Heath Ledger

Water takes six of his ten planets, with two in fire and a single one apiece in earth and air, and five of the ten were retrograde at his birth. Six planets in the element that registers and absorbs, with almost nothing left to stand back and arrange it. The record says Ledger won a posthumous Oscar for the Joker, having spent weeks alone in a hotel room building the part, and that he died at twenty eight of an accidental prescription overdose.

Mercury, Venus and Mars spread across twenty degrees of Pisces, the sign that holds no fixed edge of its own, and the Sun sits at fourteen degrees of Aries, which is most recognisable when it has something to push against. The Moon answers from Cancer at eleven, the sign it rules, where feeling is at full strength and entirely unfiltered, and it is one of the Moons in this set whose sign is certain. For somebody whose record is one part built alone in a room, a Pisces group under an Aries Sun is the division to start from.

Venus sits directly opposite Saturn at under a degree, warmth meeting a wall: feeling unworthy, and withholding first to avoid being refused. Saturn sits a fifth of the way round from Uranus at under a quarter of a degree, which is practical innovation, new ideas that actually get built, and an unusual patience for slow change. Mars sits in easy contact with Jupiter at a degree and a third, effort that pays and well timed action. Those are the standing meanings of three angles and not an account of anybody; the record of the part he built alone sits beside them rather than under them.

He died in New York on 22 January 2008, at twenty eight, and that day the transiting Saturn stood on its own natal degree at three fifths of a degree. His Saturn return and his death fell together. The record gives the cause and the chart does not amend it: a Saturn return arrives for everybody at that age and almost nobody dies of it. Saturn also stood directly opposite his natal Venus at a third of a degree, which is the axis the chart was born with. The Moon was full and entirely lit.