The Sky Within

 

Planet	Sign	Position	House		House Cusps
Sun	Libra	03°Li51'	06th		01  06°Ta04'
Moon	Virgo	20°Vi55'	06th		02  06°Ge37'
Mercury	Libra	29°Li41'	06th		03  29°Ge41'
Venus	Scorpio	16°Sc22'	07th		04  21°Ca33'
Mars	Leo	15°Le36'	05th		05  16°Le43'
Jupiter	Libra	17°Li03'	06th		06  20°Vi40'
Saturn	Libra	11°Li43'	06th		07  06°Sc04'
Uranus	Scorpio	27°Sc15'	07th		08  06°Sg37'
Neptune	Sagittarius	22°Sg14'	08th		09  29°Sg41'
Pluto	Libra	23°Li27'	06th		10  21°Cp33'
Midheaven	Capricorn	21°Cp33'	10th		11  16°Aq43'
Ascendant	Taurus	06°Ta04'	01st		12  20°Pi40'

  

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 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 Sun in Libra, on the deepest level of your character you are an artist.  If you look like one outwardly, painting or playing an instrument, so much the better.  Even if you don't, your essence is still charged with aesthetic sensitivity.  Cultivate it, and you'll feel as though you've come into yourself.

You were born with an instinctive tolerance for paradox.  Everything has two sides, and you'll almost always consider both.  This gives great clarity of mind, but also presents a problem.  Be careful you don't get caught between two equally attractive or (unattractive!)  possibilities and just freeze there.  Life will crystallize around you again and again in that form: you'll be faced with a parade of morally or practically ambiguous situations.  You'll understand them far better than your more dogmatic friends.  The question is whether you'll be able to make a choice and get on with your life, burning bridges behind you.

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

Craft, responsibility, the joy of competence -- that's Sixth House territory.  Traditionally, it's the House of Servants.  The label still works -- provided you recognize that it's not your butlers and chambermaids we're discussing here!  You're the servant, and that's not nearly as bad as it sounds.

There's a myth in our culture that encourages us to believe everyone is automatically depressed on Monday morning, happy on Friday afternoon, ecstatic 'til Sunday around dinner time, then crashes down into the pits again come Monday.  Don't believe it!  With a Teacher in the Sixth House, you've got a good shot at shattering the myth, at least for yourself.  A big part of you likes to work, enjoys being good at something, prefers to be useful.

The trick lies in finding the right crafts, skills, and responsibilities.  Let's let the Teacher speak.

With the Sun in the Sixth House, you're a hard worker, a responsible person who'll keep promises and fulfill contracts.   The trick lies in making sure they're the right promises and the right contracts!  Finding the crafts and skills that express your spirit is perhaps the central challenge of your life.  Dignity and self-respect for you lie squarely in the world of work.  To feel good about yourself, you must achieve excellence.  And that revolves around self-discipline, humility, and locating worthy teachers... and has nothing at all to do with whether you get your face in People magazine!

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 Virgo.

Virginity isn't the point.  That's just a kind of inexperience, and in the long run no one learns much from avoiding experience.  Virgo means purity.  Perfection.  Getting everything exactly right.  That's a tall order.  Perfection is a harsh master.  It drives the Virgoan part of you, haunting you with a sense of what could be, a sense of the ideal.  It also holds a flawless mirror before you, revealing all the imperfections and shortfalls in your character.  The combination is powerful.  It fills your spirit with hunger and divine discontent, imbueing you with restlessness, as though you'd taken out an insurance policy against complacency.  Be careful, though: Virgo energies can self-destruct, slipping into a crippling hyper-awareness regarding all the flaws and shortfalls inherent in people, oneself, our possessions, our prospects -- everything.  And nothing kills our climb toward perfection faster than that.

