Bobby Brown: High peaks, even deeper valleys

I recently saw a 2009 VH-1 special on Bobby Brown, the provocative entertainer and ex-mate of Whitney Houston. He peaked early, an international pop star at 15. "I'm not that old that I can't reach for the top again," he says in the special. Can he? Where is he in the life cycle? Has Bobby passed into an obscure stage?

Like Gail Sheehy's Passages [1976], which delineated major stages in the life cycle, astrology gives many ways of looking at charts to predict peaks and valleys. One way is to track the outer planets from Jupiter through Pluto. While transiting the top half of the chart, these planets keep one out in the world where one's light can shine. In the bottom half of the chart, one goes through what Grant Lewi called a period of obscurity. Since they are slow moving, each impacts our lives for long periods of time--years, decades.

Saturn is transiting Bobby's 8th h. stellium. With Saturn being aboveground [top half] for the next nine years, his pain, passion and progress will play out in the public arena. Progress: Saturn's transit of his n. Pluto at 24 Virgo coincided with his reality show evolution into a country and western singer, a successful public transformation. Pain: a death rumor went viral so fast in April he had to refute it by speaking out.

Eighth house transits change us for good, leaving us bereft because we have to give up someone or something. In his case, his marriage ended, he was homeless and broke, and he gave up drugs. With four planets [Moon, Pluto, Uranus, Jupiter] in his 8th h., he has a smoldering, heartbreaking sensuality. The latter three planets trine his 1st h. Mercury in Aquarius, so he can speak, sing and write this sensuality in an utterly unique way.

If you look at the green lines in his chart, you can see something like a narrow pyramid. This is called a yod. A yod involves at least 3 planets (or angle: MC/IC or Asc/Desc). Two will be 60 degrees apart; each of them will be 150 degrees from the third. His Virgoan Moon and Scorpio Mars are sextile. The third planet in Bobby's chart is Saturn in Aries in the third house.

Gail Sandra Klein asserts that the yod typically leads to chronic (unfinishable) situations, like illness, neuroses, habit formations which, because the energy must find continual release, result in creativity. In other words, Mister Brown will have this energy percolating all his days, and music is the way he releases it.

Saturn is also the ruler of his chart since he has 16 Capricorn rising. What?! Bobby Brown, incorrigible, law-breaking, pelvis-twisting, drugging, wild wild Bobby Brown has strong Capricorn influences? Aren't those type of people conservative, stick-in-the-mud, law-and-order, upright citizens? Yes, they are, and now that he's given up drugs, he has a chance to let this side unfold. Drugs obscure the real person. People with strong Saturn influeces are hard workers. He was an international star in his teens because he started working and touring [and doing drugs] that early.

In the VH-1 special, Bobby said, "I'm gonna be the bad boy probably forever."
He's chosen, he said, to be the bad boy only in performing and to use his prerogative to live "without dope, without drugs."

b. February 5, 1969, 5:21 AM, Boston, MA
birth data from astrotheme.com

Star Jones: fading into oblivion?

In August 2003, Starlet Marie Jones had gastric bypass surgery, losing 160 lbs. Her lies of omission and commission to conceal the operation lost Star her spot on The View. She thus lost a high-profile job, a husband and 160 lbs. after the operation. But did she lose? Was her weight loss a gain?

Like snakeskin shed, the 160 lbs. came off over three years, as another person emerged. This is about the time of a Saturn transit through a zodiac sign. Which spot was Saturn transiting in Star's chart? Star has Cancer rising.

Wow! Saturn crossed her Cancer Asc., 6.18*, on July 23, 2003, and transited through her first house until June 26, 2005. Saturn touching the Asc. follows a 14 year cycle of tremendous development and outer progress. Its descent into the bottom half of the chart coincides with WEIGHT LOSS! She had the bypass on Aug. 19, 2003.

Annie Heese at CafeAstrology.com writes about this transit: "We concern ourselves with how we come across to others on a personal level with Saturn here. Our physical body becomes a focus as well... it is a time when we see our bodies quite clearly. This is an excellent time for beginning health regimens, diets, and the like, simply because it is a time when we look in the mirror and see ourselves clearly—not what we want to see. Our outlook on life changes to a more serious, responsible tone...this transit acts to transform your self-confidence in such a way that you question the source of your confidence to date, and discover a more solid base for pulling up inner strength. Saturn here acts to rip away the superficial. Illusions about the self, the body, and personal abilities will no longer be tolerated."

Star reached a point where she could no longer be fat. It wasn't healthy, she's said. Star's dramatic weight loss was blown up by her fame.

