Celebrity Horoscopes - the Chinese Yin Yang Horoscope method

If you want to demonstrate a point, it's best to begin from where everyone knows the territory. Here are some people not many will be ignorant of, together with brief characterizations suggested by this Chinese astrology.

A full Yin Yang Horoscope interpretation will of course be more exhaustive, and will also cover the evolution of the birth symbol, the so called hexagram (built up from two of the eight signs or trigrams). The transformation of the birth hexagram into that of a "later nature" may or may not show a significant development in life... Especially the one line in a hexagram singled out as the "ruler" is carefully considered. (Lines are always counted from the bottom and up.)

To be honest, it may be difficult to tell the difference between the various hexagram symbols. At a quick glance, some would appear to cover pretty much the same ground. In the case of Leonardo DiCaprio's quick rise to fame and superstardom, it is, however, not hard to see how his life generally corresponds to the birth hexagram!

Western astrology has coined the term "singleton" for when a sole planet has an entire hemisphere or an important portion of the horoscope to itself. In a similar although simpler way, these hexagrams follow the same rule of thumb. "The One controls the many."

And it so happens that the singleton in hexagram Yü is a Yang line truly loaded with power. Positioned at the fourth place (always counting from bottom) it lends character to the trigram Chên, the symbol occupying the upper half of Yü. Chên is the sign of "arousal" (emotional or otherwise), volatility, an exuberance of life and among the phenomena in nature it is likened to thunder, that violent and attention grabbing force.

Below this stirring and vital force we then find the trigram which consists of three passive but responsive Yin lines. This is K'un, Mother Earth, also used as to represent devotion or the multitude of people (as opposed to their leader). In this hexagram it thus becomes pretty easy to see a strong leader before or above the people and arousing them to follow him with ardent devotion. This is the sign of the mega star! The title of the hexagram can even be translated as The Enthuser or he/she who causes enthusiasm!

The hexagram will become a lot clearer if knowing that Marlon Brando was another case of a birth to the all important fourth line! Just look at the single yang line, leading the lower trigram. Does "larger than life" come to your mind? If going by this late and great actor it looks DeCaprio will stay on top in the business for a long time to come!

Here is what I Ching in its veiled way has to say of people born to this crucial position: "Following preparedness: great is the acquisition! Do not doubt! Friends relate [like hair gathering around a] hairpin". It is not hard to visualize the following as the hairs firmly bound to the head (another symbolic statement) by the ornament.

ROYALTY:

Lady Diana 61-07-01 19:45, Sandringham, 0:30 East, England: hexagram 29 line 6 and hexagram 2 line 5

Well, so I described her birth moment before realizing it had been miscalculated. Upon correction a much bleaker scenario emerged - the story of one who falls into a dark prison dungeon and is allowed no pardon for the full term of the sentence! As is well known, Diana's brush with Royalty was not an entirely happy affair! The hexagram called K'an is a serious symbol, alluding to a saddened heart and long-suffering. Only total sincerity will be of help to get by in what may in hindsight and regarding this case be called "a difficult incarnation." I sometimes get the feeling that at least some of these symbols indicate a "payback time" for reasons perhaps only to be found in a distant past...

So how come then her popularity and warm femininity, so nicely evidenced by the earthly element in the miscalculated birth symbol? As it turns out, Diana's moment of birth at 19:45 is on the verge of turning into the next Chinese hour (starting at 20:00) and as has been often seen, the upcoming time segment is already making its influence felt.

In this case there is thus a complementary hexagram much in evidence and it is none other than that indicating the 100% receptive type of person, the archetypal Female! This is the one who is beloved, the counterpart to Yang. An all-Yang profile is at best respected if found in a woman, but seldom loved in the same way. The motherly and caring Lady Di thus contrasts in an interesting way to the fiercely independent woman found just below this case. But even in the favorable hexagram of the "Devoted", the fifth line, the ruler's position, warned Diana to keep a low profile in order not challenge her "King" or draw undue attention to herself. This truly is a hexagram fitting a "First Lady" and I am not the one to judge whether Lady Di succeeded. Obviously, from 29, the sickened heart, she did not feel too well by practicing this Royal self-repression...

