We’re living in an age when climate change is growing ever more severe, while corporate interests gain increasing power, and those in power are methodically destroying the Environmental Protection Agency. With climate change now exacerbating deadly disasters, it seems that Edward Abbey’s radical activist spirit is more important today than ever.
April 22 is Earth Day… appropriately for Pluto in Aquarius, the theme for Earth Day 2025: “Our Power, Our Planet”
“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.” ~ Edward Abbey
Edward Abbey
To be honest I knew little to nothing about Edward Abbey until I got my weekly email from Maria Popova. What she wrote caught my attention and I did some research on Abbey. He’s a fascinating Aquarian man with a very complex birth chart.
Excerpt from the weekly email digest of The Marginalian by Maria Popova.
“The summer after graduating high school, knowing he would face conscription into the military as soon as his eighteenth birthday arrived, Edward Abbey (January 29, 1927–March 14, 1989) set out to get to know the land he was being asked to die for. He hitchhiked and hopped freight trains, rode in ramshackle buses and walked sweltering miles across the American Southwest. Upon returning home to Pennsylvania, he was promptly drafted and spent two reluctant years as a military police officer in occupied Italy. Defiant of authority and opposed to the war, he was demoted twice and finally honorably discharged “by reason of demobilization of men.” When he received the discharge papers, he wrote “RETURN TO SENDER” on the envelope in big bold letters to signal that he was never willing for the job he was being fired from. The FBI took note and opened a file, to which they would later add the World Peace Movement he organized on his college campus, his acts of civil disobedience to protect old-growth forests from the corporate chainsaw, and his attendance of a Conference in Defense of Children in Vienna, deemed “communist initiated.”
Even as a teenager, Abbey understood that ideologies are only ever defeated not with guns but with ideas, so he decided to subvert the system by enrolling to study philosophy and literature at the University of New Mexico under the G.I. Bill. He spent the rest of his twenties traveling (he fell especially in love with Scotland, thinking about what makes life worth living, and dreaming of becoming a writer. It was when he took a job as a park ranger at thirty that he found the material for his first book: the ravishing Desert Solitaire, which went on to inspire generations of writers and environmental activists, among them Wendell Berry, Gary Snyder, Cheryl Strayed, and Rebecca Solnit.”
Writer and Activist
Edward Abby’s writing advocated for environmental issues, criticized public land policies, explored the American Southwest, and the relationship between humans and nature.
Abbey considered his Pennsylvania roots fundamental to creating his literary voice. But his life and writing were molded by his romanticized version of the cowboy lifestyle. This led to him focusing his life and writing on the American West. He described his relationship with the vast and varied beauty of the West as “love at first sight.”
Edward Abbey’s Birth Chart
I’d suggest you take time to watch Edward Abbey: A Voice in the Wilderness, a biographical documentary that follows Abbey’s life from his origins in rural Pennsylvania to his death in his beloved Southwest before diving into his Birth Chart.
Note: In my opinion an individual’s birth chart gives a rough sketch of the person’s life and character. To truly understand a person’s birth chart correctly, it’s necessary to combine the person’s overall life story with the chart symbolism.
With the Sun and Mercury in Aquarius, Abbey valued his individuality, had a rebellious streak, and preferred to think for himself rather than follow a normal path … he took “the road less traveled.”
He prioritizes ideas over emotions, which at times made it difficult for him to connect with others. And with his Sun/Mercury on the cusp of his 5th house he had a desire to express his creativity in a unique and unconventional way.
From a young age Abbey was a compulsive journal-keeper, wrote his first articles in his high school newspaper, and authored over twenty books in his lifetime. His 1975 comedic novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, considered a seminal work in eco-fiction, advocates for the protection of the environment through radical means. It inspired the formation of the environmental direct action organization Earth First!
Before Abbey writers (such as John Muir and Henry David Thoreau) who came to the defense of Planet Earth spoke with gentle lyrical voices. Abbey “spoke with a clenched fist and a heart full of anger” that lit fires under people.
