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  Character you are born with Your personal natal report covers the planets, ascendant and nodes by house and sign plus areas of heightened activity written by Steven Forrest a well known Astrologer

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THE CHARACTER YOU ARE BORN WITH

by Steven Forrest 

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 birth chart, 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.   [ Top ]                                         

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 birth chart 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 birth chart. 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 Leo.

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 [ Top ] 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 your Sun in Leo, you are naturally creative.  Your task is to express that side of your character vigorously and confidently -- and to make sure that what you offer is appreciated.  What is the best truth you know?  What's holy and pure in your life, worth living for?  That's your gift.  Dramatize it.  Package it somehow.  And perform!  You may be drawn to the arts.  But just as possibly, you might express your creativity in a business, or in some public service.

Beneath the colorful surface of your character, there is an insecurity.  Hardly anyone sees it.  It's the fundamental spiritual problem you've come into this life to work out.  Your "yoga" lies in tricking the world into clapping its hands for you.  Be wary, though: even if you win the Nobel prize, it won't mean a thing unless you win it for expressing your SELF.  Otherwise, your deep-seated doubts and insecurities about your SELF go untouched and unhealed.

One more thing -- if you're doing your best and nobody's clapping, remember this: your act is fine; it's the audience that needs to be replaced.

We can take our analysis of your natal Sun a step further. When you were born, that solar light illuminated the Fifth 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.

Pleasure -- that's Fifth House territory.  It's as though God marched you off the end of the cosmic diving board with the words, "Go down there and try to have a good time!"  That sounds pretty lightweight, but think about it: feeling good in this world isn't so easy!  We've got global pollution, schizophrenics with AK-47s, ego-maniacs with nuclear warheads... not to mention disease, taxes, mosquito's, cars that won't start....

How do we feel real pleasure here on planet Earth?  Alone, the "pleasures of the flesh" can't cut the mustard; money, alcohol, orgasms -- they help, but they're not enough... just look at the usual life-expectancy of a "purely physical relationship."  Where to turn?  To the pleasures of the mind, the heart, the soul!  The joy of learning.  The spiritual high of athletic excellence.  The bliss of meditation.  And, perhaps above all, the sheer pleasure of creative self-expression. [ Top ]

Astrological force is focused here in your birth chart.  It offers joy -- and warns of the addictions that can overcome you if you miss that joy, or seek it all in one place.

With the Sun in the Fifth House, you're full of charisma and creative drive.  Express those qualities, cultivate them, and you'll feel right on target.  You're also learning some complicated lessons about the human need for peak experiences.  Old-fashioned astrologers would say that you tend toward excesses.  That can be true, but those kinds of problems -- with food, drugs, sex, whatever -- arise only when you've forgotten to fully enjoy the bliss of your enormous creative energies.

The next step in our journey through your birth chart 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 Sagittarius.

To the medieval astrologer, there were three kinds of Sagittarian: the gypsy, the scholar, and the philosopher.  They're all legitimate, healthy parts of the picture.  Sagittarius represents the urge to expand our horizons, to break up the routines that imprison us.  One way to do that is to escape the bonds of the culture into which we were born -- that's the gypsy.  Another is to educate ourselves, to push our intelligence beyond its customary "position papers" -- the way of the scholar.  Finally, our  intuition can stretch outward, trying to come to terms with cosmic law, attempting to grasp the meaning and purpose of life.  That's the philosopher's path.

To keep your Sagittarian energies healthy, you need to feed them an endless supply of fresh experience.  Travel.  Take classes.  Learn to scuba dive.  Amazement feeds the Archer the same way protein feeds your physical body.  Conversely, if there's a cardinal sin for Sagittarius, it is to consciously, willingly allow yourself to be bored.

With your Moon in Sagittarius, there's a plucky, open, innocent quality to your instinctive life.  You find yourself here in this fascinating, inexplicable universe.  You have X number of minutes to explore it all--better get on with it!  You feel most comfortable when you're actively pursuing your Holy Grail, which is Understanding.  You may do that by reading books or watching National Geographic specials.  You may do it by stretching your physical horizons.  But you'll never do it while mired in predictable routines.

