The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 474, titled:
Time Twins in Astrology: Adolf Hitler and Charlie Chaplin
With Chris Brennan and Nick Dagan Best
Episode originally released on January 17, 2025
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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 February 11th, 2025
Copyright © 2025 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, I’m gonna be talking with astrologer Nick Dagan Best about the birth charts of Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler, who are both time twins that were born with very similar charts, and both responded very strongly to Venus retrograde periods because they were both born during Venus retrograde. So it ends up being an interesting study on what’s called “time twins,” which is people who are born at the same time or people that were born with roughly the same birth chart. So hey Nick – thanks for joining me today.
NICK DAGAN BEST: Hey Chris! Thanks for having me.
CB: Yeah. So this is a special study that you’ve done, especially with Venus retrogrades, and part of the genesis of this is that we’re researching an episode right now, we’re putting together an episode on the upcoming Venus retrograde in Aries that’s about to take place this year in March and April of 2025. And these two are people as we were putting together that research that you’ve done presentations on before because both of them were born during that same retrograde, and both of them had some of the most important turning points in their life take place under this retrograde that repeats every eight years essentially, right? And that’s something you’ve come to specialize in with Venus retrograde periods.
NDB: Yeah, that’s correct. And Chaplin and Hitler were two of the earliest examples I found that helped me sort of flesh out this system. I mean, what I was doing ultimately was sort of rediscovering Babylonian goal year periods, in a way, for my own, you know, purposes. I didn’t know they were called that; I had some vague idea that that’s how astrology was done. That these synodic cycles of planets were used in a manner sort of like this, or presumably like this. So the idea of being – Venus being the easiest one; Venus has a synodic cycle of eight years. So every eight years, Venus makes pretty much a full return relative to the Sun, position-wise. And if you look at your solar return or anyone’s solar return for their 8th birthday, their 16th birthday, any multiple of eight – Venus is always gonna be very, very close to the natal position in those solar return charts, and not just in the same zodiacal position, but relatively speaking close to the same phase that the natal Venus is at. If someone’s born, you know, two months before a Venus retrograde, then every 8th birthday will be something like two months before a Venus retrograde.
CB: Right. Or more simply just that Venus retrograde is gonna go retrograde in Aries in March this year, and eight —
NDB: That’s right.
CB: — years earlier, it also went retrograde in March in Aries in 2017, and then eight years before that, it also went retrograde in Aries in March in 2009. And so on and so forth in eight year increments pretty far back.
NDB: Yeah. 2001, 1993, 1985, 1977, 1969, 1961, 1953, 1945, so on and so forth. Yeah. With this regularity that you can follow. It’s almost like a musical rhythm in the sense that it’s very even and symmetrical, you know? So it sets this very evenly lengthed period of time that you can follow over a person’s lifetime or even longer.
CB: All right. So one of the things I wanted to emphasis in this episode as we’re putting together this episode – a big Venus retrograde episode – on what’s gonna happen in terms of like, mundane events in the world because I think March and April time frame looks like some major geopolitical events and other things like that, and we were researching like, US history and Russian history and all these other histories of major things that have happened during these retrograde periods. But I also wanted to have a demonstration for people about how sometimes these Venus retrogrades can be personally relevant in a person’s life, that they can coincide with important turning points, but also that they can sometimes connect events in that eight year cycle so that some things that happen in your life during this upcoming Venus retrograde in March and April of 2025 may be connected to events that happened eight years earlier in March and April of 2017 or eight years before that in March and April of 2009 and so on and so forth. So I wanted to do a natal chart study, and I know one of the most compelling and impressive natal chart studies you’ve ever done was this one with Chaplin and Hitler because both of them were born at the same time and both of them responded so strongly to this one specific Venus retrograde that kept occurring in eight year increments for their entire lives.
NDB: Yeah. They were born four days apart. Charlie Chaplin had the Sun in Aries, and Hitler had the Sun in Taurus. But they’re born four days apart. They did both have those funny little mustaches, which is, you know, sort of interesting in and of itself. They were both aware that they were born four days apart. There is a record of Chaplin talking to people and telling people when he was making this film The Great Dictator – that’s the thing. Like, Chaplin even kind of played him in a movie. And he told people that, you know, “This guy was born four days after me; I know what he’s like. I can play him in a movie.” And Hitler was also apparently very aware, even in the ‘20s, that Chaplin was born close to his own date of birth. The Great Dictator was banned in Germany during the war; it came out during the war. And Chaplin always went to his grave wondering what Hitler might have actually thought of it. You know. Anyway, it’s a really interesting connection between these two men, and the astrology’s really very simple and easy to grasp. And all we’re doing is using this one cycle of one planet to illustrate how this cycle was really a sort of a dominant figure in the timeline of both these men, each in their own way.
CB: Right. And so Hitler obviously was like, became the leader of Germany and led Germany into World War II as well as the Holocaust, and then committed suicide at the end of the war as the Allies were invading Germany, and then Chaplin was a famous movie star that was like, the highest paid actor in Hollywood at one point, right?
NDB: Yeah. Well, more than just a movie star. He was also a film director, film – I mean, he was the whole operation, you know, so yeah, he did it all. And even – he was the cofounder of United Artists film studio, you know, so he was also at some point he had a co-owner of a film studio. So he did a lot.
CB: Got it. Okay. All right. So let’s start at the beginning just with their birth charts to orient people. So here is the birth chart – and we have timed charts for both, roughly timed charts, for both of them, right?
NDB: Yeah. Chaplin gives his time of birth in his autobiography. You know, he was born in England. The childhood was quite rough, so he wasn’t, you know, he probably didn’t carry around a longform birth certificate over his life. He spent time in workhouses and orphanages and things like that.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: But that being said, you know, he did have an older brother. He did, you know, his mother lived to be fairly old, so you know, there were people around who could confirm the information.
CB: Okay.
NDB: With Hitler, we also have a time that’s probably rounded off to the hour, but it’s always worked and every astrologer who’s ever, you know, worked with his chart has used it, so I think that one’s also quite solid; the source is good.
CB: Cool. All right. So here’s Hitler’s chart. For those listening to the audio version, we’re looking at a chart with Libra rising, and Venus is actually ruling the Ascendant, and is placed in Taurus retrograde in the 8th whole sign house forming a close conjunction with Mars – a retrograde conjunction with Mars – which is also at 16 degrees of Taurus conjoining Venus at 16 Taurus. Both of those two planets are squaring Saturn, which is at 13 degrees of Leo in the 11th whole sign house. He had a Moon-Jupiter conjunction in Capricorn in the 4th house. His Sun was in the very beginning of Taurus; he was born on April 20th, 1889. Mercury’s on the Descendant in Aries. And yeah, Uranus is in the rising sign, basically, not too far from the Ascendant in the first house.
All right. So right away, that’s kind of interesting that Hitler has Taurus rising, potentially. He has Venus retrograde in Taurus, so —
NDB: No Taurus – Libra rising.
CB: Sorry, Libra rising, and Venus retrograde in Taurus. So maybe there’s some reasons right away in terms of Venus being more important in his life potentially as a timing factor, both in that he was born with Venus retrograde natally, but also has that Libra rising, so Venus is ruling the Ascendant, and then has a stellium of planets in Taurus, which is Venus’s ruling sign.
NDB: Indeed. And you know, for his part, you know, this is obviously someone who had some very kooky ideas about the world and humanity. You know, Venus retrograde in terms of as a transit let alone in a person’s nativity, one of the things it really signifies is people who wanna sort of change the status quo. They’re offended by the way things are done, and they feel that there’s some fundamental change that needs to be applied. And it can be anyone from any, you know, point in the political spectrum, including, you know, this charming fellow. So you get a sense of – I guess like, sort of the standard teaching about Venus in astrology is it’s about, you know, sort of love and peace and harmony. But it’s also, you know, jealousy and prejudice and rudeness and social exclusivity and a lot of other things that aren’t nearly as sort of pleasant and presentable.
CB: That’s one of your keywords, though, is “challenging the status quo” for Venus retrogrades?
NDB: Yeah. I mean, you know, that’s certainly how it functions as a transit. Just, you know, what it does every 18 months is it brings certain things to the surface. You know? It’s sort of like, it’s when we all sort of start paying attention to how things are done and how they could be done differently. But you do get those sorts of people, those sorts of ideas. You’ll see Chaplin in his own way certainly fell into that category as well, though, you know, not in the mass murder sense of the word.
CB: Right. Although it’s interesting, even with his prominent Venus for Hitler that early on he was like, a vegetarian painter. Or like, he had aspirations to be an artist earlier in his life but ended up failing, and that didn’t work out. And that’s —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — what led to everything else.
NDB: Yeah. The vegetarianism only started in 1931 with the death of his niece. But he was indeed, he was an artist; he was turned down famously from an art school. He was mostly someone who sketched houses and buildings, and he made his living for a little while selling postcards. You know, people often ask the question, “Was he any good?” He was perfectly good at drawing these little houses. Like, he wasn’t gonna win any big awards. But he probably was good enough to be accepted into an art school and, you know, maybe he should have been.
CB: All right. That’s Hitler. And then our other birth chart – so Hitler was born April 20th, 1889. And Charlie Chaplin was born April 16th, 1889 – as you said, four days earlier – at about eight PM in Walworth, London. Scorpio rising. The Venus-Mars conjunction is still very close; Venus is retrograde in Taurus at 18 degrees applying to a conjunction with Mars at 13 degrees of Taurus, and they’re both in the 7th house. In his chart, the Moon is a few signs earlier; it’s in Scorpio in the first house. Because the rising sign is different, the entire chart shifts so that Saturn in Leo is now in the 10th whole sign house. The Sun is earlier – it’s fallen back into Aries; it’s at 27 degrees of Aries in the 6th house, along with Mercury in the 6th. And Jupiter is now placed in the 3rd whole sign house in Capricorn.
NDB: Yep.
CB: All right. So this is Charlie Chaplin’s chart. With Scorpio rising, Mars is ruling it, but that Venus is still very prominent on an angle, retrograde in Taurus, and applying to that conjunction with Mars.
All right, so and then – so yeah. This is a good study for time twins. Also just as an aside because sometimes people – like, skeptics of astrology have classically like, you know, raised that as an issue and said, “Well, what about two people who are both at the same time that have different destinies?” And that’s actually one of the weird things then that astrologers when they actually study this issue find that is that sometimes you do have these people that are both with similar charts that sometimes have weird parallels in their life, especially in terms of the timing of important events, because they would be having similar transits hit their chart around the same time, and that’s basically what we’re gonna demonstrate here today.
NDB: Yes. That’s exactly right. I mean, we’ve got two men with entirely different destinies. Both are gonna become world famous. They’re both coming from virtually nothing in their lives, but one is gonna make incredible art that still resonates with people today. You know, I’ve shown Chaplin’s films just in the last few years to my girl when she was, I don’t know, eight, nine years old, and she got it all. She laughed at every joke where she should have. Like, it still hits. At the same time, you know, then you’ve got the other guy who also did quite a bit, but not necessarily as productive, shall we say. But yeah. Both of them are – we’re looking at both these men sort of reach those points in their lives, and it’s just really the sort of the stages that are timed by the recurring returns of Venus. So we’re following both of them at these eight year intervals over the course of their life and seeing how doing that tells so much of the story that we know about them.
CB: Right. So why don’t we start – should we start biographically just about their lives? Because one of the things that was interesting as a parallel is they both had kind of difficult early lives, didn’t they?
NDB: Yeah. Chaplin’s life was like, very rough. Like, you know, Victorian London rough. His mother battled with mental health problems. There were periods where Chaplin and his older brother, Sydney, were taken away by the state and placed in orphanages or workhouses and things like that. The father was out of the picture very early. Chaplin and his brother basically got into show business, you know, to earn a living as kids. You know, this is before we had strict laws about these things, and you know, maybe we’ll be back to that again. So —
CB: Right.
