Marilyn Monroe's birth chart

It’s likely that we have the correct time of Marilyn Monroe’s birth, because her birth certificate is available. Thus, the birth time is possible to find out through an electronic birth registry. That’s why on Astro.com the birth accuracy is marked as excellent.

However, it’s a round number – 9.30 am. Often midwives enter round numbers rather than exact minutes of birth because they don’t think that being exact is that important. It’s an unfortunate practice which I hope will change.

However, this chart definitely suits her, so I’m going to interpret it as it is.

Lilith influence

Firstly, we find Lilith right on her Ascendant.

This gives many clues about who she was, though the Ascendant describes outer personality and behavior only.

Later we will get into her inner motivations.

I was so surprised to see her chart – it shows a totally different person to who I thought she was.

Yet, it didn’t take long to see that persona once I knew what to look for.

That just shows how important a natal chart is – for friendships, intimate relationships, or any other important interactions. You never really know who you are dealing with, and it can take years to find out what a quick reading of the chart can show.

People with Neptune in the first house can easily project the kind of image that society wants to see. They are indeed natural icons, like Kim Kardashian who has Neptune in the first. So as I read her chart, I got to know a person hiding behind the projected facade.

This kind of placement of Lilith (on the Ascendant, in Leo, opposing seventh house planets) produces a manipulative nature. Untransfomed Lilith will use sex to manipulate, and will play a victim.

She will project her own dark sexual fantasies and violence on other people and then attract those experiences to her own self, finding herself a victim. It’s a classic example of denying your dark nature and projecting it on others and then getting hurt by it.

She is very likely to use the victim card. Yes, certainly she was badly abused – her fourth house and the Grand Trine situation show it. Yet some people move away from that and heal, whilst some use this to make people sorry for them so that they get what they want.

Getting to success through any means

She was not a hard worker but she was very talented. She thought she deserved a lot in life.

She considered herself entitled to the luxury lifestyle, and with such placements she would try to obtain such a lifestyle without much work (chart ruler Neptune opposing Jupiter).

(I actually consider Lilith as a co-ruler of the chart, yet this is just me and not a common astrological practice.)


But with such placements, she would do all she can to succeed in life, and she would try to cut corners to success, resorting to getting attention through a provocative way of dressing or even sleeping her way to the top. Her chart is very, very sensual.

Though she has a very insecure core, she strove to be in the spotlight. Being seen and approved of by others was everything to her. She would use all means possible to get what she wanted.

Sensitivity and vulnerability

She was very sensitive and she mixed truth with fantasies. Because of her afflicted chart ruler, she could have lived half of her life in fantasies, lying to herself and others as a natural extension to her dreamy mind.

She may have told how she wanted to see things rather than the way that they were. This, of course, made her an excellent actress. She may have found escape in her roles, away from the world which hurt her.

Because of the lack of true self-confidence, she could have found it very difficult to perform as an actress. She may have feared that at any time people would see her weaknesses. But because she loved a luxury lifestyle, she tried to act as well as she could to maintain her level of success.

Lilith placed this way would give deep fears about fame being taken away and therefore the loss of her luxurious lifestyle. Afflicted Neptune would also give her much fickleness and unreliable nature. She was easily hypnotized and influenced.

No way out

Though some astrologers would say that Grand Trine is always a good thing to have in the chart, that’s not always the case. In Marilyn’s chart, we find the Grand Trine to be made of malefics which badly function in those signs. So what we get is a destructive energy circle almost impossible to break.

In Marilyn’s case, this involved family trauma triggering her to make friends with people who were as abusive as her caretakers, and this would trigger substance abuse and promiscuity.

Marilyn has several suicide indicators, though I’m aware that there are speculations about her being murdered. She has Mars in Pisces in the eighth house, aspecting malefics. She has Saturn in the fourth house signifying old age, conjoining the suicide star Unukalhai.

Unukalhai also gives success followed by fall, accidents, involvement in politics and forgery, interest in writing, love problems, loss, and insanity.

Her Uranus in the house of death conjoins the evil Scheat star which gives imprisonment or being locked up in some institution, danger of drowning, murder or suicide, and other extreme misfortunes. Harvey Weinstein had this unfortunate star conjoining his Sun.

Psychic tendencies

Marilyn Monroe was highly psychic because of all the water in her chart and malefic planets activating it.

She also has Neptune, representing the ocean and other worlds, in her first house.

This made her very psychic but in a negative way because of all the malefics and afflictions involved.

Therefore, for example, she may have been aware of the negative aspects of spiritual worlds, like seeing frightening creatures.


Pluto in Cancer can give a haunted home and a psychic mother. It can give deaths in the family.

With such placements, I strongly suspect that there was psychic activity going on around her. Wherever she moved, she may have invited psychic phenomena because of her energy field. She may have dreamt realistic dreams some of which showed future events or frightening scenarios.

Inherited mental illness

Marilyn’s mother (pictured left) is likely to have been psychic.

The psychic blood was likely in the family for generations, and it disturbed her mother’s mind, in my opinion.

