So we think we’re tense in the hours before an eclipse? What if you carried that energy for your entire life? That’s in essence what happens to those born on an eclipse; they come into their life on Earth charged with the intensity, and perhaps shadowed by, eclipse energy. My theory is that those born under a Solar Eclipse may be the source of tumultuous events in their own life scenario, while those who arrive under a Lunar Eclipse may experience the chaos as swirling around them, reflected (appropriate for the Moon) in surrounding events. I’ve only just begun to explore this idea, so stay tuned for further discussion.

Right now let’s look at a Lunar Eclipse baby around whom plenty of trauma and drama has swirled in her lifetime: Gloria Vanderbilt (Feb 20 1924, 9:55 AM, New York USA, Placidus). Known in 1930’s media as the ‘Poor Little Rich Girl,’ Gloria was the subject of a volatile, protracted, and very public custody battle for possession of herself and her millions upon the death of her father when she was an infant (possibly signified by Pluto, retrograde at birth, which continued backward progress for only about another month, then turned and passed back over the birth point). Ms. Vanderbilt was unusual for the time, early on attempting a career, first as a painter, then a textile designer, and finally as one of the original American designers who rose to fame in the 1970s as entrepreneurs who popularized the designer label on mass market goods. All Ms. Vanderbilt’s career choices are amazingly faithful to her Taurus Ascendant (and the Swan she chose as her symbol is also a good fit), ruler Venus in Aries (Self-assertion) in the unconscious/ Collective 12th, widely conjunct Chiron (working out wounds through beauty?) and to her Pisces Sun at 00 degrees, conjunct the South Node (the past influences the identity and Soul path), ruler Neptune in Leo in mutual reception, trine Venus ruler Mars which is conjunct Jupiter in 8th (receiving the support of others, expansive and active imagination that powers the Will), and suggesting she knew innately how to expand her audience, and to make her inheritance grow. The Sun is also semi-square Chiron, implying that the primal wound will be experienced to some extent through the discovery of the ‘I am.’

For the other side of the birth Lunar Eclipse we see the Moon at 00 Virgo, making this a very tight pattern, almost like you’d expect a little ‘ding, I’m here!’ on the child’s arrival! The Moon is conjunct Earth and the North Node (of course, contact to the Nodes is an eclipse!), hinting that both the destiny and the material experience will be inexorably entwined with the emotional Beingness; add to this a semi-square of the Moon/ Earth to Juno, and we see that this was, for her, the way to empowerment, and perhaps also instrumental in realizing, like the goddess Juno, that she could not personally control everything. This latter idea is tragically apparent with the suicide of one of her sons, who threw himself from the 14th floor family apartment right in front of his mother; she has three other sons, one of whom is reporter Anderson Cooper.

A varied marriage history does suggest recurring emotional changes, if not turmoil, and supports the Lunar Eclipse theory. She had a short, early marriage to a Hollywood agent; a second to conductor Leopold Stokowski, 40 years her senior, with whom she had two sons and from whom she parted amicably some years later; a third to producer/ director Sydney Lumet; and a fourth to Wyatt Cooper, with whom she had two more sons, and who died on the operating table, leaving Ms. Vanderbilt a widow.

Though we can’t know with any certainty that Ms. Vanderbilt sees her life as tempestuous, and herself subject to a high drama factor in events outside her direct control, we can guess that many of the events of her life at the very least required a strong character just to survive them, and her business success of course required another kind of energy and strength, equally vital for the secure development of the Self, especially important for someone with the Sun at 00 degrees.