Truman Capote, who would have been 100 this year, is having a moment thanks to the new TV program about his feud with his “swans” – the belles of New York whose beauty he both revered and hated.
Best known for his groundbreaking books “In Cold Blood” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” Capote was raised in lonely isolation with aunts after the divorce of his parents at the age of two and the abandonment by his mother. He taught himself to read and write and began writing fiction at the age of eleven. Although he had a great deal of confidence in his writing and the early success he attained in that arena, he was deeply insecure in personal matters. An openly gay man, he both admired and resented the beauty of the glamorous women he began to encounter as his fame grew. He was known to be highly sensitive and resentful of any slight or criticism.
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His astrological chart is, of course, fascinating. The 3 pm time of birth that we have thanks to Astrodatabank is taken from a biography of Capote and fairly reliable. Capote himself apparently said he was born just after midnight, but that could have been for dramatic flair. In any case, Capote had the Sun in Libra with its love of beauty and need for relationships, but the Sun is squared by Pluto, the planet of destruction and regeneration. This by itself would explain a great deal of Capote’s personality: The need for love (Libra) set against competitive resentments and emotional violence (Pluto). But this aspect in the chart is exacerbated by his Scorpio Moon, ruled traditionally by Mars and passionate in nature. Pluto is the modern ruler of Scorpio and adds a layer of intensity and a tendency to destroy in order to rebuild. And then on top of this we see Saturn, planet of isolation and responsibility, conjunct the Moon signifying a deep loneliness.
Saturn rules the Aquarius ascendant (Saturn is the traditional ruler of Aquarius), and this idea of standing alone in life comes with any dominance of Saturn in a chart. Aquarius can be somewhat detached, and after his tell-all article was published and his friendships destroyed Capote famously said “What did they expect? I’m a writer.”
Capote’s Venus was in Leo, a sign that craves the approval of others, and it opposes his Aquarius Mars which can set up a conflict between one’s need for personal connection (Venus) and the need for independence (Mars), made more complicated by the detachment of Mars in Aquarius which is always pushing against too much emotional entanglement. Because his Scorpio Moon craved that entanglement, this was a complex psychological system that likely facilitated the power of the book “In Cold Blood.” But apparently it was the writing of this book that perpetuated his slide into addiction when he became overly emotionally involved with the project and with one of the murderers.
Astrology gives us a way to peek behind the curtain into someone’s psyche, but we can never predict the future with an astrological chart. There would have been thousands of people born on the same day with these same astrological configurations who did not have the kind of dramatic lives that we see in Truman Capote’s biography. I found another notable person born that day, Elfi von Dassanowsky, who seems to have channeled all of that intensity into a successful film business and philanthropy (though we don’t know the ascendant or the degree of the Moon, the rest of the chart would have been similar). Another notable person born that day was Vel Phillips, a civil rights activist and highest ranking female official in Wisconsin in the 20th century.
Watching the TV series, I feel the mtheme of destruction — that of the self and that which Capote loved the most — playing strongly in his life. The Plutonic and Scorpionic energy lashing out, and the Aquarian detachment from it all. Sad, but fascinating.