I think I have found my spiritual father. His name is Fritz Riemann and I’ve been reading his work in the past week, at my analyst’s recommendation. I began first with his book which in English has been rather poorly translated as “Anxiety: Using Depth Psychology to Find a Balance in Your Life” (in its original: “Grundformen der Angst“), and then I realised that he was also the author of another book I had on my list, the beautifully titled “Astrology and Psychotherapy” (or “Lebenshilfe Astrologie“) a book which I see as the manual to my future profession.
I’m just two weeks away from turning 39 years old, an age which is usually marked by something called the mid-life crisis. This is described as a pivotal period in a person’s life (usually spanning from the 37th year of life until the 41st) in which the foundations in a person’s life are revised and new decisions for the future have to be made. It’s like a pitstop in the middle of a person’s life in which past actions are coming up for scrutiny in order to find the answer to the burning question “How do I move forward in life?”.
It’s called a “crisis” because something breaks down (usually a career path or a significant relationship, a way of life) and this catapults the individual into a pressure chamber of a mindspace, in which solutions need to be found with urgency.
Carl Jung wrote about this period in a positive light. He saw this breakdown as a special indication that a person was getting closer to living out the truth of their identity or in his terms, the crisis was an opportunity to finally ‘individuate’. What made the crisis so intense was the extent to which someone had lied to themselves so far in their lives, and build a life on shaky and borrowed values, rather than on their personal intuition or on what mattered most to their individuality. In his words:
The nearer we approach to the middle of life, and the better we have succeeded in entrenching ourselves in our personal attitudes and social positions, the more it appears as if we had discovered the right course and the right ideals and principles of behaviour. For this reason, we suppose them to be eternally valid, and make a virtue of unchangeably clinging to them. We overlook the essential fact that the social goal is attained only at the cost of a diminution of personality. Many—far too many aspects of life which should also have been experienced lie in the lumber-room among dusty memories; but sometimes, too, they are glowing coals under grey ashes. – C. Jung, The Collected Works, p. 395
Astrologers also wrote about this period as being one marked by the multiple aspects that transiting Saturn would be making to the natal Saturn and Uranus placements in an individual’s chart, precipitating painful and unexpected changes that have long-lasting consequences. The most notable of which is Erin Sullivan in her book “The Astrology of Midlife and Aging”. Sullivan describes the mid-life crisis as:
“Between the ages of thirty-seven and forty-one, in synchrony with the transit of the planet Uranus’ opposition to its place in the horoscope, something mysterious takes place within the psyche. Further, Dante says: “I cannot clearly say how I had entered the wood; I was so full of sleep just at the point where I abandoned the true path” (II 10-13) The ‘sleep’ with which we are full at the meeting at the crossroads is really the unconscious life that we have within and that is still unlived. Jung said that in this phase of life one is living the “unlived life”, assuming correctly that midlife does not begin a time of rapid decay, loss of libido, and inevitable death but rather in a time in which one might recollect one’s life and, from that recollection, build upon a profound understanding and conscious action toward the next phase of adulthood.” Sullivan, The Astrology of Midlife and Aging, p. 4
Similarly to what Jung and Sullivan have described in their books, I also find myself needing to change my profession at this turning point in my life, as I am no longer able to make a living out of just being an astrologer and tarot reader. I am lucky that I am able to have the interior and exterior resources to be able to undergo this transition with a relative amount of meaning. After I was hit with the transit of Saturn conjunct my natal Mercury and Sun in the last 3 years, I witnessed the gradual loss of a lot of the things and people which used to anchor me in place. I’ve also felt blocked in my development, both creatively and emotionally and frustrated with life.
This produced a crisis of meaning inside of myself and aware that Saturn rules over time and old age, I sought the wisdom of those older than me. In a random way – and possibly influenced by this year’s transit of nostalgic Jupiter in Cancer – I was reminded of an old dream of mine, that of completing my psychotherapeutic training. So after my father’s death I signed up for a professional training to become a Jungian analyst. And I’m happy to say that as lost as I was a couple of years ago, I am now meaningfully placed exactly where I need to be, since my current training offers me a sense of purpose and meaning, which I was robbed off in the past.
However, there are still plenty of difficulties to overcome, most of which have to do with the reshaping of my very soul. I am overwhelmed at the moment by moods, fears and bouts of low energy, which I am processing each week with the help of my supervising analyst, by doing dream analysis and art therapy. This is where depth psychology and the work of many Jungian analysts come in handy, as I don’t believe I would’ve been able to start the process of “mining” through my memories and rearranging my inside, without their help.
So here I am, in my second semester of professional training reading the works of Fritz Riemann and Marion Woodman, my substitute spiritual mother and father. While the German author is helping me stitch together my previous experience as an astrologer and put it in relation to my current experience of being a trainee psychotherapist, Marion Woodman is my wise maternal guide, helping me understand the deeper layers of my psyche and especially my relation to my own Shadow, and what lies beneath it: the Animus and the Death Mother Archetype, two figures who have been haunting me for a while.
After, watching the documentary “The Way of the Dream” and having read her interview with Daniella Sieff titled “Confronting the Death Mother: An Interview with Marion Woodman“, I was curious to find out more about Marion, much like I wanted to discover more about Fritz and his attraction to astrology. I kind of feel like they are kindred spirits to me, or at least ancient members of my soul family. So naturally I pulled up their birth-charts.
Fritz was born a Sun in Virgo (loosely conjunct Venus), with a Moon in Aquarius (loosely conjunct Jupiter). He has a natal Saturn in Capricorn conjunct Chiron (the Wounded Healer Archetype) and a Uranus in Sagittarius conjunct Lilith (the Wild Feminine Archetype). Remarkably he is a member of the Pluto in Gemini generation and he has a natal Neptune in fellow water sign, Cancer. His Mars is in proud Leo and his Mercury is conjunct his North Node, both in the sign of Libra.
His comfort zone, is marked by Aries, as his South Node is in Aries. Unfortunately, I have no idea in which astrological houses these planets are falling because I am lacking information on his birth time, and hence there is no Ascendant. But he seemed like a charismatic and optimistic fellow (which is rare for Virgo men to be honest). So I am wondering if perhaps his Ascendant was in Leo, which would’ve placed his Mars conjunct it too?
In terms of comparing our charts and finding out why I feel he is one of my kindred spirits, I can see that he has his nodal placement opposite to mine as I was born with a SN in Libra/NN in Aries, and that his Moon and Jupiter fall around my Venus in Aquarius (so I fall in love with the ideas that he cared about, and with Aquarius energy these ideas are indeed audacious and astrological).
Moreover, his Uranus in Sagittarius is conjunct my natal Saturn in the same sign (which makes him the perfect, wacky mentor for me) and his Pluto in Gemini sits in a tight conjunction to my natal Chiron in Gemini in the 8th house, while his Mars in Leo sits on top of my Midheaven. I interpret these two final aspects as being motivating and healing to me, even from beyond his grave. No wonder, I see his work as that of my spiritual father figure.
Moving on to Marion, she was born with a Sun in Leo conjunct the Moon and Mercury (so she is a New Moon baby, an aspect that denotes a pioneering spirit and a true individualist). She has her natal Venus conjunct Neptune in Virgo, an aspect which made her perfect for analytical work but it may have gradually eaten down her relationships due to a perfectionist streak. Furthermore, her natal Mars is conjunct the North Node in Gemini and her South Node is in Sagittarius (and sadly) conjunct her Saturn, which denotes a rough upbringing no matter how positive the Jupiterian influence may be.
In addition, I see a bold Uranus in Aries, Pluto in maternal Cancer and Jupiter in enterprising Taurus conjunct Chiron (the Wounded Healer Archetype). You can easily see that she has not had an easy life and that growth for her came during painful moments when she was wounded but she had to heal others (Jupiter conjunct Chiron). At the same time, she was able to increase her awareness of the pains of the human condition and bring truth in areas of life previously thought of as taboo, such as in her description of the Inner Tyrant. Her book “The Ravaged Bridegroom: Masculinity in Women” is a pearl in terms of helping me understand the painful underbelly of romantic attractions and why they usually fail and end up in heart-break.
Being born with Saturn conjunct your comfort zone means that any comfort in early life is usually robbed off you as a form of karmic debt, and Marion has been vocal in her book “Leaving my father’s house: A Journey to conscious femininity” about the strained relationship she has had with her father who blocked her chances of being herself (Saturn in Sagittarius). But she was an exceptionally intelligent and wise woman, almost to the point of having an intelligence which stood against her in many ways, and may have self-sabotaged her chances of being happy in life.
In terms of placing her chart in conversation with my own natal chart, the fist thing I noticed is how we share the same Saturn placement and how her South Node is almost perfectly conjunct my Moon in Sagittarius, denoting a deep and unconsciously fertile link between the wisdom she provides and my compulsive search for wisdom. In addition, her Uranus in Aries is conjunct my natal North Node and Jupiter in Aries, making her a truly wise, maternal guide for me to learn a lot from, especially in relation to my own masculinity and wounded Animus (Aries).
Moreover, her Pluto in Cancer falls in my 9th house, where I have Lilith in Cancer (the Wild Feminine Archetype), an aspect which I fondly refer to as the Erin Brockovich effect in terms of using feminine power to combat the abuses of the patriarchy. Marion’s writings liberate me and give me the feeling that I can live life completely free of taboos and complexes as a powerful woman, surviving a changing world (much like Marion had lived her life).
It’s strange how I just begun with an intuition that I should read the works of both Fritz and Marion, and then as I dived into their work and found how strongly it resonated with me, I fell under the suspicion that it may be more to our shared energies than meets the eye. Astrology then showed me in concrete ways, of what I initially just spun out of the thin air of a gut feeling, that I was correct. So I rest my case once more.
Astrology is truly magical, and following your intuition and insights is almost like putting the whole energy of your natal chart in motion towards fated events. This is why it is so important to allow the inner compass to guide you in life, rather than fall for external opinions or follow the indications of others. Trust your gut, trust you path and walk in the direction of your soul tribe. Pursue interests and learn from those who came before you. I would even go so far as to say that this may be the pragmatic application of Jung’s core theme of individuation.
May your journey be filled with suprising joy and boundless wisdom!
Seeing as the highly feminine and exalted transit of Jupiter in Cancer of this year, is providing the perfect background for such a topic, I would like to analyse in the following article some famous and difficult mother-daughter relationships from an astrological point of view. I have experienced such a relationship throughout my life and chances are that if you were drawn to the title, you may also be immersed in such a maternal bond (and consequently the maternal complex that comes with it).
I think this article is also about feminine rebellion and about the astrological signs that point in someone’s birth-chart that their destiny is about becoming a rebel, even if only a gentle one at best. It is to some extent about those character traits that push someone to stand up against external forces that try to dim their natural light, their energy and their capacity to be who they feel they are meant to be, even when these forces come from inside your family unit and your bond to the mother.
In astrology, all aspects connected to the Self and its capacity to express what it is, are contained within the Sun sign, the astrologically dominant planet under which we are born and which shows the seasonal proclivities of the part of year in which a person is born and metaphorically speaking, the kind of “weather” that a person continues to have throughout their life.
As an example, for a Gemini (a person born at the end of May and beginning of June) their world revolves around communication and socializing since that period of the year shows Nature in full bloom, is abundant in fresh produce and as a result people organise celebrations, parties and weddings. While for a Sagittarius (describing someone born at the end of November and beginning of December) their solar light points them in the direction of growth during trying times, as Nature dies around the month of November to prepare for a renewal, and for developing a sense of adventure when faced with life’s darker side and the vicissitudes of surviving Winter.
In addition, astrologers tend to associate the Sun’s solar light to masculine traits while the Moon’s energy in our chart shows our feminine potential; as such the Sun is considered to be the placeholder for the Father archetype while the Moon is the placeholder for the Mother archetype. Bearing that in mind, in this article I want to write about how a feminine Sun signs and their destiny (their North Node) could live under the shadow of someone else’s control and of the karmic masters who wield it in our lives, those first initial spiritual teachers who mould our capacity to intuitively understand our Sun sign and who demarcate how well we can express our inner light during our formative years. I am of course, talking about our mothers.
What happens when someone’s solar energy (i.e. their vitality, capacity to grow, their personality, skills and energy levels) is frustrated by their bond with a mother figure? In the following, I will be looking into the charts of two famous women who suffered at the hands of their mothers but they somehow managed to transform that suffering into haunting literature and cautionary tales of the price of fame and entertainment.
Rebellion and control are usually not words associated with ‘normal’ or ‘thriving’ mother-daughter relationships. This is why these word ends up labelling other types of mother-daughter arrangements, those barely ‘good enough’ forms of mothering which usually look ‘good’ on the outside and are experienced as ‘living hells’ on the inside. What would be the purposes of such relationships in our lives?
In the summer of 2024, I became strangely obsessed with the biography of Shirley Jackson, an American author I discovered after watching the Netflix series ‘The Haunting of Hill House’, a series which even though it is a departure from Shirley’s original text, it was nonethelss brilliant in my opinion in its fantasy depiction of domestic & familial horror.
I then started learning about Shirley’s life and work with the help of the channel Books and Cats on Youtube, which has plenty of videos on Shirley’s work and her legacy. I came to fnd out that domestic horror is the literary genre which Shirley spear-headed, and as a person who has had lifelong issues with emotional neglect and maternal control, her story and writing spoke so deeply to me, as if it woke up parts of my soul that lay dormant and needed some stirring healing. So I thought of composing this article after I finished reading “The Lottery and Other Stories“.
Photo of author Shirley Jackson and of her natal chart, created with the help of http://www.astroseek.com
At the same time as discovering Shirley’s work, I got drunk one night and called my mother. Somehow everything I had repressed in my relationship with her came spewing out of my mouth. Needless to say, I had an argument with her; this is something usual in our dynamic and it is hurtful each and every time, like putting salt on an open wound. My mother was hurt by her own mother so she ends up hurting me and thus we perpetuate mutual hatred on the maternal line.
I resist having children for fear that I may unconsciously continue this dreaded cycle of pain. After our fight, I fell asleep crying. The next day I opened my eyes and they immediately fell upon one of the books in my bookshelf as the light from the Sun outside was making it stand out. I bought a book last Spring and realized I forgot to read it. This book was Jeanette McCurdie’s “I’m glad my mom died”. I picked it up and could not put it down, since it spoke volumes to my current state of despair in my ‘bond’ with my mother.
Photo of actress Jeannette McCurdy and of her natal chart created with the help of http://www.astroseek.com
Although, I have no prior experience of being a child star, I could emotionally identify with Jeannette’s experiences. And I felt weirdly understood at the same time. These are some of the contextual elements which brought me in contact with both women’s reflections on their experiences and I’m going to use an astrological perspective to interpret these experiences to see if there is anything in their natal charts that shows that their mothers had to teach them some tough karmic lessons in order to make them into the individuals that they reluctantly became.
I will be drawing in my analysis from Jan Spiller seminal book “Astrology for the soul”. I hope this post will appeal to those of you who love the two celebrities but also may have the same astrological markers discussed. We know that Shirley had a co-dependant relationship to emotionally abusive mother from the letters she wrote to her but never sent. You can find out more about Shirley’s life from this video or by dividing deep into her Wiki entry. For Jeannette we obviously know a lot about her relationship to her mom from her best-selling memoir and some revealing interviews she offered the public after her mother’s death. One of the main things that attracted me to writing an article about these two women were the fact that they had problematic mothers and that they also shared a South Node in Cancer / North Node in Capricorn destiny.