Your spirit feels good when you have people in your life  who aren't strangers to amazement, people who like it when you change their minds... and people who are capable of changing yours.

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

[ Top ]The House of Long Journeys over Water -- that's one old name for this part of the birth chart.  Since you have energy focused here a fortune-teller would say, "I see travel in your stars."  True enough, although a deeper way of expressing the same notion is that immersing yourself in cultures outside the one into which you were born is a pivotal spiritual catalyst for you.

There are other kinds of catalytic journeys.  Getting a wide education, formally or informally, is one.  So is anything that breaks up the normal routines of life and thought.  Even learning to hang-glide.

Ultimately, in the Ninth House you weave a grand scheme of life's meaning and purpose, at least your own version of it.  This is the House of Religion... provided we recognize that many major world religions have no churches or temples.  Cynicism is one such religion.  Existentialism, Materialism, and Science are others, not to mention Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism and so on.

With the Moon in the Ninth House, instinctively you sense that each moment is precious.  Your heart has a taste for adventure, for learning, stretching, seeking new horizons to cross.  You have wonderfully adaptive reflexes when presented with changing circumstances or alien customs.  All those qualities taken together constitute a powerful "Teacher" inside you.  To learn the lessons, all you need to do is follow that expansive impulse within yourself, however impractical or irrational it may seem: travel, explore, connect with people from radically different backgrounds than yourself.  Yours is a religion of the heart; knowledge, information, even insight take a back seat to a simple feeling that the universe is the Great Mother, that she's wiser than you, and that she's guiding you.

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, Aries was lifting over the eastern horizon of Santa Monica, CA. Let's begin our analysis by considering the meaning and spiritual message of the sign of "The Warrior".[ Top ]Courage!  That's what Aries is all about.  Traditionally this sign is represented as the Ram -- a fierce, frightening creature.  That's a pretty good description of how this energy looks from the outside.  Inside, it's different.  Not the Ram, but the newborn robin, two days old, just hatched from its shell, living in a world full of creatures who think of it as breakfast.  Does it cower?  No -- the little bird flaps its stubby wings and squawks its head off, demanding its right to exist.  That's Aries: the raw primal urge to survive.  Existential courage.

Courage is a funny virtue -- it has to be scared into a person.  In the evolutionary scheme of life, Aries energy has a disconcerting property: it draws stress to itself.  You can choose a life of risk and adventure.  Or you can choose a life of one damn thing after another.  Refuse the first, you'll get the second.

However gentle your intentions may be, with Aries rising, you often frighten people!  Your "mask" is direct, brusque, impulsively honest.  Only people with solid ego-structures get along easily with you -- unless you intentionally tone yourself down.  That's something you may learn to do in social or business situations, but it's no fun and doesn't contribute directly to your happiness or sanity.

What helps you feel centered is basically "going for it" -- taking chances, putting yourself on the line.  That can involve adventure, or some sporting activity, but just as readily it can be confronting a friend with a real disagreement -- and those who are truly, naturally, your friends will enjoy that process rather than view it as a threat to your relationship.  However we look at it, one key notion emerges: for you to feel good, you need to feel the "edge" every now and then.

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 Leo with the Moon in Sagittarius and Aries 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 Performer", or "The Aristocrat", or "The Clown". Those are just different ways of saying you have the Sun in Leo. [ Top ]

We can say you have the soul of "The Gypsy", or "The Scholar", or "The Philosopher"... your Moon lies in Sagittarius, in other words.

We can add that you wear the mask of "The Warrior", or "The Survivor", or "The Daredevil". Those images capture the spirit of your Ascendant, which is Aries.

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 birth chart through association with the Sun, Moon, or Ascendant. These three are power brokers, and any linkage with them boosts a planet's influence.

Your own birth chart is complicated by the fact that, at your birth, Pluto was aligned with the Sun... or "conjunct" the Sun, to use the proper astrological term. Thus, the energy and spirit of that planet is fused with your solar identity. In a sense, you are an "incarnation" of Pluto."

What can that mean? Start by understanding the significance of the planet.

