British-Mexican artist Leonora Carrington’s surrealist painting, “Les Distractions de Dagobert” was recently sold for $28.5M at a live-broadcast Sotheby’s auction.
While there is no exact time of birth for Carrington, her date of birth is fairly undisputed. The chart below is a sunrise chart for Carrington’s birthdate, April 6, 1917.
The Sotheby’s auction that saw Carrington’s painting sold to Argentinian businessman and art collector, Eduardo F. Constantini, took place on May 15, 2024. I watched the auction on IG live. It was a super gripping 10 minute back and forth between the auction house staff on the phones and the gentleman in the room. Watch it here.
On the day of the auction, the north node in Aries was transiting Carrington’s collection of planets in Aries. To examine the symbolism of the north node and how it comes forth at the time of the auction, I turned to delineations of the nodes from the Medieval Islamicate astrologers. Medieval Islamicate astrology synthesizes Hellenistic and Vedic astrological techniques and theories (^).
With respect to natal astrology, Islamic astrologers generally interpreted the north node as magnifying the positive qualities of the planets that share the same sign with it.
Carrington’s natal chart shows several planets in Aries: Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, which will be transited by the north node in succession. Extrapolating from the Islamicate natal technique to interpret the transit — focusing on just the Sun — the north node’s transit to her Sun shows the magnification of distinction, honor, fortune, and success (*) at the time of the auction, leading to its record breaking sale price.
“Les Distractions de Dagobert” was previously sold for $475K about 30 years ago (about $1M today). For the 2024 auction, the painting had an estimated value of $12M-$18M.
The north node’s transit of Carrington’s Aries stellium, along with the record setting auction of her work, comes with a concurrent surge of interest in women Surrealists.
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^ – Referencing translated material shared by Ali Olomi
* – Sun’s attributes noted from Valens, The Classical Seven Planets by Charles Obert