When analyzing the destiny of a NN in Cap it is important to check the sign, house & aspects made by the person’s natal Saturn (as Saturn is the planet presiding over their NN since it is the traditional ruler of Capricorn). So we see that Shirley (a Sagittarius Sun and Ascendant with a Moon in Leo) has a Saturn in Cancer in the 8th house, while Jeanette (a Cancer Sun with a Moon conjunct Mars in Taurus) has a Saturn in Aquarius in the 7th house; these are too highly relational houses, denoting problems and blocks on the path of loving and being loved, trusting and being able to create intimacy. Saturn, astrology’s great malefic, parked in these houses for life also denotes low-quality relatives and issues of money and painful duty being deeply intermingled with parental care.
Although the gals have the same destiny as their nodes are similar, they are ‘living’ out this destiny in specific ways as shown by their dissimilar Saturnian placements: for Shirley it is emotional & maternal karma (Saturn in Cancer) while for Jeamette it is group-based & self-awareness karma (Saturn in Aquarius).
Their Saturnian placements are furthermore, amped up by their lunar nodes, those parts of the natal chart that describe the growth potential and destiny of someone’s life. Here is what Jan Spiller has to say about NN in Capricorn/SN in Cancer individuals:
“Capricorn North Node people need to find a focus beyond their scattered emotional needs and those of people around them. When they bring themselves into alignment with a higher principle or spiriual belief , they feel protected and nurtured. These people excel at being “the boss” (…) To achieve success in any area, these folks need to be “in charge” of their own piece of the puzzle. When things don’t go as they want, they overreact emotionally, subconsciously hoping that others will see how upset they are and change their behavior. But other people perceive this as a means of controlling and are unwilling to modify their behavior just to appease these natives (…) These folks are extremely sensitive to their own emotions and those of others.” – p. 400-403
If we take a brief look at their astrological placements we can see that Shirley is a Sun in Sagittarius with a Moon in Leo and a Sagittarius Ascendant; not only that but she has a whooping 8 planets and points in her chart in Fire signs! That is a considerable amount of passion and lust for life that had to be kept under wraps due to the presence of a watery and maternal Pluto in Cancer, the marker which shows that her destiny (South node in Cancer) was bound to her relationship with a dominant mother figure who worked on her emotionally (Pluto in Cancer).
On the other hand Jennette is a Sun in Cancer with a Moon conjunct Mars in Taurus and an undetermined Ascendant. She is a member of the so-called Millenial generation, being born with a Pluto in Scorpio. What I found interesting, and what binds the destinies of these two women together is not only the fact that their power lies within their emotional healing as both of their Pluto placements are in Water signs but also the fact that they both have a South Node in Cancer & North Node in Capricorn – the quintessential marker of a person who is meant to gradually and irrevocably separate from their mother figure and find their own financial success by overcoming hardships, limits and the many temptations of their own basic instincts.
I know it’s considered childish or a sign of having a weak character for blaming your parents, and especially your life-giving mother for all the problems in your life, and I agree. Life as an adult will show you many times that in order to move forward with it, you’ll necessarily have to get ‘childish’ and explore your past, your roots and pluck what is rotten in order to prepare the ground for fresh growth. It’s an unnerving and often frightening psychological process of coming to terms with parts of yourself that are exactly like what you are criticising in your mother (you know that old saying that every daughter inevitably ends up turning into her mother, and this clichee begins to feel eerily familiar once you reach your late 30s).
Again, I want to let Jan Spiller speak on behalf on this nodal placement’s complicated family dynamics:
“Capricorn North Node people have a hard time letting go. They are very sentimental and they don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. When they start to leave a situation, even if its clearly not working, they get depressed – so they tend to “hang in there” until their realize deep down that there’s no hope. They do all they can to make the relationship, the job, the situation work. When their survival is threatened they will leave; but they will be much better off letting go before the situation escalates to that point (…) Their whole world revolves around their family and they expect the dynamics to be reciprocal. But more nurturing from family members, usually isn’t forthcoming – it’s just not set up that way in this lifetime (…) Capricorn North Node people need to let others know what the rules and limits are, and then stick to them unflinchingly (…) These folks must learn to stand behind their word. Their commitment must be stronger than their fear of upsetting the other person.” – p. 406-409
Of course, one thing to keep in mind is that we all know about Jeannette & Shirley because they managed to face their fears & succeeded to a large extent in growing into their NN in Capricorn. They are more or less willingly fulfilling the “take charge” requirements of their destiny and this is how a Romanian astrologer like myself got to hear of them and their lives: through their work & their stoic and scary reflections on family life. Think about having this kind of reach & influence in your own life, if you happen to have this nodal placement and are struggling to embody it. Decide today to set goals & take charge & see where the soulful journey takes you.
And don’t worry for you shall be blessed. As the SN in Cancer/NN in Capricorn individual has to integrate their mother’s wounded energy to become the father they wish they had themselves. One exercise I like to do to integrate this maternal/paternal healing energy is to pray not only “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost”, but also “In the name of the Mother, the Daughter and the Holy Body”. Amen.
“ The individual is driven by his personal crises into deep waters which he would usually never have entered if left to his own free will. The old idealised image of the Ego has to go, and its place is shaken by a perilous insight into the ambiguity and many-sidedness of one’s own nature.” – p.79, E. Neumann, Depth Psychology
When Pluto, the planet of Rebirth and Intensity, reaches the Nadir (also known as the Imum Coeli or the root portion of a birth-chart) it begins a soulful and emotional transformation that has the potential to change the relationship of an individual to their environment. Individuals experiencing this transit are becoming increasingly aware that surrounding reality seems to be shaped by what they feel and how much they feel it.
The Imum Coeli, translated from Latin, literally means ‘the bottom of the sky’. You may encounter some astrologers refer to the IC as the Nadir, another obscure term defined by the Oxford Dictionary as: a) (in astronomy) the point on the celestial sphere directly below an observer; b) the lowest or most unsuccessful point in a situation. In a 2014 article on the reputable website astro.com, Polly Wallace describes the IC as poetry in motion and in the following way: “Definitions of Imum Coeli include the lowest heaven and a literal translation as the undersky. Such evocative phrases conjure up a sense of the IC as a territory in its own right (…) As the undersky, the IC is always hidden. It stands like the portal into a mysterious zone. The realm of the lowest heaven is vast; it encompasses all our past(s), all the detail of our origins and our roots – and all our secrets. It is another world, an inner world, experienced on a level as profound as the deepest darkness of night-time and of winter. Like the earth below our feet, this realm is the fecund darkness where seeds germinate, where roots develop intricate and enduring networks.”
I guess you can imagine what darkness is unleashed in the life of an individual when the farthest and most intensely contested planet of our solar system meets with the most mysterious and hidden point of the chart. But this darkness is unseen to others, it is private and known only to the person affected. Contrary to other places in the natal chart, the 4th house describes interiors of many different kinds, and what could be more interior to a person than their psychology, their memory and their soul. I am personally becoming more reclusive since this transit has begun. I feel the need to sleep during the day and stay active at night. The soul is awake at night and I feel its power so strongly at the moment. I am so driven to read, write, watch movies and draw – I do these things to understand my drivers and patterns, so I can remake them. I do these things because I love them and they make sense to me. Reality and daily living seems harsh and belligerent, devoid of meaning and I push myself to be in my own ‘bubble’ by wearing noise cancelling headphones. But more on my personal experience with this transit in the middle portion of this article. Let’s get back to the traits of Pluto’s movement conjunct the IC and inevitably on the cusp of the 4th astrological house.
Unlike Venus, Pluto has no delicate finesse. It acts like a sledgehammer, especially in the debut of a transit, the first months up to a year when it switches signs. The theme of its transit is brought up suddenly – like a punch in the stomach – all of the emotions that have been repressed, overwhelming the psyche of the affected person with memories, patterns, unresolved wounds and chaotic emotions are suddenly out on the table. It takes the next decade to work through them, and as the work is performed a deep, personal transformation occurs. Then at the middle point of a Pluto transit, the rebuilding begins and slowly what was once dark and hopeless turns into light and passionate love. Throughout the entire duration of that Pluto transit, the individual will have to do the deep psychological work of organizing their messy psychic content, discarding what is now dead and useless and continuing to nourish what remains vital and alive inside of them.
If one can deal with these emotions and work at understanding them, then their immediate reality will begin to mirror their hard-working inner world and a state of attuned harmony is reached after some time. However, if one allows themselves to be drawn into a whirlwind of emotions without comprehending them, if one begins to live more intensely in the past than in the present, becoming complacent in the struggle with the forces of the unconscious, then there is potential here for one’s worst nightmares to materialise and for a mental health condition to completely take over one’s life.
Either way emotional transformation and confrontations with core, wounded aspects of our largely unconscious Self are necessary for personal growth. Most importantly, the main theme of any transit to the IC is reflecting upon or establishing a sense of personal safetyin the world again.
The sign or constellation that Pluto travels through will also determine the way in which emotions and past memories are unleashed and how the individual will work at integrating them. As this transit happens it will also end up affecting the home, the immediate and private environment of an individual. For most people and in most charts, the IC lies in the 4th house, the house ruled by the Moon and the astrological sign of the celestial Crab, which symbolizes the protective shelter in which we regroup our forces.
What Others are Saying About this Transit
To prepare for this article, I read extensively whatever I could find on the topic. First of all, I turned to Steven Forrest’s seminal text “The Book of Pluto” and found this beautiful and psychological interpretation of the meaning of the 4th house:
“the fourth house is the “House of the Home”. In most modern astrological texts, it is interpreted in more psychological terms, as the house of the inner self, the feelings, one’s deepest archetypal roots (…) Every human who has ever lived possesses a fourth house. Translated, we all to some degree have a need for ‘family’ – a word we must use broadly to mean a set of unquestionably secure social relationships. Loyalty and lifetime commitment are the critical notions here, not blood kinship. Depth, often unspoken depth, may possibly develop in these bonds, but it is less central. Roots, a safe haven, a place to let one’s hair down – these are the crucial concepts (…) To form clan and hearth with other human beings is the ultimate act of trust. Due to your wound, you may turn away from it, taking refuge in your own self-sufficiency (…) “If I really opened up, they’d be too shocked to handle it” – that’s often the belief at the roots of this particular navigational error. Even more fundamentally “There’s something horrible and dirty inside of me” (…) Your navigational error, if you succumb to it, would be to live the life of a ghost, with your fire, intensity, and vision removed from your biographical life while you went through the motions of existence. And, regardless of outward appearances, at the psychological level you would live the life of a heartless, homeless person.
– p. 79-83
Some people describe this Pluto-IC transit as the midnight of the Soul. As Lynn Hayes writes: “It shows the psychological legacy from our parents and ancestors that submerges in the unconscious until activated, usually by transit of a planet to that point. This is the point at which we enter the underworld of our own internal psyche, turning inward to meet the essence of who we are in this lifetime.”The Raw Astrologer describes this transit in such a perfect way as Pluto invading your personal space and beginning to chaotically and disturbingly recreate your family life, your home and your sense of security.
This placement can have a beautiful side-effect and that is coming in touch with the Plutonian imagination which can be vast, intense and mystery-increasing. As Anne Whitaker describes in her account of being born with such a placement, that in her childhood: “My ‘real’ life – eating, sleeping, going to school – was incidental to my inner life which was full of what I felt were the really interesting questions: why are we alive, where do we go after death, do we live on several planes of existence at once, what is happening in other galaxies”. In addition, June from Saturn & Honey writes that this type of Pluto transit is a family curse-breaker: “4th house Pluto means staring the truth of one’s early life or longer-term family history in the eye and choosing not to continue the pattern, committing to change. Let the ways of the past end with you.”
Over at Little Golden Age blog, and in a short post which contains a good amount of personal experiences with this transit, actuallyjessica writes on surviving Pluto: “I quite literally hope that I survive. I realize that many people don’t ever experience this kind of astrology, so I’m trying to extract the lessons, tear down the old bullshit, transform my powerlessness into wisdom and turn my lump of coal into a shiny diamond. If you, like me, are deep in this Pluto business, I hope you find your way through the darkness to bright new days.”
Pluto conjunct the IC (the bottom of the sky) means that Pluto is also in opposition to the Midheaven, as Peter Holm from Holm Astrology writes: “when the home and family are being affected in our lives and security wavers, it may be due to demands from the MC, which deals with one’s status, occupation and ambitions (…) The IC and MC, particularly in early life, depict incidents linked to the parents which in turn will affect the child. This parental influence on a child, shifts as we mature. The influence widens in such a way that we are no longer just influenced by the parents that dictate our lives, but we are also now affected by an extended version of the family and our place in the overall structures of life.”
Finally, for a really comprehensive description of this astrological placement and transit, Astrology by Jo offers a description of the IC as being the one to set the feeling tone of our upbringing and the soul’s inheritance. These deep parts are what are illuminated and transformed by Pluto. One can find their root power under a Pluto conjunct the IC transit, but before the moment of intense breakthrogh comes the pressure-cooker build-up. Let me exemplify with a brief account of the last two years of my life (2024-2025), as Pluto gravitated between 29th degree of Capricorn and the 1st degree of Aquarius and encircled my IC.
My Personal Experience
Initially I felt invaded by this energy, and it felt like against my will the structures in my life which I had worked so hard to build, started moving and shifting in dangerous ways. I went from suffering constant auditory pain in my household, to waking up with the bleakest moods I’ve had in my life, to visiting my dad decaying on a hospital bed, to having shouting matches with my mother, and being threatened with violence by neighbours. The upsides of this energy, have been reshaping my career to do a training in Jungian analysis, expanding my social family by adopting two more cats from the street, and realising the meaning that alcohol had in my family’s life and bypassing ‘a need to drink’ by sublimating it into drawing and painting again.
In the final months of Pluto in Capricorn at 29 degrees, I began to obsess over anything related to the home, to protection and to securing the boundaries of my daily living experience. Just shy off my 36th birthday, I bought an apartment in March of 2023 with my lifetime’s savings. What had initially felt like a wish come true, soon turned into a nightmare. I came to realize that while my place was cozy and practical, it was surrounded by problematic individuals and part of an environment which I had considerably underestimated under the spell of my first-time buyer’s excitement. I am not a financially wealthy being, and actually the wound of poverty is the strongest marker in my personal chart (see that Saturn in the 2nd house placement).
To me, owning a home, even if it was a small flat, was a very important aspect of breaking through ancestral patterns of women being denied the right to property or having money to buy their homes, and thus finding self-empowerment and safety. Dazed as I was by finally finding a place that I was able to afford in crowded and expensive Bucharest, I had not realized I was trying to sleep in a hornets’ nest. And there can be no true safety in such an environment.
Across the road from my apartment a highway was being finalised and when I moved into the place in March, I had no idea that roadworks would last until the end of November of that year. I lived for months with loud drilling noises, made worse by the fact that the building next to mine also was being enveloped simultaneously as the highway – something damaging happened to my nervous system during that period, the repercussions of which I still have to live with. Over the summer of that year, the neighbourhood turned into hot mulch, and the air was toxic due to the dust in the air.
