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The earliest human cultures, stretching back perhaps two to four million years, were hunter-gatherer cultures. These cultures of small groups of humans lived a timeless existence compared to modern man. Nothing changed for 100,000’s of years! The only visible indications of time were the cycles of the moon and the cycles of the year. Women’s menstruation matched the monthly cycle of the Moon. The hunting seasons and gathering seasons repeated the same every year. The seasons…Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter…came around regularly…the same every year.
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It was the predictability of the seasons and the abundance and bounty that Nature provided that gave humans a chance to exist and evolve. To early humans, the Powers of Nature were evidence of the beneficent nature of “the gods”, and Nature taught man about the nature of Reality. These forces of Nature were themselves soon seen as Divine Powers. Among them, the Moon and her cycle were the silver Queen of the Sky, the Goddess Herself, who ruled fertility of the women, sexuality, joy in life, pleasure, nurturance, home and hearth, the instinctive needs of the body-mind, the balance of life in Nature (the Law of Predator and Prey), and Life and Death.
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Since only women in these indigenous cultures could bear young, they took on some of the numinous quality of the Goddess. Women’s roles in tribal cultures embodied the Goddess in human life, and so Women were accorded respect by Males on a spiritual level. Their specific roles in their cultures were the gifts of the Goddess: the nurturing of children, sharing in group activities, holding their extended families together, homemaking, cooking, gathering food, and being lovers for and givers of pleasure to their men. Families were large and extended, with multiple generations living together and supporting one another. Men were hunters and warriors, defending their homes and families. The Women grounded their cultures in the fertility and abundance of the Earth, while the work of Men was to protect and support their Women and Children.
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The qualities of the feminine were recognized as associated with the Goddess: intuitiveness, receptivity, creativity, groundedness, cycles, love, nurturing, feeling, emotions, physicalness, relationships, and community. Their spirituality, and that of the Goddess, was of the Earth Herself, as the wise women and medicine women communed with the Earth and the spirits of the Plants. Males in their roles, on the other hand, tended to be individualistic, less grounded, focused upon efficiencies and doing, active, tough, unemotional, and aggressive. They had to hunt and kill game and be prepared to fight hostile tribes and animals. Their spirituality tended to the realms beyond the physical, involving the use of hallucinogenic drugs and communion with the ancestors and the spirits of the animals.
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The people related to their Nature gods, accepting the harshness of life and finding meaning in life. The Goddess was the goddess of not only birth, but death and war. She took some. She left some. But she gave the women babies too. Life was lived in cycles…just like the crops, the animals, the Sun (which was born and died each day), and the Moon Herself as she passed through Her own cycles in the sky. In order to survive, each person in the tribe had his or her role and was valued, was needed. Each person found meaning in their life and their role in the tribe. The old died and became the tribe’s ancestors, who protected the land and the living. The tribe was bonded to their past through their ancestors and appealed to their gods for good hunting, healthy babies, and mild weather.
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This pattern of living survived for hundreds of thousands of years even before the development of cultivation of the land, herding animals, and living in cities. And this pattern remains in the genes of humanity as an archetypal way of life that lends stability and emotional support to life.
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This timeless era, living by the cycles of the Moon and the Seasons of the Year, is today called “The Eternal Round.” It is characterized by peaceful acceptance of the cycles of life…birth, growth, maturity, and death…and the feeling that life has meaning, that the experience of the body is deeply sensuous, pleasurable, joyful, without guilt or shame. This is living life from instinct and not ego. It is not a state of becoming or seeking, exploration or expansion of consciousness. It is a state of Being and contentment with simply living and meeting basic needs...hunger, sex, community, belonging, and comfort. This is, of course, Lunar consciousness. Lunar conscious is a state of mind in which the person lets go of their sense of self, or ego, and comes present in their life. They let go of the past and the future and focus on what is happening right now. The mind grows quiet and thoughts subside. They align with the Reality of this Moment, without striving or worrying about their futures or agonizing about their past. So we see that without the possibility of lunar consciousness, there is no possibility of happiness in life.

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Solar consciousness is expansive, but on the other hand involves struggle and seeking, striving and failure, and separation from the state of peaceful acceptance of ordinary life. The ego is engaged, and a person can easily become lost in thoughts or emotional turmoil of insecurity, fear, feeling excluded, feeling unimportant etc.
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In these early cultures...both hunter-gather and agricultural...myth and spirituality were identical. The oral stories told by the elders to tribal young held their myths of creation, the birth of the gods, the making of mankind, and the nature of the relationship between men and his gods. The wisdom of living of the tribe was also held in these tales. Animals and the tribe’s gods were featured actors of these tales as well as humans. There were many gods; each connected with some facet of nature…the wind, the fire, the earth, the waters, the thunderstorms, the rivers, trees and spirits…Nature IS the face of the Goddess. And life is good.
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About 12,000 years ago, some tribes in Asia Minor and the Middle East began staying in one place and cultivating the rich soil of the rich alluvial plain of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Cities emerged here in this green and growing land, and people began specializing in the ways they earned their living. Hierarchies and government were invented. Religions centered on the Goddess and her “dying son/husband god”, symbolizing the death of crops in the winter, started up with female priesthood. Time began to assume a linear character. The seasons still ruled agriculture, but storehouses kept the grains available years around, and trade began to move goods and food among regions. People living in the cities of this rich plain began to live in a different concept of time, freer from the cycles of the Moon and the seasons and freer from the lifestyles of the past 4 million years. Nature began then to become a thing to be exploited and not a living spiritual presence.
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The hold of the Moon, the Goddess and the Eternal Round began to decline as Time began to assume a more linear character and the cycles of the year became less important because mankind learned to control their environments to protect themselves from the extremes of Nature; and trade, storage and preservation of foodstuffs were developed. Mankind could not control Nature, but we began to learn to “use” nature to build wealth and control some of the issues that came with being at the effect of Nature: death and sickness, cold or heat, floods, water for the crops, and so forth. Nature became less a spiritual power that determined Man’s fate and more a “resource” to be exploited for power or wealth.
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These agriculture-oriented tribes were harassed by other nomadic tribes of the deserts and steppes which chose to become horse cultures or herders of cattle, sheep and goats. These nomadic tribes had to find grazing areas for their animals, and so often migrated into the settled areas of the fertile crescent. When they did, they brought a threat to the survival of the cities, because these desert tribes were warlike and often violent. These tribes lived in harsh environments beneath an open sky. Their nature gods were fierce and merciless, and thus their religions tended to be severe and unforgiving. And as the land upon which they grazed their crops was often dry and wild..masculine in character--not lush and green and feminine as the fertile river valleys...the gods of these places were given masculine identities. It was from these cultures that the fierce and unforgiving patriarchal religions began to grow.
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Through the past 12,000 years, mankind has experienced many traumatic changes to its lifestyle. Through the 10,000 years until the Birth of Jesus Christ, war and tragedy stalked the striving civilizations of the Middle East, Europe, the Mediterranean, Persia, India and China. Life was unsure, short and brutal. Death by plagues carried by traders and invading armies swept across the planet killing millions each year. And then, during the 2,000 years following the birth of Christ, humans in Europe endured the stasis and dominion of the Catholic Church and other religious movements, including Judaism and Islam, while plague and armies again stormed across the land. Humankind began to look to the Sky Gods to rescue them from the suffering of life on earth.
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Man’s connection to the cycles of the year and the Moon over these thousands of years was lost, and many began to experience life as never-ending struggle towards Divine forgiveness and escape from life on Earth. Only the Church, Temple or Mosque and the traditions of feudalism promised salvation and escape. Endurance of life’s tragedies and suffering would be rewarded by an eternity in Heaven. Religion and living obediently within the protection of some feudal lord became the means to the only security in life. However, that religion now was patriarchal…not matriarchal.
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First, the heavenly Father had to be placated, absolutely obeyed, and one’s sinfulness forgiven. And the price of that was good behavior as defined by the Church. Good behavior required that the natural instincts of the human being be denied, repressed, and replaced by the ethical rules and ideals of a dogmatic church theology.
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These patriarchal religions made the Goddess and what she symbolized a symbol of sinfulness and denial by the Sky God. It was Eve who disobeyed God and tempted Man into disobeying God in the Garden, for example, in the Christian Book of Genesis. In the Christian myth of Original Sin, a wound was given to humanity that even today remains as a source of the loss of love of the body, the sacredness of sex and pleasure, the love and respect of Nature, the cycles of time and the meaning they brought to life. Birth became the doorway to a world of suffering. Death ended the suffering. But suffering on earth was rewarded with a Heavenly home for good behavior and believing in the theology of the Church. The result was a never-ending motive to seek within Western society. This wound drove man out of the Eternal Round, out of peaceful abiding on the Earth, out of unconsciousness. This wound drove Mankind towards a more conscious future...but at the cost of peace of mind, acceptance of self, and the ability to relax into life on the earth and stop striving.
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Modern western society has passed through several revolutions in roles for men and women…but especially women. Today, women’s labor force participation rate rose dramatically in the 20th Century from only about 15 percent during the 1800’s, extended families and tribal groupings began to break up and be replaced by two parent families and even single-parent with child families. Children began to spend more time alone, without supervision or nurturing. More and more began to be taken care of by hired nannies and babysitters. Focus within the family shifted from the Mother’s role to the wealth building and labor market activities of the adults. Individualism supplanted community and communal activities.
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In this transition, over thousands of years to a more patriarchal society, much has been lost to Western societies. From community and intimate relationships with ones tribe, we have moved to a society in which the individual is largely isolated and has few close friends and more superficial relationships. Our families must be mobile, like those nomadic tribes in the old days, and we follow the work opportunities. But moving increases our isolation and reduces our access to the support of extended families. Greater emphasis is therefore placed upon young adults, who have little parenting experience, less life wisdom, and little time to devote to parenting, to support one another and their children.
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Greater stress has been placed upon women in marriages and partnerships as they have moved out into the work place seeking the fulfillment of careers. They not only have to support their husbands’ needs, but they pursue their own and try to maintain home and families. Less time is available for traditional feminine roles of nurturing and spending time with their children.
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With less time in the home, Western food habits have changed. Now, most spend a large portion of their income on commercially prepared food. Families now spend far less time together and less often eat together or spend time talking about their days or problems.
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The end result of these changes has been a tremendous increase in stress and deprivation; too many people living without nurture, without the guidance and support of experienced elders, without community, without real intimacy, without guiltless physical pleasure, without the grounding of the feminine center to mankind’s lifestyle. This stress has lead to pathologies, to psychological and spiritual unwellness in society.
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The two great elements of the Monomyth, the archetypal process of psychological and spiritual healing in the psyche are the Quest (or Hero’s Journey) and the Eternal Return. But without the spiritual and psychological recognition and honoring of the Goddess, the power of the Moon, the importance of the cycles of time in our lives, both men and women find themselves on a perpetual quest without fulfillment, without peace, without end, without self discovery…because they must always continue on to the next issue, the next goal, the next achievement.

