FRIDA KAHLO
Pain doesn’t create genius: it changes its language.
Frida Kahlo was Frida Kahlo even before the horrific accident that struck her at eighteen while traveling by bus in her city.
It may seem like a banal observation, but it isn’t at all.
I spoke about it recently with ChatGPT while previewing the short astrological reading of this extraordinary woman and artist that I was about to write. My favorite chatbot—which, in this case, I’m giving the male gender because I inevitably connect it to Sam Altman, its creator—told me that, knowing my writing, it had predicted that I would begin precisely from this point. And I replied that it was absolutely right.
In fact, I believe we should start from here, even before the accident, because this story leads us directly to a reflection that, in my opinion, belongs not only to my personal Weltanschauung, but also to a vision of life that is widely shared today, beyond political, philosophical, or religious affiliations.
To get there, we must, first of all, not be afraid to address the subject of Cesare Lombroso.
Here, I open a parenthesis and return to an article I published in 2001 in my quarterly magazine Ricerca ’90, commenting once again on the Novi Ligure massacre perpetrated by two fifteen-year-old sweethearts.
However, beyond the provocation I launched at the time, and without necessarily wanting to fall into a sliding-door philosophy, I believe that, in light of subsequent news events involving Omar Favaro once again, it is inevitable to ask ourselves some questions about the qualities—or, if you prefer, the defects—hereditary and genetic—with which we come into the world.
For this reason, I’m reposting an article I wrote many years ago, I believe between 1982 and 1984, when I was an in-house editor at Il Mattino di Napoli.
Here it is:
This newspaper (Il Mattino, Editor’s note), a few days ago, ran an inside page headline: “Montalcini: You’re Not Born a Drug Addict,” following the interview my colleague Lùcia Borgia had conducted with the Italian Nobel Prize winner regarding the controversy that arose following the scientist’s alleged statements. According to some press reports, Borgia postulated the existence of specific genes, at birth, that lead certain individuals to drug addiction. This has led to a major controversy, including those like Muccioli, who, in our opinion, have no standing in such a dispute, unless they have studied biology or other disciplines that might allow them to form a reasoned opinion on the matter.
Montalcini clarified that her thinking had been distorted and stated that she had never hypothesized such things, which would conflict with the entire edifice of her scientific thought over the decades. She also added that the main causes that lead a young person to drugs are to be found in social influences, from society and the immediate environment, in the early stages of life.
At this point, an army of sociologists, psychologists, doctors, and especially politicians have calmed down, and the matter seems to have subsided, considering the controversy. But let’s see: is it really absurd to think that a child, at birth, already has the right “information” to become a drug addict? Let’s be clear, we don’t want to talk about geniuses because that would be entering into a specific field that doesn’t concern us, but we simply want to say that in our opinion, and not only ours, a human being, seeing the light for the first time, already bears within him the “labels,” the stigmata of much of his own destiny. We fully realize that such a statement may be highly unpopular today, when good-natured demagoguery teaches us that we are all born perfectly equal and that only a sick society can make us ugly, dirty, and evil. But five thousand years of written observations—astrology—have taught us otherwise, and for this reason astrologers were burned at the stake in past centuries, and today they are still often accepted with considerable reservations. The topic at hand, as you will have noticed, is vast and involves religious, moral, philosophical, scientific, and other principles. It is the age-old problem, in some respects, of free will or determinism. We would love to discuss it at length in a forum like this, but space is limited, and since we cannot take advantage of the Director’s availability further, we will limit ourselves to a few very brief observations.
Well, a pair of renowned French scientists, Michel and Françoise Gauquelin, have demonstrated, using a sample of over 30,000 births, beyond any reasonable doubt and based exclusively on the strict laws of statistics verified by professors at the Sorbonne, that those born with Mars on the Ascendant will very likely be successful soldiers or athletes. Those born with a strong Jupiter at the Midheaven will tend to excel as judges or leaders in political hierarchy, those born while the Moon is rising or culminating will frequently be writers and poets, and so on.
So, where does this leave free will? Naturally, in a potential debate on the subject, we wouldn’t just raise this issue, but we must ask: is it so far-fetched to speak of clear predispositions at birth?
For better or for worse? Could anyone ever convince us that Caruso became the world’s greatest tenor by virtue of the environment that surrounded him and not, above all, because he possessed an immense birthright of this kind? And could anyone ever prove to us that the fact that Luigi Pirandello, born in the countryside of Girgenti (ancient Agrigento, editor’s note, in the last century), the son of a sulfur merchant, was later favored by this to win the Nobel Prize for Literature and did not become one primarily because “he was already a Nobel Prize winner at birth”? And, again, are we to believe that Hitler’s genocidal follies are to be found solely in a bad relationship with his father? No, honestly, we absolutely do not believe that.