Even with the windows closed, the surrounding noises were unquenchable, especially since I was hit with another issue: my next-door neighbour was prostituting herself to the workers in the neighbourhood and would place loud music on her subwoofer, every time they came to see her to drown out her moans. To make matters worse, often these men would knock on my door, as the doors to the flats were so close to each other.
As summer burned outside, the inside of the building was littered with garbage and we lacked an Intercom, so strangers were freely entering the building to get drunk or high on the staircases. One night I got woken up by the sound of a man snoring loudly as he had fallen drunkenly asleep near my door. And to top it all off, one of my neighbours from two doors down across from mine had frequent psychotic breakdowns in which he would dress as a woman and threaten to jump out the garbage chute or paint the hallways with crayon and other bodily fluids.
Whenever I would leave my home I was equipped with a pocket knife, pepper spray and ready to record any interaction coming my way. I felt like walking through metaphorical ‘trenches’ and distracted my attention by making my indoors look cozy and warm and by taking care of the neighbourhood’s stray cats. By taking care of the vulnerable I was also and indirectly sending out a cry for help: ‘Would someone take care of my vulnerable Self?‘ It took me a while to understand that this elusive someone had to also be me.
All these interferences and frights made me crave safety in life like never before, but as the planet Saturn resides in my 2nd house, I am deprived of experiencing it in this lifetime, unless I put in hard work to obtain it. Interestingly, just when I thought I had figured out the deeper meaning of the 4th house in astrology, I began reading Wanda Sellar’s book ‘Introduction to Decumbiture‘ and was struck by how often she associated the 4th house with ‘the grave‘. This terrified me at the time, as I imagined my own sudden death, but in turns out that this death took someone else in my family, the parent I was attached to the most, my father. Most of us will have this Pluto to the IC transit happening somewhere in our charts and part of the reason I am writing this article is to help prepare some of you for what may come and how to read the energies that could emerge in your life, disturbing your peace, home life and emotional foundations.
I eventually (and reluctantly) ended up selling my flat in February 2025. Even writing this sentence is sending me into a slight panic attack, which tells how I continue to be emotionally attached to this idea of a place as a container of my sense of safety. When in reality, these disruptive events that are causing me to move home so frequently are trying to help me cement the understanding that I am actually the home I am looking for, the home I idealise and crave to own or to build. It is inside of myself that this feeling of safety, of belonging in the world, that needs time and nurture to root and sprout, to grow and expand until I end up feeling safe as a state of being. The root of this feeling begins in my past and is reconstituted in the present through my body and my relationships to others, it is with these two aspects that I need to make peace, by relinquishing a sense of guilt, shame and fear and learning to trust more, to be gentler and to flow.
After I sold the flat, I moved into a rather old-looking apartment, a place in desperate need of new furtnitue and renovation, with big windows and vast amounts of light. I was drawn to that exposing light and didn’t mind the old furniture because to be honest I was so destroyed at the thought of having sold my home that I’ve felt deep down inside that I somehow don’t deserve better. I wrongly believed I had failed at making a home. I sold what was so dear to me. I had given up. I accepted this weird rental with two-beds and linoleum flooring and a kitchen that was tiled in the same style like a sanatorium because I felt sick, frail and somehow self-punishing.
The strangest thing is that the week that I moved into this intermediate home, this purgatory flat, my father died. Two months later a neighbour died. 4 months later, I realised my landlady was suffering from undiagnosed mental health issues that pushed her to cross my boundaries regularly & months later I moved out in a panicked state, right before Christmas after having an argument with her because she had begun following me. The same week I moved out, I also had sex for the first time after 4 years.
When the Scorpio man with beautiful blue eyes, whom I had the spend the night with, asked me “Why did you wait so long?” I answered “Because I was waiting to have sex with someone I loved. But in the meantime, I guess I got pragmatic”. On some level it’s not healthy to put off sex for so long as an adult, and a part of me felt that if I had sex maybe my neurotic symptoms will cool off. And they did, temporarily at least.
Thanatos and Eros, the death drive and the sex drive felt like two large psychological pillars that had marked my existence in the weird limbo-flat in which I stayed for most of 2025. When I moved in, I witnessed the death of my father. When I moved out, I had a night of passionate sex with a stranger. I had ultimately chosen life, and pleasure and sex, which prompted me into a rebirth of some kind. I guess the duality had to be activated inside of me in order to believe again that I am worth more and that I deserve better. I am now renting a one-bedroom apartment which no one knowns the address of and I can’t believe how much I am enjoying this little detail. It’s a place with a dark red wall, just one bed, a place that feels somehow more solid, exceedingly warm and protected, although it is also on the pricier side. I sleep all day and stay awake at night to work in perfect silence. I feel balanced, because somehow, I had managed to jump into a new reality, and had left some of the pain behind. I go to therapy sessions on a weekly basis, analyse my emotions and dreams in a diary and create as often I have energy. Although, I am not sure yet what I am now becoming, I feel somewhat released of the birthing pains and pushed on the path of learning to walk again.
The Energy of this Transit as Shown in Films
Because of my recent experiences, I resonated so strongly with a couple of movies which portrayed the psychological transformations of 4 women. Each at a different level of their becoming, the protagonists’ struggle in their homes, mirrored some of my own intense emotions. I also found it remarkably healing to look at stories driven by women, which placed the themes of motherhood, desire, safety, loss and betrayal at the core of their cathartic decisions. And maybe this could serve as some interesting recommendations to understand the deeper meaning of a Pluto in the 4th house transit or natal placement.
In the following section, I will share my perspective on what the place of the home represented on an emotional and psychological level to the main characters in each of the movies I list below. Interpreting the symbolic meaning of a home is a good exercise in preparing for what is to come. However, understanding something may not inevitably protect you from it, but it will certainly help you feel like you are at least more aware of the wise implications of this energy, so that when it happens you are able to handle it and even – dare I say – enjoy it?
Similarly, when someone is aware that they are going through for example, a Saturn return then it is easier to handle it on a mental level, as you understand that tests, limits and hardship are inevitable. I find it fascinating how the movies I am drawn towards, as this transit is unfolding, are centered around the theme of rebirth within the space of the home. These movies show me that when other women go through intense emotional experiences (whether blissful or terrifying) their homes change with them, and in some cases are even exorcised by them. It’s also interesting to note that almost all of the movies I have chosen to discuss have female protagonists and in all of them something either creepy or erotic tends to take place (these being core Plutonic themes). In my description of the following movies, I’ll figure-skate around any spoilers in case you haven’t seen these movies, so you may safely continue reading.
Created in the final stages of the Pluto in Scorpio era, this movie features the magnetic Sharon Stone in such a vulnerable role that at the same time brings an electrifying edge, which only she can perform on screen. Her story begins with moving into a new condo in a weirdly shaped, futuristic building, reminiscent of the intimidating structure in High Rise. She has her reserves about this place (which she should’ve listened to) but is eventually convinced by the estate agent to give it a try. Little does she know that this will be a life-altering decision because not only will she become the fresh target of the building’s covert murderer, but also meet the man of her dreams. Again, the themes of death and sex, Eros and Thanatos are brought to life in this decision to move home.
The movie finds its thrilling bits in the way it keeps you guessing whether her lover is potentially the killer or not, but what really makes the movie fascinating to watch is the state of being under constant surveillance and seeing how this pressure cooker builds to a quick life-affirming denouement. I have to say that the soundtrack kind of sucks though, taking away from the eerie atmosphere of the movie, but her chemistry with William Baldwin is sizzling. As a sidenote, both of them are Pisces Sun actors, and I think I could write a whole different article on William Baldwin’s penchant for starring in erotic thrillers with awesome Piscean co-stars (see Fair Game for another example).
It’s clear by now that I’m a big Rebecca Hall fan, but this movie was surprisingly scary and also deeply emotional at the same time. I kind of sweated and cried with her, since the movie centres on a theme which unfortunately was something, I experienced as well in my life: romantic betrayal, then abandonment and the desperate search to understand the truth about the man you once loved. The really scary character in this movie, is this truth, which once brought to life, shatters the foundations of her sense of psychological security.
This rather flawed movie is at the same supremely atmospheric and carried for most of it by the ultra-talented Jennifer Connelly, who lights up the screen with her soulful performance. It’s also a supremely damp, soggy and wet film in which the environment is literally suffocated by leaks and spill overs, denoting the repressed emotions of the main protagonist, a single mother who in the wake of a divorce has to start life all over again together with her small daughter. She rents an apartment in a building in desperate need of refurbishment on Roosevelt Island in New York, finds a job and enrols her daughter in a new school. All seems to be rebuilding well, until her bedroom ceiling gets a strange leak that keeps becoming larger and larger with each passing day, and then her daughter befriends a girl who no longer exists. With its emphasis on loss, repressed emotions, ghosts, water, broken bonds, porous walls and the desperate seeking of safety in the figure of a mother, this movie holds such deep and obvious fourth house themes that it should be used as compulsory viewing material in astrology schools.
A once stable child psychologist with a family of her own, becomes agoraphobic and obsessed with the aparent murder of her neighbour from across the street – I guess you see how these two things clash, and from the tension of not being physically able to leave her flat the excitement of the film develops as well as the horror. On the surface level this is the plot of a movie that holds no punches in delivering the most gruesome fighting scene I have ever witnessed between a teenager and an adult on a rainy rooftop. but I won’t say more so as not to spoil the plot for you all. You’ll notice early on that the movie draws heavy inspiration from two classic claustrophobic stories that also happen to take place in mythical apartments: Rear Window and Dark Passage, and coincidentially two of my all time favourite films.
The place of living may not be a home for all, but it matters to us all as a vessel of psychological containment for our fears and worries, or what Jung called the ‘unum vas’, the alchemical vessel which holds matter and distils the soul, as we transform and individuate. The home as a shell, your personal safety coating against the harsh world and the perils of nature, or the home as a container of our psychological changes, the walls recording daily dramas, witnessing the unravelling of our private selves. In the home you are who you are, you rarely bring your Persona in and your Ego doesn’t seek the approval it normally seeks from other people’s public validation. So being ‘at home’ can allow the Self to emerge.
I always thought that if people were to know my homebody, ‘pyjama Self’ they would probably find it very different than my academic Self. Last year, in 2025, I dared to show others, with the help of my work on the Internet, this fragile, pyjama Self. I didn’t get much validation and approval, but neither did I get offense and rejection. I felt left to inhabit a limbo area of my Self, much like the apartment I was inhabiting. But I did move in a whispered way from exposing this vulnerable Self, to taking it within and protecting it. This is why I feel safest now, in a state of being ‘draped up’, of not existing during the day, but rather meeting and making friends with my nocturnal Self, my night being. My spirit animal is the sensitive and misunderstood bat and I am comfortable with that image, because usually right before a drastic rebirth you are meant to walk inside the darkest of nights for a while.
Nocturnal little animals You keep your mother up You watch the town shut down You watch the lights go off Shutters closing in the bars
Homes can permit or block the development of us as beings, for example, if you look back at your childhood home (or lack thereof). Homes can also be places to hide what we don’t want others to see, or places within which we hide in order to control the environment around us, to spy on the world that hurt us so much that we can no longer participate in life, like the Woman in the Window portrays so well.
Homes can be places within which desire plays out like in Sliver, birth may happen, diseases and death can occur, away from the prying eyes of strangers. We allow ourselves to be vunerable, soft, pliable in the home. Moreover, houses can be vessels to our memories, and haunted homes especially so, in that they can become a projection screen for parts of our unconscious mind that we have yet to come in contact with: those infamous skeletons in the closet, those darkened basements that house the unspeakable, those creaky floors, bedroom windows that won’t shut properly and those singing pipes, that threaten to burst when our emotions get the best of us but we bottle them up anyway, like its shown in The Night House and Dark Water.
What is left ‘un-homed’ is equally important to what the home represents. The space that is left when we outgrow a place and silently move on in life, leaves an energetic imprint. We leave traces of ourselves everywhere we have been and homes are the containers of these past, previous, ghostly selves, that we can no longer fit into. It’s a different way to interpret the sense of ‘horror vacui’ , which appears so frequently around abandoned homes and derelict places. This is why revisiting a location can feel so distabilising or why entering in a new place can also overwhelm us, because we come into contact with what has lived here in the absence, much like Steven Soderbergh shows in his haunting film “Presence”(2024).
And absoring that absence, welcoming the past self into the present, private reality we dispose of, can help us to create that elusive and transient sense of being ‘at home’, like it is so tenderly portrayed in a movie that managed to leave me in cathartic tears, as it deals with healing a father-daughter relationship through art, the poignant Sentimental Value (2025). Please go watch it, it will leave you loving.
In conclusion, I guess it helps to welcome the past, no matter how painful it has been, and to resist running away from it, as it will show you the way forward in life when you are going through a period of being ‘stuck’.
Ultimately, I understood that to feel safe in the world, no matter the location or place, is to feel safe embracing that haunted basement, those secret skeletons in the closet and that scary attic that have always been part of me. Like the goddess Hekate, I have to find a way to carry a torch even in the darkest parts of my Underworld, those places I didn’t dare visit while I was young because I was unprepared to take on the burdens of Eros and Thanatos, but that now as an adult are asking me to integrate them with courage and honesty into all aspects of the experience of being alive.
The spiritual goal toward which the whole nature of man strives is to rescue the light of consciousness…it is the sea to which all rivers went their way.
Movie still of Rebecca Hall as Margaret from Resurrection (2022)
I think by now it’s obvious from the content of my articles, that I have a soft spot for intense individuals who border on the insane. I’m fascinated to see how people cope with duress, with the challenges life throws at them, and most often the pressures that they place upon themselves. I think this is why I have always been attracted to psychotherapy and I’m actively involved not only in my own healing but in that of those who I am fortunate enough to cross paths with.
In 2025, I randomly saw a large number of movies which involved dark, intense and rather disturbing topics. I think I was drawn to them because it was a way to safely and creatively experience my own private wrestling match with some dark and heavy emotions. It’s as if what I was feeling inside was spilling over into a warped, emotional reality, enhanced in its dream-like quality by my viewing of so many movies. I blame the transits of Saturn and Neptune for putting me in this state, and while I understand that there is an underlying logic to this sullen cosmic energy, I still cannot bring myself to enjoy the process. Around May of this year, when dad died, I started sleeping during the day and getting up around evening time to then sit all night and watch movies, read, cry and pray.
I lost so much this year. Despite my resistance, 2025 vacuumed me of pleasure, joy, hope and faith. I felt in equal parts, shame, guilt, intense anxiety and despair. Some days I struggled to get up and when I did, I was struck by how pointless doing anything was. I often didn’t know what to do but to put on a movie with my projector, curl up in a foetus position, sip cold, black coffee and see the stories of people whose fates are worse than mine.
