The Sky Within

 

 

Planet	Sign	Position	House		House Cusps
Sun	Capricorn	27°Cp18'	06th		01  19°Le32'
Moon	Aquarius	12°Aq26'	06th		02  12°Vi06'
Mercury	Aquarius	13°Aq31'	06th		03  09°Li34'
Venus	Aquarius	20°Aq40' R	07th		04  12°Sc14'
Mars	Taurus	03°Ta03'	09th		05  17°Sg21'
Jupiter	Gemini	11°Ge57' R	10th		06  20°Cp26'
Saturn	Taurus	21°Ta40' R	10th		07  19°Aq32'
Uranus	Taurus	26°Ta28' R	10th		08  12°Pi06'
Neptune	Virgo	29°Vi48' R	02nd		09  09°Ar34'
Pluto	Leo	04°Le48' R	12th		10  12°Ta14'
Midheaven	Taurus	12°Ta14'	10th		11  17°Ge21'
Ascendant	Leo	19°Le32'	01st		12  20°Ca26'

 

 

 

 

THE SKY WITHIN

by Steven Forrest

 

Using Your Birthchart as a Spiritual Guide

A woman has a baby and is blissful about it. Another one does the same, and spends the rest of her life dreaming about how she might have been a ballerina. The same choice: having a kid. But only one smiling woman.

Nobody has a generic formula for happiness, at least not one that does the trick for everyone. That's where astrology comes in.

The birthchart, stripped to bare bones, is simply a description of the happiest, most fulfilling life that's available to you... personally. It spells out a set of strategies you can use to avoid boring routines, bad choices, and dead ends. It lists your resources. And it talks about how your life looks when you're misusing the resources and distorting the strategies -- shooting yourself in the foot, in other words.

All from a map of the sky?

Hard to believe. But think for a minute...

"How can the planets possibly affect us? They're millions of miles away." Astrology's critics are fond of rolling out that argument. But it doesn't hold water. Go out and gaze at the moon. What's really happening? Incomprehensible energies are plunging across a quarter million miles of void, crashing through your eyeballs and creating electrochemical changes in your brain. We call the process "seeing the moon." Certainly the planets affect us. The question is where do we draw the boundaries around those effects?

Let's go a step further.

Open your eyes on a starry night. What do you see? A vast, luminous space, full of shadows and light. Now close your eyes so tight they ache. Where are you now? What do you see? Again, a vast, luminous space, full of shadows and light. Consciousness and cosmos are structured around the same laws, follow the same patterns, and even feel pretty much the same to our senses.

"As above, so below." Just as the starry night awes us with its vastness, there's something infinitely deep inside you, a place you go when you close your eyes, a place that's beyond being an Aries or a Gemini or even a specific gender. At the most profound level, a birthchart is a map back to that magical center. It describes a series of earthly experiences which, if you're brave and open enough, will trigger certain states of consciousness in you -- states that operate like powerful spiritual catalysts, vaulting you into higher levels of being.

In the pages that follow, you'll tour your personal birthchart. But don't expect the usual "Scorpios are sexy" stuff. You are a mysterious being in a mysterious cosmos. You're here for just a little while, a blink of God's eye. You face a monumental task: figuring out what's going on! In that spiritual work, astrology is your ally. How will it help?

Certainly not by pigeon-holing you as a certain "type."

Astrology works by reminding you who you are, by warning you about the comforting lies we all tell ourselves, and by illuminating the experiences that trigger your most explosive leaps in awareness.

After that, the rest is up to you.

 

YOUR TEN TEACHERS

Freud divided the human mind into three compartments: ego, id, and superego. Astrologers do the same thing, except that our model of the mind differs from Freud's in two fundamental ways. First, it's a lot more elaborate. Instead of three compartments, we have ten: Sun, Moon, and the eight planets we see from Earth. As we'll discover, each planet represents more than a "circuit" in your psyche. It also serves as a kind of "Teacher," guiding you into certain consciousness-triggering kinds of experience.