Neither men nor women today can relax into the present, stop struggling, stop accumulating wealth, stop seeking power, stop seeking security, stop seeking for something that might give life meaning, because there is no place of peace and meaning to reach any more, no stopping the Quest. As soon as we try to stop, our restlessness, sense of guilt or shame, our feeling of unworthiness, our unfulfilled need to feel special (egotism), drives us on seeking adventure, power, love, or security again.

In fact, the seeking process itself fragments and shatters the psyche. The guilt and shame associated with our needs to experience life physically, through sensation and pleasure, have stolen from us our peace, our innocence, and our ability to stop the struggle for love, safety, and self worth. For it is only through our bodies, and our instinctual nature, that the ecstasy of being alive can be felt, that we can feel alive, that we can stop struggling, and that we can experience life as pleasure.
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The lost treasure is the Eternal Return: the timeless realm of community life, life in the body, the joy of family and tribal wisdoms, respect for Nature and the pleasures of the flesh, family, relationships, meaning to life that is found outside the mindless accumulation of wealth and neverending busyness of the mind, being at peace with one’s gods and not living in fear of spiritual damnation, and peaceful acceptance of the cycles of life…birth, growth, decline, death, life as it is. All of us need to get back in touch with the Moon.
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There is nothing else to find on our Quests for Meaning but a state of peace, wellness and grounding, where life can be experienced as pleasure, joy and abundance…the realm of the Goddess, the rulership of the Moon. We are constantly called to engage with our instinctual nature, to be well. But life constantly calls us on Quests, to maintain our egoic nature, to test our wills, to re-engage with our sense of self and personal power. We may find new meaning, but we stretch ourselves away from our peaceful state of unconsciousness, of routine and family life. We need to come back to it, periodically, to rest and wait until life calls us outside our selves once again.

Life lived simply and directly, in relationship and community, fulfills us. But it is no longer enough for modern Mankind. We constantly make ourselves unwell by our ambition and seeking, driven by insecurity, fear and need for love.

Planets sometimes retrograde in their transits across the sky. Retrograde means they appear to move backward in their orbits. Of course, they don’t really move backwards. They only appear to move backward relative to the Earth’s motion. Nevertheless, when a planet retrogrades, the backward movement carries a powerful symbolism for the person in whose chart is might appear.

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Any planet, when retrograde, represents a function of personality operating against the normal tide of social trends. They manifest in a personality as “not fitting in” with society’s expectations, values, routines, manners, behavior, or attitude. Such an experience can make a person feel “not included” among her or his peers, separated, rejected, scapegoated, rejected, unacceptable or isolated. Such feelings can cause many problems in self image and behavior which the person must find a way to correct in their journey through life.

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Astrologer Joan Wickenburg points out in her book Your Hidden Powers: Intercepted Signs and Retrograde Planets that those with retrograde planets were born at points in human history when traditional beliefs and institutions were facing strong pressure for change in society’s values, and that we personify a need for change in social action and/or perspective. New values need to emerge that prepare the way for new lifestyles, new social policies, new attitudes towards one another. The pathfinders of those new values must be those who don’t fit the values of the past--the people with retrograde planets in their charts.

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Some part of us doesn’t understand or agree with society's traditional ways of doing, seeing, or understanding things. The planet in retrograde symbolizes that part of us. For example,

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• Mercury - Society’s basic ideas
• Venus - Society’s values
• Mars - Society’s physical drives
• Jupiter - Society’s aspirations
• Saturn - Society’s rules or laws

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The normal way society views these issues do not work for you. Therefore, you must turn inward and discover the basic ideas, values, physical drives, aspirations, and rules that work for you. And those issues in play in your life demonstrate to others the ideas, values, drives, aspirations, and rules that fit the future better than the society that has existed.

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The outer planets of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto operate at the level of the Deep Unconscious and are harder to recognize, but they too bring change to society. These great planets of the outer solar system are known as the Gods of Change. Wickenburg says that retrograde planets “want you to go inside to find your own reality, your own center, and then make outer choices based on your own internal truths. To do this, the person must enter into his or her own unconscious mind to discover a new and creative way of manifesting new ideas, values etc. Obviously, the person who lives entirely in his or her outer world is unable to do this. Only those who encounter frustration in their lives, failure, losing, and the absence of meaning will finally turn away from the pursuit of happiness or wealth or experience in order to plumb the depths within. We are the Change Makers.

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Because those with retrograde planets do not fit in society, we must learn to stand alone. We must find within ourselves the means to affirm our inner value and build a strong sense of self capable of going against the tide of society on many issues: nationalism, religion, politics, and economics only are a few issues that we may find ourselves out of favor with society about. And then, we face disapproval, criticism, or rejection. If the personality is not strong enough to stand for its own truth, it may abandon its inner searching and seek acceptance and approval in conformity again.

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In any chart, each planet has two signs it governs: a primary sign and a secondary sign. Take the planet Mercury, for example; in a chart without a retrograde Mercury, the person can execute the function of Mercury’s primary sign (Gemini) before she executes the planets secondary sign (Virgo). In this situation, the person would gather information (Gemini) and then it would go into Virgo where it would be sorted, analyzed, digested, and put to work in some application in the world. Within a person’s chart with a retrograde Mercury, the order is reversed. The person must satisfy the planet’s secondary sign’s requirements before taking on the planet’s primary sign. Before information can be accepted by the person, it must be internalized, analyzed and digested (all Virgo activities) before it can be accepted and communicated to others. Such a person experiences a world in which she doesn’t fit and therefore the information coming to her doesn’t make sense. She must work through the puzzle of the world first, and then a shift in perspective comes that makes sense of the information. But in a way different from society. And then, she can communicate her perspective.

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The same pattern follows for each of a chart’s retrograde planets:

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Venus rules both Taurus and Libra. When direct, a person will implement Taurus first and then Libra to acquire experiences which validate one’s personal worth. Personal worth established in Taurus enables healthy relationships in Libra, I.e. self love leads to the ability to love others. But when Venus is retrograde, the secondary sign must be opened first; Libra must be entered and conquered, and only then is Taurus opened; from forming relationships, a person experiences feeling loved, and then from this, she learns to find value in herself.

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Mars rules both Aries and Scorpio. When direct, a person will act aggressive in order to get his needs met first, which leads to an awareness of his separateness from others. When indirect, a person will have to experience the depths of Scorpio first, and only then know his separateness and sense of power in Aries. The I AM is suppressed until confrontation with your own power is experienced. The individual experiences vulnerability and powerlessness first. The sense of self must be regenerated in Scorpio from the experience of one’s power, and only then does the individual enter Aries and feel his or her separation from others.

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Jupiter rules both Sagittarius and Pisces. When direct, the individual experiences Sagittarius first and then Pisces. In Sagittarius, she learns social principles, ethics, and basic morals. Then, in Pisces, she extends these findings into her inner spirituality. When indirect, the individual experiences Pisces first and only then Sagittarius. She must develop Piscean understandings prior to accepting Sagittarian issues. Spirituality leads her into acceptance of social principles and basic morals.

