How to Spot the 24 Astrological Signs

How to Spot an Aries Man:

- He has prominent, expressive nostrils.

- He looks likes Mr. Burns.

- He’s excited about the comic book he’s writing, so he can get chicks.

- He has a giant, bloated head.

- He’s losing his hair.

- He’s lying about his fluctuating weight, so he can get chicks.

- He’s showing chicks his katana collection.

- He looks like a giant baby.

Examples: Alec Baldwin, Quentin Tarantino, K Fed, Conan O’Brien, David Letterman, Vince Vaughn, Vincent Gallo.

How to Spot an Aries Woman:

- She’s hacking her daughter’s hair off.

- She bets she can beat you in race, bitch.

- Her upper lip is missing.

- She has an asymmetrical haircut.

- She’s writing a list of things for you to do.

- She hates women.

- She’s trying to sell you an insurance policy.

- What she lacks in boobs, hair, and lips, she makes up for in obnoxious frantic craziness.

Examples: Jenna Jameson, Kate from Jon and Kate +8, Joan “Mommy Dearest” Crawford, Sarah Jessica Parker, Celine Dion, Amy Sedaris, Victoria Beckham.

How to Spot a Taurus Woman:

- She has sweeping drag queen/chola eyebrows.

- She has a vacant, bovine stare.

- Her nipples are cross eyed.

- Her boobs are like heavy sacks of wheat.

- She rubs udder cream on her fun bags every night so she doesn’t chafe.

- She is what gay men think of as the epitome of feminine beauty.

Examples: Uma Thurman, Audrina Patridge, Bea Arthur, Kirsten Dunst, Kimmora Lee, Cher, Barbara Streisand, Tori Spelling.

How to Spot a Taurus Man:
- He’s dowdy.

- He looks like a dork.

- He wants to show you his bongos.

- He doesn’t floss.

- He loves dub music; in fact, he just called to say he dubs you.

- He’s the self-appointed ruler of an autocratic dictatorship.

- His art sucks.

- He loves free jazz.

Examples: Hitler, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Lenin, Saddam Hussein, Bono, Trent Reznor, Tim Roth, Harvey Keitel.

How to Spot a Gemini Man:
- He possesses an aerodynamic nose and angular face, which he accidentally  pokes people with.

- He has a website dedicated to his pronounced facial hair and/or coif, which gives him the silhouette of a mountain gorilla.

- He wants to know what’s it gonna take for you to drive off this lot today in a brand new car.

- He wants to PARTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111111

- He’s wearing a neon graphic t-shirt. He’s 40.

- He likes to scat.

- He enjoys eating tripe.

- He identifies with black culture.

Examples: Kanye West, Mike Meyers, Rupert Everett, Gene Wilder, Trey Parker, Miles Davis, Andre 3000.

How to Spot a Gemini Woman:

- She looks like a toddler.

- She’s blogging.

- Her outfit looks like a picaresque pile of hot garbage.

- She is perpetually vying for some dude like a pre-tween.

- She wants you to come over and watch the Sex and the City boxset with her.

- Pedophiles love her.

- She’s made out of clothes.

Examples: The Olsen Twins, Anne Frank, Lauryn Hill, Stevie Knicks, Marylin Monroe, Angelina Jolie, Carrie Bradshaw.

How to Spot a Cancer Woman:

- She’s putting hemorrhoid cream on her perpetually swollen eyes.

- She has a “dewy” complexion that makes her appear moderately damp at all times.

- A pool of light seems to always be bouncing off of her expansive forehead.

- She forgot to wear pants.

- She has extra teeth.

- She keeps her vicodin in an old hairspray bottle.

Examples: Lindsay Lohan, Courtney Love, Pamela Anderson, Jessica Simpson, Carly  Simon, Cyndi Lauper.

How to Spot a Cancer Man:

- The tip of his nose droops.

- He has a pie shaped face.

- He has creepy, flesh colored hair.

- Despite his albinism, he enjoys rollerblading and eating his mother’s store bought lasagna.

- He also enjoys motor boating.

- He dates hotties.

- He’s a free mason, scientologist, or polygamist.

Examples: Larry David, Tom Cruise, Will Farrell, George Bush, Beck, Tom Hanks, Gary Busey, George Clinton.

How to Spot a Libra Man:

- He has a venereal dimple on his cheek or down the middle of his nose.

- He is in a decaying relationship.

- He is a dandy.

- He’s worried about his weight.

- He’s doing alternating lunges while performing plastic surgery.

- He’s wearing a turtle neck.

- He has Pert Plus hair.

- Other men hate him.

- He resembles a Q-P doll.

Examples: Luke Perry, Dr. Rey, John Cougar Mellencamp, Oscar Wilde, John Meyer, Austin Scarlett, Sasha Baron Cohen, Jeff Goldblum.

How to Spot a Libra Woman:

- They’re luscious.

- They’ve posed nude.

- They’re offering you an individually wrapped piece of dove chocolate from their giant, old timey pocketbook.

- They have prehistoric teeth.

- They’re pure like Olivia Newton John.

- They think marriage is the next step.

- They appear waspish, even though they’re Armenian.

- They enjoy babysitting, applying for lines of credit, and stalking their exes.

Examples: Kim Kardashian, most Playboy Playmates (statistically speaking), Gwen Stefani, Julie Andrews, P.J. Harvey, Angela Lansbury, Gwenyth Paltrow.

How to Spot a Virgo Woman:

- They have an eating disorder.

- They give rigorous handies.

- They have acid reflux.

- They’re wearing lucite and spandex.

- They’re on a reality TV show that makes you feel like you need a shower after watching it.

- They’ll do “anything for my man.”

- They want your love, but don’t deserve it

Examples: Shauna Sand, Heidi Montag, Amy Winehouse, Nicole Richie, Rachel Zoe, Mother Theresa.

How to Spot a Virgo Man:

- He’s silently judging you.

- He’s working on his self-esteem.

- He’s weathered.

- He works in human resources.

- He has but one testicle.

- He stars as a “Dr.” in a televised show in which he attempts to save people from themselves.

Examples: Michael Jackson, Mickey Rourke, Leonard Cohen, Dr. Drew, Dr. Phil, Bill O’Reilly, Cesar Milan, Lance Armstrong.

How to Spot a Leo Woman:

- They look like dudes.

- They want to borrow your conditioner.

- You can see their nipples through their resort wear.

- You caught them flexing in the mirror.

- They’re a strong black woman; in fact, they were in the movie Waiting to Exhale.

- They’re wearing a leather and neon combo.

- They broke up with you by changing the locks.

- They’ve peed on you.

Examples: Samantha Ronson, Madonna, Angela Basset, Whitney Houston, Vivica A. Fox.

How to Spot a Leo Man:

- They resemble the cowardly lion.

- Their sparse facial hair is grossing you out.

- They want to bench press you.

- They’re addicted to internet porn.

- They’re always covering their bald spot with something, like hair extensions.

- They’re directing their girlfriend’s music video and haircuts.

- They invented method acting.

- They are a public relations disaster and always have someone apologizing on their behalf.

Examples: Hulk Hogan, Spencer Pratt, David Duchovny, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jeremy Piven, Billy Bob Thorton, Dustin Hoffman, Robert DeNiro.

How to Spot a Scorpio Man:

- Their entire bodies, faces, and heads are covered in pubic hair.

- They resemble penises.

- They sleep in coffins.

- They’re small and evil, like ferrets.

- They’re invading your privacy.

- They have a folksy creepiness ala Deliverance.

- They know everyone you know, biblically.

Examples: Charles Manson, Bob Ross, Larry King, Bill Gates, Matthew McConaughey, Joaquin Phoenix.

How to Spot a Scorpio Woman:

- They resemble birds of prey.

- They have fucked up grills.

- Despite their ten years of braces, they usually have prominent gaps in their front teeth.

- They look nothing like their Match.com profile picture.

- They have some form of body modification/deformation.

- They like to reproduce; they have an overactive uterus.

- They’re drunk and crying, and they want to come over.

Examples: Laura Hutton, Katy Perry, k.d. Lang, Rosanne Barr, Calista Flockhart, Anne Hathaway, Sally Field, Tila Tequila.

How to Spot a Sagittarius Woman:

- They have bulging, naive eyes.

- They have soft, beer-and-pizza diet bodies.

- They rock the horny nerd look.

- They have problems with basic hygiene.

- They love pairing red lipstick with lounge wear.

- They’re divorced.

- They’re the only people left in the universe that smoke cigarettes.

Examples: Britney Spears, Katherine Heigl, Amanda Seyfried, Milie Cyrus, Scarlet Johansson, Christina Aguilera.

How to Spot a Sagittarius Man:

- They have large, high booties.

- They smell like barnyard animals.

- They ate all your organic pop tarts.

- They’re perpetually “on their way to the gym.”

- They wash themselves with a moist towelette every other day.

- They’re drunk and high on something you’ve never heard of while reading a book written in Latin.

- They refuse to wear shoes, unless they are bowling shoes.

Examples: Brad Pitt, Jeff Bridges aka The Dude, Jim Morrison, Frank Zappa, Keith Richards, Richard Pryor.

How to Spot a Capricorn Woman:

- They’ve had discount plastic surgery.

- They’re trying to check their giant mink coat at your party. You do not have a coat check at your party.

- They put the ass in class.

- They invented the boho look.

- They’re fucking your grandpa.

- They’re antiquing with your mom.

- They’re pimping your little sister.

Examples: Heidi Fleiss, Holly Madison, Kate Moss, Sienna Miller, Eartha Kitt.

How to Spot a Capricorn Man:

- They are an awkward height.

- They broadcast self-loathing.

- They apologize for their ugliness.

Examples: Ryan Seacrest, David Sedaris, Howard Stern, Joey Ramone, Kid  Rock.

How to Spot an Aquarius Man:

- Their heads and necks are shaped like light bulbs.

- They look like aliens.

- They have voluptuous love handles.

- They’re humiliating you in public.

- They have weak chins and look sexless.

- They are wearing something embarrassing on their head.

- 1984 is their favorite book, and Blade Runner is their favorite movie.

- They have an underbite; you’re reluctant to introduce them to your father.

Examples: Christian Bale, Dog the Bounty Hunter, George A. Romero, Alice Cooper, Paul Newman, Abraham Lincoln.

How to Spot an Aquarius Woman:

- They dress like clowns.

- Their lack of personality is making you feel uncomfortable.

- They look like cabbage patch dolls.

- They are fucking air heads.

- They’re a political activist.

Examples: Jennifer Aniston, Lauren Conrad, Paris Hilton, Heather Graham, Christina Ricci, Aubrey O’Day, Mischa Barton.

