Marjorie

Misery memoirs are still going strong with another couple of nightmare childhoods being laid bare.

  Jeannette McCurdy, teen star of “iCarly”, was a poster child for children’s TV, seen weekly by millions, her face on Hollywood billboards, T shirts and party balloons, every little princess’s dream but it was all a gigantic lie. Her super-controlling, failed actress stage-mother dominated her every waking moment, made all her decisions for her, tried to push her into anorexia to delay puberty and when she finally started to break free trashed her to her fans on social media. Only after her mother died of cancer did she fully face the abuse that had destroyed her childhood. Hence her memoir, titled “I’m Glad My Mom Died” which according to reviews is sharply funny and empathetic.

  A decade of therapy has seen her pull back from eating disorders and alcohol abuse and into a stable relationship.  She has directed a few short films; has a book of essays and at least one novel in the works; and may venture back into acting.

 She was born 26 June 1992 10.36pm Garden Grove, California and has an entertaining Sun Venus in Cancer conjunct her South Node in her entertaining 5^th house which will radiate sunshine when she’s in front of an audience. Behind the facade, however, she has a Taurus Moon opposite a possessive Pluto and in a bleak square to Saturn in Aquarius – and that is one cold, controlling and destructive mother. She also has an Earth Grand Trine involving Jupiter which would be her saving grace with Jupiter in her 7^th house of relationships trine Mars in determined Taurus trine Uranus Neptune in Capricorn. It will help her build a secure life for herself.

  Her mother Debra McCurdy, 17 July 1957, was a Sun Cancer square Neptune; with an attention-seeking Mars Venus in Leo opposition Jeanette’s Saturn and square her Moon and Pluto – so an aggravated interface. Her disciplinarian Saturn fell in Jeanette’s 10^th house of career. The worst kind of Cancerian mother.

  Their relationship chart had a central Saturn square Pluto tied into the Sun – so again that cold, dominating chemistry.

  The other memoir is writer Kit de Waal’s Without Warning and Only Sometimes: Scenes from an Unpredictable Childhood about growing up in an Irish-Caribbean family of Jehovah’s Witnesses. She was one of five children caught between a sullen Caribbean father and an energetic but erratic Irish-British mother in Birmingham in the Sixties and Seventies with both grandparents opposed to the match. The religious fervour added another layer of strain. “Three times a week I am reminded that the world will end and I will die.”

  The Bible was the only book allowed which makes her subsequent career all the more laudable and surprising. She is  the author of two highly acclaimed novels, My Name Is Leon, shortlisted for the Costa prize, and The Trick to Time, longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and two collections of short stories. Having escaped the rigours of her childhood she got in with a bad crowd and nearly went under. But managed to climb over the challenges and got her life together.

 Reviews suggest it is moving and heart-warming, so not all doom and gloom.

  She was born 26 July 1960 in Birmingham, no time, with a Leo Sun and Venus.  Like Jeannette McCurdy she has Mars in determined Taurus, in her case conjunct Algol, and square Uranus.

  Algol, planet of Medusa, is infamous for being destructive but it can have another purpose which is to force us to face suffering and horror and not brush it aside. When Algol’s death-dealing capabilities are quelled it produces a surge of imaginative power which allows ugliness to be faced without being destroyed by it. In the myth after Medusa is beheaded, Pegasus, the winged horse of creativity springs forth. Makes sense she’d be a writer.

  Her Moon is probably conjunct Pluto in Virgo and probably trine Saturn – not quite as bleak as Jeanette McCurdy’s but not a warm and comforting childhood.

 What would be her saving grace is a super-confident Jupiter in optimistic Sagittarius on the focal point of a Yod to Mars and Algol sextile Mercury – it would sustain her through dark moments with the thought there was bound to be better round the next corner. 

  Moon Pluto seems to be a recurring theme with disastrous mothers, with Anne Heche as well (below). In shorthand I tend to describe it as a possessive mother but that can sound emotionally close. In reality a Moon Pluto mother can be smothering, suffocating, death-dealing.

  Maybe better rename misery memoirs as redemptive remembrances.  