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Saturn rules both Capricorn and Aquarius. When direct, the individual experiences Capricornian experiences of achievement first. Here, she learns self discipline, working with others, responsibility, and the need to follow rules. Then, she begins to discern the unhealthy aspects of conformity and power in organizations, and begins to feel a sense of rebellion and independent choice. Through Aquarius, Saturn teaches us to learn responsible modes of rebellion. When indirect, the individual must experience Aquarius first, and later Capricorn. Unable to find where she fits in society or within traditional organizations, the individual must break free from social conditioning or social programming. She must determine just who she is, what her own values and wishes are, what she alone wishes to do. She won’t find her “place” in life until she has detached from society’s mainstream.

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Uranus rules Aquarius, along with Saturn, and functions from without to break society’s crystallized forms and institutions to permit social change. The old must be broken down before the new forms can take shape. When direct, Uranus acts to bring change from without as revolutionary or catastrophic change. When indirect, the individual must first learn to work with existing forms and institutions within Capricorn before change will occur. Uranus retrograde renovates what already exists.

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Neptune rules Pisces, along with Jupiter, and prepares the individual spiritually to rejoin her Creator. It also can be considered to rule, along with Jupiter, the sign of Sagittarius. Neptune rules vision and idealism. It calls you into the Unknown to pursue your ideals and dreams with absolute faith. When not direct, the individual is called to explore the Unknown first as a Seeker (Sagittarius). Faith results from this exploration as the individual finds a philosophical basis for dropping all her doubts in Pisces.

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Pluto rules Scorpio. Wickenburg argues Pluto also co-rules Aries with Mars. She argues that, when direct, the individual will work through Scorpio first to learn that the ego cannot control much in life. Seeing this, the individual can choose to sacrifice her separateness and independence to gain support from others for meeting her needs. (Aries). Pluto teaches concern for collective issues which extend beyond one’s ego and personal desires. When retrograde however, Pluto must work through his secondary sign first, and only then the primary. Aries must be confronted first before Scorpio. Before any commitment to some social or universal cause can be accepted by the individual, the person must find a new identity that restores his sense of worth, power or Will. Only then will he be able to internalize Pluto’s regenerative energy to contribute to social change.

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Source: Joan Wickenburg, Your Hidden Powers: Intercepted Signs and Retrograde Planets

We all learn in different ways. For some of our life processes, we might learn best using the intellect, language, and conceptualizations. For others, we might learn best by moving and manipulating our bodies. For still others, we might learn from the impacts upon our emotions. And for still others, we might respond to some intangible essence one might call “spirit”, inspiration, awe.

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In astrology, these ways in which we related to our world are symbolized under what is called the elements. Each sign, and house, is associated with an element, including fire, earth, air, and water. Each has a meaning that relates it to human aspects. For example,

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Fire - The person understands the world through intuition and “inner knowing”

Water - The person experiences the world via the emotions, and is dependent and introspective.

Earth - The person experiences the world via the physical senses and body and is practical!

Air - The person arrives at an understanding of the world through thought, logical reasoning, and words

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There are natural fire houses, natural water houses, natural earth houses, and natural air houses. However, in any individual’s chart, the sign at the cusp of each house may differ from its natural element, and that means that different people learn in different ways and experience the world in different ways.

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For example, the first house--the self or persona--is naturally associated with the sign of Aries and therefore is a fire house. The first house is the house through which one “sees” the world. But my birth date and time put Gemini on the cusp of my first house. My “ascendant” intersects within the sign of Gemini, and therefore, I display to the world the characteristics of a "communicator". Like other Gemini's, I love to read, to write, to communicate. I am analytical, restless, always searching for new sources of information and variety. I am, like most Gemini ascendants, prone to emotional volatility and preoccupied with collecting information. I also have, though you might not notice it if you only met me in certain situations, two personalities--as the Gemini twins in myth demonstrate. If you met me, you would likely see me as “professorial” and even very serious (Saturnian). I have three planets positioned in this house, giving it a high importance in my personality: Uranus, Mars, and Saturn.  

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A lot of teachers are Gemini sun signs or Gemini ascendants. But I have a usually hidden personality which is mystical, intuitive, spiritual, dreamy, and attracted to the darker aspects of human nature, which stems from the influence of other planets, the Sun and the Moon in my chart.

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Gemini is an air sign. I learn easily from reading books, using language, reasoning and conceptualizing.

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Gemini is ruled by Mercury, and since the sign of the ascendant denotes the planet which rules one’s chart, Mercury “rules my chart.” Mercury/Hermes is the Messenger”, denoting the conscious mind, and carries the messages of Zeus (Jupiter) to others on the Earth and into the Underworld (Pluto’s realm).

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So this role of the communicator is a dominant factor in my public persona. It is instrumental in the making and maintenance of relationships. So one would expect that I would use my mind and mental skills as the dominant way of relating to others in this world. There are three houses that deal with relationships: the third, the seventh and the eleventh. The meanings of these houses are described elsewhere on this site, but to summarize:

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House 3: The house of learning, childhood, the period in which my conscious mind was formed and one learns to communicate with others

House 7: The house of marriage and close friendships

House 11: The house of community relationships, groups one belongs to, business associates, less intimate friendships and relationships

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Now, if you were to look at my chart, you would find the signs at the cusps of these houses to be Cancer, Sagittarius, and Pisces. And these are, respectively, a water sign, a fire sign, and a water sign. So here I was a young man faced with the task of learning to communicate, a task which I naturally conducted using mental skills, but instead I was faced with learning based upon emotional needs (House 3), intuition and spiritual needs (House 7), and emotional needs (House 11). As you might imagine with significant emotional needs to be met in childhood relationships with parents and siblings, and with significant emotional needs to be met from employers and co-workers once I went to work, I experienced real difficulties in communicating with others and developing relationships which might support my personal development.

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One tends to assume that one can use one’s communication needs to meet all communication needs, but that need not be the fact. I did use my Gemini skills on the job, for instance, but my emotional needs (Pisces) kept getting in the way and causing me trouble. Gemini's are notorious for having no patience and wandering off to seek new mental stimulation, and so I would not get my emotional needs met in the workplace, and after awhile, I'd grow impatient in the routine and leave for a new job.

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What are emotional needs? These are the needs associated with the Moon: feeling safe, emotionally supported, feeling loved and cared about. And what are fire needs? The need to be able to be brave in the face of fear (Mars), to be creative (the Sun), to be brave in facing the Darkness (Mars), to feel one’s connection with the Everything (Jupiter), to feel inspired and be intuitive.

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So as a youngster, I faced the world as a Gemini, learning with the mind, language, concepts, reason--as perhaps many or most of us do in school. However, in the other areas of my life where I needed communication skills, I struggled with emotional needs and barriers that hampered my ability to develop relationships (in childhood with my brothers and sisters, parents and neighborhood friends, and in the early years of my schooling); the needs for security and be loved. As I recall, I had a rough time with this!

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And in relationships with girls, instead of being able to communicate confidently, I struggled under a spiritual need for a soul mate…even as a child. It wasn’t until I met my wife, now of 43 years, at the age of 22, that I recognized her immediately as the one I’d been waiting for. Our connection was immediately magical. I recall seeing her for the first time fifty feet away at a college mixer, and when she turned and looked at me, her eyes shone and she called me over immediately. We had an immediate spiritual connection.

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No analytical mind or collection of facts or information there.

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Another way of dividing up the Houses is into categories having similar purposes in our lives. For example,here are four categories to think about:

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The Houses of Life - Those houses involving personal progress

The Houses of Substance - Those houses having to do with accomplishment

The Houses of Relationships - Those areas of life in which we interact with others

The Houses of Endings - Those houses requiring an emotional investment

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The Houses of Life include: Houses 1, 5, 9

The Houses of Substance include: Houses 2, 6, and 10

The Houses of Relationship (again) include: Houses 3, 7, and 11

The Houses of Endings include: 4, 8, and 12

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It certainly helps a person to have his or her Houses of Life as a consistent element,. Having a consistent element rule similar functions because this helps the individual use the same skills and way of experiencing the world in similar activities, like relationship making.

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So you see, the dominant way you have of seeing the world or relating to it may NOT be the ways you need to use in other areas of your life, even in similar houses. For probably most people, this is not a serious problem, because generally each house has a different sign on its cusp and therefore--even where fire houses are not matched up to fire signs, water houses not matched up to water signs, etc--the ways they relate to relationship houses are at least consistent. And the ways life houses are matched up to houses involved with personal development are consistent. And the ways substance signs are matched up to accomplishment houses.

