_{Movie still of Catherine Deneuve in ‘Repulsion’ (1965), the first movie in the Apartment trilogy}

The reason why I love writing so much is that it can help me make sense of difficult experiences in life. Writing brings a certain order to the chaos of living life here on Earth, and it can temporarily give the illusion of having understood yourself, people and human experiences. I say illusion because we can never fully know and oftentimes our words are taken out of context and misinterpreted. Much like it happened to the French philosopher Jeal-Paul Sartre whose sentence ‘Hell is other people’ was famously misused. Hell might be other people if our lives are rife with conflict; but people can also help us see paradise.

When you experience other people as erratic and unpredictable the world can turn into a pretty unsafe place. It may not be the quality of the world in itself, as unsafe but it appears as such to us, as we relate to others who don’t make sense or we can’t empathize with. To make everything even more complex, in this blocked process of understanding how our Selves are shaped by Other People’s words/actions/feelings, what we relate to might not necessarily be other people but parts of ourselves that haven’t been integrated into our conscious identity. Or to use a psychological term, we psychologically project the emotional content we hold within onto others, literally transforming our lived experience.

For example, the perceived pettiness of a neighbor becomes your own pettiness, the lack of honesty of a lover is your own unacknowledged dishonesty. In another instance, we compete with others who actually adore us, ending up in a weird competition with ourselves. People can often serve as our mirrors and they might show us things we don’t like. Establishing the difference between the person and your relationship to them is of great importance and it might just be what saves your sanity. In astrology, the themes described above (us versus others, I and them etc) belong to the 7th house, the place of sociable and balanced Libra, a pleasant Venus-ruled energy. While the 4th astrological house deals with our deep, authentic self, the one that was ruled by emotions and sensations, that one we embodied before socialization took place, as we were infants, suckling at out mothers’ breasts. That marked a time when we didn’t know yet the proper rules of conduct in society. When there are strong aspects to both of these houses due to the planetary transits that take place across them, we might have to analyze and integrate how our Authentic Self thrives or is controlled by the relationships it lives within.

In this article, I will explore how watching Roman Polanski’s ‘Apartment Trilogy’ triggered within me a massive wave of awareness which is eerily connected to both my current astrological transits and the director’s own natal birth-chart placements.

To have a home is not the same as being at home within the Self  

Alone & at home. Alone in a home, without others. Alone with your feelings. And what feelings are you experiencing? Is it something safe and pleasant? After all, a house can make you feel protected from other people’s judgements. Or is there something sinister coming up to the surface, something you’ve taken a lot of time and energy to stuff down and never think of? When it is still and quiet and everything is orderly, the home can work as an echo chamber for all of our unexpressed emotions and repressed desires. The home can function as a womb, a psychological holding space into which we let go and let ourselves feel those things that we can never show the outside world. But what happens when the boundaries of this private place are trespassed by others? What can you risk showing other people? How vulnerable can you get? And what will you do to defend yourself from feeling vulnerable?

The place of this deep psychological becoming, the holding seat of the zodiac, the womb of creation and of everything that keeps us rooted into place (mentally, emotionally and physically) is the 4th house of the zodiac. This is a lunar house, shadowed by the Moon and governed by the watery sign of the Crab, the Cancer. This astrological space holds our childhood memories, our emotions related to our mother and how welcomed and safe we have felt within our given home and our culture of origin. This house contains feelings of belonging, psychological wholeness and the ways in which we get in touch with our souls (how we seek quiet, how we meditate, how we are able to stay present and the things which touch our hearts and make us dream nostalgically).

As I am writing this, I’m having a profound astrological transit to this house, more specifically the transit of the planet Pluto to my 4th house. Pluto is associated with darkness, despair, spiritual transformation and healing empowerment. It is the planet of death and the underworld, and when it touches the 4th house, the root of an individual, it brings up an emotional Underworld to be experienced by the native in their home, in their immediate living surroundings.

