Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by my friend and colleague Emma Frey to explore the fascinating mythology of the rising signs as portrayed by famous actors and in iconic Hollywood stories. Emma has crafted this series with her unique creative flair, and I'm excited to co-host and delve into these rich archetypal narratives with her. We'll be continuing the series that examines how the characteristics of various rising signs are embodied in the roles played by well-known actors, offering an engaging and insightful way to understand astrological archetypes.
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Transcript
Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology. Today, I am joined by my friend and colleague, Emma Frey. We're going to continue our series on the dharma of the rising signs by looking at some of the core mythology that is related with each of the 12 Rising signs, and in particular, we're going to look at how that mythology of the rising signs actually plays out within the Hollywood stories portrayed by actors who have that rising sign.
It's an interesting thing. But it's very common to see that a part of the way that the chart charts of artists will play out will be in and through the demonstrations of their artwork. Whether it's music, painting, or film, you will often see that major portions of an individual's birth chart will express themselves through the lens of their art, and you can do this across the board in so many different ways with astrology.
But one of the most interesting ways, and this is the focus of this series, is to look at the rising signs of actors and actresses in Hollywood and some of the ways in which the core mythology of the rising sign plays out in some of the most prominent characters that these actors or actresses have played throughout their career.
If you want more on how this series works in the philosophical premise, from the standpoint of ancient astrology, be sure to watch the first lecture, where Emma and I take some time to break down basically the philosophical and archetypal background of the series and why we believe that it's totally valid and you can replicate this over and over and over again, looking at the charts of actors and actresses and seeing the archetypes and their charts reflected in some of the pivotal roles and stories that they play in film.
Anyway, so more on that, visit the Aries episode because, in part one, we kind of do a deeper philosophical dive to give you the background and further context for the whole series if you're curious about that. Today, we're going to be visiting the sign of Taurus, so we will be looking at a variety of different core Taurean myths and how they have expressed themselves in the stories portrayed by actors and actresses with Taurus rising.
Before we get into it, as always, don't forget to like, subscribe, and share your comments and reflections. We'd love to hear from you. You can find a transcript of today's talk or any of our talks on the website nightlightastrology.com. I also want to take you over there right now because I'm in the midst of promoting a new class that's coming up on February 15. It's a one it's a single evening webinar. So, it's not a huge commitment. Just a single evening of talks. If you go to the website, you'll click on live events. Or, if you go to the events page, click on live events on the drop-down menu.
Once you go there, you'll see that on February 15, I'm giving a talk called The Outer Planets in Our Relationships. I'll be doing three of these: one in February this month, the next in March, and then in April. This is part one, where we're going to be looking at the role that Pluto plays in love and relationships. Whether it is configured in some way to the topic through your natal chart, the same aspect of Venus is in the seventh house, or if transit is affecting something in your birth chart that has to do with the significations of love and relationships. The talk is dedicated to looking at the role that Pluto plays in love and relationships.
So, if you're interested in that, you can register on the website there under the Live Events tab. If you can't make it live, we send you a recording after you register to download. So you can be there live for the webinar and the Q&A that follows, or you can get the recording later. Seven to 9pm. Eastern on Thursday, February 15, registrations are $20. Okay, well, on that note, I'm so happy to have my good friend, Emma, back on the show today. Hey, Emma.
Emma Frey
Hey, Adam. Thanks for having me again.
Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, I'm really excited to continue this series; we got a ton of really great feedback. The first time, it was actually like a ton of questions that people were asking me, like, would there be other parts of celebrities, not just celebrities, but in particular actors and actresses? Could we see other parts of their charts playing out in the films that they play? And although Emma, your research has been mostly on rising signs, I think it's safe to say that if you did more, you could probably find more signatures in people's charts that reflected big roles that they've played, right?
Emma Frey
Yeah, absolutely. I've started to look into it. But it gets overwhelming, I think, pretty quickly, just because I think that films can be pretty good mirrors for some reason. You know, of real life when it comes to birth charts, and so my next project, if I ever were to want to dive deeper, I would probably want to look at the sun signs because I think that's just a fun place to go next with actors and how their stories show up and what characters they play, and all that good stuff.
Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, so you could get really deep with it if you wanted to take things like sun signs in the house that they're in. Oh, yeah, like 12th House Sun characters, I'm sure, abound or whatever. There was, you know, another question that came in before we got into Taurus that I wanted to put past you in a run by you. Someone else said, Aren't we mistaking the characters that people play for the person that they are by doing this? And my answer to that, and I'd like to hear yours, too. But my answer was No because the archetypes are multi-valiant.
