Gabriel García Márquez : An astro-obituary

Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez (American Spanish: (6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014) was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America.

García Márquez started as a journalist, and wrote many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but is best known for his novels, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). His works have achieved significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, most notably for popularizing a literary style labeled as magic realism, which uses magical elements and events in otherwise ordinary and realistic situations. Some of his works are set in a fictional village called Macondo (the town mainly inspired by his birthplace Aracataca), and most of them explore the theme of solitude.

Márquez had his radix Sun [15pi] conjunct Achernar – a great first magnitude star in the far southern sky, marking the end of Eridanus, the River flowing into the Universal Sea. Aratus called Eridanus “The River of Many Tears” but with the cleansing waters of Aquarius also here many work to alleviate the sufferings of others.  

Eclipses tend to bring about endings and new beginnings especially if they fall on natal placements as the April 15 lunar ecplise   probably did for Marquez whose radix Moon for a noon birth is 26ar. The eclipse Sun [25ar] was conjunct Kurdah [24ar23], xi Cepheus in King Cepheus’ breast [1]. Cepheus is portrayed as a solitary, scholarly and cultured monarch [2] so that it is easy to see why most of  Marquez’s work explore the theme of solitude.

About the stars of the constellation Cepheus, Diana Rosenberg writes:

From King Cepheus’ breast come extremely passionate, sensitive people – an extraordinary number of great artists, poets, playwrights, composers, actors and dancers have placements here…. here are 1^st century BCE Roman poets Ovid, Horace and poet Martial, 14^th century lyric poet Petrarch, Norwegian rustic  poet  Aasmund Vinje, poets Wordsworth, Whitman, Verlaine, Dryden and many others.

The lunar eclipse of April 15 occurred just a day after the Sun’s entry into sidereal Aries. A chart drawn for the Ingress at Mexico City has the current much talked of  Cardinal Grand Cross with Uranus-Pluto on the angles. The Cardinal Grand Cross (*) symbolizes the potential to break through as well as break free from whatever enslaves. Marquez’s soul chose to break free from the confines of the body.

[1] http://www.constellationsofwords.com/stars/Kurdah.html

[2] Secrets of the Ancient Skies; Diana K. Rosenberg (v.1, p.97)

(*)  In the draconic zodiac,  the Grand Cross (exact on 21 April)  occupies 15 degrees of the mutable signs straddling Marquez’s Sun (15pi) and Achernar…the River Eridanus flowing into the Universal Sea.