For Sagittarius season, I thought I would explore the intricate planets, points and aspects in the chart of a daring, Sagittarius Sun pioneer, the Serbian artist Marina Abramovic. Although sticking true to her freedom-loving and boundary-breaking Jupiterian energy, I assume that she would recoil at such categorizations of her personality. Marina just is and she just creates. And in the process she opens our minds by awakening us to the deeper nuances of human nature. As you get to know her from reading her memoir “Walk through walls” (2016) Marina doesn’t distinguish between life and art. Her work is her life, and her life is her art. This year, Marina turned the noble (and numerologically blessed) age of 77 years old. In her book The Secret Science of Numerology author Shirley Blackwell Lawrence describes the energy of the number 77 as “the number of the Christ-consciousness because CHRIST has 77 as its full number, and Jesus was the 77th in his line of ancestry (…) 77 is the analytical thinker. True 7’s are spiritual. The more spiritual, the more they radiate that spiritual-quality, an intensification of inner wisdom”.
So for Marina, we can see that 2023 is a highly spiritual year. And perhaps because of this, or maybe since I am naturally drawn to Sagittarians as I carry a stellium of planets in this sign in my own natal chart, I felt compelled to read her memoir and write this article about her. For years, Marina has been an artist I only knew off in passing, since I grew up in the Eastern-European part of a territory nearest to the Balkans, and she often appeared in news-pieces in this part of the world. I remember when I was a teenager that I got scared seeing some images of her Rhythm series among the art textbooks I was perusing on a weekly basis at the French Institute’s library in Bucharest. In my teenager’s mind, she was someone who looked statuesque, unapproachable and somehow scarily strange but someone who I felt could teach me a lot about human nature (my natal Saturn and Uranus are in Sagittarius). Recently, I got back into my fascination with her life, work and unusual beauty by randomly being recommended a video from a Youtube Channel I follow, Blind Dweller. In a two-part documentary style analysis, Blind Dweller presents her brutal and yet empowering spiritual and artistic journey through life
However, as I picked up and began reading her book, I was surprised to see that most of the things described in this Youtube docu-series were the first chapters from Marina’s memoir. So if you want to know more after having watched the clips, I highly recommend you read the book. It’s a riveting account of a life lived to extremes, the extremes of work, love and real estate. Yes, Marina has the Midas touch with buying property. For example, there is a phenomenal account of how after her painful separation from her twin-flame Ulay, Marina purchased a 6-stories house in the center of Amsterdam for just 40,000 guldens, a house that she later sold for 4 million euros (!) and a place which initially was inhabited by some 35 junkies; she actually helped one of them put his life back on track as they continued to live together despite having no romantic connection. And as I was reading this part of the book I kept thinking of her chart placements and her blessed conjunction between the planet Venus (value, money) and Jupiter (wealth, growth).
So even though, Marina has a Venus in Scorpio – a position which is considered by many astrologers to be a detrimental factor for love, money and harmonious relationships – her Venus is nonetheless helped by the Great Benefic, Jupiter. Marina describes how she was born into a family of war heroes, who saved each other’s lives during World War II only to enact domestic violence upon each other as they entered a suffocating marriage. While her upbringing was replete with violence and arguments, her Jupiter constantly attracted towards her romantic and sexual opportunities, got her to love art, form relations to wealthy individuals and celebrities, gave her a magic touch in real estate issues and helped her pull in the sums of money she needed to accomplish her goals. She often supported the people she loved (such as her second husband, Paolo Canevari), which is another generous characteristic of this aspect.
Marina was born on the 30th of November 1946 in Belgrade, Serbia. Unfortunately we don’t have the time of Marina’s birth, so her Ascendant will be missing and in consequence, my astrological analysis will be rather limited. Despite this, we can see by opening Marina’s chart that there are a couple of heavy-weights sitting together and squaring each other – squares being aspects of tension and deep inner conflict in a person’s chart, that have the benefit of making a person’s life eventful and dynamic.
The first interesting pair is the one formed by the conjunction between Saturn and Pluto in the strong sign of Leo, the next is the Sun sitting together with Mars (a masculine presence that incites violence), the South Node (an aspect denoting past life karma) and the asteroid Lilith (the Wild Feminine Archetype). Furthermore, there is also a cluster of planets in the most intense sign of the zodiac, Scorpio, as Marina has her natal Venus, Mercury and Jupiter bundled together. The asteroid Chiron – the Wounded Healer Archetype and an indicator of deep and unquenchable pain in someone’s chart – is also nearby this darkened Scorpio stellium. With such powerful Water and Fire energies, I am happy to see that her chart is also made lighter by the air it receives from her natal Neptune in Libra, her Moon in Aquarius and her North Node conjunct Uranus in Gemini. It’s noteworthy to mention that this final aspect between her North Node and Uranus is the marker of Marina’s destiny as a controversial & original performance artist.
One important thing to notice is that Marina’s chart is devoid of Earth energy! Which is incredible for someone who manipulates matter to serve the spiritual development of society (an artist). But this absence of Earth also helps Marina maintain her exploratory courage and gets her to disregard conformism in any of its forms. With a Sun in adventurous & blunt Sagittarius, a Moon in prophetic and innovative Aquarius and a stellium in transformational Scorpio, I wouldn’t have imagined Marina living a mundane 9 to 5 life, tending to domestic matters and raising a traditional man’s children. If she would have had such a life, I’m sure that it would’ve been just a front to cover her real occupation, potentially that of an international spy. I say this because judging by the energies contained within her chart, secrets, transcendence and extremism are meant to flavor her life. And she is also meant to develop a light-hearted and detached approach to such life themes, as her North Node is Mercurian, ruled by the sign of the divine trickster, Gemini.
