The Sky Within

 

Planet	Sign	Position	House		House Cusps
Sun	Gemini	22°Ge53'	11th		01  17°Le34'
Moon	Sagittarius	20°Sg41'	05th		02  09°Vi15'
Mercury	Cancer	08°Ca47'	11th		03  05°Li57'
Venus	Cancer	25°Ca41'	12th		04  08°Sc31'
Mars	Leo	26°Le45'	01st		05  14°Sg26'
Jupiter	Libra	17°Li27' R	03rd		06  18°Cp19'
Saturn	Cancer	23°Ca49'	12th		07  17°Aq34'
Uranus	Gemini	17°Ge53'	11th		08  09°Pi15'
Neptune	Libra	05°Li51' R	03rd		09  05°Ar57'
Pluto	Leo	10°Le02'	12th		10  08°Ta31'
Midheaven	Taurus	08°Ta31'	10th		11  14°Ge26'
Ascendant	Leo	17°Le34'	01st		12  18°Ca19'

  

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 Gemini.

Wonder, amazement, astonishment, a sense of the miraculous -- those states of consciousness are the best of what Gemini symbolizes.  Although this is an Air sign and therefore rather mental in its orientation, the Twins represent something more primal than thinking.  They represent perception itself: all the raw, undigested stuff that pours in through our senses.  Thinking too much about that material removes us from its immediate, moment-to-moment reality.  We start to inhabit theories instead of the actual world of perception.  "Authority" creeps in.  So does "rightness."  And "mental clarity."  And the Twins wither. Nourish your Geminian energies with an endless diet of newness and change.  They're hungry for anything they've not seen or felt before.  Feed them!  Give them conversation, books, travel, education... anything but boredom.

With your Sun in Gemini, you're blessed with high levels of physical and mental energy.  Use them!  There's a quickness about you, an aliveness to the moment.  People probably imagine you to be younger than you really are.  Your deepest nature is driven by one force above all others: curiosity.  You're happiest when faced with surprises.  You thrive on the unexpected.  And you wither in the face of rigid predictability.

Spiritually, you're learning to keep your mind wide open, to view life as a crash course in amazement.  Feed your vitality with new relationships -- or old relationships with people who themselves are always new.  Stimulate yourself with books and travel.  When in doubt, look through a telescope!  Take a course in Etruscan history!  Do anything you've never done before.

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

What do you want out of life?  What are your priorities?  What kind of old person are you in the process of becoming?  Those are core Eleventh House issues.  The challenge here is to accomplish something many people talk about but few actually do--lead a life; that is, create your future according to your deepest interests and values.

The planetary forces focused in this segment of your birthchart are Teachers dedicated to helping you find the threads of your destiny.  They describe what you were born to become -- and warn you of how you look when you're off course.

"House of Friends" is the old name for this part of the birthchart, although "House of Acquaintances" is perhaps more accurate.  Intimacy isn't the issue here; teamwork and networking are.  But clear priorities must come first, or all those talking faces serve no purpose.  They just tie you up in pointless social interactions.

With the Sun in the Eleventh House, you're majoring in a couple of closely related subjects: group dynamics and the formation of life-strategies.  Increasingly, you'll find yourself in positions of leadership... but not dictatorship.  That is, you'll be working to hold together often contentious crowds of individuals, and you'll be needing to do that with diplomacy rather than brute force.  For those team-projects to be ultimately successful, it's critically important that you know exactly what you stand for personally.  Every year or so, try to get off by yourself for a couple of days and think about what you've accomplished, what you're doing next, and how you've evolved since last year.  One more point: The second half of your life will tend to be more dynamic and colorful than the first half; it takes you a while to get up to full steam, but when you do, there's no stopping you.

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 Sagittarius.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With the Moon in the Fifth House, there's clearly a playful streak in your character, a desire to express yourself whimsically and creatively.  Trouble is, it's fairly easily abashed.  Your evolutionary challenge is to keep that "child within" alive and confident, despite the wounds of life's early years.  You have a terrific imagination.  You can build inner worlds before breakfast.  Make sure you enjoy the bliss of expressing that fantasy-life.  If you don't, you'll try to make up the pleasure deficit in less healthy ways: stupid self-indulgences, typically with food or sex.

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 Queens,New York. 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 Gemini with the Moon in Sagittarius 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 Storyteller", or "The Journalist", or "The Witness". Those are just different ways of saying you have the Sun in Gemini.

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

We can add that you wear the mask of "The 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. Mars lies in your First House, a part of the chart which is really just an extension of the Ascendant. Thus, Mars adds yet another tone to your "mask," modifying and deepening some of what we've already seen.

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 glitters in Leo, where it glows with power and charisma. Once your enthusiasm is ignited, people tend to line up behind you. They believe you, trust you. The archetype of the Warrior King (or Queen!), full of dignity and righteous authority, plays a basic role in your psychic makeup. Spiritually you are learning about the humility and sensitivity that must temper the weight of the crown.

With the War-God occupying your First House, people's first impression of you is that you're a rather daunting individual, strong-willed, and one with whom nobody trifles. There's a presence, a passion, an intensity about your "persona," perhaps more so than you know. From an evolutionary perspective, you center yourself most effectively when you willingly, actively, face your primal fears. Scared of heights? Then learn to sky-dive.

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

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

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.

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

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 Eleventh 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 marinating in the depths of Cancer. That combination links your mental functions with the dreamy creativity and compassion of the Healer archetype. Your voice is soothing, your mind full of sensitivity and subjectivity. Spiritually you are learning a lot about the risks -- and the absolute necessity -- of emotional self-expression.

With the traditional "Messenger of the Gods" occupying your Eleventh House, as you mature, your Mercury energies play an increasingly central role in your nature and circumstances. That means that if you play your cards right, you'll move in the direction of becoming a "voice" in your community, one who puts into words the needs, fears, and perceptions of your "tribe."

Your birthchart displays another area of heightened activity: the Twelfth House. The reason for that is simple -- there's a lot of planetary activity. With Venus, Saturn and Pluto 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.

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.

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 Cancer. Thus, both your aesthetic sensitivity and your taste in partners is shaped by the imaginative, womb-like spirit of the Cosmic Mother. In the realm of beauty, whether natural or wrought by human hands, you have a taste for subtlety, for enclosure in dream-like, intimate spaces. The same goes for friends and sexual partners -- you are drawn to people who open up slowly, like yourself, people who promise a long, unfolding journey, with the challenges of radical emotional nakedness made bearable by an absolute commitment to faithfulness.

With Venus in your Twelfth House, your Inner Teacher is the Goddess of Beauty. Translated, that means that you benefit spiritually from immersing yourself in inspiringly lovely surroundings. Ultimately, in this House we are learning the hard lesson of letting go -- and therefore at least one of the most critical spiritual turning points for you revolves around the loss of someone upon whom you've allowed yourself to depend a little too much.

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."

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

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

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

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

Your birthchart shows still another area where planets congregate: the Third. By combining forces, Jupiter and Neptune emphasize that department of your life almost as powerfully as the Sun or Moon would.

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.

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.

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.

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.