Today is one day out of the year that is for ARMY and for BTS. Today is Festa! Happy Festa everyone. I wanted to spend some time looking at BTS’s chart for this Festa just for enjoyment for a little bit.
To start off, BTS debuted on 13 June 2013 at 7 PM KST in Seoul, South Korea. Usually when you’re looking at entities you choose a ritual that signifies the creation of that entity and the debut chart seems to be a pretty good chart to use. This is the chart in whole sign houses:
And here is the chart in Placidus (I usually use whole sign houses to work with natal charts and this is the one I’m most familiar with since I practice astrology but, when I look at events, I always like to look in Placidus too):
Dream
You know what’s really funny about the BTS chart? That Jupiter!
Sagittarius is on the ascendant for the chart so Jupiter has a pretty big influence on the trajectory of the entity that the chart describes. Jupiter is BTS’s chart ruler. Now, look at the condition of this Jupiter. It’s detriment. It’s combust. It’s also accidentally debilitated because it can’t see its own ruler (Mercury) or the other benefic in the chart (Venus). What Jupiter has going for it, however, is that it’s angular.
However, that’s not the only thing that this Jupiter at 28º degrees Gemini has going for it. There’s something else that is very, very spectacular about this Jupiter. This Jupiter is exactly opposite Bang Si-Hyuk’s Jupiter.
Bang Si-Hyuk or Bang PD is, for all intents and purposes, the main lead on the creation of BTS. He used to work with JYP and started his own company in his early thirties. You could call him the body that BTS was birthed from. In the chart, the leader of a business would typically be described by the Sun. Bang PD is the Sun in Gemini in BTS’s chart.
Bang PD has his Jupiter at 29º Sagittarius.This means that the debut of BTS was an almost exact Jupiter opposition for him. It also means that BTS’s Jupiter in detriment has the support of Bang PD’s domicile Jupiter.
Jupiter is Zeus. We usually think of Jupiter as an expression of power and also divination. It can be about having faith in one’s own future or one’s own ability to make a future. It’s really this huge dick swinging type of energy. When you have Jupiter in detriment, you’re actually approaching the world from the perspective of confronting existing powerful structures. These confrontations can be difficult and you might feel a lot of fear when you do this. When you have Jupiter in its own sign like Bang PD, you’re not afraid.
What are you not afraid of? Zeus was the king of the gods because he possessed Moira’s powers of divination. You’re not afraid of your own dream.
So, Bang PD’s Jupiter is domicile. He’s not afraid of his dream. BTS has an afflicted Jupiter in detriment. They debuted under the song No More Dream.
Dreaming is very important to the BTS mythology. But BTS isn’t about dream promotion. BTS has Jupiter in detriment. BTS is about dream reconstruction. The first verse of their debut single No More Dream, as translated by doolset, reads:
얌마 네 꿈은 뭐니
Hey you, what is your dream
얌마 네 꿈은 뭐니
Hey you, what is your dream
얌마 네 꿈은 뭐니
Hey you, what is your dream
네 꿈은 겨우 그거니
Is your dream only that?
I wanna big house, big cars & big rings
But 사실은 I dun have any big dreams
But actually, I don’t have any big dreams
하하 난 참 편하게 살어
Haha, I’m really living an easy life
꿈 따위 안 꿔도 아무도 뭐라 안 하잖어
Even if I don’t have a thing like dream, no one says anything to me
전부 다다다 똑같이 나처럼 생각하고 있어
Every single one thinks the same way as I do
새까까까맣게 까먹은 꿈 많던 어린 시절
The completely forgotten childhood that was filled with dreams
For nation states, defining dreams is often an expression of both future and power. The American dream, for instance, was about how American saw themselves as a superpower and their own futures post World War II. There’s also the Korean dream. Under Xi Jinping Thought, we even find the promotion of the Chinese dream. A lot of the dreams promoted by state sponsored propaganda sources under neoliberalism are cynical dreams. They’re about acquiring material possessions. BTS points this out in this verse and contrasts these dreams to the forgotten childhood that was filled with dreams. The cynical person who wants nothing but to take it easy has forgotten their dreams from childhood.