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The searing  memories of the orgiastic savagery following the partition of Pakistan and India in 1947 are still raw as both countries head for their 75^th anniversary. 10 and 20 million people were uprooted at a day’s notice along religious lines, with large-scale violence and an estimated death toll over a million.  

  A survivor of those times remembers: “People were setting fire to Hindu homes. But Hindus and Sikhs were setting fire to Muslim homes, too. Everyone did it to everyone else.”

  Although Lord Louis Mountbatten, Viceroy of India since the February of 1947, has been landed with the blame for a rushed division of the sub-continent, it had been on the cards since the mid 1920s as the Muslims feared they would not be protected if a unified India remained after independence.  Though admittedly with WW11 causing a distraction it did end up in a last minute final decision in a typical Brit colonial botch-up of an exit.

  Pakistan declared independence on 14^th August at 9.30am with India waiting for the midnight into the 15^th. Both charts have the heavy Saturn Pluto conjunction in Leo conjunct Venus and Sun in Leo square Jupiter in Scorpio – enduring, stubborn, tough-minded, can be self-destructive. Both have a North Node in Taurus which can give rise to turmoil and long running disputes. The Pakistan chart is more volatile with an explosive Mars Uranus straddling the Midheaven. The India chart has the North Node on the Ascendant creating an identity problem.

 The colonial unified India chart which saw Victoria named Empress on 1 January 1877 was never going to either divide or transition easily into a new entity. It had a Fixed, ruthless and controlling Pluto in Taurus opposition Mars in Scorpio square Uranus in Leo which would give rise to barbaric cruelty and extreme resistance to change. There are similarities to the French revolutionary chart which oversaw a period of blood running in the streets.

  Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who campaigned for a separate Pakistan state and became the first Governor-General was born on 25 December 1876, six days before India was unified, so he had a similar chart – do-or-die-determined, stubborn to the nth degree and a trailblazer/innovator and status-quo-upsetter.

  Jawaharial (Pandit) Nehru, a secular, anti-colonial nationalist, who became India’s first prime minister in 1947, is the name best known from that period. Born 14 November 1889 11.36pm Allahabad, he had like Louis Mountbatten the mesmerising and ambitious Neptune Pluto in Gemini of the time. In Nehru’s case it was in his 10^th house of career, bringing him to great prominence.

 Nehru and Jinnah were never going to agree since Jinnah’s Pluto was conjunct Nehru’s MC and his Uranus on Nehru’s Ascendant and all in hard aspect to Nehru’s Scorpio Sun.

  The rumour mill had it that Nehru was romantically involved with Edwina Mountbatten (who was a lady who certainly got around) and even that Mountbatten himself pitched in as a ‘throuple’ (given his proclivities nothing would surprise me.)

  Mountbatten, 25 June 1900 6am Windsor, was a Sun Cancer conjunct Neptune opposition Saturn; with a disruptive Moon Pluto South Node opposition Uranus; and Mars in late Taurus – an unstable personality and emotionally disorganised.

  He certainly had a strong and fated connection to Nehru with Mountbatten’s Sun exactly conjunct Nehru’s North Node and opposition Nehru’s Jupiter. And their relationship chart was highly emotional as well as complex and aggravated.

  Edwina Mountbatten, 28 November 1901 7am Romsey, England, was described by one of her daughters as “a man eater” and had many lovers throughout the marriage, leaving her children in the care of nannies to travel with her paramours. Her husband appeared to accept the situation and often welcomed them into the family home.

  Like her husband, she had a see-saw chart with an upfront Sagittarius Sun; a deeply buried 8^th house Moon Neptune opposition Mars; and the rebellious Pluto opposition Uranus. Another chaotic and unstable personality – what a marriage.

  The Mountbattens are only footnotes in India/Pakistan’s troubled relationship history but ironically their messy, shambles of a marriage in a tiny way mirrored the greater disarray of the partition at which they were principal bystanders.  

  I can’t get all worked up in anti-colonial rage since all super-powers have always acted badly through the aeons since the beginning of time. And there were some pluses left behind. But the screw-ups caused by the collapse of the British empire still causing grief today are legion – India/Pakistan and the unresolved Kashmir problem; Palestine; Hong Kong; Kenya/Zimbabwe; Aden/Yemen; Burma/Myanmar; Northern Ireland/Ireland (not quite colonial but certainly interference from the mainland).