How to Spot a Pisces Man:

- He knitted a giant doily, and now he is living in it.

- He’s lying about his drinking problem.

- He has the eyes of an abused dog.

- He’s frumpy.

- He “accidentally” left his cable knit sweater at your house, and now he’s coming over to “pick it up.”

- He looks like a fish stick.

- He made you a craft.

- He’s dating a filthy whore.

- He’s sad.

Examples: Kurt Cobain, Bret Michaels, Peter Fonda, Benicio Del Toro, Billy Corgan, Johnny Cash, William H. Macy.

How to spot a Pisces Woman:

- They blew their social security check on costume jewelry and designer imposter perfume.

- They’re rotund.

- They’re hanging from your nut sack.

- They’re addicted to e-harmony, boxed wine, and romance novels.

- They are compulsively lying to get out of a warrant that was issued in a “state they never even lived in!”

- They look like they’re melting.

- They have lizard eyes.

- Their rich parents are disappointed in them.

- Their boyfriend abuses them.

Examples: Glenn Close, Jennifer Love Hugetits, Whitney Port, Elizabeth Taylor, Liza Minnelli, Drew Barrymore, Chelsea Handler, Rihanna.

The Astrology of the Real Housewives of New York City/Taurus Women are Drag Queens

I heart the Real Housewives of New York City. The women highlighted on the show are about as salty and stale as their Pucci shaded shriveled up V’s, their oversized egos as artificially enlarged as show ambassador and anti-housewife Bethenny Frankel’s silex-filled breasts. Their endless infighting alludes to some poisonous amour-propre that fills up their Hampton nucleates like a kind of designer asbestos. In the words of Karl Marx, they are “the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality.” They are Jewish American Princesses hopped up on Adderall and sunshine, and during these times of economic duress, they are leaping through your television screens to remind you just how utterly fucking crazy rich people are.

Most of the Real Housewives of NYC are autumnal sun signs, each abutted next to the other. This lends an interesting dynamic to the show, as most of their zodiac signs are conjunct- an astrological aspect that tends to magnify both bad and good in each women through their relationships with each other. (Pictured from right to left) Alex McCord is an October born Libra, while her creepy, bloated fish of a husband, Simon (not pictured), is a Pisces. Ramona Singer and Bethenny Frankel are Scorpios. Jill Zarin is a Sagittarius, and her daughter Alyson (not pictured) is a Scorpio. Luann de Lesseps and Kelly Bensimon are both Men… I mean May born Taureans.

First, let’s discuss the most alienating characters on the show: the Taurus Drag Queens, Luann and Kelly.

Taurus women are sturdy, and I mean sturdy like 6’ tall, 200 lb basketball players. Both Luann and Kelly are ex-models… their elongated physics, mannish shoulders, and deep, honey coated, breathy voices make them obvious objects of an industry ran entirely by gay men. Fashion embraces the brand of XL Amazonian burliness that Taurus women naturally possess. Gay men prefer to be in the company of other gay men, and there is no more of an accurate proxy for a gay man than a Taurus woman. Bull ladies (I like to call them bull-ies) are physically huge, opulent, florid, gold-gilded and powder pink bitches from Venus, a planet that exists in the popular psyche as, appropriately, a flaming pink planet populated with fembots, drag queens, and women who can’t find dates.

Most fag hags are born with their sun in Taurus. Kimmora Lee “busted overstuffed loveseat” Simmons, Barbara Streisand, Cher, Donatella Versace, Bianca Jagger, Janet Jackson, Melania Trump, Brooke “Tranny McManny” Hogan, Megan “I think I look like Alan Alda” Fox, Madeleine Albright, Uma Thurman, Bea Arthur, Grace “Drag King” Jones, Carol Burnett, and Murphy Fucking Candace Bergen Ball Busting Brown are all female bullies. All of them are obscurely feminine, like bulging melted Barbie dolls. They are women engineered by gay men (at fourteen, Kimmora Lee was Trilby to Karl Lagerfeld’s Svengali). Thus, their possession of that which is feminine is grossly over-exaggerated; their faces running, their tans as crispy and fake as their contrastingly urine yellow-blonde hair. Donatella Versace and Brooke Hogan are excellent examples of Taurus bullies, their sad painted clown faces and their brown skin hanging loosely from their behemoth frames as if they were frozen characters in a work of outsider art on the unnaturalness of our prepackaged notions of female beauty. Taurus is a play on woman.

This leads me to Scorpio Bethenny Frankel’s relationship with the Real Housewives bullies, Luann de Lesseps and Kelly Bensimon. These tranny bullies have a natural aversion towards Bethenny. Kelly told Bethenny she is better than her. Because Kelly fashions herself as some sort of gold-gilded, fabulous, pure-bred cow, she felt compelled to let the entire cable television watching universe know that she is too exceptional to mix with lugubrious bugs and bottom feeders such as the scary scorpion, Bethenny. Luann the Man has a similar air of contrived arrogance, and took great pleasure in eschewing poor little buggish Bethenny by telling her she needs a metaphorical face lift (she gave her coaching on how to be more of a woman- her advice? Act helpless- yet another Taurean “play” on genuine femininity) as well as a literal face lift (she told her she needs “retouching”). Astrologically, this sort of undercutting and contention makes perfect sense. While Taurus and Scorpio are elementally compatible- water (Scorpio) and earth (Taurus) mix to form the innocuous substance of mud, Taurus and Scorpio are opposite on the zodiac wheel, their common denominator being they are the only two fixed feminine signs in the zodiac. They represent the same principles of obstinacy (fixity) and subtle manipulation (female). Both are illicit and possessive, finding meaning in sex and possessions. However, Scorpio is a realist, and Taurus is not. Both signs are treatments in over-indulgence. Taurus is a sloth, Scorpio is an addict. Scorpio is the blood-covered surgeon of the zodiac- approaching reality with a scalpel, probing internally for those gory nuggets of harsh reality.  Taurus is a pampered pig, a proverbial Miss Piggy stuffing herself with saccharin pink snow balls, indulging in her bovine heritage by nonchalantly frolicking about in the sun (hence their microwaved appearance).

Taurus eschews reality, Scorpio is addicted to it. As astrological opposites, both see mirrored in the other something that they do not like in themselves, but flipped. Overall, this is a stressful dynamic.

Jill (Sag) and Bethenny (Scorp) are genuine friends, even if they occasionally threaten in earnest to fork out each others’ eyes in public. Sagittarius and Scorpio are “conjunct” signs, meaning they are positioned next to each other on the zodiac wheel. One of the most useful tools for understanding the inner workings of an astrological sign is to inspect its astrological “neighbors.” There is a lot to be learned about a sign by peering at its ancestors (that is, its predecessor) and its future incarnation (its astral progression). Before the air-heady, shallow, eternally optimistic, iconic pop singer-y Sagittarius was all bubbles and happy go lucky red hair, she was a somber, self-loathing, raven haired Scorpio. Before Jill was Jill the JAP, Jill was Bethenny, hence her ability to serve as makeshift mommy to abandonment-issues riddled Bethenny. Jill, the Jupiter ruled archer, urges Bethenny to be happy and optimistic, and Bethenny, the creepy primordial scorpion that reigns over the eighth house of death, sex, and loss, urges Jill to take off her suede pant suit and stop yacking about bullshit. Overall, this is a relationship that is full of challenges leading to mutual growth.

The singular outsider among the Real Housewives of NYC mix is the sole air sign, Libra Alex McCord. Alex petitions nearly everyone she meets to accept her as one of their own (human), yet it is obvious that absolutely no one is buying her performance. She is an alien who has creepy tentacle sex with her even creepier husband. She is an Oklahoman outsider desperate to infiltrate the upper crust of New York society and absolutely no one is letting her in. Her passivity in conflict alludes to her desire not to disrupt her human persona, otherwise revealing her cyborg underbelly. Her poor impersonation (borderline characterization) of a refined, urbane East Coaster is very Libra-like, as Libras are the desperate, co-dependent diplomats of the zodiac. You never see them alone, although no one really knows them. Their disingenuous friendliness is hard to buy. They are the quintessential loners in a crowded room (save for their plastic dummy of a partner they have glued to their side, lest others find out they are friendless and alone).

It is no surprise that Alex’s biggest critics on the show are the resident reality-junkies, Scorpios Ramona Singer and Bethenny, both of whom find her faux upper-echelon charade to smack of phoniness and “silex,” suggesting her and her social scaling husband ought to be experts on how to “crawl through a fire escape to get into a good party.” Scorpio and Libra are neighboring signs and like Sag and Scorpio, they are also “conjunct.” Unlike Taurus and Scorpio, which are 180 degrees away from each other on the zodiac wheel and are thus mirror images of each other (opposites represent the same archetypal principles, just tweaked enough to foster a lot of mutual antipathy), conjunct signs are true astrological opposites. Scorpio’s harshness is a “backlash” to the Libra romanticism that preceded it on the zodiac wheel. Unlike Scorpio, who is Libra’s older sibling that has already passed through the flaming hoop of the Libran karmic lesson, Libra is still trapped in a stage of youthful idealism. Scorpio is the zodiac’s naughty, taboo-obsessed sex and death monster. Scorpio is an investigator and a critic, approaching life with a magnifying glass, a pair of gynecological forceps, and a scalpel, their mission in life is to pry and splay reality until it has revealed its ugly, bloody innards and thus rendered itself exposed and helpless. Libra hates blood and poo (not coincidentaly, Scorpio reigns over the “chode” in medical astrology, where poo and sexy bits collide, literally). In fact, Libra, like wanderlust Sagittarius, hates reality, preferring to see life through the gossamer blur of romanticism and gentle artistic sensibilities. Alex is lost in airy make-believe, and the Scorpios hate her for it.

Unlike the Real Housewives of the OC which was populated mostly by Virgos (Jo de la Rosa, Jeana Keough, Tamra Barney, and Kimberly Bryant are all Virgo trainwrecks, please see this blog entry for further elaboration) and other summer signs, the autumnal astrological mix of the RHONYC brings a brevity, wit, and maturity that the OC crispies were missing; and of course, more drama than you can shake a loaded camera at. You can learn more about the RHONYC here.

Leo Woman: The Alpha Pussy

Unlike the soft, pouting, etherealized sexuality of her astrological neighbor, Cancer, there is nothing ethereal about a Leo woman. Unlike her subtler, wetter counterparts, Leo is obvious, almost obtusely so. She isn’t particularly intellectual or superiorly beautiful, nor is she terribly caring or nurturing. As a fixed fire sign with a masculine polarity, she isn’t a paragon of natural poise nor a possessor of that magical, subtle feminine mystique that we all salivate over. The trait that singularly puts Leo woman in a separate, elevated category from her female counterparts is her intense creative spark and her invisible bloated testicles, it is her moxie.

