_{Image of Armie Hammer on the cover of OUT magazine. See here: https://www.out.com/tag/armie-hammer#toggle-gdpr}

I will never be able to look at the The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in the same way again. It’s Virgo season, so in today’s post I have the chart of another Virgo Sun male celebrity for your consideration. This is not necessarily the most positive example of a Virgo chart, and it’s slightly sad for me to do this analysis since I had a soft spot for Armier Hammer. I actually found him pretty hot, before the news broke of his mistreatment of women. As we are approaching the Full Moon in Pisces, some things come out of the shadow and become apparent, especially situations involving the secrets of the acting world. This approaching Full Moon in idealistic Pisces is coming up on the 31st of August and it is conjunct Saturn (the energy of karma) and Neptune (the energy of imagination and escapism, the one that rules over the film industry).

Bearing all this in mind, I recently saw the House of Hammer mini series on HBO and felt slightly gob-smacked at the evidence presented against Armie Hammer and his intimate relationships with a number of women who accused him of sexual assault. Now, I am aware that such docu-series can be fabricated to present a certain version of the truth, and to a large extent, as the public we will never truly know what actually happened between two people in an intimate setting, but my gut was telling me this rings somehow true and that was the chilling factor in my bones. Armie is an objectively good looking man, a classic ‘hunk’ some might say, but this is the manufactured public version of his personality, his ‘Hollywood costume’ if you’d like. So I was curious to see what does his chart say about how he his in private? What about the form of masculinity he naturally embodies?

In the series, I found out that Armie was named after his great-grandfather Armand Hammer, a ruthless man who built an empire from scratch and became a wealthy oil tycoon. His grandfather however also had a penchant for exercising domestic violence and covert control tactics to keep his family members in check, especially his wives. And it seems that just like the name he was given, the spectre of a received type of masculine identity seems to be unconsciously haunting Armie. I’ll try to combine in this article my knowledge of sociology, psychology and astrology and analyze this fascinatingly eerie case study of a famous Virgo Sun.

In their book ‘Toxic Masculinity: Mapping the Monstrous in Our Heroes’ (2020) Esther de Dauw and Daniel J. Connell write that:

_{“(…) hegemonic masculinity can be defined as the configuration of gender practices which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women.” This hegemonic masculinity is straight, able-bodied, White and ‘hard’ i.e., not feminine” (p. 4).}

The term ‘hegemon’ comes from Ancient Greek and can be defined as a supreme leader, a king basically. So it could be tempting to consider the form of masculinity which Armie seems to adopt in his private life to be a toxic kind; but rather than seeing his identity as toxic it’s more of a case of him employing toxic behaviors in private in order to maintain his power, a power that gives him so many rewards in his public life. Indeed if you watch the docu-series, the text messages presented there portray Armie as being hungry for absolute power in the sexual coercion he was employing with his lovers. The authors go on to complete that in society, through the means of culture:

_{“(…) men are encouraged to wield a performative “woke-ness” which allows them to act personally in ways that are seemingly divorced from hegemonic or toxic masculinity while simultaneously reinforcing structural inequalities. Hegemonic masculinity has an unfixed nature, encompassing hybrid masculinities, hypermasculinity and toxic masculinity” (p. 5).}

Or to put it bluntly, what distinguishes Armie’s aggressive masculinity from that of any other man who uses violence to punish a woman, is the fact that Armie is rich and well-connected, and thereby he embodies a higher form of toxicity, a hegemonic form of masculinity, the kind that usually walks away and doesn’t suffer harsh consequences even when leaving behind the disturbing evidence of his actions.

So how did he learn to embody this hegemonic masculinity? Well, it seems that the docu-series is putting forward the idea that it was transmitted to him, passed down from grandfather, to father to son. Our parents are able to give us not only material and financial assets or help us develop our intelligence and our skill sets, but they also can give us in unseen ways, some pretty heavy emotional baggage. Family psychologists have a term for this process and they refer to it as ‘inter-generational transmission’, or:

_{“the extent to which behaviors and characteristics of individuals from one generation are recurring in offspring, has been reported for multiple characteristics, such as personality and psychopathology, educational attainment and Socioeconomic Status (SES), Body Mass Index (BMI), life style factors, and health, as well as relational processes, such as quality of parenting or divorce” (from Branje et al., 2020)}

Now that I introduced the terms used in the title, I hope that it is more clear what I am attempting to argue for in this article. Astrologically-speaking, in order to explore the answers to the questions above, we need to examine the placement of his natal Moon, Mars and the North Node, since the Moon shows our unconscious priming, Mars shows the type of masculinity her uses in his daily life, and the North Node shows his destiny or what he is meant to experience in this incarnation. Needless to say, if I was shocked at the allegations of cannibalism and rape, when I had a look into this chart, I was floored again by how the astral placements matched the history of violence and the transmission down his family line of toxic masculinity traits and strong Ego attachments to power. Take a look for yourself:

_{Image of Armie Hammer and his birth-chart taken from https://www.astrotheme.com/astrology/Armie_Hammer}

