This is a cardinal reading to analyse the relationship between Tony Soprano and his mother, the one that runs through the entire series and, in the end, structures almost everything he is. The Ascendant is Tony, because I wanted to see the relationship through his eyes. The Descendant is Livia, as the Other. The Imum Coeli is obviously the root of the family, the bottom of the house, what is inherited, since the 4th house in astrology is the house of family and origins. And the Midheaven is the outcome of the relationship, the way it is fixed in destiny.
Ascendant/East – Four of Wands
On the Ascendant came the Four of Wands, which corresponds to the decan of Venus in Aries. Aries is ruled by Mars, and Venus is in detriment in Martial signs. This is because Mars and Venus represent two opposite principles. Mars separates, cuts, and divides; Venus unites, attracts, and seeks concord. Aries is ruled by Mars and is a masculine, hot, and dry sign. Venus, by contrast, is a feminine planet, cold and moist. When Venus is placed in Aries, she loses her own qualities and is forced to operate according to Martial conditions. Love, attraction, and the need for union become hardened, dry, and aggressive.
This already describes a fundamental inner conflict. Read as Tony, this shows a man who is Venusian at the root of desire and of the need for recognition, but forced to live and express himself through a Martial structure he did not choose. The home is a structure built to endure tension rather than to shelter. The four, as a number of fixation and containment, operates as a prison. In Aries, that prison is made of impulse, anger, and constant initiative that never finds rest. It is an identity built around a domestic war that never ended. Aries is centrifugal. It moves outward and acts without mediation, by sheer impulse. If this were Scorpio (also ruled by Mars), we would be speaking of contained actions, because Scorpio is a feminine, fixed sign of Water, inclined to keep things underground and to strike only when the moment is ripe. But Aries is pure explosion and outbursts of rage.
Imum Coeli/North – King of Wands
On the Imum Coeli came the King of Wands, and this is an almost didactically perfect choice for the root of the system, especially because the Imum Coeli corresponds to the 4th house of family and origins. Even if the biological father is not the central figure of the series, what appears here is the model of tyrannical domestic power, of a hypertrophied masculine principle that organises the house through intimidation and force.
This is a decisive card, because it describes the foundations. It is the law of the strongest as a permanent emotional climate. Lex talionis, almost. Nothing in this figure is tempered, since it is Fire of Fire. There is no Water to soften, no Air to mediate, and no Earth to stabilise. Everything here is excessive, abrupt, and uncompromising. It makes complete sense to underline the total dryness of this card. It is will without mediation. No breaks at all. The house is a training ground for war. And this explains why, even when the “king” disappears, the logic remains. Livia inherits and embodies this function in another way, more subtle and more poisonous, but no less destructive.
Descendant/West – The Magician
On the Descendant came the Magician. Remember, this is Livia. And this is not the “suffering mother” or the “victim mother”. It is a Mercurial figure in the darkest sense of the term. She governs through words, insinuation, and manipulation. This is because the Magician is associated with Mercury. Mercury–Hermes is an ambivalent and dual god. He is at the same time the god of mediation, of language, and of trickery, deception, and cunning. He is the one who knows the elements, who knows the structure of things, who knows how systems work. For that very reason, he also carries within himself the possibility of manipulation, of controlling and producing illusion. This power is exercised above all through speech, words, thoughts, suggestion, and what is left implicit rather than explicitly stated.
And it is important to notice where this card appears in the reading. The Magician came up in the West, on the Descendant. Now Hermes is associated with the East, where things are born, and Mercury is a planet whose joy is in the first house (the East too). Here, however, the Magician appears in the exact opposite place, in the Descendant, where things die or vanish, which is also the place where the Sun has its fall and therefore a place of shadow. This already indicates that this Mercurial principle is operating in a darkened, inverted, and corrosive mode.
In the Tree of Life, the Magician is associated with the path of Beth (ב), connecting Kether to Binah. Beth in Hebrew literally means “house”, and it is the same root as Bethlehem, the “house of bread”. Livia here is the one who kneads the bread, who knows the family structure from top to bottom and uses that knowledge for her own advantage, twisting it from the inside. This is far from someone who runs a house-made-shelter.
Binah is also the supernal sephirah that begins the Pillar of the Mother. Again, yes, the mother. It is the sphere where what is still pure emanation in Kether receives form, structure, and limit. In itself, this is the principle that makes creation possible. But form can also be profoundly cruel (think of the Three of Swords), depending on the nature of the one who imposes it. Livia is the Saturnine Mother in her harshest mode, the one who structures in order to make life heavy, guilty. Tony is never enough, never does enough, never gets it right. This is the work of a true dark Magician.
Medium Coeli/South – The Chariot
On the Midheaven, the fate of this relationship, came the Chariot, and the reading here closes in an almost tragic and inevitable way. The association of this card with the sign of Cancer is fundamental, because it shows that the whole movement of Tony’s life is, paradoxically, an attempt to leave the womb and, at the same time, never to lose it. But this is a Chariot without reins, or rather, with forces pulling in opposite directions. In the Tree, it again touches the Pillar of the Mother, connecting Binah (once more) and the martial, cutting, warmongering Geburah. The Saturnine Mother is connected to violence, brute force, and destruction. The result is an entire life in flight, but a flight that only reproduces the original pattern on a larger scale. Tony leaves home to build an empire, but that empire is only the original house enlarged and projected onto the world. The separation from the mother, even when she dies, is never truly consummated.
And look how precise Tarot can be. The entire vertical chain from Kether down to Geburah is compromised. The Magician connects Kether to Binah, and the Chariot then connects Binah to Geburah down the Tree. What begins as a luminous principle in Kether is intercepted and distorted by the Magician, and then flows into the Chariot only to face collision, violence, and brute force in Geburah. The whole descent is contaminated right from the top.
And it is impossible not to recall how often this pattern appears literally in Tony’s life: Tony collapsing in a car with a panic attack. Tony almost getting murdered in his car. Tony assassinating his own nephew inside a car. The Chariot.
Kύριε ελέησον