Today is the birthday of  the completely fascinating Sarah Bernhardt

“Why this ongoing attention to a French theatrical star of the distant past? You can ascribe it to Sarah’s rich and notorious private life, always ripe for retelling; to the central role she played in the history of the theater in particular and the culture of the time in general; to the unique way she grew into legend morphing from a tarty little actress into the most famous French person of her century after Napoleon and the most admired Frenchwoman in history after Joan of Arc (whom she played twice she didn’t manage Napoleon, but one of her greatest triumphs was as his doomed son L’Aiglon)

Her undying celebrity would not have surprised her: from her earliest years she was determined to be noticed, to conquer the world, and to do it her own way. When at the age of nine she was dared to jump a ditch and broke her wrist falling into it, she cried out in rage, “Yes, yes, and I’ll try it again if I’m dared to! I’m going to do exactly what I want all my life!” That’s when she decided on “Quand meme” as her motto, and she never relinquished it. She decorated her stationery, her dishes, her silver with it; it was inscribed on the flag she flew over the little fort she bought and summered in on Belle-Isle, off the Brittany coast; it was as much a part of her legend as her scrawniness, her legion of lovers, the coffin she sometimes liked to sleep in. But how to translate it? “Even so”? “No matter what”? “All the same”? “Despite everything”? “Nevertheless”? “Against all odds”? “Whatever”?…”

I always thought she was Libran and indeed, she could be. Just. Would depend on the time of birth.

She was most likely born with her Sun at Zero Scorp, squared by Saturn in Aquarius…And, her Moon was in early Aries, conjunct Uranus and both opposed by Mars…The Mars trining the Saturn. Her birthtime is oft estimated at 8pm – not sure why but it puts her Moon-Uranus on the Midheaven.

And, I love this, given her blissfully intense and creative love life – Venus conjunct Chiron in Virgo…Do read the article, linked in above, it is full of the most fabulous anecdotes…I LOVE the idea of having a motto that you inscribe everywhere.

And surely, she had Leo rising? She looks feline, as Leo Risings so often do.  Note also that the women actually had a lot of aspects traditionally described as “bad” – Sun square Saturn, Moon opposite Mars etc but so many of the most celebrated peeps do have technically “bad” charts. Something to fight against? Miserable childhood worth rising high to get away from? The school of ‘surthrival’ as revenge?

“Her admirers? To name a few: Mark Twain (“There are five kinds of actresses: bad actresses, fair actresses, good actresses, great actresses and then there is Sarah Bernhardt”); Freud (“After the first words of her lovely, vibrant voice I felt I had known her for years”); D.H. Lawrence (“She represents the primeval passion of woman, and she is fascinating to an extraordinary degree”). “

Plus there is this fab story about her sojourn in Sydney, Australia…