First of all, we see a Gemini Ascendant at the chaotic 29th degree (also called the anaretic degree, a fated indicator). His Ascendant is conjunct his Moon and the asteroid Lilith, both in the witty and dual sign of Gemini and placed in the spiritual 12th house. This house is also the house of secrets, bed pleasures and spaces of confinement – make a note of this Gemini energy in the 12th house, because it is the defining clue to what I mean by him being haunted by his great-grandfather’s karma. We also see a dutiful Sun in Virgo conjunct Mercury and the Part of Fortune in the communicative 3rd house. This placement denotes an intelligent person with a penchant for behaving like a trickster. So Armie has a lot of Mercurial energy in his chart, as Gemini and Virgo are co-ruled by the Messenger God, Hermes Trismegistus. The equivalent to Hermes in Scandinavian lore is the mean-spirited God Loki, who had a bone to pick with his brother the more luminous and popular Thor. I’m only bringing up this mythological and familial drama, because it seems to bear a heavy weight in Armie’ relationships to the men in his family. Having a Mercury ruled chart makes someone intelligent, social charming but also contradictory and cunning. And the theme of his destiny seems to be this conflict between mind and heart, since a brilliant mind without a kind heart can make someone quite cruel and calculated.

You’ll also notice that his Mercury (his mind and the way he speaks) is squared by Saturn in Sagittarius in the 6th house, an aspect that denotes someone who suffers from ‘foot in the mouth syndrome’. So Armie clearly has a pattern of saying things (Mercury) that are detrimental to his work (6th house), things that endure in time and can affect his reputation (Saturn). Saturn is also sitting in tension with his Sun, so despite the fact that in the media and in his local environment, things and people will revolve around him (as he is the warmth-bringer with his Sun placed there at the incredibly fortunate 4’44 degree), however in his everyday work he is frequently challenged by older and wiser men who have the capacity to block his growth (Saturn in Sagittarius). Certain ‘truths’ about his personality will emerge from the people he interacts with on a daily basis, people who have the potential to become his open enemies (the 6th house). Some of these enemies are sadly, his own relatives (Moon opposite Saturn and Uranus).

Although, Armie was born with a super-pleasant Venus in Libra energy – which makes one charismatic and sociable, well-mannered and literate in their personal connections – his Venus is conjunct the South Node (his comfort zone), an aspect which tells me that he loves women (Venus), surrounds himself easily with them and tends to fall back on his relationships with beautiful women when things become tough in his life (South Node). However, most of the women he will encounter in his life will be his karmic partners due to that conjunction to the South Node. This means that even if he is attractive and lucky with women on some level, women will continuously hold his accountable for his bad behavior and bring a lot of punishments and responsibilities in his life. Furthermore, he is meant to have mostly short-term romances with them, since his Venus is placed in the fun-loving, non-committal 5th house; this is also the house of skills, so he “ahem” practices his skills on them (such as rope bonding, apparently).

However, things are indeed meant to take a darker turn in his life, because if we look closely there are two massive red flags influencing these rather sweet placements: his Venus is loosely conjunct intense Pluto in Scorpio in the same 5th house, and his Mars in Capricorn in the 7th house is sitting in tension with his Venus in Libra. Now, Mars square Venus is the classic aspect of fights and arguments in someone’s love life; it is an aspect of misfortune in love and some astrologers have went as far as to call it ‘the domestic violence aspect’. Paired with a darkened Venus, which is affected by Pluto (the aspect of the underworld, death and decay), well I can already see that the allegations made by the women in his life carry seeds of truth. A Venus conjunct Pluto personality has a knack for power and domination in love, especially when it is expressed in a lower vibration it can bring up issues such as sadism, fetishes and even murder.

With a Mars in the house of love (the 7 house), Armie is a man who takes initiative in his relationships and can come across as strongly sexual. Mars is also in the sign of Capricorn, which tells me that Armie is adopting a traditional form of masculinity, in which violence and womanizing might be commonplace to his particular understanding of being a ‘man’. Capricorn is a strict disciplinarian, a follower of rules, a conformist that keeps everyone in check. With a Mars in Capricorn, Armie gravitates towards a definition of masculinity which is constructed around control, especially physical, financial and sexual control. This energy is however softened by a conjunction to Neptune, and which placed in the 7th house makes him an individual that could often have messy relationships, in which he doesn’t really see his partners clearly and he could also cheat; this combined energy tells me that Armie easily idealizes love, idealizes women and marriage, while at the same time upholding a 1950s form of relating to the people in his life.

To put it more clearly, I can see that the inner world of Armie Hammer is the world of a Don Draper-like character and lifestyle. It’s a world of wealth, privilege and being the center of attention, while also being at the mercy of some dark, unconscious forces which play out in his personal connections (the 7th house) as well as with women in short-term love affairs (Venus in the 5th). His problem is relating to men, and especially the men in is family, and this under-developed energy is evident in Armie’s North Node in Aries which shows someone obsessed with being a man while also struggling to accept his masculinity. This is interesting since the 7th house is also the place in which we store our Shadow.

