Vincent van Gogh
Endless Expressions
This month, our guest contributor Bettina Fernandez Sleeman sheds light on Vincent van Gogh’s chart. Following the threads of fortune woven into the narrative of this legendary artist's life, Bettina uncovers the various trials and triumphs on his journey.
The Letters
Vincent van Gogh was a prolific letter writer, indicated in several areas of his chart. Notice the Moon applying to Jupiter at 24 degrees of Sagittarius and then transferring the light to Mercury at 25 degrees Aries. This transference of the Moon’s light activates and energises Mercury’s natural significations of communication and language.
These letters, written in four different languages, were abundant and brought to light by being published. Mercury in Aries is prominent in the 10th house. Lord Mars is in the fertile sign of Pisces in the 9th house of publication, conjunct the Midheaven. As the highest point on the horizon, the Midheaven illuminates van Gogh’s professional path and public persona.
These letters are a window to Vincent's universe. The total surviving correspondence features 902 letters, most of them written to his younger brother Theo, which is reflected by Mercury, the Lord of the 3rd house of siblings.
Finances and Ideology
My dear Theo
Thanks for your letter, I was glad to hear that you got back safely
I missed you the first few days
and it was strange for me not to find you when I came home in the afternoon…
Theo provided Vincent with emotional and financial support. Note that Mercury in the 3rd house receives a superior trine by degree from the benefic of the sect in favour, Jupiter, significator of generosity.
With Mercury co-present with an exalted Sun ruling the 2nd house of money and resources, one wonders why van Gogh needed the financial support of his brother, and Mercury’s trine to Jupiter. Perhaps it’s because the Sun is also in a separating contra-antiscia (secret opposition) with Mars, the malefic out of sect.
Adding more nuance, Mars is enclosed by the benefics, Jupiter and Venus, the ruler and exaltation ruler of Pisces, respectively, offering mitigation to a dreadful situation and making Mars somehow less destructive and more productive.
Vincent always had “just enough” to live by. But more accurately, his poverty was self-inflicted as he would give his belongings away or use them entirely for his work. As Paul Gaugin recollected, Van Gogh had sold a painting to a dealer and gave away the money immediately afterward to a poor young woman in the street.
When I receive money, even if I've fasted, isn't for food, but is even stronger for painting [...] meanwhile the lifeline I cling to is my breakfast with the people where I live, and a cup of coffee and bread in the cremerie in the evening...
Throughout his adulthood, van Gogh was interested in serving the less fortunate. Where would we see that? Let us look at the 6th House, the place of self-sacrifice and social justice. The 6th House is the rejoicing place of Mars, the military patron, and guardian of soldiers and farmers. There, we also find Jupiter in his own domicile of Sagittarius, present with the Lord of the first House (of self), the Moon, squaring by degree with the Midheaven. I see these fighters and peasants as an integral part of his being and his career path.
He who lives uprightly and experiences true difficulty and disappointment and is nonetheless undefeated by it, is worth more than someone who prospers and knows nothing but relative good fortune.
It is interesting to note that Vincent’s 4th house of family and ancestry is ruled by an exalted Lord, Venus in Pisces, which made him very well connected and gave him access to influential people. However, as we saw previously, Van Gogh seemed to emotionally identify with the lower class and appreciate a simpler lifestyle. Saturn, the patron of agriculture, is placed in the earth sign of Taurus and is in the 11th House of community and friendship.
Health
We shall examine his artistic vocation and religious path in a minute, but for now, let's concentrate on his health since we are looking at the 6th House. Vincent had severe depression and mental health issues, psychotic episodes, and delusions. Throughout his life, he often neglected his physical health by not eating properly and drinking heavily. The Moon speaks for his body and mind. Placed in the 6th House of sufferings, injuries, servitude, and plain old bad luck, the Moon applies within three degrees to the South Node. This adds an inclination to escapism, detachment, alcohol, and drug use. Furthermore, with Jupiter in the mix, these meanings are amplified, leading to madness and self-sabotage.
He even mutilated his ear. The South Node tends to reduce what it touches and, in this instance, a part of the body (the Moon). Vincent terminated his own life by shooting himself in the belly.
The Moon-South Node placement also points to a strong spiritual inclination.
Religious Path
As a young man, van Gogh took up a post as a missionary in a working-class coal mining district. To show his support, he gave up his comfortable lodgings at a bakery to a homeless person, moved into a hut near the workers, and slept on straw. The church dismissed him for “undermining the dignity of the priesthood.”
He also prepared for the University of Amsterdam’s theology entrance examination, which he failed. He undertook a three-month course at a missionary school, which he also failed. Mars, the malefic opposite to the sect in favour, is placed in the 9th house of religion and higher education, disabling Vincent from adhering to and belonging to any religious institutions.
