A recent headline on Yahoo Shine reads “Britney [Spears] says that her new life is worse than jail”.   The article goes on to quote Spears from an upcoming documentary about how difficult and depressing her life has been over the past few years, and how she wakes up each day feeling restrained and oppressed, often wishing that she could somehow break free and become liberated again.

Just about every word and phrase that is quoted in this short piece has echoes of Saturn written all over it, and when you look at some of the transits that Saturn has been making to her birth chart over the past few years it is hardly surprising that she feels this way.   These Saturn transits are contrasted by the stellium of planets she has in Sagittarius, with Uranus prominently figured in.   Take a look for yourself:

Britney Spears’ Natal Chart

Britney was born on December 2, 1981 in McComb, Missouri at 1:30 AM.   She has Libra rising, and the ruler of the ascendant, Venus, is placed in Capricorn in the 4th house.  This is a nocturnal chart, since she was born in the middle of the night, so right away we know that the nocturnal planets (Moon, Venus & Mars) will be functioning in a more positive or constructive manner in her chart, while the diurnal planets ( the Sun, Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn) will be functioning as more challenging or problematic significators.

Since Saturn is the diurnal malefic planet, we know that this will be one of the more difficult significators in her chart, and some of his transits will coincide with some of the most difficult periods in her life.   While his placement in the sign of his exaltation, Libra, and his mutual reception with Venus do help to ameliorate some of the more difficult tendencies of having a nocturnal placement of Saturn, his very prominent placement in the 1st house and his superior square with Venus ensure that not all of his more problematic implications can simply be swept under the rug during the course of her life.

That is to say, because Saturn is so prominent, it is not as easy to simply ignore some of the challenges that he indicates in her chart.  Since Saturn is ruling the 4th and the 5th and he is placed in the 1st, this would indicate that some of Spears’ greatest challenges in her life will center around topics related to her family, her parents, her home life, and her children, and problems in these areas may have a negative effect on her own health and vitality.

However, since the mutual reception between Venus and Saturn is one of the strongest placements in her chart, these areas may ultimately end up being the ones in which she finds the greatest personal fulfillment. As with all things related to Saturn though, this only comes with time, and often only after a process of trial and error.

When we look at her chart over the past few years we see that this process of trial and error began a few years ago.   With the ingress of Saturn into Cancer, her 10th house, in the spring of 2003, her career started to level out, and during this time she entered into two unsuccessful marriages.

The second, and most famous, was her marriage to Kevin Federline on September 18, 2004, which took place on the very day that transiting Saturn was exactly opposed her natal Venus, with transiting Venus and Neptune opposed in the sky and straddling her natal Moon in Aquarius:

Britney Spears Marries Kevin Federline: Transits

The transiting opposition of Venus and Neptune on top of Britney’s Moon highlights the somewhat unrealistic nature their union, while the opposition of Saturn to her natal Venus is more of an indication of the problems with the relationship itself, especially from Britney’s perspective.

The following year, in the summer of 2005, Saturn made its ingress into Leo, where it would oppose Britney’s natal Moon for about two years.  This inaugurated a period of great emotional turmoil, including emotional breakdowns, trips to rehab, her divorce from Kevin Federline, her infamous haircutting episode, the loss of custody of her children, and just bad times in general.   The fact that the Moon is the ruler of her 10th house didn’t help either, since this put the focus of some of the Saturn transit on her career and public image, which were also damaged during this time, with the media plastering images of her breakdown all over the news.

By the fall of 2007 Saturn made its ingress into Virgo, finally ending its two year opposition with her natal Moon in Aquarius.  While this may have alleviated some of the emotional strain and career difficulties that she had experienced during the previous two years, the ingress of Saturn into Virgo inaugurated another two year period in which Saturn makes its way through her 12th house.   The 12th house often pertains to circumstances that keep the native restrained in some way, and in older texts it is often quite literally associated with prisons.  According to Deb Houlding the 12th house is traditionally associated with

…sad events, sorrow, anguish of mind, tribulation, captivity, imprisonment, persecution, hard labour, all manner of affliction and self-undoing.

Many of these topics are coming to the forefront in Britney’s life now as she makes her way through the last bit of what has been a rather long and difficult transit of Saturn through her chart.   What she was expressing in the statements quoted earlier in this article about feeling like her life was worse than jail is actually a rather striking depiction of how she is actually experiencing this transit on a psychological level.

The transit of Saturn through Virgo has been squaring her natal Sagittarius placements, creating this strong tensions between her natural desire for freedom and liberation, due to the combination of Uranus with the Sag planets, and the reality of her situation at the present time, where she simply doesn’t have the same freedoms that she previously enjoyed and thus she feels somewhat trapped or imprisoned by her own circumstances.

Saturn Ingress Into Virgo in September 2007

With her natal Mars in Virgo, ruling the 7th and the 2nd house in her chart, it would seem like the main focus of some of the constraint that she feels at this point of time is centered on her relationships and her finances or personal possessions.    Indeed, at the moment Britney’s father has been granted indefinite control over her personal and business affairs, including her finances.

So where is this all heading?   It would appear that Briney is gearing up for her Saturn return.  This is another one of those long 2 year transits, and for her it will take place between late 2009 and early 2012, while Saturn is transiting through Libra.   This is one of the more pivotal and defining transits that people go through, and it is usually the point in which a person will really get their affairs in order and make the full transition into adulthood, or things will fall apart completely.

For Britney the main focus is going to be primarily on 4th and 5th house topics since Saturn rules those two houses, so it will be about stabilizing her home and her living situation, strengthening ties with family members, and devoting more time towards her children.  The best case scenario with her Saturn return is that she comes out of it having improved these areas of her life, by establishing a strong foundation for the next 30 years as she begins a new cycle of Saturn through her chart.  The worse case scenario is that these areas of her life continue to be mismanaged, and the strain that it causes starts to have an adverse effect on her health, since Saturn will be transiting through her 1st.

The hope of everyone here at CelebrityAstrologyBlog.com is that she takes the next few years in stride and pays her dues, using this period as an opportunity to reorganize her life and to devote it to the things that truly matter to her.  One suspects that in the end she will find that it is her family that matters to her the most, and this will increasingly become the main focus of her attention over the next few years.

Ultimately she is the only one that can make the right choices for her life though, so all we can do is wish her the best and hope that she does.

Written by Chris Brennan

Chris is a practicing astrologer and researcher from Denver, Colorado. He specializes in Hellenistic astrology, with additional areas of interest in the history and philosophy of astrology. He writes articles regularly at the Horoscopic Astrology Blog, and he consults with clients and teaches online classes through his personal website at www.ChrisBrennanAstrologer.com

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Tags: 12th house, Britney Spears, Saturn, Saturn return, Transits

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