Reframing Aquarius: How the Cool and Detached Offer Us Love

I want to disclaim, before you jump in, that Love in this write-up and in my opinion, is not a feat of romantic heroism or distilled in ambiguous twin-flame theory. It is not a Drew Barrymore rom-com or an episode of The Bachelor. The Love I speak of here transcends the human trappings of performance, expectation, and desperation. The Love I speak of here, the Aquarius Love, is dispassionate, impersonal, and vastly encompassing. It is a validation of humanity, in all its forms. It is the simple act of non-judgement and fundamental acceptance, that allows the human spirit space to breathe and be. That is my Love.

I want to disclaim, also, that this write-up is about the archetype of Aquarius, what exists in the ether independent of human form. I write from my personal brand of Mercury conjunct Neptune magic. Therefore, this is not necessarily about your Aquarius Sun mother, or your Aquarius Venus crush, or about historical figures of Aquarian nature and lore. It is about energy. What human beings do with that energy sprouts a myriad of potential. Below is one of those potentials.

Like Capricorn and Christmas, Aquarius and Valentine’s Day seem to be fundamentally at odds. Where the serious Saturn-ruled earth sign seems incongruous to merrymaking, so does the Saturn-ruled air sign seem an out-of-place home for one of the more romantic days of the year. If pop Astrology had its way, Aquarius would remain inextricably associated with stereotypes of distance and detachment. While those descriptors are certainly relevant, they are not the end of the story.  You may find Taurus or Libra more fitting for Valentine’s Day, where the planet of love and romance is home. Or Pisces, where the planet of love and romance is exalted. Perhaps even Leo, where bouquets of red and pink balloons and Leo-ruled heart-shaped boxes of candy proudly boast and roar: love!  But in removing the superficial layers that surround the misunderstood Aquarius, we can come to understand why Cupid’s foray through this cerebral sign is no accident, and rather points us towards a more fitting, yet shocking, conclusion: that the Aquarius love is deep and endless, that the Aquarian heart throbs with an alien passion. If this shocks you, good. Aquarius can enjoy a revolution, a subversion, a brain-fuck. And so may this revolution set Aquarius free from misinformation, and set ablaze a different way of thinking. If you choose to want to think it, that is—Aquarius doesn’t care!

Where Taurus makes love physical, Libra makes love delightful and Pisces makes love dreamy or transcendent—Aquarius makes love ideal. In any working definition of the word romance, “idealized love” makes a literal or alluded appearance. It could be said, then, that from Aquarius, the idea of love is born, even if not practiced. And from ideas, all things sprout. This isn’t altogether odd. Aquarius deals with intellect and logic. And ruled by Saturn, striving towards lasting standards of excellence and fairness, signposts of anything ideal, lines up with what we know about the archetype. In potentializing love to an ideal place, the Aquarius Love comes with a bigger heart and bigger mission. As a human sign, Aquarius is not particular about love— who deserves it, who is giving it, why it went away, when it’ll come, how it looks, etc. With the power of scope and objectivity, Aquarius Love transcends physical limitations and instead becomes a universal concept under which all of humankind can shelter. And what could be more loving than the unrelenting acceptance Aquarius offers? And so where things aren’t sensual or material or comfortable enough for Taurus, where things aren’t refined or classic enough for Libra, or magical and hypnotizing enough for Pisces—Aquarius asks no price of admission, for love to them remains priceless, a public good to be doled out and shared not on pretense, but on brotherhood. It is Aquarius’s diligent eye on humankind and fraternity that expands the concept of love: come one, come all, and come as you are.