The second difference between astrology and psychology is that astrology's mind-map, unlike Freud's, is rooted in nature itself, just as we are.

The primary celestial teacher is the Sun. What does it teach? Selfhood. Vitality. How to keep the life-force strong in yourself. If the Sun grew dimmer, so would all the planets -- they shine by reflecting solar light. Similarly, if you fail to stoke the furnaces of your own inner Sun, then you'll simply be "out of gas." All your other planetary functions will suffer too.

How do we learn this teacher's lessons?

Start by realizing that when you were born the Sun was in Capricorn.

Tell the truth about Capricorn and you start sounding like a voice out of the Boy Scout Handbook.  Here are the key concepts: integrity,  character,  morality,  a sense of personal honor.  Those are the Sea-Goat's evolutionary themes.  They all boil down to the capacity of will to dominate every other aspect of our natures, including emotion.

The Capricornian part of you needs to begin by asking itself one critical question: In the part of my life touched by the Sea-Goat, what is the highest truth I know?  The rest is simple... at least simple to understand.  Just live it.  Keep a stiff upper lip, and do what's right.

But be careful.  There's nothing wrong with expressing feelings as long as they're not doing your decision-making for you.  If you're tempted to do something wicked, don't be afraid to mention it.  Otherwise, half the world will think you're a saint while the other half thinks you're a pompous ass.  And neither half will get within a light-year of your human heart.

With your Sun in Capricorn, you feed your elemental vitality through one all-consuming activity: the accomplishment of Great Works.  They may be public -- like building a career that reflects the best of what you are -- or they may be private, like quietly doing what's right for yourself regardless of social or practical pressures.

Capricorn is the sign of the Hermit, and accordingly, there is a theme of solitude in your life.  That doesn't mean loneliness.  The Sea-goat's solitude has more to do with self-sufficiency and privacy.  It's certainly healthy for you to love; it's neediness on your part that leads inevitably toward frustrating emotional isolation.

You're a survivor, an endurer.  Those are fine qualities, and when life is hard, you'll shine.  Careful you don't use them inappropriately: when you're sad or frightened, express it.  Otherwise, you put yourself in pointless emotional exile.

We can take our analysis of your natal Sun a step further. When you were born, that solar light illuminated the Sixth house. What does that signify?

Start by realizing that Houses represent twelve basic arenas of life. There's a House of Marriage, for example, and a House of Career. Always, we find an element of "fate" in our House structures; the "Hand of God" continually presents us with existential and moral questions connected with our emphasized Houses. How we react and what we learn -- or fail to learn -- is our own business.

One brief technical note: Sometimes the Sun, the Moon, or a planet lies near the end of the House. We then say it's "conjunct the cusp" of the subsequent House, and interpret it as though it were a little further along... in the next House, in other words.

Craft, responsibility, the joy of competence -- that's Sixth House territory.  Traditionally, it's the House of Servants.  The label still works -- provided you recognize that it's not your butlers and chambermaids we're discussing here!  You're the servant, and that's not nearly as bad as it sounds.

There's a myth in our culture that encourages us to believe everyone is automatically depressed on Monday morning, happy on Friday afternoon, ecstatic 'til Sunday around dinner time, then crashes down into the pits again come Monday.  Don't believe it!  With a Teacher in the Sixth House, you've got a good shot at shattering the myth, at least for yourself.  A big part of you likes to work, enjoys being good at something, prefers to be useful.

The trick lies in finding the right crafts, skills, and responsibilities.  Let's let the Teacher speak.

With the Sun in the Sixth House, you're a hard worker, a responsible person who'll keep promises and fulfill contracts.   The trick lies in making sure they're the right promises and the right contracts!  Finding the crafts and skills that express your spirit is perhaps the central challenge of your life.  Dignity and self-respect for you lie squarely in the world of work.  To feel good about yourself, you must achieve excellence.  And that revolves around self-discipline, humility, and locating worthy teachers... and has nothing at all to do with whether you get your face in People magazine!