So when you have a, when you're looking at a rising sign, you're really talking about an entire mythology that will present through our character and one of the things that one of the ways in which actors are experiencing their personal character in their life is through the roles that they play and that has been historically documented by so many actors and actresses who have said that part of their own personal journey of self-exploration has been through the roles that they play. It's not to say that we're saying, oh, an actor is the same as the role that they play. What we're saying is that there's a mythological and archetypal correlation between the rising sign and some of the most significant roles that people play in the way that as artists, and the way that that may actually play a fundamental role in their personal lifetime journey.
Emma Frey
Yeah, absolutely. I think I've grappled with this question, too. I think what excites me is that as I'm doing this research, I'm a Virgo rising, and when I look at the Virgo rising stories, I can see how they play out in my life already so far, and I don't know; I'm way more interested in always have been in the story than in looking at celebrities, personal lives. But the cursory research that I've done for looking at their personal lives is oftentimes similar to the arcs that they carry out in their films.
It's subtler, and because real life is more mundane than the high stakes, high fantasy world of film. But I think that's what's so helpful about the film is that it kind of blows up these stories, these myths, into more easily recognizable formats so that we can grab onto them and use them as we navigate our own more mundane lives if that makes sense.
Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, to me, it makes just as little sense to say that the art that someone makes has nothing to do with their chart as it would to say that a person is their art and nothing else, probably like both or extremes. I think the series lands somewhere in the middle and says, look, there's an interesting correlation between the charts of artists and the art that they portray or make, and so anyway, I thought that was a fun kind of debate that was sparked in the comment section of the first video and again, for people who are joining this, I recommend going back to the first video to also hear me break down the some of the basic philosophy behind archetypal astrology and the history of archetypes and astrology, and how the ancient philosophy of astrology really supports the idea that a birth chart would show itself in many ways, including the ways in which artists portray themselves are different characters and movies. So anyway, go back to that one to see more.
Emma Frey
I will just say one more thing. I'm a Gemini sun, and so I actually, sometimes my brain hurts if I try to understand the why behind all of this. I mostly like what I do with my astrological physiognomy project patterns and stars. I just like to share data. I'm like, I'm seeing patterns across whatever made it, like if it's photographs of celebrities, or in this case, character arcs and film, and those patterns are so strong and repeated that I think it's worth sharing, and so I would love to hear what people think is behind those patterns, but so much of my passion is just being like, Hey, I found this pattern. What do you think? Isn't it cool?
Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, I love this series a lot, too, because I think one of the things it does is encourage us to see archetypes everywhere. So whatever you make of these connections is really up to you. We're just here presenting them and saying, as you said, like, look, look at how beautiful this correlation is. It really is; there are so many interesting things.
If you like Emma's work, I highly recommend after today's video that you go check out Emma's Instagram @patternsinthestars, where you will see her making all sorts of fascinating patterns and associations between charts and sometimes the facial profiles or the look or appearance of various people who have similar placements in the chart. It's really, really fascinating work that she does, and you can also find more about Emma's work at her website patterns in the stars.com. On that note, should we dive into Taurus?
Emma Frey
Let's do it.
Adam Elenbaas
Taurus is an interesting one because I feel like a lot of people might instantly have some images or ideas about Taurus, but I think people will be surprised by some of the really profound correlations that you made. Yeah,
Emma Frey
I totally agree. I think you know that when I first presented this entire project to you, this was one of the signs that I got excited about showing because I didn't expect to see the kinds of patterns that I did. It really was data first, and then exploration second, and so you'll see that when I start diving into the films.
So Taurus, this is just the glyph, and then why don't we start before we dive into the movies with the core Greek ancient Greek Taurus constellation myth, that of the Divine bull; you may be probably most familiar with it if you are at all with the Minotaur portion of the myths and the labyrinth and Theseus.
But starting from the beginning of the myth, there was this king Minos, and he was like, I want to sacrifice something really good to the gods, and so the gods were like dope. Here's a divine bull, and Minos was so enamored of the bowl that instead of sacrificing it, like he had said that he would, he decided to keep it, and so to punish Minos, the gods cause his wife, the Queen, to fall in love with the bull, and then she gives birth to a half human half bull creature called the Minotaur, very famous creature. The king was pretty ashamed of the Minotaur.