This spring and summer, I have been feeling the pressure to examine my emotions which tend to creep up on me in a furious way and rather suddenly, as they are bringing more awareness regarding what has been left unresolved in my past. This process began when I bought a flat in March of this year, an achievement towards which I have been working for years and which was supposed to be a wonderful celebration, but in reality turned out to be a day-mare. I woke up each day to erratic noises, abominable neighbors, tense family relationships, furniture replacements and unsafe district landscaping near my building which have been creating a nerve-bubble with the sole purpose of urging me to pay attention to my emotions and thoughts and how I can use them to become assertive and to protect my personal boundaries. In this period in which I am seeking answers as to why this is happening and what is the deeper meaning of such painful and nerve-wreaking experiences, I became enthralled by Roman Polanski‘s Apartment trilogy. This is a series of 3 films (Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby & The Tenant) which he shot between the years 1965 and 1976 that deal with claustrophobic apartments, increasing personal terror and ultimately the psychological breakdowns of individuals who are processing mysterious traumas.

_{Collage image of the movie posters that represent Polanski’s Apartment trilogy}

Astrological Placements & the Awareness of Living within the Trauma

Roman has a Libra Ascendant, an aspect I share in common with him in my natal chart. In his chart, he also has a Uranus retrograde (a more concentrated energy, so a powerful one) in the sign of Aries (the sign of conflict and action) and in the house of other people, the 7th house. I have a similar transit of Uranus in my 7th house but in the sign of Taurus (wealth, pleasure and stability), and crossing almost perfectly conjunct over my natal Mars and Vertex in Taurus. In addition, Jupiter and the North Node have recently joined Uranus in this 7th house too, increasing the attention I am to give to my personal relationships. My experience with this energy has been incredibly similar to what the characters in Polanski’s trilogy are experiencing: nosy and weird neighbors who are calculated and function as projection screens of the protagonist’s past fears. A Uranus transit to the 7th house, would normally introduce some madness in personal relationships. It brings romantic connections, business partnerships or friendships that are episodic or asynchronous, often outright bizarre in their violence and shock-value. One is not meant to cling to these relationships but to learn from them and move one. The interesting aspect is that David Lynch, whose chart I analyzed back in January, has the same placement of Uranus in the 7th house, and just judging by his work, there are similar themes to Polanski’s movies; wherein madness, mystery and alienation are experienced by protagonists as they attempt to live with, communicate and understand Others (again, 7th house themes).

_{Picture of a younger-looking Roman Polanski next to his natal birth-chart from http://www.astrodienst.com}

What produced a trigger in me was seeing in Polanski’s movies actions, themes and events which are happening in my current life circumstances in this period. A couple of weeks ago, a random post on Instagram suggested I watch ‘The Tenant’ and I thought ‘hmm interesting’ since the topic resonates with what I am going through in my own living space, ever since I bought a flat. But I also thought, hang on! The Tenant is part of a trilogy?? I was familiar with Polanski’s movie ‘Repulsion’ which to me, it has always been one of those disturbing movies that have haunted me for days, when I first saw it back in college. Re-watching it again, made me shudder since it was creepy how some of the psychological themes present in that movie have gravitated in my own mind-space and personal fantasies which came with the move into my new home. I’m choosing to be honest here because I want to draw your attention in this article to how astrology, movies and psychology are powerfully linked. And maybe this article can function as well as an account of psychological healing.

So, after seeing the Tenant and Repulsion, I rewatched Rosemary’s baby last week and even if the movie has a certain campy energy about it, the emotional suffocation and social control that Rosemary is experiencing is incredibly pertinent to a Pluto in the 4th house transit. Having some rough aspects (squares, oppositions, semi-sextiles) from other planets lodged in the 7th house, can create certain experiences in a person’s life that resemble what Polanski is showing us in his trilogy: how entering into a new space can also seed the grounds for conditions of psychological breakdowns, if the individual is not ready to transform and heal from the emotional ghosts of the past. On a symbolic level, the Devil & cult participants in Rosemary’s house, the angry and lusty boyfriend in Repulsion, and the older, French neighbors in the Tenant represent the emotions of the protagonists, whose lives are quickly changing and entering into an unknown territory. Resisting the unknown in life, therefore gives rise to conflict, tensions and ‘demons’.

