Gods Have Feelings Too: On the Astrology of Attachment, Access Intimacy, and the Luxury of Need

[Ron Athey's "Acéphalous Monster" Photo by Rachel Papo]

Having written and talked a lot recently about the special aspect relations and their connection to BDSM and kink, I thought I would go into more detail about how I usually work with one of these aspect dynamics—adherence—in consultation, particularly for understanding someone's attachments, dependencies, and relationship to intimacy. This is also the central focus of the second session of my upcoming Kepler College class The Language of Ancient Aspect Theory. 

Adherence is a conjunction between two planets with less than 3° between them, when the faster moving planet is applying to the slower one. When a faster planet is applying to a slower planet within 3° by aspect (instead of conjunction) it’s called “connection.” 

Ancient astrological doctrine treats conjunctions differently than modern approaches. There are three levels of intimacy that planets in conjunction have with each other.

1. Copresence: First, as soon as they occupy the same sign, regardless of the distance between them, they are in copresence. 

2. Assembly (Sunodos): Then when they have moved to within 15 degrees of each other, they are in “assembly.” 

3. Finally, when the faster planet comes up to the slower one from behind and is 3° away from it or less, they are in adherence, and they meld and intertwine. This is the moment that Demetra George describes as “the deepest kind of intimacy between two planets; the two merge into one, as if in sexual union.” 

This basic choreography—a fast planet approaching a slower one, ingressing into its house, meeting it in assembly, and then merging together as one before flowing apart and separating—changes dramatically depending on who the two planets are, and what exactly they represent. A malefic adhering to any planet (or being adhered to by any planet) hurts that planet’s condition severally (what’s called “maltreatment”); a benefic adhering to any planet (or being adhered to by any planet) improves that planet’s condition immensely (this is called “bonification”). I explain the technical details much more thoroughly, and with video, on the Star Gays podcast, so go check that out if I'm confusing you.

The original Greek word for adherence is kollesis, a common word for the physical process of joining two objects together: literally bonding, glueing, or joining. Among other things, it’s used frequently in extant texts about joining two pieces of papyrus together by gluing them and then hammering them down until they merge into a single piece of paper. Even though “connection” is aspect based, so the planets aren’t close in the sky, the original Greek word—sunaphe—is also a very physical word (it can literally mean physical contact), reflecting an ancient worldview that didn’t have a limited materialist concept of causality. 

One obvious synonym for adherence that we use all the time in contemporary society to describe relationship dynamics is attachment, and that’s precisely what I think about first when I notice someone has two planets in adherence in their natal chart. There’s something really dramatic and affective about the way that adherence plays out, the faster planet coming up to the slower one from behind and clinging to its back. But we have to flesh out the characters involved in this encounter to understand if what we’re seeing is a beautiful merging and intertwining in interdependence, or desperately clinging codependence, even parasitism. Who—or what—does each planet signify for this individual person and their unique chart?

There are a couple different approaches to choosing a signifier. We can either use the natural significations of the planets, or treat the planets as representatives of the topics & themes of the houses they rule (and occupy) in the natal chart. (Ultimately, in practice, we combine both approaches.) 

Part of why I love incorporating creative writing into my astrology classes is that it can help us move away from trying to be right while delineating a natal chart, and instead open up a vast array of narrative possibilities. The same two planets in adherence could produce innumerable encounters between two bodies in contact. Let’s generate a few Venus adhering to Mars images or storylines so I can show you what I mean:

the smell of perfume lingers on a motorcycle jacket 

the pretty young artist is obsessed with photographing UFC matches 

Lupe always wears long skirts to cover the burn scars on their legs

These images could be used to generate creative work, but they also help build an interior image-bank that your intuition can draw on when reading a chart. Rather than relying on memorizing what others have said about a planet or placement, you can develop your own personal library of symbolism and imagery.

When we’re working with a client, these images and narratives emerge from all the details of each planet's condition and placement in their natal chart, as well as your own intuition. The better we understand all the particular characteristics of each planetary god, the clearer our picture will be of the encounter between two (or more) of them. For simplicity in this example, I’ll just use the houses that a planet rules as a source of topics and themes to show how this might work. 

