When I first wrote about Tiger Woods’ little accident outside his house, there was already a hint of impropriety, but who could have imagined the extent to which this drama has unfolded.  As of today there are a total of 13 mistresses that have claimed to have been involved with Tiger Woods.  As if that weren’t bad enough, his wife has purchased a home in her native Sweden, the local child welfare office paid the Woods’ home a visit, and he has been dropped by several of his lucrative endorsement deals.

And the story, as everyone now knows, goes way beyond infidelity.  Lurid tales of three-ways fueled by Ambien cocktails, orgies with prostitutes, and a multitude of Barbie-like mistresses will probably never cease haunting Tiger Woods.  And if that weren’t bad enough, Al Sharpton has blasted Woods for his “lack of diversity” in his dalliances and relationships.  And yesterday Woods announced that he was taking an indefinite leave from golf to attend to his family.

These affairs are, for the most part, not one-night stands or midnight hookups – they are long-time relationships.  Some of them began before Wood’s marriage to Elin Nordgren, and the publicized text messages make it apparent that Woods is a man who is hungry for more than sex – he is hungry for an intensity that his public image does not allow for.

Woods has the Sun in Capricorn, the sign of achievement and success.  He was a prodigy and began his career at the age of two.   His Sun is squared by Jupiter, bestowing a kingly good fortune upon him but also suggesting that he will be undone by hubris, the sin of pride against the gods.  Like Icarus who flew too close to the Sun, Woods was given a tremendous number of gifts and squandered them.  

That Sun is also squared by Pluto, planet of death and transformation.  Individuals with the Sun in aspect to Pluto (Michael Jackson is another recent example) are born with a karmic need to learn how to balance power and intensity in their own lives.  The Sun/Jupiter/Pluto combination is a powerful one that offers great gifts, but exacts great tribute as well.  The Sun/Pluto individual is very aware thathis life is not like the lives of others; that there is tremendous significance and the potential for great self-destruction.  Any time there is a strong Pluto component in the chart there is also a fascination with the underworld of emotion and human existence, including sexuality in its most raw form.

Intensifying this dramatic fire of sexuality is the fact that Venus, the planet that drives the way we relate to others, is in the sign of Scorpio in Woods’s chart.  Scorpio’s rulers are Pluto and Mars, and the combination of the explosive intensity of Pluto with the drive and desire of Mars is an intense cocktail for any psyche.  

None of this is visible to the casual observer because of the VIrgo ascendant that creates a smokescreen over Woods’s inner Self.  The ascendant is the mask that we wear to the world as well as the way we move through life, and Virgo is the modest perfectionist; the quiet and unassuming master of his Craft.  Woods’s public persona has been that of the quintessential nice guy who just happens to be the greatest golfer in the history of the game, but under that carefully crafted persona was evidently a roiling mass of Plutonian desire and a craving to meet the destructive urge within him that the Sun/Pluto square evokes.

Woods’s Venus (relationships) sits in the third house of experimentation, so it’s not surprising that he would experience an urge for diversity in his love life.  The sign of Scorpio is on the cusp of the third house, suggesting that the hunger for experience of the third house is filtered through the Scorpionic lens of intensity and drama, adding another layer to the thirst for experiences, sexual and otherwise, that will take him to a depth of feeling which he could not otherwise access.