Derek Jarman – retreat from darkness into nature

 Derek Jarman, artist, writer, designer, gardener and activist, who died thirty years ago, is celebrated in an exhibition of his ‘dark paintings’ in London and in the publication of a treatment for an unfinished film called The Assassination of Pier Paolo Pasolini in the Garden of Earthly Delights, which Jarman wrote in 1984 as he was struggling to get his film Caravaggio made.

  Best known to the general public for his peaceful garden in the shadow of the Dungeness Nuclear Power Station, now saved for the nation, his main oeuvre in contrast was often ‘angry, dark and disturbing.’

His black paintings came out of a period when he had been diagnosed with HIV and in the midst of the Thatcher backlash against homosexuality in the late 1980s. He died of complications from AIDs in 1994.

Jarman was born 31 January 1942 7.30am Northwood, England, had a 1^st house Aquarius Sun (and Venus) in an entertaining trine to a 5^th house Jupiter; and more pointedly opposition Pluto and square Mars in Taurus – ultra-determined, angry, stubborn and enduring. His Cancer Moon conjunct Pluto on one side and sextile Uranus and Saturn in Taurus in his 4th added to his super-determined temperament. Though a 7^th house Moon would yearn for the security of a close partner. Three planets in Taurus, two in his 4^th, would incline him towards nature in his home life, hence the garden. His 8^th/9^th house Neptune was in a creative, inspired trine to Uranus.

 A critic wrote: “There’s something galvanising about Jarman’s resourcefulness as well as his rage, his protean creativity, and his determination to live his life and make his work regardless of the forces of repression ranged against it. “He kept flying through the flak. He kept going forward and he was extremely unapologetic about who he was and what he liked to do. Shadowing his work is a great deal of distress and trauma, but you were very seldom aware of it in his company because he was immensely warm, positive and joyful.”

 Pier Paolo Pasolini, 5 March 1922 6.30am Bologna, Italy was poet, film director, writer, actor and playwright,  considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italian history. Openly gay, he became an avowed Marxist after the end of World War II, voicing harsh criticism of Italian petty bourgeoisie and what he saw as the Americanization, cultural degeneration, and greed-driven consumerism taking over Italian culture. ‘As a filmmaker, Pasolini often juxtaposed socio-political polemics with an extremely graphic and critical examination of taboo sexual matters.’  He was murdered aged 53 in 1975, with blame initially falling on a 17-year-old rent boy but the more likely culprit would be a far-right terrorist group, working with the tacit approval of the secret services.

 Pasolini was born 5 March 1922 6.30am Bologna, Italy, with a father who was a gambler and pro-fascist. He had rebellious, provocative Uranus Sun and Venus in Pisces in his 1^st house in a charismatic and determined trine to Pluto in his entertaining and creative 5^th house. His Neptune sextile Jupiter was inconjunct his Sun and Venus for a personality that was both charming and also unsure. His lively Mars in Sagittarius in his communicative, opinionated 9^th house was in a showbizzy trine to Neptune and sextile Saturn as well as inconjunct Pluto.

  His Taurus Moon was square Mercury but not well integrated into his chart.

My slight impression and it is hardly a statistical survey is that an afflicted Mars and poorly aspected Moon are a theme in this and the Edmund White/Genet charts as well.