Joseph Smith Jr. (Founder of Mormonism)

Here is a link to a biography of Joseph Smith, as well as a natal chart:
http://www.astrotheme.com/portraits/N49p4wcV6q6Q.htm

I think Joseph Smith is a rather fascinating character, all things considered, whether you believe in the religion he founded or you don't. (I was raised in it but left it years ago) Joseph Smith founded an enduring religion that still has millions of proponents, suggesting that whatever might be said about him, he had his finger on the pulse of America because it is one of the few uniquely American modern religions that has thrived and endured.

On a personal level, trying to understand him as a human being helps me come to peace with my roots, which were very much grown in the soil of this religion (apparently this drive to dig is related to my own Mars being conjunct the IC in the 3rd house? LOL)

Anyway, I thought I'd practice on him, since his behavior is both distinct and well documented. Please give me feedback on this, as I'm new to astrology and trying to learn by doing. I'd also like to see what others can find in the chart, as this would be very helpful to me in learning to see how the elements play out.

I'm aware, because Joseph Smith founded a religion that is active today, that I'm on touchy ground. It is not my intent to offend anyone and the opinions and observations in this post are strictly my own. Others, particularly those who believe in the Mormon Religion, may disagree with them.

I couldn't find Joseph Smith's birth time, but Astrodienst lists it as 6 pm, and looking at the chart, this certainly seems very likely. It's my opinion Joseph Smith created a Religion in his own image.

Mormonism is one of the richest religions in the world, largely because one of the primary aspects of Mormonism that makes it unique is the way the doctrine seamlessly blends the spiritual and temporal plains, making them interdependent on one another. IE: If you are faithful, you will be rewarded with abundance in the temporal plain. You will become rich as a reward for your obedience to God, and many many Mormons do. You should strive to become wealthy because in doing so, you can contribute more to the wellbeing of the Kingdom of God on Earth through tithing, which will be distributed to the needy, and thus you serve your fellow man. Few religions espouse a stronger work ethic or more avid interest in the affairs of the physical world. Salvation only comes through hard work and faith. A Mormon premise is that Faith without Works is Dead. The reverse is also true: Work without Faith is likewise dead. Salvation requires intense effort. Joseph Smith's Mars is in his 6th House, in Capricorn, which to my mind symbolizes this drive for hard work and consistent effort in the church he founded.

If I had to assign a Sun Sign to the Mormon Religion, it would be Capricorn. Traditions are well established. The system is alive and vigorously involved in every member's daily life. The structure of the religion is a massive bureaucracy, with ultimate power entrusted to the man at the top and authority delegated in a very hierarchical chain of command, which is unyielding and clearly understood by all members. Traditional roles and values are LAW. The religion itself is ambitious and highly motivated to concern itself with recognition, power and wealth in the World at Large. This drive for success is what makes the religion itself tick, and yet it is not what the doctrine focuses on. It's simply what members do and the Church encourages them to do. It's a way of being and the subconscious yardstick that many measure themselves and their fellow members by. It is natural, then, that the founder of the religion had his Sun in Capricorn.

And yet, Mormonism is also highly concerned with family, both the single family unit and the extended family of your ancestors and your church fellows at large. The majority of doctrine stresses family ties. Family is described as the building block of the afterlife. Families can be together forever is both the lyrics of a Mormon song and the rallying call to salvation. Why should you want to be saved? Because you can live together with your whole family for eternity! What more compelling reason to obey and work your butt off is there than that? This is the banner slogan of of the Mormon Church, and the way it is generally perceived by outsiders, so it's not that surprising to see that Joseph Smith's rising Sign was (probably) Cancer.

Aquarius controls Joseph Smith's 8th House, which also contains Venus. Joseph Smith was both lusty and a lover of women. His Aquarius no doubt contributed to his willingness to say "convention be damned" with regards to his sex life. He wanted lovers and he wanted a lot of them. And yet, with his moon in the house of partnerships, he valued commitment and with his Sun in Capricorn, he held traditional values to be important. That same unconventional moon in Aquarius devised a novel solution to the problem. He married them all (despite the fact that some were already married to other men). 50 or so wives was highly unconventional, but if the marriages were all sanctioned by God, as he decided they were, then no sin was committed and his conscience was mollified. Neptune in Scorpio in the 5th House suggests secret affairs, and this certainly applies, as he did not openly acknowledge any of these wives. He married them in secret and when rumor spread, denied it.

What's more, still addressing Venus in the 8th House, he also had a love affair with other people's money, for he wasn't especially fond of earning his own. Despite his work ethic, he looked for other ways to become prosperous besides traditional labor (possibly because he was born in poverty and traditional approaches to bettering his station would not have yielded much in the way of results in that era, unlike today where a person can put themselves through school and build a career through long hours of hard work).

