Mohammed Rafi

Not one of his ten planets sits in an air sign. Fire takes four, earth three and water three, and five of the ten sit in cardinal signs. Nothing here stands back from a thing to discuss it, because the element that does that has no planet in it at all. The record calls Rafi an Indian playback singer whose voice defined mid century Hindi cinema.

Four planets sit in the opening three degrees of their signs: Jupiter on the second of Capricorn, the Sun on the third of the same sign, Venus on the fourth of Sagittarius and Mars on the third of Aries. The Sun and Jupiter are therefore conjunct at four fifths of a degree, which is confidence as a trait rather than an achievement: generosity and optimism, with the warning that nothing in the pairing teaches restraint, so the scale of a thing runs ahead of its substance. Mercury sits at nine degrees of Capricorn and retrograde, completing a group of three there. Scale fused to identity at four fifths of a degree is the contact that reads as a career, and the record puts his at the centre of mid century Hindi cinema.

Venus sits in easy contact with Mars at fourteen hundredths of a degree, the closest contact in the chart, which is desire that moves easily: warmth, creative energy and an uncomplicated relationship with wanting things. The Sun sits square that same Mars at seven tenths of a degree, so drive is on easy terms with taste and in conflict with identity at the same moment. Saturn sits in easy contact with Pluto at just over a degree and a quarter, durable strength, rebuilding after loss and authority that was earned. His Moon sits on the sixth degree of Sagittarius at noon and may have been in Scorpio. None of that explains a singing career. It is what three angles mean in any chart, and the record of the cinema he sang for stands without them.

He died in Mumbai on 31 July 1980, at fifty five. Saturn rules his Capricorn Sun, and that day Jupiter stood sixty degrees from that natal Saturn at nine hundredths of a degree, the closest thing in the sky. Uranus stood square his natal Neptune at under nine tenths and Mars square his natal Pluto at four fifths. The Moon was disseminating and eighty four per cent lit, a phase that passes on what was worked out and needs it to land, which for a voice that carried other people's performances is the phase to leave this on.