The next step in our journey through your birthchart carries us to the Moon.

As you might expect, Luna resonates with the magical, emotional sides of your psyche. It represents your mood, averaged over a lifetime. As the heart's teacher, it tells you how to feel comfortable, how to meet your deepest needs. While the Sun lets you know what kinds of experiences and relationships help you feel sane, the Moon is concerned with another piece of the puzzle: feeling happy.

When you were born, the Moon was in Aquarius.

Aquarius is the sign of geniuses -- and criminals.  It represents Individuation, which is a five-dollar word meaning the process of being yourself.  Set against your individuation are all the social forces of conformity.  Buy a necktie!  Shave your legs!  Get hungry at noon!  Outwardly, they show up as peer pressures.  Inwardly, those forces are more subtle but even more formidable: all the internalized scripts that go with having once been a very little kid learning how to be human from mom, dad, and the television set.

The Aquarian part of you is odd somehow.  It doesn't fit into the social environment, at least not without betraying itself.  In this part of your life, the more centered you get, the weirder you'll seem -- to Ann Landers and her crowd.  Go for it, and pay the price of alienation or ostracism.  It's high... but not as high as the price of living a life that's not your own.

With the Moon in Aquarius, your feelings "don't work right" -- that, at least, will often be the consensus among your self-appointed psychotherapists, employment counselors, and sundry gurus.  There are times when you'll be under a lot of social pressure to feel happy -- and you'll be sad.  Other times, you'll be pressured to mourn -- and you'll feel release.  Or jealous -- and you'll be secure.  Or enraged -- and you'll be accepting.  It's enough to make a person feel crazy.  Avoid that too; it's just another one of the social scripts you're learning to break.  From an evolutionary viewpoint, you are developing the ability to be true to your own instincts about what's going on inside you... and to avoid what for you would be the deadening emptiness of conventional "normalcy."

The people who make you feel most comfortable are outsiders, the ones who don't fit any social mold very tightly.  Spend time with them; they feed your spirit.

Going farther, we see that your Moon lies in the Sixth house of your chart.

As we saw earlier, the Sixth House represents the field of experience in which you are challenged to develop a set of skills through which you can express the basic human urge to be competent at something that's useful to other people.

With the moon in the Sixth House, you have an instinctive need to acquire concrete skills and talents, especially ones that support other people.  What skills and talents?  Back up a couple of paragraphs--much depends on your Moon sign.  Here's the general principle: You're happiest and most comfortable when you're busy doing something you're good at.  But be careful of "workaholism." You're vulnerable to it -- extra-vulnerable when the people around you express a lot of neediness or confusion.

There's a third critical piece in your astrological puzzle -- the Ascendant, or rising sign. Along with the Sun and Moon, it completes the "primal triad." What is it? What does it mean? Simple -- the Ascendant is the sign that was coming up over the eastern horizon at the instant of your birth. It's where the sun is at dawn, in other words. In exactly the same way, the Ascendant represents how you "dawn" on people -- that is, how you present yourself. It's your "style," or your "mask."

The ascendant means more than that. It symbolizes a way you can help yourself feel centered, at ease, comfortable with who you are. If you get its message, then something wonderful happens: your style hooks you into the world of experience in a way that feeds your spirit exactly the kinds of events and relationships you need. Your soul is charged with more enthusiasm for the life you're living -- and you feel vibrant, confident, and full of animal grace.

When you took your first breath, Leo was lifting over the eastern horizon of Louisville,KY. Let's begin our analysis by considering the meaning and spiritual message of the sign of "The Performer".

When we hear "Lion," we think "fierce."  But that's misleading.  Go to the zoo and have a look at the "King of the Beasts."  He's lying there, one eye open, looking regal.  He knows he's the king.  He doesn't need to make a fuss about it.  The lion, like Leo at its best, radiates quiet confidence.  A happy, creative, comfortable participation in the human family -- that's what Leo the Lion is all about.

