The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 467, titled:
The Fourth House in Astrology
With Chris Brennan and Nick Dagan Best
Episode originally released on November 14, 2024
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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com
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Transcribed by Teresa “Peri” Lardo
Transcription released December 11th, 2024
Copyright © 2024 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hey. My name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. In this episode, joining me is astrologer Nick Dagan Best, and we’re gonna be doing a deep dive into the meaning of the 4th house in astrology, especially focusing on the ruler of the Ascendant and going through at least 50 example charts in this first section showing different notable figures and different celebrity charts and how the 4th house has worked out in their life in different ways based on having the ruler of the Ascendant placed in that sector of the chart. So hey Nick – thanks for joining me.
NICK DAGAN BEST: Hey Chris. Thanks for having me back.
CB: Yeah. So we are back; you and I did the first installment of this series, which was the 1st house, and then Leisa and I have done the 2nd house and 3rd house. And then Leisa, ironically, is off dealing with some like, 4th house stuff right now with her parents, so she couldn’t do the full episode today, but she’s gonna make a brief appearance later when we do a brief subsection at one point on the ruler of the Ascendant. But you and I have been deeply collaborating on this research over the past few weeks, and just finding tons of really great example charts.
NDB: Yeah, that’s right. As always, working on these projects with you is always a huge learning experience. You know, no matter how much you think you know about astrology, there’s always just that much more to learn and absorb.
CB: Yeah, and that’s part of why I like doing these, just because you get to teach people and show them like, what you know, but there’s also things you learn in the process, especially finding new examples is always really exciting that demonstrates like, a portion of the technique or a portion of what that house means that you see in client charts, but to have it like, show up in a celebrity chart that’s very publicly documented is always really cool.
Yeah, so we’ve got 50 charts or 53 charts to go through just in the ruler of the Ascendant section. So let me put up a little diagram to explain to people what this is gonna look like.
So for this series, we’re gonna start in the first part by talking about the significations of the 4th house for probably about 30 minutes or so. And then we’re gonna jump into in part two the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house, and we’re gonna go through about 50 chart examples of different celebrities that have that placement and talk about their life and their biography and different ways that that’s manifested in very tangible ways in their lives.
So then in part three, we’re gonna go through the ruler of the 4th house in all 12 houses, and then after that, we’re gonna wrap up with part four – conclusions. So today we’re recording this on – what is it – it’s Friday, October 25th, 2024 starting at it’s 3:15 PM right now in Denver, Colorado. We’ve got a nice electional chart. We’re gonna try to focus on just recording the ruler of the Ascendant section today, and then we’ll probably record the rulers of the houses section probably in another follow up recording, although we’ll see how far we get today. And then I’m not sure yet if I’m gonna release these as stand alone portions or as like, one big episode like I have been so far. I think it depends on how long we go today with these 50 charts.
I’ve decided for this episode not to do planets in the 4th house like I have in the past couple of entries, just because I feel like that’s the point where it gets really, really long. And instead what I’ve done is I’ve folded some of the planets in the house into some of the other sections so that we’ll still get a taste of what that means.
NDB: Yeah, that’s a better strategy probably.
CB: Yeah. All right. And then after that we’ll wrap up with some conclusions.
So let’s see, other preliminary stuff that I wanted to mention before we get started. So this is gonna be a big deep dive episode, obviously, where we’re gonna get into a lot of stuff and we’re gonna go as far in our understanding with the 4th house as we can. So there’s a lot of content that I’m putting out here for free in this episode, but there’s also gonna be some bonus content for patrons. So this work and the reason I am able to put this episode, this whole workshop essentially, on the 4th house out there for free is because this work is being funded by patrons. And so in exchange for that, they get access to some bonus content for this episode, including early access to this episode, so they’ll get to watch it before anybody else does in the public. There’s also a research notes booklet that is a downloadable PDF that contains all of our notes for this episode that I’m also sending out to patrons as soon as this episode is published. So that’s a really helpful guide, because it gives you an overview and an outline of everything we talk about, including some bonus information that we’re not gonna get into in this episode just for time constraints, because we always find more research than we can actually include in the episode regardless of how long it is. Patrons —
NDB: Yeah, that’s right.
CB: Right. Yeah, because you’re working on the outline with me.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, I didn’t realize you were sharing the outline, but that’s a great idea because there’s always a lot more information and detail in our notes that we never get to all of it during a taping, no matter how long you go. And I also just wanted to point out while you’re on this slide, the episodes we’ve been doing together for The Secret Astrology Podcast have been really, really strong. Like, I mean, obviously your patrons know this already; they’re familiar with it. But for people who aren’t patrons, they’re really missing out on a really strong episode per month. Last month we just did the overflow from the 3rd house, but it’s not always directly related to one of the episodes you do, but yeah. They’re really, really strong episodes for being these, you know, exclusive, patron-only things; they’re really substantial. So I encourage —
CB: Yeah.
NDB: — people to sign up if they’re not.
CB: Yeah. So that was one of the – that’s also one of the benefits of becoming a patron is I have a private podcast series called The Secret Astrology Podcast. Last month we released a bonus episode that was two hours of extra charts; I think it was about 25 or 30 extra charts that weren’t included in the previous, the public 3rd house episode that we got into in that episode, and it was so really good ones including some that just seemed a little too spicy for the public episode, and that’s why I preserved them just for patrons.
Additionally, patrons have the opportunity to attend live chart reading sessions with me where for each episode in this series, I’ve been going through and each time I do an episode like this where we mainly focus on celebrity or notable individual charts, I’ll also do a separate episode where I sit down and interview patrons of The Astrology Podcast directly through Zoom and talk about their, for example, their 4th house. And I already recorded that episode in preparation as I was researching this one, and it’ll be released afterwards. But I’ve still got a bunch of other episodes in this series as I go through the 5th house and 6th house and so on and so forth, where I’m gonna continue interviewing patrons and that’s one of the benefits of becoming one is getting to sometimes get interviewed by me to talk about your chart or to attend those live recordings to see and have those discussions in the live chat with people as we’re doing them.
So basically, if you wanna support this work, if you’re really getting a lot out of this series and you wanna get access to bonus content at the same time that makes it even better than this episode already will be, then go to Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast in order to sign up.
All right. So let’s get into the meaning of the 4th house. All right, so we’re gonna talk about the significations of the 4th house. From a chart standpoint, the 4th house itself is in whole sign houses, it’s the 4th sign relative to the rising sign. So once you establish what sign your Ascendant is located in, you just count four signs downwards, and that will be the 4th whole sign house. In quadrant houses, the 4th house is the sector of the chart that follows just after the degree of the IC, and that’s essentially what the 4th house is – it’s the signs that are rising up towards the degree of the IC in the chart.
So the 4th house is down at the bottom of the chart, and it acts essentially as the foundation of the chart as a result of that. In ancient astrology the 4th house is called “the subterranean place” or it’s called “the place that is under the earth.” And the reason for this is because the 4th house is the part of the chart that is directly under our feet in essentially the most hidden part of the chart and the most hidden part of the cosmos. So we’re looking at a diagram right now that shows the Ascendant is over on the left side by the 1st house, the Descendant is over on the far right side by the 7th house. Everything in the bottom half of the chart is under the earth from our vantage point, whereas everything in the top half of the chart is in the sky, essentially above our head and visible.
The 4th house, though, is the lowest part of the chart, and it’s functionally from an astronomical standpoint, you can imagine the 4th house just by imagining everything that’s directly beneath your feet and directly below you. So as a result of that, it both has these connotations of having to do with the earth but also having to do with things that are secret or hidden. But most importantly, the primary significations of the 4th house are that it pertains to your home and living situation and your parents or the people who raised you. But also by extension, it can also relate to your private life, since functionally the 4th house is opposite to the 10th house, which is the most visible part of the chart and therefore represents your public life in the 10th house. The opposite to that is the 4th house, which is the most hidden part of the chart, and therefore it represents your private life as well as your home and your foundations and your roots. So that’s one of the most basic and fundamental distinctions for me that all of the houses are based on is that the 1st house is self, the 7th house is other, the 10th house is your public life, and the 4th house is your private life. And as long as you keep that in mind, you can pretty much figure out most of the significations of the houses just based on that.
NDB: Yeah, absolutely.
CB: All right. Other basic things. The 4th house is an angular house; it’s one of the four angular houses, which makes it more prominent and active in a person’s life. But it’s said to be the least active of the four angular houses, which are usually ranked like, 1st house, 10th house, 7th house, and then 4th house last.
The 4th house is the middle pivot point of the angular triad that has to do with the three houses at the bottom of the chart, and the sequence is 3rd house, 4th house, 5th house. So one of the things we talked about in the 3rd house episode is how the 4th house represents your parents, and then the 5th house which follows after that represents children, which is like, the continuation of your family lineage, whereas the 3rd house represents your extended family because the 3rd house extends away from the 4th house. So we can kind of see how the 4th house acts as the anchor in the pivot, because it represents your parents and your family. But that this entire sequence of three houses is really connected very closely to your immediate family and especially to blood relatives, essentially.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: All right. So the – go ahead.
NDB: Oh, yeah, no, I was – maybe you were about to get to this, but in case you’re not – I mean, the other sort of way to think about 4th house is it’s in a triplicity with the 12th and the 8th, which you know, probably accounts for the reason why it’s sort of the least of the angles. But yeah, despite being a pivot, it’s got this strong trigon relationship to two houses that tend to be, you know, neither of which see the Ascendant and tend to generally be viewed as negative spaces insofar as houses are concerned.
CB: Yeah. The 8th and the 12th are for sure like, two of the most difficult houses because they don’t aspect the rising sign, whereas that’s one of the things that makes the 4th one of the good houses or a more positive house is that it actually has a configuration with the rising sign. And since the rising sign represents you, the native or the individual owner of the birth chart, any house that is configured or has a major aspect with the rising sign is thought to be supportive of your life. And the 4th house is a major one that is, for the most part, supportive, although we’ll get into some ways in which it does have some challenging significations associated with it as well.
NDB: Yeah. Because of its connection to the 8th and 12th, I tend to think of the 4th house being a place where we incorporate those areas of life. You know, where they impact us, you know, the 8th and 12th houses wherever we’ve been sort of lost or hurt or whatever ways we’ve suffered or caused others to suffer, you know, tends to come out through 8th and 12th house matters, and the 4th house is sort of the angle through which we process all that. You know, childhood trauma, et cetera, et cetera.
CB: Yeah, we’ll get into more of that here in a bit.
NDB: Yeah, for sure.
CB: All right. So let’s expand and talk about our primary significations for the 4th house. The first section I wanted to focus on the first like, major subsection essentially is parents, that the 4th house traditionally has always been the house that represents your parents. In ancient Hellenistic astrology they didn’t actually differentiate between one parent or the other, which is something that developed in later traditions, partially actually potentially as a result of a mistranslation, although we can talk about that more later. But in ancient astrology, they assign both parents to the 4th house. So this means that the 4th house can signify your father, the 4th house can signify your mother, but also more broadly symbolically, it represents those who raised you. So for those who are not necessarily like, raised by their biological father or their biological mother, it can represent your caretaker or those who raised you… Does that make sense?
NDB: Yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely.
CB: All right. So more broadly, the 4th house also represents the general topic of family and the role that family plays in your life. By extension, the 4th house can also represent some things having to do with the past and your family history, which can include things related to your ancestry. But also topics of lineage can sometimes come up when it comes to the 4th house, which is like, you know, your family lineage going back in time and where you’re at now in the present relative to that.
Other topics can be family legacies, your inheritance, heritage, tradition, and also your ethnic origins can sometimes come up with respect to the 4th house as well, especially if it’s a major like, factor in your chart. It can sometimes bring that into play as part of your family origins and heritage.
So one open question about the 4th house is grandparents; there’s a little uncertainty about where to assign grandparents in the chart. In the last episode, we talked about that there’s some symbolic reasons why the 3rd house could relate to grandparents, and it does sometimes seem to show up that way in certain people’s charts, because the 3rd house in terms of the angular triads comes before the 4th house. So symbolically, you almost get this nice sequence where it’s like, 3rd house would be grandparents, 4th house would be parents, and then 5th house is your own children, which is like the continuation of your family lineage. So there’s a nice little continuum there. But things are not always like, super clean in astrology, and sometimes grandparents do seem to show up in the 4th house. I’ve noticed especially when in some instances like, the grandparents play a primary role in like, raising the native, then sometimes they take on that role of like, the 4th house as a result of being those —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — who raised you.
NDB: That’s right. I definitely, I’ve seen, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. For my part, I tend to see my grandparents being a 4th house matter precisely because I was – every weekend we spent with my mother’s parents, and they were sort of other parents to me. They weren’t, you know, merely people that I saw on the holidays or what have you. But certainly in other charts, yeah, I think it is contextual, you know? I think it does come down to what role the grandparents played in the family. Sometimes they really are just extended family, and then you do find them in the 3rd house, so. It’s a case-by-case basis, which doesn’t make our job any easier, but the nuances are accounted for.
CB: Right. So maybe it – because the 3rd house is kind of like, peripheral, and it’s extended family, but because it’s like, outside of in the same way that the 3rd house represents your neighborhood or the things that are kind of like, around or peripheral to your home, your actual house, maybe that’s sort of the connection there with the 3rd house where it’s always said to represent siblings but also extended relatives like aunts and uncles and cousins and stuff like that which are kind of like, peripheral family members for many people unless you have important chart placements there and they’re very important and close to you in your life. But maybe that’s the distinction if your grandparents are more peripheral in your life that they might show up there more. This is something that kind of astrologers will continue to debate and maybe it’s like, open to discussion, but yeah, I wanted to raise that discussion without —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — coming to too firm of conclusions.
NDB: Yeah. I think that logic really holds, especially when you consider – I know we’ll get around to this other signification of the 4th house in a second, but – insofar as the 4th house signifies the home, the 3rd house can very often signify by extension the neighborhood. And so but, you know, in some cases, the neighborhood also finds its way into the 4th house if it’s a very sort of, you know, again, it comes down to context. If it’s more central to, you know, the person’s existence, then there’s kind of an extension between the 3rd and 4th house when it comes to neighborhood. You know —
CB: Right.
NDB: So yeah. You see these nuances often, and I think rather than fret over how they make our system less easily definable, just sort of accept the fact that, you know, different circumstances can move certain things around this way.
CB: Yeah. Well, and one of the things that we’re gonna come up against later in one of the areas when we talk about significations of the 4th house is how the 4th house sometimes has overlapping significations with other houses. And sometimes there’s attempts in the tradition to try to like, smooth that out and make it so there’s just like, one house that signifies that topic, but sometimes there can be multiple houses that represent either the same topic or different like, variations of that topic in different ways. So we’ll return to that here shortly.
So the other major topic besides parents and family that the 4th house is associated with is your home, and especially your personal home and your living situation. That’s where really it shows up in your chart in the 4th house, and that’s one of the most primary and important meanings of this house of the chart. So by extension, it can also indicate things like domestic affairs. It represents your foundation as well as your roots. So you can kind of imagine the chart as if it was a tree and the bottom of the chart, the 4th house, would be where the roots lie of the tree, and then the tree sort of builds up through the middle of the chart and then eventually you have like, the leaves and the branches up top at the 10th house, the most visible part.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: So your roots. More broadly, it can also represent where you come from. So this can be like, the town you come from, the city, the state, or even the country that you come from can be represented by the 4th house. And sometimes you get these extensions of like, people calling you know, their home country like, the fatherland or the motherland, and so you get this interesting blend there with the 4th house between the home and living situation and the idea of like, parents or family.
More broadly, the 4th house can also represent real estate. It can represent houses very tangibly, as well as buildings very tangibly and sometimes by extension things like architecture or other things that have to do with buildings.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So those are our primary significations of the 4th house —
NDB: I would propose infrastructure; buildings insofar as, like, yeah, it’s sort of the base of everything. In very much in the way the 4th house is a base for a human being.
CB: Right. Yeah. All right. Another major topic as I’ve talked about with the 4th house is it has to do with the most private area of the chart because it’s opposite the 10th house as the public life. So as a result of that, it tends to represent your private life, but also issues by extension of the major topics of privacy, but also things like secrecy, secrets, sometimes concealment, because things – the stars and the planets – are their most hidden when they’re in the 4th house of the chart. It can also sometimes very tangibly represent hidden matters in a person’s life. And some of the ancient authors like Valens, for example, associates the 4th house with confinement in certain circumstances, and the 8th century or 9th century author Sahl ibn Bishr associates it with prisons. So we’ll see some chart examples where in some instances, depending on how planets are actually situated in the chart, it could represent that as well under certain difficult circumstances.
NDB: Absolutely. And again, when it comes to the privacy and secrecy thing, not to, you know, beat this to death, but again I think by virtue of the 4th house’s trigon relationship with the 8th and 12th, very often the things that a person is gonna be secretive about are the areas of life that do pertain to the 8th and the 12th. You know, you cover up the less pleasant parts of your life or you, you know, you don’t make your sex life public; you don’t make your 12th house world public. These are all sort of things that hidden away by their own accord. And I think of the 4th house as being the repository of the secrets that, you know, not just family secrets that do occur in the 4th, but the secrets that a person accumulates over the course of their life if, you know, wherever they’re sort of living outside the purview of public life. You know, doing things that —
CB: Right.
NDB: — are supposed to be private or are not supposed to be done and we keep them private because they’re illegal or immoral or destructive or what have you.
CB: Yeah. I mean, that gets into a debate that I was gonna put off until we get to the 5th house about what house to assign sex to, but I will say that there is often a connection between the three houses that are connected by triplicity. I don’t think necessarily by going to the place on associating them with the modern tendency to assign those triplicities to the elements, but more so because it does connect those three houses in some similar significations that all of them have. Like, we saw that with the 3rd house where the 3rd house was like, siblings and friends and communication. The 7th house was like, partnership. And then the 11th house is friends and alliances and groups. So there’s like, this social and communicative aspect with all three of those houses that are connected through that trigon or triplicity because in each person’s individual chart, the three whole sign houses that fall there will all have the same element or triplicity. So it’s like, you know, if your 3rd house is Aries, which is a fire sign, then your 7th house is gonna be Leo, which is a fire sign, and your 12th house is gonna be Sagittarius, which is a fire sign. And that natural affinity —
NDB: 11th house. 3rd, 7th, 11th – you said 12th. But anyway —
CB: Oh sorry, yeah.
NDB: — yeah.
CB: Thanks for correcting me. So the 3rd, 7th, and 11th, which would be Sagittarius. So there’s a natural affinity in each person’s natal chart, and that’s the primary meaning of a trine or a trigon is like, an affinity between two things.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, I think you’re absolutely right. It’s not because like, we’re not attributing that triplicity by virtue of the elemental consideration, but it does wind up, you know, being a parallel to whatever element we’re talking about. But it’s because the elements also connect by that triplicity the same way the houses do. But like you said, we’re not doing it because we’re doing a, you know, house equals sign type of approach, but it does wind up being consistent with a given element.
CB: Right. Because one of the things I’ll show in this episode is just how so much of the meaning of the houses derived from astronomical considerations, like the fact that the 4th house is the house that’s directly below your feet under the earth and that is hidden and private. And that so much of it just comes from that rather than —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — the modern tendency to wanna associate the 4th house with Cancer or things like that, which I don’t think is necessary and it’s sort of like, a separate discussion. One thing I will say, though, about your point about connecting it with the other two houses is with the 8th house and the 12th house is that part of the reason that those houses came to be associated with like, certain things that can’t be seen or like, hidden or behind the scenes is because they don’t aspect the Ascendant. You know, the 8th house is inconjunct, which is not a major aspect or not viewed as an aspect in the ancient traditions – let me put up a diagram – whereas the 12th house also doesn’t make a major aspect with the rising sign. So it’s like, there’s two reasons – those are two very specific reasons then, because those houses cannot be seen relative to the 1st house, for why they would have some of those meanings or significations. What’s interesting about the 4th house, though, is it can be seen relative to the 1st house, but it’s still under the earth in the most hidden part of the chart that’s like, hidden away. So it’s like, it has a separate astronomical reason for being like, a hidden house that’s not visible.
NDB: Yeah. Exactly.
CB: One of the other major areas that comes up by extension is one that Leisa really emphasized as we were doing this research and came up with some chart examples that she’s gonna share later is that the 4th house can also by extension have to do with the inner world, in a sense, of a person. And some of the things that go along with that that we’ll see in certain charts are contemplative activity that’s sort of like, internal activity under a distinction where if the top part of the chart is representing like, the visible world, then the bottom half of the chart in some ways – especially the 4th house, because it’s hidden – can represent almost like, the internal world in some sense.
So sometimes things that come along with that can be topics like reflection, meditation, or ways that people cultivate inner states of being. And in fact, one of the significations that Vettius Valens gives to the 4th house is mystical matters or “secretive matters” is what he says, and it really depends on how you translate that from Greek. But we’ll see that there are some people interested in more mystical things that do have an emphasis on that house that we’ll talk about later.
NDB: Yep.
CB: All right. One of the significations, one of the things I really focus on and that I’ve seen come up in transits is the 4th house having to do with the past. Partially because it’s opposite to the 10th house, which represents your future and especially the things that you strive for in terms of your career or your overall life direction, whereas sometimes the 4th house can get associated with things that are behind you or in the past in some ways, sometimes tangibly because for example, if it represents your home and your early like, upbringing with your parents, then sometimes if you’re like, an adult and you return back to your home or back to the house you grew up in, you start having this sense of like, going back into the past or reliving old memories. And I think there’s a broader symbolic meaning, then, that has to do with the past when it comes to the 4th house. And indeed, even in the 2nd century, Vettius Valens says that the 4th house refers to older people or it may mean “elders” or something like that. So by extension, we’ll see some charts where the 4th house has to do with that which is old or ancient as well as things like history, and in some instances, getting to the bottom of things. So it’s symbolically at the very bottom of the chart, and sometimes you’ll see people that are really focused on getting down deep into the bottom of things or to the roots of things that have major 4th house emphasis in their chart.
NDB: Yeah. Definitely. The 4th house is definitely one of those places that we all wind up in therapy trying to figure out later on, you know. Work out those mysteries.
CB: Right. Yeah.
All right. A more tangible like, symbolic manifestation of the 4th house is that it can sometimes literally pertain to the earth itself, because it’s literally, as I said, the earth beneath your feet astronomically is what the 4th house is spatially. So sometimes it can represent the earth, by extension it can represent the environment. Ancient texts refer to the 4th house pertaining to the land or to lands, as well as to hidden treasure, like, things that are literally buried underneath the earth, which also kind of combines some of the secrecy and hidden significations that we were talking about earlier. But one that we’ll see come up in a few charts can sometimes have to do with things like environmentalism.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: All right. Finally, one of the major areas of the 4th house that I’ve focused on and that is very present in a lot of ancient astrological texts for the 4th house that’s a little surprising from a modern standpoint is the topic of death actually comes up with the 4th house both in ancient astrology and in terms of some of the research and chart examples that we’re gonna share, that this is like, the first time that we really encounter this as a topic in this house, in the 4th house. Even though in later traditions, there tended to be an attempt to differentiate and put death only in the 8th house. And while we will see it there as a major topic, it can also come up in the context of the 4th house.
So ancient astrologers especially focused on the 4th house as pertaining to old age, to the end of life, by extension to endings in general, and the end of matters is what it was often said to signify, especially in like, electional charts or horary charts. Sometimes by extension, it can mean “the resting place” of things or the final resting place of things. And one of the major topics that comes up is posthumous things or matters that occur even after a person’s death like, subsequent to their death. And we’ll see some interesting chart examples pertaining to like, funerals and things that happened as a result of the native dying that are actually very striking in terms of how certain people have chart emphasis there sometimes, those things impact the lives of people around them even more and in very specific ways than you might expect.
By extension, a lot of traditional texts talk about the 4th house as having to do with burial and graves, which is very, you know, literal since it’s talking about being buried under the earth. And one of the that modern sources have really emphasized that’s fascinating is there’s this not contradiction, but this double meaning with the 4th house where on the one hand, it represents the earliest part of your life because it’s like, your roots and your foundation with your parents and your early home and living situation. But then it also represents this stage at the very end of life in terms of death in some instances. So it has this dual sort of meaning and this sort of paradoxical nature of representing both the beginning of your life as well as the end in some ways.
NDB: Yeah. Full circle, you know. We use round charts, but I guess even if you’re using a square or a diamond-shaped chart, it’s still kind of a full circle type of context. Anyway.
CB: Yeah, for sure. And then finally – so that’s the end of our significations section; I just wanted to have a quote from Vettius Valens, who’s one of our earliest authors, just to give you an idea of what he says about the 4th house. He says,
“The 4th house signifies reputation, father, children, one’s own woman and elder persons, what one does, one’s city, home, property, dwellings, the end result of actions, changes of place, dangers, death, confinement, and secret or mystical matters.”
So this is Vettius Valens from the second century around 150 CE, and we see some significations that are very like, familiar to us, but there’s other significations that are a little unfamiliar. Like, for example, children were assigned to multiple houses in the Hellenistic tradition besides just the 5th house, and the 4th was one of them, but also the 10th and sometimes the 11th. So that’s a whole separate topic that I’m gonna save for when we do the 5th house episode, but I just wanted to show you this just to give you an idea of what some of the earliest significations were almost 2,000 years ago.
All right. And for those that wanna do further reading on the significations of the houses or why the houses mean what they mean, you can check out my book Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune, which is available on Amazon, where I really go into the theoretical rationale underlying the houses and some of those things about which houses aspect the Ascendant and which houses are angular and different things like that to really get to the roots of why each house means what it means from a technical standpoint.
Another really great book is Demetra George’s book Ancient Astrology, Volume Two, which has a whole survey of what ancient Hellenistic and then medieval and even later traditional and modern authors say about each of the houses and what they signify. And she just has this amazing survey where she quickly summarizes like, 2,000 years of different views on the houses, and it’s a really helpful guide and it’s helped me in my research and reviewing some of these significations as I’ve been putting these episodes together. So I strongly recommend checking that out.
And then finally I wanted to give a shout out to Levente Laszlo from the HoroiProject.com where he’s translating a bunch of ancient Greek astrological texts through his page on Patreon and then making those available. And he’s been doing a series on the houses, translating it from some of the earliest sources such as Rhetorius of Egypt, and that’s been a huge benefit for me as I’ve been doing this research. So definitely check that out if you wanna read from some of the earliest source texts on what the houses signify in ancient astrology.
NDB: Yeah. All excellent! Does he pronounce his name Levente? I read it as Leventé. Or have you never spoken to him?
CB: I don’t know. I mean, we’ve always talked by typing, and I do frequently mispronounce names, so I could be —
NDB: Okay.
CB: — mispronouncing it.
NDB: Yeah. I didn’t mean to pick on you; it just occurred to me maybe he pronounces it differently, and since we’re citing him, we’d make those options available to people to, you know, okay.
CB: Okay. So now we’re gonna transition into talking about the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house and getting into the chart examples. But first I need you to do a little preliminary thing to talk about some preliminary remarks before we get into that. I’m not gonna repeat all the preliminary remarks from the previous episodes because I’ve done a little preliminary things before each of these, so I definitely refer to those for some previous comments and some extended explanations about our research process and different things like that. But I did wanna reiterate a few.
So one of them is this was mainly like, my research project over the past few weeks, and I did a huge amount of research on it and that’s what I’m here to present today with the chart examples. I also had chart examples that were submitted by different people that helped me to research this, and I’ll give a shout out to a few of them here in just a minute. And Nick’s here to help me especially to share some of that research as well as some of the shared research the two of us did together. But sometimes as a result of me sharing my research, I end up talking more because most of this is like, chart examples that I found. But I’m not able to do solo episodes anymore because my voice goes out due to my stuff with long covid. So I just wanted to reiterate that, because otherwise sometimes people are a little annoyed in the comments if I’m sometimes talking more or like, leading the episode more than it seems like I should if I was just like, interviewing somebody or having a guest, if that makes sense.
NDB: That’s right. I’m here to boost you, not to be the center of attention.
CB: Sure. Well, yeah, and just help me get through this and present all this great research and information. So thanks for joining me and also being a great astrologer and research, because that was a huge benefit to this as well.
So as I said, Leisa’a away dealing with family matters; she’s gonna make a little appearance later. I’m mainly using celebrity charts here because their lives are well-documented, although I did record a separate episode just interviewing normal people, patrons, about their 4th house that I’ll release after this that’s already available for early access on Patreon. And it’s like, both of those are helpful. It’s good to do both things, but for the purpose of this, because this is research and I wanna demonstrate what the 4th house means, part of what I’m doing is I wanna prove what it means by using the lives of documented people primarily, and especially people that, for example, have like, biographies written about them or have documentaries about them or have, you know, even Wikipedia entries, because then when I say something about a person’s life, somebody can go and verify it and say, “Yes, that’s true; that was an accurate statement about that person’s life,” or they can say, “No, that wasn’t an accurate statement,” or whatever. But that process of verifying is important to me, because part of what I’m doing here is demonstrating and trying to prove what different parts of the chart mean objectively. So I wanted to let people know, because sometimes people are uncertain why we’re mainly focused on like, celebrity or like, notable figure charts, if that makes sense.
NDB: Yeah, that’s the key. It’s not necessarily who the person is, but just how much information we have about a given person’s life, which very often is someone who’s notable for whatever reason.
The great thing about doing the 4th house episode, though, and I think the audience will find this as we go through the examples, in a lot of instances whatever the 4th house means to the individual – even if they’re someone super famous – it’ll only have a tangential relationship, if any relationship at all, to what the person is famous for. So even if we’re talking about movie stars or rock stars or what have you, 4th house matters still have to do with their private lives, their homes, not the things that they’re known for or that they’re icons for. But who they were, you know, behind closed doors and what really preoccupied them when they weren’t focused on their art or whatever it was that made them famous.
So there’s nothing, you know, you can use all the celebrities you want to talk about the 4th house. Only once in a while are you touching on matters that actually pertain to what made them famous or what makes them notable.
CB: Yeah. I mean, sometimes they are often what we’ll focus on is distinctive parts of their life and their biography, but that’s what’s so cool is we’re often not, you know, talking about these people because they’re celebrities; we’re talking about them because their lives are documented, and therefore sometimes when you point out something especially about their 4th house, it’s something that is applicable to normal people as well even though we’re talking about a celebrity, and that’s why we focus on it.
NDB: Yeah. Exactly.
CB: All right. So connected with that, though, one of the points Leisa made is that it can be hard to capture everything about a celebrity’s 4th house because it’s by definition one of the more private parts of a person’s life. So there’s gonna be things that we overlook; there’s gonna be things that we don’t know; other additional things like that. But we’ll still be able to learn quite a bit studying the charts of famous people and people whose lives are documented. But sometimes it’s by talking to people directly that you can learn even more, and this really comes out in client sessions or it comes out when you can actually ask a person about their chart and their life. And that’s one of the things that you’ll see is we got into some pretty deep discussions in the separate episode I did on the 4th house with patrons, so definitely check that out for more balance into what that individual or more personal approach can look like in terms of talking to people about their chart directly.
NDB: Yeah, absolutely. Whenever possible, you know, if a famous person has published their diaries or their journals or an autobiography, that’s where you might get more of that sort of 4th house insight into that person. Or if it’s a work written by someone who knew the person very well and you really are getting a peek behind the curtain so to speak, yeah. But it is generally inaccessible by definition. The 4th house is what we know least about any given person.
CB: Right.
NDB: Unless they volunteer the information.
CB: Yeah. And we’ll see through our examples, at least, we know quite a bit, but it can still be tricky to research. So to reiterate some other things from previous ones really quickly, we are doing traditional astrology with some modern astrology blended in, kind of a synthesis of the two, but our focus will be more on external events and trying to confirm some of the traditional significations of the houses. I may record a follow up talk where we go into more psychological stuff about the 4th house, but that’s not necessarily our main focus for the purpose of this episode and it’s something that comes out more clearly when you’re interviewing people directly where they can reflect on their past and things like that.
Another one that I’ve mentioned a few times now is that we do have more timed charts for men in the databases, and as a result of that, that skews the databases and skews research sometimes where if you’re searching and trying to find good examples of things, sometimes there’s more men that come up. But I’ve tried to balance that as much as I can in this episode and to be more conscientious of trying to balance out the different examples used, but nonetheless, there’s still that issue. But hopefully, you know, as more astrologers come into the community and take part in this research and try to collect birth data, that’ll start to be balanced out more with future generations of astrologers who are doing this work and actively trying to collect the birth times of, you know, celebrities that they’re interested in or people whose biography that they’ve read and are able to get the birth time for some reason. So we’ll see —
NDB: Yeah, certainly in politics and the sciences is where this imbalance is most prevalent. You know, there have been plenty of women artists and actresses and musicians, but we know very well, I mean, in politics and science, women have largely been shut out of those fields for a very long time and so yeah, we just don’t have as many of them, you know, relative to the number of men whose data we have who come from those fields. So it’s just, it’s a reflection of where we’ve come from and the imbalance that has existed in society is reflected in the data that we have to present.
CB: Yeah, for sure. But that’s nice that it’s something that’s changing and we’re starting to get, and in putting out a call for charts I was able to get a great amount of really great examples sent in. So other things people often ask in the comments, but if a house is empty, then you look at the planet that rules that house; that’s the answer to that question, and that’s what we’re gonna deal with in part two of this episode.
Next, our goal is to talk about people’s biographies, but obviously that takes time to tell their story and present it. But we’re gonna give that the time that it needs. Our purpose today between me and Nick is we’re gonna sit here and spend the day talking about my research and his research as two friends that are just sharing it with the public for free, because we truly enjoy this and have found some really cool stuff in researching this topic that we wanted to share with the world. So it’s sort of like if you sat together with a friend and then just talked for hours about stuff you’ve been working on and researching, that’s kind of what this is supposed to replicate. It’s not the most concise thing, but the purpose is to advance astrological research and to create a sort of legacy of raising the bar in astrological studies. So I’m willing to do what it takes to do that, however long it takes.
NDB: Yeah. But you’re absolutely right. If you weren’t doing a podcast, this is the kind of conversation and the kind of thing we’d be doing for fun anyway, even if it was just between you and I. So yeah, you’re absolutely right. This is just what we do and how we do it.
CB: Yeah, exactly. And I love it. I mean, that was one of the things I told you just a few nights ago. I love learning about people’s lives; I love comparing it to their charts and seeing how their charts play out in different ways and getting that confirmation. It’s one of my things that I love the most about astrology, so that’s why I’m excited to do episodes like this one.
So the last point is sometimes I think about putting the material like this behind a paywall, especially when people like, complain about the length. But for me, it’s important to put this research out there in order to advance our understanding and benefit the community. So if you appreciate this work, then let me know in the comments, and consider supporting the work by becoming a patron to help me get through this like, long series; we still got a lot of houses to go.
NDB: Yeah, we’re only a quarter of the way through, or we will be once we’re done with this one. And yeah, what you offer on your Patreon is, you know, there’s a lot. You get a lot for whatever someone contributes, so it’s really worth it.
CB: Right. Yeah. So yeah, and those people allow me to do this, put it out there in the public for everyone’s benefit, so I appreciate it a lot.
Last thing, I just wanna give a special shout out to – I had different research assistants that helped me with this episode. And I wanted to give a shout out to Leisa Schaim, of course, that helped me and actually came up with a bunch of example charts, some of which she’s gonna come in and present later. Nick Dagan Best, of course, who I worked with extremely closely doing all this research and found a bunch of chart examples. I wanted to thank also —
NDB: I’ve heard of him.
CB: You’ve heard of him? He’s —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — a pretty handsome guy.
NDB: He’s okay. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Camille Michelle Gray was also a major help and submitted a number of examples, and I’ll let people know each time I use an example that she submitted. Orla from OCAstrology on Twitter also submitted and did a bunch of great research and has been helping me throughout this entire series all the way since the first episode. We also had research help from Lindsey Turner, who found a bunch of great chart examples. I also wanted to thank Petr Soural from Astro-Seek, because he recently integrated a feature when I asked him for help and if this could be integrated into his website where you can now search for celebrity charts in his database that have either the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house or the ruler of the 10th house in the 4th house, and that helped me to find some additional chart examples that I wouldn’t have been able to find otherwise.
NDB: That’s fantastic. Yeah, his site is so good. If you haven’t been to Astro-Seek, folks, go there.
CB: Yeah, and actually, speaking of in terms of one of the ways that you actually contributed to this research and have for this series is through your databases in Solar Fire where you’ve collected a bunch of timed celebrity charts and you’ve entered that data into Solar Fire and then you’ve made those files available for sale on your website. And as a result of that, I’ve been able to like, search through your database in Solar Fire and tell it, you know, “Give me every chart that has the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house.” And I have my own database I’ve been building up over the past decade that has a bunch of charts, but your database has a bunch of – like, a ton more charts because you’ve been doing that for much longer than I have. So I wanted to thank you for that and also tell people that they can actually purchase your database on your website. Right?
NDB: They can purchase files from my database. My entire database is enormous, and most of it is not made available yet, although at some point it will be. But yeah, I make files available. So there’s what I call a general natal file, which is just, you know, people’s nativities – no events. And then a bunch of – on my site, I make available some sort of national history file, so you can buy like, an American history file or a Russian history file. There’s a few countries; I’ll be adding more. Spain and Portugal will probably come soon. Yeah, but there’s, you know, there’s a lot you can do with these files in terms of using them to learn astrology or satisfy curiosity.
CB: Cool.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Alright, well, people should check —
NDB: I’m happy to help.
CB: — that out. Yeah. People should check that out; I’ll put a link to your website in the description below this video as well as on the podcast website entry for this episode. Finally, also thanks to patrons that have sent in chart examples or celebrity charts as well as a bunch of people on social media when I put out a call for them sent in submissions as well. And some of those will especially come up when we get to the rulers of the houses in part two.
All right, I think that’s it. So why don’t we transition into chart examples and start talking about the ruler of the Ascendant and what it looks like when the ruler of the Ascendant is placed in the 4th house in a person’s birth chart and how important that is in terms of directing the native’s life towards 4th house topics in a way that’s actually even more striking and more significant than 4th house topics are in the lives of other people.
All right, let’s jump into our first chart example of the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house, which is Alexander Graham Bell, who is widely credited as being the inventor of the telephone. So here is Alexander Graham Bell’s chart; he has Pisces rising with Jupiter, the traditional ruler of Pisces, located in Gemini in the 4th whole sign house. This is a day chart, and he actually has a mutual reception between Jupiter, the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house, and the ruler of the 4th house, which is Mercury, which is placed in Pisces in the 1st house. So it shows a strong connection with the 1st house and the 4th house in this chart. And one of the things that’s interesting about Alexander Graham Bell is everybody knows him as being the inventor of the telephone, but growing up, he was actually deeply affected by both of his parents, deeply influenced his future career, due to having different things related to hearing as a major topic in terms of their lives and his relationship with them. Especially he was deeply affected by his mother, who gradually started becoming deaf when he was 12 years old, and as a result of that, he learned to communication with her in different ways such as – for example, at one point, he developed this manual finger language so that he could sit at her side and tap out silently the conversations that were happening at home. And he was very close to her. He also eventually developed a technique for speaking in these really clear, modulated tones directly into his mother’s forehead where she’d be able to hear him with reasonable clarity. So his preoccupation with his mother’s deafness actually led him to study acoustics, which then of course ends up leading him into the entire thing that would eventually lead to the development of the telephone. Interestingly, his father also worked extensively with deaf people, and his father taught Alexander Graham Bell, his son, elocution and how to read lips. So there’s this interesting dualism throughout Alexander Graham Bell’s life where on the one hand, you know, he’s known for creating something that could be used by people who can hear, and on the other hand, he’s also actually known for working with the deaf. So one quote that I found said, “Throughout his lifetime, Bell sought to integrate the deaf and the hard of hearing with the hearing world.” And he encouraged speech therapy and lip reading over sign language, which is a little bit controversial today, but it was like, one of sort of his positions and influence in terms of the history of the deaf community.
He was also deeply interested in heredity, which is another topic that comes up with the 4th house, and this interest stemmed partly from his work with the deaf community because he observed patterns of deafness within families. So he was trying to study that and understand it in that context as well. But that’s my first example, just because of how profoundly in his instance his parents influenced his later life and work.
NDB: Yeah. It’s a fantastic example, and also I think a really great illustration of the mutual reception between that Jupiter and Mercury. That’s exactly how mutual receptions often work is they take something that would otherwise be a challenge and, you know, either find a solution or somehow turn it into a, you know, put it in the plus column so to speak. Take a disadvantage and turn it into some kind of advantage, if not outright, you know, resolving the problem. So yeah, I mean, you know, the whole question of communication between people and being articulate and all these things that come between Mercury and Jupiter in the four mutable signs is really bolstered in his chart by virtue of both planets being angular and the mutual reception, which just sort of takes these two planets that can typically be sort of at a disadvantage in a nativity and sort of turn them around and make them an asset.
CB: Totally, yeah. Mutual receptions are really important and one of the things that we’ll see and one of the things that’s come up really strongly in my research is any time there’s a mutual reception between two houses, it very strongly connects the topics of those two houses in some way, and it tells you that those two house topics are gonna be a very prominent feature in the person’s life. But your point also that mutual receptions can also kind of like, cancel out or mitigate heavily any sign-based debility that comes about as a result of the dignities and debilities of the planets. In this instance, Jupiter being in the sign of its detriment and Mercury being in the sign of its detriment and the sign of its fall. It’s also sort of – not complicated, but there’s also frequently multiple indications of the same thing in a person’s chart. One of the things that comes up with him is that he had a Sun, Saturn, Mercury copresent or sign-based conjunction in the same sign all in the rising sign. So especially that connection between Mercury and Saturn also kind of echoes some of those themes that would come up in his life.
NDB: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, just as a side note, when he made that famous first telephone call, he was having his Saturn return. He had just turned 29 about a week earlier, and so that first phone call is Saturn having just gone back into Pisces and making that return.
CB: Oh wow.
NDB: So yeah, yeah.
CB: Nice. Nice. I like —
NDB: Yeah, and he’s —
CB: — that timing.
NDB: Yeah, exactly! And of course he was born really not long, a few months, after the Saturn-Neptune conjunction in late Aquarius that coincided with the discovery of Neptune. So yeah, it was almost like, you know, Neptune was discovered in September of 1846, I believe, and six months later we get our Alexander Graham Bell who’s gonna… Yeah, bring, you know, connect us through modern technology to communicate and sort of make the world smaller. I mean, think about it – when he invents the phone, you know, think about what phones are today. He gets that ball rolling.
CB: Right. Well —
NDB: You know, he’s not responsible for texting or emojis or anything like that, but you know, this is the start. If he doesn’t make that first phone call, the rest doesn’t happen – at least not the way it did.
CB: And that’s actually a point Leisa made to me privately recently I thought was a good point where she points out he has the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th. And especially early on, one of the notable things for most of like, the 20th century – especially once it became ubiquitous – was that the invention of the telephone allowed people to communicate at long distances from their home. Like, people would have, you know, a single telephone hardwired somewhere in their home and then could therefore like, talk to family members or could talk to other people from the comfort of their own home. So there’s something more broadly in terms of that as well that’s kind of notable in terms of his 4th house echoing in different ways both personally as well as in terms of his universal contribution to humanity, and we’ll see that come up actually in different charts as well that there’s often a dual two sides to the coin where there’s like, a personal impact and then there’s like, a global impact that a person’s chart placements have.
NDB: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. Or Leisa’s absolutely right. When you think about it, I mean, it’s a different thing today of course. We’re on the phone no matter where we are. But when I was a boy and you know, when my parents and grandparents were young, yeah, the phone was in the home. And suddenly you had this device – you know, the home again being a 4th house place, a private place, a place where you’re usually hidden from the world. But Bell’s Jupiter in Gemini in the 4th – yeah, it sort of signifies the fact that with the advent of the phone, suddenly we could in a way access anyone’s home. You know, provided that they answered the phone.
CB: Right. Yeah.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Such a great point. One last thing I wanted to make, and I talked about this in the previous episode so we don’t have to dwell on it hugely here, but you know, I do see that the ruler of the Ascendant – Jupiter – it’s in the 4th whole sign house because it’s in the 4th sign relative to the rising sign. But because Jupiter’s at eight degrees of Gemini and the IC is at 25 degrees of Gemini, Jupiter is on the 3rd house side of the IC in quadrant houses. So, you know, Leisa and I were debating this in the last episode because it’s tricky because you could say, “Well, that could be part of the reason for the major communication theme coming through in terms of being the inventor of the telephone,” but then it’s sort of complicated by the fact that Jupiter’s in Gemini itself, which is the sign of communication, especially ruled by Mercury traditionally, like, the primary house or sign of Mercury. But I’m still open to that because I’m starting to see these instances where you’ll see both being relevant and there being an overlap where obviously his parents were very important to him and that was a motivating factor in his life. But then also, he became known as the inventor of the telephone, so it’s possible that both the whole sign house placement and the quadrant placement are relevant there, and that is how some of the Hellenistic astrologers seem to have, in the late Hellenistic and early medieval tradition, seem to have tried to reconcile those things. So I’m starting to like, study this and really try to put together some chart examples, and this could be one – although, since it’s not a clean one as a result of that Gemini placement, it could kind of go either way.
NDB: Yeah. But this is really important to face head on. Houses are the most controversial subject in astrology. And rather than be sort of bothered by the seeming, you know, incongruence of competing house systems or having to take some kind of hard line one way or the other, I think astrologers are better off sort of embracing the fact that some of this is multivalent or ambiguous or that there are different ways to look at this. And you know, it doesn’t help as a consultant when you just, you wanna have your bag of tools that you reach in and you always grab and they’re always reliable, but you know, this is the cosmos. It is sometimes contradictory or paradoxical or reveals itself in more than one way. So you know, don’t get freaked out. It’s life.
CB: Yeah. For sure. Well, anyway, so this is one interesting example of that, and we’ll talk about that more probably in future episodes at some point. I will have a separate section in this episode on the degree of the IC, especially as it can float and land in different whole sign houses. So we’ll talk about that later on, probably in the rulers of the houses section as well.
NDB: Good.
