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:
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 đ
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
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.
Explore Mercury with the help of this video, created to celebrate NASA’s Messenger probe
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.
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 đ 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.
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.
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 76Â 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.
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.
In a weird blow to the collective, we recently found out that not only did Jane Birkin pass away on the 16th of July, but a mere 10 days after, on the 26th of July, Sinead O’Connor departed as well. When I heard such sad news, I immediately thought of ‘What is going on here?’ since I was aware that one thing these wonderful artists had in astrological common was the fact that they were Sagittarius Suns. Since the Spring of 2023, Sagittarius energy has been under pressure due to the squares received from Uranus conjunct Jupiter in Taurus and Saturn conjunct Neptune in Pisces – two energies which don’t blend well with Jupiterian optimism and exuberance. However, having squares to one’s natal Sun isn’t enough to predict or estimate the death of a celebrity, also because squares indicate a productive sense of frustration, they bring in dynamic changes and course corrections. However, it’s notoriously difficult to predict how an individual’s free will is going to use the astrological energy available to them; and often circumstances take a fated quality and end up escaping individual control. In such cases, astrologers need to look at the influence of the outer planets rather than the transits of the personal planets.
One thing which stands out is the fact that Sinead was undergoing her second Saturn return at the time of her death. The current transits of Saturn and Neptune in Pisces were crossing over her natal Saturn in Pisces in the 3rd house (the house of the local neighborhood & communication) and conjunct the asteroid Lilith (The Wild Feminine) and Chiron (the Wounded Healer). Not only that but Sinead’s Saturn is nataly placed in opposition to her Pluto (death and transformation) and in Virgo (the sign of health) and in the 9th house, conjunct Uranus (the energy of shock and sudden awareness). So, in spite of the fact that it’s too early to tell – because the investigation into her mysterious death is ongoing – I do feel like she might’ve been pressured (Saturn) by someone in her neighborhood (3rd house) of international origins (the 9th house). Let’s look more closely into her chart and see what else she might have in common with the late Jane Birkin.
Image of the birth-chart of Sinead O’Connor taken from https://www.astro-seek.com/birth-chart/sinead-o-connor-horoscope
SinĂŠad OâConnor was born on December 8th, 1966 in Dublin Ireland; she was 56 years old at the time of her death). Her Sun was in Sagittarius in the 1st house (conjunct Venus & her Ascendant) while her Moon was in Libra in the 10th house (loosely conjunct Mars). We see here the markers of a passionate persona who does not hold back when she needs to speak her truth. In addition, her North Node was in Taurus in the 5th house while her South Node was in Scorpio in the 11th house (conjunct Neptune and Mercury). This is the placement of an individual struggling with their self-worth and needing to overcome a lot of darkness in their lives (I briefly talked about this placement when I examined Pamela Anderson’s chart).
After 18th months of having her nodal return – since the nodes of the Moon travelled through the signs of Taurus and Scorpio from 19th January 2022 up until the 18th of July – Sinead also embarked on her second Saturn return (as the planet of karma moved into Pisces in March of this year). Those are some heavy karmic energies to deal with and I find it heart-breaking that she relocated to London during her nodal return in order to ‘feel less lonely’ only to find herself during a Saturn return, which mentally is a difficult time when one feels alone, pressured by external circumstances and criticized by people. Sinead had to find a way to channel Saturnian density into some form of meaningful work. It looked as if Sinead was indeed living up to the Saturnian pressure as she was rumored to have been working on another album and planning new tour dates, but I believe no one expected the ‘mother of all unexpected events’ to reach her doorstep, and still so early in her life.
For an artist like Sinead, having a South Node in Scorpio makes one comfortable with sudden and traumatic events that one simple must endure. A person with such a heavy karma undergoes a lot of loss, abuse and darkness as they are growing up. Oout of these experiences, the individual needs to create stability, calm, peace of mind and a healing form of art that brings the light into their soul again. And with Saturn in the spiritual and emotional sign of Pisces, soul healing was her duty in this lifetime. This Piscean energy also gave her that gorgeous voice and lyrical sensitivity. Sinead’s personal history is as sad as it gets, involving growing up with a violent mother, attending the Magdalene laundries and suffering deprivation and abuse, speaking out against the Catholic church and receiving backlash for that (Saturn in the 3rd house makes one receive their heaviest karma through their words and communications) but through it all she persevered: she raised 4 children, changed religions, fell in and out of love, was politically outspoken and kept performing. My favorite period of her career was her collaboration with Massive Attack on the album 100th Window, which to my mind is the most haunting presence she had in music.
Image of the birth-chart of Jane Birkin taken from https://www.astro-seek.com/birth-chart/jane-birkin-horoscope
I guess there isn’t much of a term of comparison, although Jane Birkin (born on December 14th 1946 in Marylebone, London, UK; aged 76 years old at time of death) had her Sun in the sign of Sagittarius in the 7th house (conjunct Mars, Lilith, Mercury and her South Node), her Moon was in Virgo in the 5th house and her Ascendant in Gemini (conjunct Uranus retrograde and her North Node). We see here someone with an opposite Ascendant to what Sinead had (Geminian rather than Sagittarian). In addition Jane had her Sun in the relational and romantic 7th house, while Sinead had it in the charismatic and individualistic, 1st house. So even if they are born under the same emotionally expressive Sagittarius energy, the areas of life and the manner in which both women play out these energies are contradictorily different.
Jane’s Venus placement was in Scorpio and conjunct Jupiter, the Great Benefic and in the service-prone 6th house, while her Mars placement was in Sagittarius conjunct that 7th house Jupiterian stellium mentioned above. These two, latter, personal placements of her Venus and Mars denote someone who was not only meant to achieve fame in her lifetime but also lived with, loved and gave birth to famous people (nod to Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon). Her Venus conjunct Jupiter energy is also the culprit behind the reason why Jane ended up being associated with one of the most expensive luxury goods, the famous Birkin bag created by Hermès and inspired by her image, and currently retailing at up to $300,000!
With her North Node in Gemini and South Node in Sagittarius, Jane was born to learn to take life less seriously, to adopt a light-hearted approach to her personal relationships and to communicate as much as she can. We see here gradually moving from her performative role in her youth, as a model and singer, and a muse to her famous partner, Serge Gainsbourg, to a more acting oriented career. I also see here someone who struggled with her emotions, feeling safe or rooted into a specific space and even might have had to put in a lot of effort into building her blended family life, since her karma, represented by Saturn is in the 4th house conjunct Pluto retrograde and in Leo. I’ sure that while she might’ve been a heavy-handed and rather intimidating mother with such a placement, she also provided her many children a sense of powerful safety, especially since with her Moon in the 5th house this is a woman who is emotionally attached to her children and someone in love with performing and the world of arts.
It’s interesting that Jane died this summer, right before the beginning of Leo season, as Venus was in Leo and preparing to begin her retrograde movement and as Lilith, the Wild Feminine Archetype and the bringer of ruin, was transiting through the sign of Leo. This summer must’ve felt heavy on Jane’s soul with so many transits going back and forth over her natal Saturn and Pluto and in the most private place of the zodiac, the 4th house. As a consequence of this energy, we are informed that Jane died at home, after a stroke which was a symptom which she had suffered from in the past. I feel like Jane left behind a rather quirky and chaotic body of work, but most importantly she left behind a legacy of freedom. From being censored for her work with Serge early in her career to her animal activism later on in life, she held a candle high for unbridled artistic & romantic expression; a mentality which I can see that her courageous & sensitive Cancer Sun daughter, Charlotte took to extremes in her career (nod to her continuous collaboration with Lars von Trier).
But this post is about Jane and Sinead, not anyone else that they loved or brought into this world. I guess that on a deeper level this post is about what we all collectively gained from their legacy; if I were to sum it up in a sentence that precious thing would be: being given permission to speak as women, live freely & take risks in life and in art, with wanton abandon.
