THE SKY WITHIN
Report for Stacey Kreller
An Interpretation of Your Birth Chart
by
Steven Forrest
The Sky Within
Stacey Kreller
Apr 06, 1978
03:36:00 AM PST +08:00
Hope,CAN
121W26'00" 49N23'00"
Planet Sign Position House House Cusps
Sun Aries 16°Ar19' 03rd 01 00°Aq00'
Moon Aries 02°Ar06' 03rd 02 00°Pi00'
Mercury Aries 24°Ar52' R 03rd 03 00°Ar00'
Venus Taurus 04°Ta26' 04th 04 00°Ta00'
Mars Cancer 28°Ca34' 07th 05 00°Ge00'
Jupiter Gemini 29°Ge15' 06th 06 00°Ca00'
Saturn Leo 23°Le58' R 07th 07 00°Le00'
Uranus Scorpio 15°Sc32' R 10th 08 00°Vi00'
Neptune Sagittarius 18°Sg15' R 11th 09 00°Li00'
Pluto Libra 15°Li18' R 09th 10 00°Sc00'
Midheaven Sagittarius 08°Sg42' 11 00°Sg00'
Ascendant Aquarius 14°Aq12' 12 00°Cp00'
Planets within orb of 1.5 degrees of the following
house cusp are displayed and interpreted as being in
that house, except the Ascendant which uses 3 degrees.
Orb Conjunctions with Sun or Moon are 8 degrees.
All orbs are set according to Steven Forrest's methods.
© Copyright 1985-2003 Matrix Software, Inc.
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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 Aries.
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.
With the Sun in Aries, there's a hidden spiritual agenda behind the dramatic tone of your life: you're getting braver. Every month, every year, you attract a set of challenges. As you've probably noticed, you're a magnet for stress. Sounds terrible, right? Don't worry: you've have a choice. There are two kinds of stress: the kind we hate and the kind we like. The kind we like we generally call by other names, like exhilaration and adventure... which, for you, is the path of destiny.
Accept it. Live the gambler's life. Risk the lows for the sake of the highs. Do it, or all that fire inside you will turn sour, emerging as tension, argumentativeness, and pointless trouble.
We can take our analysis of your natal Sun a step further. When you were born, that solar light illuminated the Third 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.
Learning to see what's before your eyes -- that's Third House territory. Traditionally, this is the House of Communication. Perception might be a better word. The words on this page are "communicating" with you. But so does the blueness of the sky and the warmth of a friend's touch. Through your perceptions, the universe floods you with a continuous storm of raw information. Trouble is, we tend to miss most of it. How? By filtering it through the thick mesh of our preconceived notions and pet theories, often symbolized astrologically by whatever planets lie in this part of the birthchart.
The evolutionary question you're facing in this House is simple... to say. Can you keep a radically open mind? Can you really see what is before your eyes? Can you bleach your senses as clean as buffalo bones in the desert?
Spirit has given you intelligence and a capacity to communicate. It's given you curiosity. The discipline here is talking -- and listening. Experiencing -- and digesting. Understanding -- and endlessly questioning your understanding.
With your Sun in the Third House, you're bright and communicative, generally curious about the world around you. You've probably been given the gift of gab. You're a natural teacher, too, born to explain things. From an evolutionary perspective, everything depends upon keeping yourself... confused! That is to say, keeping yourself in a state in which what you've allowed yourself to experience is a few steps ahead of what you've figured out.
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 Aries.
As we saw earlier, Aries is the Warrior. Superficially, it represents ferocity, the survival instinct, and will-power. More deeply, it symbolizes a set of evolutionary steps leading toward courage.
With your Moon in Aries, your heart is learning some hard lessons in courage. Like everyone else, you have feelings, needs, desires. Satisfying them isn't so easy. Circumstances crystallize around you in which, unless you find the "Spiritual Warrior" inside yourself, you'll go hungry. Sometimes that means recognizing that hurting someone with the straight truth is far kinder than being "gentle" or "self-sacrificing."