Anguish and outrage fuel “The Destructionists” a new book by journalist Dana Milbank on the warping of the once respected Republican Party and the collapse of American democracy. He pins the start of the rot on Newt Gingrich’s rise to prominence as Speaker in 1994 and his deliberate promotion of dirty-tricks politics and disinformation, resulting nowadays in a party 70% of whom believe the 2020 election was fixed. Gingrich was one of Donald Trump’s mentors.

  Gingrich pushed the conspiracy that Clinton aide Vince Foster was murdered. He defended right-wing militias after Timothy McVeigh murdered 168 people in Oklahoma City. He agitated to oust Bill Clinton over Lewinsky while conducting a less than shining-white private life himself. And he taught the GOP to weaponize paranoia and turn political opponents into demons. All of which as one reviewer writes has ended: “in the era of “alternative facts,” QAnon, Jewish space lasers, anti-vaxxing, birthers and Alex Jones conspiracies about the dead children of Sandy Hook being ketchup-smeared actors in a government plot to seize our AR-15s.”

  Mitch McConnell also gets a roasting for tainting and delegitimizing the Supreme Court by turning it into “another political branch of government.”

 Gingrich, born 17 June 1943 11.45pm Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, has a chart remarkably similar to Trump’s – though worse. He’s a Sun Gemini opposition a Sagittarius Moon squaring onto a can-be-evasive and deceitful 8^th house Neptune. Straight-dealing was never his way. He also has a manipulative, superficially-charming Venus Pluto in Leo.

  What is intriguing astrologically-speaking, if Milbank is right, is that the Gingrich wrecking-ball years, starting the downhill slide, covered the period that tr Uranus Neptune in Capricorn were colliding with the USA Mercury in Cancer opposition Pluto in Capricorn. That prone-to-rabble-rousers, fanatics and outright liars tendency in the US energy field is, of course, keyed up by the Pluto Return this year and next and was triggered over Trump’s 2016 election by tr Uranus in Aries in square.

  It may be a faint hope but perhaps by the time the Pluto Return has done its job, the madness that can be Mercury Pluto will start to recede and sanity and decency be restored.    

Geminis do seem to have hooked into the present political scene and surfed the wave of mendacity with deadly effect.

The Daily Mail – “the best-hated paper in the world” according to its adoring founder Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe, had an auspicious start when it launched in 1896 to an eager audience of hard-working, middle-class types. The elite were scathing about it being “run by office boys for office boys” but within a few years it was the world’s most successful newspaper. Which didn’t stop the criticism – one reviewer said Northcliffe had done “more than any man of his generation to pervert and enfeeble the mind of the multitude”.

  A new biography of Northcliffe describes him as charismatic, swashbuckling, admirable and appalling. His instructions to staff were to focus on anything out of the ordinary and keep explanations simple; with three imperatives for content – health, sex and money. He was a man of ferocious prejudices, with “Jews and Scotsmen” among his favourite targets. He banned photographs of women in trousers on the grounds that “masculine tendencies in women are interfering with the birth rate”. In the decade after the Mail launched he launched the Daily Mirror, bought The Observer and the Times. Despite his oddball and racist views he proved invaluable during WW1, campaigning ferociously against Germany.

  By the the early 1920s, he descended (or ascended) into  megalomania, some say because of syphilis, though others point to a terminal heart infection. Convinced the Germans were trying to kill him with poisoned ice cream, he regularly brandished a revolver at his terrified staff. On an excursion to Boulogne railway station, he loudly accused God of an enthusiasm for sodomy. He died aged 57 with no legitimate heirs though four children born out of wedlock.

  He was born 15 July 1865 6.50pm in Baile Alha Cliath, Ireland, but educated in England and started his career early running a school magazine.

