Aretha Franklin

Singer and activist · United States · 1942–2018

Aries 4.4° · born March 25, 1942
Birth time unknown

Birth date sourced. Birth time unknown.The Moon remained in Cancer throughout that civil day. Everything below uses only what the complete civil day settles.

The day, read honestly

The Sun stands at 4.4° Aries, in exaltation — the tradition’s honoured-guest placement, working at its best. Of everything the chart can be read for without a birth time, that is the loudest single fact in it.

Positions at 12:00 civil time in Memphis—a reference instant, not a birth time. No houses, rising sign, angles, or sect were computed.

Where the Sun actually stood

Measured rather than labelled, the Sun holds 4.4° Aries: the first decan, whose classical sub-ruler is Mars. A fire sign, read here in its first face.

Closer to the ground

Closer in, Mercury stands at 12.4° Pisces; Venus stands at 19.8° Aquarius; Mars stands at 10.9° Gemini. The tradition reads a mind that absorbs before it argues from Mercury, taste led by wit and proportion from Venus, drive that argues its way forward from Mars.

The angles that hold

Start where the chart is tightest — the Sun trine Pluto, 0.8° of separation. A trine runs downhill — the talent that never announces itself because it never had to. Behind it, Uranus trine Neptune at 0.9°, and Mercury square Mars at 1.5° — both still well inside the orbs this site uses. Each angle here was measured at every hour of the civil day and held; whatever the missing clock said, this geometry was in it.

Figures in the geometry

The day-stable angles form no closed figure. Nothing funnels; each aspect is its own negotiation, which the tradition reads as a chart of separate treaties rather than one campaign.

The classical map

Four planets here sit in a sign the classical scheme scores. The Sun in Aries at 4.4° is in exaltation — the tradition’s honoured-guest placement, working at its best; the Moon in Cancer at 12.2° is in domicile — the planet in its own sign, running on home rules; Mercury in Pisces at 12.4° is in fall — the tradition’s uphill placement, strength earned rather than given; Jupiter in Gemini at 15.0° is in detriment — the planet opposite its home, working against the grain. The old table grades terrain, not talent — a placement in fall works uphill, nothing more.

The shape of the whole

The honest balance sheet uses the 10 placements whose signs hold for the whole day: air 3, earth 3, fire 2, water 2 across the elements, and mutable 4, fixed 4, cardinal 2 across the modalities. An air-weighted chart thinks in through-lines; the sentence is how it takes hold of the world. Neptune and Pluto were retrograde — motion that reverses only from this vantage point, and which the old reading treats as delay used for revision.

The Moon, and how far it can move

The Moon stayed in Cancer for the whole of that day at the birthplace, covering 12.0° between midnight and midnight. Fast enough that its degree is approximate, slow enough that its sign is not in doubt. At the noon reference it stands at 12.2°.

Where this comes fromSources, revisions, and exactly what this chart assumes

Source article: Aretha Franklin · revision 1364035904
Wikidata: Q125121 · revision 2522853655
Retrieved: 2026-07-26T18:47:50.947Z
Birth date: 1942-03-25 · day precision · proleptic-gregorian
Birthplace: Memphis, United States · Q16563
Coordinates: 35.1461, -90.0519 · from Memphis
Reference instant: 1942-03-25T17:00:00.000Z · noon civil time, not a birth time
Omitted: Rising sign, houses, angles, and sect—all require a birth time.
Unknown-time range: Moon travelled 12.04° · The Moon remained in Cancer throughout that civil day.
Engine: astronomy-engine (repository dependency) · @zodiacs/engine/internal/math
Portrait: Atlantic Records (Life time: Published before 1978 without a copyright notice) · public domain · Wikimedia Commons

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