CB: All right. So that is our first chart example. Let’s move onto our second chart example, which is the birth chart of the famous painter and artist Pablo Picasso, who was born with Leo rising and the Sun – the ruler of the Ascendant – was in Scorpio in the 4th whole sign house together with Mercury, which was also in Scorpio. And Pablo Picasso, of course, became one of the most famous painters of the 20th century, one of the most famous artists of the 20th century. But one of the things that’s interesting about his biography is that his father was a painter and a professor of art as well. So this is one of our first examples of many that we’ll see – I mean, technically, the last one was also one of these, but – one of the themes that keeps coming up over and over again with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house is sometimes a parent that does one thing or is one career field, and then a child that follows after them in the same career field. And we saw a little bit of that to some extent with Alexander Graham Bell, but especially in this example that’s the main thing that I wanted to emphasize here.
So with Picasso, starting at age seven, he received formal artistic training from his father. So it wasn’t just that his father was like, a painter and then Picasso, you know, inadvertently becomes a painter later on in his life; it’s that he received like, intensive formal training from his artist and professor of art father early on in his life. And this was mainly in figure drawing and oil painting, but it played a really crucial role in shaping his artistic foundation and fostering his early development, especially because his father was an academic artist and an instructor. And he believed that proper training – his father believed that proper training – required disciplined copying of the masters and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models. So I thought this was interesting because there’s something about like, learning from what came before you in terms of like, a lineage of artists or in terms of inheriting some of the knowledge of the past. And I think there we’re seeing like, a 4th house influence come in as well in a different way or a different aspect in terms of things.
NDB: Yeah. There are a number of different ways that, you know, we can take Picasso’s 4th house and talk about him. You’re absolutely right. His father sort of trained him in the mode of the old masters.
In 1890, the same week that Picasso turned 10 years old, his father got a job – he had been trying to get this job for years, but he was finally hired to teach in an art school in Galicia, which even if you don’t know the geography of Spain, this is the part of Spain that’s at the top – like, the northwestern corner, like, north of Portugal. Picasso’s own family – he was born and grew up in southern Spain, you know, sort of down the road from Gibraltar, if you will, in Andalucia. So when he was 10, the same week he turned 10 years old, his family sailed around, you know, around the coast to the Atlantic coast and landed in Galicia. And even though they were technically still in Spain, this is a very, very different part of the country than where Pablo was from. And it was when they arrived in this new part of Spain and his father started teaching in the school that Picasso as an artist blossomed in such a way that his father realized that the son was eclipsing him already, that Pablo was already a better artist than he was. Transit-wise, I’ll just put out there that this was right at the time that Uranus had just gone into Scorpio, so when Pablo’s turning 10, Uranus is conjunct his Sun, and they move to a different part of Spain. Even though they’re in the same country, it’s a whole other world. Not one that he feels terribly familiar with. As an adult, of course, he’s gonna spend his whole adult life in France in a foreign country, so he is getting used to being sort of the outsider, so to speak.
But the whole thing about, you know, the Uranus transit, the fact that his father realizes that Pablo’s already a greater artist than he is, the sense of the Uranus transit to the Sun in that he’s now living – he’s now sort of like a foreigner so to speak in his new home, and yeah. And also I think, you know, sort of there’s a kind of… You know, the whole father-and-son thing that the fact that at such a young age, Pablo was already kind of humbling his father, already sort of taking him over. There’s something to that as well and how it changes the family dynamic. Almost like Pablo’s becoming the man of the house in a, you know, peculiar kind of way.
CB: Right. And he also goes in a different artistic direction than his father and that was something that frustrated his father as well as his uncle, who also played a significant role in his life.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, it’s funny, you’re talking about the past, and the further Picasso goes, the deeper into the past he goes. I mean, it’s true, he’s totally subverting everything his training and his heritage, you know, gave to him. I mean, he’s not famous for drawing very sort of symmetrical, real-life images, of course. You know, he’s gonna go in the direction of what they called primitivism. You know, being inspired by really ancient African art. Of course, he’s from Andalucia; you know, he’s from a place that had been more sort of integrated with Africa once upon a time. And you know, the whole idea of just like, subverting everything the way cubism did. It’s like the further he goes, the more he’s trying to, you know, humiliate his father or humble his father in some way. Maybe not deliberately, but just in terms of his artistic direction. But it’s funny – the 4th house having to do with the past. That really is a big part of what seems to drive him is to get to the essence of things, to get to some sort of point of origin that, you know, nobody’s been able to make contact with yet.
CB: Interesting. Yeah. And this is – for the video version – just showing one of his cubism paintings, Girl with a Mandolin, from 1910. And developing this style and just like, you know, everybody goes through that process, I think especially when you’re like, a teenager, of rebelling against your parents of what have you, but for him, it’s like, his dad had been training him intensely to be an artist in his style since a very young age. And so much so that at one point one of the interesting things I read is that his father rented a small room for him close to home so that he could work alone, yet his father still checked up on him numerous times a day, judging his drawings. So you know, that notion of like, working alone like, in his own little space was kind of interesting, and then of course later on as an artist he would often work at home on his paintings. That’s one of the things as a painter, even though he would also have a studio and sometimes work there, but sometimes his work was necessarily brought at home. There were tensions between them as Picasso went in a different artistic direction, but nonetheless still his father’s influence and guidance and support were essential in laying the groundwork for Picasso’s future success, even though their artistic paths eventually diverged.
NDB: Yeah. That’s right. I was only gonna say that, yeah, Picasso does have a very loaded 10th house, and there was an element to his life as an artist that was public. You know, he had this studio in Paris, the Bateau-Lavoir, and people would drop by and see him paint – you know, Gerturude Stein or whoever. So he wasn’t always just sort of hidden behind a curtain, you know, working away from prying eyes. Sometimes he was doing what he was doing in full view of everyone. But that’s another sort of element of his chart. But certainly, you know, there’s this undeniable sort of Oedipal undercurrent to how he’s responding to his father’s training and how he develops as an artist in some way, yeah, trying to sort of top his father or you know, somehow sort of show his father up in some fashion.
CB: Sure. Well, and some of that’s also probably coming from the condition of like, the ruler of the 4th house and just his ruler of the 4th house is Mars, which is ruling Scorpio, and Mars is placed in Cancer in the 12th house, which is sometimes one of the houses where you find people that you don’t get along with very well. It does have some mitigations going on because it’s like, a night chart rather than a day chart, so it’s actually not the most difficult planet for him. But that’s actually something we’ll come back to later and I’ll talk about in the rulers of the houses section is we’ll get more into the ruler of that house and how that worked out in his life.
NDB: Yeah. That Mars in the 12th – like, Picasso was rarely sort of wounded in any kind of way, but he could be very destructive in his relationships, and you know, that’s a whole other matter. It definitely played out.
CB: Right.
NDB: The way he’s – you know, what he’s doing to his father is something that he’ll wind up doing to anyone who gets close to him in a way.
CB: Okay. One last point that I wanted to mention that Demetra mentioned to me – I was talking to her the other night because I was working on researching Picasso, and then I remembered that she uses Picasso as one of her primary chart examples in her ancient astrology books, so I wanted to ask her, I wanted to run by like, what I had so far and if I was missing anything. And one of the points she pointed out to me that I had overlooked was that when Picasso was born, they thought he was a stillbirth. So they thought he died, actually. So he was a stillbirth, but then his uncle, who also had some medical training luckily, took him and he did this weird thing where he blew cigar smoke in young Picasso’s face, and it woke him up. And all of a sudden, he sort of like, came to life. And I thought this was a really fascinating initial sort of preview of a topic that we’re gonna talk about more later when it comes to the 4th house and death, but just that initially when he was born they thought that he was already dead. And we’ll see that come up as a theme more later on.
NDB: Yeah. That’s a great point. I keep forgetting that part of his origin story, but you do always read that in the biographies; that does appear to have happened, yeah.
CB: Right. All right. So I think that’s good for that. Let’s move onto our next chart example. Here’s the next chart. So this is the birth chart of a more recent example; this is Malala Yousafzai, who according to her biography – this is one I’ve tried to use, you know, accurate birth times. This is one where there’s a little question about the birth time, but according to her autobiography, she said that she was born at Sunrise, and her Sun is at 19 degrees of Cancer. So if that’s true, then it means she has Cancer rising, and her Moon is in Libra in the 4th whole sign house, and it’s copresent with Mars in a day chart.
So there’s another alternative time that’s floating around for her, but it’s introduced by somebody that’s known to have made up false birth times in the past, so I actually don’t trust it, and I’m gonna go with what she’s actually says in her autobiography for the purpose of this. But I just wanted to state that just in case anybody wonders why I’m using a birth time that’s slightly different than other websites.
So Malala is a Pakistani female education activist, and she’s really become well known over the course of the past decade and actually won a Nobel Prize in 2014 and became the youngest Nobel Prize laureate in history for her work in helping to promote the education of young children and especially young girls, and to make education something that’s available to young children regardless of where they live in the world, because she came from a part of the world where young girls were not either commonly taught or where it became outlawed to teach girls because she was born and like, grew up in a region of Pakistan that fell under the control of the Taliban in the mid-2000s.
So part of her story is she grew up and became an education activist, but what’s really interesting is her father was actually an educator who instilled in Malala a really deep sense or deep love for learning. And he ran a school that educated young girls, which was rare in that area and then eventually became outlawed by the Taliban in the 2000s. So as she grew up and interacted with her father and like, followed in his footsteps, she continued to advocate for young girls being able to learn and go to school, even though the Taliban had completely outlawed and suppressed it at that point in time.
So she began speaking out, and as the Taliban imposed stricter restrictions on girls’ educations, including banning them from attending school, she began to speak out against this as an injustice in the world. But then in 2012, when she was just 15 years old, she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman while she was riding a bus home from school. So that they actually tried to assassinate her and tried to suppress what she was doing in terms of promoting education for girls and young women. So thankfully she survived the attack after undergoing extensive medical treatment in the UK where she and her family eventually had to relocate after the attack. So she had to move away from her homeland, and her family, you know, set up a new home in the United Kingdom.
Despite the attempt on her life, though, she continued being undeterred in her fight for education, and she became a prominent global activist for girls’ rights to learn. So she set up, like, a fund or a nonprofit organization that works to ensure girls, to ensure that they have access to at least 12 years of free, safe, and quality education. And one of the things that’s interesting about that in terms of just looking at her chart is that both of the rulers of the two education houses, the 3rd and the 9th, are both in financial houses. So it’s like, the ruler of the 3rd house of lower education – Mercury, since Virgo’s on her 3rd house – Mercury is in Leo in the 2nd house, the place of finances. And then Pisces, which is her 9th house of higher education, is placed in the – the ruler, Jupiter, is placed in Aquarius in the 8th house of other people’s money. And since it’s a day chart, that’s the most positive planet in her chart, so it’s like, setting up nonprofits and setting up funds literally for people to learn as a really literal manifestation of that placement.
So as I said, eventually she was awarded the Peace Prize for her struggle against this oppression of children and young people, and one of the parts that I loved about her biography is that she actually eventually graduated from college at Oxford in the year 2020. But one of the things she says on her website is that due to the pandemic, she was actually living at her parents’ home when she graduated, wh8ich I thought was a nice touch.
NDB: Yeah. I’m also the stepfather to two kids who graduated during covid, and there was no prom; it was kind of, you know, covid did that to that generation. But yeah, it’s an incredible story, and the chart – the way she describes her birth time, she says she was born at dawn “as the last light of the star blinked out” or something to that extent, so it’s a really poetic and very precise kind of, without introducing actual sort of clock time, a very sort of precise account of her birth.
The age of 15 is, of course, a 4th house profection year, so when you see Mars in the 4th house in a chart, you can pretty much expect that there’s gonna be some kind of martian event in that person’s life, because they would have their first synodic Mars return at the age of 15. If you look at the solar return of any person on their 15th birthday, the Mars in the solar return chart will be just a few degrees from where the natal Mars is, which is the case in her chart. And so it’s one of these sort of shorthand things that I have. If I see Mars in the 4th house, be it a day chart or a night chart, I know that there’s gonna be something about events for the native when they were 15 years old that will have some kind of martian theme – not necessarily that they get shot the way she was —
CB: Right.
NDB: — but it’ll be something identifiably martian that, you know, became a part of the person’s life through experience. You know, maybe it changed elements of, you know, who they were; maybe they would have become someone else if that event hadn’t occurred, or so on and so forth. But yeah, you know, just one of those great little astrological shorthands. You see Mars in the 4th, and you know that because it’s a synodic Mars return at 15, which is always a 4th house profection year, you can pretty much guarantee that there’s gonna be some kind of martian story there.
CB: Yeah. So obviously, it’s more difficult for her because the ruler of her Ascendant is the Moon, and it’s actually applying very closely to a conjunction with Mars with the Moon at nine degrees of Libra and Mars at 10 degrees of Libra. And since it’s a day chart, Mars is the most difficult planet in her chart. And also, they’re both conjunct the Lot of Fortune at 10 degrees of Libra, which can sometimes represent that which befalls you or is outside of your control. There’s additional complications with Saturn being up there in the 10th house in Aries, and obviously that’s a very extreme scenario where she’s actually not just – you know, she’s shot as a result of what she’s doing in promoting education for young girls, but also essentially gets exiled from her home or from her homeland for her own safety and ends up needing to relocate to a new country. So this is one, you know, example of sometimes some things that can happen when you have difficult planets in the 4th house is sometimes there can be challenges that arise in your home or challenges that arise in your homeland.
NDB: Absolutely. Although it’s ironic that Mars also rules the 10th house and the Midheaven, and you know, basically getting shot was part of what made her, you know, a sort of celebrity. I mean, she was doing important work before she was shot, but I think it is the attempt on her life that brought her to sort of international attention and, you know, helped her get a publishing contract and Nobel Prize and all that. I’m not saying it was a welcome event, but it is interesting how, you know, sometimes misfortune does lead to that kind of turn. But yeah, she’s a household name; she’s a very identifiable 21st century figure. And I think it did start with that attempt on her life.
CB: Yeah. I mean, that’s a good point, just in terms of that sometimes when you have challenging planets that are associated with the 10th house, sometimes you can become known for something that was challenging or a setback that you experienced at some point in your life that is something you have to deal with or wrestle with at some point. So yeah, that gets into some interesting stuff about the rulers of the houses that we’ll see a lot more of, especially when we go through like, all of the – the ruler of the 4th house in all of the different houses, but that’s a good delineation right there that you just came up with with the ruler of the 10th in the 4th.
NDB: Yeah. Yeah, and —
CB: As well as just that like, her father influenced her career with the ruler of the 10th in the 4th as another just non-negative delineation of that.
NDB: Yeah, exactly. But you were right; the overall condition of, you know, the fact that the Mars is with the Moon and the Lot of Fortune, the fact that Saturn is opposite the Mars, the fact that the Moon rules the Ascendant, so on and so forth. You know, obviously her synodic Mars return at the age of 15 was a lot more severe than your average person; not everyone who has Mars in the 4th house is gonna be shot when they’re 15 years old. But there will be an identifiable martian event of some kind.
CB: All right. So I think that’s it for her, so let’s move onto the next example. Our next example is King Charles; I keep having him in my files as like, Prince Charles, but he’s no longer Prince Charles.
NDB: I know!
CB: Now King Charles the Third who became king, what, just two years ago, right? In 2022. And —
NDB: 20 —
CB: I think it was 2022.
NDB: His mother – is it? I thought his mother died —
CB: Oh no, you’re —
NDB: His mother died in September of ‘22, and he was, his coronation —
CB: Yeah.
NDB: — was the next year. Yeah.
CB: You’re right. So he was just coronated – I put “inaugurated” – he was just coronated last year.
NDB: Right.
CB: So —
NDB: Yeah, because there’s always – sorry – there’s always two stages. Like, as soon as the previous monarch dies, the new monarch ascends to the throne, and that’s technically when they become the monarch. But always it’s about a year later after mourning the past monarch that they have their coronation and it’s official. So depending on how you look at it, but his mother died in September of 2022.
CB: Yeah. Got it. All right, so this continues our theme in a much more literal sense of like, you know, children who take over from their parents where he literally became king and took over the family dynasty from his mother after she passed away, after Queen Elizabeth the Second passed away on September 8th, 2022.
So this is one I’ve used for a number of years because the interesting thing about Charles is that, you know, he is the son of Queen Elzabeth, and she ‘s been queen since the 1950s. And so he’s always been in line to inherit the throne and become king, but then what happened is that his mother just happened to become, essentially, one of the longest reigning monarchs in history and had a very long life and reign so that there was always this constant thing of like, you know, he got pretty old by the time he became king. And there became a question of like, is he gonna inherit the throne, or when is this gonna happen, and different things like that. So I think it’s so interesting then, because then his mom essentially his mother retained power or was the one in charge for the vast majority of his life. And already recently after he became king just in the past year, he’s been dealing with cancer, I think they announced earlier this year.
NDB: That’s right.
CB: There was already this like, question of, you know, did the majority of his life pass, essentially, with his mother in charge as the queen and he’s only taking over here. So Leisa did a lot of work on this chart, and one of her points was that his identity was very much wrapped up with his parent, with his mom in his instance, that he spent essentially his entire life waiting to inherit his position in the family lineage. That she ended up becoming the longest living monarch, one of the longest living monarchs in history, but also —
NDB: The longest English one, I believe.
CB: Okay.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So but more broadly outside of that, one of the points Leisa made is that she actually – that many of Charles’s interests or activities prior to becoming king were actually 4th house related. So for example, his college degree was in history. But also he advocated for the preservation of historic buildings and especially the importance of architecture in society. He earned awards for environmentalism, ecology, organic farming, gardening, climate change, and architecture. So these are all like, major topics in his life in terms of his interests, so it’s not just about, you know, that Charles like, waited around most of his life to become king, but also he had other 4th house interests at the same time. And one last point that I wanted to mention here that I was really stunned by at the time and it was noice remembering this as I was doing this research is that he was inaugurated on May 6th – or sorry, his coronation occurred on May 6th, 2023, and this was the day after – it was within 24 hours of – a lunar eclipse that occurred in Scorpio in his 4th house which occurred on May 5th, 2023.
So it was one of the really early instances before I started doing all of that eclipse research that you and I did last year, Nick, where I really started paying attention to eclipses in people’s lives because we saw the modern version of that, of a king having his coronation take place exactly on an eclipse. But for him, it was in his 4th house as he’s taking over this like, family lineage, essentially, and becoming the next, you know, link in that chain in terms of his family lineage of rulers.
NDB: Yeah. It’s true; he’s still, you know, as far as British politics goes, he’s the leading light when it comes to environmentalism and ecology. It’s really – like, the throne is kind of wasted on him because, you know, he’d be better off being prime minister and actually having a position of power to do something about it. But that’s, you know, that’s par for the course. That’s the thing about the monarchy is, you know, people are born into – like, you just have one job. You know? Charles had one job, which was to be ready when his mother died. And so, you know, he lives well into his 60s and 70s without that happening, and you know, it makes the life kind of otherwise purposeless. And he’s, you know, made relatively good use of that, you know, time that he had nothing else to do. It reminds me of Queen Victoria’s son, the future King Edward the 7th, who was also a Scorpio, and who for a long time had a mistress who was the grandmother of Charles’s wife Camilla. So there’s this whole very interesting parallel between – and Edward the 7th was also someone who had to wait his whole life for his mother to die, basically, and you know, same kind of deal. You know. Try to figure out what to do with himself when he’s literally prevented from pursuing most things that most people would do.
CB: Yeah. Well, one other thing – one thing that’s interesting about his chart is he was actually born just after a solar eclipse in Scorpio. Not like, super close, but the lunation – he was born almost at a full Moon in Taurus on November 14th, 1948. And if you go back to the previous lunation, it was a solar eclipse in Scorpio that occurred on November 1st, 2048. So exactly two weeks before he was born, there was a solar eclipse in Scorpio, and then literally within 24 hours of when he becomes king, there’s a lunar eclipse in Scorpio. So that’s one just like, stunning eclipse stuff again in terms of signatures, but also his is one of the first examples of something that we’ll see a lot of here in some coming examples, which is when his mother died and when he became king, there was eclipses that were bouncing back and forth between Scorpio and Taurus for that entire year because the nodes were moving through Scorpio and Taurus and through his 4th house and his 10th house. So one of the things that that actually demonstrates is that when eclipses start happening, especially in the 4th and the 10th house, it can show the interrelationship sometimes between your 4th house and your 10th house. That’s true of all of the houses that whenever eclipses are taking place, there will be seemingly unconnected parts of your life through those two opposing houses that sometimes will be drawn together for some reason. For him, it was his 10th house – like, eclipses taking place in his 10th house and becoming king and finally fulfilling his destiny in some sense of becoming king with that 10th house placement. But it was as a result of his mother dying with eclipses taking place in the 4th house at the same time. So there was obviously a close interrelationship there that was very specific for him, but we’ll see some other examples like that in the future.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: All right. So let’s move on —
NDB: Interesting – just one last thought. His Taurus Moon was conjunct his mother’s Sun; it’s just interesting. Just a little FYI.
CB: Nice. Yeah. Family synastry. All right, so moving onto our next example. Our next one is closer to you, my Canadian friend, where we have the chart of Justin Trudeau, who’s the current prime minister of Canada, and he was born with Virgo rising and Mercury in Sagittarius in the 4th whole sign house, copresent with Jupiter in Sagittarius and Neptune in Sagittarius in a night chart.
So the main thing that I thought was interesting about Justin Trudeau that I realized as soon as he came up was that Justin Trudeau is the current prime minister of Canada, and his father was actually also a prime minister of Canada before him. Not immediately before him, but his father was one of the longest serving prime ministers in Canada’s history, and now Justin has served multiple terms, and he’s also starting to become one of the longest serving prime ministers in Canada’s history. So this is just another one of those examples, but in a different area of like, politics, of you know, a son taking over from their father or a son following in their father’s footsteps.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, his father is really important. His father literally – like, until his father was prime minister, the Canadian constitution was in London. You know, we were ostensibly, you know, a dominion and our own country, but our constitution was still, you know, safeguarded by the Queen and British Parliament. When Pierre Trudeau was prime minister, he had a new constitution written and a whole ceremony and, you know, I got the day off school. I was 14 at the time. 13 going on 14. And so yeah. And he was prime minister for 16 years – Pierre – the second longest standing Canadian prime minister, but really, really instrumental at a turning point for Canada. The thing to understand, and you really see it in Justin’s chart as well, that you know, unless you know sort of the backstory, it won’t make much sense. Pierre Trudeau was born to a French-Canadian father and an English-speaking mother in Montreal, which may not seem like a big deal, but if you’re in Montreal, that really is like, being biracial so to speak. Or at least like, if you try to relate it to an American context, it has that kind of quality where someone is a combination of the two worlds. And part of what made Pierre Trudeau an important prime minister in his time was the way he worked to reconcile the divide between those two language groups in Canada that sort of identify two political camps if you will. And Justin, in a broader context, he’s the son of a Quebec father and a British Columbia mother. So in a Canadian context, he’s seen as like, a guy who brings together the east and west in the same way that Pierre was the guy who brought together the English and the French. So when you see that 4th house that Justin has with Neptune, Mercury, and Jupiter in Sagittarius – yeah, that’s what I see there is this sort of bringing Mercury and Jupiter together in that way is like, yeah, bringing the eastern Canada and western Canada together in a union or something to that effect. That’s what the Trudeaus tend to signify is this bridge between these otherwise seemingly unbridgeable worlds that you get in Canada, which is a very sort of divided place, really. It’s not a country in the same way that the United States is. It’s not this sort of cohesive unit. And so it makes these factors all the more important.
The other thing about Justin —
CB: That’s a good point. That’s an interesting point just because, you know, in ancient astrology, mutable signs are said to indicate two of whatever they signify. So that’s sort of what’s coming through there with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house in a mutable sign in Sagittarius. And that’s something to pay attention to that we won’t always note in every example, but that oftentimes like, the sign placement – there will be something that comes through the quality of the sign or the condition of the ruler or other things like that.
NDB: Yeah. The other thing to say about that 4th house – when Pierre Trudeau died in September of 2000, there was a huge funeral. I happened to be back in Montreal at that time just for a couple of months, and you know, you could go see the coffin. It was like, a big state funeral. Like, obviously, like the same thing when a president dies. But Justin, who was just having his Saturn return at the time, Justin gave the eulogy on Canadian television. And it’s still seen to be, you know, one of the sort of signature pieces of Canadian oratory, I suppose, in you know, Canadian media history. Everyone saw him give this speech, this really impassioned testimony to his father and his father’s work and legacy. And you know, he sort of, he – the speech ended with him saying, you know, “Je t’aime Papa” – “I love you, Dad” – and you know, this outpouring of emotion. And I think it was right there and then that, you know, people in the political world say, “Oh, we gotta get that kid into politics.” It’s directly him giving that eulogy for his father on television is absolutely the key in the door that began his political career and that, you know, they started sort of grooming him to, yeah, take up his father’s mantle in a way. The Trudeaus are the closest thing you’re gonna get in Canada to a sort of Kennedy-esque dynasty, I suppose, at least now that, you know, Justin has been prime minister. And you know —
CB: That’s evocative of like, the Jeff Buckley example that we’ll talk about later where he also had a big turning point at, what was it, it was like a —
NDB: That’s right.
CB: — concert —
NDB: A memorial concert for his father, yeah, exactly.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: Yeah, very 4th house kind of thing where the son is ascending by virtue of the father’s legacy. You know, even if it’s being at odds with that legacy, it’s still sort of, you know, it bolsters the son.
CB: Yeah, well, and that’s another element here is like, will he be able to… Sometimes son or daughters who attempt to exceed their parent, so you know, his father was longer I think serving than him currently —
NDB: So far, yeah.
CB: Yeah, and that’s the question is will he be able to exceed his father in terms of serving longer, which is an open question right now. But you said it was at his Saturn return. Do you know what degree Saturn was at?
NDB: Yeah, well, it was late September 2000. It’s almost exactly his Saturn return. I think it’s like, it’s close to the degree the last time I looked at it. Yeah, because Saturn had only made its ingress into Gemini in August of 2000 just before Pierre died. So yeah, I think it was like, a bang on Saturn return if I remember correctly.
CB: September let’s say 25th, 2000.
NDB: Yeah. And the, you know, the thing on —
CB: Oh yeah, you’re right.
NDB: Yeah, yeah. The eulogy on TV was early October, like October 2nd or 3rd or something like that. But yeah, it’s basically a full on Saturn return.
CB: Okay. So that, and yeah, in September – for the audio people, we’re looking at his —
NDB: He died September 28th is when he died.
CB: Okay. So for the audio listeners, Justin Trudeau has Saturn at zero degrees of Gemini retrograde in the 10th house. It’s ruling the Sun, which is in Capricorn in the 5th, and it’s a night chart. But it looks like Saturn would retrograde back into Taurus not long after that by like, november, and I was just curious about that because I can see the degree of his Midheaven there at like, 27 Taurus, so that means his IC is in the 3rd house of communication in Scorpio. So that’s like, getting activated as well, that axis right there, as he’s having his Saturn return and maybe, you know, just looking for like, technical reasons why that speech could have been an important turning point for him.
NDB: Yeah. It does need to be said, like, Pierre Trudeau was a real sort of renaissance man. He was, you know, an incredible sort of intellect and visionary, and I say this as someone who wasn’t necessarily his supporter politically. But he was a really, you know, a really special person. But Justin is more of sort of a frontman. He’s not the brains behind his government; he’s sort of like the spokesperson. There are people behind him sort of, you know, pulling levers, if you will, whereas Pierre was absolutely had no, he was completely his own force. Anyway. Yeah.
CB: All right, let’s move onto our next chart example, which is the birth chart of Indira Gandhi. So here is the chart where she was born with Leo rising and the Sun in Scorpio in the 4th whole sign house copresent with the degree of the IC at 17 degrees of Scorpio. So Indira Gandhi was the first woman prime minister of India who served as prime minister of India in the ‘60s and 1970s and 1980s. So this is another example of a, in this instance, a daughter following in the footsteps of her father because she was the daughter of the first prime minister of India. And her mother was also actually a political activist as well. It’s actually part of a whole political dynasty because her son ended up succeeding her in office as the country’s 6th prime minister, creating this entire political dynasty. And she was the second longest serving Indian prime minister after her father, but her political lineage actually goes back even further because her grandfather was a prominent figure in the Indian Indepence movement to begin with.
NDB: Yeah. That’s right. Her grandfather cofounded the Indian National Congress. Her father was Nehru, who wasn’t just the first prime minister of India but also sort of effectively a founding father, you know, an important ally of Gandhi and the whole independence movement against the British empire. And even the family dynasty goes really far; her father’s sister, her aunt, was a really important figure in, you know, some geopolitics. She was in the United Nations and a really important force there. And apart from one of Indira’s sons following her as prime minister, she’s also got, she had another son who was an important sort of political ally of hers, and his wife – he died, but his wife is the leading of an opposing political party to the Gandhis. So it’s actually not unlike, you know, what we see today with the Kennedys. It’s a political dynasty family that is actually splintered now. But yeah, it really goes far; she’s got, you know, grandkids and what have you who are involved in politics. So yeah, it’s an important force there.
CB: Sorry, I just realized I was muted; I’m back. All right. One of the things that I liked about her story is that she was involved in politics from a very young age, because her father actually mentored her. And her father was a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi, which immersed her in the struggle for independence from a very early point in her life. And her father involved her in political discussions and took her along on a lot of really important trips and state trips. This gave her really invaluable exposure to the world of politics as well as to the world of just like, statecraft in general. And it brings up sort of a broader thing about like, you know, people following in their parents’ footsteps, which sometimes in the worst case scenarios today we often talk — like, the word like, “nepo babies” comes up where people —
NDB: Right.
CB: — associate that in a negative sense sometimes with nepotism in instances where it’s like, somebody gets a role in a movie because they had a family member or something like that who called the shots and like, pushed them in even though they’re undeserving. But there’s a whole other side of that coin, I think, is the different version of that where you imagine, you know, like, a family of let’s say like, carpenters and like, a daughter or a son who mentors under their father or their mother for many, many years and is trained in this like, highly specific thing to eventually take over the family business and then eventually does that and it gets like, handed down from generation to generation. And that used to be much more common, I think, in the world, but we’re seeing echoes of that here with some of these ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house placements is we’re seeing people who are getting trained from a very early age by one of their parents in order to in some instances take over for them, but in other instances, to just get the sort of like, lived experience of their parent and having that transfer to them directly in a way that alters the course of their life. And that’s really what the ruler of the Ascendant is about, because the ruler of the Ascendant is like, the captain of the ship, and it’s showing you something about what your life’s destiny is being directed towards. And oftentimes when the ruler of the Ascendant is in the 4th house, it means for some reason one of your parents or both parents or other 4th house topics are somehow tied up in your destiny and your overall life direction.
NDB: Yeah. That’s very well-put. I mean, she was weaned on politics because there wasn’t a moment in her life where, you know, her father wasn’t engaged first in the independence movement like you said, working alongside Gandhi, and then once independence happened, you know, Nehru was really the founding father of the modern Republic of India. So she was at his side through that whole thing, and when she did come to power, she kind of – yeah, she knew the ropes to a large degree.
CB: Right. So she ended up adopting many of her father’s political views, and this included democratic socialism, secularism, and non-alignment of India so that she ended up continuing a lot of his policies of modernization as well as the industrialization of India. They reportedly shared a very close father-daughter relationship, and his letters to her which were later published as Glimpses of World History was the title shows a really deep affection and intellectual guidance between the two.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: So she ended up becoming prime minister just like he was, and then unfortunately, you know, I’ll often come across her story because she was actually assassinated in 1984 just like, a day before I was born. So she was assassinated on October 31st, 1984, and I was born November 1st, 1984. So it’s one of those like, when you look up stories in the news on like, the front page of the newspaper like things, that’s usually like, the front page of like, the newspapers for me on the day I was born. But again, it brings up especially with some of the ramifications of her death and assassination brings up other 4th house topics already as a early preview of that theme.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, India is a very, very tough country to govern because it’s, you know, really like a bunch of little countries molded together by virtue of being on the subcontinent. She was murdered by Sikh activists because the Indian army had been in a sort of, you know, little mini civil war so to speak with the Sikhs. And then when her son succeeded her in office, he was later murdered himself by Tamils, you know, from what was going on in Sri-Lanka and what have you. So it’s a perilous position, and yeah, not just her but also her son, they both lost their lives to assassins by virtue of political fallout from things, their policies or things that people on their behalf had done.
CB: Okay. All right. So moving onto the next example. The next one is Richard M. Daley, who was a mayor of Chicago. And what’s interesting about him is that his father was also a mayor of chicago, was a very famous mayor of Chicago. His father was Richard J. Daley who, for me, like, that name I always know because it came up in the news this year because he was the mayor in charge of chicago in 1968 when the Democratic Convention happened there and there was so much like, terrible stuff that happened and he was in charge of the city and had given some of the orders to the police that they carried out. But this is really just a really simple one, which is that his son – Richard M. Daley – grew up and he ended up becoming mayor, and he was reelected five times, eventually declining to run for a 7th term. So at 22 years, his was the longest tenure in Chicago mayoral history, surpassing the 21 year mayoralty of his father, Richard J. Daley. So this was one of my first examples where there’s like a really tangible example where he like, surpassed his father by one year and then called it quits. So I thought that was pretty good.
NDB: Yeah, it’s another little sort of Oedipal theme in all of that. And you know, you get, you were born the day after Indira Gandhi was killed and the Chicago Democratic Convention was two weeks after I was born, so these stories are also touching our own timelines as they were.
But yeah, this is, Daley’s another great example like Justin Trudeau or Indira Gandhi where there’s some kind of political dynasty being established once the son succeeds the father to office. And —
CB: Right.
NDB: — the fathers are always these towering figures. I mean, Daley as mayor of Chicago, the first one, in many ways is to Chicago what Trudeau is to modern Canada or Indira Gandhi was to modern india. So you know…
CB: One of the things I like about —
NDB: Sorry, what Nehru was to modern India, rather.
CB: Right. One of the things I like about these, though, that’s interesting is like, with Charles, you have a hereditary, you know, taking over. Like, he’s king because he was Elizabeth’s firstborn son. One of the things that’s interesting about these other recent ones in democracies is that even though that gave them probably an advantage of some sort, like already having a famous name or having a famous parent who had been ruler before them, it didn’t guarantee that they would absolutely become, you know, elected to their office or would become the ruler. It wasn’t purely hereditary. So instead, they still had to like, rise to the occasion; they still had to take all of the life lessons that they learned from their parent or whatever and apply that to skillfully or successfully like, become elected to these positions as well as to just like, part of the other symbolism is people who rise to power in their homeland or rise to power in the place that they are from, whether that’s like, an entire country in the case of Indira Gandhi, whether it’s the case of like, a city when it comes to Richard M. Daley. It’s also representing people who come to power or positions of power in their location.
NDB: Yeah. I think it’s safe to say in their cases that having famous fathers was certainly an asset in terms of, you know, forwarding their own political careers. But you’re right; it’s not like a dynasty of a monarch where it’s guaranteed, where you’re supposed to follow the parent into that position. You know, in all cases, the position still had to be earned; it still had to be sanctioned, you know, by votes and what have you. So yeah, it’s not the same thing as what you get with Charles, although they are viewed as dynasties. I mean, you know, if you talk to Chicagoans about Daley, they’ll think of it as a dynasty. Certainly, you know, the Trudeau name or the Gandhi name in Canada and India have that ring to it as well. So they sort of, they’re almost like, organic dynasties if that’s an appropriate way of putting it. You know, they’re not officially sanctioned, but the people tend to think of them that way anyway or they become that organically.
CB: Yeah. I guess it’s just something I’ve been thinking about a lot because I think it’s something that gets lost sometime in the recent how like, popular cliche it’s gotten to talk about like, nepo babies or nepotism that it’s like, there are cases where sometimes people are thrust into positions that they’re truly not qualified for just because they have like, a famous parent or a parent who’s in a position of power. But then other times, you do have those situations where you actually have somebody that was born into a family that happens to focus in a specific industry and therefore they got a headstart like, learning about that industry from a very early age because that’s what their parent was focused on and therefore they actually are able to become more successful or more skilled, more adept, at that specific let’s say occupation or what have you than other people because they really grew up around it. So it’s an interesting thing to like, take into account here with some of these examples that we’re seeing. Sometimes you might see different things just depending on what the actual situation is.
NDB: Yeah. Certainly.
CB: All right. So let’s move onto our next example, which is the famous movie director Francis Ford Coppola.
NDB: Oh yeah.
CB: All right, so this is – I know this is one of your favorite examples. Francis Ford Coppola was born with Capricorn rising and the ruler of the Ascendant is Saturn, which is placed in Aries in the 4th whole sign house along with the Sun and Mercury. And Saturn is actually in a mutual reception with the ruler of the 4th house, which is Mars, which is placed in Capricorn in the 1st house very near the degree of the Ascendant. So here we have another really strong connection between the 1st house and the 4th house, and the main reason I wanted to use this as an example is because his most famous movie – so he’s a movie director, he’s done a number of different movies at this point including one that just came out recently that lots of people are talking about, but still in his life even though he’s towards the very end of his life and career as a filmmaker, his most famous and influential movie is still the movie The Godfather. And the movie itself is interesting both in terms of why he was chosen to direct that movie as well as what the movie itself is actually about. So you know, the film is about an Italian crime family and specifically it’s about the patriarch of the family and the process of a son who is taking over for his father eventually as patriarch by the end of the movie. And one of the things that’s interesting is one of the reasons why Francis Ford Coppola was chosen by the movie studio to direct the movie is because of his Italian heritage and his family background, because it was a movie that was being adapted from a book about essentially like, the life of an Italian-American crime family. But the studios wanted it to be really authentic, so they wanted to go with an up-and-coming filmmaker who actually had an Italian background and could bring some of his family experience to the movie to make it feel more authentic, and that was like, a major part of the movie that he was successful with I think.
NDB: Yeah. The situation was that the most recent sort of gangster films that had come out before The Godfather had flopped, and they had flopped because they were seen to be inauthentic. You know, they were written, directed by someone from Nebraska or what have you. You know, someone who had no real sort of contact with this culture. So yeah, it had very much the – you know, the way one of the producers termed it was they were hiring Francis because he was Italian, because when you were watching the movie, they wanted you to be able to smell the spaghetti or taste the spaghetti. In other words, make it so, you know, like, authentically Italian. And that is a really great sort of – you can really see how Francis’s 4th house in its own way reflects the plot of The Godfather, the whole you know, the handing over of the dynasty from the father to the son. But it really, it even goes deeper than that in a way, because Francis – like Michael CorLeone – is a younger brother who was not expected to succeed. Francis Ford Coppola’s older brother was, according to Francis, the family favorite – August Coppola. This is the father of Nicolas Cage; some people might not know the actor Nicolas Cage’s real name is Nicolas Coppola – he’s Francis’s nephew. And Francis grew up with like, his older brother August being like, the favorite and the one who was expected to succeed and the one who, you know, taught Francis a lot of the things he knows as well.
So in the same way that Michael CorLeone as the younger brother sort of rises ahead of his, well, his oldest brother is killed in the movie and then the other older brother he sort of shoots ahead of him. That was in its own way a reflection of, you know, a sort of autobiographical touch by Francis is that it also sort of reflected what was happening in his life and would continue to happen. The other thing is —
CB: Because what? Because he exceeded his brother?
NDB: Yeah, because he sort of, you know, succeeded where his brother had not, if you will. He became the success of the family as opposed to his brother who was expected to be, let’s put it that way.
CB: Got it.
NDB: Also, you know, Francis’s father is a musician, and you can hear his father’s music in The Godfather and in a lot of Coppola movies. Young Sofia Coppola, who we’ll talk about in a minute, was born when the movie was being made and you can see her in The Godfather; she plays the little boy who’s being baptized at the very end of the movie. So in other words, there’s a real sort of family affair. Francis is a very family-oriented guy. He’s always brought his family with him no matter where he’s filming. You know, when he was filming Apocalypse Now in the Philippines, his wife and kids were there with him no matter what he did. And he’s a great advocate, if you ever see him in interviews, he encourages young people to go and have their kids early. You know, he’s all about saying, you know, don’t wait to have kids. People are always saying, you know, I’ll only have kids when I’m ready. He’s like, you know, have them now. So yeah, very sort of 4th house guy. And another great illustration of how that mutual reception bonifies what would otherwise be a tricky Saturn to have, you know, a Saturn in Aries in a night chart, you know, with the Sun like that – that would be very difficult. And finally, you know, another interesting thing to it all is the fact that Sofia also has the Sun and Saturn in the 4th house in her chart. You know, the Saturn doesn’t rule the Ascendant in the same way, but you can see this whole sort of family theme run through their filmmaking. Not just in Francis’s work, but also in Sofia’s. I think that the most striking thing about all this is that Saturn of Francis’s – in 1986, within days of his birthday, which was his 47th birthday, there was a solar eclipse conjunct Francis’s Saturn at 19 degrees Aries. And then a few weeks after that, Sofia turned 15 years old and she had a 4th house profection year where she has the Sun and Saturn. And shortly after that birthday, her older brother, Gian – Francis’s oldest son, was killed tragically in a boating accident. And Francis – even now if you watch an interview that, you know, Francis has done just in the last couple of months, he talks about how he spent 30 years mourning the death of his son. And one of the next movies he did after his son Gian died was The Godfather III in which Sofia plays a role in which she, you know, she’s murdered at the end of the movie – not to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it. And then furthermore, when Sofia finally made her first movie, it’s a movie called The Virgin Suicides; it’s a wonderful movie, a film I thought was really fantastic. I like her work a lot. But in The Virgin Diaries, it’s a story about a family – these very strict, controlling parents with five beautiful young daughters who they, you know, sort of keep hidden away from the neighborhood boys and it’s very sheltered and the girls in the end take their lives, and the parents are dealing with all this grief. It’s another very sort of Sun-Saturn in the 4th house themed work, and I think it touches on, you know, again all the sort of dynamics that are happening in the real world. Finally, with reference to that eclipse that happened in 1986, 38 years later last April, we had that same eclipse – well, an eclipse at that same degree of 19 Aries – and within just a couple of days of that solar eclipse, Francis’s wife died, Sofia’s mother. So these recurring, you know, you were talking early about eclipses in their power; this recurring eclipse cycle that happens on Francis’s Saturn has coincided closely with the death of two family members – his son in 1986 and his wife in 2024. And you can see it in Sofia’s chart and you can see it in Francis’s chart. And it’s… Yeah, just a really, really powerful bit of astrology there.
CB: Yeah. So it’s like we’re seeing both his major focus on family with the ruler of the Ascendant there and having three planets in the 4th house, but also because he has Saturn there in a night chart, it’s also the area where he has some of his greatest challenges and struggles and difficulties, and in those instances with both of those eclipses in the 4th house losing members of his family in tragic ways at those times.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: So but overall, my main point with this example is just that he’s somebody that frequently brings family along and integrates his life and work with his family and makes it part of that, including taking his family to like, far-off places and different countries. When he was filming in different countries, his wife actually shot like, a documentary once because the entire family was there about the filming of Apocalypse Now and what a kind of like, disaster it was at that time because she was there with the rest of the family. And in some instances, his family has become prominent, or members of his family have become more prominent as a result of being involved in his work, such as for example his father winning an Oscar for the score of The Godfather Part II is like, a really notable moment for him in terms of his family legacy and his relationship with his father and everything else. So it just creates such a unique cinematic legacy where the Coppola family is interwoven with some of the most iconic events in film history because of this focus on the 4th house especially in his chart.
NDB: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And of course, you know, apart rom being a filmmaker, Francis is also – or at least until recently has been – a producer of wine, which you know, involves working with soil. There’s a real sort of 4th house skillset involved there as well in terms of owning land and cultivating, especially a very Saturnian operation like wine-making, which is always a sort of multiple year operation. You know, it’s not just something that you start in one month and finish a few months later; you’re always working on a sort of a schedule of years as opposed to months or days or weeks. So yeah, it’s all over his work. I mean, certainly the example with his father winning the Oscar or with the circumstances that got him hired to be The Godfather – those reflect that 4th house of his, but just, you know, everywhere you look in his work and his life, you see that 4th house. You see that configuration there. It’s unmistakable.
CB: For sure. And I think he sold – the news reports are that he sold off part of his wine-making business in order to fund the movie that he did this year, Megalopolis, which is kind of interesting. I haven’t seen it yet; I don’t know if you’ve seen it. But you know, even the title is interesting that it’s about a city of some sort; I don’t actually know what the full thing is, but it would be funny if that was like, a 4th house thing as well.
NDB: Well, there is an element to that when you’re talking about the past. I mean, it’s a very sort of futuristic movie, but it’s supposed to be some kind of retelling of ancient Rome. It’s, you know, he’s trying to retell the story of ancient Rome in a sort of modern context that’s removed from the… Yeah, it’s not set in ancient Rome, but it’s supposed to be about ancient Rome and I suppose about America in so far as it’s a reflection of ancient Rome, but yeah. There is still a 4th house theme in all that. You know, the most interesting interviews Francis is doing these days is the ones where he’s out there talking about Roman history and philosophy.
CB: Right.
NDB: Because then you understand like, why he’s making the film and what it’s supposed to really be about.
CB: Yeah. Well, people can let us know in the comments if there’s any like, deeper things or conections in terms of that. All right, so let’s move onto the next example, which is actually his daughter’s chart. Sofia Coppola also has the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house.
So Sofia was born with Aquarius rising and the ruler of the Ascendant is Saturn, which is in Taurus in a night chart conjunct the Sun in the 4th whole sign house. So not just the father but also the daughter have the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house, and she of course, as we said, like, grew up traveling around to his film sets, learned a lot about filmmaking and even appeared not just in the first Godfather movie as the baby, but also in the third Godfather movie where she actually played a role in that movie. But then eventually, she would grow up and become a famous award-winning filmmaker in her own right, basically. Yeah, basically, and become a famous director, but it’s another one of those now in a different area. We had been talking about like, political examples of this; now we have an example of this in filmmaking with a famous filmmaker father and daughter.
