ARTICLE
His works, of naturalistic and Neogothic styles, can be appreciated from several perspectives. An astrological overview and an hypothetic rising sign for the Spanish artist.
Antoni Placid Guillem Gaudí i Cornet (Antoni Gaudí, Cancer) worked as an architect, sculptor and designer, displaying Modernist and Neogothic tendencies in Catalonia by the end of the XIXth century (Spain). He constructed mostly residential and religious buildings, in public and private areas, as well as urbanization and landscape projects, with special interest in ergonomic furniture.
- Gaudí's birth chart
- About the artist
- Taurus & nature
- Pisces & The Waters
- Uranus & The Phoenix
- Cancer & Pisces
- Saturn, Death & Neptune
- Rising sign at Milà
I. Gaudí's birth chart
Born in Tarragona district (Catalonia Community, Spain), under the Sun in Cancer, there's no reliable registries about his birth time. This article displays his birth chart with traditional aspects, a second chart with only lunar nodes' aspects (karma), and a third chart including all of the aspects. The gallery makes it easier to consider the weight of natal karma on the configuration, especially on the second chart with the nodes in Cancer and Capricorn.
Birth date: 06.25.1852 in Reus, Baix Camp district (Tarragona, Catalonia Community, Spain). Death date: 06.10.1926 in Barcelona City (Catalonia).
indexII. About the artist
► Support and sustainability
He took his first studies at the infant school of master Francesc Berenguer, whose son Francisco would become later his main collaborator, and also the builder of the house where Gaudí lived at in Parc Güell, between 1906 and 1926, the year he passed by.
He had just few although wealthy customers, like the Catalan Count and magnate Eusebi Güell i Bacigalupi, who became his benefactor and friend. He was also frequently requested to build big urban constructions, colleges, Catholic churches and cathedrals, counting with successive jobs all along several decades.
With a constant projecting activity, and sometimes in charge of several works at the same time, he delegated a lot of jobs to peers. Whereas other designs were just not approved, since they would have implied huge reforms on the surrounding areas to preserve an harmonic landscape or support the viability of the urban project, depending on the case.
► Last years and post-mortem
By 1915, his benefactor and friend Güell had passed by, and in the next few years several friends and his best customers would do the same. Since then, he was completely dedicated to work on the Expiatory Temple of the Sacred Family, the Neogothic church where he spent his last years. He moved his workshop to the temple, but a tram accident caused his death in 1926. Ten years later, many of his documents, works and papers were burnt during the Spanish Civil War.
During his lifetime, Gaudí only received one award for Calvet House as the best building construction of the year (1900), a classic work, of symmetric style and latticed arches. Even two streetlights he had made in 1910 for the Major Park in Vich were later torn down in 1924, due to the lack of manteinance by the city administration. Just during the 50's his works were distinguished, especially by the painter Salvador Dalí and the architect Josep Lluís Sert.
- 1952: in the centenary of his birthdate, the Association of Friends of Gaudí was founded, meant to promote and preserve his legacy.
- 1956: Gaudí Chair was inaugurated at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.
- 1957: his works were exposed at the MoMA in New York.
- 1969: the Ministry of Spanish Culture declared 17 of his works as Historic-Artistic Monuments of Cultural Interest (a distinction given as an exception, since it's only given to works of more than 100 years).
- 1976: in the 50º anniversary of his death, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain organized an exposition about Gaudí to display his works all around the world.
- 1984 - 2005: seven of his works were included in Unesco's Worldwide Heritage List.
- 2002: in the 150º anniversary of his birthdate, Gaudí's International Year was celebrated, with numerous official ceremonies, concerts, shows, conferences and publications.
- 2008: the Gaudí Awards were created to honor him, given by the Academy of Catalan Cinema.
- 2013: in the 130º anniversary since Gaudí's first work (the Mataronese Worker Cooperative), it was founded the Counsel of Promotion of Gaudí's works, supported by Catalonia Administration.
► Traditions over time
Gaudí was surrounded by a lot of collaborators, Francisco Berenguer among them, son of his master in the infant school. And Eusebi Güell, his benefactor, also became his personal friend. These two specific relationships remind of brothers Guillem and Ramon Berenguer Ist, almost 800 years ago, who had been Counts in Barcelona by the XIst century. But Guillem had renounced to his legal rights as a Count and became a monk at San Miguel of Fay Monastery, in Bigues district (Barcelona). Strangely, Guillem was Gaudi's second name, and similarly, it is said he had a quite monastic lifestyle.
The monk's brother, Ramón Berenguer Ist, was called as "The Old Man", although he lived only 53 years-old. He was also known as "the subjugator of Spain" and "the advocate and wall of Christian people". From those perspectives, he gathered numerous documents that have been considered to set feudal laws by those times, a doctrine that mostly restricted people's lives to specific usages and traditions. Similarly, Güell was a Count and magnate, and didn't just asked Gaudí to construct great buildings for himself but also recommended him to be in charge of other works, mostly of a religious kind.