The initial error goes to show the major weakness of the system. Many symbols are so vague one can easily be mistaken for another. Especially if not well read up on a person, just about any hexagram may seem to do. But finding that Lady Di was to a certain extent the "trapped one," caught up in circumstances beyond her control, certainly makes a lot of sense! Even her untimely death may be alluded to by the birth to the highly unlucky top line of the hexagram of "traps, pits and dangers."

In many cases of this symbolic astrology the individual line in the Yin Yang complex considered the ruler may modify the overall meaning of the hexagram. Marilyn got the perhaps most difficult line of them all in a hexagram which as a whole spells out the demands on a person who has to direct others, no less than oneself, in an organized and efficient way. In the heat of battle it is all too easy to lose presence of mind, and the Sinologue Hellmut Wilhelm referred to Marilyn Monroe's ruling line as typifying a splitting apart of the personality.

As can be seen from any of the countless Monroe pages on the Internet, her early life was a particularly hard one, with an absent father, a mother institutionalized for mental illness and herself moving between foster homes and institutions. I would venture the guess that all this is summed up in the enigmatic text accompanying the fifth line (counting from the bottom): "(Invading) birds and beasts in the field. You must catch them to avoid disaster. If the elder son commands the Army while the younger son carries carts of corpses, there will be defeat."

The sentence about the two sons could be about making the right priorities, or could refer to the split personality, or, as some commentators see it: that nepotism would seriously injure the campaign (the military campaign can itself easily be seen as a simile for one's life at large). Since only the best available forces should be used in warfare, it would be a pity to make selections based on what is most convenient or only happens to be near at hand! From what I've read, Monroe dropped her first husband the very minute she got wind of better things in life! Thus, errors in judgment can be expected from the less auspicious births to this horoscope, as witnessed by Monroe's own eventual mental illness ending in suicide by drugs. The mental states may, however, have been due to a secondary influence of which more below.

Still, this is one of the horoscopes where we find a single line of opposed polarity to the rest. It usually makes the individual stand out in some way, sometimes by being a born leader of men, in the Shih hexagram symbolized by a General. This type of personality may find itself setting the standard for the many, as in the case of the adored actress. Most often this will happen by, for example, being discovered as Shih is in itself not a terribly ambitious horoscope. The two trigrams from which the General is made up, can also be read as "still ground water," which can be interpreted in several ways.

Unfortunately the ruling line in this hexagram is also weak and its ancient commentary straightforwardly laments a lack of inner stability due to an unusual sensitivity to external commands and orders - seemingly directed at the person from just about every quarter. Another case known to me suffered from such nervousness as to need tranquillizers at that period just to cope with standing in line with other people.

It almost looks like the one-time team of Elton John and Bernie Taupin echoed Chinese Astrology in its timeless wisdom when they penned their classic song in memory of Marilyn: "It seems you lived your life like a candle in the wind." Indeed, Sun, the wind-like and "insubstantial" might suffer from chronic homelessness, resembling a forlorn wind, as witnessed by other cases known to me also having had a childhood bereft of a "true" home with the biological parents, or, in cases with the childhood unknown to me, did strike me as being extremely sensitive and vulnerable people.

In looking at Marilyn's both horoscope symbols one should, however, remember that the Yin Yang Horoscope includes additional "omens" whereby one might try to ascertain whether the birth hexagram is likely to appear for better or worse.