NDB: Yeah. And like I said, when she was 15 and having a 4th house profection year, her older brother died. And I see that Sun-Saturn in the 4th house and think, you know, she had to sort of help pick up the pieces when her parents were shattered by that loss. And I think you see a lot of that especially in, like I said, the theme of her first movie, The Virgin Suicides. I might have said “The Virgin Diaries” earlier. The Virgin Suicides, which again is a real sort of like, a film about a family being devastated by, you know, death. And yeah, I think it’s a big part of, you know. Again, like with Francis, I think you see her work in her chart. Just another —
CB: Yeah.
NDB: — little aside thing. Oh, sorry – go ahead, yeah.
CB: I think one of the things I got insight into at one point from a more direct, in terms of her relationship with him as well as a more psychological or internal glimpse of, was she received a lot of like, training from him since she was on set with him and witnessed his creative process firsthand. So that this early immersion undoubtedly shaped her own artistic sensibilities to some extent in terms of just one’s environment. And later she worked with him directly as like, a second unit director and as a costume designer so that he acted as like, a mentor and a source of guidance throughout her career. But also she’s actually spoken about her admiration for him and the importance of family in her life, but she’s also discussed the pressure of living up to her father’s reputation and the need to forge her own path. And I thought that was really interesting because, you know, it’s not something I would have thought about, but it makes perfect sense in terms of yeah, if you go into the same field as your parent, it’s not just always a matter of like, nepotism necessarily, but you have to prove yourself, and so there’s always gonna be this shadow hanging over you to a certain extent of like, you know, can I show that I have the skills and like, the quality to stand up to what my parent did, especially if your parents like, you know, directed The Godfather, which is like, usually regarded as one of the top movies of all time? And then you decide to go into the exact same, you know, occupation essentially of filmmaking. Then you’ve got a lot to prove. And so that’s probably also gives insight into a lot of these other ones that we’ve looked at that we hadn’t really thought about or talked about up to this point or our first glimpse into that; probably every single one of the examples that we’ve looked at so far had a similar thing of having that feeling of like, pressure. And for her, it’s probably mch more pronounced because it’s like, Saturn in the 4th house in a night chart, and it’s the ruler of the Ascendant, so she feels like she has to prove herself in some sense, both to her father but also to everybody else. But it’s interesting like, psychological side of things.
NDB: Absolutely. I mean, it’s understandable why her cousin Nic changed his name to Cage to avoid the whole charge of being, you know, a success because of nepotism. And Nicolas Cage has succeeded on his own merits, you know. He did have some small roles in early Francis Ford Coppola movies, but they didn’t get him anywhere. It was the work he did on his own.
As far as Sofia’s concerned, yeah, that name speaks volumes. If her work wasn’t any good, she could almost bring, you know, sort of – not shame to her father, but she could damage the legacy that he’s built, which is like, that additional pressure. When he had to cast her in The Godfather III because Winona Ryder backed out, they both were heavily criticized at the time. So she’s probably, she must – I thought she was really good in that movie, but I’m in the minority. But she was obviously, you know, she’s been made conscious of the fact that, you know, her involvement in her father’s work could go sour, could go awry. And that’s just like, extra Saturnian pressure. At the end of the day, as far as I’m concerned, you know, if she wasn’t making great cinema, no one would really care what her name is. But her films are consistently really good, I think.
CB: Yeah, for sure. And like you said, some like, 4th house themes actually consistently come up in her movies. Like, one of them is an exploration of family relationships where several of her films delve into complex family relationships. Sometimes there’s a sense of like, isolation, like Saturn in the 4th house, that despite being surrounded by family, a lot of her characters sometimes experience this profound sense of isolation or alienation, which is kind of interesting in terms of Saturn in the 4th house. But also there’s this emphasis on the importance of home and the concept of home in her movies is sometimes depicted as a place of both comfort but also of confinement in some of her films. So you get these —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — interesting themes that come up.
NDB: Yeah. Virgin Suicides certainly – the home is, you know, confinement for the girls. I thought her – I’m again in the minority in this, but – I loved her version of Marie Antoinette. I love that movie. It’s unconventional, but she did it really well. I thought it was really well cast and beautifully made. But it’s another film where, you know, you don’t see Marie Antoinette go to the guillotine in this movie; it’s all about sort of everything that built up. The fact that she’s, you know, you’ve got this Austrian princess who’s gotta survive in hostile France, the hostile court, because France and Austria have been at war, and so she’s really alienated and trying to find her way, and of course things go terribly wrong at the end, and we only get an intimation of that in her film. But yeah, it totally, it’s another film even though it’s a film about a very famous princess who’s famous mostly for how she died, she makes this very personal movie about a young teenage girl who has to, you know, make her way in a hostile foreign country. And it’s just beautifully reflected in her chart, I think; it’s another example of that.
CB: Right, living in the opulence of like, the Palace of Versailles.
NDB: Right. And yet, it’s miserable; it’s confinement indeed, you know.
CB: Right. Even —
NDB: Hostile.
CB: Even in her other movie, actually, what you were saying makes me think of she has the ruler – Sofia has the ruler of the 4th, like, Taurus is the 4th house and the ruler is Venus in the 3rd house of travel. And one of her movies is like, Lost in Translation, and the entire movie is the two main characters like, living in a hotel, essentially, and having kind of like, isolated existences but then like, finding some comfort with each other even though they’re in a foreign like, place and a foreign location where they don’t speak the language. And that was like, she won a lot of awards for that movie; that’s like, one of her early standout movies, I think, right?
NDB: Yeah, it was her second movie, but it definitely was the one – it’s probably her biggest success, yeah.
CB: Yeah. So that’s an interesting delineation then I’ll have to save for the ruler of the 4th in the 3rd, because I actually have a example that’s very like that, which is Richard Branson who early in his life lived on a boat in order to like, save money, and now, you know, has other situations where he’s like, living on boats or yachts or other things like that.
NDB: To save money.
CB: Yeah, exactly. Well, he’s gonna – one of the things we’ll get into is now he’s like, working on space, you know, tourism. So eventually it’s gonna be about people essentially living temporarily on like, spaceships while they’re away for like, a trip.
NDB: I can attest he actually owns a house that I can see from if I walked out this door, I could look up the mountain and see a house that he owns. Nice place. Looks like it’s got a pretty great pool.
CB: Nice.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Nice. All right. So that’s it for the Coppolas. I wanna move on and do one more film director though. Another one that came up in my files when I was searching for ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house is another famous film director, which is Martin Scorsese.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: So he has Leo rising with the Sun in Scorpio, and a whole stellium of planets in Scorpio consisting of Mars, Mercury, the IC, the Sun, and Venus all in the 4th house in a night chart, of course, since the Sun is in the 4th.
So what I thought was interesting about him is that a lot of his movies, you know, really focus on and it’s become really important to him is his Italian-American heritage. And that his upbringing in a really tight-knit Italian-American family in New York City has deeply shaped his world view, but that his films often explore themes that are very 4th house-y, like different dynamics involving family, involving community, and involving especially cultural identity within this specific context. So you have films like Goodfellas, Mean Streets, and The Irishman that all depict in different ways different complexities of different family relationships within the Italian-American community, which include themes like loyalty, betrayal, the struggle between tradition versus assimilation and all sorts of other things like that. It was one of the first things that I thought of when I saw him come up in my files.
NDB: Yeah. I’d say another thing for Martin – I mean, yes, his Italian heritage is important. The other thing about Marty is he is a New Yorker. Like, New York is another 4th house thing for him, if you think Taxi Driver, if you think After Hours. You know, a lot of his movies are very New York centric. Maybe not Goodfellas so much, but – although I believe it takes place there – but you know, Taxi Driver, After Hours – he’s got a number of movies that are very New York. Raging Bull, you know? He’s really invested in that.
Like Francis, he also involves his family in his filmmaking. You and I were talking earlier that great scene in the Goodfellas where, you know, Joe Pesci and De Niro and Ray Liotta have a body in the trunk of their car that they, and they go by Joe Pesci’s house because they wanna get a shovel to bury it. But Joe Pesci’s mom is up and makes them a snack and all that – well, that mom is played by Martin Scorsese’s mother. And she does it beautifully. I think he didn’t even give her lines of dialogue; he just, you know, said, “Go be Joe Pesci’s mom,” and she did what a mom would do. Like, you know, oh, you guys must be hungry and fix you a snack and all this stuff, and it’s just – yeah, it feels, again it feels very authentic. So yeah, it’s another real sort of 4th house family-oriented filmmaker. I think you’re absolutely —
CB: I like that it’s in Scorpio, though, and it’s like, often like, crime movies or like, crime families.
NDB: Right. Right. You know, the whole idea of like, you know, you’ve got a dead gangster in the trunk of your car, but you know, mom’s gonna fix you some nice rigatoni or whatever.
CB: Right.
NDB: You know, because you’re a hungry boy and you’re growing. Yeah. No, there’s something real sort of perverse and funny about all that. Yeah, he’s made an amazing, you know, run of films himself.
CB: Yeah. And so you’re right that New York City he’s from plays a major role in his movies, but also the importance of place and that his films often emphasize the significance of physical spaces and their impact on the characters’ lives in general. Because even like, his other movies if they’re not set in New York, there’s often a specific location that’s really important as a huge element of the film. Like Casino, for example, was Vegas and like, Vegas specifically in a very specific timeframe in like, what, the ‘60s or ‘70s or whatever it was so that it’s like, the location is playing a crucial role in the film and is almost like a character itself.
NDB: Right. Yeah. Very much. And I mean, think about Taxi Driver. You know, just the way it’s filmed, it’s the most New York movie ever. You know it’s, I mean, really long before – and I remember the first time I arrived in New York when I was 12 years old, I had seen Taxi Driver even though I wasn’t supposed to be old enough, and yeah. It looked, you know, it reminded me of Taxi Driver. Taxi Driver captured something about New York City that no other movie really could. It’s astonishing that way.
CB: Even his last movie, Killers of the Flower Moon —
NDB: Oh yeah.
CB: — was about, which was really heavy, but it was about that location and about the murders of the Osage Nation and just some of the exploitation of that that was happening at the time due to like, oil wealth, and you know, it encountered some very like, similar themes in terms of place and location but also things like family —
NDB: Family. Family and betrayal and yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s – oh my god, what a movie. Yeah. Exactly. It’s still very rooted in the 4th house even though it takes place a great distance from New York City. You still very much feel like you’re, you know, a part of that world and it is really rooted in that land and that legacy and everything involved there.
CB: Yeah. Last thing that I wanted to mention about him that’s funny that, I don’t know, people may not know about if you’re not old enough, but he even has directly explored the relationship with his parents, and he made a whole documentary titled Italianamerican where he interviews them about their lives and experiences. Here’s a quote about what it’s about just to like, give you an objective synopsis. It says,
“Over dinner at their New York apartment on Elizabeth Street, Martin engages his parents in a lively and candid discussion about their lives, discussing such topics as their upbringing, family, religion, marriage, their Italian ancestors, postwar life in Italy, and the hardships of poor Sicilian immigrants striving to succeed in America. Catherine also demonstrates her technique for cooking meatballs, a recipe later printed in the end credits of the film.”
So you know, stuff like that comes up, and we’ll see other instances of that. For example, Dave Grohl later on who his mom ended up like, writing a book about raising rock stars and then she interviewed other rock star mothers – that sometimes just the parents of the native will come up in a major way at some point in their biography in a way that’s not normal or that stands out. And that they’ll sometimes do something like that or something in terms of the overall occupation will sometimes come up.
NDB: Your comment about the meatballs reminded me of that bit in Goodfellas where they’re in prison but they’re cooking these like, amazing meals, and they’re slicing the garlic with razor blades, and you know, it’s like… Yeah, bringing home wherever you go, even if it’s in prison.
CB: Right, totally. All right, I think that’s it for that example. So let’s move onto the next one, which is the actress and entertainer Dorothy Dandridge, who was born with Leo rising and the Sun in Scorpio in the 4th whole sign house along with Jupiter and the planet Mercury all in the 4th house. So she was a famous American actress and singer, and she was actually the first black film star to be nominated for an Academy Award for best actress for her performance in the movie Carmen Jones in 1954. So what’s interesting about her is that her mother, Ruby Dandridge, was also an entertainer and really pushed Dorothy from a very early age to basically to sing and dance and act and to go into the same career field, essentially, reportedly partially because she recognized her daughter’s talent and actively sought opportunities for her and her sister to perform from a very early age.
So there’s a few things going on with this chart, because it’s like, early on her mother created a song and dance act for Dorothy and her sister, and what’s interesting of course if you’re looking at the chart is that like, the IC is in the 3rd whole sign house, so it’s blending 4th house and 3rd house topics. But we see that Saturn is placed there. It’s in the sign of its exaltation in Libra in the 3rd house, but it’s also in a night chart, so it’s the most difficult planet. And what happened is that on the one hand, her mother’s dedication provided Dorothy with the early exposure and experience in order to like, give her, like, catapult her eventually into her chosen career field. But some accounts suggest that her influence was also controlling and possibly exploitative at the same time and that her and her sister were not treated well growing up, and that the demanding performance schedule and the strict discipline that was imposed by the mother and her partner, who acted as a manager, likely impacted Dorothy’s childhood and development. Because for example, they were like, touring the southern United States constantly for five years and rarely attending school. So as a result of that, you know, with Saturn in the 3rd house and rarely attending school, she ended up being illiterate or unable to read in her early years due to that lack of schooling, even though they were like, traveling around performing in churches and schools. So there’s a lot of like, 3rd house themes there with that Saturn placement and the IC there.
NDB: Yeah. And of course the ruler of the 3rd is retrograde in the 5th, so it’s almost like, you know, she doesn’t get schooling because she’s off performing.
CB: Performing, yeah.
NDB: You know. The other thing about her chart that’s interesting – being a night chart, that Jupiter in Scorpio you can really fathom, if you know her story and her chronology, you can really fathom how even though Jupiter is a benefic and it does bring good things, in a night chart, it can be a kind of double edged sword. It’s not always, you know, gonna deliver favorable results.
Dorothy’s mother, Ruby, who you mentioned, had Jupiter in Scorpio – she was born on a Jupiter in Scorpio station. Her mother had the Sun in Pisces perfectly trine Jupiter in Scorpio at 10 degrees, and she’s born right on the station. And then when you go into like, Dorothy’s life, it seems whenever transiting Jupiter was in Scorpio, that tend to be periods where she was, where things were working against her in some way. This husband that she married in 1959 who wound up bankrupting her, she married him when Jupiter was in Scorpio – what would be the last Jupiter in Scorpio transit of her life. So there’s something very curious about that Jupiter. When you follow her life, you know her mother’s birthday, you know like, some of the ups and downs of her life. You get a sense of like, wow, Jupiter’s doing something that I wouldn’t typically expect. You know, it just seems to be in that sign whenever things are going wrong, I guess, is the way to put it.
CB: Yeah. Well, it’s getting afflicted by that square from Mars. It’s like, Jupiter’s at three Scorpio and it’s square Mars at seven, and the 7th house itself – so it’s like, the ruler of the 4th is in the 7th, and the ruler of the 7th is that Saturn in a night chart in the 3rd. And that shows up early in her life where it was her mom’s partner that is the one that’s actually like, primarily managing but also like, pushing the two girls – Dorothy and her sister – really hard and potentially like, to the point of like, child abuse or like, exploitation in the sense of working them too hard and not giving them a proper education. And it’s weird because it comes through the mother’s partner especially, which is somehow coming through Dorothy’s 7th house with Saturn ruling that. But then also at the same time, later in her life with Jupiter in the 4th house but ruled by Mars in the 7th house. You mentioned that relationship and we’ll actually use her as an example later on of the ruler of the 4th in the 7th because her partner like, mismanaged her funds and she ended up having to see her beautiful home in like, Los Angeles or in Hollywood as a result of that and move into a little apartment that was very modest because of the mismanagement of those funds. And —
NDB: Yeah, she had to declare full on bankruptcy. I mean, she was ruined. Yeah, sell a beautiful house, but she had nothing.
CB: Yeah. And then yeah, there was some other stuff there, but we’ll get to that. But —
NDB: Sure.
CB: It’s a tricky case just in terms of her – again, this is kind of like, the reverse or converse of what we’ve been talking about so far where it’s like, here we have the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th and again the mother, the daughter following in the footsteps of her mother to some extent in terms of being an entertainer. But in this instance, it’s much more challenging; it’s like, a much more difficult relationship. There’s issues of abuse involved, and there’s some negative things even though it would still set her up with the foundation where she would later like, go on to be nominated for an Academy Award, for example. So yeah.
NDB: Exactly.
CB: We’re just starting to get to that side of things as well, which is the more tricky side of like, family dynamics.
NDB: Yeah. The synastry with her mother is really interesting, but I’ll leave it to your viewers to investigate that on their own.
CB: Yeah, for sure. All right. Let’s move onto my next example, which is the birth chart of Bindi Irwin, who is the daughter of Steve Irwin the famous crocodile hunter.
So Bindi Irwin was born with Aries rising and Mars in Cancer in the 4th whole sign house copresent with Venus – or conjunct Venus – in a night chart along with the IC. So Bindi Irwin – you know, her father was a famous conservationist and TV personality who worked with animals. He was known as like, Steve Irwin the Crocodile Hunter. And Bindi’s mother was also a conservationist and runs a zoo. So really early on, Bindi – the daughter – was raised in this environment where she got an early exposure and developed a passion for wildlife being raised essentially at the Australia Zoo surrounded by animals and involved in wildlife conservation from essentially the very start of her life. So this early exposure to animals really fostered a deep love and respect for them, which became the foundation of her later career at this point.
So her parents also introduced her to the world of being in television and being like, a television and media personality, and she appeared in documentaries and shows alongside her father very early on in her life. Eventually, this helped her to develop the communication skills that are necessary to become an effective wildlife advocate, which she would grow up to be. But unfortunately, she also experienced tragedy early in her life where her father was killed in a freak accident by a stingray while he was shooting an underwater documentary when Bindi was very young. So that was this really tragic loss. And then she grew up and tried to follow in his footsteps, where he was like, a famous conservationist and wild television personality, and she was inspired by him and she’s continued to try to educate the public about wildlife and to especially promote the sort of like, fearless approach to conservation, which I think is a 4th house topic that he promoted. And she actually, she has a book that’s coming out, and I really love the title because it’s titled, You Are A Wildlife Warrior: Saving Animals and the Planet. And I love that because she has Aries rising with Mars ruling the Ascendant in the 4th house and, you know, talking about being like, a wildlife warrior I think is where that’s really coming through very strongly.
NDB: Yeah. Absolutely. I remember – Steve Irwin died in 2006 when you and I were, you know, neighbors, and I vaguely remember that we learned of his passing when we were together watching TV.
CB: Yeah, I actually remember that day when we learned; we were all kind of like, shocked.
NDB: Yeah, we were shocked. You know, because he was on TV a lot right at that point, and yeah, fantastic guy. Really, you know, really fun to watch. Really smart. Somewhat daring and, you know, he was certainly doing things that you wouldn’t catch me doing. But it was always a family show, too. Like, you know, you knew his wife was on camera too; the kids were kind of part of the scene – obviously not central to the show, but it was always kind of a family operation. So she’s – yeah, it is another instance of this sort of this dynasty thing coming on. But of course she was literally born into this work, and yeah, she’s doing great.
CB: Yeah. And it continues to be like, a family collaboration where it’s like, Bindi, her mother, and her brother have worked together to continue her father’s mission through the Australia Zoo and through various conservation projects. And this really close family collaboration has been really instrumental in shaping her career and allowing her to carry on her father’s work. So I thought that was really interesting theme here in the sense of having a very literal example of a daughter carrying on her father’s work as being, you know, part of the main theme of her life with the ruler of the Ascendant there.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. All right. So next example is Britney Spears, and this is a more challenging example.
So Britney Spears was born with Libra rising and Venus in Capricorn in the 4th whole sign house in a night chart. And the ruler of the 4th house is Saturn, which is in Libra in the 1st house in a night chart. So you have this very close connection between the 1st and 4th house because you get a mutual reception between those rulers, and it’s like you have the most positive planet is Venus, the ruler of the Ascendant, in the 4th, but then the most challenging planet is the ruler of the 4th, which is Saturn in the 1st. So you’ve got kind of a difficult combination because it’s like, the most challenging planet and the most positive planet in like, locked together in this kind of struggle between the 1st and the 4th house. And Britney Spears, of course, is a famous singer and is one of the world’s best selling music artists. And from a very early age, her parents actually recognized her talent and supported her aspirations for a career in entertainment and facilitated her participation in singing and dancing lessons. And her mother in particular was heavily involved in managing her early career, but then later on as she started to gain more success, her father helped to secure record deals and guided her career during its initial rise. So her father started becoming much more influential as a manager. But then eventually as her fame grew, her father’s management style became increasingly controlling, and this eventually culminated later in life in this really controversial conservatorship which granted him extensive control over her finances, over her career, and even over her personal life for 13 years where she had some kind of like, mental health episode in the late 2000s and then a judge in California, I believe, granted her father pretty much like, complete control over her life. But then something that usually would be like, temporary ended up going on for 13 years so that eventually it became almost kind of a spectacle because people were kind of watching this and feeling like that she was like, trapped or that she was being controlled by her father or by her parents and that it had gone too far. So that eventually there was like, you know, this whole social media thing with like, hashtag Free Britney and different things like that where social media people started like, trying to campaign or advocate for her in order to get her to be out from under the control of this, which eventually was successful. And her conservatorship was eventually ended on November 12th, 2021, after 13 years.
NDB: Yeah. Patrick and I did a whole episode of our livestream on her life, and I read her autobiography, which was – I was not expecting it to be so moving, but it was really incredible. At the beginning of this show, the taping, you said we were doing mostly traditional astrology with some modern; I’d like to introduce just a little bit of modern to talk about Britney, because I think it’s an important factor.
CB: Go nuts.
NDB: I would argue that it’s possible that that Saturn-Venus mutual reception wouldn’t be so harsh if it wasn’t the Pluto square to her Venus really darkening her door. Because when you look at her chronology, the sort of her rise and fall as a popstar is quite perfectly encompassed in the period when Pluto was in Sagittarius. You know, when her life was finally sort of coming apart, it was at the tail end of Pluto being in Sagittarius. And then finally when she won, you know, control over her life again, that was when Pluto finally came to her Venus in Capricorn in 2021. So you can just, you know, this whole story that we’re telling in its own way you can also tell by virtue of the square of Pluto to Venus and that Pluto’s transit through her Sagittarius stellium and finally it landing on her Venus when she finally regained control of her life.
CB: Right, because Pluto went into Capricorn like, 2008, 2009, so that’s literally —
NDB: Exactly.
CB: — going into her 4th house —
NDB: Right after she —
CB: — and passing her IC.
NDB: Yeah. And 2007 was the year that she, you know, had her sort of public breakdown that I’m sure everyone remembers; I don’t have to take us through it. But yeah, so in other words, you know, that was all Pluto in Sagittarius stuff. You know, when she signed her record contract with Jive Records in 1997, Pluto had only been in Sagittarius for about a year and a half, but her records started coming out when it was conjunct her Mercury and then her Sun. And then she started to fall apart when it was conjunct her Neptune. So you can really trace that transit of Pluto —
CB: Yeah. That’s wild.
NDB: And it tells her story in its own way. And I think that’s important. And it’s possible, because mutual receptions usually are more sort of benefic than that. And you know, maybe we’re splitting hairs here, but you know, initially her mother was an asset to her career. It’s just, it’s true – things degenerated with the whole conservatorship and what have you.
CB: One of the questions I had because this comes up in some other examples where we’ll see some other examples later on where there was one person, Jennette McCurdy, who was like, pushed into being a child actor early on by her mother who was like, trying to live out the mother’s like, dreams of being famous and pushed it on her daughter in a way that was inappropriate. And I was curious was – I don’t know enough about Britney’s biography to know – was it truly a case were her parents like, supporting her own aspirations early on, or was it a case similar to that where the parents were the ones pushing her to be a performer? Do you happen to know the answer to that?
NDB: I don’t know the answer offhand. I should know because I did read her book, but I read so many famous – like, unfortunately, that story’s very common. You know —
CB: Right.
NDB: — like Elizabeth Taylor’s story is like that. Her mother, you know, she became an actress because her mother had wanted to be an actress. There’s a lot of stories like that, and so they all start to blend together. But —
CB: It might not be that case, because Jennette McCurdy has a very specific reason for that where it’s like, the ruler of the 4th is in the 10th or the ruler of the 10th is in the 4th and it’s a difficult planet, so it’s like, it’s very obvious why that would be the case here, whereas for Britney maybe it’s different and maybe she did have just talents initially that her parents recognized.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, I know she, like, you know, she was on The Mickey Mouse Club, and she had to audition. Like, the first time she – you had to go all the way to Florida, you know, and she lived in Mississippi and you have to audition. And the first time she did, she failed, and so she went home, but she later went and succeeded.
CB: I think she was on Star Search or something too, wasn’t —
NDB: She was on Star Search, yeah, that’s right.
CB: Okay.
NDB: And you know, she’s like, 15 and going to New York to sign a record contract. You know, she’s certainly – I think she had her own drive in it. But I think, you know, she wouldn’t have been able to do what she did if her mother hadn’t been with her the whole way. You know, someone has to take the kid to Florida to do the audition; someone has to take the kid to go to New York to sign the record contract. So yeah. It certainly started off as what would appear to be a supportive family operation. You know —
CB: Right.
NDB: — some people… You know, I mean, let’s face it —
CB: Well, and even —
NDB: — culturally, we’re not well trained in how to deal with mental illness. And you know, people often sort of really drop the ball when it comes to coping with that. And you know, I think that’s a big part of what happened, what went so wrong here.
CB: Well, and even with the conservatorship, I often wondered about that because I assumed that there was some good reason why she was originally put into that and there was some intent on the part of the judges or even potentially her parents who were trying to help her. But it just seemed like it went on for too long at a certain point, whereas it was assumed that something like that should be temporary or should be weaned off after a certain number of years. And so there was like, an issue there in terms of I didn’t know who had what sort of intentions and if they were —
NDB: Right.
CB: — good intentions initially and then it just went too far or what happened with that exactly.
NDB: Well, I think if we had Britney here on the call with us now —
CB: Right. Yeah.
NDB: — she would put the darkest spin on that. She certainly, I mean, she’s – you know, she’s not terribly forgiving to her parents. So even if we’re objectively to say yeah, that does appear to be the case, they might have had her wellbeing – they might have had good intentions way back when two decades ago and things just went sour somehow, I’m not sure that’s how she would tell the story.
CB: Sure. Right.
NDB: And the truth might even be, you know, people are like this. We have to be able to handle paradoxes; the truth might be both. you know, it can be that in some strange way, so. Yeah, I think Britney would disagree with that point now if I read her book correctly.
CB: Yeah. And I think we can see pretty clearly why just because the most difficult planet in the chart is the ruler of the 4th house and it’s in her 1st house, so it was very much experienced as, you know, being constrained or almost imprisoned in some ways by her parents in some sense. So this actually then becomes one of the very first instances of that keyword of like, “confinement” and feeling confinement from the 4th house, which in this instance is being emphasized even more because it’s Saturn that’s involved in a night chart.
NDB: Yeah. And I mean, Britney’s – yeah, Britney’s been confined. You know, there’s no doubt about it. I mean, even back in the popstar days when she was really struggling with the divorce and the custody of her kids and everything was going wrong, you could see that she felt really trapped, really imprisoned, by this world that had built up around her.
CB: Right. For sure. Yeah. All right, so and then over the past few years, she’s been free and then be able to do different things that she couldn’t do before, and then that’s been a whole process as she gets like, reintegrated back into having personal autonomy again, like, over her life rather than having that autonomy delegated to her parents, essentially. So that’s a really interesting theme as well in terms of the ruler of the Ascendant being there.
NDB: Yeah. Imagine only finally becoming an emancipated adult in your early 40s, you know? Like, boggles —
CB: Right.
NDB: — the mind.
CB: Yeah, and just like, skipping over your 30s basically.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. All right. Well, wish her the best. Let’s go onto the next example. So the next example is the birth chart of Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, who was actually I believe she’s currently like, the richest woman in the world. We used her in the 2nd house episode first, that’s where I first came across her chart. And I think she’s actually one of the richest people in the world in total because she’s the daughter of Liliane Bettencourt, and her family founded L’Oreal, the like, makeup and cosmetics company that’s such a huge company at this point. So at this point, she’s the 12th richest person in the world overall as a result of inheriting this company, basically, or inheriting her family’s share of this company essentially.
One of the things that’s interesting about her if you look up her biography is that she tends to be more private, and she has this stellium in the 4th house. I should probably mention the placements; she has Aries rising and Mars is in Cancer in the 4th house along with the Moon, the IC, the Sun, and Uranus. And Mars in particular in very closely conjunct the Sun at 17 degrees of Cancer and Uranus at 18 degrees of Cancer, and all of those planets are square to Saturn in the 7th house at 20 degrees of Libra and Neptune at 21 degrees of Libra. And —
NDB: Yeah, the Sun is essentially contained by that Mars-Uranus. It’s…
CB: Yeah, it’s kind of tricky. It’s pretty tricky because here we get two themes; one of them is, you know, inheritance and a massive amount of inheritance from a family. But then on the other hand, this is a more difficult one that shows conflict within a family as well that centered around especially primarily something that’s usually called the Bettencourt Affair, where in 1987, her mother became friends with and became a benefactor of this like, celebrity photographer. And her mother ended up giving this guy just huge amounts of money and gifts over the years that ended up being totalling worth like, one point three billion dollars. So just huge amounts of money. And Wikipedia says at one point,
“These gifts include, among other things, a life insurance policy worth 253 million euros in 2003, another life insurance policy worth 262 million euros in 2006, 11 works of art in 2001 valued at 20 million euros, including paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian, Delaunay, and Leger, a photograph by surrealist May Ray, as well as a lot of cash.”
So what happened is that the daughter, the owner of this birth chart, eventually ended up filing a criminal complaint saying that her mother was being exploited as a result of a psychological weakness by this guy. And her butler at one point actually feared that the mother was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and was being duped by this person, who was essentially like, giving away the daughter’s inheritance essentially. And at one point, the mother actually attempted to make this guy her sole heir. So there ended up being some very public conflicts between the mother and the daughter partially as she was trying to like, stop – the daughter was trying to stop this from happening. And luckily, the daughter ended up eventually being successful and eventually the mother was separated from this guy and wrote him out of her will. And then not long after this, she was put under a guardianship due to declining mental health, and the guy himself was eventually convicted of charges of taking advantage of the old woman. And then her mother eventually died in 2017. Then eventually the daughter in 2023, she became the first woman who was worth over a hundred billion dollars.
So at this point, she serves as the president of her family’s philanthropic foundation, which encourages French progress in the science and arts. But I thought this was a good example just because we have those themes of inheritance, but we also have those themes of in this instance sometimes when something’s really, you have a very difficult relationship with a family member or when something is going awry in the family and when your need to fight for that sometimes becomes a major chapter in your life.
NDB: Yeah. Absolutely. Accidently, I’m once again gonna have to introduce Pluto into this situation. It was in 2008 that she started the, you know, that she filed the lawsuit that she would eventually win I think in 2010. So again, we’re seeing the transit of Pluto going to Capricorn and start to oppose, you know, first her Moon and all that when all this went under. So yeah, it’s a very interesting chart. That 4th house is pretty distinct. Like, that’s not an arrangement you’re gonna see very often.
CB: Right. Well, actually, one of the things I forgot to mention is if you look at her chart, the Sun is at 17 degrees of Cancer. The South Node is at three degrees of Leo, and the Moon is at three degrees of Cancer. She was born like, the day of —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — or the day before a solar eclipse in Cancer in her 4th house. So that’s the other like, part of this in terms of eminence factors and other things like that of why this is a much bigger thing in terms of even almost like, world history that she would become the richest woman in the world at one point. But it was tied up in this conflict and this inheritance with her mother.
NDB: Yeah. It’s gotta be rough when your mom gives away over a billion dollars and yet you still inherit and become the richest woman in the world even though your mom gave away over a billion dollars.
CB: Well, yeah, but can you imagine like —
NDB: Sure.
CB: Imagine – I’m imagining being like, the native of the chart and like, your mother is being taken – let’s say just if that’s true and since he was convicted I assume that it was true. Your mother’s being taken advantage of by this guy, and she has declining mental health or even Alzheimer’s, and she’s being like, led on or something like that, and then you have to like, fight this somehow in order to stop this from happening and this becomes like, a central thing in your life. That’s very much like that Pluto transit.
NDB: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. And here’s what you were talking about – yeah, we see Pluto going in around 2008, 2009. And then I just wanted to see where it was in 2017… Yeah, that’s what I thought. So it’s like, Pluto’s —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — at like, 17 Capricorn by 2017, and it’s opposing her Mars and Sun and Uranus at 17 and 18 Cancer and that’s when her mom passes away.
NDB: Okay. Yeah. There you go.
CB: Yeah. So —
NDB: And she filed the suit in 2008, so that would have been right around the ingress, either just before or just after the Pluto ingress, so yeah.
CB: Right. So you know, obviously, this is a very unique situation, but it brings up some things that you can sometimes run into in terms of different family dynamics and things that can come up sometimes. Like, in that instance, needing to take care of a declining parent, which is a more universal situation that sometimes happens.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, that is the thing about the 4th house. Like we were saying at the beginning, it doesn’t matter who you are. Like, the 4th house is, you know, it’s the foundation, it’s the base. It’s an area of life that, you know, I mean some of us might live in nicer houses; some of us might have families that are a little more pleasant than the other. But no matter who we are, like, whatever that world is, it’s the world that we’re sort of stuck with, and yeah, it’s where a lot of the trauma lives. You know? Again, that triplicity with the 8th and the 12th, of all the angular houses, it’s the one that carries all this baggage and yeah, like I said, trauma with it.
CB: Yeah. Or sometimes like, good things. I mean, you know, especially —
NDB: Oh, yeah, sure.
CB: — that can sometimes be the difference is sometimes there’s people that have a lot of benefics there and all the best parts of their chart are like, in their 4th house. And like, the strongest thing in their life and the most positive memories are —
NDB: Yes.
CB: — that they had a wonderful or very supportive foundation growing up from their parents, and that that’s something that they can come back to as like, a solid foundation or a solid even foundation of memories.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. All right. Let’s do one more example in this section and then we’ve actually finished the first hilariously initial section.
So my final example here is Kylie Jenner, who is a famous social media personality and is one of the Kardashians and like, woke up or was raised – grew up – as part of like, a reality television family. So she was born with Capricorn rising and the ruler of the Ascendant is Saturn in Aries in the 4th whole sign house in a day chart. And the ruler of the 4th house of home and family and parents is Mars, which is in Libra in the 10th house of public and reputation and career. And I think it was like, from the age of like, eight or nine, she rose to fame initially as part of this reality television show that was really popular at the time called Keeping Up With The Kardashians, which followed her family’s life.
So the main architect behind the show was her mother, Kris Jenner, but she also grew up with a famous father, who was Bruce Jenner at the time, who was a famous like, Olympic athlete. And then later in life, Bruce would transition and came out as a woman as Caitlyn Jenner. So what’s interesting about Kylie Jenner is that she’s like at this point like, a famous media personality, socialite, and businesswoman because she was able to leverage her fame to launch a successful business, most notably launching Kylie Cosmetics, which is a makeup company known for its lip kits.
So she’s become one of the most famous and influential figures in pop culture with a massive social media following as well as a significant impact on beauty trends. But her entrepreneurial ventures have made her one of the youngest self-made billionaires, although people have debated like, the title “self-made” just because of the involvement of her family. And what’s interesting is the ruler of the 2nd house of money and finances is located in the 4th house of family, and she was able to, you know, use her family’s notoriety to like, catapult her to success and fame and to that status of being a billionaire.
NDB: You can also see – just to interject about that Saturn – you can see she has the Sun at 18 Leo and Saturn retrograde at 20 Aries. So what does that mean, Chris? What does that tell us?
CB: She has what? Say that again.
NDB: She has the Sun at 18 Leo, and Saturn retrograde at 20 Aries, and I’m asking —
CB: Oh.
NDB: — what does that tell us?
CB: It’s stationing.
NDB: Exactly. That Saturn has just stationed. So it looks like she was born nine days after the retrograde station, so it’s still – it’s a Saturn that’s got this extra intensity to it, you know, being that close to the station.
CB: Yeah. That’s a really good point. It looks like Pluto’s stationing as well, but anytime you see one of those outer planets, like especially Saturn and Jupiter, in a trine with the Sun, you know they’re about to station retrograde or direct.
NDB: Yeah. It’s an important sort of shortcut again to, you know, take that one dimensional chart image and render it three dimensional in your imagination. Yeah. When the Sun is trine Jupiter and Saturn, that’s when they make their stations. Saturn, it’ll be a bit wide, maybe as much as 10 days away from the perfect trine; Jupiter, it’s usually very close to the perfect trine. But yeah, you know, when you see the arrangement that way between the Sun and Jupiter or Saturn, then you can spot stations without having to look it up, and that —
CB: Right.
NDB: — can make a difference in terms of your ability to read charts quickly or to, you know, conjure some interpretation, so yeah. It’s really handy to know that stuff.
CB: Yeah, for sure. So her chart is interesting for two reasons. One, just that her mom was like, the initial one who pitched to television producers the idea of this reality television show. So in some ways, like, her mom becomes like, the architect and the main driving force behind the family, and I wanted to point that out because I think it’s important here. Because sometimes it alternates and sometimes it’s like, we’re seeing instances where sometimes it’s like, the father that’s more of the influence or is the one leading the family; in this instance, it’s really the mother who’s like, the driving force behind a lot of this that’s coming from the 4th house in the chart. The other thing that’s really important about the chart that’s interesting and will segue nicely into a later topic is even though the ruler of the Ascendant’s in the 4th house, which is typically a more private part of the life and the chart and can sometimes actually indicate even like that privacy or secrecy or other things are more important to the native, what’s interesting in her chart is that the ruler of the 4th house is Mars which is in the 10th house of career conjunct the degree of the Midheaven at 27 Libra to 29 Libra. So it’s like, what you get then is you get when the most private part of the chart is in the most public part of the chart in terms of the rulers is her private life of her home and family life growing up for like, her entire life was put on public display because they had cameras like, following them around and documenting their interactions and documenting a lot of very private things in terms of their family over the course of, what, a decade or almost two decades now. So it’s quite a unique —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — situation, but you can see the archetypal dynamic there of like, why that’s the case in the chart.
NDB: Yeah. And keep in mind, I mean, she’s the youngest in the family. She was 10 years old when Keeping Up With The Kardashians started, you know, taping and broadcasting. So you know, imagine being 10 years old and all that part of your life, you know, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 – your whole adolescence, all that stuff – is lived out on camera. Different for the other members of her family. You know, she’s got Kendall, who’s a bit older than her, and you know, she was also going through this sort of early exposure to fame. But most of the other people in the family were adults and you know, lived a good portion of their lives being relatively anonymous. But yeah, for Kylie and Kendall, it’s more of sort of a virtually a lifetime thing. You know, they were so young.
CB: Yeah. So it’s like, with the ruler of the 4th is in the 10th or the ruler of the 10th is in the 4th, you might find different lower level variations of that in terms of the family being involved in one’s career, but this is just, you know, a really extreme manifestation of that where the family is very much involved in her career and they’re intertwined in this really significant way.
NDB: Right. Another thing occurs to me with that Saturn making the station, the fact that it’s Saturn in the 4th. The name of the show is Keeping Up With The Kardashians. Kylie’s last name is Jenner. Now, the story behind that is because Kris Jenner, before she married Bruce Jenner who would later become Caitlyn Jenner, before that she was married to Robert Kardashian who is famous for having been one of OJ Simpson’s lawyers during the famous murder trial. And so it’s Kylie’s older half-sister, Kim Kardashian, who was the centerpoint of the whole TV show happening even though the mother sort of orchestrated the show.
So Saturn does have to do with like, you know, sometimes it’s step-parents and things like that or adoption or what have you, and I think in this case it’s sort of, you know, the fact that the name of the show is her older sister’s surname and it’s not the Jenners. It’s not Keeping Up With The Jenners, I guess, is my point.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point. That’s interesting. Yeah. All right. Well, those are our initial set of examples of just like, parents and the ruler of the Ascendant being in the 4th and parents being really prominent part of the life. So let’s take a little break and then we’ll transition into the next section about home and living situation.
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All right, we’re back from break. And now we’re gonna move into a section talking about the home and the living situation and showing examples of that with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house.
So our first example is Dave Grohl, and he has… Let me just put his chart up here. So he has Capricorn rising with Saturn in Aries in the 4th whole sign house. And his Sun is actually about six degrees from rising; his Sun’s at 24 and his Ascendant’s at 18. So like George Lucas, I’ve always treated this over the past several years as a day chart. I think it works better as a day chart; people can make arguments either way. For the purpose of this, I’ll treat it as a day chart. And what’s interesting about Dave Grohl is a few different things.
So he’s, of course he was the drummer in Nirvana, and then after Nirvana, started his own band, the Foo Fighters, which has since become super popular, so he’s in two of the biggest sort of bands of the past 30 years, I think. And one of the things that’s really interesting is that his mom was a teacher, and she was very supportive of his career as a musician. So one of the first things that he did when he became famous was he actually paid off her house. And I think this is interesting because he has the ruler of the 2nd house of finances is Saturn, which is in the 4th house of parents. And I love that that was like, one of the first things he did. And he said in this interview I was watching the other day that they had talked about like, buying her a new house, but instead they decided to keep and just pay off her current house because that was Dave’s childhood home, and he would – so she ended up staying living there throughout the end of her life, and she only just passed away a couple of years ago. But Dave would fly back there periodically and then go back home, basically, to his childhood home in order to experience that basically and in order to have a sort of, you know, a way to go back and get grounded despite his fame. And he’s talked about the importance of his childhood home and returning there and how that helps him stay grounded for a long time.
So that’s really interesting. And then I was watching this other interview with like, Conan O’Brien was interviewing him, and one of his questions was like, you know, given your somewhat like, punk rock background, did you ever have concern about becoming like, rich and successful or famous early on when Nirvana took off? And Dave’s answer was like, well, no, not really, because at the time before Nirvana took off, I was living with Kurt Cobain as friends and as bandmates, but that we were living in squalor. So he said something like, “I would have done anything to have a place of my own at that point in time.” That’s the exact quote; he said, “I would have done anything to have my own apartment and to be able to do that with music.” So while being a musician. And what’s funny about that is it partly reflects the ruler of his 4th house, which is that he has Aries on the 4th house, and the ruler of the 4th house of home and living situation is Mars, which is in Scorpio in the 11th whole sign house with the Midheaven. And so he, of course, was like, living with his friend Kurt Cobain and living with also his bandmate. But also when he was younger and a teenager, he went through periods of living with other friends, especially as he was touring with different bands. And then he would continue to do that, of course, as an adult as he toured the world with his friends and bandmates.
NDB: Yeah. Interestingly, Cobain of course also had Mars in Scorpio. The account of the two of them living together, which would have started in sort of late 1990 – Kurt had been living with his girlfriend. He and his girlfriend broke up. The girlfriend moved out, so Kurt was living on his own for a little bit, and apparently that really descended into squalor. And then Dave Grohl moved to Seattle – or moved to Washington anyway, I guess this was in Olympia where Kurt had the apartment – and he joins Nirvana and he moves in. First he lives with Kristopher about a few weeks and then he moves in with Kurt at this place that is sort of this place of squalor. But everyone who knows them says when Dave moved in with Kurt, the place did get more homey. Like, it was still kind of a, you know, rock musician crashpad, if you will. But just the minute Dave moved in with Kurt, you know, it went from being a real sort of hopeless case of a flophouse to something semi-homey.
CB: Nice. Yeah. That’s really good. So yeah, it’s like, that was one of the things I wanted to give even though it seems like a subtle example. But I think it’s one that’s relevant for people that have the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house is that Dave Grohl would periodically fly back home in order to rest and recharge, and that’s something I’ve heard from other ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house people. And also it’s like, you think about that; it’s like, you go back to your childhood home. Some people have that and they have like, you know, their parents have their bedroom is like, the same or something like that. And all of a sudden, it’s like traveling back in time and seeing your roots and where you grew up and what you came from and who you used to be at a certain point in time. So you start getting a lot of other feelings and a lot of other sort of psychological things that come along with that.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, what I know about Dave before he joined Nirvana, he was in this band called Scream; I had one of their albums at one point. One of these Washington, DC bands, and he toured a lot. Basically, the story of Dave’s life is apparently a lot of his adolescence he was, you know, sleeping in vans and stuff. So that can only sort of compound a person’s desire to have, you know, a comfortable 4th house environment to settle down in.
CB: Right, for sure. And then the last point I didn’t know until a few days ago, but his mom actually wrote a book a few years ago about raising a rock star where she talked about raising Dave, but she also went around and interviewed other rock star moms or moms of famous rock stars and musicians. And I thought the title was striking; it was From Cradle to Stage: Stories from the Mothers Who Rocked and Raised Rock Stars. And the description says,
“Virginia decided to seek out other rock star mothers to ask these questions, and so began a two-year odyssey in which she interviewed such women as Verna Griffin, Dr. Dre’s mother; Marianne Stipe, Michael Stipe of REM’s mother; Janis Winehouse, Amy Winehouse’s mother; Patsy Noah, Adam Levine’s mother; Donna Haim, the mother of the Haim sisters; and Hester Diamond, of Mike D in The Beastie Boys’ mother.”
So I think it was really striking and it was funny because you can still see interviews where the two of them were going around promoting this book when it came out back in 2017. But just in terms of it really was somebody with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house that was very close to one of his parents and his mother specifically, but that it was very much also tied in with the home and living situation.
NDB: Yeah, indeed. The other thing that occurs to me – Dave Grohl has Saturn at 19 Aries. We were just talking about someone else who’s got Saturn at 19 Aries – Francis Ford Coppola, who had —
CB: Yeah.
NDB: — an eclipse on his Saturn just —
CB: Right.
NDB: — half a year ago. And yeah, without going into the nitty gritty of it, this is a rough eclipse period for the guy as well.
