I’ve just watched the 3-part BBC documentary on the Maxwell family. The final episode is about Robert Maxwell’s daughter Ghislaine. I had not realised just how prolific had been her procuring of young girls for Jeffrey Epstein to abuse and rape, and for how many years it went on. The girls were terrified to do anything apart from what Epstein and Maxwell ordered them to do. Ghislaine behaved in an exceedingly cruel manner, on behalf of her boyfriend, for a long time. She was able to charm young girls from poor areas to come with her, in a way that Epstein would not have been able to. It is hard to imagine that she did not derive pleasure herself from having these girls in her power. And she knew exactly what Epstein was going to do to them. She would give them orders to do exactly what Epstein wanted.
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| Epstein and Maxwell |
I’m going to outline a few salient points from her chart, for which we have an accurate birthtime. I will attempt to explain some of her behaviour, without condoning it.
The first point to note is that she was arrested in July 2020 during her second Saturn Return. She was found guilty in Dec 2021 as Saturn made his final crossing to her MC. Saturn was also conjoining her Jupiter last December, and went on to oppose her Moon and North Node early this year. Saturn has been all over her chart. It has been the main theme. Under Saturn we reap the consequences of our actions. And maybe we learn from them. Saturn can also describe imprisonment.
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| Click to Enlarge |
Ghislaine's natal Sun
is in Capricorn (Saturn-ruled) in the 8th House. It is conjunct Mars
in Capricorn. The 2 male planets in her chart show her attraction to older men
of high status and achievement. They are trine to Uranus and Pluto, and do not
make any hard aspects: her relationships with such men are therefore something
she naturally slips into.
The first was with her own father Robert. No doubt much will be made of that relationship in future books and films about her, and probably already has been. When he died on 5th Nov 1991, Jupiter had just trined her Sun, and was exactly on her Pluto. Jupiter is associated with death – he is king of the gods, and takes us back to himself – and this timing shows how her Sun-Pluto was connected with her father.
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| Ghislaine and Robert Maxwell |
Ghislaine was her father’s favourite, and he named his yacht after her: the Lady Ghislaine. She lived her life in his orbit, and after his death soon took up with another rich, older man, Epstein, undertaking many of his practical tasks, as she had done for her father. Her shared life (8th House) with a high-status man (Sun in Capricorn.) The Sun often describes the long-term partner in the chart of a woman, with Mars being the type of man she is attracted to.
Her
relationship with her father was a quasi-marriage, as it was with her Epstein, where the
two only seem to have been sexually involved for a few years. Ghislaine's Sun-Mars was opposite her father's Mars-Pluto, which would have been very hard to stand up to. He was in love with her, needed her, indulged her, and how could she resist? Mars-Pluto made her father a kind of 'Demon Lover', as was Epstein. This is often a phase women go through, while their friends tear their hair out, what the fuck is she doing with that guy?
Ghislaine is a French name, originally from the German, meaning ‘sweet hostage’. I doubt Robert Maxwell knew the etymology of Ghislaine when he named her, but these things have power nonetheless. It is startling.
This 'hostage' relationship to men is in
her chart: her Sun is in the 8th, Pluto’s House. Pluto abducted a young
woman, Ceres' daughter Persephone, and forcibly married her. Ghislaine allowed herself to be abducted by both her father and Epstein, never
truly developing a life of her own, and was psychologically married to both of them. She in turn became the abductor.
Abduction was what she understood. Maybe it was a kind of revenge for her own
disempowerment. Her father unknowingly cursed her when he named her Ghislaine. He claimed her for his own.
Ghislaine has Moon square Ceres, suggesting a loss of her own womanhood in her abduction by men. This loss is further suggested by Moon square Neptune (as is the glamour, also Jupiter on the MC.) Her Moon-Neptune-Ceres-Jupiter Grand Cross overlays her father's Jupiter-Neptune-Ceres-Moon Grand Cross. They were that tight. She has never had her own family. When she was found guilty in December 2021, there was a Ceres-North Node conjunction in the sky, highlighting this abduction theme, not just for herself, but more widely for the young women concerned.
She will have many years in prison. Both her progressed Sun and Ascendant have changed signs in recent years. A whole long new phase of her life is beginning. Her Progressed Sun was in Capricorn until shortly before her father died: she was the good girl, living out the script her father had given her.
Then it moved into Aquarius: she began to break the social rules with Epstein, in an egregious way. There is, interestingly, not much synastry with Epstein's chart (though we don't know his birth time). But his natal Sun is cusp Aquarius/Cap, where Ghislaine's Prog Sun had reached when they met: he suited the phase she was entering. His Sun also conjoins her natal Saturn, suggesting a father figure for her, and her Saturnian influence on him as his arranger.
In recent years her Prog Sun has recently moved into Pisces: not my will, but thine. Her life will be under the control of others from now on – which, indeed, it always has been, in a sense – and she has lost everything, as can happen to Pisces. She may find some way of dominating others in prison. But she may also be punished by other women prisoners for the way she treated young girls.
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| Ghislaine now |
You never know with people whether reflection and self-consciousness will arise. It is a mysterious thing. Ghislaine is deeply hidden from her own power, and has relied on powerful men. There is some deep psychological/archetypal work she will need to undertake if she is to change. Saturn is presiding over the start of this new phase, as the transits have shown. She will need to begin in a Saturnian way, by acknowledging what she has done, at least privately. She has caused a huge amount of pain, and that can be a very difficult thing to own. But with Prog Sun in Pisces, her old barriers will be coming down. Prison may give her the space from men that she needs to reflect on her actions.
