Like all her fans, I was crushed to learn of Sinéad O’Connor’s (Shuhada’ Sadaqat’s) death. I’m not going to get too into analyzing her personal struggles…suffice it to say we of the Pisces Saturn opposite Pluto-Uranus generation are working through lifetimes of (usually religious) guilt and/or persecution, which can involve putting oneself back in a similar situation. Sinéad often walked through fire of her own making, but likely she’d been burned (or burned others) at the stake in the distant past. Sadly, she didn’t make her second Saturn return.
Squares are challenging, especially T-squares, and her Sagi Venus was in this configuration with the Pluto-Uranus/Saturn-Chiron opposition, her Xena warrior Venus believing unequivocally that without the freedom to love who and how we want, there can be no healing. As well, Pallas Athena, Jupiter’s favourite warrior daughter in rebel Aries. But her Black Moon Lilith, sometimes a self-saboteur in youth was also in Pisces, sign of the martyr, conjunct Saturn, and the two of them opposite Mars in Libra. Not easy to keep a balance (Libra) with the ironman Mars sitting on one of your scales, while luminaries Venus and Sun have their hands full trying to mediate the forces of Pluto/Uranus and Saturn/Chiron. Saturn in this placement can feel like one’s been abandoned by god and/or one’s own father, which is what happened. All of them under Jupiter’s watch (see explanation below).
Read her book, ‘Rememberings’ if you want to know about her personal life. Here’s a great Guardian interview from 2021, upon its release.
With Chiron tightly conjunct her Saturn, the urge to break and heal the long cycle of pain would be even stronger, but as we know, Chiron’s own wounds never quite heal even as he healed others. Sinéad gave music her all, and all her music. “We’re only given as much as the heart can endure” sang Capricorn Patti Smith, but Sagittarius is known to bite off more than they can chew. Sagittarius is clichéd as being a lucky, optimistic, freedom-loving zealot. And that would be true. However there is also what I’ve always referred to as ‘the unbearable lightness of being Sagittarius.’ It’s kind of like an unbearable heaviness, except light. (Sagis will understand).
I had actually just been listening to Sinéad’s Irish Ballads the night before the sad news broke, that crystal-perfect voice, remembering how she’d said that these songs were ‘ghosts.’ Spirit possession, be it via songs, demons or Holy Spirit or can be a very stressful practice, definitely not for the faint of heart. Sometimes they won’t leave.
Jupiter, like Sagittarius, is given this benign definition of ‘greater benefic’ or ‘fortunate’ or signifying ‘excess’. And these would be true. But Jupiter’s influence, being of the spirit, is perhaps not fully fathomed until a person has passed and their own, ‘larger than life’ spirit becomes one with everything. That’s kind of the whole point of Jupiter’s religiosity (although many astrologers now attribute this ‘seeking oneness’ quality and Pisces rulership to Neptune, I see the outer planets as a slow release over a long period of time, affecting whole generations, so am not quite ready to replace the traditional rulerships with them). Similarly, when a loved one dies you recognize and perhaps feel it in a breeze or passing bird…a Jupiterian serendipity. This planetary god makes spirit known.
Jupiter in the end shows where a person died a ‘good death’ (though not necessarily without physical pain), ‘with honours’ or simply how the pull to spirit realm was at that moment overriding the material. Think of how we are drawn into sleep each night, the realm of dreams – Pisces being Jupiter’s other traditional sign. Likely she died in her sleep.
Sinéad’s Sagittarius Sun (ruler of Leo) was in mutual reception with her Leo Jupiter (ruler of Sagittarius). Her Libra Moon and Taurus North Node were also ultimately under the influence of Jupiter, since her Venus (ruler of Taurus and Libra) was in the sign of Sagittarius. It’s called the ‘chain of command’ in a chart. At the same time, her natal Venus was being trined by transiting retrograde Venus. Retrograde Venus is where we get the myth of Ishtar going into to the underworld – ie, the period of invisibility in the Sun’s rays, before re-emerging the other side – where, en route, she had to remove a veil at each of seven gates (heavenly spheres).
I’m dancing the Seven Veils
Want you to pick up my scarf
See how the black moon fades
Soon I can give you my heart
~ first lines of Sinead O’Connor’s first big hit, ‘Mandinka’
When the news of her death broke, Jupiter was conjunct her North Node (future/material) and Sun was on her Jupiter. As well, the Moon was transiting her South Node (past/spiritual) node. The Lunar Nodes are an axis and work together, not separately. Whatever was going on, it seems her God-father came to take her home, with honours for her musical contribution and valiant battle with lifetimes old cause of so much abuse and suffering. Yes, she had a martyr complex at times (her Neptune conjunct south node in the 12th house was a significator of that in this life and the past), but that was also deeply imprinted in the psyche via catholicism. Life throws us enough suffering without the added notion that somehow we ‘deserved’ it and are being punished by the almighty for simply being ourselves, but that is the general idea of ‘original sin’ and it’s made a real mess of things.
As well, we see transiting Mercury, flanked by Lilith and Venus, squaring her natal 12th house Mercury, representing her son Shane. Like his mum, he had been institutionalized (12th house), and sadly, although on ‘suicide watch’ he had ended his own life (age 17) last year. She expressed in her last tweet how she was basically walking dead without him, that he was the ‘lamp of her soul’ and that they ‘shared a soul’. Transiting Mercury is the psychopomp, conjunct retrograde (underworld) Venus and Black Moon Lilith (the void/anti-Moon). So much there offering her the door. “Alright, my daughter, you’ve had more than enough.”
It is not personal, human foibles (sorry, media) that ultimately defines how a great artist will be remembered, but their legacy. Jupiter also sired the nine Heavenly Muses, when he slept with the Titan Mnemosyne (‘of Memory’).
I think Sinéad, Jupiter’s daughter, whom Christy Moore once referred to as ‘one of our [Ireland’s] sons,’ and a catholic priest asked she sign his copy of her book ‘because she is a prophet’, was blessed by at least several of them. ~rb
All written content (except lyric quotation) herein is copyright ©Roxanna Bikadoroff and may not be used/reproduced without my permission. Please share via LINK only. Thank you.
