Nathan Fielder

Earth holds four of his ten planets and water one, leaving three in fire and two in air. Earth builds methodically and will carry a plan much further than anybody expects it to, which for a comedian whose work consists of following an absurd premise all the way to its logical end is the whole engine. Fielder is a Canadian comedian whose two named programmes both do precisely that.

The Sun, Moon, Mercury and Mars group inside six degrees of Taurus, which is an extraordinarily tight four planet cluster. Taurus does not hurry and does not let go. Identity, feeling, speech and drive all occupying nearly the same point in the most immovable sign there is describes somebody who can commit to a deadpan position and simply hold it, for as long as it takes, while everybody else in the room gives up first. A comedian who will keep a straight face for a full half hour while a premise collapses around him is that cluster doing its work.

Six of the ten planets were retrograde at his birth, which is a clear majority facing backwards. The Moon sits conjunct Mercury at seven hundredths of a degree and the Sun conjunct Mercury at a sixth, so he was born very close to the new moon with the planet of speech fused to both. Two yods run through the chart, both holding Mars and Neptune, and neither resolves. For somebody whose programmes are built by rehearsing reality until it behaves, a chart facing that far inward is the method rather than a quirk of it.

Jupiter finished where it began in Sagittarius, on 14 December 2018, at thirty five, retrograde then exactly as it had been originally. That is the planet of reach returning to the sign it governs, which is as clear a run as it gets, and Sagittarius counts distance covered rather than depth. Three circuits had closed by then, and the stranger of the two programmes came after. A second trio of Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune sits in Sagittarius, all three retrograde, which puts scale, disruption and image together and faces the whole group inward.