Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei, born in Pisa in 1564, is rightly called the father of observational astronomy and of modern science itself. He studied free fall, inertia, projectile motion and the swing of the pendulum, built an improved telescope and turned it skyward to find the moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, the rings of Saturn, sunspots and lunar craters. His championing of Copernican heliocentrism collided with the Church; tried by the Inquisition, found vehemently suspect of heresy and forced to recant, he spent his last years under house arrest, yet still wrote his masterwork Two New Sciences before his death in 1642.

His chart is that of a revolutionary mystic. The Sun in Pisces, the wisest and most unknowable sign, gives the dreamer who sees beyond the veil, and it burns in the eighth house of death and rebirth, the phoenix who quite literally gave rebirth to our understanding of the Sun. His Moon in Aries, that alpha, Martian, warrior heart, made him fearless and combative, feeding on the ninth house of philosophy, higher learning and the great questions of the cosmos. With regal Leo rising, he wore the lion's mask, a torch-bearer illuminating the path for all who came after.