"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 birth chart 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 Fifth House... the most self-expressive part of the birth chart. Spirit has blessed you with creative passion. Find your art and cultivate it. But to create a sense of meaning in your life, that art must serve a purpose beyond entertainment. It must shake people into consciousness, shock them into wrestling with parts of their lives that aren't clean and clear. You have a mission in life, and it involves telling us truths we'd prefer to avoid.

While a fairly large number of people have Pluto in that sign and house, the fact that it lies conjunct your Sun gives it special emphasis. By pushing the strengths it suggests toward their limits, you charge your solar vitality, approach your destiny, and set the stage for full filling your spiritual purpose.

Sometimes a planet gains prominence in a birth chart simply by sharing a House with the Sun. That's the case with you. Mercury is bathing in solar light, occupying the Fifth House along with our central star.

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 chittering in Virgo. This combination links your mental functions with the hungry, analytical logic of the Virgin -- a formidable marriage. Your intelligence scans your environment with the speed of a NASA computer, searching for flaws, hunting out inconsistencies. Spiritually you are learning a lot about the imperfections woven into everything we do -- and some hard lessons about the costs of mentioning them.

With the traditional "Messenger of the Gods" occupying your Fifth House, your intelligence is naturally, colorfully, self-expressive. You enjoy repartee with quick-witted raconteurs, whether they're sitting across the table from you or floating off the printed page. Make sure you don't miss the bliss of pushing your intelligence towards its limits, or else all that energy will dissipate in a blither of vacuous words.

Your Fifth House is crowded. Also found here are Venus and Jupiter. [ Top ]

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 Leo. Thus, both your aesthetic sensitivity and your taste in partners is shaped by the dramatic, playful, self-expressive spirit of the Lion. In the realm of beauty, whether natural or wrought by human hands, you have a taste for the monumental, for the lofty goal fully realized. The same goes for friends and sexual partners -- you appreciate people who express themselves with magnanimity and style, people who are unafraid of their own power -- and unafraid of yours too.

With Venus in the Fifth House, there's an aura of convivial refinement that radiates from you in any social situation. You have the delightful capacity of helping people feel good about themselves, and therefore more spontaneous, natural, and forthcoming. It's deeply important that you find some kind of avenue for the expression of your considerable aesthetic sensibilities -- dancing, playing the flute, painting.

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 Virgo. 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 Craftsperson. Basically, what that means is doing something you're good at! For you, a sense of competence and skill is a spirit-healer... especially if that competence and skill helps someone else out of a jam.

In your chart, the "King of the Gods" reigns in the Fifth House -- traditionally the "House of Children." Your nature is playful and self-expressive, and the "inner child" is vibrant inside you. Creativity comes naturally... but, spiritually, you are learning how to use it correctly. Sincerity and risk are the keys; without them, you'll produce a technicolor personality and lots of applause, but little else. The archetype that's trying to break through you is not simply the Bard... it's the Wise Bard.

Your birth chart displays another area of heightened activity: the Sixth House. The reason for that is simple -- there's a lot of planetary activity. With Mars and Neptune 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.

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.

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 is steaming in the searching, questioning, restless field of energy we call Virgo. The Warrior inside you is bent on one target: seeking out flaws, weaknesses, errors. Like a magnetic compass, you unerringly home in on the fracture zones in any monolith -- be it an argument, an idea, a strategy... or a person. Spiritually you're learning two lessons here. One is how to be scrupulously honest in naming problems. The other, which makes the first endurable, is forgiveness.

With the War-God occupying your Sixth House, a piece of your destiny-pattern is that you draw to yourself kinds of work that are inherently competitive, even if you yourself aren't really that way. (In all your responsibilities, the basic paradigm is that there are three dogs and only two bones.) Spiritually, you are learning a lot about assertiveness and personal power in the work environment -- and that may mean in your job, or in whatever nonprofessional responsibilities life thrusts upon you. [ Top ]

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 Libra. Thus, to trigger higher states of consciousness in yourself and to stimulate your psychic development, you may choose to follow the Path of the Lover... that is consciously, intentionally to seek life partners who'll hold the mirror of the soul before you. Without the purifying, soul-bleaching effects of dialog with these soul mates, you tend to drift away from Spirit, losing yourself in the mazes of daily life. But remember: finding them usually isn't the challenge. The challenge lies in hanging in there with them, listening and learning, even when you don't like what's reflected in the "soul mirror."