With your Moon in Virgo, your instincts are analytical, always searching for weaknesses and flaws.  People can misunderstand that, and imagine you to be "negative" or "hyper-critical."  Those problems are real possibilities for you, but only when you're not taking care of yourself.  When you're healthy, there's a constructive aspect to your perceptions, as though you're constantly straining to improve things.  Ultimately, the only kinds of people with whom you can be comfortable are ones who are willing to see themselves objectively, call a spade a spade, and proceed in reasonable ways to change their characters or circumstances.  You don't have much patience with pretty words that aren't linked to sincere, concrete promises.

To be happy, it helps you a lot to have some kind of hands-on hobby or craft, something that calls for skill, precision, and knowledge.

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

As we saw earlier, the Sixth House represents the field of experience in which you are challenged to develop a set of skills through which you can express the basic human urge to be competent at something that's useful to other people.

With the moon in the Sixth House, you have an instinctive need to acquire concrete skills and talents, especially ones that support other people.  What skills and talents?  Back up a couple of paragraphs--much depends on your Moon sign.  Here's the general principle: You're happiest and most comfortable when you're busy doing something you're good at.  But be careful of "workaholism." You're vulnerable to it -- extra-vulnerable when the people around you express a lot of neediness or confusion.

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, Taurus was lifting over the eastern horizon of Saginaw,Missouri. Let's begin our analysis by considering the meaning and spiritual message of the sign of "The Naturalist".

Ease, calm, naturalness -- those are the spiritual goals of the Bull.  Silence too.  But not just the kind that comes from keeping your mouth closed.  The Bull's silence is deeper: it's a quiet heart.  Feel the wind in your hair.  Feel the efficiency of your body, the rightness of its rhythms, the easy intelligence of your cells and muscles.  That's Taurus.  The part of you that's learning the lessons of the Bull is getting more grounded, more present, more receptive to immediate reality.  As a result, it has a physical orientation and a practical feeling.  It's not so interested in abstract flights of speculation.  It avoids the metaphysical Disneylands that seem to fascinate so many people.  It specializes in the wordless mysticism of ordinary life.

Feed your Taurean side with hands-on work: gardening, crafting wood or cloth, communing with animals.  Soothe it with music.  Restore and renew it with time spent close to nature -- in the forest, in the mountain valley, by the ocean.  Dress it in blue jeans and flannel.  And never, ever, ask it to go to a cocktail party!

With Taurus on the ascendant, your outward personality tends to be earthy and solid.  Instinctively, people trust you and feel comforted by your presence.  That's true even if you happen to be in lunatic mode that day -- people still see a serene surface.  Something in your aura seems to tell people to relax, to be real, to quit pretending to be Madonna or Donald Trump.

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 Libra with the Moon in Virgo and Taurus 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 Artist", or "The Diplomat", or "The Lover". Those are just different ways of saying you have the Sun in Libra.

We can say you have the soul of "The Perfectionist", or "The Analyst", or "The Servant"... your Moon lies in Virgo, in other words.

We can add that you wear the mask of "The Naturalist", or "The Elf", or "The Silent One". Those images capture the spirit of your Ascendant, which is Taurus.

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.

Your own birthchart is complicated by the fact that, at your birth, Saturn 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 Saturn."

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

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 graceful terrain of Libra 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 Scales' shadow side: indecision and people-pleasing. Sometimes bridges must be crossed -- or burned. Will yourself toward commitment! This is especially pertinent in regard to the affairs of Saturn's House in your birthchart. Which House was that?

The Sixth! The arena of life where we learn lessons of responsibility and competence, where we are asked to be of concrete value to those around us. With Saturn here, you are challenged to acquire a set of skills which don't come easily for you or anyone. Perhaps they are highly technical. Perhaps absorbing them requires long education. Maybe the work seems nearly impossible. Grit your teeth and do it anyway -- or else a kind of pointless martyrdom or trivial workaholism will rush into the vacuum.

While a fairly large number of people have Saturn 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 Sixth 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 balanced in Libra. That combination links your mental functions to the evenhanded, aesthetic logic of the Scales. Reflexively, your intelligence seeks out both sides of every question, drawn always to the idea that paradox is woven into the fabric of reality. Your mind works like a poet's, sensing that without beauty, words lose some of their truth. Spiritually you are learning about diplomacy in speech -- and perhaps about the pitfall of letting kindness blur the truth.

