Whitney Houston – A talented life destroyed by excess and bad choices.

Such a shame, such a crying shame!! Whitney Houston was an incredibly talented singer and performer with a voice that will go down in popular music folklore forever, one so pure and powerful that dominated pop music around the world during the 80’s and early 90’s. On Saturday she was found underwater and unconscious in the bath of her Beverley Hill hotel room. At the moment, the Los Angeles police are ruling out foul play, however the true cause of her death may not be revealed for several weeks.

Whitney was born on 9th August 1963 in Newark Heights, New Jersey at 20.55 hrs. She was a glamorous Sun sign Leo with an Aries Moon and a Pisces Ascendant. The Sun and Moon in combination brought a real fiery quality to Whitney, emotionally expressive and needing to get to the top of the tree, Whitney adored the limelight and stardom that the music industry brought her. Here we had great ambition and a love of drama. With these two planets in trine aspect, emotionally and physically she was absolutely in tune with herself. And when she sung, didn’t you know it?

This is a very complex chart, all the planets knitted together by multiple aspects. I have found that such charts are great for when there is good energy around as the chart soaks it up and uses it very efficiently. The only problem is when nasty aspects come around, the chart uses this energy efficiently too and the whole persona can get dragged down very quickly as a result.

There are 3 distinct patterns in this chart. Firstly there is a kite formation based around a Sun/Venus/Saturn opposition, also connecting a Jupiter/Moon conjunction to a Sagittarius ascendant. Secondly, a t-square also based on the Sun/Venus/Saturn opposition squared by Neptune in Scorpio and lastly a wedge formation based around a Pluto Mercury Uranus opposition to the ascendant which also connects onto the 8th house Neptune.

Let’s take things one by one. The kite formation through Sun Venus and Saturn showed a kind attention loving girl who loved glamour and the high life, was very talented in an artistic sense (Venus in Leo), she was a huge perfectionist (Sun in 6th), but was also a girl who was beset by relationship problems. Saturn opposing the Sun and Venus often shows feeling of inadequacy and self doubt. That lack of love of herself was confirmed by Neptune squared by Saturn ruling her ascendant through Pisces. The rest of the kite tells a different side to the story as the Aries Moon/Jupiter conjunction trines to the Sagittarius Midheaven also ruled by Jupiter. She would do everything in excess, partying, spending, drinking & having a good time as well as dragging her self down into the depths of despair. We had a real contradiction in her personality, one minute as high as a kite, optimistic and life and soul of the party, the next minute wracked by fear of her own identity, afraid that nobody loved her. Aries’ impact on Jupiter and the rather independent first house Moon here impelled her to act. This was a lady of extremes, very much larger than life, and she literally could not stop herself; expansive Jupiter in the 1st house of the self was working double overtime.

Squaring off the Sun/Saturn opposition in this talented kite was Neptune in Scorpio in the 8th house. This was her natural career path, the squares from Saturn and Sun bring motivation to sing and perform. Neptune rules all creativity and this Neptune was receiving a bucket load of energy from the two main formations on this chart. Neptune also being trine to the sign it ruled on the ascendant meant that this creative talent to sing was present from the minute that Whitney was born, it was completely natural to her. She rose to prominence in the New Hope Baptist Church gospel choir in Newark very quickly, although having a mother who was also a performer as well as Aretha Franklin as a godmother and Dionne Warwick as a cousin, music surrounded her from an early age.

Neptune in Scorpio in the 8th house trine to a Pisces ascendant would ring alarm bells in the brain of any astrologer. As a positive influence, it is incredibly talented, musical, creative & artistic. Remember what I said about Whitney having her whole chart in sync. This is why she was so good. The energy from Neptune to her ascendant was pure, idealistic and the notes and range she could achieve was almost unsurpassed. Scorpio allows one to go to the extreme, and here the extreme in a positive sense made her stand out from the crowd. However whenever you deal with the outer planets you have to think of them in both good and bad terms. With Neptune the darker side is shown through escapism, alcohol and drugs. With Pluto & Scorpio comes jealousy, the underworld, sex, death, abuse, the unknown and the potential to plunge you into the depths of uncertainty and desolation. With Pluto and Mercury on the descendant just into the 7th conjunct to Uranus in the 6th and connecting to Neptune via a sextile, we had all the good and bad influences rolled into one. Pluto affected the self in it’s opposition to the Pisces ascendant, and brought out the best and the worst of that heavily aspected Neptune. The rollercoaster of emotions of these outer planets would have overpowered most people, but especially someone with such a gentle impressionable Pisces Ascendant. I have seen Pluto Uranus in Virgo directly on the descendant opposite a Pisces Ascendant in action on a good friend of mine, someone who would at the drop of a hat fall into uncontrollable depression. Whitney would have done so too in exactly the same way, and once in that almost unending spiral downwards, she would have taken forever to pull herself back up again.

Pluto in the 7th house showed that her relationships were going to transform her life. Meeting Bobby Brown was the catalyst for Whitney’s slow slide from pop super-star to drug and alcohol dependency. With Mercury conjunct to Pluto in the 7th, you can see the mind being infected and destroyed over time by the partner (7th house). The self doubt that had always been present was magnified by the bad influence that he brought to her. Had Whitney been able to stick to a rigid work routine, maybe she might have pulled through the worst of his influence, but Uranus in the 6th brought a chaotic influence to her daily life, relying on that natural talent rather that needing to keep practising. Mars in the 7th house showed that Whitney was attracted to the “bad boys” and arguments and fights in her marriage would have been common place. The thing also about Mars in Libra in the 7th is that is is intrinsically tied to the marriage partner. One needs to be in a relationship, and to pull away would bring even more pain that the pain suffered while in it. Despite Bobby Brown’s bad influence, she was tied to him by an unbreakable bond of love.

The day she died was clearly shown by the transiting Nodal axis which was tightly square to her Pluto Mercury conjunction as well as square to her Ascendant. This influence would have been affecting her for a couple of weeks before she died and I understand she was “not herself” during that time. Transiting Pluto was trine to it’s own position and square to Mars. Aries (ruled by Mars) is on the cusp the 2nd house and Pluto here was undermining her own self worth. Interesting too that transiting Mars was square to her Midheaven, an action she took affecting her public status. Looking at the midpoints for the time she died, transiting Pluto was exactly to the second square to the Uranus/Neptune midpoint. In my view the midpoint Pluto square Uranus Neptune can be translated as death (Pluto) through a shocking event (Uranus) because of use of drugs, through drowning or both (Neptune).

You know the story of Whitney so reminds me of Amy Winehouse. In a way their charts have the same faults and they resulted in the same outcome. Both women found themselves in a vicious circle, trapped by relationships to the wrong type of guy, their amazing talent through Neptune compromised through excess shown by too much Jupiter, Pluto and Scorpio influencing on their chart. Their strengths of their musical ability also became their weaknesses through drug and alcohol abuse, and yet their short but dramatic lives and their music will live on in our memories for eternity.