Mata Hari

Mata Hari was born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle in the Netherlands in 1876, and she remade herself into a legend so complete that the woman vanished behind it. Reinventing her past as sacred Eastern dance, she took a stage name meaning "eye of the day" and conquered Paris with an act built on sensuality and invented exoticism. This is the work of a Leo Sun placed in the ninth house of the foreign and the far: a nature meant to shine, dramatic and magnetic, casting herself as a global figure gliding between cultures and capitals. Her Pisces Moon supplies the dream-fabric she wove around herself, an imagination tuned to fantasy and illusion, the empath's gift turned toward performance. A Scorpio Ascendant gave her the survivor's mask, the mystery and the piercing allure that drew powerful men into her orbit. That orbit became her ruin. In 1917 France convicted her of spying for Germany and shot her by firing squad, though the evidence was thin and many historians since have judged her a scapegoat, her files partly falsified. A chart describes temperament, never destiny; hers was reinvention, and it cost her everything.