For some people Sun, the wind-like, might rather represent intellectual faculties of the highest order! Thus the famous authors Jack Kerouac and August Strindberg (Swedish playwright) were both born to the bottom line of this very finely tuned hexagram, a line warning of "going to and fro and losing all decisive willpower." Some will se how well this ties in with the characters of both these writers. Chuck Berry, on the other hand, was born to the top line where a "loss of the axe" was predicted. The axe being a symbol for the electric guitar in rock music one may marvel at the occasional "hitting the bull's eye" of this astrology, even though the symbolism originally pointed to our human intellect which must be sharp as an axe to cope with all circumstances. Reading a Berry biography and learning about his imprisonment for child prostitution (whatever the exact circumstance) certainly points to a man who lost his good judgment.

We must conclude that the worst possible outcome of Marilyn Monroe's both birth hexagrams joined forces in a life cycle that nonetheless let its subject, for a time at least, set the agenda for the day. Obviously, celebrity and stardom cannot easily be predicted from the Yin Yang Astrology, which instead focuses on the work to be done!

This is the kind of symbol you would expect from an artist with the seemingly inexhaustible capacity for re-inventing herself time and time again. With a doubling of the trigram for Heaven, there is not a single weakness in sight in this hexagram, which is good in theory when speaking of the Yang force as an abstract principle. Heaven describes the constant outpouring of undiluted motivative force making the planets circle their orbits and the clouds move across the sky. But in real life too much of one thing can be difficult for others to deal with. In this hexagram there is no such thing as "you"; the Yang force is wholly married to its own whereabouts. We are reminded of the Egyptian symbol of the snake biting its own tail, forming a constantly revolving circle.

The complementary Yin principle is in itself just as removed from real life's complexities in being described as totally wanting in directive and more submissive than humanly possible. Both these "caricatures" - if we may call them that - of pure masculinity and femininity may therefore represent potential problems in everyday life where there is need for a giving and taking also within the personality.

The pure Yang people are seemingly not for real in their pronounced desire for having full control - just like Heaven was in ancient times seen as controlling all beneath itself, and this is definitely the sign of the work-o-holic. There's simply no way the heavens could stop their eternal rotation and this seems to have been true for Madonna over the years.

To be sure, the ancient texts to this hexagram are filled with praise of the inventiveness and clear mindedness that comes with the sign, but twice adjuncts the person so represented to pay visits to "the Great Man," by which is meant something like a sage hermit or a guru. Later in her career, Madonna seems to have sensed this need as witnessed by her interest for Eastern mysticism and yoga. Without the advice of humanity's truly great, these Dragons, as the heavenly people are called, at length risk destroying themselves after having developed an arrogance towards smaller conditions and habitats than those they themselves have come to occupy!

Guy's in the West, who pride themselves of their masculinity and make a show of it, has tended to idolize Lennon. His was the voice of the angry young man. Rather telling, isn't it? This is one of the more extreme hexagrams in the whole of the Yin Yang Horoscope catalog, and Lennon must be considered having been fortunate in that his ruling line was one of the Yins in the figure, giving him access also to a softer streak in his personality. There exists an ancient Chinese gloss to the word "sung" which explains it as "not to love," which of course adds to the paradoxical characteristics of our case, since Lennon never tired of preaching Love! But listening to his song "Mother" might give an inkling of what the Chinese may have meant: "the feeling of lack of love" with the resultant expression in anger.

It would have been hard to guess that this strained configuration of Yin and Yang would show up in a world celebrity horoscope, but then again, there is room for everyone, on every level, in this great House of our lives!

Included in the full Yin Yang Horoscope interpretation is the "later nature," a hexagram describing the potential evolution of the birth symbol, and there, finally, we find Lennon cultivating "the small Yin principle." So it actually looks as if he came to terms with certain attitude problems in the long run, or at least began considering them. Rest in peace John.

Note. The precise birth time is seldom given in biographies, but I have located at least one more celebrity case of Sung: the assassinated US politician Robert Kennedy. He was certainly a very confrontative voice in his time! If the symbol of heaven represents "truth" and the meandering river water that of "crookedness," one could easily suspect a relentlessness in the pursuit of truth such as that exhibited by both these personalities.