Unlike Scorpio, who is emotionally intense (fixed/water), Leo (fixed/fire) possesses the intense creative energy of free will. Being internally motivated by something more elusive and powerful than emotion or intelligence, Leo is intrinsically motivated by an invisible, inextricable spark of sunshine which pours out of her like molten hot lava. She pursues life with an inspired exactitude that leaves the sloppy, half-baked efforts of others depressingly inferior. When Leo woman is gyrating to her own music on stage, she does so maniacally. When she loves you, she does so violently. When she writes about herself in her blog, she does so with such a powerfully impassioned self-love that it becomes endearing. When she loves you, she loves you to the depths of your soul. When she scrubs a toilet, she fucking scrubs a toilet. Leo woman may not appreciate and admire you like a Libra, or nurture you like a Cancer, but Leo is heart, she is love, she is hot pink sunshine, and who doesn’t want to be enveloped in that?

Leo’s luminary ruler is the sun. The alchemical symbol for the sun (as well as the self) is represented by a mandala, a circle with a dot in its center. The circle represents the path of self discovery; the dot represents the mysteries of the individual self… that is, the true self, or what Buddhism refers to as the Diamond Self (Hinduism refers to it as the Atman). The sun, like the self, represents autonomy and individuation. All monotheistic religions share a common origin in the heliocentric Kurgan culture, suggesting the solar principle is both personal and patriarchal, as all monotheistic religions are based on the individual’s relationship with deity, rather than the society’s relationship with deity writ large. Hence, solar-based religion is fundamentally about understanding the true self. In the monotheistic ethos, The Diamond or True Self is the alchemical Tartarus Mundi, the central salt-point of the universe into which all things collapse. Just as all spatial lines ultimately vanish at a single identifiable point in our spherical universe, all of reality disappears with the individual. Thus, the Leo glyph represents the most elemental enigma we all must confront in life: who am I really, and what is my purpose, my place in the universe?

Mandalas and acts of circumambulatory meditation have been used as spiritual tools in Hindu, Abrahamic, Buddhist, and Cabbalistic spiritual traditions since time immemorial. At its core, the solar archetype is what Jung refers to as “the circumambulation of the self,” as we meditatively concentrate on the centripetal force of the sun or mandala’s center, all other realities dissolve, and for a brief moment, we are absolutely nothing but emptiness. This is our true self- what we experience as children when we repeat our names over and over and over again, until our identity loses its significance.

Leos envision themselves as having all the explosive potential of an atom. By exploring and probing the depths of their individual psyche, they expect to release equivalent sums of energy. Leos are existential, self-exploration junkies. Carl Jung and Aldous Huxley, the kings of self-involved psychological exploration, are perhaps two of the most influential Leos of all time. While Gemini’s dynamism is a result of varied experience, Leo’s is driven by an irascible need to know their “true” self. Like Madonna and Dorothy of Oz fame, their journey is an internal one, elaborated on in their dreams. Unlike the Wanderer archetype, they do not search outside of themselves for their spiritual abode; they simply peel back another layer of skin, forever the onion searching its various peels for its soul.

Leo’s goal in life is to know themselves, their REAL SELVES, that golden delicious nugget of pristine truth hidden deep within the auricle of their hearts. While most see Madonna as being mercurial or even schizophrenic in her search for self, trying on new identities and lives like a shapeshifting chimera, its obvious to me that she is simply on a path to becoming a closer approximation of her true self: a spiritual, self-obsessed, perfectionistic, physically strong, disco-sunshine-animal skin clad-kitten who loves kids, clothes, and dancing. In a sentence, that is Leo woman- a fluorescent colored, overly-tan (an imprint of their mid-summer birth and solar archetype), naturally buff (an imprint of their feline heritage), almost always half naked- in particular- topless (a shout-out to their “many breasted” Artemis archetype) slinky lady that is as magnetically irresistible as she is irritatingly big mouthed and destructively hot. That is the hazard of being part sunshine, part wild animal.

The fifth astrological house of Leo encompasses all things revolving around the heart- the pin-dot core of human reality. In Cabala, the number five represents creativity, protection, and sex, the Roman numeral for five (V) has historically been used as a protective marker on shields. Leo reigns over the zodiacal house of passion, love, self-expression, self-actualization, romance, pride, drama, amusement, children, fame, art, dance, games, holidays, imagination, creativity, and renown. In medical astrology, Leo rules over the biological heart. Leo’s home in the human nervous system mirrors her astrological glyph. Leo is the central point in her social circle, often pushing her way into the center of available attention. She operates from the centermost area of her heart, and can be found smack in the center of her protective circle of fire, which simultaneously repels with fear and attracts with lightness, presenting any would-be friend or lover with an almost impassable obstacle: can you cross her personal boundaries without being engulfed in flames; and most importantly, can you love her as much as she loves herself?

Solar ladies are unaware that they are being taboo or violating social norms in their overt self-exposure, they are simply being their obnoxious selves. Leos crave attention, if not harsh scrutiny, obviously a result of her unstable sense of self. Like any attention whore, Leo’s instability is spawned from being ignored as a child. Just as Cancer compensates for her unstable childhood by becoming a gold-digging, Vicodin popping mess, Leo compensates for her latchkey, alienated childhood by foisting herself into the scope of others. She is the neglected kitten, peeing all over your possessions and clawing at your Horchow rug just to remind you that she is important. Leo will whore herself just to feel some false sense of being worshiped, basking in the fleeting glory of being someone’s new favorite thing. The easiest way to identify a Lioness in a crowded room is to select the ruddy lady with the wildest mane, whose laughing a little too loudly while revealing too much about herself. Leo woman is embarrassingly self-revealing, almost pathologically incapable of restraint or self-editing. She is a fire kitten who needs to be known… she has molten hot pink lava boiling over inside of her that she desperately needs to show you. Just accept the hot pink lava spewing out of her like kitty vomit as a gift, a token of her expansive, almost grotesquely over-sized heart. A volcano can’t help but erupt all over you.

Leos make excellent, if not overly-exposed, performers, models, writers, and actors. Lioness Tori Amos is known for furiously masturbating herself on stage while Madonna’s performances can be as disturbingly exhibitionist as a videotaped childbirth. Leos will happily parade around in the most scant bespattering of fabric in the most public of places: Kim Catrall (aka The Slutty One), Natasha Henstridge, Jennifer Lopez, Iman, Halle Berry, Emmanuelle Beart, Vivica A. Fox, Melanie Griffith, Charlize Theron, Jackie Warner, and Geri Halliwell are all lionesses who seem to fundamentally abhor wearing clothing… while other solar maidens reveal themselves through their writing, music, and displays of public pageantry (usually debacles and scandals) which are often engineered by Leo with an overt sense of ego, as if people were DEMANDING to inspect their dirty laundry and they’re simply dishing out what the people have requested: Monica Lewinsky, Sloan Crosley (she writes like a drunk chick incapable of foreshadowing the embarrassment awaiting her the morning after, she has Leo Volcano Syndrome), Dorothy Parker, Sally Struthers, Connie Chung, Loni Anderson, Whitney Houston, Clara Bow, Kate Bush, Martha Stewart, Emily Bronte, Iris Love, Lucille Ball, Coco Chanel, Annie Oakley, Delta Burke, J.K. Rowling, Beatrix Potter, etc. Leos are also excellent politicians; many lionesses thrive off of derivative political power. Leo is one of two power signs, the other being Scorpio. Scorpios and Leos are attracted to one another’s corrupt sense of entitlement to socio-political power. Some of the most famous power couples in the world are scorpion/lion duos: Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Joe Biden and Barack Obama, Bill and Hilary Clinton, Alain and Rosalie Delon, Puff Daddy and J. Lo. Leos also make excellent presidential mates. Take one female Leo, give her a regal sense of above-reprieve exceptionalness and a passionately opinionated political belief, and you have the Annoyingly Self-Righteous Political Wife, some of the most peevish examples being Tipper Gore, Elizabeth Dole, Lynne Cheney, Jackie O, Rossalynn Smith Carter, and Bill Clinton (well, he’s almost a wife, and was almost a First Lady).

The feminine mystique hides under dissimulation, and Leo is just too obnoxious to provide enough omissions, enough ellipses to indicate there’s something more. She’s a cat, and cats only come to you when they have something to purr into your ear. As the consummate cat-fighting, hot blooded bitch of the zodiac, Leo is capable of fending for herself (and inevitably, she must, as anyone who has “put themselves out there” as much as the uncontrollably volcanic Leo can certainly understand). She can be a predatory, staunchly independent, emasculating, calculating, overachieving, overly-competitive workaholic, all depending on how unstable in her sense of place she is. Stable or unstable, Leo is hot strength personified.

In the traditional Marseilles tarot deck, Leo is represented by the eleventh trump card, the Strength or La Force card. This is a transitional card, marking a juncture point in our archetypal journey, as it is the first instance that we encounter a woman in the tarot deck. This maiden is neither an embellished princess nor a stiffly seated, cadaverous priestess; she is an accessible, slightly silly looking Plain Jane (nice hat, Jane). However, she is obviously not an ordinary woman, because ordinary women do not stick their hands (or in later decks, their heads and entire bodies) into the mouths of ferocious lions. Unlike her masculine counterpart, the Magi (represented in the zodiac by Aquarius, Leo’s opposite sign), she uses no tools, no baton or scepter, no potions or electrical conductors to protect her from the animal threat. Her raw audacity doesn’t come from some disposable alien technology- it is indelibly and inalienably a part of herself, her mysterious power is no mystery, it simply comes from her eagerness to make personal contact with something untamed and violent, her willingness to confront the instinctual, pre-cultural aspects of herself.

The Leo archetype has taken on many incarnations in myth and popular culture: Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz, the Greek “virgin-hunter” goddess Artemis/Hestia, the Egyptian Bast or Sekhmet, and the comic book character Cat Woman (played in film and television by, not surprisingly, Leos Julie Newmar and Halle Berry). Like the principle of the Strength tarot card, Artemis/Hestia is virginal and inviolate, untouched by culture. She is a huntress connected with her animal-side, often having a difficult time incorporating herself into the reality of other’s (read: men) due to her feline fixedness and independence.

Not coincidentally, Cat Woman (Leo) has been casted as Batman’s (Aquarius) unrequited, “one true love,” their tumultuously romantic relationship based on both mutual antipathy and deep understanding. Cat Woman is the villainous, anti-heroic side of the vinyl unitard clad couple, while Aquarius is her selfless, humanitarian conspecific. Cat Woman is motivated by personal ends (jewelry, money, self-preservation), while Batman is motivated by social ends (justice, social-order, reformation). Both are vanguard and independent, and as opposite signs in the zodiac, are pulled to each other by a magnetic force.

