Latest / The Astrology of it all / An Eric Dane Tribute
Transcript
- Jakayla Snipes: Okay, so this won't be long and I won't be doing a slide for this one because it's a little too hard to do the talking about it anyway, but Eric Dane died last week and I want to talk about his chart. Not because astrology explains death, doesn't and not because this chart predicted ALS. It didn't. But because when you look at what Eric Dane was working with astrologically, the survival strategies his nervous system learned in late fall of 1972, and then you look at the roles he played, the intensity he carried, the way he showed up in the world, and yeah, the way his body eventually betrayed him, I think it all tracks, not as fate, but as a pattern. And I think understanding that pattern might help us understand what made him so magnetic, so devastating to watch, and why losing him. feels like losing someone who's carrying something. The rest of us were maybe too afraid to hold. I haven't felt this emotional about someone who I don't know passing away since somebody else I'm not going to say, musician. So it's a little difficult, but let's talk about it. I want to talk about it. Let's talk about what it means to be born in late Scorpio season with a Capricorn moon and a Libra stellium and what happens when beauty control and dissolution are all operating in the same nervous system. So Eric Dayne was born on November 9th, 1972, which is deep Scorpio season. So let me walk you through what that actually is, because if you don't understand the season, you don't understand the person. You see, November 9th is like fall, not, oh, fall's pretty and leaves are changing fall. We're pretty much past that at this point. By early November, most of leaves are already gone. The trees are bare. The temperature has dropped. And here's what's happening in nature at this point. Everything is composting. The stuff that was alive three months ago now is dead and it's breaking down and it's decomposing, returning to the earth. And that's not sad. That's not tragic. That is necessary because decomposition is how nutrients get back into the soil, right? It's how the cycle continues without death and breakdown. There's no spring. So there's no rebirth. So if you're born in early to mid November, you're entering the world at a moment when the earth is teaching this one specific lesson. Nothing lasts. Everything transforms and the only way through is surrender Not giving up but surrender and there's a difference because giving up is like collapse Surrender is letting go of control because control was never real in the first place and that's Scorpio That's the survival strategy this season teaches So what does that look like in a person? Well, if you're born into this everything is dying and transforming moment Your nervous system early on learns that intensity is survival because you can't be casual about life because life isn't casual. Things end, people leave, bodies fall. So when you're here, you're all the way here. It also translates to a person as like secrets or currency. In late fall, everything goes underground. Animals burrow, plants store energy in their roots, and humans, we pull inward. We hide what's vulnerable because exposure in this season means death. And we have control as an illusion in a person who was born in this moment. Because you can't stop the leaves from falling, right? You can't stop winter from coming. So Scorpio learns to work with the inevitable instead of fighting it. And here's the thing people miss about Scorpio. It's not dark or mysterious or dangerous. It's about being awake to the fact that nothing is permanent. And once you see that, once you really see it, you just kind of can't unsee it and you walk through the world differently. You love differently, you perform differently and you die differently. And that's Eric Dane and that's what he was caring for day one. So let's talk about his son, his core identity, his life direction. I really hate that I'm like crying over someone I don't know. But I I cried over him when he fictionally died. So surprised here. But son, is, his life direction, the role he's here to play is at 17 Degree Scorpio. ⁓ And in theory, which I don't always use, but sometimes you're really accurate. 17 degrees is considered a Leo degree, which means long-term fame and being recognized. Not influencer fame or viral fame, but a legacy type of fame. The kind where people remember you decades later because you embodied something they couldn't look away from. And that tracks because Eric Dane didn't just play characters, he inhabited archetypes. Dr. Mark Sloan, the surgeon who's brilliant and broken and can't save himself even though he saves everyone else, fixed a face. make it look all pretty? Vass Scorpio. Cal Jacobs in Euphoria, the father who's hiding a secret life who's both predator and victim, who makes you deeply uncomfortable but you can't stop watching? Vass Scorpio. See, he wasn't playing roles. He was showing us what it looks like when someone is awake to darkness and still chooses to show up. we couldn't look away, at least I couldn't. Not just because he was conventionally handsome, though he is, and yeah, of course. But because he had that thing that all Scorpio sons have when they're actually doing the work, he wasn't afraid to let you see the decay. Now let's talk about Mercury. Mercury is how you think, how you communicate, how you make sense of the world. Eric Dane's Mercury is also in Scorpio at 60 degrees and how he processed reality. So his mind wasn't interested in anything surface level. He thought in subtext, in hidden motives, in what people aren't saying. And