Polish-American-French director Roman Polanski was married to actress Sharon Tate (C126) when she was brutally murdered by Charles Manson and family. Prior to that he was considered a “Young Turk” with his movie with Mia Farrow, and John Cassavetes in the ghoulish Rosemary’s Baby. Later on, he made the movie Chinatown with John Huston, Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, and the two movies have more in common than most think .In this essay, Celestiology explores how Polanski burst onto the Hollywood scene, and how he utilized his past in Nazi Poland to make these classic films.
Roman magnetism
Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Krakow, Poland to a Jewish father and Catholic mother but was raised agnostic. I rectified Polanski to 10 Cancer 52, a degree that E.C. Matthews calls “magnetic.” French author Georges Sand & Broadway showman George M. Cohan had the same degree for their Sun.
Polanski’s childhood is marred by World War II and the Holocaust. Its effect on his vision and life is undoubtable; it left a deep psychic scar (Pluto in Cancer conjunct the Moon) that he exploits well for his career (Moon semi-sextile his Part of Fortune).
A talented director, “Rosemary’s Baby with Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes is often credited with being the godmother of the Satanist horror genre; while his other notable Chinatown, has Faye Dunaway, John Houston and Jack Nicholson, in a perverse movie, melding corruption, murder and a long held taboo – incest.
Some call the later movie the last of the film noir genre that ran from the 40s onward. and the perfect metaphor for the corporate disintegration of naïve America. I think the reason Chinatown is so powerful is that takes away the magic of Rosemary’s Baby and Satanizes the old developer, as played by John Huston, the director, while Faye Dunaway, who is his unwitting daughter, is a good update to the earlier Farrow ingenue. In both cases, Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown, there is a “baby” whom the mother seeks to protect from more of the father’s evil and the two work as tableau — the young Farrow eventually becomes complicit with the Coven, to save and nurture her baby, while Dunaway, years later, realizes that very mistake and tries now to run away and free her child from evil about.
The last that are worth seeing were both done after the Tate murders can be seen as the obverse of the first set: Macbeth and Tess (of the D’urbervilles by Thomas Hardy) His exile to France changed his works, for their acceptance of the enfant terrible left him with few challenges; it’s hard to rail against the machine when it is so accepting.
Sharon Tate Murders
Of course Polanski is forever linked with the brutal murder of his pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate by Charles Manson and family on August 9-10th 1969 in Hollywood right before Woodstock (August 15 – 16th Bethel, New York) later that week. The relationship wheel between the Polanskis, below with Roman on the inside and Sharon the outer, shows the dynamism between his Saturn and her Venus, both in Aquarius in his eighth house.
This biwheel is uncanny in showing the magnetic attraction between the Hollywood stars — his Moon to her Jupiter in the first house shouts how through her stardom he discovered his wild attraction for her striking beauty. Unlike his second marriage, this one was rather close in age, but then he was still young, and only ten years apart so there are many generational conjunctions within. With her North Node conjunct his South in Leo and in the second, we see how he was attracted not only to beauty and fame but her earning ability after her success in Valley of the Dolls. It is obvious to Polanski, Tate was a total package.
Besides the planets in the eighth house signifying death and his regenerative abilities, their joined fourth house intimates violence in the home. Square the Moon and Pluto in his first, and trine her Venus and South Node in the eighth, this setup does foretold the racist violence of Manson against the two (Mars in his fourth (their home) to Mars in her sixth trine her Uranus in the tenth).
While the relationship may have worked long term, his Saturn opposite her Pluto, suggests the sexual tenor of their marriage would have been dominated by her need to always be seen as the “femme fatale, ” and his need to play the field. How this dynamic would have changed with the birth of their son, later that August, is of course, unknown.
Rape and the exile to Paris
After the Manson-Tate murders, Polanski then gets catapulted into the headlines for rape of 13-year-old Samantha Geimer. This was such an outrageous crime that he was forced to flee to Paris and resurfaced lately because director Quentin Tarantino, himself the son of a 15-year-old mother, has brought it up defending Polanski much like Jack Nicholson, another son of a teenage mother did 45 years ago.
