(And a replacement for chapter 15 of Yesterday’s Sky)

The 2:14 PM time of birth I use here for mystery writer Agatha Christie is new information. When I wrote about her in Yesterday’s Sky in early 2008, I used her then-current birth time of 4:00 AM, which I found on seemingly good authority. Later, it emerged that "a midwife named Mrs. Shelton-Price who, according to her bill, had charged one crown and two shillings to deliver Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller at 2:14 pm on Monday afternoon, September 15." This new time of birth now gives Agatha Christie’s chart a Rodden Rating of AA—and a very different look. What follows is a rewrite of my previous analysis. Consider it a replacement for chapter fifteen for all editions and printings of Yesterday’s Sky starting from 2008 and running into the third quarter of 2024. In all new printings, this chapter will replace the previous incorrect one.

 

As ever, astrology’s Achilles’ Heel is bad birth information. With someone you know, you can often sense that something is off in the chart. With strangers, you’re much more vulnerable.

Four billion copies of her books are in print. She is often described as the best-selling author in history. Her play, The Mousetrap, is the longest running one in the world, having opened in London on November 25, 1952 and still going strong as of this writing. 

But it is for her murder mysteries that Agatha Christie is best known. Her work practically defined the genre. Her vain Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, with his waxed mustache and his brilliant deductions humanized the infallible “Sherlock Holmes” archetype. Poirot is the only fictional character ever to be given an obituary in The New York Times, after Christie killed him off in her 1975 novel, Curtain. That’s some indication of the popularity of her work. Her delightful Miss Marple, who was at least as brilliant as Hercule Poirot and a lot more charming, made it safe for older, middle-class ladies on both sides of the Atlantic to have a formidable gleam of mischief in their eyes, along with garnering some respect for their well-tempered intelligence and insight. Anyone can say “don’t underestimate me.” Miss Marple’s irrefutable wisdom made that honorable sentiment irrefutable.

Reading Agatha Christie’s mysteries today, one might be excused for complaining that they are ridden with clichés – until we realize that she originated most of them! Arguably there is not a mystery writer today who does not owe her an enormous debt.

So who was this impressive woman?

Agatha Christie was born in Devon on the southern coast of England. Her mother was British and her father was an American stockbroker who died when Agatha was only eleven. Their circumstances were comfortable – at age sixteen, for example, young Agatha was sent to “Mrs. Dryden’s Finishing School” in Paris to study piano and voice. In 1914, she married a pilot, colonel Archibald Christie. She gave birth to a daughter, Rosalind, in August 1919. 

Christie’s literary career took off in October 1920 when her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published to glowing reviews. There are many obvious features in her natal chart that foreshadow her illustrious public profile. Jupiter rules her chart from the first house. Venus rules her Libra midheaven from the tenth house, suggesting success in the arts. Tellingly, her career-oriented Venus is in the sign of the Scorpion – a symbol that is naturally resonant with murder mysteries among other things. Meanwhile, in her sixth house – which reflects her actual “Monday morning” craft – we find the epochal Neptune-Pluto conjunction. That latter configuration shines a light on her creative imagination (Neptune) expressing itself in language (Gemini) and adding a dark, Plutonian element to the result. Clearly, Agatha Christie lived her chart.

At the most basic astrological level, Agatha Christie is a Virgo. That makes verbal Mercury the dispositor of her Sun. On top of that, Mercury itself is strongly placed – it’s part of a broad triple conjunction, with her Moon on one side and Uranus on the other. (Mercury lies almost exactly at their midpoint.) No astrologer would be surprised to learn that this was the chart of a prolific and successful author. Her Venusian art was language – specifically, words spiced with the naughty edge of Scorpionic and Plutonian rawness. More specifically, there’s the fact that she made her living writing about “murder most foul.” Once again, it’s no surprise that Mars is not only very prominent, being conjunct her Ascendant – but also wildly Out of Bounds at over 26 degrees of southerly declination, well into “criminal territory.” 

Agatha Christie was born to break the rules in more ways than one – a fact that looms more starkly if we recall that she was born female in the very proper, very gender-defined, British society of 1890.

