It is no surprise that an article
on 3rd House Lilith churned out a ton of words. Even limiting this article to a dozen
profiles, I was itching to write more at the end. Out of necessity, the Third House article is
a two-part series, so that readers can take a break on the trip through the
Lilith cornucopia before their eyes glaze over.
Although I didn’t initially
understand why astrologer Mae Wilson-Ludlam thought Lilith was exalted in
Gemini (natural energy of the 3rd House), I do acknowledge a certain
tendency for Lilith to run amok in this sign now that I’ve explored some of the
famous with this natal placement. If my
readers make it through both these articles, they may find themselves agreeing
with her.
Keywords for Lilith
Deception, home-wrecking, unwed mothers, miscarriage, abortion, death of
child, loss of child custody, obsession, an “Eve” wife who knows about a
“Lilith” mistress, being the “third person” in a marriage, dance ability,
(singing ability in the 3rd House), reputation for creativity and
innovation (Lilith churns out “new forms”), shape-shifting
Observations
·
Communicative chameleon –
mischievous, witty, charismatic, clever liar.
Known for saying one thing and doing another.
·
Personality – Quicksilver,
curious, inventive – the 3rd House is the mindset, so Lilith
qualities will be a thorough part of the personality. Sometimes Lilith even “takes over” the mind,
with resulting mental illness, or atypical mental functioning.
·
Lilith impacts the sibling
ü
On occasion, there is an
overwhelming number of siblings (Dolly Parton, Tenzin Gyatso [the 14th
Dalai Lama], the Dionne quintuplets) or death of a sibling (the three previous
examples – sibling death is more frequent in very large families)
ü
More often, there is Lilith-like
behavior in the sibling (Britney Spears, Bill Clinton, Jackie Kennedy).
·
Loss of legal custody of
children - the child is taken away from the parent, or the 3rd House
parent has children who are taken away – this is different from the abandonment
more typically experienced by 4th House Lilith. (Britney Spears,
Courtney Love, the Dionne quintuplets)
·
Very occasionally, a marker
for the death of children (more typical if Lilith is tightly conjunct a planet
or fixed star). Jackie Kennedy had an
infant son who died in 1963, and also a stillborn daughter. She also had Lilith partile conjunct Altair
in the 1st degree of Aquarius.
·
Lilith impacts the voice –
some natives have incredible voices (Susan Boyle, Barbra Streisand). There are a lot of singers with this
placement, and quite a few dancers, as well as people who were both singers and
dancers (Maya Angelou, Britney Spears, Courtney Love).
·
This Lilith shows up very
strongly in childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. There may be less of an impact as the native
ages, although some aspects of this Lilith are still present in maturity. A powerful 3rd House Lilith gets
the child out of the starting blocks unusually fast, and the payout normally
occurs before age 25. This is the child
with a full-time career, or a teenager who experiences total transformation by
late adolescence.
·
Mental illness first
diagnosed in early adolescence is featured, although not very common (Virginia
Woolf, Sylvia Plath had her first suicide attempt by age 20, all of the Dionne
quintuplets had epilepsy).
·
Occasionally signifies a
dynastic family with quite a few premature deaths or assassinations – Jackie Kennedy,
Robert Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, and Caroline Kennedy all have 3rd House
Lilith.
·
In marked contrast to 4th
House Lilith, the childhood family is often a source of support, or receives
the native’s support – especially in dire circumstances, and despite other dysfunction. Even when very poor, the family somehow keeps
the wolf from the door (Maya Angelou’s uncles killed the live-in boyfriend who
raped her, Dolly Parton was raised “dirt poor”, but she and her husband raised
several of her younger siblings).
·
Quite a few trust fund kids
have this placement (Jackie Kennedy, Grace Kelley, Courtney Love, Vladimir Nabakov, and Rihanna, who
was taken to live with a wealthy family in early adolescence).
·
Likes having sex with the
neighbors, or “neighbors” in the sense of one’s peers – may do best in an open marriage (Dolly
Parton, Barbra Streisand)
·
These are rebellious,
rule-breakers when young, but are more likely to use their Lilith-like cunning
within the establishment as they mature, whereas 9th House Lilith
wants to reform the system, or somehow transform it, and more often operates
beyond the establishment.
