Charles Barkley

Four planets of his ten occupy earth signs and only one in fire, along along with three in water and two in air. Earth holds a position and does not move off it, which is a reasonable chart for a forward who was shorter than the men he played against and spent a career refusing to give ground anyway. Barkley played professionally and then became a broadcaster, which is the same job done with words instead.

The Sun sits on the second degree of Pisces, near the very start of the sign, with Jupiter further along it. Pisces takes the shape of whatever it has entered and keeps no firm outline, which is an odd placement for somebody known above all for saying exactly what he thinks. The Moon answers from Capricorn, alongside Venus, and Capricorn is the half that keeps the account and knows precisely what each remark costs.

Mercury sits in Aquarius, the sign that will say the unsanctioned thing because somebody ought to, and Saturn is square Neptune at just over a fifth of a degree, structure against image. That last aspect is the recognisable one in a man whose public reputation and private discipline have never quite matched up. Four of the ten were retrograde at birth, Mars among them, which turns the drive inward first.

Jupiter stood on its Pisces birth degree once more on 25 March 2022, at fifty nine, seven weeks after Saturn closed its own lap. Pisces dissolves a boundary rather than defending one, which makes it an awkward sign for the planet measuring how far a thing has gone. Five circuits come before it, and the second career has now run nearly as long as the first. For somebody whose Sun sits on the opening degree of the most permeable sign in the zodiac, two working lives rather than one is less of a departure than it looks.