Topping everything off, we find the radically innovative planet Uranus conjunct Agatha Christie’s Midheaven. Uranus is on the ninth house side, but the conjunction is accurate within an orb of less than a degree and a half – and there’s another indication of her enormous, game-changing impact on the world at large. 

Christie had written The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1916, with transiting Uranus and the progressed Sun applying to a trine to her north node. As we will see, whether she knew it or not, some karmic healing was taking place as she wrote that book. Her very successful debut volume emerged in a major Jupiter period – the planet was squaring her Pluto, sextiling her Venus, and conjuncting her Saturn. Those three transits happened, all more or less simultaneously, in October 1920, which was the month of her debut novel’s publication. Christie had also just emerged from her first Saturn return and was thus “entering midlife.” 

It was time for her work to begin – once again, in more ways than one.

HER DISAPPEARANCE

On December 8, 1926, with the transiting Sun conjunct her south node and the runaway  Sagittarian New Moon falling in her 12th house, Agatha Christie disappeared for ten days. By that period of her life, she was quite famous so it was a media circus. Popular opinion held that it had been a publicity stunt, but more likely Agatha’s own explanation was the truth. She described it as essentially a controlled and very private nervous breakdown, driven by her husband falling in love with another woman. 

She checked into a hotel into which she “disappeared” under the name of his lover – and please keep that odd fact in mind as we get into the deeper karmic material, where we will discover her south node in the identity-erasing twelfth house. 

By the way, if you’re fascinated by this period of her life, check out the 1979 film Agatha, starring Vanessa Redgrave, Dustin Hoffman, and Timothy Dalton. It provides one version of what might have happened – but to this day, no one is really sure.

Agatha’s marriage to Archibald Christie broke up in 1928, shortly after this mysterious episode. He almost immediately married his lover. The divorce happened with Saturn spending most of the year transiting back and forth over Christie’s 12th house south node – an astrological event which quite reliably crystalizes any underlying unresolved karma, bringing it into visible manifestation. 

In September 1930, Christie re-married. That happened with the progressed Sun tightly square her Jupiter. That’s the planetary ruler of her south node, and thus also a point charged with the ghosts of the past.  Agatha’s second husband, Sir Max Mallowan, was an archaeologist fourteen years younger than herself – a fact which reflects her Gemini Descendant. That marriage had its ups and downs, but it lasted until her death in January 1976.

Due to Mallowan’s work as an archaeologist, Christie had many opportunities to travel to the Middle East, the setting of many of her novels – a straightforward biographical reality that reflects both her massive ninth house stellium and her Sagittarian Ascendant. She clearly had business in this lifetime that required “long journeys over water” – not to mention some breathing space opening up between herself and the culture of her birth.

Illustrating that point, Christie’s best-known work is probably Murder on the Orient Express, which she wrote in Istanbul. It was first published on January 1, 1934. Uranus was stationary that very day and in a nearly exact trine to her Ascendant. Meanwhile, by solar arc, her south node was less than one degree away from a conjunction with that very karmic Jupiter. Once again, in the pages of that signature novel, the past was crystalizing in the present tense – and, as we will soon see, there was something about a train full of potential murderers that echoed the unresolved feelings implicit in her south node structure.

By the time Agatha Christie died at the age of eighty-five, in the course of her sixty-six novels she had symbolically murdered literally dozens and dozens of people. Some of them were stabbed. Some of them were drowned. One was even strangled with a ukulele string. But, above all, Agatha Christie loved poisoning them – poisons took more than half of her hapless victims. You can almost see the naughty twinkle in her eye when she said, “They can't be poisoned every time, but I am happier when they are." 

Remember – we’re talking about a proper English woman born in 1890. She was, after all, a graduate of “Mrs. Dryden’s Finishing School.” What could have possibly led her to wreak such prolific, gleeful mayhem upon the world?

Perhaps the answer lies in a time long ago, before she was born into that proper British home . . .

