Next week film director Paul Verhoeven’s most recent production Benedetta will be released. Verhoeven is one of few Dutch directors that have enjoyed international success with films like Robocop, Basic Instinct and Total Recall. Verhoeven always does it his way and he knows how to effectively catch the spirit of the times with his slick cocktails of sex, power, violence and religion. His trade-mark is an ice-cold hardness, exceeding all boundaries, always dressed up in rather glamorous esthetics.
His latest film Benedetta about two lesbian nuns is a good example, it is a typical Verhoeven production. Russia even decided to block its release because of the film’s extreme and shocking blasphemous nature. Verhoeven’s natal chart clearly shows his iconoclastic attitude, click the download link below to be able to view it.
The first thing striking the eye is this rather ferocious Sun-Mars conjunction on very powerful Procyon, the main star of the Small Dog that does it all his way, challenging the powers that be. By antiscion this conjunction is on the Ascendant so very strong and dominating in his life, the Sun is Lord 5 of creativity, Mars is the General Significator of sexuality and violence. The Sun is also Lord 4 of his youth and Verhoeven was very much impressed as a boy by the allied planes bombing the German V-2 rocket launching platforms near his parental home during the war. In his work you can still hear the threatening humming of these planes.
Venus-hunger
The Part of Fortune of the soul’s hunger is in the tenth house of public activity, so he really wants to be someone and the PoF conjuncts the planet part of Venus, this hunger of the soul is directly connected to beauty. A conjunction (or opposition) of planet parts always points to a very special, important theme in the life. This conjunction is disposed by Saturn, not only Lord 10 of the job but also Lord 9 of religion, here is the religious obsession. It will however manifest as a kind of radical desacralization, Saturn is in its fall in the twelfth house of transgressions. Saturn is the planet of sacrifice making spiritual development possible, but in its fall Saturn it will not sacrifice. The only serious thing Verhoeven did, was write a rather banal book about the “historical” Jezus.
It can be seen here how strong the effect is of the Part of Fortune as the soul’s hunger, also in his latest production with these lesbian nuns. This theme is repeated by another conjunction of planet parts, of the part of the Sun with the Part of Mercury on the cusp of the sixth house. The solar Part is the Part of Spirit and Abundance, the gateway to the divine, but the Mercury Part is the Part of Despair as Mercury is the planet of earthly detail. The gate to the divine is closed, that is why Verhoeven keeps trying to push it open. Cusp 6 does not make things any better, this is the house of the inevitable misfortunes we will experience in earthly life.
In fact, we see a very desperate and disappointed man here. At a very young age he experienced the grim real reality of life and you had better be very honest about this as the idea that there something higher is an illusion. This is strengthened by the main star of the Hyads on the Ascendant, the Hyad’s story is that of the young promising god Dyonysos who grew up to be an impossible drunkard cut off from all higher things.