The evolutionary method is deceptively simple: creative self-expression.  As we offer evidence of our internal processes to the world, we feel more at home, more accepted, more spontaneous -- provided the world claps its hands for us!  That's the catch.  Leo needs an appreciative audience.  That audience can be a thousand people cheering or one person saying "I love you."  Either way, it's applause, and for the Lion, that's evolutionary rocket fuel.

Toughing it out, not letting oneself be affected by a lack of support or understanding, may well be an important spiritual lesson -- but not for Leo.  Here the evolutionary problem comes down to lack of real, ultimate trust in other people.  The cure isn't toughness; it's building a pattern of joyful give-and-take.  So perform!  And if no one claps, go somewhere else and perform again.

With Leo on the ascendant, you radiate calm assurance into the world.  Your outer self seems to announce, "I'm doing perfectly well, thank you."  That's true, even if you've just stepped into a bear trap, contracted a social disease, and annoyed Muamar Gaddafi!  The Leo mask is tough to penetrate; even when you bend over backwards to be self-revealing, people still imagine you to be a thousand times more in control than you feel.

To maintain a sense of well-being, it's pivotally important that you have some kind of creative outlet.  It may be an art form.  Or it may be something less formal, like telling stories or jokes or putting some flair into an organization.  Whatever the pattern, throw yourself into it wholeheartedly, and make sure there are some people to appreciate it.

What have we learned so far? Quite a lot. Astrologers use the primal triad of Sun, Moon, and Ascendant in much the same way people who know just a little astrology use Sun signs. The difference is that while there are only twelve Sun signs, there are 1728 different combinations of all three factors. So when we say that you are a Capricorn with the Moon in Aquarius and Leo rising, that's a very specific statement.

Here's a way to make those words come even more alive. Traditionally, signs are connected with Bulls and Sea-Goats and Scorpions -- creatures we don't see every day. But we can translate those images into more modern archetypes.

We can say you are "The Authority", or "The Prime Minister", or "The Boss". Those are just different ways of saying you have the Sun in Capricorn.

We can say you have the soul of "The Genius", or "The Truth-Sayer", or "The Exile"... your Moon lies in Aquarius, in other words.

We can add that you wear the mask of "The Performer", or "The Aristocrat", or "The Clown". Those images capture the spirit of your Ascendant, which is Leo.

You can combine those archetypes any way you want. And you can go further: Once you have a feel for the three basic signs in your primal triad, you can make up your own images to go with them. Whatever words you choose, those simple statements are your fundamental astrological signature. It's your skeleton. Our next step is to begin adding flesh and hair to that skeleton by considering the planets.

 

Unsurprisingly, planets can gain prominence in a birthchart through association with the Sun, Moon, or Ascendant. These three are power brokers, and any linkage with them boosts a planet's influence.

The lunar dimensions of your astrological signature are deepened by planetary overtones. At the instant your independent physical life began, the planet Mercury was conjunct the Moon -- aligned with it, in other words. As a result, we cannot discuss your emotions and instincts without including the notion that your Soul is charged with the spirit of Mercury, as though that ancient "god" lived inside you.

Our first step, of course, is to get aquainted with this new element in the puzzle.

Mercury buzzes around the Sun in eighty-eight days, making it the fastest of the planets. It buzzes around your head in exactly the same way: frantically. It's the part of you that never rests -- the endless firing of your synapses as your intelligence struggles to organize a picture of the world. Mercury represents thinking and speaking, learning and wondering. It is the great observer, always curious. It represents your senses themselves and all the raw, undigested data that pours through them.

Mercury is chafing in Aquarius. This combination links your mental functions with the rebellious, authority-questioning logic of the Exile archetype. Reflexively, your intelligence rebels against conformity, against the blind stupidity of the herd. Spiritually you are learning about the electric shock of genius -- and about its loneliness.

With the traditional "Messenger of the Gods" occupying your Sixth House, you're happiest when you're "talking for a living," although "thinking for a living" is a close second. Any kind of work or responsibilities that don't leave plenty of room for innovative thought fail to feed your Mercury... and then you get Mercury "diseases" like nervousness and chatter -- or compulsive job-changing.