ü
Contrast 3rd
House Lilith Rupert Murdoch, who headed up a news empire, with 9th
House dissident Edward Snowden, who works with cutting-edge, alternative
journalists and filmmakers.
ü
Also contrast the
leadership style of 3rd House Bill Clinton, the President who
rehabilitated the Democratic Party after Jimmy Carter, with the maverick 9th
House Margaret Thatcher, who was first viewed as outside the establishment,
then became the establishment, and finally was booted out of the establishment.
Virginia Woolf
She was raised in a literate and
very well-connected Victorian household, with three siblings and three
half-siblings (her mom had seven children).
The boys were educated at Cambridge, and Virginia came to resent that
she and her sisters could not attend, although she did benefit from its
intellectual stimulation because her brothers brought their friends home to the
family salon.
The sudden death of her mother
when she was 13, and her half-sister Stella two years later, led to the first
of lifelong nervous breakdowns. She
would suffer “mood swings” her entire life, and spent three brief periods in an
institution, but her literary productivity continued despite mental illness
(also true of 3rd House true Lilith Sylvia Plath).
Woolf is considered a major
innovator in the English language (also true of Maya Angelou). She experimented successfully with
stream-of-consciousness technique, and her most influential novel, Orlando, shows the influence of Lilith,
with its fantastical story of a hero whose life spans three centuries and both
sexes. It was also a tribute to her
lesbian love affair with Vita Sackville-West, which her open marriage with
Jewish husband Leonard Woolf permitted.
Of Orlando, Vita’s son, Nigel Nicholson, would later write, "The effect of Vita on Virginia is
all contained in Orlando, the longest and most charming love letter in
literature, in which she explores Vita, weaves her in and out of the centuries,
tosses her from one sex to the other, plays with her, dresses her in furs, lace
and emeralds, teases her, flirts with her, drops a veil of mist around her.” What an amazing depiction of Lilith.
Like the biblical Eve, Virginia was very much in love with her
husband. In 1937, she wrote in her
diary: "Love-making—after 25 years can’t bear to be separate ... you see
it is enormous pleasure being wanted: a wife. And our marriage so complete." So it is surprising to find that she made
comments that he was a “penniless Jew”.
She also wrote in her diary, “I do not like the Jewish voice; I do not
like the Jewish laugh."
Yet she seemed to acknowledge her own private flip-flopping on the question
of Jews when she wrote, "How I hated marrying a Jew- What a snob I was, for
they have immense vitality.” And just to
be fair, she also denounced Christianity, seeing it as self-righteous
"egotism" and stating "my Jew has more religion in one toe nail”. With regard to anti-Semitism, like a typical
3rd House Lilith, she said one thing and did another.
Virginia Woolf eventually committed suicide by drowning. She left a note which left no question that
her Jewish husband had been the love of her life – see her Wikipedia entry for
an excerpt.
Jackie Kennedy Onassis
Jackie Kennedy had true Lilith alone in the 3rd House, just along the
cusp, and partile conjunct Altair at 1 degree Aquarius, so one might expect a
noticeable effect – Altair is associated with the realization of ambitions, and
sudden fame or notoriety, albeit briefly.
Lilith will aid the star, or add to its impact somehow. In fact, Jackie dealt with Lilith intensely –
through the death of her children, the competition from her sister, Lee
Radziwill, and the knowledge of her husband’s famous mistress, Marilyn Monroe,
but I would argue that Lilith’s more positive gift was mainly realized in her 3rd
House publishing career.
Her Mid-Heaven at 28 Leo 55 was tightly conjunct Regulus (an ambitious
Royal Star associated with dignity, graciousness, watchfulness, and authority),
and her Jupiter was partile conjunct Aldebaran at 9 Gemini 34 (success,
popularity, humor, but possible chicanery).
The fixed star energy in her nativity is prominent, and heightens the
strength of anything associated by tight conjunction, so we may anticipate
Lilith as a “major player”, which it was.
Jackie was born into an incredibly wealthy family. She and Lee Radziwill were the daughters of
Wall Street stockbroker John “Black Jack” Bouvier and socialite Janet Lee. Once her parents divorced, Jackie’s mom
snagged Hugh Dudley Auchincloss, Jr., the heir to the Standard Oil
fortune. This established a very high
bar for both daughters. Jackie met the bar
and exceeded it, while Lee was always at her sister’s heels, struggling to do
as well.
