Marjorie

Josephine Chaplin, the daughter of Charlie Chaplin and his fourth wife, Oona O’Neill, who starred in many French films has died.  She was the sixth of 11 children fathered by the comic screen legend and the third of eight with O’Neill, daughter of the Nobel prize-winning playwright Eugene O’Neill.

   It is a mind-boggling prospect being part of such a vast Chaplin tribe, the child of a world renowned screen star on one side and the grandchild of a Nobel winning playwright on the other.

 [Detail on Chaplin and Oona O’Neill, who married when she was 18 and he 53, in previous post February 18 2022.] 

  Josephine, 28 March 1949 12.10am Santa Monica, CA, was a Sun Aries on the cusp of her 4^th house opposition Neptune on her Midheaven with Pluto in her 8^th – anchored in the family, a creative legacy but trapped. 

   What is a recurring pattern through several of the family charts is a last decan Aries or Libra marker – of either Chiron, Sun or North Node. In her case her North Node was at 25 degrees Aries conjunct her mother’s Chiron Mercury in Aries. Her father Charles Chaplin had a 27 degree Aries Sun.

 The half siblings from an earlier marriage born around the time of Oona O’Neill – Charles (1925) had Chiron Mercury at 25/22 Aries; Sydney (1926) had Chiron at 26 Aries; and Maurice (1927) had his Sun at 22 Aries conjunct Chiron at 1 Taurus.

  Her full brother Michael (1946) had Jupiter Chiron in last decan Libra.  Eugene O’Neill had his Sun at 23 Libra.

  Tied together by fame (Nodes), plagued by issues of identity (Aries) and struggling with the wounds and vagaries of fate (Chiron).

  Chiron close to Mercury is interesting for Oona O’Neill since it would give her a sense of being wounded in her intelligence and way with words, not surprising with such a notable father.   

  Josephine’s North Node conjunct her mother’s Chiron suggests that Josephine’s development lay through connecting with her mother’s pain.  

  What is also significant is the Aries energy especially in a North Node which suggests a need to stand alone and/or take the lead. Tricky in a family with such powerful connections in the zeitgeist that they could never completely escape.

  All quite a fated tangle as is probably true in a great many families.

Singer Tony Bennett has died. Called “the best in the business” by Frank Sinatra, he had a career spanning seven decades and was still performing in his mid nineties on stage with Lady Gaga when suffering from Alzheimers.  He released 61 studio albums between his debut, Because of You, in 1952, and his second album of Lady Gaga duets, Love For Sale in 2021. One of the original crooners, he held onto his sophisticated, emotionally understated style of jazz music through the merry go round of fashions in pop. His fortunes did slump when the Beatles appeared but after overcoming a cocaine addiction he reinvented himself, his popularity stronger than ever.

  He was born 3 August 1926 in New York, no birth time, into a poor Italian immigrant family with his father dying when he was 10. Drafted into WW11, he faced racism from officers because of his ethnicity and witnessed discrimination against fellow black soldiers; and had the horror of being present at the liberation of a sub-Dachau concentration camp. It turned him into a pacifist and an activist for civil rights, marching with Martin Luther King in the 1960s.

  He had started singing early in the family, then as a singing teenage waiter and after the war was spotted by Bob Hope and broke into the professional circuit.    

He became known as the torchbearer for the Great American Songbook with hits including The Way You Look Tonight, Body and Soul, and (I Left My Heart) In San Francisco.

  He was a Sun Leo but what probably marked him out as one of a generation of outstanding singers was his Neptune in Leo conjunct his Mercury opposition Jupiter square Saturn in Scorpio. Burt Bacharach born two years later was another Neptune in Leo square his Taurus Sun; and Frank Sinatra born in 1915 had Neptune in early Leo.

  In Tony Bennett’s case his Mercury Neptune Jupiter would give him his deceptively easy-listening style which only came about through the obsessively hard work of Saturn. He also had a seductive Venus Pluto North Node in Cancer and a Gemini Moon.

