basil hawkins

i've given hawkins a birth time of around 2 a.m., which makes him a cancer rising. this may seem like an odd choice because cancer is popularly reduced to a crybaby sign, but consider its ruler, the moon, is the fastest moving planet ("wandering star") in the sky. cancer rising is restless and sensitive, not just emotional sensitivity like usagi tsukino but quick to react (and overreact) to changes around them, not so much a fiery trigger finger but a crab retreating into its shell. hawkins' wording about kaidou and big mom to killer about "biological instinct" made me want to give him one of the bestial signs of the zodiac as a rising sign to contrast the human figure of his virgo sun, and that's all besides joining the beasts pirates. appropriately, the combination of birth year and time i've given him places his moon in scorpio.

we see a lunar adaptability in hawkins' outward acceptance of his circumstances in wano: he went from captain of his own crew to a shinuichi of the beasts pirates in a remarkably short period of time due to kaidou's "mercy" of recruiting strong pirates. apoo's betrayal happened in the post-dressrosa wind down, so in those few weeks of whole cake island, hawkins has seemingly settled in wano. on the flip side, proud and stubborn capricorn sun eustass kid digs his heels in—and survives. hawkins' succession of humiliations and excuses for his choices, cancer rising too willing to bend to protect its own hide, most likely fucking kill him in the end. he's a maladjusted, overprotective cancer with nearly literal armor in how he uses his devil fruit to insulate himself from danger.

hawkins' moon and mars are in mutual reception, meaning they are in each other's signs. mars was on the horizon when he was born, in his first house, which is one reason he could be mistaken for scorpionic; meanwhile his moon is in scorpio, one of mars' two signs of rulership (the other is aries). what mutual reception does in a case like this is mitigate how unhappy mars would normally be in cancer, so despite having a soft-spoken, protective rising sign, still has teeth (or a stinger) to him seen in how cruel and spiteful he is to killer in onigashima, and earlier brownbeard on foodvalten.

on a more lighthearted note, mars rules fighting and fucking, and i think being able to keep a cool head in a bathhouse is 1) gentlemanly, like i'm sorry, i love sanji but this is a green flag for my southern belle ass, and 2) quite literally mars in cancer, a wet towel thrown over hot coals. not saying he has low or no sex drive, just that he probably expresses it selectively.

scorpio is hawkins' fifth house, and throughout his birthday the moon will conjoin venus and jupiter in the same sign. these are the two "benefic" or "good luck" planets, even in less than ideal condition like venus being uncomfortable in scorpio (being one of mars' signs). i think it's easy to leave things to fate, or wholly believe in its course, if this is the hand it dealt you. with all of the worst generation but the straw hats coming from the more dangerous blue seas, every other crew gets a two-year head start in the new world and likely had a smoother time in paradise. there's also more annoying good luck in the trines (120-degree angles) his moon forms to the two malefic or "bad luck" planets, mars and saturn. trines occur between planets in signs of the same element, in this case water.

the fifth house is related to play and pleasure, creativity for creativity's sake. setting aside oda's repeated SBS insistence that hawkins enjoys interior design, i think despite hawkins' declaration that he doesn't like jokes, he does enjoy games and describes his attack straw man cards as a game, with convoluted rules barely related to tarot that seem to mostly screw him over. i know it's a convention of shounen and especially one piece for characters to have parameters to their powers like this, but we have to remember in the real world, tarot is only about five or six centuries old. its progenitor is an rennaissance italian card game called tarocchi that had no mystical imagery to it at all. i don't think you're attracted to tarot if art and play aren't valuable to you. i imagine he has a dry humor to him he would deny is humor. well, i think he's funny as fuck for how he intervened at that sabaody restaurant; it's not like he started his day drawing cards for the fate of his crewmate's clothes, and inciting violence is generally not a good idea for any pirate on sabaody at the time, psychic or not. i think he sometimes has fun with his own ominousness and wonder if anyone in his crew appreciates it. since the ruler of cancer and thus his whole chart is here, in a context other than wano where he's really only a few notches above a hostage, he lived a life of an aesthete.

hawkins' virgo sun is in his third house, which rules communication. he isn't the most talkative of the supernovas, but tarot is a kind of vocabulary. while i judge him as written by oda to have a pretty shit "bedside manner" if he did client work, he's introduced in wano via tanishi. i don't humor modern AUs for one piece like i do for other IP, but anyone trying to make a living off of mysticism has to be a damn content creator. we're all writers because this nonsense has no form other than language (astrology = astra (star) + logos (discourse) = star talk). maybe he is this quiet because virgo is a bit more subdued, chews a bit slower than the other mercurial sign, gemini, or more likely because his mercury in libra doesn't form an aspects to other planets. he could be so articulate but doesn't feel particularly rushed to share it all, especially since we mostly see him surrounded by enemies. the tarot card that traditionally corresponds to virgo is the hermit, which describes hawkins in wano presumably separate from his crew. i disagree with this, but because of some modern astrological laziness, virgo has been equated to the sixth house as a sign that likes being subservient, but coming from a virgo moon, i think it's a sign that thinks because it intellectually understands the big picture, it doesn't need any further help or insight from others. virgo can dish out criticism and analysis all it wants but can't take what it dishes. it's a sign that can't accept help and refuses to believe it needs it, be it drake's suggestion that hawkins betray kaidou or killer's taunts that originate from pity.

the last planet i haven't touched is his saturn in pisces and his 9th house. i said this in my crocodile reading, but the 9th house is for pirates, much like the sea. it rules "overseas travel," higher education, organized religion, and philosophy overall. saturn is interesting here. the planet that finds its joy in the 9th house is jupiter, who rules pisces, and he and saturn are contradictory: jupiter expands and explores while saturn retracts and restricts. it's tragic for a pirate to 99-percent certainly die in a closed country, but with hawkins, i think more about the confounding nature of esoterica in one piece. what does tarot stand contrary to? in our world, it developed into what it is in reaction to early modern christianity. the hierophant used to be the pope; the high priestess in the waite-smith deck sits between columns from solomon's temple. happily for hawkins, jupiter barely forms a trine to his saturn from that stellium in scorpio, so this imbues his sense of "play" and humor with a saturnine seriousness, and helps his saturn lighten up by tapping into jupiter's curiosity.

i would hope a man interested in fate and fortune is interested in the past, too. in the real world, he would know this history of the tarot, so i stay annoyed that someone so tied to what is "taboo" is never shown pursuing poneglyphs, that we silly woo-woo people cannot possibly be as serious or interested in material reality as an archaeologist or a d-name who gives a shit about that d. i hope he'd be after them for the sake of knowledge rather than to find the one piece, and i'm a bit ashamed i also wrote him a bit incurious in my s/ins' imperfect memory.