It was possibly the greatest celebrity love affair of all time. During their 13 year relationship encompassing two marriages and two divorces, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton wowed the world with their mesmerizing sexual chemistry, both on and off the big screen.
Undeniably, this was a couple who loved each other body and soul. Yet when they were married, their screaming matches were so thunderous, they always rented three hotel suites – one above and one below their own – in an attempt to limit the disturbance to other guests.
Here was a classic example of a ‘fatal’ attraction between two people who could neither live without each other nor with each other – and Taylor’s obsessive Scorpio Moon, falling almost exactly on Burton’s dangerously sexy Scorpio Sun, tells us pretty much everything we need to know.
A Magnetic Sun/Moon Conjunction
There is probably no more powerful a romantic connection between a man and a woman than that symbolized by his Sun conjunct her Moon. Occurring in Scorpio, the most passionate, intense and compulsive of all the signs, it generated a magnetic male/female (or yin/yang) sexual attraction that proved impossible to resist.
Factor in a reciprocal Sun/Moon cross-aspect (Elizabeth’s Pisces Sun lines up opposite Richard’s Virgo Moon) and it’s clear their partnership also works well when they swap traditional gender roles and Liz takes the lead (which she did frequently), with Burton playing a more passive role.
Despite the strong astrological links between Taylor and Burton, their relationship was undoubtedly far from easy. Due to the powerful love/hate energy associated with Scorpio, they were alternately hopelessly besotted with each other or furiously fighting cat and dog.
Living on the Edge of a Volcano
Burton once described his life with Elizabeth as living ‘on the edge of an exciting volcano’, while she gleefully commented that for her, marital togetherness was about ‘out-and-out outrageous fights’. Taylor’s passionate yet highly volatile Venus/Uranus conjunction in angry Aries, awkwardly quincunx Richard’s explosive Scorpio Sun, goes some way to explaining why.
It’s well known that jealousy and possessiveness are major problem in relationships for Scorpio people. But red-blooded Aries is also quick to flare up at the first hint of a rival for its loved one’s affections – and with his reputation as a notorious womanizer, Burton frequently gave Elizabeth reason to lose her rag.
Burton’s Mars in Libra, the sign of love and relationships, came under attack from a challenging angry square aspect to both Liz’s Pluto and her Saturn. Although basically equitable and peace-loving, a Libran Mars is easily enraged by what it sees as the unjust behavior of a partner.
With Taylor’s planets on the one hand frustrating, and on the other hand manipulating, Burton’s expression of his anger, it’s small wonder that he violently erupted on a regular basis – ‘about twice a year’ – as he once told the world, neatly corresponding to Mars’s ‘hard’ transits approximately every six months during its two year Zodiacal cycle.
A Real-Life Love Drama
That they enjoyed, and got a kick out of, their rows however, is well documented, doubtless due to the opportunity they afforded for passionate ‘make-up’ sex. She needed constant romantic excitement (Venus/Uranus exactly conjunct in Aries in her 5th House), while he thrived on emotional intensity (Sun/Saturn exactly conjunct in Scorpio). Theirs was a real-life love drama more turbulent than any movie romance.
The concluding scene of the Taylor/Burton drama was probably the most revealing in terms of what is tells us about the undying nature of their love for each other. Just before his premature death in 1984, and some eight years after their second divorce, Burton reportedly sent Elizabeth his last ever love letter in which he told her how much he missed her and wanted to ‘come home’.
During the whole of that year, Uranus – the planet of sudden and unexpected change – was transiting over Taylor’s Sagittarius Ascendant. Had Richard not suffered a fatal stroke just two days later, who knows whether this might have led to marriage number three for the couple. According to Burton’s niece, Elizabeth – who is said to have been buried with that mysterious love note – always believed that it would.
This article is Copyright © AstroReveal Ltd 2012-2024. All rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is strictly prohibited .