With the traditional "Messenger of the Gods" occupying your Sixth House, you're happiest when you're "talking for a living," although "thinking for a living" is a close second. Any kind of work or responsibilities that don't leave plenty of room for innovative thought fail to feed your Mercury... and then you get Mercury "diseases" like nervousness and chatter -- or compulsive job-changing.

Your Sixth House is crowded. Also found here are Jupiter and Pluto.

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 Sixth House -- traditionally the "House of Servants." Jupiter expands things, and here it's expanding your work and responsibilities. That's not as bad as it sounds! If you're unhappy with your job or your duties, ask yourself this: "How have I been underestimating myself?" Spiritually, you are learning to have enough faith in yourself, enough self-worth, to go out and find the kinds of work that fill you  with a sense of meaningfulness, prosperity, and joy.

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

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

Pluto was journeying slowly through the sign Libra. Thus the shadow material you are called upon to face has to do with the dark side of the Lover archetype: shallowness. In what part of your life or personal history have you chosen to preserve the appearance of peace and understanding at the expense of truth? (If your answer is "Nowhere!" then congratulations... you're Enlightened... or not looking hard enough.)

At the moment of your birth, Pluto gleamed in the Sixth House... the part of the natal chart concerned with competence, responsibility, and service to others. It is pivotally important that you find a kind of work in which you have a profound moral stake. Just making money and not hurting anyone will never be enough for you. There is pain in the world; your job is to address it... even in places where success is unlikely.

Your birthchart displays another area of heightened activity: the Seventh House. The reason for that is simple -- there's a lot of planetary activity. With Venus and Uranus in that area of your life, it is charged with activity, soul lessons, and opportunities for personal development. Before we even consider the planets separately, our first step is to explore this piece of existential real estate in broad terms.

One thing about love -- there's no way to learn much about it without some help!  The Seventh House, traditionally the House of Marriage, is the part of your birthchart where you encounter the people who'll provide your deepest insights into intimacy.  But that's not a code word for sex!  For that reason, "Marriage" is a misleading title for this House.  You can have intimacy without erotic or romantic feelings.

There are two parts to understanding the Seventh House.  The first is that whatever energies you have in this part of your birthchart represent lessons you're learning about empathy, trust, and commitment.  The second is that those same planetary energies describe the people who'll provide the lessons.  They may be mates or lovers.  They may be best friends.  They may be colleagues or business associates.  They may even be "worthy opponents."

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 Scorpio. Thus, both your aesthetic sensitivity and your taste in partners is shaped by the probing, digging spirit of the Scorpion. In the realm of beauty, whether natural or wrought by human hands, you have a taste for passion, for intensity, for a willingness to unsettle people. The same goes for friends and sexual partners -- you appreciate individuals who look you right in the eye and tell the truth, ones who are not overly concerned with politeness. Your sexuality is intense, but you're most peaceful when facing the journey with one special partner who renews the vow between you every time your eyes meet.

With Venus in the Seventh House, you sincerely enjoy the company of others of your species! There's a warm-heartedness about this configuration, an ability to reach out to people and form bonds of trust and affection. Caution, though: True intimacy is a gift that must be earned gradually. You radiate such magic that people's judgments can be eroded. They can bond with you more quickly and deeply than is appropriate. And you can do the same! Your true soulmates are Venusian types; that is, they are graceful, attractive people, typically with elevated aesthetic sensitivities.

If Uranus were the only planet in the sky, we'd all be so independent we'd still be Neanderthals throwing rocks at each other. There would be no language, no culture, no law. On the other hand, if Uranus did not exist, we'd all still be hauling rocks for Pharaoh. All individuality would be suppressed. This is the planet of individuation... the process whereby we separate out who we are from what everybody else wants us to be. Always it indicates an area of our lives in which, to be true to ourselves, we must "break the rules" -- that is, overcome the forces of socialization and peer pressure. In that part of our experience, what feeds our souls tends to annoy mom and dad... and all the "moms" and "dads" who lay down the law of the tribe.

