Well, yes. Surely every Halloween birthday should be a meeting of The Scorpions Club. The American poet/Parisian salon hostess also liked to cruise around the house in a long velvet gown “emblazoned with astrological signs.”
She also refused to stay in hotel rooms that faced any direction other than the South West, hated to read yet ran a literary salon, disliked all flowers except tuberoses and refused to attend any funeral, ever.
According to the most in-depth biography on her – Wild Heart – A Life – Natalie Clifford Barney and the Decadence of Literary Paris – she often referred to her “dual nature, calling herself a double dyad” and yet her Scorpio Sun, conjunct Juno in the 11th house wasn’t opposing a thing.
I think she knew her astrological chart well and that the duality she referred to was her Aries Moon opposite a Libra Moon-Mars. And in local space astrology – the method use in the Astral Magic reports – South-West was her Uranus direction.
In those days Uranus was seen as the ‘gay planet’ – a protector of ‘queer people’ and Natalie Barney was not only into astrology, she was the most ‘notorious lesbian’ of her scene….
Nicknamed ‘the Amazon’ for her avid love of women and horses, she generated awesome gossip via stunts like living in a polygamous tri-marriage with two other women, literally eloping to the isle of Lesbos and somehow buying a house with a derelict Freemason’s temple in the back yard & turning it into a Sapphic temple.
“Being other than normal is a perilous advantage,” she said. Even more ‘scandalous’ then her gayness was in the era, how about her hair? It looks modern, right? Her Uranus in Leo? She also had an exuberant Jupiter in Sagittarius rising so I imagine that plus a retinue of dogs + horses and all the scandalizing could leave you with little interest in elaborate coiffures.
She hated time constraints and would often make declarations like “let’s lose the watch and live by the pulse alone.” Of course she infuriated many people and she seems to have had an entirely cavalier approach to love but who wouldn’t want to time-travel back to one of her salons and hang out with Natalie in the converted Freemason’s Temple?
It would be a wonderful supernatural destination for this Halloween, Scorpio or not. Thoughts?
I learned about her and the Freemason temple on the Messy Nessy site. What a cool addition to your garden!
I know right! I will check out that site also. I actually discovered Natalie because the artist I featured in the D.M for yesterday did these amazing paintings of poems by a woman who seemed to have been in love with her.
I would love to hang out with her. Book me a spot on the time machine.
I just love this!!! Love the historic profiles of queer baddies imagining how they paved the way for me to be me 🙂
Incredibly courageous women. And you are right. They did pave the way.
Obsessed! All of it!
It’s giving Chloe Sevigny (another Scorp?)
cruising around the house in a long velvet gown “emblazoned with astrological signs.”
nice work if you can get it
yes similar hair to Kate Bush who also has Uranus in Leo
Thank you for this post MM.
I can relate to so much mentioned here. The concept of time and the hairstyles remind me of various people I have known.
Scorpio Juno here makes sense why my Scorpio Sun friendships have been in my life over the years. All of us sharing magical experiences together, from deep conversations and pure Plutonic times. My most influential experiences have been with these women. The framework is set for something here…I’ll need to sit with this an invite a dream to clarify this further.
woo-hooo!
a fellow scorp sun/aries moon, whoop!
only my moon is opp my venus-pluto conj in libra
she DOES look v modern….🦂🦂🦂🔥