I am a little bit obsessed. Ever since the nodes of the Moon switched signs, and shifted from the Scorpio/Taurus astrological axis to the Aries/Libra one on the 18th of July, I randomly started listening to Marylin Manson and Nine Inch Nails and kept to it on a daily basis (as I’m writing this, Coma White keeps playing in my mind, for example). It’s such a strange break in my habits, and I was wondering what pulled me in so suddenly to the dark rock figures of the 90s? Naturally, I had a look into Marylin Manson’s & Trent Reznor’s charts, and the idea for this post was created since the meaning behind this weird & spontaneous revival of interest started unraveling.
You see, much like myself in this period, Marylin Manson is having his nodal return, since I noticed that he was born with a North Node in Aries in the 8th house (and conjunct Chiron, the Wounded Healer and Saturn, the Lord of Karma sneakily placed in his 9th house). On the other hand, I have my North Node in Aries in the 6th house and conjunct Jupiter. Marylin Manson also has his Venus in Pisces, while my Sun and Mercury are in Pisces and these placements are currently being karmically linked by Saturn in the sign of Pisces, the Neptunian master of all things musical, emotional and spiritual. So the dark music that Marylin Manson creates with all that Martian intensity in the fiercest house of the zodiac (the 8th, ruled by Scorpio) makes me strangely happy in this period. Maybe happy is not the best word; his music makes me feel as if I just finished arguing with somebody and there is that relief that washes over me that finally the truth, no matter how brutal, has been conveyed.
Psychologically, Marilyn Manson’s music is facilitating in me a sort of healing regression to my past, bizarrely reminding me of my puberty, when as an anxious teen I had my eyes glued to MTV and can still remember how the videos for ‘The Nobodies‘, ‘The Beautiful People‘, and ‘Disposable Teens‘ terrorized me and I had to actively avoid them in order to sleep well at night. It was only during the ‘Dope Show‘ era that I could spend time actually looking at a Marylin Manson video but still the songs didn’t hook me in, I just found it scary and uncomfortable to watch. Aries is about identity, so this nostalgic dive into the past can help me understand better what messages I was exposed to while growing up.
Segway to my late 30s and I find the songs, aesthetic and lyrics of that dark rock era to be strangely comforting and pertinent to a lot of the social problems increasingly encroaching around me. I live in a loud neighborhood, where people constantly fight and shout at each other, construction workers abound and everything feels dusty and industrial. I also am feeling highly sensitive in this period and rather isolated, as Neptune & Saturn are conjunct my already Neptunian-afflicted Sun. So I think I can understand where Marylin Manson’s music is coming from now. It also helps that hearing someone scream in a rock song, takes the pressure out of my own capacity to get angry, because I can simply project it onto the song and sublimate my real-life emotional experience. I can’t pretend I feel attracted to either him or Trent Reznor, but it’s their music, the aesthetic and the lyrics that I kind of find comfortable enough to psychologically ‘live in’ at the moment, as the nodal return is stirring up some anger inside of me, some romantic longing, some regret, and fears about the future.
The hopeless desolation of this music, the biting social critiques, the fury of being seen and judged as an outcast, the extremity of feelings – I’m completely on board with that, while simultaneously remaining curious to see how long this phase with last (the nodal return is taking place across 18 months, but I doubt I can sustain the interest for that long). It’s interesting to see how the name that Marylin Manson chose for his shock-rock alter-ego stems from the metaphorization of his nodal placements, as he named the band after someone beautiful (Marylin Monroe, a representative of Venus) and someone violent (Charles Manson, a representative of Mars). The nodal axis of Libra and Aries deal with exactly these themes of peace & war, beauty & violence, masculinity & femininity, personal anger & social justice. I also find it fascinating that I was thinking of both Marylin Manson and Trent Reznor in this period, not knowing that Trent actually helped Marylin Manson in their debut & they actual had some sort of years-long, twisted, bromance that frequently ended up in feuds and reconciliations. This chaotic & karmic energy between them, emerges so clearly when we put their charts in synastry, and as always Venus and Saturn are heavily involved.
Marylin Manson, by his actual name Brian Hugh Warner (born January 5, 1969 in Canton, Ohio; 54 years old) is a Sun in Capricorn in the 5th house (conjunct his Part of Fortune) and a Moon in Leo in the 12th house conjunct his Leo Ascendant. After seeing this, it’s not surprising to me that he is such good friends with Johnny Depp since Johnny has a Moon in Capricorn and a Leo Ascendant too. Coming back to Brian’s chart, we see here a lot of Ego markers in tandem with a Light & Shadow play since he has strong Leo placements (light) in combination with Scorpio and Capricorn (dark). His Mars is in Scorpio (conjunct Neptune) and his Venus in Pisces, so we can witness here some pretty powerful romantic and emotional energies especially since these Watery energies are placed in his communicative 3rd house, private 4th house and relational 7th house.
The interesting thing is that Brian is getting ready for his second Saturn return which will begin for him from 2025 until 2027 and it will take place in his 9th house (the house of freedom, adventures and good luck) and in the pioneering sign of Aries and conjunct his North Node in Aries tied in to Chiron in the sign of Pisces. With both Saturn on his North Node and Venus conjunct Chiron, I can see why he might associate love with pain and mix in romance with cruelty. The final stretch of Pluto retrograde in his sign is also urging him to change right before his karmic retribution comes in, as Saturn will return. His buddy, Johnny Depp had a very public Saturn return in Aquarius in the courtroom, and I wonder if we will see Marylin in a similar position two years from now, as he is having to deal with an impressive number of abuse allegations.
Trent Reznor’s big three placements are: his Sun in Taurus in the 4th house (conjunct Mercury), his Capricorn Ascendant (conjunct Lilith) and his Moon in Sagittarius in the 12th house (conjunct the South Node in the 11th house). His Mars is in Virgo and Venus in Gemini, while the nodal axis is connected to the signs of Sagittarius and Gemini, with a really crowded North Node placement in Gemini in his 5th house involving conjunctions to Jupiter, Venus and the Part of Fortune. That’s fascinating to me because I recently saw an interview with him in which Trent mentioned how he played most instruments in his band at the beginning, and it spoke volumes to his 5th house Sun placement since the 5th house is the zodiac house of skill and talent (naturally ruled by Leo). He also mentions in the interview that he got a reputation of being ‘a control freak’ or an ‘ego maniac’ which speaks volume to how others perceive his Capricorn Ascendant trine Sun in Taurus blended energies. These two signs are the most stabilizing influences in the zodiac, and to create order and stability one has to exercise control over themselves and their surroundings.
The theme of control can be seen in Brian’s chart as well, since Trent’s Ascendant mirrors Brian’s Sun both in the security-obsessed sign of Capricorn, the sign of limits, effort and karma. Not only that but Trent is actually going through his second Saturn return as we speak, since his Saturn is in the sign of Pisces and in the 2nd house conjunct Chiron, the Wounded Healer. In an interesting synastry aspect, we can also see that Marylin is also having the transit of Saturn over his natal Venus in Pisces. To be honest, I am surprised at how many astrological energies these two men have in common in their chart. We see in Trent’s Saturn placement some problems with his sense of self-worth which could negatively reflect on his body, on the money he earns and the wealth he is able to create in life. He could make a lot but he might feel it is never enough, and judging by his materially-sensitive Taurus Sun and ambitious Capricorn Ascendant, the struggle for wealth & respect as an artist could have marked his whole life.
Looking into the backstory of how he created some of the NIN albums, it seems that this path towards self-love and making healthier decisions reached a pretty low point around the time Nine Inch Nails released the album ‘The Fragile’ in 1999, detailing he destruction of a man and Trent’s personal metaphor for his struggle with addiction. During that era, Pluto began its transit through the sign of Sagittarius in the year 1995 and it touched upon his natal Sagittarius Moon. Rather than analyzing his emotions, Trent did everything he could to avoid them which made him dive head first into addictive patterns at the root of which where emotional problems (Moon). By the time Pluto was ready to leave this sign, NIN released ‘With Teeth’ in 2005, an album covertly about recovery and re-empowerment. His self-worth and artistic struggles of that period stand as a testament of a Pluto’s transit capacity to break you and then re-make you.
Looking at the synastry points between the two men, I can see a pattern emerging. As Brian’s Sun in Capricorn (energy) touched upon Trent’s Ascendant (opportunity, direction), they took on this master and apprentice roles. Usually, having met someone who has the Ascendant in the same sign as your Sun, will make one attracted to look like the Ascendant person, so I guess that Marylin really enjoyed how Trent looked and the whole aesthetic of the Nine Inch Nails creative project, while having an Ascendant conjunct someone else’s Sun would make the Ascendant person obsessed with reaching the ambitious goals, prestige and charisma of the Sun-born placement so I think that on some subconscious level Trent did emulate a lot of Marylin Manson’s art after they met, it wasn’t all just Brian learning from him.
It’s also intriguing to notice how both men have Fire Moons, Brian having his in the sign of Leo and Trent in the sign of Sagittarius. Without this energy and with so much Earth governing their chart, both men would’ve been conformists; traditional types who would’ve respected hierarchies and allowed their lives to be confined by social norms, habits, codes of conduct and pragmatic achievements. But with these feisty lunar subconscious worlds, they both had a fire in their hearts to create, and to especially express anger in creative and powerful ways.
Anger is especially a big theme in Brian’s chart, since learning how to cope with it and integrate it as fuel for his creative work, rather than as violence against his partners is the key to his success in this lifetime. Unfortunately, anger is also one of the few emotions allowed in the construction of traditional forms of masculinity; it is a toxic character trait but one which many still associated with male privilege and dominion. It’s interesting to see that at the time when Pluto in Sagittarius was reshaping Trent’s body, finances and self-worth issues, Brian was building and then destroying his personal relationships. Following a short period of being married to the gorgeous Dita von Teese, he entered into a toxic relationships with the luminous Even Rachel Wood, but it has been speculated that both of these relationships failed due to infidelity, drug abuse and intimate partner abuse. Brian has a Pluto in Virgo in the 2nd house which is a marker of someone who may use money and material objects to control people, while his Mars in Scorpio in the 3rd house is also about verbal control or secrets texts messages and emails that could be created to solicit sex, to exert control and power or to keep things hidden; so I don’t doubt that there is some truth to the allegations.
A final word about their Moons – since the lunar placement matter a lot in the charts of artists – is that both men also have these lunar placements in the soft and imaginative 12th house of the zodiac, which tempers a little bit the strong passion, powerful anger and sense of entitlement they might feel, since a 12th house lunar placement gives one a penchant for suffering, a need for solitude, and a deep need to feel loved and held (this need could be so vast and deep that no human experience might be able to fulfill it, so the native turns to a higher power, like God and the angels…or in this case, the available demons). The 12th house is also a place of confinement (like a prison), privacy (secret bed pleasures) & altered states of consciousness (such as those induced by drugs or alcohol). And most of these landscapes of confinement, deep melancholy and mutated powerlessness figure prominently in the earlier and edgier songs and videos of both Nine Inch Nails and Marylin Manson. Those very images, that on a subconscious level at least, shaped my impressionable teen brain a couple of decades ago, especially because they seemed so obscene and forbidden.
If the music of Marylin Manson or Nine Inch Nails is something new to you, feel free to start here & here. Have a listen and let me know what you think (it’s certainly a different soundscape than what is popular today, in the ‘constant positivity’ era).
I know it’s Leo season and this post makes no sense as it is not about Leo energy, but I’ve been feeling quite nostalgic recently. Could be the combined energy of the Venus retrograde and the fact that the planet Pluto has been sitting this entire year, on top of my Immum Coeli (the seat of the soul, the root of an individual’s being) and in the 4th house, the most nostalgic house of the zodiac. Since the North Node entered Aries this past week, I shared on Instagram (@ms_bontemps) that I have been listening to a lot of 90s dark rock. I grew up glued to the television screen, watching American movies, MTV and Cartoon Network and absorbing like a sponge some pretty intense and charged up imagery.
If in other parts of the world, parents were applying the findings of psychological research which ascertained that children’s behavior’s were strongly influenced by what they saw on television (especially their mimicry of violent attitudes – see Bobo de clown experiments), in the post-communist Romanian landscape of the 90s, growing up with a colour Tv was a privilege and if we could, we all lavished in it. Most people couldn’t afford a television during Ceausescu’s times and even if they did, it mostly showcased black and white, scheduled propaganda. So because my parents thought that they were cool and progressive they did not consider it necessary to limit my screen time because they also believed it taught me English, a language I apparently needed to learn how to speak in order to seek my economic fortune elsewhere, once I was old enough to work and travel (which I did at some point and then returned home, as I became aware of my early conditioning & realized I like living in my own country).
In this context, I grew up watching most of the violent and sexually-charged things that were abundantly available in the dark ages of the Pluto in Scorpio era. This is why whenever I listen to Marylin Manson, Deftones, Bush or Nine Inch Nails or when I re-watch Terminator, the X Files, The Twilight Zone or Blade Runner, as disturbing as it may seem from a contemporary moral lens, I actually feel a fuzzy sense of nostalgia. Looking back, I see that we made a lot of progress in terms of how we protect children but at the same time we live in an increasingly surveilled and censored era which does impact the creativity one can exert in art, music and films.
Case in point, when was the last time you saw in the cinema a really good erotic thriller? I always think that as an adult if you want to consume such entertainment nothing beats the movies that were created between the years 1983 and 1995 (or the time-span of the Pluto in Scorpio era). And speaking of these movies, I was re-watching last night ‘Fatal Attraction’, which made me think of ‘Basic Instinct’ and suddenly I realized something interesting from an astrological point of view. Aside from the fact that both movies have reached cult status by now and both star Michael Douglas as the leading man (a truly bizarre casting choice), both movies are also lead by two awesome women who were born with Pisces Suns!
Sharon Stone who plays Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct and Glenn Close who plays Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction are both born in March but years apart. So I immediately thought, is there something in their charts that made them gravitate towards such roles? It is not surprising to me that they both reached public exposure during the Pluto in Scorpio, since Scorpio and Pisces are Water signs and as such they energetically support each other’s goals. So as Pluto was making a beautiful trine to both Sharon and Glenn’s Suns, they reached a public form of empowerment in their work by appearing in these movies in the years 1987 and 1992. One interesting fact that I wasn’t aware of until I started writing this article is that Sharon Stone lost custody of one of her sons after Basic Instinct appeared. The more you dive into this story the more you understand how unfairly she was treated, although karmically this can be explained by the strict energy of her Saturn in the 4th house placement (the house of privacy, nurturing and motherhood) conjunct her Moon (so affecting in a negative way her emotions and feminine receptivity). When unfair or cruel things happen to us that leave us often gobsmacked and in need of some logical explanations as to why we deserved that, then you can rest assured that karma and Saturn and Pluto are involved, and unfortunately Sharon has strong energies in her chart from both of these planets. She has even claimed in an interview that as she suffered a near fatal stroke in 2001, she was clinically dead for a couple of minutes and witnessed the afterlife.
Pluto deals with sexuality, intensity, violent passions and deep transformation. It also brings up themes of betrayal, control and murderous intentions. So Pluto shined its dark light and helped these actresses embody two of the most iconic roles of that era, being both laced with sexual intensity and murderous circumstances. But aside from the transit, was there something else in their natal charts that influenced this choice of roles? Let’s have a look at their charts and explore what else helped them embody the darker side of the dual, Pisces sign.
Sharon Stone’s was born on March 10, 1958 in Meadville, Pennsylvania. Her significant markers are her Sun in Pisces in the 7th house (conjunct Mercury and the asteroid Lilith, the Wild Feminine Archetype), her Moon in Sagittarius in the 4th house (loosely conjunct Saturn – I wrote about this placement of hers in a previous post, see here), and her Ascendant in Virgo (conjunct Pluto retrograde at 0 degrees!). Her destiny is marked by a powerful North Node in Scorpio in the 3rd house (conjunct Jupiter and Neptune) and a South Node in Taurus in the 9th house (conjunct her Part of Fortune). She actually went through a reverse nodal return in the years 2022 and 2023, which might have placed her in some destined and growth-related circumstances. This news-piece about her turning her home into an art studio really stuck with me, because we can see the influence of the Nodes at work in her life since Taurus energy rules over art and beauty, while Scorpio is about expressing emotions in a way that helps the soul transform. Therefore painting and making art is a perfect way to play with this Scorpio/Taurus nodal energy in her chart.
Glenn Close was born on March 19, 1947 in Greenwich, Connecticut and she is 76 years of age. Her big threes are her Sun in Pisces in the 8th house (conjunct Mars and Mercury retrograde), her Moon in Aquarius in the 7th house (conjunct Venus), and her Ascendant in Leo (conjunct Pluto and Saturn retrograde). Her destiny points revolve around a North Node in Gemini in the 11th house (conjunct Uranus) and a South Node in Sagittarius in the 5th house (conjunct the asteroid Lilith, the Wild Feminine Archetype). We can clearly see that Glenn’s destiny is to open people’s minds and to get them to think differently about art and femininity. She is doing this by mostly playing villains or gender-swapping characters with a fierce precision and commitment to her craft which I admire. for example she had some brilliant dialogues with John Malkovich when they played together in Dangerous Liaisons. It’s funny or rather fitting, because she shares a lunar placement with him, seeing as they both were born with an intelligent and provocative Moon in Aquarius, and Aquarius energy is all about witty discussions.
Coming back to her chart, the first thing that stands out to me is her Sun in the 8th house which offers Glenn a rather Scorpionic energy to her already emotional and imaginative Pisces identity. It could be why she is usually cast in the role of the villain like in ‘Fatal Attraction’ but also in the cartoony role of Cruella DeVil (which she played to perfection, because I can’t see any other person playing in this role *silent nod to Emma Stone, who tried*) or as the scheming Marquise de Merteuil from ‘Dangerous Liaisons’. In addition to this, Glenn is truly a force to reckon with since she has both Pluto and Saturn conjunct the most visible part of her chart, the Ascendant (her aura, her body, her presence and the opportunities she attracts towards her; so all of these are darkened by the energies of these two ‘malefics’). I think that in person, as on screen, Glenn can be quite intimidating and a little bit of a perfectionist who might’ve struggled with people’s perceptions of her – which I am sure where not that favorable (to put it mildly). Saturn and Pluto make people criticize you and teach you some harsh lessons through what you attract towards you, but Glenn seems to have developed so much fortitude and a healthy sense of humor in coping with these placements, which I attribute to her playful Leo Ascendant energy and her whimsy & intelligent Aquarius Moon.
She is an actress who received so many prizes and accolades in her career for her transformative acting and yet she never got an Oscar, which is the ultimate recognition as an experienced actress. She jokingly said she is ‘keeping the record up’ by being nominated for one 7 times already, but I can see that it is a karmic burden she is supposed to bear in her career since her capable and professional Midheaven in Taurus is unfortunately squared by her Saturn in Leo (and it is retrograde, which makes this energy even more dense and powerful). This placement is connected to slow rewards in work, a legacy that is built after overcoming many setbacks and frustrations, and also with the side-effect of not being the most popular with the public; nonetheless, I do believe she might receive an honorary Oscar for her entire career, since her South Node is in Sagittarius, the sign of competition, awards and growth and it could help unleash a big career blessing for her just when she least expects it.
Of course, in such an article I can only scratch the surface of the actual interpretation of the charts of these talented Piscean actresses. I was mostly interested in exploring why they received these roles and why these roles made them so well-known. As always, Pluto and Saturn have something to do with it but once we take a look at the position of the nodes of the Moon, the karmic South Node and dharmic North Node, it emerges quite clearly just how destined some things in our lives are and how in spite of our free-will the flow of life can lead us into situations that darken our perception before they bring on the light and adulation of many. If these actresses’ work is new to you, you can start here with Sharon Stone’s filmography and for Glenn Close please check out this list. Happy discoveries!
It’s the final day of Cancer season in 2023 and I thought I would create an ‘honorable mention’ looking into the birth-chart of the gorgeous Isabelle Adjani, a French actress who won 5 times the prestigious Cesar French Film Award and was nominated for an Oscar. She’s a fascinating person, not only due to her extra-ordinary beauty but also because of her strange personality, being known for her reclusiveness, vulnerability and strange interview comments.
Isabelle’s filmography includes some of the most intense performances I saw from a female lead and I always wondered whether I would be able to pick up from her chart what makes her gravitate towards these unusual cinematic performances. Her beauty alone would make her a prime contender for the role of a romantic heroine, but even when she chooses to play such roles (like in Queen Margot) the stories of her characters are ultimately tinged with blood, gore and despair. This week she re-appeared in the media due to her being accused of fraud by an ex-employee.
Isabelle’s big three astrological markers are her Sun in Cancer in the 4th house (conjunct Mars and Uranus), her Ascendant in Aries and her Moon in Libra in the 6th house (conjunct Neptune). She has a balanced mix of Air, Water and Fire in her chart, however these energies also portray a person who grew up in an environment in which the parents were in conflict and which might have taught her to internalize a set of contradictory values (this is a typical marker of a person born with a Sun square Moon aspect). We see here a person who is governed by the changeable and mysterious nature of the Moon, since she is not only a Cancerian but her Sun is also placed in the house naturally ruled by Cancer and the Moon, the private 4th house. So it could be said that she is a double-Cancerian, which means that the qualities and defects of this maternal sign, tend to be amplified in her energy. Her Sun’s placement in the 4th house is an indicator of just how naturally comfortable she feels away from the public eye and indeed many have called her ‘reclusive’. The Sun shows what our life revolves around, if you consider how the planets in our solar system revolve around the Sun, in much the same way the markers in a natal chart are also warmed and supported by the center of our focus in this lifetime, our identity (the Sun).
So for Isabelle, her life revolves around her home, her relationship to her family members, and I guess that she identifies strongly with her role as a mother. She is a person with a rich inner world and with some powerful emotions (Sun conjunct Mars). Emotions come over her in surprising ways and she is meant to learn and grow from her emotional reactivity (Mars conjunct Uranus). This is someone who can fly into fits of anger or passionate love and then as quickly she can detach and observe her reaction in order to extract wisdom from it and emotionally expand, especially if we look at her analytical Moon in Libra placement. I believe that this is why is such a good actress because she is able to feel things strongly but then she is also capable of detaching from this intimate intensity.
As a Cancerian she is natural born artist, with a phenomenal sensitivity and intuition. Indeed, this purity of method s obvious on screen, as you can almost touch her vulnerability, making her acting an almost palpable experience. However, there is a fury attached to this emotionality, a sense of mischievousness and cool control, which is given to her by her Uranus and Mars in Cancer placements. Her home life and private inner world is restless and electrifying with these placements flanking at the root of her being, the seat of the soul in astrology, the Immum Coeli. However, because her Ascendant is in brave and creative Aries, she is able to easily display the rich emotional content she has harvested inside, in those deep moments of reflection and analysis (due to her analytical Moon in Libra in the Virgoan and pragmatic 6th house). She acts from a deep and instinctive place and her characters seems pragmatic and visceral in their performances. She could deliver an over the top performance for sure, but her acting never seems inauthentic, and that is truly a gift. Isabelle calls her acting something akin to cellular memory retrieval (or ‘memoire cellulaire‘).
Movies stills of Isabelle Adjani from (top to bottom): Queen Margot (1994), Possession (1981) and The Story of Adele H. (1975)
Another interesting thing stands out of Isabelle’s chart: she has the so-called ‘mogul’ aspect of wealth & prestige in her chart, a powerful Jupiter conjunct Pluto in Leo in the 5th house. This aspect again underlines her destiny as an actress and performer and talks about experiencing a lot of joy and drawing her power from acting and performing, from showcasing her skills on stage, in front of other people. In addition, this is also a marker of a mother who really enjoyed her role of bringing children into the world and raising them, but she might’ve also been too intense, jealous and intimidating in her children’s eyes.
The 5th house rules also over short-term romances and great passions, so with this hot Jupiter (joy, expansion, luck) conjunct Pluto (intensity, drama, sexuality) in the combative and exuberant sign of Leo, you can only imagine the type of consuming love-affairs she had in her personal life. As a public, we know mostly of her relationships to Bruno Nuyten, Daniel Day Lewis and Jean Michelle Jarre, relationships which unfortunately ended up in separations and from which Isabelle remained with two rather handsome boys. It is said that Daniel Day Lewis (an Aries Sun) broke the news to Isabelle that he was leaving her by means of a fax when she was 7 months pregnant with their son (wow!). Isabelle, seems to not have that much luck in love and her personal relationships, as beautiful and talented as she is. She lost her brother in 2010 & some say that she got secretly married to a mysterious man in 2022.
The reasons why I am bringing up these separations and her loss is because we can see that she has a lot of love-related karma, since her Saturn is placed in intense Scorpio and in the house of other people and marriage, the 7th house. The fraud accusations seem to tall in line with this Saturnian presence which shows that some of the toughest karma Isabelle had to endure in this lifetime is related to her lovers, family members and business associates. Again secret intimacy, delayed or non-existing marriage, broken contractual agreements and tax-related issues are some of the most Saturn in Scorpio themes one could experience. A Saturn in Scorpio tends to freeze emotions and gives one issues related to sexuality and sexual pleasure. It puts one face to face with some painful emotional decisions and it can make a person either abstain from sex completely or become a Mary Magdalene character. The most difficult aspect is learning how to trust others and how to open up and show vulnerability. I guess we can see that Isabelle succeeds in her karmic ‘vulnerability test’, at least in her public role as an actress, but we won’t know for sure how painful this placement must’ve been for her in private.
And speaking about showing emotions and putting in the work of trusting more, Isabelle has another interesting aspect that reflects how her path in this lifetime is changing from one of a rational and detached soul story, to a passionate and feisty one. She has her South Node in Gemini in the 3rd house (this is her comfort zone), and her North Node in Sagittarius in the 9th house (this is her growth zone). Again we see a marker of natural-born actress, with her comfort zone being in the sign of the zodiac’s jester, Gemini. In addition, we know that she was born into a family with parents from different cultures and she was bilingual from an early age. So the visceral intensity that we see on screen is a direct influence of Isabelle working her dramatic Saturn in Scorpio in tandem with her South Node in Gemini/North Node in Sagittarius axis, which are both basically urging her soul to feel and to become more emotionally expressive. She is meant to let go of over-thinking things, playing the Devil’s advocate or being just cynical and intellectually detached from life (Gemini) and to display authenticity, to fight for what is right, to showcase passion and concentrate her energy on achieving one important goal at a time (Sagittarius). Her soul is moving her from a past-lifetime legacy of pessimism and duality, to a perception of life as an adventure replete with drama, passionate fights, and the search for truth and freedom.
I am hopelessly attracted to women who act in difficult roles, women who are brave and take risks in their career, women who seem complicated and who radiate a special kind of light, and I wrote about them in a previous post. So I understand if Isabelle might not be for everyone’s taste. But if you are like me (aka a Millennial who grew up watching French movies in her high-school years) and enjoy such a personality, for further explorations of Adjani’s work (especially if you are new to her) you can begin with these movies . I also enjoyed this video commentary of her extra-ordinarily disturbing performance in Possession (1981) Check them out and let me know your thoughts.
Images of Pamela Anderson in her hit show ‘Baywatch’ (left) & of Harrison Ford is his iconic role as Indiana Jones (right)
It’s Cancer season, so I thought it would be interesting to explore the charts of two famous Cancer Sun celebrities. For balance, I chose an actress and an actor, each well-know in their own right for different reasons. Well, I know this is an unlikely pairing but that’s why interpreting their charts is a fun and (I hope) informative experience. Although on the surface level you’d think that Pam and Harrison are worlds apart, if you dive deeper you would be surprised at some of their shared, core, crab sensitivities. Obviously, in this post I will barely scratch the surface of their astrological placements as I mean to give you some interesting insights mostly about their public persona, significant relationships and some of their karmic placements.
On one hand we have 90s bombshell Pamela Anderson (born on July 1, 1967 in Ladysmith, Canada; age 56 years) the woman with the most Playboy covers (14), who recently re-appeared in the public eye with her Netflix documentary ‘Pamela, a love story’, created to celebrate her unusual legacy and disconfirm a lot of the things depicted in the recent miniseries ‘Pam and Tommy’. Pamela’s big threes are: Sun in Cancer (conjunct Mercury), Moon in Aries (conjunct Saturn and Lilith!) and a Gemini Ascendant. Her North Node is in Taurus in the 11th house and her South Node is in Scorpio in the 5th house.
On the other hand we have ‘veteran’ actor Harrison Ford (born on July 13, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois, United States; age 81 years ), a reluctant celebrity who managed in his career to be part of two of the most successful film franchises there are: Star Wars and Indiana Jones (not to mention his cult performance in Blade Runner as detective Rick Deckard). Harrison’s big threes are: Sun & Moon in Cancer (conjunct Mercury and Jupiter on the Midheaven) and a Libra Ascendant (loosely conjunct Neptune, by degrees and not by sign). His South Node is in Pisces in the 5th house and his North Node is in Virgo in the 11th house.
Did you already notice something interesting that they have in common? Firstly, their North Nodes are placed in the same houses, the 5th & the 11th houses, even if in different astrological signs. The 5th house is the house of fun, entertainment, radiating light, being a skilled performer and having a strong personality, while the 11th house is the house of working as part of a group, detached communication, idealism and having a unique and progressive lifestyle. Both were born as natural performers and they were meant to create and live within their own social group, to be rebellious and innovative.
Secondly, their Water Suns are balanced by an Airy outer-wrapping since both have Ascendants in Air signs. Not only that but their karmic loads are pretty heavy and this karmic payback plays out for them in their private love life, in their personal relationships. Pam has the infamous Moon conjunct Saturn aspect, that unfortunately I am also intimately acquainted with and about which I have extensively written. Her placement is in feisty and charismatic Aries and it is conjunct the asteroid Lilith, the Wild Feminine Archetype, a marker of passion but also ruin in someone’s natal chart. In addition, Harrison has his Venus in Gemini conjunct Saturn, Uranus and also Lilith. When Saturn touches a person’s Moon (like in Pam’s case) or a person’s Venus (like in Harrison’s case), it limits the energy, freezing a person’s capacity to love, to feel things and to receive things from other people (be it gifts, compliments, affection etc). Saturn also separates things and grounds the energy in the chart of someone to a depressing degree. So Saturn is about deep emotional pain and painful romantic separations. In spite of the native’s best intentions, ultimately love can lead to a tough letting go and to some karmically-bound losses. The native is meant to learn emotional self-control, to remain stoic in front of life’s challenges and to put in emotion work if they want their relationships to last. Any fickleness is karmically punished, and fulfillment in love comes predominantly with old age.