Jackie’s youthful equestrian skill got a lot of attention, because it was
appropriate to her social set, but young Jackie also had a strong career
orientation toward journalism and publishing, photography and art. No one expected it to be anything but a
sideline; her job was to marry a millionaire.
Still, Jackie got an early “payout” from Lilith – she was hired as an
“Inquiring Photographer” for the Washington Times Herald as soon as she
graduated from college, AND
she published a book called “One Special Summer”, based on a trip she and her
sister took through Europe when Jackie’s college graduation coincided with
Lee’s high school graduation – the only book that would feature Jackie’s own
drawings.
A distinctive Mid-Heaven in a woman’s chart often says more about her
husband than her career – this is as true now as it was sixty years ago, in
Jackie’s era. Jackie would marry her
Royal Star by the age of 24, and quickly achieved lasting fame as the most
memorable First Lady of the 20th Century (this may seem unfair to
Eleanor Roosevelt, whose intellectual and political stature was unsurpassed,
but it is nonetheless true).
In her private life, Lilith shows up in a lot of ways – in her witty,
sharp, unsparing, rather mean insights on people around her (the reason why her
daughter Caroline was so quick to defend her mother’s 1964 interview tapes with
historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr.), and in the death of her infant son in 1963
(she also had a stillborn daughter). In
the 3rd House, sibling death is more common than the premature death
of a child, and even sibling death is not especially common, so one senses that
Jackie’s dealings with Lilith were out of proportion and extra-ordinary (very
similar to Marilyn Monroe, who had even more fixed star conjunctions than
Jackie did).
In the 3rd House, the Lilith energy is often deflected to a
sibling – Lee Radziwill was overtly Lilith in her private life. Lee’s second marriage was to Polish prince
Stanislaw Radziwill, who divorced his second wife in order to marry Lee (her
Lilith-like status as a low-profile home-wrecker is not in question). She also had a long-standing affair with
Aristotle Onassis, and was bitterly disappointed when he married her elder
sister.
Onassis’ death in 1975 made Jackie a widow a second time. Her connections and social standing
guaranteed that a job of her choice would land in her lap if she wanted one,
but it did not ensure the sort of enduring achievement that Jackie would
realize as a publisher. My sense is that
Jackie had worked though enough karma after the death of two children and two
husbands, and was finally able to tap into Lilith as a gift rather than
heartbreak.
Jackie had two significant, largely overlooked publishing achievements in
the 1990’s. She oversaw the publication
in English of The Cairo Trilogy by
Naguib Mahfouz, an honor shared with co-publisher Martha Levin. Mahfouz had a huge impact on the mid-century
Arab world – the saying, “Cairo writes, Beirut publishes, Baghdad reads”, was
in part due to the influence of his collected work, much of which was
originally published in the 1950’s.
Jackie understood instinctively that he would become a bestselling
author, and she was right – his slow, meandering saga of one multi-generational
Egyptian family is still considered a classic out of Africa.
Her other legacy was the publication of Dorothy West’s 1995 book, “The
Wedding”. West was known as the last
surviving member of the Harlem Renaissance, and the book was also a study of
race, class, wealth, and power in one multi-generational African-American
family. Jackie’s inside view of dynastic
families was coupled with good insight on what books would sell – “The Wedding”
was eventually made into a mini-series starring Halle Berry.
Britney Spears
The ultimate high-achieving child star, Britney became the 'best-selling
teenage artist of all time' before she turned twenty. She had attracted the attention of the
casting director of The Mickey Mouse Club
by the time she was eight, and had moved to New York with her mom to start a
career the same year. By age 11, she was
on The Mickey Mouse Club. At age 16, she signed a major label, and with
her small-town girl instinct – a feature of 3rd House Lilith – she
did a shopping mall promotional tour for her first album that got a lot of
attention.
Britney has a tight true Lilith conjunction with Neptune in the 3rd. My own feeling is that Lilith-Neptune is a
star at either sex or religion (admittedly, the sample size is small, but
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, also had a partile 3rd
House Lilith-Neptune conjunction. Like
Britney, he was also a child with a full-time career.)