Your birthchart displays another area of heightened activity: the Tenth House. The reason for that is simple -- there's a lot of planetary activity. With Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus in that area of your life, it is charged with activity, soul lessons, and opportunities for personal development. Before we even consider the planets separately, our first step is to explore this piece of existential real estate in broad terms.

Community -- that's the key to the Tenth House. How do you fit into your local branch of civilization?  What role do you play there?  "He's an anesthesiologist." That's a Tenth House statement. But so is, "She's into the women's movement." Even though she doesn't make a dime being a feminist, it still says something about the hat she wears in the community.

Planetary Teachers in this House do two things for you.  They outline your "cosmic job description." That is, they tip you off about the role you were born to play in your community. Unfortunately, they don't do that very well; there are a billion roles and only ten planets, so the descriptions they provide are of necessity rather vague.  At best, they're rough guidelines.

Tenth House Teachers do better with their second task.  They point out parts of your own character that need to be developed to a radical degree before your mission coalesces before your eyes.  Accept their suggestions, act on them, and you'll leave a lasting stamp of your vision upon the myths and symbols of your community.

Take all the planets, all the meteors, moons, asteroids, and comets. Roll them up in a big ball of cosmic mush. They still wouldn't equal the mass of the "King of the Gods" -- Jupiter. Exactly that same bigness pervades the planet's astrological spirit. Jupiter is the symbol of buoyancy and generosity, of opportunity and joy. At the deepest level, it represents faith... faith in life, that is, rather than faith in anybody's theological position papers.

Jupiter stands in Gemini. This is an important piece of information -- maybe a pivotal one. Being human is tough sometimes. When you need to boost your elemental faith in life, your answer lies in following the Way of the Witness or the Storyteller. What that means is that when you're sad, the only cure is a big dose of amazement. Do something new. Take a chance. Learn something. Break up a routine. Have a fascinating conversation with an intriguing stranger. Almost invariably that will put the sparkle back in your eyes.

In your chart, the "King of the Gods" reigns in the Tenth House -- traditionally the "House of Honor." In the old days, this meant "power, glory, and riches." Better said, your whole life will be a long meditation on the true meaning of the word "success." Red carpets will be rolled out for you, but not all of them lead to joy or meaning. Behind the glitz, you are learning some hard-edged lessons about discrimination, and about the ephemeral nature of worldly glory. Ultimately, your "cosmic job description" suggests one overriding principle: you were born to play the role of the Wise Clown; that is, the one who inspires us with hope, faith, and pie-eyed joy.

Look at a NASA photo of Saturn. The icy elegance of the planet's rings, the pale understatement of the cloud bands... both hint at the clarity and precision which characterize Saturn's astrological spirit. Part of the human psyche must be cold and calculating, cunning enough to survive in the physical world. Part of us thrives on self-discipline, seeks excellence, pays the price of devotion. Somewhere in our lives there's a region where nothing but the best of what we are is enough to satisfy us. That's the high realm of Saturn. In its low realm, we take one glance at those challenges and our hearts turn to ice. We freeze in fear, and despair claims us.

The earthy terrain of Taurus offers a region of profound spiritual challenge for you, as Saturn was passing through that sign at your birth. You must learn to steel yourself in the face of the Bull's shadow side: spirit-numbing predictability. Will yourself toward openness! Throw a monkey wrench into your efficient systems! This is especially healing -- and challenging -- in the context of Saturn's House in your birthchart. Which House was that?

The Tenth! The arena of life where we devise a meaningful role to play in our community. Typically, but not always, that means our job. With Saturn here, you bear the burden of destiny. You were born with a mission, and that mission involves commitment, years of effort, and an occasional willingness to tolerate meager rewards. The path of your work may look barren at times. Other paths, easier and juicier in material terms, may tempt you. Don't succumb: it would cost you your dignity.