To feel comfortable, you require drama in your life. You need to feel the "edge" sometimes. You may get it from sailing in a hard wind. You may get it from riding a bicycle a little too fast. You may discover it in a steamy, intense, confrontive interaction with someone you love.
If you don't feed your Arian Moon the fiery experiences it needs, you tend to get temperamental, bossy, and needlessly competitive. But that's not your true nature -- just an "occupational hazard" that goes along with this volatile lunar position.
Going farther, we see that your Moon lies in the Third house of your chart.
As we saw earlier, the Third House represents the field of experience in which you are challenged to keep your mind and senses wide open, taking in the raw information of the world, and then communicating your impressions of that information as clearly as possible.
With the Moon in the Third House, all your perceptions are filtered through the lens of your subjectivity. The question isn't "What's out there?" It's "How do I feel about what's out there?" That makes for an imaginative, uniquely personal set of views and opinions, but you'd make a better poet than scientist. At your best, you're a wonderful teacher and storyteller, gently bringing people along on your mental journey, nurturing their understanding. At your worst, be careful of putting so much emotional intensity into what you're saying that people get confused, shut down, and miss the logic of your point.
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, Aquarius was lifting over the eastern horizon of Hope,CAN. Let's begin our analysis by considering the meaning and spiritual message of the sign of "The Genius".
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 Aquarius rising, you radiate independence and individuality. From the moment they meet you, it's clear to people that you intend to be yourself. You may appreciate it if they accept you, but you won't become a dancing monkey to win their approval. That, at least, is how you look when you're healthy. There's another side to the coin. If you succumb to social pressure and take on more conventionality than is natural to you, then your style will shift: instead of a delightful uniqueness, even zaniness, we'll see an aloofness, as though you're holding something back. And of course you are, at least in that scenario -- you're holding back yourself.
To feel centered and clear about who you are, you need to feed yourself a set of experiences that lie outside the social mainstream. Basically, a lot of the things that are good for you look rather strange to average people.
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 Aries with the Moon in Aries and Aquarius 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 Warrior", or "The Survivor", or "The Daredevil". Those are just different ways of saying you have the Sun in Aries.
We can say you have the soul of "The Warrior", or "The Survivor", or "The Daredevil"... your Moon lies in Aries, in other words.
We can add that you wear the mask of "The Genius", or "The Truth-Sayer", or "The Exile". Those images capture the spirit of your Ascendant, which is Aquarius.
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.
Sometimes a planet gains prominence in a birthchart simply by sharing a House with the Sun. That's the case with you. Mercury is bathing in solar light, occupying the Third 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 percolating in Aries. That combination links your mental functions with the energetic logic of the Warrior archetype. The result is that your mind is sharp, penetrating... and combative. Instinctively you think in terms of pros and cons, letting them do battle with each other. Spiritually you are learning a lot about uncompromising honesty... and about its costs.
With the traditional "Messenger of the Gods" occupying your Third House, you are a natural explainer. With little effort, you can become a remarkably effectively writer too. Be careful you don't intimidate others with your quick mind. If you do, they'll keep mum and you'll miss the insights they potentially offer.
Your birthchart displays another area of heightened activity: the Seventh House. The reason for that is simple -- there's a lot of planetary activity. With Mars and Saturn 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.
One thing about love -- there's no way to learn much about it without some help! The Seventh House, traditionally the House of Marriage, is the part of your birthchart where you encounter the people who'll provide your deepest insights into intimacy. But that's not a code word for sex! For that reason, "Marriage" is a misleading title for this House. You can have intimacy without erotic or romantic feelings.
There are two parts to understanding the Seventh House. The first is that whatever energies you have in this part of your birthchart represent lessons you're learning about empathy, trust, and commitment. The second is that those same planetary energies describe the people who'll provide the lessons. They may be mates or lovers. They may be best friends. They may be colleagues or business associates. They may even be "worthy opponents."
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 sleeping in Cancer. Your assertiveness is directed inward, toward the heart. Your internal life is vivid, full of heroic fantasy. Spiritually you are learning many lessons about the kind of courage it takes to be vulnerable -- to those you love and, even more, to your own personal history. The surest way to evoke the Warrior's rage in you is to attack your home, your family, or the sanctity of your own privacy.