As his church became more established, he made a bold attempt to form it along communist ideals, which was a fresh idea at the time and something some other upstart religions were trying. Members were asked to turn over all their worldly possessions to the church which would then be distributed among the members (including themselves) as need arose. Not surprisingly, Joseph Smith himself got a large share. As things went wrong, and Joseph made bad decisions in his over optimism for expansion, the church went into deep debt. Again, Joseph tried to recoup from this with other people's money by creating an underfunded bank (another popular notion at the time and illegal from the start because his application was rejected by congress) and convincing members to deposit their savings into it. This resulted in a catastrophe, as people eventually cottoned on to the reality that there wasn't much actual wealth backing the paper notes the bank was issuing, forcing Smith to flee the state, even deeper in debt than when he'd started the scheme.

Pluto in Pisces in the 9th House I believe gave him a strong metaphysical bent. Despite the fact that Modern Mormonism spurns mysticism and the occult (at least in their own minds they do, the elements of mysticism are still very evident in their rituals and practices) Joseph Smith was fascinated with it and made his early wages in life by hiring himself out as a mystical treasure hunter, professing to be able to find buried treasure in the Earth with the aid of magical talismans. (Again, that old obsession with other people's money) Shades of that occult mindset color the Mormon religion, despite its present self image as a conservative Christian religion.

And finally, we have Uranus in the 4th House. Joseph Smith was certainly revolutionary in his view of the home and the family unit. He changed the way a good many people viewed family during the years polygamy was openly practiced by the Mormon Church and even today, by those who still either sanction it or practice it, despite its taboo nature. Saturn in this house may also represent the extreme importance Joseph Smith place on home and the family. It is literally required for your Salvation, if not in this life, then you must achieve it in the next.

If the 4th House says something about your circumstances at the end of your days, then Uranus and Saturn here are appropriate. His own home was troubled at the end of his life, as his First and Primary Wife, Emma, was increasingly suspicious of his many marriages and not at all pleased about them. Tension in his home was coming to a rapid boil. When he died, it was quite suddenly and violently, at the hands of an angry mob, as suggested by Uranus.

Joseph Smith, Jr.



23.12.1805, 07h.27m.33s., +04.50W, 72°W26’38” 43°N46’23”, Sharon, Vermont.


Turn внимение on his head structure. The small mouth speaks about that, in the seventh house of its horoscope should be Ketu which gives the small finitenesses
It is religion of closing Gods of the middle world. This prophet at astral level belongs to a caste of the untouchable. It that that similar to gipsies. There even Belief not Spiritual, and material. A code on a birth as at a Jews, only a caste on a position more low.
. This sect a product of crushing of other sect from Christianity
Product of narrow consciousness. They have come not for a long time to this world on development.
It is good, that at that time were not pricked, but only smoked opium, and he not such heresy would write that to you. And it was дюбитель to smoke a drug.

Interesting. I personally think Smith was a fraud, a grifter and a con artist to his dying day. The religion he founded is a sham that has ever since desperately strived for acceptance and validation in the mainstream society. I view the LDS Church as a cult more than a legit religion, because of how it controls its members' lives down to very personal choices (like whether or not to drink alcohol), isolates members from mainstream society through strict routine, narrow mindset and hefty obligations, and is hostile to anything or anyone from the outside that would challenge it, raise questions about its legitimacy or digs in its history. Mormons I have known have been mostly intellectually dead, their curiosity and independent thought oppressed and forbidden, and they are motivated largely by shame, guilt and fear of being ostracized, rather than charity, generosity or loving openness. If it was up to me, I'm wipe the planet clean of this mock religion that gives valid religions a bad name.

That's my Aqua Mars, 1sthouse Uranus singleton and Pisces Moon-Diana conjunction talking. I loath oppression in any form.

It's known Smith was an alcoholic. It was also likely, given his known behavior, that he was bipolar and a sex addict. He likely used alcohol to self-medicate during his depressive episodes, and was sexing it up when he was manic. His writings display many signs of hypomania, a type of mania that can manifest in highly impulsive behavior and grandiosity (two things that Smith was never in short supply of), as well as obsessive--and unhinged--creativity, like verbose or highly imaginative writing. This would include the Book of Mormon ,which was originally published listing Smith as the author, before he started the LDS Church and claimed the book was inspired by the visitations of angel "Moroni." (First editions of the BoM listing Smith as the author still exist, but nearly all now are in the possession of the LDS Church themselves, who spent lots of money buying up available copies at antique book auctions and dealerships over the course of the 20th century, and now these copies are keep safely locked away from even Mormon scholars.)