Saint Valentine of Rome, whose written account has come to serve as an historical template for the inception of Valentine’s Day, acted out these Aquarian ideals. He performed weddings for those forbidden to marry and when sent to jail, healed his jailer’s daughter of blindness. Afterwards and right before he was due to be executed, he sent a letter to the jailer’s daughter, and signed it, your Valentine. Saint Valentine of Rome was also said to give out paper hearts while ministering to people about God’s love (an impersonal Aquarius resonance, equality under an all-seeing eye), and a direct line can be drawn from this action to the Valentine’s Day decorations we see today. In this brief recounting, we meet two Aquarian archetypes, the former more recognizable than the latter: rebellion and compassion. A human thing to do despite the laws of the time, Saint Valentine, though perhaps not an Aquarius himself, extolled all of the best, yet often ignored tenets of the sign—the push towards equality, that all deserve to have their love legitimized and recognized, endless openness to the human condition, and the Love with a capital L that drives one to such measures. Questionable religious ideology aside, Valentine lived and died on one principal: that love, in all its myriad of incarnated forms, in all of its ceremonials, is for all. That the Sun was travailing through Aquarius as the framework for our modern conception of Valentine’s Day was underway can be no coincidence. All of Astrology bears correspondence to human events, even if they remain obscured or misunderstood for a time.

In Ancient Greece, Aquarius season coincided with Gamelion, the month of marriage. Two festivals occurred then, roughly translated to Sacred Wedding and Divine Wedding. These festivals celebrated the union of Zeus and Hera. In Roman texts, Hera was known as Juno, the goddess of marriage. If Juno sounds familiar, it is because an asteroid was named after her and has come to represent what is looked for in marriage and commitment. Modern natal chart calculators can show where Juno is in the sky for an individual, and can points towards the characteristics of a most suitable long-term partner. So what is it about Aquarius that corresponds to this cultivation of lasting love and marriage? Look to the element and modality: fixed air. Like any fixed sign, Aquarius holds on tight and when best expressed can exalt the virtues of fidelity. Of course, any ideal marriage or partnership needs this brand of loyalty and perseverance. Though much is said about the Aquarius need for space, even the Aquarius need for isolation, it cannot be overlooked that when in intimate partnership, Aquarius is one of the more steadfast partners, seeking not for frivolous union, but for deep connection. But the elemental nature of Aquarius sets it apart from the rest of the fixed family. It can be said that inherent to Aquarius symbolism are two life-sustaining elements: air, and water, as Aquarius is the water-bearer, often mistaken by novices as a water sign. Let me poetically pontificate: no living being can do without air or water. And so the Aquarian love is life-sustaining, from which all bounty and blessings grow, from which all beings benefit. It is the grandeur of this concept that gives Aquarius its aloof quality—their Love is so universal and welcoming that to the casual observer, it appears impersonal. But it is precisely the scope of Aquarius Love that makes it so palpable, an equally matched breadth and depth. Where fixed Taurus can become materialistic, fixed Leo can become self-aggrandizing, and fixed Scorpio can brood and become paranoid, no more fixed is Aquarius than the air it represents: ubiquitous, self-sustaining, stretched over distance yet deeply intimate, as oxygen and the connectivity of breath is shared by all. Co-dependency has long reigned as a romantic model of love, clinginess and self-dissolution perversely used as measures of affection. Psychology has now caught up and identified this proclivity as self-sabotaging and maladaptive. The Aquarius model of live and let live in relationship can appear threatening to the osmosis some wish to experience, or expect to experience. But it offers us a great chance at healthy love—as when air is squelched out of the equation, breathing becomes labored, and the life of the relationship is threatened. When inserted in mutually consented amounts, air allows for space, wherein two individuals (or more, *wink*) can fully stretch out into their identity, their lived experience, always feeling supported, but never entrapped. That is what Aquarius can offer—a Love given the air to float, fly, and flex.

In a sense, and as alluded to above, Aquarius love can be cerebral. But all things start first with thought. The belief of a thing creates the experience of a thing. So for Aquarius to hold you in their minds with love and affection is to tap into a potent creative energy, one that serves as the basis for all emotion and action. And because these ideas are fixed, good luck changing the Aquarian mind. Once loved, always loved. For Aquarius, the idea of love for a person, up close or from afar, is to render that love timeless and shapeless, graduated out the physical dimensions of gift-giving, face-time and attention, and into an ethereal experience. Aquarius is associated with personal freedom and independence. Aquarius gives Love the freedom to expand, to individuate, untethered by expectation or precedent.