During his damaging time in the forces during World War 11 as a late teenager he had the pressured, challenging tr Pluto conjunct his Sun; and a disruptive tr Uranus opposition his Solar Arc focal point Saturn; as well as a high-risk, scary and horrifying Solar Arc Venus Pluto square his Mars in Taurus. He said the experiences scarred him for life though he did not let it show. Except he did have a cocaine addiction and near suicide attempt in the late 1970s which was career-related but may also have been when old terrors resurfaced. That was when tr Uranus was conjunct his Saturn and tr Saturn was conjunct his Solar Arc Venus Pluto.

  What would keep his darker feelings under control was his Venus Pluto conjunction and his obsessively conscientious Saturn in Scorpio.

The marshmallow-pink utopia of Barbie Land may well outsell Oppenheimer at the box office when both open this week. A frothy toyland satire versus the real destroyer of worlds – a surreal Hollywood juxtaposition.

   Reviews for Barbie have been mixed though Robbie Collin, usually sound, describes it as “deeply bizarre, conceptually slippery and often roar-out-loud hilarious”. Rolling Stone said Barbie “may be the most subversive blockbuster of the 21st Century.” Margot Robbie, as a stereotypical Barbie one day starts malfunctioning and is despatched to the human world to find out why, accompanied by Ken (Ryan Gosling). Sarah Vine of the Mail was unimpressed and wrote: “It’s a deeply anti-man movie – every male character is either an idiot, a bigot or a sad, rather pathetic loser.”

 The real – plastic – Barbie was launched on 9 March 1959 on a Pisces New Moon which fits with a frothy dream – though that apart the chart reflects a hard sell and an aggressive approach.  Ruth Handler, 4 November 1916, the toy manufacturer who launched Barbie, likewise was a determined Sun Scorpio trine Pluto and square an innovative Uranus. The only hint of frivolity in her chart came from Mercury opposition Jupiter square Saturn Neptune in Leo. A hard headed marketing brand.

 Barbie’s Principal Photography started 22 March 2022 which is imaginative with Jupiter Mercury Neptune in Pisces but otherwise light on the essence of pink with a hard-edged Mars Venus in Aquarius square Uranus.

 Greta Gerwig, the director, 4 August 1983 Sacramento, CA, is a Leo trine an adventurous Jupiter Uranus in Sagittarius but is not made of candyfloss with a Saturn Pluto conjunct square Mars which is solid titanium.

  Margot Robbie, 2 July 1990 7.45am Dalby, AU, is a Sun Jupiter in Cancer opposition the triple conjunction in Capricorn with a Scorpio Moon and a heavy-duty childhood from Pluto in her 4^th and her Mars square Saturn.

  Ryan Gosling, 12 November 1980 2.34pm London, Ontario, Canada, who gets top reviews, has an intense, deeply buried 8^th house Sun Uranus in Scorpio with a charming Venus, Jupiter, Saturn in Libra in his 7^th plus a hard working Capricorn Moon.

  Not one of the associated charts hints at an overdose of Jupiter Venus which is quintessence of the plastic fantastic image of feminine perfection of the 1960s. Understandable maybe in a movie that is a satire but the originators were hardly mirroring their inner child either.

The pendulum swing of ‘progressive’ condemnation of disbelievers in their cause has run into another buffer over the backlash against banks closing accounts because they dislike the political views of a client. A highly critical No 10 has put in motion legislation to impose on banks free speech duties otherwise they could lose their licence.

  Though the government is hardly blameless either in the arena of free speech following last year’s Cabinet Office rules banning speakers who have criticised government policy from addressing civil servants.  

   It has been a weird few years for free speech in the UK including the ‘coercive control of language’ element to the trans debate. Andrew Neil described it as “a new form of McCarthyism. In woke companies, as well as in media, public bodies, charities and academia, people are being fired, sidelined, marginalised or generally penalised because they won’t kowtow to the latest fashionable views.”

   Is it the great bleeding heart of Neptune in Pisces which howls in pain over one slighted group being victimized (or not given centre stage) and demands the greater majority give up its rights to salve their wound?

  There is a fanatical streak in Neptune – Joseph McCarthy had a Scorpio Sun trine Neptune with Neptune opposition Uranus. When McCarthyism got under way in the US, the SA North Node was conjunct the USA Pluto (opposition Mercury) which is more than prone to obsessive thinking and bullying debate. But laissez-faire UK has never much gone in for fads and fetishes where opinions were concerned (I don’t think).

