Ueshiba Osensei's Astrology

I've been meaning to do this blog for awhile. In late fall I had Andrea Mallis(www.virgoinservice.com) do Ueshiba Osensei's chart. I guess the tremendous amount of energy around this has been gathering to where I am going to start. Now Andrea is top of the line. She does sports astrology and can often be heard on some of the KNBR sports talk shows. I asked her to do Osensei's chart with his birthdate(December 14, 1883) and birthplace(Tanabe, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan), yet lacking his precise birthtime. Yet a pretty comprehensive chart can be done with just the information available. I have over the past couple of years found Andrea's council and accuracy to be very insightful and valuable. So I am going to start. And from this chart I found this to be very much the Ueshiba Osensei I felt I knew(through books and people who directly knew him) and at the same time I had surprising insights into areas that without the chart I would not have suspected existed.

His sun is in Sagitarius. This would make him religious and fun-loving. His moon is in Gemini, which means he was rather bookish about his feelings and tended to have a bookish side. Now these planets are fixed at his birth. There are also the fact that planets move, or that we go through various transits during the course of our life. In astrology it is important to realize this. Planets represent various energies. And the planets fixed at our birth give incredible information and insight in to a person's nature. Now he was obviously religious and spiritual. But his fun-loving side? He had a great love of adventure and in his native Tanabe was a legend around New Years when mochi or rice cakes are made and served. Giant mallets or hammers are used to pound special rice into mortars thus producing the rice cakes. Osensei was so strong that when he swung the giant mallet he would break the support used to make the mochi. This got to be such common knowledge that he was awarded a place of honor at these so he would not swing and break more mortars. He was very scholarly(his mother's influence?) when younger, reading the classics and showing a great interest in spiritual matters. He wanted at a very young age to become a monk, but his father would not allow this. So bookish. And his son Kisshomaru, the second Doshu, wrote about his father that he had difficulty in public showing any affection for his wife Hatsu. So the Gemini moon in further evidence.

Another important planet Mars was in the sign of Leo at his birthtime. This is a great sign for athletes. Mars is energy, assertion, aggression, which are vital for a top or in this case an elite athlete. And Leo is a very exalted sign to have your Mars in. So Osensei was blessed with having the astrology of an elite even uniquely gifted athlete. For comparison, Barry Bonds has his sun(also an important planet) in Leo. Other things that come with this placement, a Noblesse Oblige (Osensei was blessed with the fact that his family had money and his father was able to do things like build a dojo and bring in a judo sensei so that Osensei could train following the Russo-Japanese War, and he bankrolled Osensei's move to Hokkaido with what was estimated at the time at a quarter of a million dollars), a strong sense of personal integrity, and a highly competitive nature. Even though aikido is non-competitive and stresses inner development over outward victory, Osensei honed himself in life and death matches and encounters. For this a well-placed Mars was undoubtedly important and even necessary.

And his sun in Sagitarious trines(re-inforces) his Mars in Leo. This is excellent for athleticism(His son writes that his father by jumping in the air and grabbing his legs with his arms and making himself into a ball could go 5 feet in the air), physical strength(it is recorded that during one season in Hokkaido he personally cut down 500 trees and by his own account this was over 700). He possessed great will power. He was a winner. Again competitive, and aggressive. So even with his early love of study and spirituality he was not by any means just a philosopher.

I can see we have just touched the surface of this project. So more soon, including some planetary influences he had to overcome. He was not blessed with an easy life. And the completion of his mission entailed the victory over things that might not be evident to the casual student. So more soon. And sooner as opposed to later. I am including a video of Osensei in his later years with some revealing slow motion shots: