Mata Hari – a wild and wayout Leo

The most iconic spy of all time – Mata Hari – was executed exactly 100 years ago today. Prior to WW1 she had been a legendary ‘femme fatale’ of ‘Belle Epoque’ Paris, where her she more or less invented the striptease as a form of dance and her lovers included ministers, industrialists and generals. Then came the war and information replaced sex as the currency of the moment. Historians argue over whether she was a German spy or a double-agent and she may have died as a scapegoat, sacrificed, some say, because the French needed to find a spy to explain their succession of reverses in the war.

Born Margarethe Zelle on 7 August 1876 1pm Leeuwarden, Netherlands, at 18 she married an abusive, alcoholic officer in the Dutch East Indies and probably contracted syphilis from him which may have killed one of their two children. She ran away to Paris performed as a circus horse rider, became an artist’s model and then gained fame for her exotic dances.

She had quite a collection of Sun, Mars, Mercury and Uranus in Leo squaring onto a super-confident Jupiter in Scorpio opposition Pluto in Taurus in her 7^th. So not shy and retiring – flamboyant, wayward, attention-demanding. Her 4^th house Pisces Moon conjunct Saturn was trine Venus in Cancer, not making for a happy emotional life.

Her creative 5^th and 7^th and actresses’ 15H are all strongly aspected; as was her self-defeating 10H; and her leaving-a-mark-on-history 17H.

Evidently she dressed with style for her death, refused to be blindfolded and blew a kiss to her executioners. At that point she was on her mid-life crisis Uranus Half Return and Neptune quarter Return; with tr Neptune Saturn and Mars all in Leo. Tr Jupiter was just into her 8^th and Jupiter was also in the 8^th on her Solar Return for that year, so at 39 she was somehow at peace for this transition. Her Solar Return also had a brutal, destructive Mars Pluto in Cancer opposition the Node Capricorn. An extraordinary life.