When both of the giant planets, Jupiter and Neptune, plus their signs, Sagittarius and Pisces, are personalized in someone's chart, he or she tends to be a larger-than-life character. Candy Darling had the Sun and Moon respectively in these signs, plus the ruler of each luminary in aspect with the other (Neptune sextile Sun & Jupiter opposite Moon). Immortalized by Lou Reed & the Velvet Undreground in the songs "Candy Says" and "Walk on the Wild Side," Candy Darling has been described by Mary Hallon as the "Marilyn Monroe of drag queens" because of the humour and vulnerability she projected (Candy's Pluto conjuncts Marilyn's Leo Ascendant at the end of her Twelfth House).

Maternal Moon & Paternal Sun

Born to a mother who worked as a bookkeeper (Mercury square Moon) and an alcoholic father who was a gambler (Sun in Sagittarius conjunct Mars in Scorpio), Candy started life as James Lawrence Slattery. Young Jimmy would escape his suburban existence by impersonating female movie stars (Pisces Moon trine North Node in Cancer). Living in this "faux Technicolor Hollywood dream world," he eventually transformed into a beautiful and talented woman, 'Hope Slattery,' at age seventeen (as progressed Venus conjunct his/her Sun/Moon midpoint). But 'Hope' soon became 'Candy' because of her sweet tooth. The surname 'Darling' was soon added along with the story that her father had a "fortune...made from a chain of dry cleaning stores...!" (Jupiter in Virgo dispositing the Sun).

Mercury T-Square

With Mercury at the Apex of a T-square, opposite and dispositing Uranus in Gemini, Candy confided to her close friend Jermiah Newton that her writings were integral to the expression of her creativity. Candy was an avid diarist who delighted in making drawings of dress designs, eye-make and funny faces, along with cartoonish doodles in between the poetry and dreams she recorded in her diaries.

Neptune in Libra

As Mary Harron observes, Candy "crystallised all her favorite elements of traditional femme culture into a dream life of what it is to be a woman." Her dreamy persona and artistic leanings serve as an expression of her ultra-femme Pisces Moon, disposited by fantasy-planet Neptune in oh-so-blonde & stylish Libra ("her persona was a synthesis of all movie blondes"). Furthermore, "As the greatest of all drag queens, Candy is beyond camp: you can always hear the heart beating beneath the artifice" (My Face: 6-7). This quote encapsulates the sextile between Candy's Neptune and her Sun, the latter planet always representing one's life force.

Angular Venus

Like her idol Marilyn Monroe, Candy would embody the Venusian archetype: While Monroe had Venus conjunct her MC, Darling had the same planet widely conjunct her South Node, allowing her to reincarnate as a blended version of various blonde Hollywood screen goddesses. Dyeing her brown hair platinum blonde, Candy left her humble Long Island abode (Lou Reed sings that "she came from out on the island") for Manhattan where she could not only pass as a woman, but also become a star.

Synastry (astro-chemistry) with Warhol

While mixing with the glitterati and other habitués at Andy Warhol's Factory, Candy metamorphosed into one of Warhol's superstars:

Rather than accepting the life that, at the time, was prescribed for boys who wanted to be girls or girls who wanted to be boys - which meant a life of utter outsiderness, a life of being called a freak, a weirdo, a sicko - Candy thought she could make her mark on the culture. When she met Andy, she found someone who understood her glamour in deep ways. Andy knew that she represented more of that old Hollywood screen magic than most of the stars of the '60s, many of whom didn't want to symbolize glamour anymore. Candy did. She knew from her own life of dreaming about glamour how much it meant to people, how much fantasizing about it could fill in the loneliness that one felt. Candy loved being seen as beautiful, partly because that was so different from how she'd been seen for most of her life. That's all part of why Warhol, who met her in 1967, was so attracted to her. (Richard Pandiscio)

Final Progressions

Candy died at 29 years of age in 1974 from leukemia probably caused by the street hormones she took in order to feminize her body. At this point, Uranus had progressed to conjunct her Saturn, while Saturn itself had made its return (in Cancer) and progressed from the focal point of her Boomerang pattern to conjunct her Pluto (the death planet).

Pluto ruling Mars in the Last Degree of Scorpio

In her too short life Candy had become a darling of both downtown and uptown society. She befriended Tennessee Williams who cast her in the off-Broadway premiere of his play Small Craft Warnings, she performed in off off-broadway plays (like Vain Victory), she made several films and television dramas, she appeared in theatre alongside Robert De Niro, she was photographed with Truman Capote, she shared personal communications with Diana Vreeland, she interviewed celebrities, and she was photographed by Richard Avedon and Cecil Beaton...

In 1996 Stephen Dorff played Candy in Mary Hallon's film, I Shot Andy Warhol. An exhibition ("Candy Darling, Always a Lady") was held in New York and at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh in 1997, while the book My Face for the World to See was released the same year. Pluto was then hovering on the cusp of Sagittarius in trine with Darling's Mars-Sun conjunction.

Fulfilling the Purpose of her North Node

Candy Darling wrote in her diary, "I enjoy being a woman." What a wonderful expression of the Moon in trine with -- and ruling -- the North Node in Cancer!

Candy Darling, with Francesca Passalacqua, D. E. Hardy & Jeremiah Newton, eds, & Mary Harron (foreward). My Face for the World to See: The Diaries, Letters, and Drawings of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol Superstar. Honolulu, HI: Hardy Marks, 1997.

---. Candy Darling. New York: Hanuman, 1992.

I Shot Andy Warhol. Dir. Mary Harron. 1996.

Richard Pandiscio. "Andy and Candy. (artist Andy Warhol and drag queen Candy Darling)(Warhol Mania: An Interview Special)" 1996.

Melanie Yarborough. "Warhol's Superstar Candy Darling Makes the Silver Screen"