Neptune, planet of transcendence, occupies the Sixth House of your birth chart, where mystical dimensions become linked to your natural skills and instincts for service. You grow spiritually through helping others -- and not because God hands out brownie points, but rather because service, more than any other spiritual discipline, teaches us humility and compassion. One more piece of the puzzle: You have a special instinct for working directly with other people's unconscious minds. This may mean you were born to help others unravel their dreams, or that you should work with guided imagery, or with hypnosis.

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.

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 private terrain of Cancer 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 Crab's shadow side: a killing fear of risk and a tendency to hide safely behind the mask of the caregiver. Will yourself toward enthusiasm for life! Take the risk of expressing your own needs! All this is especially pertinent in regard to Saturn's House in your birth chart. Which House was that?

The Third! The arena of life where we speak and listen, read and write. With Saturn here, you need to take an orderly, long-term attitude toward building your communication skills. Your mind doesn't work quickly, but it works with depth and precision. Trust it! And push it towards the limits of logic and concentration. As you approach your goal here, increasingly people will recognize an innate authority in your tone... unless you've bamboozled yourself out of your birthright by mistaking your natural deliberation for mental inadequacy.

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 Gemini, the process of individuation for you is tied up with the Path of the Storyteller. That is to say, you strengthen and clarify your own Uranian identity through bombarding your senses with mind-stretching new information -- and without it you're likely to clog up your head with cunning rationalizations and word-games. Consciously chosen forays into the world of wonder 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. Those forays can be educational or experiential, but the important point is that they sate your appetite for the unexpected.

House of Money -- that's the old name for the Second House, where your Uranus lies. The issues are broader; not just money, but the whole basis for your self-confidence and sense of personal legitimacy. Uranus is your Teacher here, and the lesson can be summarized this way: what other people think of you is none of your business. That which "normally" gives people a sense of being "okay" -- lots of social approval and a middle-of-the-road position -- fails you utterly. You hear a different drummer. Trust your ears!

Your Lunar Nodes, The soul's journey [ Top ]

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 birth chart, 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 Capricorn, the sign of the Great Father. Anyone looking into your eyes as you took your first breath would have observed an uncanny maturity, as though he or she were looking into the eyes of an octogenarian. For a thousand years you've found yourself again and again in positions of authority and responsibility, often in the face of daunting circumstances. As a result, resourcefulness has arisen in you, as have toughness and what the British call "a stiff upper lip." Now, like a child who grew up in a terrible street war, you must learn new lessons: spontaneity, emotional self-expression, a willingness to feel.

That nascent ability to open the heart utterly to emotion is symbolized by your North Node of the Moon, which lies in Cancer -- the sign of the Mother. As we saw earlier, the North Node can be seen as the most significant point in the entire birth chart. Why? Because it represents your evolutionary future... the ultimate reason you're alive, in other words. How can you accomplish this Cancerian spiritual work? The "yoga" is easy to say, harder to do: you must overcome the hermit inside yourself, drop your attachment to your own self-sufficiency, and reveal yourself to someone! That is, you need to intentionally place yourself in situations which encourage emotional self-expression: stable relationships with people whom you respect, trust, and view as equals.

There's another piece to the puzzle: The Moon's South Node falls in the Tenth House of your chart. This implies that previous to this lifetime you were often a "pillar of your community." That is, you were a figure of authority and substance, often setting the tone for the cultural process around you. Trouble is, even though there's nothing inherently wrong with wielding power, you did get attached to it... not so much in the sense of blind, unscrupulous ambition as in a difficulty imagining yourself stripped of a meaningful, stabilizing social role.

In this lifetime, with your North Node of the Moon in the Fourth House, you must act to counterbalance some of that focus on your role in society... not so much because it's "wrong" as because you've already learned everything you can from it. The time has come for you to concentrate on your interior life, both psychologically and spiritually. And one of the most effective ways you can accomplish that is to establish a "nest" with a mate, perhaps with children. That path will ultimately reveal more to you this time around than having your face on the cover of Newsweek.

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. [ Top ]