At age 17, she was on the cover of the April 1999 Rolling Stone magazine,
which featured her lying on her bed, clad with a bra, shorts and an open top.
Her Wikipedia entry notes that the American Family Association (AFA) referred
to the shoot as "a disturbing mix of childhood innocence and adult
sexuality". At issue was Britney’s
3rd House Lilith tendency to say one thing and do another – at the
same time she did the Rolling Stone photo shoot, she was saying she would
remain a virgin until marriage, and the implied duplicity was apparently a big
deal for her target audience. One critic
accused her of being a “bad girl who was trying to act like a good one”.
Britney has a third house bonanza – with Uranus, Mercury, the Sun, Lilith,
and Neptune all in Sagittarius and all in the 3rd House, and with
Jupiter right on the 2nd House cusp, which really expanded her
earnings. The public readily seems to
judge her (Sagittarius) based on that unseen, yet deceptive Lilith – it has
been said that she is not a particularly strong vocalist because she lip syncs
on stage. Yet in all fairness, her fans
don’t go to her concerts for the music, but for the spectacle. Plus she is doing a lot of dancing on stage
(3rd House Lilith musicians and writers seem to have dance in their
backgrounds) so flawless live singing may be a little much to ask for.
Britney pushes her body fairly hard.
Three months after the birth of her first child, Sean, she was already
pregnant with her second child, Jayden.
Her relationship with their father, Kevin Federline, was contentious
enough that he was quick to use the courts to seize custody when she appeared to
be using drugs. Britney was briefly put on a psych ward – echoes of 3rd
House Lilith mental illness. She also
got the kids back – for once, her judgmental audience was more inclined to feel
sorry for her, and Federline rather grudgingly wished to avoid looking too
eager to kick her while she was down.
Lilith also shows up with Britney’s sister, although it is nowhere near as
obvious as it was with Jackie Kennedy’s sister.
Jamie Lynn Spears got some brief notoriety for being on her way to unwed
motherhood at age 16 – she and the baby daddy did not get married, even though
they tried twice to make the relationship work.
Courtney Love
Her real claim to fame is that
she was a rock-and-roll bad girl and Kurt Cobain’s wife. No one pretends for a moment that she had
anything near Cobain’s talent, but she has a fascinating back story and a
striking talent for the spotlight. Her
Lilith is right on the cusp of the 3rd House at 29 Capricorn, and a
little too far from Altair for it to matter (I use an orb of 1 ½ degree), but
the fleeting nature of her fame is consistent with Altair nonetheless.
The Lilith signature is buried
deep in Love’s family tree. Her mother,
Linda Carroll, wandered through three husbands and as many communes in Oregon,
and Courtney spent three years shuttling between foster families and juvenile
detainment facilities as a teenager after her mother completely abandoned her. This sounds more like a story of 4th
House Lilith than it does 3rd House Lilith, but there’s more to the
family history than meets the eye. For
one thing, at age 15, Courtney was able to emancipate herself from her family
and begin living on a modest trust fund established by her adoptive
grandparents. Despite the obvious family
dysfunction, there was a safety net present that simply isn’t there for most 4th
House Lilith natives.
As mentioned above, Linda Carroll
was the adopted daughter of ex-Grateful Dead manager Hank Harrison. Carroll’s biological mother was a well-known
children’s writer named Paula Fox, who may have had an affair with Marlon
Brando. There is some possibility that
Linda Carroll may have been Marlon Brando’s biological daughter, which would
have made Hole his granddaughter. However,
Carroll declined to make any mention of Brando in her memoir about her
dysfunctional relationship with her adopted parents and eldest daughter, and
her publisher would not confirm any speculation about Brando.
Before she was a singer with a
band, Love was a stripper. She liked
pole-dancing, and stripping provided her with a ready source of income no
matter where she ended up, from Japan to Alaska. As she noted herself, “Writing songs has a
lot to do with your sexuality…I danced for a while and just being around that
made me aware of what people use. And if you grow up being blessed with a certain
beauty…. you can get into a better position in life. Stripping can be really
powerful... it’s how I got a guitar. It’s how I had a band. ” One can
appreciate the sly humor of a stripper who names her band, “Hole”.