AGATHA CHRISTIE’S NODAL STORY

Let’s go through the analytic process step-by-step starting with an analysis of Christie’s character in a prior life – a lifetime whose karma ripened at her birth on September 15, 1890. As always, past-life character is indicated by the south node and its planetary ruler. Meanwhile, what happened – the past life plot – is revealed in the aspects that other planets make to the south node and its ruler.  

First we’ll inventory both dimensions in purely astrological terms, then we’ll piece together the story.

Agatha Christie’s south node lies in Sagittarius and the 12th house. It falls late in that house, actually within the orbs of a conjunction with her Ascendant and – importantly – within the orbs of a conjunction with her dramatic Out of Bounds Mars. 

Meanwhile, Jupiter rules the south node from Aquarius and the first house. Together, those symbols define who Agatha Christie was in a prior life (or perhaps in a series of prior lifetimes, each one of which reinforced the pattern – we can never tell for sure.) 

By the way, what orbs should we employ for aspects to her south node and its ruler?  I suggest about ten degrees as a practical starting point. By that standard, Christie’s south node is squared by both Saturn and the Sun. Were we to extend our orbs a bit further to eleven degrees, we could pick up an opposition to Pluto – and of course, it’s hard to discuss her Pluto without talking about Neptune since they’re tightly conjunct. 

Should we include them? There’s nothing rigid about orbs, but given the weakness of Christie’s node-Pluto aspect, if we use it at all we should resist the impulse to make it central to our story.

What about any aspects to Jupiter, the ruler of her south node? Those are just as compelling as aspects to the south node itself. There we find a solid square to her tenth house Venus in Scorpio, along with a very tight opposition to her seventh house Chiron in Leo.

My general practice is to start our analytic process of the prior-life plot with any hard major aspects – squares and oppositions. Soft aspects and minor aspects can be meaningful too, but they’re usually not as central to the story. Even though that’s my usual approach, with Agatha Christie I cannot help but notice her dramatic Grand Trine. It involves Jupiter, so it’s part of the karmic story too. Her Moon forms a trine to Jupiter from one side and to her Pluto-Neptune conjunction from the other. That Grand Trine is striking enough that we’ll include it in our analysis even though it’s formed by less-dramatic soft aspects.

Whenever we see the Moon’s south node in the twelfth house, a good place to start is to consider that some terrible loss might very well be one of the dominant themes in a person’s unresolved karma. With the south node in Sagittarius, we naturally think of strong beliefs. Putting two and two together, we quickly come to the seed-idea of self-undoing as a result of adherence to some kind of philosophy, or some strongly held belief, or perhaps to a religion.

We are at a very early stage in our analysis, and so it’s important to put many possibilities on the table and to keep an open mind about all of them. Getting attached to a single interpretation at this point is a classic rookie mistake. To illustrate that pitfall, immediately two very different interpretations of that Sagittarian south node in the twelfth house come to mind. 

• In the first one, erroneous beliefs simply led to disaster – the belief, for example, that “there are probably no bears in that cave” or the belief that “I bet we can take that curve at 100 mph.”

• There’s a second possibility however. All through human history, we’ve seen brave, noble souls who were willing to die for something in which they believed. They see it coming and they do it anyway. That kind of tragic heroism can also be symbolized by a south node like Agatha Christie’s. 

While I would primarily read her south node as being in the twelfth house, we cannot ignore its conjunctions both with the Ascendant and with Mars – the separation is only six degrees. Especially in light of that powerful Mars, this configuration adds a major first house dimension to her nodal story as well, strongly suggesting that Christie was in a position of leadership and decision-making. 

Going further, Mars always implies “war,” at least in some sense of the word. That can refer to war quite literally, but it can have other meanings too. In any case, a strong Mars signature in a karmic story always suggests situations characterized by some mixture of stress, conflict, anger, fear, passion, and aggression.

Jupiter rules the south node, and like Mars, it is also in the first house – a fact which further underscores the theme of leadership. Clearly, in this prior lifetime, Agatha Christie was “in charge.” She was also making fearsome decisions in some kind of existential pressure cooker, all the while both driven and constrained by idealistic beliefs for which she would willingly die if necessary.

