The astrology of Martha Stewart: Transformation and reinvention

“When you’re through changing, you’re through.”

This is a quote from the Martha Stewart documentary which I watched last night. I of course had followed her through her career, but I knew nothing about her personal life or her personality and it is fascinating.

Martha Stewart was born under the sign of Leo, the sign of performers and individuals who often have a personality that is larger than life. If they don’t, there is usually a part of them that craves this kind of recognition and it is a life lesson to realize that the true recognition of one’s value comes from within. We have a reliable birth certificate time (thank you Astro.com) which places the Sun within range of the Midheaven, the cusp of the 10th house of vocation, and the Sun rules the Leo Midheaven. Because Leo is all about expression of the Self, when Leo is on the Midheaven and in the 10th house there is a need for one’s own personality to shine through the work and career. If ever there was a symbol of this it is Martha Stewart, whose very name became a cottage industry.

click to enlarge

The transformation planet Pluto conjoins the Sun, with Chiron, planet of emotional wounding and healing, sandwiched between them. A conjunction of Chiron to Pluto itself suggests a deep soul wound from an early age.  This is a potent symbol of someone who needs to prove themselves over and over again in an attempt to heal the soul wounds that come up over and over again. She alludes in the documentary that her father was handsome but alcoholic and unable to support his six children. I imagine that led to some stressful times in the household which would be reflective of the Sun/Pluto conjunction. But Stewart’s chart shows a great deal of resilience, with Mars-ruled Scorpio rising and Mars itself in its other rulership sign of Aries in a harmonious trine to the Sun/Pluto system. This fiery influence (if not accompanied by stressful aspects) tends to burn off the stress of childhood and that seems to be what has happened here.

The ascendant or rising sign describes the way in which we live in the world, and someone with Scorpio rising can be overly concerned with issues of power and control – especially here where the Scorpio ascendant is in an exact square to her Leo Sun/Chiron/Pluto system. I watched with interest the way Stewart’s face changed in the final interview from the glowering Scorpionic intensity to a sunny Leo smile when the camera was turned on.

All of this Mars and Pluto with a fiery backdrop doesn’t make for easy relationships. Stewart is known to be prone to anger and fits of rage as revealed by former staff members, and her ex-husband of 30 years says that their marriage was abusive. She herself says in the documentary “I’m not going to ask someone how they feel in a relationship – I want to know what they think about, what they are doing.” This is not, in my opinion, the recipe for a happy relationship of any kind. And in fact Venus in the chart is in Virgo which can tend to be somewhat critical.

The perfectionism of Venus in Virgo is evident throughout the documentary where she often talks about perfection. A quick google search brings up Martha’s perfect pie crust, her perfect steak, her perfect meringues. At book signings she would autograph each book “Perfectly perfect.” The strong square from Venus to Jupiter amplifies and gives honor to the search for perfection, making it almost a religious experience.

Her Mercury in the home-loving sign Cancer is the only water in her chart (other than the Scorpio ascendant), so the idea (Mercury) of family (Cancer) is important to her. But her chart reveals the lack of empathy or sensitivity to others that seems to have plagued her relationships.

I’m a huge admirer of Martha Stewart and all she has accomplished. I aspire to be as vibrant when I’m 83.  I follow her avidly on Instagram. So I’d like to give her the last word in this post (taken from an interview about the documentary with the New York Times):

“So many girls have already told me — young women — that watching it gave them a strength that they didn’t know they had. And that’s the thing I like most about the documentary. It really shows a strong woman standing up for herself and living through horror as well as some huge success.”

“That’s what I wanted the documentary to be. It shouldn’t be me boasting about inner strength and any of that crap. It should be about showing that you can get through life and still be yourself.”