Aquarius is traditionally ruled by Saturn. There is, then, a resonance with Aquarius and Saturn’s sign of exaltation—Libra. They trine one another, and share a common Saturnian DNA. Libra, in some ways, is the sign of marriage, one-on-one partnership, diplomacy, and fairness. Therefore, there is an invisible but what I find a personally noteworthy through-line and resonance connecting the idea of peaceful partnership to the Aquarius archetype. With this link, Saturn, and by virtue, Aquarius, can delight when relationships become stable and enduring, planting fertile ground for love to blossom perennially, even after the cold and dry winters.

In sum, I invite you to reconsider what you’ve heard about Aquarius. Leave room for the wondrous ways in which this sign offers us love, and hold space for a history that can corroborate it symbolically. Remember that as the water bearer, Aquarius has within it wells of untapped emotional capacity. Only, unlike any other sign, Aquarius shoulders these emotional conditions with impenetrable strength and understanding, turning them into nutrient, tilling human soil, watering it with compassion. In this alchemical process, all human experience, the sordid and splendid, meet their highest resolution in the arms of Aquarius. It is this level of belonging, of feeling seen and heard, that allows unbridled love to flow. It could be that the Aquarius tendency for distance and austerity is merely erected as a means of protection. That the love they feel for others must somehow be contained behind a wall, less it completely overwhelm them, less their waters drown the world. But do not be mistaken—beyond the ideas of coldness and detachment lies a soft, loving center. A sweetness disguised, but always alive.

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

-William Shakespeare

The Great Conjunction (Saturn + Jupiter) through the Houses + Affirmations for December 21st (and beyond).

Saturn and Jupiter meet up in the sky approximately every 20 years. The Great Chronocator, the Markers of Time, Saturn and Jupiter conjunct represent a societal changing of the guard. The last Great Conjunction was in the year 2000 in the sign of Taurus at 22 degrees, and symbolically marked a 20-year period of enhanced focus on the world economy, conglomeration of banks and corporations, making money and achieving material stability. Jupiter and Saturn have teamed up in earth signs for the last 200 years and will enter a 200-year period of meeting up in air signs. In earth, worth was/is derived quite literally from earth via agriculture, oil, coal. Taking base metal and materials and turning them into vehicles and buildings. Humanity has been in a cycle of material building, even in smaller ways like the establishment of the eight-hour work week, labor unions, law and policy around financial reform and regulation. This is all earth—the slow plod to structure a society, to structure things, plan around wealth and resource, work and reorganize, and fundamentally move in practical ways that produce tangible results. Caste, class, color, order, tradition and hierarchy are also tenets of earth, as they also aim to structure. This theme of taking from the earth and making from the earth has left us in dire straits: our trigger-haired economy, deteriorating environments and ecosystems. Demoralizing and high-stress work environments all for the check. Hustle culture. With a conjunction in the air sign of Aquarius we will (and already have) begin to see a society moving towards humanitarian causes, towards diversity of thought and idea, towards focus on fraternity, toward freedom and independence, and structure derived from a more high-minded and considered place. The demolishing and rebuilding of industries and practices that currently disenfranchise. The move towards electronic (think: solar panels, Tesla) and wind energy is a manifestation of Aquarius. So is telework, the 4-day workweek and other work/life emancipations. And with Uranus currently in the sign of Taurus, a symbolic resonance is occurring cosmically: how we value and what we value is being revolutionized, decentralized, and radicalized.

Anyway, all this high-level poetic stuff is interesting, but what does this great conjunction mean for you? The archetype of Jupiter is expansion, ease, opportunity. The road of least resistance. The archetype of Saturn is restriction, challenge, hard work. The road of most resistance. When these two planets form a conjunction two things can happen: One, Jupiter allows you to exploit and expand within given Saturnian structures and paradigms. Two, Jupiter makes very clear that you must break free of said structures and paradigms. In the former case, Jupiter works under the tutelage of Saturn’s malefic energy by providing some scope and space: you may be a cog in the machine, but you’ll be the best cog ever! And maybe even become your own machine one day. That’s the hope. In the latter case, the machine is worn, torn, broken, and hard to maneuver. It simply doesn’t work anymore but it’s all you know. Jupiter provides a method of escape, like being pulled from a wrecked car with the jaws of life. Either way, you’re making progress. And the foundation of this progress, its tools, lessons, successes and hardships will be a 20-yearlong theme.   