We do not want to and cannot ignore the role that education, social environment, and early childhood experiences have on an individual’s future, but—we are equally convinced—we cannot deny that each of us, coming into the world, already brings with us a whole series of precise information that will become essential elements in the construction of that specific destiny. And this is true regardless of the thinking of Lorenz, Cesare Lombroso, Freud, Marx, and those who believe the mystery of life can be encapsulated in a single, simple mathematical formula.
Note: I, who followed the entire story “on the ground,” am convinced that Montalcini did indeed say “you’re born a drug addict,” but under the ideological barrage of almost the entire scientific world of those years, she was forced to backtrack.
Conclusions (?)
Obviously, there can’t be any. But there are a few questions, and perhaps not even small ones.
If we were reasoning along the wavelength of two opposing fan bases, that of the “Curva B” and that of the “top of the class” (guided by the sound principles of the ideology that no one is born ugly, dirty, and bad), then we would return to the age-old dilemma: do we throw away the key for people like Omar Favari or do we spare them even a single day in prison because he was in no way guilty of the massacre he committed and, if that is proven, he has not committed any for the new hypothetical violence against his current wife either?
Obviously, the question is and must be rhetorical. It will not find political asylum at any political longitude, and so I simply throw it here, like yet another stone in the pond of desperation of many who, like this writer, are fed up with the “pro-Cain army.”
But let’s get back to Frida Kahlo.
And let’s return, above all, to what I consider the greatest truth that astrology has taught me.
It’s absolutely not true that we are all born equal. In my opinion, exactly the opposite is true: we are all born wonderfully different.
There are those who are born likeable and those who are unlikeable; those who possess an insatiable intellectual curiosity and those who never will; those who are naturally inclined towards art, literature, or music and those who, instead, will find their fulfillment elsewhere.
There are those who are born lovers of war and hunting and those of peace; those who are modest and those who are womanizers; those who are chaste and those who are whores; those who will be able to type with ten fingers on a keyboard and those who will never even be able to thread a thread through the eye of a needle; those who possess an extraordinary mathematical talent and those who are completely hopeless at the rational; those who are born actors, painters, or musicians and those who, instead, will carry within them Smilla’s sense of snow.
There are carnivores, vegetarians, raw foodists, fruitarians; People incapable of giving up chocolate, and others naturally devoted to fasting and chastity.
We could continue this list for a million pages.
And it is precisely here, in my opinion, that Lombroso intuited something important, even though he was grossly mistaken in many of his conclusions.
From an astrological perspective, in fact, the birth chart reveals to us from the very first breath some of the individual’s profound predispositions: not their destiny, but the quality of the material with which they will build their existence.
And it is for this reason that, having also studied criminology and published numerous books on crimes and criminals, I consider it essential to distinguish between what belongs to our original structure and what, instead, derives from the environment, education, and life circumstances.
Evil, like genius, can be present from the beginning.
Just as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s musical talent or Bobby Fischer’s chess talent were already imprinted in their nature, so there are people in whom violence, cruelty, or other profound predispositions are part of their original heritage.
Of course, all of this will then have to be confronted with life, education, and personal experiences. But the raw material, in my opinion, already exists.
And Frida Kahlo represents one of the most extraordinary examples of how an exceptional personality can transform a physically devastated destiny into an immortal work of art.
Let us return, then, to Frida Kahlo and that fatal car accident that radically changed her life.
On September 17, 1925, at the age of eighteen, she boarded a bus home with her boyfriend Alejandro after school.
Following a collision with a tram, the bus she was traveling on was literally crushed.
The consequences were devastating.
Her spine broke in three places in the lumbar region; the femoral neck and several ribs were shattered; her left leg suffered eleven fractures; her right foot was dislocated and crushed; her left shoulder was dislocated, and her pelvis was broken in three places.
As if all this weren’t enough, the bus’s metal handrail also pierced her vagina.
She underwent around thirty surgeries.
When she was released from the hospital, she had to remain immobile for months on end, confined to her bed at home, confined to a cast.
Even today, such an accident could prove fatal. Imagine in 1925 Mexico, with the possibilities offered by medicine and surgery at the time.
Physically, Frida became a cripple, forced to wear orthopedic braces and corrective prosthetics practically her entire life.
When she finally managed to get up and walk, it was certainly not a pleasant sight. According to some sources, she had already suffered from spina bifida or had contracted polio before the accident, a condition that already left her walking with a marked limp.
From that moment on, her existence was accompanied by industrial quantities of drugs, sedatives, opiates, alcohol, and, above all, morphine.
Obviously, both the Solar Return and the Lunar Return of that event were textbook (Discepolo’s).
