Last week Josephine Baker was taken up in the Panthéon, that typically French gallery of national heroes. Baker was born in the US as a poor black girl but emigrated to France (her birth-place St Louis, Missouri was then still partly French-speaking) where she achieved enormous success as a dancer, singer and actor. In the Second World War she was a member of the French resistance and later she fought for black rights. On the one hand Baker was an activist but on the other hand a real French heroine, she bridges the gap between nationalists and their left-wing critics.
So taking up Baker in the Panthéon was also a political signal from president Macron: you can be a real and proud Frenchman and still have a heart. You don’t have to be intolerant as a Frenchman neither a woker (extremely and aggressively politically correct). The president did have a point, both camps are unbearable, the intolerant sometimes racist nationalists as well the blinded wokers. The old battle between fascists and communists seems to appear here in a new form, so we very much need a sober middle position. Josephine Baker was made into a symbol of this middle position and it is interesting to cast a glance at the chart of this remarkable lady, click on the download button below to view her radix.
Quite a picture! In the tenth house no less than four planets are found and then success is a certainty. Lord 10 is Venus showing her performance as a dancer. Venus is strongly placed in the eleventh house but by antiscion it conjuncts overwhelming Pluto too. Her trade-mark was the erotic (Venus) that went very far (Pluto) for that time. Baker danced almost naked only clad in an “exotic” (very) little skirt of bananas, yes really. O tempora, o mores! Venus is also conjunct Neptune, the rough god of the oceans, salt water is a symbol of desires flooding everything. These two outer planets give this Venus quite some power with their mythical themes.
With this very strong emphasis on the tenth house, it is clear that Josephine Baker would escape her poor youth, although it strikes the eye that the main star of the Pleiads is on the MC and Lord 1 on the main star of the Hyads, their half-sisters. Both nebulas are connected to disappointments but the Pleiads and the Hyads are also the companions of the hunter goddess Artemis. Artemis is a lunar goddess and her companions are expected to keep themselves aloof from men. Independent women who hunt, this certainly could apply to Baker. The disappointment you will not see here because of these strong positions in the tenth house.
Mercury is Lord 1, Baker herself in the “’theatre of her own life”, very high in the chart in its own sign. She disposes herself, nobody rules her and this Mercury also disposes the three other planets in the tenth house. She has a lot of power, Mercury in Gemini is also the singing talent (Venus the dancing talent) Her lunar mansion is Al Simak, the house of Spica in the constellation of Virgo strongly associated with relationships and the tense connections between the feminine and the masculine which made her career.