Later on in the same song, BTS delivers similar messages, saying that on the “On a same boring day, on every repetitive day, adults and parents forcefully instill dreams that are molded” and asks the listener sarcastically if their number one dream job is really becoming a government employee. The position of the performer is really interesting in this because the person is looking into the mirror at themselves and confronting their own “glass mentality” or fragile mentality. This is someone who doesn’t want to try hard but is also too scared to drop out of school.
All throughout the song, BTS is talking to a parental figure and says that this figure is forcing the young person to study. However, the end of the song is rather empathetic. They tell the parental figure that they themselves didn’t know how to make their own decisions or believe in their own dreams. That’s why they are acting like this. The solution? BTS tells listeners to go our own way.
What an expression of detriment Jupiter!
Bulletproof
Mars has kind of a special dynamic with Jupiter. In mythology, Mars was Jupiter’s son and Mars happened to be Jupiter’s least favorite son. Sometimes we see a weird kind of contradictoriness or even antagonism between the Mars placement and the Jupiter placement in a chart. When we look at a chart, and this is why I like to use Placidus for events and entities, we also look at the most angular planet for that chart as the planet that will be most obvious in its expression.
BTS’s most angular planet is Mars. That’s Mars in Gemini about 3º away from the descendant cusp. It’s pretty close and we would expect Mars to show up in significant ways.
The name BTS is actually Bangtan Sonyeondan which means Bulletproof Boy Scouts. Do you see the Mars connection? Mars is the god of war and BTS’s first logo was a bulletproof vest. Even in their anthology album, they depicted themselves with a lot of bullets and bullet holes. Their fanbase, ARMY, is militaristic in name and is represented by a shield because we protect BTS.
The reason why an entity with Mars energy might need something like a bulletproof vest is because Mars is an underdog. There’s this whole story about Ares or Mars not being invited to a party where all of the other gods were gathering. His sister Eris, who also represents Mars, ended up crashing the party anyway.
We see this play out through BTS’s entry into the K-pop industry. At the time of their debut, there were only three big companies—JYP, YG, and SM. These three companies, put in charge of industrializing the local music scene for cultural export by the South Korean government since the 1997 financial crash, were an impenetrable fortress and they kept BTS away from award shows, variety shows, and other platforms. For years, BTS was a pretty much unknown boy group. Even when they started getting bigger, Lee Soo-Man actually wanted to buy them just so that he could destroy them because he didn’t want the competition for his groups.
What ended up happening was that BTS did something completely new. They used social media in ways that idols had never used before. They made their own variety show called Run BTS. They crashed the party.
Moon
The other thing that is quite special about BTS’s debut chart is their Leo Moon at 14º. It just so happens that Bang PD was born under the New Moon in Leo with his Sun at 16º. We’re not sure what degree his Moon is because we don’t have a birth time for him but we know that it must be in Leo.
In the chart of a business entity, the Moon actually represents how this entity will interact with the public at large. The song Moon which appears on Map of the Soul 7 and is written by Jin as a letter to ARMY goes (translation by doolset):
달과 지구는 언제부터
Since when the moon and the earth
이렇게 함께했던 건지
have been together like this
존재로도 빛나는 너
You who shines solely by existing
그 곁을 나 지켜도 될지
I wonder if I can stay by your side
너는 나의 지구
You are my earth
네게 난 just a moon
To you, I’m just a moon,
네 맘을 밝혀주는 너의 작은 별
a tiny star of yours that brightens up your heart
너는 나의 지구
You are my earth
And all I see is you
이렇게 그저 널 바라볼 뿐인 걸
The only thing I do is to gaze at you like this
The lyrics express a distanced appreciation. This is about BTS’s appreciation of ARMY, the people who love BTS from afar as an image. Later, the lyrics say:
네 주위를 맴돌게
I will orbit around you
네 곁에 있어 줄게
I will stay by your side
네 빛이 되어 줄게
I will be your light
All for you
난 이름조차 없었어
I didn’t even have a name,
내가 널 만나기 전까진
before I met you
넌 내게 사랑을 줬고
You gave me your love
이제는 내 이유가 됐어
and became my reason now
The luminous quality of Moon in Leo really jumps out to me. I feel like the moon in poetry tends to be about yearning or about inconsistency a lot of the time. However, Jin isn’t expressing that at all here. He’s expressing a consistent moon that stays by someone’s side. It’s a bright moon that becomes his light and his reason. It’s a moon that calls him by his name and gives him recognition. Jin describes an almost Sun-like Moon in this song. Should we say it? A Moon in Leo.
