The Sky Within

 

 

Planet	Sign	Position	House		House Cusps
Sun	Gemini	13°Ge14'	01st		01  05°Ge37'
Moon	Sagittarius	20°Sg00'	07th		02  27°Ge03'
Mercury	Cancer	06°Ca42'	02nd		03  14°Ca42'
Venus	Gemini	05°Ge43'	01st		04  03°Le40'
Mars	Aries	13°Ar41'	12th		05  29°Le00'
Jupiter	Aries	29°Ar59'	12th		06  09°Li56'
Saturn	Sagittarius	16°Sg02' R	07th		07  05°Sg37'
Uranus	Aries	06°Ar48'	11th		08  27°Sg03'
Neptune	Leo	26°Le36'	04th		09  14°Cp42'
Pluto	Cancer	15°Ca49'	03rd		10  03°Aq40'
Midheaven	Aquarius	03°Aq40'	10th		11  29°Aq00'
Ascendant	Gemini	05°Ge37'	01st		12  09°Ar56'

 

 

 

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 First 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.

Stories always have two dimensions: plot and character.  But on a deeper level the concepts merge.  "Janie is shy."  How do we know?  "She walked into the room and didn't speak to anyone."  Character is defined through action; action implies character -- that is, needs, desires, and values.  In the First House, the territory you face is the plotting of your life -- and therefore the definition of your character.

First House energies "act out" a lot.  They're a visible, dramatic, well-developed part of your nature.  For that reason, this is a part of your life where people think you have a real gift for leadership.  They're right -- but it doesn't always feel that way to you.  How to get it right?  Easy -- trust your instincts.  Be yourself.  A good plot proceeds from a sound, coherent character.

With your Sun in the First House, there's a lot of punch to your style.  People tend to be impressed by you, to remember you.  In fact, you sometimes have to make an effort to avoid overwhelming them.  That charisma and apparent self-assurance masks the evolutionary issue you face: creating a destiny.  Because, unlike most people, you were born without one!  The "hand of fate" plays a minimal role in your life.  There's a frightening freedom built into this solar position.  It all boils down to the words of St.ÿAugustine, "Love God, and do what you will."

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 Seventh house of your chart.

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."

With the Moon in the Seventh House, you've shoved the most vulnerable part of your psychological self right into the hornet's nest: the perilous world of intimacy!  You bring tremendous empathy and caring into your love life; you also bring all your wounds and tender places.  For you to feel comfortable, there has to be a lot of subjective "flow" between you and the people with whom you share your life.  For that reason your "soulmates" tend to be emotional folks, full of imagination, in touch with their needs and fears -- and often, therefore, rather moody.  In love, you're riding a roller coaster and that's scarey... but you really wouldn't have it any other way.

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, Gemini was lifting over the eastern horizon of Frankfurt am Main,GE. Let's begin our analysis by considering the meaning and spiritual message of the sign of "The Storyteller".

As we saw earlier, Gemini is the Storyteller.  Superficially, it represents the capacity to communicate.  More deeply, it symbolizes a set of evolutionary steps leading to the development of a radically open mind.

With Gemini rising, your outward style is quick and alert, hungry for input.  You have a sharp wit and a mind that's faster than Ma Bell's switchboard.  For most of your life, people will tend to underestimate your age... the reason being that we tend to associate curiosity and energy with youth!  You have plenty of both, and that'll be just as true on your ninety-seventh birthday.  To feel centered, you need to flood your senses with torrents of new information.  You can do that by traveling, or by reading, or by pursuing education.  One of your favorite methods is to talk with interesting people... just make sure you listen too.

Cultivate patience; the world is full of folks who are full of fascinating insights and experiences, but most of them pace their lives -- and minds -- more slowly than yours.  You'll need to slow down a bit to synchronize enough with them for the data exchange to take place.

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 Gemini 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 Storyteller", or "The Journalist", or "The Witness". Those images capture the spirit of your Ascendant, which is Gemini.

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

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 Gemini. Thus, both your aesthetic sensitivity and your taste in partners is shaped by the quick, electric spirit of the Storyteller. In the realm of beauty, whether natural or wrought by human hands, you have a taste for the fluid, for the unpredictable, for the surprising. The same goes for friends and sexual partners -- you are drawn to intelligence, to a willingness to experiment... and, above all, an eagerness to talk animatedly and listen intently.

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.

Your own birthchart is complicated by the fact that, at your birth, Venus (described earlier) 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 Venus."

While a fairly large number of people have Venus 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.

The lunar dimensions of your astrological signature are deepened by planetary overtones. At the instant your independent physical life began, the planet Saturn 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 Saturn, as though that ancient "god" lived inside you.