Nevertheless, excluded from public ministry, Vincent retained his deep faith. He later thought that instead of being born out of doctrine, faith should not be taught but that it was based on human feelings. Ultimately, he came to see nature and human history symbolising “God.”
One cannot do better, than hold onto the thought of God through everything, under all circumstances, at all places, at all times, and try to acquire more knowledge about Him, which one can do from the Bible as well as from all other things.
Art and Love
At 27 years old, when a Pastoral career was closed to him, Vincent began drawing. His subjects were those he tried to help as a pastor—the poor, and the less fortunate. His Midheaven in Pisces, the sign of spirituality, transcendence, and mysticism, doubles up the meaning of Jupiter and the Moon with the South Node.
Exalted Venus, patroness of the Arts, in conjunction with the Midheaven, announces Vincent’s fate to become an artist. But not any artist! An artist working with paints and wisdom to glorify divinity by honouring nature and his comrades in struggle. Work becomes prayer and a holy expression of divine Love accessible to everyone. One might work the soil, the other might work with paints.
There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
Venus would also point to what we find attractive in a partner. Van Gogh commented that he preferred to paint women in blue denim rather than in refined dresses. He had a relationship with a homeless pregnant prostitute, Sien. This relationship encountered great opposition from his upper-middle-class relatives.
Well, gentlemen I tell you- you who set great store in manners and culture, and rightly so, provided it’s the real thing- what is more cultured, more sensitive and more manly: to forsake a woman or to take a forsaken one? […] for my part, I can only marry once, and when would be a better time to do it than with her, because only by doing so, I can continue to help her.
But Vincent never married. Venus in his chart conjuncts severing Mars, terminating any prospect of “forever after” probably by initiating an unbearable intensity in his relationships. A great example of that intensity would be when he cut his own ear off after a furious row with Gaugin over a girl. At the time, in Arles, in the south of France, after a bullfight in the arena, the defeated bull would have his ear cut off and given as a trophy to the matador. He did indeed give his cut ear to the lady and told her to “keep this object carefully.”
Venus is also about to change dignity dramatically in his chart from exaltation to debility. Venus in Aries is independent, assertive, and out of her comfort zone. (I often think of this placement neighbouring Venus-Uranus and/or Venus-Pluto), perhaps Vincent’s relationships reflect this placement, but we can also find it in his art.
Let’s examine “The Night Café,” which Van Gogh defined as, “The ugliest I’ve done.”
His calling of the painting “ugly” could describe the room and the feeling you get from it. In his description, he uses words like “blood-red” to describe the colour on the walls, “battle” to describe the contrast of reds and greens, and refers to those in the room as “ruffians.”
Venus conjuncts Mars, the planet of war, transforming the painting of a local café into a battlefield!
Unlike typical impressionist works, van Gogh used impulsive brushwork and infused his work with his emotions, typical of what was later called Expressionism. Another expression of Venus-Mars, a painting ahead of his time, he also commented:
I often think that the night is more alive and more richly coloured than the day.
In the blue depth the stars were sparkling, greenish, yellow, white, pink, more brilliant, more emeralds, lapis lazuli, rubies, sapphires.
How could he say that? With a day chart and an exalted Sun so high in the sky? I have discussed this with my fellow astrologers from Astrum Opus. We surmised that through the Moon squaring the Midheaven by degree, she is being lifted and transported to the highest point in the sky, enabling her to manifest her meanings more prominently than any other planet. Furthermore, the Moon’s alliance with the South Node would signal Vincent’s inclination to appreciate obscurity, mysteries, and vagueness.
Similarly, he compared himself with the protagonists from the scene in “The Night Café”, who he imagined as travellers without a native land. The Moon and South Node conjunction grants him an ethereal and alien disposition. He said that “The Night Café” is "the equivalent, though different, to the ‘The Potato Eaters.’" They do resemble one another somewhat in their use of lamplight. For the sorrowful & otherworldly condition of the protagonists, one likens to skeletons and the other to ghosts.
Besides being a prolific correspondent, Van Gogh was also a prolific artist; from the age of 27 until 37, when he died, he produced more than 900 paintings and many more drawings and sketches, which works out to nearly one artwork every 36 hours.
But he was poor all his life, even though his paintings are now being sold for a fortune. This is largely thanks to his sister-in-law, Johana, who made Vincent’s work known. Can you see that in his chart? Let us know in the Comments.
Bettina Fernandez Sleeman is a French-Uruguayan astrologer living in the UK. Her approach to astrology is grounded in the methodical application of ancient techniques, with a healthy dash of spontaneity, and welcoming the unexpected.
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I really enjoyed this, thank you for this very interesting piece Bettina.