess wasn?t always this organized. The first official championship was held in 1886, but it was official because both participants said so. This was pretty much the way things were done until 1948. To try to grasp this world and our native, we?re going to take a cook?s tour of world champions and maybe one or two others. Beginning with New Orleans born Paul Morphy who claimed the title in the mid 19th century. Morphy?s mental prowess was considered so astounding that he reportedly memorized the entire Louisiana civil code and passed his bar exam at age 19. When the then self-proclaimed world champion, Howard Staunton, refused to play him, Morphy declared himself to be world champion, went home, gave up chess, and died crazy.
The next champion wasn?t much saner. Wilhelm Steinetz had to be taken from the insane asylum where he lived to matches and back again. He once claimed he could beat God and offered to play the Divinity over the newly invented telephone and give God odds to boot.
The next two champions were closer to normal. Emanuel Lasker was a mathematician and philosopher, but he didn?t believe in studying the philosophers who came before him instead he developed thought on his own. Unfortunately all he did was cover old ground. A perennial candidate for the world title at this time was Aron Nimzovitch who expressed a feeling all chess players have at times when he jumped on top of the table kicked the pieces all over the room and yelled at the top of his lungs, ?Why must I lose to this idiot?? We?ve all been there Aron.
Our next champion was probably the sanest of the lot, the smooth, urbane, handsome, and hugely popular Cuban, Jose Raul Capablanca. Capa was a chess machine. He claimed never to have read a chess book and relied instead on principles and native genius. He is routinely placed at or near the top of everyone?s all time greatest lists. Outside chess he was well read, educated and a fine baseball player with pro-like talents. He did occasionally show up late for matches, but not out of rudeness. He would run into the hall while pulling on a shirt or adjusting his tie as though he was still getting dressed. He was still getting dressed - having spent the night carousing around town and had just risen from the bed of a lady or two he met the night before. Heroes are made not born.
Capa would lose his championship to a man who was once accurately described as an obscenity scrawled over a masterpiece. Alexander Alekhine. He was a drunk, abusive and had severe psychological problems. He once showed up for a match hopelessly inebriated and urinating on the floor. Unfortunately for his opponents he played drunk better than they played sober. After briefly losing his title to a true gentleman, Max Euwe of the Netherlands, he won it back all the while steadfastly refusing to give Capablanca a rematch, despite it being a precondition in the title match he won. Capa died at the age of 54 of a stroke and Alekhine followed him in death four years later at the same age.
The chess world was in chaos and the system that is more or less used to this day was developed. This was the beginning of the Russian hegemony of chess; one Russian after another took top honors. Chess was not only the national pastime of Russia it was state sponsored giving their players a huge advantage over players from other countries. It became a propaganda weapon as well, during the cold war. The rest of the world?s players had to scrounge out a living doing something in order to survive. Some drove cabs, some gambled, some became clergymen. Very, very few outside the Soviet Union could make enough on chess alone to live.
Soviet champions were no less colorful than those of the past. There were people like Botvinik, who never met a man he couldn?t insult, Tal a man who played chess like the three musketeers played at swords, Petrosian, who easily wins the title of world?s most boring player, and finally a thoroughly decent fellow and ultimately the first Russian to play for the title against a non-Soviet player, Boris Spassky. It was into this World Wrestling Federation for the mind that the brash bad boy from Brooklyn, Bobby Fischer, a high school dropout with an IQ estimated at over 180 entered and bulldozed his way to the wildest world championship of all time in August, 1972, Reykjavik, Iceland. After which, his life swirled deeper and deeper into paranoia.
Tony mentioned early in life primary directions. Little is known for certain of Fischer?s parentage. One man is generally acknowledged to be his father as his name is given on Fischer?s birth certificate, but my reading indicates that this may be in doubt. One source claims Fisher?s father left his family in 1945, perhaps coinciding with Pluto?s direction to the ASC. Fischer?s paranoia doesn?t permit research into his family background.
In the nativity, the Moon, imagination, a requirement for fine chess play, is in the sign of her exaltation at the top of the chart. Jupiter in Cancer (exaltation), natural ruler of the 9th, disposits the Sun in the 9th, but is posited in the 12th and is retrograde, works against the native. Mercury, the rational mind is usually well placed in Aquarius but in this case is afflicted by being conjunct the south node and posited in the 8th house of death. Something will die, and it will be Fischer?s rational mind.
