Frida Kahlo

Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was born as Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón on July 6, 1907 in Coyoacan in Mexico City. The family was of wealthy Catholic middle class. Her father was a photographer, of Hungarian-Jewish birth, and her mother was of Mexican-Indian origin.

Frida was the second youngest in a large sibling group, all girls. She showed an early interest in art, encouraged by her father, but it was only after a very difficult bus and tram accident at age 18 that she began painting seriously. She was severely crippled by the accident with permanent damage to the spine and genitals and came to live with constant pain, which characterized the remainder of her life and came to be reflected in her paintings. In addition, at the age of six she had become a victim of polio, a disease which also left its mark on Frida.

During Frida's childhood the Mexican Revolution raged. Early on she sympathized with communism and later claimed to have been born in 1910, when the revolution began.

It was during the convalescence after the road accident that Frida Kahlo began painting. The motives were primarily self-portraits, painted in bright colors and with a lot of symbolism in the images. The paintings reflected her changing states of mind and all the pain she had to live with.

Self-portrait with thorn necklace and hummingbird

In 1929 she married the 20 years older artist Diego Rivera, also a revolutionary sympathizer. The marriage was very turbulent and they managed to both divorce and then marry a second time. Together they traveled to the U.S. and Europe where they spent time in the contemporary artistic and political circles. It is known that the two had many "affairs" outside of marriage and that Frida also had several lesbian relationships.

Frida Kahlo achieved great success with her painting and had several exhibitions in Mexico, New York and Paris. But it was especially after her early death that she became a really big name in the art world.

After being forced to amputate her leg, and after a long period of alcohol and drug abuse and increasingly deteriorating health, she died on July 13, 1954 in what is believed to have been a suicide. In Mexico Frida Kahlo is known as 'la heroina del dolor' (" the heroine of pain").

Her birth chart:

Frida Kahlo, July 6, 1907, 08:30, Coyoacán, Mexico

(Source: Astro DataBank)

What do we expect to find in her horoscope? Drama, pain, strong passion, and artistry are words that describe Frida Kahlo's life and we should be able to see them reflected in her birth chart. The most prominent signs are Leo (the Ascendant and Mercury), Cancer (with the Sun, Jupiter, Neptune, the North Lunar node, Pars Fortunae) and Taurus (with the Moon and the Midheaven). We have here a sensitive (Cancer) and artistic soul (Leo, Taurus). The Earth element is predominant, followed by the Water element.

Emphasized houses are the Fifth (creativity, self-expression), Tenth (career, life goals) and Eleventh (friends, groups, ideals and aspirations). Most of the planets are placed in the fourth quadrant, and the eastern and southern hemispheres. We have a self-motivated and self-centered person, who wants to stake out her own path in life and who is independent, wants to be seen in public life and make her mark on the environment. The Moon is in its balsamic phase, towards the Dark Moon.

The artistic side of her life is clearly evident through the Ascendant in Leo, the Venus-ruled Third House of communication and the Jupiter-ruled and stressed Fifth House of creativity and self-expression, as well as by the Venus-disposed Moon in conjunction with the Midheaven (life orientation , career) in Taurus. Venus herself is in a close and intense conjunction with Pluto in Gemini in the Tenth House, on the cusp of the Eleventh, squaring Saturn in Pisces in the Eighth House. The artistic sensitivity is also emphasized by the Sun in close conjunction with Neptune in the Water sign Cancer in the Eleventh House.

That Frida Kahlo would encounter the terrible road accident is mirrored painfully obvious already in her birth chart. The Sun and Neptune are in an almost exact opposition to Mars (accident, injury) and Uranus (suddenness) in Capricorn in the Fifth House. The accident seems to have been inevitable, which is reinforced by the Lunar nodes located right on the Sixth and Twelfth House cusps (Houses of health, disease, treatment, and in this case, life-long disability). The severe damage is also reflected by the entirely unaspected and Uranus-disposed Chiron in Aquarius in the Sixth House.

The fatal accident also meant the beginning of her artistic career, it was during the difficult and painful recovery from that event that she began painting. Sun/Neptune in opposition to Mars/Uranus in the Fifth House of creativity and self-expression also marks the start of her artistry. Her Sun is also in a wide conjunction with the Fifth House ruler, Jupiter, exalted in Cancer, which in turn is in conjunction with the North Lunar node, right on the Twelfth House cusp. From all this it can be seen how the life-long disability caused by the severe road accident became processed through the self-disclosing artistry.

The Ascendant in Sun-ruled Leo - squaring the Moon on the MC and in a sextile to the intense Venus/Pluto conjunction - shows her creative and powerful personality with all the drama, intensity and charisma that characterized her. Also, Mercury, unaspected except for a half square to Pluto, is in the proud and creative sign of Leo in the Twelfth House.

The strong intensity and passion in her life is reflected in the close conjunction between Mercury-disposed Venus and Pluto squaring Saturn in Neptune-ruled Pisces in the Eighth House. It expresses both her pain, her sexuality and her artistry, sides of her life that are intimately linked. Saturn in Pisces in the Eighth House indicates the lasting damage in the genital area from the accident and the square to Venus/Pluto gives a picture of how this affected her sexuality and femininity. Saturn in sextile with her Taurus-Moon in the Tenth House reflects how she at the same time was able to channel the pain and grief through her art, where she literally poured out all her pain and sorrow for public contemplation (Tenth House).

Saturn squaring Venus/Pluto also shows the painful experience of jealousy due to her husband's infidelity. The Venus/Pluto conjunction is exactly on the Eleventh House cusp and the Eleventh House is also the site of her husband's (Seventh House) "love affairs" outside of marriage (Eleventh House is the fifth from the Seventh). Her own infidelity is indicated in turn by her Jupiter-ruled Fifth House. The Fifth House is also the place for her creativity and self-expression, manifested in her colorful and symbolically charged paintings. So we see how closely interwoven the pain, sexuality and creative expression are in her life.

The placement of the Lunar nodes along the Sixth to Twelfth House cusp axis shows, as already mentioned, her tragic destiny with suffering, disability and grief and also shows that the alcohol and drug addiction came to further undermine her health. The same addiction is also expressed through the Sun's conjunctions with both Jupiter and Neptune in the Water sign Cancer.

The tragic end, which was probably a suicide, is demonstrated by the Fourth House ruler Pluto squaring Saturn in Pisces in the Eighth House of death, which is also enhanced by Uranus (in this case suicide) in conjunction with Mars and in opposition to the Sun/Neptune.

Finally, Pars Fortunae, the expression of joy and fulfillment, is in Cancer in the Eleventh House in conjunction with the Sun and Neptune. Cancer accounts for birthing and motherhood, aspects of life that were brutally taken away from Frida Kahlo by the fatal road accident, which deprived her of the ability to bear children. We see this illustrated by the opposition of Pars Fortunae to Uranus and Mars - the sudden accident and the damage it caused. But at the same time it led to the start of her artistic creativity, and perhaps one can say that painting came to replace maternity and childbirth. Both artistic creation and children are expressed through the Fifth House, which is so strong and dramatically emphasized in her horoscope. Surely she experienced her deepest joy and fulfillment in her painting, which became her primary language and means of expression, reflected by Pars Fortunae in conjunction with Neptune (art, painting) and the Sun (creativity).

© Mats Bergman 2013