Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Carmen Jones, Eartha Kitt and Astrology

I'm always intrigued when what starts as a simple Google search leads in an entirely different direction from first intentions. We had watched a DVD of Carmen Jones. I was pleased, for once, to see an astrological chart as a wall display in a scene in the movie. Talk of "bad luck in the cards" was included in the same scene. A character later threw a half-eaten peach across the room, it hit the first house on the chart - a bad omen indeed, as events unfolded - although a hit on eighth house might have been more astrologically correct.



I'm not sure what I was searching for in connection with this, but I somehow got sidetracked into reading about Eartha Kit(who was not in Carmen Jones!)

Here's what set me in a new direction - quote from a review of a 1959 movie "Anna Lucasta"

"I got a big laugh a few years ago, when Eartha Kitt was exposed as a pretentious know-nothing. In 1998, she made a public statement that she was a lifelong devotee of astrology: she had scrupulously followed her horoscope, and it had guided her through her successful career. Shortly after she made this statement, someone located Eartha Kitt's birth certificate ... and it turned out that, all these years, she'd been following the horoscope for the wrong birth date!"

After further investigation I found this (here):

"Eartha Kitt usually gave her birth date as January 26 in 1926 or 1928, as she was abandoned at a young age by her mother and did not know the real date. In 1998 students from Benedict College found her birth certificate and actual birth date, January 17, 1927."

Several on-line sources still mistakenly quote 26 January as Ms Kitt's date of birth. I was interested because, ever since first seeing Eartha Kitt in a 1950s movie "New Faces", I'd had a soft spot for her, especially as I too thought her birthday was 26 January, a day away from my own.

I expect it must have come as quite a shock to Ms Kitt to find that any Aquarian attributes she possessed did not emanate from her natal Sun. Aquarius does figure in her natal chart though, and if we knew her time of birth it might figure even more prominently. 12 noon chart shown below (no birth time available). Her corrected Capricorn Sun fits her first name very well, as it turns out - Capricorn being an Earth sign.




Her natal Venus lay at 10 Aquarius with Jupiter in the last degree of the same sign. Her Capricorn Sun closely sextiles Uranus , modern ruler of Aquarius (in Pisces).
It's not surprising that she recognised herself from descriptions based on Aquarius Sun.

From a list of Eartha Kitt's quotes, it's possible to see both Capricorn and Aquarius in her nature:

AQUARIUS:
Don't make yourself stressed out over nonsensical things like material things.

When we want to have our own style of living, it is nobody's business but ours. What we do in private is our private business.

Just because you are different does not mean that you have to be rejected.

And, from Sidney Poitier "Eartha Kitt is the freest spirit you have ever met."

CAPRICORN:

I always believe in living in the country, because that's where what I eat is what I can put back in the dirt.

I've always said to my men friends, If you really care for me, darling, you will give me territory. Give me land

Everything should be done with moderation and using common sense.


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