On September 17, 1981, Jim Morrison's image graced the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, captioned "He's hot, he's sexy and he's dead." This event, while perhaps not a milestone in good taste, holds astrological intrigue.
Jim Morrison, the charismatic frontman of The Doors, was born in Melbourne, Florida, on December 8, 1943, at 11:55 AM-EWT. His birth chart reveals fascinating insights into his personality and the events surrounding his life and even after his death.
Astrological Highlights
Several astrological transits and progressions coincided with significant events in Morrison's posthumous career:
- Transiting Uranus conjunct Midheaven: This occurred three times - December 1980, June 1981, and September 19, 1981 - just two days after the Rolling Stone cover's publication. This transit often indicates unexpected career developments.
- Solar Arc Mercury conjunct Lunar South Node: This happened on October 11, 1981.
- Solar Arc Venus trine Pluto: This occurred on June 8, 1981. Pluto ruled Morrison’s Scorpio Midheaven, linking the Venus event directly to his career.
- Progressed Venus conjunct Sun: This occurred on August 1, 1982, less than a year later. Progressed Venus hits his Midheaven and an artist’s career takes off like a rocket.
In 1980, sales of every single Doors’ album had doubled or tripled compared to 1979. Joe Smith, the chairman of Elektra Records, said “No group that isn’t around anymore has sold that well for us.” The Doors’ magnum opus, *The End*, had been featured in Francis Ford Coppola’s hit film, *Apocalypse Now*, in 1979.
Jim Morrison's Personality Through Astrology
To understand Morrison's personality, it's essential to examine his natal chart. His childhood was both privileged and unstable, with frequent moves due to his father's career as a US Navy officer. This likely contributed to his detachment from instilled values and his retreat into literature and an imaginary world.
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Morrison's Sun and Jupiter are in mutual reception, with the ruling planet of Sagittarius in Leo. However, the Sun receives tense aspects from Uranus and Mars in Gemini, along with Saturn. Despite these challenges, the Sun is supported by a sextile with the Ascendant and a trine to Pluto, indicating a dominant character and natural pride. The planets in Gemini gave him an ability to quit the game during all circumstances.
Mercury in Capricorn and Saturn in Gemini are also in mutual reception, suggesting a taste for solitary, serious, thoughtful, and insatiable analysis. Morrison often clashed with authority figures, such as teachers and university staff, and openly opposed the Vietnam War.
Pluto, his main dominant because it is angular, controlling the Midheaven (the career) and sending multiple aspects. In fact, he doesn't even hide a certain fascination for crime and chaos, which can be easily explained with this badly framed Pluto. He didn't hesitate to use his voice and his charismatic presence on stage to accept no boundaries. One day, the police took him away in the middle of a concert, after his aggressive behavior with officers. The public was furious and supported the star. Thirteen people were arrested However, Morrison's prison was brief but noticed, as it was a first for a rock singer. To sum up, death has been the intimate companion of the singer-poet. The ultimate Plutonian mark, his tomb, at Père Lachaise in Paris, remains one of the most visited ones across the globe.
There is no question that a great deal of the double-edged success which Jim Morrison attained as an artist came about through a mixed-bag of themes related to his 1st lord, which for his Aquarius ascendant refers to the malefic graha Saturn. Secondarily, the influences of the planet Mars, which sits with Saturn, as well as the positively placed Moon in his chart, all combined in his life to create his sardonic and satirical, yet often optimistic, persona.
Much of what creates a sure-footed, confident person lies in the building blocks of their early childhood experiences. While a positive family upbringing may not fully remove the potential heavy karmas promised in the chart, it does wonders for a person’s capacity at bottom to find stillness within themselves in difficult times. In Jim Morrison we see a well-educated mind on one hand, contrasted with an unrelenting spirit that is hungry for personal expansion on the other hand.
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Jim’s positive prospects in early childhood are shown by the state of his 4th house, the 4th being a significator of one’s emotional environment growing up. Note the benefic waxing moon, almost full, in the 4th house of Taurus (its sign of exaltation). The moon is emphasized here for better and/or worse, as the karaka of the 4th house in the 4th house. We observe the positive support of Mercury towards Taurus, where the moon is placed, by rashi-aspect. The sign of Cancer, which rules the moon, was also auspiciously supported by a Rashi-aspect from benefic Venus and its own lord, the waxing moon itself.
However, the story of the moon in Jim’s chart was not picture perfect, owing to its ownership of the malefic 6th house and its vriddha avasta status. We can imagine that Jim may have been constantly preoccupied (6th house theme) with feeling good (Cancer), an attribute which may have contributed to his nasty alcoholism habit later-on. The outlook of the moon on his early emotional environment is generally positive though, and it probably precipitated a feeling that the constant conquest (6th house theme) of education (4th house theme) could provide him with a soothing neurological axe to grind, which bodes well for the high-education Jim received from his parents in university, not to mention from his own introspective curiosity - Jim’s education in Jungian psychology and the mythos of Fredereich Neitzche is often lost on his fans and detractors alike.
Venus was also supported by the 12th house Mercury, and rested in the auspicious 10th house, which we might take to mean that Jim’s family may have invested in his luxury in youth, in their fervor to see him grow into a respectable name for their family.