There are those who believe he possesses enormous self-confidence. During the Spassky match he was implored to spend time studying an adjourned position by his second. After all Spassky had 35 (that?s right thirty-five) grandmasters in Iceland and in turn they had contact in Russia with many more. Fischer had himself and two others. He replied, ?Analyze what? The guy?s a fish. Let?s go bowling.? The ?fish? is always listed in the top 20 players of all time and usually in the top ten. Fischer won.
Others insist his stalling tactics are an indication of deep seated fear that he will be exposed as less than he thinks he is. His ego couldn?t stand that or so goes the argument.
If we go to the solar return for 1972 we do not see, or I don?t see, so much the culmination of his life?s work and his finest achievement, winning the World Chess Championship on September 1, but rather the beginning of the end. The angles of his birth chart repeat themselves and are fairly close in degree to the natal chart indicating a significant year. Venus who occupies the MC in her detriment in the nativity again occupies the 10th house, but this time in her domicile ruling the 11th house of ambitions, hopes, etc. He realized his hopes of being World Champion, but ominously on the ASC ? DSC axis lie the nodal axis with the malefic south node on the ascendant. If the south node is where you get hurt, on the ASC the native hurts himself. The part of fortune also occupies the 10th in a Moon sign (Taurus) indicating great fortune, but also occupying the 10th is the lesser malefic, Mars in detriment. The honors will not last. Notice, too, that shortly before his victory, Bobby underwent his first Saturn return.
Since his 1972 victory Fischer has been a recluse. Moving from place to place perhaps emerging on Internet chess sites incognito. At least those are the legends. In what must be the ultimate nightmare for a paranoid, he was arrested for bank robbery in Pasadena, CA, in 1981. He fit the description of the bank robber, but rather than admit who he was, he used a false name complicating matters. He did not commit the crime and once it was learned who he was, and he could account for his whereabouts at the time of the robbery he was released, whereupon he wrote an article about his torture at the hands of the police. Had he been up front with them; he probably would have been released shortly after his arrest.
He played a re-match of sorts with Boris Spassky in 1992. Fischer still claims to be world champion on the grounds that he never lost the title. Spassky, reportedly needed the money, so he went through the charade. The match was held in Yugoslovia and Americans were forbidden to travel there at that time, but Fischer did anyway. He won the match, which produced a couple of seriously high level games, but was mostly uninspired. Spassky was ranked 95th in the world then, and falling. You have to be in top physical as well as top mental condition to play at a consistently high level, not to mention keeping up with the advancements in the game.
He hid in Japan for five years and managed to avoid detection. He cannot return to the US. If he does, he will be arrested for violating the executive order that forbid traveling to Yugoslavia. No small thing either. The maximum sentence is ten years and he is said to owe the US government $3.65 million and 10% of his purse from the 1992 Spassky match. He?s had a few girlfriends and even a wife, and he fathered a child he rarely sees. After decades of defending his repulsive and hate filled behavior, the US Chess Federation finally gave up on him when he publicly applauded the attacks on 9/11.
Fischer?s hate is in the same class as his chess. He is forever blaming ?the Jews? for everything and everyone he doesn?t like is a Jew including, probably to their surprise Bill Clinton and both Presidents Bush. He?s expressed admiration for Hitler particularly his single-mindedness, and dismissed the Holocaust as fiction. The possibility of the long ago trip to Yugoslovia being forgotten is remote as he called George W. Bush borderline retarded. There are some things you just don?t do when you need a favor.
His hate might be a problem, if he had the wherewithal or even desire to do something about it. He doesn?t, and was always on friendly terms with Jewish chess players. Fischer himself is Jewish. One chess player said if it weren?t for chess, he would be a dangerous psychopath. The world does not need a dangerous psychopath with an IQ in the 180s. Perhaps from afar, and being less hate filled than he, we can see him for what he is, not merely an enfant terrible, but a pathetically ill man as much worthy of our pity as our scorn.
Further Reading: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/798934/posts
Bobby Fischer Goes to War by David Edmonds and John Eidinow, Harper COllins 2004
Also the man who probably understands the chess world as well as anyone is Reuben Fine, a prominent Freudian Psychologist who was once a legitimate candidate for the World Championship. He had to make a choice, chess or psychology and chess lost. He wrote a book that I have not read, but I'm sure is good: Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World Chess Championship.
A decent chronology of Fischer's life can be found at :
http://www.chess-poster.com/great_players/fischer.htm
Unless the reader is certain that the author has a strong grasp of the chess world, take what he writes with a grain of salt. Not all of Fisher's demands were unreasonable although to the uninitiated they may seem that way.