If Uranus were the only planet in the sky, we'd all be so independent we'd still be Neanderthals throwing rocks at each other. There would be no language, no culture, no law. On the other hand, if Uranus did not exist, we'd all still be hauling rocks for Pharaoh. All individuality would be suppressed. This is the planet of individuation... the process whereby we separate out who we are from what everybody else wants us to be. Always it indicates an area of our lives in which, to be true to ourselves, we must "break the rules" -- that is, overcome the forces of socialization and peer pressure. In that part of our experience, what feeds our souls tends to annoy mom and dad... and all the "moms" and "dads" who lay down the law of the tribe.

With Uranus in Taurus, the process of individuation for you is tied up with the Path of the Earth Spirit. That is to say, you strengthen and clarify your own Uranian identity through deepening your bond with nature -- and without that you're likely to clog up your life with unnecessary conservatism. Consciously chosen forays into the natural world, such as hiking, gardening, or close association with animals, purify your sense of self, purging out the spurious "inner voices" you've swallowed sitting in front of the great wraparound television set of late twentieth century Industrial Culture.

House of Honor -- that's the old name for the Tenth House, where your Uranus lies. The issues are broader; not just your reputation, but also your career, and even more broadly, your "cosmic job description." Uranus is your Teacher here and the lessons can be summarized this way: to find your most satisfying role in the human community, you must first find yourself... that is, separate from the promptings of your spirit all the extraneous, phony dreams you internalized watching TV when you were a kid. You HAVE a cosmic job description, and it is Revolutionary, Breaker of Rules, Troublemaker, Sower of the Seeds of Doubt.

In the final analysis, all planets are important. Each one plays a unique role in your developmental pattern, and failure to feed any one of them results in a diminution of your life. Just because the following planets aren't "having breakfast with the President" through association with the Sun, Moon, or Ascendant doesn't mean we can ignore them.

Pale red Mars suggested blood to our ancestors, and they named it the War God. That's an effective metaphor -- Mars does represent violence. But today we go further. The red planet symbolizes the power of the Will. Assertiveness. Courage. Without it, there'd be no fire in life. No spark. Where your Mars lies, you are challenged to find the Spiritual Warrior inside yourself, the part of you that's brave and clear enough to claim your own path and follow it.

Mars lies quietly in Taurus... waiting. This is an odd combination, but a powerful one. The bull's patience clashes with the impulsiveness of the red planet. The result, at best, is that they temper each other; under pressure, you tend to remain calm and deductive. That's the good news. The bad news is that you need to avoid doing a "slow burn" when a quick confrontation would be better for everyone. Spiritually you're learning a lot about how to claim your right to have peace and quiet -- forcefully, if necessary.

With the War-God occupying your Ninth House, you have a fiery enthusiasm for life itself. Passionately, restlessly, you seem to be searching... for what? Answers, maybe, although that's a pale word. Instinctively you form a "religion" whose nucleus is the notion that mortal existence is not for the faint-hearted, that without courage, faith, and a willingness to live life to the fullest, we are nothing -- and deserve less.

"Life's a bitch. Then you die." Go to any boutique from coast to coast; you'll find those words on a coffee mug. Meaninglessness. Like most truly frightening ideas, we make a joke of it. That's Plutonian territory: the realm of all that terrifies us so badly we need to hide from it. Death. Disease. Our personal shame. Sexuality, to some extent. Initially, Pluto asks us to face our own wounds, squarely and honestly. Then, if we succeed, it offers us a way to create an unshakable sense of meaning in our lives. How? Methods vary according to the Signs and Houses involved, but always they have one point in common: the high Plutonian path invariably involves accepting some trans-personal purpose in your life.

One more point: Pluto moves so slowly that it remains in a given Sign for many years. As result, its Sign position in your birthchart refers not only to you but also to your generation. The House position, however, is much more personal in its relevance.

Pluto was journeying slowly through the sign Leo. Thus the shadow material you are called upon to face has to do with the dark side of the Performer archetype: an obsession with being noticed. In what part of your life or personal history have you chosen style over substance, glitz over moral excellence? (If your answer is "Nowhere!" then congratulations... you're Enlightened... or not looking hard enough.)