you can see that in almost every interview he gave. He didn't do that celebrity thing where you deflect and you stay safe, you give a PR approved answer. He was honest, sometimes uncomfortably so. Because Scorpio Mercury doesn't know how to be shallow, it's not capable of it. Which by the way, makes acting easier I think in some ways because you're already looking for the wound underneath the words. You're already inquiring like what is this character hiding? What are they afraid of? What are they pretending isn't true. But I think living it, think it makes living harder ⁓ you kind of can't turn that off. You see through people, you see through systems, you see through yourself. And once you see it, you kind of can't unknow it. Now let's talk about his moon. Because his moon is huge. Where his emotional regulation system is, his sense of safety, the part of him that needs to feel secure, his nervous system. It's in Capricorn and Capricorn is deep winter, late December, early January. This is when the world is the coldest, the darkest, when the resources are tight and survival depends on discipline and restraint. And so what that means for someone's emotional world is that your feelings don't get to run the show. You don't fall apart just because things are hard. You carry what needs to be carried and you don't complain about the weight. Now that can look like strength and in a way it is, but I think that's also exhausting because Capricorn moon people don't give themselves permission to not be okay. They're the ones holding everyone else together. They're the ones showing up when they're barely holding it together themselves. And they do it so well that no one even realizes just how much they're struggling. And so, Erechadoscopio Sun, which makes you very intense and private, and the Capricorn Moon, which makes you very emotionally self-sufficient, almost to the point of isolation. And I think that combination is someone who feels everything, but shows almost none of it. someone who would probably process pain alone and someone who even when they're drowning would make sure everyone else stays dry. And now here's also where it gets interesting because I kind of want to say, I kind of call the Libra stellium like a beauty as armor. And he had four plants in Libra, Venus, Mars, Uranus and Pluto, which is a stellium, which is a concentration of energy in one sign. And Libra is early fall, late September, early October. This is a timeframe when harvest is mostly done. The work is finished. And there's this moment of pause where everyone just like looks at each other and they're wondering, are we okay? Are we still connected? Because Libra is a sign of relationships, aesthetics, balance, and social harmony. So when you have a stellium here, your entire life gets organized around how you look and you're perceived and the way you connect and the way you maintain harmony, even when things are falling apart. And here's the thing about Eric Dane. He was absurdly beautiful. Like, Devon statingly so. that wasn't just an accident. That wasn't just genetics. ⁓ was Libra energy doing what it does best, creating an image that makes people feel something. ⁓ the thing I think that people don't understand about Libra is that they use beauty as a survival strategy, ⁓ as a way of vanity or shallowness, but more so like if I can make you feel comfortable, if I can make you like me, if I can present something aesthetically pleasing, you know, something a little good to the eyes. Maybe you won't see how unstable everything actually is. See, Libra knows the world is chaotic. It just chooses to create pockets of beauty and balance to make that chaos bearable and make it look good while they're doing it. And I think Eric Dane just does that. People always said he walked into a room and you felt it and you felt steadied by his presence. Even when he was playing someone dangerous like Cal Jacobs, there was something about him that made you feel like, okay, at least he's beautiful. At least there's something to hold on to. And then it makes me think about even him in private practice and with Addison and that's Libra stellium energy. Beauty is an anchor. Charm is an anchor. So then let's talk about his Mars and Libra. And I know I'm just jumping straight to the placements, because if I stop and I, I'm gonna cry and I'm I'm trying not to cry. But his Mars is also in Libra and this placement is a very big complication, I think, because it makes someone struggle with confrontation. See, because Mars is your drive, your energy, your ability to assert yourself and fight for what it is that you want. And with his being in Libra, that's kind of tricky because Mars is a planet that wants to be direct and push forward. And he wants conflict when conflict is necessary. But Libra hates conflict. wants peace and balance and harmony. So a Mars and Libra is someone who's typically stuck in a loop of I need to assert myself, but what if that disrupts relationship? I'm angry, but I don't want to make this uncomfortable. I know what I want, but I don't want to hurt anyone by taking it. And that can kind of show up in like a people pleasing or passive aggressive manner or saying yes when you mean no, because you just don't want to kind of like rock the boat. And again, I don't know Eric personally. I can't say how this played out in his private life. But what I do know is that someone with a Mars and Libra and a Capricorn Sun, I mean, a Capricorn, Capricorn Sun, no, a Scorpio Sun and a Capricorn Moon is someone who feels intensely and they regulate alone and they avoid direct confrontation even when it would help them. That's someone who might struggle