Dolores O’Riordan, the Irish singer with a haunting voice, often compared to Sinead O’Connor, has died in a London hotel aged 46. A smash hit in her native Ireland and the USA, at her height she sold 40 million records, duetted with Luciano Pavarotti and toured with REM and Oasis. But she found fame difficult to handle and was ultimately diagnosed with bi-polar disorder.
Born 6 September 1971 near Limerick in Ireland, she was the youngest of nine children, brought up by a devout Catholic mother who imposed a strict religious upbringing, and was beaten at school by nuns. In later years she revealed that she had been sexually abused as a child, leading to anorexia, the overuse of alcohol, manic depression and suicidal thoughts. She married and had three children, but she had left them in Canada to try to get her life together, when she died.
She was a charming Sun Venus in Virgo, though a square to Saturn would induce self-doubt. Hints of her unhappy childhood come through an Air Grand Trine of Saturn in a harsh trine to Mars in a volatile trine to Uranus, with Saturn in a creative/neurotic opposition to Neptune (Jupiter). A surfeit of Mutable signs would make her inclined to nervousness and anxiety; and Saturn opposition Jupiter would bring highs and lows. Her Jupiter sextile Pluto would give her spurts of confidence, but clearly not enough to outweigh her other concerns. Her Moon in late Pisces/Aries was probably opposition Pluto, so she’d store up difficult feelings inside.
This year she had a raft of difficult transits to midpoints approaching; but most significantly her Solar Arc Mars, pulling on all the energy of her Grand Trine/Kite, was about to oppose her Pluto and was maybe around the conjunction to her Moon. Often life crises appear when Solar Arcs of central configurations move to collide with, and put strain, on natal planets.