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You will notice that in my own Houses of relationship, I did not have the same element ruling the different relationship houses, and that made for real struggles in dealing with the relationship issue growing up. I had different needs that I naturally sought to solve in different ways, but I couldn’t straighten them out. I was not conscious that I was trying to meet different needs in different relationship areas, nor that I needed different skills in the different relationship areas. And that made communication difficulties a real struggle through most of my life. It wasn’t until I discovered astrology and found these distinctions that suddenly it made sense, and I saw why I needed to change my behavior and be conscious of my unconscious needs that were driving my difficulties.

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So two areas in my life that have become especially important are the 5^th House and the 9^th House--the houses of creativity and meaning. At some point in all of our lives, the issues of lost creativity and the meaning we’ve found for our lives becomes important. If we feel uncreative, how can we address that “lack” in our lives? And if we feel that our lives lack “meaning” and “purpose”, how can we address those important issues?

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In my chart, my fifth and ninth houses are Earth houses. What does this mean? It means that I will experience creativity through the sense of my body, and that I will discover the meaning for this life through the senses of my body. What does this mean? If I employ my usual Gemini mental skills in “collecting information about the world”, I will not be able to feel creative nor feel that my life is meaningful. I experience these areas of life through my body, my senses. In the fifth house, I am inspired by Nature and its beauties; I receive beauty like food for my soul. I feel it in my body, so to "feel creative" I must feel creative in my body...not so much my mind. So far, I have not found a way to transpose these issues into art, but playing music, acting in plays, or dancing are among those fields I must consider to feel creative.

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In the ninth house, by spending time in Nature, I’ve realized a participation mystique which is a body sense. I feel my connection to the world, to trees and animals and people  through my body senses. I feel connected, no longer separated, and I see the world and myself in it as a Dance of spirit. Through this feeling of connection, I am no longer alone in the world. I have found my meaning. But it is NOT, note, information, a concept, an emotion, a material thing, or an intuition; it is an bodily experience. For others, it could be differently experienced. But for me, it is this participation mystique with the world.

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The problem becomes especially severe for people who have intercepted signs within houses. And intercepted sign is a sign which is entirely within the borders of a house. Therefore the intercepted sign is not a ruling power of any house. When signs are “skipped” like this, it creates inconsistencies among similar houses in ruling elements and therefore creates a high probability for confusion in navigating life for those so afflicted. Intercepted signs also create another special problem. Intercepted signs denote areas of life that an individual’s environment--social, values, cultural, etc--fail to provide models for the individual. The intercepted signs are “gaps” in a person’s life…gaps which the person may feel but which he or she cannot find a solution to in their family, community, or culture.

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In my own case, I have two intercepted signs: Taurus in the 12^th House and Scorpio in the 6^th House. The work of these signs was inaccessible to me through most of my life. The task becomes even more difficult when there are “intercepted planets” within these intercepted signs. In my own case, I had the Moon intercepted within Taurus, which was intercepted in the 12^th House; and I had Venus intercepted within Scorpio, which was intercepted in the 6^th House. This meant that these planets were also not accessible to me, nor were the signs they ruled accessible. Venus rules relationships, so relationships would not be solved until I found a way to access it, nor would the signs Venus rules be accessible--Libra and Taurus. The Moon rules emotions and security, so issues of feeling safe in the world, feeling connected to others and the world, and feeling loved--and the sign of Cancer-- would not be dealt with until I found some way to access the Moon.

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I had to break the unconscious programming of my culture, values and religious training and strike out into entirely unexpected directions to encounter solutions that bought me back to a balanced, grounded life--that in effect opened up access to these intercepted signs and planets. One has to go outside their environment; that may mean outside one’s country, one’s culture, one’s region of the country, one’s traditional religions, one’s traditional work to find the solutions to these problems of intercepted signs and fill those “missing“ areas in one‘s life.

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When one has intercepted signs, it usually means one also has intercepted houses--houses whose borders lie entirely within the boundaries of their signs. This means that two consecutive houses will have the same sign on their cusps and be ruled by the ruling planet of that sign.

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In my own case, I have two intercepted houses: the first and the seventh. So my first and second house are ruled by Gemini (and Mercury), and my seventh and eighth house are ruled by Sagittarius (Jupiter). Sagittarius is also my Sun sign, whereas Gemini is my ascendant sign. So two very strong houses have sets of needs and skills which I can “extend” into their succeeding houses with strength. My Gemini mental skills can be extended into my second house of work to earn my income. My Sagittarian student and philosophical skills can be extended into the eighth house, where I come face to face with deep issues such as death, the secrets of the Universe, and unity consciousness. Therefore, when one has intercepted houses, there is the opportunity to extend one’s exceptionally strong skills and abilities into other areas of one’s life with power. In a sense, these are hidden powers.

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Sources:

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Judy Hall, The Astrology Bible

Joanne Wickenburg, Your Hidden Powers: Intercepted Signs and Retrograde Planets

Chiron is a planetoid in our solar system having a peculiar orbit between Uranus and Saturn. It has for some time been included in horoscopes because it plays the unique role of identifying the character of the soul’s wound and healing needs. Chiron also is key in bringing on the process of individuation in the form of a “shamanic journey“…an archetypal psychological experience characterized by a near-death experience, followed by a long psychological illness and restoration, in the end, of sanity. The experience may leave the soujourner strange and eccentric, and possessing odd sensitivities or talents.

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Chiron in myth was a Centaur…the son of the god Kronos and a nymph, Philyra, who…seeking to escape the god’s amorous pursuit...changed herself into a horse. Kronos nevertheless had his way with her, by changing himself into a stallion. She became pregnant as a result of the rape and bore Chiron. The new baby was half man, half horse. In horror, Philyra sought forgetfulness and sought help from Zeus. Zeus changed her into a Linden tree where she might live out her appointed time dreaming.

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Taught his lessons by Apollo…god of Light and Reason…, young Chiron was guided away from his instinctual side and towards reason. Psychologically, this metaphorically describes the process of “repression” in which the ability to feel one’s emotions and body are sublimated and lost in our “unconscious” as we are educated to value the mind and spirit over the body. With no connection to our instinctual side, we too are not grounded in our bodies, symbolizing the fate modern man has been dealt as a result of our historic denial of our animal side.

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Chiron is known as the archetypal “shaman” healer, and his influence is to serve us as our inner teacher when we are called into an internal “shamanic journey” of individuation to heal this inner split. This “wounded healer” is sometimes able to heal others but not himself.

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Chiron’s psychological theme is the combination of a negative rejecting mother and an absent or weak father and is the common psychological theme of our time, creating in our children a loneliness and sense of isolation. This intergenerational heritage creates basis for the archetypal Parsifal hero’s birth, leaving our psyche wide open to the imaginal realm and hindering ego formation. The result is often a increasing emphasis on a rarified spirituality with repression of instincts ( a flight from pain) and an early sense of destiny and urgency to develop ones own individuality.

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The result of Chiron’s wound was the creation of a repressive barrier between his personality and his instincts. He possessed an extremely fine mind, but could not feel himself, his animalness or his emotions. This loss is Chirons first wound. He became the mediator of Apollonian ideals in a ancient culture of harmony and order set against the instinctual. In effect, Chiron epitomizes the humanity of the early agricultural society. He became a wise man, prophet, physician, teacher and musician; mentor in leadership; healer, and scientist. Such were his skills that his students often surpassed even him in ability or fame, such as the physician Aesclepius and the hero Jason..

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Later in his life, Chiron was mortally wounded in the leg by one of Hercules’s arrows which had been dipped in the poisonous blood of the Hydra, symbolizing the wounded animal aspect/instinctual side of humanity. This was Chiron’s second wound...one he could not escape because, being the son of a god, he was immortal. After his injury, he lived in constant, terrible pain. In the end, Chiron asked to be allowed to take the place of the suffering Prometheus in Hades and to die. Chiron thus became man’s teacher in facing and accepting death.

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Some of the life issues associated with Chiron include:

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• Homoeopathic healing , heal by exaggerating the compulsions to repeat certain lives, experiences, needs.
• Where ever Chiron is in the chart often it represents things we can do well for others but not so well for ourself.
• Subpersonalities in the psyche may constellate around Chiron’s place in a chart as the archetypes of victim, the persecutor, and the rescuer
• Missionary zeal is associated with Chiron.
• Chiron’s story “underlines” the need for acceptance of our woundedness in order to be healed.
• Acceptance of and compassion for ourselves and our suffering
• The Wounded Healer Archetype IS the archtype of the Self!
• Seeking for Meaning to life is driven by the suffering of your woundedness

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Like Chiron, each of us has a soul wound that drives us into seeking for answers and meaning, and from which we cannot escape. This pain drives us into yearnings, compulsions and addictions that causes us to seek ends which cannot be attained. Our dreams are filled with images and archetypal forms. We are often driven to depart our ordinary lives to seek for who we are and our own uniqueness. The journey sometimes takes the form of an emotional or mental breakdown, followed by a long period of recovery. We are tempted to take up causes and spiritual burdens on this journey. But the purpose of each journey is not to make us into priests or healers, but to help us heal the trauma we experienced as small children, to learn to stand alone in this world, to speak our own truths and stand upon our own authority; in other words, to become psychologically and spiritually mature.

