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Robin Williams
1951-07-21 at 13:34:00 · Chicago, Illinois, USA
Three planets in Cancer in the 9th house at the start of the chart's lower hemisphere. Sun at 28°, Mars at 11°, Uranus at 10°. Then Mercury at 22° Leo in the 10th house alongside Pluto at 18°. Then Pisces Moon at 8° in the 4th house. That configuration explains Robin Williams better than any single performance does. Three personal placements in Cancer in the philosophy-and-meaning house, two more in Leo on the career peak, an emotional Pisces Moon in the home and roots sector. Every placement points toward emotional, philosophical, performance-oriented work driven by feeling. The career was inevitable; the difficulty of carrying that chart for sixty-three years was also inevitable.
Born at 1:34 PM in Chicago, Illinois on July 21, 1951, Williams came in with Scorpio Rising at 0° (the very first degree of Scorpio, on the cusp from Libra) and the Cancer cluster sitting in the 9th house just below the Midheaven. Scorpio Rising at the cusp produces an intense public face with hidden depth-and-emotional registers; combined with the 9th-house Cancer cluster, the chart's overall configuration is sensitive, intense, feeling-driven, philosophical, performance-oriented. The famous Williams stage presence — the manic improvisation, the rapid character voices, the emotional accessibility that made the dramatic turns land harder than other comedians' dramatic work — all run from a chart that was structurally built to feel everything and externalize it through performance.
Mercury at 22° Leo in the 10th house alongside Pluto at 18° is the verbal-and-transformation cluster at the career peak. Leo Mercury speaks with theatrical confidence and warmth; Pluto in Leo (generationally, born 1937-1958) deepens that voice with transformational intensity. Together in the 10th house, the configuration produces a public communication mode that runs through performance and depth simultaneously. Williams's stand-up work, the dramatic acting that earned the Academy Award (Good Will Hunting, 1997), the dozens of voice-acting roles (Aladdin, FernGully, Happy Feet, others) all run from 10th house Leo Mercury and Pluto doing the verbal-transformational work the placements were wired for.
Cancer Sun in the 9th house with Cancer Mars and Cancer Uranus alongside is the protective-and-original drive in the philosophy sector. Three personal placements in Cancer in the 9th house specifically produces a person whose meaning-making, drive, and unconventional thinking all run through emotional and family-protective register. Williams's most enduring work — Dead Poets Society (1989, the teacher as meaning-maker), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993, the family-protective father figure), Good Will Hunting (1997, the therapist as meaning-maker), What Dreams May Come (1998, the afterlife exploration of love and family) — all share this signature. The roles aren't accidental. They're the chart doing the work the placements demanded.
Pisces Moon at 8° in the 4th house is the emotional anchor in the home and roots sector, in water register. Pisces Moons regulate through empathy and the willingness to dissolve boundaries between self and other; the 4th house places that need into family and origin. Williams was famously empathic toward other comedians and actors (the generosity with younger performers, the constant USO tours visiting servicemembers, the willingness to engage with anyone on his level emotionally) and that's 4th house Pisces Moon doing the boundary-dissolving work the placement is wired for. The placement also explains some of the difficulty — Pisces Moons can absorb other people's emotional states without protection, which compounds over time.
Virgo Venus at 10° and Virgo Saturn at 28° in the 10th and 11th houses respectively is the love-and-discipline signature in earth, in the career and community sectors. Virgo Venus values precision; Virgo Saturn does the structural detail work. Williams's three marriages (Valerie Velardi 1978-1988, Marsha Garces 1989-2010, Susan Schneider 2011-2014), the long working relationships with directors like Mike Nichols and Peter Weir, the careful craft work behind the improvisational surface (he prepared exhaustively for roles, despite the impression of spontaneity) all run from Virgo Venus-Saturn doing the patient precision work the placements were wired for.
Aries Jupiter at 14° in the 6th house is the courageous expansion in the daily work sector. Aries Jupiter expands through direct action; the 6th house places that into routine and craft. The famously high work volume across stand-up tours, films, voiceover work, charity appearances, USO tours — Williams's career output was extraordinary by any measure, and that's 6th house Aries Jupiter doing the courageous-daily-work expansion the placement is wired for.
