At the beginning of October, during an unnaturally bright and sunny day, I got the chance the enter Iulia Hasdeu’s home in the city of Campina in Romania. A home that resembled a miniature castle and a place in which she sadly didn’t get to spend much time in, because Iulia, a Romania poet and the daughter of the philologist & historian Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, died at just 19 years old. Before her death however, Iulia was already speaking 5 languages by the age of 11, she was musically and artistically gifted, had already published 3 volumes of poetry and plays, and got to become the youngest scholar selected to study at La Sorbonne in Paris at the age of 16. In addition, she had a very close connection to her father who mourned her intensely after she departed and even went as far as using magic and ritual to get in touch with his beloved Iulia once again.
His account of conducting a seance and invoking the spirit of his daughter one evening, which ended with him feeling Iulia’s presence and then seeing Iulia’s handwriting appearing on a piece of paper reassuring him that she is alright and that she will see him again, is a famous one, and makes for a spooky Halloween story. Many attributed this to a grief-stricken mind which was merely playing illusions on him, but I have a tendency to believe him since he shared such a strong emotional bond with her, a fact which appears in their astrological synastry.
Iulia Hasdeu was born on the 14th of November 1869 in Bucharest and her chart placements show us that she is a Sun in Scorpio with a Pisces Moon (the Ascendant information is not reliable). While her father, Bogdan Petriceicu-Hasdeu was born on the 26 of February 1838 in a city in Ukraine. He was a Pisces Sun with a Moon in Pisces (according to an ephemeris of the year 1838). So the father and daughter couple share a Sun-Moon conjunction and compatible Water sign energy, which led them to have a lot of things in common and a similar sensitivity to immaterial things. They were both drawn to spirituality and contributed to culture with the fruits of their labor. Iulia’s contribution was especially productive, almost as if she knew she has little time left on this Earth and must achieve as much as possible before a certain age. Her story is heart-breaking and shows once more that if we didn’t lose genius women in Romania due to the suppression tactics of the patriarchy or the demands of domesticity and house-wifery, we lost them to premature death.
Throughout the summer of 2023, I also felt haunted & guided by Iulia’s spectre, as I got the chance in June to attend a guided tour of the Bellu Cemetery and visit her lush and gothic crypt. And then in October I also visited the home built in her honor by a grieving father, situated in Campina, a small town relatively close to Bucharest (it’s a train ride of one hour and a quarter’s time). Not only that but I studied in the high-school named after her, the Iulia Hasdeu Highschool in Bucharest, considered to be one of the best places to study philology and foreign language (I tend to agree with the description since I walked out of there speaking 4 languages and wanting to become a writer). Personally, looking into Iulia’s story and visiting the places left where we may commemorate her, was also a trip down memory lane, reminding me of the time I spent those 4 years in a high-school named after her (a building which also resembles a castel by the way).
Coming back to Iulia, I need to mention that if you read her poems you’ll notice quite a strong fixation with death and transformation. In the collection of her personal belongings which I was able to observe in the museum, was a letter from a fan who said that her sensitive poetry helped him make peace with the death of his infant. Now looking into her chart again we see a Venus in Capricorn, which would give her an eerie propensity towards the themes of death, decay, poverty and hardship. A Saturnian Venus can also experience the loss of their loved ones or in Iulia’s case the loss of her own life. She also has a powerful conjunction between the planets Jupiter and Pluto in the sign of Taurus, an aspect which the British astrologer Sue Townsend calls ‘the wealth of buried matter’. According to Sue “the combination sometimes yields an interest in magic, for magic is simply concerned with the power of the mind over matter and it can be used for good or ill” (page 236 from Aspects in Astrology). Other astrologers have called this the Mogul aspect, since Pluto’s energy is turbo-charged by Jupiter, the Great Benefic and in Iulia’s chart it shows us that she would’ve achieved great notoriety and prestige by writing and publishing her work, by teaching and transmitting information that is of a spiritual nature, if she had lived a little while longer; on the other hand, this aspect may also be the cause of her premature death, since Jupiter exaggerates the themes of Pluto in someone’s life, and these are death and transformation.
As I’m growing in life experience and refining my astrological knowledge, I am beginning to see Jupiter as a bit of a problem in the charts of people who experience sudden life changing events, those who suffer catastrophes or intense experiences at the hands of groups and savage deaths; particularly having the North Node in Sagittarius may expose one to such issues. However we see that Iulia had a Mars-ruled by Jupiter in the sign of Sagittarius conjunct Saturn, the lord of karma. With her luminous North Node in Leo and her genius South Node in Aquarius, she was indeed destined for great things in the spotlight of the public. But Saturn taught her an unforgettable lesson. Apparently, Iulia caught a flu during her time intensely travelling through Europe. It is said that she didn’t take appropriate measures to treat her sickness, and then the disease turned into a pulmonary issue for which she was hospitalized for a while. However, the disease continued to spread & eventually it claimed her life. So by over-exerting herself very quickly (Mars), and not paying attention to the limits of her energy or demonstrating patience in her travels (Saturn) she ended up incurring a disease acquired from her foreign places (Sagittarius) which ultimately put an end to her life.
I wish I had more accurate data to work with and conduct a complete synastry report of her and her father’s charts and also dive deeper into her own. But for the time being, I’ll stop here as this post was meant to simply commemorate her during Scorpio season and to introduce her to some of you out there who may have never heard of her. It’s certainly worth visiting the Hasdeu Family home in Campina and I also heard that each year on the 2nd of July there is a large festival to celebrate the two Iulia’s (herself and her mother, who shared the name). Maybe next year I’ll attend that and see if any of my perceptions have changed or if I am able to commune with Iulia’s ghost. As always, I’ll keep you posted on whatever I discover and if in the meantime you feel inclined to get in touch with me for a personal birth-chart reading, you may find my services here.
With cosmic love,
Lexi
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