Greta Garbo’s BaZi: Autumn Metal and Sixteen Years of Hollywood

Greta Garbo (born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson) grew up in a working-class family in Stockholm. Her father died when she was 14, and she left school to work in a department store. Her chart is Yi-Si, Yi-You, Geng-Shen, Bing-Xu (乙巳 乙酉 庚申 丙戌): Geng Metal born in autumn, when Metal is at its strongest, with Shen, You and Xu forming a Metal combination. Our engine reads it as strong. To be clear from the start: within this series’ “moving abroad” group, her BaZi is not a plain chart, and Wealth is even favorable for her. She is included because her Zi Wei birth chart is modest, and because the gap between her life before and after emigrating is the widest in the group. She reached Hollywood at 19, retired at 36, and for the next fifty years almost never appeared in public.

Birth data

Stockholm lies 3° east of 15° E, the reference meridian of Central European Time, so the true sun runs about twelve minutes ahead of the clock, and the mid-September equation of time adds a few more minutes. The result is 19:49, still in the Xu hour. Because the data is grade A rather than a certificate, we cast all twelve hours: 9 read strong and the rest balanced, and in every one the favorable elements are Water, Fire and Wood, so the big picture does not depend on the hour.

Four Pillars and Ten Gods

Our strength engine scores season, roots, visible stems, Resource and companions against Wealth, Officer and Output; below 0.35 reads weak, above 0.55 reads strong.

A score of 0.687: strong. With so much Metal, the favorable elements are Water (Output) to drain it, Fire (Officer) to forge it and Wood (Wealth) to use it up; the unfavorable ones are more Earth (Resource) and Metal (companions).

People with a crowd of companions tend to be independent, opinionated and unwilling to be managed by others; two Direct Wealth stems combining with the Day Master suggest opportunities and resources that come looking for you. She was famous for being reclusive, refusing interviews and skipping award ceremonies, and “I want to be alone” became her calling card, which sits close to a reading of a chart full of Metal. But these are descriptions of personality. The chart alone gives no sign that she would go from a Stockholm department store to Hollywood.

Before and after emigrating: fully favorable luck the decade she reached Hollywood

For a woman born in a yin year (the year stem Yi is yin), the luck pillars run forwards, starting at age 8.

“fav / unfav” reads the stem first, then the branch: whether each one’s element is favorable (useful), unfavorable, or neither (neutral) for this chart.

In the Ding-Hai luck pillar, 1922–1931, the stem Ding Fire (Direct Officer) forges the Metal and the branch Hai Water (Eating God) drains it: favorable in both stem and branch. In these ten years she went from drama student to the biggest female star of the silent era, and then crossed successfully into sound, one of the few silent stars the talkie revolution did not sweep away.

Conversely, the Ji-Chou luck pillar from 1942 is Earth in both stem and branch, exactly her unfavorable element. She retired at the tail end of the previous pillar, and in this decade comeback plans came and went without a single one happening. This is a correspondence, not a verdict: the public explanation for her retirement is that she had tired of Hollywood, and the loss of the European market in the Second World War played a part.

A few key years

1920 is Geng-Shen, Metal in both stem and branch: companions piled on companions, the thing her chart fears most, and that year she lost her father. 1924 (Jia-Zi) and 1926 (Bing-Yin) are fully favorable: Wood is Wealth, Water is Output and Fire is Officer, so opportunity, expression and status arrived together. We list these correspondences and go no further.

When you change country, does your destiny change too?

Garbo is the third in the “moving abroad” group. Like Arnold and Cary Grant, her turning points fall in favorable luck pillars and years, and she arrived in Hollywood right around the time her luck pillar turned favorable. Our reading: the chart gives the timing; the place gives the size of the stage. Hollywood in 1925 was becoming the film capital of the world, and that multiplier is not in the chart.

Where does the chart miss her real life?

Zi Wei Dou Shu chart

The same birth time, cast in Zi Wei Dou Shu (San He school, the same engine as our Zi Wei chart tool, using the same true solar time as the BaZi chart above). BaZi weighs the five elements and what the chart favors; Zi Wei looks at which stars fall in which palace. The two systems ask different questions, so the Zi Wei chart is shown on its own first, followed by where it agrees and disagrees with the BaZi reading.