One because, you know, it was not his own, but also because it was kind of horrific, grotesque, very unnatural, and so because he was so ashamed, he had a labyrinth constructed to contain the Minotaur, and then, eventually, there was a hero that came in Theseus, who volunteered to enter the labyrinth and slay the Minotaur, putting an end to the whole thing and then with the help of the king's daughter, Ariadne, who gave Theseus a ball of thread to navigate the maze, Theseus the hero successfully defeated the Minotaur, and again with the ball of thread escapes the labyrinth, and so the whole thing was put to rest, and so there's a lot there.
Obviously, you know, we know tourists to be associated with the bowls. So that connection makes a lot of sense, and from that, and based on the movies and the patterns that I saw, I kind of broke things out into three different themes that harken back to that myth.
This one is definitely more complicated than Aries. But you know, Aries is all about just breaking out of the darkness, and Taurus is about sustaining. So it's a little bit more, I think, not immediately apparent what's going on. But the themes are clearing of projections from oneself, put upon someone by other people, or they could be false accusations.
On the other hand, before people start to get too comfortable in the victim position, there is a deliberate separation from a false or grandiose self version of the self, and then there's finally, like this return to Eden, a state of innocence, often represented by literal nature. The home people often return home in Taurus-rising stories in a state of honesty, purity, and all that Taurus stuff.
So, to help talk about this, I will illuminate a little bit further with Taurus in terms of where it is in the year. We are not yet at the brightest point of the year that will come at the end of Gemini season, but as a Taurus, we see the sustaining of the rise of the dominance of the light. That's the best way of describing what is happening. The sun, at this point, is working to arrive at its peak point. But it's not. It's not there yet. If you're looking at it from a microcosmic, just like a day view, I think of it as mid-morning. It's not quite as high noon yet, but it's making its way there, and so, literally, what we have is not literally, but like from our vantage point, the sun is fully separate from the ground. It's fully separate from the Earth. It's released itself from the confines of the Earth, free and light astrologically and esoterically. It's often correlated with consciousness, life, clarity, control, you know, apart from the surrender associated with death, it is a triumph of lights, consciousness, and clarity, and so we're bringing that consciousness higher, and it becomes more dominant with Taurus.
So, the first theme that we see is the clearing of projections or false accusations. I'm going to start with Linda Blair, who plays Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist 1973. I don't think that many Taurus risings will go through literal exorcisms in their lifetime. But I think it's a really good metaphorical visual of what can happen, which is that something comes into we see this person is infected with a demon, and over the course of the film, you could say that Theseus comes in to slay the Minotaur or the Hierophant, the shaman, the priest, Father Karis. If you're familiar with the film, I'm going to be spoiling all these, I think, so that's just a warning right now, and so it's really simple. It is the Exorcist, which is what it is. It's an exorcism, and the Hierophant is the Exorcist in many ways. The Hierophant is a Taurus card, by the way. So yeah, there's this thing, this external thing, the demon that comes in and then is expelled, and I think that that's similar in many ways to like this clearing of the Minotaur. It's getting rid of this unnatural thing and bringing Reagan back to a state of rightful child innocence.
Adam Elenbaas
There's a kind of the word possession. You know, that's such a Taurus word that we end up talking about in terms of material things, but it's miners who become possessed in a way and possessive of the bolt, and then he has to become dispossessed in the exorcism is in the removal of the Minotaur, which is, in a way his own shadow. I'm not suggesting that that's exactly what's going on in The Exorcist. But the idea of possession and exercising something that possesses is so closely connected to Minos.
Emma Frey
I think we'll see a lot of this that a lot of Taurus risings go on types of journeys to expel their demons, and Adam, I know that you have. I know that you went through some ayahuasca journeys, and that process can not be vulgar, but a lot of Taurus risings. I've noted that people literally get sick in their films, and there is this visual representation of the expulsion of labor.
Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, that does happen. It did happen as, of course, rising, I can attest.
Emma Frey
Yeah, I'm so glad we started with that one. But the next one is actually really pretty similar. It's another horror. I'm so sorry if anyone here doesn't like horror. I'm trying to keep this pretty heart-centered, but this is Mia Farrow, who plays Rosemary Woodhouse in Rosemary's Baby in 1968, and this is so literal, I think, to the myth. It's it's kind of funny.