The reason why I wanted to highlight Bang PD’s Sun being so close to BTS’s Moon is because I like to imagine Jin’s lyrics to ARMY as being at least somewhat inspired by Bang PD. This is a Leo who gave all of his love, creativity, and power to this weird group of seven young kids. Just to reiterate, BTS was not successful for years after their debut. Bang PD didn’t flinch. He didn’t disband or pull away. He kept it going. He stayed by their side. He gave them their names. He gave these kids who weren’t destined for a college educated lifestyle a means to find their own purpose.
A lot of the time, you look at the relationships between idols and their fanbases and you see a lot of conflict in addition to admiration and reciprocity. That’s normal. There also has to be some conflict within ARMY and between ARMY and BTS because we’re separate entities or separate people and conflict plays a crucial role in differentiation. However, I do feel like BTS’s relationship with ARMY is kind of special. And I’ve been in various K-pop idol fanbases before.
There’s a maturity with which BTS interacts with ARMY and vice versa. They tell us things like it’s okay to make fanfiction about them because they also have fun playing with fanworks. They tell us that it’s special to have love for something as a fan. According Anton Hur who is one of the translators for BTS’s upcoming book Beyond the Story, BTS is also the only K-pop act whose fanbases crosses over into appreciation of Korean literature. The Moon in Leo is also in the ninth house. They elevate us.
I think that this special dynamic between BTS and ARMY has a lot to do with Bang PD. I’m interpreting his Sun being conjunct BTS’s Moon but I’m also thinking about Bang PD’s love and appreciation for fun and fans. Not all CEOs are like that. You see a lot of ruthless CEOs who just want to suck life from their idols and resources from the fanbase. Kim Youngmi, an ARMY, says that “Bang knows how fans feel, because he's been a maniacal fan himself.” When Bang PD sticks by BTS, he does so as an ARMY. He teaches BTS, sharing with them books to read and shows them how to love. By doing that, he’s also showing ARMY how to love BTS and how to love one another.
Future’s Gonna Be Okay
If you’re ARMY, then 2025 is a date that you probably know very well. All Korean males have mandatory military conscription that they have to do before the age of thirty and this also applies to BTS. Kim Seokjin and Jung Hoseok are already in the military and we expect to see Min Yoongi go sometime this year. Kim Namjoon might also go but I’m just speculating.
2025 is the year when Bang PD says that he hopes BTS will perform again as seven people. What’s special about 2025? Jupiter will still be in Gemini until through May 2025.
It’s all very up in the air. There’s theories that Jeon Jungkook won’t go until later so the performance can happen before he goes into the military. Obviously, when each member chooses to go through the training and service will be very personal so no one can really plan too much for these things. But it’s worth mentioning that Jupiter’s transit through Gemini will be a Jupiter return for the group. We already know that Jupiter is such a significant planet in the lifeblood of BTS.
Not only is 2025 BTS’s Jupiter return, it will be another Jupiter opposition for Bang Si-Hyuk. This may not be BTS related since Bang PD is his own person and his life isn’t all about BTS. His Jupiter return would have been just a little bit before TXT debuted.
In addition, 2025 will be a Jupiter profection year for BTS and a first house year at that. I can really see why there’s so much build up around 2025! Even if not all seven members are able to perform together, I have a feeling that they will do something that year.
That’s 2025 when BTS turns twelve. This year, BTS turns ten. And, more crucially, next year it turns eleven.
This year, BTS moves into an eleventh house Venus year and the Solar Return Moon is in Taurus where the Moon exalts. The Moon is conjoined with Jupiter and sits in the sixth house. We already know that we’re going to get solo projects from both Kim Taehyung and Jeon Jungkook this year, which is very exciting.
