eating disorders in the birth chart
Today I wanted to talk about how eating disorders might manifest in the natal chart.
I don't know that there is one particular sure-fire signature that we can be sure indicates the native will experience disordered eating or body dysmorphia or anything else related.
Caveat: I would always use the natal chart as confirmation of an eating disorder. I would never use it as indication of an eating disorder. I would be very cautious to form a hypothesis that implied an eating disorder. So my strong recommendation is to use the chart retro-actively - not pro-actively - when bringing astrology in.
Locating a probable natal chart signature can be helpful in delineating - coloring in or naming - the exact nature of the eating disorder. And it can be helpful in locating and delineating self appropriate and creative ways to begin to work with it and to work our way out of it into a healthier expression.
My chart as example:
I'll begin with my chart as an example because I have definitely experienced disordered eating, dieting behavior and a very extreme eating disorder in my life.
First of all, I have Pluto conjunct Saturn and both of those are squaring the Sun.
So Saturn - when we're lensing it through looking for an eating disorder, is so much about control.
And it's even about control as pleasure in the same way that a sexual kink around control, like being a dom or being a sub or even physical restriction like bondage or shibari, can feel pleasurable.
Control can actually feel pleasurable. Control can actually give us a reward hormone, a dopamine hit.
Then there is Pluto. Pluto is very compulsive. Pluto is very much about obsession and fixation. Pluto speaks to the things that are just so habituated or so addictive, that it's hard - in fact, it feels impossible - to break that pattern or that behavior. So with Pluto, I can definitely see the very addictive and compulsive side of eating disorders coming through.
In my chart, Pluto and Saturn are conjunct and then they're squaring my Sun.
Anytime there is a conversation that certain outer planets (Saturn and Pluto being two examples) are having with certain personal planets, especially Venus, Moon or Sun, and if that is very strong in our chart, or if it is emphasized in a few ways throughout the chart, then this is a signature that - especially retroactively - can confirm an eating disorder.
The next thing I'm looking at in my chart, is I have Chiron in the sign of Taurus. Taurus is very much about physical beauty, embodiment, being in the body, being okay with being in the body, feeling beautiful, feeling attractive, and feeling worthy.
Chiron is squaring my Venus. Venus is the planet that wants to be loved, that wants to be in relationship.
I have often spoken of this particular aspect: Chiron square Venus, as expressing itself as feeling unpreferred or unchosen. Also unloved, but more specifically, maybe loved, yes, but not in a special way. You're not the first one picked.
Let’s move to the signs. I have Pluto in Libra which means it will show up around relationship. For my eating disorder, one of the roots of it - maybe not the main root, but one of the roots - was wanting to be desired. Wanting to be in a relationship, wanting to be found attractive to those I was sexually attracted to - for me, it was men at the time.
And Libra is very much our awareness around how those we are attracted to are perceiving us. Libra is about how accessible relationship is to us.
My Saturn is in the sign of Scorpio which is Pluto's domicile. That underscores the Scorpionic or Plutonic kind of obsession, compulsion. Both Pluto and Scorpio relate to our deepest, deepest desires, our most vulnerable desires.
For me, a lot of my life that has been around relationship, around having a boyfriend, around being told I'm beautiful, around being seen as beautiful.
With Pluto and Scorpio involved there is this idea of our social-sexual identity getting activated. This is so much about how much of our power we give away to be attractive, to be popular, to be included, to be loved, to be pursued to be wanted. And I think that is not insignificant for eating disorder conversations.
For my chart, the last thing that I'm noticing is I have Leo on the ascendant or Leo rising.
Leo is a sign that, in particular, is very concerned about being seen as special, being seen as magnetic, getting external validation.
The last signature that I can add here is that I have both Neptune and the South Node in my fifth house, which is the house of romance, of falling in love, having that honeymoon period.
Neptune being in the fifth house adds this longing, just this profound longing for things to be ideal and romantic, and to match the fantasy.
South Node in the fifth house continues the story of compulsion or habituation that I started with Pluto. South Node is a place where we we go because it's familiar and we go there in this compulsive unconscious way. And even if it's not good for us, the fact that it’s familiar and known trumps all of that.
