Tina Turner, an American rock singer, was one of the most significant icons and repeatedly crowned the queen of rock ‘n’ roll. She sold 200 million records, received eight Grammys, Rolling Stone magazine placed her on the list of Immortals – the greatest artists of all time, she got her space in the “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame” museum and is a Grammy Award winner of the Hall of Fame.
Although she has spent a large part of her life in the spotlight, receiving awards for her achievements and doing the work she loves, Tina’s life cannot be considered easy because of the above.
She was born in 1939 in a poor and discordant family from which her mother ran away because of her father’s mistreatment and left Tina and her two older sisters with their father. Two years later, their father also left them. In her autobiography “I, Tina” she wrote that parents did not love or want her, but that she never let that fact define her.
During her life, Tina experienced poverty, domestic violence, childhood neglect, rejection by both parents, mental and physical abuse, rape, control, possessiveness by her partner, suicide attempt, suicide of her older son and death of her younger son from colon cancer. Also she herself struggled for years with colon cancer, diseased kidneys and the consequences of a stroke.
Looking at this short cross-section of bad events in her life, I’m sure that no normal person would trade their life for hers. Despite the fame she experienced, Tina had a life full of pain, suffering and transformation, and I’m sure that no amount of fame or money can heal the wounds she had.
Tina was a deeply hurt, neglected and suffering being surrounded by bad people, but in the end her Soul still found a way out of the living mud that tried to swallow her.
Tina Turner was born in the sign of Cancer. The Moon, the ruler of Cancer, is exalted in the 11th house whose main significators are elder siblings, income, gains and fulfillment of desires. The Moon is in the most favorable constellation (nakshatra). Rohini is the most attractive nakshatra that attracts people and deities with its energy. It is associated with strong creative energy (Rohana Shakti) and one of the themes in a person’s life is the great urge to create. The Moon, as the ruler of the Lagna (ASC), is in a favorable constellation in the 11th house of wider social circles and already in the first steps of the analysis gives confirmation of the support of society and the strength to fulfill wishes.
If Tina did not have the DESIRE to fulfill her WISHES and goals, she would hardly have been able to overcome the other difficult combinations in her chart. The desire and hunger for something gives us the strength to get out of such bad combinations. It doesn’t have to be a career achievement. It can be any area of life that awakens a desire in us and gives us the strength to break our shackles and go in the direction of what we love most in the world, be it children, family, work, friends, hobbies. Doesn’t matter what is that because for every single human being it will be something different; personal and meaningful from their perspective. It is only important that it gives us the strength to get out of the shackles.
One of the combinations that made her life path so difficult is the Kala Amrita yoga that occurs when all the planets are placed between the nodes. In this case when they are in the houses starting from Rahu and going towards Ketu. With Tina, only the Moon is outside the nodal axis, so although the rule is that all planets must be within the nodal axis, this is an exception. When the Moon is outside that axis, a person thinks she is free, but she is not, and it takes a long time before she realizes that she is actually trapped.
Kala Amrita is Moksha marga, i.e. the path of spirituality and liberation from desires. Her life path did lead to spiritual liberation, and she herself gave us confirmation of this in one of her last interviews when she said: “People think that the days on the stage were my glorious days. Stage lights, clothes… Those were not my glory days. These are now my glory days. True and lasting happiness comes from a steadfast spirit that can shine no matter what.”
Another difficult combination that she has, which is directly connected to the nodes, is Shraddha dosha (strong ancestral karma), i.e. the burden of the restless souls of the ancestors that press the native with this combination. Shraddha dosha is formed by the conjunction or aspect of Saturn and Rahu. And the same combination with her ancestors is brought to her by the conjunction of Saturn and Ketu, which is called Preta dosha.
The third difficult combination is Sarpa yoga, which occurs when there are only malefics without the presence of benefics in at least three kendras (1st, 4th, 7th, and 10th houses). Tina does not have a “full” Sarpa yoga because she has three malefics distributed through two of the four kendras.
Sarpa means snake, and this yoga means that we are surrounded by bad people and situations and that we feel like we have no way out. The exit can be through that house where there are no malefics. Tina has no malefics in the 1st house (herself) and the 7th house (partner). And as it is obvious through her life and early entry into relationships, she sought the first way out of Sarpa yoga through partnership and marriage, but she was not happy, because the ruler of the 7th house is in a kendra; malefic Saturn in conjunction with Ketu. She ran away from the snakes straight into the anaconda’s embrace.