By the 30's in the XIXth century, a Spanish movement called as Renaixença arouse, meant to build a doctrine based on the language, culture and history of Catalonia as an independent country. That spirit was like a new birth, and even counted on a coat of arms and the Phoenix figure as iconographic symbols of the newspaper La Renaixensa, the main channel to spread the movement's statements. All of this also reminds of the doctrinary spirit of Berenguer Ist, and of the monastery where his brother Guillem became a monk, a place that can be traced in many of Gaudí's works as a geographic inspiration.
More about the monastery
It's located at the geographic limit between Bigues i Riells district (Vallés Oriental region) and Sant Quirze Safaja district (Moia region), both in the autonomous community of Catalonia nowadays. At that specific place, there's a crag under which the monastery was built. Across the area, two springs fall down, the last one finally ending in San Miguel Caves (in the valley of the same name). The place is also the source of Tenes River, whose waters later fall into the Besòs River, to finally meet the Mediterranean Sea. Currently, the place can be accessed from a road started at San Felíu de Codinas district, in the Vallés Oriental region too, where Gaudí took a temporary retirement once, and for which he designed a local banner in the year of 1900.
By 1006, a friars community was already settled down in Fay, but the monastery was founded by Gombau de Besora, who had bought the area. The place was enrolled in the Catholic order of San Benito, which gathers autonomous monasteries under the rule of praying and working. Although of small dimensions and hosting a community of only 5-6 monks, Gombau and several Counts of Barcelona provided huge resources to the place. In 1042, it came to depend on San Víctor Abbey (in Mallorca, Baleares Islands), and in 1567 on Gerona's diocese.
The monastery is surrounded by a natural environment, and was built like a cave inside of a rock, with the house dated from the XVth c., of a Gothic style. Currenlty, only the rests of the major altar can be appreciated. Near the entrance, a staircase leads to a small cript, where are mostly tombs of abbots on the floor and of two monks on the sides: of Guillem Berenguer, brother of "the subjugator of Spain", and of Andrés de Arbizu (from Navarra, who had also provided a great amount of resources).
III. Taurus & nature
Gaudí's works alludes to numerous references of different kind: from Catholic religion, myths, literature, nationalism, astrology... All of them, along with folk details and his own imagination, were represented according to an hermetic principle he implemented at high scale: as above, is below. The lands, places of hidden treasures, are above. Below, the incommensurable waters, origin of life, clear, deep, obscure, calm, turbulent. Sometimes, the other way around, depending on the perspective.
Working on materials, on lands, is a hard task, and requires a lot of effort, such as it happens when what has been incorporated is processed. Stones, ancient minerals, had already been worked by Gaudí's parents, farmers who were used to quarries. Rocks are part of Capricorn's landscape, until the desired form is constructed and finished by following Saturn's ways, the planet of bones, of what is hard and demands effort, of father and death, a planet precisely emplaced in the sign of physical volume, Taurus. The artist's karma comes from Capricorn, so it's not strange that stones and bricks have been the main construction materials he used all along his life.
Using local resources and recycling them were also part of his working methods, because such are the ways nature works. He searched for stones in areas nearby the constructions, as well as broken ceramics about to be discarded. With them, he created attractive and cheerful bench claddings, walls and tops of chimneys in top-roofs. Since then, the technique of creating irregular shapes by gathering ceramic pieces is known as trencadís.
IV. Pisces & The Waters
In the beginning of the XXth century, Gaudí started to implement his own organic and inorganic naturalistic style. Nature grows in curves and asymmetrically, under the action of his own forces, as it can be appreciated in water erosion on rocks, in the gallery above. In the same way, the artist designed wavy geometrical lines and shapes, in areas where holes and fills are next to each other, in continuous sequences.
The designs of many structures were inspired by worlds under the surface of rivers and seas, or that have been there once back in time. Neptune in Pisces is the greatest signifier of those places where shapes easily wave, where straight views seem to lose forms, where all seems to be. Very long ages, millions of years, are now stalactites inside of mysterious caves, in the hardness of underwater stones that finally disappear, above and below.
Neptune in his own sign was very present in the decoration of outer and inner spaces, mainly in the most famous residential and urban works of the artist. The Sun in Cancer, sign of mothers, home and family, along with Neptune, produced one of the greatest attractions of his works: the combination of fantasy, imagination and childish appeareance.
Parc Güell
V. Uranus & The Phoenix
Karma also made him be inclined to homes and tombs, spaces to live in and stones to work on, two subjects mutually impulsed as part of a constant dynamics. The same dynamics is indicated in his chart by kitte patterns pointing to the lunar nodes in Cancer and Capricorn. But the key factor was Jupiter, the true responsible of making lands and sea life forms emerge.