Find the house that the sign of Aquarius occupies for you.

First House: This conjunction marks a pivotal period of identity growth for you. But don’t call it a comeback. Saturn will strip away artifice, introduce you to isolation, pessimism, lack or exhaust. A building under construction often looks bare, haunted, grotesque. We see its bones and are reminded of the painstaking process of fleshing out something correctly, not quickly. Taking a deeper look at your own scaffolding, where it is weak, where it is strong, where it serves, where it doesn’t…is what will make your personal growth a feat worth building, something to admire from afar. With Jupiter around, don’t limit yourself to the familiar blueprints. You can bend a little, you can create anew, you can paint a wall hot pink because it makes you smile. You can abandon old plots of land and start again somewhere else and will likely bump up against opportunities to do so. The selfhood you build, while requiring a hardhat and work boots, while exposing weak drywall and leaks, can also be an exercise in passion, in hope, and in personal accomplishment. You may be under construction, but you are far from over.

I am my eighth world wonder.

Second House: This conjunction presents the opportunity to create a life of true value. In defining the things that make you feel substantial, wealthy in ways that are material and immaterial, you will become sorely aware of the ways you have squandered your value, your worth, even your belongings. Aware of where you hold too close to the chest, where scarcity mindsets make you feel small and play small. Aware also of the mismanagement of what life has entrusted to you. It is fitting that the word currency is synonymous with money, because it hints that behind every transaction is energy. Jupiter can spark this energy, preparing buffets of riches from which you can pick and choose. But the energy behind any all-you-can-eat/spend/do/make is…lack or greed. In the end you are a bloated little thing. Saturn is the wisdom to pick and choose the things that are in alignment with your value systems, that match your energy, that are becoming of what you are becoming. And if necessary, Saturn will pick for you, introducing impossibly tight circumstances that can align you, once and for all, with the things that truly matter.

I am aligned with what truly matters and gives meaning.

Third House: This conjunction is working on your perceptions of the world, the situations that create them, and how you communicate them. Saturn creates a maturation of those little thoughts and events and comings and goings that hammer grooves into your neuropathways. Flits of this and that are to be taken seriously now. To become an expert in anything—a field of study, a creative path, your mind, your voice—is to be regularly tested. Do you know what you think you know? Did you say what you think you said? Your mind is being restructured, and like the first house above, the mental scaffolding laid bare invites in some chilly winds—depression, discouragement, the nagging feeling of stupidity. You are no longer being insulated and comforted by patterned and habitual thought. You need to extend deeper, to say things of integrity and purpose. Jupiter can provide fill between these new structural beams by enlightening you, making higher-minded concepts a function of everyday thinking and processing. Jupiter gives you scope and space, an ability to get out of rote mental functioning and reach for something more inspiring. Jupiter is the gift of neuroplasticity, and with Saturn around, you emerge master of your message.

I am master of my message.

Fourth House: This conjunction is repotting you. To come into the fullest glory of yourself, you need environments that grow as you grow. A plant held hostage to a pot where its roots cannot fully extend is dwarfed in potential. Saturn transiting your fourth house feels like being uprooted, like the ground beneath your feet is shifting. Your home, your family, your tribe—all various pots you hoped could contain your growth may prove cracked, worn, small. The happenings below the surface—your soil, your network of roots—all affect the viability of your bloom. You must tend to any garden with discipline, ready to get dirty, to encounter subterranean critters and pests. The state of your soul, your home, your domestic and private life may call for some uncomfortable pruning or caretaking. That is Saturn. But like any garden, the fruits of your labor are delicious and nutritious. Your foliage becomes wonderous. Small, cracked pots give way to larger and more nurturing environments where you can expand fully into that glory. With Jupiter around, there will be no shortage of beautiful new pots. And the discernment to know where to be planted will prove to be the greatest crop you could grow.

I am blooming into sacred spaces that support my growth.