NDB: — yeah, very, very hard childhood working in theater, walking in vaudeville as a performer.
CB: Yeah. That was one of the things as I was refreshing myself with his biography that stood out right away is one, issues with his mother and her battles with mental illness, and she was actually committed to an insane asylum like, a couple of different times in his life, although she was committed at one point and was gone for a while, but then she eventually came back and he had the experience of being reunited with her, but then lost her again at some point where she was then committed again. And that seems really relevant, because I remember this one story from the last Venus retrogrades of the woman – I’m spacing out her name, but – who like, murdered her mother or had her boyfriend like, murder her mother that was —
NDB: Oh yeah.
CB: — in the news.
NDB: She had – her name was Gypsy something, because —
CB: Yeah, Gypsy Rose Blanchard.
NDB: That’s right, that’s right.
CB: I believe that was like, one of our Venus retrogrades we were talking about last time. It just brought up how sometimes there can be issues with the mother or something strange or different or that goes against normal societal grain, societal expectations or other things about the mother sometimes with Venus retrograde as a natal signature. And hearing about his mother and some of the issues with that reminded me of that as well as his experience of having getting her back at some point but then losing her again being similar almost to the motion of Venus retrograde of this forward and then backwards motion.
NDB: Yeah. And Charlie’s mother will pop up in our story. One of those returns will pop up in our story as we’re exploring the Venus retrogrades. Hitler, on the other hand, I mean, his mother —
CB: Hold on, the last thing about the mother, though, with Chaplin is his mother sang, and he like, imitated and mimicked his mother and that’s how he started actually getting into performance was through his mother’s singing originally.
NDB: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, she would sometimes, you know, she wouldn’t be able to appear, and then he’d have to like, in order for the family to eat, he’d have to go do the job that she was supposed to do. That’s kind of how these things happened. So yeah, it’s not your modern showbiz story.
CB: Yeah. And then at the same time, his father took off and like, left the family so that the mother was struggling to pay bills, and that’s why they were so poor. And then at one point, like, he had to when the mother was thrown in a mental asylum, he had to go back with the father but the father was like, abusive or a drunk or something like that.
NDB: Yeah. I forget if it was abusive or drunk or just sort of generally disinterested. But this was Victorian England; it’s not like a single mother could go out and get a job at the typing pool or whatever. You know, I mean, it was a very different social order. So that in itself is another thing, is Venus retrograde in that kind of society can be sort of the “fallen woman” if you will. You know, talk about sort of, you know, disrupting society or things like that – it’s, you know, not by will or design, but merely by existing. Nonetheless, it’s another very sort of common Venus retrograde theme in that kind of world.
CB: Yeah. Like a woman that finds herself having to do something different as a result of societal expectations and the fact that she’s going against it or something. Because that makes me think of —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — Jack Nicholson, who was another Venus retrograde in Aries that we’ve talked about in our 3rd house episode where you pointed out to me that he was, he grew up thinking that his mother – that the woman that he experienced as his sister was actually…
NDB: His mother, and his – what woman he thought was his mother was actually his grandmother. Right.
CB: Yeah. I’m tripping up on this. That his mother had him when she was young and not married, and therefore the family pretended that his grandmother was actually his mother and that his mother was his sister, and he didn’t find out until he was like, an adult and a famous movie star when a reporter told him at one point. And that’s his kind of crazy Venus retrograde in Aries story.
NDB: Yeah, exactly. And both women went to their graves without telling him. He just, he had another sister who survived, and he was able to confirm the story with her. But it’s kind of wild that they both went to their graves without telling him. Yeah. You know, it was at one point just to be a mother without a man looking after you, whether it was of your own doing or not, was by default a sort of state of disgrace. So you know, that’s the way it was. And in that kind of world, yeah, Venus retrograde will signify that, you know.
CB: And I just looked it up to remind myself and Gypsy Rose Blanchard – we were talking about her the last Venus retrograde in 2003 because she was born four days before Venus turned retrograde in Virgo and had Libra rising with Venus in the 12th house conjunction Mars. So that’s one theme I wanna keep in mind as we’re doing our Venus retrograde research sometimes is like, the relationship with the mother and their being something different or strange or something difficult about that for unique reasons.
NDB: Yeah. Absolutely.
CB: All right. So tell me about this Hitler fellow.
NDB: Oh yeah. This charming guy. So his mother, you know, is on the other hand, married and not apparently insane, which is surprising given who her offspring winds up being. But she actually, she lost the child she had before Adolf. So Adolf is, you know, this is in a period when of course it was more common for children to not survive. You know, families would have more of them because not all of them would live. But because an older sibling had died, his mother was very traumatized, and so she was sort of extra clingy and indulgent to Adolf. And she was considerably younger than his father, too, so there was a real disconnect. It was, you know, it wasn’t a happy or comfortable marriage to put it mildly. And she died very young; she died when he was 18 right when he was failing out of art school. That’s the thing is it’s sort of it’s the double edge. Like, his mother dies, and he’s not been accepted into art school virtually at the same time, very close together. And he’s —
CB: Wow.
NDB: — 18 and he has no idea what to do. You know, even though he is gonna go on to become this terrible person. At that point in his life when he’s 18 and all that’s happening to him, you can’t help but, you know, feel for his position at that point.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: And that’s the last you’ll get from me! But yeah —
CB: Right?
NDB: He’s 18; he hasn’t done anything wrong yet. We’re —
CB: You were like, “You can’t help but feel for him becoming a Nazi,” and I was like, “I don’t know…”
NDB: Well, no, no, no. That’s not where I’m going with that. But just when you’re an 18-year-old and you haven’t been accepted to the school you want and your mother’s died and you don’t know what to do with your life, you know, I think —
CB: It’s decided.
NDB: — anyone would say, but yeah. No —
CB: Take over Europe, you know —
NDB: Of course not —
CB: — that’s a natural, very natural, very —
NDB: Yeah, no, that’s not where I’m going with this. That’s not —
CB: Perfectly normal. Perfectly healthy.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: All right. So he had a very difficult relationship with his father, and his father was abusive, right? Hitler?
NDB: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. Schicklgruber. Alois Hitler, yeah. Yeah, he was just, you know, he wasn’t a good father. He was an old guy, and I don’t think he was, you know, interested in anything other than children sort of doing what they were told and not speaking very much.
CB: Okay. So in terms of Venus retrogrades, do we have one that was like, the first one? Or where do we come in in terms of Venus retrogrades being important for them?
NDB: Okay, well, I mean, the big one – you know, we can cut to the chase. I don’t have that great detail on their, you know, very young years in terms of a timeline. I have some of the dates that Chaplin was working in vaudeville theater; he did, you know, tours of America and Britain for years, quite a few.
Hitler, you know, we sort of know where he was living and what he was doing. He moved to Vienna. He was from this smaller town in Austria, but he moved to Vienna, and he lived in a sort of, like, men’s workhouse for a while or men’s rooming house, I should say. And he was known as this crank who painted and, you know, ranted against the Jews. So he was already at that, you know, even before the first World War. And then he ran out of money, and he was like, virtually homeless, and so he moved from Vienna to Munich. He moved to Germany from Austria. And he is 24 years old when he does this in May of 1913.
CB: Okay. So this is —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — May of 1913.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: He’s how old?
NDB: 24.
CB: Oh, 24.
NDB: He’s just turned 24.
CB: So this is three Venus retrograde like, repetitions. So Hitler was born under Venus retrograde in Taurus, and then going back it would eventually go back into Aries in the next cycle. And then every eight years, that repeats. So at eight years old, at 16 years old, and then finally at 24 years old. So we now have – we’re in a year, 1913, when Venus goes retrograde in Aries sort of like when he was born connecting it back. And he has a major important relocation where he moves from Austria to Germany.
NDB: Yeah. And you know, foreshadowing being what it is, I mean, this is the future Fuhrer of Germany moving to Germany for the first time. So it does, you know, given that we have the privilege of seeing the foreshadowing at work, you know, it’s remarkable. On the one hand, it’s just like a young, you know, guy in his 20s moving to a new city in a new country because he doesn’t feel like he belongs in his own or that he’s doing very well. Something that happens to millions of people, you know, but obviously it’s special because it’s him and because of what he’s gonna become.
CB: Right.
NDB: So yes, in May —
CB: I’m trying to think of like, a parallel of that, of like, somebody moving from one country to another who then eventually rises up to become the leader of that country is —
NDB: I know, too.
CB: Okay.
NDB: I know of this. I know of a Corsican kid who went to – started going to school in France, and eventually becomes the emperor of France.
CB: Right.
NDB: And then I also know of this like, you know —
CB: So Napoleon.
NDB: That’s right – Napoleon. I also know about this thug from Georgia who, you know, does things like robs banks but gives all the money to this revolutionary guy he’s never met named Lenin, and then becomes his sort of, you know, second in command, if you will, once the Russian Revolution takes over. And when Lenin dies, he becomes the de facto leader of the Soviet Union – Stalin.
CB: Okay.
NDB: So there is a pattern. There is, you know, yeah, the Corsican who rules France or the Georgian who rules Russia, or the Austrian who rules Germany. There is, you know, something to that.
CB: Right. So there’s definitely instances of this in the past of somebody that moves from a different country or a different region and then rises up through the ranks to become the leader of that entire country. And this is Hitler doing that in 1913 during a Venus retrograde in Aries year.
NDB: That’s right. Yeah. In May of 1913, Venus was going retrograde from Taurus to Aries, just as it had been 24 years earlier when he was born. So yeah. That’s happening, but the amazing thing to me is during that same month in May of 1913, within about two weeks of each other, Charlie Chaplin is doing a vaudeville theater tour of the United States, and he’s in Philadelphia. And he gets a telegram inviting him out to Hollywood to participate in this new art form that’s developing out there, this moving pictures thing that, you know, is starting to catch on. So he is invited to Hollywood at first to sort of act in this director Mack Sennett who was an early pioneer of silent comedy movies. So first he goes to be in Mack Sennet’s movies, but within a year or two, in a very short time, Chaplin realizes he could be a better director and winds up becoming – and he becomes a huge success and a film director, and really quite an innovative one as well.
CB: Right. So this is – he’s in New York when he gets the invite, right?
NDB: Philadelphia, I think. Philadelphia.
CB: It’s like he’s acting in – Philadelphia, okay.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: So he’s acting, he’s doing like, acting on the east coast. How long has he even been in the US for at this point?
NDB: He’s done several tours. I think this is like, his third tour. His first tour of the US was in 1910, so this was something he was doing as part of work, you know. It wasn’t uncommon. Vaudeville —
CB: Okay.
NDB: — had a tradition in England and America, so it was the kind of thing where you did get these, you know, touring companies coming over and traveling from city to city and doing their shows, you know. Cinema was only just becoming a thing, so this really was the main entertainment of the day.
CB: Got it. Okay. So this is like, acting on the east coast, and then he gets this, he gets scouted and he gets this invitation to come to Hollywood. And then he would become this pivotal figure in Hollywood of not just the highest paid actor, but also somebody that changes and sets new norms in Hollywood, including starting major – I mean, it’s basically the Hitler’s equivalent of like, basically —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — his destiny was to rise into this leadership role of Germany, and he moves to Germany at that time. Chaplin’s destiny was to rise into prominence in Hollywood, and he moves to Hollywood under the same Venus retrograde; that’s crazy.
NDB: Yeah. Exactly! That’s kind of the way this whole, you know, narrative is gonna unfold is just the two of them are experiencing – largely, for the most part – very similar things at the same time. Certainly, I mean, this is, you know, a very strong example of that. Because yes, I mean, Charlie Chaplin is as important to cinema as Hitler is to, you know, 20th century geopolitics. I mean, it just, you know, virtually defines it. Virtually, you know, yeah. You know, just the face of The Little Tramp is as iconic as anything that we get from the second World War. So it is a big deal for Chaplin to be going to Hollywood, or to be invited to Hollywood, and go there, and for Hitler to be going to Munich, going to Germany. You know, moving there for the first time at that same month when it’s a Venus retrograde return of their natal Venus retrogrades. Yeah. It’s, you know, it is amazing.