  He had a Cancer Sun, which, as a sign, has a knack for sniffing out the public taste and spotting trends. His Sun was square a Saturn opposition an Aries Moon – hard-working, emotionally damped down. At first glance it is not that interesting a chart for a man who became ‘one of the blazing meteors of the late Victorian age.’ But on closer examination his Mercury is heavily aspected being in the intense (digging the dirt) 8^th house in a dogmatic square to Pluto and a duplicitous trine to a communicative 3^rd house Neptune and sextile a frivolous, entertaining 5^th house Venus in Gemini.  His Moon and South Node were also in his communication 3^rd house opposition a self-righteous 9^th house Saturn. He had a vengeful, deeply buried 8^th house Mars sextile a divisive Uranus on his Descendant and a passionate, emotionally insensitive square to Venus.

On the other hand his get-it-together, businessman’s 5th Harmonic is immensely strong with a highlighted mega-confident/successful Jupiter Pluto conjunction tied into the North Node (=spirit of the age), the Moon ( = the masses) with a hyper-active and enduringly determined Mars.

  The Daily Mail, 4 May 1896, has a more descriptive chart with an enduring, stubborn Taurus Sun opposition an obsessive Saturn in Scorpio square an Aquarius Moon; and Mercury in Taurus opposition an outspoken Uranus. More significantly it had the Neptune Pluto in Gemini conjunction of that era which is scandal-prone and associated with the rise of ‘yellow journalism’ noted for its sensationalist leanings.

  The circulation war between Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal in the USA in the late 1890s was a classic Neptune Pluto event.

  In the Mail’s case the Neptune Pluto is square Mars giving it a ruthless edge –  both showbizzy and publicity-attracting from Mars Neptune, as well as cold-hearted and merciless from Mars Pluto.

   During the 1930s, the then Lord Rothermere, a brother of Alfred, was a friend of Hitler and Mussolini and violently anti-Communist.   

Jaws dropped when it was learned that Sarah Ferguson, not long ago on the verge of bankruptcy, had bought a £5 million Mayfair property as an “investment opportunity. And eyebrows shot up further when news surfaced that there was a £1.6 million debt still outstanding which may interfere with the sale of the Swiss chalet she jointly owns with Prince Andrew, which had already caused maximum aggravation to the original seller who described Prince Andrew as “an absolute fool”. The sale was supposed to clear all debts, and according to rumours pay Prince Charles back for the Virginia Giuffre £10m payout.

  Fergie did profit from a bestselling Mills & Boon novel last year and went on to sign a 22 book deal, but the Sunday Times sniffily said her novel had only sneaked into No 10 of the best seller list for a week and then disappeared. It would not produce a James Patterson level of profit.

  Both their charts always did look due for more turmoil with any hopes of an appropriate decade or several out of the limelight not being likely.

 Andrew’s divisive and can-be-lawless Uranus on the focal point of a Yod at 18 degrees Leo is in line for the Uranus Mars North Node square and that continues on for several months ahead in effect. So there is a real prospect of it sending his life’s path off on a different trajectory altogether. There’s also a good deal of activity around his 8^th house of joint finances where his Mercury in Pisces, on another leg of his Yod, sits. His Progressed Moon is exactly conjunct his Mercury at the moment with his Solar Arc Saturn moving to conjunct his Mercury, exact in 3 months. Pisces, ruled by Neptune, ruing his 8^th has all the right ingredients for secrets crawling out into the open.

  Tr Saturn is also heading for his 8^th house from mid 2023 until 2026 which is when he will be thrown back on his own resources and not able to borrow as easily as in the past. He’ll be forced to sort his chaotic and shady finances out.

 Tr Pluto is, of course, also conjunct his 6^th house Mars Venus in Capricorn and his Solar Arc Moon this year and next which will be infuriating and frustrating and put pressure on his health, as well as grind his career to a halt.

  2024 is when his life will upend further as tr Uranus opposes his 4^th house Moon which may precipitate a house move. Indications are Charles wants him out of the Royal Lodge when he takes over the throne. In 2025 Andrew’s Solar Arc Neptune will conjunct his Saturn, on the other leg of his Yod.  All life-changing jolts and jangles.

 Fergie, 15 October 1959 9.03am London,  has her Solar Arc Mars conjunct her 2^nd house Saturn, exact in late 2023 and that will be a financial setback for considerable proportions. Her Solar Arc Saturn will oppose her Pluto, exact in six months for a blocked slow-down; and by 2025 the tr Neptune Saturn in Aries will square her 2^nd house Saturn for more financial woes.

