By now I am confident that everyone is familiar with the infamous “Slap Heard Round the World” (which we will refer to as The Slap). Back in 2022, during the 94th Academy Awards, Will Smith lost his cool on national TV, walked on stage, and slapped the host, Chris Rock, in response to a joke Rock had made about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. It was a wild moment that broke the internet and social media. Leading up to this event, Smith’s reputation amongst the general public was pretty good. He was likable, charming, and most people saw him as a genuinely nice guy. But this event revealed a different side to Smith; a darker, uglier side. The fact that this was revealed in the most public way possible was shocking, to say the least.

I have been thinking about the astrological indicators for this, but held off on doing anything with it. I wanted to allow enough time for the dust to settle. There were two main questions swirling around my mind. First, would this have an impact on Smith’s career? Prior to the incident, he was averaging multiple films per year. Since the incident he has only done one. It is clear that his career has gone in a different direction. Second, could astrology reflect an event that was both challenging and supportive? Smith also won the Academy Award for best actor at this event. It seems improbable that an event could represent the pinnacle of Smith’s achievement while also signaling his fall from grace.

Can astrology reflect the dual nature of this event and if so, how is that even possible?

Methodology

To answer these questions, we will compare and analyze the energies in Smith’s natal chart to transits and progressions. Transits are the real time movement and positions of the planets in the sky. Progressions are slightly different. They represent “symbolic” planetary movement. There are three different types of progressions: minor, tertiary, and secondary. We will use tertiary and secondary. For tertiary progressions, each day of movement in the ephemeris represents one lunar month of actual life. For secondary progressions, one day in the ephemeris represents one year of actual life. Tertiary progressions are seen to reflect the slowly evolving emotional maturity of an individual while secondary progressions reflect our more general slowly evolving internal self.

By comparing transits to progressions and then to the natal chart we gain a comprehensive picture of what Smith was feeling at the time of The Slap. Chart A shows the transits (outer wheel) and tertiaries (middle wheel) while Chart B shows transits (outer wheel) and secondaries (middle wheel). Smith’s natal chart is in the inner most wheel for both charts.

Chart A

The transits for this event are tricky. The stellium of transiting planets (Moon, Mars, Venus, and Saturn) aligned with Smith’s midheaven (MC – the cusp of the 10th house of career and achievement) promises some very good potentials. For one, Saturn is dignified and strong in Aquarius as well as ruler of the 10th and is forming positive sextile aspects to Smith’s Saturn – Part of Fortune (POF). Venus’ involvement offers support as the lesser benefic, but the Moon’s alignment with the MC offers the strongest confirmation because the Moon is a timing for events. Any astrologer looking at this would have predicted a victory for Smith. And that’s exactly what happened. He won the academy award for best actor.

But there is more to these alignments than it would appear and obviously more manifested than just the award. While that transiting stellium delivered a victory, it also manifested in a moment that would have far reaching impacts on his career. For in addition to the sextile, these transits also made square aspects to Smith’s volatile Lilith-Moon opposition. Given Smith’s “nice guy” reputation (Libra Sun, Gemini ascendant), this opposition hints at a part of his personality that is not as squeaky clean.

Let’s start with Lilith. It is a wild energy. It is untamed, rebellious, defiant, and has a raw fury that can feel a little unhinged. On the other end, Smith’s Scorpio Moon is not helping to improve Lilith’s temperament. The Moon is debilitated. His emotions, while he feels them deeply, can have a certain destructive vindictiveness that can be a little scary at times. With Saturn triggering this opposition, Smith was about to learn some very public (10th house visibility) lessons in emotional self-control (Saturn = discipline, maturity). It should also be noted that what triggered him was a joke about his wife. With transiting Mars and Venus involved with Saturn, issues about relationships also became part of the manifestation.

The transiting nodal axis was also in alignment with Smith’s Lilith – Moon and this can be seen as more evidence that he was about to encounter a critical point in his evolutionary journey that would require him to revisit this volatile opposition. It also represents an encounter with the general public and its square aspect to Saturn – Venus – Mars indicates that this encounter would put his career at odds with the general public. And all this instability was exacerbated by the chaotic workings of Uranus and its square aspect to Smith’s MC.

Of course, the transits are never working alone and when progressions align with the same dynamics it raises their priority as well as increases the possibility of manifestation. In the middle wheel of Chart A the tertiary ascendant and Saturn are also aligned with the transiting North Node and Smith’s Lilith, which again are in square aspect to that 10th house stellium of transiting energies. These tertiary energies are specific in their impact on Smith’s career (Saturn – 10th ruler) and identity (Ascendent).

This impact to career and identity was further echoed by transiting Pluto’s alignment with his progressed MC which were both in square aspect to his Mercury (chart ruler) and Venus. Whether we like it or not, Pluto often dredges up that which is toxic within us. It can show a side of us that can be explosive and violent. This alignment underscored the detriment to his reputation (MC), image (Mercury), and relationships (Venus) by showing Smith’s uglier side. Those Plutonian dynamics were triggered by the fast-moving ascendant (moving 1° every four minutes) that had arrived at Smith’s natal Pluto at the exact moment The Slap occurred. Astrology is nothing, if not accurate. The timing of this moment again reinforces how much fate is swirling around us at all times and exacerbated by our lack of awareness of their influence.

