



Keith Richards, founding member of the British rock band The Rolling Stones (1962), is their lead guitarist and musical leader, infamous for his hard living, who has been quoted about drugs and addiction …

“Lou Reed claimed nicotine was harder to quit than heroin. It is.”

“It’s an addiction… and addiction is something I should know something about.”

“I only get ill when I give up drugs.”



… about health and longevity …



“I mean some doctor told me I had six months to live and I went to their funeral.”

“I’m not getting old, I’m evolving.”



… was long an incessant smoker until he quit this past year at age 75. It’s become a joke that he’s played up about how long he could possibly live.

So what is in his astrological chart that could indicate durability through all the touring and hard rock-and-roll living?

Look here at the interesting alignment between Mars’s conjunction to Uranus and Pluto’s with the North Lunar Node:



Mars and Uranus are sextile Pluto and North Node. Mars sextile Pluto in particular is an aspect of strength, passion, and determination. With Mars conjunct Uranus another facet comes into play, which is the potential of spontaneous renewal and regeneration. Mars-Uranus is spontaneous action, free action. But with this conjunction sextile to both Pluto and North Node, we can see that this is encourages him to try new things, stay interested, involved, with an ongoing shift in how his future is seen.

In addition he has Sun trine Jupiter and Moon square Mars-Uranus. The latter aspect is not necessarily thought of as good or beneficial, but Moon-Mars aspects can increase strength of passion and will power, indicating a default tendency to push harder, keep trying.

But that’s not all. See something even more important here in the declinations:



Mars at 24N09 and Pluto at 23N28 are in parallel aspect. Both are contra-parallel Sun at 23S21.

Mars parallel Pluto is like a conjunction with its fusion of the two energies and adds to the effect of the sextile between them. It indicates strength of constitution, strength of will, stamina, even if there are some temperament problems and tendencies to extremes.

So Mars is sextile and parallel Pluto, plus both contra-parallel Sun, which presses him into ambition and to keep trucking along through adversity.