CB: Right. Yeah. All right, so moving onto the next example. This is one that was sent in by a listener, and this is the birth chart of Selma Lagerlof, who was a really striking example. It was sent in by a listener on Twitter named EvaChristinaF, and this is the birth chart of a Swedish novel writer and playwright. And she was actually the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature way back in 1909. So what’s interesting about her story is that she was born and spent her childhood on this really nice family estate. And the estate had this really rich history and was surrounded by this really natural beauty, and this had a really profound impact on her imagination and shaped a lot of her early experiences that she would later incorporate into her work later as a writer. But when she was 13 years old, her father suffered a series of financial difficulties and was forced to sell the estate, and this loss was experienced as this really devastating blow to the young Selma, and it left this really lasting impression on her as a young girl or as a teenager.
So what’s funny about her story is that many years later after achieving literary success and winning the Nobel Prize in literature in 1909, she was able to take the money from the Nobel Prize and what she did is she repurchased the estate. So she repurposes her childhood and her family estate, and this was in her biography is like, a triumphant moment for her where she’s able to make her return to her roots and to reclaim her family heritage.
So after that point, she got really into restoration and preservation where she dedicated herself to restoring the family estate and bringing it back to its former glory, essentially, because it had fallen into a state of disrepair. So she meticulously renovated the estate and preserved its historical character while also adding some of her own personal touches.
So at this point, she ended up living at the estate the rest of her life and found solace and inspiration in its familiar surroundings. And eventually in her will when she passed away, she stipulated that the estate had to be preserved as a memorial and open to the public. So today it’s actually a museum and a popular tourist destination in Sweden, and it offers visitors a glimpse into the life as well as the work of her as a really celebrated author in Sweden. So it’s really cool, and it also appears in several of her literary works where it often shows up as representing this sense of like, belonging, of tradition, and also creates a connection to her past. So it’s like, an enduring symbol, basically, of the power of home and its influence on especially her personal identity, which is a really important keyword because we’re talking about the ruler of the Ascendant here in the 4th house, and that’s why I really love this example because of the confluence between home and place and also personal identity through the ruler of the Ascendant.
NDB: Yeah, it’s a great story. I had never heard of her, but her story is really interesting; I was reading about it before.
CB: Yeah. And I forgot to mention the placements; she has Leo rising with the Sun in Scorpio in the 4th house. So that is that. Let’s move on to the next example is a more contemporary example. This is the birth chart of Dua Lipa, who is of course like, a famous singer and musician at this point. She was born with Gemini rising with Mercury in Virgo in the 4th house in its own sign of Virgo.
So what’s interesting about her is that she was actually born, her parents are Albanians from Kosovo who emigrated due to the war in the 1990s. So she was actually born in London to refugee parents, and she grew up there for the most part as a child. But then eventually once things started getting better, her parents returned to Kosovo when she was 11 years old. And while she went with them for a brief period of time, she ended up going back to the UK eventually. So later on, she ended up accepting Albanian citizenship when she became a famous singer, and her ancestry and her origins are actually very important to her. But that’s one of the things that’s funny about this example is you’ll note that Mercury, the ruler of the Ascendant, it’s in Virgo, which is a mutable sign. So remember we were talking about mutable signs indicating two of whatever they indicate according to the ancient texts, and she has dual citizenship in both the UK, both Albanian citizenship and UK citizenship, which is really striking.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So go ahead.
NDB: Oh no, no. Nothing. Go ahead.
CB: So you know, if you listen to her work or if you read like, biographies about her, she really consistently emphasizes her pride in her heritage. And even though she was born and raised in London, her Albanian background has been really deeply influential in terms of her upbringing, in terms of her values and in terms of her worldview. So one of the things that she does a lot of at this point is advocacy for Kosovo, and she’s become a really vocal advocate for Kosovo, especially in terms of raising awareness about its history, about its culture, as well as about its ongoing challenges. So she tries to use her platform where she’s becoming like, one of the most famous singers in the world to promote a better understanding and support for her homeland, essentially. So it’s like, we’re getting a lot of the keywords about like, homeland, about heritage, about, you know, parents, where you’re from, et cetera. Even though her music is predominantly pop music, you can still find some subtle influences of Balkan music in some of her songs, and she’s also collaborated with different artists from Kosovo and incorporated some Albanian lyrics into her work. So it’s like, you can see the cultural things coming into her actual work, which also represents the 4th house placement.
Finally – go ahead.
NDB: No, go ahead. Oh, my comment obviously, I think any astrologer looking at this chart is it’s so striking how many planets are in their own domicile. But I didn’t mean to distract from your point; that’s just sort of an exclamation. Please continue.
CB: Right, just that she has like, the Moon in Cancer in its domicile and the Sun in Leo and Jupiter in Sagittarius.
NDB: Yeah, along with the Mercury in Virgo. So that’s quite the set up.
CB: Yeah. It’s quite the chart.
NDB: The only other thing I was gonna say is it looks like she was born like, right when the war was happening. I wonder if her mother wasn’t pregnant like, before leaving, if you know what I mean. Like, if she was – like, I know she’s born to refugees, but being born in August of ‘95 is so close to the war, I wonder if her mother didn’t have to leave Kosovo while pregnant with her.
CB: Right, that’s a really good question. I don’t know the answer to that, but that would be worth checking out. One thing that happened that’s really cool is that she started with her father a foundation called the Sunny Hill Foundation in Kosovo to support young people in the arts and culture there. And I thought this was really cool because she did it together with her father, of course, having the ruler of the Ascendant there in the 4th and having something that both represents their homeland but also represents a connection with her father and her relationship with him. And one last thing that was really funny – people that listen to the podcast and forecast episodes will remember this from like, a year or so ago where she went back home for like, a visit at one point, I think to like, London. Actually, I’m not sure where it was; I don’t know if she went back to London or she went back to Kosovo. But she thought over the past few years that she had Libra rising, but one day she went back home for a visit, and she must have found like, her birth certificate or a birth record or something like that, because her actual birth time gave her Gemini rising. And what was funny about this at the time is that Mercury was actually retrograde in Virgo at the time exactly conjoining the degree of her natal Mercury in Virgo. And at that point, she basically discovered through going back home her actual birth time, and then posted about it online asking people how this changed things so that it actually changed her perception of her identity, which is what the first house and the ruler actually indicates.
So it was a great example of that, of how the ruler of the Ascendant can represent your understanding of yourself, but also how Mercury retrograde can sometimes cause you to revise things that you thought you knew about your past or about who you are.
NDB: Right. It also strikes me, I mean, she just turned 29 two months ago going into a Scorpio profection year. But if this happened last year, was she in a Libra profection year when she learned that she wasn’t actually a Libra rising, you know, where she’s got Mars and the North Node? It’s another sort of curious element to that story. It’s a great story; I remember when that happened.
CB: Yeah, because I think it was – I thought it was like, September or something or around about there of last year which was 2024, but —
NDB: Now’s 2024. So a year ago was 2023.
CB: 2023, okay, yeah.
NDB: When she was 28 and she would have been in a Libra profection year as of August 22nd, 2023.
CB: Okay.
NDB: When Venus had been retrograde like, starting on her natal Sun-Venus as well just leading up to that, yeah, you know. Her solar return would have had that as well, so it’s an interesting time for that to happen.
CB: Well, yeah, and you know what happened like, the day that Venus stationed retrograde there at like, 28, 29 Leo right on top of her Sun-Venus conjunction at 28 Leo; that the day the Barbie movie came out, and she —
NDB: Right.
CB: — was both in the Barbie movie and she also did like, the lead single in the Barbie movie, not just the soundtrack but also it was like, featured in the movie itself. So it was actually really impressive Venus retrograde story.
NDB: Yeah. Because she’s born at the flipside of that same Venus retrograde; she’s born under what I call the blue five, the exterior conjunction of Sun-Venus in Leo, which occurs, you know, four years before and four years after the Venus retrograde in Leo. Sort of like a —
CB: Right.
NDB: — you know, it’s a partner part of the cycle, so that’s interesting as well. As we’ve covered already on your show, the whole Barbie movie was rife with that kind of Venus retrograde, you know, action going on with the synastry of all the performers and what have you.
CB: Yeah, for sure.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: All right, so that’s it for that example. The next one is a brief one; it’s the singer Lorde. And Camille Michelle Gray noticed this one and sent it in. So Lorde has Capricorn rising with Saturn in Aries in the 4th house. And one of the things that Camille pointed out was that Lorde’s breakthrough song was “Royals,” which was like, this huge smash hit like, a decade ago at the start of her career, and the song is actually partially about where she lives and where she’s from. And it has lyrics like, “I’m not proud of my address / In a torn-up town, no postcode envy.” So the song is partially about like, not being royal, not coming from a royal lineage, not coming from money, and not having a fancy sort of like, background, and the whole song touches on themes of like, social class and inequality and all sorts of things like that. Like, essentially suggesting the pursuit of wealth and status can be alienating and ultimately unfulfilling.
One of the observations I made that was funny after Camille pointed that out is that Saturn’s actually in Aries, which is the sign of its fall or depression, and that’s a good demonstration of what fall means. Because exaltation often means like, when something’s raised up and you get the highest version of whatever that thing is, whereas depression is the opposite. It’s like, when something is lowered and you get the lowest version of what something is. So like, not coming from fancy royal lineage or not coming from like, a fancy town.
NDB: Yeah. And then add the, you know, the fact that the South Node is so close to that Saturn there as well, just I think adds to the emphasis on how that is felt. You know? Some people can have very little and be okay with it, but just the sense that it’s such an absence for her that she would write about it. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So the last two things that Camille noted is that the stage name Lorde comes from her fascination with aristocracy, which is, you know, associated with heredity and family. And the last thing is also that she’s notoriously is very private, that she has a very small social media presence. She rarely attends Hollywood events, and she lives a relatively “normal” life. And that sense of like, privacy is a major topic that we’ll get to later, and this is like, an early preview of that.
NDB: Yeah. Although I’m personally convinced that she’s really Randy Marsh on South Park, but that’s a whole other story.
CB: Yeah. All right. So moving onto the next one is Drake. So Drake is a famous rapper and music artist, and he has Leo rising and the Sun in Scorpio in the 4th whole sign house along with a whole stellium in Scorpio, including Pluto, Venus, the IC, and Mercury.
So one of the things that’s really interesting about him is he’s one of the most successful rappers and musicians of the past decade, but one of the things that’s interesting if you watch or read any biographies of him is that his home and his city are very important to him. And he has a lot of pride in his hometown of Toronto and speaks about it a lot in his music. Additionally, he has this like, wildly extravagant and expensive mansion in Toronto that he refers to as “the embassy,” and he’s invested like, a lot of money into making it be like, essentially a reflection of both his success but also of his personality, which is where the ruler of the Ascendant part comes through. So he spent reportedly somewhere between a hundred million dollars to 180 million dollars building this like, huge house, and in terms of the construction, the mansion is completely custom built masterpiece with luxurious features and really high end finishes, which obviously would have significantly contributed to the cost. In terms of the interior design and furnishing, he basically spared no expense in furnishing this entire home with all these bespoke pieces and unique artwork, further adding to its overall investment. And for him, he sees it as like, this symbol of his success where the mansion represents the culmination of his hard work and his achievements in the music industry so that it’s kind of like a tangible symbol of his success as well as a place where he can sort of enjoy the fruits of his labor. But it’s also in this interesting way kind of a reflection of his personal identity because he was so involved in the design and the decor of his home and he filled it with all these personal touches and items that reflect his interests and his passions. You know, one of the things, of course, as a musician that’s interesting about it is that he actually made sure he built a home recording studio there so that he can actually work from home, which is a theme that you’ll see come up a number of times when either the ruler of the Ascendant or especially the ruler of the 10th are in the 4th, sometimes with 6th house connections as well, but the idea of like, working from home.
Let’s see. Last thing – he said he wants his home to be like a landmark in Toronto and a symbol of his love for his city, but of course, in the past year a lot of that got kind of like, reversed on its head because in the rap battle with Kendrick Lamar that happened earlier this year, one of the ways that Kendrick attacked Drake was to put a picture of his home on the cover of what became just an infamous, probably one of the most infamous diss tracks of all time. And by Kendrick attacking Drake in this way, by attacking his home in a way that he sort of attacked one of the things that was most important to him, which I think is really interesting for somebody with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house and with a stellium in the 4th house.
NDB: Yeah. Brutal. That whole thing. You can see how important it is to Drake, so yeah, to have that sort of become the target of something so infamous – yeah, it’s gotta hurt.
CB: Yeah. All right —
NDB: My sense of it, I mean, my sense of it is that, you know, anyone who knows more than I do about the subject says Drake was the loser in that whole battle. I don’t know if that’s the absolute verdict on it, but…
CB: Yeah. I mean, I think that that is definitely the wide perception and definitely —
NDB: Okay.
CB: — it was…
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, it didn’t go super well for him. But it’s interesting that his home became such a focal point of the entire thing just with that being such a prominent thing in his chart, so.
NDB: Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Moving on. The next example is Julia Child, and a few different people sent this in, but Camille Michelle Gray worked on it the most. Where Julia Child was a famous like, homemaker on television who wrote cookbooks that became wildly successful. And Julia Child had Gemini rising with Mercury in Virgo, retrograde, conjunct Venus in the 4th house and coperesent with Mars in a night chart. And what’s super interesting about her is that her cookbooks, especially her book Mastering the Art of French Cooking, had this profound and really lasting impact on households and on housewives in the United States where prior to Julia Child, French cooking was often seen as intimidating and inaccessible to the average American home cook. But when she published her cookbook afterwards with these really clear instructions and really detailed explanations, which is very Virgo, it basically suddenly made French cuisine approachable and achievable for everyday cooks at home, which was like, a huge turning point that really elevated home cooking, which is interesting in terms of Mercury being in the sign of its exaltation. So literally being elevated or raising things up to a higher level.
NDB: Yeah. I think of Virgo being the sign of all the sort of fine things in life, if you will. You know, Virgo wants the gourmet food and the classical master artists on the wall and yeah, you know, just the best of everything.
CB: Yeah, for sure. The like, bespoke things as well.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: So she really emphasized the importance of using fresh ingredients and mastering fundamental techniques, and this really encouraged housewives to take pride in their cooking and to view it as more than just a chore. So what was interesting is that this was also part of, in the 1970s, to some extent part of the thing – the emphasis was also on empowering women where women’s roles were often confined to the domestic sphere. And Julia Child provided this really powerful example of a woman who was passionate and knowledgeable and successful in a field that was traditionally dominated by men because men, especially in terms of professional chefs, were often the ones that were really dominating that field. So in doing that, she kind of inspired women to explore their culinary creativity and also to embrace the role in the kitchen in a much more, in a way that elevated it much more.
NDB: Yeah. I only have vague memories of her being on television, but she certainly, even just in the world of TV, which is usually, you know, sort of low-brow entertainment I suppose, she just had this real sort of air of class and dignity, but not in a haughty way – in a very approachable way. Almost like anyone who watched her show was elevated with her to some higher plane of awareness or existence if you will.
CB: Yeah, that was actually one of the points Camille made is that with Mercury being retrograde, she had this really distinctive voice, but also all of her mistakes or any blunders that she made often made it into the broadcast of her cook shows, which made her more relatable to people at home.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: So I just thought it was a cool example, because her life’s work was primarily consumed by people when they were at home using television and cookbooks, and that was really the thrust of what Camille pointed out with this example that I thought was so good when you think about the 4th house as having to do with homemaking, but also sometimes with things like cooking very explicitly. And we’ll see another example of that with a famous chef later on.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Last point – the only other thing Camille pointed out was that before she became famous cooking, one of the things that was interesting is that she was actually involved in the Office of Strategic —
NDB: Espionage!
CB: — in espionage, like, during —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — in previous decades before that where one of the things for example that she was tasked with was “registering, cataloging and channeling a great volume of highly classified documents and communications for clandestine operations.” So this is an early preview of another major 4th house theme, which is secrecy and secretive actions or covert actions that are taken because the 4th house is the most hidden place in the chart, and also it’s just a good example that sometimes different meanings of that 4th house can manifest at different times in a person’s life.
NDB: Yeah. I’d heard that about her being a spy; I always thought it was, you know, what a great sort of cover for someone doing that kind of work, because she’s the last person you would suspect. You know, she’s not James Bond.
CB: Right. The cook is always the last person you suspect until they like, karate chop you and you’re knocked out.
NDB: That’s right.
CB: Exactly.
NDB: Child – Julia Child.
CB: Right! All right. So moving onto our next example. Our next example is Charles E. Dederich, who was basically became eventually a cult leader. And this is one that Camille found as well where Charles Dederich had Aquarius rising and the ruler of the Ascendant is Saturn, which is placed in Taurus in the 4th whole sign house in a night chart, and it’s copresent with Venus, which is also in Taurus.
So he founded an organization called Synanon, which was this controversial organization which actually began as a rehabilitation program in California in 1958, but it gradually evolved into a cult-like community where there was authoritarian leadership and really questionable practices, basically. So eventually it became like, a self-sustained community with people living and working and going to school all on the Synanon campus. And it almost became like, a communal living experiment of some sort.
So he was like, a recovering alcoholic, and initially, Synanon gained recognition and success for its unconventional approach to treating addiction where it emphasized group therapy sessions known as “the game” where members engaged in these intense verbal confrontations and in self criticism. Eventually it became a community, a comune, and everyone started living together, and it had this diverse following, including celebrities and intellectuals who were drawn to the communal living and the promise of personal transformation. But eventually it transformed basically into a cult, and over time, the focus shifted from rehabilitation to social engineering, and Dederich became increasingly authoritarian and started demanding absolutely loyalty and obedience from its members so that it became increasingly isolated from the outside world and eventually started operating completely self-sufficiently with its own businesses and schools. So we’re talking about like, a whole sort of town here basically.
NDB: Right.
CB: So eventually in the 1970s, they started facing mounting legal troubles as well as public scrutiny, and Dederich and other leaders were implicated in various crimes including tax evasion, assault, and attempted murder, and the organization’s reputation plummeted and its membership basically dwindled. So eventually by 1991, the organization disbanded following a series of criminal convictions and financial scandals.
NDB: Okay.
CB: So there we go. Cult leader, creating a community but having like, the ruler of the Ascendant be Saturn in a night chart in 4th house.
NDB: Right. The other thing, the Saturn’s copresent with Venus in Taurus, but that’s a Venus in Taurus that’s about to go retrograde. So it’s a Venus in Taurus that’s moving very slow and has a lot more power than you would expect; it’s not some, you know, innocent little pleasant Venus there. It’s got some gravitas; it’s probably moving slower than that Saturn or at the same speed, possibly. And yeah, this is, you know, the sort of the scandal of things. You know, which is what Venus retrograde often provokes. Venus retrograde is about sort of, you know, testing the rules, testing the boundaries of what is or is not socially acceptable. So you know, something like, you know, this type of communal living during this era and with the specific sort of idiosyncrasies of his community – I think that’s really interesting.
CB: Yeah. It’s also about like, doing things differently and sometimes like, going against the grain. And probably part of the initial allure was like, setting up a different, a new type of like, intentional community that’s like, different and is probably seen as progressive initially before it became this like, authoritarian nightmare.
NDB: Right. Of course, he was born during a total lunar eclipse; we can’t ignore that. But yeah, so much of what you describe – certainly I see the Saturn in there, but also like, you know, copresent with that Venus being squared by the Uranus and Mars in the first. It’s quite the picture. You can see like, how things sometimes worked and sometimes they didn‘t.
CB: Yeah. That’s a good point – a total lunar eclipse in the 9th house of religion and belief and philosophy. And that Moon is like, coming off of a square with Pluto – out of sign, but just like, two or three degrees away. Mars is like, right on the Ascendant, and it’s squaring Saturn, and the Ascendant itself is also squaring Saturn. So there’s definitely some stuff going on there.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Good times.
NDB: I’d like to read more about him. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. All right. So moving on. My next example is George RR Martin, and this is one when I started researching it came up in my files as having the ruler of the Ascendant there. I didn’t initially know why, because I didn’t know a lot about his biography aside from that he’s a famous writer at this point and he’s the author of The Game of Thrones books which eventually became the successful HBO television series.
But he was born with Taurus rising and Venus in Leo in the 4th whole sign house. And as a writer, one of the things I realized eventually – I was reading his blog, and he talks about like, working from home and calling it his “fortress of solitude,” which I thought was really interesting phrase. And so as a writer, that’s one of the things that appealed to him is that not just that he could work from home, but he realized at a certain point that once he became a writer, he said in one interview he said that he appreciated that once he became a writer that he could work from home and live anywhere he wanted. So at one point in his life in 1979 and 1980, he ended up moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and he became like, not just a long-time resident of Santa Fe, but also like, a local fixture there who’s influenced the community there to a significant degree or to a notable degree. So this is a example of somebody where through the transits to his 4th house, you can literally see him discover like, the place that he would fall in love with in terms of he originally discovered Santa Fe as he was traveling across the country with his partner at the time to like, a sci-fi convention, and they like, passed through there and then all of a sudden just fell in love with this quirky little southwestern town, basically. And what was happening is that Jupiter was transiting through Leo, so it’s going through his 4th whole sign house, but also more importantly, eclipses were taking place in that two or three year period through Leo and through his 4th house when he discovers this place, falls in love with it, and decides that he’s gonna move there.
So he’s become a local fixture, and he’s also invested a lot in the local cultural landscape of Santa Fe by contributing especially to the arts and the film scene in a really significant way, and I think that’s funny because it’s like, Venus in Leo. And one of the things that he did is there was a local cinema there which was like, a historic, single-screen movie theatre that was in danger of closing down. And then in 2013, he stepped in and purchased it, and then renovated it and reopened it where now it sort of showcases independent films and classic movies and special events. He even sometimes hosts personal appearances and like, book signings there.
He later opened a bookstore next to the theater, and then he’s also really into the arts. And I found one quote from somebody who said, “His support of the arts community has had serious real impact in Santa Fe.” And one of the things that he supported was like, what was initially a local art installation called Meow Wolf, which while it was not solely owned by him, he was a really crucial early investor in this – it’s like, this really immersive art experience where it’s a collection of artists who create interactive and fantastical exhibits. And it’s become a major tourist attraction at this point in Santa Fe. So he’s really been influential in the local art community. He also attempted at one point, unfortunately, to build a castle-like library on his residential property, but the city ended up scuttling it, basically, and denied his plans due to zoning restrictions because they have kind of strict restrictions about like, the appearance of things and he was literally trying to build like, a medieval castle in the middle of this city.
NDB: Hilarious.
CB: Yeah. It’s pretty funny. Later he actually married his long-time partner of like, 20 or 30 years in a small ceremony at home, which I thought was funny of somebody with the ruler of the Ascendant – which is Venus – like, getting married at home is a pretty striking thing that not everybody does.
NDB: Right. When he found Santa Fe – excuse me – when Jupiter was in Leo in 1979, which I guess is when he found Santa Fe, I’m curious if it was during the summer. Because the August of 1979 had a very – excuse me, I’m sorry – August of 1979 had a very peculiar arrangement where you had the Sun being surrounded by Venus and Jupiter like a triple conjunction of Venus-Sun-Jupiter in Leo, you know, in that 4th house of his. Which is, you know, sort of especially abundant and, you know, friendly – very Leo friendly. So I’m curious if it was like, right around that summer that he found Santa Fe, but maybe I’ll have to look into it myself.
CB: In the summer of ‘79, you mean?
NDB: Yeah.
CB: What was the dates you gave again?
NDB: It’s about August, August of ‘79.
CB: Okay.
NDB: So just before he turned 31.
CB: Yeah. I don’t have all of that; I have a bunch of like, additional notes, but I don’t have all the dates.
NDB: Okay. I might look into it sometime.
CB: Yeah, it would be worth it. It’s kind of an interesting example. One last thing I was thinking about with respect to his creative output is, you know, the thing he’s best known for at this point is Game of Thrones where one of the things he did is he created this whole alternative world called Westeros. And there may be something to the fact that one of the things he did is he created this entire fictional land in his head, and one of the things that he did that he’s really unique for in doing that is he established its geography in great detail as well as its history. And he really focused on developing this theme of family lineages is like, this major, major theme in Game of Thrones where you have these different houses and these different families and family lineages, and this plays a really crucial role in the story in essentially like, the conflict and the competition between these different family houses and different family lineages as well as sometimes conflict between like, father and son and different things like that. So there’s something even about his creative output —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: He’s kind of like JRR Tolkien in a way in that sense. Like, if you think of like, the map that’s so detailed from Lord of the Rings, Martin basically did a version of that that’s even larger and more detailed and which he wrote this like, huge history and backstory for almost every single house and character and family line. So it’s one of the other things where it shows up not just in his personal life, but also in his creative output.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, it is so common. You find, you know, an artist’s work in their chart. And yeah, what you describe really does match that Venus-Pluto in the 4th. You know, Venus alone in the 4th would be sort of pleasant and royal, but you get Pluto there and then things become more a matter of life and death and more involved in power struggles and corruption and, you know, all the things that I know take place over the course of that story.
CB: You know, actually, that’s really funny that you say, because it actually makes me think of something else, which is that one of the things he’s most infamous for is like, this one event in his series called the red wedding, which he partially based off of earlier history, like, an event that occurred in earlier English history. So his study of history is actually probably part of what we’re seeing with the ruler of the Ascendant but in this one historical example broadly speaking it was about like, one family inviting another family into their home for a wedding but then like, murdering them basically. So that’s funny because it was actually kind of reminiscent of what we’re looking at here with like, the ruler of the Ascendant is Venus conjunct Pluto in the 4th house.
NDB: Come to a nice wedding! You’ll have a nice time! And then —
CB: Right, exactly.
NDB: — murder! Yeah.
CB: Yeah, and Mars is like, there in the 7th house in Scorpio squaring the Venus-Pluto, so might be something to that. I don’t know. Game of Thrones fans can let me know in the comments.
NDB: Right. It sounds like he might have been inspired by the Saint Bartholomew Day massacre in France when there was a royal wedding and a lot of the Protestants came to attend the wedding and then they were massacred by Catholics. It might be something like that, or maybe it’s some other reference. But —
CB: It might be. I —
NDB: — it reminds me of that story.
CB: I thought it was from English history, but maybe you’re right. Maybe it is that one.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: All right.
NDB: It might have happened in England too; it’s a good ploy, you know.
CB: Right.
NDB: Keep the old classics working.
CB: For sure. All right. So moving on. The next story, the next example, is one that was found by Lindsey Turner who sent this in, and it’s for a woman named Joan Ganz Cooney who, as you can see in the chart, was born with Virgo rising and Mercury in Sagittarius in the 4th whole sign house along with the degree of the IC and Mars and the Sun, which are all in Sagittarius in the 4th. And she is basically the co-creator of Sesame Street and is also a TV writer and a producer.
So she has a mutual reception between the ruler of the 4th house of home and the 10th house of career, because Jupiter – the ruler of the 4th – is up there in Gemini in the 10th house conjunct the Midheaven. And what’s interesting is that the idea for Sesame Street was reportedly first imagined during a dinner party at her home. And she was raised very conventionally, but was always pulled towards civil rights and social justice issues. Her father died by suicide in 1956, the year that she turned 27, which was actually a 4th house profection year, and we’ll get into 27 and the 27 Club later and how important that is as a 4th house profection year.
But Lindsey found this quote where she said, “I knew that I was born to be in education television; it was St. Paul on the highway.” And one of the things you have to remember – I was watching this like, little documentary about this a few days ago, but – when she first pitched this idea essentially for Sesame Street, the idea of educating children through television was like, a new idea. And what she was seeing at that time period from like, the ‘50s and the ‘60s was that children were starting to repeat commercials that were being played on television, and they were starting to repeat some of the like, songs from them and different things like that that they were like, internalizing about watching them on television which was still kind of a new medium. And she got really fixated on this idea of using television in order to educate kids at home.
So she helped to raise eight million dollars to produce Sesame Street, and then she ended up becoming one of the first female TV executives in American history after she successfully launched this and it became basically like, a mainstay of American homes and televisions that just millions of kids grew up with over the past several decades and still continue to because Sesame Street is still a really like, common thing where people can turn it on and you can learn to like, count or do other things.
NDB: Yeah. Might I add it was also very influential for Canadian kids, although because Americans and Canadians pronounce the word “zed” or “zee” differently, I was always admonished to not listen to that part of the show if it was the episode brought to you by the letter Z. As a Canadian, I was supposed to disregard that. But other than that, I mean, it was I think instrumental in my knowing how to read and write before I even got to school. And I mean, just a brilliant show and so entertaining. But you can really also fathom – this is another great example of that mutual reception of hers, because the show is – I mean, it depicts what you imagine to be a fairly like, working class neighborhood in New York. That’s how I see the Sesame Street set. It’s not supposed to be some like, friendly white picket fence. It’s, you know, your local neighborhood if you’re a city person. You know, the guy – I forget the guy who works in the grocery store whose name I should remember – or just like it’s, yeah, it was a very sort of neighborhood feel but a very sort of working class neighborhood feel. And you know, wonderfully diverse. So yeah, they weren’t presenting white picket fence America. In fact, they were broadcasting into white picket fence America some sort of child’s version of, you know, the other American I think, which was —
CB: Right.
NDB: — a really interesting component to it.
CB: Well, but also it was like, about, there was clearly an element from the beginning about like, diversity and inclusion and like, education. One of the things that Lindsey says is just that with Sagittarius in the 4th that she brought a world of education, of philosophies and ideals right into the homes of millions of children and that with that mutual reception between Mercury in Sag and Jupiter in Gemini, even though they’re in the signs of their detriment or their exile, because they have that mutual reception that’s strengthening both of them, Lindsey’s point was that it sort of testifies to her ability to dream about an unlikely resource that could support children’s literacy while also having big dreams herself in some ways of television and working in a way that also creates social change at the same time. So it’s a really cool example for that reason where you can see the sort of personal connection with the 4th house, but this is another one of those examples where you see somebody’s chart acting sort of globally or universally in some sense that she’s affecting millions of households as well, not just in the US but also around the world, because I forgot that Sesame Street was also like, localized in a bunch of different countries and different —
NDB: Right.
CB: — languages as well.
NDB: Yeah, yeah. You had – like in Montreal, you would have a French portion of the show that I’m sure you weren’t getting in the US. That’s absolutely right. It encouraged multilingualism. I’m pretty sure the American version, you know, had Spanish immersion in it included with the English education.
CB: Yeah. So that’s an interesting aspect of it then as well in terms of Sagittarius and stuff.
NDB: Exactly. And in my database, I happen to have the charts for the first taping and the first broadcast debut of Sesame Street because I’ve studied Jim Henson’s chart in the past. And funny enough, wouldn’t you know that she was 39 years old when Sesame Street was first taped on October 21st, 1969, and when it first debuted on TV on November 10th, 1969. So she was in a Sagittarius profection year when the show, you know, came to – was first broadcast. So we’re seeing that 4th house, you know, really central for her that year as well.
CB: Nice.
NDB: Leading up —
CB: So her 4th house was actually activated.
NDB: Her 4th house was activated, but furthermore because it’s 1969, we happen to know leading up to making, you know, the show was taped October 21st, but obviously she would have spent a lot of 1969 putting the whole show together. And it was in the spring of 1969 that there was a big Mars retrograde in Sagittarius while she’s in a Sagittarius profection year. And obviously her Sun’s very connected to that Mars. So even though I don’t know the details of, you know, whatever ups and downs she needed – you know, a TV producer always has to put out a million fires if you will and they’re still putting everything together – but I can just anticipate leading up to the taping of the show in October that most likely that Mars retrograde transit in Sagittarius over the spring and summer of 1969 would tell us a lot if we were to sort of follow her life as she was developing the show and getting it on air.
CB: Yeah, for sure. Nice. Nice, good work. All right, so that is that one. And then my last example in this section is the birth chart of the United Nations. We actually have a time birth chart. This is from Nick Campion’s Book of World Horoscopes where we actually have the specific time when the United Nations came into being on October 24th, 1945, at 4:45 PM in Washington, DC, and that chart has Aries rising and Mars in Cancer in the 4th whole sign house where it’s conjunct Saturn, it’s copresent with the IC as well as the North Node. And I just think it’s so funny and so interesting that the chart for the United Nations, which is really about all of these different countries and nations coming together, has the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house that represents one’s home but also more broadly one’s country, one’s origins, and it’s a bunch of different countries, you know, coming together and attempting to hopefully do peace deals or reconcile things because it was formed in the aftermath of World War Two and with the desire to never let something like that happen again. So it’s interesting that you have both the focus on the 4th house. Obviously, you can also see some of the difficulties since it’s like, a Mars —
NDB: I was gonna say!
CB: It’s like a Mars-Saturn conjunction in the 4th house, but that being said, it’s also a Venus-Jupiter conjunction which is in Libra. You know —
NDB: Right.
CB: — Venus is at seven degrees of Libra; Jupiter’s at 12 degrees of Libra in the 7th house of other people. It is conjunct Neptune, so there’s a certain amount of like, idealism to it, obviously. But you have both the good things as well as some of the challenging things which come with that organization.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, that’s what I was thinking. When I’m looking at the chart, I’m thinking like, if this was the chart of a human being, I would think this was someone who grew up with a lot of arguing and fighting in the household precisely because you got both Mars and Saturn in the 4th.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: You know, it looks like —
CB: October of 1945?
NDB: Right, right. It looks like a home where, you know, everyone’s arguing, which is largely what the place is about. You know, you need to have everyone in one room arguing things out so they’re not killing each other. And once in a while, you know, it actually works out that way. So yeah. I mean, it’s wonderful how – I mean, it’s such a spot-on chart, isn’t it? You’re right. I mean, the Venus-Jupiter and the Mars-Saturn, it’s all those things.
CB: Yeah. I used it in the 3rd house example also of an example of that Moon-Uranus conjunction in the 3rd house, and I just think of that singular room where all of the different nations are connected and like, each of the representatives is wearing like, an earpiece and they’re hearing the other representatives be translated in real time —
NDB: Right.
CB: — in order to communicate with each other, and there’s just something really striking about that image as well.
NDB: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. Once again, that Mars in Cancer is slowing down to a retrograde. The United Nations would get a progressed Mars retrograde station in 1986, so make of that what you will. But it’s another instance where like, that Mars isn’t just Mars; it’s a Mars that’s possibly moving slower than the Saturn, or if it’s not, it soon will be. And I maintain that’s always an important consideration, especially looking at a chart like this where, you know, you see a Mars-Saturn conjunction and instinctively, intuitively you think of Saturn being the dominating body in that combination because typically it’s the slower planet. Usually that’s the case. But that might not be the case here, and that might be the difference between, you know, Mars having more clout than the Saturn in this particular case. Obviously neither of them is strong in Cancer. Just by virtue of the speed of a planet, the slower a planet is, the more power it has as well. So that can be the case with that chart and it’s the kind of thing that where again it really helps to have a sense of the movement of the planets, because that’ll inform you in some way that simply seeing a planet in a given sign won’t on its own.
CB: Right. Yeah. I mean also just, the sect of the chart since it’s a day chart, and so you get the tricky situation that comes up in nativities where if according to sect the most challenging planet in the chart is the ruler of the Ascendant, then sometimes the issues in the person’s life come from within in some way. And for the United Nations, it would be somehow some of the issues come from within or come from what it is on some essential level or something like that based on its actions or based on what it’s about. So I don’t know; we don’t have to get further into that. This is really sort of a little far afield, but yeah, that’s actually —
NDB: It’s a good one, actually. I like it, yeah.
CB: Yeah, it’s a really interesting chart to look into.
NDB: We should talk about the NATO chart when we get to the 8th house episode. That’s —
CB: Okay. All right. So that is actually the end of this section on the home and living situation, so why don’t we take a little break?
If you’d like to learn more about my approach to astrology, then you should get a copy of my book titled Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune, which is available in both print and now ebook forms where I’ve started selling a PDF copy of the book through my website at HellenisticAstrology.com/Book.
All right, so now we’re gonna transition into the next section where we’re gonna talk about the topic of secrecy and the private life and things that are secret or concealed or covert, which is a major area of the 4th house that’s much more present in ancient astrology and traditional astrology but kind of dropped out to some extent in the modern astrological tradition. But it’s one that came through very strongly in my research, so I wanted to have a whole segment on it to talk about some prominent examples of this.
So my first example is the actress Greta Garbo, and this was sent into me by a few people. And I didn’t know a lot about her, but I was really fascinated once I started learning more.
So she was born with Gemini rising and the ruler of the Ascendant is Mercury, which is placed in Virgo in the 4th whole sign house. So Greta Garbo was an early Hollywood film star who was notoriously private, mysterious, and reclusive, and also shoutout the first person who sent this in to me was on Twitter; it was Medusa_a_LaMode, and then Nick also did a bunch of work on this one as well.
So she’s just like, known as this notoriously private, mysterious, and reclusive actress, and she started in silent films but then eventually she transitioned into talking films, right, Nick?
NDB: Yeah. And that was a big deal. She was actually, she made the most silent films after the advent of talkies of anyone else. Like, she and Chaplin were seen as the last holdouts of converting to talkies, and yeah. So she was very much a silent movie star, but when she did move to talkies, it worked out and the transits are fascinating; I can’t wait to talk about it. But please continue. We’ll get there.
CB: Nice. So I was watching an A&E biography on her, and I laughed because the very opening line is it says, “Garbo: Divine, mysterious, reclusive.” And that really made me laugh because I was watching it with this in mind of the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house. And I remembered that one of those is like, a keyword going all the way back to Valens where he talks about the 4th house pertaining to the mysteries.
So Garbo was born in Sweden, and she ended up coming to America to work in Hollywood. Early on in her life while she was still in Sweden, she ended up having to leave school at age 13 to take care of her father after he got sick, but then sadly he still died two years later when she was only 15 years old. So —
NDB: It was three months before her 15th birthday that he died, but yeah. Close enough.
CB: Close enough. So eventually she started acting, and she ended up moving to America and eventually became a successful actress. But she had this really cool facade so that nobody really guessed what was underneath is one of the like, comments that I often read and heard. So she made very limited public appearances and she rarely attended public events, premieres, or award ceremonies, and she famously avoided the spotlight and basically shunned publicity. One of the points that was really funny that I read was that she gave minimal interviews even though she was a famous Hollywood actress, and she almost never gave interviews and she was known for her reluctance to engage with the press. But what’s funny about this is that this only fueled the curiosity and the speculation about her personal life, and what I thought was funny is that the studios evidently were fine with this. Like, instead of being against it and sort of like, mad that their big Hollywood star wasn’t doing interviews, they realized that it was actually creating a deeper aura of like, mystery surrounding her, so they were like, “That’s fine; go nuts,” which is kind of a funny reaction to have.
NDB: Yeah. At first they did. It was Louie B. Mayer who was, you know, Captain Interference when it came to the studio bosses. At first he was upset that she wouldn’t talk until he realized that it was an asset, and then he relented. But she, yeah, she gave him a lot of trouble in a lot of ways, which maybe we’ll get to.
CB: Yeah. So after she got famous, she ended up renegotiating her contract. One of the things that she did in renegotiating her contract is she made sure to include a provision that allowed her to go back home to visit Sweden because she became really homesick.
So during the course of World War Two, she actually ended up investing wisely during the war, which resulted in her not having to work for a large part for the rest of her life. And some of what she invested in wisely were property investments, which I thought was really interesting. She ended up retiring from acting at the relatively young age of 35, and then at that point she just like, further withdraws from the public eye, which adds to her mystique and her sort of like mystery and legacy.
She had a very secretive personal life where she was very guarded about her personal life and relationships, and she never ended up marrying or having children and kept a very small social circle. And the last thing I have is just that she had this famous line that was quoted or attributed to her, which was, “I want to be let alone.” And it’s often —
NDB: “I want to be alone!”
CB: It’s often misquoted as “I want to be alone,” but it was actually, “I want to be let alone,” which had a subtle but important distinction. But it became associated with her, and it reinforced her image as this recluse who really valued her privacy above all else. And I really love that as a ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house in the most hidden and private part of the chart example.
NDB: Yeah. No, it’s a great one. It’s true; in Grand Hotel, she does say, “I want to be let alone,” and that sort of sets the tone. But it winds up being a line that she repeats in other movies as well. It almost becomes like a parody. Like, people wanna hear her say it. And —
CB: It’s like Arnold’s “I’ll be back.”
NDB: Yeah! No, it becomes like that or, you know, Dave Chappelle and, you know, “I’m Rick James,” et cetera, et cetera. Just like, you know, that line became too popular for my liking kind of thing. So yeah, her chart is fascinating. The transits are amazing. I always think of Neptune’s ingress into Virgo. It’s pretty much in sync with when movies went from silent to talking, but what it’s even more in sync with, because technically the first talkie movie was The Jazz Singer in 1927 when Neptune was still in Leo. But when Neptune goes into Virgo in 1929, that’s exactly when she records her first sound film. And no one’s even sure, because she’s Swedish, no one is sure. A lot of movie careers ended when the sound era came about because you had a lot of these European actors who had really thick accents and they were fine in silent film, but suddenly they couldn’t get work. And there was that concern for Greta Garbo as well, but it turned out no, you know, she worked on her English apparently. And you know, they found her speaking voice was okay. It was literally a national headline – Garbo talks okay. You know, just like, reassuring people that she would be in sound films. And that really is the advent of Neptune going into Mercury is when she starts making talkie films, which like I said, she was something of a holdout on that.
So there’s that element, and that is when Neptune makes its ingress into Virgo. And then so much of the story that follows has a lot to do with that Neptune transit through Virgo. Now she turns 27 in 1932, and what happens is just before that birthday, just before her 27th birthday – like, barely how many days, yeah, two weeks. Just over two to three weeks before her 27th birthday, there was a total solar eclipse at eight degrees Virgo conjunct Neptune. So it’s a total solar eclipse with Neptune on that natal Mercury of hers. So what happens? She goes back to Sweden. Like you said, she’s just renegotiated her contract again; she did two renegotiations. One was back in ‘26 when she first became a star; that gave her a little more freedom and money. But this is the one where she really like, argues for like, total power. And she gets the studio to agree that she makes one movie a year for the next two years and the rest of the time she can go do what she wants. So she goes back to Sweden. This eclipse is right on her Mercury. She spends time, she reconnects with an old lover that she knew 12 years earlier when she was in her previous 4th house profection year. But she also makes a couple of like, secret trips to – like, she’s hanging out in Sweden with her family and lovers and what have you, but she goes with a friend for a quick trip to Paris and London and she wants to sort of like, you know, do some sightseeing incognito. And she wears like this, apparently she wears like, a really obvious disguise. Like these weird Sunglasses and a wig. She kind of like, stands out even though she’s trying to blend. And in both cities, she’s noticed at the hotel she’s staying in, and a sort of paparazzi fan frenzy starts. You know, the big crowds outside her hotel room. And this is Miss, you know, Mercury in Virgo in the 4th house; she really doesn’t want it. But the funniest thing is she’s – also she goes back to Sweden. She’s all distressed about how crazy the fans were. While she’s in Sweden, she’s researching her next role, which is to play Queen Chrstina – a queen of Sweden who had ruled back in the 17th century. So she’s going back to all these old like, castles and Swedish, you know, historical landmarks that are related to Queen Christina as she’s researching the role, and ultimately she comes back to America and makes the movie. And she’s still filming the movie while she turns 28. Just before she turns 28, there’s another solar eclipse; this one’s at 27 Leo on Regulus opposite her Saturn close to her North Node, and of course she’s playing a queen, and that’s a royal star. So I just, I found her – you know, you can go into greater detail. I’ll spare you with that. But just like the, “too long, didn’t read” of all this is first of all, when she turned 15 in 1920, that’s when she made her very first film; it was an advertising film for a department store she worked in. And she started a love affair that would break up in a year, but then 12 years later when she’s a movie star, she would reconnect with that lover and actually they would be close friends until he died 30 years after that. So there’s that element to it. There’s the element of her going to Sweden and researching Swedish – like, her national history, and she’s gonna play this role. And it’s also it’s the period in her life, that trip to London and Paris – you know, she’s had the eclipse on that Mercury. There’s about to be a Mars retrograde on that Mercury. She’s really, she feels more invaded than ever. Like, it’s a real, you know, she’s really traumatized even. And all the biographers say that like, she vanishes for about four months after she leaves London and France. They know she goes back to Sweden, but there’s like, no record of what she did, what she was going through. Some people speculate she might have been pregnant and had a miscarriage or had an abortion, all kinds of things, you know, because they don’t know. So it’s such a 4th house profection year like, par excellence, and you know, you throw in the eclipse. You throw in the Neptune transit. And it’s just wild. And just to conclude —
CB: Yeah, so in the biography it really emphasized that first trip that she took back home because the movies that she had been in in America by that point had been shown in Sweden. So she returns back home for the first time as just this like, mega superstar, and they showed people like, falling all over each other. So this eclipse is coinciding with that first trip back.
NDB: This wasn’t the first trip back, but that kept happening. But this was an even crazier invasion of her privacy. I know the one you’re talking about; that was a few years earlier when she first went home. This one was even crazier. But she did a better job in Sweden of hiding from the public, but it was when she just tried to, you know, go and disguise herself and do a little sightseeing.
One thing I forgot to say, though – it’s really funny. Talk about spilling into the art. She makes this movie Queen Christina. Queen Christina was a queen who never got married; she wound up renouncing her throne to convert to Catholicism. But she was reportedly she would sometimes dress as a man and go out incognito. And in the movie, Greta Garbo playing Queen Christina at one point dresses as a man and like, goes to, you know, mingle with the common folk. And it struck me as funny because like, when you’re watching the movie, like, she doesn’t look like a man. She looks like Greta Garbo wearing pants. But everyone, all the other characters are supposed to like, believe she’s a man, you know. Old movies are like that. They don’t, you know, it’s not like when you see modern movies where people are really trying to be realistic. But it’s just so funny that she was sort of spotted in London and Paris for wearing a really obvious disguise, and then she plays a character in a movie who is also like, disguising themselves to go out in public. So my other point was that the profection is even seen in the movie, the one movie she makes that year. Not only does it reflect everything that’s going on in her life like all 12 months of that year, but even the theme of the movie fits into that.
The one other thing I just wanted to say in closing about Neptune is you can see her Sun’s at the end of Virgo at 25 Virgo, and it was when Neptune came to make the conjunction to her Sun in 1940 that she disappeared from the public eye for good. It wasn’t necessarily by design. I think it was, you know, partly she saw she was out of touch. Her last two movies had been comedies, which was sort of a genre switch for her. And I think she got out, you know, when she was on top kind of thing. But yeah, it’s interesting like, again, to come back to the Neptune transit signifying this, you know, how she transforms cinema. The fact that she disappeared from view when Neptune was finally conjunct that Sun is really interesting.
