A man of many talents
Sam Shepard with his down home honesty and American good looks; seemed, like fellow actor Robert Redford to personify the Marlboro Man Mythic sans the tobacco. His acting in “Frances” led to his meeting Jessica Lange, and ended his only marriage to O-Lan Jones. His next success was in the movie “The Right Stuff” , based on the book by Tom Wolfe on Apollo 17, the last manned mission to the moon. Then there was “Baby Boom” with Diane Keaton and his career took off, as his fans, like Adelina Patti’s, each with their Moon in the Eleventh House, ate him up.
From Steve to Sam
His real was Samuel Shepard Rogers IV and he was born at Fort Sheridan, Illinois on November 5, 1943 at 15:45 and his nickname was “Steve” but when he started playwrighting he changed it to “Sam Shepard” and it stuck.
He was the eldest of three children and the only boy. His family led a rather nomadic life living on several military bases as his father was an army officer and former Air Force bomber during World War II. His mother was a teacher. He wrote of his dysfunctional family & the fading West as it sinks into plastic and neon in a non-linear fashion. You can read more at his eldest son, Jesse Mojo Shepard’s website, complete with photos of the fam.
And then the Map
Sam Shepard is a buck with a Moon handle in the Eleventh House of Aquarius as shown on the chart above. His Ascendant is Pisces 25º marks a foresighted and courageous nature but one that is tends to be an agitator. It is also quincunx Saturn in the Third House (Brothers & Sister as well as Communications) and conjunct Mars at 22 Gemini makes him hard to get along always falling into the role of devil’s advocate.
That Mars is inconjunct both Juno at 23.34 Capricorn and Mercury 09.43 in Scorpio creating a Yod with the Midpoint at the Midheaven at 28 Sagittarius and opposite his Part of Fortune. That is one thing about Shephard’s chart that is so interesting, pick up one planet make and aspect and you find another and then another and before you know it you’ve made another Grand Cross. That is often the case in multi-faceted people; they tend to have rather complex charts.
Shepard’s Yod with the Midpoint at the Midheaven shows first how much travelling he did and how he enjoyed the changes and two how much those changes marked different part of his career and personal life that he wrote in his thinly veiled autobiography called “the One Inside” this past winter, February 2017.
Lou Gehrig’s Disease
On July 27, 2017 Sam Shepard reposed on his farm in Midway, Kentucky only 62 miles away from the great August 21 eclipse maximum viewpoint that occurred four week later. He died of complications of ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a highly progressive incurable neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. There are no laboratory tests for the disease just an EMG and NCV nerve test. The disease is always fatal and usually hereditary.