This article is a continuation of the Facebook thread.

One important point to make is that the astrological chart constructed for the moment of your birth is not you.

It is the whole Universe as it appears from your birthplace at the time.

The signs of the Zodiac cover all possible characters and forms of expression.

The houses show all possible areas of life.

These signs and houses don’t belong to you.

You are represented by the planets and their interrelationships.

We are all conditioned to try and identify ourselves by memberships of certain groups.

We say I’m a Christian or a Muslim, a Liberal or a Conservative, an accountant or a circus performer and so on.

We identify with our family, our relationship preferences, our country of birth or residence, our sports team and so on.

We wish to be seen as part of a group and maybe also as not being in a different group.

As soon as we come across something like astrology, we automatically want to see it in those terms.

We want to be an Aries or a Pisces, to identify with others who share the same Sun sign.

We look for membership of a club.

And we keep on looking at astrology in these terms.

We say I’ve got the Moon in MY 4th house.

But it isn’t your house. It doesn’t belong to you.

You could say there’s no harm in thinking in this way, and to some extent that is true.

But it conditions a way of thinking about astrology that in the long run does become harmful.

Because this ownership of specific parts of existence, this club joining can easily lead us directly down paths that are useless and erroneous.

This is the kind of thinking that sucks people into utterly nonsensical house identification like Profections “ I’m in a 7th house year”.

Or sign obsession like “My progressed moon is going into Cancer”.

Or down any number of absurd rabbit holes.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying it’s of no value to understand your Sun sign characteristics or the descriptions of the house that it falls in.

I just feel we should not fall into obsessing about these seperate placements without due consideration of how they fit into the whole chart pattern.

We have to constantly remind ourselves that the sky above (and below) us does not have sharp dividing lines, delineating the signs and houses.

These are man made inventions and different astrological systems disagree about where the boundaries are in any case.

The only thing we can be truly sure about is the relationship of the planets to the 4 angles of the chart and to each other.

The one area of astrology that is unarguable is the aspects.

If we are born at a Full Moon that is a fact.

This is so regardless of what sign or house or degree that it falls in.

If you were born at a Full Moon you will have the two most important parts of yourself pulling in opposite directions, wanting different things and your life will inevitably be dominated by your attempts to find some way(s) of reconciling these two energies.

In terms of how your life is likely to play out, understanding this simple fact is more important than the signs or houses that they are placed in.

That understanding can come later. We have to start with the aspect itself.

And this is where the introductory books can be so misleading.

If you work through them, it’s unlikely that they will have addressed this essential fact of the Full Moon in the first 300 pages.

And even when they do, there is just one paragraph on it giving the Sun/Moon opposition nor more weight than it did to Saturn being in Pisces or Mercury being in the 6th house.

My advice to any beginner would be to buy your own astrological software.

I know it’s tempting to use sites that do this for you for free and provide you with a computer generated placement analysis, but having your own programme will be a great aid.

If you have your own software you can create a chart design that helps give you a strong sense of planetary interrelationships.

The reason I use this software is that it clearly does that.

The closer the aspects between the planets, the thicker the coloured lines are.

In this chart you can clearly see the strong red pattern connecting Venus (3.52 Leo in the 7th) opposite Pluto (1.04 Aquarius in the 1st) and the Moon (2.33 Scorpio in the 9th).

So if you are looking at the chart as a whole rather than obsessing with individual placements, your eye is immediately drawn to this pattern and you are already asking what it might mean in terms of the person’s life.

So we instantly recognise that there will be some sort of challenge between the kind of experience that this person will attract in their relationships (Venus near the Descendant) and their own changing personal expression (Pluto near the Ascendant) which seems to impact on their emotional wellbeing, sense of security and place in the outer world (Moon in the upper part of the chart).

Every chart is unique, this moment with its combination of planets has never happened before.

So it makes sense to start by looking at that combination as a whole, to see what it might be suggesting, rather than do that ABC thing of the Sun is in Cancer therefore…., the Moon is in Scorpio…. Mercury is in Leo…..etc etc.

If we go by that approach, it could be ages before we get anywhere near considering the Venus/Pluto/Moon TSquare when it is by far the most important single theme in that person’s life.

So we need an approach to astrology right from beginners level that takes us to the most important themes straight away.

You might think it doesn’t matter because we get there in the end, but I dont believe that we necessarily do.

I am constantly disappointed at the inability of even very senior, experienced astrologers to spot the key patterns in a chart and apply them to that person’s life.

This is particularly the case when it comes to transits to those patterns.

I believe this is because they have learnt the subject in that way, so find it hard to see the wood for the trees.

The planets in brief.

The Sun

Without the Sun there would obviously be no life at all, so the Sun in a chart rules the person’s essence, their individuality, that which makes them different from everything else. It rules our vitality, creativity and sense of self.

So the Sun represents our core theme in life, by house or quadrant it shows the area of life we are most likely to focus on, by sign it would indicate the way we are most likely to do that.

Or at least it would do, if it was the only planet in our chart.

It represents these things in an ideal world. This is what we would do if left to our own devices.

But the Sun’s angular relationships with other planets will show how other parts of ourselves and the world out there will respond to and alter or compromise these ideals.

The Moon’s appearance is constantly changing owing to its reflecting the Sun’s light to earth.

The Moon in the chart rules that which changes in us, our moods, feelings and responses to people and life. It rules our instincts and habit patterns.

