Ohio Astrology (OHA) pointed out last year the great error of Valentine’s Day: this holiday representing romantic love occurs in February in the sign of Aquarius which represents friendship. There is a holiday called Friendship Day which, hang onto your seat, occurs in August in the sign of Leo, the sign of romantic love.

Aquarius and Leo are opposite signs. Both deal with creative interaction with others. Leo is personal and Aquarius is impersonal.

Whoever assigned the days for Valentine’s and Friendship Day was clearly standing on his/her head.

Who gets to make these decisions anyway? Why aren’t astrologers on the Holiday Assignment Committee?

Or could it be that the Western world confuses friendship and romantic love?

Types of Love

I’ve heard from Spanish speakers how English has one word for love while the Spanish language has many words for love. This one-word-for-love thing caused great difficulty for Leonard in the Big Bang Theory when he told Penny he loved her and she could not reply but later claimed to “love” cheesy fries.

The Ancient Greeks described many types of love, I hear. According to this Wikipedia article these types of love are:

1. Eros – passionate love
2. Philia – love in friendship
3. Storge – affection, used mostly to describe family love
4. Agape “unconditional love” or “true love,” but not of the passionate kind

If I were to assign signs, I’d say passionate love is Leo, friendship love is Aquarius (the opposite of Leo), affection is Cancer and true love is Pisces.

What’s interesting in this is that Leo-Aquarius is the fire-air fixed axis. Cancer and Pisces are water signs. Water is associated with feeling and makes sense when talking about love, a feeling.

That an air sign (Aquarius) rules friendship makes sense because friendship is non-physical (as opposed to romantic love) and arises through a shared consciousness of experience or interest. I’m not saying you don’t hold hands with friends or have friends with benefits, but sexual relations are what defines romantic love.

Maybe Eros is actually the third water sign – Scorpio, also known for passionate intensity, the kind which leads to obsession and often makes the receiver of this “love” a little less than comfortable. Scorpio love-gone-bad leads to restraining orders.

So if Cancer is affection, Scorpio passion and Pisces universal love, then friendship is hanging out on a limb. In C. S. Lewis’ “The Four Loves,” Lewis, according to this Wikipedia page:

“… describes Friendship as, ‘the least biological, organic, instinctive, gregarious and necessary of our Loves’ – our species does not need Friendship in order to reproduce. He uses this point to explain that Friendship is exceedingly profound because it is freely chosen.”

Friendship is “freely chosen,” an Aquarian concept. Both freedom and friendship are scary, by the way. Your family is always your family because of the fact of birth. But friends can choose to come and go. Freedom is not always comforting.

So maybe love is watery in nature with airy friendship as the snorkeling equipment that allows us to breathe from the watery depths. “Love” can be to some (like Penny in the Big Bang Theory), a little suffocating.

Friendship Love – February 14

Friendship love seems clearly and cleanly placed in the sign of Aquarius (which will please Aquarius since it doesn’t like a mess). Let’s take a look at a person born on February 14.

Simon Pegg

You might better know Pegg as Shaun in the movie “Shaun of the Dead.” If you haven’t seen this movie, put down your phone and find the nearest Red Box or go order from NetFlix. I’ll wait.

Back yet?

Shaun is just your average bloke, hard working (although not the hardest) who, at the end of the day, spends his time with friends, including his best buddy, down at the pub (The Winchester).

Shaun also has a girlfriend who is miffed that Shaun isn’t doing well with boyfriend duties like taking her to nice restaurants. Shaun has difficulty with the rules of dating and botches the simple dinner reservations thereby losing his girlfriend.

How can he get her back?

Shaun tries the usual ineffective flowers and apologies.

Unfortunately for the world and fortunately for Shaun, a zombie takeover is occurring which will provide the lackluster Shaun and way to prove his heroic, manly abilities.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie is Shaun running through backyards with his posse and escaping to the pub to avoid the zombies. His posse includes his girlfriend, girlfriend’s best friend and boyfriend, his best friend and his mother.

As Shaun’s posse is running to their pub, they pass another posse running to their own pub. Like Shaun’s posse, the other posse also has man, girlfriend, girlfriend’s best friend and boyfriend, his best friend and his mother.

Shaun is carrying all his loves with him – Eros (girlfriend), Philia (best friend), Storge (mother) and Agape (people associated with his girlfriend).

Another major character in “Shaun of the Dead” is Shaun’s best friend Ed, played by Nick Frost. Pegg and Frost play best buddies in Hot Fuzz as well. When the rest of the world is angry with you, you can always count on your bestie. If I recall, the best buddy causes Shaun’s girlfriend some irritation in “Shaun of the Dead.” Shaun does much better in friendship than in romance.

Pegg and Frost, according to IMDB, are close friends off screen as well.

