Pablo Picasso's Birth Chart

Scores weigh each feature's kind against its frequency in 1880s charts. None is scarce: the least common, six planets in fixed signs, appears in about one chart in 9; Mercury outranks it because a station weighs more than a sign tally.

Wikipedia does not say where Cabanne found the hour. Enrique Mallen's On-line Picasso Project appears to trace it to the father's declaration in the civil register, citing Cabanne and Josep Palau i Fabre (1980, page 17), but those pages sit behind a login and neither book was read, so the hour stands as a biography's. The birth-house museum gives the date, no hour.

Leo held the Ascendant for 2 hours 27 minutes. Move the birth 28 minutes earlier and Cancer rises, after Pluto, Mercury, Uranus and Jupiter have all changed house, Pluto within 8 minutes; later, the Sun goes first, into the 3rd house within 30 minutes. If the hour was sundial (apparent) time, the mean-clock birth falls about a quarter of an hour earlier: Pluto moves, Leo holds. The Moon, in Sagittarius since 8:42 AM, changed sign that day, as in about 44% of the decade's charts.

Mercury, at 24°14′ Scorpio in the 4th house, covered only 0°15′ a day and stood 21°31′ from the Sun, outside its beams. The scoring counts Mercury as near a station in about one chart in 7, and many astrologers give a planet about to stand still added weight.

Mars, at 12°21′ Cancer in the 12th house, reached 23°46′ north in declination, past the ecliptic's 23°27′ tilt, true of about one chart in 6; writers after Kt Boehrer see such a planet as working beyond ordinary limits. The Moon and Mercury sit 0°04′ apart in southern declination, a parallel.

Mercury opposes Jupiter within 0°41′, the tightest major aspect, and Pluto within 4°32′, facing the Taurus group. Mercury and Jupiter rule opposite signs in the traditional scheme, and modern authors frame their opposition as detail against the broad view. Of the Ascendant's four contacts the closest is Venus's sextile, at 1°06′.

The ten planets split into two camps across wide empty arcs, Marc Edmund Jones's seesaw, seen in about 30% of 1880s charts. Saturn through Mars sit above the horizon; Uranus through the Moon sit below, and Capricorn through Aries hold nothing. Later writers read the pattern as a weighing of alternatives.

Earth holds five planets, as in about 27% of charts, though all are Jupiter or slower; fixed signs hold six, as in about one chart in 9. Venus alone is in air.

Sunset had come 6 hours 4 minutes before the birth, a night chart by sect rules, which put the Moon, Venus and Mars in sect. Of that trio Venus fares best, in its domicile at 4°31′ Libra (as in about one chart in 5), with the top strength score, 77, and the title of lord of the geniture.

By the traditional tables Mars is in its fall, found in about one chart in 9, yet it holds the water triplicity and is in sect, which leaves it mid-table at 50. The Sun, ruling the chart because Leo rises, is peregrine and out of sect but gains from an angular place in the 4th house.

Among those profiled here, Carl Sagan's chart is nearest, matching Scorpio Sun and Sagittarius Moon. Virat Kohli, Joe Biden and Indira Gandhi match on the Scorpio Sun alone; no roster entry shares the birth date.

The Lahiri ayanamsa of 22°12′ puts the Ascendant at 13°25′ Cancer and moves Venus into Virgo, where Jyotish counts it debilitated; Mars backs into Gemini, out of its fall, while Mercury keeps Scorpio.

Saturn first regained its natal longitude on April 29, 1911, again in three passes ending February 20, 1941, and came round a third time on April 11, 1970. Jupiter completed seven returns in his lifetime, the last pass on March 22, 1965.

Every longitude above comes from precise astronomical calculations for the birth house at 23:32 UTC on October 25, 1881. The cohort behind each rate is simulated: 1880s births at random minutes, in towns drawn with odds rising as the square root of population. Astrological readings here describe a tradition, not the painter.