HRH Taylor Swift, the Sagittarius queen of confessional songwriting, sick burns, and exhuming the sins of her exes, is back at it with the release of ‘The Tortured Poets Department,’ her 11th studio album.
A meditation on her frayed relationship with British sad boy Joe Alwyn, with lyrical forays into her ill-fated affair with Matt Healy, a beef with Kim Kardashian and a few nods to new dude Travis Kelce, the album dropped on an auspicious day, leaving a whimsical, side-eye giving trail of astrological easter eggs.
Can you find them all? Read on and see how you did.
Mercury Retrograde
The hotly anticipated release comes amid the thick heat haze of Mercury retrograde in Aries, a time when the re- prefix is emphasized and we reimagine the past, revise our self-concepts, and revisit the muck and the mire of failed relationships, to discover the kernels of wisdom buried in the burning buildings of romantic ruin.
In essence and ashes, this album is the smoking, stillborn delivery of a doomed love story.
Aries is the sign of fierce individuation. Through these songs and during this transit, our girl is asserting who she is within and without a relationship and loudly proclaiming what she will no longer stand for.
Bless it.
Aries is also the sign of the unequivocally, unapologetically extra, so it tracks that Swift would round out the drop with ‘The Anthology,’ a secret, 15-song companion album to ‘TTPD.’
Swift released her opus while the sun was at a precarious 29 degrees of Aries. Known as an anaretic degree, this is the last moment before a planet changes signs.
Also called critical degree, 29 is famously unstable. It’s insistent and simply must express the essence of the archetype in its totality. In Aries, the anaretic is volatile, even vitriolic. It’s gotta let it out, play it loud, and burn it down.
Check, check, check.
Venus/Mercury conjunction
Swift’s latest was released mere hours before the planet of love (Venus) and the planet of communication (Mercury) conjoined in the cardinal cauldron of Aries. Conjunctions blend the energies of two planets. Given the prevailing influence of fire, the results here are incendiary.
Under normal conditions, this conjunction empowers us to own and express our desires, but during a retrograde and in the sign of Aries, our wants and our language around craving and connection take on a different level of intensity — let’s call it argumentative attraction.
It’s about wanting someone but wanting more than anything to be heard, themes that are heavily laced into ‘TTPD.’
Swift’s double album was released mere hours before the planet of love (Venus) and the planet of communication (Mercury) conjoined in the cardinal cauldron of Aries.
The brilliant astrologer Colin Bedell of Queer Cosmos explains that under this conjunction and during this retrograde, we are reimagining the role of the individual in relationships.
“Our relationship satisfaction is largely determined by another partner’s self-sufficiency. We are drawn to other people when they’re in their element. When they’re enthusiastic about something…When they’re radiant, when they’re expressive, when they’re fully defined,” Bedell said.
‘TTPD’ is T. Swift at her fullest and most fearless, on her grind and in her element, having come through the baptismal fires of love and loss wisened — and with fresh pain for the grist mill, turning what hurts into what heals.
Rewriting the book of love during Mercury retrograde? We love to see it Tay Tay.
Bedell suggests that this conjunction begs the question, “How much life force and self-sufficiency am I bringing to romantic relationships?” Swift’s long list of ex-lovers is riddled with the names of men who couldn’t f—ing hang/match with her life force, nor support her degree of self-sufficiency — fools she will suffer no longer.
Perhaps with buoyant Libra bro Travis Kelce, Swift has at long last found a vitalizing match; a safe place to land and an appropriate person to hang her wishes, dreams, and choruses upon.
Rewriting the book of love during Mercury retrograde? We love to see it, Tay Tay.
Astrologer Reda Wigle researches and irreverently reports back on planetary configurations and their effect on each zodiac sign. Her horoscopes integrate history, poetry, pop culture, and personal experience. She is also an accomplished writer who has profiled a variety of artists and performers, as well as extensively chronicled her experiences while traveling. Among the many intriguing topics she has tackled are cemetery etiquette, her love for dive bars, Cuban Airbnbs, a “girl’s guide” to strip clubs, and the “weirdest” foods available abroad.
