It’s always useful to check the arrangements of the outer planets when looking for generational themes.

Some are decidedly nicer than others. 

The Uranus / Neptune conjunction in Capricorn during the 1990s brought with it a great fascination with complimentary medicine and alternative world views.

As I have these two as part of an extremely tight TSquare also involving my Ascendant and Jupiter, I was naturally well placed to take advantage. 

I started my own practice in Alexander Technique as the conjunction started and it really hit the zeitgeist, within 5 years I’d saved up enough money to buy a beautiful 4 storey terraced house near Brighton seafront. 

I fell in love with it as soon as I walked through the front door. I didn’t bother too much with surveys and due diligence. 

I just made sure I elected the chart for the exchange of contracts.

There is one problem with elections for things like house purchases, the sellers, buyers, solicitors and estate agents are not generally content to sit around and wait for an astrologer to come up with a perfect chart and I was given a window of one week to work with tops.

This moment was by far the best available.

There is an exact Grand Trine between Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Placing the Moon there in early Cancer applying favourably to so many planets was perfect.

So what time of day to use ?

Pluto on the Ascendant was good because this would be a place of transformation.

I was going to have a Sun / Saturn opposition whatever. But it would also be part of a Kite formation so any issues that it might bring up would not thwart the generally favourable enterprise.

One main reason for purchasing such a large property would be that the ground floor could be turned into a teaching school for AT practitioners so a 9th house Virgo Sun would be a good fit.

I also figured that the 3rd house was a good place for Saturn in Pisces to be as this would be a school where people would come to do mind / body / spirit work on themselves.

I didn’t think about the 3rd house connection with neighbours.

It turned out that the property next door was owned by notorious property developer Nicholas van Hoogstraten who five years later was up on a charge of murdering a business associate.

” Two of Hoogstraten’s hired thugs, disguised as handymen, arrived at Raja’s residence. When Raja answered the door to them, a fight broke out. Raja was stabbed five times in the heart and neck and was shot in the head twice at point blank range, dying as a consequence.

In July 2002, van Hoogstraten was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment for the manslaughter of Raja, after being found not guilty of murder: a jury at the Old Bailey decided that “although he clearly wanted Mr Raja harmed, there is no evidence that he had intended Mr Raja to be murdered”. This conviction was subsequently quashed by the Court of Appeal in July 2003.

Hoogstraten later relocated to Zimbabwe and became great mates with Robert Mugabe.

His business model was to buy up Brighton houses, chop them into tiny cell like rooms and rent them to temporary homeless people and kicking them out after a short time. This ensued maximum remuneration from social security per square foot.

The inmates were held in check by a vicious bouncer who could frequently be heard throwing them against our party wall.

Fights happened in the street on a regular basis and needles were thrown into our back yard so my son ( who was two at the time ) could not play outside.

So very Sun in the 9th opposite Saturn in the 3rd.

I decided to get the place Feng Shui’d. 

But who to trust to do it. I was already familiar with alternative practices so I knew that it couldn’t be just anyone.

I found some guy who had done Millwall’s new stadium. He told them that painting it blue was an absolute disaster despite the fact that it was the team colours. 

Needless to say the Millwall board ignored him. Given they refused to take this sound advice, the rest of the world continued to ignore Millwall FC. 

They only thing that they have ever achieved is when their fans smashed up Luton’s stadium ( I’m a Watford fan ).

So out of empathy with this guy because my advice has been similarly ignored by numerous football clubs, I decided to get him to come round. 

I deliberately didn’t tell him about the neighbours, just wanted to see if he’d pick up on it. He said that the house was lovely and gave a few tips and cures, but also told me that there was a big problem with negative energy coming from other buildings in the street.

He seemed to think that this was a problem relatively easily solved by placing a Bagwa mirror in the window reflecting ” the crap back at them “. Those were his words – he was from Millwall after all.

He said that the remedies would take 2 – 3 weeks to take effect.

Just over 2 weeks later Hoogstraten chucked all his tenants out and sold to a Housing Association who gutted the place and took in long term well behaved clients.

I became fascinated with Feng Shui and studied it even giving advice to friends about how to arrange their own houses. 

But I struggled with the Chinese 5 Element Model. 

Fire, Earth, Air and Water of course but Wood ???

How is that in any way comparable to the other 4 and any chance of symmetry is out of the window. 

What does all this have to do with anything ? 

Well 25 years later with Pluto in the same place as Neptune was then it has given me the perfect headline to go with the usual convoluted Capricorn Research introduction to an article about something that would appear entirely disconnected. 

But I knew then that Wood and Water don’t mix.

As a Cancerian film star Natalie Wood have been keen on Feng Shui – if she’d only lived long enough to experience that Uranus / Neptune opposition to her Sun from her 4th house.

Tragically the other two heavyweights got there first. 

On November 29th 1981 she drowned.

Looking at that tight Sun / Mars / Pluto conjunction in Cancer its pretty clear that something violent and tragic quite probably involving water would happen to her at some point.

Usually when there is a close Sun / Pluto conjunction, the most dangerous time for that theme to assert itself is when the transit square occurs.

This would be a once in a lifetime transit and it began at the end of 1981.

This was the main one but Saturn was also opposite its natal position and heading for the square with her Sun.

This kind of thing always poses problems for astrologers. Are we talking sheer fate or was this avoidable ? And if it was, what kind of advice could we give to help mitigate its effects.