Psychic Growth & Energetic Contamination

Moving home means to begin life again, in a completely new space, and in that transition, in that liminal space of leaving behind something old and facing something new, repressed feelings come up to the fore of our minds. Feelings sometimes come over us with such a force that we can perceive it as an emotional assault. We might then need to take emotional leave from some of the changing circumstances of our lives, although with transits to the 7th house we might not be given this leave time. We could be forced to deal with things head-on and to think-on-our-feet. In addition, the process of growth and expansion is accompanied by many fears, especially if the individual is struggling with self-worth issues. Moving into a new flat or buying a home represents the beginning of a new chapter in a person’s life, and as happy or successfully this might appear on the surface, the personal transformation of adapting and accommodating to a new environment, can also be brutal and mentally taxing.

Often-times the places we move into carry the energy of the previous owner and many times we could be influenced by this lingering or stagnant energy (especially is you are sensitive to psychic currents and energy). We might not know all the details of that person’s life and how they used the space we now inhabit, or to be honest we might not care so much to know. We simply want to move on with decorating our space, enjoying it and finding a new daily routine around this important territorial shift in our lives. But the karmic bond we share with the previous owner might not give us peace.

These aspects are explored in the Tenant *spoiler alert* in which the main character is practically negotiating his way into the flat of a woman who is suspected of having committed suicide. However, she survives and then follow a couple of days in which he is flirting with her best friend as he is putting moves on the landlord to rent the place. He is basically waiting for her to die so that he can move in, which in itself creates a certain type of karma that ends up haunting him. I could not stop thinking about a particular scene in the movie in which a handicapped girl is taken out her flat at night and made to wear a fool mask while the neighbors beat her with sticks. This is a feverish scene which The Tenant thinks he witnesses as a marker of the cruelty of his neighbors, but could it have also been a memory from the war that appeared projected onto the image of this collective of foreigners? I say this because the Tenant deals with the theme of being foreign, or being Other and different from the locals, a theme which could’ve cost you your life during the war, when cultural relationships were rigid & dangerous. I saw the young handicapped girl and the suicidal previous tenant as versions of the old world into which Polanski was born, a world that during his youth was torn apart by the savage energy of the Second World War.

Many scenes in the Tenant which take place in the present hark back to a painful emotional past flooded by what we can image were traumatic images of young Polanski growing up in a ravaged European landscape. After the war as conditions in his life changed, became more stable and prosperous, the repressed emotional content that was not properly integrated slowly unraveled in the creation of his on-screen characters and their intimate dramas became projected onto the walls of their new homes. What made the plots so interesting to follow was how this unresolved emotional material often spilled into the relationships the protagonists had with those in their environment, with neighbors, delivery people, local pets, children, policemen and cleaning staff. I guess here you could argue that we don’t know exactly how much of his own emotional experiences Polanski poured into his movies, especially since they are adaptations from novels. But looking at his chart, with a Leo Sun in his professional 10th house (conjunct witty Mercury and soul-transforming Pluto) I would say he poured his heart into it, to the point that he could’ve found it difficult to distinguish his creations from his personality (an experienced mirrored by the protagonist of the Tenant when he dresses up as a woman, almost to embody feminine pain; & knowing Polanski’s allegations of rape against minor girls, such scenes were so bone-chilling to watch in the movie).

Another important theme here is the destruction of feminine energy, the corruption of purity, or the almost energetic rape of what is supposed to be beautiful, tender, maternal, yielding and understanding. We witness how interactions with others can transform someone pure-hearted and kind into a suffering soul, something distorted and pained, if their own Shadows are not accepted. Both Catherine Deneuve (Libra Sun) and Mia Farrow (Aquarius Sun) are tormented in their roles by fear, fatigue and confusion to almost paroxistic levels. Towards the end of their stories, even if they start out as these shy, alluring and softly feminine presences, we watch how madness and suffering eventually overtake them.

