Martin Luther King, Jr.'s legacy was one of compassionate, peaceful protest.  He was a channel for love and healing, unafraid to be different in his approach to humanistic "brotherhood."  King consistently supported civil disobedience in the challenge of racism and war.  Willing to break the rules or even laws in pursuit of justice, the only laws he would not break were his own moral laws against violence.
    Martin Luther King, Jr. brought healing to a nation and a world in need of a better spiritual understanding of how to move past racism and violence.  If you can agree with Dane Rudhyar that what we should be able to see in a person's birth-chart "is what the universe (or God) sought to achieve by the birth of a human being at that particular time and place," then surely we must also believe that God meant to achieve a great deal of social change and global healing through Dr. King. All of us are capable of spiritual achievement, of directing our natal energies in positive and uplifting ways.  Let's look at how Dr. Martin Luther King did just that. 


       Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birth chart.  Click Image for Larger View

    I'd first like to look at King's Nodal axis.  His North Node is in Taurus in the 12th House, tightly conjunct the ascendant.  His South Node is in the 6th House in Scorpio, tightly conjunct the descendant.  A north node on the ascendant challenges a person to be direct and aggressive about their unique identity, i.e., "My goals and ambitions are important, and I will not be stopped from moving forward with them."  At the same time, the Taurus/12th of his north node asks him to direct his assertive ascendant energy in a way that is peaceful (Venus) and compassionate (12th House).  He certainly lived up to those north node goals, unafraid to assert (ascendant) his values and morals (Taurus) in an environment that promoted compassionate (12th House) change. 
    The ruler of his NN is Venus in Pisces on the 11th House cusp, opposed Neptune.  Here we see those issues of compassion repeated in the sign Pisces and in the planet Neptune.  A Venus in Pisces relates to others in a very ephemeral way... "You are me, I am you, we are all one."  There is a feeling of martyrdom here with all the 12th/Pisces influences. And in fact, King is quoted as having said that "A man who won't die for something is not fit to live."  He did die, ultimately, for his beliefs, and in his death came to represent the same kind of unselfish sacrifice that is presented to us in the Christ mythology.  North Node's ruler Venus is trine to Pluto, and in his death he brought more power to the civil rights movement than there had ever been.  For a man of such peace and compassion to be killed for both his race and his struggle against the injustice of racism was a wake-up call for many.  And isn't Pluto always trying to wake us up?  Forcing us to heal, even if it requires some painful self-awareness?
    I'm interested also in looking to King's south node, at where he was coming from when he came into this specific incarnation.  As he fantastically embraced his north node destiny, I wonder what he must have achieved throughout past lives in order to have come to the point of being able to influence so many lives.  We can see that his SN is in Scorpio in the 6th House, tightly conjunct the descendant.  With the descendant conjunction we can see how Venusian influences have been strong for King even in past lives.  He learned how to understand the needs and identities of others in mirror to his own.  He learned to relate (descendant) to others through service (6th house) and through an ability to perceive hidden and even disturbing truths that were in need of healing (Scorpio).
    The ruler of King's SN is Pluto in Cancer in the 2nd House (on the 3rd House cusp).  Those Venusian influences keep coming up!  He came from a background of wielding his words (3rd House cusp) in painfully truthful ways (Pluto).  Pluto in Cancer may even indicate a long soul history of witnessing violence and death (Pluto) between countries/nations (Cancer), and thus coming to understand the pain of power being wielded incorrectly.  At some point in his soul's journey he must have come to understand that non-violence can be just as powerful as violence, perhaps even more powerful. 

    Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon
which cuts without wounding
and ennobles the man who wields it.
It is a sword that heals.  --Martin Luther King, Jr.

    And because I believe that ultimately King was a healer, someone who had the power to heal the masses, not only in his own time but throughout history, I would also like to look at King's Chiron placement, which is tied also to Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune in a grand trine. 
    King's Chiron is in Taurus in the 12th House, like his North Node, and so immediately we can see that much of his soul purpose (NN) was to carry out healing (Chiron) in the way I have already described above in regards to the Taurus/12th House north  node.  Chiron shows us where we must begin to heal others because we recognize their own wounds as reminiscent of the ones we have not been fully able to heal for ourselves.  I absolutely love Dawn Bodrogi's explanation of Chiron:

Wounded, in essence, by his own hand, [Chiron] endured a suffering that could only be transcended by making a sacrifice for the greater good. [...] Where Chiron is, we cannot remain alone with our wisdom. We must make sacrifices, we must give it away. We must understand that there is a higher power at work, and we must ......make ourselves a vehicle to carry that power to those who need it. --Dawn Bodrogi

    King's Chiron is in Taurus conjunct Jupiter, the planet that represents freedom-fighting and philosophical justice.  Where Venus (an energy strong in King's chart) is interested in equality and fairness, Jupiter is interested in the philosophical understanding of WHY fairness is just to begin with.  When Jupiter and Venus pair up, laws are created and implemented that are truly in the interest of justice and righteousness.  King said, "It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important."  
    We can also see that the Chiron/Jupiter conjunction in King's chart forms a grand trine with Saturn in Sagittarius on the 8th House cusp and Neptune in Virgo on the 4th House cusp.  Here again we see those themes of justice, compassionate giving of the self, a recognition of power and the ability to wield it.  We also see how his compassion (Neptune) needed to be wielded in practical, tangible service (6th House) of others, especially in the healing of his own country (4th House) and in the healing/acknowledgment of his ancestral roots (4th House), roots that had been about an unwilling servitude (Virgo), and an unwilling giving of the self (Neptune).  We can see how the pain of not only the present but the deep well of injustice from the past found are thematically linked with a Chironic urge to heal, and how all of this finds direction through Mars as it forms an opposition to Saturn.  Mars ties us back again to King's North Node on the ascendant, and we can see how his identity, his courage, his insistence on carving a new and innovative direction for the world actually did change Saturnian structures and foundations.  His most famous quote, "I Have a Dream," encompasses all of that Neptunian, compassionate vision-making which his fearless Mars self-assertion sought to achieve through the re-structuring of an unjust society. 

I will leave you with this, one of my favorite of King's quotes:

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be
until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality. --Martin Luther King, Jr.

Like Dr. King, we are here in our present incarnations to fulfill a purpose given to use by God (the universe, the source of love and life).  Our natal charts are a clue as to how we can best accomplish those purposes, which we must believe are good and loving purposes.  I hope you've had a blessed holiday.  :) 

                                                                                        LOVE,
                                                                                        Gabby

There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.
When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.