Aquarius and Leo are opposite signs on the zodiacal wheel, meaning that they represent two sides of the same coin, so to speak. The Strength card presents us with the meaning of the Aquarius and Leo coin: while one performs magic in public, the other performs magic privately, intimately. This is at the essence of what separates Aquarius, the social reformer, from Leo, the existential psychoanalysis junky. While an Aquarius may feel so unhappy in their own life that they find their dissatisfaction spilling out into the public and political domain of unhappiness, Leo will obsess over their personal problems without feeling the least bit compelled to involve themselves with the pain of others. While both are transformative and creative, one is personal, the other impersonal. One is political, the other artistic. One touches many through radio waves and inspired soapbox speeches in the center of public life (like, for example, Aquarians Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln), the other contacts you personally via e-mail and MTV (like Leos Bill Clinton and Barack Obama). You blog politics, I blog astrology.

Leo woman is a control freak intolerant of erraticism, the most defining characteristic of her Uranus and Chiron ruled opposite sign, Aquarius. Leo is liable to smack the weirdness out you, histrionically storming out of her relationships when she detects the least bit of resistance or non-conformity like the royal pain in the ass that she is. As the heart of the zodiac, Leo claws her way into the executive center of any enterprise she’s involved in, appointing herself as the sauciest and most brazen, bossiest bitch of her family, co-workers, home, and partners. Her behavior, more often than not, results in her attracting only the weakest, most passive posse (Pisces, Libra, Cancer, Virgo, Gemini, and Sag) while disaffecting anyone with a backbone (Taurus, Capricorn, Aquarius, Aries, Scorpio, other Leos). Solar ladies, like the sun, embody the male or father principle, and can thus be daddy-like. She is controlling and ritualistic to the extreme. A Leo mother will force her son to wear make-up and a teal sweater set for his school pictures, stomping out any resistance like a matriarchal Gestapo. She’ll take her boyfriend or girlfriend shopping, pick out their clothes, supervise their haircuts, throw out their gummy bears and beer, piss all over their friends and family, clean their room, and, unlike a Scorpio or Virgo, will do so without one iota of subterfuge or kindness. The Leo star invented the celebrity rider, from J Lo’s demands of being surrounded by “all white furnishings,” at all times, to Madonna’s insistance that she exclusively consume only blessed Cabbala water, Leo seeks stability in the silliest of places. The more “off-center” she feels in her sense of selfhood, the more she seeks that stability through asserting her control, moderating her life with an obsessive compulsion that may lead to anorexia, phobias, and an addiction to work- exercise, career, cleaning, and “improvement” -of herself and anything she identifies as being an extension of herself.

Despite all of her selfish, almost infantile sense of egoic importance, Leo lights up those around her like Hestia’s hearth, radiating harsh, yet unconditional love onto those in her inner circle just like the sun. She is a love monster, lighting up the vim around her with her bloated heart… and perhaps at times, unnerving those around her by accidentally loving herself a little too much.

Gemini Man: The Metamorphoses

The Gemini man is the zodiac’s little mariposa, a fluttering social butterfly and nervous buzzing bee forever undergoing transformation. From egg, to larva, to pupa, to full blown verminal dung beetle, he is constantly permuting from one incarnation to the next.

No other sign in the zodiac is as dynamic as the zodiac’s little golden butterfly. Slightly serpentine and slimy, the Gemini archetype represents the forever oscillating duality of the human condition. Like Prospero of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Gemini man is capable of manipulating his environment as an emancipator and innovator, as well as an exploiter and conman. Gemini is the most morally relativistic sign of the zodiac; they are truly the devil’s advocate. Despite any accomplished achievements, the Gemini legacy is always diaphanous and morally vague. Famous Geminis, such as Allen Ginsberg: The Poet, Jean-Paul Sartre: The Philosopher, Salman Rushdie: The Novelist, Errol Flynn: The Actor, JFK: The Reformer, Donald Trump: The Entrepreneur, etc. always carry a disguised underbelly to their lives that eventually, when revealed, leaves a sickly sour taste in our mouths: Allen Ginsberg: Bearded Pedophilic Sexual Predator, Jean-Paul Sartre: Self-Important Egotist, Salman Rushdie: Modelizer, Errol Flynn: Alcoholic Statutory Rapist Bisexual Slut, JFK: Philanderer, Donald Trump: Exploitive Capitalist with Glued on Hair Piece, etc. Both of my now deceased grandfathers were Geminis. It wasn’t until decades after my paternal grandfather’s death that it was revealed he had a second family, a wife and a son. Appropriately, his remaining family members regard him with an ambiguous confusion befitting a riddling, mercurial man.

If mythic images implicitly govern a culture, then it is no coincidence that, according to birth records, there are more cunning and nervous Geminis fluttering about the earth than any other sign. If there are but a few pan-cultural human traits that distinguish us as a species, they must be our obsession with communication, our penchant for face to face fucking, our innovation, and our incessant gathering and dispersal of information, all of which come under the domain of the Twins archetype. As the enormous list of chatty, intellectually ambitious famous Gemini men would suggest, the Twins introduce a verbal and cerebral sophistication to any field they are involved in. Gemini men are the greatest lyricists, poets, composers, screen actors, and orators of all time: Bob Dylan, W.B. Yeats, Clint Eastwood, Laurence Olivier, Walt Whitman, R.W. Emerson, Johnny Depp, John Wayne, Ginsberg, Sartre, Rushdie, Morgan Freeman, Vincent Price, Michael J. Fox, Morrissey, Cole Porter, Tom Jones, James Brown, Tupac Shakur, Paul McCartney, Prince, Barry Manilow, Spalding Gray, Miles Davis, Kanye West, Andre 3000, Gene Wilder, Monteverdi, Bob Hope, and Tony Curtis are just a few Mercury ruled jugglers that have imprinted their cerebral and vocal talents onto their respective fields.

Gemini is ruled by Mercury. The mercury archetype has influenced a nexus of mythic “messenger” images: the Greek Hermes (or Logios, the Orator), the Egyptian Thoth, the Roman Mercurius, and the American superhero Flash, all of which were psychopomps, the only deities of their respective pantheons that possessed the ability to cross the threshold between life and death. Mercury ruled Geminis are not only drawn to traveling between geographical bodies, but are often drawn to metaphorical states of traveling “in between.” They can be found in somewhat incomplete, nebulous (and at times, dubious) stations in their lives, usually juxtaposed between opposites… between marriages, between jobs, between complete and utter financial collapse and shitting out thousands of dollars worth of black caviar on gold gilded toilets, ala overindulgent 1980’s style. They are perpetually “just visiting,” neither here nor there, in the words of Victor Turner, they are “betwixt and between,” straddling the demarcation between light and dark, good and bad, or what was referred to in the ancient Hymn to Hermes as “wolf light,” that strange period between dawn and light that transcends our standard dichotomies, and for a brief moment, inspires us to the think outside of our binary dualities.

Just as the woven webs of bees and butterflies, two Paleolithic images of the Mercury archetype, relate to the interconnectedness of all life, Gemini man embodies the interconnected principle of the butterfly effect more so than any other. As a mutable air sign (changeable, intellectual) Gemini is chaos theory: let’s just say that if a Gemini farts into the wind, the impact is much more cataclysmic than that of someone else’s anal expulsions. Gemini’s woven webs of relationships, affairs, and transactions extend far and beyond the provincial world of most of us terrestrial types, and because of this, their (typically) morally dubious activities not only affect their immediate family, but also their “hidden” families. Not only do Geminis suffer from severe ADD, they are also very, very cunning, a recipe for a favorite Gemini hobby: “juggling” relationships (and thoughts and careers and oranges). As the consummate multitasker, Geminis are artful philanderers and cheaters, many living double lives.

Gemini rules the third house of the zodiac, the house of rapid change, inconsistency, trickery, commotion, curiosity, eloquence, speech, cognition, cunning, contradiction, gossip, riddles, and mental stimulation. Gemini is that cunning-linguist who talked you out of your panties and into the freakiest sex of your life, only to find him gone when you awake, and yourself naked and embarrassed. Gemini is the natural born conman Hermes, who, in complete cradle-ridden infantilism, managed to smooth talk his way out of being charged with theft. Gemini is the absentee parent that abandoned you as a child for a frivolous, irresponsible life of travel and exploration. Gemini is unfinished scaffolding that unexpectedly leads you to your sudden death. Gemini is that elusive element of change and unpredictability in our lives that keeps us jumpy and expectant, that keeps us on the edge of our seat. If you find Geminis difficult to digest, perhaps it’s not so much the person that is giving you dyspepsia, but the quality of shock and surprise, for better or for worse, that they represent. The more you are comfortable with change and a bit of trickery, the more comfortable you are in the presence of a Gemini.

In traditional Jungian archetypes, Gemini is represented by The Wanderer or The Fool. The Fool card is depicted as a traveler, and in tarot, is considered the most powerful of all the trump cards. As he is the only unnumbered card, he is free to travel at will; confounding the established order of anything he is involved with (like The Joker in modern playing cards, who has no real purpose other than to cause the occasional misdeal).

The Fool is usually pictured blindfolded with his canine companion nipping at his heals, warning him of his impending death unless he takes notice of the precipice he is about to wander off of.

Like The Twins, he is never alone; despite his handicapped appearance, he is not misguided, his path being directed by something more animalistic, more deep seated than vision and conscious thought. The Twins archetype, like The Fool, represents the dual nature of humans: spiritual and profane, instinctual and intellectual, thoughtful and ignorant, naughty and nice. The Gemini glyph also represents this dual nature, one bar representing the physical, mortal half, the other bar representing the instinctual, psychospiritual half of ourselves that inherently understands archetypes, primordial concepts, and is tapped into what Jung referred to as the collective unconscious.

Similarly, it is no coincidence that Hermes’ scepter was depicted as a caduceus of entwined snakes, hearkening back to his own bicephalic (that is, two headed or two faced) nature.

When we read tarot, we are tapping into the madcap wisdom of The Fool and The Twins. Part dumb ass, part wise man, Gemini is The Riddler, connecting the wisdom of the future with the playful innocence of childhood, urging us on in our journey through life, handing us ambiguous clues, challenging us to reveal his true meaning. His kaleidoscopic, paradoxical appearance surprises us with profound revelations in much the same way fairies and elemental characters reveal profound insights into the nature of reality via DxM and other psychotropic drug experiences. The Fool reminds us that life is fun, a paradoxical ride through heaven and hell, a series of unfortunate events. Life is silly, life is easily destroyed, life is profoundly beautiful, and it is not to be taken too seriously.

