Russell Brand’s Gemini Sun-Neptune opposition led him down the slippery slope of addiction in younger life. Armed with the confidence of comedic timing, after leaving home at the tender age of 16 he attended several theatre schools while working a (typically Geminian) day job as a postman to provide a steady income and the prospect of meeting lonely women. Following expulsion from theatre school (and the ethics of his nefarious Postman Pat activities catching up with him) he eventually traded his Neptunian sex & drug addiction for that planet’s altruistic expressions via spirituality, social justice, and his one-man show: Messiah Complex. Brand has been sober since 2002 and now works that Sun-Neptune theme by incorporating spiritual disciplines from Buddhism and Hinduism into his comedic and political media narratives.

Give this Gemini motor-mouth a microphone and he’ll tell you what he thinks! By his own admission he’s the archetypal Mercurial trickster: “I’m a tricky little swine. I’m a Trickster. I’m a Raven. I’m a playful Coyote. Looking for mischief!”. Mercury shows its signature physically too, with flailing long limbs extending from his 6’1” tall, slender frame, embodying the fluidity and vivacity with which he communicates opinion.

A true shape-shifter, Brand’s mutability has invoked many career transformations over the last 20 years: MTV host, stand-up comedian, author, voice-over animator, as well as the roles portrayed in Hollywood movies (typically true-to-type depictions of forever-young rockstar reflecting real-life themes of a recovering addict). After announcing his departure from Hollywood’s narcissistic trappings, he embraced the potential of new technology/social media platforms, developing millions of followers for his YouTube channel The Trews - True News with Russell Brand and his podcasts such as Stay Free and Under the Skin.

Born with Mercury retrograde in its own sign, Brand never lacks words but is not adverse to backtracking and clarifying them. His style is dualistic, looking at life from both sides, with divergent trains of thought and a rapid rusty rockets style of shooting information while heading down avenues of speculation and curiosity you never knew existed. His Mercury is energetically triggered by its sextile with Mars, Moon and Jupiter in Aries, with Mercury and Mars the strongest planets in his chart and Mars governing Brand’s 9th house of philosophy and higher mind – it is the spiritual dimensions he combines with everyday issues that make him, if not relatable, then at least curiously interesting.

The witty, thinking-on-ever-moving-feet quality of that Gemini and Aries sextile keeps Brand lively, youthful and full of surprise. But his engagement with his audience is boosted by the charisma and charm of that powerful angular Venus, gracing his Cancer descendant with the desire to connect. Venus rules his 3rd house and characterises his broadcast message as marked with care for others – see how he leans over in interviews, appearing to reach out energetically to embrace the person he is talking to. He maintains Mercurial ground with one foot high on a celebrity pedal and the other down to earth with ordinary folk, dispelling political allegiance by telling us the news that the news won’t tell us. Exploring themes of corruption, hypocrisy, inequality, censorship, and freedom of speech, he acknowledges the irony that addressing such topics labels him a ‘conspiracy theorist’. Brand has gained momentum since 2020 when the transit of Pluto over his ascendant coincided with a change in his discourse, resulting in one of his videos being censored by YouTube for breaching community guidelines.

For all his apparent levity, Brand is Capricorn rising and underpinned by leanings towards the heavy, serious and profound. His ascendant ruler, Saturn, placed in its sign of detriment in the darkened 6th house, illustrates a sense of stoic tenacity from someone who places his lane on the periphery and probably always feels somewhat in exile. Note how Saturn receives the superior squares from Mars, Moon and Jupiter, illustrating how fire and pace counter the weight of Saturn when he dedicates himself to matters of health or adopts a disciplined approach to his personal well-being routine (he practices veganism, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and transcendental meditation).

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Angelina Jolie, in contrast to Brand, is soft-spoken. Channelling her Geminian qualities of shapeshifter through the roles she plays, she also crosses enemy lines for the common good through her humanitarian work as a UN Ambassador.

