Star Struck Style

August 16 is Madonna’s birthday.

Madonna does not have the natal chart that I would expect her to have. For someone who is so “out there,” she has far more going on in her twelfth house than I could have anticipated. To be honest, I’m very surprised that she hasn’t had problems with drugs and alcohol like so many other stars of her magnitude.

Her Leo sun is joined by Uranus in Leo in the twelfth house. She also has Mercury and Pluto in Virgo in the twelfth house. Her ascendant is in Virgo, just ahead of her first house Virgo moon. Other chart highlights include Venus in Leo in the eleventh house, Mars in Taurus elevated in the ninth (yet quite a few degrees away from her Gemini midheaven), Jupiter in Libra in the second house, and Saturn in Sagittarius in the fourth house. A third of the zodiac is unoccupied, from Capricorn through Aries, leaving the fifth house through the eighth house empty, as well.

I suppose it’s not difficult to appreciate the theatrical, imaginative nature of the twelfth house and its influence upon someone with a Leo sun. Madonna was born to be an iconoclast and a performer. This chart literally screams “All the world’s a stage.” In “Star Struck Style,” I discuss the word “costume” and how much people in the fashion business tend to loathe it. I kind of like it, and I also like the people who can get away with wearing fashion that the rest of us would describe as “stage costumes.” For what it’s worth, in my book I give permission to Leo and Pisces individuals to wear costume-like looks. Pisces is connected to the twelfth house where Madonna has a unique concentration of planets in her natal chart.

So I get that. I just don’t get how she hasn’t become a total mess. I suppose that the moon in the first house has endowed her with a maternal nature that has allowed her to take care of herself because of her children. Without that, I could see reckless abandon and escapism becoming her Achilles heel. Michael Jackson’s moon sat in a similar place in his natal chart, and his kids seemed to be the only thing that kept him together. His sixth house stellium, however, was likely responsible for the way in which he would seek escape from the real world. He self-medicated to keep his feet on the ground. I could attribute some of the dichotomy of these two charts to Chiron in the sixth house (Madonna) vs. Chiron in the twelfth house (Michael Jackson). That’s a subject worth exploring in another post.

Anyway, I believe that Madonna has actually used both her art and her role as a mother to keep herself together. I guess that I can see that now, but at first glance I wouldn’t have come to that conclusion. I’m glad that I took a moment to look into it.