Esther Williams

Fire holds four of her ten planets, water three, earth two and a single one air, and Uranus alone was retrograde. The Sun, Mercury, Mars and Neptune fill fifteen degrees of Leo, the sign the Sun rules and the one that expects to be watched. The record calls Williams a national champion whose Olympics were cancelled, and then MGM's swimming star.

Four planets in the performing sign, in somebody whose competitive career was cancelled out from under her and whose second one was performance, is the division the record itself draws. Venus sits in quiet contact with Mars at just over a tenth of a degree, the closest pairing here, which is desire that moves easily: warmth, creative energy, and an uncomplicated relationship with wanting things. Mercury sits on the first degree of Leo and Mars on the fourth.

Jupiter and Saturn sit at twenty and twenty three degrees of Virgo, and Uranus sits in easy contact with Pluto at four fifths of a degree, though that pair moves slowly enough to belong to a cohort rather than to her. Her Moon sits at twenty four degrees of Libra at noon, close enough to the next sign that it may have reached Scorpio, so it is left out. Mars sits in mild friction with Jupiter at just under a degree and a half. A swimmer who became a studio performer had two careers in two different elements, and the chart hands the slower half of it to Virgo.

She died at Beverly Hills on 6 June 2013, at ninety one, and Venus stood conjunct its own natal degree that day at just under a degree, which is a Venus return rather than one of the slow ones. The Sun sat sixty degrees from its own natal place at half a degree and Mercury conjunct her natal Pluto at eleven hundredths, the closest thing in that sky. The Moon was balsamic and three per cent lit, the phase that finishes things, lets them go, and is already looking past them.