I think that this year will be really enjoyable when it comes to loving BTS. It might even feel like an abundance even if we don’t see all seven people together. The last time we had a Venus year with BTS, they were doing Love Yourself and there was so much love. However, the Moon in Taurus is also very close to its own node. This means that the light of the Moon is eclipsed. Usually, this is a marker of transition.
This makes sense. This is a new era of BTS where the members express themselves on their own. Usually, boy bands start to do this after three years together so we’re getting it very late from BTS. It is also a transition and transitions are endings in a way. 2023 is the year when we will see the solo side of all seven members. This changes the group and, more importantly because we’re talking about the Moon which is about the group’s relationship to the public here, it changes the fanbase.
2025 will be all about Jupiter. In that Solar Return chart, Jupiter is actually at 0º Cancer. This is ARMY’s Jupiter return. I’ll talk more about this when I look at ARMY’s chart for July 9.
However, before we get to 2025 we’ll be going through 2024. 2024 will be a twelfth house and the twelfth house is a place of rest. It’s also the place of secrets. For BTS, a twelfth house year is also a Mars year.
The last time BTS went through a Mars year was 2017. This birthday year would have started in 2017 and continued into 2018. That was the year they actually almost disbanded because of power struggles within the industry. Jin was the one who told us about it. He says that it was a year during which they “regathered their hearts.” Jungkook says that they re-evaluated themselves that year and Yoongi, who wrote Tear, says that he faced doubt that year. This doubt made him self reflect.
Hopefully, 2024 won’t be as dramatic as 2017. We already know that 2024 will be a year when things are very much in flux for the fandom and for the group. That’s expected. And the twelfth house, being the house of rest, might be just what this project and the people involved in it need most.
Gemini
As you already know, BTS is a Gemini. I wanted to end with this because Festa is a celebration of BTS’s solar return.
Gemini is the storyteller of the zodiac. BTS is a group that tells stories. This has been clear from the beginning. Yoongi says, “We started to tell the stories that people wanted to hear and were ready to hear, stories that other people could not or would not tell. We said what other people were feeling—like pain, anxieties and worries. That was our goal, to create this empathy that people can relate to.”
There’s all kinds of stories within BTS. There’s BT Universe. There’s the story of Zhou Xuan’s song moving across pop culture asia into BTS. There’s the animated world of BT21. There’s the story of Black Swan which was based on the anime Perfect Blue which was about idol culture and then BTS reinterpreted Black Swan back as idol dancers. There’s dreams as stories—Map of Soul 7 is based on psychological practices of storytelling.
How BTS tells stories isn’t by holding up a mirror and simply reflecting things back. They’re not that kind of air sign. Gemini is a human sign and its sign is the twins. BTS tells stories through relationships. They tell them through their relationships with each other and with us.
We’re used to seeing BTS go through a ton of change because they are so mutable. The Moon, being fixed, is a constant and stable source of support through all of this change. We’re a fanbase that doesn’t expect the group to remain the same. If BTS has shown us numerous ways to love ourselves and one another, from giving each other nicknames to giving one another purpose to simply existing in each other’s presence, they also show us how to love through change.
BTS shows us the conflicts that they have with each other, with the industry, and with culture itself. K-pop is a genre of music that needs to be in flux. It’s in part imitative and old shamanism lives through K-pop despite this magic being endangered by Japanese and American imperialism. This is magic that creates relationships and mimics in order to keep living. It’s a magic that industrialized itself and branded itself as a technological cultural export to survive. That’s the Gemini energy maybe.
The life of a Gemini, this survival constant change and reference to things that it lives in partial conflict to, isn’t such an easy thing. A lot of relationships end when they can’t handle change. You can’t stop that from happening because living people have to change. It’s just part of life.
Whenever we celebrate BTS together on Festa, I think that we’re celebrating mutability. We’re celebrating a group that has changed so much since its inception. We’re also celebrating the changes that we have gone through since we’ve found BTS. We’re celebrating love that can accept and move through change.