The gold frame is the Life Palace; the shaded palaces are its three-sides-and-four-directions (Wealth, Career, Travel). Solid badges are the birth-year transformations (Lu, Quan, Ke, Ji), red names are the six malefic stars, and the small word after a major star is its brightness.

Garbo’s Zi Wei birth chart has Tian Fu in the Life Palace (the Hai palace), together with Zuo Fu and Tian Ma. The Wealth Palace is empty and the Body Palace also falls there; Tian Xiang is fallen in the Career Palace. The opposite Travel Palace holds Zi Wei with Ke and Qi Sha, almost the same layout as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s birth chart: a plain home palace facing a powerful opposite palace, which the old books read as “doing better away from home than at home.” Tian Ma, the “heavenly horse”, in the Life Palace means travel far from home, which makes sense for someone who left for Hollywood at 19. But with an empty Wealth Palace and a fallen Career star, the birth chart alone gives no sign that she would become a star of both the silent and the sound eras.

With the other birth-time versions, the Zi Wei chart becomes:

In BaZi the hour pillar changes every two hours while the day pillar and above stay put. In Zi Wei the Life Palace is set by the lunar month and the hour, so a different hour moves the Life Palace, the Body Palace, the bureau and every major star at once. The same dispute over a birth hour therefore usually matters more for Zi Wei than for BaZi.

Following the popular online method of “recasting in local time when you move”, converting her moment of birth to Los Angeles time lands in the Si hour on the morning of the same day, and the Zi Wei chart becomes Qi Sha (brilliant) in the Life Palace, Tan Lang in the Wealth Palace, Po Jun in the Career Palace: a complete Sha-Po-Lang, with Lian Zhen and Tian Fu in the opposite Travel Palace. It is exactly the same result as Arnold’s and Cary Grant’s recast charts. But she was born in Stockholm; Los Angeles clock time is just another way of writing the same instant. This is picking a chart after knowing the outcome: an after-the-fact calculation, for entertainment only.

For school, leap-month and Zi-hour settings see the Zi Wei chart page; for how the two systems differ see BaZi vs Zi Wei Dou Shu. The hindsight warning applies here too: once you know the outcome, any star can be made to explain it.

Western astrology chart

The same moment of birth, cast as a Western natal chart (tropical zodiac, Placidus houses, the same engine as our natal chart tool). A natal chart uses the sky at the moment of birth, so it needs no true-solar-time correction, but it does need the latitude of the birthplace to fix the Ascendant and the houses. BaZi and Zi Wei are both derived from the Chinese calendar, while a natal chart computes planetary positions directly. Because the three systems start from different places, the chart is listed on its own below, followed by where it agrees with the BaZi and Zi Wei readings.

Sun in Virgo, Moon in Taurus, Gemini rising. The most striking feature is the Moon in the 12th house (solitude and hidden things): emotions that need privacy and a retreat behind the scenes. Garbo’s most famous line is “I want to be alone”, and after retiring at 36 she withdrew almost entirely from public view. The Moon squares Venus with an orb of only 0.0°, which tradition reads as a long tug-of-war between what one needs emotionally and how one wants to be loved. The chart ruler, Mercury, is in its own sign of Virgo (domicile) in the 5th house (creativity and performance), a reading of meticulous craft on screen. BaZi sees her as a strong Geng Metal surrounded by companions, stressing independence and refusing to depend on anyone. That and the “retreat” of a 12th-house Moon are two sides of the same thing.

Domicile, exaltation, fall and detriment in brackets are the classical categories for how comfortably a planet works in a sign; they are not verdicts of good or bad. For how to read the big three, the ten planets and aspects, see rising sign, Moon sign, the ten planets and aspects. The hindsight warning applies here too: once you know the outcome, any sign can be made to explain it.

Is your chart crowded with companions?

The Four Pillars, strength score and luck pillars on this page all come from the same engine as the chart on our home page. Enter your birth date to see how many companions your chart has, whether your Day Master is strong or weak, and which elements are favorable for you. You can also look at the other people in this series who made their name abroad: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn and Rudolph Valentino.