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

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 boundary-shattering terrain of Sagittarius 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 Archer's shadow side: a tendency to spend years denying one's natural need for risk and adventure, only to release it all in one glorious existential pratfall. Will yourself toward a robust engagement in life. And support that journey in practical, Saturnian terms by fortifying yourself with the concrete skills and strategies a gambler needs in order to survive -- especially ones 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.

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 Mars and Jupiter 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.

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 blazes in Aries. This is a natural combination of fiery energies, and it turns up the volume on your gutsiness, assertiveness, and general feistiness. There's a price tag, though: with all that fire coursing through your veins, you need to burst through brick walls every now and then -- or you'll slip into argumentativeness and temper. Spiritually you're learning the purest Mars lesson of all: bravery.

With Mars occupying your Twelfth House, the "War God" stands between you and the realization of loftier states of consciousness... not as an obstacle, but as a bridge. What that means is that you've come to a place in the spiritual journey where, if you're going to go further, you need to become braver. The point is that, despite the pretty words in inspirational books, there's something frightening about entering higher levels of awareness, and that very jitteriness is holding you back. Hence, your "guru" is the "Cosmic Warrior."

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 Aries. 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 Warrior. What this means is that in dark times you need to recharge yourself by pushing toward the limits of your courage... even if that action has nothing to do directly with the problems you're facing. Take a rock-climbing class, go trekking in Nepal--feel the "edge." Mysterious, but it will always restore you.

In your chart, the "King of the Gods" reigns in the Twelfth House -- traditionally the "House of Troubles," but actually the House of higher consciousness. Spiritually you have reached a point in the inner journey in which you need to learn lessons about radical faith. That is to say, in order to enter higher levels of being, you must first be willing to take chances in the world... such as traveling to a Sacred Site, even if you can't afford it. Again and again, Spirit will ask you one simple question: "Do you trust me?"

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 Leo. Thus, to trigger higher states of consciousness in yourself and to stimulate your psychic development, you may choose to follow the Path of the Performer... that is consciously, intentionally to seek the purest expression of your creative vision. Without exposure to the purifying, soul-bleaching effects of spontaneous, unreserved self-expression, you tend to drift away from Spirit, losing yourself in the mazes of daily life.

Neptune, planet of transcendence, occupies the Fourth House of your birthchart, where its mystical feelings are linked to questions of your innermost life and intimate personal history. Peel away the layers of your psychological onion and, deep down, dead center, we find the soul of the mystic. There is something inside you that just watches the show, watches your "personality" do its dance in the world. Careful you don't starve that spirit. Watching the world go by isn't always enough; you need a few relationships and a few outward experiences which engage, enlighten, and surprise that Wise Old Being you keep so well hidden.

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 Aries, the process of individuation for you is tied up with the Path of the Warrior. That is to say, you strengthen and clarify your own Uranian identity through undertaking adventures -- and without them you're likely to become merely touchy. Consciously chosen stress, such as expeditions or high-stakes sports, purifies your sense of self, purging out the spurious "inner voices" you've swallowed sitting in front of the great wraparound television set of the late twentieth century Industrial Culture.

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.

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 Second House, you prove yourself to yourself most effectively by constantly making an effort to stretch your intelligence -- and your capacity to communicate it -- to its limits. You may collect books... but make sure you read them too!

"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 Cancer. Thus the shadow material you are called upon to face has to do with the dark side of the Crab archetype: hiding from life. In what part of your life or personal history have you chosen safety over experience, the appearance of love over the steamy reality of shared growth, security over magic? (If you answer is "Nowhere!" then congratulations... you're Enlightened... or not looking hard enough.)

At the moment of your birth, Pluto stood in the Third House... the part of the birthchart that addresses questions of perception. Spirit has blessed you with the sharp, penetrating eye of the truth-seer. To create a sense of meaning in your life, you need to accept your role as Teacher... and that doesn't mean Preacher! Your task is not so much to answer questions as to raise them. Where there are lies agreed upon, such as racial or gender prejudices, you have the skills -- and bear the burden -- of the truth-sayer.

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 Seventh House of your chart. This implies that previous to this lifetime you learned a lot about compromise and adjustment through devotion to your soulmates. Trouble is, you sometimes gave up too much of yourself to accomplish that, sacrificing truth on the altar of harmony.

In this lifetime, with your North Node of the Moon in the First House, you must act to counterbalance those old devotional 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 wield more authority over the shape of your own experiences, learning a kind of "enlightened selfishness" in which nothing is allowed to stand between you and the kind of life your soul hungers to live.

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.