Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Nicole Richie At Risk

While I am loath to acknowledge as "celebrities" those individuals who are noteworthy primarily for being the spawn of celebrities or, worse yet, of rich and unfamous people, Nicole Richie has crossed over from the "heiress" to the "train wreck" category and therefore has piqued my interest.

A glance at Nicole's chart shows that this is a high-risk time for her if the rumors of self-destructive behavior are true. Mars is conjuncting Nicole's natal retrograde Chiron in Taurus, which is the focal point of a yod with her Neptune and Pluto. This aspect may indicate a distorted, shameful or painful body image or a low sense of self-worth, which serves as a release valve for other pent-up pressures. This Mars transit could be the catalyst for her to act out this self-destructive potential in some way.

Pluto, the planet of transformation, has been passing over Nicole's natal Neptune for the past year or so. While she has no birth time on record that I could find (please email me if you know it), it would not be a surprise to find that Pluto is passing through Nicole's 1st house of appearance, seeing as how she has physically transformed into an almost unrecognizable person, from chunky, skunk-haired, table-dancing hoochie to "Breakfast at Tiffany's"-looking bobblehead.

This spring, Pluto will come within two degrees of a square to her mutable Virgo Sun before turning retrograde. During this time Nicole will continue to change, possibly becoming even more fastidious about her appearance in an attempt to control every facet of her physical being. With a four-planet pile-up in Libra, including a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction and a tight Mercury-Pluto conjunction, Nicole may have something of an obsession with beauty and being loved. It would be nice if her musical endeavors turned out to be something less than abhorrent, since an artistic calling would be a wonderfully fruitful expression of Libra's jones for beauty and grace. As opposed to, say, constant self-starvation and shopping.

So, if you're one of Ms. Richie's loved ones and you're reading this, please call her parents and tell them to get her some help. Then, please ask them if they could look up her birth time and email it to me. Thanks in advance.

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Lindsay Lohan's World Hospital Tour

CNN confirmed today what I first saw on blogs a week ago: that Lindsay Lohan cut her leg at the London home of Bryan Adams and had to be rushed to a hospital for 10 stitches. According to skanky, enabling mother Dina:

"She and her friends were preparing breakfast, with eggs and everything, and Lindsay was going up the stairs, carrying a ceramic teacup. She had just come out of the shower so she was still wet and had some lotion on, and she completely flipped on the stairs since it was slippery. The teacup went flying, it was shattered, and one of the pieces cut Lindsay in her shin. It was an accident." (Source)

This raises so many questions that may be beyond even the grasp of astrology to resolve. To wit: What was Lindsay doing at Bryan Adams' place with her friends? What is Bryan Adams doing living in London? Is he still popular there or something? How was Lindsay preparing breakfast and in the shower at the same time? And how did her mother possess such eerie photographic recall of the incident, down to the consistency of L.Lo's lotioned skin?

But I digress. Perhaps what astrology can help shed some light on is the fact that Lindsay is in and out of hospitals the way most celebs stay in hotels. Already this year she's been an ER VIP in Miami and London, and that's not counting last year's incident when she fell victim to the celebrity exhaustion epidemic. Oh yeah, and she crashed her car a bunch of times. Since early 2005, erratic, accident-prone Uranus in Pisces has been trining Lindsay's sensitive Cancer Sun, a transit that makes it easy to get carried away with spontaneous behavior and disruptive changes. Uranus stationed in a trine to Lindsay's Sun in June 2005, around the time (as she revealed, then retracted in Vanity Fair) when she became scary-skinny due to self-destructive behavior. Things come easily to people when trines are active, sometimes too easily. The hyperspeed pace of her life changing with fame could be overwhelming to a sensitive young Cancer like Lindsay. Pisces rules addiction and self-undoing, and Lindsay may have been lashing out at herself in order to blot out intense feelings. With four planets in fire signs and Mars and Neptune in driven Capricorn, Lindsay is hardly a stereotypical reclusive, shrinking-violet Cancer, but as a water sign she certainly might internalize stress more than she even realizes.

Neptune in Aquarius has also been opposing Lindsay's Venus in Leo for the past year, during which she seems to have gone through a lot of relationship turbulence. Neptune clouds and confuses, even deludes, and with it afflicting her relationship planet, Lindsay may have had a complete lack of clarity around who really cares about her and is loyal to her (Venus in Leo), and who is just interested in her fame (Neptune in Aquarius).

On the day of the accident, transiting Mars in Capricorn was in a near-exact trine to Lindsay's natal retrograde Mars in Taurus. This is a time of high activity and energy, when drive and confidence come easily. Lindsay may have been rushing and so eager to get to the next thing that she lost her balance. Again, trines can incite you to bite off more than you can chew. Lindsay would be well advised to slow down and make an effort to be present in the moment, instead of always chasing after the next big thrill. Uranus' trine to her Sun will once again be exact around February 20, and it would be a real shame to see Lindsay land in yet another hospital. Let's hope she uses this water-sign energy creatively rather than self-destructively.

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Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Joatch Out, Joaquin!

On Thursday, Jan. 26 at 2:50 PM PST in L.A., Joaquin Phoenix flipped his car and walked away unscathed. Urgently concerned about this, I rushed to my computer a mere five days later to see what's going on in his chart. A Scorpio born in 1974, Joaquin (like myself) has a Jupiter-Neptune square in mutual reception, meaning each planet is in the sign the other rules, so they vibe off each other. Right now Uranus is passing over his Jupiter, which can bring unexpected good luck and opportunities (like his multiple award nominations) but also startling reversals of fortune -- in this case, literally turning him upside down. Jupiter's connection with Neptune can create a tendency to overindulge in alcohol or other forms of escapism and/or self-medication. Joaquin recently did a stint in rehab so he is obviously in touch with this tendency. With Uranus upending his life, the pressure, frenetic pace and unpredictability of fame might tempt him to fall off the wagon. One of my very fave gossip columnists, The Awful Truth's Ted Casablanca, has frequently commented recently on how broody and morose Joaquin seems at premieres for someone who ought to be enjoying his success and accolades. Well, first of all, as a fellow Scorpio Ted should know from brooding for brooding's sake. But more particularly, Chiron, the "wounded healer" planetoid, in Aquarius, the sign of mass communication and public relations, has been squaring Joaquin's Scorpio stellium of Mars, Venus and the Sun, thereby reopening old wounds associated with being in the public eye. The attention of the masses and the media is quite possibly painful for Joaquin. With Uranus activating his Jupiter-Neptune square, life may be feeling chaotic and out of control; even when the universe hands him good fortune, like nominations and awards, he's probably experiencing it as out of his hands, determined by forces totally independent of his volition. (Scary for a Type-A Aries Moon native, who likes to act immediately and directly on his emotions.) Perhaps flipping his car was an unconscious manifestation of his experience of life careening out of control. Certainly an alcohol relapse, not that I am suggesting or implying one because this is pure idle speculation and I really can't afford a lawsuit, would exacerbate the problem of feeling chaotic and out of control. Hopefully Joaquin can find a constructive outlet for his need to take direct action to feel in control of his life.

BTW, one of the archetypal symbols of Scorpio is, fittingly, the phoenix. Scorpio is the sign of transformation, and the mythical bird rising from its own ashes to begin a new life represents Scorpionic energy in its most highly evolved, transcendent form. Scorpios really are capable of completely changing their lives, shedding their old ways and never looking back.

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