Disclaimer: If you're an annoying white man who's like ASTROLOGY ISN'T REAL bitch neither is the western economy shut up. Vedic uses closer to where the stars are astronomy wise shut up you're soooo annoying please stay out of my comments.
Pick your system
So the thing about astrology is that there's many many many systems, typologies, and opinions. And a lot of astrologers mix and match frequently. The most popular now in the west is the Placidus - most likely because it is easier for people to calculate horoscopes.
There's so many variations: just look at these got damn astro-seek options just for houses
I won't go out of my way to say any such number of configurations are wrong they're just different. IMO I just hate Vedic cuz it's mean to me (they said I have a big forehead).
But it's actually kind of important to know which system you're using here because the sources I personally use are specifically: Hellenistic traditional leaning with some Persian and Islamic Golden age sources - specifically around Zodiacal releasing - and Persian Firdaria. Time Lord shit (no Doctor who)
yes the autism books are mixed in with the astrology books don't ask more questions - yes I have a strong saturn influence in my chart ok.
So in the past year especially I've been specifically drilling in hard into astrology trying plan my career stuff better and it's been working out really... well? For the first time in my life. Which makes sense, especially astrologically.
Belle's personal astro-seek settings
Tbh Chani gives a pretty good overview in her app too if you want something far more simplified.
Breaking down what you need to know to get this going.
Okay so I'm assuming you know 1houses and planets and signs. If not I think Chani's website (linked in footnotes) has some really good resources and isn't totally AI-sloppified. There's also2 Brennan for the real freaks out there.
There's 3 main points you gotta know here:
Midheaven/10th house - This is the biggest key because your career legacy rests here. We'll get back to this later
Mars/6th house - this is how you work more day to day, it's also considered the house of minor misfortune - if you're having a lotta issues with people at work for whatever you do - this is the place to look.
Part of Fortune - This isn't a planet, it's a specific formulaic point (it's literally an algebra formula, one of hundreds in use by astrologers sometimes - the arabic lots were kind of invented alongside algebra)
Whatever planets/signs/houses your industry of choice relates to - they help support this work.
And then you pick 2-3 celebrities with a lot of planets/signs (ideally a stellium) in your midheaven and other key parts of your chart.
When I planned for this year, I picked two celebrities who's work inspired me and who I thought I wanted to work like: For me it was MF DOOM and Christina Aguilera (esp in the Xtina era)
Ironically I didn't think too much about it, just kind of felt drawn to them and then was like ok I wanna do it how they do it. Find a few who really really resonate with you, artists or people you're inspired by - ideally not in a field that you're currently in. Picking visual artists or Product people I liked didn't work out because I emulated them too closely - the goal is to find a spark of inspiration and translate it into something new. Not copy.
In my case music was a natural fit since I've always been very close to the Vocaloid community - but never have (and probably never will) pick up an instrument or will sing (I come from a family of gospel singers, but am basically like the penguin from happy feet)
Why MF DOOM?
but really it's like: I loved how he made his favorite blorbo part of his personal brand - and it was what I noticed what was working for me with Astarion - anything with Astarion was... somehow getting me attention and jobs and work. Which is hillarious because my shitty abusive ex our last conversation was him saying to me,"I don't think you're taking your career seriously enough, you just keep talking about Astarion. He's not going to get you a job."
Anyways I'm now Head of Product and a creative director :3
MF DOOM is pretty widely considered one of the best rappers of all time and it's more the style of his work that interested me. MF DOOM was able to succeed and arguably his legacy outlived most of his contemporaries who were trying to do gangster rap - while arguably being the weirdest rapper and effectively using nostalgia and fandom to wield influence and still protect his identity.
This was of special interest to me because I struggled to get influence and attention using my full name and professional brand - but was gaining a lot of influence (and actual jobs!) under my uh, fandom persona - Torrent-empress and fandom comic.
MF DOOM has a lot of aliases and personas, and a lot of projects so a similar trajectory, he also had a late start to his career relatively. Only reaching prominence after his late 20s/early 30s.
Looking at his chart he has heavy pisces and cancer placements (VERY similar to me) - I learned this only much later this year after embodying this, and then it started clicking to me what was working here. Something that's interesting is that a lot of charts that seem to be deducting his birth time through like recertification astrology - most likely put him with a Sag midheaven - so like me. LOL. (big if true)
How MF DOOM?
A lot of what DOOM did worked because he was so good at being a wordsmith and producer and so confident that it didn't really matter that he was mixing in Hannah Barbara samples into his beats. The shit was hot and he was constantly experimenting. So I kept doing that, while also inserting my nerdy references and holding out for the fandom people - in line with our shared Cancer + Pisces placements.
Why Xtina?
