Sinéad O'Connor

Battles of Devotion

This month, our new guest contributor Molly Curtis takes us on an captivating tour through Sinéad O’ Connor’s passionate and soulful chart. Please dive in, enjoy and don’t forget to leave a comment!

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I’ve said this before now. You said I was childish and you’ll say it now. Remember what I told you, If they hated me they will hate you. - Sinéad O’Connor, Black Boys on Mopeds

For some, youthful rebellion is just baked into the adolescent archetypal cake. For others it is just the beginning of a lifetime of resistance, protest and being an outspoken voice for those who are silenced.

I didn’t want to be a fucking pop star. I wanted to be a protest singer. - Sinéad O’Connor (Photo credit: Getty)

A sentimental struggle expressed time and time again throughout the career of one of the most defiant and evocative female singers in the last forty years. Sinéad O’Connor was undersold as a singer/songwriter. In reality, music was just a vehicle for her lifelong protest. 

Two Pillars

Sinéad was discovered as a musician at a young age of 15, following a youth of shoplifting, truancy, and battling her own mother’s demons of violence and crimes. She was even sent away to an asylum for 18 months where she was overseen by nuns.

Music and religious devotion have always remained two central pillars in her life, and it was through both channels she would also express her most heartbreaking sentiments on the human experience. The music and the religion were acts of devotion, but also protest.

 

I feel that having a No.1 record derailed my career, and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track. - Sinéad O’Connor

In the quote above Sinéad is referring to the infamous 1992 Saturday Night Live appearance where she performed Bob Marley’s “War,” with altered lyrics addressing child abuse. Following this song, she performed the most punk rock move of her career to date, tearing up her mother’s photo of Pope John II on live TV and shouting “Fight the real enemy!” Pluto was transiting Scorpio in her 12th house, hovering over natal Neptune and Mercury, exposing deep spiritual corruption. 

The child sexual abuse accusations toward the Catholic Church came nine years prior to the mass disclosure. For this, Sinéad was ridiculed and ostracized by many big name celebrities and elite figures, including being booed off stage at a Bob Dylan tribute concert. Sinéad was ostensibly shunned from many circles; she never apologized and even decades later, had no regrets. The collective took years to see her for the protest hero she was at the time, and in 2020, Time magazine named her one of the most influential women due to that act of protest.  Meanwhile, even though she was waging war with the church proper, she remained a devout Catholic in her own way.

A Fiery Road

It seems to me that being a pop star is almost like being in a type of prison. You have to be a good girl. - Sinéad O’Connor

Defiant acts would litter Sinéad’s career, including her notable and perpetually shaved head. This seemingly small superficial act stemmed from a record exec telling her to grow her cropped hair and dress more feminine. Her immediate reaction was to shave her head, in protest for all women subjected to such sexist expectations of women in the industry. This would be a lifelong signature to her protest brand.

If we were to consider a planetary archetype for the protesting punk, Mars would be our warrior. Likened to “Joan of Arc of rock music,” Sinéad was never afraid to swing the sword in her work. She was even considered as the lead in Luc Besson’s The Messenger, The Story of Joan of Arc.

Evocative Mars is applying to the MC, her personal career aspect, by 3 degrees in Libra. Mars in Libra, her 11th house of social allies, is constantly fighting aside Venus to balance the scales of justice, and certainly speaking fiercely when one side gets too heavy with injustice. The Moon is also present in this house, residing on the path of via combusta at 26 degrees of Libra, further emphasizing the hazardous environment she would find herself in time and time again. 

A fiery road indeed, Sinéad’s path in this lifetime would be marked with a determination to stay out of step with the masses.  Returning to the SNL moment that put her career under the public microscope, the Sun was transiting her 11th house. The Libra Sun was shining a spotlight onto her Mars/MC signature, inciting public heat.

Libra, Venus ruled, is heavily concerned with virtuous balance. Mars incites and wages war, but does so in a Venusian temple, first laying its weapon at the muses feet. Mars also rules the creative space, 5th house Aries, where Venus rejoices. Love and war - these are Sinéad’s scales.

Photo credit: Terry O’Neil/Hulton/Getty

Venus is found in her 1st house of appearance, self-identity and personal interface with the world, easily expressed by her headstrong shaved head and powerful eyes. Sinéad’s natal Sun also resides here in the 1st house, Sagittarius. Her guiding light, her principles, her value and her art all accumulate together in Sagittarius, overseen by host Jupiter.

Jovial Power

Holy Jupiter is the final swinger of swords by the highest court’s verdict, and for Sinéad that was God. Her life’s work is about freedom for the oppressed and from oppressive structures that obscure the truth. Sagittarius supports this freedom, and is always looking to open the borders and remove resistance. 

