Aristotle Onassis

Aristotle Onassis was a Capricorn Sun in its purest form: the old-soul climber whose whole identity organised itself around the slow, relentless ascent to the very top of the ladder. Born in Smyrna in 1906, he fled the burning of the city with his family in 1922, rebuilt himself in Argentina as a tobacco trader, then a shipowner, and with pure Saturnine discipline and boss-energy amassed the largest privately owned shipping fleet in the world, one of the richest and most famous men alive. He founded Olympic Airways, battled Prince Rainier for control of Monaco, chased oil-shipping deals with Saudi Arabia and ran whaling expeditions. That is Capricorn ambition made flesh: dependable, resilient, forever reaching for the next rung.

Yet his Moon lived in Sagittarius, and there is the other half of the man: emotional peace found only through freedom, movement and the open horizon, the Jupiterian wanderer who changes the weather of any room he enters. His famous, restless private life, the long affair with Maria Callas and the marriages to Athina Livanos and Jacqueline Kennedy, carried that Sagittarian hunger. The death of his son Alexander in 1973 broke that expansive heart, and he followed two years later.