Scorpio: la femme fatale 7b

Three concentrating men born October 29: The Shah of Iran (1919). Carl Djerassi (1923) and A. j. Ayer (1910)

For an analytic philosopher A. J. Ayer had an astonishing number of sexual liaisons in addition to his four marriages, even fathering at least one illegitimate child, on the Hollywood columnist Sheila Graham. It has been said he was "a slave to his libido" and one colleague described him as 'a great mind ruined by sex". As could be predicted by his philosophical affiliation with logical positivism, he was an atheist, but attested to a powerful NDE (near death experience) which caused him to alter his beliefs.

Carl Djerassi is the chemist who invented the oral contraceptive, forever changing the very nature of sex. A man of many brilliances, he was greatly concerned with the ethical and philosophical implications of the entrance of science and technology into the world of human reproduction. He is a prolific writer and playwright. His play "An Immaculate Misconception" deals with in vitro fertilization, and is published along with the play "Taboo" under the title "Sex in an Age of Technological Reproduction". Other plays include "Phallacy" and "Foreplay". His life was turned around by the terrible suicide of his daughter.

Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the exiled Shah of Iran, endured a prolonged and very public death, from a rare indolent cancer, Waldenström's macroglobulinemia. Few people have had their death's so thoroughly scrutinized by the international press, which followed him from hospital to hospital on three continents.

An old-fashioned Persian aristocrat, he kept a harem of women and had this to say about the opposite sex to Orianna Falacci:

“ . . . All I can say is that women, when they govern, are much harsher than men. Much crueler. Much more bloodthirsty. I’m citing facts, not opinions. You’re heartless when you have power. Think of Catherine de Medicis, Catherine of Russia, Elizabeth I of England. Not to mention your Lucrezia Borgia, with her poisons and intrigues. You’re schemers, you’re evil. All of you."

More Libras in white

Grisha Bruskin, Russian artist, b. 21 October 1945

Dangerous Games Hugh Jackman, b. 22 October 1965

Pride of Lions: one male and six females

I am remiss in sharing new astrological data. Just picked up an addition to the Leo file. Turns out that the radical modernist composer Karlheinz Stockhausen (b. 22 Aug1928), one of the pioneers of electronica, was polygamous. Three other important, charismatic Leos were similarly all-embracing in their love lives.

Carl Jung (26 July 1875), like Stockhausen center of a cultish circle, was famously shared by his wife and his pupil/colleague Toni Wolff, who was also said to  manage his harem of Jungfrauen. For the last 40 years of his life he was commonly accompanied by both women  at public and private functions.

Erwin Schrodinger (12 Aug 1887) the great physicist and Einstein colleague, a Vedantist with deep theories about the role of sunlight in the creation of life on the subatomic level, lived openly with two women, because of which several universities terminated his engagements. Oddest of all, perhaps, the great Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich (20 Aug 1886), author of ‘The Courage to Be’ (such a Leonine title) agreed with his wife early on to an ‘open marriage’ but according to his son, “this arrangement got out of hand. He wouldn't stop and she didn't like it anymore.” Nevertheless they did not divorce, and his promiscuity was unconcealed.

What particularly strikes me is that all four of these guys, in addition to being Leos, are German (yes Jung was Swiss, but German-speaking Lutheran and self-identified as Aryan). Needless to say, the lion in the wild is virtually a symbol of authoritarian maleness. He is also the Blond Beast.