His Shadow is actually sitting in conjunction to the North Node of his great-grandfather Armand, who was born with a South Node in Cancer in the 12th house and a North Node in Capricorn in the 6th house. You can see in the image below that Armand’s destiny, that of becoming a power, status and money-obsessed man, the ultimate provider (North Node in Capricorn) is triggering Armie’s Mars in Capricorn in the 7th house, the area in his chart which is showing what he unconsciously received passed on from the older men in his family. Breaking through the obsession with power and financial control that he inherited from great-grandpa and constructing a form of progressive masculinity of his own, was the main task of Armie’s transit led by Pluto in Capricorn in the last 14 years which crossed over his natal Mars and Neptune and reconstituted his relationships (ex. we know he went through a divorce which plunged him into this string of sexual liaisons, in which he projected the trauma he refused to heal onto his victims).

Not only that but Armand was a Gemini stellium! Having his Sun, Moon, Pluto, Venus, Neptune and Lilith in this Mercury-ruled sign and in the 11th house of ideals and co-working. All of these placements fall in Armie’s 12th house, the house of the unconscious, of dissolving the Ego and of collective memories. Remarkably, Armand also had his Mars in Aries which now falls on Armie’s North Node in Aries in the 11th house (where his great-grandfather had his natal stellium in Gemini). The pattern is uncanny! Armand had North Node in Capricorn conjunct Armie’s Mars in Capricorn and Armie has a North Node in Aries conjunct Armand Mars in Aries. This points so strongly to the deep mental connection between these two men, showing that Armie was literally born to psychologically transform the toxic legacy of the men in his family, a legacy which began with Armand.

_{Image of Armand Hammer and his birth-chart taken from https://www.astrotheme.com/astrology/Armand_Hammer}

How will he be able to achieve this? By having the courage to re-create his identity (Aries), one which is different from what he knows and was taught. He is not supposed to be aggressive with other women, but to compete with the best version of himself, as he builds his masculinity from personal experiences. By becoming aware of his own behaviors’ in privacy but also by investing effort in raising his own children (he had a daughter Grace and a son, Ford) he can gradually become emotionally mature and aware of these patterns and dissolve them. The secrecy and the ignorance are the ingredients which allow this psychological toxicity to keep infecting his family.

In his personal relationships, be they romantic, familial or professional, Armie constantly tries to enact control and the sweet release from it since both his Sun (personality) is in an Earth sign (Virgo) known for preferring order and control, while also having his masculine identity (his Mars) in another earth-sign, Capricorn, who feels comfortable with rules, regulations and bondage. The problem with Earth signs is that they tend to be rather unemotional, and this empathy issue is further underlined in Armie’s chart by his brainy Gemini Moon and Ascendant. So he needs to learn how to feel things, to empathize with others, to show vulnerability and be brave enough to heal the traits of his hegemonic bloodline.

This is because the real problem-bringer of his chart is his North Node in Aries; but in the problem also lies the blissful resolve. Aries is the energy of the first sign of the zodiac, carrying with it the impetus of primal fire. Having a North Node in Aries means that one’s destiny in this lifetime is to pioneer something in their family, to be the first to accomplish what their ancestors were not able to. A poorly functioning Aries North Node would mar a person’s life with violence, sex, drugs and rock’n’roll and a couple of sobering confrontations with the law. A highly functioning Aries North Node is a creative powerhouse, a person who is incredibly passionate about life and shares that unbridled optimism and energy with everyone they come into contact with. Aries works at its best when it defends, protect and is the first to inspire others to have courage.

At its worst, Aries is a thug, a criminal, a rebel with no cause, out to pillage, rape and destroy just for the sheer madness of it (and this description applies to both men and women born with an afflicted North Node in Aries, see for example Amber Heard who shares this placement in common with Armie). With his North Node in the collaborative and collegial 11th house, Armie needs to learn to sacrifice his selfish needs (5th house South Node) and to use language to become a team-player, to ask for consent, to negotiate within social groups and enact equalitarianism. We see how he is currently failing at this; but this year marks his nodal return so he is given a couple more chances to reform and for the sake of other women out there, I hope he does before he hurts them.

In a nutshell, after taking a look over his birth-chart, do I believe the sexual assault claims made against Armie Hammer are true? Yes. Do I believe that he will likely get away with them? Also, yes. Notice his Jupiter placement! When you are curious if someone will get away with something, you should always pay special attention to Jupiter, as the lucky ‘get out of jail’ Monopoly card in a natal chart. Armie has his Jupiter in the 10th house, the house of the public and his career. Not only that but his Jupiter is highly functioning in the blessed and spiritual sign of the arts and cinema, Pisces. So it is highly likely that the public will continue to love him and still watch his movies, even despite SA allegations. But I also think that he is a man that makes enemies easily and that he will constantly have people taking advantage of the trail of communications he leaves behind him.

As Pluto will enter Aquarius and his 8th house from next year – the house of blood, sugar, sex and magic, also the house of healing on a deeper level – it will be interesting to see if he will take on the responsibility to transform his mind and behaviour. Pluto will leave his 7th house from 2023 onwards, moving away from the years-long degradation of his natal Mars in Capricorn conjunct Neptune, and it will be fascinating to see how his public persona will transform. Will he only be offered roles in which he is sarcastically playing the sadistic sexual predator? Will he be given the redemption arc to follow and thereby have the American public fall in love with his atonement? With a North Node in Aries he can smoothly make a career out of being the villain, and to be honest that would be a more authentic career change for him. From my part, I only wish that he becomes increasingly more aware of these energies in his chart and refrains from hurting the people he is dating.