Jolie is blessed with Venus rising in fertile Cancer. Voted the most beautiful woman in the world by various magazines, she is also notable for her large brood of children (Venus at its greatest elongation ruling the 4th and 11th houses reinforces her intention of creating a ‘rainbow family,’ having adopted three of her six children from Cambodia, Ethiopia and Vietnam).

Family issues have marked her emotional concerns for most of her life. She is the daughter of actor John Voight (of Midnight Cowboy fame), who separated from her mother whilst Jolie was an infant, and their relationship is publicly acknowledged as dysfunctional. Jolie describes her adolescent self as a “punk outsider” who felt lonely and bullied. Like Brand, she suffered her share of obsession, leading her to seek vices and self-harm to satisfy the intense hunger of her Sun-Neptune opposition and the immense energy that elevated cluster of planets in Aries can produce. As a teen, her Aries Moon-Mars opposition to Pluto produced tattoos and the traumatic, self-mutilating need to cut herself, to feel something more intense than what she felt emotionally.

The sharp precision of Mars in its own sign, Aries, governing her 10th house of career, has served her perfectly in action-oriented roles such as Tomb Raider (in 2001, which solidified her presence in Hollywood), Mr & Mrs Smith (2005) and Salt (2010). The sextile of Jupiter on the MC with Mercury in Gemini also gives her the flexibility to cross thresholds, and she has been successful when stepping behind the scenes into the role of writer, producer and director.

With Cancer rising, Jolie is ruled by that Moon in Aries, in the 9th house of spirituality and personal philosophy. Using her own body to express this, she is chronicled with numerous tattoos, including Buddhist prayers in Sanskrit, a Latin proverb quod me nutrit me destruit – ‘what nourishes me destroys me’, and the coordinates of each of her children’s birthplace on her left arm. But the Moon is a changeable planet and she has also had several tattoos removed, saying: “I’ll never be stupid enough to have a man’s name tattooed on me again”.

With that strong 9th house emphasis, and its ruler – the planetary benefactor Jupiter – so exact on her midheaven, much of Jolie’s work has taken place internationally as a UN High Commissioner for Refugees. While filming Tomb Raider in Cambodia, seeing first-hand the consequence of war, Jolie joined the UN aged 26 and has dedicated years of service to their causes, using her Moon-Jupiter-MC fame to attract attention to the innocent casualties of war. Her humanitarian work has extended to child protection and advocacy, environmental conservation, international human rights, and protection of women against sexual violence in combat zones. Her Gemini Sun ruling the 2nd, Jolie puts her money where her mouth is, donating extensively to numerous causes and having made the single largest donation to the UN ever.

Like Brand, the difficulty in Jolie’s chart is found with Saturn in detriment; this time 'joyfully' miserable in the 12th house and ruling her 7th house of committed partnerships. Married and divorced three times, Jolie has had vast attention placed on her sexuality and dating life (Venus partile square Uranus). When marrying first husband, Johnny Lee Miller, she wrote his name in blood across a white t-shirt, while she and second husband, Billy Bob Thornton, wore vials of each other’s blood around their necks. However, it was her relationship with Brad Pitt, referred to as Brangelina, that escalated this attention. Refusing to get married until everyone could marry (a protest to same-sex marriage being illegal in America), Jolie and Pitt confirmed their relationship with the announcement of their first biological child in 2006. Their family of six children became a family of eight children with the birth of their twins two years later.

Jolie and Pitt married on August 14, 2014 when bans on same-sex marriage were overturned in the US. They separated on September 15, 2016 and a wet blanket fell on any ideals she held about marriage as transitting Pluto opposed her natal Saturn, and transitting Saturn opposed her Sun and conjoined her natal Neptune. On that day transitting Mars was also exact in opposition to her natal Mercury – it was a bitter divorce: Jolie and Pitt positioned either side of a custody battle, and Jolie citing domestic violence as the source of irreconcilable differences.