During a couple of such sedated days, I got a chance to watch two rather niche but equally powerful movies. I saw Resurrection (2022) with Rebecca Hall directed by Andrew Semans, and Antiviral (2012) with Caleb Landry Jones directed by Brandon Cronenberg. I personally felt like I couldn’t shake these movies off of me, long after I finished watching them. The first movie made me weep so hard as the credits rolled in, and the second was more of a mindfuck that made me press replay, just so I could understand what I had just watched. One thing I knew for sure was that the impact of the stories I just saw was exactly what I needed: a cure for getting out of my life and my wounded Self; a fascination for trying to understand two fictional characters with fucked up fates. I felt suddenly inspired…
Both movies display difficult subjects. In Resurrection, an abusive ex returns to torment a woman who just managed to build a better life for herself, but for most of the movie you find yourself doubting her sanity rather than believing that the villain’s comeback is doing any actual harm. In ‘Antiviral’, an employee working for a high-tech company is obsessed with a celebrity to such an extent that he injects her diseases into his body just to feel close to her.
The movie posters for the two films I discuss in the article
Antiviral is the debut feature of Brandon Cronenberg, the son of famously weird Canadian director, David Cronenberg (who created Existenz, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Crash etc.) Compared to his father’s work, I find Brandon’s movies to be unique and mesmerising, but even more ruthless and clinical than David’s movies are. if you are to consider Infinity Pool and what a distorted ride that movie was. I guess it’s just the astrological difference of their solar imaginarium, seeing as David is a Sun in Pisces and Brandon is a Sun in Capricorn.
Coming back to Antiviral, I have to say that I really liked the idea which was a direct critique of our obsession with celebrities, amplified as the story was by the excellent acting. Even if the movie was engrossing, certain gory scenes could’ve been better polished if not altogether scrapped out; also, the movie did lack a certain empathy and emotionality. On the other hand, Resurrection was so tightly controlled and filmed that it made you feel slightly claustrophobic, thereby matching the viewer’s complicity with Margaret’s own palpitating and overwhelming emotions. I think I’m saying that this latter performance made me feel more, while the first experience was intellectually interesting but too clinically delivered.
Superficially speaking, I think that what mesmerised me so much about both of these performances is the fact that we are looking at two flawed but also gorgeous people who were filmed with such a dedication that it felt their connection with the audience almost became tangible (for example, at a certain point I am pretty sure I was more familiar with Rebecca’s snot and sweat and Caleb’s bloody gushings more than with my own bodily fluids).
Movie still of Caleb Landry Jones as Syd March from Antiviral (2012)
Antiviral doesn’t pack an emotional punch like Resurrection does, a movie at the end of which I felt shattered seeing how simultaneously soulfully free and yet physically condemned Rebecca Hall’s character, Margaret, was. In Resurrection the psychological unravelling she experiences as a result of years of cruelty and gaslighting was masterfully done. The entire movie rests heavily on Rebecca’s acting chops and mad presence, at least up until the point where she shares a couple of scenes with Philip Roth and you feel your blood curdling in your veins as you witness their back and forth and find out what traumatized her this much that she is losing control at the mere sight of this small and insignificant man.
Since these were two tough viewing experiences, demanding a lot from their audiences – even if the acting was so unhinged it was close to perfection – I was vibrating with curiosity to look into the natal charts of both Rebecca and Caleb and see if there were certain energies they disposed of which made them gravitate to these stories. You may be aware that we tend to play out the inherent astrological energies we contain inside, through the work that we do. Actors and performers in general do this in a very visible and public way, which provides countless study cases for interested astrologers to explore, seeing as the world of film – or the land of Neptune – is a giant projection screen for what lies within.
Let’s first look at Rebecca’s chart. Born on May 3rd 1982 (age 43 years) in London, UK, Rebecca is a Sun in Taurus and a Moon in Aries. You can see her birth-chart below:
Her Moon is conjunct Venus in her fall in Aries, her Taurean Sun is conjunct the Wounded Healer asteroid, Chiron, while her destiny points are a South Node in Capricorn (her comfort zone) and a North Node in Cancer (her growth area). With a witty and domicile placement of Mercury in Gemini and an almost perfect conjunction between her natal Neptune and Lilith (the Wild Feminine asteroid) in freedom-loving Sagittarius, this is a woman who can think for herself and someone who gains her sense of freedom in life through martyrdom, escapism and acting. Although her fierce core brings a lot of determination and grit to the table, while her Saturnian comfort zone makes her a natural stoic and professional, what really gets her to gravitate towards harrowing tales and emotionally-intense roles is her natal Jupiter in Scorpio and that North Node in Cancer, placements which tell me she just finds so much joy and pleasure from bringing to life twisted stories and exploring deep emotions.
Catharsis, rebirths and life-and-death experiences are her happy place. In addition to this, with a stellium of planets in the beautiful, relationship-prone and justice-driven sign of Libra, involving Saturn, Mars and Pluto she is a force to reckon with, both on screen and outside of it. As a sidenote, her husband is a fellow actor: Morgan Spector, a Sun in Libra man whose solar energy touches upon Rebecca’s stellium in Libra, letting me know that their relationship is anything but easy but it can also be quite hot and stubborn in its longevity and perseverance.
Now, let’s explore Caleb’s chart. Born on December 7th 1989 (age 35 years) in Garland (TX) in the US, Caleb is a Sagittarius Sun with a Moon in Aries, as you can see below:
Caleb was born with a Jupiter conjunct Chiron in Cancer (a marker for painful success or fame that wounds the soul), a South Node in Leo and a North Node in Aquarius, and what is perhaps the darkest and most fascinating part of his chart comprising of a close conjunction between Mars and Pluto in Scorpio (further enhanced by a nearby Lilith) and a stellium in grounded and restrained Capricorn. Having just one of the Saturnian or Plutonic energies can severely weigh down and intensify your chart, but Caleb has them both! His Capricorn stellium includes the planets Venus, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus and Mercury. With Saturn almost perfectly conjunct his Neptune in the sign of Capricorn, he is an almost walking-and-talking embodiment of the collective energies we are at the mercy of in 2025, a year which is marred by the conjunction between these two giants of our solar system and the ensuing chaos that they are creating in our lives.
Although Caleb’s Saturn is domicile – which means that it functions better than the current Saturn in Pisces transit – and some would argue that his Venus is not conjunct his Saturn because it is so far apart by degree, but being in the same sign makes the planet function in a similar way. We see here the roots of intense emotional deprivation and a need to mask it with toughness, rules, rigidity and calculation – similar traits he displays so well in his character, Syd March from Antiviral. His energy is further darkened by the stealth ruthlesness and volcanic desires cloaked within the Mars-Pluto conjunction in Scorpio. No wonder that more recently, he starred in Dracula: A love tale (a dissapointing and unwatchable adaptation, in my view).
One thing that stands out is that both Caleb and Rebecca share in common a Moon in Aries placement. Aries, being the first sign of the zodiac is usually associated with new life, vitality, lifeblood and the forceful rebirth of Nature after the dead of winter. When Aries energy exists in the Moon position of a native, this primal fire energy works at a deeply unconscious level, and it is somehow softened but also even more subtly powerful as it pervades a person’s complete aura and sense of being, especially when they rest and relax. Here is how astrologer Donna Cunningham describes this lunar position in her book “Moon Signs: The Key to Your Inner Life”:
Aries is the best Moon sign, at least according to those who have it. They have to be the best at nearly everything they do – otherwise it ruins their whole day. They’re not always aware of this instinctive competitiveness, for the Moon’s traits are often unconscious. Nonetheless, Aries represents the urge to be out in front of the pack, so many Aries Moon natives display outstanding leadership and pioneering abilities. Active and vital, they’re easily bored by routine and want to be busy all the time.
— p. 142
It’s fascinating that these are not the only two creepy roles that Caleb and Rebecca decided to take on, since I still have on my watchlist The Listeners and Nitram; the first movie is about a woman hearing strange noises no one else can hear and the latter about a man who committed a massacre in the 90s, a script based on a true story. I also need to say that I loved Rebecca in the Night House, but I am saving my thoughts on that movie for an upcoming post on Pluto and 4th house matters.
The crux of this article is basically just me saying that as a depressed Sun in Pisces woman who struggled to get out of bed and continue to live this year, getting in touch with the work of two Moon in Aries performers who literally electrified the screen with their presence and passion for their craft, woke me up back up to life.
So, if you are doubting your energy and your work, please don’t. The way you are and the effort and passion you put into your craft and into your work can be so important to someone out there, in ways you may not even be aware. Inspiring a resurrection, passioncan literally bring people back up to life, as it tends to be highly infectious… and against this type of infection, I don’t think we need any antivirals.
A Google Gemini generated image showcasing the Gods Saturn/Cronos (left) and Neptune/Poseidon (right)
I have been trying to finish this article for a while now, but I find myself so depleted of energy that what I set out to do when the day begins, becomes undetermined by night-time. I find myself going from one extreme of energy to another: either completely drained and bed-ridden, as the weight of the world suddenly crushes upon me, or filled with energy but having to move through so many tiny obstacles that by the time I resolve them all, I am depleted of energy again. As a consequence, my usually prolific creative output has been low and inconsistent, and maintaining my passion for work has been a great problem. I feel both a sense of dread and an upsurge of excitement for the future.
I’m sharing this with you now because what I am experiencing is the felt reality of the great Saturn and Neptune conjunction, and I want to focus in this article on this specific cosmic energy. The reason this planetary configuration is affecting me to my core, is because I was born with a Sun in Pisces at 29 degrees (the anaretic, misfortune degree) in my 5th house (the seat of pleasure, divinity and passion) and a Jupiter in Aries at 4 degrees in the 6th house (the house of service work and daily routines). Therefore, the Saturn and Neptune movement through the final degrees of Pisces and the first degrees of Aries throughout 2025 and the Spring of 2026, is nestled right in between my Sun (energy and vitality) and my Jupiter (faith and growth), stunting them both. To say, that I am perceiving life as some form of prison of solitude is a minor understatement at the moment, and is conducive to a number of ailments I find hard to cope with. By writing about this experience, I reach out through the divide and feel less alone, less abandoned and sick.
The timeline
More broadly speaking, August 2025 is a very special month, marked by the retrograde movement of 4 planets (Saturn, Neptune, Pluto, including crowd-favorite Mercury, due to a retrograde through Leo) and more importantly it features the great conjunction between Saturn and Neptune, currently in the creative sign of Aries, moving around 0 and 1 degrees of this sign. Some astrologers would disagree in relation to the perfect conjunction of these two celestial spheres; some argue that only if two planets touch the same degree are they in perfect alignment, while others consider anything between 5 degrees of closeness a conjunction. Disenting voices judge the conjunction by the presence of planets in one specific astrological sign. I am of the latter group, and as such I want to bring out the importance of the month of August 2025, and then February and March 2026 for the great Saturn-Neptune meet up.
What is a conjunction? A conjunction is defined by Heather Roan Robbins as: “Anytime two celestial bodies conjunct – meaning they dance close together – they first work together and blend meaning and purpose, then begin a new cycle in their relationship”.
A Google Gemini generated image depicting the planets Saturn (left) and Neptune (right)
The present conjunction sees the blending of the energies of two of the least rational signs of the zodiac and involving the least compatible planets of our solar system, and this brings with it overt conflict and internal pain. The fact that the flowing, mystical and illusory energy of Neptune is meeting none other than that of the pragmatic, disciplined and separatist Saturn, is a symptom of tension, but what makes the conjunction so hard to bear is having to wake up daily to feelings of despair, pessimism and despondency (after all, Neptunian or Saturnian folk are not known in astrology for their cheery optimism).
In the battle of the giants, one wants to dissolve limits and merge with emotion (Neptune), while the other wants crystal clarity and harsh boundaries (Saturn); one wants to fight & win (Aries) while the other forgives and is letting go (Pisces). All the best and worst qualities of these 2 zodiac signs and these two planets are currently emerging into the collective in confusing and chaotic ways, guided as they are by rebel-rousing motor of Pluto in Aquarius. Pluto is stealthily working to change society through shocking moments of pain and outrage that amplify our collective awareness. None of these energies is tender or loving.
With the first movement of Saturn into Pisces in March of 2023, a temporal cycle was activated which embraced the loose movements of Saturn and Neptune through the last sign of the zodiac (Pisces) and the first sign of the zodiac (Aries), alongside Jupiter’s (for a brief period in 2023), Chiron in Aries and the North Node /South Node axis crossing through Aries and Libra in 2023-2024, and now through Pisces and Virgo. The preparatory ground was therefore created for their almost perfect encounter in the month of March 2025, when Saturn in Pisces was at 24 degrees just as Neptune in Pisces at 29 degrees was ready to switch into Aries.
Following on from that brief tete-a-tete, we are now spectating their full-blown tango as the first two weeks of August 2025 sees Saturn at 1 degrees of Aries with Neptune overlapping. From the 17th of August onwards, and due to its annual retrograde, Saturn wil begin to slide back into 0 degree Aries and then officially back into Pisces on the 2nd of September. Saturn will stay in Pisces until just short of Valentine’s Day, on the 15th of February of 2026.
This means that whatever concerns and themes you are riddled with in July and August of 2025, they will make a comeback in full-force (as the planets will be direct) in the last two weeks of February and throughout most of March of 2026. As a sidenote, I will turn 39 under this auspicious sky on the 20th of March of 2026 and God help me, I hope to survive this transit since Saturn can bring illness conducive to death and my health has been in shambles under this conjunction, so far. The conjunction can also bring a sense of victimhood and delusions of contempt based on being of service to society but never been valued for it, so keep your victimising tendencies in check.
To recap, the baseline dates are: March 2025, July-August 2025 and February-March 2026. As a brief exercise, look back across the last two-to-three years of your life and see if any significant events took place during these months, as a way to foretell what areas of concern in your life will become activated next year in Spring again. For me, it’s my work and professional path, my relation to the public and my legacy, as the Sun’s transit throughout March and August is illuminating my 6th and 10th astrological houses. Whatever gets activated by the Saturn and Neptune conjunction will be set on fire by the Sun’s transit and next year promises to be pivotal since the final conjunction of Saturn and Neptune will be in a weird aspect to the Sun in Pisces loosely conjunct the North Node in Pisces.
It may be that events are more intense and impactful the more planets and points you have in the signs of Aries and Pisces in your natal chart. If you have none in these signs, then consider any Libra and Virgo placements, as these are opposite signs of the zodiac wheel and the Shadow zones of Aries and Pisces.
Personal Characteristics of the Saturn-Neptune Conjunction
La Miseria (1886). Cristobal Rojas
I’ll begin by sharing with you, some personal things I noticed in relation to this Saturnian and Neptunian energy, the cycle of which began to be felt from March of 2023, when Saturn went ingress in Pisces.
Irrespective of the many problems this transit has brought into my life (the worst of all being my dad’s cancer diagnosis and subsequent death), I feel privileged enough that in my position as an astrologer I get to experience first-hand the effects of this once-in-a-lifetime astrological cycle. Some of the things I will describe below have been things I personally have been going through but also what I have noticed among my family members, work mates and clients.
The biggest theme seems to be that of illness, an illness that can lead to positive changes in your life or to having epiphanies during victim-like, trance states. Being put into a position to suffer, however difficult, can be exactly the pathway forward in life. If you refuse to feel your pain you get stuck in a weird limbo until you bravely accept to feel all of your uncomfortable feelings. By undertaking an emotional ordeal you not only heal your heart and relieve some of the physical symptoms they may be causing in your body, but you also reconnect or (for some connect for the first time) with divinity, a sense of a higher being watching over you. Your suffering therefore has a purpose.