An interesting sidenote is that I chose a good day to write and publish this article since today Armie turned 37 years old. I also found out that he shares a birthday with the amazingly talented Florence Welch (who apparently is celebrating her birthday recovering in the hospital after surgery). I hope that with time, Armie will be able to retreat from the dating game and heal himself from the intense legacy of violence inherited from the emotionally unaware men in his family.

With universal love,

Lexi

_{Portrait of British Sci-fi author, China Mieville from: https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/china-mieville}

What if I told you that inside your home lives someone whom you never met? An individual that shares the same space as you, but also someone you were taught to unsee since birth, for fear of breaching your immediate reality? What if the city you live in, had another city superimposed upon it? Or that only through a careful exercise in ignoring certain details about your daily life, both of these parallel worlds could co-exist? However, if there are two cities having this awkward relationship with one another, then what takes place in the space in-between them? What happens when things (and people) spill over conventional boundaries? This is the fascinating premise of China Mieville‘s 2009 novel ‘The City and the City‘, which I just finished reading and couldn’t wait to write about!

I knew of China’s work from before, when in 2012 in Edinburgh (exactly 11 years ago!) I saw him speak at the Edinburgh Book Festival, after spending a feverish 2 weeks tucked into the world of his Perdido Street Station novel. A man whose writing made me reconsider bugs (in a way in which perhaps only Kafka in his brilliant ‘Metamorphosis’ got closest to). Needless to say, a Virgo Sun.

Happy Virgo season & Mercury retrograde, btw! I guess you noticed who is the Virgoan ‘culprit’ who I shall be analyzing in today’s post. As I was reading ‘The City and the city’ and knowing that he is a Virgo Sun with a peculiar fondness for bizarre settings and crimes (labelled in literature as ‘weird fiction’), I wondered what else in his chart could make a man who penned his author’s name to sound like something soft and precious have such a prolific output and a penchant for sci-fi, neo-noirs? Let’s investigate together by peering into his astrological abyss below:

_{Image of China Mieville born on the 6th of September 1972 in Norwich, UK & his birth chart taken from: https://www.astro-seek.com/birth-chart/china-mieville-horoscope}

Remarkably, the first thing that stands out is that he is in his 50s (!) and that he has a Moon in Leo at the anaretic 29th degree. Could it be a mere coincidence that I felt drawn to finish his book and start writing about his chart at the New Moon in Leo which took place on the 16th of August? Not really, I don’t believe in coincidences anyways. A Moon placed at the final degree makes an individual intimately familiar with their creative urges, as they are very comfortable being emotional and exploring their unconscious fantasies. It is a sign of emotional maturity but it also means that the chaos experienced by an individual in their lives is ruled by their relationships with women, emotions and their unconscious desires. So in a way one is dissolved into that very thing one feels like they control the most, and in China’s case these are his strong emotions and his ripe imagination.

Another aspect that stands out to me – aside from the annoying fact that without his birth-time we can’t see his Ascendant* (some advanced astrologers are able to do this but not me, sadly, at least not yet) – is that he has a Venus in Cancer conjunct his South Node and a North Node in Capricorn. Both of these nodal points are in friendly energy to his Virgo Sun, Mercury and Mars, which means that his goals in life and his identity are supported by the forces of his destiny guiding him towards a rather strict and stoic existence. He has to write in order to earn, and writing takes a long time usually, or at least it takes effort and concentration, and the paycheck comes also with the completion of this slow work, so I assume he needs to learn to save up for a rainy day and be cautious with his spendings. He is meant for a modest existence here on Earth that nonetheless can help him create the kind of work that will outlive him, and that is the gift of a Saturnian North Node. If a North Node in Capricorn could talk, it would say to its astrological native: “struggle now in this embodiment so that people will know your name even after your death”.

A Capricorn destiny is a pressure cooker but one which China can easily live up to considering the Martian qualities of his modest and hard-working Virgo Sun. If as a writer, he looks more like a street-fighter than an Oxford professor, this is due to his natal Mars placement which is perfectly conjunct his Sun in Virgo; this special cosmic blending makes his personality borrow traits from Aries energy. By consequence, he looks like a motorcycle-loving rebel rather than a neat and dutiful Virgo man. Judging by his work, I guess we shouldn’t be fooled by this idiosyncrasy. And personally speaking I think this makes him quite interesting and hot 🙂

I can also see that through writing, he is also healing his identity because he has Chiron (the Wounded Healer Archetype) in the sign of charisma, Aries, which might have been frequently produced wounding in his life related to his identity, his masculinity, a feeling of being misunderstood and not being admired enough or allowed to create. With a shy and family-oriented Venus in Cancer, growing up China might’ve preferred having women as friends and been very close to his mother too. I don’t know the facts of his upbringing but his chart shows me someone that had to work hard to develop healthy relationships with other men his age, and especially to feel loved and admired by his father. These are all symptoms of a SN in Cancer / NN in Capricorn life-path, denoting a person who eventually becomes the respectable and admirable father that they wished they had while growing up. So China was brought into this reality in order to work (NN in Capricorn and Sun in Virgo) and to create (Moon in Leo) in order to heal (Chiron in Aries) and to express his skills by paying careful attention to details (Mercury in Virgo).