At the moment of your birth, Pluto gleamed in the Twelfth House -- the part of the natal chart that refers to self-transcendence. To do your inner "spiritual" work, you must first face some mucky material in your personal or karmic history. Your "inner guru" values honest self-appraisal above any other virtue. Purification, paradoxically, is dirty work -- but once you've done some of it, you're free to manifest your mission and thereby create meaning in your life. Your mission? Easy to say, hard to do: it is to teach others the inner path of Spirit.

Venus is the part of your mental circuitry that's concerned with releasing tension and maintaining harmony. Its focus is always peace, inwardly and outwardly. As such, it represents your aesthetic functions -- your taste in colors, sounds, and forms. Why? Because the perception of beauty soothes the human heart. Venus is also tied to your affiliative functions -- your romantic instincts, your sense of courtesy or diplomacy, your taste in friends. Invariably, this planet has one goal: sustaining your serenity in the face of life's onslaughts.

Venus was passing through Aquarius. Thus, both your aesthetic sensitivity and your taste in partners is shaped by the innovative, rule-smashing spirit of the Exile. In the realm of beauty, whether natural or wrought by human hands, you have a taste for the unexpected, for the shocking -- and a corresponding contempt for hackneyed themes. The same goes for friends and sexual partners -- you appreciate independent individuals with spunk and novel perspectives, people who are willing to let you be yourself without fear of knee-jerk criticism.

With Venus in the Seventh House, you sincerely enjoy the company of others of your species! There's a warm-heartedness about this configuration, an ability to reach out to people and form bonds of trust and affection. Caution, though: True intimacy is a gift that must be earned gradually. You radiate such magic that people's judgments can be eroded. They can bond with you more quickly and deeply than is appropriate. And you can do the same! Your true soulmates are Venusian types; that is, they are graceful, attractive people, typically with elevated aesthetic sensitivities.

You're lying in your bed, going to sleep. Suddenly a jolt runs through your body. You just "caught yourself falling asleep." Where were you two seconds before the jolt? What were you? Astrologically, the answer lies with Neptune. This is the planet of trance, of meditation, of dreams. It represents your doorway into the "Not-Self." Based on the sign the planet occupies, we identify a particularly critical spiritual catalyst for you... although we need to remember that Neptune remains in a Sign for an average of a little over thirteen years, so its Sign position actually describes not only you, but your whole generation. Its House position, however, is more uniquely your own.

Neptune was passing through Virgo. Thus, to trigger higher states of consciousness in yourself and to stimulate your psychic development, you may choose to follow the Path of the Servant... that is consciously, intentionally to seek the perfection of those skills and virtues in yourself which benefit others. Without exposure to the purifying, soul-bleaching effects of selfless service, you tend to drift away from Spirit, losing yourself in the mazes of daily life -- or in the subtle ego-traps of meditation.

Neptune, planet of transcendence, occupies the Second House of your birthchart, where its mystical feelings are linked to questions of self-esteem and dignity. To feel good about yourself, to avoid the pitfalls of self-limitation, you need a spiritual framework for your life... a sense of divine purpose. Why? Because mere ego-fulfillment is never inspiring enough to motivate you in the long run, and without inspiration, you won't do anything!

 

Your Lunar Nodes

The soul's journey

Here's a jolly baby. Here's a serious one. An alert one. A dull one. A wise one. Those are common nursery room observations, but they raise a fascinating question: How did that person get in there?

Most of our psychological theory, either technically or in folklore, is developmental theory... abuse a child and he'll grow up to be a child-abuser, for example. But in the eyes of the newborn infant, there is already character. How can that be? One might say it's heredity, and that's certainly at least part of the answer. A large part of the world's population would call it reincarnation -- that baby, for better or worse, represents the culmination of centuries of soul-development in many different bodies. A Fundamentalist might simply announce, "That's how God made the baby." Who's to say? But all three explanations hold one point in common: They all agree that we cannot account for what we observe in a baby's eyes without acknowledging the impact of events occurring before the child's birth.

