August Alsina & the rumor mill

On last night's episode of The Surreal Life (a VH1 show where celebrities live together for 2 weeks in a Hollywood mansion), American rapper August Alsina, 30, appears to announce to the world that he has a boyfriend:

Or at least that's how the gossip rags are calling it.

As this aired, Mercury and Venus perfected a conjunction at 6° Sagittarius – a transit over August's natal Moon in early Sagittarius. Many speculated that the man August gushed over wasn't his boyfriend at all – that the man was in fact August's brother (it isn't, the tattoo's don't match). Given Mercury's association with brothers, this is just the kind of rumor to gain traction under a Mercury/Venus conjunction.

But there's another rumor going around that underscores the power of transits. If you read what I've written about Will Smith & Jada Pinkett-Smith, their relationship, and August Alsina's debut within it – then you might recognize that 6° Sagittarius transits Will's descendant (7° Sagittarius) and Jada's ascendant (3° Sagittarius), and trips up Jada's Saturn/Jupiter opposition across her first/seventh axis. The connection between August, Jada and Will seemed most concentrated in the early degrees of Libra, and around 6° Sagittarius. There's nothing triggering early Libra, but the Mercury/Venus transit to 6° Sagittarius means Will and Jada are likely to take a few strays, as seen in the following tweet (all of which, at the time of publishing, has a 'like' count north of 48 thousand) –

Rumors about Will's sexuality, which have circled for decades, have some new gossip to feed on.

'Gossip' has a bit of a bad reputation in modern times, a stance with which I broadly agree; but it's helpful to remember that gossip played an irreplaceable role in our evolution as a species, and in our coming of age. Astrologers, sensing the public had a desperate need of this, developed techniques over many centuries to assess the reliability of rumors. So what of this?

This person was posting more in jest than anything, and it would be fault number one to interpret literalism where it doesn't exist. And the transiting astrology is playful at the moment, anyway. Mercury is a jester, and conjunct Venus in Sagittarius, there's a bit more playfulness around love matters and romantic agreements. I don't see a reason to think on Will's participation in Jada's entanglement too deeply.

But – for the sake of exercise, let's say we were more suspicious. A good start is to consider the astral connective tissue between the moment and the people involved. For a rumor to have a bit more validity, it would establish itself with deep, meaningful connections to the roots of the matter.

August, Will and Jada share a sharp focus in the first few degrees of Libra – all within the first term of that sign, come to think of it, which belong to Saturn (his role in this is explained in my previous Smith article). The absence of a present trigger to those degrees might suggest there's not much substance to what's said.

We can also assess the rumor astrology alone, if we don't have access to the astrological history of something. Here, we'd take into account the angles and the Moon – whether they are in fixed signs suggesting the rumor is rooted (truths are usually better rooted than lies, but some lies have secure origins, so this rule isn't absolutely reliable), whether they are harmed by malefics which suggest malicious intent, whether they are lifted by benefics suggesting the moment is unlikely to yield something false, whether the South Node is prominent showing a gaffe or mistake, etc.