He is a prolific author because his Saturn is in the sign of communication, reading, writing and learning: witty Gemini. Furthermore, he feels drawn to future topics and hence sci-fi, because he has a Pluto conjunct Uranus pairing in intelligent Libra. This means that he is attracted to space, the future and to wacky ideas, because he is himself a ‘walking & talking’ revolution. From what I can remember he is charming and quite funny in public conversations which I attribute to his Jupiter in Sagittarius, a domicile position which grants him a lot of good luck, especially in terms of creative and imaginative ideas, as his Jupiter (a point of growth) is natally conjunct dreamy Neptune.

Not only that but China has a Lilith placement in Scorpio, which could get quite dark, making him both irrevocably attracted to mysterious, sexy and cruel women or at least to topics which are taboo and involve life or death scenarios. It seems like I got him quite figured out but not really, since I am surprised to see a lack of Aquarius energy in his chart. I am maybe thinking that his Ascendant is in Aquarius, which would make him look attractive in an unconventional way and it would put his Moon in Leo in the communicative 7th house and his Saturn in Gemini in the 4th house, while his strong Libra duo of Pluto and Uranus would then land in his 9th houses the place of travel and the higher mind, which would be perfect for a sci-fi writer.

But this is only speculation. I do need to mention that in parts, his writing does become quite clunky and confused and often I need to re-read a couple of phrases to understand what he is trying to get his characters to convey. He often has a lot of dialogues when I would’ve also preferred a carefully crafted balance of descriptions and dialogues. But overall his ideas are truly something that linger with you. For example, I’ll never forget the interspecies sex scene with which Perdido Street Station begins or the realization I had that perhaps the City and the City offers an interesting interpretation to that weird sensation we have that some places are haunted: if we are to take the two-city theory to heart, we are not haunted by specters but by people who lead lives superimposed upon ours and which our eyes have trained to ignore each day. Huh…

In a global society in which we are becoming increasingly more tuned out of observing the everyday environment as we become more plugged into our gadgets and interests, this realization sent a chilling sensation down my spine. And this is exactly why during this Virgo season, I would recommend giving China Mieville’s prose a try. Let me know what you discover!

_{My sandals and watermelon smoothie match the cover of China’s book, the City & the City}

With universal love,

Lexi

_{Virgo by Salvador Dali, 1969}

From the 23rd of August until the 15th of September 2023, swift planet Mercury will retrograde in the sign of pragmatic Virgo, travelling from Virgo 21’51 degrees to Virgo 8’00 degrees (8 being the esoteric number of power and financial wealth). Needless to say, starting the ‘going back to school’ season with a Mercury retrograde is not ideal since most of the administrative things that will need to be efficiently dealt with, will take up more time than expected, will require more of our attention, focus and effort. However by the end of the retrograde something important will have been cleared up in our lives and following some random expenses brought about by the Venus retrograde which will overlap with this Mercury retrograde, well those expenses will be reorganized and finally dealt with. Financial reconstitution is the main theme of this retrograde and bringing order back into the emotional chaos of the summer is its main goal.

A retrograde brings a confusing energy with it, and it often creates a phenomenon called ‘brain fog’. On a pragmatic level, symptoms of its manifestations might include mixing up delivery addresses, forgetting the passwords that you use daily, making invoice mistakes, losing your keys, dropping your phone or laptop to the ground, messing up spreadsheets and double-booking meetings and events. On a psychological level, retrogrades bring with them the energy of feeling ‘completely out of it’ or as if you just ‘can’t be bothered with it’. This is why a retrograde is a perfect time for a detox, a clean up or a holiday, since you’ll be moving with the energy of release rather than pushing hard to build new things on quick-sand.

Virgo is the energy of the Divine feminine, as she represents the 6th sign of the zodiac and this is the numerological vibration of Venus and beauty in all its manifestations here on Earth. Virgo is a also the flexible Earth sign of the zodiac, the pure, hard-worker who appreciates stability, loyalty and ‘savoir faire’ (or skilled competence). If you struggled to get into some healthy eating habits, if you neglected your self-care routine, if you fell ill and couldn’t work, then the period around the New Moon in Virgo is your ‘health = wealth’ reset time. We need Virgoan analytical magic to parse through the complicated emotions that this Venus in Leo has stirred in us all. The problem is that much as love and beauty tends to be muted during a Venus retrograde, so is logic and order absent during a Mercury retrograde. Without logic and love, or rather with these energies ‘on hold’ for a while, then what are we?

The answer to this is that we are adequately equipped to work on the past and deal with those things that have been haunting us. Reflecting on our relationships with people from the past and with the past itself, reconsidering some things we overlooked when the planets were direct, reviving a beauty routine, clearing up some old objects, catching up with childhood friends or getting closure from an ex are all favorable during this 3 week period. We might have decided on something as Venus was retrograding by herself, only to reconsider our decision as Mercury begins its retrograde. This is why I feel that celebrity couples who broke up during this Venus retro will potentially shock us with news of a surprise reconciliation or some ‘dirty laundry’ being washed in public during the Mercury retrograde.

