The Astrology of Amanda Bynes

Amanda Bynes is in “the news” again.

Due to my interest in conspiracy theories – the mind-controlled child celebrity conspiracy, to get really particular – I thought it might be interesting to take a look at her chart.

Right off the bat, I see a tight Moon-Pluto square. With hard Moon-Pluto aspects, there’s almost always some level of abuse going on. Frequently the abuse is coming from a caregiver (Moon = the mother, and mother-like figures.) Sometimes it’s not outright abuse, but controlling, and manipulative behaviors.

At one point, she was accusing her parents – her mother in particular — of financial abuse. Earlier on, she had gone on a vitriolic Twitter tirade accusing her father of emotional and sexual abuse. She later blamed her statements on bipolar disorder and gave more fuel to the fire of being dismissed as “crazy” by stating, “The microchip in my brain made me say those things but he’s the one that ordered them to microchip me”.

As of today, (to the best of my knowledge) she has mended her relationship with her parents…..or is she just playing along?

She certainly does have several markers of mental instability in her chart – but what came first, the chicken or the egg? Was she subjected to abuse by her parents? I’m not really seeing a strong sign of this. However, there were surely some shady characters in her past, who appear to have been “let in” by them. Whether they knew what they were doing or not, this girl – at the very least – was not adequately shielded from the predators who seem to run rampant in Hollywood.

Her Ascendant is in Gemini. A sign of duality. The conspiracy community might jump on that as a sign of induced Dissociative Disorder – or multiple personalities. Further – her chart ruler, Mercury, is in its detriment in daydreamy Pisces while square to erratic Uranus.

Mercury-Uranus aspects, including the square, can be innovative, brilliant even. But this combination shows disordered thinking. Mercury in Pisces is imaginative thinking – not rational. With the square to Uranus, her imaginative mind is agitated. There’s a possibility of nervous tension turning into paranoid delusions.

She has Mars and Neptune conjunct in the 8^th house of hidden things, secrets, intimacy, and the resources of others. On a positive level, Mars-Neptune conjunctions show an aptitude for acting. More negatively, acting can be so ingrained in the personality that you can’t tell whether the person is “wearing a mask” or being their true, genuine self.

There can be worry over imagined dangers. Mars is an aggressive energy, while Neptune can pertain to the imagination. In the 8^th house, there may be intense fears of intimacy or sharing. Such a person might let their heightened sense of danger run wild. This is another marker for paranoia.

Mars-Neptune can also show a reluctance to take responsibility for one’s own actions due to not really thinking about consequences — or not thinking about the consequences in a realistic way. The impulse to act is too mixed up with fantasy scenarios.

Exacerbating all of this – Mars is the ruler of the 12^th house cusp. The ruler of the House of the Unconscious and “self-undoing” is acting out in in the 8^th. The 8^th and the 12^th are both houses that deal with psychological garbage – the stuff that is tucked away, out of sight, out of mind. For people with heavy 8^th/12^th placements, it can take a lot of work and maturity to sift through the rubbish.

The final thing I want to touch on is the T-square between Chiron, Saturn, and Jupiter.

Jupiter square Saturn is a one-step forward, two-steps-back sort of energy. There can be real “tests of faith” with this square because boundless optimism (Jupiter) clashes with the cold hard truth of reality (Saturn). Things are started with passion and vigor…but not much forethought for potential difficulties. When challenges inevitably arise, they feel insurmountable.

Then there’s the opposition between Saturn and Chiron. Much like Ceres-Saturn aspects, when I see Chiron in a tense aspect to Saturn the word that jumps out is “grief”. Saturn is often representative of authority figures – the father in particular. Often in modern astrology, Saturn in harsh aspect to Chiron is considered to be a “daddy wound”. The feeling of not measuring up to what’s expected by the father…..or by what one thinks the father expects of them. Because Chiron is in the 1^st house of self, this can manifest strongly. The whole self (or what the ego thinks of as the “self”) carries the wound.

The Chiron-Jupiter square can show a sort of woundedness around one’s beliefs/convictions. Perhaps a feeling of not living up to one’s own morals.

With this T-square I can imagine someone who creates a sort of negative feedback loop in which they promise too much, are unable to fulfill those promises, and then feel really bad about themselves as a result. And then they start the whole process over again in an effort to prove Saturn wrong. Really it is a manic-depressive (bipolar) energy of uncontrollable highs and crushing lows.

Now, unfortunately, this chart analysis can’t prove or disprove that Amanda Bynes is a mind-controlled entertainment industry slave. But there are certainly a lot of markers for mental illness.

The Role of Transits

It appears that Neptune transiting Pisces may have been one trigger for her erratic behavior. When it squared her Ascendant in 2012, she was charged with a DUI. A year later, when Neptune was on her Mars/Pluto Midpoint, she was arrested for reckless endangerment and later hospitalized and placed on a 72-hour hold for a mental health evaluation. Neptune retrograded and came back to the Mars/Pluto midpoint a year later when she accused her parents of abuse. Simultaneously, transit Chiron was on her Mercury/Jupiter midpoint while Uranus was conjunct with her Natal Sun, and transit Pluto was square to it.

Mercury/Jupiter being activated can sometimes show “failures through negligence or deceit” while Uranus conjunct with the Sun is an indicator of shocking behavior. For some, Uranus brings “aha!” moments…for others, it can act more destructively.

“Outer planet transits can wreak havoc on ego-damaged individuals who have little sense of their center and who don’t know how to establish an identity separate from others or from the collective unconscious…The results of such ego-fragmentation can be disastrous, manifesting as varying degrees of mental deterioration”

– Bil Tierney, Alive and Well with Uranus: Transits of Self Awakening

Amanda Bynes has kept a fairly low profile in recent years. I do wonder if her recent “psychotic episode” is a sign of things to come. It occurred as Pluto entered Aquarius, squaring her 12^th house Node/Venus conjunction. Later this year, Transit Saturn will be in a close orb of activation to her Saturn-Chiron-Jupiter T square before retrograding. Hopefully, age and maturity will be working to her benefit as the planets make their motions…