The Sky Within

 

Planet	Sign	Position	House		House Cusps
Sun	Cancer	13°Ca47'	12th		01  07°Le07'
Moon	Libra	16°Li42'	03rd		02  27°Le36'
Mercury	Leo	09°Le50'	01st		03  22°Vi40'
Venus	Leo	21°Le30'	01st		04  24°Li12'
Mars	Virgo	09°Vi18'	02nd		05  00°Sg54'
Jupiter	Libra	18°Li09'	03rd		06  06°Cp38'
Saturn	Cancer	26°Ca30'	12th		07  07°Aq07'
Uranus	Gemini	19°Ge09'	11th		08  27°Aq36'
Neptune	Libra	05°Li56'	03rd		09  22°Pi40'
Pluto	Leo	10°Le35'	01st		10  24°Ar12'
Midheaven	Aries	24°Ar12'	10th		11  00°Ge54'
Ascendant	Leo	07°Le07'	01st		12  06°Ca38'

  

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 Cancer.

Opening the inner eye, mapping the topography of consciousness, learning to express compassion -- these are Cancer's evolutionary aims.  To assist in that work, Cosmic Intelligence has cranked up the volume on the Crab's ability to feel.  No other sign is so sensitive -- nor so vulnerable.  A certain amount of self-defense is appropriate here; after all, this world isn't exactly the Garden of Eden.  Trouble is, legitimate self-defense can degenerate into shyness or a fear of making changes.  You really do care about the hurts that other beings suffer.  That's good news.  You also have an instinctive ability to soothe those hurts, homing in on the source of the pain.  More good news.  The bad news is that you could choose to remain forever protected within the safe (and invisible!) role of the Healer, the Counselor, or the Wise One.

With the Sun in Cancer, you feed your solar vitality by finding a role in the world in which you address the hurt in the lives of other beings.  You become a nurturer or a healer of some sort.

You also need to make sure that you have enough real intimacy and quiet, private time to "nurture the nurturer" -- yourself, in other words.

Those methods strengthen your sense of identity.  They trigger higher states of awareness in you.  If you don't express your soothing wound-binding instincts, all the glories of the world would leave you feeling like an imposter in your own life.  And without quiet time and naked intimate honesty, you'll quickly burn out on playing the role of everyone's psychotherapist.

Like the crab, you're a vulnerable creature who's evolved a shell.  That's fine and necessary.  But again like the crab, you must eventually shed your shell and grow a larger, more inclusive one, or you'll be awfully cramped.

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

Slipping the bonds of ego, letting consciousness expand beyond the narrow framework of personality -- that's the terrain of the Twelfth House.  A planet here stands between you and higher states of consciousness, not as an obstacle but as a bridge.  For that reason, it's helpful to view such a planet as your "Guru" or "Master Teacher."

The very existence of a planet in this part of your chart tells us that in this lifetime you're ready for a quantum leap in awareness.  But to accomplish that, you must practice a very specific "yoga."  What yoga?  That depends on the planets involved.

Before we identify that spiritual discipline, there's one more point -- your planetary "guru" is rather insistent.  If you avoid the methods the Teacher suggests, your poor ego will take some hard knocks.  To the old astrologers, this was the "House of Troubles."  That's a fair description of what's in store for us if we choose to maintain our usual attachments, ignoring the call of the inner worlds.

With the Sun in the Twelfth House, you're learning about nonattachment.  That doesn't necessarily mean poverty, celibacy, and a begging bowl -- those can be attachments too!  Nonattachment means being willing to let go of anything, anytime.  It means recognizing that you're not simply a personality, you're a consciousness, something deeper than all your postures or possessions.  It means putting your inner life on the front burner all the time.  Nonattachment, then, is an inner attitude, not an outward condition.

When you fail to maintain that lofty state, "bad luck" will intervene: the thing you're stuck on will be taken from you.  That's why, centuries ago, astrologers named this sector of the birthchart the House of Troubles.  What they forgot to add is that the troubles are optional.