The good news is that the period of this Mercury retrograde will actually wrap up the Venus retrograde which will officially end on the 3rd of September. Furthermore, during Mercury’s backward spin we will also have a Full Moon in Pisces conjunct Saturn and Neptune on the 31st of August and a New Moon in Virgo on the 15th of September – the day we will collectively be released from the retrogrades of these personal planets (woo hoo! mark that date and chill the champagne). However, we will remain knee-deep in outer-planetary retrogrades as Pluto, Saturn and Neptune are all retrograde and on the 29th of August, Uranus will join them too. So, as the outer planets all line up in their retrograde positions, all personal planets line up in their direct modes, during this magical Mercury retro. This means that we will gradually begin to feel more personal power, as external events will become slightly more difficult to deal with. The Autumn and Winter of 2023 should be interesting times, especially as Pluto in Capricorn will be reaching peak corruption and the 1% will continue to live out their ‘honeymoon period’ on borrowed time.

A gradual worsening of the economy (Saturn), ongoing environmental surprises (Uranus), and the rise in the use of psychedelics, medication and other forms of escapism (Neptune) are ushering in some sudden and powerful changes in society in the year 2024 (a year which begins strongly Uranian, as Uranus goes direct during Aquarius season on the 27th of January and Pluto re-enters Aquarius on the 20th of January). But I feel I am looking too far ahead and I run the risk of confusing you with too much information all at once. Better boundaries with the kind of information you receive during this Mercury retrograde will be an important skill to acquire.

To sum up, Virgo likes to clean house and this is exactly what this Mercury retro will do for us: help us move away from bad romances, remove toxicity that exists in our body due to relationship stress, help us get grounded and look at things with more common sense than ever. We will post-it our walls, streamline our wardrobes to make them more echo friendly, think of ways to save up and manage our money better, refresh our food intake, and think deeply about how can we be of service to the world, when faced with so much destruction (or the decay of the crumbling Pluto in Capricorn environment). And if you can, please deal with any frustrations by being outdoors and close to nature, or ideally take a step back from work and focus on some emotional, internal clean up, as you get some rest. In the Pluto in Cap era we have been all over-worked and underpaid. Therefore, if you feel some strong procrastination tendencies, don’t worry; you are simply beginning to align with the energies of the Pluto in Aqua imaginative environment, in which work will begin to change its meaning and form, and social causes will abound.

With universal love,

Lexi

_{Movie still of Greta Gerwig in Frances Ha taken from: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/frances-ha-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness}

What do Charles Bukowski, Greta Gerwig and Arnold Schwarzenegger have in common? Aside from unpronounceable family names, they are all born with Leo Suns. I want to use the space of this article to dive as much as I can into the things that bring them together and also set them apart as the Leonic artists that they are. Of course, I’m only able to ‘gently’ touch upon some of the surface-level aspects in their birth-charts since it might take me the span of a whole book to do a deep astrological comparison, so keep this aspect in mind as you read the analyses below. I first need to mention the very awesome fact that the people I selected for this article are part of 3 different generations: Pluto in Cancer (Bukowski), Pluto in Leo (Schwarzenegger) and Pluto in Libra (Gerwig). This aspect shows that they have very different values and unconscious needs and that they lived within a set of circumstances that made their success possible.

Now the reasons I selected these three Leos is purely personal and selfish: Greta blew up in the media with her latest movie ‘Barbie’ which I really enjoyed seeing but also made me wax nostalgically about her earlier work in fringe movies like ‘Frances Ha’ (one of my favourites). Arnold was recently featured on Netflix as part of a documentary about his legacy. I’ve always had a soft spot towards him after seeing Terminator for the first time when I was about 5 years old (the movie shocked me so much that I recounted the synopsis to anyone who would care to pay me attention). The documentary on Netflix about Arnold’s life as a body-builder, actor and politician revived these memories for me, so I felt compelled to write about his chart.

On the other hand, Charles Bukowski was someone whose literary work I heard of in high-school when I was listening to rock music and read articles with my favorite musicians who would often cite his work or his name at least (nod to Paul Banks from Interpol); but much like Henry Miller, whose work he was often compared to, I didn’t find it interesting enough at the time to read his work (I was more of a Thomas Hardy and Virginia Wolf afficionado back in high school). Last week, as I was browsing through a bookstore in Bucharest, I found his book “The Most Beautiful Woman in Town and Other Stories” and decided it was time to become Bukowski-ed 🙂 So as I’m writing this, his novel rests on my night-stand and I am adequately entertained, shocked and disgusted to sleep, by his feral adventures.