Mars is also Out of Bounds, with an extreme southerly declination – a quality that is echoed by Jupiter being in “outlaw” Aquarius. Together, these two mutually-reinforcing conditions unambiguously spotlight another theme: Christie was an outsider – that is to say, someone operating in tension with the dominant paradigms and social power structures which surrounded her. 

• Cutting to the chase, the picture that emerges of Agatha Christie’s underlying past-life character is that of a rebel leader caught up in a bloody do-or-die situation and faced with overwhelming odds stacked against her.

What about the plot? What actually happened? We already have a sense of which way the winds are blowing, but as we add the aspects (other than the conjunctions) to the south node and Jupiter, we’ll fill in the actual storyline.

Let’s start with the fact that Agatha Christie’s south node is squared by the Sun. Anything squaring the south node represents something that created a problem for a person in a prior life – something that created blockage or vexation. When it comes to such problems, the Sun is the last one that anyone would want to have. That’s because in the solar system, the Sun is force majeure. It’s the power that no one can resist. It holds all the aces. And whatever it represented, it was “the elephant in the living room” that was operating at cross-purposes with her. 

We have already learned that she was defeated – there’s her twelfth house south node again. Now we are beginning to get a sense of the enormity of what defeated her. 

We can take the solar symbolism further. So far, we have only spoken of the Sun generically. What about its sign and house? It’s in Virgo. It’s also just four arc-minutes short of the ninth house cusp, and thus clearly operating in the framework of the ninth house, not the eighth. With Christie’s south node in Sagittarius, we’ve already considered the possibility that religion (or something like it) might have played a role in defining her own character – now, with a ninth house Sun squaring her south node, that religious theme emerges a second time, giving us even more confidence in that line of interpretation. 

What we have already seen here in terms of her character is that she was perhaps identified with a religion (or at least some similarly-compelling system of belief) – that’s a plausible reading of a Sagittarian south node in the twelfth house. But now we add that ninth house Sun squaring her – that’s likely to be “religion” again, but this time it emerges as an antagonist. 

Did Agatha Christie find herself at crossed purposes with “big religion” in a prior life? We already know she was a rebel – remember that Out of Bounds Mars and that Aquarian Jupiter. Big religion, as history attests, can be a formidable enemy. And it often attracts dissidents towards whom it is ill-disposed. Was she one of them – and a leader among them?

Furthermore, the Sun is in Virgo, suggesting a critical or judging attitude “squaring” her – again, that judgmental quality is not hard to detect in the history of situations where one religion is pitted against another one.

Agatha faced a second Virgo problem – Saturn is in that sign too and it also squares her south node, this time from the eighth house. Classically, the eighth is the house of death – and given what we have seen so far, we can consider taking that term literally. Did death “create a problem” for her? Religious martyrs are abundant in the history books. But even if we don’t take the idea of death literally, that eighth house Saturn can also point to secret, treacherous, or underhanded machinations operating “at crossed purposes” with her. Saturn itself can also suggest an inimical “father figure” of some sort – something or someone also creating vexation or suffering for her. 

There’s yet another possibility. The eighth house often aims our attention at sexuality and the complications it can create in our lives. So far, nothing else that we have seen reinforces that sexual line of thinking, but wait – there are still some cards that we haven’t turned over yet.

As we explore the “plot” dimensions of someone’s karmic story, it’s essential to include aspects to the planetary ruler of the south node. That’s something we still haven’t done. Agatha Christie’s Jupiter makes two hard aspects. One is a square to her Venus in Scorpio in the tenth house. The other is an opposition to her Chiron in Leo and the seventh house.

Remember how we just mentioned the possibility of eighth house sexuality playing a role in the story? Now we have sexy Venus in Scorpio in the mixture, plus a strong seventh house influence. With those two aspects in the picture, we now know that there will definitely be some intimate dimensions to our tale. 