With Uranus in Scorpio, the process of individuation for you is tied up with the Path of the Magician. That is to say, you strengthen and clarify your own Uranian identity through exploring the realm of the hidden, the mysterious, and the taboo -- and without that kind of input you're likely to foul up your life with long periods of prosaic boredom, punctuated with explosions of "inappropriate" activity. Consciously chosen forays into secret realms such as psychotherapy or "occult" spiritual practices, purify your sense of self, purging out the spurious "inner voices" you've swallowed sitting in front of the great wraparound television set of late twentieth century Industrial Culture.

House of Marriage -- that's the old name for the Seventh House, where your Uranus lies. The issues are broader; not just marriage, but all your significant partnerships. Uranus is your Teacher here, and the lessons can be summarized this way: the only kinds of emotional bonds that are likely to last for you, at least happily, are ones in which there's plenty of room for your own freedom and self-expression. You bristle at constraint. To link with your natural soulmates, you'll often have to break taboos... hooking up with people upon whom your "tribe" looks down, or whom they feel are "inappropriate" for you somehow.

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.

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 Fifth House, you have a strong and rather competitive streak of playfulness. One of your greatest joys lies in finding a "worthy opponent" -- on the tennis court, across the chess board, or in the dramas of any passionate human interaction. Be careful of overwhelming people; you can do it, often without knowing that's what you're doing.

You're lying in your bed, going to sleep. Suddenly a jolt runs through your body. You just "caught yourself falling asleep." Where were you two seconds before the jolt? What were you? Astrologically, the answer lies with Neptune. This is the planet of trance, of meditation, of dreams. It represents your doorway into the "Not-Self." Based on the sign the planet occupies, we identify a particularly critical spiritual catalyst for you... although we need to remember that Neptune remains in a Sign for an average of a little over thirteen years, so its Sign position actually describes not only you, but your whole generation. Its House position, however, is more uniquely your own.

Neptune was passing through Sagittarius. Thus, to trigger higher states of consciousness in yourself and to stimulate your psychic development, you may choose to follow the Path of the Gypsy... that is consciously, intentionally to expand awareness, perhaps through pilgrimage to holy places, certainly through a study of metaphysical philosophy. Without exposure to the purifying, soul-bleaching effects of that kind of mind-stretching activity, you tend to drift away from Spirit, losing yourself in the mazes of daily life.

Neptune, planet of transcendence, occupies the Eighth House of your birthchart, where mystical dimensions permeate your experience of the instinctive realms of consciousness. There is a powerful "occult" element in your psychic matrix. That doesn't mean witchcraft, at least not in the evil sense. Rather, it indicates a native capacity for healing, for working with symbols, and for interpreting dreams. To trigger these skills fully, you benefit enormously from establishing a sexual relationship with someone who understands sex as more than pleasure and affection....

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

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

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

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

And that's your birth chart.

Trust it; the symbols are Spirit's message to you. In the course of a lifetime, you'll make a billion choices. Any one of them could potentially hurt you terribly, sending you down a barren road. How can you steer a true course? The answer is so profound that it circles around and sounds trivial: listen to your heart, be true to your soul. Noble words and accurate ones, but tough to follow.

The Universe, in its primal intelligence, seems to understand that difficulty. It supplies us with many external supports: Inspiring religions and philosophies. Dear friends who hold the mirror of truth before us. Omens of a thousand kinds. And, above all, the sky itself, which weaves its cryptic message above each newborn infant.

In these pages, you've experienced one reading of that celestial message as it pertains to you. There are others. You may want to consider sitting with a real astrologer ... micro-chips are fine, but a human heart can still express nuances of meaning that no computer can grasp. You may want to order other reports, ones that illuminate your current astrological "weather," or that analyze important relationships. Best of all, you may choose to learn this ancient language yourself, and begin unraveling your own message in your own words.

Whatever your course, we thank you for your time and attention, and wish you grace for your journey.