Byron and Shelley in Italy

Embodying Neptune Part 1

I spent a magical few days in Portovenere in October 2014 which was the final impetus for my move to Italy less than three weeks later. It’s the most spellbinding place and often referred to as the sixth village of the five cliff side villages of Cinque Terre. It is also where Byron’s grotto is located.

The Gulf of La Spezia is also more famously known as “I Golfi dei Poeti” – the Gulf of Poets. It was a place of sublime inspiration for Percy and Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, D.H Lawrence, George Sand, Dante and Petrarch.

Lord Byron was a close friend of the Shelleys. He used to swim across the bay from Portovenere to visit Shelley. The so-called “Byron’s Grotto” (Cala dell’Arpaia), located at the end of a promontory in Portovenere, below the 13th century Church of San Pietro, was named in honor of the poet because, according to a local legend, Byron meditated and drew inspiration for his literary works there.

Byron’s Grotto is a small yet deeply spiritual place in this most mesmerising of small villages.

Shelley and Byron were not the only writers whose work was divinely transmuted by the beauty of this corner of Liguria which is just south of the more famous Cinque Terre. Centuries previously, Dante and Petrarch had also deeply loved the Gulf.

In 1818, aged 26 (hence not long before his first Saturn return) having already lived a highly colourful life in the England and Wales, Percy and Mary Shelley moved to Italy to escape debts and conflict, but also for health reasons. They stayed with Lord Byron for some time. They were first in Pisa, and Leghorn followed by some time in Bagni di Lucca. In 1822 they left Pisa to rent Casa Magni in Bay of San Terenzo near in Lerici. Shelley and a friend Edward Williams sailed their boat the Don Juan out to meet friends, but the boat sank in a squall. Shelley was a mere 29 when he died. Saturn return time again.

Lord Byron left England in 1816, aged 28 (again at the start of his Saturn return) , scandal-ridden and debt-stricken – never to return. After time in the Swiss Alps where he befriended the Shelleys’, he settled in Venice, later spending time in Rome, Ravenna, Genoa and Pisa.

Two years after Shelley’s death, Lord Byron would also be dead at the tender age of 36.

Keats and Shelley were friends and on hearing that Keats was ill, Shelley invited him to come stay. Keats however died of tuberculosis in Rome on 3rd February 1821, at the poignantly youthful age of just 25 without Shelley knowing he was there.

All three poets have highly Neptunian charts. We can see how the lower vibration of Neptune played out for Byron and Shelley in the form of scandal and debt. Less so John Keats.

John Keats was born on 31st October 1795 and even without knowing his birth time, we know he was a whopping Sun, Venus, Neptune in Scorpio. All three planetary energies were hence blended, and his words as a hugely prolific poet simply flowed from him, like a river. Poems in the forms of sonnets, Spencerian romance and Milton like epics flowed effortlessly from him. He published a mere 54 poems, but like the other poets, had he lived longer, who knows how prolific he might have been?

Lord Byron was born on 22nd January 1788 at 14.00h in London England, and has a highly Neptunian chart. His Neptune (stationary in Libra) trines Venus (in Aquarius) Jupiter (retrograde in Gemini) and also Pluto (in Aquarius). So his Neptune forms a grand trine in air between Neptune in Libra, Jupiter in Gemini and Venus in Aquarius. So in effect his Jupiter is expanding his Neptune, enlarging his higher vision, his higher creativity, where in essence, it comes through him and not from him.

Pluto trining Byron’s Neptune enhances that even more. Pluto brings depth and soulfulness to his Neptune, helping him effortlessly channel deep emotions and unconscious content through artistic, storytelling, and other creative processes. As we know he did with his almost gossamer like ethereal poetry.

His Neptune in not surprisingly, in his fifth house of creativity.

Byron interestingly also had a large number of retrograde planets in his natal birth chart – Chiron (in Gemini), Jupiter (also in Gemini) Juno (in Cancer), Mars and Uranus (both in Cancer) and Ceres (in Virgo) were all retrograde and his Neptune was stationary. Most of us have three of four, Byron had six. A slowness around how things got done perhaps? Or maybe a “let it all happen” view of life?

Like Byron, Shelley was also highly Neptunian. Shelley was born on 4th August at 20.00h in Horsham England. Like Byron his Neptune is also in Libra (a generational aspect) but unlike Byron, his Neptune is direct (Byrons’ Neptune was stationary). Shelley’s Neptune is conjunct both Mars and Jupiter in Libra and like Byron he also has Neptune trining Jupiter.

Like Byron, Shelley also had his Neptune in his fifth house along with Venus and Chiron. His Venus was closely conjunct Chiron, hence a sense of expressing wounded love.

They were both living in the time known creatively as the Enlightenment, where new ideas and creative visions were formed.

Lest I be accused of forgetting the women in their lives, it is interesting to note that Mary Shelley, born 30th August 1797 at 23.20h in London, England, did not share any of these aspects. Her Jupiter was totally unaspected and her Neptune only formed a trine to Saturn, putting structure around her visions and her higher creativity.

In astrocartography, Byron had Neptune quintiling his Descendant off the coast of La Spezia. A quintile, as we know, which has a radius of 34 miles is an external manifesting of our creativity and we know that the grotto in Portovenere is where he went to meditate on his creativity. So the land itself in that area inspired Byron.

Shelley’s astrocartography is even stronger as he had the Moon trining his Descendant off the coast of Italy and further south, his Moon line went through the country itself. So we know that Italy then had a real sense of home for him, as Moon lines not only symbolise home, they also symbolise where we feel most emotionally nurtured. All of which would have helped his creativity flow. Shelley’s Moon natally is almost totally unaspected, except for the semi square it forms to Saturn.

We can see that their vast creativity, where it truly comes through them and not from them, is fluid and boundaryless in both their charts. They were quite simply born to create.

The next time we see this level of vast vision will be in 2080 – 2090, will we still be alive then?

Thank you for reading my blog post “Embodying Neptune Part 1”. If you would like to know more please do not hesitiate to contact me on info@marthaclarkeastrology.com, or book a free call with myself or learn more about my upcoming Intensive Astrocartography Course.