Angelina Jolie: How To Be A Hero
From bad girl to mad girl, to femme fatale, to single mother, to philanthropist, to partner, to mater familias: Angelina Jolie’s public profile has evolved dizzyingly over the past two decades. While some celebrities respond to publicity by retreating, Jolie looked the paparazzi cameras dead in the eye and kept on walking straight towards them.
She’s brave. Jupiter-Moon-Mars in Aries.
Her decision to write an op-ed piece in The New York Times about the double mastectomy that she’s undergone this year is another example of both her brilliant handling of her extraordinary fame and her guts. Her choice to have the operation and to talk about it could well save lives, because she truly can be that much talked about thing, a role model.
Looking at her chart, you can see that she’s bound to be known for something more than acting. The magnetic film presence is in the Sun-Neptune opposition, with Neptune in the 5th house of acting. Neptune is, of course, the planet of film and illusion. It’s also the mirror, so her Sun shines right at it.
But the emphasis in her chart is on the Midheaven and the Ascendant. That is her status and her persona and in those she is blessed by the gods. Venus, the goddess of beauty, sits right on her Ascendant exact to the degree, and Jupiter, the king, is also exactly on her Midheaven – to the degree, crowning her with very high status. That’s quite an astonishing double dose of luck, so I checked the provenance of this chart, which gets an AA rating from Astrodatabank. Apparently it’s kosher.
Jupiter on the MC makes her loom large in the public imagination, but that Jupiter also conjuncts her feisty, ferocious Aries Moon. In fact that Moon is moving away from fiery Mars towards Jupiter. Her emotions must be enormous, towering, sudden, violent.
She says that she spent years self-harming with blades and with a partner. This was a pretty literal way of living her chart. Mars rules sharp things, and its proximity to her Moon gives the blade direct access to her emotions. Her 14 or so tattoos are also evidence of the power of sharpness, and drawing blood, for her.
Nevertheless, the Mars-Moon contact comes to the fore again with this latest news. The Moon, because of its rulership of Cancer, rules breasts. Transiting Uranus, the planet one would associate with advanced medical intervention (I’ve seen it with c-sections), is currently at 11° Aries, the midpoint between Jolie’s natal Mars and Moon, and it’s been hanging around this point all spring. Transiting Pluto, the planet of excision, has been squaring that same point from her sixth house of health.
So the Pluto-Uranus square is right at the heart of her chart right now, bringing greater pain, greater fame and greater meaning to her life.
She won an Oscar for this role in Girl, Interrupted. |
Her article about the surgery was published as the Moon moved into Cancer, its own sign, creating a grand trine between the North Node in Scorpio, destiny in the sign of deep surgery, and Chiron in Pisces, the wounded healer in the sign of mass consciousness. What is more, Chiron is currently exactly conjuncting Jolie’s Dark Moon Lilith at 13° Pisces. Chiron is about both scarring and healing.
Jolie has said, in another context: “I find flaws attractive. I find scars attractive.” In fact, she has spoken about scars quite a surprising amount.
In a previous incarnation, her Girl, Interrupted phase, Jolie was embodying the energy of the Lilith. In her natal chart, her Sun and Moon are also both at 13°, square and semi-sextile to Lilith in Pisces. This must be the root of some of her mesmerising, voracious and vulnerable, sexual allure.
Her Sun and Moon, her nature and her core self, also form a so-called Mystic Rectangle with Neptune, the movies, and Pluto, power. This is, of course, not mystical at all, but shows her true temporal power. Jolie has the ability to influence millions of people with her actions and her money. And with this power comes huge responsibility.
Finally, Jolie’s North Node is at 0° Sagittarius, the archer. There’s an eclipse at 4° Sag on the 25th of May, the last of the Gemini/Sagittarius season. Jolie’s Sun is in Gemini and her partner Brad Pitt’s Sun is in Sagittarius. They have been through a rapid evolutionary leap in the past 18 months or so, I suspect.
That North Node, her destiny and life direction, is in the 5th house of children and acting, so that’s good. It makes one exact aspect — to Pallas Athena, the warrior goddess at 0° Aries, the very first degree of the zodiac. This is the pioneering degree, the beginning, the first step, the breakthrough. Women warriors in ancient times, the Amazons, each removed one breast so that it would not get in the way of a drawn bow. And it also makes an aspect to Jolie’s Venus-Ascendant.
