The Astrology of Britney Spears
Plus, when the stars say 2021 will stop being terrible.
This past week, I gave a talk at the 92nd Street Y with the astrologer Chani Nicholas, whose book You Were Born For This just came out in paperback. Last year, I spoke with Chani for my podcast to ask her why our horoscopes didn’t warn us about the impending pandemic. It turns out, the astrology for last year never indicated that good things were on the horizon—in fact, many of the same planetary alignments that existed during the Bubonic Plague and the HIV/AIDS Crisis were in full swing during most of 2020. The question that most of the audience wanted Chani to answer this past week was: When is any of it going to get better?
Chani answered that particular question (sooner than you think!), plus she pulled up the “natal chart” of one Ms. Britney Spears. I don’t need to tell you that Spears has been the center of a New York Times documentary series and a heated court case. Her own astrology reveals some really painful things about her chart and, again, a reason for hope on the horizon.
Whether you’re an astrology fan or a total skeptic, I think there’s some interesting tidbits for you here. And if you ever want to learn more, I recommend picking up Chani’s book and downloading her app to explore your own chart more intimately.
About the Astrology of 2021:
“The whole deal is the Saturn-Uranus square this year. Saturn is old guard, structure, and tradition and Uranus is newness and innovation. But Saturn's also the container we create things in, and the commitments and boundaries that we need. Uranus is also the chaotic, radical, upheaval of things that might not actually be good for society.
And so, the very last degree of Mars in Aries was January 6th. That was the moment that Mars moved into Taurus to join forces with Uranus, to amp that whole thing up of revolution and chaos and change. And that's part of what we experienced. It was a really good reminder that these energies are specific, but they can land in a lot of different ways and be used for a lot of different agendas.
Now we're really in this moment of what works that we need to keep and what doesn't that we need to change and how do we get to where we want to go? And who's disrupting it? And who's causing chaos and havoc and what of that do we need to disrupt and disturb, and what is just besides the point?
But also needing some of these structures that we have. We can't just throw everything out all at once, I don't think. Maybe other people do. But this is the tension that we're in. This is how we've done things, this is the new way that's wanting to come in and shake all that up, and that's a really destabilizing feeling. Now, we went through the January moment and now we're here and [next Thursday] we're going to have the first exact square between those two.
Do I think anything specific is going to happen on that day? It might, but it doesn't have to. It's already happened. It's already here. We already know. And then, I think with Uranus in Taurus, we have to really think about the Earth and the changes that the Earth is going through. Taurus is the Earth sign and Uranus is about change. So what is going to come down this year in terms of climate crisis and how that impacts different communities in different ways? And what structures need to be changed in order to address that, as well? That's the bigger not-so-great news. Or maybe great news if we do get to actually change some of the structures we live within.
Not to overdo this, but Jupiter's going into Pisces in May and stays there in June, and there's some really beautiful astrology. So it does feel like May, June, and a bit of July has some breathing room and there's some joy there. It could be that there will be more fluidity and more flow and more things happening in a way that feels positive for us for the first time in a while.”
About Saturn Returns (AKA the Astrology of the Millennial Life Crisis):
“This generally happens around the ages of 27, 28, 29, into 30. Saturn Return is about choosing yourself. Saturn Return is like, This is what my family wanted when I was in my 20s, this is what society told me to do, this is what I tried to go achieve. By the time we get to the Saturn Return, we have to deal with the depression and the loss of that stuff not making us happy, whatever that stuff is. So it's all the ways in which our projections got the best of us, the way we might have bought in to social conditioning. And it's about: Am I going to choose myself now? Am I going, to the best of my ability, to whatever degree of privilege I have, to take my life seriously and move towards what is structurally meaningful for me?
There's a lot to do with isolation that comes with Saturn Returns, and there's this important piece about isolation, because it can help us to push back. It's the only thing that can help us get in contact with what's underneath everything. If we can cut away the busyness and we can tone down the outside noise, we get in touch with what the structure is.
Saturn comes around in these seven year stints, and it really gives you a check on your age. When you're about 36, that's the point where it actually gets really, really interesting. All the ways in which you did or did not choose yourself at your Saturn Return? All of those choices come up and they bump up against you. You just can't do the same things in the same way and get away with it at that time.
If you've worked with the Saturn Return, you've built up to something—and by 36, you can really start to feel what it is that you have done. You get to see clearly what you've done with the choices you've made, and it's another one of those points where you have to start stripping down and saying, I'm going to keep this thing and then I'm going to build with that.”
On the Astrology of Britney Spears:
“Britney is a Libra rising, and that makes Venus the ruler of her ascendant, which means it's the planet that steers the direction of her life. So anything that happens to her Venus is going to impact the direction her life takes.
