Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Happy Birthday Scorpio! Spotlight on...Edith Bouvier Beale!

"There are some really nice people in the world you know, I just don't happen to be related to any of them."


  Hello friends! Happy Edie Beale Day! Edith Bouvier Beale, in case you didn't know was a socialite, model, singer, fashion icon, noted eccentric and the subject of the 1976 documentary, Grey Gardens. She was born November 7, 1917 and passed away sometime in early January 2002. Her Father Phelan Beale was a successful lawyer in New York City and her Mother, Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale, "Big Edie" came from a wealthy, well respected family that claimed to be the descendants of Fourteenth Century French Kings. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was her first cousin. Little Edie's early life was one of privilege, with private school educations, shopping trips to Paris, attending galas and other high society events in New York and summers by the sea in the Hamptons. She was the only girl in her immediate family, and was obviously her mother's favorite. She once missed almost a year of school, ostensibly because of respiratory problems, but many speculated this was just Big Edie's way of keeping  her daughter close. On New Year's Day, 1936 Little Edie made her official Debut to Society wearing a white silk gown with gardenias in her hair.

  Edie Beale lived in New York city until the age of thirty-five, pursuing singing, acting and dancing opportunities. She modeled briefly for Macy's Department Stores, but her fun hating dad shut it all down because modeling was considered by some to be a shameful profession at the time. During this time, Edith claims to have dated many rich and powerful men including J Paul Getty, Bruce Cabot, and Joe Kennedy Jr. She famously stated that if Joe Kennedy Jr had survived the war, he would have gone on to become President, and SHE would have been First Lady instead of her cousin Jackie.

  In 1952, Edie Beale said goodbye to New York and moved into Grey Gardens, her childhood summer home. She was thirty-five. In the documentary Grey Gardens, the argument over whether Little Edie returned home, as she says, to care for her ailing mother, or whether she "had to" as her mother says because she was never able to find success in the entertainment industry is a subject of frequent and heated debate. The once world famous and immaculately maintained estate had fallen into disrepair and continued to disintegrate around the two women for the next twenty-five years. The Edies lived on a very modest fixed income and simply could not afford the maintenance the home required. Raccoons and feral cats took over. Garbage piled up because they couldn't afford the waste pick-up fees. The home became largely uninhabitable, with the two women sharing a couple rooms on the first floor and cooking on a hot plate. In 1971, Gray Gardens was on the verge of being condemned, but Little Edie's cousin and possible nemesis Jackie Onassis intervened and paid to have the house brought up to code.

"I can tell what's inside a person right away." EBB 

  The 1975 release of the film Grey Gardens was met with much critical acclaim and Little Edie with her unconventional fashion sense (skirts worn upside down, sweaters repurposed as headwraps) and intense personality became a cult celebrity of sorts. In 1977, Big Edie passed away and Little Edie was free to sell the home that had become a prison and move on with her life. She first returned to New York City and experimented briefly with a cabaret career, and then moved into a small apartment near Miami Beach. She lived there, swimming almost daily, until her death in 2002. She was eighty-six. Edie Beale was a Sun in Scorpio and the Astrological sign Scorpio is closely tied to the mythology of the Phoenix,who dies, but then rises up from the ashes. Little Edie lived up to that archetype, on a larger scale than most.

  Scorpio is possibly the most maligned sign of the Zodiac, and I've never been able to understand why. I'm mean really, Scorpios tend to not give a shit what anyone thinks and will have your back for life, what's not to love? Personally, I enjoy the company of people who go their own way. My daughter is a Moon in Scorpio. Her rising sign is Cancer, so initially she comes across and gentle, dreamy and sweet, but underneath that placid exterior is a stubborn, strong willed, steely resolve and I love that about her. I tend to struggle with being too much of a people pleasing pushover at times, and hopefully she won't have that problem. Scorpio is a Fixed Water Sign and is ruled by Pluto, the planet of Transformation. Little Edie certainly experienced a lot of that in her life.

