Britney Spears & Me: Yeah, We're Close

I wanted to try my hand at a little celebrity astrology and found myself staring down the barrel of an issue I occasionally have with some of my clients: a similarity of transits and a parallel in personal issues.

Britney Spears (December 2, 1981, 1:30 AM, Mahon Mississippi) was in a previously-unpublicized hearing in dependency court today, raising the possibility that child abuse charges will be flying in the upcoming Spears-Federline divorce and tabloid TV festival. This comes after a year of heartache, bad behaviour, and general celebrity mayhem.

In a sick sort of way, I love looking at transits of people who are going through major crap. There's absolutely no shortage of things to go on about... and it's always a challenge making a Pluto square sound like a wonderful personal evolutionary opportunity. Which it is. Of course, if you think about it, a flooded basement is an indoor pool.

I want you to understand that although my transits are different, there's a certain symmetry. So I have to immediately declare myself fallible and possibly biased.

Having said that, though... I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that although Brit's life over the course of the next year is going to get ugly, she's going to come out the other side intact. Transiting Saturn squaring her natal Uranus is going to be an ongoing issue until next summer, drifting in and out of orb, with the only remaining exact hit in September. But there's a close pass in March-May, when Pluto drifts in for a conjunction.

This is the sort of thing that could be used to seriously scare a client. But I'm not into scaring people: life itself still does a good enough job of that without any help from me. I may have found the saving grace in all this pile of bad transits. And, like Sherlock Holme's famous dog who didn't bark in the night, it was hiding in plain sight.

During this entire mess I'm not seeing any major transits, good or bad, to her natal Moon from any of the heavier planets. None. A sextile and a quincunx from Jupiter, although positive (or at least not obviously bad) is just too soft to count.

I think -- and a disclaimer, this is more my personal experience as an astrologer than anything I've read anywhere -- this means that no matter how things get, the period in question will be endured and the person will come out the other side roughly intact. I've seen this before. And given that maternal issues are largely involved

On the other hand, you can't look at the dog's breakfast of transits from the outer planets and wonder what's going to blow up next, and which tabloid will run the pictures first.

I'm normally able to offer something more concrete than this in a consultation, but in this case I admit my judgement is a little clouded. Again, Brit and I are suffering from certain strange parallels right now. The only thing I want to admit to is the one that is already somewhat public: the recent nastiness involving my other blog.

I'm not here to whine about my life. But a reminder to all you astrologers out there, whether amateur or professional: you try to read your own transits at your own peril. Even the world's greatest surgeon shouldn't try to take out his own appendix.

If only there were some kind of astrology that could cut through all this angst!

Next Time: Vedic To The Rescue (Maybe) -or- "Help! My Grahas Are In A Knot!"