While the transiting nodal axis was involved in the overall themes, so was Smith’s natal nodal axis. With the transiting Sun aligning with his North Node, this event offered an opportunity for Smith to receive the dignity and honor that could propel him forward. But like we saw with the other transits, the transiting Sun was also aligned with progressed Chiron in Aries (exact to his North Node by less than half a degree). This means that the exposure the Sun would bring would involve Smith’s aggressive or violent (Aries) wounding (Chiron) that can get projected on to others. Which it did.

Chart B

Chart A provides a compelling picture of synchronicity. We almost do not need more evidence to tell this story, but we would be missing a few critical components if we neglected to review the impact from secondary progressions (middle wheel) in Chart B. The 10th house transiting stellium again shows up prominently due to its alignment with the secondary progressed Mercury. This t-square configuration represents similar dynamics to what was revealed in Chart A. Mercury’s role as Smith’s chart ruler again shows that this event would have an impact on his general identity, but Scorpio is a much darker and emotional zodiacal quality than Libra so this quality would become quite visible here. (Also, it should be noted that the chart ruler’s ingress in Scorpio infers that the direction of his life will now change drastically from the more light hearted approach he experienced while it moved through Libra for decades.)

The progressed Moon is another timer for this event. It aligns with Smith’s natal Mercury and Venus repeating their emphasis that we saw in Chart A. The Moon’s conjunction is waning, but this is fine because the sign quality is more important. Its ingress into Scorpio is the real timer here, reinforcing the influence from progressed Mercury. To say that Smith was not in the mood for jokes around this timeframe is probably an understatement.

The biggest progression from the secondaries comes from Saturn. Again, Saturn is the ruler of Smith’s MC so the double emphasis from the tertiaries and secondaries underscores the focus on his career…but the impact here is bigger. Part of the reason for this has to do with their speed. Secondaries are much slower than tertiaries so the ripple effects from their manifestation tends to also be more significant. As a simple illustration, look at Smith’s natal Saturn. Its position at birth was at 23° Aries. It took almost 54 years for it to retrograde back to 19° Aries. That’s only 4° of movement. Super slow. What does that mean for him? Well, think of its alignment with his POF. This alignment foreshadows that he would encounter success and good luck and fortune through his career (and vice versa), but Saturn’s retrograde status would put that success at risk. In other words, it symbolized a potential that his success and good fortune would reverse course at some point in time. By the date of this event, that time had arrived.

All this sounds like a type of destiny and as fantastic as that may seem, it is also not far from the truth. When an outcome like this has been on a trajectory for over 50 years, then the symbolism involved with that destiny starts to feel almost like prophecy. Believe it or not, there is an astrological configuration that is often seen to have a close affiliation with events that are considered “fated.” It is the yod. Yods are basically a triangle of astrological energies. It is comprised of two planetary bodies at the bottom connected by a sextile aspect that are both connected to a third apex planet by quincunx aspects. For Smith, the two planets at the bottom are his Moon in Scorpio (discussed at length above) and Jupiter, the ruler of his 7th house of relationships. This makes progressed Saturn the apex body. In essence, Smith’s harsh feelings (Moon in Scorpio) about his relationship (Jupiter) led to an aggressive response (Aries) that carried immense karmic repercussions (Saturn) that severely impacted his career (POF and 10th rulership).

Saturn

From the transit to both levels of progressions, Saturn was the operative force behind the manifestations involved on this date. Saturn is often described as some type of evil force, but this is not accurate. Saturn is the god of reality. He is symbolic of responsibility, discipline, and structure. Most powerfully, he is a strict lord of karma. If we do well and meet Saturn’s expectations then he will reward us as he rewarded Smith with the best actor award. But he also punished Smith (for years afterwards) for his bad behavior on the same night. None of this is philosophical conjecture. It is literal as well. For example, take Chris Rock. Rock is an Aquarian Sun. Guess where his Sun is positioned? 18° Aquarius. That’s right – in conjunction with the transiting Saturn that was moving through Smith’s 10th house. In other words, Rock was the physical embodiment of the archetypal lessons that Saturn represents. Whether he realized it or not, he was there to “test” Smith and Smith failed that test spectacularly. And true to form, Saturn then held Smith accountable for his failure by taking his career away from him. As improbable as it may sound, both radically different outcomes occurred on the same night and manifested through the same planetary archetype.

Multivalence

As I stated above, I have a suspicion that many astrologers would have probably predicted a victory for Smith given these astrological transits. I am not as confident that they would have predicted the other, more challenging, manifestation. There is a concept that describes this challenging array of potentials: multivalence.

Multivalence is a concept associated with something having multiple qualities, values, definitions, or possibilities. Because astrological symbolism and archetypes can manifest in a variety of ways, this phenomenon is a common feature. It is also a reason why prediction can be devilishly difficult. Essentially, astrology has a dual nature and it vividly revealed this through Saturn’s manifestation with this event. But why was Will Smith such a textbook example of this phenomenon?

It was because he was born with a Gemini ascendant.

Gemini is the sign of the twins. It is a zodiacal quality most closely associated with the dual, multiple nature of anything. With this sign rising at Smith’s ascendant, this quality is part of his identity. It is the most visible part of who he is. Therefore, this event was more than just the manifestation of Saturn’s archetype, it was also the representation of astrology’s dual nature using Saturn as the expression of this phenomenon and Will Smith as the embodiment of both Saturnian karma and duality.

Events like this, while tragic and shocking, can offer lessons in the nature of astrology, which are essentially lessons on the nature of existence itself. If we are willing to dig deep, then what we may uncover will be nuggets of insight that are truly mind blowing.

As above, so below.

As within, so without.

And within the one, there is always two.