And we see this energy play out very well in Pam’s love life. She attracts a large number of men towards her, but very few can fulfill her emotional needs. She is portrayed in the documentary as someone that falls in love very easily and is a hopeless romantic, but chasing the thrill of love could be a sign of a person that finds it hard to sustain affection for a longer period of time, which is a symptom of a Moon conjunct Saturn personality. Throw Lilith into this planetary combo, and we can see that in reality, Pamela’s deep emotional need is to work and to live independently rather than to become a trophy wife or a domestic goddess. Pam also said that she feels like Tommy Lee is the love of her life and yet she also feels like they can’t be together and the reason for this is that Tommy is a Sun in Libra, and in Pam’s synastry chart, his solar energy was opposing her Moon conjunct Saturn in Aries duo. As much as they loved each other, Saturn was bound to eventually separate them; I can also see that Pam might’ve felt like the parent in this connection, since she had her Saturn activated by Tommy’s Sun.
To my mind, the miniseries portrayed Pam in a kinder and more beautiful light than the documentary, who I feel made her look a bit unhinged. It’s strange to see Pamela’s desire to not be interpreted by other people, to not be overly sexualized or judged by others, when she simultaneously and actively sought this attention from the public by making some risquĂŠ career choices. This overt duality shows the contradictory nature of her Gemini Ascendant and how it can play out in the natal chart. It’s almost like Pam’s internal monologue could be: “I am a bombshell but also a nerd who loves to write”, “I am a moral mother but also a woman who earns money by objectifying her body to cater to the male gaze”. There’s nothing to blame or shame here, I actually really like Pam and am rooting for her to find true love and feel more emotionally settled in a partnership (especially as she is approaching her second Saturn return). It’s just an example of how astrological placements end up determining a person’s path in life. With a Midheaven in Aquarius, Pam is meant to leave behind a unique and outrageous legacy, a body of work (emphasis on the body) meant to open up people’s minds (…and it could take years before they catch up).
She is also not meant to feel comfortable with this legacy since her shy and domestic Cancer Sun sits in tenson with this progressive Aquarius Midheaven, so this is why we can visibly witness her discomfort at accepting the fact that she will forever be known as a sex symbol. When you are born with a South Node in Scorpio and a North Node in Taurus, like Pam was, your destiny in life is bound by the ark of redemption and it could show the path of an individual turned from ‘sinner’ to ‘saint’, from darkness to light, from obsessive relationships and intense, sexual magnetism to living a wealthy, moral and upstanding life. Interestingly enough, Pam’s story re-appeared in the collective when she had her nodal return, a time in a person’s life when they are hastily pushed in the direction of their destiny. She created this documentary and is currently working on a book which reinterprets her torrid love affair with Tommy Lee not from the perspective of a hot, mad love that made them marry 4 days after they met (South in Scorpio), but from the viewpoint of star-crossed soulmates who were also good and devoted parents (North Node in Taurus).
In terms of Harrison’s personal relationships, he has been married twice and is now in his third marriage with Ally Macbeal‘s leading actress, Calista Flockhart. He has an impressive number of children (5) not all of which are biological. When I take a closer look at the synastry aspects between his and Calista’s chart, I see here a true soul bond, a partnership that makes him look forward to things in life and helps him spiritually grow. Both Calista and Harrison have compatible Suns (he is a Cancer, she is a Scorpio) and compatible Ascendants (his is in Libra, hers is in Sagittarius). Moreover, his Venus (love) is conjunct her North Node in Gemini (destiny), while her Mars (sexuality) is conjunct his North Node in Virgo (destiny). Both partners have a Mercury-ruled North Node (him in Virgo, hers in Gemini), which means that learning to communicate and to organize their daily lives is essential for their success in this lifetime. In addition, they are both drawn toward supporting humanitarian and educational causes. Among other things that energetically and astrologically bind them together are the fact that her Venus is conjunct his Ascendant, so Calista genuinely finds him attractive and handsome, and even though there is a 20 years age difference between them, this works in their favor since Calista has a Moon conjunct Saturn in Aquarius. This aspect shows me that she has a tendency to fall in love with older, wiser types who bring her a sense of emotional safety, just like Harrison.
Furthermore, Harrison was meant to find love and feel happier in his relationships in the latter portion of his life, so after his second Saturn return (around 56-58 years of age) because of his Venus conjunct Saturn in Gemini; as you can notice both of these placements are in friendly and compatible Air signs, which I think balances their charts pretty well as it intellectualizes their Water sign sensitivities and cools of their fire placements (and Harrison has plenty of that in his chart, with an ultra-powerful Mars conjunct Pluto in Leo, an aspect that military leaders do well with, since it is said to bring victory in combat, even beyond death).
And since I mentioned this Leonic energy in Harrison’s chart, I want to bring up Pam’s Leonic placements because this is another thing they share in common: in spite of their moody and artistic Cancerian Sun, both Pam and Harrison are fighters, they are deeply passionate individuals who can easily get hot under the collar. In a man’s chart, usually his Mars placement shows the type of masculinity he tends to identify with and embody, while in a woman’s chart it is Venus which shows the femininity performed, or the way in which she loves and styles herself to feel attractive. Harrison has a Mars conjunct Pluto in Leo (an aspect which makes him part of the so called Baby boomer generation) so I think for him, as a man, he might’ve identified more with Leo-related qualities than his Cancer Sun. Although both Cancer and Leo are loving and warm energies, Leo represents strength, loyalty, traditionalism, honesty and romantic charisma. We could see this energy in Harrison in his earlier roles, as he channeled this darker and aggressive aspect of his personality in Blade Runner or Presumed Innocent. Pluto makes him an intense lover, deeply suspicious and jealous but also wonderfully protective and dedicated to his close inner circle. It is this Leo energy that helped him create the rebellious character of Hans Solo and give that infamous reply to Princess Leia’s confession of love to him with ‘I know’, rather than an ‘I love you back’ :))
Just as a sidenote, I always thought it was weird for me to watch Harrison on the screen since he resembles a lot my own father, who is a Libra Sun (left), especially when he was younger:
For Pam, we can see that she has her Venus conjunct Jupiter in Leo. A Venus in Leo shows someone who is very generous and big-hearted, they are warm, sexy and inviting. You want to date them and to be around them since they have a star-like quality. Leo Venuses are also attracted to famous people, to wealth and optimism, to the glitzy and glam side of life, but they might also provoke dramas when things become too quiet and peaceful or when they feel ignored. They can easily attract well-known people or hang around with people who have a star-like quality. The problem with this placements is that it could be too Ego-based in intimate relationships, and since Pam has this energy amplified by Jupiter, the planet of living large and lucky gambles, I could see why Pam has such a powerful force-field of attraction around her but also why her romances are doomed to fail. As a Leo Venus it is important to pay attention to the needs of others and to be careful how much you are giving and how much you are receiving in your close relationships, because you might take more than you give, or you could just expect others to adore you and find this to be the foundation of the relationship. Wearing your heart on your sleeve and acting out of impulse when you begin or end a connection, are also possible scenarios with a Sun-ruled love life. But no matter what happens, a Leo Venus shines and they will forever do so.
In spite of the romantic disappointments, Pamela remains an icon. Leo is also Yang energy, which means it is solar, masculine and competitive so this energy plays out better in the chart of a man than in that of a woman’s. Pam unfortunately has a lot of masculine, Yang planets in her inner world (her Moon, Venus and Jupiter) which can make her prone to taking the leader role in her romantic relationships and this might provoke arguments. She is nonetheless beautifully balanced in her energy by her Cancerian Sun and Mercury, her Libra Mars and her Pluto & Uranus in Virgo.
Finally, I thought it’s useful to focus on these Leonic placements in their charts because we are collectively undergoing the transit of the planet Venus in the sign of Leo, at the moment at which I am writing this article. This energy will intensify as Venus will go retrograde from the 22nd of July until the 3rd of September. So for 44 days and 44 nights, issues related to our personal attractiveness, how we use our strength in love, how we compete with others and what angers us in love and how we rise into our super-star qualities will be prominent. These issues will have to be worked inwards, since Venus retro is about going within and taking the focus from surface-level beauty to the beauty of one’s own character and inner values. So think about this: What or whom are you defending in love? What is worth fighting for in your daily reality? What angers you to the point of pushing you into action? And how do you use your heart to attract the genuine affection of others? Maybe these questions could serve as the beginning of some deep inner work. Although, I kind of feel like it would’ve been spiritually nourishing to sit down and talk to Pamela and Harrison about love & life. After all, the most beautiful quality of a Cancerian Sun is their wonderful capacity to tell insightful stories that truly touch our hearts.
