Transcending Astrology

In the birth chart of Harvey Weinstein, we have a number of placements that reinforce some classic astrological tenets. I want to first stress that people with planets in detriment or traditionally “challenging” aspects must remember that we are products of our choices. Astrology sets the scene – we must paint the walls.

Energy always looks for the easy way to move. If you know your birth chart well and you know the kind of energy you are dealing with, you can change that. Learning our birth charts is the smartest thing we can ever do (should I put in a shameful plug here? About how I can teach you?).

I can teach you.

Who is Harvey?

Harvey Weinstein rose to the top of his game at the turn of the century as a film producer. He and his brother started from nothing and worked their way up to amass great wealth and power in the world with their company Mirimax.

Mirimax produced films like Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting, Clerks, Shakespeare In Love, and Fahrenheit 9/11, winning Academy Awards and ultimately a buy-out from Disney. At his height, Weinstein was one of the top film producers in Hollywood. Wealth and power, indeed.

Let’s get to the chart.

Right off the bat, you’ll notice Harvey has a Grand Cardinal Cross/Square involving the Moon in Capricorn conjunct Chiron, Saturn widely conjunct Neptune in Libra, Uranus in Cancer, and Jupiter conjunct Mercury in Aries all making up the placements in the cross. That sentence alone takes my breath away!

The Grand Cardinal Cross

As we know, the Grand Cross is a very dynamic chart pattern often creating much turmoil/crises in the native’s life. Squares and oppositions are tense energies that make things happen, driving the native forward to either make change happen or deal with lots of change that happens to them (usually it is both).

The Grand Cross creates momentum. As a structure, it carries themes of cardinality. The planets are always connected and they are always at odds. It points to a lot of inner struggle with the potential for great triumph in life. The good thing about the Grand Cross is that it is inherently able to be balanced, although the need for balancing and compromise in the native’s life will be marked. When major transits activate one part of the cross, all other parts are activated as well.

Harvey’s Grand Cross is fairly tight and doubly cardinal. I see it as a generator, propelling him forward to fulfill his Pluto, but I will get to that.

Before I do, can I just point out that Mercury/Jupiter conjunction?? In Aries, no less! And opposing Neptune and Saturn, holy moly, roly poly… This guy’s judgment was not the best, to say the least.

Great for movies, though.

Considering Childhood

When I do readings, I always look at a person’s childhood because that is how you really get to understand where they’re at. To do this, you look at the Sun, Moon, Saturn and the MC/IC axis. I also look for any theme in more than one place for confirmation. Usually, the rule is: if a theme shows up in 3 or more places, it is a major influence in the native’s life.

His Pisces Sun is at a critical degree – the anaretic degree – and has no major Ptolemaic aspect, aside from a partile trine with Lilith, which I will get into a little. This man likely felt he had little support growing up, feeling alone his entire life. It’s safe to say the father figure was experienced as not entirely present, even if he was around young Harvey, leading to an ill-defined sense of masculinity and ego. The Sun shows a failure to provide a healthy or needed level of ego support, probably shifting the ego emphasis onto the Mars rising. Harvey may have found his male role models outside the home.

The anaretic degree of any sign is pronounced and often skewed so that the archetype expresses itself in full-force with a Uranian signature to it. This can sometimes be marked by a life of crime. With an unaspected Pisces Sun at the anaretic degree, Harvey not only felt alone with no proper masculine role model. At the same time, he was disconnected from himself and what he truly needed for a healthy ego. The Piscean energy got twisted. Our Sun represents our ego’s development and path through life. His Sun became like a lone lighthouse in a fog of zero boundaries. He lived purely in a fantasy world. This worked well for his film background but not so much for real life. With Harvey, there was no retreating into his fantasy world because his fantasy world was his world.

Again, great for the movies.