One more thing I wanted to —
CB: Right.
NDB: — say, I forgot to —
CB: Yeah.
NDB: — point out —
CB: That’s similar to some of the other examples.
NDB: Right. One other thing, really interesting – I know I’m going a lot on her, but her astrology is just so rich – the other thing about Greta Garbo that we haven’t talked about that is so much about that 4th house is she is said to be the queen of the closeup. She basically invented screen acting because, you know, you’ve seen old movies. I mean, you know, Chaplin and Buster Keaton are great, but it was very sort of theatrical, right? It was sort of like theatre acting caught on camera. But she learned how to act for the camera, which is much more subtle, much more about just sort of like, you know, some little change in a facial expression tells you what the character’s feeling from moment to moment. And she’s really the one who’s said to have created that, that subtle nonverbal way of acting on screen as opposed to the stage, which are, you know, virtually opposite ways of approaching the craft. So I think that’s an also a really interesting thing about her as well.
CB: Yeah. Maybe that’s something about the ruler of the Ascendant being in Virgo, because Virgo represents small things and sometimes how small things can make a big deal. So maybe it’s something about that; I don’t know.
NDB: Yeah. I would go with that. It’s also just, you know, 1929 – the year that she made her first talkie movie – she had just turned 24, so you still get like, the Mercury’s ruling that Ascendant with Jupiter in Gemini, and that’s when she made her first talkie movie. And then you go down to the Virgo profection year three years later, and that’s when she makes Queen Christina and all the stuff I just described happens. So it’s also —
CB: Yeah.
NDB: — just, you know, her career is really interesting to follow along with that as well.
CB: Yeah, for sure. And I’m glad you mentioned the Sun; I forgot to mention it’s not just her ruler of the Ascendant, Mercury, in the 4th, but her Sun is also placed there. So it’s not just her sense of self and focus and direction in life with the ruler of the Ascendant, but also something about her basic identity. With the Sun in the 4th house, it also tends to be more private or gravitate in that direction, and that Sun is square Pluto, which is in the first house, which is also probably contributing things here since, you know, some of the complex outcomes that we’re talking about are rarely a result of just one placement but usually like, multiple tings going on.
NDB: Yeah. Another 4th house thing that occurs to me – I’m sorry, I know it’s again, the astrology is so rich. Apparently like, I’ve read some feminist critiques of her films, and her character wasn’t like Jean Harlow, like your classic bad girl, but she also wasn’t like, your homespun “good girl,” to use the parlance of the day. Like, her character was really ambiguous morally. But apparently, like, the number of movies she made where her character dies is like, you know, comparatively really high. Like, her character was so – her general sort of whatever movie she was in, you know, because she wasn’t a totally sort of, she didn’t portray pure type of characters. You know, it had to be written into the script often that her character would die by, you know, as punishment for her misbehavior, if you will. That was the sort of the movie code at the time. If you had someone in a movie doing something bad, they had to pay for it. You couldn’t show people getting away with bad behavior.
CB: Okay.
NDB: So her character often had to die, and that’s another sort of 4th house thing, I guess.
CB: Yeah. Well, now that you mention that, actually another thing I thought was interesting about her biography is that she had relationships with women, or at least one major relationship with a woman so that she was queer or she was bisexual. And in that time period, one of the things that will come up too with some other examples is just that’s something where people would have to keep secret or private or hidden about themselves, otherwise they would face like, persecution or even legal ramifications or other things like that, so that sometimes that became a tangible reason why sometimes people had to do things privately or secretly when having prominent 4th house placements.
NDB: Yeah. I’m reminded – I mean, one of her same-sex relationships, I would describe her as fluid because she really, you know, even that year when she’s 32 and she goes back to Sweden, part of the time she’s with her male lover, part of the time she’s with her woman lover. There was another woman lover of hers, a woman named Mercedes de Acosta, who’s a writer in her own right. And in 1960, she had some kind of medical emergency and she needed to pay her bills, so she wrote and published a sort of tell-all book about her relationship with Greta Garbo. And Garbo, you know, cut Mercedes Acosta out of her life for good at that point. But it occurs to me, this would be right around when Pluto was conjunct Greta Garbo’s natal Mercury in Virgo down in the 4th house, if I’m not mistaken, in 1960 when that book was published. So yeah, you know, even later in her life, you can see that 4th house is central to everything for her.
CB: Yeah, that must have been really horrifying to her then personally.
NDB: Oh yeah. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. All right. Yeah, just to be like, such a private person but then to have secrets about your life or your private life become public.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: All right, so let’s move on to my next example, is the birth chart of Louis Pasteur, who is the famous scientist who the pasteurization method is named after. So he was a French chemist – actually I should show the, give the chart placements first. So he had Libra rising with Venus in Capricorn in the 4th whole sign house along with a whole stellium of planets that included Mercury, the Sun, Neptune, Venus of course, Uranus, and Mars all in Capricorn in the 4th whole sign house in a night chart. And he was a famous French chemist, pharmacist, and microbiologist who was renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation, and pasteurization, the last of which was of course named after him.
So one of the things that’s interesting – there’s a couple things that come up in his life. One is the topic of death as a motivating factor, and he’s one of our first previews of that where he experienced both the death of siblings as well as the death of children, which may have motivated some of his work with different things like vaccination because a lot of them died from diseases which today are actually preventable. So that’s one major thing.
The other major thing that I wanted to focus on here is that there’s a huge element of secrecy surrounding his research and his laboratory where privacy and secrecy were actually surprisingly significant themes in his life. So the reason for this is the protection of ideas where in the competitive world of 19th century science protecting one’s ideas and discoveries was actually crucial, and Pasteur was known to be very cautious about sharing his findings prematurely because he feared that his rivals might steal or even discredit his work. So he often kept his research private until he was confident in his results and ready to publish them formally.
Another reason that he kept things private is that he wanted to have control over the narrative because he was very keenly aware of his public Image and his legacy. Legacy is a super important keyword here where he carefully controlled how his work was presented to the public, often emphasizing successes and downplaying setbacks or controversies. And this control extended to his laboratory notebooks, which he kept private during his lifetime, possibly to maintain a curated version of his scientific process because he wanted to control his legacy. And some of that extended to even his ancestors where he gave instructions for the preservation but also to keep his written works private to some extent. So some historians today argue that Pasteur sometimes employed methods that were not entirely transparent or ethical by modern standards. For example, he may have exaggerated The success of some of his vaccines or even used experimental treatments on humans without fully disclosing the risks involved. So keeping these practices private may have protected him to some extent from criticisms or even potentially from legal challenges may have been some part of the motivation. But also his research was deeply personal to him because of his past personal experiences with losing members of his own family, and especially the loss of his children may have deeply influenced his scientific work. So as a result of that, I think that this personal connection may have actually made him more protective of his research because he viewed it as an extension of his own private struggles and emotions and attempts to sort of fix some things that had gone wrong in his life and in his family to some extent.
Let’s see. What else? In his lifetime the scientific community was really undergoing significant changes, and there was a lot more increase of competition for funding as well as for recognition in this sort of like, competitive environment probably contributed to his desire to maintain control over his research and to protect his internal property and legacy. So strategic balance between public engagement and private research.
One thing that I found interesting is that he ended up founding the Pasteur Institute in Paris and he’s actually buried underneath the Institute, so —
NDB: Okay.
CB: — that’s something that will come up in terms of like, graves, burial, things like that having to do with the 4th house, and I just think it’s interesting that he’s actually buried underneath the Institute that he created and is named after.
NDB: Yeah. Especially in Paris of all places where, of course, I mean, you know, some of the most famous cemeteries – you have the Invalides where Napoleon and other military leaders are buried. I mean, it’s a city with a lot of different sort of, you know, burial plots. Of course there’s the catacombs full of bones. But yeah, for Pasteur to have his own private, you know, place, you know, for where he built – for him to be resting in a place that he built I think is extra special and you know is signified in what we see there.
CB: Right. Yeah, in the like, main city of his country.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: So last thing that I thought was interesting is that he told his family never to reveal his laboratory notebooks to anybody. So it’s like, he left very specific instructions for the preservation of his legacy in death, and his family actually ended up obeying, and all of his documents were held and inherited in secrecy for generations, for a generation or so. And because he did not allow others in his laboratory to keep notebooks, this secrecy kept many aspects of his research unknown until relatively recently where some more of this has come out and there’s been more discussion and analysis of some of his methods and different things like that. But it brings up another 4th house thing that we’ll get into more, which is just what happens after a person dies, and some —
NDB: Right.
CB: — instances of the chart and 4th house placements sometimes being able to speak to that.
NDB: Yeah. Absolutely. You know, obviously, everyone knows his name. You know, biochemists or what have you aren’t usually, you know, household names, but we’ve all heard his name. You know, that sort of speaks for itself.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: Again, we have a mutual reception. Again, we have a Saturn that’s just stationing direct within days of the birth, and that Saturn is part of the mutual reception with that Venus which, as you pointed out, rules the Ascendant. So yeah, there’s tremendous control over his sort of empire if you will. The domicile and exaltation rulers of his Ascendant are in mutual reception, and one of them’s making aphasis. So it’s quite extraordinary, even just seeing that Venus sandwiched between the Neptune and Uranus within the stellium. And one tends to associate those outer planets with new developments in technology and culture, and you know, talk about culture – suddenly we weren’t drinking as much bacteria as we had been until Louis came along and helped with that. So it’s, yeah, it’s a really interesting chart —
CB: If I could do a rimshot right now for you, I would. But I like, sadly cannot.
NDB: Yeah, I’m —
CB: That was a good joke.
NDB: I’m the drummer in this gang, so there you go – I have to do my own.
CB: That’s true.
NDB: But yeah, it’s —
CB: I’m glad you brought up the Saturn placement, though, because that’s actually how I originally found this example is I was looking for examples of the ruler of the 4th in the 8th. And I started with mutual receptions, and he came up in your database, actually, first that he had a mutual reception between the 4th and the 8th. And that’s where that piece about his notebooks and how they’re inherited but kept private and secret by the people who inherited them in his family basically until relatively recently, and I think it has to do with that strong mutual reception between his 4th and his 8th.
NDB: Yeah, absolutely.
CB: Yeah. All right. So that is Louis Pasteur. Let’s move onto my next example. This is not a ruler of the Ascendant example, but this is a Sun, Mars, and Mercury in the 4th whole sign house. I originally found this as a Sun example in the 4th house, but wanted to merge it into this section on privacy and secrecy because it was one of the most stunning examples I found of that concept in relation to the 4th house.
So this is the birth chart of Billy Tipton who was born with Libra rising and the Sun, Mars, and Mercury all in Capricorn in the 4th whole sign house copresent with the degree of the IC. So Billy Tipton was an American jazz musician, bandleader, and then later a talent broker whose music career began in the mid-1930s when he led a band for radio broadcasts and went on into like, the 1940s and ‘50s.
So Billy Tipton lived and identified as a man for most of his adult life, but after his death in the late 1980s, his friends and family were actually surprised to learn that he was transgender and had been born as a woman. And reportedly, none of his family members knew this in terms of past wives or partners or his children.
So this is primarily about having the Sun in the 4th house, and sometimes having something about one’s identity that is concealed or having to conceal it. And there’s multiple different things going on in this chart which we can talk about in a little bit once I tell the story, but the setup and the basic premise is that he was known for his skill as a pianist, a saxophonist, and a bandleader. And he achieved a degree of success in the mid-20th century jazz scene and really started to become prominent in that scene.
So really early in his career, he adopted a male identity, likely partially to gain acceptance and to have opportunities in what was then the male-dominated world of jazz music in the 1930s and ‘40s. And during that time period, he started using binding and padding in order to create a more masculine appearance. So you know, somebody who wanted to be in music who specifically wanted to be in jazz, but jazz was not a place where women were like, accepted at that point in time. So part of the story is that thought to some extent to be part of the motivation for starting to present as a man at that point in time. Do you know much about the jazz scene in that time period in terms of being more male dominated?
NDB: Well, I mean, you know, I know quite a bit about the jazz scene; I’m a big fan of it. You had your singers. You had your Billie Holiday, your Ella Fitzgerald, and Billy Tipton would have been contemporary of theirs. But they were singers, not instrumentalists, and certainly not bandleaders. You know, maybe occasionally you would have a woman in a band who played, you know, saxophone or piano or something, but – like later Sarah Vaughan was such a woman – but a bandleader? That would have been probably beyond the pale in the ‘30s and ‘40s.
CB: Right.
NDB: Unless it was an all-woman band. You could have something like that maybe happen, you know, as a novelty. Like, “Oh my god, look at those women! They’re playing instruments.” You know, you could have had something like that. But Billy Tipton would not have had the career he had, I think, if he had lived his life as a woman. So yeah, it definitely gave him the chance to do what he wanted to do.
CB: Right. So you know, it’s a really interesting story because it highlights the challenges… You know, some of it was probably partially motivated by especially what would have been contextualized in that time period as like, wanting to pursue that career. But also Billy wasn’t just presenting as a man publicly but also in his personal life as well, and reportedly his wives and adopted children were unaware of his assigned sex at birth. So one of the things that’s interesting to me about this story is that it highlights the challenges faced by what today are recognized as transgender people in a time when societal understanding of gender identity was really limited and was also very hostile towards the concept of being transgender, which Billy was.
So what’s interesting and I think the point of this story is that Billy made choices to live authentically as himself even if it meant concealing a significant part of his identity. And this is really where I think the Sun especially in the 4th house comes into play. So his story prompts reflection on the complexities of gender identity and the lengths to which people may go to live a life that’s true to themselves. And there’s this actually really interesting and really amazing documentary I watched on Billy titled No Ordinary Man, and at one point in the documentary, there’s an interview with a person named Zackary Drucker, and they had this amazing quote that I wrote down where they said,
“Trans people’s survival through history was based on invisibility. Based on people’s ability to either conceal their feelings of gender dysphoria or where their ability to assimilate into society without being noticed. You see that like that people lived an entire life as, you know, the other gender, as it were, and were revealed post-mortem to be of the other sex. It’s scary when centuries of your survival have been based on not being seen.”
And I thought that was a really amazing —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — quote, especially in this context just with that 3rd house stellium of three planets and how much, you know, that —
NDB: 4th house stellium.
CB: Yeah, sorry – 4th house stellium – and just how that played such a major role in Billy’s life and just thinking about, yeah, just like what kind of fear they would have had not just in terms of their public life but also in terms of their private life if that became known. Because of course ironically what happened when they passed away on January 21st, 1989, his son called the paramedics and then the paramedics discovered that Billy was born a woman, or was not a man at birth. And then it became like, this huge like, media fiasco basically, and then all of the like, talk shows were talking about it and the family was being hounded by reporters, and it was this huge thing. And of course at that time in 1989, there was this huge stellium of planets that were in Capricorn that were moving through Billy’s 4th house. So that famous like, Capricorn pile-up in the late ‘80s would have been in Billy’s 4th house hitting all of those 4th house planets natally.
NDB: Yeah. Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, I think. By January ‘89, they’re all in Capricorn or just going into Capricorn, I think, in Uranus’s case. Yeah, that’s – those are heavy-duty transits. I’ve read other stories of, you know, other trans people in history, you know, who didn’t make it to the grave without being discovered, and the consequences could be really brutal. And you know, kudos to Billy for pulling it off, you know, going the whole distance without anyone ever knowing.
CB: Yeah. It’s like, some of the early reporting was like of negative, of how could the wife not know and accusing the wives of knowing, or —
NDB: Right.
CB: — talking about the dishonesty aspect of it in terms of the personal lives. But for me as I was like, kind of watching this story is I was thinking like how tough that would be to have such a deeply held private secret that, you know, could destroy your life where even your family members might not know and having to keep it from them for your entire life all the way through ‘til death. It put that in perspective for me what that experience would have been like to be trans, obviously even still in the present day, but even more so like, 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 years ago when it would have been even more dangerous.
NDB: Yeah. And as it turns out, I believe his fears were well-founded, because I think his adopted kids did renounce him, didn’t they, when they learned the truth. So like, it, you know —
CB: Well, no.
NDB: No? Oh, okay. That was what I thought I read there.
CB: I mean, there was definitely some stuff early on, but I know —
NDB: Okay.
CB: — one of his sons was featured in the documentary that was released in the past few years, and he said that he came to understand what that was like and what Billy was living with and didn’t seem to hold resentment over it.
NDB: Okay. I think I read something that was older, you know, maybe before that all sort of came about. Certainly —
CB: Sure.
NDB: — I mean, you can imagine they had to process the whole thing, so there might have been different stages in terms of how they felt about it.
CB: Yeah. I mean, one of the things they said was that the son did say that he got harassed about it because then having a transgender father, kids would pick on him and say, “Does that mean you’re gay?” And this was like —
NDB: Right.
CB: — 1989 when that was like, a slur to people.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: So anyway, so this also brings up, though, again just that theme of not just privacy and secrecy but also things that happen after you die. And in this instance, having that secret come out when Billy died, but also so many discussions then that came as a result of that, and a lot of that was just that Capricorn stellium hitting stuff and especially the day he passed away, transiting Uranus was conjoining his Mercury in the 4th house. And transiting Mercury was retrograde and conjoining his natal Uranus in the 5th house. So there’s a ton of other stuff going on, but I just noticed those two things in particular.
NDB: Yeah. You know, of course, his natal Mercury is opposite Pluto so that when Uranus is on his Mercury, it’s also opposite his Pluto.
CB: Right.
NDB: The ruler of his Ascendant is Venus at 29 Scorpio just coming out of a direct station, so he’s again, we’ve got a very slow moving, deceptively powerful planet in that Venus in Scorpio being trined by Neptune at 29 Cancer.
CB: Exactly.
NDB: Neptune having made the ingress into Leo, and it’s in its regress period. And you know, trining a Neptune – trining a Venus, rather – that might even be moving slower than that Neptune potentially. So yeah, there’s a lot going on there. Yeah, the transits for his death are quite amazing. Quite amazing.
CB: Yeah. So it’s just a – anyway, it was a good personal example, both with the natal placements as well as the transits. But I definitely recommend people check out that documentary, because it was just a good documentary all around. It’s titled No Ordinary Man.
NDB: Yeah. I’m gonna do that.
CB: All right.
NDB: I also wanna hear some of his music. That’s the thing that intrigued me; I’m like…
CB: Well, that was one of the things that was actually tragic about him is that they did one album, and it was moderately successful. But so much so that they almost got signed, and they were given an – he was given an opportunity with his band to do another several follow up albums and to sign a contract. And it was gonna be moving up higher and even working with Pavarotti and stuff was on the horizon. Like, he was getting a major break. But Billy pulled back and turned it down and ended up like, moving to Washington or something like that and starting a family. And so there’s this real interesting like, mystery about what happened at that point in time, and did Billy stop himself from going and being as successful as he could have been because he was fearful of his secret becoming public? And that’s like, one of the questions if that’s the correct scenario or alternatively, did Billy hold back from pursuing that career and having as much success because Billy actually wanted to have a family and wanted to raise a family, which is also possible in terms of those 4th house placements, and then did end up adopting three children and did get married.
NDB: Yeah. No, that’s a good question. But I’m wondering why a jazz musician would be recording with Pavarotti. I mean, I know Pavarotti for an opera singer was kind of, you know, reaching across the aisle so to speak, but it seems like a kind of strange combination. My impression was that Billy Tipton is a big band jazz musician, no? Or was he doing —
CB: I mean…
NDB: No?
CB: I don’t know.
NDB: I’ll look into it. All right. Okay. Fair enough!
CB: All right. Let’s move on. I have one other example like that that was really good. This one was first brought to my attention – Camille Michelle Gray pointed out. I didn’t know that we had her birth data, but this is the birth chart of Kerry Washington, the actress. And when I was looking at this when I was researching the Sun in the 4th house, I just happened by chance to come across this interesting line in her Wikipedia page about an incident that happened a few years ago where she unexpectedly learned that she was conceived through a sperm donor in 2018 so that her biological father – or her father who raised her was not her biological father. And she didn’t know until she’s like, an adult who had had almost like, a full career at that point in time.
So what happened is that this revelation came about as she was preparing to participate in the PBS ancestry show titled Finding Your Roots where I don’t know if you’ve seen that, but like, a bunch of celebrities go on, and they like, do a DNA test and then they tell them different things, sometimes surprising things, about their ancestry basically based on their DNA.
NDB: Right. Like Larry David actually is related to Bernie Sanders, right? Like, he had been playing him on TV, and then it turned out they actually are related when they did that. That’s one of the funny ones I’ve heard, yeah.
CB: Right, and sometimes there’s like, funny little things like that. But so she’s like, oh yeah, like, I’ll do it. And what was funny is she was having – well, I’ll get into that actually in a minute, the timing. But so she signed up to do it, and her parents were sent a DNA kit, and they initially were on board with it. But then all of a sudden, once her parents got the DNA kit, her father started acting weird, and he started acting erratic and he wasn’t sleeping and he wasn’t eating as much. And she had no idea like, what was going on or what his problem was. There’s this amazing interview she did with Oprah where she talks about this. And eventually what happened is the show host was like, talking with the parents as the parents start trying to back out of it, and they eventually told the PBS host, Skip Gates, what the deal was or like, a hypothetical scenario, and then he ended up telling them that it would be best to like, tell her the truth because he said that in his experience, when children aren’t told the truth, then what happens is eventually the parents die and then they found out later, but then they have so many questions that just later go completely unanswered, and that’s a worse case scenario he said to them than just, you know, telling them and being honest. So after a lot of deliberation, eventually her parents sat her down and told her the truth. And her father was like, really broken up about it because what she said was that her dad was really fearful that the premise of why she loved him is that she believed that he was her biological father, and he feared that if she knew that he wasn’t her biological father that she wouldn’t love him anymore basically, even though he was the person that raised her.
So she has this really amazing quote where she describes it in the Oprah interview where she said,
“I knew that my dad is always gonna be my dad because I have tremendous parents. And despite the fact that in that moment I knew that they had kept this truth from me for decades, for my whole life,” she said, “I guess I realized sitting across from him that up until that moment, that every time I had said ‘I love you’ to my father, that it had been on the condition of a lie. There must have been some part of him that thought, ‘She loves me because she doesn’t know. She loves me because she thinks I am her dad, and maybe if she finds out, maybe that wouldn’t be the case.’” And then she said, “And I said to him, ‘Dad, you are going to have a chance now to know what it feels like to be loved unconditionally.” And she says, “My dad loves me so much, and I have been able to now return that love because it hasn’t changed. If anything, it is deeper. My love for my parents is so much deeper in truth than it ever was before this revelation.”
So it’s just this amazing story, and she wrote a autobiography just in the past few years talking about it. And you know, in the chart, we can see the Sun is in the 4th house, and the ruler of the 4th house is Saturn, which is up there in the 10th house. And interestingly, what was happening in terms of the timing is there were eclipses taking place in her 4th house in 2018 when this revelation came about.
NDB: Her solar return is within hours of a lunar eclipse on that Saturn, so it’s yeah, it’s very tight.
CB: Nice. Okay. Well, and one of the things that was cool about it is it showed to me again the interrelationship and how eclipses can tie together two disparate areas or seemingly opposing areas of a person’s life – in her case, the 4th house and the 10th house. Because in one of the interviews, she described how she’d been talking to the PBS guy, the host of that show, for years about doing it and she wanted to, but she wanted to wait until this television series she was on wrapped up. And then what happened in 2018 is the television series wrapped up, so she was having eclipses in her 10th house which indicated a major ending and a major beginning in that area of her life in terms of career. But then the eclipses were also taking place in her 4th house at the same time, so because that TV show ended, that opened her up to be able to do this other television show about her DNA and her ancestry, which then precipitated this entire crisis that happened that unfolded that summer. So again, that’s just another one of those examples of how eclipses can sometimes tie together those two seemingly opposite and unrelated parts of your life in very striking ways. And I believe – I think there was also like, a Mars retrograde in —
NDB: Yes! I was waiting —
CB: Okay.
NDB: You beat me to it. I was dying to jump into there with that.
CB: I stole a Mars retrograde story from you.
NDB: Well, no, it’s okay! But this is the thing. Mars only goes retrograde in Aquarius once every 32 to 47 years, and in fact before 2018, it had been 47 years since Mars had been retrograde in Aquarius, the last time being 1971. So whenever I see someone who’s got an Aquarius Sun, an Aquarius Ascendant, that kind of thing, I’m often curious like, okay, so what was going on for this person in the summer of 2018 when there was that first Mars retrograde certainly in ever in Kerry Washington’s life? Kerry Washington has always been an Aquarius Sun; she has never had Mars go retrograde in her Sun sign or on her Sun until 2018 when all this happens. And like I said, her solar return was right on a lunar eclipse on that Saturn of hers.
Now she has a Sun-Saturn mutual reception; that certainly is, you know, that adds a lot more to both houses as we’ve been talking about. And then they’re in this T-square with Uranus, which is something that – the kind of thing that one expects when it comes to these situations with, you know, third or fourth parents or what have you. Or you know, sometimes if technology’s involved, infertility issues, or you know, in these other issues where there’s like, a step-parent stepping in as a real parent, if you will.
CB: Right —
NDB: So yeah, the transits —
CB: Yeah, that was —
NDB: — are fascinating.
CB: That was one of the basic indications is just sometimes having the ruler of a house in the sign opposite to its house indicates that it’s othered or it’s removed from familiarity in some way. So in ancient astrology, sometimes it can indicate like, that can be an indication for like, living abroad or living in a different country if like, the ruler of something like the 4th house is in its opposite its domicile, because it’s like, the furthest from its home situation that it can get.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. But I mean, I don’t know what all the details were, but I think it was just that her parents were like, having trouble conceiving. But it was during a time period where that was far less common to talk about in terms of doing something like that back then in the ‘70s.
NDB: Yeah. She was born within a year or so of the first test tube baby. All this sort of stuff was kind of brand new. But yeah. That’s – I mean, you can always see with that’s the beauty of the Mars cycle is because – with certain signs – because it’ll only make a retrograde or a conjunction to the Sun maybe twice in a person’s lifetime, maybe three times if they live really old, then you can really zero in on those moments, on those periods, you know, three months out of an entire lifetime when that one time Mars goes retrograde on the Sun. And you know there’s gonna be a story there, especially because she was 41, so she’s in a 6th house profection year – Aries – so Mars was the lord of the year, even. So you’re already looking for its transits to be a little more central. The Sun’s in the 4th house as it is. So yeah, I mean, it was really timed in such a way that 2018, I think, was always gonna be the year that she found this out.
CB: Yeah. So that – a Mars retrograde and also those eclipses, and then yeah, so this is just a very simple example. Like, the Sun representing literally one of the classical indicators of the father in the 4th house and just there being something secret or something private about matters pertaining to the father and to ancestry. And yeah, and then finding that out at some point.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: All right.
NDB: Yeah. I was raised by an adopted dad, and I am an adopted dad, and you know, go adopted parents.
CB: Yeah. For sure. And that was one of the reasons why I made sure and later went back to fix that. It’s like, the 4th house is those who raised you, and like, sometimes that can relate back to biological parents and whatever the background is with them. But oftentimes, the people that raised you are your 4th house, even if they’re not biological necessarily.
NDB: Yeah. We have a good example of that coming up soon enough.
CB: Okay. All right. So let’s move. We’ve got two more examples in this section. So the next two are actually kind of light, funny ones now that we’ve had some like, heavy privacy and secrecy ones.
So the first one Lindsey actually came up with this one – Lindsey Turner did – and I thought it was brilliant. This is the birth chart of Jim Henson who is the founder of the Muppets and who was like, a puppeteer, basically, I guess is the official designation. And he was born with Cancer rising, and he has the Sun and Mercury and Venus all in Libra in the 4th whole sign house along with the IC. So having a 4th house stellium, you know, he was known as the creator of the muppets, and Henson was a puppeteer who became famous for TV shows such as The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, as well as the movies Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. And the funny thing about this is just that, you know, he spent his entire career hidden essentially below —
NDB: Right.
CB: — the stage while he would put his hand up in the air and control the puppets, and the puppets would be the ones that would appear in the television shows or the movies or what have you. And his face is rarely seen. So it’s funny as a secrecy or privacy example, because you have somebody whose entire career involves being hidden and yet still appearing, you know, to some extent.
NDB: Yeah. I mean and also it’s interesting with the Mercury retrograde there, because keep in mind – he’s Kermit the Frog. He’s Ernie in Ernie and Bert. We know his voice. You know, that is the part of him that, you know, apart from his arm moving the mouth of the puppet, you know, the character voicings that he did are classic. You know, this is the guy who sang “The Rainbow Connection” in The Muppet Movie; give me a break, you know? It’s a fantastic voice, but it’s the only part that carries out, and it’s interesting, you know, it’s retrograde and so, you know, it’s not Jim Henson’s voice. You’re not hearing, you know, how Jim would have Sung “The Rainbow Connection;” you’re hearing Jim sing “The Rainbow Connection” as Kermit the Frog. So yeah, that’s another sort of interesting element to it as well, I think… You know, the part of him that wasn’t buried, the part of him that did sort of rise to the surface.
CB: Totally. That’s a great point. Yeah, and you know, it’s Venus in a night chart in the 4th whole sign house in its own domicile in Libra, and we’re just getting like, one of the most like, positive expressions of that where this is obviously a much more positive example of secrecy and privacy having to do with the 4th house rather than something that’s more difficult.
NDB: Yeah. I’ve looked – sometimes one interesting thing for people who are Jim Henson fans to do is to look at his synastry with Frank Oz. Frank Oz we know as the voice of Yoda, but he was also the voice of Bert and Miss Piggy. He was sort of like Jim Henson’s, you know, puppet partner if you will. So they’re a fun pair to study together for people who wanna dig more into the Jim Henson astrology fun show.
CB: For sure. Yeah. So shout out to Lindsey for that example; it’s a great one. And then one more in this section is Vanna White. So this one was also found by Lindsey, and she made some really great points and then I made an additional realization where I suddenly realized it fit in this section where Vanna White’s chart is Cancer rising with the Moon in Libra in the 4th whole sign house copresent with Jupiter in a day chart. And it’s ruled by Venus, which is up in Aquarius in the 8th house of other people’s money.
So Vanna White is an American television personality and game show host who’s best known for her role on the game show Wheel of Fortune. And what’s really funny about this is that I understood the second part of the example, which is I could see she had the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th and the ruler of the 4th is Venus in the 8th, and I was like, that’s interesting because I know – you know, other people win prizes, basically, on Wheel of Fortune, and that’s kind of the point is you’re competing in this game show for prizes, which is very 8th house. But then I suddenly had this realization about why her 4th house is emphasized with the ruler of the Ascendant there; it’s because her role on the game show is literally to turn the letters so that they go from being hidden or obscured to suddenly becoming visible. And that was literally her primary job on the game show is she became known as the host who like, turns the letters and makes the words appear going from —
NDB: Right.
CB: — hidden to invisible, and I just cracked up when I saw that. I thought it was amazing.
NDB: Yeah, no, that’s a brilliant insight. Because of course – I mean, Pat Sajak is really the host of the show, the guy who reads the questions and makes all the jokes and what have you. Vanna doesn’t speak. You know, you see her; she is like, a star of the show as a figure. But largely silent and standing by the letters and just, yeah, revealing them as these contestants, you know, guess, buy vowels and do all the things that you do on Wheel of Fortune. I also love that the Sun is opposite Pluto, because she’s really like, you know, she’s – the Pluto is the contestant, you know, the one who’s gonna find that they’re either about to own a new car or they’ve just blown it in getting a new boat, or whatever the case. These are all very sort of Pluto experiences where you go from rags to riches or riches to rags very, very quickly. So yeah, that’s kind of interesting to me as well. But yeah, your insight about her revealing the letters – I think that’s spot on and just hilarious.
CB: Yeah. So she just, she reveals letters on the puzzle board as contestants would guess different words or phrases for those that haven’t watched this. One other point that Lindsey pointed out that was also interesting is that in her private life, she’s said to also love flipping houses and investing in real estate. So there’s like, another 4th house thing there as well, of course, with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th.
NDB: Brilliant.
CB: Yeah. So I believe that is the last one in this section, so I actually wanna take a little bit of a break, and then we’re gonna come back with a special guest who’s gonna join us for the next section.
NDB: Oh boy! I hope it’s Jim Henson.
CB: Right. Or Vanna White.
NDB: Or Vanna White, yeah. Jim Henson’s been dead for 30 years; let’s hope it’s Vanna White.
CB: Okay. All right —
NDB: Jim Henson, that’d be a bit creepy right now. Okay.
CB: Yeah, I don’t want any zombie muppets on this show. It is October; it is Halloween time, so maybe —
NDB: It is Halloween, yeah.
CB: Okay. All right. We’ll be right back.
The astrology software that we use on The Astrology Podcast is called Solar Fire for Windows, and you can get a 15% discount on the software by using the promo code ‘AP15’ when you purchase it through Alabe.com. For Mac users, we recommend the program Astro Gold for Mac OS, and you can also get a 15% discount when you use the promo code ‘ASTROPODCAST15’ at the website AstroGold.io.
All right, we’re back, and we have a special guest. Joining us is Leisa Schaim. Hey Leisa; thanks for joining us tonight.
LEISA SCHAIM: Hey Chris. Thanks for letting me come on for a little cameo visit.
CB: Little cameo. It’s a little better than the eight hour thing last time; you’re just coming in for a brief little thing this evening.
LS: I think that’s the way to go!
CB: I think that is the way to go, I’m starting to realize now that I’m thinking about it. That was smart.
NDB: I’m your ringer on this marathon, Leisa, so.
CB: Yeah. Nick —
NDB: I’m taking the bullets for you.
CB: Luckily for me, Nick has not learned that lesson yet. So we are having a late night.
LS: Yes.
CB: All right. So you have an example that you found in order to round out our last section about secrecy and that will help transition us into the next section. So why don’t you go ahead and set it up and introduce it and I’ll pull up the chart.
LS: Yeah. So this example is of Noor Inayat Khan. She had Virgo rising with Mercury in Sagittarius in the 4th house. Mercury is applying to oppose Pluto somewhat closely, and Mercury is also opposite Saturn by sign in a night chart.
So she was the eldest child of Hazrat Inayat Khan, who was the founder of the Sufi Order of the West, which we’ll actually be talking about in the next section right after this. So obviously, that gives her like, a 4th house parent, family signification already because her father was a notable public figure. But the really interesting thing about this one was that in World War Two, she served as a British resistance agent in France in what was called the Special Operations Executive. So the purpose was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance and to aid local resistance movements, which are of course by their nature secret, right?
So it was really interesting because she was not raised to do this. It was just one of those things where sometimes people during a war end up doing something completely different than, you know, what they were doing before that time.
CB: Right. She was raised as like, a pacifist.
LS: She was raised as a pacifist, and she had pacifist ideals because of that, but she wanted to aid the war effort without killing people. And of course, it’s interesting that her Ascendant ruler is the Mercury in Sagittarius in the 4th, right, because Jupiter ruled Mercury is, you know, like, can be like, the ideals around who you are or you were raised with certain ideals or ideologies. Anyway —
CB: Like a pacifist Sufi father?
LS: Right. Yeah. Like, you wouldn’t – when I came across this, which I came across just in researching her father, I was like, wait, did I get this right? Is this the same family? Right? Because it seemed so incongruous that she was like, doing espionage work. It didn’t sound like she was like, made for it, honestly, as in like, they were not even sure whether to send her.
But anyway, she had a codename, which was Madeline, which is interesting with Mercury itself as the planet ruling the Ascendant and the 4th, so it’s like, her very identity was a secret, a secret name. And she became eventually the first female wireless operator sent to occupied France to aid in the French resistance. So again, secret messages with the Mercury ruling the Ascendant and the 4th. And you know, of course, alternately the French resistance was also called sometimes the French Underground, and I always think that’s interesting with the under the earth signification of the 4th house, right? Things —
CB: Right.
LS: — that are like, under the —
CB: That’s literally like, the ancient name for the 4th house, the under the earth.
LS: Exactly! So you think like, underground, basements, like, things like that, or even metaphorical ones have like, 4th house significations.
So anyway, she ended up being arrested about four months after she was sent, which apparently is pretty good. The life expectancy of one of those people being sent was like, six weeks. So she actually like, lasted a while. She was later taken to Germany and imprisoned. And you know, I don’t know if you talked about the prison signification earlier today of the 4th house.
CB: Just —
NDB: Yeah, he mentioned it.
CB: — very briefly, but this’ll be our first example, I believe.
LS: Okay. Yeah, so confinement, constraint can be a 4th house signification; it’s certainly not one of the most common ones you think of, you know, with the 12th house being more commonly associated with prisons. But we have seen a few in examples in the research of like, imprisonment actually also being associated with the 4th house.
So anyway, she was… The timing was really interesting. It was transiting Saturn stationed at 26°37’ Gemini on October 10th of that year, which was opposite her natal Mercury, which was her Ascendant ruler in the 4th, less than half a degree. Right? Which was also her Saturn return, so that was transiting Saturn stationing within her Saturn return in the 10th house opposing her Mercury.
CB: 1941?
NDB: ‘43.
LS: ‘43. Yeah, thank you.
CB: October 10, 1943.
LS: 1943.
CB: Let me put up a biwheel.
LS: Yeah, it’s really striking. I almost didn’t even catch this part; I added it on today. But so yeah, transiting Saturn stationed around October 10th exactly opposite that Mercury in the 4th within that Saturn return in her 10th house. And on the one hand, that seemed like, okay, bad times, right, because it’s a night chart – Saturn return in the 10th house opposing her Ascendant ruler. But it was also, I mean, in a sad way of course, but it was also cementing like, her legacy, what she would be known for like, in this process.
CB: So she was captured by the Nazis and —
LS: Yeah.
CB: — sent to a concentration camp at this point?
LS: She was captured at that point. She was captured on or around October 13th, so that was like, right around when it was stationing.
CB: Okay.
LS: And then she was sent to Germany, and she was in solitary confinement for 10 months in complete secrecy. And of course, the complete secrecy line kind of like, perked my ears, right, with the 4th house signification of secrecy there, not just with the espionage part but also this. It was part of this “Night and Fog” political prisoner program by the Nazis to make political prisoners disappear without anyone knowing their fate. So not just like, bad things happening to them, but like, no one like, really knowing one way or the other what happened. And I was struck also by the Night and Fog with, you know, her Ascendant ruler in the 4th, because you know at night the Sun goes down to the 4th house, you know, at nighttime. And so that’s literally like, disappearing something, like disappearing the Sun during the night.
So almost a year later, she was transferred to the Nazi concentration camp Dachau and executed. So it is a sad example, but the striking piece was certainly the secrecy. Like, both of those secret pieces, especially like, sending secret messages and so forth.
Then she also had a bunch of like, posthumous recognition, so she was granted British and French military or military allied awards after death. There’s a whole bunch of things. It was like, she had a bronze bust made of her. There’s a stamp with her face on it. There’s a “blue plaque,” which is like a recognition thing with her name on it at the last house she lived at before she went on this mission, which is interesting with the house signification of the 4th house.
NDB: And the historical thing as well.
LS: Yes! And the historical – right. It was like, she became this, you know, piece of history when honestly, like, her biography leading up to that point didn’t sound like, super prominent. But it’s one of those things with some of the people with the 4th house significations to become more famous after death.
CB: Right.
LS: She also had a bunch of theatrical plays, films, TV, and radio shows made about her life, and I know, Chris, you noted maybe as the ruler of the 4th in the 5th – at least I think that was your note.
CB: Yeah. She has Jupiter ruling the 4th house and the ruler of the Ascendant, and Jupiter is placed in Capricorn in the 5th. And I keep seeing that 5th house placements show up in creative works, and actually one of our people that I’ll talk about later – a listener – has a story of having the IC in the 5th and doing creative works based on her father’s legacy.
LS: Wow. That’s striking.
NDB: This whole story reminds me of Josephine Baker, who, you know, she – an African American singer-performer who was living in France in the ‘30s and the ‘40s. And she also worked as a spy. She was allowed to go between, you know, regular France and Vichy France for performance, so she was, you know, performing for people. And she had secret coded messages written on her sheet music in invisible ink. And she was later given the Legion d’honneur. I mean, she didn’t get caught. So you know, she was later decorated by Charles de Gaulle for her service to France. I even wonder if maybe she and Noor knew each other. But Josephine Baker also strikes me as someone who had no training to be a spy. I mean, she was just, you know, a nightclub performer.
CB: Ironically, it looks like she also had Virgo rising.
NDB: She did, yeah.
CB: But she had the ruler of the 4th in the 10th house —
NDB: In the 10th.
CB: Jupiter in Gemini in the 10th.
NDB: Yeah. So you can see it still sort of, you know, playing out for her. You know, maybe this is why she was better at, you know, staying free. You know, the fact that the ruler of the 4th is hiding away in the 10th in plain sight. Because she was a very hiding-in-plain-sight kind of spy, right? I mean, she’s very public. She was already famous. And yeah, and still —
CB: One of the things —
NDB: — carried those messages back and forth.
CB: One of the things I thought I read about Jsopehine Baker that part of her thing was like, her social connections and that she would get like, info from people at parties and stuff. So there was – I often associate it with like, a 7th house component because Jupiter’s ruling the 4th and the 7th and it’s in the 10th, or possibly an 11th house component with Venus in the 11th.
NDB: Yeah, the Venus-Neptune in the 11th says volumes about her and the, you know, the kind of life she has a performer, as a human being, because she did know everybody. I mean, she’s part of that whole Paris scene, you know? So…
CB: Right.
NDB: Anybody who’s anybody in Paris knows Josephine Baker, yeah.
CB: All right. So anyway, back to the example though. That’s a really amazing example, and yeah, of just because you know, we also already talked about Julia Child who also did like, secret, covert stuff during the war as well with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th, and then later after the war would go on to do other 4th house stuff related to cooking and homemaking. But this is a more tragic example of somebody who did covert stuff during the war but that ended up being their final thing and part of their final, lasting legacy.
LS: Yeah. She was only 30 when she died, so that became like, the defining thing that she was remembered for.
CB: Right. Yeah. Well, that’s a really good example, and I think that really helps to round out this section on secrecy, on privacy and covert things that I think, you know, I’ve been paying attention to for years, but it was really great looking into this more and getting some of these. I think this is something you were a little skeptical about at one point, Leisa, but you feel more compelled by, confident now by some of these?
LS: Not so much skeptical as like, there’s more examples of it than I expected. Right? Like, some of the – there’s some house significations where it’s like, sure, they come up, but like, not nearly as frequently as some of the other ones, that kind of thing. So I was like, sure, it could come up as secret things, but like, how often is that a major part of someone’s life, right? But then when we looked —
CB: Right.
LS: — for, you know, research examples, I’m like, oh, there’s more than I thought! So it was really striking to find.
CB: Yeah, for sure. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to like, have this section and share all this research, because I was so excited to finally show the world like, here’s a collection of this. This is a thing. And now other people will be able to – once you understand what to look for, now it’ll be easier for people to research this and identify additional examples.
LS: Right. Because I think it’s easy with this kind of signification, like, the secrecy for the 4th, to just sort of gloss over it and not see that in someone’s chart or to attribute it to something else, or you know, just because it’s not like, one of the main 4th house significations you usually hear about.
CB: Right. Well, and one of the points you made that I mentioned at the beginning of the episode as a preliminary remark is that the 4th house is already hard to research because it’s the part of the chart that by definition represents the private life and the most hidden or private parts of a person’s life, so especially with celebrity charts sometimes that can be difficult to research and document. And this then is an even more tricky part where sometimes there may be things that you see in a chart that even you try to delineate in a consultation or with a celebrity or something, but that you may not be able to because that information may not be public knowledge. Like, you know, imagine if somebody sat down with like, Billy Tipton and did like, a chart reading while Billy was like, in their 40s or something like that. Yeah, sometimes there’s just like, things either a person has to keep private or secret, or things that they opt to keep private or secret for whatever reason. Or in the case of Kerry Washington, things that are being kept private or secret from them that they don’t know about.
LS: Yeah, exactly. I figured that would be quite a limiting factor when we started looking for charts for this episode and have been like, happily surprised to see how many things you could still find that were publicly knowable at least at this point in time.
CB: Yeah. Well, that brings us – that is an excellent transition point into our next section which you have joined us in order to lead because this is one that you really pioneered and you felt like was a major section that we needed to include, which is talking about the 4th house as pertaining to the inner world and themes of contemplation and other things like that.
LS: Yeah. So I had long noticed that sometimes just kind of like what I was saying, the main 4th house significations wouldn’t resonate with some people who had important 4th house placements. And I was like, well, it’s gotta mean something; it’s gotta be actually more important than usual here, right? But it was like, a dead note or something. But after a while, I noticed that some of those people had like, things like a significant meditation practice or they attended to their inner life more than usual, like, more than the average person. And I was like, that’s gotta be a thing, right? Because it’s like, an inner part of the chart. And you know, I also knew there was this almost what felt like at the time a throwaway part of the end of the lists of 4th house significations, like secret or mystical matters, hidden things. Interestingly, you know, I just noticed looking back that Riley translated that part as “religious matters,” which is an interesting angle on it.
But you know, so this actually does make sense, you know, the contemplative 4th house signification in connection with the other significations, because it’s kind of an extension of your private life. Like, it’s the most private part of your private life is like, your inner world, right? And you know, mysteries by their nature like, not everyone sees like, what’s going on with you with that, right? And I had always been kind of intrigued by that last piece of those like, lines of significations, but I’m like, what do you do with that? They’re mysteries. Right? Like, how do you know what they are then?
Anyway, so doing research for this episode actually really confirmed that signification for me, the contemplative piece. I found a bunch of great charts for this. So the first one is Hazrat Inayat Khan, who was the father of Noor Inayat Khan we were just discussing. So he had Pisces rising with Jupiter in Gemini in the 4th house. Jupiter’s also ruling the 10th house, placed in the 4th. And the ruler of the 4th house is in the 5th – Mercury in Cancer.