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 Â
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.
I normally refrain from sharing a lot of the beautiful emails I get as feedback for my astrological chart analyses and my tarot readings, but one crew member whom I have known since the beginning of my Youtube channel ‘The Spiritual Social’ just wrote me to let me know that she is living out her manifested love story. I was completely speechless as I was reading her account and had the biggest smile of disbelief on my face. In spite of doing the kind of work I felt spiritually called to do for a couple of years now, I have my share of moments of deep doubt and self-consciousness, especially since at the moment the planet Saturn is transiting over my natal Mercury (my mind) and my Sun (my energy) making me feel rather tough on myself and the work I am doing. Exactly in one such moment, A. sent me the letter I got permission to reproduce below. Talk about Divine intervention đ It is a beautiful account of how someone with just a little support can bring into being their dream love story (and also a lovely compliment to my skills, I’ve got to admit that). Thank you A., and now I’ll let her tell you her inspiring story:
“One early morning in January 2020, I went into a twilight state in which I inadvertently saw a vision of a tattooed man with dark features. The vision was so real that I woke up in shock, knowing somehow that I loved this man, and that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. For months he remained heavy on my mind, taking up a lot of my headspace as I struggled to go through a massive career change and faced the stress and confusion of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time, I began to submerge myself into online tarot readings and watching videos about spirituality. The majority of the readings I watched were about my âfuture love,â including the usual titles that involve âWho is Your Future Spouse?â and âWhat Are Their Thoughts About You?â It was around this time when I came across The Spiritual Socialâs YouTube page. After watching several videos, I began to realize that you, Lexi, would somehow be able to understand my situation. I had some money saved up and had decided to invest in a reading.
First, I sent an email explaining my situation. I was hoping that you would understand where I was coming from. I knew on a deep level that you wouldnât be the type that would dismiss my situation as nonsense. Fortunately, you didnât. You thoughtfully responded by saying that you thought my situation was âbeautifulâ and had experienced something similar, yourself. You suggested that we do a General Reading to start, since I wasnât sure if this man was an actual person, a spirit guide, or even just a figment of my imagination that I created to appease my ongoing stress. You then said that I would be able to ask for a Love Reading later on if I thought it was necessary. So we agreed to go along with the General Reading. This would be my first The Spiritual Social reading. The details are as follows:
First Reading: April 2020 The first few cards you pulled were some of the most difficult in the tarot: Death, The Hanged Man, and the 5 of Pentacles were among them. You noted that he was clearly going through a very difficult and dark time. You said that it seemed like he was coming out of a relationship, one that was karmic and intense. You read that it was his former girlfriend who had cheated on him, and maybe he had cheated on her as well. He was experiencing the end of this relationship and was reflecting on his life and where it was going. You then said something that brought some comfort to me: that it was good that we hadnât met yet, because if we had, he would be very difficult to love. You also noted that the reason why I was âpicking up on himâ (of sorts) was because I had reached the appropriate age where we would finally meet. You said it was because I had cleared all of my karma (interestingly, I had just completed my first Saturn return), but he was still clearing his, which was why there was a delay in our meeting.
A significant card that stood out to me for some reason was the ‘Full Moon in Sagittarius’ card from the Moon Oracle deck. Both you and I noticed the bright pink on the card. You mentioned that it was a signifier of the new love coming into my life. I also took note of the Sagittarius sign. As I am an Aries sun (and the only fire sign in my immediate family), I was glad to know that I was connecting with someone who would be compatible with my fiery energy. Another card was one that had the wolf on it (I regrettably can’t remember the card title or the deck it came from — I’m thinking it’s from an animal totem/spirit animal deck.) The wolf had a very striking stare, and you noted how it had ‘lone wolf’ energy. You then mentioned that the ‘lone wolf’ stereotype is actually a myth, that there is no such thing as a lone wolf in nature, as wolves are pack animals. This resonated with me not only because I also picked up on that energy, but also because I had long related to the lone wolf stereotype, myself. I thought, “This person and I must have a lot in common⌔
You also asked if we could be given a card that would properly describe this individual. After a few shuffles, the King of Pentacles card shot out. You and I were both impressed. You read that this individual was going to be older, an Earth sign, and was good with money. The King was also possessively holding onto his pentacle, which you made note of. You said, “It’s like he’s saying, ‘It’s MIIIINE.’” You also mentioned that he would be very loyal (in fact, you kept saying that over and over), sensual, and a little controlling.
At the end of the reading, you looked into my question about what messages he might have for me. You very thoughtfully picked up on his feelings in that he wanted to move on from the strife that he was dealing with, he wanted to dedicate a new life to me, one where the house he lived in would be a home, and that his hard work would be justified by our relationship. You also picked up on his admiration for me and how âstrongâ I was, and how I was going to help him view the world differently, especially how he viewed women, love, and life. He then also asked that I connect with him, and to not let him go. Because he was facing a very difficult time and needed my presence, he had somehow âcalled outâ to me and needed me to respond. I loved that reading and watched it over and over. Unfortunately, that summer was when your account got hacked and you lost all of your old recorded videos. I didn’t get a chance to save that reading, but I did manage to take note of those cards that really stood out to me. You told me that I would meet him within 10 months, but, unfortunately, 10 months came and went and I never met him.
Astrological Birth Chart Reading: Summer 2020 A few months after the reading, I was inspired to request a Natal Chart Reading from you. I was about to start my graduate degree program and was curious as to what type of energies I naturally exhibited in regard to how I learn, how I collaborate with others, and what my general life path was so I could apply that knowledge to my educational experience. Alas, I have a lot of contradictions in my chart, but you very graciously gave me a synopsis that helped me a lot. You gathered that I would have difficulty collecting dry facts due to my strong Aquarius placements (true); that as an Aries Mercury I was a slow-to-start communicator, but once I got going, I would not stop (true); because of my sixth house Jupiter I am most lucky by providing services to others and maintaining a daily checklist of chores (very true!); and that in time I would be rewarded with a family of my own, mostly comprised of friends, coworkers, and other community members, that I would care for as a matriarch. There was one big takeaway, thoughâŚ
You indicated that I was destined for a life that would have me at the mercy of men, that I would need to be taken care of by them, and that I wasnât meant to have a career as much as I was meant to be a traditional wife that would have her husband provide for her. This struck me as odd, as I have lived a mostly single life, and the reason why I was getting my graduate degree was to ensure that I could have a career and that I could provide for myself. But it got me thinking â could this âKing of Pentaclesâ character, the one who was good with money, be the one I was destined to be with? Could this all have been preordained?
Second Reading: April 2022 By Spring 2022, I had all but given up on this ‘vision’ of sorts, and figured that this ‘Lone Wolf’ was a figment of my imagination. I had gone back to my old ways of thinking that the rest of my life was to be spent alone, and I was struggling to make peace with that. That was when I decided to give myself a birthday present and requested a love reading from you. I figured if anyone could gauge where I stood in my love life, it would be you. This time, you didn’t seem to pick up on the same Lone Wolf energy as you did the first time. However, you did indicate that I would meet someone about whom I would be very curious. He, however, would not want to reciprocate my feelings. At least not at first. You picked up on a warning that I needed to ‘trust’ the energies of this person, even if they come across as rude or too arrogant for my taste, because there was a chance I would not take too kindly to their behavior and would be inclined to cut ties with them before any connection could be made. I was surprised at this, as it seemed to be a reaction that is out of character for me, but I heard you out. What was interesting is that you also pulled a card that had the wolf on it. I figured this was a strong sign that this person was the Lone Wolf, and that his energy never left me.