With the War-God occupying your "House of Marriage," emotional closeness for you depends upon an exchange of passion and fire. Rise to that challenge, or your personal life will degenerate into a pattern of bickering and petty vengeance. Your natural "soulmates" are strong people, often somewhat opinionated. Like it or not, they demand Mars qualities in you such as assertiveness, pluck, and a willingness to call a spade a spade.
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 colorful terrain of Leo 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 Lion's shadow side: fear of rejection. If people applaud your false self, what good is that? Cultivate your creativity and don't be afraid of artful embellishment, but will yourself toward honesty too! And support that journey in practical, Saturnian terms by fortifying your creative talents -- especially in areas pertinent to Saturn's House in your birthchart. Which House was that?
The Seventh! The arena of life where we encounter our soulmates -- lovers, deep friends, and partners -- and figure out what to do with them! With Saturn here, you face some profound lessons in the intimacy department. To prepare for them, focus first on self-sufficiency, both materially and emotionally. Then seek out partners with Saturnian qualities: responsibility, sobriety, a willingness to make -- and keep -- deep vows.
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.
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 Sagittarius. Thus, to trigger higher states of consciousness in yourself and to stimulate your psychic development, you may choose to follow the Path of the Gypsy... that is consciously, intentionally to expand awareness, perhaps through pilgrimage to holy places, certainly through a study of metaphysical philosophy. Without exposure to the purifying, soul-bleaching effects of that kind of mind-stretching activity, you tend to drift away from Spirit, losing yourself in the mazes of daily life.
Neptune, planet of transcendence, occupies the Eleventh House of your birthchart, where its mystical feelings are linked to the priorities which increasingly shape and dominate your life as you mature. If you get six out of every ten existential questions right, by the time you're old you'll be living a contemplative life, full of the presence of God. Inevitably, down that road we would see you surrounded by people who draw inspiration from you. The darker path, optional unless you fail to explore the spiritual dimensions of your life now, is that by the end of life you'll be totally dedicated to keeping yourself anesthetized.
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 Taurus. Thus, both your aesthetic sensitivity and your taste in partners is shaped by the earthy, physical spirit of the Bull. In the realm of beauty, whether natural or wrought by human hands, you have a taste for the colors and textures of the countryside, sensual but never jolting. The same goes for friends and sexual partners -- you appreciate unpretentious people, the kind who are comfortable perched on a boulder with the wind ruffling their hair... the kind who aren't upset at the thought of sitting silently for half an hour.
With Venus in the Fourth House, you restore your psychic equilibrium by retreating into quiet havens--home, garden, your bedroom, a shady bend in the brook. There's a wonderful tenderness about your spirit, but you may have to make an effort to reveal it. Deep down, your self-image is organized around the twin archetypes of the Artist and the Romantic.
"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 Libra. Thus the shadow material you are called upon to face has to do with the dark side of the Lover archetype: shallowness. In what part of your life or personal history have you chosen to preserve the appearance of peace and understanding at the expense of truth? (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 Ninth House... a part of the natal chart concerned with expansive adventures, and with philosophy. It is essential that you make contact, however brief or long term, with "foreign" cultures. Through the act of committing yourself to such a quest, a transformation occurs in your being -- and the capacity to fulfill your transpersonal mission arises. What is that mission? To forcefully encourage people to consider their lives from the viewpoint of meaning and purpose. This is the Path of the Preacher; follow it, but be wary of the pitfalls of self-righteousness and certainty.
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 Sixth House -- traditionally the "House of Servants." Jupiter expands things, and here it's expanding your work and responsibilities. That's not as bad as it sounds! If you're unhappy with your job or your duties, ask yourself this: "How have I been underestimating myself?" Spiritually, you are learning to have enough faith in yourself, enough self-worth, to go out and find the kinds of work that fill you with a sense of meaningfulness, prosperity, and joy.
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 Scorpio, the process of individuation for you is tied up with the Path of the Magician. That is to say, you strengthen and clarify your own Uranian identity through exploring the realm of the hidden, the mysterious, and the taboo -- and without that kind of input you're likely to foul up your life with long periods of prosaic boredom, punctuated with explosions of "inappropriate" activity. Consciously chosen forays into secret realms such as psychotherapy or "occult" spiritual practices, 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.