Libra Neptune at 16° in the 12th house is the dreamy idealism in the hidden sector. Libra Neptune generationally produces people whose ideals run through partnership and aesthetics; in the 12th house, that idealism happens privately, often through unconscious channels. Williams's openly discussed struggles with depression, anxiety, addiction (he was open across decades about his sobriety work and the relapses), and ultimately the Lewy body dementia that was diagnosed posthumously after his 2014 death — the diagnosis explains many of the symptoms he'd been experiencing in the final year that were originally attributed to Parkinson's and depression — all involved Williams trying to articulate experiences his interior was processing without conscious access. That's 12th house Libra Neptune at work, the placement that handles the deepest material the chart processes.
Williams died on August 11, 2014 at age 63. The Lewy body diagnosis (made by autopsy) explained the final-year decline as a brain disease rather than a willful choice; his widow Susan Schneider has spent years since making that distinction publicly clear. The chart did what charts do — it produced one of the most gifted performers of his generation, and it also gave him the sensitive interior configuration that made the late-life brain illness specifically unbearable. Cancer 9th cluster for the emotional-philosophical performance work. Leo 10th Mercury-Pluto for the verbal-transformational craft. Pisces 4th Moon for the empathic foundation. Williams gave the chart's gifts to audiences for forty years. The illness took the gift in the end. The performances are still there.
What the Chart Reveals
Interpretations drawn from Robin's natal placements.
☉ Sun in Cancer
Cancer's Cardinal Water register holds the Sun without formal dignity. Solar identity rooted in lived feeling rather than abstraction. The ninth house is philosophy, higher knowledge, the architecture of how the chart owner makes meaning. Sun in Cancer in the 9th links identity to the search for meaning through an emotionally and culturally rich lens, philosophy rooted in lived experience and inherited tradition rather than purely intellectual investigation.
Lives with this placement seek wisdom that feels personally resonant and spiritually alive, kind of allergic to philosophical systems that don't land on something felt. Travel that deepens emotional understanding moves the placement profoundly. Learning that has no personal emotional charge fails to genuinely stay. The chart owner's philosophy of life is inseparable from their emotional history.
Anyway. The maturation arrives through pursuing higher learning in environments that feel emotionally nourishing. The best insights arise from lived felt encounter rather than purely abstract study. The honest challenge is seeking philosophical comfort rather than philosophical challenge, gravitating toward traditions that affirm rather than expand. The worldview gets challenged. The roots stay.
☽ Moon in Pisces
Pisces carries the Moon into the 4th house, the chart's private foundation. The fourth house is home, roots, the emotional base laid in childhood. In the 4th, the placement runs the permeable emotional register through domestic life.
Lives with this placement need the home to be a sanctuary, a place to retreat from a world that comes in too loud. The home is also a sponge ... it takes on the emotional atmosphere of whoever lives in it, so a tense household soaks the chart owner through and a peaceful one restores them completely. Early roots often carried something unspoken, a sadness or a mystery in the family the chart owner felt without ever being told. It's not just sensitivity; it's structural identity expressed through having almost no barrier between the self and the emotional climate of home. The shadow is the placement that can't rest anywhere the atmosphere is troubled, and carries a family's mood as though personally responsible for it.
What ripens across a lifetime is the recognition that the chart owner can love a home without dissolving into its weather, and tend the atmosphere without becoming it.
A house that doubles as a refuge and a sponge, slowly learning to keep one room dry.
☿ Mercury in Leo
Mercury in Leo runs Fixed Fire through the chart's house of career and public name. The tenth house is reputation, the public role, the version of a person the world keeps on file. In the 10th, the placement runs the performing mind through the work of being known.
Lives with this placement build careers out of the way they say things ... they front the project, give the talk, become the name and the face, because a mind that speaks to be admired finds its natural climate at the top of the chart. Ambition is the easy read. The structural one is wanting the public self to be impressive. The shadow is the placement that confuses the reputation with the work, that polishes the image until being admired becomes the actual job, and won't hear that the audience can tell.
The slow lesson is a public self with something real behind it. The shine stays. It just stops being the whole structure.
The world admires the performance first. It keeps the people whose performance turned out to be true.