Gemini is the quintessential insider and man about town, devouring experiences and information like that curious scamp, Leroy “Encyclopedia” Brown. Just as Encyclopedia Brown will forever be trapped on paper as being stuck in that interim stage of witty, deviant, exploratory boyhood, all Gemini men are similarly entrapped in that naughty boyish state of stunted adolescence, forever the petite explorer. Gemini man invented the “Peter Pan complex.” I’ve never met a Gemini man that doesn’t, to some degree, rely on his parents for financial support- a result of their inability to consign themselves to lasting responsibilities.

The Gemini mantra is “I communicate,” and Geminis are constantly gathering a wellspring of information to cleverly sprinkle onto their endless address book of friends and playmates. The Gemini archetypal image is that of the Twins, not a two-faced individual, as most have mistakenly interpreted this image to represent. The twins are depicted as being in a perpetual conversation with each other, representing the ongoing dialectic process of communication. Geminis intuitively understand the subtle equilibrium preserved by the constant confrontation of a thesis with its antithesis, each conversation an opportunity for new revelations. The Gemini pursuit is truly the pursuit of trivia. Their mental circuits are always pulsating to the “beep bop boop” of the media’s dissemination of what’s current in mental innovation.

The Twins always have their finger on the pulse of what is cool, urbane, new, and exciting. Whether it be as low brow as Britney Spears’ pussy peaking through her panties or as high brow as an insightful academic review of Foucault’s Birth of the Clinic, Gemini is the ultimate hodgepodge collage of low-brow meets high-brow, a post-post-modernist philosophical zietgiest that has permuted the world in the last ten years and is manifest in such cultural phenomena as the elevation of the filthiest, lowliest cuisine on earth (like, say, Indian street food or macaroni and cheese) to the highest reaches of society, or the fact that you can receive a degree in pop cultural studies from accredited universities, where Madonna and Britney are treated with Heideggerean Phenomenology. This is at the heart of the Gemini man’s spirit- to assess all things with no regard to their provenance, whether it be a fatty pile of carnitas he picked up from a hot, sweaty lunch trunk or duck confit served to him on a white table cloth at a five star Michelin Mecca, he’s able to fluidly vacillate from the heights and lowly depths of culture in a single 24 hour period. His style of dress is equally as high/low, Sex and the City character Carrie Bradshaw exhibiting the female Gemini style perfectly. As sure as he owns a well tailored designer suit, Gemini man owns a pair of hot pink and neon green board shorts that he may pair with Miu Miu slippers and a puff paint T-shirt he made at summer camp in 1984. And chances are, his slight, adolescent physic hasn’t changed a bit since 1984 (although everything else about him has, x100).

Sex with a Gemini man is a marathon and a surprise. The surprise is often his buck naked form appearing out of nowhere. Gemini men are lovable scamps at heart, and because of this, their own “little rascal” brand of sexuality always smacks of being premature, overly forceful, and not quite tempered by the slowing inertia of adulthood- an affect that never dawns on them. No Gemini men exhibit mercurial sexual energy with more gusto than Benjamin Andre 3000 and Prince. First, both dress and look like very slight, very young teenagers, their aerodynamic faces and bodies reminding us of their quick traveling archetype. Second, they love “marathon” style sex (please see Andre 3000’s “Spread,” and Prince’s “Get Off”). A brief list of Gemini mansluts reveals not only a preoccupation with sex, but a preoccupation with having a lot of sex with a lot of different partners, often dipping into both gender pools: Prince, Andre 3000, Collin Farrel, Errol Flynn, Boy George, Johnny Depp, and Rupert Everett (an ex-prostitute).

No one has been possessed by that playful, boyish Juggler archetype more so than Gemini Gene Wilder (or Gemini Johnny Depp) in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Willy Wonka is a cunning dealmaker and merchant, a whimsical poet, and a vicious trickster if there ever was one. He is a flashy magician of a man, straddling the boundary between nefarious villain and sanctimonious humanitarian. He, like all Mercury ruled men, is a riddle in human form.

Like Hermes, Geminis are light, and they travel light (and they do love a play on words). Free of all encumbrances of society, Gemini man is a free floating mariposa, eternally dodging the tragic entwinements of life’s responsibilities. Like a cultural zeitgeist that seemingly appears out of no where, teaches us all a new way of viewing the world, and is gone as quickly as it appeared, Gemini man too possesses an expiration date. There is never a consolation in mourning a missing Gemini man, whether he was your flagrantly absentee father or temperamental child-like boyfriend, Geminis are as ephemeral as life itself, and like life, they are to be experienced, not possessed. Besides, there’s always a new winged tourist waiting at the next bus stop looking for an interesting character to pick him up and show him the innards of the city he just landed in. That is, until after weeks of frenetic gallivanting from one tripe serving Singaporian pit latrine to the next, you awake to find that your Gemini man-boy has left, jet setting to the next life altering experience, leaving in his wake a book of riddles scribbled over the collected works of Rumi, a paper thin vintage T-shirt from the 1986 Montreal state fair… and a puff of glittery fantastical purple smoke that when settled, is just a pile of unanswered question marks.

Cancer: The Lunatic

Lunar energy is mysterious, haunting, subtle, creative, changing, artistic, nocturnal, sexual, nefarious, manipulative, hysteric, magnetic, ancient, provocative, intuitive, feminine, and unsettling. Accordingly, those born under the hypnotic vibrations of Luna exhibit these traits, rendering Cancer the zodiac’s resident lunatic.

Cancers are, in true lunatic speech, misunderestimated. I can only assume that the hordes of astrologers who’ve painted Cancer as the perfect paragon of pastel pink maternalism, with their big bloated lactating funbags and rotund bodices, have never been magnetically sucked into the salty, slightly damp cave of a loony, indwelling Crab. And chances are, they haven’t. Cancers are as elusive to diurnal folks as your neighborhood burglar or night stalker. You’re more likely to encounter a Cancer hiding under your bed (you’re not sure what the hell they’re doing under there, but it’s safe to assume it has something to do with either a future black-mailing, casting a cursing spell on you, or gathering fodder for some retributive emotional manipulation) than during daylight hours.

Crabby McCrabclaws can easily be detected by their raucous, ribald laughter, the laughing lunatic being a modern day manifestation of their archetype. You will never meet a Cancer that doesn’t have a deeply perverted, irreverent sense of humor. Cancer, the zodiac’s own bipolar mother (or what Jung referred to as “The Dual Mother Archetype,” half psycho/half sweet) was probably the genesis of the dead baby joke. Accordingly, Cancer is the sign of The Mainstream Humorist: Bill Cosby, Robin Williams, Gilda Radner, Phylis Diller, Andy Dick, David Spade, Larry David (he’s actually funny, unlike the rest of this list), Dan Ackroyd, Will Farrel, Mel Brooks, and Don Knotts are just some of the popular comedians born under Luna’s influence.

Cancer is also the sign of The Slightly Retarded Insane Person: Garey Busey, Andy Dick, George W. Bush, Courtney Love, Jessica Simpson, Lizzy “40 wacks” Borden, Larry David, Geraldo Rivera, Khloe Kardashian, Mike Tyson, Lindsay Lohan, 50 Cent, Leona Helmsley, Tom Cruise, O.J. Simpson, Richard Simmons, Jerry Rubin, Bridgit Neilson, Isaac Brock, Ross Perot, Pam Anderson, Juliette Lewis, Cyndi Lauper, and Nancy Reagan are just a few crazies born under the moon’s unstable, bewitching influence.

Cancer rules the house of personal history (childhood trauma), collective memory (patriotism sponsored by contrived historical precedence), home and real estate (agoraphobia), self-protection (paranoia), collecting (pack ratting), security (dating for money), emotions (unstable volatilism), mood (bipolarism), intuition (incessant stomach aches), and the maternal principle (manipulation via nurturing). All Cancers, despite their apparent differences, are united by their insatiable appetite for mysticism. Even the most proper Lunar Ladies (such as Nancy Reagan and Princess Diana) and Lunatic men (Scientologist Tom Cruise) are drawn to astrology and the occasional chanting/ouiji board sess’/exorcising, an ancient holdout from when the moon = menstruation = dangerous, mystical female power/magic. Cancer is a peculiar mix of nocturnal, brooding, mystical darkness; child-like prettiness, outlandish eccentricism, filthy dead baby jokes, and historic romanticism. As the zodiac’s nocturnal historian, Crabs are easily identified by their vintage scent, a musky mixture of unwashed thrift store clothing, dead roses, Chanel No. 5, and mildew. This is appropriate, as most Cancers can be found lurking in the dark lairs of some permuted basement: sex dungeons, bomb shelters, attics, archives, vintage clothing stores, dingy dive bars, late night greasy diners, 24 hour pharmacies, historic downtown lofts, antique stores, clubs, and the basement office of your neighborhood psychic are just a few of Cancer’s favorite haunts.

In traditional tarot and astrology, motherhood, babies, and big boobs play a minor role in the depiction of the moon and its archetypal vibratory pattern. As sure as the moon coincides with women’s ovulatory and menstrual cycles, the full moon has also been positively correlated in controlled academic studies with measurable increases in “homicides, suicides, fatal traffic accidents, aggravated assaults and psychiatric emergency room admissions.” Lunar energy has become less boding and intimidating to us as we’ve mastered darkness through the controlled use of light. We’ve come to regard the moon as an inhospitable (read: incapable of being pillaged) and useless meteor, a floating vestige from the haunted, pre-scientific world of our moon-worshipping ancestors. We no longer see her as a glowing egg in the sky that magically draws us into the mysteries of the dark; she is now our bloated, overly protective mother that, despite our best efforts to ignore her out of existence, is still interfering in our lives. Thus, we’ve simply related her to something harmless, such as moon = motherhood, rather than moon = Mike Tyson biting your ear off or moon = your scorned girlfriend smashing her car into your garage door. I hate to break it to you Linda Goodman knock-offs, but the moon means much more than just Tampax and Gymboree. Such is the hazard of literal interpretations. The truth is, a Cancer is more likely to neurotically obsess over their metaphorical creations (that which they birth from their soul) rather than their literal creations (that which they birth from their uterine canal). Most Cancers are more inclined to paranoidly fret over their creative works being stolen by plagiarists or losing their investments to the inconsistencies of the financial market than losing their biological children to adulthood. In conclusion, Cancer is not your mother. Cancer is your eccentric nieghborhood pervert/agorophobic artist.

