Celine Dion has cancelled all her remaining live shows after being diagnosed with Stiff-Person Syndrome (SPS)a rare neurological disorder. She said the disorder was causing muscle spasms and was “not allowing me to use my vocal cords to sing the way I’m used to”. The tour was to have been Dion’s first global concert tour in a decade and the first without her husband-manager Rene Angelil, who died from cancer in 2016.
SPS is a rare condition and not well understood, characterised by fluctuating muscle rigidity in the trunk and limbs and a heightened sensitivity to stimuli such as noise, touch, and emotional distress, which can set off muscle spasms. While there is no cure for SPS, there are treatments – including anti-anxiety medicines and muscle relaxants – which can slow down its progression.
She was born 30 March 1968 Charlemagne, Canada with conflicting birth times of 12.15pm or 12.30 am. She has her Aries Sun conjunct a hard-working, forced-to-be-self-reliant Saturn. Her Aries Moon is trine Jupiter in Leo and may be conjunct Mars in early Taurus. She also has Venus Mercury in musical Pisces opposition Pluto Uranus in Virgo and trine Neptune.
I would be inclined to go for the circa 12.15pm birth time since it puts Neptune on the cusp of her performing 5th house; and a career oriented Sun conjunct Midheaven and Saturn, Moon and Mars in her career 10th.
Tr Pluto is square her Aries Moon in 23/24 on this birth time and in recent years both tr Pluto and tr Saturn were moving through her 6th house. She looks understandably anxious ahead with tr Neptune opposition her Uranus this year and tr Uranus opposition her Neptune in 2024; plus a frustratingly trapped tr Pluto square her Mars in 24/25.
It would be a tough diagnosis for anyone but for a pro-active Aries it will be doubly difficult slowing down and accepting her condition.
Gnarly Dude, no one knows what causes ME and it can be seriously debilitating I doubt his parents splitting caused it wholely although emotional shock/trauma can led to ME. It does not make it less real than any other illness.
Delia – I’m only reporting what he told me. Where did I suggest ME isn’t real?
When I said, ill-health comes from emotional causes, I should have qualified that with “the majority of”. If you lose an arm in a sawmill accident then clearly it wasn’t an emotional cause. If however, you have a daredevil attitude to race cars fast or basejump from buildings and you get injured then I’d say that was down to an emotional cause even if superficially you were subject to some blunt trauma.
When you say “no-one knows what causes ME” that potentially underlines my point. What you’re saying is researchers/doctors haven’t been able to find a measurable cause. Emotional issues are not easily, if at all, measurable. And most people don’t have the insight or desire to sit and talk about their habits / emotional drives etc.
Always bear in mind that until 1970, doctors were adamant it was impossible for ill-health to be caused by emotional issues because there was no connection between the brain and immune systems. Then someone discovered one and they became more willing to consider it. If you really want to explore this stuff, take a look at Esther Sternberg’s book “The Balance Within – The Science Connecting Health and Emotions” which is a historical recount of the science – a totally different approaching to Louise Hay’s intuition approach books.
I don’t know about Louise Hay and her books, but I do know what the current research literature says about psychological distress and physiological correlations. Here’s a sample:
Takotsubo cardiomyopathy – shortness of breath, chest pain and heart abnormalities that mimics a heart attack on electrocardiogram that was first observed in Japan in women following emotional distress
Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality – Holt-Lunstad and colleagues study (2010; 2015) famously found that loneliness is a greater risk to mortality than smoking 15 cigarettes per day. Six alcoholic drinks per day was even found to be half as likely to kill you off than loneliness. It sounds incredible but these are findings that have been replicated. This is now a big area of research
Prognostic importance of marital quality for survival of congestive heart failure – Coyne and colleagues found that those in happy relationships were far more like to survive in the months following heart failure
While not being able to completely protect against genetic and other environmental factors, there is strong evidence to suggest that perceived emotional support can make us more resiliant physically. We do know that loneliness can be a killer. So look after your good relationships, leave unhappy ones and don’t ignore feelings of loneliness.
She also lost her brother to cancer, she actually has a difficult life, I wonder if the illness stopping her from working will led to a different path. I suffer ill health on and off since my early twenties and it has led me to live a different life than I had planned, it also taught me a lot about natural health, mental strength and empathy for others with illness. I was a compassionate person but it made me more so. I was a nurse and after being ill and recovering went on to social work. I had a bit of an edge because of what I had experienced first hand becoming acutely ill and having to accept we cannot always control our future and how to manage that..I also studied astrology, an interest of mine since I was 11..every cloud has a silver lining.
Like Celine, I’m an Aries with a very rare (and potentially deadly) autoimmune disease–granulomatosis with polyangitiis, a.k.a. Wegener’s or GPA. Was diagnosed nearly two years ago. The disease attacks small blood vessels and most often does
severe damage to kidneys, lungs and upper respiratory tract. It has so far spared my kidneys and lungs, preferring to reside solely in my head. It has wiped out my hearing–have gone 100 percent deaf in one ear, with the other ear just barely functioning. I am convinced that this disease was triggered by environmental toxicity. A few months before diagnosis, a contractor installed new flooring on the upper level of my home, with wood dust and other contaminants flying all over the place. My nostrils became so horribly inflamed that I could hardly stand being indoors. Wearing a mask didn’t help much. Ultimately, a nasal biopsy revealed that I had this crazy/weird disease that I’d never heard of before. At this point, I don’t know which is worse–the disease or the awful prescription drugs that I have to take for it. The meds prevent the disease from progressing, but OMG the side effects can be so debilitating–mainly non-stop fatigue. Astrologically, it’s interesting that this disease has chosen to do its thing solely in my head. I’m a quadruple Aries after all. For us Ram types, it’s all about the head. I feel blessed that I have so much Aries energy. I’ve always been extremely resilient….I’m full of plans for the future, disease be damned. A warning to all: Be careful about what you breathe.