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 Aries, the sign of the Warrior. Anyone looking into your eyes as you took your first breath would have observed the results of lifetimes spent learning the ways of courage: alertness, presence, a certain edginess. You've grown strong, tempered by the stress of countless battles, but now, like a Viet Nam vet who throws a knife through the wall when a car backfires down the street, you must learn a new lesson: the war is over.
That nascent ability to release the accumulated tensions and defenses appropriate to battle is symbolized by your North Node of the Moon, which lies in Libra -- the sign of the Balance. As we saw earlier, the North Node can be viewed as the most important point in the birthchart. Why? Because it represents your evolutionary future ... the ultimate reason you're alive, in other words. How can you accomplish this Libran spiritual work? The "yoga" is easy to say, harder to do: you must temper some of your tough independence, consciously letting go of your winner/loser instincts and your hunter/prey reflexes. To attune yourself to this gentle Libran energy, it helps to immerse yourself in the enjoyment of art and nature's beauty, and also to put yourself in positions in which you must interact trustingly with friends and partners.
There's another piece to the puzzle: The Moon's South Node falls in the Third House of your chart. This implies that previous to this lifetime you developed an extremely quick wit and a capacity to think on your feet -- "street sense," in other words. Trouble is, in your concern with assessing changing circumstances, adapting to them, and putting the right verbal "spin" on your self-justifications, you lost a sense of the larger picture.
In this lifetime, with your North Node of the Moon in the Ninth House, you must act to counterbalance some of that old cunning... not so much because cunning is "wrong," but because you've already learned everything you can from it. The time has come for you to concentrate on larger questions, trying to establish some ultimate framework of meaning for your life. In that effort, a terrific assistance comes to you whenever you leave familiar territory and expose yourself to the mind-expanding, reality-shattering effects of culture shock -- travel, in other words.
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.
Report for Stacey Kreller
An Interpretation of Your Birth Chart
by
Steven Forrest
The Sky Within
Stacey Kreller
Apr 06, 1978
03:36:00 AM PST +08:00
Hope,CAN
121W26'00" 49N23'00"
Planet Sign Position House House Cusps
Sun Aries 16°Ar19' 03rd 01 00°Aq00'
Moon Aries 02°Ar06' 03rd 02 00°Pi00'
Mercury Aries 24°Ar52' R 03rd 03 00°Ar00'
Venus Taurus 04°Ta26' 04th 04 00°Ta00'
Mars Cancer 28°Ca34' 07th 05 00°Ge00'
Jupiter Gemini 29°Ge15' 06th 06 00°Ca00'
Saturn Leo 23°Le58' R 07th 07 00°Le00'
Uranus Scorpio 15°Sc32' R 10th 08 00°Vi00'
Neptune Sagittarius 18°Sg15' R 11th 09 00°Li00'
Pluto Libra 15°Li18' R 09th 10 00°Sc00'
Midheaven Sagittarius 08°Sg42' 11 00°Sg00'
Ascendant Aquarius 14°Aq12' 12 00°Cp00'
Planets within orb of 1.5 degrees of the following
house cusp are displayed and interpreted as being in
that house, except the Ascendant which uses 3 degrees.
Orb Conjunctions with Sun or Moon are 8 degrees.
All orbs are set according to Steven Forrest's methods.
© Copyright 1985-2003 Matrix Software, Inc.
126 S. Michigan Ave., Big Rapids, MI 49307 231-527-2603
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 Aries.
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.
With the Sun in Aries, there's a hidden spiritual agenda behind the dramatic tone of your life: you're getting braver. Every month, every year, you attract a set of challenges. As you've probably noticed, you're a magnet for stress. Sounds terrible, right? Don't worry: you've have a choice. There are two kinds of stress: the kind we hate and the kind we like. The kind we like we generally call by other names, like exhilaration and adventure... which, for you, is the path of destiny.