Because I was trying something really different! And because there was a lot of coincidences - Dirrty was directed by my favorite photographer too David LaChapelle. I thought a lot about artists who had made a really hard, but successful pivot - and the entire Xtina era was a shining example of what I wanted out of my career.
See Xtina's early era was defined by being in Britney's shadow - she was a belter in a time when the baby voice Britney (which I found out is apparently fake anyways) was starting to go out of style. Even Mariah was getting quieter and Whitney was.... well.... RIP. :(
Her voice and style of singing was considered really antiquated, so instead they tried to market her as Spanish Britney. (I would consider early blonde Shakira their gem fusion after they forcibly extracted her arabic roots from her and got rid of her red hair)
While people mark the release of the Dirrty era as the start of the Xtina era I would actually carbon date it earlier - specifically the cover of Lady Marmalade. Everyone on that track was an iconic vocal powerhouse at the near height of their career - Missy Elliot, Lil Kim (before we lost her beautiful OG face), Mya, P!nk (who is a zionist and a hater who didn't want Xtina to have top spot lol) but Xtina apparently, allegedly, demanded to have that top spot. And that video's styling marks what I believe to be the true start of the Xtina era - it has all the style markers - darker colors, edge, sexiness.
I was at a pretty similar spot, career wise. I started going through alternative routes to try and get UX work and unconventional places, one night when rewatching the Dirrty video it hit me. Yeah, this is how I wanna present myself. If the product/UX world was a bunch of bubble gum pop Britney's and they aint want me, then I'll be Dirrty Xtina in the warehouse with the fetish folks mudslinging, fist-fighting, and hanging out with the furries.- can't argue with results, after all.
Whole sign charts put her as having a Sagittarius Midheaven but more importantly a fucking Sagittarius stellium (3 or more planets in a sign), meaning a fuck-ton of Sag energy in that chart. She's basically an archetype of Sagittarius energy. + her part of fortune is in cancer - so key placements around cancer as well having to do with luck and career.
How Xtina?
I don't actually have a lot of Sagittarius placements other than my midheaven so... tapping into that energy was pretty hard for me. I looked closely and dissected her stylists from the time, producers, directors she worked with - she leaned into edge, wasn't afraid to cross-genre with Redman or even remix (technically Dirrty is a remix and also a sneak-diss against Eminem who could not shut the fuck up during that time, she went and worked with his favorite rapper before he did lol).
Dirrty and the subsequent singles off Stripped album, including Beautiful - showed both edge and a lot of vulnerability. Xtina's voice in this context showed prowess, but was made cool by aesthetic positioning and a willingness to be in the underground - literally.
The line between Dirrty - a club thumping theme and Beautiful - was elevating genres, art, and peoples that were snubbed on by mainstream culture. Aligning yourself with queer people - trans people (post 9/11! At the height of American insane behavior) even so publicly during 2002 without a hint of irony resonated super deeply. It's a lot of what I do with my work.
She also had to basically demand a lot of the things - Beautiful was a song the songwriter originally thought wouldn't fit her. Same with Moulin Rogue, and so I made a point of kind of ignoring what a lot of people thought I wasn't a "fit" for if I knew I had the skills.
How's it going then?
Well, my professional approved portfolio got kind of panned even though it had pretty solid feedback. Meanwhile my neocities website - which people really go out of their way to tell me they adore - really started around that time - https://neocities.org/site/torrentempress sits at about 76k views - mostly from the past year.
I will have a full write up of this year's wins this year on my main blog, probably, as I did last year. But I promise it's pretty impressive compared to when I spent my early 20s sleeping on the floor and dodging homelessness lol.
Funny enough though, the other day I had the song Villain - y'know the KDA one stuck in my head. I had even met some folks on Riot this year and had had the chance to ask them questions about it. I had been facing some pretty harsh attacks from colleagues in the atprotocol community and I kept feeling like this was how they saw me, and I was like, damn, and I asked myself two questions all day after visiting a bunch of beauty supply shops, looking and asking my boyfriend if I should go red finally:
"Should I stop starting trouble in the atprotocol community by speaking out?"
and
"Should I enter my insane redhead latina era?"
And as I said that out loud, I got a ping on my phone - KDA finally released a new song for the first time in years.
And there's Evelyn, my favorite. Singing:
I'm a fire starter, work a little harder
Got me fired up, I'ma burn it down like
I'm a fire starter, crazy, out of order
Got me fired up, I'ma burn it down like (Hey, hey)
I'm insane
Yeah, I know you like it that way
Chaos runnin' wild in my veins
Feel this moment
That will paint this once-cold world red
I decided to look up if Evelyn has a canonical birthday, turns out it's very close to mine.
When the Universe talks to you, you gotta pick up the phone sometimes lol.