 Neptune in Pisces has not had an obviously outsize effect on the UK chart except at the start when it was conjunct the UK Pluto on the focal point of a yod inconjunct Neptune sextile Uranus in 2012/13. This is when David Cameron decided to hold the Brexit Referendum. (And because I am floundering around trying to find a pattern – the UK Pluto was activated years earlier in 1997 at Princess Diana’s death when the UK lost its wits in an outpouring of atypical national mourning. So the UK Pluto does have a powerful effect.) Along the way of the past few years tr Neptune has been sextile the UK Sun and Mars was well as trine the Midheaven, Moon and Neptune. With this year the Solar Arc Sun square the 2^nd house financial Neptune, keyed up by the recent Lunar Eclipse which may explain the banking connection – and tr Uranus was also opposition that 2^nd house Neptune earlier this year in the 18 degree spotlight.

  I’m still no wiser about quite what has sparked up this supposedly liberal intolerance in the UK.

  This year on the UK chart there is a deadlocked Solar Arc Pluto square the UK Sun which is waning now; and an approaching Solar Arc Saturn opposition the UK Uranus, exact in a few months – which will set up a conflict between the old versus the new, the forces of repression colliding with the forces for progress. Though in this topsy turvy situation with the ‘progressives’ turning totalitarian it’s tricky to see who is in which camp.

 Tr Pluto in Aquarius trine the UK Uranus from early 2024 for two years might be expected to activate a robust free speech debate – and more so when Uranus moves into Gemini in 2025.

  I faintly remember from philosophy lectures a concept about the social contract  – that in a fair and decent society there should be a ring fence of freedom around every individual which extends only in so far as it does not impinge on the rights of others. With the emergence of identity politics,  the loudest voices are clamouring for supremacy for their special interests at the expense of others who hold different views. They want society to be created in their image with non-believers banished into the desert as non-persons.

   Against everything that Uranus holds dear. What is weirder is that it is a total contradiction of essence of diversity. Putting value on difference.

  It may or may not be relevant that Farage’s Saturn is conjunct the UK’s Pluto and JK Rowling’s Mercury is in opposition. They tap into the UK’s cultural power issues.

Comments welcome.

Carlos Arcaraz, the Spanish tennis player, who defeated  Novak Djokovic to win the Men’s Final at Wimbledon, making it his second major singles win, is barely twenty years old.

  Born 5 May 2003 3am Murcia, Spain with a tennis academy director father, he started hitting the headlines as the youngest participant on the international circuit and winning as a teenager.

  He has a quick-witted 3^rd house Taurus Sun and Mercury which squares onto a dynamic Jupiter Descendant opposition Neptune Mars.  He has perseverance and endurance from Taurus, high vitality and the ability to take risks from Jupiter Mars and endless optimism with Neptune in the mix.

  What also marks his chart out as talented, lucky and determined in an inspirational and entrepreneurial Fire Grand Trine of Jupiter in Leo on his Descendant trine Venus in Aries in his financial 2^nd house trine Pluto. Charming and easy-going in one-to-one encounters, he’ll ooze confidence, be an influencer in society and will enjoy spending money. His Jupiter opposes Mars Neptune for one Kite. His Pluto opposes his Moon and Saturn in his sporting 5^th house for a second Kite – giving him toughness and an ability to shut off his emotional needs.

  Long term with Saturn in his 5^th plus that entrepreneurial Fire Grand Trine I’d imagine he’d become a sport organiser/executive.

   He’s on a lucky roll this year with tr Uranus conjunct his Jupiter/Uranus midpoint despite tr Saturn heading downwards through his First Quadrant for some years ahead which can be a drag on ambitious projects.

Marketa Vondroušová, who won the Women’s Singles, the first unseeded player to do so, was born 28 June 1999 (no birth time) Czech Republic. She comes from an athletic family and started playing tennis at 4.  She has a Cancer Sun on the focal point of a yod inconjunct Pluto sextile Neptune so will veer between over and under-confidence. Like Arcaraz she has a high-vitality Jupiter opposition Mars which in her case squares onto an ever-hopeful Neptune.

  Neptune oddly can be a strong factor in top athletes’ charts.  