In addition, I also noticed that things break down or are in need of fixing and repair, in a state of flow. Like a wave crashing onto the shore, a problem appears in your life needing resolve. One thing is resolved and another problem appears that requires immediate attention and effort, just like another wave crashing onto your life shore.
There is also a pervasive feeling of needing to work to survive, but work is chaotic. You may not know exactly towards what specific goals to work towards or where to put effort into, mostly because you may be feeling like your work does not yield results or it gains you an sufficient income. Even worse, the circumstances that offer your work some structure are falling apart right before your eyes: a flood destroys your factory, the company that employs you is merging with another or goes bankrupt over-night, you can’t seem to fit your skills into any job description, your work becomes redundant due to updates and innovations, etc. Moreover, the work effort necessary to achieve a specific goal is disproportionate to the task at hand or the tools and the materials needed to accomplish it, because there are constant updates, repairs and improvements.
To add to this, nothing is as it seems and you may be feeling like you are living under a perpetual state of dreaming, which often feels good like a sedative and other times it can quickly morph into your worst fears and transform your reality into a night-mare. If something initially looks terrifying or unappealing it is most likely a flash in the pan; while on the other hand, if something is appealing and beautiful it is most likely a mirage. Illusions of the mind abound and as such, mental health issues are on the rise. Waking up to reality can feel like taking a cold shower. What is a good opportunity can turn into something awful and what is a difficult path to walk on, can prove to be easier than imagined. It helps if you find courage to feel your fears and do what is right anyway.
To add to this, we collectively experience a need for boundaries, for some form of control or regulation that establishes fairness. Individually, we may feel that only with discipline can we succeed in these uncertain times, but all of these tough desires seem to evaporate as soon as practical implementation begins. Schedules change throughout the day as people change their minds or fall in and out of conscious awareness, and the paradox is that the changes should be welcomed rather than resisted because the outcome will be much better for everyone involved. The part that requires some work is the one about needing to cope with the uncertainty and the delays caused by such readjustments, and here is where practicing flexibility becomes a way of life. Much like that old saying the reed that bends the wind cannot break, or something similar…
Probably the worse side-effects of the Saturn-Neptune conjunction are the physical ailments that multiply when emotions are overwhelming. The body parts mostly affected are the skin, the feet, the eyes, the head, the circulatory and the nervous systems. In terms of astrological body archetypes, these are the organs and biological components traditionally under the rulership of the sign of Aries (the head especially) and Pisces (the feet).
There are also frequent sleep disturbances and problems with drinking water and keeping hydrated: wanting so badly to sleep but having your sleep interrupted by other people’s activities (noise pollution especially and auditory hallucinations), then not being able to fall asleep because of all the things you are thinking of doing. Living within such altered mind states makes us more prone to consume narcotics to self-sedate and achieve relaxation at all costs, even at risk of dissociating from reality.
This then creates a mixture of deep fear and excitement but one that is not conducive necessarily to sexual arousal. In terms of sex, there are mixed feelings about it: either too much or none at all; either complete disconnect from the sexual impulse and reverting all the energy into creative work, or being suddenly overwhelmed by horniness and not knowing what to do with it. Masturbation can prove difficult to complete in the absence of imagination. You may need the fantasy as well as the physical stimulation to reach an orgasm (with or without a partner).
And lastly, I noticed some changes to the process of manifestation. Once needs to imagine the path and the action in order to understand what the next logical steps are. If you wake up and feel listless and confused as to what to do with your day, rather than jumping outside and engaging in any form of activity just for the sake of it, sit back for a couple more minutes and imagine your next steps. As you prime your unconscious mind with a conscious dream-plan, actions and activities begin to emerge organically, as if you are moved by something unseen on the path to achieving your goals. It is a soft and yielding process of allowing your subconscious mind to guide you in the direction of manifesting some powerful desires rather than making logical plans and sticking to them with the discipline of a field marshal (hint: it’s not going to work).
The more you try to impose control and restrictions to how you go about getting something (or someone), the less likely you are to actually see your desires become reality. Instead, adopt a Yeats-ian approach to living, something akin to what he wrote in his poem He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven: “I have spread my dreams at your feet / Tread softly for you are treading on my dreams”. Softly, slowly, messily, sensitively, build in flexible bursts of activity. And when you run out of energy (which may happen sooner than you think), rest and dream your next steps.
Interruptions to your plans are also possible due to distortions of speech and thinking, such as believing dreams and fantasies are real, and witnessing as the boundary between the real and imagined is frequently broken and in need of rebuilding. To feel real, check with your body, the only solid thing you actually own in this world. Delusional socialization is prevalent under this energy so forming and maintaining new relationships will be excessively tricky. This is why solitude is fruitful and benefic for living under a Saturn and Neptune transit, because you can sense and hear your inner voice and intuition better when you are not distracted by another person’s energy.
We are generally more sensitive to energy as this transit unfolds, and it’s crucial to be aware of and to interpret emotional cues from your body when interacting with other people. For example, if you bloat around a certain person, chances are you are being lied to; if your chest warms up as you feel drawn towards someone than that person is helping you in your spiritual development.
Reflecting on the recent events of this summer, I think I can safely conclude that a tight Saturn-Neptune conjunction also has a lot to do with the creation of cults, since Saturn offers structure to religious rituals and beliefs, which fall under Neptune’s jurisdiction. However, and because Saturn is considered a malefic planet with a limiting energy, the cults which are created are giving religion a bad reputation, increasing the fears that many people have of believing in God or of practicing any form of organized religion. Saturn can indeed materialize what is divine and Neptunian, but it may also sully and dirty up the spiritual energy which Neptune unleashed into the collective, especially when Saturn is in an incompatible Fire or Water sign, like it is during the 2023-2027 era.
To wrap up I would say that the best consequence of this transit has been gaining keen insights into the world beyond the veil, or the realm of ghosts and those departed. If you use the Saturn-Neptune conjunction to harvest the power of the increased sensitivity to hearing and to actively listen, you can develop a greater capacity to foresee. This increased capacity to divinate usually gets activated once you do something pragmatic or physical: like after a work-out, or after you clean up your house, and often after you eat something.
Finally, and the least important but the most noticeable has been the fetishization of goods and a state of hypnotic and mindless consumerism provoked by them: from the Stanley Cup craze, to the long lines waiting to get a Crumbl Cookie, or the current trend of purchasing boxes of eco-wasteful Labubus, people are irrationally driven to consume as a replacement for purpose in their lives and a as a way to fill up the dread created within their souls by wave upon wave of disappointment, abandonment and chaos. Like a scared child clinging onto a beloved Teddy bear as his parents are fighting in the living room at night, we are collectively clinging to our ‘Labubus’ in an effort to find some comfort as we are overwhelmed by rising taxation, forced migrations, the threat of war and the lack of cessation of other world conflicts or being obliterated by the forces of nature.
It’s fascinating to see how the Saturn-Neptune conjunction is happening simultaneously with the Solar 25 cycle, which had space scientists forecasting a decade ago, that 2024 and 2025 will be harsh-weather years due to our Sun’s activity reaching solar maximum. In a truly weird, scary and wonderful way, we are literally being shown the true meaning of the saying ‘as above, so below’, as the Sun’s boiling super-energy is manifested on Earth in our crazed, social tensions. We are faced with the uncertain dawn of a new era of evolution, so of course, many of us are freaking out.
Views from Other Astrologers
St. Elizabeth of Hungary’s Great Act of Renunciation, 1891. Philip Hermogenes Calderon (1833-1898). Oil on canvas; 60 1/4 x 84 inches (153.0 x 213.4 cm). Collection of Tate Britain, reference no. NO1573. Kindly released on the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported) licence. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
To add some depth to this article and help you understand better the force of this transit, I thought of compiling some information I found in my astrological research. The month of August 2025 will usher in an opportunity that will help you finally see the path forward in your life, in that area that has been like an open wound since 2023. Whatever frustrated you and you had not clarity on, whatever you lost, will now be replaced and will provide an open doorway for you to pass onto the next level.
However, to do so you’ll need to fulfill the requirements of the one Rudolf Steiner named “the guardian of the threshold“, a spiritual energy which can be manifested in your reality as: a difficult romance, a tough and new workplace, a qualification you have to study for and earn, a relocation to a foreign and unwelcoming land etc. You will nonetheless get a chance to begin anew, and effort will be needed to support your pioneering dreams.
For example, here is how British astrologer Sue Tompkins in her book ‘Aspects in Astrology‘ describes the social landscape created by this great meeting of the gods of time and flow in the sky:
Society was feeling guilty (…) Saturn-Neptune seems to describe poisoning and, more generally, lessons around purification and refinement (…) Sometimes the issue is paralysis and a psychological feeling of ‘caving in’ and not being able to cope (…) Typically, Saturn-Neptune people are frightened of loss of control and occassionally fate seems to ensure that they literally have to relinquish some form of control in order to learn lessons of some sort of non-attachment (…) With these contacts the father is not attached to the world in some way (…)
The pattern of a missing or weak father figure, the ‘father’ who gets it wrong not because of what he does but of what he fails to do. A father who is not and doesn’t set himself up to be, the voice of authority (…) Guilt is very much a feeling that one might attribute to this combination (…) for the individual on some level often feels as if they are in debt for something and must continually be making reparation, paying a penance, often paying the father’s (or society’s) debts or avenging those that are indebted to him (…) Saturn-Neptune can be associated with renunciation (…) it is surely the combination of the ascetic. Indeed, the image in one’s mind is of a monk or a hermit (…)
Saturn-Neptune would seek a simple and uncluttered life, free of any kind of opulence and excess (…) At best, this is the combination of the practical idealist, the person who has an awareness of their own limitations and the limitations of the given situation but nevertheless works to make some ideal a reality in the concrete world.
(p. 240-243)
Indeed, I can personally vouch for the theme of the sick father (due to the overlapping Saturn-Neptune link with my Pluto on the IC transit, I experienced my father’s passing away this year). In addition, it seems that emotional severity, financial hardships and the theme of sickness is also reported by the Astrology King:
What you thought were safe and secure relationships, possessions, employment or general structures and patterns in your life may dissolve away, leaving you feeling anxious and depressed. In its higher manifestation, this transit allows you to make sacrifices and do without something to do good. You can help others or reach a particular goal. In the lower manifestation, a gift would be forced upon you to teach you a lesson about responsibility.
Whatever the case, this is a severe phase of life, and you will tend to see the worst and not the best in everything. Pessimism can get out of control; therefore, it is essential to do your best to avoid it. Negativity must be avoided because Saturn can materialize Neptune’s illusions or delusions. It is essential to take care of your health; now is a good time for a general check-up with your doctor.
Moreover, one of the astrologer’s I have been following for years and who taught me most of what I know in terms of relational astrology, the Bulgarian astrologer Lada Duncheva describes the Saturn-Neptune conjunction as a breaking down of illusions in one’s life and reminds us all of the fall of the ideology of communism when Saturn and Neptune met in Capricorn during the 1988-1990s era in Eastern Europe:
When Saturn and Neptune are together- like now and in 2026, they tend to burst illusions, deceptions and long going schemes. Neptune in Pisces was able to operate for many years under the table, leading to many deceptions, underhanded games. Now Saturn nearing it- it is time to bear the consequences, to pay the karma, to reveal the deceptions.
And finally, in an exhaustive exploration of the Saturn-Neptune conjunctions throughout history, the evolutionary astrologer Maurice Hernandez lays out some of the core themes of this epic transit and what it could manifest in the collective from next year, as both planets rejoin Aries:
A call for leadership, entrepreneurial or political. Fate can prompt a person to take the reins and step into positions of authority and command.
A boss or parental figure may go through a crisis, requiring care and adjustment. We may see those who once were in their prime exhibit tremendous vulnerability.
Accountability and ethical realignment. Unethical behavior may surface and prompt a person to take responsibility for possible misalignments. Conversely, the person with this transit prominently positioned may be the whistleblower, exposing unethical behavior.
The loss of meaning; losing the grip on what was once important or held in high esteem. Possibly experiencing a vacuum or emptiness until a new goal emerges.
A spiritual realization. Possibly the meeting of a spiritual teacher who will provide a new form of guidance or body of knowledge. Following the calling to lead a more spiritual life.
Adopting a new lifestyle and reinventing oneself in one shape or another. Depending on the house where the transit occurs, it may affect professional, relational, or academic matters.
Health vulnerabilities may affect adrenal function. Autoimmune reactions can engender inflammation in different parts of the body. This may be an opportune time to adjust our diet and get self-care support to sustain or increase vitality.
June for me is a month of recovery. A recovery that is necessary in the wake of May’s energy. This is because last month’s energy was something beyond what I had experienced in a long time, and this confession doesn’t come lightly since I was born a Plutonic and I am used to unexpected and strong doses of life’s intensity. Due to my karmic Pluto in Scorpio Rx in the 1st house placement, life had demonstrated to me several times that this is going to be an incarnation of extremes, of symbolic deaths and rebirths, and having to understand some of the deepest emotions. However, sometimes a certain period comes along which simply turns up the Plutonic heat up a notch. Like a square aspect of transiting Pluto in Aquarius to my natal Pluto in Scorpio, during Taurus season, for example…
For perspective, transiting Pluto in Aquarius is at the moment of my writing this article at 3’19 degrees in my 4th house; my IC (imum coeli or the bottom of the sky), the root of my chart is placed at 1’37 Aquarius. As a factual recap, the month of May of 2025 debuted with selling my small one-room flat and my moving into a 2-bedroom rented apartment in a safer part of Bucharest. A decision I didn’t easily make as I had to let go of the financial security of owning my place, but I gained the physical safety of knowing that at least, in this rental I will no longer be threatened with violent abuse by my neighbours, like I had been in my previous location.
Escaping into a safer neighbourhood was something coming for two years now and as difficult as it had been to decide on this move, I pushed myself into making it because of self-preservation. The heavy-heartedness, however, came along with me. Just as I was getting accustomed to this new place and thinking it was better that I was somehow closer to my parent’s place and could visit them more often, on the 8th of May my father died.
“…this process will serve as an excellent time to examine the impact of the individual’s early environmental situation as reflected through the parents, and for those who are parents, how they themselves have emotionally responded to their own children, family and spouse (…) It will now be necessary to change or eliminate all forms of emotional dependency and security that are linked to external situations. These dependencies and securities are in some way limiting further growth (…) This evolutionary time frame and experience can be very difficult because many people will feel as if the very foundations of their lives are being threatened and removed. Such an experience must occur so that the individual is more or less left with only his or her self to look at, to examine, and to depend on (…) For some people this process will be enforced through the loss of a job or career, a family member or someone close to them, emotional confrontations of an intense magnitude with family members or even the loss of the individual’s own life.” (p. 322-323).
Dad was cremated on the 10th of May and I found myself walking back from the Crematorium into a straight line back into the new flat I had just shortly inhabited. I crawled into bed like a slug and rested there for the next hours, feeling numbed out of my mind. I couldn’t cry. My body held on to the pain. It was familiar. It was a family thing to hold onto pain. I was simply being loyal.
