Full Moon in Capricorn-ey
I explore the full moon in Capricorn in light of Britney Spears' courageous and incisive testimony today on her conservatorship, and her desire to regain control over her wealth and autonomy.
This full moon in Capricorn was always going to highlight imbalances regarding paternalistic structures and hierarchies, and whether or not they are truly nurturing the people they purport to shelter and serve. This has played out most literally in the case of a sudden apartment building complex collapse in Miami, with 99 occupants still unaccounted for and one reported dead.
The discovery of another mass grave under The Marieval Indian School in Saskatchewan today hints at the Moon’s providence over the grim disinterment of forgotten indigenous shades (the first mass grave was discovered in B.C. over the lunar eclipse). The portal opens a deeper reckoning for Canada with its own shameful history of institutional neglect, abuse and murder of First Nation’s children wrested from their families, and subject to a systematic program of assimilation and ethnic cleansing.
Though this full moon is bolstered by a shimmering sextile to Jupiter—a fount of abundance and inspiration in his watery domicile—we have another aspect culminating that may exacerbate the cold, executive edicts of Capricorn. Venus opposes Pluto, and power struggles are all but inevitable, as well as potential gaslighting and manipulation on part of the feudal lords who sense their serfs rebelling.
It should come as no surprise then that Britney Spears' chart is being rocked by this full moon, as the luminaries line up with her MC and IC, nearly to the degree. Spears also has Pluto and Venus in hard aspect natally, so her story of Venusian beauty being dragged into the underworld finds its parity in the cosmos of now.
Today the pop star has finally been given the stage to speak her truth, after years of her most ardent fans ciphering her Instagram posts for clues and cryptic messages. She has risen to the occasion with startling courage and measure, stating her desire to be removed from her conservatorship, and granted autonomy over her estate and person-hood.
She has singled out her father, in particular as the most abusive of actors in the institutional leeching of her extraordinary output as a performer, and industry unto herself—hinting that he reveled in the power he had over her (very much a Pluto-Venus theme). A leaked recording of her deposition is easily found for those who want to listen to the whole thing, but what came through was her measured and perfectly lucid tone, despite the adrenaline that must have been coursing through her system. It was suggested that unwanted stints on Lithium, and periods of institutionalization, were dangled as punishments when Spears did not fully comply to a punishing work schedule.
Jupiter’s support of this full moon could be felt in the courage it must've taken for the pop star to break her silence. Spears admitted that this hesitation came from her doubt that she would even be believed. Considering the long history of women's pain and suffering being weaponized against them, or twisted into hysteria, the case of Britney Spears is a reminder how easily the institution of psychiatry can be abused, even in the case of dazzling wealth and celebrity.
Conservatorships seem especially primed for abuse, as an intractable feedback loop keeps its victims paralyzed in place: if you're seen as well, it proves the arrangement is working; if your condition deteriorates, its necessity is also bolstered.
Like those plaited finger traps that tighten the more you struggle, Spears' resignation, and even Stockholm Syndrome, are perfectly understandable when you consider that her dehumanization started at a tender age. It was her parents who saw their daughter as a prized stallion and business opportunity (branded in both senses of the word), rather than a vulnerable child worthy of nurturing and protection.
Spears' understanding of nurturing is therefore likely filtered through the lens of dogged discipline, and responsibility, as she bears an entire cottage industry on her shoulders. She describes the intense perfection of performance her father demanded, and though she is waking up to his abuse now, there is likely still that little girl trapped in Britney Spears who conflates achievement, and endless grinding, with love.
Saturn themes continue in her 5th house, where an Aquarius Moon points to a deep emotional need for creative expression, but also a profound desire for motherhood itself. Spears revealed, in her deposition, that an IUD has been implanted, against her will, to prevent future pregnancies. Reproductive sovereignty is an issue I have seen come up with Cancer, (another element of this sad tale feeding into the full moon). The fact that she has largely been robbed of motherhood through the strictures of her conservatorship is a further heartbreaking layer to Saturn's potentially restricting providence over these themes in her life.
As a night chart, Saturn is the malefic that Spears would be challenged by the most, which can bring archetypal struggles with the father to the fore, as well as themes of depression, isolation, and alienation (and over-achievement rushing in to fill the void). Spears' compulsive solo-dancing, in her LA mansion, also speaks to her Mars in the 12th: psychic struggles are wrested down by sheer movement, and her remarkable athleticism always struck me as spiritually therapeutic.
An Aquarius Moon can sometimes see a traumatized psyche disassociate and fragment, as adult themes and burdens infiltrate what should be a childhood space of play and innocence. I've always been struck by a theme that runs through Spears' most iconic music videos of the pop star literally splitting: “Toxic” and “Womanizer” come to mind, but you can also see it in her protracted 2008 breakdown (perhaps exacerbated by undiagnosed post-partum depression in the wake of divorce).
Her breakdown culminated in wigs, British accents, and parasitic handlers during a particularly cruel paparazzi era that would claim Lady Di in a Paris tunnel (also an Aquarius Moon, incidently, and someone Spears posted about recently). The loaded shearing of Spears' own hair was the moment that led to her fateful sectioning: father's prized pony, brushed and burnished to an unearthly gleam, cut away the part of herself that most signaled her fragmented vampiness--the hair whip being her crowning move as Britney the performer, and the culmination of her 90’ era arc from virgin to ‘whore’. I have also been struck in interviews with the pop star how divorced she feels from her stage persona: a coping mechanism for many in the entertainment industry, I'm sure, but the split seems especially marked in the case of Spears.