This shows someone whose comfort zone is conflict, drama and passion (South Node conjunct Mars in Sagittarius), someone who is learning from violent and creative episodes how to let go of her Ego (South Node conjunct Mars and the Sun in Sagittarius), and someone who is gradually replacing independence for inter-dependence, and action with thinking. Her thinking can indeed be surprising and innovative and many have challenged her because they were just not on that extreme level that her natal Uranus conjunct the North Node is constantly pushing Mariana to reach towards. The way to reconcile this exclusionary energy is to use humor (Gemini), and indeed having read her memoir I have to say that I laughed out loud at her dark, Balkan comments and the jokes she sprinkled throughout her text.
Let’s now look deeper into the aspects made by her natal planetary placements, because if the Ascendant data is missing I cannot discuss the influence of the zodiac houses in her life. The first aspect that stands out to me is the opposition between her Mars (conjunct Lilith & the South Node) and Uranus (conjunct the North Node). A Mars-Uranus opposition is described by astrologer Sue Tompkins as “a very decisive combination, and having decided, Mars-Uranus will usually let nothing stand in their way”. She adds that this is the aspect indicative of “great extremism” in someone’s chart and that it can make the native have a “talent for generating great sexual excitement”.
The second aspect is a triple one, as her Moon is squared by Mercury, Venus and Jupiter. Again Sue Tompkins explains that a Moon squared by Venus makes one “over-adaptive” & “someone who seems to get hurt and bruise very easily” and gives one “a strong urge to create a pleasing home” and a propensity towards artistic endeavors, while a Moon squared by Mercury makes one work hard to bring their “instinctual, gut feelings into alignment” and can make one prone to worry and gossip and to “fleeting moods and fleeting opinions”. Finally a Moon squared by Jupiter adds a sense of “affectionate greediness” into the native’s life. The author describes how “The Moon-Jupiter person often comes from a background where the maternal figure was rather dramatic and may themselves behave quite instinctively in a larger than life kind of way”. And indeed Marina recalls how her mother was honored for her military efforts and was also an individual who enjoyed art and owning beautiful things, but she was also in the habit of randomly and suddenly slapping Marina for the basic things, like not cleaning her room or sitting on the couch with spread legs while she was reading. One can imagine how a person learns to hide inside of their body if they grow up in an environment where drama and violence may suddenly spring up on them. For Marina the healing and catharsis came through her transcendent performances.
You may think that these aspects by themselves are not really that bad, however they are all squared in turn by her Saturn and Pluto conjunction. Coming back to Sue’s words, a Saturn squaring Venus gives a person “strong issues here about self-valuation” and this is in part because “those with Venus-Saturn contacts come into the world feeling unloved”. Such an individual may not bother so much with physical appearances, and struggles with money until they understand how to use it for their benefit; often, a Venus-Saturn person may try to “buy affection”, and could feel awkward giving and receiving love, especially without any strings attached. While a Pluto squaring Venus shows someone who “can become involved in tense, highly charged relationships”. She goes on to add that the Venus-Pluto person is “not able to let go”, “seems to need deeply intense but quite short bouts of relating” and can “drive their partner into a frenzy of desire” from which jealousy and possessiveness are not excluded. So, Marina has some heavy energies flanking her capacity to not only love herself but also to love others, however both of these energies helped her transform her relational and romantic pain into art, by increasing her sensitivity to what actually matters in love. And she got better at her art, making money, owning property, having famous friends who supported her and receiving awards, but with time. Her memoir ends with her still struggling to truly love and accept herself, as she was healing her broken heart with the help of shamanic experiences in the Amazonian rainforest.
From her work, I think the performance that stayed with me the most was her Balkan Baroque one from 1997, for which she won a Golden Lion in Venice. In this artistic piece she stayed for a couple of days in the airless basement of a building, dressed in white and for 6 hours each day she cleaned the meat off the bones of dead cows with a toothbrush, while singing Serbian lullabies. In this grueling and rank environment she was breaking people’s hearts reminding them of the physical horrors endured especially by women and children during the terrifying Yugoslavian conflict which changed the geography of the Balkans in the 90s. The visual and felt impact of mass pain is immediately felt in this performance.
Her ritual, the mourning, the repetition of cleaning, the smears and stains that cannot be washed away or forgotten, all fall heavily within the psyche of a Saturn-Pluto individual, a person who has the capacity to bring up collective wounds to the surface and heal them in a public way (Leo). I remember very briefly how my mother and grandmother used to switch the television channel whenever news of the conflict reached Bucharest from time to time, so that me and my sister wouldn’t hear of the atrocities which were committed, and I also remember the influx of refugees we got during the 90s, most of which were displaced Albanians. As a sidenote, Marina had Pluto transiting over her Sagittarius Sun when she created this piece. And when she was deeply in love with Ulay, her twin soul and artistic collaborator, she had the transit of Pluto crossing over her Venus, Mercury and Jupiter. Their love story is fascinating and I may focus on it in another article dedicated to real twin-flame couples.
There is so much more to say, but I’d rather you read her memoir or watch the beautiful Youtube analyses done about her life. If you feel inspired by my interpretation of Marina Abramovic’s astrological chart, and would like to have a similar analysis done for yourself, then feel free to get in touch with me for a birth-chart reading here.
With cosmic love,
Lexi
spiritualsocial.wordpress.com 
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