Whitney Houston’s Piscean Journey, Part 1

Houston died yesterday in Beverly Hills of as-yet unknown causes. It will be easy to want to look at her transits to see what caused her death, but a death occurs just as a birth occurs: when it suits the soul’s journey as the ending to a chapter of life experience.

But to understand her life better, we can look at her Chiron in Pisces in the 1st house and Saturn in Aquarius in the 12th house.

A karmic analysis of her chart using the method outlined in The Soul’s Journey I: Astrology, Reincarnation, and Karma with a Medium and Channel reveals that Saturn is Houston’s South Node ruler. The South Node represents conditioning environments chosen in many lives by the soul (including family), and its ruler tells us about the chart holder’s role in those environments. With her South Node in Capricorn, we go straight to Saturn for information on her special talents, interests, and challenges as an individual in her soul’s many lives.

Saturn is in the 12th house, telling us that in her soul’s many lives, she shows up as a 12th-house figure. In her life as Houston, we have seen her rise meteorically to fame, embody beauty and the very definition of glamor, as well as experience addiction and subsequent attempts to recover. These are all 12th-house themes as they describe parts of life in which an individual can lose herself to forces outside of herself that are or seem much larger than the self.

Saturn is in Aquarius. This means that she shows up as different and with a streak of genius that comes out in her 12th-house living. She is also capable of great detachment from what is going on, feeling swept along by the strong flow of events surrounding her. And then the Saturn is retrograde. A retrograde South Node ruler is about the way the person goes about defining and expressing the self needs to be retooled. It means that there is a certain level of burnout that comes with living out those themes. She was challenged to experience that rise to fame and – later – addiction with the sense that something needed to be different this time. When we have an important karmic planet (here Saturn is not because Saturn rules karma or because the 12th house is about karma – the entire chart is about karma – but because it rules the South Node of the Moon) retrograde, we feel we need to do something new and different with ourselves.

And then we have Chiron in Pisces in the 1st house. On the personality level, Chiron in the 1st means that the energy antenna of Chiron is in the house of the body. In Pisces, it works in her and in her body by inviting her to release control and flow with whatever is around her. My clients with Chiron OR Pisces in the 1st house repeatedly get invited to establish healthy energetic and emotional boundaries, as either signature can lead to porousness and emotional/energetic chaos if not intentionally managed. Chiron being retrograde means that she will have to learn on her own the right ways to manage energy, emotion, and her sensitivity to these in others. People with Chiron retrograde often by default don’t know what to do with it: being open or closed to others doesn’t entirely make sense until they figure out how to have good energetic/emotional boundaries.

Yet on the karmic level, this Chiron opposes Pluto in Virgo in the 7th house. The soul’s empowerment journey is represented by Pluto, and Chiron in her soul’s many lives opposes the most important thing she came here to do – create fairness in relationship (7th house) and take responsibility for her part in hers (Virgo). Pluto for a person is the thing that must be done in a healthy way in order for him or her to feel life was worth living, and Chiron in Pisces opposing such an important life mission means that the pain and suffering of others – and other people’s needs – blocks what that person feels he or she came here to do.

This is all to say that awareness of energy and emotion, and feeling a sponge when it comes to them, is a major issue for Houston in all of her soul’s many lives. She’s blocked by others’ suffering and needs (Chiron opposing Pluto) while she herself carries her own on her sleeve (Chiron in the 1st).

Each of her lives is in one way or another an exploration of how to deal with the reality of intense feelings in self and other. With this South Node ruler Saturn in the 12th and Chiron in Pisces in the 1st, being in the spotlight didn’t remove Houston from connection to people. She was always feeling all the energy offered to and thrown at her due to her celebrity status and the way that she touched so many people through her music.

After a time in the spotlight, she may have begun to feel an emptiness inside – perhaps this is part of the reason substances seemed a good outlet at the time. This heavy Piscean/12th house signature says that it’s important for the chart holder to transcend Earth-plane reality, yet the hows and whys matter quite a bit! First she escaped in one way through her rise to fame, and after that she escaped with substance use and, ultimately, addiction.

There is also an important note in Neptune in Pisces in the 8th house being in trine to that Chiron in Pisces in the 1st house. Whenever anything in intimate relationships was painful, this trine can lead a person to feel that the best thing is to escape the reality of the moment. Again, the hows and whys of escape matter because there are myriad ways of transcending reality, of identifying as more than the egoic self.

I’m looking now at the oppositions to Saturn and the inconjuncts to Chiron, and these are also important to explore. Stay tuned for another post on Houston’s karma to reveal more about her life and its place in her soul’s multilife journey.

Tom Jacobs is an Evolutionary Astrologer, Medium, and Channel helping you understand and do what your soul came here to do. Get nine books, your Soul’s Journey Soundbite MP3 or video, or Living in the Present Tense Natal Report/2012 Prep Course through https://tdjacobs.com.