Vincent van Gogh's Birth Chart

Dignities account for three entries and motion for two, while signs and aspects supply two more. The eighth, a crowd of planets above the horizon, is measured from the Ascendant, and at about one chart in 5 it is the commonest of the list.

Venus and Mars trail the Sun by 11°35′ and 13°31′, beyond conjunction orb, and the Moon stops 11°04′ short of a trine; an unaspected Sun turns up in about one chart in 24 from the 1850s. Some astrologers picture it as a center running on its own terms. Jupiter is the reverse: it trines Mercury by 1°20′, the tightest orb between planets, squares Mars, Venus and the Midheaven, and joins the Moon, matching its declination within 0°14′. No planet is out of bounds.

Act 29 of the 1853 register of Zundert en Wernhout, held by the Brabants Historisch Informatie Centrum, was read here on the archive's scan: 'om Elf ure des voormiddags'. The Gauquelins' 1970 volume on painters lists the birth as entry 1444 in Greenwich time, using the longitude of 's-Hertogenbosch, and adding that offset back gives eleven exactly. Research found no rival time.

The Netherlands had no legal time until 1909, so eleven o'clock is read as Zundert's own mean solar time, UTC+0:18:40, which places the birth at 10:41 UTC on March 30, 1853.

Every planet from Mercury to Pluto is direct, a clean sheet found in about one chart in 9 from the same decade, though Mercury, within two days of its station, nearly spoils it; near-station Mercurys make up about one chart in 7 of that sample. Astrologers say such a planet dwells on its themes. Mars, moving swiftly, sits under the Sun's beams with Venus.

Houses are touchier. Pluto, 1°04′ past the 11th cusp, crosses to the 10th house given 4 minutes more on the clock, less than the shift a village clock kept by the sun would make. Mars and Venus reach the 9th with 15 minutes and 22 minutes more; Mercury moves into the 11th if the birth was 13 minutes earlier.

Counted forward from the Moon to Saturn, the ten planets occupy 145°13′, a bowl in Marc Edmund Jones's pattern scheme, which he tied to a self-contained outlook. Not one of the ten lands in Gemini, Libra or Aquarius, a gap matched in about one chart in 7 that decade. Above the horizon sit eight planets, all but the Moon and Jupiter, both in the 6th house, a split seen in about one chart in 5 born in the 1850s.

This is a day chart in sect terms, and the Sun leads the dignity scores at 100: exalted in Aries (about one chart in 12), in its own triplicity and angular. Traditional astrologers liken an exalted planet to an honored guest. Venus, exalted in Pisces (about one chart in 11) but out of sect, scores 88; Jupiter, at home in Sagittarius (about one chart in 6), 73. The chart's ruler, the Moon, has no dignity in Sagittarius and scores 46, ahead of Pluto alone.

Albert Einstein's chart comes closest, with the same Moon and rising signs. Emma Watson matches the Sun and Moon, Rodrigo Duterte the Aries Sun and a Mercury within a degree of Van Gogh's, B. R. Ambedkar the Sun alone. No databank birth shares the date.

Subtracting the Lahiri ayanamsa of 21°48′ shifts the Sun back to 17°51′ Pisces, with the Moon landing at 28°55′ Scorpio. The Ascendant falls at 29°21′ Gemini, close enough to Cancer that 4 minutes more would cross it, and Neptune moves into Aquarius, so the sidereal chart does hold air.

Van Gogh died on July 29, 1890, where the table stops. Saturn returned once, on May 8, 1882, while he lived in The Hague; the third Jupiter return, on January 8, 1889, fell during his Arles period. Both are calendar coincidences.

Each longitude comes from precise astronomical calculations for 10:41 UTC on March 30, 1853, cusps follow Placidus, and a rerun through the site's chart API differed by no more than 0.0002°. Each rate gives the fraction of simulated 1850s births in large cities carrying the same feature.