So sorry to hear of your illness. Hope you get better soon.
Celine is a woman who has worked non-stop, at a very high level, since she was 13 years old. She has surgically transformed her face and has been super thin as an adult. The stress of her career, which demands ‘perfection’ at many levels, including rigorous discipline, has been intense and unremitting.
That she now suffers from this terrible condition of stiff person syndrome seems almost inevitable in someone, whose life appears to have been programmed since her early years. She has always struck me as a very sensitive, emotional person. It’s striking that in interviews, she adheres to a romantic view of life, in contrast to her demanding one. Her reliance on her husband was total. Cilla Black said that Bobby, her husband, mopped up all the bad stuff allowing her to live in a highly protected bubble.
Celine’s clearly did the same. The shock at finding herself alone, unprotected, must have been immense. That she now suffers physically is not surprising. I suspect that underneath all the superficial wordliness, she’s still a little girl, needing protection. Poor woman, especially as an Aries, it must be so hard. I feel for her. I hope her children can protect her and bring her joy, notwithstanding the prison of her terrible physical problems.
The Pisces Mercury-Venus nicely describes that romantic attitude you’re describing; and the opposition to Virgo Pluto would need someone else to pick it up which would play in them protecting and organising her life for her.
When I was reading her Wikipedia yesterday, I saw she was the youngest of 14 children. It’s very easy to get lost in a family that size and not have your needs met. As you say, it forces the person to develop strategies for coping with the outside world but they are often struggling with emotional arrested development.
Zita, Celine is reportedly estranged from her eldest son who has “abandoned her”.
Thank you Marjorie!
When I see a photo of her I see a woman trying to fight the passage of time (without resorting to surgery). I think women in the entertainment industry have a particularly rough time in that respect. Madonna being another example of someone struggling to convince us that she has hardly aged. It’s about time it was accepted that people’s bodies are supposed to change as they get older. I also wonder about the link between unacknowledged fear and auto immune disease. I have often felt that the role of emotions is not sufficiently taken into account when debilitating disease strikes. That’s not to say that the disease is not real but that perhaps there is a link or something that the soul is asking for.
Louise Hay would agree with you.
I have read Louise Hay’s books and she has some interesting things to say but I don’t agree with her that all disease is rooted in emotional or spiritual imbalance. Some is simply genetic (hereditary) or environmentally triggered.
I believe that the point of the Louise L Hay books is to promote a link between emotional and spiritual imbalance and illness. I don’t believe she encourages people to forgo traditional medicine or treatment. I don’t think she says ALL disease is rooted in anything. She simply offers an alternative path of healing and a way of looking at illnesses as messages (sometimes chronic) that the body wishes to communicate with a person.
If I were a friend of Celine, I would genuinely offer the book – as food for thought.
Admittedly, I offered it to my sister, and she wasn’t too interested!!
As a Pluto in 6th person, I have always believed ill-health comes from emotional causes. Thus far I’ve barely had a day of illness in my life and I intuitively know what to eat, drink and how to exercise.
I think were you to offer Celine a copy of Hay’s book, her Sun-Saturn wouldn’t give it the time of day. Far too wacky a notion and the type of personality which prefers to stay with the conventional and be limited by that and claim “bad luck” in the health stakes than go out on a limb. Ultimately, her Aries Saturn requires her to step up and take responsibility for herself.
As an aside, back in the 90s there was a guy at my office who got signed off with ME, eventually having to quit his job and didn’t work for 7yrs. He couldn’t go near a computer screen or anything. I met him some years later and he’d recovered. Said it turned out to be an emotional issue related to his parents splitting up (or something – I can’t remember the details) making him need to keep everything at distance. Someone had suggested this to him in the first year of his diagnosis but he rejected it and went off down the incapacitated, poor-me route until he finally confronted the emotional baggage.
Would you could consider her Aries moon to be in a yod with Uranus-Neptune?
She seems to have a real conflict in her chart between wanting to be tough (Aries Sun-Saturn, Moon, Jupiter Leo) and vulnerable Pisces Mercury-Venus trine Scorpio Neptune but with more conflict of the opposition to Virgo Pluto-Uranus. Throw in Aries North node conjunct Saturn and she may well be stuck in her Libra south node.
Sun-Saturn is tough especially for a woman – perhaps less so in the modern world – but often I note they seem to find a man to carry it for them – she certainly did as her husband was 26 years older. I noted he died in 2016 when Pluto and Uranus were transiting her Sun-Saturn – thereby forcing her to work on owning her Saturn.
The SPS syndrome really feels like it is a descriptor of Sun-Saturn. I suspect she has many demons she has been avoiding through a successful music career. I wish her well.
Celine Dion and Leonard Cohen are both the singing pride of Montreal, where I live. This is a true tragedy for one of the greatest voices in the world.