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The energies of transformation one encounters on these personal journeys are extremely powerful and can possess us. Most of us must not get caught up in these images or archetypes, for they cause ego inflation and fanatical seeking rather than healing. In time, we must stop the ego inflation that comes with possession by these archetypal energies, stop the seeking, the messianic preaching and Questing, and come back down to live life as it is in humility.

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Stressful placements of Chiron might point to wounds, limited understanding, dogma, self-doubt, or spiritual unrest.

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By understanding the archetypes which try to possess us and denying them our life, we are like Prometheus rebelling against "the gods"--stealing fire from the gods. The story of Prometheus has been linked to Aquarius (where Chiron currently is transiting).

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Through the process of the shamanic journey, we learn to live and to:

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• Give the gods their due respect
• Uphold human values, maintain individuality, stand in our uniqueness, and don’t give into authority
• Accept the limits of our individual make up, the society we live in, the relationship we have, and the lives we lead

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Chiron stresses the shamanic journey as a means of healing and/or transforming and unites the body and mind, the intellect and instincts.

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A prominent Chiron in ones chart indicates the potential to be an educator or healer…one who challenges limited views. But not necessarily. It may simply be the archetype driving one’s individualization.

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Chiron is the Inner Teacher. This archetypal journey into the shamans worldview, into an “expanded awareness”, brings a shift in philosophical perspective to balance the prevailing feelings of powerlessness and victimization…not to make each person into a shaman or healer. Any transformational journey set off by our woundedness is likely to be marked by an archetypal return to Ouranic consciousness, Nature and instincts…a state of participation mystique with Nature. The purpose and goals of each person this happens to may be unique, but it can result in the recovery of a lost sense of self and a subsequent need to feel well again.

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The shaman and the hero must surrender to this process. The hero returns to his life. The shaman becomes possessed by the process and serves others.

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With the completion of our journey, we move into a new sort of relationship between mind and body that restores individuality without necessarily repressing instinct. Communication lines are opened to be well. The personality is strengthen and the feeling of personal empowerment is restored. The personality adjusts to become more intuitive, sensually oriented, and more open to bodily needs.

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The shaman performs a religious function in reconnecting people with life…visible and invisible…to experience and feel ones connection to divine agencies. When traditional religion loses its ability to do this and take people off into institutional but not experiential forms of religious experience, there is no feeling of love, support that one gets from ceremonial forms of worship /Dionysian experiences.

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Chiron’s sign shows where this traumatic search is likely to occur in our own lives.

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Chiron’s house represents an area of life that is initially blocked, wounded or functioning poorly. This is the Cave where he lived.

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Planets in aspect to Chiron tell us something about the terrain of our journey, foes we will meet, and the monsters we may meet, befriend or be devoured by.

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Chiron’s death psychologically is our return to life. He goes back into the Underworld.

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Associations: Horses, shamans, spiritual warriors

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Psychology: Immune system, thighs, genitals

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Past life blocks: Personality splits, roles as victim or scapegoat, unhealed wounds, fears.

The lesson of the Sun in Taurus is learning that using power must be tempered by selflessness and sexuality by judgment. Earthly power used in the service of the ego and personal gain leads to tragedy and suffering. Its user becomes a tyrant. Sexuality is also a power, that when misused, can be destructive of relationships and self-respect. The Taurian must solve the paradoxes of allowing the expression of these powerful human needs while containing the power of human instincts to comply with social and ethical mores.

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The Myth

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One myth that might illustrate this lesson is the story of king Minos of Crete and his insult to the Sea god, Psoidon. Minos, a son of Zeus himself, was one of three brothers contending for the throne of Ancient Crete. But he called to Psoidon, god of the Oceans, to send a bull out of the sea as a sign that he was the one chosen to be king. If the sign was granted, he pledged to sacrifice the bull to the Ocean god. Psoidon complied and sent him a bull from the sea. But upon seeing the magnificent animal, Minos was taken by greed, and decided to instead sacrifice the best bull of his herd and to keep the Bull from the sea for his own herds.

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The selfish act angered Psoidon, and he retaliated by asking Aphrodite to have Minos’ wife, Pasiphae, fall into lust for the bull. And she, in turn, prevailed upon the master craftsman, Daedalus, to build her a wooden cow within which she might “receive the bull”. The mating occurred, and Pasiphae subsequently delivered a child. But the child had a horrible bull’s head. Thus, was the Minotaur born. As he grew up, the Minotaur proved so ungovernable and terrible that Minos had Daedalus built a labyrinth into which the Monster was placed. There he was fed young men and women in the darkness, for human flesh was what he demanded for his food.

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Minos was known far and wide in his day for his wealth, which was based upon sea power. Yet at the heart of his empire there was a horror in the darkness of the labyrinth, and his empire stagnated.

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The Journey of the Taurian

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The Seeker on his Hero’s Journey, like Theseus who himself was sired by Psoidon and eventually killed the Minotaur, must travel into that dark place where he meets the Minotaur--the dark, bestial form of his own Father and the Terror waiting at the center of the dark labyrinth of the mind. Like Theseus, each of us must redeem that aspect of ourselves, Minos, who sinned against god by choosing to use his earthly power to benefit himself rather than by honoring his responsibility and debt as a servant of that Oceanic Power.

Taurus is ruled by Venus, the planetary version of the goddess Aphrodite, and it was--after all--Aphrodite who laid the curse upon Minos’ wife. Goddess of Love that she is, there are aspects of the goddess who carry darker import than others, for only Aphrodite and the daimon Eros were able to “possess“ humans.

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Aphrodite was unique among the Greek pantheon for she was open to carnal love with both mortals and gods. The body is sacred to Aphrodite. Thus, she is often portrayed naked. She is actively sexual, assertive, and confident. She is the image of relative sexual equality and was the goddess of courtesans. Conjugal satisfaction, procreation, desire and satisfaction, adornment and culture, beauty and the erotic arts all belong to her. She links instinctual sexuality and the cultural arts of love. But she is in no sense a wife, although her arts belong to all wives.

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Her list of powers would seem to be uniformly positive, but her arts are double-edged for when irresponsibly employed or undisciplined, the results can be tragic. And in this case, Aphrodite’s arts lead to a bestial mating that produced a monster and a tragedy for Minos’ kingdom.

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The Sigil of the Bull

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The image of the Bull, the sigil for Taurus, is an ancient symbol of the King and Queen conjoined, united in passion. It has both masculine and feminine aspects. The Bull is the manifestation of powerful instinctual drives within humanity, including the instinct to power and sexuality. The Bull is not evil in itself, but when out of control, it can be deadly, violent and destructive--for it represents animal passions.

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Sexual activity in itself is not evil either, but when not regulated within relationships and social contracts, it too can produce tragic consequences. Women born under Venus-ruled Taurus have to be careful in employing their arts of love, for these arts can prove destructive in relationships and life as well as joy-producing. For Taurus is a very instinct-driven sign. Sexuality is a key element of their needs and drives. Giving in to these instinctual drives outside of social conventions or relationship agreements can prove destructive, as it did for Pasiphae and Minos. Even when not discovered, the person will find deep within herself--in the labyrinth of her unconscious mind--a monster that, in time, will devour her life and the happiness of her kingdom.

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The masculine aspect of the Bull is reflected, perhaps, in Aphrodite’s husband, Hephaistos, the Divine but ugly craftsman of beautiful things. He is the creative aspect behind Aphrodite, the beautiful goddess. While he is unlovely, he creates beauty. And from the masculine, although sexuality may not possess the allure it does within the feminine form, the sexual impulse can take the form of creativity and the development of beauty in life. But a delicate balance must always be maintained between the uncontrollability of the sexual impulse and its procreative and cultural manifestations. Whenever the beast gets out of control in someone’s life, tragic consequences can occur.

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The Seeker must solve the paradox of the Bull: the attraction and joy in the sexual impulse balanced against the need to control and discipline the impulse and channel it into creative and sexual expression. Too harsh a repression of one’s sexuality, and the mind splits from the body, and pathology results. The person becomes overly intellectual and uncreative, and in the darkness of the unconscious mind, a monster grows from these unmet sexual needs. Too profligate an abandonment to sexuality or the creative impulse, and the person can lose herself and her self respect in bestial affairs or in his art.

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Each of us must learn to “dance with the bull” as did, perhaps the Cretan Bull Dancers of long ago, vaulting over the horns of charging bulls and lightly landing, balanced in their devotion to the good of themselves and others.

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The Task of Taurus

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The task of Taurus is to find that balance in one’s life and hold it, to find peace, serenity, and tranquility. Taurus is so very physical and sensual. She seeks to touch and be touched. She longs to touch the earth, the branching trees, to walk barefooted in the grass. She revels in sensuousness.