  She’s also got fortunate winds behind her this year and next with tr Pluto square her Jupiter and tr Uranus conjunct her Solar Arc Jupiter. Though she will have moments of frustration through this October with tr Pluto square her Mars.

The Commonwealth Games look to be in jeopardy with Australia’s hosting of the 2026 event now being cancelled because of rising costs. Increasing hostility to colonialism, empire and the like and the passing of Queen Elizabeth may ring the death knell for the entire Commonwealth edifice before the end of the decade.

  The Commonwealth was first mooted in the Balfour Declaration of 15 November 1926 mainly in regard to the dominions of New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Ireland, South Africa – it referred to autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, united by a common allegiance to the Crown. It was put into statute on 11 December 1931. The London Declaration of 28 April 1949 allowed for India’s continued membership after  transition to a republican constitution and established a precedent that republicanism was compatible with membership of the Commonwealth.

   The 1926 chart is certainly in a turbulent phase with tr Uranus opposing the Venus, Sun and Saturn in Scorpio and squaring the Jupiter and Neptune through 2023/24; with a grind-to-a-halt tr Pluto square the Mars in 2027/28.

  The 1931 chart will be undermined by tr Neptune Saturn in Aries square the Mars in 2025/26; with significant disruption in 2027 as the Solar Arc Uranus is conjunct the Pluto and opposition the Saturn.

  The 1949 chart indicates paralysis this year with tr Pluto square the Mars and hitches and glitches until a perhaps terminal blockage with Solar Arc Pluto conjunct Mars in 2027.

  Maybe it is time for what was a legacy of the past to move on. Though as in all things that the wokery decry in outrage, it did good in its way and may well be missed.

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Cerberus and Charon, gatekeepers to the underworld and land of the dead, are the chosen names for the life-threatening heat waves blasting Europe and elsewhere. Man-fuelled climate change may be a partial cause but before melting into a frazzle of anxiety about the end being nigh it is instructive to look at wiki’s list of heat waves over the centuries. They are not exactly new events. 1913 saw the hottest record temperature ever in California’s Death Valley at 57C which the present spike is likely to equal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heat_waves

 Astrology and weather forecasting are not well-aligned but looking back over notable heat waves and droughts in the past – for some there are astrological parallels.

 1913 had Pluto square the North/South Node axis with tr Neptune trine/sextile.

  This year tr Pluto is also square the North/South Node axis; and is trine Uranus, sextile Neptune.

  Previous highlighted droughts:

1540: Neptune conjunct North Node trine/sextile Uranus opposition Pluto.

1743: Neptune trine Pluto conjunct the South Node.

1757: Neptune conjunct North Node trine Pluto and opposition Saturn  with Pluto square Uranus.

1896: North Node opposition South Node square Uranus (Saturn) with Neptune trine the South Node.

  Those are only a few. The Nodal connections seemed to be markers which means the Eclipse charts will be a guide. Pluto is in there for some adding a mega-factor. And Neptune in its hallucinatory, heat-haze, not watery guise, adds a layer of panic.

Any additional thoughts welcome.  

Derek Malcolm, ‘a giant among critics’ and film world darling, has died. His early life was stranger than any movie and he wandered through a chequered career before finally finding his fate as one of the world’s leading film critics aged 40.

  He was born 12 May 1932 in London, long after his father, on returning unexpectedly from military service in World War One had shot his mother’s lover. After a sensational murder trial he was let off on justifiable homicide, having claimed he was defending his wife’s honour. They remained unhappily hitched thereafter and never spoke of it. 

  Young Malcolm was boarded at crammers from the age of four, thence to Eton, where he learned to ride and discovered a gift for words. His family home was oppressive so he escaped during school holidays in daily visits to the cinema and later  squeaked into Oxford, the Warden being one of his mother’s lovers, and joined the Film Society.

  Thereafter he tried to get into publishing, became an amateur National Hunt jockey, started an acting career in the theatre. After three years in repertory on the South Coast, he became a gossip writer, racing correspondent, then deputy film critic before ascending to the role itself in 1971.

 What is is fascinating about his life looking backwards is it seems blindingly obvious what he was designed to be. Yet he was forty before he found his destiny. Or it found him.