CB: Yeah. That’s extraordinary. So quick digression about Venus retrograde periods – the Venus retrograde lasts for 40 days once Venus stations retrograde before it stations direct. But there’s also a broader period where you can extend that based on the shadow periods. Like, the pre-retrograde shadow period and the post-retrograde shadow period. And that’s one I like to focus on a lot.
There’s also one of the ways that I conceptualize it is that the Venus retrograde is also experienced as if it’s like, a long transit of Venus through one sign or sometimes two signs if the retrograde crosses a sign boundary which extends it. Because then you’re having like, an extended Venus transit in a certain part of your chart, and like, for example, this year because Venus goes retrograde in Aries and it goes back to Pisces, that means that the entire period of Venus transiting those two signs will actually last for about six months from Venus going into Pisces on January 2nd all the way until Venus departing from Aries for the last time on June 5th. So that’s like, a huge chunk of time, sort of with the retrograde as like, the nucleus – the most important point in the middle – the actual retrograde. But there are surrounding periods of importance around it, and you’ve also identified another important one, which is the period of maximum elongation, right?
NDB: Yeah. Well, what I found – because again, the cycle of Venus is so symmetrical. So I found that if I took, if you take the whole eight-year Venus cycle and divide it into parts, you can get this very even part if you go from one maximum elongation of Venus to the other where there’s a retrograde in between. The first greatest elongation, which is actually eastern – no, sorry, western. It’s kind of counterintuitive in terms of what the greatest elongation is. But it precedes 50 days before the station. Then you get the 40 day retrograde. And then 50 days after the direct station, you have the other greatest elongation. So these are the two periods when Venus is at the greatest distance from the Sun. And therefore it’s, you know, close to its brightest glow. And that’s another element, I think, to this period – the Venus retrograde indeed it is going back and forth through degrees, but it’s also radically changing in speed and in visibility, you know, sort of back and forth. It’s slowing down; it stops; it accelerates retrograde, and then it stops again. And at the same time, it’s coming in and out of visibility. It’s disappearing from the western sky; it’s rising in the eastern sky. So over the course of a fairly short period of time, it’s transforming again and again over the course of that fairly brief period.
So yeah, I do look at about a 146 day period where that goes from greatest elongation to greatest elongation with the retrogrades in between. And if I do that, you’re literally cutting out just like, a perfectly even five percent of the total Venus cycle. In other words, like, even this phenomenon is proportional and symmetrical and very easy to measure. So that’s, I mean, that’s the beauty of the cycle. It almost like, allows you – not unlike the way the solstices and the equinoxes give us this very natural even way to divide the ecliptic, you know, up against something. The Venus cycle has its own way of just being divided very evenly and you can study its cycle in these different parts that are basically all the same size. You know, 20 equal parts.
CB: Yeah. I was noticing that the other nice when I went for a walk at night, and I looked up in the sky, and Venus was super, super bright, and it was conjoining the Moon and Saturn because that’s, you know, they’re all clustered —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — in Pisces the other night. And once Venus moved into tropical Pisces, it’s applying to a conjunction with Saturn in Pisces as well, and Venus is just like, super, super bright because it’s getting ready to go retrograde, and therefore when it stations retrograde, it’s getting as far away from the Sun as it can. So therefore, its brightness gets increased.
NDB: Exactly. So yeah, if you think of that very special 146 day period, you’re think of Venus being very at its furthest distance from the Sun on one side, then approaching the Sun but then, you know, I mean, sort of pass the Sun, reaching its greatest point, going retrograde, coming back to the Sun in the retrograde, making the interior conjunction, then it continues and finally stations direct. But the Sun keeps going, and so Venus winds up being, again, at its greatest elongation from the Sun on the other side. And all of this in a very short period of time. So in 146 days, there are the two greatest elongations that it makes from the Sun on either side of the Sun, and the retrograde, and the different levels of brightness and visibility and invisibility and setting in the west, rising in the east, all that happens in this fairly short period of time. Whereas the rest of the time, Venus is, you know, fairly static. I mean, there is the exterior conjunction with the Sun as well. But apart from that, it’s generally, you know, visible and generally consistent in its speed. So it is this really sort of special period where Venus goes through all these transformations very quickly.
CB: Yeah. So you have a whole separate video about your system for dividing the Venus cycles and classifying them based on the different retrogrades; it’s on your YouTube channel, right?
NDB: Yeah. I have a video called “Introduction the Venus Synodic Cycle,” and it explains how I break down the Venus cycle into these parts, into this system, that you can study independently of each other that each have their own sort of character, apparently. And yeah, it’s a very interesting way of first of all that helps you sort of work with the Venus cycle and follow it over long periods of time. And yeah, it also just sort of, you know, helps you follow things like transits of this nature. Nativities like we’re studying today, where the life really seems to be almost timed by the recurring returns, eight year returns, of Venus.
CB: Right. Okay. So people can check that video out for more information about that. But okay, so to bring it back to our current topic – because I just wanted to mention that in terms of, you know —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — that we’re focused on the Venus retrograde, the 40 days is the nucleus of our time period, but there’s also a broader spectrum that extends outside of that. So people can look at that episode, or I’ve done other Venus retrograde episodes. I did a major one with you and Patrick in the past where we talked about some of this as well. So let’s get back to our narrative.
So Hitler moves to Germany under this retrograde in 1913, and Chaplin moves to Hollywood. So then yeah, so what’s next after this in our story?
NDB: Well, that’s the beauty. We’re gonna jump ahead eight years! And so, like, when we left the two of them in 1913, one of them is a, you know, homeless guy who’s just moved to a foreign country, and the other guy is like, this, you know, theater rat who’s gotten this dubious invitation to go across the continent and work in this new industry that doesn’t have the greatest reputation at the time. You know, it’s thought to be a kind of disrespectful or, you know, not a respectful profession, shall we say.
But in those intervening eight years, Chaplin’s gonna become a huge movie star quite quickly. So much so that by the time Venus goes retrograde in 1921, the next time it goes retrograde in Taurus to Aries in 1921, he’s already worked for a number of different film studios. He started United Artists in 1919. He’s been married and divorced already once, and he’s getting ready to get married again, which is gonna go even poorly – you know, it’s gonna be even worse for him. And yeah, you know, a lot has changed just in those eight years.
Hitler in the meantime, of course after he moved to Munich in 1913, he evaded the Austrian draft because he didn’t wanna fight for the Austrian army. But he very enthusiastically signed up for the German army. In fact, there’s even a famous photo of Munich on like, August 1st, 1914, when war between Britain and Germany was declared, and Hitler’s face has been identified as one of the faces in the crowd who are just thrilled that Germany’s gonna be, you know, fighting a war. And I mean, Hitler just had some funny ideas about nationhood and race, as we probably know. And so he had ideas about, you know, the German nation being the real nation of the German race, whereas Austria was this, you know, empire of different nationalities, and he saw that as some kind of travesty. This is Venus retrograde stuff. Like, you know, “This isn’t the way things should be; I think things should be that way!” You know, just that sort of attitude.
So it, you know, he winds up fighting with the German army in the first World War. And he is decorated. He’s a runner; he’s a messenger. So he does a lot of stuff that’s, you know, that puts his life on the line. And so he’s decorated for bravery. And he’s, when the war ends in 1918 for Germany, he’s recovering; he’s been blinded temporarily in a gas attack and he’s in a hospital with bandages on his eyes, and he finds out that Germany has surrendered, or has signed an armistice, rather. Has not surrendered, but signed an armistice. And he’s just, he’s devastated and really distraught.
But the thing is he eventually, you know, recovers his eyesight, and even though he was this – you know, when he got to Germany before the war, he was this homeless Austrian dude who, you know, didn’t have a job and was kind of nuts. But because he’s now a decorated war hero, he’s taken seriously by Munich society. Right? I mean, this is, you know, the whole attitude changes. He’s got medals on his chest. So he’s being invited into, you know, different circles. And he’s recruited as a spy. You know, there was an attempted Communist revolution in Germany in 1919 as the war was ending, a sort of extension of the Bolshevik Revolution. And so Hitler is assigned to spy on this political radical group and attend their meetings and report on them.
This happens in 1919 in the summer during a Venus retrograde, but within a year and a half, by the next time Venus goes retrograde in Taurus to Aries in 1921, he’s now a member of this group. No longer spying on them, but basically just about to take over leadership. It’s in this period in 1921 that he gives speeches to large groups. He’s been giving speeches in little, you know, basement meeting halls or what have you. But starting in the spring of 1921, he’s really starting to get a claim as a public speaker for this, you know, National Socialist party that he’s joined. And by the time that the retrograde is just ending in 1921, he basically takes over leadership of it. And it’s, I believe, during this retrograde that people start calling him “Fuhrer,” as I’ve read. So you know, even though he’s not gonna be the leader of Germany for more than 10 years away, in fact it’s a full – at this point, he’s a full Jupiter cycle away from being the Fuhrer of Germany – but they are starting to call him that just in the party.
CB: Got it. So this is the next Venus retrograde; it’s in 1921 in like, the —
NDB: That’s right.
CB: — the spring and like, the first and early second quarter of 1921. And he starts giving these big public speeches and basically rises into a leadership role of the Nazi party, which that’s like, the great irony is that Hitler was sent as a spy to spy for the current government of Germany on the Nazi party because they were suspicious about it. But then he ended up like, joining it, and then very quickly becoming the leader.
NDB: Yeah. And discovering that he had a talent for public speaking. You know. Which is an interesting thing when you think about like, Chaplin is famous for being a mime, right? Like, you know, silent movies, not speaking. Whereas Hitler, you know, really could only do one thing well, which was give speeches. So it’s kind of… There’s an ironic twist there as well, I think.
CB: Well, there’s an element of like, theatrics to both of them, because it makes me think of like, you know, the hand movements that Hitler would do, but also like, those famous pictures. Those like, behind the scenes pictures of that photoshoot he did where he was like, trying on different like, poses and things like that.
NDB: Right. Yeah. Well, not to mention, you know, if you’ve seen, you know, those movies of the Nuremberg rallies. I mean, they are like the early rock concerts. I mean, you know, these lighting and staging that was just unprecedented. The idea of having these big searchlights, and I mean, it’s very dramatic those rallies, you know? So yeah. Early use of the PA system – I mean, using this very new technology to amplify the voice. Not in 1921, but as he develops his speaking career. The rallies have this sort of very – you’re right – very theatrical, very cinematic, you know? The film director Leni Riefenstahl sort of directed this, you know, parade, you know, this show, so that it would show up well in cinema. So all these dramatic lighting and what have you was meant for the film cameras. But it also just becomes a very, yeah, theatrical experience in and of itself, albeit one with a rather nasty tone.
CB: Right. Yeah. But I don’t know – two people that are very aware of Chaplin and Hitler, the impact of film as an artistic, a mode of artistic expression, but the power of that to capture sort of like, hearts and minds to some extent.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: And who both used it to great end. So I meant to show this list of dates that I put together for Venus retrograde in Aries over the past century. And we’re not gonna hit all of these today, but just to show you where we’re at – we’re at 1921. This is when Hitler starts giving these big speeches and moves into this leadership role with the Nazi party, and that’s eight years after the previous Venus retrograde in Aries when he literally just like, moved to Germany during that time. So that’s already just within his individual biography like, a stunning connection and repetition, and that’s one of the things I wanted to emphasis with this episode that people should pay attention to in terms of Venus retrogrades in general, but also in terms of this upcoming retrograde that sometimes Venus retrogrades can connect two successive sets of events in eight year periods in your life, that there may be a connection or a repetition or an echo of something that happened eight years earlier when Venus again goes retrograde in the same spot in your chart. And that’s especially the case if you were born under or near that actual retrograde that’s about to happen, because then it sets it up as a signature in your chart. But just in general, it’s always a good idea to look at those eight year repetitions regardless.