Accept it. Live the gambler's life. Risk the lows for the sake of the highs. Do it, or all that fire inside you will turn sour, emerging as tension, argumentativeness, and pointless trouble.
We can take our analysis of your natal Sun a step further. When you were born, that solar light illuminated the Third 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.
Learning to see what's before your eyes -- that's Third House territory. Traditionally, this is the House of Communication. Perception might be a better word. The words on this page are "communicating" with you. But so does the blueness of the sky and the warmth of a friend's touch. Through your perceptions, the universe floods you with a continuous storm of raw information. Trouble is, we tend to miss most of it. How? By filtering it through the thick mesh of our preconceived notions and pet theories, often symbolized astrologically by whatever planets lie in this part of the birthchart.
The evolutionary question you're facing in this House is simple... to say. Can you keep a radically open mind? Can you really see what is before your eyes? Can you bleach your senses as clean as buffalo bones in the desert?
Spirit has given you intelligence and a capacity to communicate. It's given you curiosity. The discipline here is talking -- and listening. Experiencing -- and digesting. Understanding -- and endlessly questioning your understanding.
With your Sun in the Third House, you're bright and communicative, generally curious about the world around you. You've probably been given the gift of gab. You're a natural teacher, too, born to explain things. From an evolutionary perspective, everything depends upon keeping yourself... confused! That is to say, keeping yourself in a state in which what you've allowed yourself to experience is a few steps ahead of what you've figured out.
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 Aries.
As we saw earlier, Aries is the Warrior. Superficially, it represents ferocity, the survival instinct, and will-power. More deeply, it symbolizes a set of evolutionary steps leading toward courage.
With your Moon in Aries, your heart is learning some hard lessons in courage. Like everyone else, you have feelings, needs, desires. Satisfying them isn't so easy. Circumstances crystallize around you in which, unless you find the "Spiritual Warrior" inside yourself, you'll go hungry. Sometimes that means recognizing that hurting someone with the straight truth is far kinder than being "gentle" or "self-sacrificing."
To feel comfortable, you require drama in your life. You need to feel the "edge" sometimes. You may get it from sailing in a hard wind. You may get it from riding a bicycle a little too fast. You may discover it in a steamy, intense, confrontive interaction with someone you love.
If you don't feed your Arian Moon the fiery experiences it needs, you tend to get temperamental, bossy, and needlessly competitive. But that's not your true nature -- just an "occupational hazard" that goes along with this volatile lunar position.
Going farther, we see that your Moon lies in the Third house of your chart.
As we saw earlier, the Third House represents the field of experience in which you are challenged to keep your mind and senses wide open, taking in the raw information of the world, and then communicating your impressions of that information as clearly as possible.
With the Moon in the Third House, all your perceptions are filtered through the lens of your subjectivity. The question isn't "What's out there?" It's "How do I feel about what's out there?" That makes for an imaginative, uniquely personal set of views and opinions, but you'd make a better poet than scientist. At your best, you're a wonderful teacher and storyteller, gently bringing people along on your mental journey, nurturing their understanding. At your worst, be careful of putting so much emotional intensity into what you're saying that people get confused, shut down, and miss the logic of your point.
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, Aquarius was lifting over the eastern horizon of Hope,CAN. Let's begin our analysis by considering the meaning and spiritual message of the sign of "The Genius".
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 Aquarius rising, you radiate independence and individuality. From the moment they meet you, it's clear to people that you intend to be yourself. You may appreciate it if they accept you, but you won't become a dancing monkey to win their approval. That, at least, is how you look when you're healthy. There's another side to the coin. If you succumb to social pressure and take on more conventionality than is natural to you, then your style will shift: instead of a delightful uniqueness, even zaniness, we'll see an aloofness, as though you're holding something back. And of course you are, at least in that scenario -- you're holding back yourself.
To feel centered and clear about who you are, you need to feed yourself a set of experiences that lie outside the social mainstream. Basically, a lot of the things that are good for you look rather strange to average people.
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 Aries with the Moon in Aries and Aquarius 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 Warrior", or "The Survivor", or "The Daredevil". Those are just different ways of saying you have the Sun in Aries.
