Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir was one of those souls who take an idea and build a whole cathedral of thought around it, patiently, brick by brick. That is the fingerprint of a Capricorn Sun: Saturn-ruled, disciplined, an old soul with a strong drive to climb to the highest rung of the ladder and be seen as dependable, serious, a person of true weight. Her Sun sat in the second house, the domain of worth and value, so her whole identity organised around what endures; and endure her work did. The Second Sex (1949) remains a foundation stone of modern feminism, a rigorous, patient dismantling of women's oppression, and her memoirs and novels (She Came to Stay, the Goncourt-winning The Mandarins) carry the same grounded seriousness.

Yet under that reserved Capricorn architecture ran a Pisces Moon in the fourth house: the ultimate empath, tuned to feeling, imagination and the tender interior life. This is where her warmth and descriptive power came from, the psyche that could hold the whole ache of a life.

To the world she wore a Sagittarius Ascendant, the philosopher's mask, the wandering questioner forever asking how one ought to live.