Patsy Cline

Not one of her ten planets sits in an air sign. Earth takes five, water three and fire two, and six of the ten are cardinal. Venus, Mars and Pluto fill seven degrees of Cancer, and the Sun, Jupiter and Neptune nine and a half degrees of Virgo. The record says Crazy and I Fall to Pieces made Cline the first woman to headline country music, and that she died in a plane crash at thirty.

Mars sits in hard contact with Uranus at just over a fifth of a degree, which is action without warning: recklessness, abrupt breaks, and a temper that arrives with no build-up at all. A reader with the record in front of them will take that contact straight to the aeroplane, and it does not go there. It describes a temperament. It says nothing whatever about the weather over Tennessee in March 1963, and the honest thing to do with the sudden end of a life at thirty is to write it down as a fact and refuse to make it mean anything. Three of her six closest contacts are the slow pairs shared by everybody born in those years, which is a second reason this chart explains less about her than it looks able to.

Mars also sits conjunct Pluto at half a degree, and that reading is overwhelming force: immense stamina, a capacity for total commitment, and an intensity other people find hard to be near. For a singer the record credits with being the first woman to headline a form that had not previously let one do it, stamina and total commitment are the part of this chart with work in them rather than an ending. Mercury sits at an awkward angle to Saturn at under half a degree, thought meeting doubt: self-criticism, and difficulty being understood. Mercury itself sits on the last degree of Leo and Venus on the last ten arcminutes of Cancer, so two planets here sit on a threshold.

Her Moon sits on the first half degree of Capricorn at noon with Sagittarius still possible, so it is left out. Saturn and Uranus were the two retrograde planets. She died near Camden on 5 March 1963, at thirty. Jupiter stood in easy contact with her natal Pluto at thirteen hundredths of a degree that day and with her natal Mars at under four tenths, so the planet of scale reached both halves of the closest pairing she has, and Neptune stood sixty degrees from her natal Sun at under a fifth. The Moon was at its first quarter and eighty per cent lit, a phase whose standing reading is about breaking something in order to act, and this entry is not going to apply that phrase to the day she died.