With all that Cancer square to a 7th house Moon in Taurus we might suggest that Natalie avoid trips on her husband’s luxury yacht, particularly since couldn’t swim.

But even if she’d stayed at home, she would probably have died in a horrific bathroom incident.

Because even if actual events aren’t inevitable, a certain type of symbolic experience is.

Unless we understand astrology we can’t get our heads round an act as unexpected and horrific as this, so every man and his dog looks around for someone to blame.

The Sun conjunct Venus in Aquarius in the 3rd house with Moon in Cancer doesn’t look like a killer unless the chosen method was kind words.

Scorpio rising with a ruling Pluto in the 8th house however does create a tiny bit of suspicion, particularly when it’s accompanied by the Moon.

Robert Wagner’s Moon is in a very tough T square opposite Saturn and apex Uranus in the 5th house.

These features would certainly be fingering a shock death of a Moon / Cancer type person while involved in a leisure pursuit theme.

Given that Nat and Bob got married twice, their actual synastry leaves something to be desired.

His Sun and Venus opposes her Mercury and this forms a T Square with her 8th house Uranus and South Node. His Ascendant turns this into a Grand Cross.

His T square creates another Grand Cross with her Ascendant which also draws in her 7th house Saturn experience.

Her Venus is conjunct his Neptune, which could be said to be a dream connection, if it wasn’t for all the others. When you take them into consideration, this one takes on a more sinister theme.

The chart for the suspected time of Natalie’s death is tricky as well.

Traditional astrologers might make a lot from the fact that all the planets are beneath the earth, perhaps saying ” goodnight from her “

While not actually disagreeing with the above hypothesis I would also point out that for the first half of the 1980s the five slowest movers were all contained within the autumn and winter signs, so every night during those seasons would have at least 8 planets there.

Mercury, the chart ruler, is exactly conjunct Uranus in Sagittarius in the 3rd house so clearly any kind of journey was an accident waiting to happen.

Mars, the 8th house ruler, is rising in square to Neptune, again perhaps pointing to the risk of drowning. The fact that Neptune is the 7th house ruler doesn’t help Wagner’s case either.

Venus in Capricorn conjunct the South Node ( opposite Wood’s Cancer grouping ) square to Saturn and Pluto adds another layer.

But the fact that the Moon is right on Robert’s Saturn in his horrible T square does seem to be tying any possible astro defence up in knots.

The last eclipse before this tragedy flags it up very strongly.

The Sun is a mere 3 degrees from Natalie’s own fated one. The eclipse creates a T Square with an 8th house Pluto showing how it would all end.

The Sun as 7th house ruler also involves Robert Wagner.

There are a lot of things that do point in his direction. But does that mean he actually killed her ?

There were two other people on that boat at the time.

The actor –

And the boat’s sailor –

” The case was reopened in November 2011 after Davern publicly stated that he had lied to police during the initial investigation and that Wood and Wagner had an argument that evening. He alleged that Wood had been flirting with Walken, that Wagner was jealous and enraged, and that Wagner had prevented Davern from turning on the search lights and notifying authorities after Wood’s disappearance. Davern alleged that Wagner was responsible for her death. “

Walken’s Sun at 10 Aries is right on Wood’s Descendant and conjunct Wagner’s apex Uranus.

His Moon / Mars is also conjunct Wagner’s Sun so this scenario seems very likely.

And Davern’s Mars in Scorpio square Venus / Pluto in Leo also plugs into the latter synastry very strongly.

Dennis Davern had a Sun / Uranus square aspect.

” In February 2018, Wagner was named a person of interest by the police in the investigation. The police stated that they know that Wagner was the last person to be with Wood before she disappeared.  In a 2018 report, the Los Angeles Times cited the coroner’s report from 2013 saying that Wood had unexplained fresh bruising on her right forearm, left wrist, and right knee, a scratch on her neck, and a superficial scrape on her forehead. Officials said that it is possible that she was assaulted before she drowned “

In February 2018, Robert Wagner had his 3rd Saturn Return exactly opposite that 8th house Cancer Moon.

This also makes Saturn exactly conjunct the Moon in Natalie’s death chart.

The transit Uranus ( in the 8th house in Natalie’s chart ) was conjunct her 7th house Moon.

Does this appear to be some kind of karmic judgement ?

All of the above does seem to involve Robert Wagner in his wife’s death.

While the afflicted Cancer Moon is a problem, his chart still doesn’t look like a murderer’s one though.

Maybe astrology is pointing to the most likely scenario where Wagner was enraged by Wood’s flirting with Walken and attacked her. Perhaps she fled the scene in a dinghy and subsequently drowned.

It’s understandable that people would want to blame him for her death even to the point of accusing him of murder. We don’t like unresolved cases, it doesn’t sit with our inner Hercule Poirot.

Blame is a strong word, maybe we should use responsibility. And that wouldn’t just necessarily fall completely on one person.

Any readers with afflicted planets in Cancer will understand when I feel some responsibility lies with Natalie Wood’s own parents.

With that Sun / Mars / Pluto in the sign they really should have taught their daughter to swim.

With all that Cancer squaring a Taurus Moon maybe they were too busy arguing about their soft furnishings.

At least they should have moved the sofa out of that water sector.

Posted on February 27th 2023

YOU CAN BOOK YOUR OWN PERSONAL ASTROLOGY CONSULTATION HERE

TREAT YOURSELF – REMEDIES INDIVIDUALLY TAILORED TO YOUR BIRTHCHART AND TRANSITS