A fascinating female psychopath is how Ma Anand Sheela evidently comes across in Netflix’s Wild Wild Country documentary six parter. It tells the tale of the war between an Oregon town and the Orange followers of the Indian guru Bagwan Shree Rajneesh who set up a commune there on 64,000 acres in the 1980s. Combining eastern mysticism and western capitalism, he urged devotees to explore sex as a path to enlightenment and acquired a great many Rolls Royces,
The Rajneeshees fought the war with mass poisonings, drugs, rigged elections, attempted assassinations, and an arsenal of assault weapons they practiced with on their land.
‘Bhagwan was their leader, but Sheela, his tiny cherub-cheeked, foul-mouthed secretary, was pulling the strings.’ She was a master of manipulation; overthrew his other secretary to become his righthand, and instructed a young disciple to murder Bhagwan’s doctor. The woman obeyed, though she wasn’t successful.
Bagwan was later deported, while she pled guilty to attempted murder and a bio-terror attack in poisoning local people with salmonella; and was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, paroled after 29 months. She later moved to Switzerland, where she married, and purchased two nursing homes. And was later convicted by a Swiss court of “criminal acts preparatory to the commission of murder” in relation to a plot to kill US federal prosecutor Charles Turner in 1985 but served no time.
Born 28 December 1949 Baroda, India, she has a Capricorn Sun opposition Uranus square Mars in Libra – ambitious, rebellious, explosive; with a pro-active Aries Moon possibly conjunct her North Node. Not short of initiative with all those Cardinal planets or aggression. Her Jupiter Venus is in freedom-loving Aquarius with passionate and manipulative Pluto in Leo opposition her Venus.
Bagwan, 11 December 1931 5.13pm Bhopal, India had a stellium of five planets in Capricorn with Mars, Mercury conjunct and Venus, Moon Saturn in his 8th – ambitious, indulgent, secretive, cold. His Moon Saturn was in a bleak opposition to Pluto in the 2nd – money was his god, with sex a close second. He also had an entrepreneurial Fire Grand Trine of Uranus trine Jupiter in flamboyant Leo trine his Sagittarius Sun.
Deeply unpleasant the pair of them and yet they enticed a whole tranche of hippy dippies to throw up their lives, hand over their money and worship at his shrine.