  Relationships within the Royal family are always mystifying – Charles hates confrontations and seems confused about Andrew this year; with the Queen also perplexed and more so next year. Though there’s nothing muddled about Prince William’s view of his uncle – he’s seething through 2023/24 and will be pushing hard for a decisive banishment by the look of the astrology.     

Absolutely nothing in the way of insight appears to penetrate.

Talented but tortured actress Anne Heche has been involved in a seemingly self-inflicted car crash which ended with the car and a house she crashed into burnt out. She is in critical condition in hospital but expected to survive.

  She came to prominence in Donnie Brasco in the 1990s, as well as catching the headlines in her relationship with Ellen Generes. Since then she has worked in film and TV, had two children, a marriage to a cameraman and then a long liaison with another male actor.

  Born 25 May 1969 4.51pm (birth certificate) Cleveland, Ohio, she comes from a troubled family with three of the five siblings dead, a father who died of AIDs, whom she has said abused her from a young age, and a mother who belongs to a fundamentalist religious church, from whom she is estranged. She has been open about her mental problems and alcohol and substance abuse.

She has an intense 8^th house Gemini Sun Mercury in a volatile opposition to Mars; with with her Sun also opposition a filmic and addictive-prone Neptune; and a packed 12^th house with her Virgo Moon, Pluto, Jupiter and Uranus plus South Node there. 12th and 8th house do require a good deal fo psychological understanding and insight to function at their best.

Her Venus in Aries on the focal point of a Yod to her Moon Pluto Jupiter sextile Neptune would make her feel awkward and at some level unacceptable. She also has an unaspected Saturn in Taurus in her 7^th which can lead to a lack of self-discipline and a lack of self-preservation skills as well as a disorganised approach in general to her life.

  At the moment her Solar Arc Mars is almost exactly square her Saturn which is classic for an accident, even if she volunteered for it. The upcoming Scorpio Solar Eclipse will also oppose her Saturn which is always a wake up call. And the rest of her transits are a mix of over and under confidence involving her 12^th house Jupiter Pluto so she would have been  struggling with self-doubt and maybe responded by trying to make a dramatic gesture to drag herself out of her inner turmoil.

  If she does survive it’ll be a long road to recovery.

She surely wasn’t given an easy hand of cards to play in this lifetime.

‘Never say no to anything’ was the recipe for the exuberant and jam-packed career and love life of Robin Dalton. Her CV listed literary agent, film producer, memoirist, journalist, television performer and intelligence agent and her list of paramours was extensive and unrepentant, including pilots and sailors, and a marquess cousin of Prince Philip.  She once said “There was never a time when I was not, actively, in love. I don’t remember any of it being unrequited. One floated on a cloud of love affairs, more or less effortlessly gliding from one to another.” She was engaged to several suitors, two at the same time on one occasion and was married three times.

  She spied for the Thailand Government and eventually became one of London’s leading literary agents with a dazzling list of clients, including Margaret Drabble, Arthur Miller, Iris Murdoch, Edna O’Brien, Arnold Wesker and Tennessee Williams, Then in her late sixties she added successful film producer to her resume.  

  She was born 22 December 1920 in Sydney, Australia, with a Northern Irish Presbyterian doctor for a father, whose wealthier patients subsidised his treatment of prostitutes and criminals. Her mother was a Polish-Australian Jew who smoked 100 cigarettes a day and regularly invited strangers to stay. Her father did not speak to his mother-in-law for 35 years despite living in the same house. 

  She had a last degree Sagittarius Sun or zero Capricorn which was super-charged being the driving planet of a Water Grand Trine of Uranus trine Pluto trine North Node in Scorpio, with Pluto opposition her Sun – creative, able to live in her own bubble of reality, not shy and retiring, for sure. Her love life would be amped-up by a Venus Mars conjunction in broad-minded Aquarius opposition Neptune square an indulgent and sensuous Taurus Moon. Venus Neptune is a romantic. Mars Neptune good for a showbusiness career.

   She also had a Jupiter Saturn conjunction in Virgo which can be helpful in grounding ideas, and making business schemes work out. She has just died at 101.

   What a gloriously eccentric and fulfilled life. She clearly regretted very little and had the ability to make a go of whatever she turned her hand to. Her chart is delightfully descriptive.    