So he was a renowned Indian music, Sufi teacher and mystic. He was credited with bringing Sufism to the west, founding the Sufi Order of the West. And his teachings emphasized the inner life and development of intuition. He developed, he established a “inner school.” When I first saw this, I was like, oh yeah, this is it, right? All that inner signification. He established a “inner school” comprising four stages of contemplative study based on the traditional Sufi disciplines he translated into English as concentration, contemplation, meditation, and realization.
So when I started reading through his biography, I was like, oh yeah, this is the 4th house signification. And I was pretty excited to see that line up, because I had so far just seen it in like, everyday people I knew who had like, strong meditation practices or things like that. But he was like, the actual leader of like, a whole movement or lineage of, you know, contemplative practice. So —
CB: Right. And actually like, codified with those four principles especially.
LS: Yeah. And continued it on from previous lineages. So I found this statement on the website for his lineage.
“Sufism is not a religion in the sense of being a system of beliefs, separable from other religions, but a school of experience focused on the cultivation of the heart and the deepening of awareness through the practice of prayer, meditation and spiritual inquiry.”
So, you know, it’s not religion; it’s not like the… It’s more of the inner part of either spirituality or religion; it doesn’t have to be like, a traditional religion. You know, there were some people that are associated with those and some people who are not who have this placement. But it’s like the inner part of that work. It’s not the codified rules. You know, it’s not religious rules and practices. It’s like, what are you doing to develop your inner life and your inner world and your, you know, your spiritual practice?
CB: Right. I looked up a Google definition, and it said, “Sufism is a mystical Islamic practice that focuses on spirituality, ritualism, and asceticism with the goal of achieving a direct personal experience of god.”
LS: Yeah. So it’s like that personal thing again, right? It’s like your private life, it’s your private connection, you know, with the ineffable or what have you. It’s not the exoteric; it’s the esoteric part.
CB: Yeah. And I think that’s important because that’s the throughline with the other examples that you found where this is like, the… A lot of the major religions have like, a version of this which is like a metaphysical or like, an occult or – that’s not the right term – a mystical version of their religious practice that emphasizes more a direct personal connection with the divine or with god. And this is like, sort of the quasi – this is the Islamic offshoot of that. But then you also, we found some other examples with Hinduism, with Judaism, and with Christianity.
LS: Right. Yeah. It was actually really cool to see a bunch of different ones going that way. But yeah, it’s the focus on the inner experience and inner development. And you know, it can be spiritual development, but it’s like the inner practice.
CB: Nice. All right.
NDB: I always think of Sufism as being sort of, you know, more artistic than you find in, you know, the poets, the musicians. The sort of the art in Islam seems to come from Sufism, at least from my vantage point, so. Yeah.
LS: Right. Well, and interestingly in his chart, he has the ruler of the 4th then in the 5th, right? And he was also like, a prominent musician. Like, he blended that with the mysticism. So yeah, he was like, born into a family of musicians, he was a master of the veena instrument, and a gifted vocalist. And he tried to harmonize east and west through music and mysticism, so exactly that.
CB: It’s funny because there’s also like, with the – it’s like the Alexander Graham Bell thing as well where it’s like, Pisces rising and Jupiter in Gemini.
NDB: Yeah.
LS: Right. Right. The other thing I thought that was cool about this one is it just really showed the importance of lineage, because his Sufi sources included both some of his paternal ancestors but also his particular Sufi teacher, the latter of which included four different lineages. You know, and the 4th house being like, people who came before you, people or things that came before you. And it kind of illustrates that those lineages can be both of blood and of teaching.
CB: Yeah. That’s really huge. And that’s something… I don’t know if – can I characterize it as like, we don’t have as much familiarity with that in the west sometimes, but that there are more, there’s more of a connection with that especially with different eastern, as we’ll see in some of the upcoming examples especially, some of the different eastern religious or philosophical lineages where things are passed forward from student to teacher for generations, and that does seem to become – as we’ll see in some of the future examples – like, a 4th house thing.
LS: Yeah, I was pretty excited to notice that, because it also felt like one of those things where you can observe how the astrology is still the astrology, but it’s like, combining with different cultures in different ways. Where like, if lineage is not important in the US, not nearly as important, right, as some other places – then we’re gonna mostly see family lineage there. But in other places, that can show other kinds of lineage which is like this.
CB: Right. For sure. And it’s like, I guess there are versions of that. Like, hermeticism had a version of that in the west, or freemasonry has like, a version of that in the west, and I’ll show an example of that later. But it’s a little different than this.
LS: Yeah, it’s not that it’s like, black and white, but there’s certainly more I think emphasis on lineage elsewhere than here.
CB: For sure. For sure. All right. That is a great, great example. So you found that example, and then were looking around for others, and pretty early on in the process I remembered a major chart that one of my early Vedic astrology teachers, Dennis Harness, had shared with me, which is the birth chart of Paramahansa Yogananda. And Yogananda was a Hindu, an Indian monk and a yogi – actually, I should put up his chart. I’m still showing the Sufi chart.
So this is the birth chart of Yogananda. There’s slightly differing times, but all of the times I’ve seen give Virgo rising with Mercury in Sagittarius in the 4th whole sign house ruling the 10th house as well as the Ascendant, and it’s copresent with Venus in Sagittarius in a night chart. So it’s copresent with the most positive planet in the chart. And his is a really interesting story, because he was an Indian monk and yogi who introduced millions of people to meditation and to Kriya yoga.
So he was basically like, a key figure in bringing yoga to the west earlier in the 20th century, and he established an organization for this called the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles in 1925. So his bestselling book is titled Autobiography of a Yogi, and it continues to be a source of inspiration for spiritual seekers around the world. And he was kind of like, influenced to some extent by theosophy I get the sense, and he emphasized the underlying unity of all religions and taught a balanced approach to health and wellbeing for body, mind, and soul. And he’s said to be one of the first Hindu teachers if not – I mean, some of his followers claim that he was the first Hindu teacher of yoga to spend a significant or spend a major portion of his life in America. And he toured America at different points. So I thought this was really interesting just because of the focus on meditation especially and on yoga and those sort of like, internal practices and having the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house.
LS: Yeah —
NDB: Yeah. Another – oh, I’m sorry. I just want an interjection. He first came to the US in, he arrived in September of 1920, which means he was 27 years old when he came to the US for the first time, and he was in a 4th house profection year.
LS: Oh.
CB: Nice. Brilliant. Yeah. And so 4th house profection year activating that, and he would basically live like, the rest of his life in the United States. So it’s interesting that in terms of the 4th house placement as well.
LS: Yeah.
NDB: Yeah.
LS: It’s interesting because the Ascendant ruler there and the benefic of sect, like Venus in a night chart, and I think you know just thinking again about, you know, the other 4th house significations. If you tried to read this person’s chart and you were like, you know, home and family is really important to you, and they’re like, “Yeah, but,” you know? It was really like, that inner world.
CB: Right. If you said, “There’s something about your private life and your inner world that is important to you,” he would be like, “Yes, that resonates.”
LS: Right, exactly.
CB: Yeah. Nice.
NDB: He definitely, he’s presented as like, one of the first gurus, I think is what you were getting at, Chris. Like, the first sort of guru to arrive in the west, to have that sort of relationship to an Americann public or to a western public.
CB: Right, yeah.
NDB: At least that’s how I understand it. Like, he’s kind of the trailblazer for that.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: For the whole idea of having gurus in the west.
CB: Right, which creates like, lineages and stuff in and of itself. And then also, yeah, bringing sort of eastern teachings on these more internal oriented religious or spiritual inclinations and sort of like, mystical practices to a western audience and sort of initiating large western audiences to those.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. All right. So that is that example, and then Leisa did an amazing job. So we’ve done essentially like, a Islamic example of that; mine was the Hindu example, and then Leisa has found a few others to like, round things out.
LS: So the next one is Gershom Scholem. He was Virgo rising with Mercury in Sagittarius in the 4th. He also had the Sun, Mars, Saturn, and Uranus also in Sagittarius in the 4th. So really like, packed 4th house there. So you would think there’s just a huge concentration in that area for some reason. He was a German-born Jewish philosopher and historian, and you can already see the 4th house signification of like, the history part. But he’s also widely considered the founder of the modern academic study of Kabbalah, which is Jewish mysticism. So he did a whole bunch of historical research to find and piece together scattered Kabbalalistic texts and dedicated his life to researching and analyzing those and kind of challenged the prevailing views at the time that dismissed that as like, just superstition. He like, took it seriously as a, you know, an academic pursuit. It’s not clear whether he was actually personally, you know, practicing this or not; he was famously private, which makes sense with the, you know, huge 4th house concentration there. So he tried to keep himself out of the limelight and just focus on the work itself. But yeah, it was really interesting – kind of like that exoteric/esoteric thing again where he was like, Jewish mysticism wasn’t just inherently interesting in itself to him, but that it like, challenged the sort of prevailing norms of Judaism that were more about like, rules and law. And that they were like, he was like, but there’s this whole other inner strain that people aren’t talking about that was there since the medieval times. And so yeah, so he did a whole bunch of rigorous scholarship, helped establish Kabbalah as a legitimate field of academic inquiry, and what I love about this example is that it illustrates several 4th house significations. I mean, I guess a lot of them do, but you know, it’s the historical texts, and you know, Mercury is already ruling the Ascendant in the 4th, and Mercury is like, you know, words and texts. And then it’s texts about mysticism itself, which is a 4th house signification. And there’s also the contemplative piece, because part of – not all of, but part of – Jewish mysticism, there are like, meditative pieces, contemplative pieces. So yeah. So anyway, I was pretty excited when I found that, because again, it was just like, bolstering this whole like, oh there is a concentration of 4th house contemplatives that just like, I didn’t – I’ve never heard people talk about.
CB: Yeah, for sure.
NDB: It’s very interesting. He was born right at the Uranus ingress into Sagittarius, like, within a couple of days. And then when he died in 1982, it was like, two months after Uranus ingressed into Sagittarius. There has to be something about him that connects with that. Obviously, anyone with a —
CB: Right.
NDB: — Saturn-Uranus conjunction, it’s a very sort of complicated thing. But since the Uranus is the planet that just made the ingress and for him – again, 4th house – you know, coming and leaving, he joined us when Uranus had just gone into Sagittarius, and then he left us when Uranus had just gone into Sagittarius. That’s interesting.
LS: Yeah.
CB: I mean, it’s probably something about one of those biographical things is just Kabbalah being treated as something that was like, a weird oddity of, you know, in Jewish studies up to that point, but him centering it not just as this like, weird bizarre thing, but actually as a really core thing that was part of Jewish history and ancestry. And this becomes also a good example of one section we’ll get into next, which is looking to the past and sometimes like, people that become historians being part of that. So this becomes one of our first good examples of like, a historian who, in his instance, he’s not just a historian who’s studying something random or abstract, but also because he had Jewish ancestry there was probably an element of that to his search or his investigation as well.
LS: Exactly. And especially with the Saturn-Uranus there, he actually came from a family that was more like, German assimilated and not super religious, and his rebellion was like, going back to, you know, ancestry. And so, and you know, the Saturn-Uranus conjunction there is interesting as well because it was like, yeah, that tension of like, him trying to integrate something that he felt that was authentic to, you know, the lineage of Judaism itself and Jewish history. But trying to like, blend that with like, you know, current day understanding of it, which I feel like is part of that Saturn-Uranus.
CB: Right.
NDB: Yeah, I think of Saturn-Uranus as being you’re either normalizing something that’s considered strange, or you’re taking something that’s considered normal and making it strange.
LS: Exactly.
NDB: You know, that you’re sort of blending things that are supposed to be incongruent or are not supposed to be, you know, unified, and somehow you do. You know?
LS: Right.
CB: I love that also because you can also localize probably then to like, a family context, as if he grew up in a non-religious, like atheistic household or something along those lines, then it’s like, he’s kind of like growing up and sticking it to the man, or sticking it to his father, his family, but like, rebelling and becoming religious or at least focused on religious study. And that’s always a funny dynamic when the child grows up in an environment of a certain sort and then rebels against it by doing the opposite of whatever their parents did, whether that’s like, growing up in a religious environment and then rebeling by rejecting religion or in this case almost like, the opposite to some extent.
LS: Exactly.
NDB: We’ve seen —
LS: Yeah.
NDB: Yeah, we’ve seen some – I’m sorry, Leisa. I just wanted to – we’ve seen a few examples, you know, over the course of this episode of sons having some sort of Oedipal, you know, thing with their fathers signified in the 4th house. And when you’re looking at his 4th house, you definitely get the impression that something like that could have been, you know, in the picture, that he was indeed motivated to, you know, stick it to the old man so to speak. You know, I sense an element in there; I don’t know his story at all.
LS: Yeah, yeah. I forget why, but he got kicked out of his house, and I can’t – it might have been a part of why, but I can’t remember that for sure. But yeah, I mean, people always think of Uranus as weird, but it’s just weird for whatever the context you’re in. So like, when people have Uranus oppositions in their 40s, for instance, it’s not always people doing like, really erratic weird things. If that was already their context, sometimes people like, reverse that and, you know, like, go get like, a Fortune 500 job in their 40s.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Right. Yeah. If you already drive like, a red sports car or your parents did, then you buy like, a Toyota —
NDB: Horse and buggy.
CB: Yeah, exactly.
LS: Yeah.
CB: Which would be very Uranian. All right. Good example. So let’s move on. You found another internal area.
LS: Yeah, there’s a few more. So the next one’s gonna be Ken Wilber. He’s Libra rising with Venus in Capricorn in the 4th house along with Jupiter in Capricorn. And he was a pretty prolific author; he is still alive. He is a pretty prolific author focused on consciousness, mysticism, transpersonal psychology, and unified theories of “everything.”
So some of his books that he started out with in particular were The Spectrum of Consciousness, Transformations of Consciousness: Conventional and Contemplative Perspectives on Development, Spiritual Choices: The Problem of Recognizing Authentic Paths to Inner Transformation, Integral Meditation: Mindfulness as a Way to Grow Up, Wake Up, and Show Up in Your Life, and Integral Buddhism: And the Future of Spirituality. He has many other books besides those. I was kind of pulling out the ones that were focussed on, you know, those – if you read those titles, it’s really evoking the like, Ascendant ruler in the 4th house, right?
So that’s where he kind of started. He started with like, Buddhist meditation and Vedanta, and he went further afield later in theorizing, yeah, really far afield. So we’re not really focused on his entire body of work here, but just kind of like that that was the genesis and the focus of a lot of his work was consciousness. He did face some more criticism in later years, and I was trying to sort out when I was researching this like, everything going on with this, but not having already been following him too much before this, I was like, all right, for the purpose of this example, I don’t need to figure all of that out. Just need to, you know, his focus was consciousness. But interesting that one of the critiques at least at one point in time anyway – I don’t know if it’s current anymore – was that at one point, he had a very hierarchical model of the like, levels of consciousness, and not just applied to individuals but also like, even cultures. So obviously that could raise criticism. But I thought that was interesting in that like, the Venus and Jupiter in the Capricorn in the 4th are like, in Capricorn, which is nothing if like, prone to hierarchy, right? Not all of the time, but it’s ruled by Saturn; it likes things to go step by step, so.
CB: Yes. Capricorn is hierarchical.
LS: Yeah.
NDB: Yeah, and you can imagine it being more sort of comfortable with the familiar as well. Like, you know, less likely like, say Sagittarius where you’re, you know, out in the world. You know? It’s more sort of like what’s my culture versus someone else’s culture, you know. More compartmentalized.
LS: Right.
NDB: It strikes me, Leisa, a lot of the examples you’ve brought in – well, at least two, but I think I saw more – all had Sun opposite Pluto. I don’t mean to like, knock us off topic, but just like, a side observation. Yeah, there have been a lot of —
LS: That’s interesting.
NDB: — Sun opposite Pluto, yeah.
LS: Yeah, I wasn’t really paying attention to that; that is interesting. I mean, I think Sun-Pluto in general has more propensity to just become known publicly, but maybe there’s more beyond that going on here.
NDB: Yeah, broadly I think of Pluto being sort of things that would only have happened in the 20th century, you know? Things that are really distinct to that period, even if they’re sort of cultural ideas that, you know, have evolved from other eras. You know, it’s putting some kind of very distinct 20th century stamp on whatever it is you’re doing.
LS: Yeah, I think so.
CB: Well, as a Sun-Pluto conjunction, I think also Sun-Pluto aspects can sometimes be associated with like, taking things to extremes and like, digging down deep and going as far as you can into a subject, which —
LS: Right.
CB: — some of these natives I think shared when it came to focusing on their specific like, spiritual discipline.
LS: Yeah —
NDB: Although I don’t see that in you.
CB: No?
NDB: Kidding. I’m sorry, Leisa.
CB: I’m pretty easygoing.
NDB: Yeah. So easygoing.
LS: Well, I think about the placements in the 5th house and like, creative output. You know, and he wrote like, tons of books, but it was like, that was one of the, you know, big criticisms of him is not only maybe not being so personable sometimes when critiqued, but also just like, kind of going too far. Like, trying to literally make theories of everything, right? That’s what he did in those like, titles of so many books, so.
CB: One of the titles is A Brief History of Everything.
LS: Yeah! Like, I’m not exaggerating! So that was his thing.
NDB: Yeah.
LS: So, you know, perhaps —
CB: I don’t know.
LS: — that is part of the Sun-Pluto was like, trying to do, you know, too much, and…
CB: I don’t know this guy, but I think I can get on board with this. It’s sounding pretty good to me.
NDB: Yeah, you just like people with Jupiter in Capricorn, I think.
CB: Maybe. All right, I’ll have to look into him later. But good example of another sort of like, internal sense. And then you have funny – we like to have like, a… Actually, what is your next one?
LS: My next one is – yeah, that’s after that. So this is like, one that I would love listener help with corroborating. Saint Teresa of Avila – really wanted to use as an example. I’ll just talk through why, and you know. So there’s a birth time discrepancy from the biographies. There’s one that says five AM; the other one says 5:30 AM. So with the five AM time, it would be late Pisces rising with Jupiter and Mars in Gemini in the 4th house. Or else with 5:30 AM, it would be Aries rising with Mars in Gemini in the 3rd house along with Jupiter. So I think – do you have her chart at all, Chris?
CB: Which time do you want me to show?
LS: The five AM.
CB: Okay.
LS: I am more swayed by the five AM, but I’ll talk through why. So she was a medieval Spanish Christian mystic, monastic, and nun. She wrote books such as The Interior Castle and The Way of Perfection, which were about Christian mysticism and Christian meditation practice, which already sounds kind of 4th housey. You know, there’s other ways that can show up certainly, but here – so here’s the chart.
So if it was five AM, it would be Venus exalted in Pisces in the first ruled by Jupiter in the 4th. Makes sense so far as a possibility, right? in terms of —
CB: The internal castle.
LS: Yeah, The Interior Castle.
CB: Okay.
LS: Which like, cracked me up because there’s already the interior; that would have been enough for me. But the castle – the buildings. The buildings part of the 4th house, because how she describes that is like, The Interior Castle uses the illustration of seven mansions within the castle of the soul to describe the different states of one’s soul, different states one’s soul can be in during life. And I was just like, castles, mansions, buildings, interior – it all sounds very 4th house-y to me, right?
CB: Yeah. I like the seven as well, because there’s an ancient Mesopotamian thing about I think it had to do with like, Inanna and like, going through seven gates or something like that, and I —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — ended up wondering if that was a precursor to in the later hermetic and Hellenistic tradition they ended up developing this thing about the seven zoned sphere and about the soul descending through the seven planetary spheres before birth and then re-ascending through the spheres after death. And there was some sort of weird continuum of this number of seven, so it’s interesting hearing that.
LS: Yeah, that’s a really good tie-in. So there’s other corroborating things that make me lean towards the Pisces rising. I mean, one, just Pisces rising – just more tendency towards spirituality in a broad, broad sense. But her father was supposedly a wealthy merchant, which would have been Jupiter ruling the first and 4th even though it’s a night chart. If it switched to Aries rising, it would have been the Moon ruling the 4th placed in the 6th, which doesn’t sound nearly as like, wealthy merchant.
She also had long periods of time when she was chronically ill, and with the Pisces rising chart even though she has Venus in the first there, it would be a night chart Saturn overcoming the first house and also opposing the Ascendant ruler. And both of those are really, you know, can lend themselves to like, chronic ill health things that are long and drawn out. Not like the Mars type of, you know, injuries and accidents. Usually the Saturn ailments for health in night charts are more long and drawn out chronic things that are depleting, and she was like, paralyzed for three years, she was just kind of like, worn out after that and like, frail. Sounds more like a Saturn night chart thing to me.
CB: Right.
LS: Granted, if it was 5:30, there would be a question of whether it was a day or night chart, and Saturn would still be opposing the Ascendant ruler then. But it would not be doubling up Saturn also overcoming the Ascendant. So there’s kind of a double whammy here for health that I’m kind of persuaded by with Pisces rising.
CB: Okay.
NDB: I have to imagine that someone with Venus rising on the Ascendant is not a sort of a yes man so to speak. Like, this is someone who would want things to be done a different way who would be in some way would be altering, you know, practices, opinions, or putting a very sort of personal stamp on something that’s otherwise very sort of codified. Like, was she rebellious? Was she, did she provoke society? Or was it all much more sort of well integrated from the start? I mean, what was her —
LS: Which placement were you talking about again?
CB: I’d like to get —
NDB: The Venus retrograde on the Ascendant.
LS: Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, she had a whole like, reformation that she was part of. But it was like a —
NDB: Okay.
LS: — interestingly, it was a reformation to be more strict, for her order to be more strict —
NDB: Okay, no, I mean —
LS: — instead of more lax.
NDB: — it could still be that, but yeah. But I mean, yeah.
LS: Yeah, I mean, like, I was trying to like, talk through the Saturn too because like, Saturn in the 10th could easily lend itself towards like, being the leader of something that is strict, right?
NDB: Right.
LS: But then Aries rising would put Saturn in the 9th. I don’t know. I’m much more leaning towards the Pisces rising personally.
CB: While I am fascinated by this discussion of the rectification of this 16th century saint’s chart, it’s been a long day, and I think we have a few more charts we have to get through.
LS: Okay.
CB: So you can’t just like, pop in and like, start rectification things at like, midnight and then dip out. Like, Nick and I still have a few more charts to get through, unless —
LS: Yes you do.
CB: — you’re volunteering to stay up tonight and continue the rest with us.
LS: No, it’s a little late here.
CB: All right, well then, I think we can curtail —
LS: We can.
CB: — the rest of the rectification discussion and just say you have some good reasons for thinking she has the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house, but you’re leaving it to the —
LS: I do.
CB: — listeners to research and find out more.
LS: Yeah, I would actually love to hear from if anyone’s studied her life more closely, because she’s famous, you know, amongst certain circles. So maybe other people can help confirm or deny that. But it sounded an awful lot like the meditative 4th house thing going on again with the Ascendant ruler.
CB: Right, and if so —
NDB: I’m reading a lot of Spanish history these days, and she would have been alive, you know, just at the dawn of Spain in its colonial era, et cetera, et cetera. So maybe I’ll come across her, and maybe some day over tea we talk about rectifying her chart.
LS: That sounds good.
NDB: All right.
CB: I would appreciate that. All right.
LS: Okay!
CB: But otherwise, that would be a good example, because that would round out basically you almost had a trifecta or quadrafecta or whatever five version is, because that would have been the Christian saint to complement the mystics that were focused on Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and even like, psychology. Nice work. Nice job.
NDB: Yeah!
CB: If anybody else —
NDB: Well rounded.
CB: Very good.
LS: Thank you.
CB: All right, and —
LS: I’m happy with it.
CB: — then you have one last example, which is a funny one that you found.
LS: I have the silliest example to finish —
CB: To round —
LS: — this out.
CB: To round out this section.
LS: Yes, which sounds a little bit like a departure, but anyway. So this is Joseph Pilates. He had Virgo rising, Mercury in Sagittarius in the 4th along with the Sun in Sagittarius in the 4th. He was the founder of the pilates method of exercise. And this was after I was talking with you, Chris, and you were like, well, if you really feel strongly about this section, you know, could you find some more chart examples that have like, an inner focus? And late at night, I texted this, and I was like, so you know how pilates, there’s like a really strong emphasis on strengthening and stabilizing the core?
CB: Core strength.
LS: Yes, core strength. I was like, it’s literally the most innermost muscles in your body. Right? And yeah, so his method was initially called Contrology, was known for its focus on core strength, flexibility, postural alignment. And he believed that achieving a physical and mental well being through controlled movements that emphasized precision, breath, and concentration. But it is a hilarious version of the Ascendant ruler in the 4th, which is a focus on the physically innermost part of one’s being.
CB: That’s brilliant. So it’s literally about your core. Not metaphorically, like all of the other like, spiritual seekers that we’ve been seeing in this section. It’s literally about the core of your physical body.
LS: Yes. Right. The concrete core, not the spiritual core, not the searching core. Your muscular core.
CB: Right. So if you sat down with this person and you were like, trying to do a consultation with him and you’re like, “I think that you’re very focused on inward seeking, perhaps of a spiritual nature, and striving towards uncovering things about your central core,” and he would be like, “You’re right, but not quite. Almost got it!”
LS: Right. Yeah, exactly.
NDB: And I love that a guy with Uranus rising literally died on his 84th birthday.
LS: Oh good.
CB: Oh wow. Which is a Uranus return.
NDB: He died December 9th, 1967 on his Uranus return, yeah.
LS: That’s striking.
CB: Like, peacefully in his bed, or was he hit by a train or what?
NDB: He was doing pilates!
CB: Oh wow.
NDB: No, I don’t know what he was doing, no.
CB: A freak core accident.
NDB: Saturn happened to be stationing on his Aries Moon that day as well, so I don’t know. I don’t know the – I mean, when you die at 84, it’s not necessarily something sinister.
CB: Yeah, for sure. All right, good times. Well, and I think this is – despite being a joke one – points to something more fundamental, which is that, you know, the 4th house is under the earth and it’s what’s below our feet. But like, in terms of like, the earth and everything else, like, what’s under that is the core of the earth itself. And there’s something about that that all of these, especially in this section, have gravitated towards because they’re trying to get down to the bottom of something. They’re trying to investigate and get underneath sort of the surface level of things and get down to what the fundamental or what the core principles are of some of their different religious or metaphysical or spiritual beliefs and pursuits. And so that’s actually something that makes this not just a joke thing but actually because it’s pointing to the underlying principle of something about what the 4th house actually is.
LS: Yeah. Metaphorically, it’s exactly the same. It’s just like, a different specific focus, but it’s just like, trying to seek what is most inward and yeah, what is at the core of anything that someone’s trying to do.
CB: Right. Yeah. For sure. All right. Brilliant. Well, that is the end of this —
NDB: Great section, Leisa.
LS: Thank you.
CB: — section on the inner world and —
NDB: Way to breeze in and bring in the best part of the show! I’m here —
CB: — and just like —
NDB: — the whole time!
CB: Just knock it out of the park and just —
NDB: Seriously.
CB: — land like, five three-pointer basketball shots. And then you just like, drop the microphone and take off and go to bed, whereas Nick and I, we got two more sections to go! So we —
LS: Yeah.
CB: We got work to do.
LS: Yeah, you do.
CB: All right. Well, thank you so much for contributing that section as well as —
LS: Yeah!
CB: — a bunch of other research that has already either appeared in this episode or that will appear in the next part in the rulers of the houses sections.
LS: Yeah, and I have a few more examples in the section I think you’ll be talking about tonight, but I trust that you will discuss them responsibly.
CB: I will do my best.
NDB: Count on it.
CB: I’ll do my best to stop Nick from making jokes about them.
NDB: Yeah, all my examples are silly ones, so there you go. I take the serious ones and silly them up.
CB: Right.
NDB: Thank you, Leisa! I’ll do my best to behave. All right.
LS: Nice to see you all.
CB: Alright, cool. Yeah. Thanks for joining us. Hopefully we’ll see about future appearances, but otherwise yeah, we’ll see you again soon and let’s take a little bit of a break.
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All right, we’re back from break and we’re gonna start the next section. We’re gonna focus on the topic that has to do with the past. And this is a topic while it doesn’t come up in a lot of traditional texts, it’s something that I’ve seen come up pretty frequently, and I think it gets tied into things like ancestry especially in some of the traditional texts as we’ve seen some instances of this already, and especially in the last section, one of the people that Leisa shared who was a historian. So I wanted to share some other examples that are in a similar vein in order to really draw that out where sometimes people that have the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house could be drawn to study the past for various reasons.
All right, so my first example of this is a writer and historian and astrologer named Michael Baigent. So Michael was an astrologer and writer and author who had Cancer rising and the Moon in Libra in the 4th whole sign house conjunct Neptune. And the ruler of the 4th house itself is Venus, which was in Aries in the 10th house.
So Michael was primarily known as the author of a book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which is the book that inspired the fiction book The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown that became so popular in the 2000s. And Holy Blood, Holy Grail proposed a controversial theory that Jesus Christ was an actual historical person who survived the crucifixion, married Mary Magdalene, and fathered a bloodline that continues to this day.
So Baigent and his other coauthors claimed that this lineage was protected by a secret society called the Priory of Sion and that the Holy Grail is not a physical object but rather was a metaphor for this sacred bloodline. This book further suggests that the secret has been suppressed by the Catholic church to maintain its power and authority.
So about Baigent’s background, he was the father of a devout Roman Catholic and he was tutored in Catholic theology from the age of five. But afterwards, his father left the family when Baigent was only eight years old and he went to live with his maternal grandfather and adopted his grandfather’s surname at that point. His grandfather was named Lewis Baigent. So his great-grandfather served as a city mayor and had founded a forestry business, and initially Baigent intended on studying science and intended to continue the family career of forestry, but he switched to studying comparative religion and philosophy.
So he ended up collaborating a lot with his friend Richard Leigh, who he coauthored Holy Blood, Holy Grail with, and one thing that’s really interesting is that he focused on this theory that he became associated with with Holy Blood, Holy Grail, but he was also an astrologer, and he actually wrote an early book on Mesopotamian astrology which is actually still like, one of the two like, best books that I often recommend on Mesopotamian astrology. So he also had a focus on ancient astrology, and he also coauthored a book on mundane astrology with Nicholas Campion, which is another interesting thing, which is like, the astrology of nations and countries, which I think is another manifestation of his ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house. A little like —
NDB: That’s the one I know him best for. That’s a good book.
CB: Right. Yeah. I think it actually – I don’t remember the title, but I think it has a title that’s actually fitting with that as well.
NDB: Mundane Astrology: Introduction to the Astrology of Nations and Groups.
CB: Yeah. So I think that’s pretty good, the astrology of nations, with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house.
All right, one other interesting fact about Michael Baigent was that he also became at some point in his life involved – he became a member of the Freemasons. And he actually ended up taking on a leadership role as a grand officer of the United Grand Lodge of England. So he was actually taking a major leadership role as a freemason and as part of this quasi-secret society, which is another sort of aspect of having the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house that I found really interesting and really fascinating. So he wasn’t just like, writing books about secret societies, but he was also to some extent like, involved in one.
So yeah, I think that’s really it. But I was fascinated by the focus on like, bloodlines and things like that. And you know, I don’t know – his work is often like, criticized as not being historically accurate, and so I don’t know and I’m not vouching for like, the accuracy of any of this. You know, the Moon was also conjunct Neptune in the 4th house, so it’s like, sometimes that can be not quite as like, historically grounded in certain facts as it could be. I don’t really know. But just the fact that he did focus on especially history, on ancient bloodlines, on secret societies, and on ancient astrology I think makes him a really fascinating figure as somebody who had the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house.
NDB: Yeah. Absolutely.
CB: Yeah. All right. So moving on. My next example is a Mexican painter and artist named Miguel Covarrubius.
NDB: Covarrubias.
CB: Covarrubias. Sorry. Trouble pronouncing names. So he has or had Virgo rising with Mercury in Sagittarius in the 4th whole sign house. And he was known as a mexican painter, caricaturist, and illustrator, but later in his life, he actually essentially became an anthropologist and an art historian. Especially later when he stopped doing caricature work, he transitioned into becoming an anthropologist who wrote some pretty notable books. In particular, he became deeply interested in the art of earlier Mesoamerican cultures, and he also did some anthropological work on Bali. But it was his work on Mesoamerican art that became really interesting and really influential because he just possessed this really profound understanding and appreciation of art and also this interest in looking back into the past and looking back into past cultural history, particularly pre-Columbian and indigenous art forms from, you know, prior to Columbus’s arrival.
So he studied art extensively, and he traveled throughout Mexico and other parts of the world to observe and document different artistic traditions. In particular, he developed an expertise in Olmec art and recognized its unique characteristics and historical significance and eventually wrote a book about it. And what’s interesting is that his book, Indian Art of Mexico and Central America, is still considered a seminal work on the subject that showcased his really deep knowledge and insightful analysis of Olmec artistic styles.
So I love this because it’s like, he didn’t have academic training as an anthropologist or as a historian, but instead he was just somebody who was deeply focused on art and had a deep appreciation of art as well as the ability to look at art and be able to say some really insightful things about it and was able to develop a reputation just on the basis of the work that he did. So —
NDB: Yeah, oh I was just gonna say that’s also, it’s really 4th house because, you know, the Olmec civilization is very, very old. I believe it’s the oldest one we know of in North America or in the Americas. It is basically Mexico, present day Mexico. We’re talking super old, super mysterious. I mean, you know, we call them the Olmecs; we don’t know who they were. So it’s not just like, you know, researching say the Maya who, you know, were only a few hundred years old to him, but a really, really ancient civilization that have left these artifacts behind, and we have no clue as to their origin or destiny or anything like that. So it’s very 4th house; it’s very, it’s way, it’s digging way back in the past.
CB: Right. Yeah, totally. So he was really good about focusing on the contextualization of art where he didn’t just describe art, but he was really good at placing it within its cultural and historical context. And one of the things I wrote, one of the notes I wrote is that he explored the relationship between art and society, and he examined how art reflects the beliefs, the values, and the traditions of different cultures. So his writings and artistic interpretations influenced the way that scholars and the public perceived Olmec art and other pre-Columbian art forms, and he helped to elevate the status of these artistic traditions as well as promote a greater appreciation for their aesthetic and cultural value.
So yeah, he was a really cool guy, and I think… You know, I really liked this because it obviously, because he’s from Mexico, there was this element of going back and researching to the oldest tradition like, ancient roots and things like that. But I just love it also because he’s somebody that didn’t have that training. It’s not like necessarily like, a 9th house thing for him that he like, went to college to study this, but instead it was like, it came from his appreciation of art and his career as an artist but also having this orientation towards the past and interest in history and desire to go back and get to the roots of the different artistic traditions that he was involved in seemed to really motivate a lot of his work.
NDB: Yeah. I know he was friends with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and that he spent some time in Europe and had a fair amount of notoriety there as an artist before he went into his historical work and stuff. Yeah, he’s an interesting figure to study. And you know, like Kahlo and Rivera coming out of the Mexican revolution with this sort of renewed sense of a Mexican history that goes, like you said, pre-Columbian. I think it’s all, you know, all there in that story. I’m very keen to read more about him.
CB: Yeah, for sure. I was excited to see that we had a birth time for him when I was doing this research and looking for like, historians who focused on, who had the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house or other 4th house placements. And one of the things that’s also nice as an aspect of this is just that it’s something that he got into and really focused on later in his career after becoming a successful artist and caricature artist especially. And I see that sometimes where there’s different parts of a person’s chart that don’t get activated until later on, and then you’re kind of like, surprised – or some people see it as like, a non sequitur if they’re not astrologers and they’re just looking at a person’s like, career objectively as somebody who’s a fan of their early work. Like for example, I noticed this recently with Conan O’Brien, who is a famous late night television show host, but he has the ruler of the Ascendant in the 9th house, and in the past year, he launched essentially like, a travel show where he goes around to like, different countries and does like, a travel comedy show, which almost looks like a non sequitur, except it’s actually described in his chart very well having the ruler of the Ascendant in the 9th house of foreign travel and foreign countries. And it’s interesting sometimes seeing a person like that grow into things or do things that are indicated by their chart later on in life. And I think this is another example of that with this person.
NDB: Right. Yeah, I’m a huge fan of Conan’s chart. Patrick and I had a lot of fun talking about it once on a livestream. The other thing about Conan that’s very, you know, ruler of the Ascendant in the 9th is he went to Harvard. He was an editor of The Harvard Review.
CB: Right.
NDB: He sometimes felt like later in his career that that would sort of get in the way of him being taken seriously as a comedian. He’s got a very funny story about when he started his talk show, he had like, a warm up comedian, and he wasn’t paying attention to what the warmup comedian was saying. And the warm up comedian was going out and telling audiences every night that, you know, Conan comes from Harvard and he’s written these, you know, an academic paper on this and that, and Conan’s like, oh, come on – I want them to think I’m funny, not some egghead. So I think sometimes he’s, you know, felt embarrassed by it, but yeah he’s a really smart guy. And his podcast is as good as his talk show was.
CB: Yeah. He was actually the editor of The Harvard Lampoon while he was at Harvard, so he actually —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — you know, played a major role there at college. But still so it’s like, we see that 9th house focus earlier in his life, but it’s interesting seeing him manifest a different aspect of that later on, and I think that’s important, you know, for people to understand that the same placement can manifest in different ways during different eras of a person’s life.
NDB: Yeah. I think his travel thing, at least one of the travel things he’s doing, is like, he has fans write to him from around the world and he like, drops in on them. So like, you know, some guy in Sweden or whatever, and suddenly Conan is knocking on his door. I know that’s one of the things he’s doing, which is pretty funny.
CB: All right. Moving on.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: The next example I wanted to share is the birth chart of Michel Gauquelin, who was a famous astrologer but also for our purposes was a famous birth data collector where he set out to do the largest scale statical studies, like scientific studies, on astrology that have ever been done up to this point, especially in the 20th century when he was doing it in like, the second half of the 20th century. And he was born with Leo rising and the Sun in Scorpio in the 4th whole sign house, along with Mercury and the degree of the IC. And what I think is interesting and important about this is that in order to do these large-scale statistical studies that he wanted to do to test astrology scientifically, he wanted to test birth charts, so that meant he needed data for this, so he initially the largest scale collection of birth data that had been done up to that point in history. And he especially focused on his own native country of France because France is a country where birth certificates and birth times are available to the public. So as a result of that, he especially focused on collecting birth data from France and then running statistical studies on these like, thousands and thousands of charts until eventually he started coming up with some results such as the famous Mars Effect, which I’ve done an entire episode talking about.
But I thought it was really interesting that for him, I think what we’re seeing here is like, the researcher, the person who’s trying to get to the bottom of things, but also somebody who’s doing essentially like, birth data and essentially ancestry research to the extent that that comes up when it comes to the 4th house.
NDB: No, exactly. Yeah. It’s another, you know, sort of gathering and collecting of things. Yeah. And reaching back in the past and trying to like, you know, bring to light the unknown, I think. You know, Michel Gauquelin being the Vanna White of astrological data, you know, going out there and revealing it to us.
CB: Right. Yeah. So what’s interesting though is I found another example of this in another famous birth data collector who is Frances McEvoy. And Frances had Aries rising and Mars in Cancer in the 4th whole sign house along with Pluto and the IC. And what’s interesting about Frances is that Frances was from Massachuseetts and from the Boston area in particular, and what’s interesting about Massachusetts is that Massachusetts in the US is rare because it’s also an open state where birth data records are public and all you have to do is like, go down to like, a local what it is – like, government building – and request a piece of birth data. And then they’ll provide to you. And so what’s fascinating about this is if you’re doing birth data research using AstroDatabank these days, you’ll frequently come across charts of like, really obscure things. Like, when I was doing the 2nd house episode, I was searching for lottery winners, and a bunch of lottery winners kept coming up that were all from massachusetts, and I eventually realized what was happening is every time Frnaces would see like, somebody in the local news who had won the lottery, she would walk down and get their birth data in order to see what it was in their birth chart.
So I think she’s another interesting case because it’s like, it’s research, it’s ancestry and genealogy to a certain extent, but there’s also a major local component to it where for Michel Gauquelin it was like, France especially. And for Frances it’s Massachusetts and Boston especially where she’s from. So there’s this local element to it as well. But it becomes part of their lasting legacy, especially to the extent that astrologers like you or me are still using birth data that they originally found.
NDB: Yeah. I’ve done the trip to the Boston office. I mean, for me from Montreal, Vermont is also an open state for birth certificates. Vermont’s even easier than Massachusetts. In Vermont, it’s like walking into a library and looking through the microfiche. And then yeah, you go to Massachusetts and you look through some index cards and find the people you’re looking for and break down the numbers and give it to the… Not local for me, but it’s an important part of what we do, and yeah. I mean, it’s so awesome that Frances was living close by for that long and got us that much, because we sure have a lot from her.
CB: All right. Well, that actually brings us to the end of this section; it’s just a brief section on the past and these themes of like, history and historians and people that do that type of research of going back to the past. But I think that’s sufficient to have made the point.
All right, so now we’re ready to begin the final section of this treatment of the ruler of the Ascendant through the houses where we’re gonna talk about – the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house – we’re gonna talk about a topic that’s more obscure in modern astrology, not usually emphasized as much, but it was actually a major factor in ancient astrology, which is the association of the 4th house with death and matters that happen after a person dies.
So just to reiterate some of those basic significations, in some of the ancient texts, we have significations like old age, end of life, by extension endings or the end of matters in general, which metaphorically is like the final resting place of things. But also in ancient texts in the medieval tradition, it came to be associated with posthumous things or matters after death as well as with burial and graves and other things in connection with funerals and things like that.
So the very first example of this that I wanted to share is a pretty heavy one, but it’s like, a pretty notable one from American history, and that’s the birth chart of Emmett Till, who was born with Aquarius rising and Saturn in Taurus in the 4th whole sign house in a night chart. And Emmett Till was a 14-year-old African American boy from Chicago who was brutally murdered in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused on whistling at a white woman during a time when segregation and other things like that were still very, very prominent especially in the south.
So his horrific and the subsequent acquittal of his killers actually sparked national outrage, and it served as a catalyst for the Civil Rights movement. Because one of the things that happened is after he was brutally murdered, his mother insisted on having an open casket funeral in order to force America, essentially, to confront the brutal reality of racism and the effects of it. And a photographer was there and took the picture of his essentially like, badly mutilated corpse, and then that picture was publicized in newspapers, and it became a national focal point for the Civil Rights movement, so much so that one of the things you reminded me of the other night, Nick, is that Rosa Parks was actually said that she was actually thinking of Emmett Till when she refused to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama on December 1st, 1955, in the same year in which Till was actually murdered. So it actually —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: His death actually had a major impact on the course of – his death and his funeral – ended up having a major impact on the course of American history at that point, especially in terms of the Civil Rights movement.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, certainly, you know, Rosa Parks on the bus, that’s maybe four months after his murder. But there’s even more long standing legacy that he leaves, because for instance, he was about six months older than Muhammad Ali, so you know, who was still a young kid named Cassius Clay when all this happened. But as Ali himself became a really important figure in the ongoing civil rights struggle in the ‘60s and ‘70s, he had a sense of Till being, you know, like he could have been Till, you know? They were the same age. They, you know, had sort of – he could see himself in Emmett Till. And there were other people as well. You know, the young African Americans who started the Black Panthers. Huey Newton was only about six months younger than Emmett Till. A lot of people from that era, from that movement, were right around that age range. So I think, you know, that a lot of them could see themselves in Emmett Till. Like, this is something that could have happened to me. And so yeah, you know, there’s this very, very long standing impact of that crime.
CB: Right. Yeah. And it’s a really tough setup in terms of his chart just because it’s Aquarius rising; Saturn’s the ruler of the Ascendant – it’s in the 4th house and it’s a night chart, so it’s like, the most difficult planet is the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house, and just suffering a really terrible death. And I was looking at the transits just now and noticed that like, one of the things that this is an example of in terms of the rulers of the houses that I thought about is that the ruler of the 4th house is Venus, which is located in the 7th house of other people. And of course, like, over the past few years, over the past decade, the woman that accused him of whistling at her or hitting on her – whatever – who ended up being essentially like, the cause of his death directly or indirectly is still alive, or was still alive until relatively recently. And so people, you know, would comment on that recently that this woman still lived this like, full life, whereas his was cut short so tragically. And in some ways, it’s striking that the ruler of the 4th is in the 7th and it sort of describes the circumstances to some extent.
NDB: Yeah. And all the more so, you know, you notice that Till has the Sun conjunct Pluto. And by the time he was 14, Pluto was now, you know, on his Descendant, basically conjunct both the Moon and Venus, you know, certainly close enough. And that, you know, to my mind, that speaks to this scandalous testimony that was leveled against him. And there’s, you know, another context to all this too that we haven’t introduced into the story – Till was from Chicago, but his mother was from Mississippi originally. And so he was down in Mississippi on his summer vacation visiting family. And so, you know, first of all, there’s 4th house enough in that. Like, literally when Till was abducted by his murderers, you know, it’s not like he was walking down the street and they, you know, drove up and threw him in the back of a car. They went to his family’s house and demanded from I think it’s his uncle or his grandfather that he be handed over. So literally, I mean, the killers just brazenly went right to his front door and said, you know, “Give us that kid.”
And there’s also, because Saturn – the sort of the clash of these two cultures, urban Chicago and rural Mississippi – Emmett’s mother had warned him when you go to Mississippi, don’t act the way you do in Chicago. There was, it was imparted to him that he was entered a different culture, into a different place. It’s very Saturn-Uranus when you have these two sort of incongruent set of values that have to somehow coexist or can’t coexist. So I think that’s also, you know, as well.
CB: Okay. Yeah. That Pluto transit is something I noticed, because you know, his Ascendant ruler – Saturn – is at 26 degrees of Taurus. And the day he died, Pluto was at 26°45’ Leo in his 7th house, so it was almost exactly squaring the ruler of his Ascendant while Pluto was also conjunct his Descendant and Venus within a degree or two as well. And then you mentioned his Sun-Pluto conjunction at two and three degrees of Leo, and Uranus had recently ingressed into Leo into his 7th house. So obviously, there’s just like, a lot. There’s so much going on in the chart, but the 4th house and the ruler of the 4th house – Venus – are major focal points of it. And of course, he’s one instance that we’ll see some of of people who in some ways become more famous in death or whose death ends up impacting the world in a way that’s almost more major in terms of their contribution to the world in general that even some of the things that they did while they were alive.