Jezebel republished Tarantino comments to shock jock Howard Stern in 2003 arguing that his former interview with Deadline was disingenuous but still defending the Polanski reap. He repeated the old saw that Samantha Geimer wanted sex and “was down with this.” Ms. Geimer in her book argues that point.
No matter, Mr. Polanski pleaded guilty to unlawful sex in 1977, and fled the United States before sentencing. Other women have since accused him of sexual abuse when they minors also, claiming he preyed upon them too.
In 1983 he married the French actress Emmanuelle Seigner, thirty-three years his junior. They have two children, a daughter Morgane, an interesting tribute to his late wife, as the house at 10050 Cielo Drive, was built in the 1940s for French film star, Michele Morgan, and a son Elvis.
Astrologically Polanski
- His Line of Vitality is semi-sextile (thirty degrees apart) similar to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s. Both men use their network to ensure success; they vet them first before going public.
- His Line of Efficiency is conjunct. This aspect shows that Polanski takes up projects on the spur of the moment as they suddenly appear to him as being meaningful.
- His Line of Motivation is trine highlighting Polanski’s gift for making allies throughout his life.
- His Line of Social Significance (AKA Culture, Jones liked to name and rename his aspects, making cataloging them difficult through his several books as he believed different names appealed to different people 1 Jones alludes to this in his 16 Points of Chart ) is inconjunct. This line shows Polanski’s desire to be important within his social framework and the culture at large.
Polanski’s rectified chart as a Bucket with a Saturn Handle in the eighth house of legacies and money obtained from others. The eleventh house, money received from wages as a director, has Uranus is the bucket rim opposing Mars in creative endeavours.
This latter line is supported by the linkage of Sun to Neptune in the same house as Marc Jones delineates in Astrology: How and Why it works,1 where he mentions this highlights a person who feeds off of others using his special abilities and/or stories as the lure.
This Leonine preponderance highlights his multi-faceted skill is a screenwriter-director and in the third house shows how younger directors turn to use his methods for their venues. It is important to note the amount of sextiles going from the second to the fifth house, itself creating a square, highlighting friends, and hanger ons who want to benefit from his Hollywood contacts. Despite his being exiled to Paris, it is obvious looking at that amount of sextiles he still has a lot of influence in the LA world.
His chart has the 4-8-12 trine of Reward where his plunging into his life and its experiences are reused for material reward, which I have demonstrated is really his storyboard for the movies he makes. Growing up in Nazi Poland, and then fleeing to Vichy France, left Polanski with lots of material he could use, and being a young child then, he has dwelt on the relationship of the very young being exploted by cruel men in power. This is rather perverse as in many ways Polanski’s own life has shown he being that very character, perhaps demonstrating that while he finds such behaviour repulsive, he is still drawn to it because it was what he was inculcated with.
Alas, this also highlights that Polanski uses these experiences without dissecting them psychologically but as experiential images of his own world. This does not always work for him: Chiron in the twelfth shows that this private obsession with misery, crime and violence traps him because he does not see the spiritual or metaphysical beauty or goodness in people.
This aspect more than any other in his chart shows how many of his early and best films, really are an outgrowth of his own inner vision and with the T-Square point focus at Pluto he can simultaneously transcend those qualities and plumb further into them and explains his magnetic attraction to film goers and fellow thespians.
Footnotes:
Originally, this was issued as “Chart only, ” with Polanski at 29 Libra. That has since been corrected to Cancer 11 and adding a bi-wheel of him adding his late wife for support. Charles “no name” Manson (C127) is another post. The Cancerian ascendant works particularly well because of his movies centering around mothering and babies.
- Marc E. Jones, Astrology: How and Why it Works, Patterns of Simple Expediency, Sabian Publishing Society, Stanwood, WA: 1961.
Footnotes:
- 1Jones alludes to this in his 16 Points of Chart