Jupiter in Scorpio completes a Water great karmic trine on the chart, and impulses the emerging motion after three Scorpian experiences of sinking and emerging, until the Phoenix finally shows up, flying high in the sky. Those experiences are represented in the very astrological symbol of the sign , with the final arrow going up after the third falling to abyssal wells (the process has been alluded to in the terms of the artist's religious tradition). Jupiter leads to the surface, and on the chart points to a kitte pattern's ending, Uranus in Taurus, which reforms nature on fixated Earth.
The experience of Uranus in Taurus is the farthest from sexual desire, the driest one in physical terms, like a rock is inside. This article is not about the artist's private life, so the reforming spirit can be appreciated in the renewal of Gothic art, as a new way to work on inorganic matter. Although this will be better explained in the last item, the artist was requested to reform numerous buildings, by implementing his own style.
VI. Cancer & Pisces
Literature was a great source of inspiration, too. Water element on his chart was related to the Jupiterian triumph of life over death, and also to a great urge to incorporate fatherly tendencies, previous developments, karmic obligations. This is the hammer pattern coming from the benefic Jupiter and falling on Saturn in Taurus, the worker, and through Mercury, being the latter the planet of communication and books, and Saturn being the ruler of the karmic past.
As it was expected, Cancer and Pisces were the signs to channel the energy that could hardly be processed, and both functioned as air to breath. Those signs provided the worlds of heroic myths, fantastic tales and poetries that inspired the decoration of his most famous works. Compositions easily look like scenarios of tempted children although, as it usually happens with Water signs, appearances play tricks...
Batllò House
Milà House
VII. Saturn, Death & Neptune
Guides, the past and parents, works, awareness, knowledge and expressing the own experience, inside of the duality of being alive and dead, are all expressions of Jupiter in Scorpio, Mercury in Gemini and Saturn in Taurus. The latter is one of the karmic rulers and, inside of its raw reality, where fantastic Water adornments are dismissed, it emerges under the form of the Expiatory Temple of the Sacred Family, his last great work that evokes the effects of time on stones, the effects of water on Earth's bones.
The building exposes a skeleton, of a clear Gothic inspiration although renewed. The world under waters, that of erosionated caves, emerges without fantasy. The renewal is an exposed inner world, deformed inorganic caves, as they lose shape, as they die while holes are opened in the body. A nature of tetric shapes has emerged from dephts, like those sea monsters in story tales, now represented by parabolic vaults in the Gothic cathedral, as profuse details in Baroque adornments and engraves, making it Neogothic. Death and worked bodies become visible, and are masterful echoes of the conjunctions of Pluto, Uranus and Saturn in Taurus.
The classic sobriety, darkness and simplicity of the Gothic style are no more with Gaudí. Instead, the artist made use of curved irons, a technique only utilized at those times to construct bridges. Curves slightly incline slender vaults, alleviating the weight falling on walls, so it was possible to add a greater amount of chromatic glasses on them, which increased the illumination inside of the building.
For finding those colors of life, the death front must be walked through at the entrance of the cathedral, to later look up high and see vaults from below, those calcareous structures where sea species live at. On Gaudí's chart, this is like a mystic rectangle: family and tradition (nodes in Cancer-Capricorn), combined with an emerging (Jupiter in Scorpio) and the shaping of a skeleton (Saturn in Taurus). Altogether, they finally give a message from Neptune in Pisces: life after going through death, inside of waters, is eternal life.
Batllò House is a residence (Cancer) resembling a cave inside of a rock (Capricorn). Different lights (Uranus) illuminate the outside what in other cases illuminate the inside, so sea life (Jupiter), skeletons, and shadows of death (Saturn) emerge and are displayed to a viewer.
VIII. Rising sign at Milà
Numerous symbolic and decorative details, his famous ergonomic furniture and other very important works of the artist have not been mentioned here. Even those ones explicitely referred to are just partial aspects that don't transmit the general impression or the singular and numerous design details that could be appreciated in each work.
About his private life, just some public references have been included, enough to understand a little bit more his artistic preferences, from an astrological point of view. It's not clear if symbolisms included in his works came from his customers or his own inspiration. But it is certainly known that the interior decoration in Milà House was not made by the artist, although the genious representation on the top-roof displays his own birth chart! Anyway, it's something quite strange, since the house had been requested by the married Pedro Milà i Camps and Roser Segimon Artells, both heirs of big fortunes. The first one had been the son of a business man from the textile industry, and his wife was a widow who had inherited the wealth of her former husband, made in American coffee plantations.