So yeah, I think maybe that’s good for that initial example. So let’s move on and look at the next one. This is the birth chart of Jeff Buckley. This one was Leisa’s special study; it was also sent in by like, a few other people who submitted it, and then I know it’s also one that you’ve taken a special interest in for quite a while now as well. So I’ll set it up real quick and then let you take it.
NDB: Sure. Yeah.
CB: So Jeff Buckley was born with Leo rising, and the Sun in Scorpio in the 4th whole sign house along with a stellium of planets including the degree of the IC, the South Node, Neptune, Mercury, the Sun, and Venus all obviously in a night chart in the 4th whole sign house.
So one of the things about him is that he was a young up-and-coming musician who was in his 20s and he had released one album that was somewhat successful in his 20s. But then he ended up dying tragically at his first Saturn return at the age of 30 after he was like, working on his second album, and then he went out one day. He was like, with a friend, and he went for a swim where he had all of his clothes on, and he like, went for a swim in the river and then he was accidentally – a boat went by, and the undertow accidentally like, pulled him under and he ended up drowning in this freak accident at the age of 30. So he’s somebody who’s notable because he died at a tragically young age, and he has this large 4th house emphasis in his chart.
So he’s also significant for a few other reasons. One of them is that, one is that his music – I was watching a biography the other day, and it said that he became more well known in the years after he died than he was when he was actually alive, partially because his mother inherited his estate, and then she continued to push to release his music. And more of his music was actually released after he died than music that was released when he was actually alive. And at one point, a cover song of his, a cover that he did of Leonard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah” was song on American Idol in like, 2008, and this caused his song to suddenly shoot up the charts and became really popular again, reaching number one on Billboard’s Hot Digital Songs in 2008, a full 11 years after his death. So this is somebody that becomes even more famous after he has died, subsequent to his death, with a full stellium in the 4th house.
NDB: Yeah. There is so much that is 4th house in this story. The thing to start with really is to go to the beginning. Jeff Buckley was the son of Tim Buckley, who was a fairly popular singer-songwriter in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s. Like Jeff, Tim Buckley had a sort of angelic voice with a very wide range. And Jeff was conceived I think just before Tim recorded his first or second album; it was very early in his career. He was only just starting his recording career.
Jeff’s mother is named Mary Guibert. She’s a Pisces, and we know this because Tim Buckley wrote a song called “I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain,” which is a song that Tim wrote to Mary to say that even though she was with his child, that he was not gonna be there for her, that he was gonna go his own way and try to pursue his music career and that he wasn’t gonna try to be a father to the child. And yeah, in the lyric, he refers to Mary being a Pisces.
CB: So that’s really heavy. That’s like, the father of the owner of this chart wrote a song to his mother about like, not being there and about leaving to be a musician basically.
NDB: Right. “I never asked to be your mountain.” I mean, it kind of speaks for itself in the sort of rejection of this important moment. So yeah, Jeff was raised —
CB: Right.
NDB: — by a single mother. Tim Buckley’s career went from strength to strength. I mean, he is a sort of a, you know, a cult artist, but he did, you know, he was a known singer. He wasn’t like, a huge star, but he was known and reasonably successful.
CB: The father was?
NDB: The father, Tim, yeah.
CB: Okay.
NDB: So when Jeff was seven, his mother – after she hadn’t seen Tim basically since Jeff was very small. But she noticed that Tim was playing a concert somewhere nearby in Orange County, and so she brought Jeff to the concert. I think he was eight at the time. And Jeff got to meet Tim, and it was a nice meeting, and Jeff seems to have been excited about it. And then just a few months later, Tim died accidentally of a heroin overdose, apparently, you know, using too strong a dose or something of that nature.
So Tim was lost, and Jeff just had this one memory of a father that he enjoyed meeting, but he grew up listening to Tim’s records. And as it turned out, Jeff had a lot of musical talent himself. When he graduated from highschool, he went to a music school. So he was a very like, skilled, trained musician, and he did go out and just sort of work as a musician. There’s a funny story – Jeff Buckley at one point was in a country band with Danny Carey, the drummer for Tool. They played in a country and western like, as a job, things like that. But when Jeff —
CB: Leisa has a note saying that Jeff at age five, he began playing guitar when he discovered an acoustic guitar in his grandmother’s closet.
NDB: Yeah. And he had natural talent. You know, and he went to his music school. And then when he was 24, he was living in California; he had grown up in California. But across the country in New York City, this guy Hal Willner, who was a figure in the music world, he would make a lot of like, really interesting compilation albums and hold these strange sort of concerts, theme concerts. And he was organizing a tribute concert to Tim Buckley, to the music of Tim Buckley. And so he’s getting all these known performers to come in and play Tim Buckley’s music, and somewhere in the organizing of the concert, they found out, oh, Tim has a son. And oh, you know, we should invite his son to his father’s concert. And oh, his son, you know, maybe let, I mean, how bad could he be? And then Jeff turns up; they realize —
CB: Right.
NDB: — oh. Like, this guy’s really good.
CB: It was the father’s manager. It was the father’s manager who nobody else, none of the father’s other people associated with them, even knew that he had a son. But the father’s manager did, and the father’s manager is the one who reached out to Jeff.
NDB: Right. So it was, I mean, that was it. It was such a chance thing. And it wasn’t with the thought at first that, oh, you know, Jeff’s a talented musician; it was just like, oh, let’s have his son be invited to the concert. But then they realized how talented he is. And you mentioned that Jeff’s mother handles his estate, and she had released a lot of sort of recording, you know, some of them, most of them are really good. But there’s one recording that she’s actually withdrawn from circulation, and it’s a recording of Jeff performing at this tribute concert. Back in the Napster days, you know, 1999, 2000, I had recordings of these. I don’t think I still do. But Jeff performed three songs at this Tim Buckley tribute concert. The first song he sang was “I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain.” And then the other two songs are sort of relevant as well to, they’re relevant to the son missing the father, let’s say. But certainly for —
CB: So he performed the song at the tribute concert for his father that his father wrote to his mother about abandoning the son and the mother, basically.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, it’s a stunning – like, the context is stunning, and the fact that, I mean, it’s a very, it’s not a song just that anyone can sing. Tim Buckley and Jeff Buckley have this like, very wide vocal range, and they can go very high. So I mean, you know, the fact that he could sing it at all was startling. The fact that he could, yeah, I would say sing it better than his father was all the more startling. So —
CB: Right. So that —
NDB: — really it was kind of this, yeah. It was this, you know, sort of magical moment. Suddenly everyone there realized like, oh, this – you know, Tim’s son is the real deal. You know, this guy’s —
CB: Right.
NDB: — really amazing.
CB: So everybody there went from not knowing that he existed and that the father had had a son to all of a sudden through this performance, like, everybody’s blown away by the music —
NDB: He’s the star of the show.
CB: Right. And Leisa has this quote from him where he talks about this performance, and he says, “It wasn’t my work, it wasn’t my life. But it bothered me that I hadn’t been to his funeral, that I’d never been able to tell him anything. I used that show to pay my last respects.”
NDB: Yeah. I mean, it’s really something else. But I understand why he doesn’t want it in circulation because, you know, even though the performance is amazing, it was not easy for Jeff to do that. He had very, very mixed feelings about Tim.
CB: Right.
NDB: He certainly liked him and respected Tim’s musical talent. Tim Buckley was amazing. But you know, obviously like many abandoned children, there’s this very strong resentment of the father. So yeah, very, very, very complicated picture.
CB: Right. And the concert, though, ended up being Buckley’s first major step into the music industry and became kind of like a full circle 4th house moment.
NDB: Very much so. Yeah. I mean, thanks to this concert, he’s now, you know, there are record company people and other folks who are interested in him, you know. And he started playing these solo shows in the East Village in New York at this little club that’s like a pizza place. And gradually starts getting a following, and then in 1993, he puts a band together. He gets a record contract, and he records this album Grace, which is the album that has “Hallelujah.” And it’s the one album that would be made and released in his lifetime. So he recorded this album as he turned 27 in late 1993, and it was released in the summer of 1994. So he was also in a Scorpio profection year. And Pluto happened to be conjunct his Sun in that solar return as well in that profection year. And Grace as an album, you know, death is a major theme in that album. You know, he’s got one song called “Eternal Life;” there’s of course there’s “Hallelujah.” But there are other songs, you know, the title track – “Grace” – has a sort of forlorn, doomed quality to it. You know, it’s all about death again. So I mean, just full on Scorpio 4th house themes throughout the music. He has the Scorpio stellium in the 4th house and his transits on his 27th birthday were very Scorpio heavy as well. So it just like, everything was happening at once.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: He put his band together. Sorry, yeah?
CB: Leisa has this quote from Brad Pitt that she said was evocative of Buckley’s music and evoking 4th house imagery where the quote was,
“There’s an undercurrent to his music, there’s something you can’t pinpoint. Like the best of films, or the best of art, there’s something going on underneath, and there’s a truth there. And I find his stuff absolutely haunting. It just … It’s under my skin.”
And that’s this quote that Leisa picked out that’s really evocative of that 4th house placement and stellium there.
NDB: Yeah. Absolutely. Another thing that was very 4th house about Jeff, unlike most Gen X musicians, Jeff was very well schooled in the history of music. So for instance, before he got that recording contract when he was just playing that small place in the East Village, he would be playing music from the whole sort of 20th century tradition. He’d play like, songs by Edith Piaf or really old blues songs alongside sort of contemporary things and things he’d written. And that was something that, I mean, in his short life and career, he was able to make music that in some ways spoke to the past, that was evocative of the past. And then towards the end of his life, he was making music that I think was very much, you know, in the vogue – not as a deliberate attempt to be in style, but just he was drawn more to the music that was happening in the ‘90s. Sort of more sort of experimental lo-fi type things, which is what you hear on the record that came out after he died. But you know, for a lot of his recording career, there was – and even with things like recording “Hallelujah” or “Corpus Christi Carol,” another sort of old piece of music that he put on his first album, he was very, very connected to the music of the past. And yeah, there’s a great —
CB: One of the —
NDB: — recording of, sorry. Go ahead.
CB: One of the things that Leisa was excited to find out is she found out that he was really into Sufi music, and there was some —
NDB: Yeah, Nusrat —
CB: — specific —
NDB: — Ali Khan. Yeah.
CB: Okay.
NDB: There’s a singer named Nusrat Ali Khan who, like Jeff, has this just spectacular range. And so Jeff was, I think, really drawn to his Sufi music in part because it was music that his particular talents could really, you know, play with and learn. Jeff had this amazing sort of range in his vocal, you know, capabilities, and so if you’ve heard Nusrat Ali Khan’s music, you would understand the connection. You can see the influence clearly. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Leisa wrote that he —
NDB: If nothing else —
CB: Leisa wrote that Buckley reportedly owned over 400 cassettes of their music, of this Sufi artist’s music and that you can actually Google it. If you Google “Jeff Buckley Qawwali,” a video of his live EP will come up and it’s really cool.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: So just the callback to the previous like, Sufi chart example.
NDB: Yeah. But I mean, that’s Jeff. You know, he could be doing like, hard rocking music, but then he could also do like, an old Edith Piaf French ballad or eastern Sufi music. I mean, that was, you know, that was him. He was a musician, capital M.
CB: Sorry, one last thing. Leisa has this quote where Buckley talks about Qawwali and this Sufi singer’s music and has emphasized some parts of it. It says,
“In between the world of the flesh and the world of the spirit is the void. The Qawwali is the messenger who leaps empty-handed into the abyss and returns carrying messages of love from the Beloved. These messages have no words, per se, but at the high point of a Qawwali performance, they come in bursts of light into the hearts and minds of the members of the audience. Of course, by that time the whole house is either hanging from the rafters, or dancing. This is called Marifat, the inner knowledge, and it is in the aim of the Qawwali tradition to bring the listener into this state: First through the beauty of the poetry and the weight of its meaning; then, eventually, through the Qawwali’s use of repetition; repeating the key phrases of the poem until this meaning has melted away to reveal the true form to the listener.”
So this is like, a Jeff Buckley quote apparently of something he was just really into, which really is a nice manifestation of that ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house as well as all those other Scorpio planets there.
NDB: Yeah. And at the same time, not only is he describing Sufi music, he’s also describing his own album Grace. Not deliberately, but I’d say like, the same quality he’s describing in Sufi music is present in that album because it’s also an album, it’s almost, you know, even though obviously he was still alive when he recorded it, there’s something about that album that it’s sort of like the Brad Pitt. It already feels like you’re being Sung to from the other world, from the netherworld. You know, that he’s some phantom long past who’s singing to you in your dreams or something like that. It is a very sort of particular quality that he has there.
So yeah, long story short, you know, he had this big smash album and he toured the world for nearly two years. And then he kind of felt, he was immediately making a break with the sort of the Grace Jeff Buckley. Some of it was I think he was because he was touring. He was touring with his contemporaries, with his peers, and he was becoming a lot more aware of what musicians his age were playing and listening to and influenced by, because up until this point, Jeff had really been sort of of the past. Not just ‘60s music, but ‘20s music or 19th century music. And so now he was sort of like, catching up with that. It’s a very, it’s kind of a very interesting Saturn return thing to do to – in some ways, his music sort of got younger as he was at the end of his life. So this other record he was working on when he died was, you know, of a different vein, and he recorded it largely – some of it he recorded with his band in New York in early ‘97 and then he went to Memphis, Tennessee, where he rented a house and he was recording things on his four track. And that’s when this unfortunate incident happened when he decided to go for a swim in the Wolf River and never came back.
There’s one other thing about his recordings that I wanna mention. On February 14th, 1997, three months before Jeff died and two weeks before I arrived in New York, Jeff Buckley recorded for Hal Willner, the same guy who organized the Tim Buckley tribute concert a few years earlier. Hal Willner would make these albums with different artists based on a certain theme, and he was making some kind of album; it’s either like a poetry album or maybe it was an album specifically about Edgar Allan Poe. I forget. But there’s this track of Jeff Buckley reading the poem “Ulalume” by Edgar Allan Poe. But the craziest thing about this – it’s a Poe poem, so obviously it’s about death and mourning your lost lovers, you know, classic sort of Poe – but in the recording studio that night was the poet Allen Ginsberg. And Allen sort of coached Jeff on how to read this poem. You know, gave him guidance or suggestions, because Ginsberg’s read a lot of poetry in his life. And it’s a haunting poem, you know, about death and mourning the dead, and the craziest thing is that this was February 14th, 1997. By the time Jeff dies, just over three months later at the end of May of ‘97, Allen Ginsberg had also died. So when I hear this recording, again, it’s like the Grace album. It’s you know, the ghost of Ginsberg coaching the ghost of Buckley reading the ghost of Poe. You know, and it’s just, yeah, more and more of that haunting, you know, voice from the grave kind of feeling that you get. I highly recommend anyone search out that recording of “Ulalume;” it’s very sort of creepy and spooky, very Hallowen. If you guys are looking for good Halloween music, it’s spot on.
CB: Yeah. I’m think of the keyword like, “haunting.” A haunting quality.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: But so yeah, so he has Leo rising, Scorpio stellium the 4th, and there is an emphasis on like, water signs here. He has Saturn in Pisces in the 8th house and passed away on his Saturn return with Saturn in the 8th, and that was reminiscent or reminded me of, you know, a year ago now when Matthew Perry passed away by drowning in his hot tub. He also had Leo rising and Saturn was transiting through his 8th house. So there was like, a little weird parallelism there in terms of the 8th house placements here in Jeff Buckley’s chart and drowning, but also the Scorpio placements stellium in the 4th house as well.
NDB: Right. I think by the time he drowned, Saturn was in Aries. It was May 29th, ‘97. But the Jupiter is the thing that intrigues me. Jeff, of course, was born with Jupiter at four Leo. Okay, it had moved off – it was on his Moon when he recorded “Ulalume,” but by the time he died a few months later, it was on his Descendant. But he was having a Mars was returning the natal position when he died. But yeah, it’s something else. Yeah, his death was just crazy and unexplainable.
CB: Right. Like a freak accident.
NDB: Yeah. Well, it wasn’t the kind of thing that he would normally do, you know? Like, it was already out of character with him. He was hanging out with a guy who was hired to sort of look after him; he wasn’t with like, a friend. He was with someone who’d been hired to be an employee, basically. And literally, like, when I lived in New York in the ‘90s, I knew some of the people who’d been in his band. So I’ve heard this story; I also read it in the book. But the day that Jeff went for the swim in the river, his band were in the air flying from New York to Memphis to start recording his album with him. And they literally, you know, the plane lands and they’re like, “Where’s our ride? Where’s Jeff?” And then they found out, oh. He disappeared in the Wolf River.
So yeah, the whole thing is really mystifying. I mean, not suspicious. Like, no one thinks foul play. But just, you know, what possessed him to go for a swim that day? And yeah, and considering again —
CB: Right.
NDB: — because his music had these haunting death themes. And it has to be added – I mean, even though he wasn’t a huge star, he was popular, and he was voted one of the most beautiful people in the world. We haven’t mentioned he was a good looking guy. And so, you know, to be —
CB: I mean —
NDB: — young, good looking and romantic and, okay, not as good looking at you, Chris, but he was —
CB: Well, I was – no, I was gonna say he was a Leo rising, so you know.
NDB: Right. Yeah.
CB: You know some of those.
NDB: You know how that goes.
CB: Those guys.
NDB: Right. My point being, you know, there’s, it’s terribly romantic when someone young and beautiful dies, I suppose. You know, it’s not a nice thing to say out loud, but I think there’s some truth there. And the fact that his music is just so beautiful and of course that recording of “Hallelujah” it rings eternal. It keeps coming back; it keeps, you know… But my wife had never heard it, and I played it for her two years ago and she plays it constantly now. So it’s always attracting new listeners as well. And you know, a broad audience. He’s not the kind of artist would just appeal to a very niche kind of subset of music fan.
CB: Right.
NDB: His music can really reach pretty much everyone, yeah.
CB: Yeah, for sure. And like you were saying, you were kind of going that direction and we’ll see that more so with some of the subsequent examples, but there was a little bit of like, mysteriousness surrounding his death and just like —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — what happened and things like that, and people initially in like, disbelief as well. But all right. So the last thing is I found this amazing quote from him where he says – this is talking about the performance that he gave at the age of 24 at that tribute to his father, which ended up being his big breakthrough – he said about that,
“I sacrificed my anonymity for my father, whereas he sacrificed me for his fame.”
And I thought that was such an amazing quote, because it ties together like, so many different themes of those 4th house themes of him and Jeff himself probably with that 4th house stellium valuing his anonymity or his privacy to some extent. And by coming forward and like, giving that performance at that tribute for his father, it suddenly like, made him known and certainly thrust him into the spotlight in some ways, which is a very 10th house thing. And he has the ruler of the 10th house of career is that Venus, which is in the 4th house of parents and father. But then of course with his father, he’s alluding to the fact that in that song, for example, that the father himself abandoned the son and abandoned his family in order to pursue his career as a musician. So I just thought that was such a stunning quote from him.
NDB: Yeah. No, it’s super powerful. The other thing about that concert in 1991, the Greetings from Tim Buckley concert, it was April 27th, 1991, which is just 10 days after Nirvana performed “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for the first time at the OK Hotel in Seattle on April 17th. So it was just – I mean, they’re not related in any kind of way, but it’s just one of these things where, you know, there was something really in the musician zeitgeist during that period where a lot of things were about to change very quickly.
CB: What was the date?
NDB: The Tim Buckley concert was April 27th, ‘91.
CB: Okay. Yeah, that’s what I was gonna look up. So and of course, one thing we didn’t – we mentioned in passing, but just I’m amazed by is, you know, he was 24, so he was in a first house profection year, which means the lord of the year was the Sun in the 4th house, and that 4th house placement then as the ruler of the Ascendant is being fully activated when he gives this breakthrough performance at this tribute concert for his father.
NDB: Yeah, and you can see like, there’s the Jupiter-Saturn opposition. Saturn’s on his Moon; Jupiter – he’s having that Jupiter return. And that’s the whole bittersweet element of it, you know. Jupiter, of course, is, Jupiter is Zeus. Jupiter is the father who, you know, creates life and then wanders off, so to speak. Doesn’t take responsibility. So yeah, and the fact that Saturn’s on his Moon, it just sort of speaks, you know, it tells that whole story in some amazing way.
CB: Yeah. I mean, his natal Jupiter is like, at four degrees of Leo and it’s ruling his —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — 8th house of death and inheritance and his 5th house of creativity. And he’s having the exact Jupiter return at that performance in his first house of self, and that’s also a pretty powerful transit.
NDB: Yeah. Absolutely. And again, like you mentioned, the fact that he’s in a first house profection year when he performs at that concert and then he records and releases Grace when he’s 27. He started recording when he was 26, but most of it’s done when he’s 27, and certainly it’s released when he’s – so yeah. You know, there’s something about that as well.
CB: Oh, look at this. Wait. It looks like also like, Mercury was stationing retrograde, so it was —
NDB: Direct.
CB: — or sorry, direct. So Mercury is stationing direct like, that day or the next day, and then the Moon is about to ingress into like, later either that day or later that night there was a full Moon – or no, not a full Moon. It’s just the Moon ingressing into his 4th house.
NDB: Oh yeah, the concert was in New York, not Anaheim. So you’re probably a bit late with the Moon there because when you think about it, 10 PM in California is two AM in New York. But —
CB: Yeah.
NDB: — nonetheless, yeah, the Moon is obviously growing full, and it was evening concert, so yeah.
CB: Yeah. I mean, it means that night sometime late that night, the Moon ingressed into his 4th house and then hit a full Moon the next day. So it would have been super bright and shining in the sign of Scorpio late that night and into the next morning after he gave this concert, or this performance.
NDB: In a t-square with Jupiter and Saturn.
CB: Oh wow, yeah. Nice.
NDB: Yeah, so lots of father stuff there. And even just like, look at the fact that on that night, Mars in Cancer was opposite Uranus and Neptune in Capricorn. And in his own chart, he’s got Mars in between the Pluto and Uranus of the ‘60s. You know, the Uranus-Neptune in Capricorn was the signature outer planet conjunction of the ‘90s, whereas the Uranus-Pluto conjunction in Virgo’s the one of the ‘60s. And it’s really interesting to me that, you know, both those configurations are – at least insofar as Mars and Uranus are concerned, like, he has a Mars-Uranus conjunction natally, and Mars and Uranus were opposite on that night. And yeah. You know, this is a guy who was supposed to just be, like, you know, a guest at the show, and he winds up being the star of the concert. So yeah. It’ll all really great astrology.
CB: I was trying to figure out Pluto is doing and why it’s like, early. It’s not hitting his planets yet, and it’s already past the IC. But I’d overlooked it’s hitting his Ascendant. His Ascendant’s at 19 Leo, so Pluto transiting his 4th house of like, parents and father and the past is squaring his Ascendant/Descendant axis at that point and this performance at that time would lead to like, a transformation of his life.
NDB: Yeah. And like I said, Pluto was conjunct his Sun in his solar return for his birthday in 1993 when he turned 27 and was in a 4th house profection year and recording that album. So you know, Pluto – yeah, in between that time, Pluto would go from squaring his Ascendant, make a conjunction to pretty much all those Scorpio planets except I guess for Venus, which would have happened just a little bit after. And yeah, there again, Pluto bringing the dead to life, you know? Which is like the poem “Ulalume” that he read or like, other things in his music. Even Grace. I mean, Grace feels like that. Like I said, like someone calling from the netherworld. And Pluto sometimes makes me think of that sort of Lazarus quality, if not literally coming back from the dead, but seemingly rising up like a phoenix after you’ve been sort of written off. So yeah, the astrology just keeps giving with this guy.
CB: Yeah. Well, and it’s a good transition into an episode I wanna do at some point about posthumous astrology, because I’d also be curious about like, in 2008 when his song suddenly, you know, was Sung on American Idol and then his song suddenly becomes a number one on the charts, basically, at that point, what transits were going on in his chart then. But one of the things that you can see is that a person’s chart continues to respond to transits as long as the memory of them persists at different points in the future. And I think the 4th house becomes one of our access points for understanding that to some extent as we’re starting to see here.
NDB: Yeah. My guess for that 2008, the transits, I mean, I’m sure there’s a few things going on. But Saturn would have been in Virgo by then. And maybe it was coming up to his triple conjunction of Pluto, Mars, and Uranus there. Just one thought, but it depends on when in 2008 it happened, I guess.
CB: Yeah. I think we’ll save that investigation for another thing. But I think that’s good for this example. I hope we did it justice to Leisa and all the other researchers, because I know this is a favorite of like, a lot of different astrologers.
NDB: Yeah, yeah it is, and with good reason.
CB: Cool. All right. So let’s move onto the next example. So the next example is the birth chart of JonBenet Ramsey, who was born with Gemini rising and Mercury ruling the Ascendant placed in Virgo in the 4th whole sign house. So this is a really tragic case where JonBenet Ramsey was like, a child beauty pageant queen who was murdered at the age of six.
So what was unique about her case is that she was actually murdered in her family home on Christmas, and the family woke up and couldn’t find her and then reported her missing. And then later, like, six or seven hours later while the police were there searching for evidence or searching for clues or trying to find her, the father found her body in the basement of the family home, and she had been murdered.
So initially, the family at different points was considered to be suspects, including the father. But many years later, DNA evidence exonerated the family. So there was a lot of drama surrounding the family and accusations thrown at them that were later cleared. Her name, actually, even in and of itself combines her father’s first and middle names together to form her first name, JonBenet. But even to this day, there’s still a mystery surrounding her death, and that’s one of the really tragic things about this case is it’s still an unsolved mystery about what happened to her. And her father also has the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house, and I’ll talk about him more later in another section on the 12th house because he has the ruler of the 4th house of home and living situation in the 12th house of loss, and one of the most tragic things that happened to him in his life occurred in his home when he found the body of his daughter.
But earlier this year, I saw an interview with him where he still – he’s currently pushing and trying to advocate for her, because he says there’s a bunch of pieces of evidence that were never tested for DNA at all and that were never tested also with more modern methods of DNA analysis. So he’s trying to push in order to get that done in hopes that they can still at some point like, identify or track down the killer.
NDB: That would be something. Yeah. What a terrible, terrible ordeal, especially – I mean, for a long time, the parents were considered guilty. You and I were talking a few days ago about how, you know, South Park did a bit on that years ago in the early days of the show, but one where they just sort of, you know, unabashedly accused her parents of being culpable. And that’s just a South Park cartoon. Obviously, it got a lot more serious than that; they probably had to deal with all kinds of, you know, terrible experiences and false accusations.
CB: Because that’s one of the things – it became like, a media circus and like, fiasco in the aftermath of her death where it was like, sensationalized and then became the fodder of like, you know, the people that would become focused on it as like, a news story and as like, a mystery and things like that and starting to throw around accusations and different things like that.
NDB: Yeah. Well, you had this other component, which was the fact that you had all this video footage of her competing in beauty pageants. And you know, the girl died at six. So this was the first time that a lot of us – certainly me, but I think a lot of, you know, the world – became aware that they had these weird beauty pageants for small girls where they would, you know, dress up in formal wear and wear makeup and do all this stuff. And you know, on the one hand, it seems innocuous and fun and innocent; on the other hand, it’s kind of messed up and what are they doing? And you know, so for the story to become a media circus, certainly the meruder of the child on Christmas of all things was a big enough story. But for the news outlets to really run with it, of course they had all this footage of her in these contests. So you could do like, a half-hour or hour-long deep dive on the short life of JonBenet Ramsey because there was enough footage to show. So yeah, it became a real media story.
You can see she was born during a lunar eclipse in a t-square with Mars and Pluto. I mean, it is a really rough-looking chart to be sure. But —
CB: Right. Yeah. It’s a lunar eclipse that’s like, square Pluto and square Mars, and then she has an exact Mars-Pluto opposition between the 12th house of enemies and the 6th house of injury.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: So there’s definitely a lot of stuff going on there. But yeah, so I just wanted to bring it up as an example of somebody who there’s like, a mystery surrounding their death, which is a theme that I’;ve seen come up in different ways that wwe saw a little bit to some extent with Jeff Buckley, but we’ll see more prominently in some subsequent examples, but also where there was like, a media fiasco surrounding the person’s death and where the person became more well known as a result of their death than they were in life. But hopefully at some point in some future transit or activation to her chart, her killer will be identified and hopefully brought to justice.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, it’s crazy to think she’d be 34 now if she hadn’t been killed. But to your point, I think, you know, the fact that she was found in the home – you know, that Mercury in the 4th – and you know, speaks to the fact that she had disappeared and yet she was home all along.
CB: Right. And in the lowest part of the home, like, in the basement.
NDB: Right.
CB: But I just remember the case because it happened in Boulder, Colorado, which is only like, 30 minutes from where I grew up and I was pretty young at the time when it happened. So I remember it as being this big fiasco at the time.
NDB: Yeah, it was – I mean, I’m sure that for it to be a local story, it was all the more, you know, intense. But it was an international story. It was absolutely huge.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: You know, the OJ Simpson thing had just ended not too long before, so the media was ready for, you know, more of that kind of thing.
CB: To create another kind of like, publicized other circus, yeah.
NDB: Yeah. The story lent itself well to the 24-hour news cycle, so to speak.
CB: Yeah. All right. So let’s move on to the next example. So speaking of like, mysterious deaths, one of the ones that came up in searching through the files was the birth chart of Jimmy Hoffa, who was born with Aquarius rising and Saturn in Taurus in the 4th whole sign house in a night chart, copresent with the Moon in Taurus, which is actually applying to a conjunction with Saturn. And Jimmy Hoffa was a powerful American labor leader who mysteriously disappeared in 1975, and is assumed to have been murdered. But his fate is unknown, like, how he died or exactly why. And it reminds essentially as like, one of the most enduring unsolved mysteries in American history at this point where it became almost like a punchline of like, who killed Jimmy Hoffa, basically.
NDB: Yeah. You know, he was a union leader, a teamster. He definitely had mob connections, a big sort of adversary of Robert Kennedy when Robert Kennedy was the Attorney General. He did do some jail time; I forget exactly for why, but things to deal with, you know, unions and corruption and whatnot. And clearly, he just, you know, he made the wrong enemy. But you’re right, he became kind of a punchline. You know, one of the jokes is that he’s buried in Giant Stadium or Tiger Stadium in Detroit or one of the football stadiums, that he’s buried under the goal post or whatever. But that’s just the kind of lore. Yeah, he became a punchline because he was kind of a rough customer. You know, it was easier for people to be a bit more glib about his unfortunate ending. You know, he was basically hung out with the mob if he wasn’t part of the mob himself, and so, you know, it’s a reflection of the company he kept. But nonetheless —
CB: Right.
NDB: — yeah, it’s a very famous crime. And you know, one that everyone’s got a pet theory about.
CB: Yeah. So there’s a few different like, 4th house components here. I mean, one of them just his being a controversial figure in life that had alleged ties to organized crime is itself maybe a 4th house thing in terms of the secretive nature of organized crime and whatever he may or may not have been doing in terms of that. He was also convicted of jury tampering, bribery, and fraud in 1964, and he served time in prison before his sentence was eventually commuted by President Richard Nixon. So there’s also a 4th house theme having to do with prison there as well and having served prison time. And then finally, he mysteriously disappeared in 1975, and eventually was declared legally dead in 1982, seven years after his disappearance.
NDB: Right. And of course, Al Pacino played him. We were just talking about Martin Scorsese and all this stuff, and you know, Al Pacino played him – was it The Irishman? I think so, yeah. You know, where they depict his, you know, Martin Scorsese’s idea of how Hoffa would have been killed, which is certainly the part we know is that he was supposed to meet someone at this diner somewhere in the Detroit area, which you do see happen in the movie. And that he, you know, went to make a phone call, and no one saw him after that, I think, is how the story goes. So from there, Scorsese extrapolates a little bit on what he thinks would have happened. You know, that Hoffa was drawn away by someone he knew who lured him somewhere where he could be killed, which is, you know, an old trick.
CB: Okay. Yeah. I’m just seeing like, this Moon-Saturn conjunction in late Taurus; it reminds me of, you know, earlier this summer, there was that Mars-Uranus conjunction in Taurus near Algol, and a lot of the discussions about Algol as like, a malefic fixed star that Austin was emphasizing especially. And this is a little reminiscent of that, and there’s other stuff going on. I mean, he has Mars in the 12th house of enemies and it’s opposite to Neptune, the planet of like, deception and illusions. He has Uranus like, very closely conjunct the Ascendant in early Aquarius. And even just the Moon applying to that conjunction with Saturn in the 4th house is kind of tricky in a night chart.
NDB: Yeah. And then if you look at the transits of his death, you know, you mentioned the Mars-Neptune opposition he has. Well, Saturn was conjunct his Neptune, Jupiter was square his Neptune and Mars, and Uranus was also square his Neptune and Mars. So there was like, a grand cardinal cross by transits linking up to that Mars-Neptune opposition of his. That’s July 30th, 1975, in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, 2:30 PM is the time that I think he disappeared.
CB: Did you just remember that off the top of your head?
NDB: No, no, I have them in my file.
CB: But you’re not looking at the file right now, are you?
NDB: Yeah, yeah. I pulled up his chart and I’m looking at it.
CB: Oh, okay. That was gonna be more impressive if you just like, remembered the exact time that Jimmy Hoffa disappeared off the top of your head.
NDB: I could have told you without opening my file. I could have told you he died July 30th, 1975 – or disappeared that day. I could have told you that.
CB: Right.
NDB: The time? No, I had to look up my file for the time. Or the name of the small place in Michigan near Detroit where he disappeared.
CB: Got it. Oh wow, look at this. The nodes were – the South Node was at 28 Taurus, which is almost exactly conjunct his Saturn —
NDB: Put it up!
CB: Oh, do I not have it —
NDB: You don’t have it up.
CB: Sorry. I’m sharing the wrong chart. Of course. So here’s the chart roughly.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: For the day, at least. So the South Node is at 28 degrees of Taurus —
NDB: And for 2:30 PM. You’ve got 1:30 – 1:26 AM. Make it 2:30 PM. Even if it’s Brazil, Indiana, that, you know, it’ll be close. Moon right, because the Moon was in Taurus, yeah.
CB: So the South Node is at 28 Taurus, and it’s conjoining his ruler of the Ascendant, which is his Saturn, at 27 degrees of Taurus in his 4th house. And then it’s also conjoining the degree of his IC, which is at 27 degrees of Taurus in the 4th house. So that’s pretty stunning, and that means eclipses would actually start —
NDB: Square his Sun-Mercury. Yeah. Square his Sun-Mercury too, so it’s, you know. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt, but.
CB: Yeah. So that means eclipses would have started to take place in his 4th and 10th houses, especially that year. And especially subsequent to his disappearance there would have been eclipse action for like, the next year across his 4th house axis of like, you know, hidden matters and the end of life and his 10th house of like, career. So that’s again showing the connection sometimes when eclipses happening between the 4th and the 10th and sometimes connecting disparate parts of the chart.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: All right. Cool. I think that’s good for that, then, and just making the general point about the ruler of the Ascendant being in the 4th house and, you know, for certainly for him becoming more well known as a result of his death and the mystery surrounding it than he was even in life.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, he was a notorious figure in life, but he’s definitely by far more famous because of how he died.
CB: Yeah. That is the conclusion. All right. Moving forward. Another more contemporary example for like, I don’t know, more recently is the birth chart of the actress Brittany Murphy, who was born with Leo rising and the Sun in Scorpio in the 4th whole sign house conjunct the degree of the IC and also copresent with Uranus, the Moon, and Venus, which are all in the 4th house in —
NDB: And the Sun. Yeah.
CB: Sorry, yeah, the Sun – the ruler of the Ascendant – in the 4th house itself conjunct the IC and Uranus.
So Brittany Murphy was an American actress that was known for roles like Clueless, 8 Mile, and Girl, Interrupted. And I remember her because her breakout role was in Clueless in 1995, which was like, one of the biggest movies of the year in that year, but also starring alongside Eminem in 8 Mile in the early 2000s was a pretty big deal. She also was a voice actress, and she lent her voice to one of the characters on King of the Hill in some of the early seasons.
So she had a really promising career, but then it was tragically cut short when she died under mysterious circumstances at the age of 32 in 2009. And this was quite a shock to people, and there was a lot of mystery and speculation surrounding her death, partially due to the suddenness and due to her age because she was only 32 and seemingly healthy. So her sudden passing from supposedly from pneumonia was a shock. And then to compound matters, only five months after Brittany died, her husband died in the same house, also supposedly from pneumonia or anemia. And that was the other thing is that both of them ended up, like, she collapsed at home and then was rushed to a hospital and pronounced dead. So she effectively like, basically died at home, and then he died at home also mysteriously like, five months later. So this unusual coincidence fueled a lot of suspicions in the media afterwards, and initial reports were focused on prescription medications that were found in her system that led to speculation about drug abuse. But then the coroner said that these were legal medications and were not the primary cause. And later, her family actually started putting out theories that they thought she may have died due to toxic mold was in the home that may have contributed to both of their deaths, but then this theory was never confirmed. So there just ended up being like, a lack of clear answers, and despite the official reports about pneumonia, some family and friends questioned the findings and felt that there were a lot of unanswered questions.
NDB: yeah. And I mean, of course, you know, you mentioned she died at 32. She died about five, six weeks after her 32nd birthday. And what is the 32nd birthday, Chris?
CB: Tell me what the 32nd birthday is, Nick.
NDB: The 32nd birthday is the joint synodic return of Venus and Mars, okay. So on the solar return on your 32nd birthday, Venus and Mars are gonna be very close to where they are in the natal position. The day that Brittany died on December 20th, 2009, Mars was just stationing retrograde on her Ascendant, but don’t get excited yet. The craziest thing about it is, of course, because she was 32, she was also born not long before Mars went retrograde in Leo. In fact, she was born 32 days before Mars went retrograde in Leo, and then she died when Mars went retrograde in Leo on her Ascendant. So there’s some really precise looking progressions, transits, in this whole story. Very interesting that there was a Jupiter-Neptune conjunction on her Descendant as well opposite her Saturn. You know, you mentioned that the possibility of mold or something of that nature, certainly that’s what, you know, Neptune in particular would make me think.
CB: yeah. I know you’re a Mars retrograde guy and enthusiast, so that’s where your enthusiasm is coming from there. But not to get too enthusiastic. So you were talking about the date – she died on December 20th, 2009. So —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Mars was stationing at 19 degrees of Leo, and it was very closely conjunct her Ascendant at 21 degrees of Leo and squaring her Sun, the ruler of the Ascendant, at 17 Scorpio.
NDB: Yeah, at the same time that her progressed Mars happened to be stationing retrograde at 11 Leo square her Uranus. But yeah, so you’re getting the transit and the progressed station at the same time.
CB: Okay. Yeah, and it’s in the first house of like, body and physical vitality.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: And then I see that Pluto, having ingressed into Capricorn recently, ingressed into her 6th house of illness. Uranus is like, transiting through her 8th house at the same time. So like with all of these, there’s obviously like, a lot of stuff going on, and we don’t necessarily have to try to like, solve the mystery, but the point is just her death was sudden and unexpected and a shock. And then there were mysterious circumstances around it that even led to her family having a lack of clarity or closure to some extent.
NDB: Yeah. Just one last thing. I’m noticing actually it wasn’t just that her Mars stationed retrograde 32 days after she was born, but both her Mercury and her Saturn stationed retrograde 31 days after she was born. So in that final year of life, she’s got three planets making retrograde stations by secondary progression, one of which is that Mars as we explained, coincided with the actual transiting retrograde. So yeah, it’s pretty wild. Sometimes you see this with secondary progressions when there’s this much going on.
CB: Yeah. I did a episode on secondary progressed stations where we went through a bunch of examples and showed how important those years can be as turning points, especially in the year in which they station. But I can see why that would be even more important for her because she was born with both Mars and Saturn in the first house of body and physical vitality.
NDB: Yeah, and they both stationed retrograde within, you know, just as she died. So yeah, it’s pretty wild. The transits were pretty wild. Or the progressions —
CB: Yeah.
NDB: — rather. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So that’s a really sad case.
NDB: Yeah. She was really good in Girl, Interrupted, actually. I remember she plays… Well, anyway, I don’t wanna spoil the movie. But I remember her being really good in that.
CB: Yeah. Clueless because of just the, I don’t know —
NDB: Sure.
CB: — role that it occupies in my memory as like, a middle schooler will always be my favorite role of hers, although yeah, 8 Mile is also good as well.
NDB: Yeah. 8 Mile’s great.
CB: All right. Let’s move on to the next example —
NDB: You know Obama thinks so; he was just doing the song. Anyway. Moving on!
CB: That’s true. All right. So the next example I wanted to share is the birth chart of Rock Hudson, who was born – he was an actor who was born with Libra rising and Venus in Capricorn in the 4th whole sign house copresent with Jupiter and the South Node in the sign of Capricorn.
So Rock Hudson was a prominent American actor, especially in the 1950s and ‘60s, but what happened especially towards the end of his life is that he became one of the first major American celebrities to be diagnosed with AIDS. And he publicly announced his diagnosis in 1985, which really helped to raise awareness about the disease at a time when there was just widespread fear and misinformation surrounding it. In the episodes on the AIDS pandemic that I did with Gary Lorentzen, we talked about him a little bit and situated where this fell in terms of the early phases of the AIDS pandemic.
So what was important about his example is that his courageous disclosure actually helped to shift public perception of AIDS, and it contributed to an increase in funding for research. So then he unfortunately passed away shortly after his announcement at the age of 59, but it was quite a shock. But his death and the fact that he announced what had happened helped to raise awareness and helped to influence things in a positive way by bringing attention and greater funding eventually towards AIDS research.
NDB: Yeah, and you know, because he was a big movie star in the ‘50s, and so he was friends with Ronald Reagan, but he was also friends with Elizabeth Taylor. And it’s a very interesting, you know, effect that he had with both of them. Reagan was president at the time; he had known Rock Hudson because Reagan once upon a time was the head of the actor’s union and knew all the actors. But Reagan was really, you know, head in the sand about AIDS. He was doing absolutely nothing; he was basically pretending it was, you know, a trifle. And so —
CB: Yeah, he was doing more than nothing. He was, yeah. He was definitely not doing well.
NDB: No. No. And so then, you know, Rock Hudson turns up at the White House. You know, like you do! Clearly not well. And it was an appropriate embarrassment of the Reagan administration to let someone that he knew personally, you know, just sort of die without any help that way.
CB: Yeah. And I shouldn’t have said – I said the reverse of what I meant. I said – Reagan was doing less than nothing, like, he —
NDB: Yeah, no, I got you. Yeah.
CB: Very little about the AIDS epidemic and it was one of the things that set things back even further in terms of dealing with it and managing it as a pandemic.
NDB: Yeah. On the other side of things, I mean, it was Rock Hudson’s illness and death that really radicalized Elizabeth Taylor and, you know, helped her become a really formidable force in combating the AIDS crisis. I mean, she was really, really important, especially as you got into the ‘90s. So yeah, it was a terrible, terrible thing. Rock Hudson had been this very sort of strong, masculine, you know, movie star, matinee idol. And he sort of vanished from view for a while and then next thing you knew, he turned out looking very thin and gaunt and sickly on death’s door —
CB: Yeah. Well, and one of the reasons why the Reagan administration wasn’t dealing with it is because they were treating it as if AIDS was a thing that was only – that it was like, a disease that only gay people got or that it was like, a gay disease or something like that. And that was one of the reasons why it wasn’t addressed properly as a pandemic as early as it could have been because of the stigma surrounding homosexuality at that time amongst really both political parties but especially amongst the right, which Reagan was part of. But that was another piece of Rock Hudson’s story is that he was actually a closeted gay man who lived or kept his sexuality private or secret for most of his life, but the disclosure of that was part of his story as well.
NDB: Yeah. Yeah. And it really goes, you know, it’s an interesting part of his story. You can see like, Venus-Jupiter in the 4th house – talk about keeping your pleasure private, I suppose. His homosexuality was an open secret in Hollywood, and in fact, you know, a lot of the movies he played – he wasn’t like, a serious movie star. He wasn’t considered serious. He was the kind of guy you put in a rom-com with Doris Day. You know, they gave him very light, fluffy fare, whereas he was, you know, he was a really good actor. He is in some serious movies like Giant with Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean. I mean, he could do the serious roles. But largely he was given fluff, and he was given roles that sort of surreptitiously poked fun and ridiculed his sexuality. You know, he was a very sort of square jawed looking, handsome matinee idol, but the movie producers and scriptwriters would sort of torment him with scripts that would sort of humiliate or emasculate his character, and that was sort of part of the comedy thing. And they were doing this knowing that he was gay and that they were, you know, the audience would just think, oh, you know, the movie actor is going through some – you know, he’s playing a role where he does this and he does that. Whereas really there was this subtext in terms of how the film producers who hired him were, you know, sort of tormenting him in some strange way. In some way, that was very 4th house. In some way that you would have to know the subtext in order to understand what was really happening.
CB: Right. But for the most part otherwise, he was actually very discreet about his sexuality and his sexual orientation. And so to some extent, he ended up having to lead a secret life as a result of that, which is the other part of his ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house. And that actually became part of the story later on is something I talked with Gary Lorentzen about because he was around, he was an astrologer that was around as a gay man during the AIDS epidemic or pandemic in the 1980s, and we talked about the astrology of it in that episode on the astrology of AIDS. But one of the things that he talked about is that there was some people in the gay rights movement who at the time they felt like there was a lot of prominent people that were closeted, and that they needed to come out in order to spread awareness about AIDS. So some people adopted this sort of radical philosophy of outing people who were unwilling or who were still closeted like, even against their will. And Rock Hudson was actually one of those people, I believe, where in the final weeks of his life, he was outed by a gay writer in an interview to People magazine. And so that became one of the things that happened is that the disclosure of that, of his private life or of his secret to some extent – his secret life – happened through somebody else sort of telling it.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, that’s the interesting thing is transiting Neptune was just making its ingress into Capricorn close to his IC when all this was happening, when he was being exposed and when he died not long after. And it’s the funny thing about the transit of Neptune. I mean, Neptune does in its own way signify, you know, all the smoke and mirrors and things that are kept from us. But at the same time, I’ve often found that the transit of Neptune, especially ingress transits, is actually revealing. Actually sort of like, you know, clears the smoke as opposed to gathers it. So that was, yeah, that was a revelation. You know, a lot of the world – like I said, it was an open secret. People in the movie business and what have you knew. That’s why this writer knew. But the general public had no clue.