For the public, this eclipse definitively marks the end of one type of role she was modelling, and the beginning of the next. Aries MC-Jupiter-Moon-Mars is a hero. Gemini Sun has many faces. Which one will it be this time?
Absolutely fascinating, thankyou!
Hi Christina,
A hero? That’s one way of looking at it – but have a look at Marjorie Orr’s take on this decidedly odd story – http://www.star4cast.com/forum_article.asp?id=1
I have the sense that there are much darker, unconscious forces involved here. Also, isn’t it rather odd that all the mainstream media chose to support her decision 100%, and none of them considered the possibilities that many oncologists think the move was rash and that Jolie has been, well, rather less than balanced throughout her life.
I’ve just had a look at Marjorie’s piece and one thing she says is important. There’s very little earth in Jolie’s chart. But I would argue that that is why her marriage to Brad Pitt is so beneficial for her, he has a ton of planets in Capricorn, so he does the earth for her. I often see this in couples. One partner does the element the other one lacks and so together they end up balanced whereas apart they are all lopsided. It does seem to me that Jolie’s marriage to Pitt has been the making of her — and vice versa. She transformed him into a dad, a role he clearly feels very happy with.
Hi gawd
Thanks for prompting me to look at La Orr’s site – she is always so pithy!
You could read the double mastectomy as a continuation of the cutting and tattooing of her earlier life. In fact, the other most famous double mastectomy I could think of was author Kathy Acker’s. She was the sort of punk post-structuralist whose work was all the rage in the eighties. Anwyay, her subject was sex and violence, and she too was covered with tattoos and into self harm.
However, something that can be foolish in one context may turn out to be wise in another. You see this in astrology when a pattern can be read in a multitude of ways. There are dark forces at work here, but maybe they are delivering a good result.
I really don’t buy the Angelina’s nuts line though. That is just as much a media construction as the Angelina Mother of the World.
Ah yes, the old mainstream media thing. Her op-ed was an excellent advertisement for the Pink Lotus Clinic — no doubt about that at all. And whenever the US medical establishment is involved you need to follow the money….
Aries Moon does need to be the hero of her own life, and often those people make rash choices, but sometimes fortune does favour the brave.
Yes, I agree with most of that, but my point about the media was the sad fact that the story has only gone to reinforce the idea that instead of taking care of our bodies and lives ourselves (diet, lifestyle,etc) we should carry on deferring to science, and let it make the decisions, in the same way that we used to defer to members of the clergy. I thought the same the other day when I say the news item on the discovery that antibiotics could cure 40% of back pain. Great! Don’t bother doing exercise or looking after your back in other ways, just take a bloody pill.
OK – I see what you mean and, of course, totally agree.
The way science is reported in the mainstream media is, well, religious in tone.
Hello Christina,
Thank you for this article.I love Angelina and I hope so all will be fine for her. The only think that I’m afraid is don’t take to much bad energy to her and don’t became all bad for her because of this.
Kind Regards,
Dana
I don’t really understand what you mean, Dana. She’s made the best decision she can in the circumstances. She’s taken the dark power in her chart and transformed it to a useful purpose. This is really a good news story in a gothic sort of way.
Did my comment disappear?
aha – I am going to migrate this site when I can get my head around it, partly because of this problem.
I have tried posting to the comments myself when I’ve been out and about and found it rather random…
It turned up on the Uranus/Pluto post…weird, i am pretty sure I posted it on this one, as it was about Jolie…no matter!
Yes – I can’t find it. I hope you’ll try again. There does seem to be a bit of a problem with blogger comments. That’s why so many people here have to just go with anonymous.
The only issue I have with the Jolie story is too many women may follow her-cutting out completely heathly breasts. Thausands of positive and affermative comments found across various websites made me shiver. There was clearly hatred of feminine-as thougt Jolie meant-‘my uresolved emotions, my breast, my past trauma is killing me. Therefore I need to take obbjective (calulated) decision, and cut the problem (emotions, feminine) out.
First-how the decision can be objectively calculated 87% risk? What a precision? what does it means? why not 86 or 95?
What about the mind body connection? when you believe your breast will kill you it certainly will. What about clearly repressed emotions? Why Jolie does not address the issue as her unresolved trauma after dead of her mother?
Clearly she wants other women to follow to feel better about herself.
An another interesting interpretation http://www.astro.com/loop/loop130514_e.htm
It’s true what you say about the 87 per cent & I did think about this after writing it. It is just not possible that such a fine calculation could be made.