Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, was a study in two elements that rarely sit so close together: relentless earthbound craft and boundless watery imagination. His Sun in Virgo, placed in the sixth house of work and service, is the archetype of the perfectionist who shines not by demanding the limelight but by doing the job flawlessly, out of principle. Virgo is the jack of all arts who becomes master of all, the soul who rehearses a moonwalk ten thousand times until it looks like magic. From his debut with the Jackson 5 in 1964 through Off the Wall, and then Thriller, the best-selling album of all time, that sixth-house Sun burned through discipline, precision, and an almost obsessive devotion to detail.

Yet his rising sign and Moon both sat in Pisces, and that is the mystic's water. With Pisces ascending he met the world as a gentle, otherworldly, shape-shifting figure, a face that seemed to change from photograph to photograph. His Moon in Pisces in the first house wore its emotions right beneath the skin: the ultimate empath, a sponge for every current around him, tuned to divine imagination but perilously without boundaries. That same Piscean sensitivity, so glorious in his art, left him exposed. He died in 2009, a soul who felt everything and gave the world its music.