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Planetary Positions
Rising: Scorpio · Midheaven: LeoCancer
28° · House 9
Pisces
8° · House 4
Leo
22° · House 10
Virgo
10° · House 10
Cancer
11° · House 9
Aries
13° · House 6
Virgo
27° · House 11
Cancer
10° · House 9
Libra
16° · House 12
Leo
18° · House 10
Pisces
10° · House 5℞
Sagittarius
27° · House 2℞
Chart Interpretations
Sun in Cancer in House 9
Cancer's Cardinal Water register holds the Sun without formal dignity. Solar identity rooted in lived feeling rather than abstraction. The ninth house is philosophy, higher knowledge, the architecture of how the chart owner makes meaning. Sun in Cancer in the 9th links identity to the search for meaning through an emotionally and culturally rich lens, philosophy rooted in lived experience and inherited tradition rather than purely intellectual investigation. Lives with this placement seek wisdom that feels personally resonant and spiritually alive, kind of allergic to philosophical systems that don't land on something felt. Travel that deepens emotional understanding moves the placement profoundly. Learning that has no personal emotional charge fails to genuinely stay. The chart owner's philosophy of life is inseparable from their emotional history. Anyway. The maturation arrives through pursuing higher learning in environments that feel emotionally nourishing. The best insights arise from lived felt encounter rather than purely abstract study. The honest challenge is seeking philosophical comfort rather than philosophical challenge, gravitating toward traditions that affirm rather than expand. The worldview gets challenged. The roots stay.
Pisces carries the Moon into the 4th house, the chart's private foundation. The fourth house is home, roots, the emotional base laid in childhood. In the 4th, the placement runs the permeable emotional register through domestic life. Lives with this placement need the home to be a sanctuary, a place to retreat from a world that comes in too loud. The home is also a sponge ... it takes on the emotional atmosphere of whoever lives in it, so a tense household soaks the chart owner through and a peaceful one restores them completely. Early roots often carried something unspoken, a sadness or a mystery in the family the chart owner felt without ever being told. It's not just sensitivity; it's structural identity expressed through having almost no barrier between the self and the emotional climate of home. The shadow is the placement that can't rest anywhere the atmosphere is troubled, and carries a family's mood as though personally responsible for it. What ripens across a lifetime is the recognition that the chart owner can love a home without dissolving into its weather, and tend the atmosphere without becoming it. A house that doubles as a refuge and a sponge, slowly learning to keep one room dry.
Mercury in Leo runs Fixed Fire through the chart's house of career and public name. The tenth house is reputation, the public role, the version of a person the world keeps on file. In the 10th, the placement runs the performing mind through the work of being known. Lives with this placement build careers out of the way they say things ... they front the project, give the talk, become the name and the face, because a mind that speaks to be admired finds its natural climate at the top of the chart. Ambition is the easy read. The structural one is wanting the public self to be impressive. The shadow is the placement that confuses the reputation with the work, that polishes the image until being admired becomes the actual job, and won't hear that the audience can tell. The slow lesson is a public self with something real behind it. The shine stays. It just stops being the whole structure. The world admires the performance first. It keeps the people whose performance turned out to be true.
Venus in Virgo runs Mutable Earth into the chart's house of career and public standing. The tenth house is the work shown to the world, the reputation, the arc of what gets built in public. In the 10th, the placement runs the careful, modest heart up into the career itself. Lives with this placement build a reputation on competence and care ... the public self is reliable, skilled, useful, the kind of standing earned quietly through good work done well, careers in craft, service, healing, and detail where precision and devotion are the whole point. It lets the work speak. It's not just being competent at work; it's structural identity expressed through a public self built on usefulness rather than flash. Turned shadow, it's the placement so modest and so hard on itself that it undersells its worth, waits to be noticed rather than claiming its place, and lets others less skilled take the credit it was too unsure to ask for. What the placement learns, over time, is that quiet excellence still has to be claimed to be seen, and that modesty taken too far becomes a kind of self erasure. The careful work earns the respect. Believing it deserves the credit is the harder half of the career.
Mars in Cancer runs Cardinal Water into the chart's house of the big questions. The ninth house is philosophy, travel, meaning, the long view, the search for what life is for. In the 9th, the placement runs the emotional, protective drive through belief and distance. Lives with this placement fight for beliefs rooted in feeling and home ... the convictions emotional and protective, a philosophy built around family, tradition, and emotional truth, a drive to defend the beliefs that feel like home rather than argue abstract ideas, a faith held in the gut. It defends what it feels rather than what it reasons. It's not just being emotional about belief; it's structural identity expressed through a drive that protects the convictions tied to its emotional roots. Turned shadow, it's the placement that takes any challenge to its beliefs as a personal attack, that defends its worldview through emotion and grievance rather than reason, that retreats into the familiar faith rather than venture, and cannot separate an idea from the feeling attached to it. What the placement learns, over time, is that a belief defended only because it feels like home is not the same as one that is true, and that growth asks it to question the comfortable conviction. A faith defended like family, slowly learning to question the belief without feeling the home under attack.
