Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, carried a voice that could split a room open and heal it in the same breath, and her chart holds that alchemy exactly. Her Sun blazes in Aries, my pioneer among pioneers, a double leader on the throne of the first sign, radiant and unbowed; and it sits in the fifth house, the Sun's own home of creativity, charisma and self-expression, the house where charisma becomes something people pay for. She was first at so much: the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, ranked the greatest singer of all time by Rolling Stone, an artist who turned Respect into an anthem and won eighteen Grammy Awards.

Yet the depth beneath the fire is a Cancer Moon in its own home, the mother goddess herself, notoriously psychic and deeply feeling; seated in the eighth house of death and rebirth, it is a healer's Moon, a phoenix Moon that rises again and again. Her Scorpio Ascendant gave her the survivor's mask, all or nothing, seeing straight through the phony to the true. From gospel roots at her father's Detroit church to global sales past 75 million records, she poured that whole intense soul into every note. A warrior's Sun, a mother's Moon, a phoenix rising.