Other positions confirm the aloneness and troubled childhood: most notably, his Moon. Involved in the Grand Cross, Harvey probably wasn’t good at “being” a child. He had to grow up way too fast and he got no sympathy. Although his mother was likely intellectual, she may have had wild, sporadic moods, her attention and affection towards him on and off, vacillating, unstable. It’s possible she wasn’t very affectionate at all, failing to instill within Harvey proper displays of affection and intimacy. Moon opposed Uranus is notorious for at least one major traumatic break with the mother or mother figure when very young. It could even mean a fracturing of the relationship with the mother. Though I don’t think that was the case with Harvey, I do believe there was an emotional distance between him and his mother.

With Uranus in Cancer, a sign having to do with family and the archetype of the nurturer/protector, it reaffirms my belief that his mother was less than a source of comfort. This does not mean everyone with Uranus in Cancer had this type of relationship with their mother. It does mean these people have unique, different, or iconoclastic views on family and nurturing in general. The opposition of Uranus in Cancer to the Moon, plus the partile square with Saturn, the Moon in Capricorn, Aquarius on the IC… all these things, and how they are relating to each other, all leading back to the Saturn in Libra, ruled by Venus in the 4th, they scream out that there is a strange and powerful bond with the mother figure. She had a prominent and unmistakable effect on Harvey. Unfortunately, it did little to instill within him healthy self-confidence and self-love. I’m thinking the opposite happened: self-loathing, frustration, anger.

With the Moon so blasted, it was easy for him to develop unhealthy views of women as well (or even of people in general). Harvey lacked empathy and this is confirmed elsewhere as well. As a Pisces Sun, he understood emotions in an abstract way, but he didn’t actually feel compassion, particularly not for his victims. Maybe he felt for his movie characters, able to sense a good story with emotional depth, but it was not the same in real life. There was a disconnect in him.

On Pluto

He was tucked away in a twisted fantasy world and, with that Pluto in the 10th, he was able to turn some of his fantasies into tangible assets to profit. Strong Plutonian signatures in charts endow the natives with a type of brilliance that’s hard to describe. The mind registers every detail, the powers of perception are heightened. Resourcefulness and the ability to “make things happen” are undeniable.

Pluto has an interesting relationship with the human ego. Plutonian energy is so powerful at such a profound level that whenever it is used to strictly fulfill the ego, it backfires on the native. It tends to overtake the ego, swallowing it whole. Pluto must always transform – going through the death/rebirth cycle. You do not want your ego anywhere near that process! Of course, it will be anyway, because we are human, but it will absolutely be the cause of your destruction. Taking the ego out of the equation has you working for Pluto, letting the energy flow through you, using you as a conduit. When you’re working for Pluto, you are promoting the survival of the species. You are promoting your own survival.

If we look at Harvey’s chart, you can see how the tension of the Grand Cross is released through his Pluto. The blue lines (the trines and sextiles) are even pointing upwards, showing Harvey’s way out of his internal despair and hubris. This might just be a trick that I use but if I see a lot of tension in a chart (hard aspects) I always look to see how that tension could be released.

If Harvey used his power and influence for the good of all, choosing to get help for his darker fantasies, he would’ve been way better off. Not only would he not have broken the law, setting himself up for even worse, but he would’ve directed the energy of Pluto through him, instead of holding onto it and feeding it. Pluto is a mechanism, it’s a tool. It’s not a good destination.

Venus and the North Node

Some other things jump out. Venus is largely unaspected as well, aside from being conjunct the North Node. It’s hard to integrate the North Node without help elsewhere or conscious action. This is why it’s often a challenging area for people, especially when younger. Women were a very powerful force in his life, as were partnerships, business deals, luxury. Venus is The Muse. But as much as Venus blessed his, women ended up bringing him down, a strange North Node in Aquarius conjunct Venus end to his life’s movie.

The Kicker

Now, for the kicker. With a Scorpio ascendant, Harvey’s chart ruler is Mars. Yes, Pluto is the co-ruler, and is prominently placed for sure. But Pluto is only part of the story. It’s the Mars placement that I think was the cause for Harvey Weinstein’s downfall.

Mars in Scorpio is incredibly strong. On its own, it is nothing to mess with. It gives great drive, excellent strategic sense, long-term foresight, and the ability to sense fear in others. It’s got direction, willing to wait for the right moment to strike. Changing the mind of a Mars in Scorpio native is quite difficult, especially when it comes to ambitions. If used for destructive purposes, it can get very twisted indeed.