We can say you have the soul of "The Warrior", or "The Survivor", or "The Daredevil"... your Moon lies in Aries, in other words.
We can add that you wear the mask of "The Genius", or "The Truth-Sayer", or "The Exile". Those images capture the spirit of your Ascendant, which is Aquarius.
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.
Sometimes a planet gains prominence in a birthchart simply by sharing a House with the Sun. That's the case with you. Mercury is bathing in solar light, occupying the Third 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 percolating in Aries. That combination links your mental functions with the energetic logic of the Warrior archetype. The result is that your mind is sharp, penetrating... and combative. Instinctively you think in terms of pros and cons, letting them do battle with each other. Spiritually you are learning a lot about uncompromising honesty... and about its costs.
With the traditional "Messenger of the Gods" occupying your Third House, you are a natural explainer. With little effort, you can become a remarkably effectively writer too. Be careful you don't intimidate others with your quick mind. If you do, they'll keep mum and you'll miss the insights they potentially offer.
Your birthchart displays another area of heightened activity: the Seventh House. The reason for that is simple -- there's a lot of planetary activity. With Mars and Saturn 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.
One thing about love -- there's no way to learn much about it without some help! The Seventh House, traditionally the House of Marriage, is the part of your birthchart where you encounter the people who'll provide your deepest insights into intimacy. But that's not a code word for sex! For that reason, "Marriage" is a misleading title for this House. You can have intimacy without erotic or romantic feelings.
There are two parts to understanding the Seventh House. The first is that whatever energies you have in this part of your birthchart represent lessons you're learning about empathy, trust, and commitment. The second is that those same planetary energies describe the people who'll provide the lessons. They may be mates or lovers. They may be best friends. They may be colleagues or business associates. They may even be "worthy opponents."
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 sleeping in Cancer. Your assertiveness is directed inward, toward the heart. Your internal life is vivid, full of heroic fantasy. Spiritually you are learning many lessons about the kind of courage it takes to be vulnerable -- to those you love and, even more, to your own personal history. The surest way to evoke the Warrior's rage in you is to attack your home, your family, or the sanctity of your own privacy.
With the War-God occupying your "House of Marriage," emotional closeness for you depends upon an exchange of passion and fire. Rise to that challenge, or your personal life will degenerate into a pattern of bickering and petty vengeance. Your natural "soulmates" are strong people, often somewhat opinionated. Like it or not, they demand Mars qualities in you such as assertiveness, pluck, and a willingness to call a spade a spade.
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 colorful terrain of Leo 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 Lion's shadow side: fear of rejection. If people applaud your false self, what good is that? Cultivate your creativity and don't be afraid of artful embellishment, but will yourself toward honesty too! And support that journey in practical, Saturnian terms by fortifying your creative talents -- especially in areas pertinent to Saturn's House in your birthchart. Which House was that?
The Seventh! The arena of life where we encounter our soulmates -- lovers, deep friends, and partners -- and figure out what to do with them! With Saturn here, you face some profound lessons in the intimacy department. To prepare for them, focus first on self-sufficiency, both materially and emotionally. Then seek out partners with Saturnian qualities: responsibility, sobriety, a willingness to make -- and keep -- deep vows.
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.
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 Sagittarius. Thus, to trigger higher states of consciousness in yourself and to stimulate your psychic development, you may choose to follow the Path of the Gypsy... that is consciously, intentionally to expand awareness, perhaps through pilgrimage to holy places, certainly through a study of metaphysical philosophy. Without exposure to the purifying, soul-bleaching effects of that kind of mind-stretching activity, you tend to drift away from Spirit, losing yourself in the mazes of daily life.
Neptune, planet of transcendence, occupies the Eleventh House of your birthchart, where its mystical feelings are linked to the priorities which increasingly shape and dominate your life as you mature. If you get six out of every ten existential questions right, by the time you're old you'll be living a contemplative life, full of the presence of God. Inevitably, down that road we would see you surrounded by people who draw inspiration from you. The darker path, optional unless you fail to explore the spiritual dimensions of your life now, is that by the end of life you'll be totally dedicated to keeping yourself anesthetized.