It covers our feelings, the things we carry with us from the past, our need for security and reassurance from the outside world.

The Sun and Moon are polar opposites.

The Sun is where we wish to go, what is ahead of us.

The Moon is where we’ve been, what is behind us and how that conditions us.

The Sun is ourself, the Moon can indicate how others feel about and respond to us.

The interplay between these two is the most important life theme that we have.

We choose the parents and childhood experience that will characterise these patterns for us.

In some cases we can say that the Sun rules the father and the Moon the mother, but this is not necessarily the case.

They can change depending on the family situation. It can be the other way round.

Mercury is the swiftest planet and is always very close to the Sun.

It rules our mental processes, our ability to assimilate and communicate information.

It also has some rulership over our patterns of movement.

It is in the same sign or house as the Sun about half of the time, so it frequently reinforces our solar aims and directions.

The closer Mercury is to the Sun, the more our mental and communicative processes will align with these directions.

But it’s also true that some distance can give us more objectivity or at least the capacity to think about and see things from another perspective.

Venus rules our capacity and our desire to attract both people and things.

It is our magnetism and our ability to relate to other people. It also rules our artistic abilities and tastes.

Venus is in the same sign or house as our Sun about a quarter of the time, so it sometimes reinforces our core aims, but often doesn’t.

Venus, along with the Moon indicates our ability to receive experience and our interest in it.

Mars rules the personal drive and desire nature.

It governs our physical energy and assertiveness, our animal instincts together with the competitive and fighting spirit.

Venus and Mars are polar opposites.

Where Venus is incoming, Mars is outgoing.

Venus describes how other people and things come to you, Mars indicates how you go out to meet them.

These are the 5 personal planets. They are our own themes, important parts of ourselves.

The Ascendant is the point on the Eastern horizon and is dependent on the Earth’s daily rotation.

As the Earth rotates each of the signs will appear on the horizon over 24 hours, and will be the Ascending sign for somewhere between 1 and 3 hours each.

At the equator all Ascending signs have an equal 2 hours whereas the further north or south you go the more uneven the time frame becomes.

The Ascendant is the individual’s way of expression in the world.

It is a filter or window through which the self is projected. It governs how other people see us and also how we see the world.

It will affect physical type and appearance.

Unless someone is born at sunrise, their Sun and Ascendant will be in different signs. This can account for a lot of misunderstanding between people.

How people see others (Ascendant) is not necessarily what they are (Sun).

But all of the themes described by our personal planets have to be expressed through this filter as seen by others through it.

The outer planets are external to us, they are energies out there in the world that impact on us, that alter and shape us.

In many ways they will have a bigger impact on our life themes because they describe how “out there” will respond to our plans.

This is particularly true when it comes to their transits.

Jupiter is the largest planet and king of the ancient gods.

It is the principle of expansion, everything it touches becomes greater.

It is about widening horizons and rules wisdom, understanding and travel, both of the mind and body.

It is traditionally the bringer of good fortune. It signifies luck and our capacity to attract favourable circumstances without necessarily applying effort in that direction.

It can often go along with a sense of entitlement, suggesting that there is no need to work for things.

Saturn is the furthest planet that can be seen by the naked eye and was viewed by the ancients as the outer boundary of the solar system.

It is the principle of limitation and of contraction.

It creates restrictions and obstacles and is seen as the planet of misfortune.

It does, however, have an important role to play in human growth, teaching us to face up to life’s difficulties and to concentrate, narrow our focus and work hard for long term achievement.

Jupiter and Saturn are polar opposites.

What you receive through Jupiter is a favour from the gods, which can easily be taken away.

What you get from Saturn (if anything) is the result of your own work and discipline and cannot be taken away from you because you have had to grow to get it.

The three outer planets are energies of change.

Uranus was discovered in 1781, a time of great change with the American, French and industrial revolutions.

It rules sudden change and rebellion against authority.

It requires you to be open to new experiences and if you aren’t, it will be disruptive to what you already have and thought was you.

It is unconventional and wants freedom and independence.

It suggests originality and inventiveness with flashes of intuition. It is basically a mental planet, a kind of higher version of Mercury.

Neptune was discovered in 1846, again a time of great change but much of this for people was internal with a greater understanding of psychology and man’s inner life including the growth of spiritualism.

Neptune signifies adjustment but through dissolving the apparent barriers between people and the rest of the world.

It requires us to let go of our sense of separateness.

It is the world of the non – material, of meditation, it works through inspiration but in subtle, sensitive ways.

If we aren’t able to let go, Neptune will undermine and disperse what we thought we had or were.

It can also push is to lose our consciousness of self in destructive ways, through drink, drugs and other addictive behaviours.

It is basically a feeling planet, a kind of higher version of Venus.

Pluto was discovered in 1930, at the dawn of the atomic age.

It is the principle of transformation and regeneration.

The atomic explosion, that something so tiny can have such a massive effect is perfect Pluto symbolism.

It suddenly breaks through sweeping away previously existing conditions in order for a completely new start to occur.

It may appear to have little effect on someone’s day to day life, but when it does, its impact will be devastating.

In terms of transits, it is the single most powerful thing that can happen to you.

It is about death and rebirth within a life.

It is basically an action planet, a kind of higher Mars.

To be continued…

Posted 12 Jul 2024

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