Grace Kelly

Her birth time is recorded and rated, so the houses can be used here. Three of her ten planets sit in the first house, the part of a chart that deals with how somebody comes across before they have said anything: the Sun at twenty degrees of Scorpio, Mercury at eleven and Mars at twenty six. Water takes five of the ten and earth is down to one. The record calls Kelly the Hollywood star who became Princess of Monaco, and says she died in Monaco after a car crash on the corniche.

The Sun sits in easy contact with Pluto at four hundredths of a degree, close enough to call exact, and a grand trine closes between the Sun, the Moon and that same Pluto with every point of it in water. The reading of the contact is power that is usable rather than overwhelming: resilience, the ability to start again after a loss, and an instinct for what is really going on beneath a situation. Both lights are certain, which is what makes the figure usable, and a closed trine holding both of them and Pluto is an unusually self sufficient arrangement for an actress who changed country and occupation at twenty six.

Neptune sits alone in the tenth house at three degrees of Virgo, the part of a chart that deals with standing in public, which for somebody who became a head of state's wife is a placement worth naming and not pressing. Venus sits in hard contact with Jupiter at under a quarter of a degree and sixty degrees from Saturn at three quarters. Jupiter, Uranus and Pluto were the three retrograde planets.

She died in Monaco on 14 September 1982, at fifty two, and the hour is recorded, so the death chart is cast for ten at night. Mars stood conjunct its own natal degree at four fifths of a degree, which is a Mars return, with the transiting Sun directly opposite her natal Moon at under a fifth. The record says what happened on the corniche and the chart accounts for none of it. The Moon was balsamic and nine per cent lit, which is the phase that finishes things, lets them go, and is already looking past them.