Love also had some interesting
roles in alternative films – most notably the 1986 punk film Sid and Nancy and the co-starring role
in the 1996 film The People vs. Larry
Flint. Having talent in several
areas is a 3rd House Lilith trademark – many of these celebrities
make their fame in one genre, but are active all over the spectrum.
Love also had her daughter
Francis Bean taken away from her twice due to perceived drug use, but she got
her back both times. Francis Cobain’s Wikipedia article notes, “On
August 18, 2010, Cobain inherited 37% of her late father's estate. Newly revealed documents from the Fix.com show
that Frances, not her mother, Courtney Love, now controls the publicity rights
to the name and image of her late father, Kurt Cobain. According to the
Fix.com, until her mother pays back a loan for $2.75 million which Love
borrowed from her daughter's trust fund, Courtney has no rights or say over the
use of Kurt Cobain's name or image.”
Dolly Parton
"After Momma gave birth to twelve of us kids, we put her up on a pedestal. It was mostly to keep Daddy away from her."
"It takes a lot of money to make a person look this cheap! I always pattern my look after the town tramp. I swear to God that's true, but I can't give her name."
***
Parton was the fourth of twelve children born “dirt poor” in a run-down one room cabin, where one can only imagine having that many siblings must have been overwhelming. Music was in the blood – her half-Cherokee mother played guitar, her grandfather, Rev. Jake Owens, was a fiddler and a song-writer, and her uncle gave her a guitar when she was seven because her parents had no money to buy her one.
By the time she was nine, she was
appearing on TV in Knoxville, TN. At age
13, she was recording on a small label and had her first appearance at the
Grand Old Opry. By age 14, Parton signed to Mercury Records, but her
1962 debut for the label, "It's Sure Gonna Hurt," was a bomb, and the
label immediately dropped her.
Consequently, she had a normal high school experience (as did Britney
Spears, who suffered similar early setbacks).
The day after she graduated from high school in 1964, Parton moved to
Nashville. On her first day in
Nashville, she met her future husband Carl Thomas Dean, at the Wishy-Washy
Laundromat. His first words to her were: "Y'all gonna get sunburnt out
there, little lady.” As with other 3rd
House Lilith folks, everything happened for Parton during adolescence.
Her husband shunned publicity and rarely accompanied her to her
events. They had a loyal bond over a
very long marriage, even though Dolly Parton reportedly enjoyed a lot of lovers
on the side. At the same time, she
raised several of her younger siblings together with her husband. Parton always wanted children, but was unable
to have them, so she compensated with philanthropy efforts that focus on
children, acting as a mother to her own mother’s children, and also became a
god-mother to Miley Cyrus.
Lilith shows up in Parton’s life in other ways as well. She has a gift for witty quotes, and rhyming
stanzas. She plays the autoharp, banjo, drums,
dulcimer, fiddle, flute, guitar, harmonica, pennywhistle, and piano – not quite
“A to Z”, but you get the picture. She
also had film roles outside her main career as a singer, and is best known for the
1982 film, The Best Little Whorehouse in
Texas. Her two most famous songs are
“Coat of Many Colors” – which recalls the extreme poverty of her childhood, and
“Jolene” – with its acute echoes of Lilith (an excerpt is in the preface of
“Lilith in the 7th House: TheJilted Bride").
Readers may be curious about the difference between Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn, both country singers who came from similar rural backgrounds, Native American ancestry, and harsh poverty. In terms of Lilith, the difference seems to be that 3rd House true Lilith Parton was a child star in her own community, and nationally recognized by the time she was 20. 8th House true Lilith Lynn spent her teenage years in obscurity having four babies after marrying at age 13, and didn’t even pick up an instrument until her late teens at her husband’s insistence.
What Did I Miss?
Lilith in the 4th House: Where Lilith is Vicious
What's Next?
Part Two: Lilith in the 3rd House: Karma Chameleon
SOURCES
Wikipedia does a good, concise summary on a lot of people. I used Wikipedia for Virginia Woolf and Jackie
Kennedy
Astrotheme had a particularly
detailed biography of Courtney Love.
Article on Dolly Parton’s open
marriage:
For Dolly Parton’s bio, I used
artists.cmt and Wikipedia.
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