NDB: Yeah. You know, it’s true – someone’s born close to that particular retrograde, that’s one of the things you’ll follow; that’s what we’re doing with Chaplin and Hitler. But I mean, even if you just, if you have an Aries Ascendant or an Aries Midheaven, you know, in the early degrees – that means every eight years over the course of your life, Venus has always been making a retrograde transit over that part. You know, that part of your chart. And if you’re paying attention, it will speak to you. It will tell you something about that you understand about your life, but only you understand about your life. But that timing interval will really teach you something about your astrology that I think no astrologer can actually duplicate for you. It’s understanding your life and your chart at a very different level.
CB: Right. For sure. All right, so that’s Hitler. What is going on with Chaplin in 1921?
NDB: Well, we mentioned Chaplin’s mother. It’s in the spring of 1921 when Venus goes retrograde that Charlie and his brother Sydney finally manage to bring their mother to America from England where she’s been in an asylum all that time, the whole time that he’s been working his way up in show business. Yeah, their mother has been, you know, in some care facility, and they now have enough money where they can buy her a nice house and she can just sort of, you know, live her last years out comfortably. But it does, you know, because she is struggling with mental illness, and Charlie’s a very public figure, you know, again that Venus retrograde – this is, you know, today I think we understand mental illness as not something that should be a topic of shame or what have you, but in those days, again, it’s just sort of an automatic disgrace of some kind or it’s perceived as such.
So Chaplin is very – you know, on the one hand, he wants to do right by his mother. On the other hand, he’s kind of embarrassed and, you know, doesn’t really wanna spend time with her. And it’s ironic in that within a few months of her getting to America and then setting her up in a house, he goes to England for the first time for like, a big English tour. It’s almost like he, you know, can’t get far away enough from her. So it is a complicated relationship. He loves her enough to get her a nice house, but he’s also kind of like, yeah. I mean, he hasn’t known her most of his life, too, I suppose, is the thing.
CB: So but he’s at the point in his career where he’s well off enough that he can finance stuff like this because in the intervening years, eight years between 1913 when he moved to Hollywood and 1921, he became like, the highest paid actor in Hollywood. He became mega successful, maybe the most visible actor at that time during the course of that decade. So very rich and famous. He starts a movie studio. At one point, I heard he was getting paid like, 10,000 dollars a week or something like that.
NDB: Right. In 1919 dollars —
CB: Right.
NDB: — so that’s a lot of money.
CB: Which is crazy. Yeah.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: So —
NDB: Yeah, that’s just it. I mean, he’s huge. Yeah.
CB: So he’s huge at this point. Is there anything else in the 1921 that’s relevant to know?
NDB: Well, I mean, he did – he was burned on a movie set, you know, which made the papers, and it may or may not have had something to do with Venus retrograde. I don’t know of any other instance of him being injured on the set; it’s just something I noticed happened around then. No, but you know, aside from that, I think the big thing was just yeah, settling with his mother and then, you know, running off to England. You know, going back to England for the first time since he’s been in America making his fame and fortune. So yeah, it’s an interesting move on his part to do that.
CB: In the notes, you say that his mother was detained on arrival in the US?
NDB: Yeah. Well, because, you know, I mean, until Charlie and Sydney could go and say, “Oh, no, she’s our mother; she’s coming with us,” I can just imagine what a British woman who spent maybe the past two decades or so in some institution and then, you know, sails across to America, they’re gonna have some questions. But it eventually – yeah, it went through. But this is the kind of thing – I mean, I think the reason she was detained is, you know, it was clear that she wasn’t in the best mental health. And so that raises eyebrows. And this is the kind of thing Charlie’s embarrassed about.
CB: Got it. Okay.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: All right. So that’s 1921. So then we jump forward eight years to 1929.
NDB: Yeah. 1929 is kind of thin in this example. It would have been perfect if Chaplin had met – not Chaplin – if Hitler had met Eva Braun during the Venus retrograde, but he didn’t. He didn’t meet her until October. But he started working with —
CB: October of later that same year?
NDB: Of later that same year. But he did start working – he met her, she was the assistant to a photographer that he worked with, and he did start working with that photographer in April. But yeah, I don’t know that much about the 1921 retrograde for Hitler, other than like, he’s rebuilding the Nazi party. I think they do win some significant regional elections during that time.
And for Chaplin, he’s at the very first Academy Awards, which is, you know, that’s something that we’ll probably cover in the broader episode because there are some very interesting Venus retrograde stories with the Academy Awards. But in this instance, you know, it’s best to go to 1937; I just don’t have much for 1929 for either of them, other than the Academy Awards —
CB: No, I mean, I don’t wanna skip that; that’s really important, the Academy —
NDB: Oh, okay.
CB: The very first Academy Awards occurred in —
NDB: The very first Academy Awards —
CB: — 1929?
NDB: Yeah.
CB: And he’s Charlie Chaplin.
NDB: He’s Charlie Chaplin. He’s there. At this point, they’re not, you know, they’re not the big deal that they’re going to become. The idea is for, you know, Louis Mayer to throw a little party and people give speeches, and they, you know, all decide what’s the best movie of the year. It’s gonna grow over the years. And in fact, it’ll be eight years later, the ceremony in 1937, which I guess is the 9th Academy Awards, is the first one where they have like, the categories are set and named, and there’s five contenders for every and then a winner out of those five. So it becomes the Academy Awards that we know, like, the context, the structure, eight years after this one at the next Venus retrograde in 1937. But this is the very first one, and yeah, you know, this is the initiation chart for the Academy Awards, this date in 1929, and there certainly is, you know, it’s an affair that is associated with glamor and sort of the very best of show business ostensibly, you know? So there is something interesting to that. And of course, there’s —
CB: Yeah.
NDB: — you know, it’s ostensibly an appreciation of the arts. You see in the original Oscar chart that Venus coming out of the – or just, yeah, it’s just stationed direct. It stationed direct five days earlier. So it’s a very slow-moving, solid Venus in the 5th house in that chart, and it’s, yeah, it’s a love of the arts, but it is Venus in Aries. Film is not a respectable art form just yet. So there is an element of that. That it’s something kind of, I don’t know, lowbrow. I mean, this was a time when people really thought about respectability in a whole other way. And these are the politics of Venus; Venus is very much the planet of social respectability or, you know, whatever the opposite of that is. So I think you get an element of all those things in this chart.
CB: Right. And he – I mean, Charlie – one of the things that’s interesting about this, because he attends the first Academy Awards in person and then many years later – and we’ll get to this – but that he would eventually receive an honorary Academy Award.
NDB: Yeah. That’s a really heart-wrenching moment. I mean, well, yeah, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, because you gotta understand the context for it to really hit.
CB: Okay. Yeah, yeah. So really quickly I did a search really quickly; I used Google Gemini – Google’s AI – just to run a quick search, because it’s 2025, and that’s what you do. And it said for Hitler in 1929, it said that the Nazi party performed poorly in the 1928 elections, but that the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 played into Hitler’s hands, and he seized the opportunity to capitalize on economic hardship and social unrest, blaming the government and using anti-semitic rhetoric to gain support so that it says that he ramped up his public appearances and propaganda efforts in the first half of 1929, and his fiery speeches and charismatic personality attracted a growing following. The Nazi party began to gain momentum and attracted more members and more resources. So this is partially like, a repetition of his like, 1921 stuff where he first starts giving these big speeches and really moving into this leadership role and attracting so many people that he’s sort of like, I don’t know a better word for like —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — hypnotizing or whatever with these speeches and this rhetoric. And now he’s like, ratcheting it up to another level in 1929.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, I was, you know, I was aware of the sort of the general circumstances of where he is. I just didn’t have like, a specific, you know, event like this happened that it’s not like, moving to Munich or giving his first big speeches or things like that. But yeah. That —
CB: Right.
NDB: — mind you, the stock market doesn’t crash until, you know, late October of 1929. So in the spring of 1929, the economy hasn’t crashed just yet. He might still be ramping up those appearances because they did – I know they did do poorly in 1928, and they’re gonna do quite well in 1930. So that is an important turning point, certainly. But yeah, I just didn’t know of like, you know, one specific thing that he was doing in the spring of 1929. But it is —
CB: Yeah, well that’s —
NDB: — he’s on his way up at that point, yeah.
CB: And that’s gonna be one of our issues, because we’re focusing on singular events here, but realistically when you live through a Venus retrograde, you realize that it’s usually a sequence of events that are playing —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — out over a month or a month and a half of the actual retrograde or sometimes a longer period of like, a few months when you include the shadow periods and the time it takes to transit through both the sign that it’s retrograding in or however long it stays there that it’s usually like, a sequence of several events that are like, playing out over the course of this period of time. So that’s one of the things that are a little tricky.
NDB: Yes, absolutely.
CB: Yeah. And then with Chaplin, it just says that he was struggling because talking films were becoming really prominent —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — at that point. And as a silent film star, by 1929, he was really struggling with it.
NDB: Yeah. He would still make two more silent films – his two best, City Limits and Modern Times. Modern Times makes brilliant use of sound, while he’s still playing the silent Tramp character who only at the very end of the movie does sing a song, but he sings it in a gibberish language. So like, you hear his voice, but he doesn’t actually say any words that mean anything in any language. So it’s kind of a brilliant finish to the film. But he makes amazing use of sound in creating that film. Again, he’s such an innovator. The sound design is really, you know, for the era really advanced.
And there’s a great little sort of story of how he came to make Modern Times. He made another trip to London in 1933, and Gandhi was in town at that time, and Gandhi had heard – Gandhi had never seen a movie in his life, but he had heard about this man who made these, you know, movies who made the whole world laugh, and so Gandhi wanted to meet him and Chaplin was like, you know, yeah, I’ll go meet him! So he goes to see Gandhi where Gandhi is staying in London. And Gandhi is, you know, sitting in this room on the floor, and he’s spinning his spinning cloth wheel, and Chaplin says, “Why are you spinning that spinning cloth wheel?” And Gandhi says, “Well, you know, the British empire has ruined India’s economy, and so I’m encouraging, I’m doing this to encourage Indians to make their own clothing so that they’re not being exploited by the British empire.” And the whole idea of like, he says technology is ruining more specifically. And so Chaplin starts thinking about technology and how technology is ruining his livelihood right now. And so he makes Modern Times as a sort of political movie in part inspired by his encounter with Gandhi. So I think that’s sort of like, and that is his last great silent film. The next film he’ll make is The Great Dictator at the end of the decade, which is, of course, lampooning Hitler himself.
CB: Right. Okay. So anyway, so he was… Yeah, attending the Academy Awards. The rise of this new medium that’s challenging his own, the supremacy of that he’s established of his own like, dominance of the medium up to that point. Yeah. So film’s just moving into a new era then, so it’s not just – it’s like, talking films are coming in, and that’s starting to usher in a new era by the late 1920s. But also if the first Academy Award like, ceremony’s taking place in 1929, that’s also ushering in a new era of film.
NDB: That’s right. Yeah. Oh yeah, the industry is about to change. So even though he’s about to make two of his best movies, he’s making them, you know, he knows as the Sun is setting on what he can do with the Tramp character. You know, timing’s running – if anything, I mean, he sort of – he and Greta Garbo are the two silent film stars who manage to just like, extend their silent careers a little longer because they’re popular enough that they can do that. But eventually, you know, they do have to cave in and adapt. And you know, she adapts quite well for a few years at least, and he manages to keep doing what he does, but the Tramp character really was his, you know, main deal until it just, you know, became… Yeah, an anachronism of the industry.