She was a zealous baptist and very paranoid.

She wasn’t able to cope with her mental illness as time progressed, and Marilyn had to be sent to foster care.


Marilyn’s mother’s condition is reflected in the chart – an afflicted Moon in conjunction with an afflicted Jupiter, representing religion. Afflicted Jupiter can give religious extremism qualities, and afflicted Moon points to the problems with the subconscious mind.

Marilyn inherited the mother’s illness and before her death, she was mentally unstable. She is often diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder.

People with Neptune in the first house should never be prescribed drugs unless it’s absolutely necessary. All the multiple drugs she was taking simply made her addicted to the substances rather than giving her real relief.

Also, she has Mars in Pisces which can be an indicator of alcoholism or drug use. This kind of placement can also indicate sexual abuse in childhood and suicidal tendencies.

Laziness

She has laziness indicators in the chart, such as an afflicted Moon in Aquarius, Mars in the passive sign of Pisces, and chart ruler’s opposition to Jupiter. But her desires were great, owing to Pluto in the eleventh house, the same Neptune-Jupiter opposition, and Mars in the eighth house.

So this produces a person who will try to get to the top by using shortcuts, like sleeping her way to the top or dressing provocatively, which she did.

Childhood

Her family background is very unfortunate. Firstly, we find Scorpio on the cusp of her family house.

This shows already that the family had many secrets usually of dark nature.

And since Saturn is found there, this makes it even worse.

Such a combination would result in a childhood in which she was exposed to the darkest aspects of human nature and have witnessed the depths of human depravity.


All the water in her chart with malefics placed in the watery signs, and their interconnection shows that she may have been a victim of regular sexual abuse.

She has likely grown up among old people and they were not positive characters. Interestingly, the kind of men she was dating were usually old, and this is surely because of her childhood conditioning as we find her seventh house connected to the fourth.

She also attracted friends who ended up using her because of that strong energy that was imprinted in her. Also, her afflicted Neptune in the first made her energy signal vulnerability, attracting predators.

Often when such heavy negative energy imprints are shown in the chart, the astrologer should suggest a way to escape. In her case, there’s not really a way to do so.

But I would have suggested moving far away from the place of birth, somewhere to another continent ideally; as we find a well aspected Venus in her ninth house, which also conjoins a positive star Mirach, gifting her beauty and talent.

Love

Marilyn with her third husband Arthur Miller.

The star Mirach also gives luck in love, yet it’s also important to note that Venus is in her detriment in Aries, and it’s important to look at the opposition of her chart ruler to the seventh house planets. All this combined gives a mixed bag in terms of love.

She did attract many suitors (Moon in the seventh, Venus sextile Jupiter) who were wealthy (Moon conjoining Jupiter in the seventh). But because of her untransformed Lilith and oppositions from the seventh house, she triggered their dark sides through the way that she acted, causing abuse.

That’s how these oppositions work with people who aren’t willing to transform themselves by facing their darkness. The reason I can claim that she failed to transform her Lilith was because her whole life was an embodiment of malfunctioning Lilith, though some women would consider her empowered.

Such oppositions either give a projection of one’s own qualities to others, or provoking others to abuse one and not seeing that the cause lies within and not outside.

Aquarian Moon

She had the Moon in Aquarius, conjoining Jupiter. This is what gave her the attitude not of her time – she was much more broadminded and accepting that most of the society.

Yet because the Moon and Jupiter are afflicted, this also resulted in laziness, doubtful nature, promising more than she could do, fickleness, unreliability, self-indulgence, and the need for sexual gratification by any means.

Wealth

Marilyn Monroe’s Brentwood house.

She has wealth indicators such as the favorable conjunction of Sirius and Canopus stars with her Pluto, and Venus trining her chart ruler with a sextile to Jupiter.

Yet, the opposition of Neptune to Jupiter shows that Marilyn’s money management was poor. Combining that with her Lilith condition, what we get is someone who lived above her means and was addicted to the luxurious lifestyle, not caring about laying money aside for old age.

Strong desires and fame

As I told you already, she was not a hard worker. But she had a big ambition to make it in the world. She had manipulative tendencies of Lilith, natural talent (Neptune in Leo in the first house, Venus trine Neptune, Mars in Pisces), and big desires (Pluto in the eleventh, Mars in the eighth).

Her Leo decan signifies dramatic ability, confidence in public, and it also shows exaggerated good and bad traits as well as lying tendencies.

This usually produces a person who gets what she wants through doing all she can to make people pay attention to them, and in the case of women, sometimes this results in them resorting to using their sexuality to get what they want.

And though I understand that in her times the opportunities for women to succeed were very limited, were she to choose to work on herself, she could have delayed her death, and succeeded in some artistic or spiritual field anyway.

Finally…

I hope you enjoyed reading the birth chart interpretation of Marilyn Monroe. If you have anything to add or share, do leave a comment below.

Hi, I'm Simona Rich, the author of this site.

I'm from Lithuania, though most of the time you'll find me somewhere in Asia.

I write about spirituality and self-improvement, and consult on those topics.

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