Aquarian Anti-Superstar
what I learned from an impromptu astrology reading about how to heal the unhealable within my beingness
You should totally play this song while you read this post.
My friend Amanda and I had an art date yesterday (does art get made? sometimes, lol), and I am really grateful for these conversations, because they always ground me back into myself. Last night I ended up giving her an extremely spontaneously astrology reading, fully prefacing that I was just...going with it, and that admittedly, I am a Le Bebe(tm) and didn't know what I was talking about. I was just letting her chart - and the stars - talk to me. Apparently that went extremely well, so polite claps for me.
But I bring this up because while I was...divining, I can't even say analyzing, I was channelling up in that biznitch...I ended up employing a few techniques I know ain't kosher to read her chart. In the process, one of the themes that I touched on was how Gemini is the sign of the mastery of paradox. Identical twins have the same DNA, but they are two different beings, with two different (but the same) faces. The healthiest twins fully individuate while still retaining the profound intimacy and recognition of their unique sameness. Building on this further, because of that, there is a mastery of self-expression with Gemini because of this ability to exist in this seemingly contradictory state fully (which, you know, Mercury is exalted in Gemini so there's that *shrug*.) That got me thinking about how people tend to talk (or not, in pop astro spaces) about the character and quality of polarity pairs in understanding and making a whole self from our chart.
My 11th house - the house of friendship, and in a sense, freedom, hope, love, happiness, and the notion of liberation (utopia); it is also the house of mass media, including social media - happens to, notably, be in Gemini, and my Mercury is down in my 4th house in Scorpio. Understanding how I relate best to social media requires understanding this part of my chart. What this tells me is that I have a pretty easy relationship with these types of platforms (generally, true) - especially when it comes to writing - and that I gather a crowd when I speak to 11th house themes with nuance and complexity, specifically in regards to what we are asked to repress in order to have them, and when I hold the tension well between what is, what could be, what has been, what hasn't even been dreamed of yet as a consequence. Because my natal Mercury is where it is, my voice is generally going to show up most powerfully and in optimal form when I lean into being transformative, sensate, grounded (but I can sometimes be a bit too gnarled and cynical), ancestral in my tone, and focus on getting into the root of what inhibits these things in our most localized community (a.k.a., family), in our sense of sanctuary within ourselves, in our nurturing and in nurturance. However, because showing up to friendship - to love, happiness, creating utopia - requires the presence of self, I have to take a look at where my Sun and Leo are in my chart to ensure that how I approach this is balanced. This, funnily enough, also brings us back to (my) Chiron.
I have made the argument (controversially) that the highest expression of one's Chiron is actually more akin to a tattoo, because Chiron is generally conceived as "the unhealable wound." Well, fun fact: tattoos are, in a sense, unhealed wounds because the dermis doesn't fully leech the ink (also because if they get infected, those infections can kill you.) If the cells did that, the skin wouldn't be able to hold designs. The fact that they don't, means that the cells have not fully repaired and that subsequently cells continue to choose to hold the ink. The fact that our skin continues to maintain these details in our skin, is pretty extraordinary, actually. But thinking Chiron as a tattoo is a...very Aquarian approach to this subject, actually. Aquarius is, notably, the polarity sibling of Leo, where my Ascendant and Moon also happen to be. And...that was the big lightbulb 💡 moment for me when it came to understanding what changed about my relationship with social media (and, simultaneously, my understanding and connection to friends, hope, love, etc.)
With my Sun (self) and Mercury (self-expression) in Scorpio, I am keenly aware that I have WAY more lateral than most over how others perceive me (or don't.) If I don't wish to be perceived, even subsconsciously, ain't nobody gonna see nothin', lol...but if I want people to see me, they will SEE me. This is honestly quite funny when you consider that they both reside in the deepest, darkest, most private part of my chart along with my Pluto and Mars. So when considering how I show up as myself, I also have to remember that my Midheaven has this prevailing, extra layer of influence. Our Midheaven speaks to, at least according to Alice Sparkly Kat, how we react to oppression, and integrating this energy is done by "...telling yourself that your reactions are okay, that your existence is justified despite what always weighs down on you (being at the top of your chart)." Why bother? Because, as they go on to say, "...your midheaven is more than your sense of oppression - it's also your potential to contribute to the world in the largest sense you have." My Midheaven is in Aries, so I am the epitome of "Do not allow perfection to become the enemy of the good." when it comes to embodying and applying my actual values. This is especially true and relevant in this society that takes a Puritanical identity approach leftist politics, one rooted pretty profoundly in white supremacy culture and colonial assimilationism.
In the last few years, post-Saturn Return in Aquarius at exactly 0* in my 7th house of commitments, I have taken many more steps towards trusting the sincere warmth and gentleness of my Leo Moon and that people will see my genuineness when I show up to situations and the world without having to perform it. I was actually forced to do this, by virtue of genocide, a horrible election from hell, and a profound violation of my sanctuary while trying to understand my own suffering, to let go of any attachment to an identity of being a "good" and "selfless" person, which has been so deeply and inextricably baked into how I have been engaged with (and engaged) on social media. And it's true: so much of the world and community I'd built around me really did, in fact, reward this dehumanizing and helpless approach to showing up to community. I was forced to embrace and recognizing that I am limited in what I can commit to: I am only me, I can only do so much. I need to understand the structure (real, illusory), limitations (assumed, actual), and finiteness of how I see myself and the world in order to actually *be* myself in relationships. When I am in relationships, when I talk about love and friendship, when I am expertly self-articulating and narrating a vision of liberation, I need to be someone who is understood as being a genuinely talented (a.k.a., I am actually impactful + effective), creative, liberatory vehicle. I must allow myself to be someone who expands what is possible for myself and the world through *who* and *how* I am in the world, vs. merely wearing the mask and performing the motions. That takes risks. It’s messy.
So being able to show up to the world again - to overcome this discomfort and unease with social media (and with my immediate community) - is intimately tied into this story of my Chiron (and, also, my Moon and Rising) in Leo, and their relationship with their cousin, Saturn, over in Aquarius.
I have to accept that my methods and processes may not be kosher, traditional, or conventional: but I am always going to try to build something that will upend the limits of my time(s), and what I thought was possible for me, too. I will freely cop to my own fragility due to disability, and the limitations of knowing I am just another very human, personal self, while dreaming of how to find the Universe’s magic and understand its paths of least resistance. It’s because I strive to know the limitations of the material so well, that I keep speaking to the need to (re)dream what compassionate systems we need, and about my own struggle to reject the impulse towards relying on heros, saviors, righteousness, or salvation, be it my own or others. My inner vastness of goodwill and gentleness is best witnessed and recognized, I am most congruent, when I allow myself to be a star for rejecting arbitrary conformity, not community: to (re)create and imagine what it can be like to a fully expressed, individuated self - a sun of your own relational solar system - while still knowing you are but a tiny, effervescent star in a vast, near-incalcuably old, seemingly-infinite-yet-infinite Universe.
I’m just another run-of-the-mill Aquarian Anti-Superstar.
My name can live and die inside of my heart.