But if you prefer a different take on a similar cinematic experience, I couldn’t help but think of Lars von Trier’s ‘Dogville‘. In that movie, a kind woman played by Nicole Kidman, is similarly abused by those around her as she is trying to integrate into a small town (but she is also hiding away from her past). She eventually strikes back in utmost anger, and in a way which is denied to the characters played by Catherine and Mia; needless to say, I found Dogville’s ending more satisfying, in spite of how it glorifies violence. Very much alike von Trier, another controversial director, you can say what you want about Polanski’s real life (and I do believe the child molestation allegations) but his work remains nonetheless powerful.

It is also slightly creepy to see the recurring astrological ‘coincidences’ I see between my transits and Polanski’s. Since December 2020, I have been having the transit of the planet Jupiter, then Saturn and finally Pluto to my natal 4th house (where I have my Juno & Venus in Aquarius placements). Polanski was born with a Saturn in the 4th house in Aquarius and loosely conjunct his North Node. With a North Node conjunct Saturn he will not have an easy destiny as many will criticize him and discourage him as he is working and building his legacy. His legacy will certainly endure in spite of the drama, but it will be forever tainted by karma (Saturn). In addition, with the North Node in the 4th house the home, the nation and feminine energy really are his destiny! Not only due to the fact that he created the Apartment trilogy but also because he made headlines regarding the murder of his wife, actress Sharon Tate by the Manson gang in their Los Angeles home. Again, sudden and spontaneous trauma in the home (Aquarius 4th house) that separated him from feminine energy (his wife, who was an Aquarius Sun) and might’ve also given him a lot of strong emotions to process (Saturn in the 4th house). Similarly, when I bought my flat, Pluto was at 0 degrees in Aquarius very near my IC (Immum Coeli) the seat of the soul. With so many intense planets in this part of the chart no wonder my imaginarium was triggered by Polanski’s.

Facing the Shadow

My flat on its own is cozy and warm, filled with light and has all the essential amenities. But inside of it I often feel restless and surrounded by a negativity which I meditate daily to tune out. This process builds inner strength but I wonder what the long-term events of this stress will have on me. To give you a flavour of what I am experiencing, during the first weeks when I moved in, locals started accusing me of putting poison around my doors and trying to murder their pets; they actively arrived one night to block my path and to berate me from ordering some furniture from IKEA and trying to get it into my flat; they knocked on my door demanding I pay them fees for services that were normal such as picking up old plates and furniture pieces; I often see human poo in front of one of the elevators; my nearby neighbor runs a brothel and occasional, loud music is pumping through my wall when the girl he pays gets a client; and another neighbor whose door is parallel to mine had a psychotic breakdown so severe that he had to be taken away and hospitalized (and there was a scary build-up which lasted 7 days before this had to happen). When I purchased the home all these things were hidden, nothing was noticeable.

These events happened fast and simultaneously to my adaptation to a new job, accommodating to living alone again, being exhausted and underfed, led me to have an angry outburst of which I am not exactly proud of. However, this event cleansed something in my soul, something old that needed to get out. Akin to the fearsome spirit of Kali-Ma, my voice escaped from my body as I started shouting at the building’s administrator in full-blown rage one evening. I seldomly get upset or angry but in that moment I felt I released a life-time’s repression onto him. My mother intervened to calm things down, as I was still reeling from the shock and for the next two days I felt a subtle tremble throughout my entire body and my nerves felt like they re-wired. Again, I am choosing to share this event not to expose myself to criticism and have readers label me as ‘insane’ but to showcase what can happen when your natal Mars (anger and willpower) in Taurus is perfectly conjunct the planet Uranus (the planet of shocks and surprises) in the 7th house (the house of other people) and both of them are squared (irritated) by Pluto in Aquarius in the 4th house (the house of deep emotions and the home). You might find it hard to control your anger. I am now exploring ways in which I can release tension without such outbursts, and I am thankful that nothing worse happened that day.