The helical shape, so frequent in his designs, was chosen to represent lunar nodes, those areas on the chart where past and future are concentrated, the evolutional axis of karma so many times visualized as a spiraled path to ascend and descend. The House is also geographically oriented in a way that "the viewers" in between the two major sections seem to look at the horizon in the East, where the Sun emerges everyday (in the image, the top-roof is 45° inclined to the real geographic location, in order to see here a more horizontal design). As seen from them, the top-roof-chart seems to has been designed to see through the right eye, the South Node (clockwise helical access, which starts time countings).
Saturn is represented too, as six warriors (chimneys) close to that nodal access, the origin in Capricorn
. Stairs of obtuse angles indicate the path to be transited during lifetime, different moves to be started, in body-consciousness. Accordingly, the South karmic ruler moves towards the perimeter of Taurus
, where is emplaced and expresses karma's causes.
On the left side, the North node is next to other five warriors who represent the Sun
. The design points to the Sun-North Node conjunction on the chart. And, since the star is always oriented towards the rising sign, the stairs indicate the path to be followed: Gaudí would have been born when the first degrees of Pisces
were emerging on the horizon, with Neptune
as the ruler and main character. On the chart, the planet is opposed to Mars
, a solitary warrior on the top-roof.
This left section displays a pattern known as springer, supported in that opposition at the base. 
It's a dynamic pattern, in this case based on the adherence of other people and massive attraction or seduction. Neptune works like a great fusioner, and when is in Pisces, it especially prefers massive spread and contagion, even if emplaced on the so personalistic Ist house. Whereas Mars, when emplaced in Virgo, plots to increase resources. On the VIIth house, it indicates depending on other people to get what is searched for (Güell, his benefactor). Considering this, the great creativity and environmental impact of the artist's works reminds of Uranus in the IIIrd house, the area of close relations and places nearby (Berenguer, as his main collaborator and peer, in Catalonia Community). While his own creative power reminds of the Sun in Cancer in the Vth house (gestating, projecting).
Going back to the astrological representation on the top-roof, on the right section Taurus - Scorpio
opposition includes two motionless warriors (as all solitary ones): Jupiter
and Pluto
, with Taurus extended over a wide area in the perimeter, since is a quite relevant sign on the configuration.
Keeping in mind the hypothetical rising sign, the Part of Fortune (PF) would have been at the last degrees in Scorpio, another warrior to consider in detail: it's the only solitary one who is not on stairs (undefined), with no pointed direction, and also placed aside the "viewers". This location indicates it's not related in aspects, nor moves nor enters into the vision. On the birth chart, PF is the vertex of a yod in Scorpio, a pattern indicating there are matters to take care of and focus on: wealthness, discovery of resources and earnings, successful regeneration, good health, emotional recovery in any circumstance, great sexual appealing, good luck for the Phoenix!
Only the yod's components are actually in the signs they're emplaced on the chart, which indicates they should be taken into special consideration. Pluto, ruler of Scorpio and planet of wealthness, is in detriment, weakened in Taurus. 
Whereas Mercury is represented by seven warriors in Gemini
, next to Venus
access, and taking the path indicated by the stairs towards the next sign of the Zodiac, Cancer
, next to the Moon's access
(Mercury on the chart is at the last degrees in Gemini). But placing it in Venus' access dismantles the yod and leads to a material renouncement, which wouldn't be strange if considering the inclinations and most general circumstances in the life of the artist.
Two accesses on the right section represent Moon-Venus natal sextile. Moon is in the middle of a karmic dilemma (squares to nodes) and takes private legacies and social donations towards daily relations and works (from the VIIIth house to Venus in the VIth). Venus unfolds great attractiveness in Leo , and tends to gather relations all around itself, with a sense of belonging. In the VIth house, it easily influences and sets places, functions and tasks, while harmonizes another dilemma: the conflict about the flesh (Taurus-Scorpio). That conflict (squares) is resolved by Uranus' physical dryness
, ruler of Aquarius
(opposite area to Venus), which falls in Taurus. The representation on the top-roof strengthens Uranus' weight on the chart, as a sexual and economic renouncement happening when the energy is removed from the yod and is channeled towards Venus on the VIth house.
Note. Pluto the planet was just discovered in 1930, after the artist's death. Anyway, the article has included it as an astrological influence on his artworks and some personal life decisions. If the warrior on Taurus' portion doesn't represent Pluto, Gaudí might have placed there some other element he would had identified on his birth chart.
Sources: La vida y obra de Antoni Gaudí en Barcelona (12.04.22), Antoni Gaudí's Architecture in Barcelona (12.04.22), Tres colaboradores de Gaudí (12.04.22), Antonio Gaudí, Monasterio de San Miguel de Fay (12.13.22), Ramón Berenguer I (12.13.22), Gaudí, la obra (10.14.24), Simbología y religión en las obras de Gaudí (10.14.24), Antonio Gaudí (10.14.24).
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