Always on a religious path, from Catholicism to Islam in her final days, she was fueled by connecting her soul to a higher power, one greater than the mortal court.

Jupiter can be found in Sinéad’s 9th house, in Leo, providing mutual reception, and allowing a direct line of communication with the Sun in Sagittarius. The 9th house is concerned with foreign lands and travel, higher education, values, ethics, and the law. Both Jupiter and the 9th house can symbolize judges. Jupiter’s presence in this fiery temple induces the themes here. With the 1st and 9th house communicating by planetary reception, we could see this constant pressure building internally, stoking her internal fire and judgements. Jupiter in the 9th house of solar Leo expands and feeds her art, as well as her own personal interface with the world at large.

Jupiter residing in the 9th house also has a direct influence over her 4th house Pisces. Saturn resides there, and speaks to a challenging and isolating childhood, but also a complex exchange between family and religion.

Sinéad loved and battled equally, always championing those buried under oppression, and yet also internally combatting her own relationship demons.  Her scales of love and war found a clear channel through her music, with Venus and Mars constantly interluding.

Deliberately, I bought uncomfortable chairs, because I don’t like people staying long. I like being on my own. - Sinéad O’Connor

Heavy World Woes

Sinéad carried many life-long deep wounds, and the Scorpio 12th house speaks to these fixed traumas. This emotionally wounded house ruled by Mars, holds the South Node, with Neptune and Mercury in close conjunction. 

Sinéad would suffer mental and physical health problems such as agoraphobia, deep depression, addiction and fibromyalgia. Neptune and Mercury’s close aspect can impress on a mind a sense of fear, as well as a longing for a connection to a higher power. The South Node marks an area where we may find solace through escapism. In this house of isolation and melancholy, Sinéad would endlessly fall into this black hole. Jupiter presses on the 12th house through a whole sign square with heavy world woes. Jupiter and Mercury are in a separating contra-antiscia, a secret opposition. Fighting for ideals and injustices, and yet imprisoned by her own wounds and broken relationships. Aware of the world’s shadow, but unable to harness her own. Mars and Venus kept her life in constant flux. Like an ouroboros eating its own tail, she would wage, win and crash. 

God commanded His angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways. They will lift you up in their arms, to keep you from striking your foot against a stone. You will tread upon the lion and the cobra, you will trample the great lion and the serpent. - Psalm 91 & opening Gaelic prayer to “Never Get Old” , The Lion and The Cobra

Left: UK album cover - fierce in spirit / Right: US album cover - softer, more feminine

Her first album, The Lion and the Cobra, expresses the internal push-pull. Her voice is soft, angelic, perfect, and her lyrics fierce. The album image is her face in a painful scream. The record label softened her image for US sales, but in the UK the original image remained. Another expression of Venus and Mars seeking equal ground. The album title has a direct connection to her solar 9th house Leo squaring 12th house Scorpio, where the South Node (dragon's tail) resides and is being overcome by the lion. She herself is constantly tripping over both, waging wars with the great beasts, within and without, ultimately turning to God to provide her strength to pull her out of the chaos.

I will live by my own policies. I will sleep with a clear conscience. I will sleep in peace. -Sinéad O’Connor, Emperor’s New Clothes

Sinéad never caved to the music industry’s expectations, and yet her music prospered. She was nominated and awarded time and time again for her work that spanned 40 years.

Photo credit: Andrew Chin/Getty

Sinéad left the world July 26, 2023, with the Moon preparing her threshold in the 12th house Scorpio. Saturn was beginning his second return in her 4th house of Pisces and Mars was in direct opposition on this day.  This would come just over a year after she lost her first child to a suicide. Saturn’s last act entering the underworld of her chart, the 4th, was like a heavy anchor dredging through all the ancestral pain and childhood wounds that never left her side. Mars, transiting her 10th house, bellowed his last battle cry, sword drawn.

Sinéad  was full of passion, strife and devotion. We cannot separate the music from the protest, for the two, Venus and Mars, are endlessly linked.  She raised up her arms on both her heart and the world. A forever war with the perfect punk soundtrack. 

These are dangerous days to say what you feel is to dig your own grave. Remember what I told you: If you were of the world they would love you. - Sinéad O’Connor, Black Boys on Mopeds

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Molly Curtis is a practicing astrologer and archetypal tarot reader, based in Michigan. You can connect further with her astro-musings or schedule a reading at Analogskyastrology.com. 

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Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/26/arts/music/sinead-oconnor-dead.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin%C3%A9ad_O%27Connor#cite_note-Wilde-2020-74

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/arts/music/sinead-oconnor-rememberings.html

https://time.com/5793721/sinead-o-connor-100-women-of-the-year/