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Many Taureans are called into Nature, seeking Silence and Peace. And Nature, in her wildness, is extraordinarily sensual. Escaping the crowds of humans and never-ending noise is their greatest wish. There, without thoughts or sound, they can just be. When they can find that silent place and hold to it, they can control the beast within and live in balance.

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The weakness of Taurus is a need for security and human instinct is often inclined to seek safety and security. When Taurus give in to the need to feel secure, they can be seduced into an accumulation of Things. Materialism is a trap. The search for security and the accumulation of things can prove a lure into stagnation, for growth virtually always demands a choice step outside self interest and into the Unknown. Confronted by their withdrawal into materialism, many become stubborn and defensive, not desiring to surrender their safe, rich, comfortable lives or control of their lives. At some point, Taurus will have to choose: stagnation in the search for security and things versus choosing change and transformation in one‘s life. If they choose stagnation, as Steven Forrest says, “All is lost!”

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Bibliography

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Steven Forrest, The Inner Sky (Seven Paws Press: 1988).

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Liz Greene, The Astrology of Fate (Samuel Weiser: York Beach, ME, 1984).

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Virgo’s lessons involve the discovery of the Mother within the daughter and the daughter within the Mother. In Virgo, the daughter is fated to become the Mother, and the Virgin to surrender to penetration by life that she may bear her young and offer her gifts to others. To express herself and own her own body, this implies that women must possess the will to belong only to themselves and give their love and bodies to whoever they choose. At the same time, some compromise must be made with the moral judgments of the society to which she belongs. It is the solving of this paradox between self expression and abiding by the rules of society regarding her sexuality that Virgo deals.

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Both Mother and daughter are vulnerable to the judgment of society that they should remain pure and virginal until marriage and surrender to society’s constraints upon the behavior of women within marriage. In the West, society is open only to sexual activity only within the institution of marriage, and sees women who choose to disobey these values as promiscuous and immoral. Society prefers its young women to remain “pure” and virginal before marriage, abstaining from sex until they are constrained within marriage to behave as dutiful wives, responsible mothers, and loyal members of society.

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As a result, each maiden faces a “death experience” as she goes to her marriage, where she discovers she has lost control of her life and her youthful dreams for her own life. She becomes the prisoner of fate, often constrained within her marriage to deny her own dreams and life plans unless they coincide with those of her husband, children or society.

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Having to put the needs of her children and husband before hers, she sometimes reaches old age embittered and angry at not being given a chance live her own dreams in life. And she reacts to her feeling of being devalued by controlling her children’s lives and nagging spitefully at her husband for his faults and flaws. Her children then bear the burden of living her needs out in their lives or her anger and disappointment in them. And they in turn pass on the “consequences” of their mistreatment on to their own children. Fate is then visited upon the later generations within the family lineage.

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Men raised in families where the mother subordinated her own needs to those of her family emerge from childhood as "mother dependent" sons, who in their turn seek wives who will continue the care-taking roles they have come to expect and need.

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Natures Law on the other hand is that the female must provide for the future of her species first, whether she desires it or not. The species defends its will to exist, but doesn‘t care whether the woman is married or not. Through the feminine, life creates a path through generations of children and parents. This kind of immortality is of the body and the genes, not of the spirit. But in Nature, reproduction can occur sometimes more easily outside of social conventions than within.

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Virgo is about the unity of the Mother and her Daughter in the sanctity of Natures Law over Man’s Law and about the need to learn to give in to life’s flow and inevitabilities of bearing the young. Nature’s Law does not require that women surrender their lives, dreams and freedom to express their own naturalness inside marriage. Nor does Nature require that women surrender their freedom to express themselves sexually or otherwise. Nature allows women their freedom, but requires their participation in reproduction by instincts which create desire for the sexual act.

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The Myth of Virgo

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One myth that captures the theme of Virgo is the story of Demeter and Hade’s abduction and rape of Demeter’s daughter, Persephone. That story is told elsewhere in my journal, so it will only briefly be summarized here.

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Zeus (God) and Demeter (Earth) together had a daughter named Persephone, who was the warm sunshine and fertility of the Earth during earth’s golden age, when there was no winter or cold seasons. Humans were able to plant crops year around and food was abundant. As she grew into a beautiful young goddess, Demeter and her daughter were very close and spent nearly all their time together. But as Persephone grew into young womanhood, Zeus felt that his daughter should have a husband and secretly told his dark brother, Hades, Lord of the Underworld, that he should abduct his daughter to separate her from her mother.

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Hades came up from his Kingdom under the Earth through an opening in the Ground, grabbed the innocent and virginal Persephone, and kidnapped her. Taking her beneath the ground, he raped her and then carried her deep into his kingdom beneath the Earth.

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Persephone’s mother, Demeter, furious at the treatment of her daughter and lonely for her company, refused to bear crops for the people, and famine set in throughout the world. Without Persephone in the world, the world settled in to a long and unchanging winter of poor sunlight, cold and snow. The people were dying from hunger and cold and prayed to the gods for relief. Zeus finally relented and sent Hermes into the Underworld to convince Hades to release his captive. Hades agreed, but then tricked Persephone into eating three pomegranate seeds. This sealed her fate, for anyone who eats the food of the Underworld cannot leave again.

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In the end, Persephone was released to return to the upper world for 9 months, but she had to return at the end of that time for 3 months in the Underworld. During the 9 months she spent above ground, there would be sunshine and opportunity to grow food. During the 3 months which she had to spend below, there would be winter, for Demeter would refuse to grow crops. Thus, the seasons came into being.

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When Persephone rose from the Underworld, she became the Kore…and the initiates at Eleusis would witness her rise from the dead each year on the first day of spring. Each year when she rose, the Kore would become Demeter.

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In time, Persephone married Hades and became a powerful force for mercy and grace in the Underworld. Her power matched her Dark Husband, and together they rule in the Underworld. Kore’s softness and affectionate nature softened her grim mate in his Underworld realms.

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The myth makes into a metaphor Natures Law that woman will bear fruit. This is her fate, for Nature works through her to ensure the survival of the species. In myth, the prostitute is the mythic virgin--the archetypal image of the free woman who is married first of all to her inner being and only secondarily to a man. To the ancients, “virgin” did not mean “chaste”. This was a usage which came later in the religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Under the old gods, the pregnancy of nature was celebrated, with free and uncontrolled, unmarried love, in contrast to controlled nature, which is married love.

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In nature, the virgin must be sacrificed and compelled to manifest her gifts to others in an outwardly expressive and concrete way. She must stop holding back the fruit of her womb, sacrifice her purity of intentions, and be penetrated by this worlds will to be reborn inside her. This is a “fate” only when the young woman cannot resolve the paradox of social convention and personal freedom. She must both align herself with Aphrodite and be free to love as she wills, and accept some of the socially acceptable restrictions on her behavior sexually. She must solve the paradox. If she cannot resolve these dualities, she faces the extinction of her need to be well as she represses her normal, healthy sexuality. She becomes pathologically or mentally ill, and she cannot maintain a normal, healthy heterosexual relationship with men.

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The symbol of Virgo is the image of the goddess Astraea. Astraea dwelt on this earth and “lived among the people” during the Golden Age of Kronos’ reign. She taught the daughters morals. But as the Golden Age ended, she grew to hate the people of earth because they grew corrupt in her view. They no longer abided by the gods rules and became disorderly and wasteful in their living. So she left the earth and never returned, becoming the constellation Virgo.

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Astraea’s judgments were not like the judgments of a court, but more like Moira--fate acting through human generations. Astraea’s judgments were based upon “shoulds” and “oughts” sorts of values, and thus were characterized by moral judgments of women‘s behaviors and values.

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Summary

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Each young woman thus faces a choice between conforming to society’s “shoulds” and “oughts” or following her own desires and independent judgment in her sexual and reproductive behavior. But from her choices, society imposes consequences that can make her life difficult. It is the struggle of each young woman to balance these dualities--being socially outcast versus taking her power to be her self, acting morally according to social values versus being free of social conventions in sexuality, following a conventional family life versus following a professional life, being spiritual versus being a materialist, being married versus being independent, etc--and finding a way to resolve the paradoxes.

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If she doesn’t resolve these dualities, she faces a future of neurotic or pathological issues with her partners and problems maintaining an emotionally healthy and happy man-woman relationship.

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Men whose Sun is positioned in Virgo bear the same duty, but they must father and protect their young as their “duty” in society. They too are expected to sacrifice their youthful freedom and dreams to fulfill their role in procreation by Nature. And their instincts cause them to “love” and defend mate and children. Society, as it does for women, lay moral expectations upon men in their sexual and family lives. So they too must find a way to live their own lives and dreams, express their own sexuality and creative life as individuals, and not be totally controlled by social morals. If men are overly concerned about what others believe, they too become numb to their natural maleness and develop pathologies in their views of themselves and life.

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Virgo’s Profile

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Virgo is associated with “harvest time” in the seasons. This is the time when the crops are harvested and brought into the barns and storage bins. It is a time of abundance and plenty.