to ask for help, who might push through the pain instead of naming it. who might not tell you they're falling apart until they're already gone. Now here's a placement that I wrote down that I do feel like I need to tread carefully. And that's Saturn and Gemini retrograde. So I'm not gonna sit here and say, ⁓ siren and Gemini retrograde caused his ALS because that's not how astrology works. It can't cause illness, but it can describe vulnerability patterns, I think. And siren and Gemini retrograde is about the nervous system, communication, and the body's ability to send signals. Let me break this down. So siren and structure, discipline, is that part of you that holds things together. Gemini rules the nervous system, the lungs, the hands, communication, movement. And when Saturn is retrograde in Gemini, it often shows up as like having a difficulty with communication, either being misunderstood or struggling to express yourself. Nervous system sensitivity, a body that feels like it's not cooperating the way it should, a sense that the signals aren't necessarily getting through. ALS as I know it is a disease of the nervous system. is literally the breakdown of communication between your brain and your muscles. And it's where the signals stop getting through, the body stops responding. And I'm not saying that historic predicted that because again, it can't, but I'm saying that I see a pattern there, a pattern of someone whose body was always working harder than I think it should have been, whose nervous system was always maybe a little more fragile than it appeared, who maybe learned early on that his body couldn't always be trusted to do what it needed to do. And that's just what I mean by Siderman and Gemini retrograde. And I'm gonna leave it at there. And now I kinda wanna talk about his roles a little bit. Let's talk about Grey's Anatomy. Because Vic Steenney wasn't just some nickname, even though it was a fun nickname. It was also kind of like, it became an archetype, right? When you really think about it. Like, we see Mark Sloan as brilliant and charming and gorgeous and confident. But if you watch it, we all know underneath that, he was deeply broken. He made terrible relationship choices. He hurt people he loved. He ran from intimacy, even though he craved it. And in the end, he couldn't even save himself. He literally died trying to protect someone else. And that Scorpio Sun, Capricorn Moon, Libra, stellium in one character. The intensity, the self-reliance, the beauty, the inability to ask for help. And I don't think Eric had to act that role. I really, really, really, really do feel like he was that role. And then there's Euphoria. Of course, I know he played many other things, but these are the two main from 1994. I've been around very long, I didn't watch all his earlier stuff. But the two roles, and there's other stuff he played in, like these are the main... For me, my personal, I'm going just off me. My personal experience with this... Person of the fictional characters he played, basically. But in Euphoria, he played Cal Jacobs, and Cal Jacobs was honestly one the most disturbing characters on television. And not necessarily because he was a monster, but because he's human. He was a man basically with a secret life, one who had been performing his whole existence, a man who's... both predator and victim of a system that never really let him be who he actually was. I think Eric played him with so much nuance that you didn't know whether to hate him or pity him. And I think that Scorpio, this ability to hold contradictions ⁓ flinching and to show you the decay and the humanity at the same time ⁓ to kind of make you feel uncomfortable and unable at the same time to look away. So here's just kind of what I keep thinking about, because I said I was going to be short. So I want to be respectful. But I kind of see the body as a final teacher. Eric Dane spent his whole life in a body that was beautiful, controlled, and functional. And he was known for his physicality. We made an archetype out of him, extremely his presence, the way he moved through space. And then slowly and methodically, ALS took all of that away. until his body, the thing that had always worked for him, the thing that had carried him through fame and roles in life, stopped responding. And here's the Scorpio truth that I think Eric understood better than most. You can't control the body forever. You can't control anything forever. The only thing you can do is surrender to that transformation. And I don't know what his private experience was. I don't know if he was angry or terrified or at peace, but what I do know is that Scorpio energy at its highest expression understands that death isn't the end, it's the compost. It's the breakdown that makes the next cycle possible. And maybe, maybe Eric knew that maybe his whole life was practiced for this moment, for the moment when he had to let go of control and trust that the transformation was happening exactly as it needed to. And I hope I said that as respectfully as possible. Eric Dane was born in late fall. He carried Scorpio intensity, Capricorn discipline, and Libra Beauty. He showed us what it looks like to be awake to the darkness and still choose presence. He played broken healers and hiding fathers and made us feel something we couldn't name. And when his body failed him, he did what Scorpio does best. He surrendered, not because he gave up, but because he understood what the rest of us are still learning. That nothing lasts, everything transformed, and the only way through is to let go. Rest in peace, Eric Day. thank you for showing us how to hold intensity with grace.