Fifth House: This conjunction is all about how you show up in the world as your authentic self. You will learn that being able to claim your humanness, and the unique expression therein, will rely upon your ability to become master of craft and character. Superfluous avenues of joy and creation is the domain of Jupiter but painting the town red with abandon belies the depth of color and spectrum you contain, your dimensionality, your light. The energy of Saturn feels antithetical to the fifth house. But in restricting the paths of pleasure you take, in looking upon your work with a critical eye, in forcing humility out of you, Saturn aligns you with true masterpiece, with the complete and utter dedication to create a work of heart that can echo through eons. And there is joy in the process if you allow Jupiter not to just indiscriminately indulge for sake of entertainment, but to bolster the confidence with which you fight against the dying of your light.

My talents, creations, and authenticity light up the world.

Sixth House: This conjunction begins a reckoning with your service to the world and to yourself. Now is the time to lean into work that fulfills you but that also fulfills a social requirement. Does the work that you do get to work on behalf of others? Any fulfilling venture requires a heavy lift. The satisfaction of a job well done never comes from an easy solution, from coasting. You will be asked to roll up your sleeves. The heavy burden of responsibility will be passed off to you like a baton. And how you run with it will determine if you win, and how. Ambition without day-to-day effort is poorly disguised hubris. Jupiter can activate your upward mobility; it can create great pride in what you do, it may improve your station. But only work-ethic will make it stick. The service you offer yourself, how you care for your body, the routines and systems that keep your physical incarnation afloat may hit a Saturnian ice burg. And like the behemoth Titanic itself, Jupiter’s energy can expand upon the unwise ways you commandeer your vessel, but also make available to you the life rafts that can ensure a way out of choppy water.

I am fulfilled and fill my own cup.

Seventh House: This conjunction will feel like a fun house mirror because it will make you question how your relationships show up as gross distortions and reflections, and how that subverts true understanding of another and of yourself. It will make you question the diversions, distractions, and displacement of commitment in your life, where you shrink from it, where others don’t rise to the occasion of it. It will test relationships and your ability to circumvent the maze of mirrors until you land on a reflection, an other, that can see you in full, and reflect you back with some honesty and accuracy. And setting this stage in a metaphorical circus is fitting, as Jupiter transiting the 7th is all about expanded choices and offerings in your relationships, a carnival of connections to be made! It is time, though, to set boundaries, to make realistic and mature evaluations, perhaps to break free from partnerships that have no long-term viability, or to form and bolster ones that truly do. The idea you have of yourself, the respect you hold for yourself, is a direct reflection of the partners you choose. In this circus, place your efforts not on games where you must earn a prize, but on an understanding that you are the prize.

I am committed to the people who are committed to me.

Eighth House: This conjunction will enable you to move more wisely within your entanglements. Where you are jointly bound to another, to a contract, to an entity, to an obligation, to a fear response. You can move into deeper understanding of yourself through intimacy and vulnerability, or you can move deeper into debt. It is time to get serious about how you share yourself, and how others share with you. Where you overextend your precious resources, and where others overextend with you. Maybe it’s even time to see your resources as precious to begin with. Like with the second house, resources, your currency, reflects mundane transactional life but also a deeper felt bond with where you are bound. And that binding can be to your own faults and flaws, to the precarious preciousness of your humanity. Saturn can crack this open, crystalizing where you feel indebted and disquiet, making more complex your relationship to complexity. But with Jupiter, you can inherit: more assets, more forgiveness, and more understanding. Jupiter allows flexibility as you examine these entanglements, allowing greater freedom within the economy of your soul.

I am worth the investment.

Ninth House: This conjunction creates the beginnings of a curriculum that will give your life farer-reaching meaning. In opposition to the third house, here is where you become messiah of your message, elevating its importance by rigorously learning, teaching and expanding it until you are anointed not just with rote knowledge, but wisdom and experience, secure in what you believe. Dedicating yourself to secondary studies, certifications, and immersion in foreignness will expand your vistas in life, your opportunity to make a name for yourself, and to define a path forward. Ask anyone who has been to university—course loads, tests, failures, studying, sleepless nights, successes. But also--celebrations, new people, new mindsets, travel and a maturation of selfhood. It all culminates in the sublime experience of graduation, of crossing over the proverbial line from student to master. Life feels open and vast. Saturn is that exhaust in quest of greater understanding. It is losing sleep pouring over text in the great libraries of life. Jupiter is the joyful expansion into a galaxy-brained orientation, launching you into an endless space of consciousness, of perspectives unknown, wider, and wiser.  