The Cancer archetype is represented in the original Marseilles tarot deck in the form of the foreboding Moon card, La Lune. The card represents what Joseph Campbell has called “The Dark Night of the Soul,” those bleakest periods in which we find ourselves lost, confused, and unable to navigate our way out of the infinitely light-less maze we’ve driven ourselves into. Unlike The Star card, which represents the futurism and hope of Aquarius, the Moon represents our pasts… things we’ve abandoned, childhood pets we’ve put to sleep, regrets, our darkest secrets, those childhood traumas we’d like to peddle our Little Mermaid tenspeeds as fast as we can away from. The Moon is a repository for those memories that can never truly be forgotten. The Moon is a constant reminder of the most fucked up incarnations of ourselves. Ultimately, she redeems us by teaching us that the only way out of our self-imposed maze is through confronting our Shadow, only by delving even deeper into the murky depths of our souls can we finally emerge. Only when we forage a connection to our inherent bodily knowledge and intuition can we safely be guided back to the light.

The Moon is often regarded as the bleakest card in the tarot deck.

Unlike the seventeen Trump cards that precede it, the Moon card depicts no human presence; there is no place for the individual ego in this particular landscape. Anyone who has delved into the dimly lit depths of their own psyche in the form of drug experimentation, sensory deprivation, or meditation can attest to the fact that the ego does not exist independent of what Frued refers to as “social realities.” Just as Cancer represents our introduction into the element of water (to wit, pre-consciousness) in the zodiac, the Moon card marks our initial entrée into the swampy, instinctual firmament of our unconsciousness. Two rabid dogs howl at the moon, flanking a prehistoric crawfish submerged in an unending sea of cold, colorless, thick petroleum. The crawfish is able to survive the toxic, oxygen-less swamp due to her thick exoskeleton. Just as the crab or crawfish wears his armament on the outside, so does self-protective Cancer, with her uber-manipulative mind, hermetically sealed crotch, hardened exterior, and razor sharp crab claws, she is the embodiment of self-defensiveness.

The Moon card depicts luna crying lurimae lunae, “tears of the moon.” The tearful moon feeds the firmament with her dew, connecting her with the alchemical state of liquidity and bodily fluids: blood, tears, urine, mucus, saliva, bodies of water, paint, plasma, ejaculate, hormones, medicaments, excrement, poison, and cleaning products all come under the rulership of the moon. This is perhaps why water signs, Cancers especially, make excellent doctors, pill poppers, nurses, prostitutes, mothers, biologists, caretakers, surgeons, sanitation workers, plastic surgery candidates, morticians, vampires, artists, drug addicts, and cold blooded killers. Cancers, like the moon, are magnetically drawn to fluids and fluid states. Cancers love the relaxing wave of warmth that a Xanax, Vicodin, or Soma (which is derived from the Hindi word for the moon) induces over them, almost as much as they love watching the billowing waves of the ocean. Both are reminiscent of their preferred state of being: encapsulated in their mother’s womb.

Just as Cancer is the maiden of bodily byproducts, she is the supreme ruler of bodily knowledge. Cancer embodies what psychoanalysis refers to as “primary process thinking”-those visceral, ancient, unmediated drives that lie deep within the center the human brain (officially called the limbic system or even more officially, the hippocampus). Like the fourth house of Cancer, our hippocampus presides over memories, feelings, moods, emotions, sex hormones, and learning. In fact, too little blood flow to the hippocampus has been connected with Bipolarism, the medicalization of the moody “Dual Mother” archetype. And if you’ve ever met a menstrual Cancer lady during a full moon, you will truly understand what complete and utter emotional instability/two-faced vacillation looks like.

Water signs are disinclined to employ their higher cognitive faculties as a mediator between knee-jerk, unconscious viscera and their reactive behaviors. Hence, perhaps, the Cancer’s proclivity for hiding in your closet, smashing your car window with a sledge hammer, or even killing you in your sleep. Cancers, like all water signs, have a difficult plot in life in terms of love and relationships. Cancer is the most sentimental, romantic, easily emotionally bruised of all zodiac signs (yes, even more so than suicidal Pisces). Couple a crab-claw like hold on past slights with an uber soft nugget of a heart, and you have one explosive crustacean on your hands.

Cancers, with their wet, puffy, squinty, sun-shaded eyes and soft moon faces, appear as though they are perpetually recovering from a bad breakup or late night drinking binge. This is because more often than not, they are emotionally recovering from something. No other film captures the emotionally tumultuous map of the Cancer psyche more so than Cancer Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia.

Each character is bounded by memory, almost specters of their pasts. Each is wandering aimlessly through the entrapped mazes of their inconsolable pain, lugging around their hermit shells of false security, mangled memories, and mommy/daddy issues on their backs. Like the hermit crab, the Cancer desire to collect junk, stuff it into their mobile homes, and walk sideways (or backwards) through life is strong. Cancer’s hermetic pack ratting of both physical and emotional junk reminds us that there is nothing like the security of our “homes” to result in our incarceration- we must move on, we must start anew and confront the unfamiliar, we must throw things away.

Whether they’re being haunted by the memory of the neighborhood bully who squirted them in the face with a hose when they were eight, or the time their mother hacked off all their hair in an act of jealousy ala Joan Crawford (Cancers are queens of the Electra complex), Cancers are always sentimentally ruminating over some indislodgable memory from their deep past. Cancers are the zodiac’s historian, their personal repository of historic facts and memories is as expansive as the national archives. And for this reason, it is important for us all to remember to watch what we do or say in front of them, as they are recording us at all times, and like any emotional blackmailer, this creepy little bottom feeder isn’t above using any negative information against you.

Our Little Lunatic is always acting from a place of emotional tumult. Cancers are aware of their own instability, and it frightens them. Indeed, it frightens them right into the arms of the most masculine, prototypically male suitor they can find; nothing gets the female Crab’s salty cave damper than a set of bloated gonads, an overflowing bank account, a good coating of wiry fur, and a brash, emotionally unavailable, pushy mien. Aries, Leos, Aquarians, Geminis, Sagittarians, and even the occasional aloof Libra are the Crab’s ideal mates. When will you learn, my little Crab, that these men are excellent pairings for some- but definitely, under no circumstance, intended for your gentle little tender nugget of a heart? Only then will the tidal waves of emotional pain settle, only then will you find the quite stability and security you’ve been searching for.

Virgo Woman: The Anorexic, The Mother, and The Martyr

Virgo is a hard worker, a neglected mother, a quotidian task master, and a selfless martyr.

Virgo is also a reality TV train wreck, a drunken psychopath, and a self-abusing anorexic.

Virgo is the embodiment of human turmoil.

Virgo is the middle child of the zodiac, literally. Just as Jan Brady found herself awkwardly situated somewhere between her charismatic, pigtailed babe of a sister (represented by the rambunctious first quadrant signs: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, and Cancer) and her wiser, more settled elder siblings (the fourth quadrant signs: Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces), the sixth house of Virgo is erected smack in the epicenter of the Zodiac. Virgo serves as the architectural shoulders of the Zodiac wheel, literally bearing the weight of the Wheel of Life on her back. Virgo the Middle Child is always the one elected to be put to work, shouldering the burden others have neglected. Accordingly, those born under the influence of Virgo exhibit the firmitatis utilitatis venustatis of a well constructed building: durability, utility, and beauty. Virgo is capable. Although the Virgin is a mighty mighty brick house, she is also a mutable sign with a feminine polarity. Like any bridge, she legitimates the fact that a good structure requires a certain flexibility, that only when we yield to the vagaries and unpredictable windfalls of reality are we able to truly weather them. Virgos are children of reality, even in its bleakest formats.

Virgo is not deluded about her place or capabilities in life. She is a realist to the extreme, her bespectacled focus bringing all of her imperfections and shortcomings, as well as those of the people surrounding her, into sharp relief. Virgo is analytical on a good day. Virgo is self-critical, self-loathing, self-deprecating, self-flagellating, and self-defeating on a bad day. Her very existence in the zodiac is for the purpose of bridging the gap between young and old, mother and maiden, crone and virgin. Even in her quotidian existence (an aspect of life that comes under her house’s rulership) Virgo is never a thing for itself, she is always for others. Like the mother role that can only exist in relation to others, she is a servant defined by her relationship to the other. Her zodiacal mantra is “I serve.”

Martyr is a role Virgo doesn’t just excel at, but is one she invented. The Virgin, contrary to what her title may suggest, is the resident cock gobbler of the zodiac- never a topper, always a bottom. If you’re looking for a woman who will abuse herself, party like it’s Greek harvest time and she’s drunk on mead, please you sexually without so much as a nod to her own hungry genitalia, and perform all the humiliating duties you’ve assigned to her as wife and mother, look no further than the drunken Virgin of the zodiac. And yes, more often than not, this naughty little maiden is getting crunked at the club or downing daiquiris at the Mommy and Me block party, an attempt to drown to death the echoes of self-loathing that usually prevent her from embodying the female charm and charisma she labors to possess.

The Virgo archetype has been rendered in history as Kore or Persephone, the raped virgin (Hades “stole her pomegranate”) imprisoned underground by her male abuser. Persephone is the self-sacrificial female principle- an image that makes most modern American women vomit in their mouth. She is also the image of feminine maturation: Kore, the youthfulness of spring, is lost to maidenhood, the winter bareness of Demeter. As such, Virgo is an allegory for loss and tragedy, a sad story that is reenacted by all Virgo women over and over in their attempt to stay put in a liminal state of stunted adolescence. Like the Gemini man, Virgo woman is unsettled with the idea that she must eventually breakthrough the threshold of young adulthood and accept her aging body, her sagging boobies, her cellulite, her independence; hence, perhaps, her proclivity for prolonging adolescence via a) partying and b) starvation/physical stultification and c) daddy-fying men, which brings me to my favorite Reality TV Trainwreck Cock Gobbling Virgin, Jo de la Rosa:

For those of you who’ve never witnessed the delicious train wreck that is season one of Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Orange County, you’ve missed out on the most addictive nugget of suburban comedy/tragedy ever broadcasted on the tube. I don’t know who approximates the Virgo neurosis more so than Jo. At the age of 23, Jo “BUT I’M ONLY 23″ de la Rosa daddy-fied manipulative Scorpio Slade Smiley, a character so controlling he gladly agreed to parent/sleep with/support/control his little Kore into complete and utter helpless submission, her preferred state of being. After Jo flagrantly stayed out drinking/crunking after her curfew, Daddy Slade stole the license plates off of the BMW he leased for her in an effort to entrap her in his suburban underworld (e.g., Hades)… does this not resemble the Persephone leitmotiv? Unfortunately, the two ultimately parted ways… but not before they branched off into a brand new reality television show, “Date My Ex,” in which Scorpionic Slade selects the future partners for his helpless maiden, Jo “but I’m only 27″ de la Rosa. Virgins make for exquisite reality television.