 Another twist came on his father’s death in 1969 when an aunt wrote to say he was not his biological father at all. Maybe happening around the same period of his life that was not a coincidence.  

  He had a Taurus Sun conjunct Chiron – ‘damaged and chosen’  – and that sat on the midpoint of a trine between influential Pluto and the North Node in filmic Pisces which seems apt; as well as being in a confident square to Jupiter in flamboyant Leo.  His Mars in Taurus was in a showbizzy trine to Neptune, sextile Venus which would suit him for the glamour world of stars and film makers.  His Moon in Leo was probably opposition Saturn square Mars – which fairly describes a bleak childhood.  His Mercury in upfront Aries was conjunct Uranus and square Pluto – giving him a facility for words, a mischievous sense of humour and a quirky take on life.

An out of the ordinary life produced a singular talent.

Royal favourites from ordinary backgrounds enjoy immense privilege while their patrons are alive but are ousted at speed once their rarefied position disappears.

  What is intriguing is that the three recent ones – Angela Kelly (Queen Elizabeth’s dresser), Billy Tallon (Queen Mother’s steward) and Michael Fawcett (senior valet to the then Prince Charles) are/were all Scorpios. Discreet and determined, plotters and strategists.

  A West End play this autumn will celebrate ‘Backstairs Billy‘ Tallon, who worked for the Royals since he was 15 and was with the Queen Mother from King George VI’s death in 1952 until she died. Given the stories that came out of Clarence House over the years one assumes the reality will be toned down. He was described as ‘loyal but louche, diligent but drunk, discreet in word but indiscreet in life’, he rarely left her side and presided over what became known as ‘a glorious gin palace’. Her capacity for tippling was legendary and he had carte blanche to feed his own alcohol habit which eventually killed him when he was 72. The miracle is the Queen Mother tottered on to 101.

Billy was an elegant, bouffant-haired flunkey, who was gay with a steady partner, but not above seducing young pageboys. The parties in his quarters, according to all reports, were wild. He only survived five years after her death, having become institutionalized after almost an entire life in service.

  Born 12 November 1935, he was a Sun Scorpio trine Pluto, with his Sun conjunct her Scorpio Moon and his Gemini Moon conjunct her Pluto, both of them having Jupiter in Sagittarius. It does rather confirm her birth date of 4 August 1900 which was always questionable.  Their relationship chart was complex with an exuberant Mars trine Jupiter trine Neptune; and a dominating Mars opposition Sun square Pluto – as with all servant/master relationships it is always a moot point over the long haul who has the upper hand.

   Angela Kelly, 4 November 1957, Liverpool, is oddly a Scorpio Sun square Uranus which does not sound an easy fit for a restrictive Royal setup especially since her Uranus was conjunct Queen Elizabeth’s Moon.  But both share an upbeat Mars Jupiter conjunction which would help and Angela K’s Neptune opposed the Queen’s Taurus Sun for caring and/or softening the chemistry between them.

 Their relationship chart had a friendly Sun Venus conjunction opposition a possessive/controlling Pluto  – so an important partnership but one in which power played an outsized role.  

 Michael Fawcett, 6 November 1962, a Sun Neptune in Scorpio with Mercury and Venus in Scorpio as well, he does resonate with King Charles with his Venus conjunct Chas’ Sun. F’s Sun Neptune squares Mars in Leo which is conjunct Chas’s Pluto for a tricky crossover where again power and submission are issues – though it tends to be a shifting seesaw over time.  Fawcett’s Jupiter opposes Chas’ Saturn so he would have a cheering-up function. Their relationship chart has a workmanlike Sun Saturn conjunction in a chained together square to Pluto which would be helpful for large scale projects – with a dash of adventure thrown in.

  Queen Victoria’s favourite John Brown, 8 December 1826, wasn’t a Scorpio and was anyway a relationship of a different order. His Sagittarius Sun fell in her 7^th so he would be there as a steady support in the absence of Prince Albert after his death. Brown’s Mars in Aquarius was conjunct her Jupiter and his Jupiter was in her playful 5^th house.

  Mars Jupiter is a running theme in these relationships and given the relentless pressure of a Royal lifestyle maybe one of the functions of the favourite is to act as the equivalent of the court jester – to add sparkle and cheer to the grind and gravitas of monarchical duties.