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 Taurus. Thus, both your aesthetic sensitivity and your taste in partners is shaped by the earthy, physical spirit of the Bull. In the realm of beauty, whether natural or wrought by human hands, you have a taste for the colors and textures of the countryside, sensual but never jolting. The same goes for friends and sexual partners -- you appreciate unpretentious people, the kind who are comfortable perched on a boulder with the wind ruffling their hair... the kind who aren't upset at the thought of sitting silently for half an hour.
With Venus in the Fourth House, you restore your psychic equilibrium by retreating into quiet havens--home, garden, your bedroom, a shady bend in the brook. There's a wonderful tenderness about your spirit, but you may have to make an effort to reveal it. Deep down, your self-image is organized around the twin archetypes of the Artist and the Romantic.
"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 Libra. Thus the shadow material you are called upon to face has to do with the dark side of the Lover archetype: shallowness. In what part of your life or personal history have you chosen to preserve the appearance of peace and understanding at the expense of truth? (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 Ninth House... a part of the natal chart concerned with expansive adventures, and with philosophy. It is essential that you make contact, however brief or long term, with "foreign" cultures. Through the act of committing yourself to such a quest, a transformation occurs in your being -- and the capacity to fulfill your transpersonal mission arises. What is that mission? To forcefully encourage people to consider their lives from the viewpoint of meaning and purpose. This is the Path of the Preacher; follow it, but be wary of the pitfalls of self-righteousness and certainty.
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 Sixth House -- traditionally the "House of Servants." Jupiter expands things, and here it's expanding your work and responsibilities. That's not as bad as it sounds! If you're unhappy with your job or your duties, ask yourself this: "How have I been underestimating myself?" Spiritually, you are learning to have enough faith in yourself, enough self-worth, to go out and find the kinds of work that fill you with a sense of meaningfulness, prosperity, and joy.
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 Scorpio, the process of individuation for you is tied up with the Path of the Magician. That is to say, you strengthen and clarify your own Uranian identity through exploring the realm of the hidden, the mysterious, and the taboo -- and without that kind of input you're likely to foul up your life with long periods of prosaic boredom, punctuated with explosions of "inappropriate" activity. Consciously chosen forays into secret realms such as psychotherapy or "occult" spiritual practices, 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.
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 Aries, the sign of the Warrior. Anyone looking into your eyes as you took your first breath would have observed the results of lifetimes spent learning the ways of courage: alertness, presence, a certain edginess. You've grown strong, tempered by the stress of countless battles, but now, like a Viet Nam vet who throws a knife through the wall when a car backfires down the street, you must learn a new lesson: the war is over.
That nascent ability to release the accumulated tensions and defenses appropriate to battle is symbolized by your North Node of the Moon, which lies in Libra -- the sign of the Balance. As we saw earlier, the North Node can be viewed as the most important point in the birthchart. Why? Because it represents your evolutionary future ... the ultimate reason you're alive, in other words. How can you accomplish this Libran spiritual work? The "yoga" is easy to say, harder to do: you must temper some of your tough independence, consciously letting go of your winner/loser instincts and your hunter/prey reflexes. To attune yourself to this gentle Libran energy, it helps to immerse yourself in the enjoyment of art and nature's beauty, and also to put yourself in positions in which you must interact trustingly with friends and partners.
There's another piece to the puzzle: The Moon's South Node falls in the Third House of your chart. This implies that previous to this lifetime you developed an extremely quick wit and a capacity to think on your feet -- "street sense," in other words. Trouble is, in your concern with assessing changing circumstances, adapting to them, and putting the right verbal "spin" on your self-justifications, you lost a sense of the larger picture.
In this lifetime, with your North Node of the Moon in the Ninth House, you must act to counterbalance some of that old cunning... not so much because cunning is "wrong," but because you've already learned everything you can from it. The time has come for you to concentrate on larger questions, trying to establish some ultimate framework of meaning for your life. In that effort, a terrific assistance comes to you whenever you leave familiar territory and expose yourself to the mind-expanding, reality-shattering effects of culture shock -- travel, in other words.
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.
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