The Virgin archetype is one that is embraced by patriarchal societies as an image of motherly propriety, female self-sacrifice, and wifely loyalty. She is regarded in India as the perfect wife, Sita, consort to Ram in the Hinudstani spiritual epic, The Ramayana. Sita, like Kore, survived multiple tests of fidelity administered by her husband after being kidnapped and held hostage by the demon Ravana (e.g., Hades), only to be ultimately eschewed by her distrusting husband despite her unwavering loyalty and chastity. She is eventually assimilated by the earth after begging for atonement, her own earthy fortitude suggesting that she is, in fact, an ephemeral manifestation of that which is truly eternal: Mama Earth. The Virgin’s message is that there is redemption in suffering.

My personal favorite image of the Virgo archetype is the formidable Chinnamasta. Chinnamasta, the goddess who decapitates herself to feed her devotees, mocks the altruistic, self-effacing demands foisted onto mothers. In her origin story, found in the Pranatosini-tantra, Parvati (Hindu Mother Goddess) was bathing when her two attendants begin to beg her for food. After some time of wining, praying, begging, and vying with the mother of the universe, the goddess Parvati relents to her attendant-children’s demands. The merciful goddess smiles, and then severs her own head with her fingernails; three bloodstreams emerge from her throat and fall respectively into the mouths of her attendants and her own severed head. Chinnamasta was thus born. This story emphasizes Chinnamasta’s maternal self-sacrifice; however, she does not choose to feed her devotees with her own breast milk. Instead, she feeds them with what sustains her, her vital lifeblood, and she releases it with an act of self-imposed violence. This is a nearly deafening statement of the self-belittling expectations of the mommy/Virgo image to provide everything to their kin/husband/boss/etc., and that these demands, at times, become so severe and impossible that they cannot be met without the destruction of the Virgin’s self-identity.

Virgo presides over the house of habitus: work, career, public service, details, diet, bureaucracy, perfectionism, personal hygiene, medicine, quotidian tasks, health, illness, routines, and meeting one’s obligations. The Virgo vibratory pattern is restrictive, effective, judgmental, exact, helpful, and neurotic. Virgos are notoriously drawn to exact sciences, such as mathematics, engineering, and physics, due in large part to their absolute social retardedness. Virgos are a lot of things, socially charismatic not being one of them. Usually, when I meet a Virgo, my natural reaction is, ‘this person must have Aspergers.’ They fixate on minutia like Rainman, have more clicks and ticks than a malfunctioning android attempting to process human emotion, and they have the countinence of John McCain (that tumorous growth protruding from his neck is a Virgo trademark, as they are almost always suffering from– and fixating on– some permutation of acid reflux/irritable bowel syndrome/malignant neck tumor/goiter/all of the above– they are the zodiac’s resident hypochondriac, after all). Woody Allen, Elvis Costello, Hugh Hefner, Tim Robbins, Peter Sellers, Oprah Winfrey, and Yoko Ono all have Virgo ascendants.

Virgos rule the house of diet, perfectionism, and nourishment. Just glance at a list of famous Virgos and you’ll find more self-flagellating, adulthood suppressing skeletors than you can shake a stick at: Amy Winehouse, Rachel Zoe, Nicole Richie, Karl Lagerfeld, Twiggy, Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann, Peggy Guggenheim, etc. My favorite of which is the insane Rachel Zoe:

“Zoe has, of course, gotten flack for her weight (or lack of it). There is no denying that the girl’s not an eater; she won’t, either. ‘I’m a textbook definition of that perfectionist girl who has huge expectations of herself,’ she says with a shrug and a stir of her tea. ‘It’s hard for me to take care of myself, let’s put it that way. I am my last priority. What I get from people is, ‘You need to rest, you need to take care of yourself, you need to…’ But I’m like, ‘I’m fine. I have to work now.’” – Harper Bazaar interview with Zoe

Archetypes are caricatures of the human principles they represent. It is no coincidence that the etymological origins of the word hag come from the Cretian Hagne, an appellation of Persephone as Queen of the Underworld. There is something profoundly sad about triple Virgo and total hag Rachel Zoe. She is a perfect embodiment of the tragic Virgo principle: from her remarkably haggard and weather-worn face (how old is she again??), her painfully thin physic– her diet, by her own admission, consisting of nothing but ‘grapefruit and coffee,’ to her patented BoHo style of clothing that alludes to her peasant farmer archetype. She is Persephone: sickle in one hand, gauze skirt and flowing blouse cladding her 14 year old frame (the eternal state of the nubile Virgin princess). Her premature face registering the Virgo mantra: there is redemption in suffering…

Aquarius: Bateman or Batman?

After watching The Dark Knight (thorough astrological analysis to follow), I couldn’t help but contemplate…
Christian Bale is an Aquarius. Interestingly, Bale embodies the transcendent, positive qualities of the Water Bearer archetype in his role as Batman, while embodying the base, negative, fetishistic qualities of his sign as Patrick Bateman. Notice how the titles of his two most significant acting roles are separated by only one vowel. In truth, transcendent Batman and the profane Mr. Bateman are two sides of the same archetype.

Like all Aquarians, both Bateman and Batman are social critics, independent, estranged, rigid, pedagogical, dispassionate, unemotional, odd, objective, detached, unorthodox, mysterious, vanguard, alien, rebellious, complex, self-righteous, misunderstood, and completely unpredictable. Archetypically, the Aquarian represents The Wizard or The Magician. Both inventor and con-man, The Magician is the connection between the immanent reality of the material world and the transcendent reality of universal truth, the alchemical unas mundi. The Magician, like the Water Bearer, bridges the gap between the implicate and explicit order.

When we encounter The Magician in synchronous events (perhaps a chance encounter with a smooth talking Gemini or an eccentric Aquarian) or during a tarot reading, we are encountering a part of ourselves that is concerned with verbal and mental revelation. The Wiz, like the alchemical Mercurius, is paradoxically both human and alien, his wand or scepter serving as a conduit for universal revelation from above, conducting the power of transcendental truth (or alien technologies ala Chariot of the Gods) from far above to us down below.

Aquarian energy is similarly focused and paradoxical: they are at once the alien Batman swooping from the sky to institute social reformation, while living underground in a cave befitting a vagrant, alienated from the society he is so desperately in need of rescuing. The Wiz is an anonymous hero, more object than human, embodied in concepts such as Nietzsche’s Superhuman (übermenschlich) and Aquarian William S. Burrough’s infatuation with Scientology’s concept of the perfect human. Like Batman, the Aquarius man is adept at both walking and flying, he’s comfortable wearing a black vinyl unitard and swooping through the night sky, just as he’s comfortable wearing a suit and tie from the Men’s Warehouse his caretaker (usually a devoted and doting wife or girlfriend) dressed him in. Aquarians love hand me down clothing. Curing cancer and developing a working model of the universe comes naturally to the zodiac’s resident alien, but wearing human clothing isn’t something they concern themselves with. Perhaps this is why they love silly hats (usually a shout out to their pointy head-gear adorned archetype) and dress like clowns (The Juggler and carnival performer are incarnations of the archetypal Magi).

Less officially, my sister and I like to refer to Aquarians as the “Mork from Ork” of the zodiac. They’re fucking aliens. They’re Spasticus Autisticist. They’re your brother reading The Economist at your mother’s wake. They’re that discomforting weirdo you’re on a date with who just purposefully (unbeknownst to you, of course) rubbed food all over his face to make you feel uncomfortable (and here you just thought he was a messy eater, but actually, he’s testing your tolerance for oddities).

In my life, The Aquarian is my father, who is self-righteous and incorrigibly dogmatic, a hardnosed social conservative that doesn’t believe in progressive taxes or social welfare, but does believe in aliens, the holographic universe, illusory existence, and string theory. He’s a capitalistic hippie who loves a good argument, reading E.B. White while taking a shit, and the odd meal of fried lamb brains and pigs feet. He’s the odd duck, a brilliant ball of facts wrapped in an aseptic intellectualism that came crashing to the earth in the 1960’s via space wind from planet Your Anus. His head is shaped like a light bulb and he walks like an android. He talks the way I write. And he will make your butt sweat when he attempts to hug you because it’s cold, contrived, and in complete violation of his inherent nature.

How can you NOT love what an Aquarius has to offer?

The image of the Water Bearer we’ve come to associate with Aquarius is that of the Biblical Galahad, the Greek Ganymede or the Medieval Merlin, forever pouring the vibrating brain waves of knowledge and universal truth from his chalice (a.k.a the Holy Grail) onto the profane world (and yes, those are Alpha waves, not water waves):

Like the character of Batman, Aquarians are the humanistic saviors of the zodiac: they are reformers, rebels, and revolutionaries. Unlike its opposite sign Leo, Aquarius is concerned with society writ large, Society with a capital “S.” This is not a symptom of the fact that Aquarians lack an ego; au contrar, Aquarians cat fight with the zodiac’s lion for the title of Biggest Egotistical Maniac. Like Leos, they are self-righteous, self-assured, and self-possessed; however, Aquarian egotism is derived from the fact that they simply do not divorce their own self-interest from the prevailing universal interest… what’s good for the Aquarian is good for his or her family, country, the world, and– what the hell, probably the entire universe (rarely does an Aquarius, the zodiac’s psychonaut, not think in terms of the entire scope of reality). Just as my dad believes the entire world would be better off if social welfare, and the attendant taxes he pays, were done away with, all Aquarians construct their world view based on their subjective experience with little input from their emotions (read: human empathy). In fact, “emotions” might as well be conducted through dangly receptors fixed atop their head anyway: the Aquarian brain, unlike that of a water sign, truly mediates every aspect of their life. In this sense, Aquarians are not controlled by the executive centers of their brain as much as they ARE the lumpy, quivering gray mass of synaptic uptake we all think of as a part of our entire central nervous system. Appropriately, Aquarius rules the central nervous system in medical astrology. A gangly mass of brain waves and nerves, Aquarians are perhaps the most myopic, unempathetic sign in the zodiac… which brings me to our favorite sociopath, Patrick Bateman:

Patrick Bateman embodies the vibratory pattern of Uranus in his unpredictability and disaffection. He is nauseatingly superficial. Like all Wizards cooking up some convoluted potion/math equation/invention/manifesto in their lairs, his participation in reality is vague. His relationships are kept in the upper stratosphere of his brain, which is exactly why he can fiddle fuck with the most grotesque and improper sexual fetishisms imaginable. He’s removed:

“I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust.” – Patrick Bateman

Fetishism is an Aquarian trademark, in both its traditional Marxist sense and its kinkier sexual sense. The Waterbearer is fixed-air (stubborn/focused-intellectual); thus explaining their inclination towards monomaniacal obsessions and very specific fetishes, such as sticking cheese in a woman’s smooch and having a mouse eat it out. Just as Bateman can languidly participate in fetishistic perversions without internalizing anything, he can also successfully perform normalcy and quotidian behavior with more gusto than his legitimately yuppie colleagues. His fluid vacillation between complete mind fuck serial killer and normal guy is derived from the fact that, while he may be physically engaged, his actual role in these behaviors is incredibly restrained. He’s present in body, but never in mind. In the words of my best friend Matthew, my favorite Waterbearer, Aquarians are “all form, no content,” or in the words of my second favorite Waterbearer:

“There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman. Some kind of an abstraction, but there is no real me. Only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable. I simply am not there.”

