Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon belongs to that rare tribe who change the way a whole civilisation thinks, and his chart tells you exactly why. His Sun sits in Aquarius, right on the Ascendant in the first house, which is the Sun in one of the most powerful seats it can hold: the star who shines simply by being himself, but an Aquarian star, born to blaze for the collective rather than a solo throne. Without Aquarius, Gaia likes to say, we would still be in the Bronze Age, and here is the very man who argued that knowledge must be built through patient observation and honest scepticism, the method that lit the Scientific Revolution. He served Elizabeth I as her first Queen's Counsel, rose under James I to Attorney General and Lord Chancellor, and was made Viscount St Alban, yet his lasting title is father of empiricism.

With an Aquarius Ascendant he was the black sheep among black sheep, the fringe thinker who beat to his own drum, cataloguing all learning into history, poetry and philosophy. His Moon in Aries, that masculine warrior Moon in the second house, tied his sense of worth to bold, pioneering action. He found peace only by doing, and doing changed the world.