The second way out is through the Lagna (ASC) and only when she turned to herself, when she realized herself and her strength (exalted Moon in the 11th house) did she manage to escape from Sarpa.
The fourth difficult combination is Graha Malika yoga which occurs when we have planets in at least four consecutive houses (nodes are not counted here). This creates the effect of a tunnel through which we have to pass, and even worse if that “tunnel” is full of malefics and if it starts or ends in dusthan (6th, 8th, 12th house).
Tina has a Graha Malika yoga which starts in the 8th house where Mars and Saturn are in Parivartana yoga (exchange of rulership) and ends in the 11th house where the Moon is exalted. For her, this yoga begins with a brutal breakup (Saturn and Mars Parivartana, under the aspect of the nodes brings brutal violence, and the 8th house is about maintaining or breaking up the relationship) when she goes through a tunnel in which there is a malefic, but ends in the 11th house with exalted Moon which is her application of intelligence and which is the only planet outside the axis of nodes and Kala Amrita yoga.
Unfortunate events in Tina’s life started in her early childhood when she grew up in a poor and dysfunctional family. Kala Amrita yoga begins with Rahu in the 4th house representing childhood and mother. Rahu in the 4th house brings shocks, deceptions and traumas, and the rashi drishti (sign aspects) of Mars introduces elements of violence.
Although Tina’s Moon, which is the karaka (significator) for the mother, is exalted, it does not mean that the mother and the relationship with her will be a blessing for the person. The ruler of the 4th house is Venus which is in the 6th house (enemies) and in Marana Karaka Sthan (place where Venus dies) which tells us about the enmity between her and her mother and the betrayal she experienced from such a close person. Another confirmation of the mother problem is that the Moon, as the karaka (significator) for the mother, is in the eighth house from the fourth (for which it is the karaka), which is the Marana Karaka Sthan for the Moon – the place where its qualities die.
Whenever a planet is in the Marana Karaka Sthan from the house for which it is the significator – this is our first alarm that something is wrong with that house because the karaka is what God, the Universe or nature gives us and if that something is not given to us by God we will hardly be satisfied with that area of life.
If we want to see and confirm through the Rashi chart (main chart D1) what type of person is her mother (not the relationship with her, but the mother as a person), we analyze the 4th house from the Moon and see all the mother’s traits from that house. In this case, the fourth house from the Moon is the sign of Leo, whose ruler in the 4th house is in conjunction with Mercury, which would otherwise be a good combination, if it were not located in the 4th house.
Why? Because in that house, in relation to the mother’s Lagna (ASC), the Sun as the ruler of her Lagna is in zero Dig Bala (has no directive power – the person is lost) and Mercury is in Marana Karaka Sthan (place of death). Otherwise, when a planet is in the MKS, it is not good for it to be in any conjunction, especially with the ruler of the Lagna, because that planet tends to transfer its MKS (its “numbness”) to the planet with which it is in conjunction. If MKS is transiting to the ruler of Lagna (application of intelligence) it means that the person will not be the most prudent in his decisions. This does not mean that she will have an intellectual defect, but that she will make bad decisions and that she will not be very prudent.
Rahu is an Atmakaraka planet and shows that her most important life (spiritual) lessons are related to her mother, childhood, deceptions and transformations (Rahu rules the 8th house).
Although Tina said in her interviews that her childhood in which she felt unwanted did not define her, the chart says otherwise. Like most people, she pretended to be strongest where she was most wounded, but in the end, due to the strength of her mind (exalted Moon) and spirit (Atmakaraka Rahu), she overcame her past burdens.
In 1957, Tina’s career took off when she began singing with Ike Turner, her future husband and abuser.
She described her first meeting with him with the words “When I saw him I almost fell into a trance“. Due to the fact that she was enchanted by his appearance and that despite the mental and physical abuse, rape, possessiveness and control he undertake over her, she stayed with him for 16 years, I thought that the lord of the seventh house and her first Upa Pada in the tenth house, which is strongly influenced by nodes (karma), perfectly describes their relationship. Kala Amrita yoga is the yoga of imprisonment and the inability to function freely in the world, blockages and obstacles on the path of life, and wrong identification. A person thinks for himself something that does not correspond to reality.
