At first Fernando Pessoa has in his birth chart a financial configuration that is good or, at the very least, reasonable. Why? The 2nd house of movable resources, obviously money above all, is Sagittarius ruled by Jupiter. The greater benefic in Pessoa’s chart is placed right in the 1st house. It is true that Jupiter has no major dignities in Scorpio and retrograde. Even so, it remains the planet of luck and good fortune. And, when it is in the house of greatest manifestation of a chart, its force always plays in favour of the native’s life, protecting it. Since Jupiter is in the 1st and rules the 2nd, it unites the vitality of the native, the incarnation, and that which sustains it (the 2nd house signifies everything that nourishes the body and existence, which is why it is also associated in medical astrology with the mouth through which food enters).
So what would justify the constant precariousness in Pessoa’s life, with even moments of destitution according to several friends who were close to him? His rising sign is Scorpio, which places Mars as the ruler of his incarnation, of the soul’s entry into the body when heaven and earth touch. Mars has a very poor configuration in the chart. We always want to see the malefics in good zodiacal condition in a natal chart, especially a destroyer like Mars. Above all, someone ruled by Mars wants it in a state that allows it to do what it does best: destroy obstacles, enemies, cut through impediments, and open paths.
Mars in Pessoa does none of this. It is in Libra, the sign of its detriment. Mars hates the signs of Venus because she represents the principle of Love, while he represents the principle of disunion, divorce, and cutting. Mars has to keep the knives in his pocket, removing the native’s capacity to go after what he wants. Those born with Scorpio are born into a world of emotional needs, and the impulse that guides life is to satisfy them. When Mars is weak in Libra, losing its choleric force to become sanguine (all Air signs are sanguine), more abstract in rational thought than concrete on the physical plane, the native has difficulty acting in pursuit of what he desires.
Everything worsens because of the house in which it is found: the 12th. It is the worst house of the entire zodiac, the house that is cadent from the Ascendant itself, and therefore anti-natural. It is where invisible obstacles, hidden spiritual enemies, and spectral adversaries reside, reproducing themselves through processes of sabotage. This so-called diplomatic Mars with a knife in its pocket may indeed use those blades and weapons, but against the native himself, in secret, in the darkness of this 12th house, the one with the least light in the whole chart. To have the ruler of life in an anti-life house is a brutal paradox, even more so when that ruler is Mars, the planet that destroys forms and bodies.
If we see that Mars also rules the 6th house in Aries, we quickly realise that this psychic, ghostly, internal, sabotaging Mars had a brutal impact on the physical illnesses that Fernando Pessoa suffered. The 6th house is not the house of health, because that is the 1st, but of that which destroys health. In this case, Mars rules both and against both, since the 12th is completely opposed to the maintenance of existence.
All of this is to say that, in medieval astrology, the ruler of a house represents the final outcome of the matters of that house. Therefore, however much Jupiter may have seemed, at first glance, a huge asset in Pessoa’s life in terms of resources, we see that it is governed by this extremely problematic Mars, making it weaker. Money, or the possibility of earning it, ended up flowing into this planet hidden in the 12th, an internal torturer that destroyed his vitality and that which sustained it. The fact that he died at the age of 47, precisely in his 12th-house profection year, activating this Mars, is telling.
Also, the other malefic is in a dire state. Saturn hates the life-affirming, blazing Leo and is angular, near the MC axis, the point of fate and career (also a source of resources). But that Saturn and his career is a topic for another article.
Kύριε ελέησον