CB: Got it. All right. So let’s jump forward eight years to the next one, which was a Venus retrograde in Aries in 1937.
NDB: Yeah. As we get to 1937, the retrogrades really are wandering further into Aries by now. I think spending probably a bit more time in Aries than Taurus by this point, because they always gradually recede with every eight year return.
So in 1937, for Hitler, the Venus retrograde is the bombing of Guernica, which is basically the first use of what is going to be called blitzkrieg. You know, that was a term the British came up with later, but the manner in which German planes sort of carpet bomb a given region was, you know, a new development in warfare. So the Spanish Civil War was happening between a sort of a very communist republican faction and then a more monarchist conservative militaristic faction. And Stalin was to some degree helping the communist faction, although not as much as he could have, which is what inspired Orwell to write Animal Farm. But Hitler assisted Franco, the Spanish fascist leader, and sent planes to bomb Guernica, which is in the north of Spain; it’s part of the Basque country, which has always been resistance enough anyway to centralized Spanish authority. And yeah, it’s a real travesty; it inspired the great painting by Picasso. But it was the first instance – Hitler had been, you know, he’d invaded Austria and Czechoslovakia and all that. But this was a very different thing to just sort of fly planes in and bomb people without, you know… Yeah, I mean, even Austria, all he did was he went in there with tanks, which wasn’t nearly as violent. So it was a foreshadowing of the kind of thing that Hitler would be doing as the second World War erupted.
CB: That’s… That’s really striking that Picasso – because Picasso started painting Guernica in May of 1937. And so it’s striking that he started painting that, which became one of his most paintings, which was based on this war crime or this atrocity that occurred under that Venus retrograde in Aries. So there was a provocative like, piece of art basically that came out —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — of this period.
NDB: That’s exactly right. That’s a great example of Venus retrograde and the art – because Venus retrograde is sort of provocative, and it can be sensational, but certainly it’s meant to sort of break some rules. This is what Venus retrograde’s all about is like, sort of changing things. Which in society can often be an uncomfortable process, but in the arts, it’s kind of what you want, you know? You want your great art to do that much of the time.
There was also – Jean Renoir made this film, The Grand Illusion, which was an anti-war film, and that came out around this time in 1937 – also very critical of Hitler. When Hitler invaded France, the first thing he wanted to do was destroy every copy of The Grand Illusion. Renoir was the son of the great painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the impressionist, and he was an incredible filmmaker. So there were these, you know, you had Guernica, you had The Grand Illusion, you had these works of art that were provocative, that were making statements that, you know, that certainly Nazis didn’t like and other authoritarians didn’t like. And that is very Venus retrograde, indeed.
There’s a great story about once the Nazis did go into Paris, and of course Picasso lived in Paris, they went into his studio – this is probably, you know, just apocryphal, but it’s a great story. The Nazis go into Picasso’s studio and they look at Guernica and they say, “Did you do this?” And he goes, “No. You did this!” You know, great little moment there. But yeah, that’s, you know, that is Venus retrograde in the arts. It is meant to do that. That’s its function.
CB: Yeah. I aspire to have a quip like that some day, one of these days.
NDB: Yeah!
CB: We’ll see. Yeah.
NDB: Bring it on.
CB: So 1937 – Hitler’s consolidating power, purging the Nazi party from any remaining opposition. He is making – Germany’s making economic progress, but he’s also like, preparing for war behind the scenes.
NDB: That’s basically it, yeah. That’s the long and short of it. Of course, you know, Hitler bombs Guernica thinking Franco’s gonna be his ally, but you know, Franco’s gonna bow out. He’s gotten what he needed by the time the second world war proper breaks out.
CB: Okay.
NDB: Although – yeah. I was just gonna say in many ways, the Spanish Civil War, you can see it as being part of the second World War, but it’s also obviously separate in its own way.
CB: Right. So what happened with Chaplin during this time?
NDB: Chaplin at this time – so he’s done with the Tramp. He does – I don’t think he’s come up with, you know, The Great Dictator just yet or maybe he’s starting to think about it. But it’s in 1937 that he sells his interest in United Artists. It was a company he founded with two other movie stars, his friends Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, and the three of them decide, you know, they’ve had it with film studios. I guess they all sort of see themselves at this point as being kind of “has-beens” anyway, so might as well cash in. They’re not big movie stars anymore; they’re from another era. So they sell off this studio. They had founded United Artists during the Venus retrograde or close to it in 1919, in the summer that the one that happened in Virgo to Leo – or just in Virgo in those days. And here they were, they were selling it during the Venus retrograde in Aries. So it’s interesting. Yeah, Hitler’s consolidating power; Chaplin is sort of, you know, in a chrysalis stage I suppose. You know, he knows his past is behind him, and he’s still, you know, sort of the future is not quite clear yet. But eventually, he knows what he wants to do, and that is to play Hitler in a movie. You know, to do a Hitler satire.
CB: Right. Yeah. Apparently he was like, working on that in – he’s already developing that film targeting Hitler, which would be his first true sound and major departure from his usual like, comedic style.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, there is comedy in it. Yeah. Like I said, Modern Times has sound in the film; it has synchronized sound in the film. It just, he doesn’t give any like, dialogue other than singing a gibberish song at the end. In The Great Dictator, rather, he is playing a Hitler-like character, and he has lines of dialogue. Like, he’s an actor; he’s a speaking actor in film, as one is.
CB: Got it. Okay.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: So but the big thing for Chaplin was just selling his shares in United Artists at that point. So he cashed out, basically?
NDB: Yeah. He’s cashed out. And you know, he is working on the Hitler film, but who knows when it will, you know, how that’s gonna turn out? So.
CB: So he must have become like, wildly rich from selling United Artists, right?
NDB: Oh yeah. Yeah. And you know, he’s enjoying a good life. You know, he’s sailing with his friends and playing tennis, and you know, enjoying the life of a wealthy former star. He does have strong left-wing leanings, and by this point, he’s certainly – he’s under regular supervision of the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover takes a strong dislike to Chaplin back in the ‘20s. So even though he’s a multi-millionaire, he’s quite the lefty. And he gives money to left-wing causes and he, you know, hosts dinner parties to raise money for these kinds of causes. Yeah, he’s becoming kind of a political radical and putting himself in the crosshairs of the sort of the anti-communist movement in the United States. And it doesn’t help that even though he’s been living in the United States all this time that he’s never become an American citizen. You know, as opposed to Hitler, who became not just a German citizen but the leader of the country.
CB: Okay.
NDB: And these things will come back. We’ll be getting back to this soon. This —
CB: Yeah. Just looking, it says that even though the movie – Chaplin’s movie – Modern Times was released in ‘36, he spent the first half of 1937 dealing with the continued fallout as well as the success of the movie where it was a satire on industrialization and social inequality. But that, yeah, some quarters —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — saw it as having communist sympathies. And so he starts – this is like, during that period of like, the Red Scare and increasing paranoia about communism in the United States – so he starts becoming like, under the focus of that partially at this time.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, I think he was already in their sights before he made Modern Times, but yeah. If you’ve seen Modern Times, it certainly is – it casts a skeptical eye on, you know, the Industrial Revolution and technology and worker exploitation is a big theme in it. So yeah. You know, someone watching it in the 1930s could very easily think that, you know, he’s a raging communist because of that movie.
CB: Got it. Okay. All right. So then we move forward and we jump in eight year increments to our next period, which is 1945. So —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — eight years from 1937. I don’t think that much happened in 1935, so we can probably skip this period —
NDB: 1945? Yeah, no, it was, you know, they both just sort of – I think they were both on vacation that whole time!
CB: Right!
NDB: Yeah, no, seriously though. I mean, we know it’s the worst time in Hitler’s life; it’s also the end of it. But it’s also the worst time in Chaplin’s life. Chaplin isn’t having quite the bad time Hitler is, but he’s having a very, very bad time and the worst time of his life.
CB: Let’s start with Hitler, because —
NDB: Let’s start with Hitler, yeah.
CB: — you know, life story wraps up at this point, and it’s —
NDB: Yes.
CB: — slightly more consequential than Chaplin’s was to world events, so in researching this Venus retrograde —
NDB: I was gonna say there was also a very funny meme, you know, a little video of Hitler that you can see that takes place during this period we’re talking about, so yeah. Sorry.
CB: Okay.
NDB: Please continue.
CB: Yeah. So that’s one of the things that I keep coming back to in researching this Venus retrograde that’s coming up in 2025 in the first part of the year is that the most like, consequential time that this Venus retrograde happened in the past century was in 1945 as the war in Europe is drawing to a close, and both the Russians are like, invading Germany from the eastern side of the map, and then the Americans and the British and everyone else is like, invading from the western side of the map. And they’re all closing in on Germany. And then Hitler ends up committing suicide in his bunker, and within days, the war in Europe with Germany is finally over.
NDB: Yeah. I believe the armistice is signed as Venus is stationing direct. So and Hitler has his 56th birthday 10 days before he ended his life. 56 is a multiple of eight; it is a year where you get the Venus synodic return in the chart, and hence Hitler was born during a Venus retrograde, and he ended his life during the Venus retrograde as the war was collapsing around him.
CB: That’s incredible.
NDB: Yeah. The age of 56 is a joint Venus and nodal return. So it’s a Venus synodic return, but also the nodes make a return. I happen to be 56 as we’re speaking right now, so it is, you know, it’s a striking year for that reason. And it does sort of —
CB: Which means that the eclipses recur in that year —
NDB: Exactly.
CB: — in 56, because that’s what we experienced last year that was causing all those weird or coinciding with all those weird repetitions in the political race in the United States last year in 2024 where there were a bunch of connections, like weird repetitions, with 1968. And it turned out that was because of this 56-year repetition of both Venus and the nodes and the eclipses.
NDB: Yeah. You know, on our New Year’s Eve show of 2023, Patrick and I talked about how 2024 looked a lot like 1968. Next thing you know, oh, Columbia University’s being occupied by student. Oh, a Kennedy is running in the election. Oh, the standing president isn’t gonna be running in the next election – all these, you know, “Oh, an attempted assassination” – all these 1968-ish type things. Oh, the Democrats are having their convention in Chicago.
CB: Right.
NDB: Yeah, there were just all these —
CB: And there’s major protests there, and then it’s like —
NDB: Yeah. There was —
CB: And then —
NDB: — a lot of that, yeah.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: So there you go.
CB: So 56, so Hitler basically killed himself shortly after he turned 56 and he was having this not just Venus repetition but also nodal and eclipse repetition from his birth chart.
NDB: That’s right. And he dies the same month that Mussolini is also killed, but also Franklin Roosevelt had died. And you know, we’re not gonna get it into today, but I’m just gonna mention that we can take FDR’s life and trace his life with these Venus retrogrades in Aries, and it’s also very, very powerful. He first gets married in 1905 during the Venus retrograde; he gets his first government job in 1913 during the Venus retrograde. One thing after the other. So his life as well really went, you know, according to that rhythm. But we’ll put that aside for now.
The other thing, I guess since we’re talking about Hitler, is just to mention that eight years after Hitler dies, Stalin will also die during the Venus retrograde in Aries. So like, so many of those World War II leaders are gonna die during Venus retrogrades. When Charles de Gaulle eventually dies, it’ll be when Venus is retrograde in Scorpio. The only one of them who doesn’t die during a Venus retrograde is Winston Churchill, who was born during one – during the one in Sagittarius. So yeah, there’s a lot of Venus retrograde in the second world war that’s very interesting. But certainly, Hitler being born during and dying during the same retrograde transit is really striking. And that was one of the things that sort of drew me into studying this cycle in its own right was just being so aware of Chaplin and Hitler as a pair and how their lives unfolded in this way.
