speed of saturn #2

dignity and debility as conformity, nonconformity, position and power: libra debilibabies edition

dignity and debility as conformity, nonconformity, position and power: libra debilibabies edition

happy Scorpio season. The Sun is out of fall but the now the Moon is in it. womp womp. It’s okay. Let’s talk. This will be an on-going series.

Historically one of the ways dignity and debility is discussed is around conformity. As in dignified planets are defined by their conformity and ill-dignified or debilitated by their non-conformity. Take a look at these descriptions of dignified and ill-dignified Saturn and Venus as described by William Lilly by way of Christopher Warnock’s website Renaissance Astrology:

Image: excerpt of “Of the Planet SATURN, and his Signification.” Source: Renaissance Astrology

Image: excerpt of “Of the Planet VENUS, and her Signification.” Source: Renaissance Astrology

Conformity can be soul sucking, nonconformity can be dangerous. Nonconformity can also be protected in particular circles if you have the right people around you. Conformity can just make you a good person to be in community with. This isn’t to distinguish either as good, bad or even transgressive but to highlight some of the ways we can explore essential dignity and debility.

Essential dignity and debility is not just domicile, exaltation, detriment, and fall. There are also triplicity, bounds, and decans. And all of these are reflective of how the hierarchies of access, and thus the agency we have in particular roles or spaces as they relate to planetary topics, shapes our lot in life.

Essential dignity and debility can also compound. So planets aren’t exclusively resourced or underresourced, locked out, or fitting in. This allows for a complex narrative of how we get what we want, need or struggle to. There’s also this thing called accidental dignity and debility that we won’t get into that today. Let’s explore the debilitated planets we’ve experienced as of late:

Mars in Libra: rage suppression

Libra and by extension Venus is typically associated with diplomacy. In Necropolitics, Achille Mbembe talks about how politics and diplomacy were meant be an alternative to war. But he goes on to argue that we have a politic of death or ‘necropolitics’ where those who possess political power are able to decide who gets to live and die. As well as those who are trapped in an in-between state of life and death, experiencing inflictions of social and civil death through ritual humiliation and dehumanization. This includes people in prisons, plantations, concentration camps, and settler colonies. Racism is a necropolitic. He rejects this idea that politics and diplomacy is the violence free “civilized” alternative the West has proclaimed it to be. And historically Venus is also war and warrior. I’ve heard Venus be described as externally beautiful and inwardly corrosive; and comparatively Mars as externally corrosive and inwardly beautiful. This immediately calls to mind the struggle of debilitated Mars and Venus. In the instance of Mars in Libra its simultaneous experience of inward and outward corroding. It knows that the politics of diplomacy is violent and a room full of decorum is a different kind of weapon. It is an internal state of non conformity that is marked by knowing there isn’t relational room for your anger and that its presence emerges in ways that are pathologized. Because ,why would you destroy a room full of ceramic plates or scream at a room full of people engaging with you “civilly?” This is not to paint Mars in Libra as unflappable. I’m sure you’ve screamed at people who didn’t deserve it or were silent when people have wronged you and others. This is about the contradiction of the separation of diplomacy and war in our world. Internally and externally navigating this conflict. In a world where respectability doesn’t promise you survival, Mars in Libra moves as if it is unwise to come to any situation without being ready for a fight. But it also struggles to assess how much gas or break is needed in any given situation.

Sun in Libra: “How do I look?”

Three people come to mind: Virgil Abloh, Kim Kardashian and the vampire’s in Sinners (2025)

Back in June I went to Robin Givahn’s book talk for “Make It Ours,” a biography of the late fashion designer Virgil Abloh. She described Virgil as a “centrist.” He carried his audacity and immigrant drive into white dominated spaces. But that he also constantly kind and inclusive to everyone. I guess there isn’t another way to get Bernard Arnault to let you lead the Menswear half of the LVMH crown jewel. She also said he wasn’t a firestarter. She asks of the late fashion designer would he have become one if his life had persisted? The irony is the legacy of Virgil is one of breaking through the doors of fashion without a traditional background or formalized training in fashion. The first Black designer at one of the largest fashion houses in the world. Consecrating the visual language of Black American cultural influence in the Western fashion canon. He knew how to bring people together, he knew how to tweak things to make novelty and he knew how to aesthetically world-build. I will also add that Virgil’s Sun had a conjunction with an exalted Saturn in Libra. He didn’t actually have to break through the door, it was opened for him. I think this is what makes Sun in Libra different than exalted Sun in Aries.

I think of Sun in Aries as valuing the Protestant work ethic at times. Because it defines itself by what it “does” and Venus-ruled Libra is not necessarily concerned with physical labor of work to earn a spot but rather the relational work to acquire a place. The vampires in Sinners (2025) didn’t have to barge their way in. They asked nicely.

Do you remember Kim’s face card in her youth? There was an undeniable beauty of Kim Kardashian. But in a world of WASP beauty she de-ethnicized her face and now there is a world full of women who look like her clones. She occupies a space as simultaneous victim and victor. She is clearly both the victim of and perpetuator of patriarchal beauty standards as she ascends to relevance in fashion and beauty. Having access to some of the most sought after luxury items, tastemakers, and archival fashion. She also, generates millions of dollars from a culture that carves up the female body through patriarchy, racism, and fatphobia. Women want to look good and she has just the right procedure, filler, flat tummy tea, and sculpt face wrap to sell you. And I think this is what makes for this odd combination of benefic/malefic tension that defines Libra. There is a personal and social cost.

I think both Kim and Virgil who likely both have accidentally dignified Sun (Kim does for sure, I don’t have Virgil’s birth time), but they both have lives defined by their status as outsiders because they didn’t pay their dues the right way. Kim “cheated” the system with sex, building a body, “copying” Ye and relying on his contacts and relevance in fashion. Funny enough, Virgil, as a long time friend and collaborator of Ye is often accused of the same. His meteoric rise was often earmarked by “Who?” by the who’s who of the fashion establishment, but also credible accusations of theft and copying. People will also say he made nothing new. It was a grift or a ploy. Leaning on the crutch of Duchampian ideas. In other words, you got here but you don’t really deserve to be here. I think stands is the way the fallen Sun charms its way in the door. And people either love it or they hate it.

Toil doesn’t necessitate shine and toil isn’t always physical. It can be socially demanding. And there are many ways one can acquiesce to power structures to capture one’s self actualization. But everyone does it on different terms. bell hooks, another Libra Sun, talks about this in her essay “Feminism and Class Power” in which her and other feminist thinkers had to acquiesce to the “patriarchal academic system” (2000, 109) and get a PhD, not for academic careers but rather to spread the work of radical and revolutionary feminists that is systemically disappeared. And she speaks of the struggle of engaging in an on-going resistance against the deradicalization and upward mobility of the academy that entices people into silence of the harms of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. The publications, awards, celebrity, etc are all ear marked by a code of deference working against the goals of revolutionary feminism and any liberartory movement. This is obviously a different fight of conformity and non-conformity as outlined above.

To bring this full circle, the nexus in the fallen Sun is its ability to subtly leverage the social dimensions of life and obfuscate their depth and calculation with diplomacy and the image of things. This is the sign of Saturn’s exaltation after all. It possesses a patience to play the long game, and has an interest in building. Albeit, it can be shaped by contradictory obedience. The Sun is hot and dry, but the nature of air is hot and wet, and the nature of Venus, cold and wet. I imagine pouring in just enough cold and boiling hot water in a glass jar so it doesn’t shatter from the temperature changing too fast. “Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” Why work a machine when you can work the room, eh?