{"id":36529,"date":"2020-07-09T21:19:31","date_gmt":"2020-07-09T21:19:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artzealous.com\/?p=36529"},"modified":"2020-07-09T21:19:33","modified_gmt":"2020-07-09T21:19:33","slug":"the-astrology-of-frida-kahlo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/the-astrology-of-frida-kahlo\/","title":{"rendered":"The Astrology of Frida Kahlo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calder\u00f3n was born on July 6, 1907 at 8:30am in Coyoac\u00e1n, Mexico.* Known to us now as the patron saint of pain and passion, Kahlo lived a life steeped in tragedy, and from the recesses of her soul created a body of work that stands as a testament to her immense power to transfigure raw feeling into paintings that merge dream and reality, human and animal, flesh and underworld.\u00a0
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Finding her body fragmented by illness and accident, she used painting as a means of formal exploration, both aesthetic and physical. Extreme events of her life cultivated extreme modes of self-expression. She is our radical, our communist, our surrealist, our icon of Mexicanidad, lamentress with spider-monkey familiar. Let\u2019s take a look at her stars.
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Astrologically, Frida is a solar Cancer with her Moon in Taurus and Leo on the ascendant. The ascendant is the angle of beginning, and indicates to us that the Sun is the ruler of her chart, as Leo is ruled by the Sun. In her chart, the Sun in Cancer sits in House 11, conjunct Neptune, and alongside Jupiter and her North Node, which rest conjunct one another as well. And so in House 11 we see the ego (Sun) blend with the planet of illusion, fantasy, and madness (Neptune), and the planet of fertility, optimism, and excess merges with the node of fate. There is deep karmic purpose here.\u00a0
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Each house of the chart talks to us about a unique set of themes, divisions or phases of the lives we lead. House 11 in general terms talks to us about the will-to-individuation of the many, meaning politics, one\u2019s chosen circle of equals, friendship, communal energy. House 11 is the house of the individual free from familial bond as well as free from the rigid constraints of dogma, or hierarchy. The ideal collective rather than the ideal self; utopia.\u00a0
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Kahlo vehemently opposed any and all capitalist ideology, and devoted much of her life to her political efforts which sought to spread her and her contemporaries dream of communism as an antidote to colonialism which had injured her native Mexico. With her Sun in House 11, we see that her ego sense is wedded to social questions of her time. Jupiter\u2019s presence her shows that she finds expansion in the public, communal arenas of life.\u00a0
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Working with those who were her ideological equal was paramount to her. It makes me think of her dismissal of the European surrealists whom she met in Paris, saying, \u201cThey make me vomit. They are so damn \u2018intellectual\u2019 and rotten that I can\u2019t stand them anymore\u2026 I\u2019d rather sit on the floor in the market of Toluca and sell tortillas, than to have anything to do with those \u2018artistic\u2019 bitches of Paris.\u201d**
French surrealist Andre Breton famously described Frida as \u201cA ribbon around a bomb\u201d and tried his best to claim her for his movement. In characteristic fashion, she vehemently resisted. While the European surrealists explored themes of dream and psychology, Frida and her contemporaries were invested in projects both artistic and communal, which sought to provide social critique, and to empower the downtrodden. This is absolutely something we can trace back to her 11th House stellium.\u00a0
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As an artist, Kahlo\u2019s Sun conjunct Neptune shows that for her, reality and dream were virtually indistinguishable. Neptune is the planet of fantasy, madness, intuition, and inspiration, among many other archetypal influences. Neptune rules the realm of dreaming, of healing, illness, illusion. Planets that make contact with Neptune are enveloped by its energy, and from this merge comes a highly spiritual way of being in the world.\u00a0
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One of the hallmarks of Kahlo\u2019s work is her fierce and imaginative engagement with trauma. Her Cancer Sun\u2019s conjunction to Neptune imbues it with energy of the 8th principle, as Neptune is the ruler of her 8th House. We associate 8th principle energy with underworld, cycles of karma, trauma, and the subsequent rebirth that comes from engaging the shadow. It is a fertile space, but a dark one, no doubt. Kahlo\u2019s continual ability to rebirth herself through magnificent pain is depicted in works like The Broken Column <\/em>(1944) and The Wounded Deer <\/em>(1946).\u00a0
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