It is the birthday of Dame Barbara Cartland, author of approximately 723 books but best known for her romances. I went briefly bats for them when i was about 13, hoovering them up like crisps but they weren’t libidinal enough so i moved on. But apparently, her earlier books were sensationalist & banned et al. She calmed down post Chiron Return, in her early 50s.

Her books had fabulous titles such as The Angel & The Rake, Again The Rapture, Bride To A Brigand, The Lady & The Highwayman + my fave: The Haunted Heart.  BTW; if you don’t realise – “rake” is ye olde work for player. Hell knows how that came about. Thoughts?

The Dame was an early adopter of vitamins & health food – zealously recommending ginseng, bee pollen & brewers yeast to television hosts on her frequent media spots. She was step-grand-mother to Princess Diana – another Cancerian – and wore only pink, for her aura. She said of Diana: “The only books Diana ever read were mine and they weren’t awfully good for her.” As a council member, she barracked for the rights of midwives & gypsies. She is one of the best-selling authors of all time.

Her astro? She is a Cancerian Sun, of course and it is conjunct Mercury – classic signifier of the writer & she was certainly prolific. She had Venus in Leo – note opulence, in pic above & my theory is that Venus in Leo just LOVES to develop a Signature Look that sustains them spiritually and which they avidly stick to. True? False?

Moon – i think – in Aries so proto-feminist for sure. And would fight for what she believed in. Jupiter & Saturn conjunct in Cap  trine Mars in Virgo so tremendous work ethic even though she could have just settled for being a wife and/or vapid socialite…Weirder, Uranus OPP Pluto – WHAT a generation & Lilith conjunct North Node.

See, in her later career she made all her heroines virgins whom mysterious circumstances lead into having to hang around with handsome sociopathic & promiscuous aristocratic men about to be conquered by her purity – like she is a Unicorn – but in HER life, she went through a rather nasty scandal (infidelity, divorce et al in an age/class where such things very difficult) to be with the man she loved. And she went on tv in her mid-80s or something to boast about how her health methods (cold showers, bee pollen, steak tartare for brek) kept him virile and them both very active.

Cross-dresser, author, Bohemian, proto-feminist, runaway Baroness & divorcee – happy birthday George Sand a.k.a.  Amandine Aurora Lucile Dupin…Chopin – amongst many others  – loved her. Baudelaire loathed her: “She is stupid, heavy and garrulous. Her ideas on morals have the same depth of judgment and delicacy of feeling as those of janitresses and kept women…. The fact that there are men who could become enamoured of this slut is indeed a proof of the abasement of the men of this generation.”

Astro-Fiends can see her chart on Astrodienst here:  Her Cancerian Sun is trine Pluto in Pisces Rising (that’s a social change avatar, for a start) and Uranus in Libra squares the Sun/quincunxes Pluto and trines her Mercury in Gemini. She has Moon in Aries opposite Jupiter – a protective influence, despite the fact she was totally challenging the values of her society – eg; getting custody of her kids when it was not common, particularly if rushing off from an aristocrat to have a lesbian affair et al, supporting herself via novel-writing – AND she had a Neptune-Lilith conjunction in Scorpio. Nice. She was definitely chanelling some darker version of the eternal feminine & note that Neptune the ruler of her chart. Also that Pluto (rising) is the ruler of Scorp.

Indiana…

“…Chapter One…

On a certain cool, rainy evening in autumn, in a small château in Brie, three pensive individuals were gravely occupied in watching the wood burn on the hearth and the hands of the clock move slowly around the dial. Two of these silent guests seemed to give way unreservedly to the vague ennui that weighed upon them; but the third gave signs of open rebellion: he fidgeted about on his seat, stifled half audibly divers melancholy yawns, and tapped the snapping sticks with tongs, with a manifest intention of resisting the common enemy.

This person, who was much older than the other two, was the master of the house, Colonel Delmare, an old warrior on half-pay, once a very handsome man, now over-corpulent, with a bald head, gray moustache and awe-inspiring eye; an excellent master before whom everybody trembled, wife, servants, horses and dogs.

At last he left his chair, evidently vexed because he did not know how to break the silence, and began to walk heavily up and down the whole length of the salon, without laying aside for an instant the rigidity which characterizes all the movements of an ex-soldier, resting his weight on his loins and turning the whole body at once, with the unfailing self-satisfaction peculiar to the man of show and the model officer….”

Fernando Gallego

“…The Age Of Gold was the first age of the world, without hardship or toil for those who dwelt on Earth, and was without crime. The most recent age of the world, full of troubles and evils, is called The Age of Iron, but perhaps it would be better to call it the Second Age of Gold, for many of its troubles began when gold first tempted humankind to wickedness and war. through the Ages of Gold, Silver and Bronze, Astraea – the goddess of justice – still remain on Earth, but when the Age Of Iron began, she found she could stay here no longer. Now she shines down from the sky as the constellation Virgo, the virgin.  Astraea once carried a pair of scales with which she weighed up the rights and wrongs of any dispute. Now Astraea’s scales shine close by Virgo as the constellation of Libra…Astraea, whose name means Star Maiden, was the last deity to leave Earth…”

Mythology – Myths, Legends & Fantasies

In Ancient Greek & Roman parlance, they say that the return of Astraea to Earth heralds the return of the Golden Age. The Ancient Sumerians knew the constellation of Virgo as Ishtar…their Aphrodite/creation goddess. And, every now & then, someone steps forward to say that ‘virgin’ in this context refers to a temple virgin…ie; women who did not marry but initiated men into the worship of Aphrodite via sex magic.

I think that Mercury as ruler of Virgo does fit them – Virgo Rising with Gemini Midheaven is still very much the astro-signature of a writer & Virgo Suns disproportionately swell the ranks of published/acclaimed novelists – but i love the idea of Virgos also getting lovely Astraea, the Star Maiden as their sponsor. Even if she DID give away her scales to Libra in disgust. It is interesting how so many cultures have the idea of some deity coming back & beginning a fabulous new age. Whether it be aliens, Mayans, Christ, King Arthur, Astraea or other versions of the Divine Feminine.