Positive-think your way to fulfilment books and podcasts are back in fashion with celebrity influencers punting Glennon Doyle’s “Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living” and Brene Brown’s “Daring Greatly: The Courage to be Vulnerable” self-help best-sellers. With the help of Oprah, Adele and the Harry-Meghan duo’s ringing endorsements they show no signs of becoming yesterday’s fad.
Brene Brown, 18 November 1965, 8am San Antonio, Texas, is an academic and author whose staggeringly successful writings focus on courage, vulnerability, shame and empathy. In 2018 she was reputed to be giving two dozen speaking engagements a year at $100,000 a go.
She has a 12th house Sun Neptune in Scorpio which fits a fascination with the unconscious and the psyche. Scorpio is a great researcher, an explorer of the depths. She’s also clearly designed for a leading-edge, public career with the innovative Uranus Pluto conjunction in Virgo at her Midheaven along with Moon in the 10th. She has Mercury in crusading Sagittarius in her 1st in an intense, persuasive and outspoken square to Pluto Uranus. Plus a financially ambitious Mars Venus in Capricorn in her 2nd.
She has a talented Half Grand Sextile from Pluto Uranus MC opposition Saturn, sextile Venus and Neptune – so a strong and individualistic chart.
Prince Harry was evidently inspired by her approach to allowing vulnerabilities to show since it fits with his mental health campaigning. Her Uranus Pluto Moon in Virgo will connect with his Virgo Sun. But its not a combination that will stand the test of time.
The other New York Times best-selling guru – “Pain isn’t tragic, it’s magic” – Glennon Doyle, was born 20 March 1976, no birth time, and is a last degree Sun Pisces/or Aries Sun. With a healing and creative Water Grand Trine of Uranus in Scorpio trine Mars in Cancer trine Venus in Pisces; and an up and down Jupiter in Aries square Saturn in Cancer.
She was a troubled adolescent with bulimia, drug and alcohol problems who spent time in a mental hospital, got pregnant by accident, had three children, wrote a successful mummy-blog and espoused a rock-solid Christian faith. Her initial financially-lucrative writings about overcoming her demons were thrown into disarray when she discovered her husband had been unfaithful from the start. She foreswore her earlier protestations that self-sacrifice makes for a perfect wife and mother and embarked on a voyage of self-discovery which included a divorce after a coup de foudre with a female football player whom she subsequently married.
Singer Adele, herself just out of an unhappy marriage said Doyle’s latest book would “shake your brain and make your soul scream.”
Both of Brown and Doyle have strong 12th Harmonics which is associated with healing and also victimhood.
What astonishes me is how so much of what sound like clichés appear to come as a revelation to the hungry masses. Women as free creatures – a revolutionary concept.
Thanks Marjorie. These self help ‘gurus’ seem to appear – or become wildly popular – in waves. Your post prompted me to look at two of the earlier ‘positive thinking’ and self-help gurus, both popular in the 1920’s, and part of the enduring fashion for positive affirmations too.
Florence Scovell Shinn, 24th September 1871, had Mars in Scorpio opposing Pluto in Taurus, with Mars trine Jupiter in Cancer, and Mercury trine Pluto. Her first book was called “The Game of Life and How to Play It” (1925). There’s also Emile Coue, 26th February 1857, with Sun and Moon in Pisces, Sun trine Saturn. He had Pluto square (wide) Mercury in Aquarius. His book “Self Mastery Through Autosuggestion” was published in 1922. The watery themes and Scorpio/Pluto themes seem to resonate with the women you’ve discussed here.
By 1925 there was a loose grand trine between Saturn in Scorpio, Uranus in Pisces, and Pluto in Cancer. Jupiter was in Capricorn, and Chiron in Aries – as they are now.