Antares. The not-so-royal Royal star.
Just been watching 'Trial by Fire' on Netflix. On December 23, 1991, a fire destroyed the family home of Cameron Todd Willingham (born December 9, 1968), and his 3 young daughters were burned to death. Willingham was charged with murder on January 8, 1992, and executed by lethal injection on February 17, 2004,
His natal Venus was conjunct Antares when he was born. Although a 'Royal Star', Antares is often associated with fire and destruction.
Following 4 paragraphs from https://darkstarastrology.com/antares/
Antares is the alpha star in constellation 'in the heart of Scorpio'. It is about 12 times larger than our Sun. Robson says: “It causes malevolence, destructiveness, liberality, broad-mindedness, evil presages and danger of fatality and makes its natives rash, ravenous, headstrong and destructive to themselves by their own obstinacy.”
Antares or anti-Ares means the rival or equivalent of Mars. This could be because, like Mars, Antares shimmers a blazing red colour in the sky and by all accounts, its nature is similar to Mars. Mars is also the traditional ruler of Scorpio and this Mars energy is a night energy. It is more subversive than the raw Aries Mars.
Scorpios fearsome reputation could originate from its position in the south, regarded as the gateway of the Underworld. Other deathly associations for the Scorpio Sun sign period are the pagan festival of Samhain or Halloween. The Mexican day of the dead (November 1-2.). The Catholic “All Souls”, (or I Morti. “The Dead” ) is celebrated on November 2.
The constellation of Scorpio was originally much bigger than it is in modern times and spanned both Scorpio and Libra. The two Libran scales used to be the Scorpion’s claws. For the Egyptians, the scales are also used to weigh the souls of the dead before they pass into the underworld too. Generally in mythology then, Antares represents that difficult transition from life to death, and then death to life again and the burning off of karma.
Here's what Sepharial said about his Sun and Venus degrees. Note the several references to fire.
SUN: 18 of Capricorn: Authorities seem to agree that there is no good to be found here. Lying is the most pronounced sin. You may be cowardly, like gambling, quarrelsome, belligerent, and very much at odds with society and everyone around you. Naturally, this kind of behavior attracts very great problems of all kinds. This is hardly a good influence, and little as unfavorable stars concur, it may prove altogether evil. Its redeeming features may be its utter refinement (provided it does not become warped into ostentation or even worse) and that minor gift of the mind - promptness. The other features, good as they may appear, are all negative. The native will dare public opinion, but without deriving from this eighteenth degree of Capricorn a sufficiently good reason to do so; viz., that independence of thought and character which confers upon a man worthy of the name the right and the duty to rebel against society's idolized fallacies and organized wrongdoing. Here is no trace of courage, but an aggrieving and cowardly effrontery. There is no independence, rather a peevish tendency to be at cross purposes with one's interlocutors, sheepishly sponsoring the diametrically opposed point of view even if blatantly wrong. A blustering and chicken-hearted liar, erratic and stubborn, he will waste time and money on arbitrage, gambling and racing, shirking work with all possible means.
VEN: 9 of Sagittarius: The fire element is here brought to the foreground. There will be something of a fiery nature; work connected with fire of some kind; danger of fire perhaps causing burns is possible; highly susceptible to sunburn; accidents involving fire in some way; perhaps susceptible to high fever; perhaps over activity. Whether or not any of these things apply, it can be expected that this native's life burns with a lively activity and enthusiasm. There may be raging debates or polemic arguments. He may be expected to act impulsively and display a fiery temper. He may be responsible or irresponsible but he takes chances. He also has fatalistic tendencies to believe things follow a set pattern. Fire, either in a real sense or in the figurative ones; the fiery element takes a hand here. Literally it may portend a work connected with fire, or an accident due to the same. In a figurative but still material sense, it may point to fever, to physical consumption due either to the flame of a too-lively passion or to lack of balance between the rush of a spiritual surge and the body's limits of resistance, or to financial ruin and swift destruction of one's substance. In a non-material sense, fitful and restless yet aimless activity; enthusiasm or stubbornness, or both together; inspiration or a fanatic's visions; feverish, drift less and fruitless work, scatterbrained eagerness and precocious exhaustion of one's energies; sacrifice of anything else, provided one's ideal - or point of view - carries the day, with exactly the same chances of falling flat. Burning pains - life's battle will be ablaze with searing fire which, however, will cast its glow on the native's personality. Even if destined to an early death, he will have been prominent and may have chosen such a career as to bring him to the limelight. The career itself, whether literary, political or forensic, will have to be determined by the chart as a whole.
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