The aspects in her natus/transits should reflect Pluto [transformation], and Neptune [deception, concealment, confusion, scandal] also. Pluto's long transit of her sixth house of health and employment began Dec. 18, 1995; it will wind up on Jan. 30, 2011. In 1995, Star, working as Inside Edition's chief legal analyst, led that show's coverage of the O.J. Simpson murder trial. That coverage led her to fame, wealth and an impressive TV career, quite a transformation from being an attorney/prosecutor. During this 15-year transit, her star [pardon the pun] has risen and dimmed, but she remains a public figure.

Bob Marks, at bobmarksastrologer.com says that "Pluto’s effect, as always, is to clean things out. Yes, things get reborn wherever Pluto goes, but they have to decay and die first."

As for Neptune, Star suffered through being publicly ridiculed-the downside of fame. She'd built her rep as a straightshooter, then got caught in a lie, a Neptunian situation. She concealed the gastric bypass until admitting it in the September 2007 GlAMOUR magazine: "How had I allowed myself to get to 307 pounds?" But many could not overlook her deception, including former boss Barbara Walters.

Where was Neptune transiting her chart? She announced she was leaving The View on June 27, 2006. Neptune had just begun transiting her 9th house. Thus, it had just finished her 8th house transit. Eighth house transits involve loss. Often it is only when a planet leaves the eighth that we are aware of what we have had to give up. Star lost weight.

But Neptune takes its sweet time. She will continue to integrate the new self and the loss of her old person, as she has called it. Neptune occupies her 9th house from Feb. 28, 2007, until Feb. 29, 2020, at which time it contacts her Midheaven.

Transiting Neptune over natal Jupiter, Chiron, Mars and Mercury during this 13-year period assures that her expertise, commentary and candor, fortified by stronger self-esteem, will bring even more controversy and sensationalism into her life, whether her own or legal affairs she covers.

Star isn't going off the public radar anytime soon.

b. March 24, 1962, 11:30 AM, Albemarle (NC)
birth data from astrotheme.com

Sarah Palin has some hellifying transits right now!

Sarah Palin has several classic torture transits: she's getting outer planet transits from Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. When these transits occur, they can take one's mind, body, and public persona through a torture chamber in the form of illness, legal problems, forced resignation or firing, family dilemmas-think of life crises and you've got the picture.

A whole generation born in 1965-68 is experiencing Saturn transiting the natal Uranus/Pluto conj. in Virgo. That's a hellbender, causing health and vocational rethinking on a massive societal level.

The problem with outer planet transits is that they last so long. The four outer planets beyond Jupiter transit the signs slowly-Saturn takes 2-1/2 years. So people with a normal life span will receive a Saturn transit to each planet twice, three times if they live to their 80s, including the vaulted Saturn returns at 26-30 years and 56-60 years of age.

Uranus revolves around the Sun once every 84 years, while Neptune takes about twice as long at 165 years and Pluto takes three times as long at 248 years. So not everyone gets a Uranus, Neptune or Pluto hit to their natal Sun or key planet/angle in one lifetime. When people do get it, it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Palin's generation is feeling the brunt of downsizing in many industries, experiencing the outsourcing of jobs for which they had trained in their 20s.

It's the fast food generation coming to grips with trans fats and meeting the consequences of health policies or indiscretions created nationwide.

It's the ecstasy/rave & wave generation coming to grips with nervous systems finally blowing a gasket after so much misuse.

Palin's daughter getting pregnant at 17 could be seen as the result of the previous generation's abstinence preaching that sought to bypass birth control methods.

Palin has Neptune exactly conjuncting her Sun this month, a once-in a-lifetime conj. to her natal Sun, threatening to uncover and bring to light all that has been hidden for decades, not just years. It's brought her into the spotlight but the cost is exposure of all her biz.

I went through two recent outer planet transits, Sat. on my Pluto in Leo, and Pluto quincunxing [150* from] my Sat. at 28* Cancer [still there but the storm, my Gustav, has blown over]. These are just not pleasant interludes for anyone. But for a politician like Palin, everything that can be dredged up will be dredged up and reviewed before offical boards of inquiry. I had several such procedures to go through-medical, legal, academic-and they were exhausting, painstaking, costly and worrisome. All has ended well but the toll is no laughing matter.

My heart goes out to her and especially her family, even though her politics are diametrically opposite mine. She will come through it wiser--but at a cost.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Repubs. throw her back in the water if her Neptunian tide keeps washing ashore detritus. They're keeping a stiff upper lip now. But an onslaught would have to be addressed. That's what a political campaign is about. Think Thomas Eagleton with his electroshock treatments. The Dems had to get him off the ticket to salvage it, even though they lost by a landslide.