In previous newsletters, we’ve used the chart of Angelina Jolie to illustrate a number of techniques that an astrologer uses when looking at a chart. Jolie’s chart is a good one because it contains a bunch of high-profile planetary placements that make it useful for our purposes. But, as most of you know, Jolie has a rather well-known partner. And having just seen him in a movie recently, I thought it would be fun to look at his chart, and at some point down the road, look at the relationship through the charts and see what we find.

In Terence Malick’s flawed but beautiful film, “The Tree of Life,” Brad Pitt plays a proud, earthy husband and father of three. It’s a strong performance, and as I have looked at the chart of his partner, Angelina Jolie, a number of times, I found myself curious what Pitt’s would be like. Interestingly, earth is a quality that runs deeply through his chart.

To say that the chart strongly emphasizes force and ambition would be an understatement. Take a look at the 2nd house (lower left of the chart) and we find four planets tightly grouped in earthy Capricorn. The second house represents value, money, material things, worth. With Capricorn placed on the cusp we can guess that Mr. Pitt takes these things very seriously. With Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars placed there, we can venture that a great deal of his expenditure of energy will go into money and material things.

Look at the chart some more and we see Sagittarius rising and the Sun placed within that first house. Pitt was born in a small town in Oklahoma but with Sag rising and Sun in Sag it’s not surprising he left. Sagittarius leads us to freedom, exploration, adventurous and with his Sun square to the midheaven, we can expect this will get worked out through his career.

Looking more deeply, we see Jupiter, ruler of the Sag ascendant in fiery Aries. Once again, there’s a strong quality of aggression, and with that Jupiter tightly squared to Mars, the aggression moves to a higher pitch, to fighting, for instance, which is not surprising from an actor who was the star of a movie called “The Fight Club”. That Mars squaring Jupiter also has some strong sexual undertones. There’s probably going to be some fooling around. But underneath that, this is somebody who is also going to be very grounded – think back to those 2nd house placements.

Finally, going back to ambition, consider this: the chart is almost entirely made up of earth and fire. There’s no water and only a single planet in an air sign. Quite simply, the chart says: I’m going out into the world to take what I want and make it mine. So far, it seems to be working.