In the Solar Return of the previous July, we observe chilling elements: four stars (Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Neptune) in the Eighth House, which is not only the house of death or mortal dangers, but also represents one of the most serious violations of the thirty-four rules dictated by the author.
Uranus on the Third House cusp (road accidents) – Fourth House (excessively long hospitalizations) and Saturn in the Eleventh House, another important indicator of mortal danger, complete the picture.
In my opinion, he was saved only thanks to the presence of Jupiter in the First House. Let’s remember that his birth data, certified with a double A directly by Lois Rodden, indicates: Coyoacán (outskirts of Mexico City), July 6, 1907, 8:30 a.m.
The Lunar Return of September 8, 1925 is, if possible, even more impressive.
We find the Sun, Mars, Mercury, and Neptune in the eleventh house, which, in this writer’s opinion, is even more mournful than the eighth.
Also note the very close Sun-Mars conjunction, the Ascendant in the Third House (car accidents), Saturn in the First House (bones, bones, bones, and more bones), and Uranus on the cusp of the Sixth House (surgeries and hospitalizations).
Perhaps, in this case too, it was the very close Venus-Ascendant conjunction that saved her life.
But at the same time, in my opinion, it aggravated a stigma already present in her natal chart: the almost perfect Venus-Pluto conjunction in the sign of Gemini.
This speaks to us of the extremely important role sex played in her life.
But it couldn’t have been the kind of sex that primarily travels on the wavelengths of a Venus in Taurus or Pisces.
No.
Here, it was mostly brain sex.
Lots of brain sex.
Amplified by the very close conjunction of Venus and Pluto, it forces us to talk about eroticism even before physical sexuality.
A very powerful eroticism.
We cannot know whether this was also a necessity imposed by her physical condition and whether it pushed her, at least in part, to favor a less or less penetrative type of sexuality.
Her love affairs were numerous.
Men and women.
Among the men, we remember, according to many sources, the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and the poet André Breton.
Among the women, Tina Modotti, a communist militant and great photographer of 1920s Mexico, is mentioned; most likely, Aleksandra Kollontai (1872-1952), Soviet ambassador to Mexico between 1925 and 1926, the dancer, choreographer, and painter Rosa Rolando (1897-1962), and the Mexican singer Chavela Vargas (1919-2012) also exerted a strong fascination on Frida Kahlo.
I would like to point out to my four readers that this Christmas Sky demonstrates, once again, some fundamental paradigms of my school.
First and foremost, the angular aspects with zero or near-zero orbits.
As you’ll find written in almost all my books, and repeated ad nauseam, pay close attention—maximum attention—to all angular aspects with very close orbits.
In this chart, we find three that, in my opinion, explain ninety percent of the entire picture.
The first is the aforementioned erotic-sexual conjunction of Venus and Pluto in the mental sign of Gemini.
The second is the very close conjunction of the Sun and Neptune, which marked, through alcohol, opiates, pharmaceuticals, and various drugs (including a lot of morphine), the entire life of this extraordinary and exceptionally talented painter.
Last, but certainly not least, we find the close, very close, Mars-Uranus conjunction in the Fifth House, which brings us back to another fundamental paradigm of my school: the libido, where everything begins.
That conjunction occupied the Fifth House: the House of love, sex, but also of artistic expression in the broadest sense.
It’s no coincidence that many great authors and film directors present a similar configuration.
Frida Kahlo’s creativity was volcanic, precisely as demonstrated by the symbolic power of the Mars-Uranus conjunction.
The fact that it was in the sign of Capricorn, besides telling us about the mutilations and indescribable wounds her body endured throughout her life—especially to her bones—also tells us that it was precisely from that extraordinary, typically Capricornian, ambitious drive that Frida drew the most powerful impetus for her art.
It was a true creative alchemy, more pyrotechnic than fiery.
A marvelous film that recounts her life and that caliente Mexico, in every sense, that each of us loves to dream of, despite knowing how terrible, even today, many of the realities that pass through it are.
In the film Frida (2002), based on Hayden Herrera’s biography and directed by Julie Taymor, a splendid Salma Hayek brings us closer than anyone else to the small-but-great universe that was Frida Kahlo.
You can find much more information about her life in the film itself and in the numerous biographies dedicated to her.
Here, I did not intend to write a complete astrological biography of her life.
My goal was different.
I wanted to focus on some essential points of her birth chart, which, in my opinion, explain much of this woman’s extraordinary artistic and human personality.
A woman who managed to transform almost unimaginable physical pain into a universal language.
I close by recalling that Frida Kahlo died at the age of forty-seven, just one week after her birthday.
And this detail, for those familiar with my studies on Solar Returns and the so-called Twenty-Day Law, is certainly worth noting.
Ciro Discepolo
Milan, July 4, 2026Fine modulo
