Irving Berlin

Five of his ten planets sit in Taurus: the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus and Neptune, across twenty five degrees of it, and the Moon's sign is certain. Earth takes five, air three, fire two, and not one of the ten sits in water. Six of the ten are fixed. The record says Berlin wrote about 1,500 songs including White Christmas and God Bless America, could not read music, played only on the black keys with a transposing piano, and lived to a hundred and one.

Taurus accumulates rather than announces, and a chart with five planets in it and six fixed overall is arranged to pile one thing on another and not move off. About 1,500 songs is accumulation stated as a number, and a hundred and one years is the time it took. Mars sits a fifth of a turn from Saturn at under four tenths of a degree, sustained effort: craftsmanship, training, and the rare ability to work at something for years, which is the same observation made as an aspect.

No water at all is the count that will stop a reader, because the record names White Christmas, which is a song about feeling and almost nothing else. Water is the element of what is felt rather than what is made, and this chart has none of it. Whatever produced that song, a reading about feeling cannot be it, and the reasonable conclusion is that element counts describe a temperament and not an output. Saturn sits a fifth of a turn from Uranus at seven tenths, practical innovation: new ideas that are actually built, which in a man who could not read music and used a transposing piano is a limitation worked around with hardware.

The Sun sits conjunct Mercury at under four tenths of a degree, which the vocabulary glosses as a person being their own thinking, with a standing clause about taking disagreement personally. Venus sits in quiet contact with Pluto at just over a quarter, depth in relating: loyalty that survives difficulty. Mars, Jupiter and Uranus were the three retrograde planets. He died in New York on 22 September 1989, at a hundred and one. Mercury stood in easy contact with his natal Pluto at twelve hundredths of a degree that day and the transiting Sun in easy contact with his natal Neptune at a fifth. The Moon was at its last quarter and forty four per cent lit.