I am always learning and growing.

Tenth House: This conjunction represents a pinnacle of purpose. Your development has risen into the highest part of your chart, where kings and queens are made, where legacy is established, where reputation giveth and taketh. Up until now, if you have felt small and underappreciated, these mammoth energies will introduce to you the burden of success. They will test what you are made of and ask: can you carry the weight of the crown? It is harvest season now, and you must look unflinchingly at the projects you’ve tended to, the work you put in, and deal with a bounty that mirrors it. Will these successes ring hollow? Now is when empires are made, and also when empires fall. With any star turn there is loss—of a small self, of private life, of personal affairs. Responsibility and ambition can be bitter pills if we are ill-prepared. While this conjunction can thrust you into previously unanticipated heights, it can also extend you so far into the world of renown and achievement that you become a caricature of yourself. You may need to reign in how you reign: the world is watching.

I am successful and move with dignity and poise.

Eleventh House: This conjunction plays upon the power of numbers. A singular voice in the world may go unheard, but when it aligns with similarly tuned and trained voices, a choir of camaraderie rings out demanding an audience. Personal ambitions and solo successes are nothing if they can’t rearrange the societies you belong to. You are being called to transition into group projects, to align yourself with people who share a vision, and who need your active participation. You can be introduced to many allies at this time, benefactors that move you along in the world, fans and followers who feed upon your work. You are no longer creating in a vacuum, and your ability to get along, go along, and work alongside coconspirators and collaborators will define a path of least resistance, or difficultly. Sometimes awakening to the people and groups you have outgrown and that no longer serve you pushes you into isolation. Maybe friends and peers walk away from you, exposing a latent ugliness with how you relate to others. Throwing your offering into the alphabet soup of society can feel dizzying or daunting, like you’re losing control. But you must integrate yourself into these chambers or create them from scratch. It is no longer about you, but about the groups you align with. A star shines brightly on its own, sure, but a galaxy of stars shining together is arresting and awe-inspiring. That is what will move humanity.

As I contribute to the world, it contributes back to me.

Twelfth House: This conjunction is reading to you from Goodnight Moon. There is a satisfaction in rest and retreat, yet also a nagging melancholy in saying goodbye, saying goodnight. But in acknowledging that you must close your eyes, in saying goodbye to familiar things, you teach yourself an enlightened lesson of object permanence: that just because things are gone for now doesn’t mean they will be gone forever. Jupiter can align you with this gift of surrender, of calling it a night, of leaning more into a metaphysical understanding of life and its losses. You are being moved and rearranged by wise forces beyond your control. Saturn in the twelfth is like father time looking back on what it has done and seeing only failure, seeing the clock tick into eternity, wondering how to make use of what is left. The lump in your throat that accompanies this depressing epilogue can feel life-threatening, but dwelling is hardly ever productive, and Saturn is a productive force. While Jupiter is urging you not to judge yourself too harshly, to lean into compassion and magic, Saturn’s dry appraisal of where you didn’t quite hit the mark sets the stage for a comeback. To know where you have failed and made mistakes is a remarkable gift of insight. To stand within the debris of your life and dare to rebuild is testament to the strength of human spirit. But now, rest, and let what dreams may come, come.

I surrender to the wisdom of life.

Sarah Paulson's 11th House and the Archetypal Mommy

Sarah Paulson is an actress and overall wonderful person who is kind of Hollywood’s sweetheart the the moment due to the sheer amount of wonderful content she’s been in during the last few years. She’s very talented. And beautiful.

