Agnès Varda

Fire takes five of her ten planets, with two apiece in air and water and a single one in earth. Fire acts and expects to be seen doing it; the element that would hold a position is down to one planet. Six of the ten sit in cardinal signs. The record says Varda made her first feature before the New Wave existed, was its only woman, and was still making films at ninety.

The Sun sits on the ninth degree of Gemini, the sign that knows a thing and passes it on, while Mars, Jupiter and Uranus spread across twenty two degrees of Aries. Venus sits on the very last minute of Taurus, which is as near a boundary as a planet gets. Her Moon sits at twenty five degrees of Libra at noon, close enough to the next sign that it may have reached Scorpio, so the private half is open between needing things settled and admitting nothing. For a director who was the only woman in a movement, three planets in the sign that starts without asking is the structure worth keeping.

Saturn lies at an awkward angle to Pluto at two thirds of a degree, pressure against pressure, and Venus sits in mild friction with that same Pluto at seven tenths. Jupiter sits in quiet contact with Venus at under a degree, adjacent signs and the mildest link available. Mars sits in hard contact with Neptune at a degree and a third. Saturn was the one retrograde planet at her birth. Nothing here comes inside two thirds of a degree, so this is a loose chart whose only gathering is that wide Aries group. For a director still making films at ninety, a loose chart with one long group in it is a fair description of the career.

She died in Paris on 29 March 2019, at ninety. Mercury rules her Gemini Sun, and that day it stood square her natal Saturn a quarter of a degree from exact, the closest contact in that sky, and in easy contact with her natal Pluto at four tenths. Uranus sat sixty degrees from her natal Mercury at two thirds and Mars stood conjunct that last minute Venus at just over a degree. The Moon was at its last quarter and thirty eight per cent lit, the phase that rethinks the whole premise rather than the details, which for somebody still making films at ninety is the better of the two readings. Five planets in fire, and six of the ten in cardinal signs, is the thing to carry out of this chart.