(Image: Netflix)

Symbolized as a centaur-archer armed with a quiver full of flaming arrows, Sagittarius is the sign most likely to ride into a sleepy village in the middle of the night and raise absolute holy hell. Women with their Sun (identity) in this wildly adventurous sign will often come to be identified with their boldness, their athleticism, and their propensity to “grab the spotlight and set shit off” to quote astrologer Sonya Magett. (Source) This is the woman you’ll see “showing up in an outfit made for the comic books” Magett observes. (Source) To illustrate: using the comic book’s original publication date as the character’s date of birth, Wonder Woman herself is a Sagittarius. (Chart) She’s been showing up in “outfits made for the comic books” and “setting shit off” for the last 70 years. If Bruce Lee and Samuel Jackson are the ultimate examples of Sagittarius men who became icons for firing flaming arrows of truth, justice, and total badassery at all-comers then Wonder Woman is a case-study in the Sagittarius female’s desire to outfight, outrun, and outshoot the boys:

Sagittarius loves two things more than anything else: wild adventures and straight shooting honesty. Not coincidentally, Wonder Woman has her own airplane for spur of the moment adventures and is armed with a magical lasso that compels others to speak the truth.

Astrologer Austin Coppock describes Sagittarius as the “Doom Super Soldier” of the zodiac whose life is all about non-stop action while Stella Hyde says Sagittarians make for great rock stars, car-jackers, and crocodile wranglers. (Source) They are particularly well suited for work as “stunt artists” since this line of work allows them to “crash through plate glass windows and get paid for it” Hyde tell us. (Source) To illustrate: using its premier date as its date of birth, the 1980s all female professional wrestling promotion known as the “Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling” (GLOW) has its Sun, Venus, Saturn, and Uranus all in Sagittarius. (Chart) The promotion was, in effect, a band of female stunt artists who (briefly) became something akin to rock stars for raising absolute holy hell in the sleepy village that was late night television during the uber-conservative Reagan era. Two of the performers even came to the ring dressed as car-jackers (“Hollywood and Vine”) while another arrived as an actual crocodile wrangler (“Jungle Woman”). More than a few appear to have been “doom super soldiers” of various persuasions, whether in spirit or by trade. The ladies of GLOW may not have crashed through actual plate glass windows but they did shake up society’s glass like assumptions regarding what women should or should not do with their bodies. They did such a memorable job of breaking barriers that the promotion is now the subject of a top ranked Netflix series:

Sagittarius women love to make audacious proclamations every bit as much as their male counterparts and, indeed, the line from the GLOW rap “we come from the streets, we come from the city, we come from the world where there is no pity” is an excellent summary of the Sagittarius female’s bold approach to life.

It may seem ridiculous to use a cultural roller coaster as spectacularly absurd as GLOW to illustrate anything serious but truth be told it’s a textbook example of all things Sagittarius. During its four year run the promotion “grabbed the spotlight and set shit off” so boldly that shortly before its unexplained folding it had amassed 7 million weekly viewers, an incredible number given its threadbare budget and kitschy production values. In true Sagittarian fashion, GLOW even managed to fire off a few flaming arrows of competition at the World Wrestling Federation, the vastly larger wrestling company that considered women incapable of getting the job done as actual in ring performers. As a surprisingly moving 2012 documentary about GLOW explains, the ladies were politically incorrect, totally out of control, and unlike anything else on television at the time. In other words, they were as Sagittarius it gets:

It’s a toss up between Aquarius and Sagittarius as to which astrological sign is most likely to believe “the powers that be” are suppressing advancements in science and technology or silencing truth-tellers. GLOW obviously had nothing to do with suppressed science or advancements in technology but one can’t help but why, out of the blue, it was forced to close up shop after only 4 years in existence. With 7 million weekly viewers, very healthy profit margins, and seemingly unlimited marketing opportunities something doesn’t add up about why it was shut down at the very height of its popularity. Maybe the idea that wrestling was obviously entertainment and that women could draw ratings as well as men was a bit too much truth for the wrestling world’s version of the “men behind the curtain”. Female icon and all round Super-Sag Wonder Woman has never gotten her own motion picture the way iconic male superheroes like Superman and Batman have, perhaps for some of the same narrow minded reasons GLOW has never been resuscitated.

Like her male counterpart, the Sagittarius woman will often outdo her competition by leaps and bounds. Magett warns her readers that this is the sign most likely to take a broken champagne bottle to somebody’s neck at a party or to solve a workplace dispute by leaving a bag of snakes on their boss’s desk. (Source) None of the GLOW ladies ever went quite that far but one did routinely make her way to the ring operating an actual chainsaw while another once wrestled a live bear. (Being half-horse Sag is usually an animal lover) Even those performers who shied away from industrial strength power tools or 700 pound killer animals made no apologies for venturing way outside the boundaries of what was considered socially acceptable for women to be doing with their lives.

Astrologer Raven Kaldera associates Sagittarius with the myth of Vainamoinen, the Finnish God of adventure whose array of fascinating friends and talented sidekicks help him save the day. (Source) According to Kaldera, Vainamoinen’s gift is “to see the golden dream on the far horizon, to figure out the pathway there, to shoot for it, and to inspire others to do the same”. (Source) As the high decibel haute couture favored by the ladies of GLOW makes quite clear, the promotion had no shortage of “fascinating friends and talented sidekicks”:

More importantly than its array of fascinating and talented performers, GLOW inspired its fan base of young women to shoot for the horizons, dream the dreams, and venture the pathways of their own choosing without being held back by society’s assumptions regarding their gender. At the height of its popularity a number of the wrestlers were receiving upwards of 300 fan letters per week, most from young girls seeking advice on how to follow in the footsteps of the Vainamoinen inspired women they were watching on television each week. Writing for Vice Magazine, journalist Jennifer Juniper Stratford recalls the uplifting effect GLOW’s “take no prisoners” approach had on her as a teenager, emphasis added:

One morning in 1986, my mother came barging into the room I shared with my sister, insisting that we get in front of the television. “I think I found the greatest show on television,” she exclaimed. “It’s called the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling!” We crowded around a tiny television and within seconds we were cheering and picking out our favorites. I was 14 at the time and these women were the absolute coolest role models a teenager could ask for. Not only did they wear fantastic outfits while they smashed someone’s head against the turnbuckle, they put feminine stereotypes in a chokehold as well by celebrating the many facets of women using strength and humor. Growing up with a single mom in an all-female household, this was exactly what we needed. (Source)

In other words, what was most Sagittarian of all about GLOW had noting to do with the big hair, outrageous outfits, or wildly out of control performances. According to a review of the GLOW documentary, “GLOW was about a whole lot more than wrestling or even sports: It was about politics, race, sex, gender, and power, and about who controls narratives about women’s bodies and desires”. (Source) Sagittarius is ultimately the sign of the Philosopher and the Clown, both of whom on are quests. The Philosopher is on a quest to seek great spiritual truths while the Clown is on a quest simply to have fun. Behind all the absurdity and camp of GLOW the ladies truly were on a pair of Sagittarian style quests, one to show that women are perfectly capable of defining their own experiences and the other to have outrageous loads of fun while doing so.

About the Author: Matthew David Savinar is a California licensed attorney (State Bar #228957), voluntarily inactive as of June 2013. He can be reached for questions, comments, or astrological consults at his contact page.

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