Before we get there, let’s simply reflect on the fact that we have a tenth house planet squaring the ruler of the south node. Anything in the tenth house refers to “the powers of the world.” It can point to the government, to people in authority, or just to the weight of cultural norms and expectations. Echoing what we saw with the Sun squaring Agatha’s south node, with this troubling tenth house influence we again see enormous public powers arrayed against her – and perhaps treacherously disposed to her. (There’s the Scorpionic quality.)

Naturally, Venus often implies intimacy of some sort, although that interpretation is somewhat mitigated by its position in the tenth house. There’s less doubt with Chiron’s position  – anything in the seventh house is reliably related to situations of trust, partnership, and human interdependency. Normally those are pleasant words, but in working with the nodes, we must always be alert to darker possibilities. Love can go bad, as we all know. Chiron itself is often described as the Wounded Healer and that’s an accurate summary of its positive, healthy side. Looking at Chiron more suspiciously, it can simply represent a wound – and in this case specifically, a prior-life wound to Agatha Christie’s ability to trust anyone. 

• Was she betrayed by someone she trusted and was that betrayal an integral part of the story of her downfall? 

That Chironic question brings us right back to the problematic square from Venus in Scorpio. Might Agatha have had a friend or lover (Venus) in high places (tenth house) who treacherously (Scorpio) turned on her? Recall that Chiron is in Leo, which further underscores the notion of those “high places.”

Earlier, we wondered about whether or not we should include Pluto in our thinking. Arbitrarily, I generally suggest using an orb of about ten degrees for these nodal aspects. Pluto is more like eleven degrees away from that opposition to the south node (and naturally to a conjunction with the north node.) And of course Pluto is also conjunct Neptune, which is just one degree further away. 

Our nodal story stands without them, but if we include them as a little “spice” in our tale, those two planets further amplify our sense of treachery, tragedy, and deception. Via the opposition aspect, they were acting as a brick wall that she couldn’t get around. The sixth house also adds a new suggestion of “servants” betraying Agatha – in this case, that word points to people in subordinate positions, people upon whom she depended. In that context, it’s helpful to recall that one dark side of Gemini is fluent lying.

Once again, the nodal story stands without Pluto and Neptune. We shouldn’t overdo our reliance on them. Still, they add some more colors to our “rainbow.”

What about that striking Grand Trine? Agatha Christie’s Pluto-Neptune conjunction makes a trine to her Jupiter, and they all trine the Libra Moon in the ninth house, completing the triangle. (The trine aspects to Jupiter in particular are what specifically tie this aspect pattern into the karmic story.)

Grand Trines are often viewed as the “Rolls Royce” of lucky aspects. In simple terms, no one can look at the “charmed” life of Agatha Christie and miss the elements of good fortune in it. She was lucky in many ways. Grand Trines can definitely open doors – including doors that we might be better off by-passing. All that glitters is not gold, in other words. Marilyn Monroe had one in Water signs and she deftly illustrates how “looking lucky” and actually being lucky in life are two different things. That thoughtful perspective adds a helpful element of caution to our interpretation of any Grand Trine – but when such an aspect pattern is part of the nodal story, we need to be especially cautious. 

Remember: if everything went well, it wouldn’t be your south node!

Agatha Christie’s Grand Trine is in Air signs, suggesting glibness and fluidity with language, especially with two of the planets lying in Gemini. Add the charismatic “star quality” of a first house Jupiter and then mix it with the graceful appeal and sheer artistry of a Libra Moon, and we have a surefire formula for attracting followers and support. We certainly see those qualities operating vividly in her present life, but now Jupiter’s presence in the aspect pattern links them to the prior life dynamic as well.

All that might sound good – that is, until we realize that “the church” (or something)  was watching suspiciously and probably feeling threatened by the seductive power of Agatha’s mesmerizing popularity and her convincing language skills. Even worse, it is very likely that she had some “friends” in high places who saw which way the wind was blowing and made some self-serving “strategic career decisions” – decisions which did not bode well for Agatha. 

Once again, a Grand Trine can be a slippery slope.

