André the Giant

Air holds four of his ten planets, earth three, fire two and a single one water. Air works the thing out and earth keeps at it; the element that would register what any of it cost is down to one planet, which in this record is a hard absence to read. The record says acromegaly took Andre the Giant to seven feet four, that he wrestled for two decades in constant pain, and that he played Fezzik in The Princess Bride.

The Sun sits on the twenty eighth degree of Taurus with Mercury at fourteen, both in the sign built on steadiness and on simply continuing. His Moon sits on the fourth degree of Capricorn at noon, with the sign before it still possible, Sagittarius, so the private half could be either managing a feeling or needing room. Taurus will tolerate a situation long past the point of usefulness because leaving is the more disruptive move. For a record of two decades of wrestling in pain, that is the hardest sentence in this chart.

The Sun sits seventy two degrees from Pluto at a quarter of a degree, the angle of power that is usable rather than overwhelming: resilience, and an instinct for what is actually going on underneath. Venus sits in mild friction with that same Pluto at just over a quarter. Nothing else in this chart comes inside a degree and a half, so this is a loose birth with the two tight contacts both running to concentrated force. Jupiter and Neptune were the two retrograde planets. In a wrestler the record has working two decades in pain, resilience that close to exact is the only contact that matters.

He died in Paris on 28 January 1993, at forty six. Venus rules his Taurus Sun, and that day it stood square its own natal place at a degree. Three separate planets sat on his natal Jupiter: Uranus square it at four fifths of a degree, Neptune square it at nine tenths and Saturn in easy contact at just under one. The Sun stood directly opposite his natal Pluto at just over a degree, and the Moon was a crescent at twenty seven per cent, the phase that pushes against the weight of how a thing has always been done. One planet in water, in a working life the record describes as constant pain, is the fact to keep.