I was watching her latest film, Run, on Hulu yesterday while running through her social media mentions. In the movie she plays an possessive mother, hellbent on keeping her daughter close to home. Her character has Munchhausen Syndrome by Proxy (that’s not a spoiler, btw!). But even before this film, it has been a long standing joke that fans and stans alike will call her “mom” or “mommy”. Internet culture is weird. Paulson has addressed it and has seemed to accept it! (We’ve done something similar with Lady Gaga’s “mother monster” persona. In fact, calling a public figure “mom” or “mommy” has become a shorthand for expressing admiration.)

What is SO FUNNY is that Paulson’s 11th house is Cancer, the archetypal mommy. And 11th house is the place of fans, followings, audience. So that her fan base calls her mom, however strange, has symbolic resonance with her chart. As per usual, we see astrology manifesting correctly in the weirdest of ways. She has Big Mommy Energy.

What’s more, she has Saturn in Cancer in that 11th house. The mom and mom-like figures (think, caretakers) she plays are often maleficent or are in creepy/unsavory plots. In Run (poisonous mom), Ratched (poisonous nurse), literally all of her roles in American Horror Story, and even her so-good-but-awful role in 12 Years a Slave, playing a cruel mistress and house mother. She even plays hated (Saturn) women (Cancer), like Marcia Clark in American Crime Story: OJ and will be back in the series playing Linda Tripp. These are controversial figures! Even in more nuanced portrayals, like that of anti-feminist housewife Alice Macray on Mrs. America, Paulson seems to symbolically tap in on the restrictive or challenging nature of Saturn placed in a sign of femininity and care taking.

There is a running joke on social media is also that Paulson’s is the queen of crying and screaming on screen. And I thought—that’s about as Saturn in Cancer as it gets! Frigid, scared, crying women. Saturn is about things that go bump in the night. Cancer is about how we emote that fear.

I find it fascinating how actors pick roles that seem to illustrate their chart. Even if in their normal waking life that part of the chart is dormant in personal affairs, it can be expressed through artistic choices. It calls to mind the roles we play within our own networks. How those fans, followers, and friends see us.

Paulson’s Moon in Aquarius rules that Cancer 11th from the 6th house, creating a nice little mutual reception. Her life’s work (6th house) is embedded in expressing that mommy archetype, even in the darkest ways (Saturn).

JoJo & The Blessing of a Saturn Return

Random but it had to be written. UPROXX recently uploaded a short documentary on JoJo and it resonated so well with what I saw in her chart, rated AA.

At 13, JoJo experienced massive success (2nd house profection year, hers ruled by expansive Jupiter, which trines her MC--more on that later), but was subsequently held hostage by a greedy (and now defunct) music label. As a result, she couldn't release music for more than a decade.

JoJo is an Aquarius Rising, and her Saturn is at 24 degrees of Capricorn, placing it in the 12th. When the ruling planet of the ASC is averse or "hidden" from the ASC, a theme of "delay" can prevail, as the steersman of your ship cannot see where it is going. Very frustrating. In JoJo's case, it is further compounded by the fact that her ASC ruler is the planet of delay and restriction. And that is further compounded by the fact that its a 12th house placement of loss. Whew!

In the midst of recording additional songs, her label dissolved (12th), yet she was still bound (Saturn) by the terms in her contract. She continued to record music but was not allowed to release any of it. We need to note that JoJo has a massive 12th house Capricorn stellium--Mercury RX, Venus, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus and NN. That she was forced into relative obscurity reinforces 12th house themes of things hidden, things ending, doing things in secret. Music studios are also the 12th house--forced creative isolation. She remarked in the documentary that she would constantly read articles that proclaimed she must have died. She recalled how frustrating it was to see musicians who started after her start to pass and out-pace her. (Personally, this is such a huge Saturn struggle. It is the bane of my existence. Anyway....)

JoJo has Neptune and Venus closely conjunct in the 12th. In the documentary, she was gaslit into taking medication to make her thinner, under the guise that her label just wanted her to be "healthy". The fogginess of Neptune playing out next to her creative planet, Venus, is also indicative of being sold a bill of goods that never comes to be. In the beginning, she was very glamourized by Hollywood, private jets, opening for Usher, etc.--but when the fog settled, she was completely and utterly screwed by signing that contract: Mercury RX in the 12th. RX Mercury begs of you to dive into the details, to double check, to be sure, transit or natal. And music contracts are complicated and obtuse already. Placed in the 12th, she became a victim of her own pen. (Not blaming her, by the way.)