This experience pushed me into a period of intense Shadow work and especially boundary-setting within my environment. If there is something that I am learning from the characters of the Apartment trilogy & Dogville is that having strong boundaries and knowing who you are is what makes the difference between keeping sane and allowing other people to enter your mind, assault body, dump their emotional load onto you and invade your private space without permission. The trilogy is also helping me understand when this might be the actual case or when these are just perceptions based on deep fears. Fears of having my boundaries trespassed could also stem from another time, a long-gone period when I was powerless and small events in the present serve as triggers. As the feeling from the past resurfaces it is washing over me so that I may finally process it. I am learning to stay present and patient and as much as possible, non-reactive. Being in a curious mindset, staying well rested and well hydrated and trying to understand where the other person might be coming from (so using empathy) are the ways in which I cope at the moment with living in a space that I feel has rejected me from the beginning. And speaking of trauma and rejection, the wound of rejection is also surfacing in my life as I adjust to this new living space, helping me uncover moments from the past when I tried to become part of a collective but was shunned or maltreated. It also highlights how much I self-rejected throughout my life, by entering a collective with fear and mistrust rather than patience and optimism. Entering a collective in this way eventually led to a self-fulfilling prophecy that only isolated me more and cast me again into the Shadow for some more work. So being authentic is the only way to ‘fix this’.

I’m helped tremendously in this period by the transit of Jupiter in Taurus in my 7th house (easing me into Shadow work with more light and energy) and by the teacher-like influence of Saturn transiting over my conscious mind (Mercury) and my energy levels (the Sun). Saturn breaks down my Ego and helps me see where I am being prideful, insensitive, rushed and selfish. As things from the past are broken down, as attachments to who I thought I am are dissolving, a new psychic space is created for a different awareness to root & grow. I am letting go of the fear of expressing my emotions and I am allowing them to give me new insights and to surprise me into showing me who I really am, warts and all. I am letting go of the fear of ridicule and of perfectionism, understanding that I make mistakes and can go over them and repair and patch up situations with others, as I go along. Not everyone will be open to repairing things with me, not all will understand me, many will disagree with how I express myself, probably more than one person will label me as insane but to be honest I lived a stoic life until this point and have been called worse names – and there is no guarantee that if I fine-tune my behavior in order to mitigate the effects of the criticism of Others, they will eventually love me. So I will risk being my Self then.

Conclusion

While 7th house issues do pressure us into acknowledging the presence, needs and behavior’s of others in relation to who we are, the 4th house brings with it the awareness that a life lived from the inside-out, a private life, lived in accordance with what you feel, is the one that has the potential to bring you the most healing experiences. And that’s what matters the most for the soul. After all, I rely on the examples of Carl Gustav Jung (a Leo Sun) & Vincent Van Gogh (an Aries Sun) who were productive and some say produced renowned works when they were at their most vulnerable, either hospitalized or battling depression.

I have planets in these houses in a constant state of tension, as my natal Venus in the 4th squares my natal Mars in the 7th. I grew up witnessing angry shouting matches between my parents, and feeling on an intimate level the gender war both at home and in the darkened Romanian collective of the 90s. I’m just at the beginning of this Pluto in the 4th house transit (with a welcomed break at the moment as Pluto slid back into Capricorn until December 2023) but I am beginning to understand how it will work for me for the next 22 years and I hope it will bring me the kind of soul healing I need to manifest unconditional acceptance and love in my life. Having this noble ideal in mind, any upcoming break-downs and trauma will be more easily surpassed, especially since I know that at the core there lies something unbreakable inside of me, a luminous force which I hope that Pluto will only amplify. Perhaps hell is to some extent the approval we seek from other people, but you can overcome such behaviour. After all, it took Persephone a while to detach from her mother’s expectations and to become queen over her own inner darkness, once the initial shock of her descent into Hell subsided. As this happened she began subduing the darkness around her and masterfully learned to rule over the Underworld, together with Hades.

With universal love,

Lexi