Sufjan Stevens

The chart places four planets in fire signs and only one in earth, with three in air and two in water. Fire starts things and earth is what would make them finish on schedule; there is almost none of the second. Stevens once announced an album for every state in his country, a project that would have taken a lifetime at the rate the first two arrived, and he has never pretended it was anything other than what it was.

The Sun sits at nine degrees of Cancer and the Moon at nine degrees of Aries, square each other within a third of a degree and braced in a T-square with Pluto. Cancer keeps and protects; Aries moves first and asks later. Those two at right angles, with concentrated force at the apex, is a chart that cannot leave itself alone, and a catalogue that swings between orchestral maximalism and a voice recorded almost alone is what it sounds like.

The Moon stands at a hard angle to Venus five hundredths of a degree away from exact, the narrowest orb here, so private feeling and taste are permanently and very precisely at odds. The Sun is at an awkward angle to Neptune at under half a degree. Jupiter sits square Saturn at just under a degree, expansion against limit, which for somebody who announces more than he completes is the plainest reading in the chart. For a songwriter who announces more than he completes, expansion braced directly against limit is the career in one aspect.

Jupiter was back on its Aries starting degree on 11 April 2023, at forty seven. Aries is the sign of whatever is begun, so the planet of reach returning there asks what has been started rather than what was finished, which is either the kindest or the cruellest question this particular chart could be handed. Four laps of the planet precede it, and the state project was announced inside the third. Whether abandoning it counts as a failure depends entirely on which of those two signs is asked.