  Edie Beale was intense, strong willed, charismatic, unafraid to speak her truth and extremely loyal. In many ways, she was your typical Scorpio. Her rant in "Grey Gardens" about how she's a 'Staunch Woman' who comes from a long line of staunch women had a nerves of steel, Scorpionic quality to me. She also possessed the  infamous Scorpio trait of being a survivor. Other Scorpio survivors include Theodore Roosevelt, Kurt Vonnegut, Larry Flynt, Grace Slick, and Hillary Clinton. Little Edie's notorious head coverings were a result of a stress induced hair loss condition. Though, according to her cousin, John Davis, after an altercation with her mother, shortly after her return to Grey Gardens, Little Edie climbed a tree and intentionally set her hair on fire, greatly contributing to her hair loss. Did you know the Scorpion is the only animal on Earth capable of stinging itself to death with it's own venom?

  Scorpio is the Sign of Mystery and Scorpios are the detectives of the Zodiac, regardless of their chosen profession. Because Scorpios are naturally secretive, they possess a better than average ability to suss out other people's secrets. Under the wrong circumstances, this can manifest as paranoia, like when Little Edie becomes convinced someone has stolen her journal. Scorpios are also gifted at picking up on the hidden motivations of others, like when Little Edie tells her mother that the neighborhood boy only wants to use her for sex. Claiming, "It's all they want!" (Spoken like a true Scorpio.) To which her mother replies, "With you?!" Little Edie was in her fifties at the time and the young man in question appeared to be in his teens. A challenge for any Scorpio is to learn to separate the ego from intuition. Being a Fixed Water sign means Scorpions can be pretty stubborn when it comes to their emotions. Scorpios tend to be some of the worst grudge holders of the Zodiac, another challenge  for Scorpio is learning the importance of forgiveness.

  Unfortunately, Edie Beale's birth time is unknown, so we'll never know her rising sign or House Placements. All the same, let's take a look at her chart to see what can be learned:


  Edie was a born performer, so it's no surprise to see she has three planets in Leo, including her Moon. Our Moon is said to be our truest self and Leo is the sign of the entertainer, so I think it's fair to say Little Edie had the soul of an entertainer. Our Moon Sign also tells us what we seek in life and Leo rules the heart. At the deepest level, Edie probably equated attention with emotional validation. Many people wanted to share the story of Grey Gardens, but the only film about her life she gave permission to be made was for was the documentary, stating, "If anyone is gonna play Edie Beale, it's gonna be Edie Beale!" Multiple planets in Leo tend to bestow one with a childlike, playful imagination, and a desire to love and be loved. She was also born with Neptune Conjunct Saturn in Leo. Neptune is Leo is a generational placement and people born with it are said so be idealistic and have a deep appreciation for art and beauty. Saturn in Leo is an interesting placement for one who seeks fame because Saturn rewards hard work, and tends to pay off later in life. Little Edie was experiencing her second Saturn return (A Saturn return is when Saturn returns to the sign it was in at one's birth.) in 1977 when her mother passed away. Two years later, Saturn had moved out of Leo and Edie's new life with an apartment in New York and a nightclub act bore little resemblance to the years she'd spent in her decaying childhood home. That's the transformative power of a Saturn Return. Sadly, Saturn in Leo can also indicate an emotionally distant father.

  Little Edie was born with Jupiter, the Planet of Gifts in Gemini. This placement gives the blessing of an intelligent, curious mind. Edie was obviously very smart and an avid reader. When the Maysles Brothers originally came to her home, she recognized then immediately  because she'd seen them in the New York Times. Her love of reading and writing poetry was also probably  aided by this influence. A volume of her poetry was posthumously published in 2008.

  Everyone will experience highs and lows in their life, but those who choose to be born under the sign of Scorpio tend to experience them more dramatically than most, and they generally have a lot of interesting life lessons to share.To me, it feels like Edie Beale's enduring Scorpionic  lesson to us is to live life to the fullest, and never give up hope. After all, she never did.