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The bearing of children is also, in a sense, a harvest time, when the abundance of the womb bears its fruit. To birth the next generation, women make a sacrifice of themselves, to put aside their own dreams and freedom to bear and raise their children. They may in fact prefer this role in society--that of motherhood and service--but they also may not. Nevertheless, Natures Law requires that they make this sacrifice. Men too must make a sacrifice, setting aside their own unregulated sexual activities, their own immaturity, and give in to the needs of family and tribe.

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It is society’s will, or law, that requires that women submit themselves to the control of society. And it is this requirement that has psychological and spiritual implications for the self worth of women. Society projects upon each woman a standard of purity and perfection that is often at variance with her individuality and individual rights to control her own body and life.

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Some say it is this moral judgment that imposes a feeling of “inferiority” upon many women who’s needs are for greater individual expression of their sexuality and individuality. It is this societal standard of behavior and moral purity that creates pathologies of the mind, that create subservient wives and neurotic daughters who cannot maintain normal healthy relationships with men, and that create dysfunctional families. Yet these standards are perceived as “normal” and “spiritually well” by mainstream society, meaning that there is no where unhappy individuals who would like to live their lives free of these restrictions can go without being labeled as a social outcast.

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Virgos who submit to social morals and prescribed roles in the family behave as perfect service workers. They are servants and caretakers. They handle endless details, routine jobs, supporting, and serving. Quietly, they go about their family roles, centering their existence in the home, shyly and demurely. They are the perfect wives. They are sweet, non aggressive, and giving. This is their standard of “goodness” and “perfection”. Virgo women often make good nurses and mothers.

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Within the Christian tradition, Virgo symbolizes the Christ: the one who sacrifices herself for others, who gives herself in service to others. This is the last of the “personality houses”, following Leo. One’s time in Virgo humbles the ego and marks the point in life when one turns within to re-discover who they are now that “serving one’s own needs” is over. It marks the point at which the strong personality is ready to endure the conflicts of social discourse and social judgments again after her period of self discovery without feeling she is losing herself in subservience. For those born in Virgo, Virgo is the programming that created each woman’s personality of subservience.

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The maturing Virgo will find her own strengths and begin to develop those to “perfection.” She will become the one issue, or principle, she is best at, and in so doing, will discover that she is able to express her inner nature without devaluing herself. She will be able to serve others without feeling subservient because she is serving a principle greater than herself and not feel used by others who do not appreciate her sacrifice.

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There also comes a time when the “bearing of children” is over and the giving up of self interest to Nature or society, however, is complete. There comes a time to put aside the needs of Motherhood and Fatherhood, the needs of younger children, the urge to be that perfect wife or perfect husband; to stop being the “servant”, the “martyr”, the “worker” or the “perfectionist”. When this happens, you’ll know to be only yourself…to be only your own needs to be well with yourself and all there is. Set all those perfectionist expectations of yourself aside. Set all those expectations of others aside. Do and be who and what you want to be. Then, the duality and paradox of Mother and Daughter can be resolved.

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The Shadow Qualities of Virgo

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Steven Forrest, in book The Inner Sky, writes that the shadow qualities of Virgo include perfectionism, being a martyr, having ethereal goals, and sacrificing one’s own self or needs for others. Isabel Hickey’s Astrology emphasizes that the personality problems underlying these traits stem from an inferiority complex caused by “having a greater sense of power than one is able to express.” Some have argued that this situation emerges from early childhood training, too much strictness with the small child, and parental withdrawal of love and approval to “control the behavior of the child”. And young girls, especially, are programmed early to be “feminine, giving, self sacrificing, loving, “nice”, or kind rather than “aggressive, needs satisfying, dominant, efficient, logical” as are the boys. But both boys and girls may be subjected to this self sacrificing programming, especially by parents who themselves have been programmed in this way.

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Force and scolding, spanking and isolation of an infant when fussy leaves the small child with the understanding that she must not express her own needs, that she is not worthy of love or having what she wants/needs…especially when tired, hungry, or dirty. And so the child surrenders her own needs and right to express her needs and her will to her parents in exchange for love and security. This bargain is so far in the past for most of us that we never consciously recall it, yet it continues to influence our ability to speak our needs and express our will for the rest of our lives. When this happens, the child becomes quieter and more tentative in dealing with parent, adults and authority figures. The child learns to wait to be told what to be, or do, by others more worthy, and powerful, than she is.

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Because of her underlying feeling of unworthiness, Virgo becomes shy and perfectionist. She feels stressed whenever she is around others, and the easiest way to relate in such cases is in some servile or servant role to those “superiors.” Not understanding her feelings, Virgo however is unable to articulate her resulting inner thoughts and feelings. Thus, she retires into her home, where she feels safest and relaxed; for outside the home around others who might judge or punish her, she becomes restless, agitated and nervous. Her outside relationships are often good, because she is sweet and not aggressive, but these relationships are because of her underlying feeling of inferiority and propensity to be a caretaker or look after others. Whenever she feels bad about herself, she tries to “be good.” This behavior is sometimes projected into religious beliefs as well.

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Nevertheless, Virgo feels that she can never do enough to make the world a better place, and frequently she projects these feelings upon others. So to others, Virgo’s greatest fault lies in being too critical or judgmental of others. Her analyzing mind can cause her to lapse into faultfinding, criticism and irritability. Driven by her underlying feeling of never being enough or good enough, she constantly works herself to exhaustion. She projects these same motives upon others, and demands of them too much. She needs to learn to accept herself and others as already doing the best she and they can, be less critical and more loving. Her feeling of being less than others and her mental way of functioning unbalances the way she relates to others, and her underlying feeling of not being good enough causes her to project her own imagined inadequacies upon others and to rupture her potential relationships through criticizing and judging them. She can be far more effective in making strong relationships by ceasing the critical complaining about others and tempering her underlying perfectionism. She needs to realize that her view of others and the world is not an "objective reality" but an inner one caused by her own inner programming as a child and by society's moral values.

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Virgo’s often unconscious feeling of being unworthy needs to be brought into consciousness and examined for its consequences for her life and relationships. By becoming conscious of one’s underlying motivation and its consequences, Virgo can relax with others, be more sure of herself, be patient both with herself and with others, and stop the judgments and complaining. Neither she nor others are really inferior. All are equal in every way that matters.

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Sources:

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Liz Greene, The Astrology of Fate

Steven Forrest, The Inner Sky

Isabel Hickey, Astrology: A Cosmic Science

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The theme of Leo’s journey is the son’s search for his Father. In so much of the Western experience, the son experiences a lack in guidance from the father, or there is no father in the home. Lacking a fathers guidance , the son sets out into the world to discover for himself what life is all about, but he is deceived into accepting the values and authority of society’s leaders about how he must behave, what his values should be, and what he must become.

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Being immature and insecure about himself, he searches first for love and acceptance in the world of men and finds he serves masters who use him for their own ends. He learns he must put his own needs below those of his “superiors.“ He is young, eager to please and idealistic, and so he does not question those masters he fears may reject or disapprove of him. As a result, he misses his opportunity stand up for himself and claim his power when the opportunity does come.

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Leo’s flaw is his immaturity and idealism, and his unwillingness to recognize and accept his own imperfections as he aspires upward in society. And so he has no compassion for others whose flaws he encounters. He uses women who care for him. And he demonizes those who disagree with him as “wrong headed” or “evil.” He is rigidly one-sided about most issues. And whenever he does try to see things differently than others, he finds that he meets with disapproval and rejection from his compatriots and masters. As a result, he is held in place, compromising himself and his truth by feeling guilty and self-doubting.

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As Leo ages, life teaches him that all men (and women) suffer. Others are really not so different than he. If he doubts or wonders what is right and what is wrong, so do they. He gradually comes to consciousness that we all are wandering through life trying to find out how to live well and meaningfully.

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Leo’s journey is to become his Father, the Father who is loving, compassionate, and wise enough to guide him through life. In this journey, the Son becomes the Father in much the same way as in Capricorn and Aries, except those archetypal journeys denote other gains. Leo’s need is to become his own man…in essence he will create himself as an individual. Who it is he is creating will not be someone others will applaud, for he will constantly question society’s values and choices. And so, he learns the loneliness of the King who shall serve his people, yet not receive their love in return.

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Two myths are needed to describe the issues in Leo. The first might be Herakles and his Battle with the Nemean Lion. The second is Parsival and the Fisher King.

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In Greek myth, the Twelve Labors of Herakles mark the twelve tasks of the human being as he circles the wheel of Fortune/Life. There are 12 signs of the zodiac, and each sign carries mythic archetypal lessons or tasks to be accomplished in the development of the human being. Herakles represents the all too human “ego” or “conscious mind”, who is attempting to understand life and learn the lessons of his existence.

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One of Herakles 12 tasks is to conquer a lion who is ravaging flocks and who, it appears, cannot be killed with any weapon. Arrows and spears bounce off his hide, and all who encounter it seem unable to control him.