Charles Bukowski (born on August 16th 1920 in Andernach, Germany) is a Leo Sun in the 5th house (conjunct Jupiter, Neptune and Mercury), a Virgo Moon in the 6th house (loosely conjunct Saturn and Venus), and a Taurus Ascendant conjunct his South Node. His destiny points are a South Node in Taurus in the 1st house (the house of the Self) and a Scorpio North Node in the 7th house (conjunct Mars!). The first thing that stands out from his chart is that most of his planetary placements are ‘underground’ or placed below the Ascendant/Descendant line that crosses a chart in half. This is the mark of a true introvert and someone who is meant to live their existence in this incarnation from ‘the inside out’. Another thing that impressed me is that Bukowski is a Moon conjunct Saturn in the purest sign of the zodiac, the Virgo Maiden; not only that but his Venus is also conjunct Saturn. Just the first placement would be difficult for someone’s love life and self-esteem but having Saturn grip both his Venus (pleasure, love, beauty) and Moon (emotions, safety, unconscious) is truly astounding and very difficult to live with. I don’t blame him for turning to alcohol and I certainly understand his need to write about what he was experiencing, because none of these placements is for the light-hearted. When Saturn touches upon someone’s Moon and Venus it gives the native both a deep desire and yearning to be loved but it also delays and prolongs the process of finding a partner that would reciprocate in kind.

_{Image of the birth-chart of Charles Bukowski taken from https://www.astro-seek.com/birth-chart/charles-bukowski-horoscope}

The person is deeply spiritualized through personal, romantic rejections, emotional pain, social awkwardness and communicative misunderstandings in love. The native usually has to deal with low-quality people, who are selfish and mean, people who mostly use them and discard them, people who are old, tired of life and sick. I know this energy intimately since I too was born with a Moon conjunct Saturn, a Mars in the 7th house and a Sun in the 5th house, just like Bukowski. So these placements combined offer the native long periods of emotional deprivation or needing to be stoic (Moon conjunct Saturn) as most of the people you tend to naturally attract (Sun in the 5th) offer your karmic lessons, tend to treat you with aggression or use you for sex (Mars in the 7th). His Mars square the Sun also shows a propensity towards fighting with other men to prove his masculinity, but it can also give him a high sex drive which he needs to learn to control. His Chiron in Aries in the 12th house shows a deep wounding of the Ego that may never be healed, and I feel that it is this wounding that makes his writing something more than just outright pornography. And indeed, his literary works portray someone of such promise and spiritual anointment (Sun conjunct lucky Jupiter and in the blessed 5th house) who chooses to live like a loser, a nobody, an all-American reject (Chiron in Aries in the 12th house in tandem with his self-deprecating Moon conjunct Saturn inner landscape). Reading him is like reading the gospel of everyday fuckery: his prose oozes with this energy, of flesh and fucking that yearns to be saved and spiritualized in some way, of the grace of daily dramas and the cruelty of relating. I remember that at some point in my life I reached the conclusion that everything in the environment either wants to ‘fuck me or kill me’ and all I had back then, was a reliance upon the Divine to show me a way out of this daily gutter. And I feel that Bukowski might have thought this too at some point, even if his cocky Leo Sun conjunct Jupiter might have tempted him to say ‘but it is I who does the fucking too’. He died at the age of 73 just as Pluto in Scorpio was preparing to leave (Sidenote: can you imagine living up until your 70s after a lifetime of drinking, smoking and a poor diet? He was a magician!).

Moving on to a more light-hearted Leo energy, let’s talk about Greta Gerwig! She was born on August 4th 1983 in Sacramento, California (age 39 years), but unfortunately I couldn’t find any information regarding her time of birth. So her analysis will be devoid of house placements or an Ascendant. We know at least that she is a Sun in Leo with a Gemini Moon (conjunct the North Node and Chiron), her Mars is in Cancer and her Venus is in Virgo (conjunct Mercury) and her destiny points are a North Node in Gemini versus a South Node in Sagittarius (conjunct Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune). She has a stellium in her chart which is a very special marker showing how an individual’s life can change dramatically over-night after years of waiting. This is also the marker of a highly intelligent person who prefers her alone time, and it denotes someone who invents things and creates beautiful things to share with the collective, in this precious alone time. A healthy & functioning stellium person rarely gets bored in their solitude.

_{Image of the birth-chart of Greta Gerwig taken from https://www.astro-seek.com/birth-chart/greta-gerwig-horoscope}

I noticed as well that Greta has chosen to settle down with director Noah Baumbach, who directed her in Frances Ha. Noah for his part, is a Virgo Sun and Greta’s Venus is in the sign of Virgo, which tells me clearly that she is very much in love with him. Usually when we meet a person whose Sun touches upon our Venus we tend to instantly feel a sense of attraction and affection towards them. Another example: my Venus is in Aquarius and I was married to an Aquarius Sun man (especially since my Juno placement – the asteroid which usually indicates marriage and the type of spouse a person is – is also in Aquarius). I also like the fact that Greta seems to have gone public with their relationship and started having children with him, after she established herself as a director, following the success of ‘Lady bird’ and ‘Little Women’ and now with this summer’s hit ‘Barbie’.