Shaun (of the Dead) has each of the four types of love in his life but struggles mostly with his romantic love (and, if I recall, some fatherly love as his stepdad was a little weird even before turning into a zombie).

Aquarius Pegg has moon in Gemini and a nice little grand air trine with Mercury (in Aquarius), Uranus (in Libra) and moon (in Gemini). Air signs definitely need snorkeling gear when dealing with watery types and watery love.

Interestingly, in “Shaun of the Dead” the refuge from zombies is the pub! Pubs, you know, serve watery substances that make us feel silly (as we do in love).

Passionate Love – August 14

The sign associated with “romance” is Leo. Leo, you know, rules the heart. Let’s look at someone born on August 14.

Danielle Steel

Who personifies romance like author Danielle Steel? While her books may not be 100 percent about romance, her dramatic Leo style could be labeled “romanticism.”

Romanticism, my 10th grade English teacher told me, is not “moon and June” but strong emotion, which can be terrifying emotion as well as passionate emotion.

What is Eros if not passionate? Is Eros simply about physical love or is Eros truly about the feeling of being alive?

Reading the Wikipedia article about her, Steel writes about more than Eros:

“Despite a reputation among critics for writing ‘fluff,’ Steel often delves into the less savory aspects of human nature, including incest, suicide, divorce, war, and even the Holocaust.”

According to this same Wikipedia site, Steel is the best selling author alive. (Checking out the Stephen King Wikipedia entry, he’s sold about half of what Steel has sold).

Clearly Steel is not about “fluff” but about the stuff of life.

Steel has sun and Mars in Leo and moon in Capricorn. It is no wonder that she writes about strong women – she is a very, very strong personality. If she were a character in a book, the last name “Steel” would be meaningful.

Moon in Capricorn has a comfort zone involving control.

Leo and Capricorn are both commanding but Leo is more open hearted. Steel may be extremely loving to those that follow her rules and extremely punishing to those that don’t.

Steel has clearly commanded a reading generation through the passion of living. That passion manifests as romance but includes the reality that comes with knowing others.

Obsessive Love – November 14

Since we’re on the subject of love, why not throw in some obsessive love, compliments of Scorpio. Obsessive has a negative connotation so maybe I should call it “intense” love or excessively consistent love.

How many people complain that the person they dated changed right after marriage? Loved baseball games, now hates them. Loved sex, now watches TV.

Although some want the intensity of the dating experience throughout the marriage, can we really handle it?

Let’s look at someone born on November 14.

Prince Charles

According to this Astrotheme chart, Prince Charles has moon at the very beginning of Taurus. Taurus is the opposite sign of Scorpio. The Taurus-Scorpio axis involves money, property, sharing and sex. Taurus is sensual and Scorpio sexual.

Prince Charles’ Neptune is conjunct Venus in Libra which creates and very idealistic sense of partnership.

That Charles waited so long to marry the true love of his life, Camilla Parker Bowles, attests to the staying power of his love. This article written in 2005 by Michael Kinsley on the Charles-Camilla marriage has always stuck with me.

Kinsley writes:

“Now, what about a prince who marries a young beauty out of his sense of duty, who waits for decades until a car crash frees him and then marries the woman he really loves — a woman whom almost everyone else in the world finds remarkably unattractive; a woman he didn’t need to marry in order to enjoy her companionship as he had for decades; a woman his family and the world didn’t want him to marry. And what about a woman who watched her longtime lover marry a much younger beauty; who married someone else herself out of some kind of bitter realism; who fell in love with a young future king but is marrying an old weirdo who very likely won’t ever occupy the throne; a woman who is inviting a lifetime of public mockery for every aspect of her public appearance. . . . Now that is a love story.”

Other Loves

Ok, so Spanish has more names for love than we do in English. Well, amigos, there are still some kinds of love Español does not cover:

• Pet love
• Sports team love
• Political Party/Candidate love

Writing about politics on OHA, I think Political Candidate Love is greatly underrated. It’s amazing how angry people can be over writings about men and women who are far away in the machine of government and probably do not care one whit about us as individuals.

Love Day

OHA proposes once again that Valentine’s Day be moved to the sign of Leo in August, to be swapped with Friendship Day.

If we can’t switch days, we can at least make sure we don’t confuse friendship with romantic love.

If this holiday swap is too radical a suggestion, we can create a Omni-Love Day which celebrates all forms of love. During that day, all rules of friendship, dating, marriage and divorce are rendered null and void. You can celebrate in Vegas if that makes it easier.

OHA proposes that day occur in Pisces, which has a deep love of humanity if it can avoid being abused by humanity. The day will, of course, be accompanied by intoxicating beverages, ruled by Neptune (which rules Pisces), which greatly aid in the feeling of love for humanity.

How about March 14? Everyone in?