Sylvia Plath
When Death is Calling
Here’s a lady who came to live in my heart one day and painted all the walls black. Sylvia Plath’s best poetic work was squeezed out of her restless soul in the last weeks of her life. Renowned as the poet of death, she inspired tons of readers and writers.
Sylvia was born under a sky revealing The Grim Reaper’s seductive grin. Both benefics, Venus and Jupiter, reside in the 8th house of death. Haunted by a relentless Venusian desire for the unattainable throughout her life, she attempted suicide multiple times. Yet, death is not all that lingers in the Gate of Hades, as the 8th house was called by ancient astrologers.
Venus and Jupiter reside in Virgo, a sign that starkly contrasts their innate pursuit of harmony, friendship, love, and the more pleasurable things in life. There is a restlessness in Virgo, reflective of its ruler, the ever-moving Hermes, who refuses to let things be. Benefic planets usually bestow equanimity and allow life to flow with ease. But here, they are agitated. Venus and Jupiter, plagued by Virgo's incessant finickiness, can create a sense of anticipatory anxiety and inner turmoil, as the peace they seek is constantly disrupted. In this Idle Place, happiness does not come naturally, and with the South Node there, we can see the desire to escape this gloomy fate. How we try to escape our fate is typically described by planets in the 8th house and the ruler of that house, in this case, Mercury.
Perhaps someday I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow. - Sylvia Plath
Mercury, the God of Writers, and host to Venus and Jupiter, takes on the task of translating Sylvia’s suffering into poetry. In the powerful 10th house, Mercury has just emerged from the beams of the Sun, a signature that highlights Sylvia’s poetic talents as well as her fascination with the occult.
Tethered to Validating Prospects
Sylvia’s natural interest in magic and the sacred mysteries as a child came to an abrupt end when her father died. It was one of the most impactful events in her life, leaving her with feelings of abandonment and betrayal. Connecting the 4th to the 9th house, Sylvia’s fallen Venus indicates the strong spiritual and philosophical consequences of her father’s death. She later referred to this event as a major source of her loss of faith and lifelong struggles with depression.
The ruler of Sylvia’s 1st house, Saturn, paints a picture of her melancholic temperament. Life is not a joke for Saturn. Until one reaches a semi-liberating Cynical Phase, life is an intimidating trunk filled with oughts and shoulds.
The hardest thing, I think, is to live richly in the present, without letting it be tainted & spoiled out of fear for the future or regret for a badly-managed past. - Sylvia Plath
The Goddess of Desire and the God of Growth and Success – Venus and Jupiter - yearn for true love and a generous dose of acknowledgment. The 8th house, glued together with the theme of relationships represented by the 7th house, deals with the social esteem we receive. How do we think and feel others perceive us and how deeply do we care about their opinions? Sylvia’s self-esteem appears to have been tethered to the projections of those around her. Her chart emphasizes an intense need for validation from others, and in Virgo, the road to recognition is one of becoming “perfect,” or of melding with everything and everyone.
I am jealous of those who think more deeply, who write better, who draw better, who ski better, who look better, who live better, who love better than I. - Sylvia Plath
Attributable to the whole-sign trine between the 8th house benefics and Saturn, love and awe are eerily connected to fear and death. Sylvia’s childhood years, spent near the Atlantic Ocean, fostered an appreciation of the impressive mix of beauty and horror encompassed by Nature. I wonder if she was caught in an analogous mix of love and fear for her own nature. In the 12th house, Saturn seems to put Sylvia on the verge of discovering her true identity while supplying her with the frightening possibility of an overwhelming darkness at its core.
The mutual reception between the Sun and Mars breathes a fiery passion into her life that prevails over the entire chart. Impatiently, she threw herself into one feverish romance after the next.
Repeated Rejection
When you give someone your whole heart and he doesn't want it, you cannot take it back. It's gone forever. - Sylvia Plath
A first major attempt to take her own life happened when she was 20 years old, after struggling with depression due to a breakup with her boyfriend and being rejected from a writing course at Harvard. She was found after being missing for several days and was subsequently hospitalized in a psychiatric facility where she underwent electroshock therapy.
Rejection cuts like a jagged knife through the 8th house, inflicting wounds that never heal. This event exacerbated the pressure of trying to balance Venusian societal expectations with her Martial aspirations. Ruled by Saturn, she must have felt she didn’t fit in anywhere but at the same time, the poorly dignified benefics in the 8th, the socially aware Moon in Libra in the 9th, and the ambitious 10th house planets all put pressure on Saturn through their superior aspects. This is also a good example of the potential of benefic planets to function as malefic influences. The desire to fit in trumped her personality for the longest time.
It's a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It's much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all. - Sylvia Plath
Her iron-willed literary ambitions, sharply represented by an angular Mercury in Scorpio in the 10th house in an exact square to Mars propelled her to work very hard. Notice that Mars not only rules the career house but also the 3rd house of daily routine. In an almost military fashion, she always got up before dawn and wrote in a very measured and technical way, keeping the dictionary close at all times, fighting to wordsmith her ideas into place. In combination with her Virgo/Libra planets, her determination for excellence, driven by a fear of making mistakes must have been excruciating at times. Her body was an extension of the typewriter, she once said.
Fatal Attractions
It was only later in her life that she was able to liberate her style from the clutches of mainstream literature. This happened with the help of her husband and poet Ted Hughes. She met Ted shortly after being brutally rejected by the love of her life, Richard Sassoon.
"Then the biggest, darkest, huggest man in the room was walking across the room straight at me... and then it came to the fact that I was stamping and he was stamping and then I was stopping. And then he kissed me bang smash on the mouth and ripped my hairband off... and when he kissed my neck I bit him long and hard on the cheek and when we came out of that room, blood was running down his face." – Sylvia Plath
This description captures the intense, almost violent Martial attraction she felt for Hughes from the moment they met. This encounter set the tone for their tumultuous relationship. Ted’s Sun at 23° Leo fueled Sylvia’s passionate mutual reception between Mars and the Sun. A few months later, they got married.
Benefic planets in the 8th house oftentimes offer rewards to those who share their resources in marriage. Ted rekindled Sylvia’s flame for the occult, and together they organized soirees exploring the esoteric traditions. Their creatively stimulating synastry also points to their ability as a couple to support one another in their writing careers. Ted helped Sylvia find her authentic voice in poetry, as the ruler of the 7th house is copresent with Hermes, the Writer, in the 10th house. However, she was overshadowed by Ted’s success. Having little time to do her own writing, Sylvia typed Ted’s work while he won prizes.
By the time she turned 28 years old and had her first child, she found herself trapped in an unhappy marriage. This is not only illustrated by the fallen Venus, but also by the Moon, a reliable traditional signifier of marriage. The Moon is seen by nobody but Mars and Saturn and is about to move into a malefic enclosure. Ted was known to be a philanderer and he started an affair with Assia Wevill right under Sylvia’s nose. Suffering emotional as well as physical abuse, Sylvia was scared that he would kill her. Under severe emotional distress, and driven to despair by her failing marriage, her responsibilities as a mother and her unfulfilled literary ambitions, she took drastic measures. Hoping to put an end to her suffering, she crashed her car into a river.
At the age of 30, she left Ted, taking their two young children with her. It was around this time that Sylvia would write her best poetry, transforming her suffering into piercing language. A few months later, she was found dead in the kitchen where she gassed herself.
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.
- Excerpt from Sylvia Plath’s poem Lazarus
Beautiful essay. I love seeing her astro depicted, haven't looked at it before. So much makes sense now.
Thank you Michelle 💜🙏