Tom JacobsMost days I scan the birthday charts of those listed on astro.com’s Astrodatabank. My approach is karmic, so I’m looking at the journey of the soul as it’s shown in the chart. I use a little shorthand for taking apart the story of a chart, and usually I see stories pretty quickly. You can’t see specifics but the themes, and it’s a way for me to check out potential research/profile subjects.
Today, I’m not sure how I got to Traci Lords’ chart (her birthday’s in May). But there I was, and I couldn’t match up parts of her biography with her chart. Until I could, that is, but I’d at that point spent enough time on her chart to make not doing a profile on her a little silly.
One brief bio overview could go like this: Ran away from home as a teenager because of an abusive/molesting stepfather, posed for Penthouse at 15, started performing in porn at 16 and continued until she was 18. Took acting lessons and transitioned into the non-porn side of entertainment. She’s made a successful turn at it, gaining respect for her work though her x-rated past is never quite allowed to be left behind. She’s had a recording career and has written an autobiography, has been married three times and has one child.
What I found confusing initially was reading a quote from her that (I’m paraphrasing) the porn had nothing to do with morality or the lack of it, but was an avenue to getting drugs.
Lords was born May 7 1968, 5:19 PM in Steubenville, Ohio (rated AA).
The karmic rundown: Lords has a South Node (SN) in Libra/1st house, with the ruler Venus in Taurus/7th house. Being the center of attention for beauty, sensuality or sexuality would be a way to successfully repeat circumstances from her karmic past – in many lives she’s been valued for Venusian qualities and behaviors. Square the nodal axis is Lucifer in Capricorn, which is tightly conjunct the IC at the end of the 3rd house. Saturn is conjunct the Aries/7th house North Node (NN).
Lucifer in square to the nodes says that moral questions are an unresolved issue for her. The Lucifer archetype tells of how we align to a power greater than ourselves in the spirit of service, and can often come out as the voice of doubt – we can doubt the right size and use of ego. It has a lot to do with the “inner goodness barometer” that each person possesses (opinions of what’s good vary, but everyone’s got a sense of right and wrong). She’s going to deal for the rest of her life with the stigma our culture puts on porn and those who make it, so it’s how she deals with that fact that will determine the karmic growth she experiences relative to this Lucifer. On the IC, the unresolved issue from past lives is in not developing her own moral compass, or listening to the judgments of others instead of truly knowing and trusting herself, and making choices that work for her and not second-guessing herself, no matter the outcome. It seems to me like she’s done this – she in no way apologizes for doing work that seems inappropriate to others, she just does what she needs to do and for her own reasons.
And then look at this Saturn on the Aries/7th NN. Karmically, she hasn’t gotten to do Saturn in relationship, and hasn’t gotten to do relationships in Arian ways. She hasn’t learned to choose mature relationships, and she hasn’t gotten to mature within her relationships. A planet on the NN can tell of figures in various lives that block us, who prevent us in some way from becoming that energy, from integrating it into our lives. For Lords to learn to call her own shots about her career, to perform however she wishes to, is important. In other lives, being valued for her Libran/Taurus qualities could have lead her to allow herself to be controlled by a Saturnian figure, and could have felt locked into the relationship with that person.
The karmic growth is to learn to assert herself within her relationships, and to initiate relationships with people she can learn to have healthy conflict with. I know nothing of her three marriages, yet I suspect that she isn’t recreating abusive sexual/power dynamics with those husbands, the kinds that lead her to flee home as a teenager from the abuse of her stepfather. With planets conjunct the NN, we often don’t believe we get to have that energy. It’s still part of us, though, so we’ll attract people and circumstances fitting with the energy. The default for Lords was abusive masculine energy, and the proactive version that leads to healing is choosing her own relationships and having boundaries, and this can all be boiled down to learning to say “no” to people who in any way don’t work for her.
Drugs must have been an escape from the abusive scenarios of her youth. Pluto is conjunct Uranus in Virgo in the 12th, and each is retrograde. This can manifest as a deep level of boredom/ennui. The karmic statement is that the soul is trying to learn to connect with ultimate truth, and to do innovative things to get there. That each Pluto and Uranus are retrograde tell that in this life she needs to learn to do that a little differently; that she needs to unplug from however she used to do it and learn new ways to go about it. Pluto in the 12th if not feeling connected to something higher than the self can choose escapist behaviors instead.
But when I was looking at her chart and the line about drugs confused me, it wasn’t until I saw the inconjunct (150 degrees, a.k.a. quincunx) between Pluto and that Saturn on the NN. This means that her karmic wounding (Pluto) has to do with unfun treatment by Saturn-in-Aries people – she was not just knocked off course by one or many, but was knocked off course in such a way as to not get back up again (inconjuncts in our karmic pasts can leave us clueless about what happened in addition to being hurt). So with this aspect, until she learns to proactively do that Saturn in Aries/7th on the NN, to become a Saturnian figure in relationship including saying “no”, she’ll feel a sense of powerlessness that leads to escapist pursuits like drugs. It wouldn’t have to have been drugs, but they fit the bill – negative 12th house stuff.
Tom Jacobs is an astrologer, medium and channel in Tucson, AZ. Contact him via his website, https://tdjacobs.com.