Flipping Out’s Jeff Lewis: Sun and Moon Oppositions

Let’s talk a little bit about the utter insanity that is Jeff Lewis from Bravo’s Flipping Out.

I’ve speculated about Jeff being a Cancer for sometime (a gay Cancer, that is). He’s moody, has a twisted sense of humor, he’s obsessed with his home and real estate, loves a good psychic reading/exorcising, lavishes 95% of all of his attention and love on his myriad of pets while remaining emotionally unavailable to the people that surround him, and is best friends with his Nicaraguan housekeeper, Zoila. If Jeff Lewis isn’t the perfect male counterpart to my favorite Cunty Cancer real estate tycoon of all time- Leona Helmsley- I don’t know who is. They both apparently love a good knife and syringe to the face, if you know what I mean:

Jeff self-identifies as an obsessive compulsive house flipper, parlaying his emotional need for perfectionism and order (a manifestation of his moon in Libra) and his desire for success in large business deals (sun in Aries) into a successful (and seriously careening) career in real estate. It’s obvious from watching a handful of Jeff’s naughty temper tantrums and volatile employee firings- and bipolar rehirings- that his sun sign must be that of a cardinal natural born leader (cardinal signs include Aries, Libra, Cancer, or Capricorn) as well as a hot-blooded fire sign (Aries, Sagittarius, or Leo). Indeed, Jeff’s individuality comes under the influence of fiery, competitive, entrepreneurial Aries, while his moon (his emotional self) is influenced by Libra. Libras are the airy, intellectual, artistic, urbane diplomats of the zodiac. What’s interesting about this combination is that his emotional self directly opposes his general self (in astrology, we call this unfortunate position “sun opposition moon”), making it difficult- if not impossible- for him to ever feel completely satisfied with his decisions in life, as his latent wants and manifest needs are almost never in perfect alignment. Thus explaining, perhaps, Jeff’s favorite past time: screaming into a blanket in his Jungian therapist’s office in order to relieve his congested frustrations.

Indecisiveness, neuroticism, and compulsive back tracking often characterize sun-moon oppositions. Compounding these obstacles are the fact that, of all of the twelve opposing sign combinations in the zodiac, Aries and Libra are perhaps the most distinct in their orientation. Aries men are aggressive “do’ers rather than thinkers,” their business plans and actions often suffer from an impulsive, headstrong lack of forethought; contrastingly, Libra men suffer from the opposite problem. They are often immobilized by procrastination and laziness, their ability to act is hampered by their endless need to arrive at the correct, perfectly balanced decision before they commit to an action. Libras put a premium on fairness and exactitude, while Aries care most about getting things done before they lose their initial interest and impulsion… which usually dissipates pretty quickly.

Jeff has a lot of steam and drive. That is, until someone tells him what to do or somehow undercuts his assumed authority. This is exemplified by his relationship with Courtney, the owner of a multimillion dollar mansion who hired Jeff as a consultant. Courtney and Jeff disagreed on hiring a plumber. Jeff was intolerant of being told what to do and Courtney’s forbearance. Jeff’s immediate reaction was to quit the project. And he did just that. Longevity and sustained efforts are not Aries virtues. Neither are patience or servility.

Aries, the first house of the zodiac, represents the principle of chaos. Before there is order (Libra, the sign of civilization and codified laws) there is only undifferentiated energy- there is only the potential for order. Aries is a gestational ball of uber-masculine, red hot, inspirational energy. Alchemically, the symbol for Aries represents the first spark of life teaming with the potential to explode from the ground:

Aries is the first emergence of the fledgling seed from the Earth, marking the dawn of Spring. Aries is the screaming, high octane emergence of a freshly self-aware babe from the womb, marking the dawn of self-awareness and life. Aries is an erect penis teaming with anxiety. Aries is an explosion of life.

Appropriately, those born under the influence of Aries, like the infantilism they represent, are all about themselves: their preoccupations, their needs, their body, their problems, their maniacally adopted beliefs on life that they are currently crusading for (and yes, whatever an Aries believes to be true, she or he will fight to the death to defend). Despite the Aries man’s rejection of most forms of codified order and authority, Aries can be the most dogmatic, narrow minded sign of the zodiac. In contrast, Libras rule the Apollonian house of universal order, balance, law, vanity, and artistic beauty. Jeff is at once a humane and vain perfectionist, while also being outlandishly impulsive, undiplomatic, and brusque. He is quixotic and contradictory, which is why he is such an entertaining figure to watch.

Just as two vehicles meeting in a disastrous collision are irresistibly entertaining to watch, so is Jeff Lewis. There are forever two opposing forces colliding within Jeff that makes him, too, an individual that you cannot resist watching with a mixture of empathetic horror and genuine concern.

Birthdays

Very few things bring me more joy than being presented with a gift. And I’m not talking about the gift of love or the gift of salvation or whateverthefuck macaroni poster surprise you conjured up in an effort to save money. I’m talking about gifts that I can touch, wear, hide under my bed, resale, and ultimately, ruin with a bleach soaked rag. I bleach library books and rented DVD’s- this is why I require ownership over my possessions, because I will inevitably ruin them in an effort to sanitize them.

How these traits relate to my own astrological profile are pretty straightforward. My sun is under the influence of Leo, the zodiac’s resident sunny, generous, extravagant, flamboyant, throbbing star. Leos zodiacal mantra is “I will…” and if a leonine cat’s gianormous heart (the organ under the rulership of the fire kitten) yearns for anything, they WILL manage to scrounge up the money, they WILL buy that insanely extravagant luxury item, and they WILL do whatever it takes to live an over the top life befitting an individual ruled by our largest star: the sun.

Tempering my leonine generosity– perhaps the only humane aspect to Leo’s extravagant materialism– is my Taurus moon. Taurus rules the house of possessions, beauty, comfort, value, practicality, indulgence, food, idolatry, sensuality, and materialism. Taureans are stingy, to say the least. For Taurus, physical things amount to more than just a source of security (unlike Cancer), they amount to life itself; their experience of life is a tactile one, eschewing abstractions and ideals for more tangible, attainable values- like things. They don’t want to save the world (as an Aquarius might), they want to collect bits of it, they want to own it. I know that someone loves me when they’re willing to invest their money in me. I experience love through gifts. Thankfully, my boyfriend is an over-spending Libra that never, ever withholds affection OR over the top gifts.

In three days, I will be 22 years old. When my boyfriend asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I didn’t play fuck around with the “just you” cock gobblery. I presented him with a wishlist that evoked the exactitude of an obsessive compulsive’s grocery list and a gay couple’s West Elm wedding registry. First of all, I love to make a list. I go to therapy 2+ times a week in an attempt to correct my OCD habits, principle of these is my incessant list making. I write lists in my mind, I imprint them on my fogged shower doors, I scribble them in traffic… I make to do lists, grocery shopping lists, lists of reasons why I should eliminate people from my life, lists of reasons why I should keep people in my life, lists of goals, lists of future cosmetic surgeries I would like to have performed, lists of things I don’t like about my dog, lists of things I don’t like about myself… the thing is, all of these lists are collapsable into one big to do list. It’s a compulsion. Actually, it’s a hobby. And a compulsion.

The thing is, I’ve been with my boyfriend for three years… give or take a few months of philandering/fleeing/number changing/moving out without prior notification (yea, yea, I’m flighty and fickle and selfish, I know, but I’m not the one dating me). The first year we were together we were both broke, mutually deciding to spend our senior year of college unemployed, tolerating intermittent losses of electricity by arguing, playing classic NES games on a stolen emulator, and essentially living on the third floor of the Lied library. Superficially, we were diligent students, but in reality, we were mostly just homeless.

My boyfriend was receiving unemployment checks at the time because he “needed a vacation,” and thus feigned an occupational injury. These ran out around my birthday, but not before he bought me the first of many gifts to come; that is, he bought me Carlton I. Carltron I was an iPod that was subsequently replaced by Carltron II after I broke him. Carltron II was replaced by Carlton III after an anonymous cock gobbler stole him out of my unattended bag while I was busy temper tantruming a security guard who told me I couldn’t sleep in the school library (“But I don’t have air conditioning, what the fuck is the point of me paying my tuition if I can’t even sleep here????) I would tell you about how Carltron III fell out of my car and was crushed in the parking lot of my work, but that might be overkill. Needless to say, Carlton III fell out of my car and was crushed; he was replaced by Carltron IV. Now that my mobility is essentially limited to three places, I am hoping I will have more success in keeping Carltron IV safe from my errancy.

My following birthday (my 21^st), I was alone and miserable. I had threatened to get a restraining order against my boyfriend the month before (mostly because I was hormonal, and let’s face it, completely insane and paranoid). Imagine my sick delight when I received in the mail a big cardboard box from my ex-stalker/current boyfriend, exploding with florescent pink packing peanuts and a myriad of little boxes, each one sloppily wrapped in zodiac and lion themed wrapping paper. Every gift had a note taped to it- a set of ten homemade disco CD’s encompassing every disco track ever released between 1970-1985 that read “The ultimate DISOgraphy- don’t have too much fun!” a vintage zodiac wheel scarf “for reading tarot on,” a Himalayan healing quartz crystal “from Canada,” a DvF wrap dress I wouldn’t be caught dead in that I ultimately sold on Ebay for $200 dollars. The sentimentality of the gifts freaked my dad out, who responded to me choosing to keep the slightly creepy gifts by telling me it was “white trash, classless, and slutty.”

Slutty? Come to mention it, I did feel slutty. But at least I didn’t call or e-mail him to thank him for his generosity, or his unwavering patience, or the fact that after all these years of intolerable insanity and evil manipulative tirades on my behalf, he’s still buying me gifts… … that would have been really classless, right?