Day 5/100
Square 26/126 + T-Square Neptune opposite Moon square Saturn
Today is Day 5 of The 100 Day Project! For my intro, see 100 days of creativity.
Square 26/126
T-Square: Neptune opposite Moon square Saturn
Yesterday we looked at Marilyn’s Neptune in the 1st house and explored some of the themes around her identity and how Neptune can affect the sense of self when it’s placed in the first house. As we looked at Neptune in opposition to Marilyn’s natal Moon in Aquarius (which is also conjunct Jupiter) in the 7th, we saw how this aspect can also affect how the emotions are expressed and how relationships are experienced, including that of the mother/mothering relationship. Several elements emerged that showed how Neptune manifested in challenging elements to Marilyn’s identity and how she formed her sense of self, as well as what was real as opposed to what was only an illusion.
Since with the Moon we began exploring her relationship with her mother and her early life and how it shaped her identity, a logical next step is to look at the 4th house. In Marilyn’s 4th house, we find Saturn in the sign of Scorpio at 21°, forming a rather tight T-Square (an aspect pattern) to her Neptune in Leo at 22° and her Moon in Aquarius at 19°. This is a fixed T-Square, because all three signs are in the fixed modality. Saturn in Scorpio in the 4th house (home, early life, roots) is the apex planet of this T-Square, as it’s the one at the crossroads between the opposing, push-and-pull forces of Neptune and the Moon (1st/7th, self/others). Neptune and the Moon both have to contend with the tension of a Saturn square. Since we’ve already looked at the opposition here, these two squares are a good place to carry on.
Interestingly, we’re all currently experiencing a challenging Saturn-Neptune aspect, as Saturn and Neptune are currently conjunct in the sky at 1°22’ and 0°56’ respectively.
What we know about Neptune is that it likes to dissolve things, in a diffuse, merging energy without boundaries. Imagine a raindrop that falls into the ocean: how do you find that particular raindrop once it goes into the larger body of water? What we know about Saturn is that its job is to construct boundaries, build structures and define limits. Saturn needs to know concretely where things begin and end, how they’re organized, and how they should behave. You can imagine that these two have to make some compromises if they’re going to get along. Each of them can learn from the other, because when they come together, neither of them can remain entirely what it wants to be, or do entirely what it wants to do. Have a look to your own chart if you want to see where this current conjunction is calling you to grow. Conjunctions are hard to separate out, but squares, like the Neptune 1st house/Saturn 4th house square in Marilyn’s chart, are more of a dynamic tension.
In Marilyn’s chart, Saturn in the “flavor” of Scorpio means that the typical Saturn themes are colored by Scorpio characteristics that can include deep intensity, an intuitive flair, privacy, possibly secrets, hidden things/shadow sides, or mystery, as well as power, strategy, and when challenged or insecure, manipulation or control.
When Neptune in Leo in the 1st house (self/identity) meets Saturn in Scorpio in the 4th house (home/security) we’re looking at a dynamic tension that wants to build a stable home life but somehow has to contend with a sense of self that keeps dissolving every time it tries to find structure at home. Marilyn Monroe spent over a decade of her childhood in and out of more than a dozen different foster homes and an orphanage. We can imagine that the early development of a solid (Saturn) self-identity (1st house) in terms of her home/family (4th house) was constantly frustrated by the ever-dissolving quality of being continually forced to shapeshift, adapt, and merge (Neptune) into different family systems. Neptune is highly sensitive and intuitive, and we can imagine that Marilyn’s 1st house Neptune meant that she was able to lose herself much like the raindrop in the ocean so she could project different personas and intuitively detect who she needed to be in order to survive in different foster home environments.
Just like the Moon can represent the mother and mothering, Saturn can represent the father and fathering, as well as authority or father figures. Here in the 4th house we meet Saturn square Moon, which in literal terms could reveal a dynamic tension between Marilyn’s experience of her mother and father, and/or tension between the mother and father themselves, as well as loss, restriction, and limitations in this relationship. With Saturn square Neptune, we can also imagine that there may have been something mysterious or an unknown quality about her father.
In fact, Marilyn’s father’s identity was for many years shrouded in mystery. Her father had a brief affair with her mother but denied paternity of Marilyn and wasn’t involved in her life. (His paternity wasn’t officially confirmed until a DNA test in 2022.) Marilyn’s mother listed her estranged husband as Marilyn’s father on her birth certificate. Once again we see how Neptune clouded the truth and cast an illusion on who was her biological father.
In a T-Square, the apex planet (here Saturn) can at times exacerbate the tension between the opposing planets (Neptune/Moon) as well as act as a mediator to help them find ways to work together. Saturn is a planet that asks us to grow through discipline, hard work, setting boundaries, following rules, understanding limitations, and creating order and structure. We can imagine that Marilyn’s 4th house Saturn gave her a desire to create a strong self-identity as a way to gain some mastery and control over her elusive 1st house Neptune. Saturn in the 4th house also probably gave her a strong impulse and desire to build a stable family structure that she herself never had. In the quote below, you can feel the Neptune/Saturn tension—dreaming (Neptune) of a father (Saturn).
When I was a youngster I lived with different families. I nearly always felt closer to the man of the house. Maybe because I always dreamed of having a father of my own.
Marilyn Monroe
If you watch this clip of Marilyn speaking about her early childhood and life, you can almost tangibly feel the shadow side of the Neptune influence — deception, illusion, elusive desire, a sense of something slipping through your fingers and impossible to grab hold of.
As you can see, aspect patterns give us a lot of material to work with, so we can start with the larger archetypes and then go more into detail based on the particulars of a person’s actual life experiences. Planetary archetypes can manifest in infinite ways, which is one of the most fascinating aspects of understanding the individual map of each soul’s journey which is the birth chart. So many possibilities are inherent in every natal chart and the limitations and tensions are what push the soul to evolve, learn, and grow.
You explain this so well, and Marilyn has a fascinating chart!