Brittney Griner, the US top basketball player and Olympic gold medallist has been handed a nine-and-a half-year sentence in Russia after she was pronounced guilty of smuggling and narcotics charges, having been found with vape canisters containing cannabis oil in February.  She had come to Russia to play club basketball during the US off-season and said she had made an “honest mistake”. There are indications she has fallen foul of ‘hostage diplomacy’ and she may be swapped for imprisoned Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout – known as the Merchant of Death.

  Born 18 October 1990 in Houston, Dallas, she is the daughter of a former Sheriff and Marine Vietnam veteran, and has had a standout sporting career since High School though with the odd violent outburst along the way. There were also domestic violence charges arising from her first short-lived marriage to fellow WBNA player Gloria Johnson.

 Griner is a Sun, Mercury, Venus and probably Moon in Libra so should be diplomatic. But she is also part of the triple conjunction generation with Uranus, Neptune and Saturn in Capricorn, which can produce great talent at the same time as erratic, unpredictable temperaments. Even more so in her case, because her Saturn Neptune sextile Pluto form a Yod focussing on Mars in Gemini. Such an apex planet Mars has difficulty in modulating anger and aggression and tends to be overly impulsive and to plunge recklessly into action.

  She also has a pushily-confident Pluto square Jupiter, which will give her a tendency to assume rules don’t apply to her.

 Her self-defeating 10^th and 16^th harmonic are both strong.

  She looks understandably devastated at the moment with undermining transits for a year or two ahead but that does not mean she’ll be stuck there – only that her life will take time to rebalance.

  Travelling to foreign countries assuming they have the same attitude to certain drugs, even prescriptions ones, is hardly sensible.

Pic: Lorie Shaull  

Nicholas Clegg has been one of the many oddities about Facebook and about as far removed from lost-in-cyberspace Zuckerburg as he could be. A bland Liberal Democrat UK politician, whose popularity plummeted when he was Deputy PM in a coalition government with David Cameron, he tapped into the FB money tree in 2018 as a senior executive and absconded to California. This year he was elevated further still to the top table, but is now returning to London, taking advantage of FB’s remote working culture, as have several other top brass.

  Murmurs are that all is not content in the Zuck kingdom. ‘Insiders claim the former boy wonder is increasingly unwilling to be challenged and ever-more irate that the outside world is not buying into his vision.’ And Facebook is now in a phase where growth has deserted them for the first time in history.

 Clegg has done well for himself with a £7m five-bedroom house in the USA, plus a salary of £2.8m, and shares in the company worth almost £10m after his recent promotion. But there may come a time when even shed loads of money are not worth being put in the stocks for FB’s misdeeds.         

 Clegg was born 7 January 1967 5.30 am, Chalfont St Giles, England, he has a Dutch mother, a half-Russian father and is fluent in Dutch, German, Spanish and French. His wife, Miriam González Durántez, a leading international trade lawyer, is Spanish. No surprise he feels European at heart.

  He has a money-oriented 2^nd house ambitious Capricorn Sun square an even more ambitious 10^th house Mars; plus an indulgent, superficially charming, sociable Venus opposition Jupiter.

 Mark Zuckerburg’s Jupiter is conjunct Clegg’s Sun Mercury – so good feelings and largesse follow. MZ’s Venus are conjunct Clegg’s Taurus North Node which also has financial resonances. Facebook’s Jupiter is also conjunct Clegg’s Pluto  and its’ Taurus North Node is conjunct Clegg’s NN as well. But for all the enthusiasm-raising and bank-account-boosting crossovers it is still a questionable connection with MZ’s Mars in Scorpio opposition his Taurus Sun sitting on Clegg’s Neptune.

  Their relationship chart has friendly feelings and also major differences which will erupt into the open in 2024/25 if not before.

 Clegg’s relationship chart with Facebook, 4 February 2004, hints at major stress between them from early 2023 to late 2024 which could be the parting of the ways.

  Clegg’s Facebook years have coincided with transiting Saturn through his lower profile 1^st quadrant since 2016, which he is slowly exiting and he may well be about to embark on a new career which might even include stepping back into the political arena in a couple of years.