If you haven't seen the movie, poor Rosemary is she's taken by Satan in the form of a bull and is forced to carry his child; there are awful, but it's a great movie, and then eventually she gives birth to a child, kind of separating herself from it, and while she's pregnant, it is like sucking the life out of her, and she looks almost as bad as Reagan does in the Exorcist. There's like this, like, you know, this thing is leeching off of you and sucking the life out of you, and you won't feel better until it's like out of you. Kind of like when you're sick, and you feel just awful, and you like you don't want to vomit. But when you do vomit, you feel better, like instantly.
Adam Elenbaas
That couldn't be more literal in terms of the actual imagery of the bowels.
Emma Frey
Well, it's wild. It's like, yeah, it's, it's pretty good. If you are interested, if you haven't seen it, anyone, I highly recommend that movie. Okay, so we're gonna move on from horror and revisit some older black-and-white movies, both of which I really like. This one is called Gilda from 1946, and it stars Rita Hayworth as the titular character Gilda.
In this movie, Gilda is seen as a kind of harlot, someone who is accused of not being faithful to her husband. And she has a really famous song called Put the Blame on Mame, and she kind of does a song and dance number, and she's like she's taken all this blame; this is where I kind of have the false accusations like this stuff that gets infected put onto her and over the course of the film, she's like exonerated, and someone actually sees her for who she actually is, and the lies about her betrayal and cheating scandals are put to rest so that's Gilda.
Then, Mr. Gary Cooper was Long Fellow Deeds in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town from 1936. This is the oldest film I have. This is also very similar to the myth in the fact that it's textbook rags to Riches. So King Minos is given this divine bull, which could also be looked at as like a lot of money or some or a lot of whatever is valuable something valuable large some large sum of something deeds starts off the movie as very like middle class like well to do but nothing to write home about. But then he gets this giant sum of inheritance money giant for the time, and you know, people try to tell him who he is after that point, and they sometimes make fun of him because of his background and his like simple way of thinking, and eventually, they even call into question his sanity, and he was put on trial to see if he is sane.
He's so fed up with other people trying to control him, telling him who he is and, you know, the whole entire ordeal of what he's gone through, and then one person finally speaks up for him and sees him for who he actually is underneath all of the all the craziness, and that's when he finds his voice and is able to kind of speak for him or herself and come back to who he really is.
Adam Elenbaas
I haven't seen that one before
Emma Frey
I do recommend it. It's old, but it's super charming, and Gary Cooper is just a doll, and it's good, and we'll see the rags-to-riches theme. I forgot to say, like, across a lot of these and in different ways. It's not necessarily just money, but it is like status and stuff like that.
Emma Frey
Okay, and then my last actor for this theme is Halle Berry. Who plays Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God from 2005, and Janie goes through a few different marriages and relationships, and they all kind of want different things from her, just like with Mr. Deeds, and then feel those all of these characters for some reason people want something from them, and they want them to be something, and they have something of value, and so there's like this clawing at them to have them be something for them, and she goes through a number of different relationships like that until she meets teacake and he sees her for who she actually is, and not just the duties of a wife and what you know, these projected expectations are for a wife for wifely duties or whatever and there's a really beautiful scene at the very end of the movie where she is just bathing in a pond, and it's like she's kind of really found her soul and who she is, underneath all of the other people's expectations.
Adam Elenbaas
I'll never forget, I had a reading from Stephen Forrest years ago, where he was, you know, talking about the different facets of my birth chart, and when he got to Taurus rising, he, he said a lot of different things. But one of the things he said was to be careful because Taurus's risings make people feel at ease. There naturally, as you know, you'd be in a room with a Taurus rising, and you often just feel like there's comfort and ease that you feel like you can just sink into yourself when you're with Taurus.
Being sort of amicable and easygoing, people will try to take things from you people will try to. There will also be a lot of projections that people will put on you because you're easy. There's, there's like an openness and an easiness. That will is an, unfortunately, good spot for projections, and so, you know, I think if it were basically identifying in all of these Taurus rising actors, that they've played roles that have had elements of this mythology that have gone along with them, they'd like, whether you think of it as you know, the characters in the horror films, even that they somehow make targets for these projections. It's interesting.
Emma Frey
Yeah, and those projections can come in film in the form of a demon or something that comes into play because you can internalize projections, and that's when it gets really gnarly because you start to identify with them. Like Minos kept keeping the bull, and you can't identify it. You have to clear it and return it to yourself, and so I will hand over the last one to you.
Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, so this is Brendan Fraser in a great movie; it came out, I want to say, in 1992. It's called School Ties, and he plays a 17-year-old working-class Jewish boy from a Jewish family at a prep school. That's all I'm trying to say, and so he is people make throughout the film, basically, he receives the prejudice of, like, his classmates, you know, people putting all sorts of different things, projecting all sorts of different things onto him that are false and, and it's obviously like a really, in so many ways, it's a film about prejudice.
But the story also involves a cheating scandal at the school, which he gets falsely accused of, and a lot of the story is about the clearing of the projections from antisemitism and the clearing of a major specific accusation of being a cheater when he was innocent and so, you know, and he obviously, he's a Taurus rising. He appears in another one of our lists later, but yeah, it's a film that's really all about exercising the demon of a major false accusation.
Emma Frey
That's so hard to handle, especially if no one's there to kind of speak up for you. It's a really difficult thing to deal with. It's crazy because the character right above him has also dealt with a cheating scandal.
Adam Elenbaas
The great movie still holds up. I watched it a couple of years ago. Now. Again, it has a little bit of the 90s-like Dead Poets Society prep school vibe. But obviously, you're instead of like a bunch of romantics, you're dealing with a bunch of jerks, and so it's like a very different environment, but it has that kind of 90s prep school, Dead Poets Society vibe a little bit. So it's a good movie.
Emma Frey
Nice. All right. So then that wraps up the first category, and the second is kind of the same. But it's more like a self-imposed projection. This is separation from a false grandiose self, and so the first one that I versus example I have is Cate Blanchett playing Lydia Tar in 2022 Tar.
She plays a very famous, very accomplished conductor, who goes by the name of Lydia Tar and she speaks very well, and the first time we see her in the movie, she's giving like this, this public interview, and it's, you know, she's like, made it. But over the course of the movie, we learn that she has been using her power for bad. She has been coercing her younger, the younger members of her orchestra into relationships with her and really not using her power well at all, and because more eyes are coming on to her, more consciousness from the outside, you know, as she gains this fame, she gets canceled, to coin a current word, and then she ends up going back home back to her childhood home, where we learned that her actual name is Linda Tar and it's spelled the last name is spelled differently. It's just spelled more, you know, colloquially, and she finally also sees, like, the impact of what she's done, the negative impact; there's this really good scene where she recognizes what she's done and how bad it is and she gets sick, she vomits and that's like, toward the very end and so it's all I think this one is also very textbook, you know if we think that the first category, I think a lot of people will be like, yes. But I think, you know, sometimes there are things that we do ourselves, and when we bring consciousness to ourselves, not just from the outside, but when we can cancel ourselves and see, like, the harm that we've done, and it makes us sick, and then we can get it out. You can express it, and then we come back to, like, who we really are underneath all of the grandiosity.
Adam Elenbaas
That's a good one.
Emma Frey
Um, I had to include a movie from my childhood. This is the Hannah Montana movie starring Miley Cyrus Taurus rising, and this is also pretty, like, self-explanatory. The movie starts off with Miley Stewart, who has her alter ego, Hannah Montana, whom everyone knows. She's a very, very famous, well-loved pop star. Miley wears this blonde wig, and at the start of the movie, she is fighting with Tyra Banks in, like, the Loubaton store, and then the paparazzi find her, and it's this whole thing, and she just feels really entitled to this life to the material goods that come with fame and, and all of that, and then her dad is like, I'm sending you back to the family farm, and that's where the bulk of the movie takes place is like taking the week off, and she remembers her real name. She hangs out with her grandma, and she kind of allows herself not to become as identified with the Hannah Montana character that became so famous.
Adam Elenbaas
Haven't seen that one, but I'll have to take your word for it.
Emma Frey
Next movie night, you know?
Adam Elenbaas
Yep. My girls might like that.
Emma Frey
They probably would. My friends and I went to the movies. When it came out, and there was no one else in the theater, we all liked a dance. We did the hoedown throwdown for anyone who knows what that is. It was it was so much fun.
Okay, the next one is Liza Minnelli from 1972 Cabaret. She plays Sally Bowles, and Sally starts off the movie with this much larger-than-life personality and self-conception. She thinks she's just the greatest. She kind of talks, she puts on airs, and she kind of, you know, the way that she just holds herself is it's just like a caricature of a celebrity, and she has this clear image in her mind of like how great she is.