In Tina’s example, this is illustrated through her subordination to Ike and her belief that he made her an icon, and that without him she would not have a career because she, as an individual, is not valuable enough.
At first it really seems that Ike Turner is perfectly described through Tina’s first Upapada which is in Aries with debilitated Saturn and Ketu, under the aspect of Rahu, and the parivartana of Mars and Saturn which would bring him into a direct relationship with violence (Mars, Saturn, Rahu ), with drugging and controlling another person (conjunction of Saturn and Ketu) and with Rakshasa Vivaha (marriage due to fear) which occurs when Saturn and the nodes are associated with a particular marriage. Saturn and Ketu on Upapada would describe that strong sexual energy that Ike had. Sarpa yoga normally brings great sexuality (considering that this is Tina’s card, it also applies to her).
However, what made me doubt this Upapada is that the second house from the tenth, which sustains that particular Upapada, has an exalted Moon which is also the ruler of Tina’s Lagna (Asc), and which is also exalted in Navamasa. Such powerfull Moon would have the power to break the relationship at any moment.
And that was not the case in her relationship with Ike. For her, one of the ways to get out of the marriage was to attempt suicide. That situation definitely doesn’t look like the exalted Moon in the second house from Upapada. Exalted Lagnesha (lord of the ASC) in the house of breaking i.e. maintaining a marriage wouldn’t have problem ending that relationship or marriage whenever he wanted and that’s what Tina did with Raymond Hill, the guy she dated before Turner.
If you notice, her second Upapada is also in the sign of Mars, this time in Scorpio. This means that her first two serious relationships are ruled by Mars, which, due to the combinations mentioned above, will certainly not give an electrical engineer partner. Of course, Raymond Hill was probably very nice guy compared to Ike. By the way, Mars as the ruler of the first two Upapadas, with its placement in the 12th house of Navamsha (pictured above; marriage chart – D9) shows the loss of those two relationships or at least no luck in that matter.
This is one of the reasons why I analyzed the relationship with Erwin Bach as her third relationship in life. Erwin is the first Upapada in Tina’s chart that has no connection with Kala Amrita, Graha malika yoga and other bad combinations in the chart, which clearly shows that the arrival of a third partner in life will not be through unfavorable circumstances generated by mentioned yogas.
Ike Turner is an American musician whom Tina met in a club where they performed together. Ike was the founder of the band Kings of Rhythm and was popular with women at the time.
As I mentioned at beginning of this article, Tina was completely stunned by his appearance. We can explain it through the fact that Ike’s natal Mars and Venus in Scorpio coincided with her second Upapada in Scorpio in the fifth house.
By the way, the second house from the Lagna (Asc), which now plays the role of the seventh house because we are analyzing her second relationship (each new relationship is counted in the eighth house from the previous relationship, in this case the eighth from the seventh is the second house), shows that the connection with that particular partner will come through fifth house meanings which is fun, clubbing, dancing, romance, etc.
Through this Upapada (scorpio in 5th house), Ike Turner is described just as he named his band the “King of Rhythm”. The Sun in the first house gives a sense of rhythm, pronounced authority, brilliance and power, and the conjunction with Mercury shows him as a good composer. The Sun is the ruler of the tenth house in the first which is Simhasana yoga which shows that the person is ”on the throne”. His hunger for power and control was something that ran through their entire relationship, and it was shown through the negative traits of Scorpio and the Sun aspected by Rahu adding fuel to his megalomania. Scorpio has dual lordship (Mars and Ketu) of which both planets are not favorably placed which extinguishes the last glimmer of hope that a person can be reasonable. Mars is in the 4th house from his Lagna where he has zero Dig Bala (directive power) which shows that he does not know which direction to go. He has a power that he does not know how to direct, so he directs it with his fists on the woman. The second ruler is Ketu in conjunction with Saturn in the 6th house. When specific arudha is connected to the 6th house from itself through Saturn and nodes then it can mean that the person will be vicious. Here the arudha of the 12th house (more precisely the second Upa pada) is connected to the 6th house through Saturn and the nodes and confirms that Ike was a person who enjoyed immoderately alcohol and drugs. Also, these same combinations have rashi drishti (aspect over signs) on his Lagna (ASC) and thus constantly bring him into contact with the negative karakatvas (significators) of these planets.