CB: Yeah. I mean, especially for Hitler, that just becomes incredibly striking that it’s like, he’s born under the Venus retrograde cycle in that sign. He moves to Germany under the same retrograde in 1913. He rises to power and starts giving some of his biggest speeches in 1921 during that retrograde, and then eventually like, he ends his life and loses the war by 1945 and like, closes out his story under the same retrograde. And those other two are also important, the intervening two, but just that the bookend there is pretty wild.
NDB: Yeah. Agreed. That’s really something.
CB: So some people just really respond strongly to Venus retrograde cycles, and Hitler was one of them. And it’s also striking that the war, that World War II came to an end under a Venus retrograde, and that’s a striking thing as well.
NDB: Yeah. You know, I mean, the US Civil War 80 years earlier also ended during that same Venus retrograde. And also with the death of a president, and also Abe Lincoln had only just turned 56 when that happened, not to compare him to Hitler, but 56 does come up a lot in these sort of circumstances, you know? Washington was president at the age of 56, so. Nixon and LBJ became president at 56. You know, that Venus-nodal return has a real deep meaning, I think, in a person’s personal narrative. You either sort of arrive or, you know, in Hitler’s case, you fall. But it’s a real sort of moment of truth it seems.
CB: Yeah. And Venus retrograde… Yeah, yeah. Okay. There’s something else I was gonna say, but I can’t remember. So —
NDB: We were gonna talk about —
CB: — let’s —
NDB: — about Chaplin now.
CB: Yeah, we gotta talk about Chaplin. But World War II ends. Oh yeah, that was the last thing I was gonna say – that also means that like, when the Allies and everybody are moving into Germany at the end, that also means that a lot of the concentration camps would have been liberated during under that Venus retrograde that’s happening in 1945 at the end of the war.
NDB: Yeah. The liberation of the camps is happening starting like, January, February, so going into the retrograde. But certainly, yes, a lot of that is. And you know, it’s a startling revelation. In 1945, in April, you know, I think Austin just mentioned this in your forecast episode that it was Venus and Mercury retrograde in Aries in April of 1945, which is what makes it seem even more so like, you know, the period coming up, because Venus and Mercury are going retrograde this year within about two – in less than two weeks of each other at virtually the same degree. And both of them are making their retrograde stations opposite the last solar eclipse. And the following solar eclipse is at the degree of the retrograde station. And then when Venus goes direct in April at 24 Pisces, that’s the degree of the last lunar eclipse, and it’ll be followed by a lunar eclipse that opposes it. So yeah, there are some things about the end of the second world war that remind me of the months to come in March and April of 2025.
CB: Yeah. Well, that’s one of the questions and that’s why I’m researching this, because we can see there’s some like, major geopolitical stuff that’s about to go down in March and April in the world, and I’m trying to look at some of the past ones to see the positive as well as the negative precursors in terms of different things that have happened, including this retrograde. So one of the more positive things, actually, is that the war ended, and so there’s a possible precedent for a war ending or some sort of liberation happening like the 1945 Venus retrograde. But there are other less good ones as well, so we’ll get into that later. So —
NDB: Yes.
CB: — all right. So let’s switch to Chaplin. What was happening with Chaplin in 1945?
NDB: Okay, well, I mean, another thing Chaplin and Hitler had in common is they seemed to be around younger women quite a bit.
CB: Oh yeah, that actually just reminded me – Hitler didn’t commit suicide alone. He —
NDB: No.
CB: — got married —
NDB: With his – yes.
CB: He got married —
NDB: Yes, just before. And then shot her. Yeah, like, almost —
CB: Yeah.
NDB: — right away, yeah.
CB: And then committed suicide. So there’s like, other little element there of the kind of fucked up romantic life of Hitler —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — that has then a parallel with what we’re about to go into with Chaplin.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, that’s just it. There’s a lot I could say about Hitler that, you know, we didn’t have time to get into it. There are a number of young women. There are at least seven young women who either tried or succeeded in ending their lives over him in some way. Eva Braun was his girlfriend, so to speak, but there were others. And one of them was Geli Raubal, who was his actual niece. And it was when she died in his apartment in 1931 people think, you know, no one knows the total truth about the relationship, but whether it was sexual or not, it was certainly inappropriate. But she took her life in his apartment in 1931, almost a full Venus cycle before he invades Poland, like September of ‘31 to September of ‘39. And when she takes her life, that’s when he becomes a vegetarian.
And you know, there’s a whole other – I don’t wanna get into the details, but Geli Raubal was born with Venus retrograde in Cancer and Jupiter in Leo, which is exactly what Hitler’s mother had. Hitler’s mother also had Venus retrograde in Cancer and Jupiter in Leo. So Geli Raubal’s chart is also a strong mirror image of his mother. But, you know, we’re really getting aside here. Long story —
CB: Right.
NDB: — short, both Hitler and Chaplin have a thing for younger women in a very problematic context.
CB: Right.
NDB: I mean, Hitler’s Hitler. So, you know, in his case, it winds up not being the worst thing he’s ever done. But that’s just because he’s Hitler.
In Chaplin’s case, I mean, Chaplin is, you know, an otherwise decent guy, but this is a real problem for him. His first wife was very young, maybe even under 18, and he married her because she was pregnant, and then there was a miscarriage and the marriage fell apart. And then his second wife was also like, a very young girl that he had gotten pregnant, and they got married and they had two sons, one of whom was a few days older than his future fourth wife, but that’s another matter coming up. And then that divorce ended like, in a big scandalous divorce in the 1920s, at a time when that was really embarrassing. This is another thing that sort, you know, turned people against Chaplin was his scandalous personal life. He had a —
CB: Right.
NDB: — reasonably good third —
CB: Like, this was a recurring thing throughout his life is that his —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — inappropriate relationships with women that were way younger than him, even at that time way back then, was viewed as scandalous and that he got a lot of criticism for it and a lot of bad press. And this was one of the things that was happening still back I think under one of the – like, the 1929 retrograde already that he was still dealing with the —
NDB: The second divorce, yeah. The second —
CB: Yeah.
NDB: — divorce. Lita Grey.
CB: Scandals.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Like, because actually “scandals” is one of our Venus retrograde keywords just in general.
NDB: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And this clearly is Charlie’s, you know, Achilles heel so to speak. He does wind up having a third marriage in the ‘30s that, although it doesn’t last, it’s with a woman who’s relatively age appropriate, at least compared to the other three women he marries, and is amicable when it ends. Like, it just ends because they’re growing apart and not because it’s, you know, he’s done something terrible or what have you. But then he finds himself sort of single again in the ‘40s, and he, you know, he starts seeing this young woman. I think her name was Joan Barry. You know, of course since he’s this big film director and film star, you know, the usual line is, “Hey, I’ll put you in the movies.” You know, that old song.
Now, it turns out – I mean, the relationship just doesn’t go well with this woman, but she seems to be… Well, I guess, you know, at least as far as he’s concerned, he comes off as unhinged. It may be that she’s just, you know, very angry at him for being, you know, for rejecting her after she’s given herself to him. But whatever —
CB: Right.
NDB: — the truth of it all is, I mean, there is an episode like, she, you know, shows up on his lawn and is screaming at him. And there’s all these different scenes. Eventually, what happens is she’s pregnant, and she accuses – she’s gonna sue him for, you know, palimony. So there’s this big court case. Now remember, the court case happens in April of 1945. The second world war is ending, and yet like, you know, Charlie Chaplin’s palimony case with this young Joan Barry woman is, you know, in the newspapers with photos and all of this stuff. This is a big story in the middle of all this other stuff happening in the world. And —
CB: But there’s this like, huge scandal and he’s having a public downfall at the same time —
NDB: Public downfall.
CB: — that Hitler’s —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — having a public downfall.
NDB: Exactly. Yeah. Even though 1937 their lives seem to, you know, the retrograde wasn’t treating them necessarily the same way in an identifiable way, we’re back to sort of the 1913 period in the sense that like, the same thing is happening to both of them at the same time, but in their own context.
Yeah, April of 1945 is just terrible for Charlie, because he’s in court trying to defend himself for having gotten this young woman pregnant and then abandoning her. But it gets even a little more insulting to him. He takes a blood test, and it’s proven that he’s not the child’s father, but nonetheless, the judge – because Charlie’s wealthy and older and entitled, and because Joan Barry is young and poor and has a child to feed – the judge nevertheless orders Charlie to pay child support for a child that is scientifically proven not to be his. Some people might think that’s, you know, fair; some will not. Certainly Charlie won’t. And certainly he’s – this is the low point in his life. Like, everything after this is, you know, by comparison better, even though he’s got more suffering ahead.
CB: Okay. So yeah. So that’s a really striking parallel in terms of both of those, and then he’s also still continuing to come – due to his outspoken political views – come under the focus of like, the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover for suspicion about communist sympathies. Because that’s gonna be actually the thing that happens immediately after World War II ends is like, then all of a sudden —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — like, the Cold War like, begins pretty soon after that.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, one thing leads to another. You know, the Soviet Union, the USA have been allies up until that point. But suspicion sets in. You know, the Soviets do one thing; the Americans do another. Everyone sort of doesn’t trust the other. The Americans certainly don’t trust Stalin. So with that in mind, by 1947, Hollywood’s going through a big investigation. There’s supposedly a lot of communists in Hollywood. They have this big hearing in Congress with what they call the Hollywood 10, these different screenwriters and film directors who have their own sort of, you know, tangential connections to the Communist party. And a lot of people are blacklisted. This is part of how Ronald Reagan sort of rises up in the film industry is he’s the president of the Screen Actors Guild. And so he’s sort of, he’s kind of responsible for reporting on which actors are communists or not. And the way he meets Nancy Reagan – her name was Nancy Davis at the time. There was another actress named Nancy Davis who was apparently an accused communist, and so the Nancy Davis who’s gonna become Nancy Reagan goes to Ronald Reagan, the president of the Screen Actors Guild, and say, “Hey, I’m not that Nancy Davis; please clear me.” And so that’s kind of Reagan’s job as the president of the Screen Actors Guild. So he’s a part of all that. Nixon is a congressman who’s making his name in the papers during this period in ‘47, ‘48.
So long story short, yes, Chaplin has, you know, quite open left-wing sympathies. I wouldn’t say he’s an out and out communist, but he’s pretty damn close. He’s definitely a fellow traveler. And Hoover has been gathering a file on him since the ‘20s. You know, J. Edgar Hoover became the head of the FBI in 1924, and I think by then he’s, you know, he’s got his eye on Chaplin. So what happens is Chaplin makes another movie called Monsieur Verdoux about a sort of serial killer; it’s quite good. He bought the idea off Orson Welles. That’s in 1947. He marries Oona O’Neill, the daughter of Eugene O’Neill. She’s 18 when she marries him. Fun twist is she – there was another man who wanted to marry her, and his name was J.D. Salinger, and he becomes very bitter and his whole writing career is kind of based on the fact that Charlie Chaplin stole his girl.
Anyway. He marries Oona O’Neill; they have many children – I think like, seven, eight, nine children? Something like that. Like, a lot more than five – well over five. A few of them are well-known actors. One of them played her own grandmother, Geraldine Chaplin played her own grandmother in the movie Chaplin. She played Chaplin’s mother in the movie with Robert Downey, Jr., when he played Chaplin. And what happens is he’s gonna go to Europe. He sails to Europe in late 1952, ostensibly just to, you know, travel. But he knows things are getting hot for him in the US, and I think he does know, like, his days are probably numbered. And what happens is in 1953 during the spring, he’s in Europe and he founds out that his, you know, he won’t be allowed back into the US. He’s been banned because of his communist sympathies. So even though he’s —
CB: So this is our —
NDB: — been living there – yeah.
CB: So this is our next Venus retrograde is 1953. Retrograde —
NDB: Corect.
CB: — in the spring in Aries, and he tries to – he’s been in Europe. And then he tries to come back, and he gets banned from reentering the United States?
