I’m trying out something quicker, more conversational, and a bit unhinged with this newsletter. Without further ado (Mad Men spoilers ahead):

Mad Men is about all about deception (Neptune) – selling ‘aspirational’ products, lying to wives / parents / etc in order to live hedonistically in Manhattan, and in the case of Don Draper, literally being someone he is not. The drama comes from how living that way is not sustainable (Saturn). All these characters, especially Don, are miserable. Smoke, mirrors, and a persistent sense of melancholy, that’s how I’d sum up the show. One day I might devote an entire post on the various cigarette cases and bathroom mirrors in this show. Since Neptune and Saturn are doing a little tango in the skies as we speak, it is the perfect show to watch / re-watch at this moment. In general though this show feels more relevant than ever in our social media age, where we have basically internalised consumerism and become the Mad Men (except we are not getting paid for it, unless we become influencers / creators / people who make money from affiliate links / whatever they are called now).

I don’t know if the show’s creators (as in actual creators, not influencers, which might be a thing now… have I just accidentally made myself one…) were into astrology, but they were definitely into tarot, based on that one episode where Anna gives Don a Celtic Cross reading and the fact the production company’s logo is The Sun card. I am inclined to believe they are, because according to Reddit, Don Draper’s birthday is on June 1, but Dick Whitman’s birthday is five months before, on January 1, making Don Draper a Capricorn passing as a Gemini. That poor man! No wonder he looks a bit strained all the time (and somehow manages to pass that off as enigma).

Don Draper is definitely a Capricorn sun. He hides behind his work and compartmentalises like it’s an Olympic sport. He’s mastered his art, climbed up to the top of the mountain, and does not like his authority being questioned. He uses money to make his problems go away. I think he thinks he is genuinely doing something loving when he gives his real-life half-brother hush money to go away; he was trying to give him the same opportunity he had to start over. But he didn’t see or really understand that all his half-brother wanted was to be nurtured and cared for emotionally (that Cancer polarity). He may not be a family man in the traditional sense, but he definitely is in the corporate sense, i.e. the way he abandons Pete in California and says (I’m paraphrasing): ‘I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think you could handle it. You want everything now now now, because you are an Aries, according to an amateur London-based astrologer named Nikkitha, but sometimes you have to be patient and build your career over time instead of trying to dazzle everyone with big wins. You spoiled prep school brat.’ (The Capricorn-Aries square could also explain their tension.)

This is also a bit manipulative. Really, Don saw a hot 20-year-old (yuck) and drove off into the sunset with her; I don’t think ‘teaching a man to fish’ was top of mind in that moment. Which fits in with my theory that he has some sort of Scorpio stellium going on. Rising for sure – that aura of mystery he exudes, and Moon potentially – his talent as an ad man comes from his instinctive understanding of people’s darkest, most private desires. He is magnetic and knows how to use that magnetism to his advantage. (Much like the real-life Scorpio stellium Shah Rukh Khan, my favourite person on Earth.) I want to say that he has a Mercury in Scorpio, as multiple people on Reddit seem to think, but that would not be possible if Don is a Capricorn sun, which I am choosing to take literally. So I would chalk it up to a Sun-Mercury conjunction, with Don’s Capricorn Mercury in cahoots with his ego expression (Sun). I mean, the way he fucking slays people with an economy of words (Sun-Mercury conjunction in Capricorn) and a penetrating look (Scorpio stellium)…

I’m just going to end by saying that Burt Cooper is my favourite character in Mad Men, and he is definitely an Aquarius.

I find his no drinking, no philandering, just-do-the-work approach a tall glass of water among all these compulsive hedonists. I like that he makes everyone take their shoes off before they enter his office (‘quirky’), and like a true Aquarian, had the foresight to buy a Rothko at a time when nobody understood those big blots of paint. He also has that Aquarian ability to know EVERYTHING but be detached from all the drama. Like when he calls Joan into the office at 2am to send telegrams to all of the clients saying ‘Roger is in the hospital but not to worry it’s business as usual’. (Poor Joan, who is having an affair with Roger, is silently crying as she does the work, to an excellent standard as usual, like the good Virgo I believe she is.) She’d arrived in the office with some random date, a doctor, and Burt tells her she can do better – and I don’t mean the doctor.

Notes

• We really need to bring dancing back. Not grinding; face-to-face dancing. Though I do appreciate how easy it is to walk away mid-grind. The bars and parties in Mad Men seem so much more fun because they are dancing without it being an unusual ‘lols so awkward’ thing. I thought the same thing when I watched the Keira Knightly Pride and Prejudice a few weeks ago. (There was no grinding there, just FYI.) I had never seen that P&P before and I finally understood why all my friends are obsessed with it. That might be what I write about next.

• I was so delighted when I heard Anna Draper say ‘lavender haze’ in Season 2. If you know you know! Get it, off my, DESK! (I wonder if Taylor Swift has a desk.. what does it look like… please speculate in the comments if you are so inclined.)

• My novel, Ghost Chilli, is out in paperback in the UK in July, and will be available in the US in October.