Jupiter in Aries runs Cardinal Fire through the chart's sector of work and health. The sixth house is the job, the body, the daily routine, the texture of how the days get spent. In the 6th, the placement runs the bold, expansive drive through the daily grind. Lives with this placement bring big energy and optimism to the work ... they take on more than anyone, attack the daily tasks with enthusiasm, grow through bold professional moves, and bring a confident energy that lifts the whole operation. It works big and bets on itself. It's not just being energetic; it's structural identity expressed through a drive that expands and improves through bold, optimistic work. Turned shadow, it's the placement that takes on far more than it can finish, that overcommits on optimism, that neglects the small necessary detail in favor of the grand move, and overextends the body and the schedule trusting it will all work out. What the placement learns, over time, is the judgment to take on what it can actually carry, and the discipline that turns big energy into finished work. What was the appetite to take on everything becomes the wisdom to take on the right thing.
Saturn in Virgo isn't formally dignified, but Mutable Earth and Mercury's precision give the placement a deep working register. The eleventh house is friendship, group belonging, the wider social fabric the chart owner participates in. Saturn here in the 11th makes group membership selective and practical, the placement contributing organizational competence. Lives with this placement are selective about the organizations they join and the causes they champion. They prefer groups that operate with clarity, accountability, and practical effectiveness, kind of allergic to the ones that don't. Within any group, they tend to take on organizational or administrative roles, identifying inefficiencies and proposing practical improvements. Anyway. The maturation arrives when the chart owner resists over-analyzing social dynamics and just shows up reliably. Sometimes the contribution of presence is more valuable than the contribution of strategy. What was analysis becomes presence.
Uranus in Cancer runs Cardinal Water into the chart's house of the big questions, where the generational disruption meets a single person's search for meaning. The ninth house is philosophy, meaning, the long view, the search for what it all means. In the 9th, the placement runs the restless, intuitive force through belief itself. Lives with this placement build a worldview through feeling and unconventional intuition ... a philosophy arrived at through emotional truth rather than cold logic, a belief in following the heart and the gut toward meaning, an unconventional and deeply personal spirituality rooted in what feels true. It believes what its heart awakens to. It's not just being intuitive about meaning; it's structural identity expressed through a faith built on emotional truth and instinct. Turned shadow, it's the placement whose beliefs swing with its moods, that mistakes a strong feeling for a settled conviction, that adopts and discards philosophies as the emotional weather changes, and confuses the intensity of a feeling with the truth of a belief. What the placement learns, over time, is that a feeling can point toward truth without being the verdict, and that a worldview needs more than the mood of the moment to stand on. A faith that shifts with the heart's weather, slowly learning that feeling can guide a belief without being allowed to rewrite it daily.
Neptune in Libra runs Cardinal Air into the chart's hidden house, where the generational dream meets a single person's unconscious. The twelfth house is the unconscious, the unspoken, the force that operates without the personality knowing about it. In the 12th, the dissolving, idealizing force runs underground. Lives with this placement carry a hidden longing for perfect union and harmony ... a buried dream of the ideal love and a world without conflict running below awareness, a private idealism about how people should be together, an unconscious wish to merge and please that the personality may not openly name. The longing for union runs in the deep. It's not just a hidden graciousness; it's structural identity expressed through a buried dissolving force that operates beneath awareness. Turned shadow, it's the placement whose unconscious need to please and merge quietly erases its own desires, that dissolves into relationships without knowing it has, that carries a buried fear of conflict it has never traced, and is run from beneath by a longing for perfect harmony it has not faced. What the placement learns, over time, is that the buried wish to merge is safer brought into the light than left to dissolve the self in the dark, and that an owned longing relates where a hidden one disappears. A hidden longing for perfect union, slowly learning that the harmony it dreamed of asked it to stay whole, not vanish.