NDB: Yeah. I don’t think he – I’m not sure if he tries to come back. He’s just notified that, you know, if and when he does, he’ll be refused is I think what happens. Or, you know, yeah. Like, he’s already in Europe when he’s informed that he’s been banned from returning.
CB: Right. In the notes, you say that he surrenders his US re-entry visa permit.
NDB: Yeah. Because they demand it. I mean, you know, it’s not like he – it’s a voluntary thing; they’re like, “Give us your reentry permit; we’re not gonna accept it.”
CB: So and the reason for that is because he’s been accused of being a communist basically at that point?
NDB: Yes, hee’s a communist, but also as I mentioned earlier, he never became an —
CB: He’s accused of being a communist.
NDB: He never became an American citizen. Yeah. But he also never became an American citizen, so it’s really easy to ban him from the country. If he had become a citizen, you know, he would have been – you couldn’t —
CB: Right.
NDB: — ban him. You know.
CB: Was that – why did he do that? Was that deliberate on his part? What was the…
NDB: I don’t – you know, I don’t think, he probably just didn’t give it much sort of thought. You know?
CB: Right.
NDB: I mean, after all, like, I mean, think of where he’s from. He’s like this British kid from the slums; he’s not, you know, yeah. I don’t know. I can’t pretend to know his motivation for that. But I can easily imagine that it’s just something that he’s not thinking about; he’s thinking about making movies and meeting young women and, you know, playing tennis and going sailing. It’s not, you know, he’s not thinking about that.
CB: Yeah. I’m just thinking so it’s – you know, he originally went to Hollywood in 1913. He’d already been in the States for two or three years up to that point, so we’re talking about 1953 at this point. We’re talking about 40 —
NDB: 40 years.
CB: 40 years later.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Okay. So that’s, you know, how does he react to that, to being kept out of the country that he had been living in for 40 years up to that point?
NDB: He’s heartbroken. He’s totally heartbroken. And yeah, basically a broken man. I mean, you know, he’s got a lot of money. He buys an estate in Switzerland and, you know, raises his kids, and settles down more or less. He does make a couple more movies. But it really breaks his heart. And it’s only 19 – is it 19? Yeah, it’s 19 years later – so like, an eclipse cycle later – in the spring of ‘72, not during the Venus retrograde. But he’s invited back to the US to accept an honorary Oscar. Funny enough, this happens like, just before J. Edgar Hoover dies! Like, within a couple of weeks. So yeah, and this footage – this is what we were talking about earlier – when he accepts. You know, he goes back to the US thinking he’s been forgotten, thinks no one cares about his movies anymore. And he goes to the Oscars ceremony, and he’s sort of standing offstage as they’re showing a reel of his films, of his film clips at the Oscars just before they bring him onstage. And he’s —
CB: Hold on just a second. The connection’s cutting out.
NDB: Yeah. Oh, sorry.
CB: Hold on just a sec. The connection’s cutting out, so I wanna let it come back so you can tell that story. Okay. So hold on just a – back up. So 1953, he’s barred from the US. Does this end —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — his film career entirely?
NDB: It doesn’t end his film career, but it ends his film career in America. He does make two or three more movies. He directs a movie with Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor, if I remember correctly. You know, he does a bit more, but not much. And he’s, you know, and he’s kind of – you know, by this point, he’s kind of an old man, so his sensibilities are not in touch with the culture. His movies at this point come off as movies that are made by an old man who’s kind of out of touch, I suppose, although they’re not bad in and of themselves. You know, he’s an artist.
But yes, in —
CB: Okay.
NDB: — April of 1972, 19 years after —
CB: What does he do in the intermediate time? So he kind of goes in, he makes a few more like, small films, but otherwise he goes into semi-retirement at this point?
NDB: Yeah, basically. Yeah. He makes two or three more movies. You know, each several years apart, you know, so he’s not like, constantly working by any stretch of the imagination. But yeah, he’s basically living on an estate in Switzerland with his wife and he’s got a lot of kids, and yeah. Just, you know, living life as a retiree, I guess.
CB: Sure. But he’s exiled from the country that he’d been in for 40 years. So then we —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — jump forward almost 20 years to 1972. And this is not a Venus retrograde in Aries period, but it’s nonetheless important in his biography?
NDB: It’s important in his biography. It is in April of 1972, and Venus will go retrograde in Gemini like, six weeks later or something like that. But it’s not the one that we’re talking about. But just to sort of put the story in context, he’s invited back to America to accept an honorary Academy Award. And he at this point, you know, he’s been gone from the US for almost 20 years and he thinks everyone’s forgotten him; he thinks he’s a big has-been and that no one really cares about him, and that they’re just being, you know, kind to an old man. But without – you know, he doesn’t think it’s gonna be that big a deal. But then he gets to California, he’s at the Oscar ceremony, and he’s backstage waiting for them to, you know, invite him onstage to get his award. And they show a reel of his films – like, just some great scenes from his films – which of course are brilliant, you know. And the audience is just loving them; they’re laughing their heads off, and they’re applauding and it’s just a fantastic reception. And he comes out, and they give him this just, you know, glowing standing ovation. And he’s so moved to tears. It’s a very powerful moment. And you can just imagine, you know, having lived there for 40 years, having been exiled for 20. It’s a very, very moving moment. And you know, obviously he had clocked it wrong. He’s still very much a big deal. There’s kind of a renaissance in this period in the ‘70s of his films and also of the Marx brothers. You know, they’re sort of – they’ve been gone so long, they become hip again in a way. And they’re old enough that they can be cool. So yeah, there’s kind of a renaissance, although that’s really it. He accepts his award, and then he goes back to Europe.
Charlie dies on Christmas day in 1977. So he did have —
CB: By the way – hold on. By the way, in early like, ‘69 during the Venus retrograde in Aries, that’s when he started to like, receive renewed recognition and honors. Some of that shift may have started to happen at that point. And then during the one in 1961, he was writing his autobiography. Or in 1961 —
NDB: Right.
CB: — he was writing his autobiography and then would publish it later that same year of that retrograde in 1961.
NDB: Right. Right. I did know that; I have a copy of the book. That’s the book where he tells us he’s born at eight o’clock PM.
CB: Okay. So just filling in those two —
NDB: Yeah. No, thank you. Thank you.
CB: — retrogrades. That’s really interesting that he was like, in this 1961 Venus retrograde that he’s reflecting on his life and literally like, writing his autobiography and like, thinking back and collecting all the things during that period. And then —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — possibly starting in the 1969 one, he starts there might be the move towards that shift of having a re-appraisal of his films and things like that in the new film era of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, there is – I mean, part of it is, you know, the film industry is going through this incredible transformation in 1969, 1970. The kind of movies that had been big hits, that had been, you know, surefire moneymakers just weren’t cutting it anymore. The culture had changed. And then Easy Rider’s gonna come out in 1969, and then of course The Godfather’s gonna come out in ‘72 around about the time that Chaplin comes to accept his award. And yeah, these movies and, you know, French Connection and all these other auteur movies of the early ‘70s are really gonna sort of signify the new Hollywood. But on top of all that, while the Hollywood studio system is crashing, you know, Chaplin and the Marx brothers are seen as these sort of evergreen talents, you know, who were ahead of their time, who had anti-war and leftist messages. You know, I mean, I remember being very small and my parents taking me to see the Marx brothers’ Duck Soup, which is an anti-war movie. The hippies love Duck Soup, and they loved Modern Times. Modern Times, you know, suddenly the message was very contemporary and very sympathetic with the public as it had not necessarily been with everyone in the ‘30s.
CB: Right. It also makes me think of some of those late ‘60s and early ‘70s writers who went to like, film school and stuff like that, and therefore would have studied the film and become very aware of like, the role that Chaplin played and therefore he would have been elevated in their eyes, especially for the more like, educated or like, academically educated film school type people.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, you know, he’s a great film director. He is a great performer, of course, but he’s just he’s simply a visionary film director. You know, he figured a lot of things out, you know, for other people who followed him. So yeah. You know, you’re absolutely right. Film students would be seeing these movies and going, “Yeah, this is the real stuff. I don’t care about, you know, these sappy musicals and romance movies” that were coming out in the ‘40s and ‘50s. “Those are square!” But these old, you know, Chaplin and Marx brothers movies are really hip and visionary and, you know, of the times, of the era.
CB: You know, that’s really funny because that’s the other thing that does come up with Venus retrogrades is retro styles and like, old artistic or like, fashion styles sometimes come back from the past, and they’re — because that was something I realized during the last Venus retrograde in Leo and Virgo is that all retrogrades have this backwards looking orientation and this past-looking orientation of looking into the past. So that’s interesting that that would make sense, that part of that would be looking back to the past in terms of film, and they would have found him right at the beginning of that.
NDB: Exactly.
CB: As well as not just even just to mention like, him eight years before that retrograde, like, writing his autobiography and looking back and reviewing his own past.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: Yeah. It’s a good book, that autobiography, too. You know, it’s yeah. One of the better ones I’ve read.
CB: Okay. So well, yeah, it would be hard… It would be a little tricky because I don’t know how much he would whitewash like, some of his personal life and some of that, the skeezy —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — stuff in terms of that versus a more objective biography that probably would have been more in some ways more critical of some of that.
NDB: Yeah. No, of course. I don’t read an autobiography thinking I’m getting, you know, the whole story. I think I’m getting the story from the horse’s mouth. And then there are other books you can read to get, you know, the fuller story – the one told from the outside as well from the inside. So yeah. I mean, you’re right. You know, there is a limited value to that, and certainly he’s gonna tell you his version of the story and how he feels about things. But number one, that’s really valuable to an astrologer. You can, you know, you don’t have to approve of a person’s position in order to learn about how it’s reflected by the horoscope. You know.
CB: Right.
NDB: So —
CB: Yeah, for sure.
NDB: Yeah. So —
CB: I guess I’m just thinking of perspectives and, like, you know —
NDB: Sure.
CB: I don’t wanna sit down and read like, Mein Kampf to, you know, get too much of a objective view about Hitler’s, even though you can obviously gain a lot of stuff from that. I’m just thinking of —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — the different values of objective versus subjective autobiography and biographies sometimes and the value of both —
NDB: Sure.
CB: — for sure, but for sure —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — you know, reading an autobiography is super important for the subjective experience as well as the inside details of the actual native who lived it.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, you know, if you’re studying the life of Hitler, as one does, then you know, sure, you do read Mein Kampf. But it’s not, you know, you don’t read it because – you know, okay, well, now I know everything I need to know about Hitler. No, it’s just – it’s telling how Hitler thinks, how he expresses himself, what he’s focused on, so that when you’re studying the life, you have that part of – you have his testimony. I mean, that’s what these books are for these men. I mean, it’s their testimony. And you know, you take it as one does. But certainly I’ve read, you know, probably a dozen books about Hitler, you know, that were not Mein Kampf that told me way more than Mein Kampf would. I haven’t read Mein Kampf cover to cover, but I have perused it for exactly that reason. I mean, if you’re studying his life as I do, you know, I study the lives of people that I admire like Chaplin, and I study the lives of people that I detest, frankly, like Hitler. It’s still a worthwhile study, and it’s still worth reading those works, but certainly it’s not like, you don’t wanna base your whole perspective and your knowledge of the person solely on those works. You know, they’re just one contribution that can add something to what you’re putting together. Something valuable, but by no means, you know, the whole picture.
CB: Yeah. For sure. For sure. And then just to bring this story to a close, while it didn’t happen during the retrograde, he actually ended up dying like, later the same year —
NDB: Yes.
CB: — of the next Venus retrograde in Aries. So —
NDB: Yeah. I do have —
CB: — in 1977.
NDB: Yeah. I do have a story relating to that. I don’t have the specific date or the event, so I didn’t give you a chart. But he dies Christmas day of 1977, which is about, you know, eight, nine months – whatever – after the Venus retrograde in the spring of ‘77.
