Princess Diana's Astrologer Says the She and Prince Charles Were Incompatible
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Long before push notifications from Costar and zodiac Instagram accounts were popular, Princess Diana believed in the power of the planets, so much so that she consulted an astrologer, Debbie Frank. The two met through one of Frank's clients who knew Diana and thought the princess would benefit from some astrological insights. Frank recalls this client telling her that Diana “really needs someone who is more empathic because she seems to be getting a lot of input from people who tell her crazy things and then that makes her crazy.”
“So Diana just called me up one February in 1989,” says Frank, who is featured in a new PBS documentary about Diana, which airs tonight. And after the initial introduction, they started talking on the phone several times a week. That June, they met for lunch for the first time, and throughout the next eight years, these lunch meetings and phone calls became a regular occurrence. Debbie says they became “very close friends” and remained so until Diana’s tragic death in 1997.
“She was going through a very difficult time in her marriage because her husband was having an affair with Camilla and nobody really knew about it and she felt desperate,” Frank says. “She felt kind of locked into something that was not what it looked like. She was a young girl who just needed guidance and help managing her feelings, more than anything. I think she felt herself to be very disempowered at that time because it was just expected that she should just get on with it.” So, Debbie investigated Diana and Charles’s astrological charts to see what the stars had in store.
Together, the two women used the charts to glean information about the couple's compatibility. Frank recalls that they tried to find answers to questions like, “Why he was like this? And what was the point of all this? And would he stay with Camilla? Would he stay like this or might he develop?”
“He was a very different person from Diana,” Frank says. The typical assumption is that individuals whose star signs are of the same element are compatible. (Each of the 12 zodiac signs are categorized as either earth, fire, water, or air.) So, Charles–a Scorpio–should be compatible with a Cancer–Diana–because they're both water signs. But who else is a Cancer sign? Camilla. Regardless, it’s not just about a person’s sun sign, Frank says. Looking at Charles’s chart, he’s a Taurus moon. “This is very stubborn. It’s very fixed. It’s very unchanging. Whereas Diana had a moon in Aquarius, which is very people-oriented–someone who wants to move with the times. They were really very different.”
“She had this affability, this amiability,” Frank says. “She was very personable. And everybody that met her felt as if they met the real Diana, which they did.” Charles, on the other hand, has a personality that is quite hard to get to know, according to Frank.
But Frank clarifies that she's neither a psychic nor a clairvoyant. “I don’t believe that your life is totally written out,” she says. So what kind of information did Diana gain from these sessions? “It was sort of like therapy–that’s what she got from it–as a means of mediating her feelings, understanding why she felt like she did, what she could do about it, what she was supposed to be developing into, how she was supposed to perceive these things, and how could she empower herself,” says Frank. “We worked a lot more from that premise of ‘what can you learn from this? What choices do you have? This is what you’re supposed to grow into.’ So, gradually she became more empowered.”
Diana also brought her own knowledge of astrology to their conversations. “She understood astrology, and it meant something to her. So, we were very easily able to use this as a language. You can translate what the meaning is, what the resonance of [something] is. She really understood that,” Frank says, noting that “She did want to know what was going on in the stars, what the general celestial frequency was.”
It isn’t just the compatibility between Charles and Diana that Frank has looked into. She also thinks Prince William and Kate Middleton are a remarkably good fit. Per Frank, Kate’s tradition-upholding nature as a Capricorn sun sign makes her a great fit for the royal family because she’s inclined to maintain the status quo. “She’s able to contain herself within that institution,” Frank says. Prince William, like his mother, is a Cancer, meaning he and Kate are opposites. “But the opposites attract,” Frank says of their specific relationship. Plus, Kate’s moon sign is Cancer, so they have that in common. “There’s definitely this big magnetic connection between Kate and William,” Frank says.
Regarding Harry and Meghan’s decision to step away and forge their own path, Frank says she thinks Diana would have been sympathetic. “There was a time when Diana took a step back. That’s often overlooked, but Diana herself made a speech and said, ‘I need some time and space. I’m taking a step back.’ But it wasn’t a permanent decision. I think she definitely would understand all the pressure–she was under enormous pressure herself,” Frank remembers. “I think Diana was more subtle, and I think she wanted the institution of the monarchy to survive, and she wanted William to become king. She wanted it all to carry on in that way. She didn’t want to modernize the monarchy, she just did it because of who she was. It wasn’t a mental construct for her, it was just that she couldn’t help it because nobody had ever seen somebody be so heartfelt, be so engaged with the public as she was. So she sort of just did it naturally by being herself.”
As Frank and others discuss in the PBS special, Diana found purpose in being a mother to her sons. The hope, they say, is that Prince William and Prince Harry–and now their children, the grandkids Diana never got to meet–will carry on her legacy.
Of course, Frank has already looked into baby Lilibet and young Archie's birth charts. Lili is “a very different signature from a lot of other royals, whereas Archie is quite similar to a lot of his cousins actually,” Frank says, meaning that the many of the planets and signs most relevant in Archie's chart are also dominant in other royal's charts. Lili, however, has a more unique chart in comparison. Lilibet's June 4 birthday makes her a Gemini, as was the late Prince Philip. “This is about communication, so she’s a communicator. Her moon is in Aries, so she’s very fiery, and she has Leo rising. So she’s going to be very expressive, a very strong personality, and quite out there. Very extroverted, quite like her mum in many ways.”
Hear more from Debbie Frank in the PBS special In Their Own Words: Princess Diana, airing tonight at 8 p.m. EST. For more of Frank's astrological insights, check out her latest book, What's Your Soul Sign?
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