She's very poor at the start of the movie, and then this guy comes in who just has a ton of money. He kind of parades her around town, and he gives her caviar whenever she asks for it and finds clothes, and she just starts to think like, oh, is he going to propose to me? And then, of course not, he leaves, and she's left with nothing. I think he like gives her $100 or something, and yeah, by the end of the movie, she's had a very clear sort of humbling and has returned to just a more honest state.
Then, I think this is my last one, potentially, in this category, Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, very famous, you probably know the character pretty well, again, larger than life, thinks very highly of herself and identifies with her wealth and then goes through a very famous, humbling at the end when it comes to the man that she, you know, had been telling her he loved her and she rebuked him, and then he leaves her and there's a similar sort of humbling that happens in a street Streetcar Named Desire, where she plays Blanche.
It's just starting off with this, this entitled perspective of everything that you think you deserve, and then it just, you know, you go through this kind of humbling over the course of the movie that if you don't invite it in, it will probably happen to you externally.
Adam Elenbaas
Cate Blanchett. Yeah, so this one is Blue Jasmine, which came out in 2013. Went and saw this one at the movie theater with Ashley. If I remember correctly, it's a Woody Allen movie. Anyway, she plays a woman super entitled sort of snobby woman who loses all of her money and has to go back to her sister's place, and the film is basically one humbling moment after another, where she basically gets to come to terms with the fact that this constructed self that she's built on wealth and privilege has completely fallen apart and I think it was her husband ended up being convicted of fraud, and they lost all their money and then living with their sister who she sees as like, beneath her.
But it turns out, there's a lot of heart and soul that come from her roots, that she's separated from through delusion, and that she is trying to sort of get back to, but I don't know, it's a little tragic because it's sort of like she's an example of someone who kind of can't let go and is sort of spiraling in a nervous breakdown from the shattered image of herself and the loss of wealth and prestige and everything.
It's kind of a dark comedy. I think people would find it to be kind of a fun movie, even though it sounds a little bleak. But yeah, she's coming on done one step at a time, and it all comes from a completely delusional sense of self that came about through a temporary rise in wealth. Yeah, and that's a kind of that rags to riches theme where you can go from rags to riches or riches to rags. But the question is always at the core, like, is there a real self in here? Were we getting possessed by some false image or something like that?
Emma Frey
Are we getting identified with these goods that have come our way and status? And yeah, I gotta rewatch that one. I remember really liking the script.
Adam Elenbaas
Well, here we have Taylor Lautner and Robert Pattinson. So I noticed this when we were looking through, and I was Emma had most of the notes, and I was just kind of perusing, and I was like, you know, what's interesting is that they both play characters in the Twilight series.
Well, first, they deal with a lot of projections that people put on them. Are they monsters, or are they not like that? They transform from human to vampire and are contending with, you know, I'm not like Robert Pattinson. His character was Edward. Is that his name in the series? I think it is. He's basically contending with whether or not he loves this. You know, girl in, what's her name?
Kristen Stewart, or does he want to like to drink her blood, you know, and he has to control the blood thirst and stay in touch with the real self that loves her? But also, he's working to sort of embrace and be okay with the fact that, like, he's also a vampire, and the same thing for Taylor Lautner in the series; there's a lot of dealing with these dual images of themselves as Minotaur or, you know, like the bull versus the Minotaur and so I just think that they both deal with at times, like grandiose ideas about who they are, and they both are trying to constantly stay in touch with some essence of who they are, despite their shape-shifting nature.
Emma Frey
Yeah, the werewolf and vampire that brings them both, like, a lot of power and, you know, it can take over someone when they overly identify and like, they're both like, kind of trying to keep their humanity alive underneath, like the beast, the vampire or the werewolf. There's like a good as a huge Twilight fan growing up, so I could give all the details. There's like a famous scene at the end of the first movie where Edward has to save Bella, and he has to, like, drink her blood, and he almost kills her because he can't control himself. That's right. So, has to like remember the human underneath?
We'll do Kristen Kristen Stewart next in Gemini Rising. The last category is a very expected one, maybe for Taurus, which is a return to Eden, which can also be seen as nature literally in film. But more figuratively, a state of innocence, childlike innocence, purity, honesty, and that often literally home we've already seen it in the other two categories. These characters will often return home in some way, whether it's the place where they grew up or their grandmother's farm, like Hannah Montana. There's this pole back to wherever they hailed. Right?