After using my chart as an example, I want to speak more theoretically about all the planets, signs, and houses that can be implicated.
First of all, it is important to look for multiple emphasis in the birth chart - the indicators have to show up more than once, in more than one way. For me, Saturn-Pluto square Sun was supported and re-indicated by Chiron square Venus, and then this was additionally corroborated by Leo Rising and to a lesser extent, South Node-Neptune in the Fifth. The signs the planets were in further supported and aligned with the planetary dialogue.
The planets:
The personal planets that I mentioned that are often involved: Sun, Mercury, Moon, Venus.
Venus because it’s about attractiveness and relationship, Moon because it’s about emotional security, Mercury when we lens an ED as a mental disorder, and Sun because it signifies our self-concept and because of how much of our identity is social-sexual (echoing Venus a little).
Social and Transpersonal Planets (in contact with personal planets or on the angles, especially the Ascendant): Chiron, Saturn, Pluto are the big three. But I also have to add Neptune and Jupiter because Neptune and Jupiter both represent extremely aspirational energies and energies where we don’t have a lot of control - where we want more and more and more without being able to put a limit on things.
Jupiter can show up when the eating disorder is specifically taking the form of bulimia or of binging.
Neptune is implicated when the eating disorder is manifesting for similar reasons as one would find in drug use - to escape, disassociate from, or cope with pain or suffering. Or - we can fall in love with a fantasy or an ideal and then began to exhibit this disordered behavior to move towards that fantasy or that ideal, especially around relationship, or body, or appearance. Fantasy and idealism is also Neptune’s realm.
And then, the south node is a place of compulsion. I wouldn’t look there first, but…
The angles:
I look at both the AC/DC (ascendant/descendant) axis first, and also the houses that they cusp - the first and seventh houses. First and seventh houses can speak to how we want others to perceive us, and what we find attractive or unattractive in ourselves or others. Also, there might be a story about how we want to shape ourselves to attract others, or to mirror what we find attractive or where we find ourselves envious.
I also look at the IC/MC axis because it corresponds to the signs of Cancer and Capricorn.
And I think this is where we get into one of the major roots of why people fall into an eating disorder. The Cancer/Capricorn axis is the axis of control and comfort. And I think those are two deep, deep reasons that are almost two sides of the same coin, that people move into an eating disorder - for control, or comfort, or both.
Ok, now the houses.
1H: The first house because that's the house of where we are in conversation around ourselves, but specifically our appearance, and even more specifically, our physical appearance.
2H: The second house because that's the house of embodiment and self-worth (oftentimes an eating disorder can actually have one of its roots in low self-worth). 2H is being in the body and also physical tangible resources, one of which is food and another one of which is beauty.
3H: School peers, siblings, early education, local environment are all the purview of the 3H. 3H can sometimes help to constellate an eating disorder. Messaging we get from the popular girls, wanting to look more like our gorgeous older sister, being bullied for our looks, gym class shit, etc.
4H: sometimes, eating disorders are an inheritance from our family. We inherit it by watching the behavior of our parents (esp. mother) or of our siblings. We can also receive strong messaging around food and appearance as right/wrong from our family. We can also begin to use food as comfort and nurturing. Food can be a substitute if the parents are not providing adequate nurture or comfort.
5H: I won’t look here first thing, but if there is something in the 5H that can corroborate a more strongly told story, then I’m listening. The reasons that I stated earlier regarding my own chart - if something is fucked up regarding play/sex/self-expression/fun/self-magnetism, an eating disorder can be a coping mechanism. To me, the 5H does have something to say about experiences of feeling attractive, feeling wanted, feeling special, all of that belongs to the fifth house.
6H: My Sun is actually in the sixth house. Sixth house pertains to daily rituals and routines. An eating disorder can very much take on ritual and routine aspects. Sixth house is also a house that deals with “perfecting” (and in a way, an eating disorder can be seen as an attempt to “perfect” the body or perfect our food intake and exercise). 6H also deals with health and nutrition. So orthorexia would very much be a reflection of 6H experiences and values. 6H can speak to places and ways we habituate and fall into a routine or behavioral pattern.
