Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, was born under a rare concentration of Scorpio: Sun, Moon and Ascendant all in the sign of Pluto and Hades, the realm of power, transformation and rebirth. This is a chart of intensity, secrecy and survival instinct, and his reign bore all of it out, for good and for ill. He succeeded his father in 1941 and ruled for thirty-seven years, taking the titles Shahanshah and Aryamehr and pursuing what he called a "Great Civilisation": the White Revolution, land redistribution, literacy programmes, rapid industrialisation and one of the world's fastest-growing economies. The Scorpio Sun in the eleventh house drove a man who would not share a throne, who centralised power under himself after the 1953 coup that removed the elected Mosaddegh.