What weighed heavily on my heart was the fact that on the morning of my father’s death, I visited grandpa’s grave – situated near my new place – and I placed a coin on top of it. I offered flowers and asked grandpa (my father’s father) to help my family out. Hours later, around midnight my mother called to tell me that dad had given up the ghost. I immediately thought of grandpa letting me know that he listened to my prayer…although I’m not sure, that was the resolution I had asked for, but I am in no position at this point in my life to have semantic arguments with ghosts. Grandpa helped. And this helping hand from beyond the veil lingers in my heart, as a life mystery left for me to unravel. I am not afraid of ghosts, but I am mortified of living a soulless life. So the problem I had to cope with now was: How do I continue to live on, when all I can feel is just how dead I am on the inside?
Dad’s departure happened right in-between Romania’s presidential elections, a period of two weeks of tumult as the population was faced with a pro-West candidate and a pro-Russian candidate. To say that the air in Bucharest was electric during those days, was an understatement. As the pressures kept pilling up on me, around the 19th of May – and after the results of the elections proved to be hopeful and progressive rather than medieval and destructive, I realised just how completely chewed up my nervous system had been. My body has started uncontrollably shaking after I took my morning shower and my hands were clenching without the possibility of relaxing them quickly. Only with controlled breathing was I able to physically ‘unclench’ and relax my body in roughly 20 minutes (which felt like an eternity).
In the final days of May, I was running from one doctor appointment to another to find some treatment for my nervous system’s temporary collapse and I was lucky enough to find the support I needed in a psychiatrist, neurologist and family doctor. The treatment my psychiatrist put me on helped smooth out my over-sensitivity to sounds and helped me feel more relaxed in my body. I somehow knew this wasn’t enough and that I had to do a bit more to get the pain through my body moving and to release it somehow. I started doing yoga and gentle stretches daily, while eating a consistent breakfast of porridge with honey and fruits and making sure I am drinking enough water each day.
I took at least 10,000 steps, and installed a tracker app on my phone to keep me to it. Each day this tracker would gentle nudge me to ‘get moving’ and then reward me by saying ‘you are getting better’, which felt like the kindest thing I could hear all day and exactly the opposite of how I was feeling. At night I worked, since work keeps me stable and optimistic and then I would watch a movie projected on the blank wall of my bedroom to take my mind off things. I would cry in the most public and inappropriate places, always surrounded by strangers and never near my mother or sister, the last two remaining members of my close family. It’s sad to write this but my relationship to them is not at all close, to say the least. I try, nonetheless.
“Psychological insights, bravely won, must penetrate down into core assumptions about yourself, and then be expressed publicly.” (p.263). He goes on to add that with this transit : “Your navigational error, if you succumb to it, would be to live the life of a ghost, with your fire, intensity and vision removed from your biographical life while you went through the motions of existence. And regardlessof outward appearances, at the psychological level you would live the life of a hearthless, homeless person (…) With Pluto in the fourth house, you heal yourself by becoming conscious of your woundedness…for you it starts with realizing the extent to which your ability to find, recognize and claim ‘your people’ has been distorted.” (p. 83)
Remarkably, the intensity I was doing my best to smooth out or diminish in my waking life, appeared once again projected through the movies that I gravitated towards in that month. One after the other, I saw four movies that were incredibly good but each in their own way, were also intense and haunting.
First of all, I saw ‘Sex, lies and videotape’ after I listened to antiheroines‘ insightful analysis on YouTube, about the disappearance of horny movies and the important role of emotional intimacy in making films feel erotic. I just loved this movie and if I was previously a fan of James Spader’s and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s chemistry in ‘Secretary‘, the unlikely attraction which existed between him and Andi MacDowell in Stephen Soderbergh’s film was much more subtle and sexy somehow.
Seeing as I was in a vulnerable state of chaotic sadness, physical pain and nervous irritation, I couldn’t believe that this movie made me feel something tender-hearted again. As if a whole new mindset was available to me, through psychological sensuality.
Still from the movie ‘Sex, lies and videotapes’
A couple of days later, the film player I used to watch the film above recommended another European movie called ’99 Moons’. This movie was filmed after the pandemic and had actors I had never seen before, so it was right up my alley. Heavily medicated, still broken-hearted but satisfied that I had completed my day’s work, I sat on my little couch to watch this movie which begins with one of the most random, brutal and unexpected sex scenes I had seen so far. I won’t get into details but I’ll just say it involved: a parking lot, a ski mask, something aggressively oral happening and two consenting adults, one of whom breaks down crying after their intense coupling. And it’s not whom you expect.
The curious thing is that ’99 Moons’ is a love story and the characters grow on you with so much ease that you feel shattered when you watch the surprising ending to the movie. I loved it because you get to see a completely different gender dynamic between two heterosexual characters, than you get to see in other erotic-themed movies. And the sex scenes are not at all vanilla or missionary, rather the opposite as most of them are female-led and unique but they always add to the story and the sensual intimacy between two people who simply were burning for each other across the years. This movie made me feel like it was worth bringing back to life, a part of me that once felt excited about sex and sexual pleasure…a part I had buried in April of 2021.
Just some nights into my treatment, and I was now continuously sad but I felt somehow horny as well, like the upper part of the body broke off from my lower region. I had to appreciate however that both systems, although apart, were trying to keep me alive and away from the darker thoughts…those thoughts I had of joining my relatives, of seeing my dad’s dead and peaceful face as flowers were thrown over him, thoughts which sounded a lot like: ‘What’s the fucking point in living anymore? He seems so calm, he no longer feels pain…I wish I could feel that’. The creeping feeling that everything was falling apart around me and I wanted to just stop breathing, so that maybe then the pressure will lift and my body will stop hurting so much in every little corner.
It felt like Freud’s concepts of how Thanatos nourishes Eros, which I first became aware of in college, it was as if they were finally being integrated skin-deep within my physicality. It was Pluto’s energy creating this cellular revolution through the way in which I was interpreting the events that happened in May of 2025 and the stories I was watching and unsuccessfully trying to escape into. The only thing these movies did was to push back upon myself the duty to live in my body and to continue to live on, no matter how painful the experience of living would get.
I remembered this feeling. It was kind of how I felt after watching a couple of years ago ‘Normal people’, just that that experience was devoid of the pain of thinking constantly in the background of my mind: “Dad is gone and I’m never going to be able to speak to him, and I knew that the last time I talked to him in January, after I argued with mom, that it would’ve been our last moment together, because I told him this and he just sadly starred at me…he didn’t say anything.”
A part of me, the child-part felt guilty for abandoning dad, while the rational part of me was aware that it felt like the force of karma worked through me, as I had done to dad what he had done to me when I was small and sick: abandoned me.
Armed with this sad mix of thoughts, I went to the cinema this time to watch an old Romanian movie with a curious title “Glissando”. A movie about a man obsessed with the portrait of a woman. Halfway through the movie, the plot dissolves into two streams, two alternate realities and the characters simply float into random and beautifully-shot sequences of events in their lives. It is a movie about love, memories and obsessions and it was gorgeous to behold and spoke volumes to me about taking it easy and just riding the wave of feelings produced by all the events of the month of May. I couldn’t control what was happening, but I could control my reactions to all these things. In that at least, I had some power left.
Still from the movie ‘Glissando’
I guess that the intensity of May was lived inside of my body between these two extremes of deep sadness – that I was trying my best to run away from – and into erotic creativity – a sensual healing I was hoping to find some sort of solace. It helped that May in Bucharest is incredibly fragrant, as all the roses and jasmine bushes blossom, and the linden trees unleash their aromas while the market boom with cherries and strawberries and honey melons. It gets warmer each night and clothes become looser and thinner and days become longer and slower.
In the background of this, I was tuning in and out of consciousness repressing feelings of sadness, shame and guilt. I slept throughout the day and was awake at night. Nature was so beautiful while my inner world was at war with itself and this contrast struck me. As if by magic, when I noticed the contradiction, the world around me seem to calm me down.
The last film I saw was also probably the most difficult to watch, due to the topic. I saw Denis Villeneuve’s “Incendies” on a random whim. I wasn’t even sure how I got to watch it… All I know is that since I moved into this new flat there have been some mysterious Middle-Eastern influences that I am still trying to shake off, which have been haunting me: from finding out that the previous tenants were Arabs, to randomly stumbling upon an Arabian perfume that I couldn’t stop thinking of, to listening to Habibi Spice on YouTube because his soothing voice helped with my nervous system regulation.
And then Incendies came along and I watched it and my jaw dropped and it helped me release a lot, because I cried my heart out. A week after, as I was walking through one of the largest literature events in Bucharest, Bookfest 2025, I felt drawn to a French-Arab publishing house and then saw the book “Incendies” written by Wajdi Mouawad – full circle moment.
Still from the movie ‘Incendies’
There are some other fascinating things about this new place I moved into, such as finding out from my mother that the shopping complex right in front of my window used to be a communist bread store in which my grandma (my father’s mother) used to work in and that it had a kindergarten attached to it, where I had briefly been to as a child. So without consulting anyone and after months of searching, I had unconsciously placed myself in May of 2025 in front of an energetic zone imprinted with memories from the 80s, when I was a toddler, and dad and grandma were alive and bread was rationed and we lived under a different political regime.
In that moment of realization, I suddenly felt immensely peaceful! I understood that although things aren’t working out as I would like them too, they are working out exactly how the planets are dictating, among which Pluto is the loudest since it has begun the process of changing my soul. I know that if I just stick with the wave of chaotic emotions, memories and symbols, I will eventually get a beautiful and shocking realization as to why things are happening how they are happening. Spirit will deliver meaning and all I need to do is ride the flow of feelings and intuition and pay attention to my environment.
And when the healing realizations begun and I was feeling a combination of illuminating thoughts and the mood-regulating treatment working, peace returned and my curiosity sparked again. During a particular difficult night, as I was wresting in bed trying not to cry again, I stumbled upon this video which although it sounds cheesy to admit, did a magical spell on my capacity to let go of fighting the intensity and simply giving in to it and accepting it:
I don’t know why I wrote this post, except that it felt cathartic to do it. I think it’s meant to be some symbolic and blow-by-blow account of how Pluto in Aquarius is influencing my inner world at the moment, as I’m struggling to make sense and interpret this energy. I’m hoping it may help someone at some point in time, who might find themselves in similar circumstances. As tough as a Pluto transit can be, especially in electrifying Aquarius, it can also offer rest, re-education and renewal. I think this article may also be a list of recommendations, because despite the sad which create the backbone of this article, the films & resources are pretty good and you may want to give them a try. Let me know what you uncover.
Let me tenderly start off by clarifying that I fucking adore Gena Marvin! And one thing is the core of my intense love for her, something that runs so thinly in society at large but oozes out of her as easily as she breathes, and that precious soul element is: courage. Gena has heaps of this rare substance called bravery, despite the fact that she appears as a soft contrarian, a vulnerable artist, someone who seems more of a passive masochist than a tough fighter. The martyr quality that emerges from her character is given by the fact that Gena was born a Sun in Pisces. By her birth name Gennadiy Chebotarev, a Russian artist born in one of the most unwelcoming places on Earth, Magadan, a remote city in Siberian Russia, known for its harsh winters, famous prison and strong gender normative culture, Gena is currently living in exile in Paris, France, after a lifetime of quiet resistance.
The other element of my intense love for her is that she is so creative. Creativity and courage when functioning optimally inside an individual result in the most irresistible charisma. This is the magical stuff of an individual who had to work at it, and unfortunately this work came about through withstanding intense violence and hatred related to her sense of self. Gena was born with a very interesting conjunction in her chart: a trifecta which involves a Saturn in Aries at a later degree conjunct a Jupiter in Aries at an early degree and in the heart of these powerful outer-planets, lies a Moon in Aries, a fire lighting the dark.
I have started this website writing about the painful karma of being born with a Moon conjunct Saturn so I won’t insist on the subtleties of this placement in this article, (it’s just important to know that Gena carries within a deep maternal wound), but I do want to focus on the loose conjunction between her Saturn and her Jupiter in Aries. This is an astrological aspect which usually denotes a lifetime of having the harshest tests related to one’s identity and then these are shortly followed by the biggest blessings. This punishment and blessing cycle brought on by Saturn and Jupiter, touches her emotionally in a very profound way (because of the presence of the her Moon sandwiched between these significant outer planets).
Alternatively, you could also see the Saturn-Jupiter astrological aspect as a lifetime of taking on tests and limiting situations in a willing way, and feeling the fear and doing it anyway. The pressure which Saturn stirs in the mix eventually eases into the most surprising growth and self-confidence, courtesy of Jupiter. And with the Moon in Aries left to do the emotional work, self-belief is the resurrection card. Through hardship, a link to the Divine within gets activated, much like in the martyr effect, or the idea that the more persecuted that you are the more your belief in the Divine is strengthened. Such beliefs fit with someone’s astrological energy when they have an abundance of planets and points in Pisces and Aries.
Here is how Sue Tompkins describes the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction: “Saturn will tend to define, restrict, restrain and add an element of fear to all those things we associate with Jupiter: namely faith, meaning, joy and enthusiasm. Jupiter expands, enlarges and increases the Saturnian principles of order, responsibility, discipline and caution. Jupiter and Saturn together usually yields great persistence, patience and perseverance. Nevertheless, this is perhaps the combination associated with solid material success, and the easy aspects especially seem buffeted in this area of their lives (…) The Jupiter-Saturn individual often craves, and frequently reaches, an influential and executive position in the world.” (Aspects in Astrology, p.227-229)
** I’ve generated Gena’s chart based on disparate and incomplete birth-information so the natal map above may not be accurate
To be fair, the whole collective has been soaked in these astral influences because since 2022, the transiting outer planets Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune together with the North Node and South Node axis have been touching upon the Alpha (Aries) and Omega (Pisces) of the zodiac, the first sign and the last sign of our equatorial constellations. We are all on some level having to let go of a part of our lives we grew attached to, in favour or staring anew and rebuilding everything with courage. Gena knows this process intimately, as her chart portrays such ending and beginning energies which she carries within and from which great creative ideas and potential spark out of. What I love about her is just how determined she is to keep pushing preconceived gender norms and to risk her physical safety as she does so. She inspires me to be less afraid to pursue my own self-expression, during a period in which most of our role-models and heroes are either strangely silent or dead.
I will admit that writing this article proved challenging. Especially because I can’t help gendering her, even when the whole purpose of her art and self-expression is to go beyond gender. Gena is trying to help us understand how to live outside of gender, in a very physical and practical way. The sumptuously filmed documentary about her life, her art and her resistance (and which inspired me to write this article), a film called Queendom, details the lived aspects of crafting an existence outside of gender and how painful, frightening and exhilarating the whole process is. I highly recommend watching it and if you do, please let me know if you manage to get Sevdaliza’s song ‘Human’ out of your mind. It still haunts me to this day, it’s so powerful.
I ultimately decided to include the ‘she/her’ pronouns since it appeared to me that in her artistic journey Gena moved from the masculine principle (within which she was born) into the feminine one, but without making her body’s transformation the core aspect of her journey. I see her message as being broader, and while deeply embodied and political, her story transcends the usual narrative of “the person who shifts genders and is oppressed by traditional gender norms in society”. Gena uses her body as a tool to subvert authoritarian politics in society. She advocates for courage and freedom, especially the freedom to dress as you please and to express who you are without fear of violence or being excluded from the benefits that other gender-confirming people enjoy in society. Her protest is not just queer and concerning identity but it is also political, as Gena is actively and dangerously resisting being part of the populist collective that advocates for war and the domination of other countries, much like we are seeing in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war.
