What’s going on with Britney Spears? What could possibly explain her downward spiral?

As Neptune moved away from Britney’s Moon in 2005, Jupiter headed onto her Saturn/Pluto/Ceres conjunction in Libra. Jupiter bore partnership gifts in Libra, but Jupiter’s tendency is to open everything. The gift-giver opened the door of an unknown castle. This is the scene where the fairytale grows grim: the newlyweds cross the threshold of marriage and dark forces receive them – Saturn, Pluto and Ceres. Love and marriage is no box of chocolates for Brit. Britney’s new marriage brings up everything. Her fears and defenses have free reign; her fear of death, of self-annihilation. While her Sagittarius Sun side cries freedom, her Libra rising side wants to please her husband and save her marriage. In marriage she experiences the dark face of love. Pummeled over and over again by fear of loss and separation, then actual loss and separation, love burns and the ashes remain. To be reshaped, eventually, into a completely different form.

Saturn/Pluto and Ceres have great power and stability. In that bargain, a world of truth accompanies: truth to self, truth to others. Relationships show us our potential for misery. By taking us to the places that are under developed, we see just how rotten stinkin’ nasty things can get. There’s a problem here with understanding how to be in an equal partnership. For a Libra rising, there’s a need to keep up appearances, to bend over backwards for her partner. I recall stories about Brit leaving the kids at home for the nightlife and boogie of the KFed clan. While Pluto/Saturn/Ceres may be an arsenal of desire and power, the promise is experiencing deep transformation within a committed union. It’s not easy though. The journey entails dropping the Libran mask and descending into the unknown realm of nightmares.

To understand Britney, we make the big picture smaller. The macrocosm is a reflection of the microcosm. What we’re noticing in Brit’s relationship with the press is also happening in her relationship with family and loved ones. She opens up and feels betrayed. They make heavy demands on her, they want her. She starts feeling paranoid. She gets angry, she wonders what she gets out of the deal. And if she can’t find her personal power in relationship to her husband, her family or the press her only other option is to end it once and for all. That’s Pluto. The buck stops here. Unfortunately for celebrity, one can’t divorce the press. Even if she goes into hiding (not likely for a Sagittarian Sun) she’ll discover, like the blood stain on Lady Macbeth, “out spot, out!” they just won’t go away. They’ll haunt her. Astrology lumps the press and her partners into Brit’s Aries-ruled seventh house of marriage (and open enemies). Now the foggy deception of her Mars/Neptune square materializes. It says, “Other people are sneaky.” “They tell you they love you but they’re really waiting for you in bushes, setting traps with their cameras and their greed” and “I don’t trust their intentions at all.” When lover becomes sniper, it’s too easy to feel victimized by “everyone.”

Catch Part 3 next…