Here's an example of some narrative threads that might emerge from Venus adhering to Mars with Cancer rising (so Venus rules the 4th & 11th and Mars the 5th and 10th): 

Your mom (4th, Venus) helps you get an amazing job (10th, Mars), but now you’re constantly anxious that you’ll fail (Venus helps Mars’ condition, but Mars hurts Venus’) 

All your friends are ravers & djs (11th/Venus), but you just found out you’re pregnant (5th/Mars) 

You feel more grounded (4th/Venus), when you’re in your art studio (5th/Mars), but you work so much that you never have time to be there (10th/Mars hurts Venus). 

Notice how each example presents both a benefit and a challenge, to mirror the way that Venus improves Mars’ condition at the same time that Mars hurts her’s. All the details of the chart (including the signs and other planets involved of course!) will guide you towards images or situations that are actually relevant for the life of the person you’re working with. (If you need guidance in identifying relevant images, use the dictionary of astrological correspondences to help you!)

That said, even an image that doesn’t directly relate to someone’s life might still spark something meaningful or profound for them, or be the source of some synchronicity. I remember working with a client who was recovering from a traumatic accident that coincided with a Mars transit; they have Mars in Pisces, and when I told them that I think of that placement as a betta fish, they got up and went into another room and came back with this beautiful, diaphanous costume with a long, betta fish tail that they’d been hand sewing for themself to wear. Sometimes we don’t need to put so much pressure on constantly doing interpretation in readings, and instead we can just offer an image and let the meaningful connections unfurl on their own. 

One of the things adherence is most useful for is learning about attachment in that person’s intimate relationships. Who are we deeply attached to (for better or worse)? Is your sister overly attached to you to the point that it’s smothering (ruler of the 3rd house adhering to the ruler of the ascendent would be one possibility for this)? Or are you the one that clings to her (ruler of the AC or sun adhering to the ruler of the 3rd)? Maybe hyper-attachment is a problem in your romantic relationships (adherence involving the 7th house, or just Venus adhering to a malefic). Maybe the ruler of your 7th house is adhering to the ruler of your 4th, so you try to find home and grounding by clinging to your love interests, who you end up treating like parents. 

If you’re interested in attachment theory, there’s a wealth of ways to integrate it into this technique, whether you’re working with an individual or doing synastry with both partners. Imagine Jupiter in Pisces in the 1st is a secure partner, but Mercury in fall & detriment (ruling the 7th) is an anxiously attached partner adhering to it. In some ways avoidant attachment may be more closely tied to not having adherence, like if that same Mercury was retrograde, so it was running away from the adherence to Jupiter instead of moving towards it. 

It feels important to emphasize that a lot of attachment theory discourse is informed by harmful capitalist individualism that assumes any dependency is inherently bad. I want interdependence not independence, and many crip, queer, marginalized folks agree with me, and oppose the tendency to pathologize having needs. If we take a more radical approach to understanding intimacy, vulnerability, and solidarity, we can help others recontextualize their own relationships through our analysis of aspect relations like adherence and connection. 

One incredible source for an expanded understanding of interdependency I’d like to point to is Johanna Hedva. You might notice that I quote them constantly (it’s because they’re one of the most brilliant and impactful theorists writing today). Across a couple of different articles and interviews, they make the case that need and neediness are not evidence of failure, absence, or lack, but an abundance: 

“I started writing about bodies because mine had recently collapsed under multiple illnesses; I felt small and broken and alone at the same time that I felt invaded and dependent and reliant on others, so demandingly reliant that it felt like the world had transformed into something unrecognisable, that it was not just me that was broken.