Remember Aquarius' avatar, Ganymede, the beautiful mortal prince thieved from his parents at a young age, and deified (ie trafficked), against his will, as cup-bearer and sex slave of Zeus and his retinue? Aquarius is an archetype that runs through many extraordinarily talented child stars whose genius would prove to be their curse: rode hard and put away wet by a brutal industry.
Like Ganymede, they would later be abstracted as disassociated constellations of themselves in Vegas' Elysium fields, where pop stars gone to pasture continue to perform a hauntology of their glory days. A Black Mirror episode, featuring Miley Cyrus, brought this conceit to its natural, holographic, conclusion. In any case, Spears’ glitzy Las Vegas residency is not so unlike the patina of light that continues to glitter in front of a black hole.
In an Instagram post uploaded today--the first transmission from Spears since her court hearing—she speaks candidly of the whimsy she has cultivated in her quirky online persona. The post also demonstrates a level of self reflection that further erodes the claim that she is so profoundly unwell as to warrant a conservatorship. Spears describes her traumatized psyche retreating into a realm of fairies to cope with years of being ‘yellow wallpapered’ in her own mansion--only flown out for the 250 Las Vegas shows she unfailing performed, or lucrative side-gigs as X Factor host. ‘You Better Work Bitch,’ indeed.
I have always considered the liminal third as the realm of fae-kin and sprites, and the place of secular worship of pagan deities (in opposition to the more rigid orthodoxy of the 9th). It’s a heretical space and its denizens often go on to be black sheep, whistle-blowers, pariahs, or beloved cult figures (yes, I will do a longer research post on the third!).
Her mutable Sagittarius Sun and Mercury, in this cadent house, hint at early fame in the guise of a nymph: sexualized from an early age but also untouchable. The ruler of her third, Jupiter, hidden away in the vault of the 2nd house, hints at her ethereal charm being linked to chthonic realms of money and power. The prototype laid out for her would be much less forgiving as she left that sexless and protean realm, and became a woman, and a mother, freighted by more earthly concerns.
Her remarkably cruel treatment from the press, over her Saturn return, almost felt like retribution for Spears evolving from something sylvan and unattainable, to a mother walking barefoot through gas stations. The final pages in Nabokov's Lolita comes to mind when Humbert Humbert’s victim—his 'nymphette’—is knocked off her toxic pedestal. She is no longer a Mercurial changeling, or prismatic cipher, for the endless projection of 'Americana' and the lush babble of consumer culture (not to mention Humbert’s own sexual abuse)... but a harried young mother, bent earthward by trauma. Her luster rubbed away, Humbert is repelled.
So why is it all coming to a head for Spears now? Firstly, as mentioned, the full moon has lit up an axis in the chart that describes our private root system and the flowering outward of our public persona—the Midheaven literally crowning us with our legacy, potential fame, and the mark we leave on the collective.
Spears' legacy is tied up with Cancerian themes of nurturing and care, which comes through in her famdom providing early shelter for the LGBT community. This full moon is particularly potent as the pop star is in a fourth house profection year, ruled by Saturn. She cannot help but see her early upbringing, and ancestral matrix, through a lens of brutal realism now.
The Free Britney movement itself has grown to encompass many people who have felt victimized or marginalized, though we must remember that Spears' deification as a screen for projection can be parasitic, even from the perspective of well-wishers. Ultimately, Britney provides a nurturing holding vessel, through the dazzling fame-imprint of that Aquarian moon in the 5th—a consummate and disciplined creative performer—for outcasts and liminal figures of all stripes.
This public role--mother to all misfit toys—has seemingly come into conflict with her IC and fourth house generally. It's as if by becoming an endlessly sacrificial figure of nurturance to the collective, she has stymied a more private experience of mothering and being mothered. Childhood has been sublimated into chilly industry and perfectionism. It’s hard not to think of those Incan children, drugged, adorned with jewels, and paraded to ritual feasts all over the land—only to be left as sacrifices on the tops of mountains where they froze to death.
Eclipses have also been sowing fateful events through Britney’s 3rd and 9th houses, further intensifying her need to speak her truth, and potentially burning through the loops of cognitive dissonance, and protective fairytales, that have been coping mechanisms for Spears.
Finally, the past lunar eclipse activated her Mercury in Sagittarius, and I wonder if part of that letting go centered on Spears’ precocious childhood fame and what may have been a case of her meteoric stardom freezing, and embalming, the adolescent Britney.
There’s a sense of Spears as the mother, and exhausted survivor, finally putting to rest some of those protective childish affectations and what she describes as a tendency to magical thinking. I will be curious to see how Spears’ public persona evolves as she steps away from her potential trauma-bonding to the role of the ingénue and naïf, and finally steps into her destiny as a mother, nurturer and Saturnian commander of her own private life. I hope she retains her connection to the whimsy and magic of the third house.
Finally, I believe it’s Spears’ Mars in the 12th that describes her karmic role in rupturing the silence that sorrounds the shadowy realm of conservatorship abuse, and the parasitic institutional labyrinth one can find themselves in after just one break down. She is also a cautionary tale of the 12th house hidden enemies that fill the vacuum when enormous welath is at stake.
We need kinder, and gentler systems of care and nurturance for those understandably suffering under the boot heel of neoliberalism. We should not have to fear a permanent limbo of drugs, and institutional gaslighting, should we find ourselves in a crisis. Anyway, brava Britney! I’m a longtime fan and rooting for her 12th house emancipation—such a pure soul.
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