FATHER'S DAY, BOOK NOOK - an astrological reading experience

ABSTRACT: In this blog, I look at the life of Baroque Artist, Artemisia Gentileschi through the lens of the novel written by Susan Vreeland.  The astrology of Artemisia’s untimed chart is explored in relation to the story told by the novel.  In honor of Father’s Day, the role of father is examined in the birth chart. 

The Passion of Artemisia, by Susan Vreeland

Portrait of Artemisia Gentileschi, painted by the artist. A woman in a pink scarf and a blue head covering partially covering her hair. She is holding a feather.

Hello everyone,

I love to get lost in a book.  Books take me to another time, another place and open up spaces in my brain to think about relationships and the histories of various characters' lives.

In particular, I love historical fiction.  It transports me.

Over Father’s Day weekend, I had nothing else planned.  That is so rare for me.  I cherish those weekends without an agenda.  A book that has been sitting by my bed for a long time is: The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland.  I don’t know how long that book had been there, but it wasn’t new.  It wasn’t even new when I got it - I often prefer to get used ‘like new’ books.  The Passion of Artemisia was one of these.

I didn’t know when I began the book that it would have a theme related to father daughter relationships.  Yet there it was.  

A great deal has been written about the impact of father-daughter relationships.  This book moved me to explore some of the research.  Perhaps, I’ll talk about that more in another post.

The name Artemisia fascinates me.  I’ve been drawn to Artemis all my life.  She’s a strong woman. She represents the Moon as her brother Apollo drives the Sun in his chariot.

There is a picture on the left of Artemis the archer standing on a purple mountain ready to send an arrow from her bow. The picture on the left is her brother Apollo in his chariot pulling the Sun across the skies.

Artemis is also the Goddess of childbirth.  

My experience as a dancer brought me through a movement and dance ritual or Artemis that was completely unexpected and very profound.  This is another topic: the way that art is a portal to explore our understanding of ourselves and of meaningful mythic archetypes that play a part in our lives.

Artemisia is an artist of the Baroque era.  At that time Caravaggio and his use of chiaroscuro was a huge influence.  Her own art, as portrayed in the book, has a quality of being therapeutic and healing. Artemisia is sexually victimized and one might consider that some of her paintings are perhaps working through that experience. She chooses subject matter that is about strong women and their stories of triumph over situations designed to take away a woman’s power and sense of herself.

Just as in the mythology of Persephone, Artemisia’s own father is portrayed as complicit in the sexual abuse of his own daughter. 

Relationships are complicated.  Father daughter relationships can be complicated.  Moving forward I will explore some of those complications, in between astrology and tarot work.  This exploration fits in with my professional experience as a psychotherapist.  It is rarely the simple work on relationships that takes focus in psychotherapy.  

A pervasive trope in psychotherapy is that people talk about their mothers.  I went to a creative arts therapy conference years ago and did a workshop led by Fran Levy, a dance therapist with whom I had studied.  The workshop was about relationships.  As I recall, we explored the relationship of our choice by imaging what kind of jungle animal we were and what kind of jungle animal the other person in our duo was.  We played out the scenario with back and forth role play.  The only caveat she gave us in choosing what relationship to work on was “please don’t choose your mother, because we’ll be here forever.”  My own experience in psychotherapy was that I spent all my time talking about my father.  I recall, my therapist asking occasionally, why don’t we speak about your mother and her influence.  My response was always, I don’t have significant issues with my mom, it’s my dad that I need to sort out.  Of course that wasn’t entirely true.  Does anyone not have things to talk about that come from their mother’s influence?  Probably not. In retrospect,  I’m sure it would have been fruitful to talk about my mother.  I”m sure that would have helped my growth.  Yet from my perspective, talking about my father was the area that was going to be most supportive of my survival in the world.

I will be curious and keep you, my readers engaged as I do some research into the relationships between fathers and daughters.birth

I found a chart for Artemisia.  There’s no birth time and the chart info is retrieved from this site https://www.astrotheme.com/astrology/Artemisia_Gentileschi

To look at the influence of the father, a place to begin is with Saturn.  We can’t really look at house placements because without an accurate time we don’t know the ascendant and that precludes accurate house placement.

In the chart, Saturn is at 28 degrees or Cancer.  Thus it answers to the Moon in Scorpio.  The Moon rules Cancer.  

Saturn is in detriment in Cancer, and the Moon is in Fall in Scorpio.  Neither of these planets are well placed. Saturn is the planet that signifies our work in the world.  Here in this chart for Artemisia, Saturn in Cancer could imply that she learned her work in the world from her father who, according to the novel, was also a painter.  Artemisia also tried to teach her daughter painting, so that she too would have a skill with which to earn a living.  However, in the novel, painting was not her daughter’s path.

By sign, the two planets, Saturn and Moon are in trine. However the fact that they are in detriment and fall respectively does not bode well for the way they work together.  If the shorthand interpretation for Saturn is Work and the shorthand for the Moon is the Body, then it appears to foretell the unfolding of something challenging and perhaps even perceived as negative with regard to Artemisia's work as an artist and a negative impact on her body.  Or if we look at the father being represented by Saturn then something negative that not only involves work, the body but something that also includes the father.

Exploring these aspects in the context of a fictional novel, I have to wonder if the writer took anything astrological into account as she wrote.

The next planet to consider is Mars, because it rules the Moon by virtue of its placement in Scorpio.  Mars is in Pisces, a neutral place 

Those are the planets that I would look at to explore the role of the father in Artemisia’s life.  I’ll leave you without any spoilers so that you can enjoy the book, The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland.

Thanks for being here and being a reader.

Best,

Mera