Results In May 2022, I was referred to a job by a close friend/coworker. I applied for the position and got the job within a few weeks. Everyone at the organization seemed nice, and I adjusted well to the new environment. One day, I completed a task and wasnât sure what to do next. The supervisors at the time were unavailable, so I asked a coworker for help. He was very kind and showed me the rest of the work process. I found myself blushing, though, because I felt a very strange, yet strong attraction to him. There was definitely tension, and he seemed to pick up on it, too, because he started talking a lot and we ended up cracking terrible jokes and laughing nervously. I was horrified by my feelings, as I had just started that job and was afraid of losing it over an unprofessional interaction with a coworker.
It wasnât long until we started talking more while at work, and I learned we had a lot in common. I found out he was a much older divorced man who had an adult daughter. His ex-wife had cheated on him which had led to the divorce. He, like me, had left the corporate world after years of abuse and had wound up in a part-time job in the public sector. He was very educated, with two advanced degrees, and was a college instructor at one point. He was passionate about books, movies, and all things pop culture. He also, like me, came from a religious family â something we often traded notes about.
One day, he approached me while we were both on break. He told me that he was writing a piece and wanted my expert opinion (because I told him I was a writer, too). I said yes, I would be happy to. He was glad and asked for my email so he could send it to me once he was finished. I obliged and gave him my email. Then he asked for my phone number so he could text me once he sent it. Once again, I obliged and gave him my number. The next day, he started texting me. It wasnât about the piece, though. He was just texting me to see how I was doing. I politely replied that I was busy with my life as a working student, then asked him how his day was going. He replied with his daily to-do list, and the conversation went from there. It wasnât long until he was texting me every day to see how I was doing. Eventually, he sent me pictures of him during his childhood and told me very personal stories about his life. It was also around that time he found an Ernest Hemingway book of short stories, one of which he had told me about during our work conversations, and had generously bought it for me. It was clear that he was interested in more than just writing critiques.
Iâll admit that when he first got my contact information, I did not realize he was asking in a romantic sense. I figured we were just two work colleagues who were evolving into friends. When he started sharing all of that personal information and buying me that gift, I was surprised. I didnât see us that way. It was just another incident where I fell into the trap of missing signals, which is something I have been criticized for in the past. This is likely due to my general lack of self-worth, as I donât consider myself attractive or interesting enough for such attention. As a result, I was frozen as to what to do. I didnât know whether to be creeped out or to just go along with it. Something told me to not be too concerned, though, and that he didnât mean any harm. In the end, I just assumed he was a lonely person who wanted someone to talk to, and I was happy to be that person.
It wasnât long until he realized that maybe I wasnât as interested as he was, so he stopped texting as often as he did. Daily texts turned into weekly texts. Weekly texts into monthly texts. Our work conversations continued, though, and he was very respectful each time we interacted. He didnât seem to be upset that I didnât reciprocate his feelings. We still talked like there was no issue. We bonded over the usual things. I noticed that he genuinely listened when I spoke, which was a kind of treatment I donât often get in my life. I appreciated him for it. I donât know how the idea came to me, but it did. One night, while thinking about a writing project I had started years ago but never completed, I decided to text him to see if he would be willing to read it. He said of course. I said great, and that I would probably have something written and sent to him at a later date. It wasnât until a few weeks later that I realized I had feelings for himâŚ
It was during a long workday full of training and the staff was dismissed for lunch. I took one look at the designated lunch tables and noticed that all of them were full. I shrugged and excused myself to a quiet area of the building where I settled myself in a corner with some caffeine and a good book. I feared that I had alienated myself from the rest of the staff, but I shrugged it off. A few minutes later, he comes and sits down next to me, coyly asking why I was being âsuch a non-conformist.â I smiled and blushed, saying that I wasnât, that there wasnât any place to sit, and I wasnât that hungry anyway. He smirked and then proceeded to ask me how I was, which triggered a long conversation that almost caused us to be late when going back to training. I think it was that incident that caused me to realize that I might have feelings for him after all.
Shortly after, we started texting daily again. Within a few weeks, we went on our first date. Then we started going on dates each week. By his birthday party in late December, I had met his daughter and made the debut as his girlfriend where I had met all of his close childhood friends. Our workplace chats became much longer and more in-depth in private. I then learned that he had had relationships with other women since his divorce, all of which were with younger women who either used him for attention or for his money (things I could never fathom as a painfully-modest woman!) I also learned that he had an aggressive personality, one with a temper that had an issue with authority, but underneath that tough, extroverted exterior lay a sensitive guy who just wanted to connect with someone.
I remember being happier than I had been in years. Each time I would go to visit him at his house, I would have a rampant case of butterflies. I would be so excited I could hardly contain myself. I felt like a child around him (in fact, I still do!). When I confessed all of this to him, he admitted that I made him feel the same, which was significant because he thought he wouldnât have an experience like that again at his age. I knew I had found someone truly special, and I deeply regretted the lost months when we didnât talk. It wasnât until early January 2023 that I realized your readings seem to correlate with what I was experiencing. Had I finally met âThe Lone Wolf?â The one who had gotten me through the turbulence of the pandemic, and the changes Iâve experienced since then? The one I would misunderstand and want to write off? The one that I was destined to be with? I figured if I had had a telepathic relationship with him over these past few years, I must still have one now. So I decided to put him to the test.
For a few weeks, I kept sending him mental messages. The theme of these messages was, â(His name), tell me youâre The Wolf. Just tell me youâre The Wolf.â It wasnât long until late one night at his house when we were relaxing after dinner and watching a movie. He got up and started moving around the room, turning off lights and giving the room a very mysterious, sexual energy. I asked him what he was doing. He responded with a smart comment. I responded with another smart comment. After which, he sat down next to me with a smirk on his face and said, âIâm a wolf.â I laughed and kissed him right then and there. I didnât let him finish his sentence, because he already told me everything I needed to know.
Further Discoveries as a Result of Your Guidance The cards you pulled:
King of Pentacles: He is a much older Capricorn Sun who is good with money
Full Moon in Sagittarius: He is a Sagittarius Moon
Wolf cards in both readings, the first one with the âLone Wolf,â the second one with a wolf walking through the image. We have both had long conversations about the âLone Wolfâ stereotype, how itâs not real, and yet how we both relate to it.
His Saturn and my Sun are both in Aries.
His Sun and my Saturn are both in Capricorn.
Our Mercury signs also follow the Capricorn/Aries dynamic â his is in Capricorn, mine is in Aries.
His Venus and my Pluto + Lilith are in Scorpio (another indicator of sexual attraction.)
His Juno and my Juno are in Scorpio.
He has several planets in Virgo, which aligns with my 8th House Virgo (I have been led to believe that this is an indicator that he can help me undergo a rebirth of sorts, which has definitely been the case thus far!) Again, there is only so much I can glean from this synastry reading as I do not have his birth time. However, I think that what Iâve gathered thus far indicates that we have a karmic relationship and were meant to find each other in this life â which is, in fact, something weâve actually said to each other!
In Conclusion Weâre still in the early stages of our relationship (only a few months in.) Even then, we still feel very close to each other and are now having discussions about sharing a home one day where the deed is in both of our names (which I guess coincides with your first reading, where you picked up his message of wanting to âbuild a home for usâ). I have met a few of his close family members and each one likes me. He has also met a few my close relatives and they feel the same about him. It seems like this is a serious relationship that will likely be for the long term. I guess only time will tell!
Thank you again, Lexi! You are truly a gifted reader.
A.”
I’m truly honored and grateful to be able to help, although most of the work belongs to A. and the brave way in which she opened her heart to her love opportunity.
I am here to suport each and every one of you who needs someone to believe with and for them in those things that we keep secret & we don’t see and yet have the power to change our lives.
The Spiritual Social 