So first, we have Robert Pattinson in David Eggers's The Lighthouse, which is a movie about two men, Willem Defoe and Robert Pattinson, who are like lighthouse keepers. They're just, like, going insane because there's nothing around them. There's in this lighthouse and, like, I don't really know, I can't really tell you exactly what happens.
I do know that the character at the end of the movie has become sort of a part of nature and has devolved over the course of the movie. He is sort of losing his mind and his conception of himself as this put-together person and eventually succumbs to this, like nature, Beast thing. I don't know; this is what I can't really talk about super coherently. But the end image, I think, is indicative of just going back to nature and being a part of it.
Adam Elenbaas
So yeah, there's definitely, like, this was something I wrote and did several podcasts on this movie when it first came out. Because yeah, this was some years ago. It came out right around Halloween, and I went and saw it like three times in the theater, and then I did a couple of podcasts on it. I was on YouTube at that point. So, but one of the things that I would say about this movie is that you have, there's a whole bunch of different, I feel like there are three or four different mythic strands in this film that you could go on for, you know, different probably different that follow different tracks than just the Taurus rising. But the one thing that I'll say about this is that there are troubled backgrounds.
There are troubled backgrounds for both of the characters in the lighthouse, the two keepers, and there's a coming to terms with something in them. That is, I would almost call it amoral. It's just sort of beastial, like you were saying, and they have to kind of come to terms with it. But as they do, it's threatening to shatter the light, which would be like sanity, right?
So you have that theme of, like, returning to nature, but also that really razor-thin line between letting nature completely possess and consume to the point where you lose the light and also not being so controlled that you're like a fugitive from your own nature, you're on the run, or you're trying to escape from it somehow. So the movie is really about them walking that fine line between the two things.
Emma Frey
Are those still around like those podcasts?
Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, there's somewhere backlogged in my YouTube, and I don't remember if I said something about the lighthouse in the title. But it was during, I'm pretty sure it would have been around Scorpio season. So if I could look back and see if I can find it because I also talked about Prometheus and because there's this whole thing, getting obsessed with the light too, and yeah, anyways, that movie was like, to me, that was like a psychedelic mandala of mythology. There was so much in that film.
Emma Frey
The director is coming out with a Nosferatu movie this year. So I am so excited. Oh.
Adam Elenbaas
I think he did The Witch, too. Did you see that? There's a huge thing in there, though, about nature and paganism and return fascinating.
Emma Frey
Good stuff. Okay. I'm gonna group the next two together because they're very, very similar. Again, we have Brendan Fraser for the second time as George and George of the Jungle, and then I have Daryl Hannah as well, Madison in Splash from the 80s, and they're both like nature creatures. My dog is being interesting. They're nature creatures who end up going to the big city and grappling with fashion, and they're given money and kind of almost tested in a way, and people want different things from them.
Eventually, they find one person who sees them for, like, who they actually are underneath like this beast quote unquote, and then they can kind of like return back to this like state of like, he goes back to the jungle with Ursula, and she goes back underwater with Tom Hanks character in splash there's like very similar, and I think that's yeah, like grappling with like the noise and the craziness of like the big city is kind of like a theme of being introduced to like all these riches.
Adam Elenbaas
It's funny that mermaids play an interesting role in the lighthouse as well. Just put it, leave it like that.
Emma Frey
Oh, they do a very interesting role. This is interesting because it's like the hybrid, the hybridization of like the person, like literally lysing that. Okay, and then we have Sigourney Weaver, who plays Dr. Grace in James Cameron's Avatar, which I saw in the movie theater like four times when it came out. I love that movie. Oh my god. She is so good, and she is like the nature mama of the group. She actually cares about the Navi BlueCat people, and eventually, she does die, but she is welcomed into the arms of Aois, the giant tree spirit that is like the mother source for the tribe.
Adam Elenbaas
That is such a good example of the archetype.
Emma Frey
Then, my last one is I had to include it. I really liked this movie. It's a French New Wave film called Dead Champagne, and it stars Taurus-rising John Murrow. Very similar to Cabaret, which I included in the last category with Liza Minnelli. Excuse me. John Murrow is like this larger-than-life character who is like the doppelganger of a statue in the movie. Two men are just taken by her immediately, and the three of them are kind of just frolicking around. There's, like, kind of the same thing happening in Cabaret. But eventually, she and her partner returned to Paris. Originally, they were in Austria; it's hard to explain. It's kind of complicated ish. But there is the theme of, just like, having to go back to where you come from, and you can't escape for very long. Eventually, it'll be brought back. Alright, and then the last one, again, we have friends for sure.
Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, so this one is the whale that came out, I want to say, 20 last year? Yeah. I think it was last year. So in this movie, Brendan Fraser plays a man who's morbidly obese and struggling with a really basically trying to restore a relationship with his daughter, and obviously, a lot of the film revolves around his struggles with food and his health, and there's right like, to me, you could, you could put this film and his character in several different categories. Where was the struggle of being possessed by something and trying to exercise himself of something? I think the possession quality is really strong in this movie. So I like it, you could almost put it there.
But there's also something about this, where, for example, he's obsessed with the movie and an essay that his daughter wrote. That is, it was on Moby Dick and the, obviously, the story of Moby Dick, which the title of the film comes from, that's a big piece of why they call it the whale has to do with the Titanic forces of nature, that we can't harness or control and, of course, Ahab in the book represents someone who's trying to dominate nature and, and trying to control and kill and take and sort of objectify the whale and so it's just an it's a really, it's a deep movie, it had some mixed reception to like, there were some people who were very critical of it, and, and so on, for the portrayal of morbid obesity, and whether it was like considered to be really accurate or not, and so forth.
I think just archetypically the struggle between the possessive false sort of nature is that's what his character is struggling with throughout the entire film, and in this kind of sense of trying to get back to something innocent and pure, he feels like he's lost, which is sort of symbolized by the relationship with his daughter and this essay that she also wrote about the forces of nature, which can't really be harnessed and that's sort of the sort of tragic piece of the movie as well. So it's a really complicated film. I really liked it. I don't know if I could ever watch it again. It was very; it was hard to watch. It was a really, it was a movie that was very hard to watch. But I felt like a lot of the Taurean themes were streaming through it.
Emma Frey
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that was; I feel the same way. I'm like, I enjoyed it, and I got a lot out of it. But it was it was a hard watch.
Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, yeah. I won't give it away. But at the end, there's almost like a similar, not identical, but a similar kind of, like, leaving off point that the lighthouse has, or there's just this kind of like, this image at the end that points toward trying to get back to something or transforming into something and reaching some state of innocence or purity. That's complex.
Emma Frey
Getting to some higher place of consciousness.
Adam Elenbaas
Exactly. These were good. All of these categories. They were so good. Yeah, tell people how they can get a hold of you. I'm gonna put some of this up on the screen again because your work is so fantastic. I love this. This has stimulated my imagination so much to look at the connection between the rising signs of actors and actresses and the roles they've played and to also use this as a fun way to just describe and deepen our understanding of the rising signs or the signs in general and their mythology. You can find Emma on Instagram, @patternsinthestars @patternsinthestars.com, and your email address, I guess, is right there, too.
Emma Frey
Yeah, just all the things patterns in the stars. Yeah, I really started off just at all those locations; you're mostly going to find my work with astrological physiognomy, seeing visual patterns and stars and, but this, this work that I'm doing right now, with the rising signs is really my passion point is seeing these other patterns in the stars, the movie stars, and it's just fun to like, find new data to explore that the internet can afford to us and it's just yeah, it's just really fun and I love being able to do it.
Adam Elenbaas
Well, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate having you here on the program again on the podcast, and we will be doing it again. Next on our list is going to be Gemini.
Emma Frey
Yes. I'm so excited. I have a lot of Geminii-rising friends and a Gemini sun. So they've all been anxiously waiting.
Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, it'll be fun. It'll be fun to work through these and, as we go, deepen the conversation around the topic too. So we appreciate all of you guys who have had some fun conversations around these videos in the chatbox and shared your own observations between archetypes, films, TV, and other things. One of the best ways to learn and grow as an astrologer is to just be in the habit of noticing mythology and mythological patterns in the entertainment that you take in.
This is art; this is the way that art has been conveyed through archetypes for 1000s of years in theater, and now in the film and Netflix and everywhere else, and if we can keep our relationship with these viewing archetypal, then I think that art can still be medicine, just like music, it was medicine long ago and so hopefully this series you know, also contributes to the just that consciousness of staying in touch with archetypes on the day to day and for that we have mo to thank for all of your really wonderful research.
So, thanks again for being here. Thank you, everybody, for listening, and we will see you guys again next time. Take it easy, everyone. Bye.
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