Elias Canetti (1905-1994)

Crowds and Power (1960) - masterstudy of crowd psychology

Canetti is the third major author and theorist on crowd psychology, following Hannah Arendt (The Origins of Totalitarianism) and José Ortega y Gasset (The Revolt of the Masses). Both Arendt and Ortega have Jupiter in Cancer, a placement whose significations include crowd psychology. Although Canetti has no planets in Cancer in his horoscope, he published his most well-known work, Crowds and Power, in 1960, shortly after the start of his Level 1 Cancer period on October 10, 1959, according to Zodiacal Releasing from the Lot of Spirit.

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Elias Canetti was born on July 25, 1905, in Ruse, Bulgaria, into a Sephardic Jewish family of Spanish descent. His early childhood was shaped by multilingualism and cultural diversity—he grew up speaking Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), Bulgarian, and later, German and English. In 1911, his family moved to Manchester, England, where his father died suddenly the following year. The family relocated again, this time to Vienna, and eventually to Zürich and Frankfurt.

Canetti earned a doctorate in chemistry at the University of Vienna in 1929, though he never pursued a scientific career. Instead, he was drawn to literature, philosophy, and the arts. Deeply influenced by German-language modernism and thinkers like Karl Kraus and Otto Weininger, he began writing novels, plays, and essays. In 1935, he published his only novel, Auto-da-Fé (Die Blendung), a powerful and nightmarish satire about intellectual isolation and totalitarianism. Though initially overlooked, the novel was later hailed as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature.

One of Canetti’s greatest intellectual achievements was Crowds and Power (Masse und Macht, 1960), a dense and original philosophical work that explores the psychology of crowds, the nature of power, and the behavior of individuals within masses. Drawing on anthropology, literature, history, and personal observation, the book challenged Freudian and Marxist interpretations of collective behavior and became influential across disciplines.

A lifelong exile, Canetti fled Austria in 1938 after the Nazi annexation and eventually settled in London, where he lived for decades. He continued to write in German, seeing the language as essential to his intellectual and artistic identity. His later work included memoirs such as The Tongue Set Free (Die gerettete Zunge), which chronicle his early life, and a series of aphorisms and notebooks that reflect his penetrating, often caustic insights into human nature.

Canetti was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981 for a body of work that illuminated the moral and psychological underpinnings of mass movements, power structures, and the individual's role within society. He died in Zurich, Switzerland, on August 14, 1994, at the age of 89.

Canetti remains a singular figure in 20th-century letters—a writer whose work bridges literature, philosophy, and social theory, and whose vision of human collectivity remains as unsettling as it is prescient.

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Victor Model factors favoring Mercury/Leo

• Sign ruler of Ascendant and Lot of Fortune

• Bound ruler of Lot of Fortune

• Evening rising solar phase

• Received by the Sun (sign) and Mars (bound)

• Mutual reception with Mars by bound

• Conjunct North Node within 12 degrees (out-of-sign conjunction)

• If wrong on Mercury, Jupiter/Gemini is a runner-up for victor selection

Physiognomy model factors favoring Leo

• Shape of face is rectangular, match to Willner’s Leo model

• Curly hair mimics sunbeams emanating from the solar disk

Moon’s Configuration

• Moon separates from Mercury (out-of-sign), is void of course, then applies to Mars; figure is nocturnal, preventional.

• The Moon’s configuration mirrors a key biographical episode in the life of Elias Canetti: stepping outside his home, becoming swept up in a crowd whose purpose he does not initially understand, and only later discovering the source of the disturbance. Mercury in Leo in the 4th house represents Canetti writing inside his home. The Moon’s separation from Mercury indicates his departure from writing—symbolizing Canetti walking out of his house—while the Moon’s rulership of the 3rd house links this act to the local neighborhood and short-term travel. We may envision him taking a break from writing by going for a walk.

• Once outside, Canetti becomes enveloped in a crowd and is overwhelmed by its power. The Moon in the 12th house suggests a state of being lost or engulfed, and planets in the 12th are often associated with irrational or exaggerated fears. Canetti later described a profound alteration of consciousness while caught in a crowd in Frankfurt protesting the assassination of Walther Rathenau. A similar experience occurred in 1927, during the July Revolt in Vienna, when Canetti found himself among a crowd near the Palace of Justice, which had been set on fire. He later recounted that he could not see the flames, but could feel them.

• This moment corresponds astrologically to the Moon being briefly void of course before it progresses to 7°32′ Taurus, activating a moiety of orb of 9°30′ with Mars. The void of course condition may have symbolically protected Canetti—he was close enough to feel the intensity of the event, but far enough away to avoid physical harm. Nevertheless, the experience left a lasting impression and profoundly influenced his later writing on crowds and mass psychology.

• The nocturnal nature of the figure helps mitigate the malefic influence of Mars. As a child, he was accidentally pushed into a vat of boiling water, resulting in severe skin injuries. Had the figure been diurnal, the incident would likely have posed a greater risk of death.

• The syzygy is preventional, consistent with Canetti as a late bloomer (Robert Zoller’s observation that preventional horoscopes tend to manifest more in the second half of life). While Canetti decided he wanted to study crowds as a teenager, Crowds and Power was not published until he was 55.