In astrology, the South Node of the Moon refers to events occurring before your birth, helping us to see what was in your eyes ten seconds after you were born... however we imagine it got in there! The Moon's North Node, always opposite the South Node, refers to your evolutionary future. It's a subtle point, but arguably the most important symbol in astrology. The North Node represents an alien state of consciousness and an unaccustomed set of circumstances. If you open your heart and mind to them, you put maximum tension on the deadening hold of the past.

As we consider the Nodes of the Moon in your birthchart, we'll be using the language of reincarnation. Whether that notion fits your own spiritual beliefs is of course your own business. If it doesn't work for you, please translate the ideas into ancestral hereditary terms. After all, it makes little practical difference whether we speak of a certain farmer weeding his beans a thousand years before the Caesars as your great, great, mega-great grandfather... or as you yourself in a previous incarnation. Either way, he's someone who lived way back there in history who sort of is you, sort of isn't, and lives on inside you--influencing but not ultimately defining you.

At your birth, the South Node of the Moon lay in Pisces, the sign of the Mystic. Anyone looking into your eyes as you took your first breath would have observed an eerie wisdom, as though he or she were looking into the eyes of a buddha. For centuries, you've been exploring trance states, typically in the context of spiritual traditions and institutions but occasionally in darker ways... like the "trance" induced by alcohol or opium. As a result, an intuitive grasp of altered and higher states of consciousness has arisen in you. Now, like one who has become too heavenly to be of any earthly good, you must learn new lessons: practical helpfulness toward others and a willingness to face squarely the mucky details of getting free.

That nascent ability to willingly and effectively accept the yoke of service is symbolized by your North Node of the Moon, which lies in Virgo -- the sign of the Craftsperson. As we saw earlier, the North Node can be seen as the most significant point in the entire birthchart. Why? Because it represents your evolutionary future... the ultimate reason you're alive, in other words. How can you accomplish this Virgoan spiritual work? The "yoga" is easy to say, harder to do: you must overcome the myth of "World Transcendence" inside yourself, and begin polishing a set of skills with which you can address the pain of other people, one by one.

There's another piece to the puzzle: The Moon's South Node falls in the Eighth House of your chart. This implies that previous to this lifetime you learned a lot about realms of human experience that are often labeled "taboo." You've lived passionately, motivated by intense emotions, especially sexual ones. There's an even chance that long ago you had some training in what we might call magic or shamanism. The dark element in all this is that your spirit has become too heavy, too brooding, for its own good.

In this lifetime, with your North Node of the Moon in the Second House, you must act to counterbalance some of those old passions... not so much because they're "bad" as because you've already learned everything you can from them. The time has come for you to take refuge in a more "normal" kind of life, calming and easing yourself with stability, simplicity, and a reverence for the ordinary.

 

And that's your birth chart.

Trust it; the symbols are Spirit's message to you. In the course of a lifetime, you'll make a billion choices. Any one of them could potentially hurt you terribly, sending you down a barren road. How can you steer a true course? The answer is so profound that it circles around and sounds trivial: listen to your heart, be true to your soul. Noble words and accurate ones, but tough to follow.

The Universe, in its primal intelligence, seems to understand that difficulty. It supplies us with many external supports: Inspiring religions and philosophies. Dear friends who hold the mirror of truth before us. Omens of a thousand kinds. And, above all, the sky itself, which weaves its cryptic message above each newborn infant.

In these pages, you've experienced one reading of that celestial message as it pertains to you. There are others. You may want to consider sitting with a real astrologer ... micro-chips are fine, but a human heart can still express nuances of meaning that no computer can grasp. You may want to order other reports, ones that illuminate your current astrological "weather," or that analyze important relationships. Best of all, you may choose to learn this ancient language yourself, and begin unraveling your own message in your own words.

Whatever your course, we thank you for your time and attention, and wish you grace for your journey.