Warhol a Leo, but the grid is Virgo's

An incorrect Scorpio birthdate for Andy Warhol is in circulation. Its erroneous origin is discussed at AstroDataBank. The coyly secretive artist offered several different dates for his birth. The accepted birthdate of August 6, 1928 is therefore dubious.  The birth certificate, not registered till 1945, was probably concocted by Warhol himself to satisfy a college registration requirement and is derived from an affidavit resting on the veracity (indeed, on the very existence) of the alleged birth midwife. This belated certificate has been supplemented as evidence by a "baptismal certificate" which on examination is equally derivative and indirect. Warhol was just the sort of person to shave some time off his age at the first possible opportunity. (“Eighteen years old and still not famous?”). I find it hard to believe that this notably dark Leo had seven planets in firesigns including sun and moon, sure representation of sunny extroversion, and few serious afflictions, as was the case on August 6, 1928. The 1928 horoscope is as much an ironic disguise as the blond wig.

One year earlier, however, we find a precise and powerful conjunction at the Venus/Pluto midpoint, of Jupiter and Uranus at 3 Aries, a degree whose Sabian symbol [M. E. Jone, The Sabian Symbols, 1953] reveals “an utterly naïve assimilation of self into its world and a complete flow of all effort  toward some proper end,” which is consonant with both his gee whiz manner and his remarkable productivity and accomplishment. (That conjunction at 3 Aries appears with equal descriptive accuracy in the chart of John Ashbury, another unique and unsunny Leo genius born a few days before.) A late Scorpio moon, conjunct Saturn and square Neptune, also seems appropriate to his mysterious, dead-pan persona, not to mention his unflinching morbid subject matter: dead movie stars, electric chairs, auto crashes, JFK's assassination, various disasters, criminals, skulls, shadows, etc. That configuration was under the direct pressure of transiting Neptune when Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas in 1968. 

I also expected to see some Virgo in this Leo’s chart, since he employed the grid device continuously throughout his career, virtually his trademark mode of presentation. As Virgo is adjacent to Leo the absence of Virgo planets in the 1928 chart is conspicuous, but in the 1927 both Venus and Mars are in Virgo. 

More on Virgo and the Grid here.

Leos are too much.

Two Leos,  Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas are divorcing. They met on the set of "Too Much" and they made one last film together, "Automata".  They will remember each other always tho as they bare matching heart tattoos. (The heart is, of course, the bodily organ ruled by Leo.) Griffith's predeliction to share her bed with lions showed up early. Here she is, age 17, with her family's pet lion, Neil.

Doing the mane thing.

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.