On September 10 2020 Diana Rigg died. If you’re nostalgic for the 1960s, this was a big deal. As Emma Peel in The Avengers she was iconic, the face of a long-gone era. She also played Teresa di Vicenzo, in the Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. At the end of the film Teresa married James Bond, and a few hours later she was gunned down, still in her wedding dress.
Arguably Diana Rigg, through Teresa’s on-screen death, was acting out her horoscope. If I want to know about the kind of relationship someone has with death, I look at their Mars-Saturn midpoint. In her natal chart Diana Rigg had the hypothetical planet Cupido square her Mars-Saturn midpoint. Cupido is the planet of love and marriage, and what better image for Cupido on the Mars-Saturn midpoint than a bride with a bullet wound in her forehead. Interestingly John F. Kennedy also had Cupido on the Mars-Saturn midpoint – the aspect was a semisquare. This tells us something about his real-life death – he was shot in the head sitting next to his wife in full view of the public.
But I am digressing. I want to talke about Diana Rigg’s real death. It is a post hoc analysis, in relation to her lunar return – the time every month when the Moon returns to the place it was at birth. I am not claiming that it would have been possible to predict her passing, particularly if one didn’t know that she had terminal cancer. Rather, I am going through the exercise of seeing if there was anything in Diana Rigg’s September 5 2020 lunar return that pointed to imminent death.
Diana Rigg was born on July 20 1938, at 2 am, in the Yorkshire town of Doncaster. Here’s her horoscope:
It is a tough chart, with two major conjunctions: the Sun conjunct Mars and Pluto in Cancer, and the Moon conjunct Saturn in Aries. Maybe she lived out these conjunctions through her stage and screen roles, but overall her chart suggests an uncompromising person, who didn’t spend too long thinking through the pros and cons of a particular action. You might also expect the two conjunctions to be in some way connected with her death, and this is suggested by her solar arc directions, set for September 10 2020. Her solar arc directed Mars was at 17 41 Libra, directly oppostion her natal Saturn at 17 57 Aries. In fact, solar arc Mars was opposition her Saturn-Hades midpoint, which was at 17 45 Aries.
Alfred Witte and Hermann Lefeldt, in their Rules for Planetary Pictures, wrote as follows about Mars on the Saturn-Hades midpoint: “The health suffers through the work. Death as a result of long illness or by a weapon. Sad death. To be exploited”. The description is broadly appropriate, though I don’t know if her death was particularly sad. She was 82 and had lived a very full life.
Let’s now look at her lunar return, set for September 5 2020. I take the location as being the place of her birth, not the place of her residence:
The Ascendant is at 15 degrees 6 minutes Sagittarius. It is exactly opposite Diana Rigg’s natal Ascendant, at 16 50 Gemini. Seventeenth Century astrologer John Gadbury, when reviewing the solar returns of Charles I, remarked that the switching of the Ascendant and Descendant signs in a return is an unfortunate signature.
The Moon in the lunar return is exactly conjunct the IC – in other words, right at the bottom of the chart. This the end of the matter, the person disappearing from view. We also note that the Moon is applying to a square of Saturn, and is widely conjunct Mars. This repeats the signature of her natal chart, where she had the Moon conjunction Saturn and widely square Mars. It is also worth noting that in the lunar return the Moon is five degrees from the square with Saturn, and Diana Rigg died just under five days afterwards. There is another link. In her natal chart the Moon is 7 degrees and 15 minutes short of a square with Mars. In the lunar return, the Moon is 7 degrees and 7 minuntes short of a conjunction with Mars.
I am not suggesting that lunar return are always worth doing. In my experience, they can be hit and miss. However in the case of Diana Rigg her September 5 2020 lunar had a powerful resonance with her death.
Although I have always been a fan of the James Bond genre my favourite film starring Diana Rigg is in fact The Assassination Bureau. At the end of this movie there is a scene which suggests that she will marry the head of the nefarious bureau (brilliantly played by Oliver Reed), who has survived numerous attempts on his life and gets to act out the part of a calculating hitman. More confirmation yet again of that Cu = Ma/Sa configuration. Is art imitating the astrology here?!
I am glad CU = MA/SA makes sense to you. She also played Edwina Lionheart, in Theatre of Blood. Apparently this was one of her favourite roles. She helped her father, played by Vincent Price, kill his theatrical critics, with Shakespeare-themed deaths. I think if you are a theatre buff, her most important role is as Medea, with its theme of death and love. Even Emma Peel lost her husband – though he was resurrected as a way of explaining her exit from the series.