Jim Morrison was a certain special brand of cosmonaut, whose concern was not for material comforts, but instead, for experimenting with and observing the alchemy of elements in the soul. Since his 1st lord falls in the 5th house of honest, curious gemini, in friendly dignity, it is safe to suggest that Jim Morrison’s creations would likely denote the flavor of self-awareness. Indeed, Saturn as the keystone of the rising personality in the 5th house gives us some insights into the magic behind Jim’s uncanny ability to put his own growing pains into a musical language which most people could relate with. Certain stories can attest that Jim’s Saturnian front gave him notoriety as a tough, rather abrasive personality in his day.
The cause of this contradiction probably lies in the fact that Jim may have taken a mostly-innocent, curious (Gemini theme) pleasure (5th house theme) in playing the role of the community “coyote” shaman in his group circles, as he would curiously prod the parameter of his friends’ sanity (Aquarius ascendant theme), in order to draw clarity from the reactions evoked from their egos. Being “experimented upon” by Jim’s curious mind must have been a daunting prospect for those who did not understand his motives, especially when the haunting spectre of his own ego, in the form of the malefic influences to his ascendant lord, surfaced. (Note also that his ascendant lord Saturn was in vriddha avasta).
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We can imagine how frustrating his presence must have been for those whom he took as his subjects, as well for Jim himself, in his self-appointed role as Saturn. Such a mentality can be seen as an interpersonal gateway to heaven through the furnace of hell, when understood in its proper place. The fact that Saturn’s rulership was also shared by his 12th house Capricorn is not lost on us, though. The secret energy behind the workings of any Aquarius rising personality tends to come from the trance-like, mystical promise of bliss emerging from the 12th house. Without any higher values, such a personality is vulnerable to be sucked in by the abysmal desire to rid oneself of the tensions which the Saturn-ruled personality is bound to collect in the physical body.
Mars was another arbiter of character and virtue which would share prominence in Jim Morrison’s life, being the 3rd/10th lord situated in yuva avasta with Saturn. Mars sharing ownership of the 3rd and 10th house shows that sportsmanship (3rd house) and career (10th house) are tightly wound together in Aquarius people, and having Mars together with Saturn would only emphasise this. Thus was Jim Morrison a person whose recreational experiments on the brink of poetic self-exploration (1st Lord Saturn in the 5th house) would intertwine itself with his career prospects as a famous public figurehead (10th lord in the 5th house), and he would sportively fight to keep that friction in the air wherever he went (3rd house theme).
We note that the combustive Sun had 53 points of kashta in Jim’s chart. His call to react with authority (Sun theme) towards those in his close relationships and identified groups (7th Lord in 11th House themes) probably deeply absorbed the energy needed for his own grounding, where his poetic soul (5th house) was concerned, as Mars and Saturn respectively took hits of 52 and 56 points of mutual aspect from the Sun.
Mars, being a friend to the powerful Sun in Sagittarius, probably worked better with this demanding aspect than the 1st/12th Lord Saturn did. This suggests that Jim worked well, and with good devotional willpower, when in a group. While his close association with group objectives may have made his 1st Lord feel rather claustrophobic, the Mars in Jim Morrison probably enjoyed the fame (10th) and the interpersonal passion (3rd) that these social obligations would have brought him.
The positive potential displayed in the use of Jim’s natal tamasic planets ultimately elicits a sad reality. There is nothing more glorious than tamasic planets well-groomed by the sands of time and experience, if and when they do fully bloom. Morrison’s life was a bottle of vintage wine destined to be dropped on the floor and never fully enjoyed. His story is that of a tragically flawed, relentlessly honest poet, whose heavy malefic influences were too interwoven with his more transcendental qualities to let those qualities shine.
Astrology Birth Chart of Jim Morrison
Vincent Van Gogh: Another Case of Posthumous Fame
To further explore the phenomenon of posthumous fame, consider Vincent Van Gogh. Arguably, no painter in the past two centuries has become so instantly recognizable, so widely copied, nor had such an impact upon collective taste. And yet Van Gogh was poverty-stricken. By most reports, he sold only one single painting in his lifetime - and that only seven months before he died.
Vincent Van Gogh was born in Zundert, Holland, on March 30, 1853, at 11:00 AM. The highest price, corrected for inflation, ever fetched by any painting in auction was US$82.5 million. That happened (in under three minutes) on May 15, 1990. The painting was *The Portrait of Dr. Gachet*.
In Vincent Van Gogh’s natal chart, we see a triple conjunction of the Moon, the lunar south node, and Jupiter in Sagittarius and in the sixth house. When *The Portrait of Dr Gachet* sold for that jackpot price, the progressed Moon was right there aligned with those sensitive points. It had just conjuncted the artist’s natal Moon on March 1, 1990.
Transiting Jupiter made a square to his Sun on October 1, 1989, quickly retrograded over it again on November 24, 1989. Jupiter squared Van Gogh’s Sun a final time on the very day his painting broke all the records: May 15, 1990, a hundred years after he was gone. By solar arc, Van Gogh’s Venus made a trine to his Sun on December 29, 1989. Jupiter conjoined his natal Uranus on December 17, 1990.
These examples raise questions about how astrology works and how a chart might live on, even after death. Charts seem to still work, at least in a mechanical sort of way, after we pass away.
Final Thoughts
The astrological charts of Jim Morrison and Vincent Van Gogh provide compelling evidence that planetary alignments can mirror significant events in a person's life and career, even posthumously. While these examples may be unique, they prompt deeper exploration into the enduring influence of astrological charts.