Erika Jayne and Saturn and consequences.
What does Erika Jayne's past three years tell us about Saturn?
Week Ahead Astrology:
On Wednesday, Jupiter and Venus are going to be conjunct in Aries. Look at your chart to see what house is in Aries — look for moments of relational joy, gratitude, and connections to celebrate in that area of your life.
On Thursday morning Mercury is going to be conjunct Saturn in Aquarius. This aspect could be helpful for reflections. In any case, you might use this opportunity to journal about what Saturn in Aquarius has taught you.
In about a week, Saturn is going to change signs from Aquarius to Pisces. If you’re around 30 years old you might know this because for the past three years you’ve been in your Saturn return and you’re looking forward to some relief. If you’re roughly 27 years old you might know this because yours is about to start and you are scared.
If you don’t know, your Saturn return is when Saturn completes a full cycle around your birth chart. Technically, the exact degree when Saturn returns to the part of the sky it was at your birth is the most potent, but most astrologers agree the entire time that Saturn is in the same house and sign it was in when you were born is significant. Wherever Saturn is in your chart, the planet signifies time, old age, consequences, isolation, labor, depression, and structure.
With the pandemic, there have been truly endless good Saturn examples, but one that’s extra interesting to me is how Saturn has shown up for Erika Girardi aka Erika Jayne aka gay hero turned actual villain of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
Since Saturn entered Aquarius in March 2020, Erika’s marriage has ended, she’s come under scrutiny for her husband’s alleged financial crimes, and she’s lost the support of a lot of the housewives audience. For a brief moment last fall it looked like she might lose her contract (and she did lose deals with Savage x Fenty). Based on where Saturn has been hanging out, this makes a lot of sense. It also, I think, tells us something about how we can interact with Saturnian things like consequences, boundaries, and social structures — and what happens when we don’t actively engage them.
As a Cancer rising, Erika’s Ascendant Ruler is the Moon. Ancient astrologers would have called the Moon the “helmsman” of her chart — basically, the Moon is in the driver’s seat and interactions with the Moon play a big part in where her life is steered. This has a lot of implications for her, but one that’s particularly interesting is its position in the 8th House in Aquarius. We also see that her Midheaven (“Mc” in the chart, and career point) is in Aries. The ruler of Aries is Mars, so her career ruler is also sitting in the 8th House in Aquarius. That’s a lot of energy in her 8th House.
Vettius Valens, an astrologer from the second century CE, said the 8th House indicates: “death, benefits from fatality … lawsuits, weaknesses”. Generally, as the opposite house of the 2nd House, astrologers look at the 8th as a house of death, owed money, taxes, shared money, and inheritance. When you layer on the meanings behind Aquarius, you might expect these themes to play out in a larger social way, to engage ideas of class and society, or to involve strict or unyielding philosophies. With the rulers of Erika’s ascendant and her MC in this house, those themes should be central to her life.
Over the course of these three years that Saturn has been in Aquarius and scraping up against Erika’s natal Moon and natal Mars in the 8th House, her life (the life she lives on reality TV, specifically) has been consumed by questions of owed money, the “widows and orphans” for whom her husband was supposed to be winning settlements, and how rich she’ll end up being after she isn’t receiving money from her husband.
I think this is interesting for the rest of us for two main reasons: (1) it’s a good example of how Saturn’s consequences and impacts are felt always, even when it’s not your Saturn return and (2) it’s a good example in the context of Saturn of how “fate” or the “arc of justice” or whatever you want to call it won’t mete out consequences fairly.
If you’re at all plugged into astrology you likely have anxiety before your Saturn return. It makes sense theoretically, because Saturn is big and heavy and means “consequences” and also because the Saturn return is literally the last moment before Saturn has been everywhere in your life at least once. In your Saturn return, you are made an astrologically “mature” person, like your astrological prefrontal cortex has settled and now you have the potential to see all areas of your life clearly. But just because there’s a cultural focus on the completion of that cycle, it doesn’t mean that all the steps leading up to it were less important.
Maturity doesn’t happen accidentally and change doesn’t happen by itself. Whether you’re frustrated that a very rich, largely unapologetic person like Erika Jayne will not experience consequences despite how she’s benefitted from tragedy or you’re just frustrated that she herself probably won’t even learn anything from this, you’re stuck in a mental game you can’t win.
At the system-level, if we want specific outcomes, we might need to break down a system. At the individual-level, if you want specific outcomes, you might need to break down a cycle.
For a lot of us, Saturn spending time in Capricorn and in Aquarius the past 6ish years has coincided with our worldviews and beliefs turning upside down. That makes sense, because Capricorn is broadly about real, literal structures, systems of value, and making plans to sustain society while Aquarius looks ahead, imagines potential future values, and (at its best) reaffirms the importance of a society made up of people.
This shift might have happened instead (or, likely, also), at the personal level. Saturn’s activities in these signs has been an invitation to make your values solid, lived, and consistent. Saturn is at home in Capricorn and Aquarius. That doesn’t mean this has been easy, but there’s been consistency.
Pisces is a very different energy. In the next three years there might be some opportunity to wash away failed systems and there will definitely be an increased need to see how we are interconnected (where perceived boundaries are false). More solidarity, more unions, more mutual aid, more compassion, more investment in each other.
I’ll be writing about it a lot in the future I’m sure (it’s my own Saturn return 🫢) and comparing my experiences, my friends’ experiences, and the theory. In this last week before that changes though, I’m going to consider where I can take the mental, idealistic shifts I’ve experienced the past three years and make plans to be better about enacting them. It’s too easy to let them live out online, but at the end of the day that’s not where we exist!
I’m going to be looking around for more local mutual aid in Austin to be donating to and, in the future, aggregating what I find here! In the meantime, if you feel like joining me, I’m starting up a monthly donation to Little Petal Alliance to support their “Transition Fairy Godparents” services.
Always a lot of credit goes to the people who have been my teachers, both directly and through their freely shared knowledge, and so many books.