Greta’s move from actor to director is a very Leonic thing to do, and it is also aligned with her nodal points. She moved from starring in artsy and niche movies in which her performances were applauded for their authenticity (Sagittarius) into directorial features which are more popular, mass-consumed, light-hearted and brimming with witty dialogues (Gemini). I’m sure that now that she has children, her next feature might build on the playful world we saw in Barbie, or focus on children’s adventures in some capacity, since she has a lot of Mercurian energy in her chart (her North Node in Gemini, her Venus and Mercury in Virgo) which usually leads to rather cartoony creations. Leos in general are very good at drawing inspiration in their art from their direct, lived and personal experiences, so I’m sure that Greta is no exception. I really like the direction her career has taken and I’m rooting for her, even if I still go back and rewatch her indie movies.

Now, you could say I saved the most famous Leo for last. Arnold Schwarzenegger was born July 30th 1947 in Thal, Austria (age 76 years) and he is a proud Leo Sun in the 6th house (conjunct Saturn and Pluto), with a Cancer Ascendant (conjunct Mercury & Venus) and a Moon in Capricorn in the 6th house (conjunct Lilith). His destiny points are a his North Node in Taurus in the 11th house versus his South Node in Scorpio in the 5th house (conjunct Jupiter and Chiron). I can already notice a very strong pattern among men who become rich and famous in the entertainment industry and this pattern is tied into their natal Moon in Capricorn placement. Case in point: Johnny Depp has it, Brad Pitt has it, Pedro Pascal has it and the list goes on. A Moon in Capricorn is a stoic placement that doesn’t deal with mushy sentimentality (unless the native had a couple of drinks). It is a traditionally masculine energy in the softest placement of someone’s chart (the Moon shows our emotions, deep desires, capacity to nourish ourselves and others and how we relax). With this Saturnian energy, usually we are dealing here with a person who can easily detach from their emotions and can exercise a lot of emotional control. They mostly pour their hearts into their work and craft, to which they feel more emotionality attached to, rather than to their loved ones.

In all honesty, a native with a Moon in Capricorn in spite of being quite loyal and responsible, can also be someone who is quite a lousy lover, a distant father and often a cruel competitor, because the native represses so much of their emotionality. Feeling like a failure is the harshest thing this lunar placement can experience and they often go through difficult separations, losses and challenges which are meant to strengthen their determination and resolve to persevere no matter what; the thing is they will most likely chose to persevere at work and in making money and not so much in saving their personal relationships from meltdowns. In Arnold’s case this energy is amplified somehow because his North Node is in stubborn Taurus, which channels all its strength to achieve wealth, financial stability and material success. In order to attain that, the native must overcome their inner darkness, obsessive nature and lewd sexual behaviour (South Node in Scorpio); the native needs to heal to attain stability and stop reproducing chaos. So I’m sure Arnold is hiding a lot of things which will probably shock us, if they reached daylight.

_{Image of the birth-chart of Arnold Schwarzenegger taken from https://www.astro-seek.com/birth-chart/arnold-schwarzenegger-horoscope}

However, Arnold was given a natal Moon in Capricorn placement in the 6th house, so that through his work in the service of others, a focus on health and routinized activities (such as weightlifting), he may learn to learn to control his temper (South Node in Scorpio) in order to attain financial success (North Node in Taurus). And this financial success is directly tied into his sense of self-worth since we see a very powerful Saturn placement in his 2nd house (the area in our charts that governs over the body, money and esteem) which also happens to be conjunct his Sun (identity) and Pluto (achieving power through transformation). Having a Sun conjunct Pluto, makes one a powerhouse of pleasure and intensity; a true daredevil with a gangsta side. But having Saturn conjunct the Sun, takes away from that power and karmically binds one into a feeling of always needing to prove yourself to others and to strive to accept who you are. Arnold has both!

So for him, the way in which he could make money and feel worthy of love and attention, was by working on his body and produce a powerful transformation. He was given the gift of having Venus in the 1st house which shows a person who easily attracts love, compliments, admiration and the support of others, especially of women. However a Venus in the 1st has the downside of denoting someone in love with themselves to the detriment of other people. Having Mercury on the Ascendant makes Arnold a more gregarious individual than his shy Cancerian energy would naturally make him be. We see here somebody who used his mind, his words and his capacity to attract love and compliments in order to build a name for himself. It might not be the truth, but I 100% believe that marrying Maria Schriever was not necessarily a move out of love, but a strategic move to get him to has a step in the world of American politics, seeing as he had his cultural foreignness as an Austrian, standing between him and even greater success. Maria is also a pat-life soulmate of his, who was meant to help him move towards his destiny but then could not accompany him fully along the way (her Sun in Scorpio touches upon his South Node and Jupiter in Scorpio; a point of growth by letting people go). Through this powerful alliance and once again, Arnold transformed his work role (Pluto in the 2nd house) and attained more wealth, prestige and an enduring image (North Node in Taurus).

In conclusion, I think that what unites these three Leonic lives is how focused they are on strength: in Arnold’s case it is obvious physical strength turned into entertaining and political strength; in Greta’s case is the strength of humor & that kind of gendered strength required to move from being an actress to becoming a successful director and a mama, embodying the epitome for ‘having it all’; in Bukowski’s case is the strength to keep writing and to endure life, to resist his own self-destructive behaviors but also to exist within a society that rejected him and tried to fit him into a mold he persistently rejected. And that requires balls.

With universal love,

Lexi