The seventh house from the Moon is our strongest desire. Tina Turner’s strongest desire was the 5th house and the conjunction of Mercury and the Sun. In the context of the partnership story, it’s Ike Turner. This is one of the reasons why she was so bewitched by his appearance. She saw a king in him (the Sun at Upapada).
Although the ruler of the seventh house from the Lagna (Asc) is in the 10th house, which indicates a joint business with a partner, and Ike definitely fits into that picture, we should not forget that Raymond Hill was also a character with whom she collaborated in business because he was a band member of Kings of Rhythm.
What Ike brought to her was not just a joint business, he brought her big power, which is the Sun in the fifth house ruling her second relationship seen from the second house from the Lagna (Asc). The only problem is that he attached the power he brought to her life to his identity (the Upapada that represents him is in her house of “power”) and renamed her Tina Turner.
The break and maintenance of this relationship is seen from the second house from that Upapada, which is her sixth house where Venus is placed. What kept the relationship maintained was Venus; passion, art and all she learned through her childhood relationship with her mother (wrong programs and beliefs). Venus is in Marana Karaka Sthan (place of death) in relation to Tina’s Lagna and that is why she did not have the strength to leave that relationship. Every attempt was a game of life and death, and once she even tried to commit suicide because she didn’t see a different way out of that hellish relationship, which exactly describes the feeling that Venus in the Marana Karaka Sthana brings to her.
In Navamsha, Venus is in conjunction with debilitated Saturn and under the aspect of all malefics, and confirms the fact from the main chart, which is that she has neither the strength nor the ability to fight him.
Why was sustaining and ending this Upapada that describes Ike so difficult to do?
The first reason is that the ruler of that Upapada is one of the karmic axis, and also, that ruler of Upapada and Upapada itself are under the aspect of a planet which is the Atmakaraka planet (Rahu), the one that represents our Soul and the most important life lessons we need to learn.
Another reason why maintenance or ending was difficult is the direct link to her childhood in all that she learned through her relationship with her mother. Venus who is the ruler of the 4th house (mother and childhood) is in the sixth house which sustains that particular Upapada representing Ike. Tina said to one of her friends, “I know what it’s like when someone leaves you and that’s why I can’t leave him” which directly connects the feeling that her mother gave her in childhood when she left her with the fact that she doesn’t want to do the same to someone else. And what is particularly interesting is that Ike and her mother are presented very similarly through the chart, in a way that her mother is analyzed in the 4th house from the Moon which is the sign of Leo and the second house ruled by what Ike has on his Upapada ( Sun and Mercury), and Ike is also represented by the second house from Tina’s Lagna (Asc) as the second relationship whose lords are Sun and Mercury in the fifth house where that Upapada is also located. It can be said that Ike and her mother played a similar role in her life. Both inflicted wounds on her. The mother may not damaged her physical, but she did it on emotional and psychological level through bad experiences in Tina’s childhood. Because of that Tina didn’t perceived that she fell into the clutches of manipulator and abuser. When she realized it, she did not have the strength to fight it.
Tina’s third partner, with whom she was in a relationship for 37 years, is Erwin Bach, a German music producer whom she met at an airport in Germany and with whom she lived abroad (in Switzerland) since 1994.
Her third Upapada is located eight houses from the previous one (the 5th house and the sign of Scorpio), which comes in Tina’s 12th house. It is a house that represents long journeys and life abroad. It also represents hospitalization, and considering the placement of eight house arudha (A8 – chronic, serious diseases) which manifests itself through the activation of the same house (twelfth), it confirms to us that she started to get sick with the appearance of a new partner and moving abroad. Tina was sick for more than half of their relationship. Erwin even donated his kidney to her when she was in the hospital on the brink of life and death due to kidney failure.
Apart from the fact that Erwin is younger than her, which can be seen through the Gemini sign on that Upapada, the only two planets which are in the kendra (what we function with on a daily basis) from that Upapada are Venus and Jupiter – two benefics. In addition, another confirmation of the quality of the third relationship is that the eighth house from the previous relationship (2nd house) is now the ninth house with Jupiter in Pisces. Tina finally found peace and love with Erwin, as she has stated many times.
“I wasn’t looking for a husband, I just wanted someone to love me. Childhood – never loved, past relationships – never loved. All my life – never loved. More than anything, I needed to feel that Erwin loved me. And he loved me, he really did.”
Rest in peace, Tina.
Written by: Maja Spahovic
Vedic astrology - Jyotish 
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