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 Libra.

Perfect equilibrium.  That's the spirit of the Scales.  When Libra realizes its evolutionary aim, the nervous system is as still as a dark pool on a windless summer evening.  Outwardly, Libran energy often looks as though it's already there: it seems graceful and balanced, even unflappable.  Inwardly, it's another story: the Libran part of you is tuned as tight as the high string on a violin.  Spirit gave you some advice back before you were born: don't pluck it.  And don't let anyone else pluck it either.

Inevitably, with your terrific sensitivity, you'll get rattled from time to time.  What can you do about it?  Watch a ballet, or any other beautiful thing.  The outer harmony will internalize; you'll sigh, releasing tension.  That's the Libran evolutionary strategy in a nutshell: flood your senses with perceptions of beauty.  It will soothe you, lifting you closer to the unbreakable serenity which is the true goal of this sign of the zodiac.

With your Moon in Libra, you have the heart of an artist.  You can get a tear in your eye watching a beautiful sunset.  You feed your spirit whenever you experience harmony -- among colors, sounds, shapes, words.  But also between people.  Instinctively you reach out to others, attempt to create linkages and understandings.  You have the soul of a diplomat or a counselor.   Empathy -- the ability to stand in the other person's shoes -- is one of your greatest strengths.  But be careful of your talent for creating the illusion of harmony when none is really there.  A pitfall for you, in a word, is hypocrisy... the kind that comes, not from malice, but from the urge not to give offense.  Some of your hardest emotional lessons revolve around realizing that gentleness and understanding, when overdone, can lead to the most brutal kind of conflict: the kind that's been put off too long.

Still, to be comfortable you need to surround yourself with people who are sensitive to the loveliness and grace of life, and with whom you can celebrate it.

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

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 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, Leo was lifting over the eastern horizon of New Haven,Connecticu. Let's begin our analysis by considering the meaning and spiritual message of the sign of "The Performer".

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We can say you are "The Healer", or "The Wise One", or "The Invisible One". Those are just different ways of saying you have the Sun in Cancer.

We can say you have the soul of "The Artist", or "The Diplomat", or "The Lover"... your Moon lies in Libra, in other words.

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

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

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

We find exactly that situation in your case. Mercury lies in your First House, a part of the chart which is really just an extension of the Ascendant. Thus, Mercury adds yet another tone to your "mask," modifying and deepening some of what we've already seen.

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 roaring in Leo. That combination links your mental functions to the self-expressive, dramatic logic of the Lion. Your intelligence is hungry for an audience and knows how to attract attention. Spiritually you are learning about the importance of being heard -- and about the trap of sacrificing honest but threatening content for the sake of mere showmanship.

With the traditional "Messenger of the Gods" occupying your First House, people's first impression of you is that you're a quick-witted person, radiating alertness and mental acuity. From an evolutionary perspective, you center yourself most effectively when you avoid boredom and mental stagnation as though they were dreadful viruses.

There's even more going on in this part of your birthchart. Also found here are Venus and Pluto.

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 First House, you are blessed with a kind of animal magnetism. People seem instantly to trust you, to feel as though there's rapport between you. You are instinctively courteous -- that is, you mold your behavior in such a way that others are put at ease. From an evolutionary perspective, you center yourself most effectively when you identify yourself as a peacemaker or an artist.

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

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

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

At the moment of your birth, Pluto stood in the First House just below the eastern horizon--about to "dawn." In exactly the same way, you "dawn" on people in a Plutonian way: intensely. It's pivotally important that you find some larger framework of purpose for your life... or else all that intensity with which you were born will dissipate itself first in pointless drama, then in bitterness.

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

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

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 Libra. 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 Harmony. First, relax. Then let your eyes rest on something lovely -- a painting, a sunset, a sloop reaching across the whitecapped bay. Then go find a dear, caring friend, and enjoy the solace of refined companionship.