CB: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know how much that translates to most of the country, especially in the like, 1950s and ‘60s where homophobia was so ingrained and could be actually like, you know, really dangerous if a person’s secret life was disclosed. So I don’t know how much —
NDB: And illegal in some places, you know? It was illegal in Canada; it was illegal in England. I’m not sure about the States, but it was certainly the cops had license to harass people even if it wasn’t, so yeah, it was really serious.
CB: Right. Yeah. So I just wanted to touch on that, because obviously then his death impacted things in terms of AIDS research and things like that, but it also then became a prominent example of somebody whose private life as a gay man became public, and then also influenced perceptions in terms of that and was part of the gradual process of like, views especially in the United States changing over the 30-year period that sort of separates like, 1985 when he passed away in the middle of the AIDS pandemic versus let’s say, like, 2012 when Obama during his second run for presidency endorses same-sex marriage, for example. Or actually no – it was like, 2015 —
NDB: 2015 was when it became law, but I think he did —
CB: Right.
NDB: — start to talk about it a little earlier, yeah.
CB: No, yeah. No, I know. It was 2012, but I just remembered that the better date to connect with 1985 is 2015, because that’s exactly 30 years later that same-sex marriage is actually legalized is 30 years after Rock Hudson died.
So it’s just another good example of how this theme of the private life and sometimes secrecy or things that are kept hidden is not like this blow-off topic, but sometimes it’s actually really important in people’s lives.
All right, the next example I wanna share is the birth chart of the rapper Eazy-E. So he was born with Aries rising and Mars is in Cancer in the 4th whole sign house conjunct Venus in a night chart. And Eazy-E was a pioneering figure in rap and a founding member of the influential group NWA. So with NWA, he released the groundbreaking album Straight Outta Compton in 1988, and this album really propelled west coast rap to the forefront of hip hop at the time, where it was like, a little bit more New York centered at that time. So sadly, his career was cut extremely short when he passed away from AIDS-related complications in 1995 at only the age of 30. But his death ended up significantly contributing to raising awareness about AIDS just like with Rock Hudson, but with Eazy-E it was particularly within the African American community and in the hip hop world it really raised awareness about AIDS as something that was to be taken more seriously.
So you know, a few years ago or almost 10 years ago now, his story was actually later dramatized in the 2015 movie Straight Outta Compton where his death played a major like, heartbreaking role towards the end of the movie. But he ended up leaving a long lasting legacy on the music industry and influenced countless artists and shaped the sound of hip hop over the course of the past 30 years since he passed away.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: So it’s just, I wanted to use this together with Rock Hudson just because of, again, another example where there was a major impact of his death, especially in terms of raising awareness about AIDS and how important that was. Because 1995 was still like, not super early, but was still relatively early in terms of the AIDS pandemic.
NDB: Yeah. And I mean, it was such a stunning thing when it happened. You know, his group NWA – there was no one who sounded like them before they came on the scene. But after them, everyone sounded like them. So much of hip hop that you would hear for the 20 years after NWA existed is directly inspired by them.
CB: Yeah, and that’s actually one of the really important things that’s notable about what he actually did in life and the other part of his 4th house contribution is that he really represented his home city of Compton, and especially representing like, street life from Compton and things like that was a big part of what his group presented, especially in the context of like, gangster rap at the time. But it’s an early example of what became a more common phenomenon in terms of like, different rappers that come from different cities and representing their home city as being an important part of their music and their life in general.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, up until that point, you know, hip hop had been almost exclusively New York. At least, you know, in the big context. There was some California rap, but it was a New York sort of thing, and a New York cultural marker. NWA were not just representing California, though; the whole thing with gangster rap – I mean, when I got that album, I was 19, 20 years old. I had never heard anything like that. You know, gunshots going off, guys bragging about, you know, murdering and selling drugs, and just – I mean, it was really brazen, and in a way that apart from hearing the F-word on a Sex Pistols record and John Lennon singing it once, you know, it wasn’t the kind of thing you heard. And suddenly there was, you know, the language was very X-rated, and they were talking about some pretty horrendous things sometimes in a very – usually in a very sort of cartoony way. But still, you know, the sort of the violence, the pseudo-realism of the recordings as a reflection of their day-to-day life. You know, it felt real, and it was really, like, there was nothing like it when I heard it. And yet, within a few years, it would be sort of almost like the stereotype of what hip hop had become, like, all hip hop became what NWA were doing in a matter of just a few years.
So yeah, by the time —
CB: Right.
NDB: — like, say, Snoop Dogg became a big star through Dr. Dre, who had been in NWA with Eazy-E. So you know, it created an explosion, and from there, you lead even to Eminem, who was also sort of discovered and produced by Dr. Dre, so.
CB: Right. Yeah.
NDB: As a sort of like, hip hop super group. You know, Ice Cube went on to this big acting career, Dr. Dre – huge figure, and then Eazy-E, who was actually the leader of NWA, he was really like, sort of the frontman. You know, and his life came to this terrible, unfortunate conclusion.
CB: Right. Yeah. It’s kind of like parallel with another chart that we’ll talk about in just a minute with like, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana and what that did in terms of rock music and the turning point of what rock was in the ‘80s versus like, the immediate watershed moment of Nirvana releasing Nevermind in 1991 and how rock changes like, virtually overnight and popularizes like, grunge and the Seattle sound and a bunch of related bands and things like that. You kind of get a similar thing here with like, pre-NWA with groups like Run DMC or LL Cool J or even other contrast —
NDB: Public Enemy. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. And then that turning point by the time they come around. So —
NDB: Yeah. With NWA, it was just, it was more sort of stunning because of the graphic, you know, sort of violence and depiction of gang life and things like that. I mean, Nirvana, sure, it was groundbreaking, but it was groundbreaking because it was a great little, you know, rock-pop album with tight songs that were well-played but were very heavy. It was somewhat groundbreaking, but it was sort of building on a lot of rock music that had come before, and I say that as a huge Nirvana fan.
With NWA, it really was like, you had never heard anything remotely like this before. You know, it really was like, what the heck? It seemed brand new, you know? Sure, hip hop wasn’t new, but hip hop done in that way was totally new.
CB: Yeah. Well, I mean, part of it though was representing in a more accurate depiction their actual like, lived life from the streets of Compton being like, a major focal point. And that’s, you know, really where I think that shines through as part of his ruler of the Ascendant being there in the 4th house, not just as an example of his death but also in terms of part of what he ended up doing in life was putting his city and putting street life in Compton like, in the public awareness in a way that probably didn’t exist prior to that point.
NDB: Yeah. I had never heard of Compton before I heard the NWA album, and since then I’ve heard of it many times. Yeah.
CB: Right. And then that —
NDB: Yeah, I get the 4th house thing for sure, yeah.
CB: And then that throughline leads through to today where you have people like Kendrick now being like, the most prominent rapper from Compton who’s sort of like, playing that role, interestingly with his Mars-Mercury conjunction in the 10th house also in Cancer. But for him, it’s in the 10th house rather than the 4th.
I wanted to use this as a contrast with Rock Hudson just because it’s like, two different people from different walks of life who both passed away as a result of the same disease but whose deaths ended up impacting different communities in different ways, and both raising awareness about the same disease that was running rampant at that time.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. All right. So let’s move on. So this of course eventually – this is the very last segment that I wanted to do. When it comes to the 4th house, I think we’ve demonstrated death and its relationship to the 4th house at this point pretty consistently, as well as how it relates to events that happen after death. But one of the interesting things that’s come up is that the 4th house’s association with death, even though it’s not something that’s frequently talked about in modern astrology, in the public consciousness actually there’s a version of a reference to the 4th house, which is the so-called “27 Club,” which is this sort of observation basically that there was starting in like, the 1960s and ‘70s, like a string of musicians who all had passed away at the age of 27. And the classic list was Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison were the most prominent examples from that generation who all died at the age of 27. But then more recently, that list was unfortunately added to and expanded over the past few decades after the death of, for example, Kurt Cobain in the 1990s and then Amy Winehouse more recently are all sort of members of the so-called 27 club. And as astrologers, of course, 27 years old is important because 27 is a 4th house profection year, and from an astrological standpoint, that’s part of the reason we think at least, or that’s one of the explanations one might be able to give from an astrological standpoint of why there’s this sort of like, correlation in those instances.
So that doesn’t necessarily mean that everybody is gonna, you know, die at the age of 27 or even if you have difficult placements in the 4th house that that’s necessarily gonna be a thing that happens. But for this group of people, that was something that came up. So we were gonna talk about two or three examples briefly in order to just like, discuss this phenomenon a little bit.
NDB: Yeah. It’s definitely, it’s not something – the 4th house is a consistent thing, but there are still like, different ones of these individuals. There are still different ways that you would look at their passing, so we’ll focus on two of them. But of course, it’s something that could be its own episode; they’re all fascinating charts.
CB: Yeah, for sure. So let me do Amy Winehouse first. So —
NDB: Sure.
CB: — this one was actually submitted by Orla, and this was primarily her research example. All right. Here is the birth chart of Amy Winehouse, who was born with Gemini rising and Mercury in Virgo in the 4th whole sign house retrograde and applying to a conjunction with the Sun at 21 degrees of Virgo, and both of those are squaring Neptune at 26 degrees of Sagittarius.
So Amy Winehouse was a famous British singer and songwriter who was really celebrated for her powerful and soulful vocals as well as her eclectic mix of different music genres, including jazz, R&B, and soul. So she really sort of burst into the music scene with her debut album in 2003 that was titled Frank, and she achieved global stardom with her critically acclaimed second album Back to Black in 2006. She was especially known for her retro aesthetic, drawing on the 1950s but also adding her own flair. And I thought this was really interesting because the ruler of her Ascendant is a Mercury which is retrograde in the 4th house, so you’re getting like, two past oriented indications in the chart – both a retrograde ruler of the Ascendant as well as a ruler of the Ascendant placed in the 4th house, which can have to do with the past.
NDB: Yeah. But it’s so true. I mean, her musical arrangements somehow sounded ‘60s and 21st century at the same time, you know? There was something undeniably sort of retro about what she did in some of the, you know, instruments she was using. You know, trombones and things of that nature. But at the same time, it was absolutely of its time. It didn’t just sound like some old record, but an old record made in the 21st century, I suppose, is one way to say it, yeah.
CB: Yeah, for sure. So however though, her immense talent was often overshadowed by her struggles with substance abuse as well as a tumultuous personal life. And unfortunately tragically, she died from alcohol poisoning in 2011 at the age of 27 years old. So one of the things that Orla pointed out with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th is that she had a really complex and often tumultuous relationship with her father where they were very close and they shared a love for music because her father was actually a jazz singer himself. And Amy even had a tattoo that said “Daddy’s girl,” and she often spoke fondly of him, which is of course striking with the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th. But unfortunately, there were themes of like, potentially themes of enabling and absenteeism because he’s sometimes been criticized for potentially enabling some of Amy’s self-destructive behaviors, and a lot of the formative events in her life, or one of the formative events, was that he was absent for a period of time in her childhood due to an extramarital affair. And some people argue that he prioritized his own singing career over her well being during her struggles with addition.
So there’s also some issues with like, media attention where her father often participated in media interviews and documentaries about his daughter, which sometimes saw as kind of almost like, exploiting her fame for his own benefit. And this further strained their relationship, especially in the eyes of the public.
So Orla wrote that Amy idolized her father even after his affair and departure, going so far as to give him the final say on if she went to rehab, which is sort of what that like, reference in her famous song about going to rehab is about.
NDB: Right. And it’s that her dad going, “No, no, no” – is that the idea? That he’s complicit in that?
CB: I mean, I always assumed it was the opposite, but Orla was trying to say that yeah, it was. It was like, him prioritizing her continuing or encouraging her to keep doing music or whatever when she really probably should have gone to rehab and gotten help and that being really the tragic part of it. So I’m not like, super familiar with her life and biography in detail, so I can’t like, say or confirm, and I don’t wanna go too far in terms of all of that. But I do know that he has expressed deep regret for not doing more to help Amy overcome her addiction since I’m sure her death in 2011 was also shocking and tragic for him as well. But for whatever reason, one of the points that Orla made was just that Amy’s ability to communicate and process and express herself was heavily impacted by her father during the course of her life, and so his influence often clouded her own desires and will to some extent. So it’s kind of a tragic case, because on the one hand, it’s like, emphasis on the 4th house, the deep emphasis on the father, dying at 27 years old during a 4th house profection year, and then also just her death having a huge impact and shocking a lot of people because she was promising and died so young.
NDB: Yeah, simple as that.
CB: Yeah. So that is that chart example, and then shout out to Orla for that. So and then you wanted to share an annual profections example with Jimi Hendrix.
NDB: Yeah. So yeah, we’ve talked about Amy’s chart. In the past, you and I have also talked about Kurt Cobain, and I think we’ve touched on his death astrologically. The obvious ones to go, you know, if you look at Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, it’s pretty easy to sort of fathom why 27, you know, was the year that it was for them. When it comes to Jimi, it’s always been a little, I found that I had to dig a little deeper to really understand why, you know, astrologically speaking, why he left us at 27. But I found something really, really astonishing. And it’s less specifically about the transits and more to do with that 4th house profection year and what it meant over the course of Jimi’s life.
So Jimi, of course, died at the age of 27 when he was in a 4th house profection year. By the age of 27, that’s the third 4th house profection year that you’ll have. The first one you’ll have is at the age of three, the next one you’ll have is at the age of 15, which like I said is a synodic Mars return. And then you have it at 27, which I suppose is the Jupiter return of the synodic Mars return, I suppose. And those three ages with Jimi sort of line up in a very, very striking way that’s very 4th house, and really sort of sums it all up. And while, you know, it doesn’t exactly solve the mystery as to why he left us when he did, it certainly sort of puts his passing in a context that you can really understand the timing astrologically.
CB: Okay. Let’s hear it.
NDB: Okay. So his 4th house is Pisces. And you know, just off the bat, having the 4th house Pisces is – Pisces being, you know, sort of the other 11 signs combined if you will – Jimi came from a mixed race background on both sides of his family. Very sort of diverse. He grew up in Seattle and went to a very integrated school; you see a picture of his class, and there’s seemingly equal numbers of white, black, Asian kids all together. So he comes from a different world, and the way Jimi became a rock star was being, you know, an African American blues trained musician who suddenly turned up in England and, you know, right as psychedelia is happening and Marshall amps are being invented and wawa panels are being invented, and he just takes London over. He’s such a formidable talent. And it’s literally almost exactly four years from the day he landed in London in September of 1966 to when he died in London in September of 1970.
So when he arrived in London, he was 23; he was about three months shy of his 24th birthday. Immediately, you know, got new amplifiers, new clothes. You know, he had a new manager sort of paying for all this. He got his band together, started recording, you know, put out his first album, played at Monterey, shook the world, became the biggest rock star of the time. You know, inspiring fear and awe in the likes of the Beatles and Eric Clapton and the Stones and all the British musicians who’d been, you know, ruling the world up until that point.
CB: So we’re talking about his first house profection year right now?
NDB: Well, yeah. When he landed, by the time his first album came out, he was in the first house profection year. When he landed in England, he was still in the 12th house. He was still 23. But by the time he was really sort of, you know, capturing everyone’s attention he was in that first house profection year.
So then we get to 1970, and he’s in the 4th house profection year. He’s had like, yeah, sorry – go ahead.
CB: Are you gonna work backwards? I thought you were gonna start from the beginning.
NDB: Well, I was just quickly taking us through his life so we could get to 1970. I guess I was cutting to the chase. Unless you wanted me to talk about every year of his life like, when he played Woodstock and all that.
CB: No. I just wanna – let’s just focus on, so he had three 4th house profection years.
NDB: Yeah, that’s what I’m getting to. I just wanted a little introduction to explain what that 4th house is. So the ruler of the 4th house in Pisces is that Jupiter in Cancer in the 8th. Okay, so I’ll just tell you the three profection years. So when Jimi was born, the second World War was going on, and in fact his father left to fight the war before he was born. So his father never saw him until after the war was over. Jimi’s mother was an alcoholic, and she struggled pretty bad. And by the time Jimi was three, her mother and sister had been looking after the baby, and actually the baby had a different name. Jimi was still called Johnny Allen Hendrix at the time. I’ll get to that in a second. One thing led to another and Jimi wound up being looked after by a family in California who were friends of his grandmother, his mother’s mother. So he was being raised by strangers in California who were interested in adopting him. Now remember, this is 4th house stuff – people who are a family even if they’re not your birth family. So then in September of ‘45 when Jimi is almost three years old, his father comes home from the war and learns that his son is being raised by strangers down in California. He’s gotta spend a little time sort of getting his life together because he’s just gotten back, and he, you know, getting some money together. And then he goes down to California about two months later – so probably about November, December of 1945, just as Jimi is turning three, his father comes and brings him home. He goes to the family in California, says, “I want my child back,” and they – even though they wanted to adopt him – they give him back, and Jimi moves back. His father takes the baby back to Seattle, reunites with Jimi’s mother, and he renames – when Jimi is three, he renames him James Marshall Hendrix instead of John Allen Hendrix, which is the name his mother had given him.
And basically that’s —
CB: Okay —
NDB: — what that first profection year is. It’s almost being adopted, it’s his father finding him for the first time, which would be a very, very strong bond, and the sort of the creation of a nuclear family in Jimi’s life for the first time for him, because he hadn’t known it until he got to that 4th house profection year. So that’s —
CB: That’s brilliant. So —
NDB: — 19, that’s his – yeah, that’s when —
CB: So his father comes —
NDB: — he turns three.
CB: — back and gets him during his first 3rd house profection year, and —
NDB: 4th house.
CB: 4th house profection year and gives him his name and changes his name to James Marshall Hendrix.
NDB: Yeah. And he’s almost adopted. So there’s that as well.
CB: Nice. Good.
NDB: Okay. Yeah. So 12 years later, Jimi is now, Jimi turns 15 at the end of 1957. So he’s in the 4th house profection year. And his mother, who for a little while Jimi’s parents were together and they had two other kids. Jimi has a younger brother and sister. But eventually when Jimi was about nine, his parents divorced finally, and his mother, like I said, really battled with alcoholism. So she died in February of 1958 when Jimi was 15 in the 4th house profection year. It’s a really – you know, cirrhosis of the liver. I think at one point, they literally found her unconscious like, in an alley outside a bar, although I believe she did die in a hospital. So really really sad, depressing stuff, and Jimi sort of holds his father responsible. Of course, Jimi has Jupiter and the Moon in the 8th house in Cancer, so you know, even though he’s in the 4th house profection year, the ruler of that profection year is in the 8th with the Moon. And you know, a lot of —
CB: Right. I think that’s really crucial that that’s one of the signatures in his chart. He was born with Sagittarius rising for those listening to the audio version. He has Pisces on the 4th house and the ruler of the 4th house is Jupiter, which is placed in the sign of its exaltation in Cancer, but it’s also in the 8th house of death.
NDB: Yeah, alongside the Moon.
CB: So —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: And his first 4th house profection year at three, his father comes and gets him. His second 4th house profection year, at this age of 15, his mother dies.
NDB: That’s right. His mother dies in February of 1958. So 12 years later, Jimi is 27. He has a very eventful year. All kinds of things happen, numerous bands, recordings, tours, all kinds of stuff. It’s overall a very busy and good year, but the last two weeks of his life are kind of everything’s kind of coming apart. His bass player quits the band. Some of the shows have gone terribly or there have been riots, and he’s kind of depressed. And he winds up back in London. He wants to be in New York making records, but he winds up back in London. He’s hanging out with a girl that he kind of knows, and you know, drugs are taken. He goes to bed, and then there seems to be some problem, and he winds up dying. His death is a bit suspicious, frankly. There’s a lot of things that aren’t answered. But the long story short is the transits around his death make a lot of sense only if you contrast them with the transits of the death of his mother. That’s when the whole sort of thing comes together. Like I said, when you look at the other people who died around the same time – Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, even Al Wilson – their deaths transit-wise make a little bit more sense sort of just independently in terms of where they were at that year. With Jimi, it’s a bit more puzzling, except when you consider it in the context of that 4th house profection year and the way it connects to these other crucial periods in his life.
CB: Okay. So he passed away on September 18th, 1970, right?
NDB: Yeah, that’s right.
CB: Okay. So he was —
NDB: And it was in London at about 11 or 12, midday, I think, you know.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: And yeah. That was really it, you know. Just like that.
CB: So it looks like – I see the nodes, the transiting nodes are —
NDB: That’s right.
CB: The North Node’s in early Pisces, and the South Node is in Virgo, so that means he was having eclipses that year in his 4th house and his 10th house.
NDB: That’s right. And you can see the nodes are also square his Mercury-Uranus opposition. That whole sort of Sag/Gemini thing for him is a very, you know, polar axis to put it mildly. I think it has a lot to do with the kind of performer he was, but I think it also sort of in terms of the way it interacts with the nodes and then all those transits in Virgo making a t-square to the Gemini and Sag planets. But yeah, there certainly were eclipses, you know, round about the time he died as well, yeah.
CB: Yeah. Not too far before there would have been… I don’t —
NDB: But yeah, there was one at the —
CB: — think this was an eclipse. It would have been —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — like this one.
NDB: Yeah, there was one, it’s August 31st or September 1st. What he was doing, he was playing a concert at the Isle of Wight. It’s the last concert that we have a really good like, DVD performance. But even there, he had some technical issues. But that was the eclipse, sort of the last popular concert that he performed.
CB: So and that was a solar eclipse in Virgo. And then two weeks before that… Oh no. It actually would have fallen on, the lunar eclipse would have fallen in Aquarius, but it would have fallen like, right near his South Node at 28 Aquarius.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Interesting. All right. So yeah. So and this is his third 4th house profection year, and so it was again activating his ruler of the 4th house, which was also the ruler of his Ascendant, which were both placed in the 8th house.
So as with all things, it’s never just like, one technique or one simple placement. There was other transits and other things going on, of course, at the same time.
NDB: Yeah. And when he goes into his 4th house profection year, his solar returns always have Jupiter in Libra close to the Midheaven. I think virtually conjunct his Midheaven the year he died. You know, and squared by the natal Jupiter. Why Jupiter on his Midheaven would mean this is hard to say, except for the fact that like I said, it corresponds to these other family issues – the death of his mother, the reunion of his family. There’s just, there’s something about that.
CB: Right. I’m seeing like, transiting Mars the day that he died was at nine degrees of Virgo, and it was squaring exactly his Saturn at nine degrees of Gemini as well as his Venus in the first house at seven degrees of Sagittarius. Yeah, there was a Sun-Pluto conjunction that was forming in his 10th house, which would have gone exact in the days following his death when the world would’ve become made aware of that basically.
NDB: Yeah. And there’s an interesting sort of sidebar with outer planet transits. You can see that Neptune was at 28 Scorpio. It had been briefly in Sagittarius at the beginning of 1970 when he was doing his Band of Gypsies album. But there’s a really interesting thing; when Neptune goes into Sagittarius not long after he dies, his recording enterprise is sort of taken over by a former manager, and a lot of sort of like, crummy versions of his unreleased music are released. And for a long time, his family fights to have control over the estate, which they finally got in 1995 as Pluto made its ingress into Sagittarius. I know you’ve lived in Seattle, Chris; you know very well in Seattle there is a Experience Hendrix museum there, and that was built as a consequence of the family winning back Jimi’s legacy in 1995 when Pluto went into Sagittarius.
CB: Didn’t we like, go there together at one point?
NDB: Yeah, probably! Yeah, yeah, I think I bought a mug for my friend.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: Yeah, I’m sure we did. Yeah.
CB: Well, it’s interesting what you said about his family having to fight for his inheritance afterwards with, because that’s another ruler of the 4th in the 8th theme of literally the 8th house signifies inheritance sometimes, especially from death, and the 4th house represents one’s family. And that’s actually a topic that’ll come up in some other charts in the ruler of the houses sections whenever I get around to recording that.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: So eventually they were successful, though.
NDB: Yeah, eventually they were. I believe his sister still runs his estate; his father passed away a little while ago, of course.
CB: Okay. Got it.
NDB: Pretty old at this point.
CB: Yeah. Well, that would be interesting; I don’t wanna go into it now, but interesting to look at some of the transits for some of that when they were eventually successful and just what was going on.
NDB: Yeah, yeah.
CB: In terms of like, subsequent 4th house profections or other things like that, but I think for the purpose of this that that’s a pretty interesting demonstration just in terms of those three 4th house profection years starting with the first and then the second, the death of his mother, and then him passing away.
You know, one of the things I always think is crazy about Jimi Hendrix is whenever I look at his chart, he was born like, really close to Joe Biden and with —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — the same rising sign. So Joe Biden at his current age now is the exact age that Jimi Hendrix would be if he hadn’t passed away at age 27.
NDB: Yeah, right? Excuse me while I pardon student debt!
CB: Right.
NDB: Yeah. No, it’s pretty wild to consider that, you know, if Jimi had lived what he could have left us musically. But yeah —
CB: Right.
NDB: — it’s true. He’s also born very close to Rob Hand. I think he’s like, within a couple of days of Rob Hand.
CB: So here’s Hendrix’s chart; it was November 27th, 1942 with Sag rising, and then here’s Joe Biden’s chart, which is November 20th, 1942, also with early Sag rising.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So —
NDB: And Joe’s born closer to the Jupiter station, too. Jupiter had just stationed retrograde.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Well, and one of the things about Joe, of course, is he’s also not been any stranger to death where his family when he was 30 years old was involved in a horrific tragic car accident that killed his wife and his daughter. And then later his son Beau died of like, cancer in the past decade. Yeah, so —
NDB: And Joe’s fought off some brain tumors and things of that nature himself. You know, he’s had some close calls.
CB: Right. Yeah. So it’s like, interesting just in terms of that with both of them having that Sagittarius rising and Jupiter ruling the 4th house placed in the 8th house.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: But yeah. So —
NDB: Yeah. I was always struck by how Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain both have the Moon and Jupiter in Cancer and they’re both left-handed guitarists who led hard rock three-piece bands from the Washington area. That’s always been – and of course the 27 club thing. So there are fun little astrological things like that as well.
CB: Yeah. And I will talk about Kurt Cobain’s chart more and especially his Moon-Jupiter conjunction in Cancer because it’s in the 11th house and it’s actually ruling his 4th house. So I’m gonna use him as an example of the ruler of the 4th house in the 11th, and that some pivotal events in his life occurred when he was living with friends.
NDB: Yeah. That’s a good one. The only other thing I would say about Jimi, you know, when we started this recording, we were talking about how the 4th house is the private life. And that even if we were talking about celebrities, we’d be talking often about subjects that don’t necessarily have to do with the thing that made the person a celebrity. And I was thinking about, you know, Jimi Hendrix’s experience in this. You know, what we saw unfold with those three 4th house profection years is something that could happen to, you know, a baker or an engineer. You know, it wasn’t specific to him being a musician, you know, the greatest guitar player ever. It’s just something that human beings go through over the course of their life, and yeah that’s the beauty of doing a study like this even if you’re looking at a celebrity’s chart when it comes to the 4th house. You know, unless it’s something like Jeff Buckley and the family legacy type of thing we’re talking about, then very often yeah, it’s not necessarily related specifically to whatever it is that makes the person famous. It can be something that’s entirely, you know, removed from that or more mundane.
CB: Sure. Just in terms of their background and their history and their family history and things like that.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, definitely. That’s a good point. Yeah, and then Hendrix, like others in the 27 club, you know, one of the things that happens is they get kind of frozen in time at the age of 27, and in everybody’s memories they stay that age basically. And while everybody else continues to go and live on and grow old and go through different phases of life and other things like that, but their legacy becomes then made at that point partially in being tied up in the fact that they died so young. And then whatever body of work that they had accomplished up to that point becomes fixed and just sort of like, paused at that moment in time.
NDB: Yeah. And in Jimi’s case, I mean, it’s just, you know, unbelievable. Because like I said, from the day he landed in London until he died, it’s almost exactly four years. It’s like, four years minus five days, I think. And in that time, he recorded so much music that we still get really good albums. I mean, since his family took over his legacy, they are a lot more diligent about the quality of the releases that come out. But he made so much music in that brief period of time that we still get some, you know. Which is not what we can say about, you know, Jim Morrison or Janis or any of the others, that we keep getting really great Jimi Hendrix music.
CB: Yeah. But in some ways, you know, each of them are interesting because their death at that age at the height of their stardom in some ways cements their legacy.
NDB: Yes.
CB: Because then it’s like, they’re permanently stuck in time at that like, high point in their career in terms of everybody’s memories and experience of them, and they never end up like, growing old and like, going through different musical stages or other things that we would have seen if they had lived into old age. And in that way, in some ways, it like, preserves their memory because then it’s like, we don’t know what Kurt Cobain’s thoughts would have been on like, the latest like, social media or political things or something like that. It’s like, we have no idea because he gets frozen in time in 1994, and therefore there’s something that becomes lasting about that legacy, yeah, that’s interesting to think about and is really tied in with the 4th house in some ways in the sense of like, permanency.
NDB: Yeah. You’re reminding me of something Jimi said in his lifetime. He was just, you know, spitballing at one point; he was talking about how like, it’s a pity that on a record, you’ve only got 20 minutes of music, and he said someday, you know, technology’s gonna let you record a three-day long song if you want. You know, and of course he’s right. Eventually you’re gonna have mp3s; technically, you could do that. But it’s really interesting to see him, you know, in 1968 or whatever, sort of looking forward to that moment. You know, there’s a similar one where Jim Morrison anticipated electronic dance music long before it existed. So sometimes yeah, you know, they’re such visionaries that they can kind of see what’s coming down the road even though it would seem like, absurd to the rest of us.
CB: Right. He was like, having visions of my like, eight hour podcasts. But maybe if he —
NDB: Yes!
CB: Right?
NDB: All Hendrix music.
CB: Exactly.
NDB: An eight hour Hendrix guitar solo. Yeah, exactly.
CB: I’m down for that. All right. Well, so this is a little interesting not digression, but I’ve been putting off doing the topic of death in astrology. I did a talk, like a broad philosophical talk, with Madeline DeCotes I think a year ago when she was out, when she visited Denver, and we talked about the broader topic of death and astrology and how astrologers cope with death. But I’ve been putting off the like, technical treatment of transits at the time a person dies or natal indications for death or other things like that for its own episode since that’s a pretty big topic. But we basically accidentally sort of like, gone into that whole topic and really broached the issue here. So that’s all we’re gonna do for that today, but at some point if people would like, I could return to that topic and do a more deliberate and sort of thorough or thoughtful treatment of it. But since it’s obviously something that comes up with the houses, obviously we dealt with it here and then that’ll be a major topic when we get to the 8th house as well.
NDB: Yeah. But for people who are interested in doing their own research, I do have a death chart file for sale on my website. It’s got quite a few charts. How many – how big is my death chart file now?
CB: Right. Well, don’t get too excited here.
NDB: It has 1,269 passings of human beings, most of them timed and most of them very well known.
CB: Okay. That’s great.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: So yeah. So that is – you know, it’s not a common thing that’s talked about, but I hope now we’ve been able to show that death and things that happen after death are important 4th house topics, and so I’m sure that’ll help to spark and expand further research when it comes to this topic.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, I get how it’s a touchy subject. Everything okay?
CB: I just remembered I have one more example. I forgot that I actually have an example to end with, and that wasn’t it.
NDB: Oh! Okay.
CB: I’m like, doing the conclusions here, and…
NDB: Right. No, I was just gonna say, you know, I mean, death is a part of life. I think it’s an important thing for astrologers to talk about. We don’t go around predicting it. You know? I wouldn’t know how to, even if I was so brazen to try. But you know, it’s something that is worth looking at and learning from, and certainly I don’t think we’ve crossed any lines today in talking about what we did.
CB: Yeah, for sure. It’s definitely a part of life and something that can be accessed through the birth chart and that sometimes it’s helpful to do so in different ways for different reasons that don’t necessarily have to do with prediction.
NDB: Yeah. No, absolutely.
CB: All right. So the last example I wanted to share is actually one that Leisa found, and I thought it would be a great example to end on. So this is the birth chart of Allan Kardec —
NDB: Oh yeah.
CB: — who was born with Taurus rising and Venus in Leo in the 4th whole sign house. And Allan Kardec was a French educator and author who’s best known for codifying the philosophy of spiritism. They were essentially like, a mediumship researcher where they became intrigued in the 1800s by the phenomenon of people using talking tables and other spiritualist sort of manifestations and like, paraphernalia, and so he set out to systematically investigate these occurrences and develop a comprehensive doctrine based on the notion of like, communication with spirits.
So they compiled over a thousand questions and asked them to different mediums about things like the spiritual world, spirit communication, et cetera, and adapted the responses into a philosophy that he named Spiritism. So the Spiritist movement emphasizes notions of reincarnation, spiritual evolution, as well as communication with the spirit world. So eventually, he defined this as “a science that deals with the nature, origin, and destiny of spirits and their relation to the corporeal world.” He eventually wrote a series of books based on the responses that he did via mediumship that was called The Spiritist Codification.
So I thought this was like, a funny example because I don’t actually know how I feel about things like Spiritism and some of those things associated with it. I don’t actually personally necessarily know what to think about that or know that I believe in that per se, but I just found it interesting. Even if you’re agnostic about that in terms of this person, that this person became fascinated by this topic of whether one could communicate with people who had died and that they have the ruler of the Ascendant in the 4th house of death and what happens after death. So and I think it’s simply like, an interesting or actually kind of like an entertaining example to use simply for that reason, whether it’s like, true or not true or whatever the validity of that belief actually is.
NDB: Yeah. Yeah, no, I think that part’s irrelevant to the astrological exercise. You know, this was something that was very much of its time. Can you put up his chart for a second? I just wanna say one thing. Because when you put up his chart, it struck me. I look at his bio, I know he published a book in 1857 – The Book of Mediums and Spirits – but when I look at his chart, I just, I have a hunch that 10 years before he wrote that book, around 1846, ‘47, that he would have been having, you know that might have been when he started to think about this material or when he reached some very important conclusions or, you know, reached some very important levels in terms of how he viewed the work he was doing. Because when Neptune was discovered, it was at 25 Aquarius conjunct Saturn, which would have been opposite his Venus, the chart ruler, and of course he’s got Neptune at 24 Scorpio on the Descendant squared by the Venus. And you know, let’s face it. I mean, his story sounds very 19th century, Neptune’s just been discovered kind of, you know, no matter where you stand on his work. So I —
CB: Yeah.
NDB: — just have some kind of hunch. This is how I would sort of, you know, if people want some insight into like, how we do astrology research, this is how a question forms in my mind. I see a chart like that, and you know, I get the impression of the biography, and I think, “Oh, I bet you that Saturn-Neptune conjunction opposite his Venus when Neptune was being discovered – I bet you that’s a thing in his timeline.” And then you go and look it up, and no doubt it will be —
CB: Yeah.
NDB: — whatever the context is.
CB: Well, and I think that’s striking because from my perspective or from our perspective focusing on the 4th house and his ruler of the Ascendant, that’s obviously like, the primary signature there that relates to that, which is not just that the ruler of the Ascendant is in the 4th house of death, but that Venus is closely squaring within a degree form 24 degrees of Leo in the 4th house to Neptune at 24 degrees of Scorpio in the 7th house. And literally the entire process in the biography I was just talking about was that he went out and interviewed a bunch of individual like, Spiritists or like, mediums basically or psychics directly and conducted interviews with them and then developed these conclusions or these ideas. But it’s very much tied up with the 4th house, which is like, death and after death, and the 7th house, which is like, interviewing individual, in this case, like, mystical or whatever Neptune type figures.
NDB: Yeah. No, absolutely. It’s a really interesting chart. I’m like you; I’m quite sort of agnostic/indifferent to the kind of work he was doing. But that is literally irrelevant. I encourage astrologers to go outside your comfort zone when you study people’s charts. You know, if you’re doing the kind of thing we do where you study, you know, people who are famous and read their biographies, you know, sure, you can do your favorite pop star, your favorite actor and all that stuff. But dare to do the people you either have never heard of or don’t care for at all or, you know, yeah. Study the astrology of people who, you know, who don’t interest you as people because their charts are still interesting, and you’ll still learn astrology by going through the process. So it’s something I always encourage.
CB: Yeah. For sure. People – we should – I think if we’ve demonstrated nothing else in this episode, I think we’ve demonstrated that you should try to study birth charts as widely and from people with as wide of different backgrounds as possible because you’re gonna learn something from every different horoscope that you look at and from people from all different walks of life.
NDB: Yeah. And also, if you do like I do and get into studying history, then you get to study different astrological landscapes so to speak. If you only study people born in the 20th century, you’re gonna get the outer planets in the same, you know, few signs. You know, eventually it gets kind of old, but if you allow yourself to study, you know, different centuries, you get an entirely different sort of astrological makeup that is totally unfamiliar to a 20th century astrologer. So I think it’s really useful in that way as well.
CB: Yeah, for sure. And that’s one of the reasons why you were able to like, know immediately about that Saturn-Neptune conjunction that occurred in the mid-1800s that happened in Aquarius and then immediately connect that with the fact that that was in his 10th house squaring that natal signature of Venus-Neptune.
NDB: That’s right. And you know, you can start to just do some of the math in your head, so to speak. That Saturn-Neptune conjunction is, you know, one that we should all memorize because it’s when Neptune was discovered. I mean, that’s the striking thing about it. So it’s something to always keep in mind.
CB: Right, which in and of itself is also astrologers often associate with the explosion of Spiritism and —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — there’s like, a related term that I can’t think of; I’m drawing a blank on. But it’s like, adjacent term.
NDB: Yeah, I mean, the United States went through a sort of religious reawakening during this time, you know, is the way to put it. And of course, you get things like the Mormons; that’s another Neptune phenomenon. But yeah, there were a lot of different things.
CB: Spiritualism. It’s often also referred to as spiritualism —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — although I was using the term “Spiritism.”
NDB: Well – no, you weren’t wrong. Allan Kardec did found something called Spiritism.
CB: Okay.
NDB: And it is more or less like what we know as spiritualism, which I think of as being more of like, Blavatsky and, you know, later in the 19th century going into the early 20th century.
CB: Got it.
NDB: This guy is earlier. But I think it’s, you know, same general area, yeah.
CB: Yeah. Got ya. All right, my friend. Somehow we have come to the end of this episode and we have completed our —
NDB: Already?
CB: I know! Well, I was just getting —
NDB: It just flew by!
CB: I was just getting started, really. But don’t tempt me, because you know, we went over 50 charts, but there’s a whole other 50 charts on the rulers of the houses – ruler of the 4th house – that we could get into. So definitely don’t tempt me. This was amazing —
NDB: And if you’ve watched the whole video, know that right now is 11 hours after when we started recording.
CB: No, don’t tell them that. You’re not supposed to share that information.
NDB: Right. Yeah. Families were made and fallen over that time. Entire empires —
CB: Right.
NDB: — rose and fell as we recorded this episode, so.
CB: People —
NDB: Well done for getting all the way through!
CB: Lives were changed. Thank you for doing this with me. Wanted to do a comprehensive treatment of the 4th house; we ended up with way more charts this time, decided to focus on the ruler of the Ascendant. I’m obviously gonna have to release this as just like, a stand alone episode on its own for the ruler of the Ascendant, and then I may or may not record a followup on the rulers of the houses because this is actually already surprisingly comprehensive and long for the 4th house treatment. And yeah, I’m gonna have to decide what to do about the rulers of the 4th house, which I also have an extensive write-up that’s ready to go, and whether I’m gonna release that publicly or maybe release it just for patrons or sell it. I don’t know; I’ll have to think about that, and we’ll see what happens. But this was really good, and thank you for joining me tonight to talk through this research and present it to the world and give it the, you know, careful and thoughtful treatment that it really deserves by actually like, taking the time to talk through the biographies, which I know is something that you’re very passionate about and we’re very passionate about as we were preparing for this.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, context is everything, you know? You can’t really summarize a person’s life in a few bullet points; you really need to understand what the chart menat to the fullest.
CB: Yeah, because I wanna —
NDB: Thank you for setting this up.
CB: For the record, I was the one that was gonna say we need to do these very shortly and briefly and sort of get through it so we can cover everything in a relatively short time frame, and you were the one that said, no, let’s slow down and actually tell these people’s stories because this is important and it sort of like, deserves room to breathe.
NDB: Yeah. No, I think just to do it properly or do it as well as we could, I think it was the way to go. So yeah, if you wanted a shorter, quicker show, sorry! I think this was the way it had to be.
CB: Yeah. Well, if people made it through to this point, then I think they are appreciative, because we just covered some amazing stuff, and I think we discovered some really amazing things. We told some amazing stories. We all learned a lot about the 4th house and the many different shades of meaning that it has as well as the commonality that we’re seeing. That’s one of the reasons why I do so many charts, because sometimes I feel like it’s only once you present a bunch of different charts and different lives that you start to see the commonalities and the connections in terms of the different ways that the archetype manifests in different people’s lives in very similar ways. But it’s only once you see a bunch of them that you start to really get a picture of the totality of that.
NDB: Yeah. Absolutely. It’s so true. You have to look at a lot of charts, a lot of charts to really know what you’re looking at in the end, you know? If your sample size is too small, you’re coming away with half the idea, if that.
CB: Right. And that’s just part of my personal philosophy for astrological research. Yeah. So thank you for helping me to leave a lasting legacy here when it comes to the 4th house, which is a very legacy-oriented house. And what do you – what are you working on? Where can people find out more information about you? Where can people find your database, because I have to give you a shout out because a lot of the chart examples I found, some of them were from my own personal database; some were submitted by people I was working with to research, but a lot of them I actually found this time by searching your timed database. So I really have to encourage people to check that out because it’s really worthwhile research. I saw another astrologer just the other day say like, I wish there was a way to search through chart files to like, see people that had certain placements, and that’s actually possible in Solar Fire using your database.
NDB: That’s right. So I do sell my database. My website is NickDaganBestAstrologer.com. You go to the shop tab and that’s where I sell the chart files. I have some on sale; I’ll be selling more. I’m also available for consultations three, four days a week. And I’m, of course, I’m working on the Nechepso software program, which I’m developing with Patrick Watson and some engineers. We’re expecting the first version to come out by the end of the year. And Nechepso will have my database built into it and a whole bunch of research features that you can’t get on Solar Fire or any of the other software, so. Yeah, I think astrology research is about to reach another level, too, so if you enjoyed what Chris and I were doing today, just know that there’s more to be done and soon we’ll have some toys and tools that we can do more with.
CB: Awesome. Yeah. That’s exciting. I’ll put a link to your website in the description below this video or on the podcast website in the entry for this episode.
As for myself, I’m gonna keep working on this series. I might – this is kind of intense, so I might scale it back a little bit with some of the future epds. We’ll have to see where I go with it in terms of finishing the 4th house as well as moving on to the 5th house eventually. I might take a little bit of a break next month to take it easy a little bit since this was an intense research session. But just a reminder that I am releasing to patrons the PDF of our notes for this episode, which is gonna contain a detailed set of notes if you ever wanna refer back to some of the charts that we talked about, as well as some bonus content in that PDF that is stuff we didn’t even cover. And I may do a bonus episode at some point to talk about some extra chart examples. So if you wanna support this work and you appreciate it, then you can sign up at Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast and get access to that bonus content while also doing a good deed of hitting me back for all the great astrology content I’m sharing on the podcast.
NDB: That’s right. If you’re not a patron of Chris’s, you really should be. If you enjoyed what we did today, we do some really cool stuff that only the patrons see. It’s not always me, but I’m often there. If not me, it’s the lovely and talented Patrick Watson. And yeah, it’s really great stuff. It’s always, always good. Thank you, Chris. Thank you for including me in this and yeah, it’s been a ball. I can’t believe it’s over. I’m sad. It’s such a 4th house kind of ending!
CB: I know. Well, every end is a new beginning, so we’ll see what happens in the future, and I’m sure we’ll be back again to talk about more charts next time. So thanks a lot for joining me, Nick. Thanks for making history with me and thanks everyone for watching or listening to this episode of The Astrology Podcast. And we’ll see you again next time!
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CB: If you’re a fan of the podcast and you’d like to support the production of future episodes, then consider becoming a patron through my page on Patreon.com. In exchange, you’ll get access to a bunch of benefits such as early access to new episodes, the ability to attend live recordings, access to the monthly electional astrology podcast, access to another exclusive podcast called The Secret Astrology Podcast that’s only available to patrons, or even get your name listed in the credits at the end of each episode. For more information, visit Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast.
Special thanks to patrons on our Producers tier, including Kristi Moe, Ariana Amour, Mandi Rae, Angelic Nambo, Issa Sabah, Jeanne Marie Kaplan, Melissa DeLano, Sonny Bazbaz, Kwatsi Alibaruho, and Annie Newman.
If you’re looking for an astrological consultation, then we have a new list of recommended astrologers on the podcast website. These astrologers offer birth chart readings, synastry, rectification, electional astrology, horary questions, and more. Go to TheAstrologyPodcast.com/Consultations.
The astrology software that we use on The Astrology Podcast is called Solar Fire for Windows, and you can get a 15% discount on the software by using the promo code ‘AP15’ when you purchase it through Alabe.com. For Mac users, we recommend the program Astro Gold for Mac OS, and you can also get a 15% discount when you use the promo code ‘ASTROPODCAST15’ at the website AstroGold.io.
If you’d like to learn more about my approach to astrology, then you should get a copy of my book titled Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune, which is available in both print and now ebook forms where I’ve started selling a PDF copy of the book through my website at HellenisticAstrology.com/Book.
If you’re really looking to deepen your studies of astrology, then check out my Hellenistic Astrology course, which is an online course in ancient astrology. It’s perfect for beginner and intermediate students because I take people from basic concepts up through intermediate and advanced techniques for reading birth charts. There’s over a hundred hours of video lectures, including monthly webinars and Q&A sessions, and at the end of the course, if you complete the final test, you’ll receive a certificate of completion saying that you studied with me. You can find out more information at TheAstrologySchool.com.