Pluto in Leo in House 10
Pluto in Leo runs Fixed Fire into the chart's house of career and public standing, where the generational power meets a single person's public life. The tenth house is the work shown to the world, the reputation, the arc of what gets built in public. In the 10th, the placement runs the intense, willful force up into the career itself. Lives with this placement build a public life through commanding power and the will to lead ... an ambition aimed at authority, recognition, and a position of real influence, careers that reward charisma, leadership, and the drive to be at the top, a reputation built on a powerful, magnetic presence. It rises to command. Being ambitious is the easy read. The structural one is a public self transformed by willful power. The shadow is the placement whose drive for power turns into a hunger for personal glory and dominance, that pursues authority to feed the ego, that can grow tyrannical or grandiose at the top, and mistakes the seizing of a commanding position for genuine greatness. The commanding charismatic drive can build real authority and influence. Wielding the power to serve rather than to glorify the self is what makes the leadership great rather than just dominant.
The North Node in Pisces calls toward surrender, compassion, and the faith to trust a current larger than the self, while the South Node in Virgo holds the comfort of control, criticism, and the endless need to fix and perfect. The fifth house is play, romance, creativity, and the open heart, so here the growth is toward a creativity that flows rather than perfects. Lives with this placement are here to grow toward making and loving from the imagination ... toward art that pours out without being edited to death, romance offered with open hearted acceptance, and play freed from the need to get it exactly right. The pull is real but unfamiliar, because the reflex is to critique the creative work, find fault in the lover, and squeeze the joy out of play by perfecting it. This isn't learning to flow so much as a heart that grows by trusting its own imagination, working at the level of identity, not habit. The trouble is the placement that retreats into the Virgo comfort of the endlessly polished, never finished creation, that nitpicks love and art alike and avoids the riskier work of a heart that simply lets itself create. Whether the heart flows or keeps perfecting depends on the rest of the chart. The 5th asks for a joy that stops correcting itself.
Chiron in Sagittarius carries the wound around meaning, faith, and belonging to a truth, and the second house brings it into money, possessions, and the sense of one's own worth. In the 2nd, the wound around meaning shapes the search for value. Lives with this placement carry a wound around whether their life and resources have any larger meaning ... a buried sense that what they earn and own is meaningless, a tender restlessness that seeks worth in experience and belief rather than in security. And from tending that wound grows a gift for helping others find a worth and security rooted in meaning rather than mere accumulation. It anchors others in a worth rooted in meaning it had to find. This isn't carrying a wound so much as a wound that becomes the source of a healing gift, working at the level of identity, not habit. The trouble is the placement whose untended wound either dismisses material security as meaningless or chases experiences to outrun an inner emptiness, and never tends the ache for a worth that means something beneath. What heals slowly is the knowledge that a meaningful worth and a grounded security can coexist, and that value was never only material or only spiritual. As the years of seeking meaning over security accumulate, the wound becomes a gift for helping others value what matters.
Ascendant (Rising) in Scorpio
Scorpio is a Fixed Water sign, and on the Ascendant it projects depth before you say a word ... the world senses there is more under the surface than you are showing, and it is right. You come across as intense, composed, a little unreadable, someone who watches everything and gives away almost nothing until trust has been earned. The presence is magnetic precisely because it withholds. The mask here is real armor, and it works. The work is learning that not everyone has to earn their way in, and that a surface this guarded can keep out the very people you wanted to let close.
Descendant in Taurus
Taurus is a Fixed Earth sign, and on the Descendant it draws you toward partners who are steady ... grounded, sensual, reliable, the person who makes the world feel solid. You seek a relationship with real security in it, one that does not keep shifting underfoot. What you are looking for in another is often the steadiness you want to build your own life on.
Midheaven in Leo
Leo is a Fixed Fire sign, and on the Midheaven it needs the work to be seen ... you are drawn to careers with visibility, where your particular contribution is recognized and your name is on it. The reputation is built on confidence, generosity, the knack for inspiring a room to follow. You are known for shining. The risk is needing the applause more than the work ... the version that lasts does the thing well whether or not anyone is watching.
Imum Coeli in Aquarius
Aquarius is a Fixed Air sign, and at the IC it shapes roots that felt a little different ... the early home may not have matched the norm, and that difference became part of the foundation. You recharge through freedom, through space to think without rules, through the rooms where you are not asked to conform. The private self needs room to be its own thing.
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