What I do know is he – apparently the last time he appeared in public was at a circus. He just went to see a circus as a spectator. But they, you know, sort of announced his presence in the audience; he’s very old at this point. Geez, he must have been what? 89, I guess. Sorry – 88! Of course, he just turned 88. And so he sort of, he stood up – he apparently did like, a little, you know, a little dance. Something whatever an 88-year-old could muster to entertain a circus crowd, you know. But he put on like, a little quick little show to acknowledge the applause he was getting. Yeah.
CB: Little YMCA dance. Like that?
NDB: Yeah, maybe. Maybe. I’m sure, you know, better than the current dancers to that song.
CB: Sure.
NDB: Although it was probably, you know, getting ready to hit the hit parade in the spring of ‘77. So yeah. Long story short, I believe he made his last basically public appearance during that Venus retrograde in the spring of ‘77 before he died on Christmas day.
CB: Wow. That’s incredible. All right. So his story ends up closing down in 1977 and in a Venus retrograde in Aries year as well. That really takes us through – yeah – most of this list of Venus retrogrades over the course of the past century.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: So that’s incredible. So obviously, there’s more to be researched there; there’s probably more things – there’s other things probably about some of the retrogrades that probably we don’t know about or could have happened, especially in terms of like, internal things, in terms of relationships, in terms of different subjective things that we may not be aware of trying to study somebody’s biography from the outside. But even from our limited standpoint with both of these figures, we can see how they both – their lives were tied in very closely to this specific Venus retrograde sequence. So that’s really striking both as an instance of time twins, of which I’m sure —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — there’s like, many other instances —
NDB: Oh yeah.
CB: — out there. But also as a good example of how those eight year Venus retrograde repetitions can sometimes weave throughout a person’s biography and tie in very important turning points in terms of their overall life story.
NDB: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly right. And you know, thank you for letting me tell this particular story. Like I said, it was one of the first ones that I was looking at when I really stumbled across the Venus synodic cycle and how it operates in this way. So it’s kind of, you know, very close to the origin of all this for me personally. And yeah, it’s a compelling example. I guess also just because, you know, it’s Chaplin and Hitler, you know? I mean, Chaplin certainly had some flaws that, you know, anyone would disapprove of, but there’s no questioning the legacy of his art, which was considerable, and that I’ve always really appreciated. And so the contrast, obviously, with this monster is also just intriguing to follow them through their course and see all those, the parallels relating to the cycles that emerge in both their lives relative to each of their contexts.
CB: Yeah. I mean, it brings up the whole issue of like, that’s discussed so much these days of how much can you separate like, the art from the artist and like —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — you know, how much does the person’s personal life, which can be egregiously bad as it was in Chaplin’s instance, and yet still studying the broader context of their let’s say pioneering work in terms of —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — the history of like, cinema and things like that, and how those two things in his instance actually intertwined, because his personal life and personal views and personal shortcomings and bad things really did in some instances impact the course of his career and his, you know, contributions to film history and things like that.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: So there was an intertwining there between those two things.
NDB: Absolutely. You know. I mean, you couldn’t blame anyone for deciding to just not watch his films because his, you know, his personal life was just objectionable. That’s an understandable choice. I guess, you know, for my part, I saw his movies as a kid, so I was seduced before I could really understand or make that kind of call. And also the conversation was very different when I was young. But yeah. You know, I guess whatever conclusion one comes to, I mean, this is the thing. I don’t – you know, I’m not an amoral person, but when I’m studying astrology, because I do study monsters and then other people who are not, there is some kind of neutral tone I adopt just to study the life and have a space where I’m not thinking about whether the person’s good or bad, but just trying to understand how they see the world, what they’re trying to accomplish, are they successful or a failure at that? How do the transits serve them or work against them? And yeah, there is a sort of surgical level to doing this that you don’t necessarily wanna jump into the pool and participate in the sort of the human level of what you’re looking at. But you’re sort of, you know, as an astrologer, you are looking down on the situation. You’re sort of removed from the whole scenario, especially if you’re studying something historical where everyone involved is dead.
CB: Yeah. For sure. I just don’t want —
NDB: But yeah.
CB: — the objective study of history and the applying from a technical standpoint of astrological cycles to be misconstrued as like, an endorsement or something like that, which obviously it’s not to us when we study these different biographies of famous dictators and like, mass murderers, or even like, serial killers or other things like that, versus… Yeah, the sort of personal judgments —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — that a person makes in terms of ethical and moral things. But this is one of the reasons why Venus retrogrades are tricky to study, because that’s one of the things that comes up is that we do have like, scandals. We do have like, questionable moral or social things. We have taboos is one of the keywords I realized was a good one earlier when we were talking about this, because taboo is a good one because it’s relative to society and whatever the societal —
NDB: The social code, yeah. Yeah.
CB: Right. Whatever the social standards are at the time, sometimes Venus retrogrades can bring up taboos or people that trespass or cross taboos, whatever those are, which may shift or be different in different societies or may shift in different time periods. But nonetheless, relative to that time period, Venus can sometimes set up like, a consensus, and then sometimes Venus retrograde suddenly turns and walks the opposite direction and breaks social convention, sometimes for better or worse. And sometimes this can be in a very like, pioneering sort of progressive way in terms of like, art and culture or politics or other things like that. And other times, it can be in a not good way, or in a regressive way, or in a… I’m trying to think of other keywords, but in a way that’s like, inappropriate or other things like that.
NDB: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I mean, just to come back to the, you know, the astrologer’s role in all of this. You know, I think – like, especially the level to which I get to with these biographical studies where they’re very detailed and sort of intimate, you know, I liken it to say, if you’re a medical practitioner who’s doing an autopsy. And you know, you’re cutting open a body and you’re taking out organs and weighing them on the scale, and reporting the weight of the lungs or whatever into a little recorder. Everything I know about autopsies I learned on TV, of course, but that’s my impression of how it’s done. But the point is, I mean, of course, you know, there’s a corpse in front of you who was once a living human being. There’s all kinds of tragic connotations; it might even be the body of a child or something horrible like that. But your job is to, you know, do the autopsy and not think about those things in that moment. You’re still a human being; you might think about them later, or just in your everyday life there are things that impact you. But when you’re in the act of doing the job, you’re not thinking about these things. You know, it could be the body of some, you know, some dictator in front of you that you loathe, or it could be, like I said, the body of a child who died tragically. Either way, you have a job to do to sort of, you know, get the job done and not let those things impact you at that time. And so that’s – I mean, that’s how I see this kind of historical work. It’s not – I have very strong opinions about Adolf Hitler, you know? And none of them are good. You know, I have people in my family who disappeared on a train to Kiev, never to be seen again, you know? And those impacted my grandfather. So, I mean, I’m touched the way a lot of people are. So it’s not so much that it’s besides the point, but when I’m doing the astrology thing and I’m looking at a life, I can’t be like, “Oh yes, this nasty person,” you know, “did this and did that.” I have to be looking at the chart through the person’s perspective. You know, think of it more like I guess another sort of metaphor is the detective who’s thinking, you know, you’re trying to catch, say, a serial killer, and you’re trying to think like the serial killer in order to catch the serial killer. To do that, you have to first think like a serial killer. So there’s an element of that in what I’m doing. You’re not, you know, becoming someone awful, but you are trying to look at the perspective of different people, how they see the world, including people who are monsters. So I just see it as being part of what we do, and there has to be a certain, yeah, you know, a certain sort of game face that you have when you’re doing it, I think.
CB: Right. I’m sure —
NDB: Does that make sense? I hope that’s understood.
CB: Yeah, no, that’s good. I think that’s good. Cool. So I think this went really well. I think this was good coverage; it was a nice concise coverage of covering just those specific Venus retrograde periods. So we’re gonna continue doing some research and do a followup because there’s lots of other interesting history with this specific Venus retrograde in Aries. So yeah, we’re gonna do some follow ups in order to look at it in other world events and other histories and things like that to continue to provide some context for this upcoming Venus retrograde. But I think this was a nice start. So thanks for doing this with me.
NDB: Yeah. Thank you for having me and giving me the chance to talk about this. It’s an old classic.
CB: Yeah, for sure. This is definitely one of your greatest hits. So where can – you do consultations. Where can people find out more information —
NDB: Yeah!
CB: — about your work?
NDB: Yeah, I’m doing consultations regularly. I can be booked at NickDaganBestAstrologer.com/Consultations, or just go to NickDaganBestAstrologer.com and press the “consultation” tab. Yeah, I’m available for that. I love doing it, and of course, I’m part of the team that’s building Nechepso astrology software that we’re expecting to be launched into the world very soon. Very exciting the things I’m seeing every day as new developments, new things, different parts are – moving parts are attached and come to life, so it’s pretty mind blowing software, and I can’t wait for everyone to see it. So I’m just putting that out there as well.
CB: Nice. Awesome. And you also have a YouTube channel where you have some other videos on Venus retrogrades where I guess people can just search for your name – Nick Dagan Best – on YouTube, and —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — they’ll find a bunch of good videos.
NDB: That’s right. My channel is just called Nick Dagan Best, and I do have – I plan to make a lot more videos. I’ve been, you know, sidetracked by the software making. But there are a bunch coming out. But I made a video about two years ago called “The Introduction to the Venus Synodic Cycle,” and yeah, if you see that video, it’s about 10 minutes long, and it just sort of explains the way I’ve broken down the cycle into this system that I use now that allows me to sort of study the Venus cycle over long periods of time that isn’t merely attached to the zodiac, but follows the cycle itself. So it’s worth learning – very useful for astrologers. In my opinion, every astrologer should know the Venus cycle by heart. It’s not hard to learn. And really, really useful in every context, you know? And as a consulting astrologer, as a researcher, in every facet, it’s just, it’s really fundamental. You gotta know it.
CB: Yeah. I think we’ve certainly demonstrated like, why that is here in this episode. And then in the last Venus retrograde in 2023, I did a series of episodes, so if people wanna learn more about Venus retrogrades, they can also check out our past episode. So you, me, and Patrick did one – episode 405 of The Astrology Podcast – called “Venus Retrograde in Astrology Explained” that’s a very good like, overview episode. Excellent episode, episode 412, with Demetra George that was titled “Inanna, Venus Retrograde, and Barbie” where we talked about how the Barbie movie came out like, the day that Venus stationed retrograde in Leo and how it actually contained weirdly like, the archetype of this ancient Sumerian and Babylonian story about Venus retrogrades connected with the goddess Inanna. And then I also did episode 410, which was titled, “Sharing Venus Retrograde Stories” where a bunch of people like, shared their stories of Venus retrogrades, and there were some repetitions in that, so good to listen to for more info. And then you and me, Nick, are gonna record a follow up here very soon to this episode on Venus retrogrades specifically in Aries. So I’ll release that for early access to patrons through my page on Patreon as soon as it’s recorded, just like I’m doing for this episode, which is gonna be available, like, days or like, a week before I release it to the public. So people can sign up for that for more information.
Thanks for joining me, Nick.
NDB: My pleasure, Chris. Yeah, sign up for his Patreon, because I just had a client the other day who said I should be on The Astrology Podcast more often. I said, “Do you know I’m on every month on the secret episode that’s available to patrons only?” And this person said, “No, I didn’t know that; I’m gonna sign up right now.” So yeah, if you like having me on the show, there’s more Nick behind the curtain if you pony up, so do that.
CB: Yeah, well, and speaking, I’m actually glad you mentioned that because I forgot. That was an episode we just recorded a research session where you and I were talking through Russian history and this specific Venus retrograde in Aries and seeing how important it was for important turning points in the past few centuries of Russian history. So that episode is available exclusively to patrons of The Astrology Podcast as an episode of The Secret Astrology Podcast right now. So people can check that out for more information, but otherwise, I think that’s it for this episode. So thanks a lot for joining me. Thanks, everyone, for watching this episode of The Astrology Podcast, and we’ll see you again next time!
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