What I was learning was that my body needed – and it needed hugely, totally. Its neediness was deep and core and basic and primary: need was the fundamental methodology through which my body functioned, its essential practice. My body reared up and demanded centre stage. It was melodramatic, operatic, totally way too much, belting out an aria soaked in need.” ["Notes on Need"]

They perfectly sum up this idea of abundant neediness in an interview titled “The Failure of Time and Healing”: 

“I want to know why we have built our world and afflicted ourselves with the law that a body should not need too much, indeed, that it should need hardly at all, when we could have built the world according to the law that a body’s needs will be there always, that they are everywhere, forever, and so, isn’t that a kind of luxury? A bounty?”

I’m interested in how the relationships between planets—their needs and dependence on each other—can be viewed through this lens of abundant need and interdependency. The planetary dynamics involving both malefics and benefics, simultaneously helping and harming each other’s condition, could certainly speak to this kind of interdependent support, particularly within the crip community; the pain of being someone who society has disabled isn’t eliminated by receiving the right care or support (the malefic still harms the benefic’s condition), but it can be profoundly relieving and empowering to be with others who truly understand your needs, who see needing as a path to intimacy instead of a pathogen to be avoided. Mia Mingus calls this “access intimacy.” This approach stands in contrast to institutional “accessibility” which bureaucratizes care and access, enacting generic access policies to avoid intimacy or actually learning about disabled people and their minds and bodies. Mingus writes: 

“Access intimacy is that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else ‘gets’ your access needs. The kind of eerie comfort that your disabled self feels with someone on a purely access level. Sometimes it can happen with complete strangers, disabled or not, or sometimes it can be built over years. It could also be the way your body relaxes and opens up with someone when all your access needs are being met.”

Certain kinds of “excessive attachment” are politically powerful and therefore dangerous to the ruling class—the luxury of need and access intimacy are just two examples. I also think of the concept of solidarity, which was taken up and radicalized by 19th century anarchists like Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin. Solidarity means supporting oppressed people and working toward their liberation regardless of whether or not we ideologically agree with everything they do and say. Just the fact that they are beings who are being oppressed by those with power should be all the justification we need to stand by them. This too could be seen as an expression of “adhering to a malefic” — subsuming our personal interests to the needs of a larger community, even if it makes us uncomfortable or requires we make personal sacrifices.This kind of solidarity is incomprehensible to fascists and individualists; just look at the paroxysms that zionists go into whenever queer people express support for the Palestinian resistance. I don’t have to like Hamas’ policies on homosexuality to oppose Israel’s genocide against all Palestinians (queers included). 

Whether we’re discussing solidarity or access intimacy or the bounty of neediness, the ancient aspect relations are one of the best tools we have for investigating the entire complex of vulnerability and (inter)dependence in a person’s life. Remember, in ancient astrology, the planets aren’t just psychological stand-ins or metaphors, but god themselves; how they feel, the resources they have (or don’t have), and the relationships they have with the other gods at the moment of our birth is reflected in our own lives and storylines. 

One of the things I love most about ancient astrology is that, embedded within the technical material, we get hints of a polytheistic worldview in which gods weren’t perfect or infallible. The gods of ancient Greece had flaws and desires and obsessions and passions and needs.

When Hedva talks about bodies being abundant with need, they aren’t only talking about disabled bodies; it's their very definition of a body: 

“The definition of ‘the body’ that I like the most is that it’s anything that needs support. It’s a human body that needs food, rest, sleep, shelter, care, other humans. It’s a social body that needs to be propelled and maintained by a collective’s aims, the tension of many convergences and disagreements coalescing into a whole. It’s a body of water that needs a solid ground on which to rest and surge. 

I like to truncate this definition, to make the body, especially the human kind, simply a thing that needs.” (How To Tell How We Will Die)

If we can start to see the gods as vulnerable bodies with needs—rather than abstract, eternal archetypes—we’ll be closer to the spirit of ancient astrological practice, and more resourceful in figuring out how to satisfy or relieve the needs of the unique planetary gods in our own charts. In fact, allowing the gods to have the vulnerability of need may be the only way we can build intimacy with them and change our relationship to the hardest facets of our charts (and lives). From there, we can radically transform our own relationships and move towards seeing our needs, and the needs of those we care for, as an abundance, a bounty, not something to be pathologized, supressed, and eliminated.