Ava Gardner’s 8th House

“I’ve always loved musicians. I’m absolutely intoxicated with them. All they have to do is stand in front of a bandstand and I’m in love with the whole band. It’s not only the beautiful swell of the music that emerges from the group, it’s the instruments, and the whole ensemble look — I think it’s sexy as hell. Some women fall for writers, some for sailors, some for fighters. I’m hooked on bands.”

– Ava Gardner – My Story

The Mars and Venus placements alone – never mind anything more complex – reveal SO much about the genre of person someone finds attractive. Or, as in the case of Golden Era Hollywood icon Ava Gardner, irresistible.

Yes, the sign, house and aspects of Mars and/or Venus show your ‘type.’  How so? Let’s use Ava and her apparent thing for musicians as an example.

A Capricorn with Leo Rising, her 7th house of significant relationships was Aquarius but “empty” – that is, without the Sun, Moon, Node or a planet there. So think ‘unconventional’ and not particularly invested in the one-partner-for-life concept.

But in the bordering 8th house, the realm of sex, intrigue and sometimes the people you’re irrevocably drawn to, the famed ‘femme fatale’ had the Moon, Mars and Uranus in artistic, oceanic Pisces.

She loved yellow roses and the tuberose-laden Fracas fragrance, created by the genius perfumier Germaine Cellier, an Aries with Mars exactly conjunct Uranus in Capricorn. “She liked the fast times,” wrote film critic David Denby, “the soft Hollywood nights filled with swing bands and torch singers.”

Uranus rules Aquarius and thus her 7th house, making it a prime relationship influencer. Not only that, her Mars was nearly exactly conjunct Uranus, drawing down wild Uranian lightning every time she felt even a beat of ambition or lust.

Mars-Uranus in Pisces is prototypal muso-vibe, encapsulating the kinetic unpredictability of live performance and the dionysian charisma of the performers. Her ‘type’ was hot, tempestuous ultra-talent. It also had to be on a huge scale because her electrifying Mars-Uranus combo was trine hyper-inflationary Jupiter and Pluto

Even if she were not famous and a renowned beauty, the hyper-inflated Mars-Uranus in the 8th would have made low-key loves or comfort-zoned arrangements completely out of the question.

Her Venus in Scorpio, in the creativity-revering 5th house, augments her ‘type.’ Trine her Piscean Moon and South Node, it rendered her more than able to fall in love with someone for their art or creations.  She said she was first drawn to her best-known husband, the Sagittarian Frank Sinatra, for his voice, which she compared to that of Maria Callas – “it made want to cry with happiness.”

Could she have become a singer herself? She flirted with it on and off but whether through her trepidation or the reluctance of big film studios to see beyond her visual appeal, it never panned out. That she was also a drinker and a brawler with a penchant for non-stop profanity and bare feet could also have played into it.

Mars-Uranus is admired for originality and instinctive cool – not so much suave career management.

Gardner’s summary of her marriages is textbook Aqua-Uranian: “I suppose one of the strangest things about my trio of failed marriages — and in passing I would like to gently point out that none of my three exes were asked to pay a penny in alimony — was the fact that the marriage bond seemed to be a shackle that manacled us together. Once divorced, we enjoyed each other and retained a deep friendship.”

Thoughts?

Images: Ava Gardner with Peter Lawford and Artie Shaw, who was to become her 2nd husband – Ava Gardner and her third husband Frank Sinatra walking on Miami Beach.