Even from her earliest days as a performance artist and musician, Lady Gaga was deemed to be too provocative and eccentric. Which only goes to show, if you just stick with what you’re good at, you can make it work.

Lady Gaga recently revealed her birth time on her Twitter feed, so that means about 42 million people now know about it, even if only a few of us know what to make of it. So here’s the scoop:

Lady Gaga has Gemini rising, with retrograde Mercury strong in the 9th and supported by Jupiter. Her Mercury/Jupiter combo forms a pair of raja yogas. Although she never finished university, during art school she wrote essays and analytical papers on art, religion, social issues and politics, including a thesis on pop artists.

Academia has since repaid her the favor. The University of South Carolina recently introduced a course titled “Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame.” A new genus of ferns and two new species have been named after her.

Lady Gaga, born 28 March 1986 @ 09h53 in Manhattan, NY.

Only Sun and Mars are angular. Third lord Sun with dig bala in the 10th speaks to her songwriting and performance skills. Mars as lord of the 6th and 11th represents both her fierce competitive streak and her earning potential.

Mars is a key planet for innovators. Admittedly, there’s a shit-disturbing aspect to its character but Mars is also known as Vakra, the crooked one. That’s because its orbital period appears so eccentric from a terrestrial point of view. Because of its perceived “crookedness”, Mars is also a signature planet for inventors, iconoclasts and outlaws.

Sun/Mars angular is representative of the Kshatriya caste, and although this doesn’t speak to her artistic profession per se, it does reflect her bold public stance against bullying and homophobia, as well as her activism in numerous social causes to which she’s lent either financial or role model support.

But the core of Gaga’s identity is a Kala Sarpa yoga that runs through her 5th and 11th houses. Some ancient texts describe Kala Sarpa as a major flaw in a birth chart, a yoga which foretells loss of everything, while others say it bestows the power of a king, assuming the child who possesses it survives. It reminds us of that old saying, Beware of fire and water and Tantriks, for all three have the power to take your life.

Lady Gaga’s Kala Sarpa is not “pure” in the sense that a strict definition of the yoga requires the nodes to be alone in their respective houses, and all the other planets spanning one side of their axis. But it is “clean” in the sense that, even though the Moon and Venus share signs with Ketu and Rahu, at least they’re on the same side of the nodal axis as all the other planets. And this alignment with the nodes gives the Moon and Venus enormous stage presence.

Moon and Venus in combination is unofficially an “artist’s yoga”, where the Moon represents both the personality and the public, while Venus is the art. Some critics like Camille Paglia have accused Gaga of being just a little too studied in her performance shock art, while others say she’s sacrificed the substance of songwriting on the altar of the beat.

Sell the sizzle, not the steak, marketing gurus advise. Maybe that’s why she wears a meat dress. One of the best-selling musicians of all time, she continues to set records. Her Fame Ball tour in 2010-11 earned $227M, thus making it the highest grossing tour for a first-time headline artist. She’s won five Grammys and 13 MTV awards. She’s the first artist to gain over a billion viral views on YouTube.

One of the characteristics of Kala Sarpa yoga is that it can catapult people into sudden fame or notoriety. Gaga toiled for years in relative obscurity, honing her performance as a go-go dancer in Greenwich Village dives, as a member of avant-garde electro-pop bands and as a songwriter for Britney Spears, the New Kids on the Block, Fergie and The Pussycat Dolls.

But ever since her Saturn dasha started in 2005, she’s been on a tear. Saturn is swa-nakshatra, meaning it occupies its own star, so when its periods run, it serves itself. As a malefic in an upachaya house, especially the 6th which is the ultimate in competitiveness, she’s become increasingly successful. She was signed to Def Jam records in 2006 (SA-SA), but seemed to suddenly come of out nowhere in 2009 (SA-ME) with her sleeper hit “Poker Face”, after which came the Fame Ball tour in 2010-11 (SA-KE) that established her.

Her Moon/Venus combo forms a strong dhana yoga, since the Moon is bright and both planets are in positive houses. Furthermore, their juice is amplified by the Kala Sarpa yoga. This is a gift that keeps on giving.

Out of nine planets in her chart, three occupy Ketu nakshatras, while three occupy Rahu nakshatras. When a bhukti runs, it tends to give primary results as per its nakshatra dispositor. That means that for two-thirds of all bhukti periods, her karma is dispensing the promise of Rahu and Ketu, especially since the two occupy each other’s nakshatras.

Rahu occupies the 11th house of income and social action, where malefics do well. It acts as a proxy for Venus with which it’s associated, Moon which aspects it, and its dispositor Mars. As mentioned, the Moon/Venus combo generates money. Mars as lord of 6th and 11th is a competitor par excellence.

Ketu occupies the creative 5th house of performance and showmanship. It acts as a proxy for the Moon with which it’s associated, Jupiter which aspects it, and Venus twice over, once as aspecting planet and again as dispositor. Moon/Venus = money. Jupiter as lord of the 7th and 10th gives her both a strong relationship with her public (her “little monsters”) and substantial influence as a public figure that goes far beyond the artistic persona she’s cultivated.

Camille Paglia may be right, but Lady Gaga is still more than just an artist, she’s an archetype. And in that sense, she’s every bit as big in her own time as David Bowie or Madonna, both of whom she’s obviously studied, were in theirs.

Hail Gaga!

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Alan Annand is a Canadian astrologer and palmist with an education spanning both eastern and western astrology. He has diplomas from the American College of Vedic Astrology, as well as the British Faculty of Astrological Studies for whom he was their North American correspondence tutor for several years.

He is also a writer of crime fiction, including his NEW AGE NOIR series (Scorpio Rising, Felonious Monk, Soma County) featuring astrologer and palmist Axel Crowe, whom one reviewer has dubbed “Sherlock Holmes with a horoscope.”

Websites: www.navamsa.com, www.sextile.com