7H: the house of relationship and a lot of times one of the things informing our eating disorder is actually how we want to be received in relationship or our unconscious or hidden fears around being received in relationship. Not the first place I’ll look, but not entirely insignificant.
8H: Also, not the first place but not entirely insignificant. Pluto's natural house. It's Scorpios natural house. We get the fixation, the obsession, the compulsion. The deep desires.
9H: I'll pull in because ninth house has to do a lot with morality, with what is good/bad and with what is right/wrong. So if we've been fed messaging around a good body, or right body, or if we're bad, or we're wrong, we might be using the eating disorder as a type of penance or correction. To make ourselves right instead of wrong.
10H: How we appear to the public. So it's actually very similar to the ascendant in a lot of ways. Also the house of Capricorn, aka authority and control. Appearance as conferring prestige or status. “Skinny” privilege, “beauty” privilege.
11H: If we’re famous, if we’re prominent in our community or social circles, or if we want fame/prominence, we may be extra conscious about how we physically appear. Our community and social circles, the media, etc. will all give us messaging around our appearance, especially if we are femme identified.
12H: I can see twelve house being important if this eating disorder behavior is something that is coming to us through lineage or through past lives if you believe in that. Or if it's something that we're picking up from the collective or if it's something that we're using in order to feel safe in the collective energy or to protect our body from dangers tat we perceive in the collective.
The signs:
Signs: I look at Taurus and Libra, because these signs are ruled by Venus, which is the planet of wanting to be loved, of wanting to be in relationship (this is more the Libra side of Venus). Taurus and Libra also are concerned with wanting to be physically beautiful.
I look at Leo because it wants to be validated, feel special, fit in socially (Libra also wants to fit in socially). I look at Scorpio because it is the polarity to Taurus and also because it is co-ruled in modern astrology by Pluto - so we have the theme of deep compulsions and deep desires, deep fixation and deep need to control - especially something that we just know can’t be controlled, at least not easily.
Lastly, I mentioned the Capricorn-Cancer axis, which is relevant because of themes of using food/exercise as emotional comfort (Cancer) and of using food/exercise as control.
I might look at Sagittarius for the moral implications - like is there a very strong morality around the person with the eating disorders behavior - is the eating disorder a way to feel superior and “right”?
I would also look at Virgo (controlling and perfecting tendencies) and Pisces (wanting perfection, wanting to check out, wanting to disassociate - eating disorders can often fulfill similar functions to drug use).
Combinations (make sure you see the story repeated a few times in the chart - just one signature is not necessarily enough to make a call):
Ideally, I want to see multiple contacts with personal planets. In the case of my chart I have Chiron contacting Venus and I also have Pluto Saturn contacting the Sun.
As another example, maybe if Neptune was contacting the Moon in Taurus and then Pluto contacting Venus in Sagittarius, and then Saturn contacting the Sun, something like that.
Or if we see Venus and the Sun in Capricorn, and then the Moon and Pluto in Cancer, because then we're activating that Cancer-Capricorn Control-Comfort axis.
The signs of Taurus and Scorpio are so much about food + body but also compulsion. So, if I'm seeing activity in Scorpio and in Taurus, which in my case, I do have Saturn in Scorpio and Chiron in Taurus, and they're both in conversation with personal planets, then that to me is a viable place to look.
My personal ED story:
Trigger warning: I want to offer my own personal story of eating disorder and how I fully healed from it.
And I do want to emphasize that I feel extremely healed from my eating disorder. I feel extremely trusting of my body. I feel like I can eat whatever I want. I feel like I can trust my body. I can trust myself. I can trust food. I never think of food calorically anymore. I just, I think of it as something that's very sensual and delicious and playful and creative. I like to play with food in a creative way, like, what new tastes can I make or, this recipe looks really interesting.
Since my very very early youth I have been obsessed with being desired. I had a childhood where I was very much a left out a lot and and made to feel different a lot and made to feel alone a lot and kind of chosen last a lot. I didn't have a lot of friends. And all I ever wanted since I can remember was to have a loving boyfriend, a really romantic Disney perfect relationship and to get married.