In your chart, the "King of the Gods" reigns in the Third House -- traditionally the "House of Communication." You are a natural teacher, able to convey not only information to people, but also enthusiasm for that information. Given time and an audience, you're a spellbinding storyteller. Spiritually, you are learning to gain confidence in the fact that you have a very specific kind of healing in your voice: you can give people hope, and doing that is a big piece of your destiny.

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

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 birthchart. Which House was that?

The Twelfth! The arena of life where we experience self-transcendence... either voluntarily in the form of inner disciplines or involuntarily in the form of personal catastrophes that rob us of ego-support. With Saturn here, you've reached a stage in the spiritual journey that calls for total commitment, profound vows, and a willingness to sacrifice all other concerns. Fasting may be appropriate for you. Or vows of celibacy or simplicity. It's as though Spirit appears at the foot of your bed and says, "All... or nothing."

A planet can gain authority by sharing a House with the Moon. We find that situation in your chart. Neptune is bathing in moonlight, occupying the Third House along with Luna.

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 soulmates, 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 Third House of your birthchart, where its mystical feelings are linked to questions of communication and perception. You have the mind -- and voice -- of a poet. That is, you naturally think and speak in terms of symbols and innuendo. This is a strength, but our culture doesn't value it much. Be careful you don't let society trick you into thinking there's something wrong with your mind! You're a visionary, and you grow spiritually when you take steps to put that vision into a form that can be shared.

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.

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 Friends -- that's the old name for the Eleventh House, where your Uranus lies. The issues are broader; not just friends, but also the framework of goals and priorities by which you orient your life. Uranus is your Teacher here and the lessons can be summarized this way: the older you get, the stranger you get! You are on a diverging course from the social mainstream, and you come into increasing conflict with the "tyranny of the normal" as you mature. Trust your path! You have a unique gift for the human family, but you're not ready to offer it until you reach the second half of your life.

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 Second House, you prove yourself to yourself through the rituals of adventure and assertiveness. You need to develop confidence in the legitimacy and prowess of the Warrior within you. Maybe you need a karate class. Maybe you need to start your own business. Maybe it's time to hike across Crete -- or to tell a domineering friend to back off.

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 Sagittarius, the sign of the Explorer. Anyone looking into your eyes as you took your first breath would have observed the results of lifetimes spent stretching beyond established frontiers: robustness, enthusiasm, expansiveness. In previous incarnations, you've had experiences in which you were sustained by little more than radical faith -- an absolute, unquestioning devotion to a dream or principle. Now, like a recovering Fundamentalist, you must learn a new lesson: how to let go of "clarity" and certainty, and see the astounding, fertile confusion that lies before your eyes.

That nascent ability to tolerate not knowing is symbolized by your North Node of the Moon, which lies in Gemini -- the sign of the Witness. As we saw earlier, the North Node can be seen as the most significant point in the entire birthchart. Why? Because it represents your evolutionary future... the ultimate reason you're alive, in other words. How can you accomplish this Geminian spiritual work? The "yoga" is easy to say, harder to do: you must overcome your tendency to jump to grand philosophical cosmologies, and consciously seek the unintegrated details and loose ends that are always the clues to yet deeper levels of understanding.

There's another piece to the puzzle: The Moon's South Node falls in the Fifth House of your chart. This implies that previous to this lifetime you lived out the notion that "the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." There has developed in your spirit a spontaneous immediacy... creative and joyful, but vulnerable to the life-derailing effects of whimsy and self-indulgence.

In this lifetime, with your North Node of the Moon in the Eleventh House, you must act to counterbalance those whimsical, self-indulgent tendencies... not so much because they're "bad" as because you've already learned everything you can from them. The time has come for you to take authority over the shape of your own life, establishing your own goals and priorities, determining in advance what kind of elderly person you'll become. Finish what you start!

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.