Any planets in the 1st house become quite pronounced, particularly when close to the ascendant. With a Scorpio Mars near the AC, Harvey embodies Mars in Scorpio. This is definitely a man with primal attributes and an animalistic nature that runs deep in his blood. Some animals hunt. It’s that vibe while hunting that encapsulates Mars so well, especially in Scorpio – a sign it rules and is very comfortable in.

And when Mars gets together with Pluto, it can easily turn into a hunt for power, for the sake of power. But rarely is power the endgame. The power is in the chase. The inclination to hunt can easily become compulsive, an obsession without the ability to be appeased because it’s about the hunt itself and nothing else.

Mars square Pluto

Mars squares Pluto gave him obsessions, a super high sex drive, and an overly bloated thirst for power and control. He was likely very suspicious of others – confirmed elsewhere by Moon in Capricorn squaring Saturn – and may have even assumed other people were as twisted as he was. Expressing his Mars the way he did fed his Pluto, and it was designed that way, but because it was negative with ill intentions, Pluto steadily prepared the most likely outcome. Sexual trauma/deviancy is a classic outcome for Mars square Pluto. This doesn’t mean everyone who has it will be abused or abuse others, or both, but if the rest of the chart is not supported, things can quickly turn this way. It’s critical to keep in mind the pairing is more about power and control than anything.

Pluto in Leo often thinks it can have whatever it wants. This is the Me Generation. This doesn’t mean all people with Pluto in Leo are selfish maniacs but there are likely to be more than a fair share. Leo is the sign of the self and healthy self-expression, of the ego itself, but Pluto often twists things because humans are apt to be ego-driven and forget others. Pluto in Leo can be indicative of a king, but kings need to remember their true purpose is to support the people they govern. Once this purpose is forgotten, the king becomes a greedy tyrant and his downfall is almost certain.

With Harvey’s Pluto in the 10th house, the need to control everything and everyone due to a weak, defensive ego was a risk for him. The need for power overtook him and Pluto here marked his downfall because of it. He used his Pluto for selfish purposes and so it brought him from one extreme to the next. This is a classic move of Pluto in the 10th. This is why people who have this placement need to make sure their egos are in check.

On the Nodal Axis

In my practice, the nodes are super important and are actually the first things I look at when I do my readings. Although astrologers tend to have varying definitions for the nodes, it’s typically understood that the South Node represents where we have innate talents, while the North Node shows where we struggle but need to head towards to truly grow.

I’m of the opinion that our souls are timeless and so the South Node is connected to past incarnations, but that is a topic for its own post.

For now, I want to point out that Harvey’s true node and mean node fall in different signs.

Here’s his chart on astro.com:

As you can see, his “mean” nodal axis above is at 29 Leo/Aquarius symbolizing the culmination and breaking point/crisis of that energy. If we go off of this, Harvey indeed felt like a king but should’ve been more concerned with the good of the public. Instead, he castrated himself by leaning on his South Node and letting the selfish greed (Leo) take over, propelling him to become a symbol for justice in society (Aquarius).

If you use the “true” nodes in your chart settings, Harvey’s nodal axis falls at 0 Virgo/Pisces, which I find interesting. Perhaps he was too concerned with day-to-day happenings or too obsessed with work or numbers. Maybe he was too self-conscious, unable to see the beauty in just being.

The Leo/Aquarius axis fits better, in my opinion, but I’m not sure the nodes would be as public as the rest of his chart, so who knows? Because the axis falls between critical degrees, it’s likely all four signs are involved to some extent. The 29th degree begins to take on qualities of the following sign because that’s the direction of growth (explained more in my post about these degrees here). The 0 degrees are basically pure expressions of whatever sign they’re in.

Final Thoughts

What terrifies me the most about Harvey is my hunch that he truly does not believe he did anything wrong. We hear him defend himself in public but to think that he genuinely blames the women for what happened to him (and them) is just proof that the human mind can rationalize anything.