SO WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

So that’s Agatha Christie’s nodal story. What does it tell us? Of what practical use is it in the counseling room? Answering those questions – which is to say, making the story come alive for ourselves and our clients – involves active imagination. Try to put yourself in her position. Get into the story as if you were an actor set to play her role. Find that character and that storyline within yourself. Identify with it. Feel it. Don’t fix it, resolve it, or try to heal it. Just let it be what it is, warts and all. 

Those are the feelings – the mood, the emotional reflexes, the attitude – that were reincarnated with Agatha Christie. 

• How would you feel if the bad guys won? How would you feel if something in which you believed so strongly that you would give for life for it was trashed by treacherous, unscrupulous powers? How would you feel if what brought you down in the end was a Judas-kiss from someone you trusted, perhaps even someone with whom you had a sexual relationship? 

Might you find yourself many years later (and inhabiting a new body) saying something along the lines of “they can’t be poisoned every time, but I am happier when they are?”

Deep down, with an Out of Bounds Mars on her south node, Agatha Christie took birth as a very angry woman. Understanding her nodal story, we can see why. Further echoing the karmic pattern, her first husband betrayed her. (Quite possibly, he was in fact one who had betrayed her in the earlier life.)  Relative to the “proper” cultural norms of her time, she was a total rebel – again repeating the karmic pattern. In her prior lifetime, she was clearly a leader and an “influencer.” In this present life, she basically created a literary genre and sold literally billions of books – once more, we see the past echoing in the present. To call her an “influencer” in this incarnation is an obvious understatement.

The point is that we all do the same thing – that is to say, we relive and repeat the past. As Padma Sambhava, the Tibetan saint from a thousand years ago, put it, “if you want to know your past lives, consider your present circumstances.” He also said, “if you want to know your future lives, consider your present actions.” That’s where the magic of free-will – and the Moon’s north node – comes into play. That’s how we can get past the emotional stranglehold of our unresolved karma.

Agatha Christie’s north node lies in Gemini and the sixth house. Gemini, above all, is about language – and the twin healing miracles of telling our story and having it truly heard. We all intuitively understand the psychological dangers of bottling things up. Secrets – especially enforced ones – can be toxic. Getting those words out, bile and all, was an evolutionary necessity for Agatha. 

In her books, was Agatha Christie actually telling us her karmic story? Would that idea have made any sense to her? Did she even believe in reincarnation? As far as the healing impact of putting her pain into words, those questions probably don’t matter very much. But on a side note, there is actually some evidence that she did believe in reincarnation. In 2019, the publisher William Morrow brought out a curated collection of Christie’s short stories called The Last Séance: Tales of the Supernatural. In those pages, you definitely get a feel for the mystical side of her twelfth house karma, reincarnation included. 

Let’s get back to our big question: in her sixty-six novels, was Agatha Christie telling us the story of her south node? If we take that question literally, no is the obvious answer. Still, how many of her stories involve treachery and betrayal among moneyed, privileged people? How many of them are about anger made toxic by unfairness – and by needing to hide it? How many involve reactions to stultifying social norms and unrealistic, suffocating “morality?”

Among writers, there’s a saying that “all writing is autobiographical.” How, in other words, can we write anything without revealing something about ourselves? For Agatha Christie, in the light of her Gemini north node, we can make the case that such “autobiography” was a healing act. 

That notion of self-healing via storytelling, by the way, is further reinforced by her north-node-ruling Mercury standing in a conjunction with her Moon and in a supportive trine to her north node itself. 

What about her north node’s presence in the sixth house? In the language of the East, we might call the sixth the house of karma yoga. It’s about service, in other words. It’s about becoming competent at some craft that helps other people. It’s about temporarily making their problems more important to us than our own problems. It’s about generously passing on what we have learned from our life to other people. And it is about self-care and the routines that support it. 

Did Agatha Christie succeed in all that? 

It’s not really our job to make such judgements. Perhaps all we should do is to raise a glass to her memory and thank her for all the stories. Let’s also thank her for helping to liberate us from a fear of talking about life’s darker dimensions.

Agatha, we pray that your eighty-five years in this world left you with less anger and hurt, and that you filled the void their absence created with love, faith, and joy.

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