Lee Harvey Oswald Redeux

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Or What I did on my summer vacation:

What I did was plop down fifty bucks (well $40 really I got it on sale) and bought Vince Bugliosi's tome History Reclaimed: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I'm a bit more than halfway through this 1600+ page work and naturally there is quite a bit on Lee Harvey Oswald. In fact there is so much information that I'm having a slight change of mind so I revisited Oswald's chart.

Even after reading Norman Mailer's Oswald's Tale and Gerald Posner's Case Closed I never felt I had a real grasp on Oswald's character and personality. It wasn't just me either. His own brother once said to a researcher, "You will never understand Lee Harvey Oswald." But Bugliosi articulated something that makes a great deal of sense and that can be seen in the chart, and in fact I should have seen and figured out.

I wrote:

Oswald, to me appears to be at times compelling, and at other times breathtakingly superficial and short sighted. I cannot tell if he was simply semi-literate and ignorant, or reasonably intelligent and unbalanced.
No one can be certain exactly what his motives were for killing the President. Oswald is dead, so we only have speculation - some educated, some not. Although everyone noticed it Bugliosi is the first person to my knowledge to emphasize the role of Oswald's dyslexia in his make up, and the first person to note, to my knowledge that what was called his dyslexia may have been something else.

"Dyslexia" means "difficulty reading." It is a catch-all phrase for we used to call "learning disabilities" but now call ADHD or "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder." It is often characterized by difficulty focusing, difficulty reading, spelling and writing. Since the three are connected it isn't difficult to see why this would be so. There are other characteristics such as hyperactivity, which Oswald did not display. What he was was an atrocious speller. It is typical of dyslexics to have difficulty recalling how words are spelled, and so they try to guess phonetically, but since they don't really "get" phonics the results are generally awful. Typically people suffering with these disorders cannot read very well and therefore cannot write very well.

Oswald was a voracious reader, and a terrible speller. His IQ was once tested and he scored about a 118, which is above average intelligence. Oswald left a lot of writing behind including his "historic Diary" as well as numerous letters. Norman Mailer cleaned up the spelling that had the effect of seemingly improving his writing. It wasn't improved. It was just revealed as not half bad for a high school dropout.

So where are we going with this? Put yourself in his place in school. His spelling is so poor that it makes his writing look childish when it is not. He is humiliated by his school work and also frustrated that he cannot communicate on a level that his IQ tells us he is capable of doing. In school, he would fail virtually every day. Behavior problems, dropout rates and trouble with the law are common among people with learning disabilities, particularly with those that have above average IQs.

Finally to his chart. I wrote:

Significator of the manners is the planet or planets that most engage Mercury and the Moon. That planet is Mars. Mars is the exaltation ruler of the Moon and the domicile ruler of Mercury. Mars is also in a partile square with Mercury.
I blew it. Oh Mars is one of the significators of the manners, and we'd have to look at Mercury to assist, but Mars is in mutual reception with Saturn who is elevated, retrograde, and in his fall. Saturn also disposes the Moon, the lady of the ASC. Mars and Saturn are working together via the mutual reception, therefore we cannot use Mars without using Saturn as significator of the manners. Saturn, of course, is the father of frustration. Mars is anger. Oswald was a very angry young man. But the origin of Oswald's anger may well be the frustration he felt as a result originally of his failures at school and ultimately his failure at everything else he ever tried. The frustration fueled the anger and the anger fueled the frustration. Note, too, that Mars and Saturn are connected to the two significators of mind, Mercury and the Moon.

Ptolemy uses these words (my comments are in parenthesis):

"submissive to disgraceful treatment" (Oswald was treated poorly in school, in the US Marine Corps, and at every job he had. He did not often strike back, but rather made a bad situation worse by not trying to improve. Oswald had no choler in his chart and was passive aggressive most of the time)

"godless" ("Communism is the best religion" - LHO)

"without affection" (one person said "He had the deadest eyes I ever saw")

"insulting" (He was verbally and physically abusive to his wife and verbally abusive to others)

"perjurers" (Oswald would lie when it was easier to tell the truth)

"eaters of forbidden fruits" (While I'm not sure exactly what Ptolemy means, Oswald's wife related this story. When she was lactating, he would drink the breast milk from her breast for sexual gratification. He told her it was normal)

"homicides' (He not only killed Kennedy and officer Tippet, but tried to kill retired Air Force General Edwin Walker)

"utterly depraved" (he was soulless)

Now all those show suffer with learning disabilities do not go on to become homicidal. There is more going on here and much of probably requires the skills and knowledge of a psychiatrist to understand. But Oswald's frustration is understandable as is the frustration turning into anger and the anger into rage and the rage into one despicable action. I think Bugliosi found the trigger but the entire mechanism is buried a bit deeper, and the astrology symbolized it nicely.

Tom