Leonard Cohen, bard of the bedsit, is a classic double Virgo. Exalted Mercury in the ascendant makes Bhadra Yoga and also rules his tenth house of career and public image. He is dry, witty, and understated, and his slim, still-youthful features are a perfect fit for this sign. Saturn in the fifth can be dull-witted, but strong here in Capricorn shows his worldly wisdom and trademark downbeat delivery, while Saturn's mahadasha starting 1962 produced most of the classic Cohen song catalogue.
Apart from his wistful songs, Laughing Len has become (in)famous for his financial affairs. In April 2005, at the onset of his Venus Mahadasha, he sued his manager Kelley Lynch for five million dollars, over theft which had allegedly gone on since 1996. For much of the previous five years - during his otherworldly Ketu period - Cohen had been in a monastery, by way of becoming an ordained Zen Buddhist monk. Lynch drained almost all of her client's money, including Cohen's pension pot and charitable trust funds. Ironies.
Mahadasha lord Venus rules the 2nd house of banking from the 12th house of loss and thieves, a signature echoed in the Navamsha with 12th house Moon as second lord. This gives Cohen an ascetic temperament, but the tendency hits him in the pocket: he can make money, but it is dissipated in debts and expenses. Or it gets stolen.
21st September 1934, 06:45, Montreal, Quebec.
During the initial trial i 2005, Cohen revealed that during their seventeen year association, he and Lynch had had a brief affair. Jupiter, karaka of husbands, is lord of the seventh of business partnerships and litigation, and placed in the second house. She was vengeful, and punished him by taking his money. The Los Angeles court found in Cohen's favour and ordered Lynch to pay $9.5 million dollars, though her lawyers claimed she was unreachable and in the end she neither repaid the money nor ever faced criminal charges.
The theft forced Cohen to tour again, at aged seventy. Venus, planet of the arts' Mahadasha activates the ninth house of luck and long-distance travel. He became more popular than ever, and to rave reviews his 2009 world tour alone netted him an estimated $10m. "Being forced to go back on the road to repair the fortunes of my family and myself", he said, was "a most fortunate happenstance because I was able to connect… with living musicians. And I think it warmed some part of my heart that had taken on a chill." Jupiter, in the 2nd house of family money, finally showed his benevolent face. It seems to have done him good: he seems lighter and more jovial today than he did as the Saturnine days of the 1960s and 70s.
There was a further twist. In 2012, during his Venus-Mars period, Cohen won a further judgement of harassment against Lynch. A Los Angeles court heard that the singer had been targeted for nearly a decade with threatening voicemails and rambling emails from Lynch, who at the time was under a restraining order. "'Cohen is going to be hung,'" the singer told jurors drily, "is not agreeable to hear." Second house Jupiter is aspected by a fallen Mars, lord of the 8th of accountants and also by Saturn in the 5th house of speculation. This time, Lynch was sentenced to eighteen months in prison and five years' probation.
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