What ensued were years of substance abuse, another 12th house theme, especially with Venus ad Neptune co present. Unable to release or perform music, JoJo became "a shell of herself" and had to be "buzzed" in order to function. Only the realization that her dad was an addict (who died of his addiction it seemed--went to sleep and never woke up) snapped her back into reality, and she begun to take control. She hired a lawyer and became embroiled in a bitter legal dispute with her former label. Her Venus, in the 12th and conj. Neptune, rules her 9th house Libra of contracts, law, legal endeavors. So she was in for an uphill battle. But she has Mars square her ASC, which, yes, can render one a victim to martial energies from others (her label), but also energizes you for battle as a result. In Taurus, it also meant/means she has to fight for her art.

In the meantime, she decided to release free mixtapes. A Saturn theme is stripping down to bare essentials. Ideally wanting to release music for profit, she had to settle for releasing music for free, and self-funding a lot of her creative endeavors. Though not firmly in her Saturn Return when she released these mixtapes, Saturn themes prevail for as it is her final dispositor.

Anyway, the story gets happier. In 2014, she was freed from her contract. It was a 12th house profection year, and during Capricorn season. So matters of the 12th house were doubly activated. And Saturn lurked still behind it all. Mars trine Saturn natives also never give up no matter how steep the odds are stacked. Go JoJo!

"Just imagine how the free bird will sing after being caged for so long," wrote one reporter. Holy 12th house! Only now, instead of entering a prison, she was leaving it. And thus began a new cycle for her, as she entered a 1st house year soon after. She signed to Atlantic Records.

Despite being away for almost a decade, JoJo still had very loyal fans. During her legal battles "#FreeJoJo" was used on social media as a means of support for the singer, and many media outlets and blogs publicized her struggle. Fans and celebrities alike stood in solidarity. And when she was finally able to tour and release music again--she sold out shows, was streamed/downloaded tens of millions of times, soared to #1 on iTunes, and recouped all her expenses. Why? Sun and MC in the 11th house in Sag, ruled and trined by benefic Jupiter in Leo in her 7th. The 11th house describes the nature of our fans and friends. Though a "victim" of her business relationships early on, Jupiter in the 7th and ruling the 11th ensured JoJo would always have support from others. It also ensured that her public image, career, and reputation would always remain afloat and gifted positivity and expansion. The Sun and Jupiter also have mutual reception, each in the sign that the other rules. That's a wonderful tag-team to have by yourself to mediate the 12th house loss. Jupiter and Sun inflate you up again---and again and again. Jupiter also rules her second house so: money.

As her Saturn Return started, JoJo re-recorded and re-released her first albums, as her former label removed all of her music from the Internet. Having to go back and re-do everything, and with precision and perfection, (Mercury RX) is Saturnian, but JoJo found it extremely cathartic. She also changed some of the lyrics to reflect that she was in her late 20s now, and not an adolescent. Saturn as ruler of time and maturity.

As her Saturn Return became exact in early 2020, JoJo won her first GRAMMY for a comeback single released in 2019. She went on to be nominated for several other awards, and is slated for bigger things in the future. She announced a new album and tour for Spring 2020.

Whew, won't Saturn do it y'all! After he hits you with 2 by 4 after 2 by 4.

I hope this is reflection for people with heavy 12th house, and retrogrades, and heavy Saturn. Or people just curious/afraid of the Saturn Return. Mine is exact today so I found JoJo's story extremely resonate and because I'm also a trapped musician with Saturn in aversion to the ASC. Yes, shit does end up sucking hard---but never forever. And usually for the better. Saturn came back around for JoJo and as a result, all the planets in the 12th were loosened up to express more freely, retribution was delivered, debts were paid and money was flowing, and most importantly, life purpose was solidified and confirmed.

p.s. One of her collaborators noted that she had a wise soul trapped inside the body of a young girl. Apropos for Saturn dominate people.