Libra Rising – Aries Descendant
One of the classic descriptions of the Aries/Libra polarity is peace and harmony (Libra) versus the drive for action and conflict (Aries). There’s a “wildness” in Aries. For Abbey, the wilderness held up a mirror to something wild inside himself.
“Wilderness (Aries) complements and completes civilization (Aquarius). I might say that the existence of wilderness is a compliment to civilization. Any society that feels itself too poor to afford the preservation of wilderness is not worthy of the name of civilization.” ~ Edward Abbey, 1980
Still …With Venus, ruler of his Libra Ascendant, also in Aquarius in his 5th house opposite Neptune in Virgo in the 11th house. Abbey had a unique and unconventional approach to romance, creativity, and self-expression, with a focus on individuality, innovation, and humanitarian pursuits… he tended towards idealism and a desire for a more perfect world. Libra and Aquarius share a dynamic and intellectual spark that fueled his wild Aries’ passion. (Libra ASC trine Aquarius Sun/Mercury; Sun/Mercury Sextile Aries DEC)
Mars, the ruler of his Descendant, is in Taurus and the eighth house. Mars is also ruled by and square Venus in Aquarius. This square represents the clash between his drive to seek out peaceful and natural environments and his need to seek out intense experience both emotionally and sexually (Eighth House). This was bound to lead to inner and outer conflict.
“The melancholic (Capricorn South node/Cancer North Node), often deeply unhappy Abbey who struggled to balance the opposing pulls of domesticity and wilderness. The Abbey who fled one marriage only to immerse himself in the troubles of another, then another, then another, then another. The Abbey who drifted from one seasonal park job to the next in large part because, as his biographer Jack Loeffler remarked, “in his endless oscillation between solitude and society … he was rarely totally happy in either set of circumstances. Always longing, forever turbulent, never at peace.” ~ High News Country -Balancing the Pulls of domesticity and Wilderness
An Exact Restless Mutable T-Square
With Lilith in Virgo in the 12th house opposite Uranus in Pisces in the 6th, Abbey was cantankerous and contradictory, and constantly dealing with a fascinating tension between the desire for sexual perfection and feeling overwhelmed by the chaos of reality. Abbey was restless and his subconscious was always looking for a way to shake things up. Thus five marriages and multiple park jobs.
Sagittarius Moon
Both Lilith and Uranus are in an exact square aspect with his exuberant Sagittarius Moon in the 3rd house. Abbey’s Sagittarius Moon was the driving force pushing him into action and resolution.
With his 3rd house Sagittarius Moon, Abbey’s writing style was philosophical and expansive; a blend of storytelling, wisdom, cultural exploration, dry humor, and big ideas.
Abbey’s books reflect his uncompromising environmentalist philosophy. Often written in a controversial voice, they are celebration of individual freedom and wilderness, and a passionate defense of the natural world.
Capricorn IC and South Node with Saturn in Sagittarius
The rootless, searching quality in Edward Abbey’s life seems to have begun in childhood when his family was hit hard by the early 1930s depression and moved from place to place as his father searched for work, and when money was tight, the family camped out. (Capricorn South Node in the Sagittarian 3rd house of early learnings)
With his Cancer North Node in the 9th house, ruled by his Sagittarius Moon, Abbey’s fulfillment in life was to come from connecting emotionally with his explorations and every piece of knowledge he acquired. Abbey has this to say…
“I became a Westerner at the age of 17, in the summer of 1944, while hitchhiking around the USA.” For me it was love at first sight—a total passion which has never left me.”
When you have a Cancer North Node, home is where the heart is and Abby’s heart was in the wild and beautiful American Southwest.
Mars Sextile Pluto Equals Passion
With Mars in Taurus in the 8th house Abbey had a drive to seek out peaceful and natural environments and settings. Mars is sextile Pluto and his MC. With Pluto in Cancer conjunct his MC he was widely seen as cantankerous, moody, and obsessive. Abbey was certainly passionate and capable of some ornery words in defense of his home.
Some Final Advice from Edward Abbey
“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am ‘” a reluctant enthusiast’¦ a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.”
~ Edward Abbey