And so throughout my youth I definitely experimented with exercise and dieting. In my early to mid 20s I became anorexic. And it was very much about control and prestige and status. So I guess as I'm saying the word status and prestige, I can see the 10th house being pulled into the conversation as well.
I wanted to be admired. I wanted people to remark on my body. Eventually it moved out of anorexia to bulimia. I experienced anorexia as this superiority of control and bulimia on the other hand was very much a loss of control and there was so much shame around not being able to exit this pattern - which I quite frankly hated - of binging and then purging.
To be very honest, when I was anorexic, I think I was very okay with my eating disorder. Everything was under my control and then when it moved into bulimia is when I really started to feeling not okay and I started feeling out of control. I was hiding a lot and just I no longer felt proud of myself or of my appearance. I felt very ashamed.
So I started working with a therapist, and she said, Listen, I don't care how much you eat, you just can’t purge, stop the purging part of it. So for an uncomfortable amount of time, and this was profoundly uncomfortable. I would just binge and not let myself purge and so I went to bed in pain not being able to move. And my body changed which was really uncomfortable. My body changed shape quite quickly.
I also worked with yoga, which was a really beautiful modality for getting back in touch with my body and finding compassion around my body and finding curiosity around this behavior and compassion for myself around this behavior.
And then I also started dating someone who I just was able to use as a model. They had an imperfect body and they just did not give a fuck, like they just ate what they wanted. They surfed. They had this really easygoing lovely relationship with life. And I coveted that and I saw how very little their body and their appearance had to do with their happiness.
And so I started surfing too and that was also very healing.
The last thing is, and I think this is a really important piece. I found something more important and more meaningful (this pulls in Sagittarius and Jupiter) to me than my appearance. There's a quote - I don't remember where it comes from.
The quote goes: your body is not your masterpiece, your life is.
A lot of what led to my eating disorder was a “self-consuming,” if that makes sense. Because there wasn't anything else in my life to turn my attention and my passion and all this energy towards.
I had this script that the meaning of life, the purpose of life, was to get into a relationship and that would make me happy.
So when I started working on my first business, it was so life affirming and life giving. And all of a sudden I was waking up excited to do more graphic design and to come up with more formulas and to get more sales. And that became the most fulfilling thing, not relationships and not my beauty. So I think that's a critical component of eating disorder recovery.
A lot of times the eating disorder is there as a placeholder for something that we haven't yet found, some greater purpose, some greater meaning.
So beginning to really get conscious and turn some energy in the direction of seeking the thing that could make us forget our eating disorder, the thing that could reduce our eating disorder in importance and in size.
It's true that the eating disorder consumes a fuck ton of mental energy. So for that reason, I do think we need to bring Mercury into the picture. Because you're constantly thinking, how do people perceive me? What did I eat? How much did I exercise? There’s all the numbers from counting calories and compulsively weighing yourself. That begins to take up so much of your brain.
Slowly but surely the binging to pain turned into eating foods that just felt incredibly safe and nurturing for almost a whole year. I picked up dinner every single night at a restaurant where I lived, and it was sweet potato fries and focaccia bread. And then in the morning, same thing. There was a place that had these very specific scones, and that's what I ate for breakfast.
For lunch, I would go out with coworkers or something, but for breakfast and for dinner, it was eating foods that just felt so comfortable and safe. The repetition - I allowed myself the luxury of the repetition. Repetition was safety.
And then little by little as I became more engrossed with my business, my partner, food and meals and exercise took on less and less important and so it just naturally balanced out.
Eventually, I would be in a place where sometimes I would be so absorbed with work that I would forget to eat and that was that. So I went from meals and food being the most like important and consuming thing in my day to actually genuinely forgetting a meal.
So that's a little bit about my story. I do believe that we can fully heal from an eating disorder. I don't believe that everyone does. But I think it's possible.
And it's something that I coach professionally around if you have an issue or just need some support or just need a safe person to be with you in this journey. I offer coaching around body dysmorphia. specifically related to eating disorders, and disordered eating and disordered exercising.
I wanted to put that out there in case anyone is struggling with it and looking for support. It’s something I’ve been through personally and it’s something I’ve received professional training with helping others.
PS Everything is currently pay-what-you-can as I believe access to social-emotional support is a human right.
