Alfred Nobel

Alfred Nobel, born on the twenty-first of October, 1833, in Sweden, was a chemist and inventor whose name now stands, above all, for the honouring of humanity's greatest gifts. He filed his first patent at twenty-four, spoke six languages, and by the end of his life held three hundred and fifty-five patents, the most famous being dynamite, patented in 1867 to tame the wild power of nitroglycerin.

His Sun in Libra is the hero-self placed in the sign of the Scale, ruled by Venus: a soul that shines through fairness, balance and the weighing of two sides. You feel it in the man who, having built fortunes in explosives and armaments through Bofors, chose in the end to set the scales right by leaving his wealth to reward those who confer the greatest benefit on humankind.

His Moon in Aquarius is the selfless, collective psyche, the mind fused with the whole tribe of humanity, the crazy-genius wave that topples the old sandcastle so a new one may rise. Libra sought the balance; Aquarius dreamed for all of us. Together they turned a fortune born of fire into a lasting instrument of peace and discovery.