Simply existing in the world, especially as a woman and then as an artist, as a creative force is seen as threatening at the moment in time, as something that needs to be controlled or treated with corrective violence. And this medieval mindset has long expired and has to change. The hopeful silver-lining comes from the strangest of places: the symbolic rumbles and metaphorical earthquakes brough about by Pluto’s transit through Aquarius, which has already begun to create social chaos in order to consistently normalize what has been seen as ‘weird’ or ‘outcast’. Give it a couple of years (and the trine between Uranus in Gemini and Pluto) for the ‘weird’ to find out just how much they belong.
A couple of hours just shy off the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump’s second chance at ruling the US, I was looking into the Elon Musk and Asmongold drama, replete with leaked DMs, removed gaming credentials and some direct accusations of Musk being a fake gamer. I found it hilarious and somehow in my weird astrologer’s brain something clicked; something I noticed a while back and I feel the need to unearth in this article and to get deeper into. I vaguely remembered that both Trump and Musk shared a really interesting astrological aspect in common: they both have a Venus conjunct Saturn in their natal charts! Normally, this aspect would portent an individual destiny marred by financial limits, setbacks and struggles, so how come these two men were put in charge with rescuing the economy of one of the biggest country’s in the world and the literal birth-place of capitalism to add to that?
As the current planetary transits also involve the conjunction between Venus in Pisces conjunct Saturn in Pisces in the month of January 2025, I thought that the synchronicities were too good to miss out on. So, as I lie in bed covered in tissues and sipping from hot tea in a desperate attempt to get rid of a flu that is kicking my ass for a week now, allow me to entertain myself and potentially you as a valued reader with an analysis of the chart of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. It will be a light-hearted analysis, focused mainly on the weird astrological connections between these two goofy, powerful men who have the potential to really mess up world politics in the next 4 years. We truly live through magical times, and magical thinking is required now more than ever to survive…
In my opinion, Elon Musk is a good example of what stress, power, over-fucking and a poor diet can do to a man’s brain. A man who had the potential to be great, in culturally significant and invention-empowering ways, but who sadly got lost in the hubris of making money for the sake of making money, and acting out in super-sensitive ways if things don’t go his way. These characteristics all feed into the creation of the super-villain, a man who ends up sitting on the wrong side of history due to an unstable character and the misuse of ridiculous financial and political power. And the saddest part is that he could do so much good with this power, as long as he remembers to be grateful for his power and to use it wisely. But attaining wisdom is not really Musk’s destiny..
His chart shows me that Musk was born with a sensitive Sun in Cancer in the softest house of the zodiac, the 12th house. So, he is a Cancerian who borrows traits from a Piscean (jeez talk about being super sensitive!) Not only that but his Ascendant is in Cancer with Mercury perfectly conjunct it, adding a Geminian vibe to any first impression he makes, and thereby adding to this super brainy persona that he likes to indulge in, but keep in mind that this is just a front as the Ascendant is not who he really is at the core. His core comprises of a Moon in Virgo conjunct the Part of Fortune and Pluto, as Musk, it needs to be remembered is a Gen X-er. Due to all of this more or less conscious Mercurian energy surrounding his lunar placement and his Mercury conjunct the Ascendant, Musk identifies with his thoughts and wants to come across as a youthful, vibrant, funny and smart lad. In reality he is an anxious and obsessed, control-freak who is struggling to keep up with the times. This aspect is further emphasized because Musk was born with a South Node in Leo in the first house, so therefore his comfort zone is being himself and this Self is rather poorly placed in the least modest sign of the zodiac: Leo, the ruler, the playful but belligerent and self-aggrandising big baby of the zodiac.
This placement puts his growth zone in the opposite sign of Leo, that being Aquarius and to add spice to this, the Universe decided to have Musk’s Mars placement conjunct his North Node too, a fact I immediately attribute to Musk’s obsession with conquering and exploiting the planet Mars (as we know, the North Node is a point of excessive growth and obsession). Furthermore, Musk’s Midheaven is in Aries, a sign ruled by Mars, and another sign of how the public perceives him: as a pioneer, as a brave and bold guy who takes risks and chances, as someone who fucks around a lot and has a lot of children (even if he is trying to intellectualize his lusty appetite by saying he is helping to repopulate the planet; I attribute his high libido and pleasure in procreating to his natal Jupiter in Scorpio conjunct Neptune in Sagittarius in the 5th house, the house of fun and children). As we see that his Midheaven is conjunct Chiron, the Wounded Healer, there is tinge of woundedness and super-sensitivity that makes him come across as a man who is more vulnerable than we would like, a leader who suffers and is not necessarily physically ill but in terms of the fragility of his Ego, since as we know Aries rules the Ego and the Self. Ideally, he would learn from life’s challenges and spread wisdom to the masses, a wisdom that can be deeply healing and inspiring. I mean he does have the power and the platform to do so; however seeing as his internal astrological chemistry contains so much Air (North Node and Mars in Aquarius, Gemini Venus and Saturn, Uranus and Lilith in Libra), he seems to be taking a superficial and technological approach to how he is handling his Chiron and therefore misses the chance for true emotional growth through processing the real pain of feeling less worthy than other men around him.
As Musk has been experiencing his Chiron return since 2018 and has been having the transit of Jupiter and then the North Node moving across his highly visible 10th house and the Midheaven in the last 3 years, more of this under-utilised and misinterpreted Chirotic energy made itself know to the public. It will be fascinating to see how the public’s perception of Musk (already at a considerable low) will change in the next two years and a half as Saturn and Neptune will enter Aries and begin affecting his professional legacy, as it will bring up some more of his deeply painful Chirotic energy to the surface.
I think the interesting aspect to Musk is that he tends to make a likeable supervillain, one who can be cool and down with the kids, goofing around, acting nerdy and speaking in boyish and charming ways that put a comic intent on most of his affirmations; affirmations that have the potential to considerably change the course of the stock market. A powerful man who wants to look like the eternal cool teenager, the nerd who outsmarted them all and built a technological empire and is now impregnating the world to preserve the human race. Allegedly 🙂 I attribute all these qualities to what I consider to be the key to his sudden rise to success and maybe even the reason to his future downfall: his Venus in Gemini loosely conjunct Saturn in the 11th house.
Let’s have a brief look over Donald Trump’s chart now:
So Trump was born as a Sun in Gemini in the 10th house conjunct the North Node & Uranus, two aspects which make him highly volatile and unpredictable! He has a Moon in Sagittarius conjunct the South Node and Lilith and sitting opposite the Sun, which means that he was born during a Full Moon and he is someone who is lucky with partnerships and needs to be in a stable and long-term connection because he is quite inter-dependent. His Moon sits in the 4th house the place of roots, family, nation – a nationalistic house, so I don’t doubt him when he says he is a patriot. He has an Ascendant in Leo (conjunct Mars in the 12th house & loosely conjunct Pluto, cause he’s a Boomer). The current transit of Jupiter in Gemini is harmoniously helping him with being seen in a positive, funny and helpful light, but this transit is frustrating his Saturn, Venus and Mercury. Nonetheless the current transit of Saturn in Pisces is supporting his inner planets especially that Venus in Cancer conjunct Saturn in Cancer in the 11th house (conjunct Venus almost perfectly and loosely conjunct Mercury). Trump has Neptun conjunct Jupiter in Libra so people born with a Sun in Libra, like his daughter Ivanka, in a weird way make him happy and bring him prestige and good luck. He also has the 7th house in Aquarius and the generation born with the Uranus, Neptune in Aqua combo may idealise him (1998 – 2003).
But let’s return to his Venus conjunction to Saturn in the shy and sensitive sign of Cancer and compare it to Musk’s Venus conjunction to Saturn in the brainy and speedy sign of Gemini. In her book on Saturn, Liz Green describes Venus-Saturn contacts in synastry as:
This is the aspect par excellence of emotional rejection, and it is a difficult one to deal with unless it is taken as an opportunity to discover whether any reality lies behind the projections of the relationship. We know that Venus is the chief significator or symbol of affection, love and harmony, and the urge for companionship. As a reflection of the individual’s capacity to relate to others, Venus expresses with charm, grace and ease those qualities which Saturn cannot freely demonstrate. She will also often suggest a sense of taste and refinement in those areas where Saturn finds himself clumsy, inept, inhibited and cramped. Venus is the eternal lover and the eternal youth and this can very naturally upset Saturn, who may have a tendency to react with jealousy, possessiveness, suspicion, and a feeling of unattractiveness or social ineptness. But it seems to be an empiric fact that Venus-Saturn contacts, whether they appear on a natal chart or in the comparison of charts, have the tendency to bring first, great unhappiness of a peculiarly personal kind and second, great opportunity for the establishment of an honest relationship – something which is rarely seen. A relationship may occur out of expediency, out of a need for financial security, or a general loneliness. It may also occur because an additional responsibility such as a child makes it impossible to consider any alternative situation. Some relationships occur under family pressure or for religious or moral reasons. Often Venus-Saturn contacts will be seen in these situations, for the other side of this tie is the duty-over-love side, and it will frequently occur in relation to money. There is frequently a tie of financial obligation involved with Venus-Saturn contacts which binds two people long after the affection has ceased to exist.
In my experience, I noticed that it was usually people who were single for a very long time who sought my astrological services and had this Venus-Saturn aspect in their chart. Saturn tends to freeze or dry up whatever it sits near to and when it embraces Venus to such a close degree, it tends to dry up a person’s love life and personal love energy; in this context, giving and receiving love tends to be an awkward process, filled with blocks and inhibitions that lead to romantic rejection and disappointment. Both Trump and Musk have this aspect which would explain why they are so weird and gauche with women, benefiting from either the attention of a lot of low-vibrational women and lewd liaisons that end up harming their reputation or coupling with high-vibrational, intelligent and beautiful women who they don’t know how to treat, appreciate and respect, so those connections end up in painful and public separations. Venus-Saturn doesn’t only affect in a negative way the way they love others, but also the love and respect they show themselves which is relatively low in both cases: Musk is known for skipping sleep or sleeping on the floor of his work office in an effort to show how committed he is to his innovative work, while Trump is a big lover of junk food and has shamelessly admitted to this several times. Eating poorly, not getting enough sleep, not valuing the way they look or dress not only changes their brain chemistry for the worse and gets them to declare stupid things in the press but it has ripple consequences on the way in which others perceive them; both Musk and Trump seem to think that only money and power will grant them the respect they would normally achieve by simply taking better care of their bodies and their health and feeling through reality in a more sensual and present way. Paying closer attention to details, slowly, carefully and patiently working through their duties rather than simply winging things all the time and declaring themselves geniuses for how fast and decisive they work, may help them both to improve a lot of ongoing issues in their lives and reduce personal and public dramas.
Sue Tompkins, reflecting on the Venus-Saturn aspect in the book by the same name, describes this energy as:
For some reason, it seems that those with Venus-Saturn contacts come into the world feeling unloved. For many, it takes years for the penny to drop that the issue is really self-valuation. Before that realization dawns, Venus-Saturn people tend to believe, though not always consciously, that it is others that don’t care, others that don’t love them. Saturn will always delay the development of whatever planetary principle it touches, and for Venus-Saturn types it takes time for the individual to learn about giving and receiving – and especially giving and receiving with no strings attached (…) these types almost expect rejection and are very sensitive to, nay listen out for, any clues which might herald the fact that the other person’s love has waned. And the constant demand for proof of affection and for the other person to continually define their feelings often does put a considerable strain on the relationships as does the continual saying of ‘I’m sorry’ which is often very much a Venus-Saturn phrase. Venus-Saturn men often find themselves doing all the loving of seemingly cold women. The Venus-Saturn person often attempts to make themselves indispensable to their loved ones and especially ever willing to give of their time or their money and this is how Venus-Saturn controls the relationship. The issue of love and time is often a very big one with Venus-Saturn. You can tell that a Venus-Saturn person cares for you if they are prepared to give you their time and similarly, they use the time-factor as a yardstick of your affection. Lack of time and subsequent denial of affection was often an issue in childhood. Issues of denial of love, control and love, and love and punishment are also pertinent here. At worst the person builds a wall around themselves and wails because nobody loves them. Saturn always give endurance and thus the Venus-Saturn person can describe the one who holds on through thick and thin and through doing so, really does make a relationship work, really does learn to give and take. People with these contacts do better after the initial attraction and illusion has worn off.
Seeing as Trump is about to begin his second term as president, and his relationship to the USA has ripened, it may very well be that trying again could work in his favour this time. Although this may make sense emotionally, from a logical point of view I still wonder why Americans have given their vote of confidence to a man who went bankrupt thrice in his career and they expect such an individual to rescue their economy? It’s like getting your stylist to take care of your taxes or hiring an illiterate person to read you bed time stories. Nonetheless, it is important to keep in mind that the president won’t fulfill his duties alone and that there are other powerful men sitting in the shadows and guiding Trump towards making the decisions that need to be taken, and I attribute this love for his flexibility to why he has won the second term in the first place. His Venus-Saturn contact shows that because of inherent father issues and feeling unloved at a deep level, he will continue to bend over backwards to please the men in his life, no matter how outwardly confrontational he may come across when talking to them (don’t be fooled by that Mars in Leo on the Ascendant, who is all roar but no bite). And an example of this is getting Musk to rule alongside him by conferring him the power to organise the Department of Government Efficiency, a right-wing sounding branch of the future Trump administration.
Voices in the world of journalism say that the bromance between these two Venus-afflicted men will not last long, but my opinion is that as long as they both continue to make decisions that profit them, and continue to raise their assets and investments, then there would be no logical reason for why they should call it quits. In the absence of love, both these men will continue to fill the voids in their hearts with the comforting zing of green dollar bills, and spread similar materialistic values into the society, poisoning it from within. One of the reasons, why we have reached this point may very well be that with their powerful and low-vibrational Venus-Saturn contacts they are simply mirroring the unconscious projections of society at large gone wrong, in these brave two thousand twenties times. As ‘beacons of light’ in a cold, cruel and loveless world, both Trump and Musk blare out from our screens with messages of progress and finding all the comfort you need in making money, because if you think that people won’t love you, the heavy-handed arm of capitalism will always make you believe that at least you are just as worthy as the things that you purchase.
Hello, welcome to 2025 friends! I’m sick with the flu, lying in bed trying to get some rest, but I’m also restless. I have so many ideas that my mind finds it hard to fall into some deep sleep. I keep falling asleep for about an hour and a half and then waking up to do astrological research. This is because I can feel the energy of this year and it will be a pretty glorious one on many levels, both seen and unseen, but especially in terms of the planetary astrological transits we will be collectively experiencing. First of all, we entered the year with a Mars retrograde and will continue in March with a Venus retrograde in its exaltation and superimposed on a Mercury retrograde. Retrogrades are times of realignment but they are also times of sensitivity and emotionality, as logic tends to take a backseat for a while. March will also bring with it eclipse season, another reason-blocking period, so be careful what you schedule for that month as many plans could go awry in the last minute. But before March we have super-hot January, made so by the closeness of Mars retrograde in Cancer to the Earth on the 12th of January, and a mere two days after the nodes of the Moon will have shifted into Virgo and Pisces, changing the themes of our collective desires and obsessions; I am so happy to leave behind the North Node in Aries as masculinity was taken to extremes and armed conflicts and violence and hatred against women has been so intense in the last 18 months. February will be quite lovely and quite slow and sweet, almost as if we are entering a really comforting bumper zone right before we are pushed into the chaotic and flowing action of March. If you want to understand how March will play out just reflect on what went down in your life in the last week of November and first week of December of 2024, as the themes will repeat.