I see nothing in this chart to dissuade me of my views of Smith. I see someone definitely predisposed to depressive episodes, deep shame and self-medicating. That's in the 6th house Cap Sun, NN, Mars and Merc. Mars conjunct NN is often associated with a very intense sexual drive, too (I have this myself but in Aqua) and Mars in Cap is prone to cycles of sexual indiscretion and aggressiveness followed by feeling of deep shame and self-loathing about their sexual expression and needs. It's the whole "slave to sex" thing about Cap Mars that can get very self-destruction if the native doesn't develop an otherwise healthy sexuality.

Smith also has a singleton conjunction: Uranus tightly conjunct Saturn, only planets in the personal houses (Eleanor Buckwater and others regard conjunctions like these as singletons themselves, as being so closely conjunct they act like a single planet). An Uranus singleton is linked to bipolar disorder, or in the very least, chaotic, erratic and intense moods. This singleton is also linked to flash inspiration that can be all consuming and drive the native to behavior in ways very extraordinary, grandiose and self-serving, say, like founding a church and appointing yourself as its leading prophet. The grandiosity of an Uranus singleton is often manifested in that "the rules don't apply to me" kind of way.

Saturn as a singleton, according to Buckwater, is linked to fear, and disorders stemming from fear. She connects this singleton to ego defenses like denial, projection and sublimation, and says this is the singleton most likely to manifest extreme forms of these behaviors. Buckwater also says overcompensation due to a profound inferiority disorder is strongly associated with a Saturn singleton as well.

So add these two singletons together into one big, hairy singleton and, wow. Just wow.
Add to that it's a personal house singleton, so you will see its influence mostly regarding Smith's sense of self and personal needs, and since its in the 4th, with his family. Smith's life as a con artist and later to found a church to sustain himself was largely motivated by his shame over being a failure a farmer. His early con jobs, including his first version of the Book of Mormon, were often spur of the moment, "false inspiration" as it were. I also recall a very sad account of how Smith would force his wife to sit guard at his house while he was in their bedroom having sex with other men's wives, and she was instructed to alarm him if the husband was coming. Then of course the hypocrisy of being a drunk in a religion that forbade alcohol, and having sex with other mens' wives and even having secret marriages with those women are example of how Smith didn't think the rules applied to him. Last but not last, he claims his religion was the one religion that setthe record straight about Christianity, and all other Christianity since the time of teh Apostles had "apostatized" or gone astray from the truth. Talk about grandiosity an overcompensation!

Add to that, his Pluto is also a singleton, the only house in the universal houses. Buckwater says, after Saturn, a Pluto singleton is the most likely to manifest through unbridled ego defenses. Pluto singletons are also uniquely driven toward profound transformation, for better or worse. It is the most power-oriented of all the singletons, in my own opinion, surpassing both Mars and Sun singletons. The reason for this is because of the subconscious level on which Pluto works, and so the native often has less awareness or control over their aspirations and need for power. Given Smith's Pluto is in the universal house, you can see this singleton's influence in how he impacted larger society, and also in his interest in esoteric and subversive things like Egyptian mythology and the Freemasons. And it is evident in how Smith died--his need for power and control drove him to send his followers to destroy a newspaper press that was printing anti-Mormon tracts, resulting in him being arrested. Smith was then shot when he was attempting to escape an angry mob incited by Smith's actions and words that stormed the jail seeking their own retribution. Overnight, the LDS Church "transformed" the cowardly and power-mongering Smith into a martyr and saint. Doesn't get more Plutonian than that, does it?

Thank you for this insightful response! I'd clean forgotten I wrote this until I got notice that there'd been a reply. I agree that the Mormon religion is a cult. It's an opinion I only reached after leaving it, however. And I also agree Smith was a fraud, from beginning to end, although I think he was such a successful fraud he had himself convinced of some of it for a while--no doubt some of that native grandiosity coming into play.

That is an interesting observation about Pluto and transformation, he certainly did transform when he was martyred, didn't he? His reputation even among members of his church was on increasingly shaky ground as he pursued his plural marriage policy in secret and rumors spread. Had he survived into old age or died in his sleep, I highly doubt the Mormon Church would be here today. It would have faded away like all the other homegrown religions of the time, nothing more than a footnote in the histories of states like Missouri.

Your observations on Cap Mars are interesting as well... Sexual extremism in tandem with sexual shame is certainly a big theme in Mormonism that it no doubt inherited from its founder. The doctrine that males are sexual deviants that require the responsibility of the "priesthood" and leadership of their families to keep them in line is so common among church membership as to be nearly on a level with the established doctrines like the "Plan of Salvation ©". Plural marriage was justified to me as a young woman by the argument that men were such nasty kinky creatures that only a few would be allowed into Heaven and because of this sad fact of life, we women would need to learn to share them. O_O Okey Dokey. Extremism and Shame in tandem. I think you're right.