Fashion Mode

Louise Hay has inspired millions of people with her books, recordings, events and publishing company, Hay House. She is loved by many for her positive philosophy of life which allows us to take control, to heal our lives through our own action. Through Louise's work we are encouraged to turn our lives around by realising that it is we alone who have the power to change our beliefs and thoughts, to release negative emotions from the past, and to learn to love ourselves as a basis for then being able to offer love and our unique gifts to the world.

As an astrologer, I am of course interested in her Birth Chart. Is there something here that speaks of the determination and brilliant success of this inspiring woman? I do not have an exact birth time for Louise, and so my comments here relate to her chart set for noon on 8 October 1926. Because of this, I shall keep my analysis to the features of the chart that would not have been significantly affected by a substantially different birth time.

Louise Hay is a Libra, with Mercury and Venus also placed in this most gracious, stylish and diplomatic of signs. Given this emphasis, it is fitting that Louise spent some of her career as a fashion model, and is still looking wonderful now into her eighties. In addition, her charm, grace and calm and collected approach to even the most difficult matters in life has been soothing and healing for millions of people.

According to the life history Louise gives in her most famous work 'You Can Heal Your Life', Louise Hay grew up with difficult family circumstances, experiencing childhood rape, abuse and the very painful situation of giving up her own baby at the age of sixteen. Her fortitude and ability to transmute these horrific experiences into a positive philosophy of life is symbolised by Louise's Moon taking the sign of Scorpio. This Moon-sign gives an innate capacity to deal with crisis, with the dark underbelly of life, and to withstand extreme emotional situations, to survive. It also suggests that powerful emotional experience is a necessary part of her make-up. That her Moon receives an opposition from Chiron in Taurus suggests that part of her life's journey was to understand bodily and sexual wounding and the healing process that would need to ultimately follow. This opposition seems further implicated, with wonderful expression, in the healing work she did with HIV and AIDS sufferers in the 1980s.

To find one's destiny through the deepest and darkest of emotional transformations is also indicated by Louise having the North Node in Cancer conjunct the planet Pluto. This suggests that one's soul growth comes through the critical purging of the Self that occurs in extreme life situations, through brushes with the taboo; with matters connected with sex, death and all that is buried. Louise herself faced cervical cancer in the late 1970s, but in deeply engaging with her own beliefs around healing and the importance of both body and mind to the process, she was able to rise again for greater adventures in life.

We must never use astrology to make excuses for what we cannot do in life. Louise Hay has made a wonderful success of her life, but we cannot say she has an 'easy' chart. Traditionally, both Sun in Libra and Moon in Scorpio are in fall and Louise has both Moon and Venus strongly challenged through oppositions from Chiron and Uranus. This suggests that her identity as a woman has had to undergo powerful experiences of awakening and wounding prior to her obtaining her current level of wisdom and understanding. She also has a Grand Cross in her chart, consisting of Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and Neptune. Grand Crosses are patterns that tug us in four directions, first here, then there, then somewhere else, and then somewhere else again! They are difficult to integrate. With Louise's Mars in Taurus, not the best placement for initiative and action, under heavy fire, she has done wonderfully well to work with her birth energies to create the absolute best; a lesson for us all - horoscope patterns may indicate our core energy dynamics but they never indicate barriers to ultimate happiness and success.

Louise Hay discovered the Church of Religious Science, whose philosophy was to change her life and form the foundation of her subsequent work, during her Uranus half-return. This is a classic point in anyone's lifetime, occurring between the ages of about 40 and 45 dependent on one's exact birth date, and symbolic of an awakening to one's unique individuality. It is a call to action for those who have until now not expressed all of their very own brand of genius and can be a powerful time as regards an increase in consciousness.

The secret to success and wisdom? Being who one is, working with one's own energetic patterns and having sufficient self-reflection to learn from past experiences and take control of one's own destiny.