The highlights of the second month of the year will be the lunar occultation of Saturn in Pisces on February 1st, the Moon at perigee on the 2nd (perigee meaning closest to the Earth), Jupiter going direct in Gemini on the 4th (which is always a lucky day, so mark that in your calendar), and then Mars going direct on the 24th of February. The most beautiful aspects is given by Venus, who plays a star role this year, as she will shine at her brightest in the night sky in between the 10th and 16th of February. Valentine’s Day will be quite special and karmic this year, as Venus is also wrapped up in her closeness to Saturn and Neptune so basically the love you give is the love you will receive; but schedule a lovely trip or getaway, a pampering treatment or make something nice to eat and even share it with others, as Venus in Pisces is altruistic and loves sharing gifts, making donations and giving comforting hugs to those in need.
I also feel that with the combined efforts of Venus being exalted and remaining in Pisces up until April and with the Moon making so many aspects to Saturn and Mars and literally standing in between them and the Earth during its growing phases, that a wave of softness is coming over the collective, marking for a hopeful closure to the violence, hatred, selfishness and restlessness that has marked the previous years. The Moon will also occult Antares, several times in Winter and Spring of 2025, and it being the brightest star in the constellation of Scorpio, you can expect some intense and deep feelings to rise up to the surface of our lives. The best way to harness their energy is to put them into creative work, because this is the year when individual, creative and imaginative efforts done solo will sky-rocket your career if you put a lot of heart into them and you dare to do something different and to challenge people’s habits. The collective mood will be quite dark, grunge and modest but also incredibly sexy and romantic at the same time (like a 90s rock music video playing on MTV late at night). This is also because Lilith, the Wild Feminine will also switch signs from Libra and into Scorpio on the 28th of March.
As the rings of Saturn will be at their thinnest that they have been in 14 years and as the Earth is closest to the Sun this year (in combination with the Sun’s barely decreasing solar maximum from last year’s peak), we will begin to experience less restrictions and become more emotional. Expect some epic warm showers this spring and summer as well. In addition, there may be more public outpourings of emotion involving music, dancing, peak religious and spiritual experiences and chants of free love. The social situation of the poor, the environmentally afflicted, the outcasts will continue to feel tense or blocked by the clutches of the past up until the end of March, when Neptune will enter Aries, and then momentum will begin building up as Saturn will enter Aries on the 26th of May. Slightly edgy but also pretty fun, June will be tense up until July swoops in and brings with it the movement of Uranus from Taurus and into Gemini. This will be a sky lit up with Fire and Air signs energy, after so many years of Earth and Water signs dominating the sky! You could call the summer, a period of a return of reason and illumination. Ideas will flow to us with more ease and communication will be prioritized above action. At the same time, the best Water energies which will remain will be the romantic and heartfelt dance that Jupiter in its Cancerian exaltation will make with the North Node in Pisces (finally released in the summer from the clutches of Saturn!). July will certainly be an excellent month to launch artistic projects, get married, fall in love or procreate. The downside will be that as Saturn and Neptune will be in a loose square to Jupiter in Cancer there may be issues of homeland security, displaced homes and mass migration that will have to be dealt with.
The friendly energies between Uranus in Gemini, Pluto in Aquarius, Saturn and Neptune in Aries will light up our July and August, ushering in a completely different mood of courage, action, intensified speech and passionate commitments. The energies will calm down and fall back into the moody darkness towards Autumn, as September will come with its retrogrades and eclipses, pulling us one final time into a past we will slowly start saying goodbye to. Seeing as we have so many planets in two highly emotional and impulsive signs (Pisces and Aries), and that the Moon and Venus are doing a lot of work this year, as Saturn will also be in an uncomfortable Martian energy and Neptune in a weird semi-sextile to its domicile placement, this year will be emotional in both the worse manifestations of this word and its highest. Personally, it may seem weird but I’m looking forward to feel more freely and to cry again, as Saturn in Pisces has ‘iced’ me out in recent years and it was so hard for me to release toxins through crying. Crying brings relief to the body; it cleanses the eyes and disburdens the soul. Asking for forgiveness can also repair relationships that were once broken and filled with enmity. All these beautiful manifestations of Piscean energy, softened as they are by Venus in the first part of the year, means that we can fix and repair what we destroyed because of pride and ego in previous months. A softly assertive approach will get you the desired results rather than a fearful or strongly aggressive approach. As the saying goes you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Saturn in Aries will get us to face our fears of each other and ram our heads into the unknown with confidence and a sense of adventure, while the North Node in Pisces will bring about some softness, some sweetness and a spiritual approach to the outcomes of each individual act of killing fear. It’s truly the year in which we can embody that old saying ‘make love and not war’, as long as we stay true to our hearts.
Controversial opinion but I need to tell you that I haven’t seen Wicked yet and I don’t think I will watch it. The main reason I am writing this article is because I noticed some interesting details about the astrology of the co-stars. As a general note, I don’t like musicals or big productions. The more hyped a movie is, the less likely I am to watch it. It seems the opposite works better for my personal psychology: the more obscure something is the more likely I am to watch it. I think the only exception to this rule is if someone in the cast is really hot (ex. Kraven, the Hunter) or if the musical is the one made by Jacques Demi in 1967, called The Young Girls of Rochefort. I saw this French film this year in June, after I quit my awful corporate job and had a glass of prosecco, so I admit that the alcohol and the summer weather contributed a lot to my enjoyment of the musical (hey, I’m human, ok?). One thing that struck me hard, as I was watching the blonde Catherine Deneuve singing together with her brown-haired sister, Francoise Dorleac, was a song in that musical which mentioned astrology. In the movie the girls sing: “Nous sommes deux soeurs jumelles / Nées sous le signe des gémeaux” translated as “We are twin sisters, born under the sign of Gemini”, and they do it in such a fun and catchy way that the song sticks to your ears, promising to never let go.
In the following, and playing upon this twin-like theme, I would like to show how Jupiter in Gemini also benefited the cast of Wicked, specifically the leading actresses Ariana Grande and Cythia Erivo. I argue that it wasn’t their individual identities but their combined talent and their on-screen partnership, an unlikely marriage of contrasts, that catapulted them to global fame, in this specific period of time. As partnerships of any kind fall under the dominion of two Air signs in astrology, Gemini and Libra, the transit of Jupiter (the Great Benefic) to any one of these signs, is bound to bring a pairing to sudden fame. To be fortunately linked to another, to cooperate, to negotiate, to blend contradictions in a fun and open-minded way are all qualities of a Jupiter in Gemini transit. To expand on this, here’s how Stephen Arroyo in his book “Exploring Jupiter: The Astrological Key to Progress, Prosperity and Potential” describes the Jupiter in Gemini energy:
“Although traditional astrology designates Jupiter in Gemini as being in “detriment”, since it is in a sign opposite one that it rules (Sagittarius), generations of readers can only be grateful that some people are able to tell fantastic stories with a myriad of details that yet impart larger meanings. At best, Jupiter in Gemini can weave a large-scale creation through correlating many diverse details and facts. One example would be Charles Dickens, whose novels were originally published in serial form in newspapers. His writings had a major impact on public enthusiasm for social reform (…) Those with Jupiter in Gemini don’t generally consider that they are taking any risk in their intellectual endeavours, but certainly many of these people readily take risks in frank communication and in exploring ideas that are not generally considered conventional. There is an innate openness to the new and an endless curiosity. At worst, they are unfocused and have no discrimination about ideas or people. Yet, they remain constantly busy (…) In virtually all people who have Jupiter in Gemini, mental exploration and growth is a key to their self-improvement agenda.” (p. 123-125)
A sign of cleverness and ingenuity, but also a sign that showcases an exaggeration of ideas to the point that they may get lost inside the stories they tell, the transit of Jupiter into the sign of Gemini brings about a flurry of contradictory information, as well as putting the spotlight on famous pairings. One such pairing is seen in all the movie posters promoting ‘Wicked’, and the fact that it took so long for this movie to finally be adapted to the screen and released during such a transit is nothing short of cosmic timing and divine symmetry. Moving on now, to the analysis of two actresses’ natal charts.
Cynthia Erivo is a Sun in Capricorn tightly conjunct Mercury and Neptune, and she has a natal Moon in Taurus (an exalted placement). Her Jupiter is in Pisces and loosely conjunct her Mars (placed at the 29th anaretic degree), while her Venus is loosely conjunct Saturn (a sign of misfortune for women) and also the shocking and unpredictable planet Uranus. I can see that for Cynthia, feeling loved and valued at her true worth has been her lifelong karmic struggle, as well the fact that her relationships to women especially tend to be sudden, short-lived and transactional. Cynthia was born to stand out and become a leader and a fighter, as her destiny is marked by the North Node in Aries/South Node in Libra axis. Unfortunately, we do not have any credible data related to her Ascendant so we are missing the placement of these planets into specific astrological houses. I would guess she has an Aquarius Ascendant as her sense of style is wacky and avant-gardist, she comes across as literate and outspoken and after years of effort she spontaneously burst into global fame due to her role as a green witch in a musical called Wicked (we see here a lot of unique, outsider energy, hence why I believe Uranus may be her chart ruler); either that or a Gemini Ascendant, placing Lilith right in the most visible area of her chart.
The most important aspects present in her chart are: the almost perfect opposition the Moon is making to her Pluto (indicating emotional strength and also having been raised by a domineering mother who had little time for her needs), and her Mars being challenged by Neptune and Uranus (and as Saturn gets closer to her Piscean Mars, she tends to have public outburst of rage, like the one related to the editing of the Wicked poster by a fan). On a more positive note she has a beautiful trine between her Neptune in Capricorn and her Moon in Taurus ensuring that she is able to bring to film the wealth of her balanced emotions and deep sensuality, and also some sextiles between her Capricorn stellium and Pluto in Scorpio and her Jupiter conjunct Mars in Pisces (the combo of a champion, a fearless soldier who always win in any competition).
Ariana Grande is a Sun in Cancer loosely conjunct Mercury and placed in the service-prone 6th house (this is also known as the house of the witch, healing herbs and potions and diseases in ancient astrology). Her Ascendant is in Capricorn, which is usually a marker of ugliness in someone’s chart and a struggle to look good (RBFs were popularised by people with this placement), but it is conjunct stylish Uranus and dreamy Neptune, a combination which makes her seem reliable, dreamily attractive and shockingly confusing at the same time. Her Mars is in workaholic Virgo while her Venus is in Taurus (an Earthy domicile placement). Despite her watery and emotive Cancerian Sun, Ariana is a tough business woman on the inside, seeing as she has such strong, pragmatic Earth placements. What really catches my eye is her Saturn in Pisces at 0 degrees, loosely conjunct Lilith and placed in the 2nd house (as a sidenote, she shares this placement of Saturn by house but not by sign, with Taylor Swift). This means that with Wicked we are witnessing Ariana’s Saturn return (a point she is aware of since she named a song on her latest album Saturn return). Therefore, we are collectively witnessing and enjoying the reward of Saturn’s pressure to get Ariana to sign, dance and behave like a witchy fairy for the last 2 years and a half.
So when both women cry in interviews, I believe those tears are real, because anyone born with a Sun in Capricorn and someone who survived their first Saturn return and have accomplished their dream, know the hardships, fears and pressure they had to endure in the process of attaining Saturnian perfection. We also had the whole Ethan Slater scandal, which I attribute to her natal Lilith in Pisces being activated by both transiting Neptune and Saturn. By the by, Ethan is a Sun in Gemini so he is also enjoying some increased notoriety & exposure at the moment through his partnership with Ariana. As we know, Lilith is the infamous other woman trope, the destroyer of marriages everywhere, when used for personal romantic goals and not harnessed to become an industry mogul and walk over your competitors’ heads. Lilith is ruthless, and Ariana carries this energy inside of her, no matter how many soft pink dresses she will wear to fool us all. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that as soon as her promo duties for Wicked will end, so will her love affair with Ethan; it feels to me like Ariana needed a Broadway boyfriend to promote her part in a musical – you know, a callous matchy-matchy aesthetic. I sound so jaded, gah 🙂
To be fair, even if I don’t like her at all as an artist or woman, I think she is acing her Saturn return, as the effort put into Wicked is eerily visible (almost leading fans to speculate she has been having Ozempic and is dangerously thin). So I do respect her work ethic and how she relentlessly goes for the gold, which is something that I feel every North Node in Sagittarius person will intuitively be drawn towards, the act of winning and making a fortune. I personally think that as soon as Saturn hits Aries and her 3rd house, she may retreat from the public for a while and put on some healthy weight, as the pressure will now move away from her body (the 2nd house) and enter her communications area (the 3rd house). Either that or she will need some epic PR damage control for some of the controversial remarks she will make.
Coming back to her natal placements, I can see that she has Pluto in Scorpio retrograde in the 10th house and loosely conjunct her Midheaven. A placement which would whole-heartedly justify why she is perceived as controversially changing her appearance and consequently her race to suit her latest releases. She is nonetheless greatly helped in her chart by her Moon in Libra conjunct Jupiter and her North Node in Sagittarius, ensuring that while she may occasionally make a lot of mistakes she will continue to grow in her fame and remain likeable and popular (because of good luck and that Saturn keeping her a consumate professional in her work).
Coming back to their synastry, it’s important to mention a couple of details that have changed the game for me when I found out their star-signs. I think we are witnessing a game of contrasts, benefic to the career of both actresses. This favourable energy is brought to them by transiting Jupiter in Gemini, assuring them good luck, popularity and an increase in wealth through duality and partnership. Firstly, Cynthia is a Sun in Capricorn and Ariana is a Sun in Cancer, so they are exact opposites in terms of their solar astrology. Secondly, because of the obvious racial difference: Cythia is Black and Ariana is White. Thirsdly, and perhaps unimaginatively, Ariana played Glinda, the Good Witch of the South (why did it have to be a white woman though?) and Cynthia played Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West (all those www’s – Elphaba’s job is like the coded equivalent to the Internet, jeez). I guess that by now you can see how Jupiter in Gemini is underlining these optical differences in the promotional tour of Wicked. In addition, there are some past life links between the two actresses/singers, as we can see Cynthia’s South Node in Libra in a conjunction to Ariana’s Moon conjunct Jupiter in Libra, and Cynthia’s Saturn in Sagittarius conjunct Ariana’s North Node. This means that in a past life they may have had a teacher-disciple dynamic, with Ariana supplying the role of a mother figure or sister to Cynthia, or in another potential scenario: Cynthia being the father-figure or older brother to Ariana.
There is a karmic kingship between these two women and Jupiter in Gemini is now making it more obvious and publicly known; as you know, Jupiter is the worst secret-keeper of the zodiac, as it is constantly bringing up the truth to the surface (so never believe a Sagittarian that tells you ‘It’s between you and me’). I think I’ll end this article here, and in true Mercurian style, I want to pass the baton to you: Have you seen Wicked? Did you like it? Why or why not? Let me know in the comments below.
The Spiritual Social 