Venus is the goddess. Venus is sexuality. Venus is attraction. Venus is the erotic energy. Venus is what we love to condemn and try to control and package and-tie up in a neat little bow. Britney is Venus in Capricorn, which is going to give her a really hardworking, gritty kind of style. There's ways in which Venus has power in Capricorn, and Venus is a really powerful planet in her chart. It's the most powerful doer of good in her chart, so it's super important for her. But it's in the house of the father; it's in the house of parents, the father, ancestry, lineage, and ownership of land and things. So right now, her Venus is having a once-in-a-lifetime transit from Pluto. Pluto strips everything down and brings us on these big underworld journeys, but Pluto unveils and opens and exposes and brings us down to the essential nature of something. It also magnifies it.
Okay, so there's that piece; we know that there's something really important and life-altering for her. It's never going to happen again. But, it's not only this moment—it's going to happen for the next year, and it's been happening for a while. So as Pluto is doing this once-in-a-lifetime approach to the planet that rules Britney's ascendant and is all about her life direction, her parents, her lineage and family, she is facing a trial about her conservatorship. As Pluto goes over it, it's uprooting, unearthing.
Now, right as the documentary comes out, Jupiter—the planet of blowing things up, making things better, making you more open to the world, bringing you blessings and fortune—and Venus are making a conjunction on her moon in Aquarius. All of a sudden, Britney is put into the world in this light that is, for the first time, sympathetic to what it is she survives as that Venus figure in the world.
The Jupiter-Venus in the sky transits over her moon, and it gives that boost that she needs, or maybe that we need in order to really understand the story. I think that it's a moment where she's being put through the ringer, in terms of that Pluto transit, and it's unearthing all of her history and all of her family stuff and all the stuff with her and her father. So there's that piece of it that's a gnarly thing that you just have to wait and see. But I think that the poetic part of it is that as her moon gets this boost, she gets this public spotlight that is so needed and necessary and I think media gets checked in a lot of ways and we get to see: That's how we treated people, that's how we treated young women, that just was normal.
So having that healing hopefully happen, I don't know if that's happening personally for her. I don't know what it feels like for her to have people being more sympathetic to what it is she survived, in public, but also with no support for her whole life. I hope that is affirming to her in some way.”
THREE QUICK THINGS (MOVIE TRIVIA EDITION):
Darien and I were photographed by the lovely Texas Isaiah for Dior Homme’s Valentine’s Day campaign. For Valentine’s Day, we went to a date night drive-in showing of Cinderella starring Brandy and Whitney Houston. The movie is now on Disney+, and it was my first time watching. I learned after the showing that Bette Midler was the original choice to play the wicked stepmother, but turned down the role because (according to a producer) “no white actress wanted to be seen as being mean to the Black Cinderella.” Bernadette Peters accepted the role and absolutely nailed it. For more behind the scenes of the film, this glorious YouTube video of Whitney and Brandy shows some…impassioned vocal coaching during a recording of the song “Impossible.”
I also recently finished Kill Bill for the first time, too. (If you haven’t seen and don’t want spoilers, please stop here!) You might remember the scene where Uma Thurman’s character kills Vivica A. Fox, and Fox’s daughter enters the room, completely shocked. Thurman says to her (I am paraphrasing), “If you’re still feeling hurt about this when you’re older, come find me.” Well, I immediately thought to myself: What a concept for the trilogy! Apparently, I wasn’t the only one. Just last year, Fox urged Tarantino to hire Zendaya to play her revenge-seeking daughter for Kill Bill 3. Zendaya responded that she’d be honored. Here’s hoping.
Finally, I spent practically all of my last Sunday making my way through Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor. Among the fun facts about that one: Taylor set a Guinness World Record for the most costume changes in a single film, the production was (at its time) the most expensive in movie history), and Taylor herself apparently hated it. “Taylor reluctantly hosted a London screening of the film. She dutifully sat through the picture, mortified by the memories it evoked and the butchery, as she perceived it, of Mankiewicz’s vision. Immediately afterward, she hurried back to the Dorchester Hotel, where she was staying—and threw up.” There’s more to learn in this dishy Vanity Fair piece from 1998 called “When Liz Met Dick.”
PARTING WORDS
Some people forget that love is
tucking you in and kissing you “Good night”
no matter how young or old you are
Some people don’t remember that love is
listening and laughing and asking questions
no matter what your age
Few recognize that love is
commitment responsibility no fun at all
unlessLove is
You and me—Nikki Giovanni, “Love Is” from Love Poems