Rumi

Rumi is, seven centuries on, one of the most beloved poets who ever lived, the best-selling poet in America and a spiritual voice cherished from Iran and Afghanistan to Turkey and South Asia. Born in 1207 in Greater Khorasan, Jalal al-Din Muhammad was a Hanafi jurist, theologian and Sufi mystic whose Persian verses, above all the vast Masnavi composed in Konya, stand among the summits of the language and dissolve every border of nation, tongue and creed.

His Sun rests in Libra, Venus's sign of the Scale, the archetype of harmony, beauty and the reconciling of opposites. Rumi shines exactly here: as the mystic who saw balance and symmetry in the subtlest things, who married the human and the divine, the lover and the Beloved, and who turned the ache of union and separation into music. The Libran gift for seeing both sides of the coin became, in him, a whole theology of love that refused all division.

His Moon lies in Virgo, the sign of service and devotion, where emotional peace is found through humble usefulness and meticulous care. That earthy, dutiful Moon grounds the ecstasy: the scholar-servant whose surrender to God expressed itself not only in whirling rapture but in the patient, faithful labour of a life given wholly over to the sacred.