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Herakles first tries arrows, but they bounce off its hide. Then, he attempts to club it to death. But that too fails. The lion however is hurt and flees into a cave with two mouths. So Herakles stops one of the mouths up with boulders, and then enters the other to grapple with the beast by hand. Finally, he succeeds in strangling the animal. Flaying the hide, he then wears the lion skin as his outer garment for then on.

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The myth can be understood as a metaphor. The lion is the young man--the son--who is unconsciously driven by his instincts rather than reason. He attempts to live his life, meeting his needs, narcissistically, but he is met with hostility by society which wants him controlled. He is fiery, passionate, warm-blooded, sexual, rebellious, irresponsible, and ruled by his emotions. His unruly demands and impatience with the rules of family and society brings disapproval from everyone. Herakles is “ego-consciousness” brought to bear upon the natural instincts to take what one needs and to bring those unruly narcissistic instincts under control.

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Herakles kills the Nemean lion and thereafter wears its skin. He, metaphorically, becomes the lion with his instincts tamed.

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The lion is also the Child Within us all, narcissistic, innocent, impetuous, warm, curious, natural, impatient, and naturally guided by instinct and desire rather than reason. When that Child meets with adult unapproved, he withdraws into himself (the cave with two mouths), hurt and feeling unloved. Often, it is his parents who confine and punish him, making him feel that his own needs are not worthy, not permitted. And so he learns to put his own needs below that of others. His parents “strangle” his life force and vitality. He is not permitted his own needs.

At some point in life, he discovers that life for him has lost its meaning and value. He turns from his life in society and begins a quest to find the Father-spirit within himself: to discover the meaning to life and rediscover how he should live it. The Quest is the Hero’s Journey…what was called by Joseph Campbell “The Monomyth.”

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The Myth of the Fisher King tells Leo’s story of the Quest. The myth has been expressed elsewhere in this Journal, so the reader may read it there. In essence, the tale is of a king who is wounded in the genitals, and castrated becomes an invalid king, His land deteriorates into a Wasteland, disappearing into another world.

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A young knight named Parsival, raised by his mother alone in the forest--for his father had been killed fighting battles for his king--ventures into his castle one night and witnesses a ceremony with the Holy Grail. The Grail heals everyone who asks for healing, but the King receives no justice, no healing. Parsival, however, is unable to bring himself to ask, “Why?” Who is it that the Grail serves that it should heal others but not the King nor the Land?

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Keeping silent, he sleeps after the ceremony, only to awake in the morning to find the castle gone and himself alone. Parsival realizes that he has been tested and failed the test somehow. It will be 20 more years before he receives another opportunity to be tested to see if he is mature enough to stop being ruled by guilt and social approval and compassionate enough with himself and others to not judge himself as too unworthy to question authority.

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An old man, when once again he is admitted into the King’s presence and witnesses the Grail Ceremony, he rises and questions the justice of what he witnesses. “Whom does the Grail serve?”, he asks. “Why is this man not healed of his wound?” And with that step, the King is healed and rises from his bed.

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Parsival’s journey was necessary because he had no father to teach him how to live well. He had to learn through experience instead. He was like the young lion, guided by his instincts and desires and without the experience to tame his passions and need to be loved and admired. He had to grow up and find out that society would never grant him his individuality and his power, no matter how long he waited. He would have to take his power by questioning authority. He would have to learn that a mature individual must be willing to stand alone and live by his own Truths.

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Young men raised by their mothers alone or with ‘distant fathers’ can emerge from childhood as ‘castrated men’…eunuchs…--wounded in their self image as males, guided by their need to be loved and told what to do rather than to take their own power and live by their own rules and values. Like the Fisher King, they are wounded males, locked into social conformity, powerless, and unable to feel alive within their bodies.

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When at last Parsival questioned authority and turned away from the guilt which had controlled his actions for so many years, he became the Father. In fact, the healed Fisher King soon revealed that he was Parsival’s own Grandfather. Although the King’s Land quickly is restored, the Old King dies within three days, and Parsival became the Grail King, inheriting the responsibility of bringing healing to the People.

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And so the Son became the Father. And the two were made One. Within each human are all the dualities of the Universe, good and evil, right and wrong, males and females, old and young, son and father, love and hatred. And within each of us, each duality must be confronted and balanced. Society will always ethically choose one extreme of a duality over the other, project the other upon its “enemies” and so unbalance every individual and create fateful conflicts in its citizens lives. Life then brings a fateful encounter for each of us that will thrust each individual over to the opposite extreme at some point in their life as their shadow resurges and calls the person home to themselves.

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The “Son seeking the Father” is a voluntary search for balance and compassion in in life. Leo’s deepest urge is to search for the Self, the central value in Life--which in mythic terms is the Search for the Father. Leo’s Father is the Life Giver, symbolized by the Sun: a merciful, compassionate father-god embodied in human values, who heals the wounded soul of the seeker and guides seekers into their own wisdom and individuality. This Father, Leo must discover within himself, for if it is not in him, it is not to be found, and the immature son will age into cynicism and bitterness at the cruelty of the world.

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To project this inner need onto someone in the outer world, is to create one’s own guru or Master, and to burden that individual with fulfilling your inner ideals--an impossible task. The Guru is within, in the mind and ideals of the seeker, and must be manifested within himself. Then, he becomes the Life Giving Father, the King who serves his People even when they refuse to return his love for them.

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This is a concept of a Father-god who must be renewed constantly to keep Ham alive and in this world, and must be embodied in outspoken questioning of outer authority by a strong, independent individual who can stand against the disapproval of society and who can advocate for compassion over judgment, justice over exploitation, healing over punishment, love over cruelty, and intimacy over impersonalization.

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The Sun is the Significator of the Spirit of a Man. It is his essence and I am-ness. It rules his need-to-be. It represents his Will and his Highest Expression. The Sun expresses a person’s determination, his dignity, his self confidence and vitality, his loyalty, fortitude and optimism.

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The Sun may be expressed in its highest nature or its lower, which is the shadow expression. When positively expressed, the Sun gives self-consciousness, strength, authoritativeness, individualism, power, leadership, confidence, courage and faith. If negatively expressed, the Sun drives self-will, cruelty, austerity, arrogance, willfulness, aggressiveness, dictatorialness, egocentricity, overbearingness, and pessimism.

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In Western myths, the Sun has a masculine character, but in others cultures and times, it represented the feminine issue.

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Leo must express who she is in the world: to express the mind. Leo can’t keep within herself the secrets others hold dear. So she opens herself so that all may see who she is. She opens her heart and lives from her heart. This is the rising of the Leo heartful personality in full bloom. The sign of Leo marks the high point of the ego’s development on the zodiac.

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Leo loves life. She must advocate for it, love it, live it fully. Any time she discovers within herself a trace of fear of life or the world, she hunts it down and obliterates it mercilessly. Life is Good. In fact, Leo opens and begins to trust the World, as a child might; curiosity, excitement, loving, Leo runs to meet us, spontaneous, naïve, and innocent. She is brave, heartful, self-reliant, confident, and expressive. Many Leos are dignified, self-respecting, courageous, honest, direct and fully dependable.

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Ruled by the Sun, Leo exults in performing for others and creative activities. Dancing, singing, storytelling, and drama all are turf for Leo’s high life. She is the center of attention; one would almost think she was a Queen, or he a King. She is the clown, the child, the actor. She is a doer, and she uses her Will like a magic wand, opening doors and manifesting what she wants, and making things happen. With her open heart, Leo wants all those she loves to be as happy as she wills herself to be.

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Behind Leo’s flamboyance, however, is an inner child who is not so sure of herself. Outwardly, she radiates self-confidence, self-reliance, pride in herself, even arrogance; but subconsciously, she is still that little girl trying to please mother and dad with how smart and talented she is.

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Mom and Dad might always have laughed and clapped for her performances, but in the “real world” people sometimes don’t appreciate the Queenly Leo. Many people will see in her clowning “silliness”, or in her performances “pretension”, in her flamboyance “pride”, and in her playful attitudes an “absence of seriousness” required for business and the real business of life: work! When Leo does not receive the love she requires to flower, her ego cannot withstand the rejection, and she withers.

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Whereas her complement across the zodiac, Aquarius, suffers from a shadow aspect of ”self-pity”, Leo suffers from “self-importance.” And in both cases that quality is based upon self-doubt. Self doubt stems often from her early childhood when her parents ran down her efforts to do or perform. “You can’t do anything right!” may have been heard too often in the home, or “You’d better work harder or you’ll fail. The world is a hard place. You can’t count on anyone out there.” Aquarius responded by detaching from interpersonal relationships and becoming an intellectual with an inferiority issue. But Leo worked all the harder, became aggressive in making people like her, and dedicated herself to the game of life competitively. Her way became the way of the Will. She had to perform for the people to show how good she really was.

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But self-importance is a mark of low self-esteem, self love, or self acceptance. If Leo cannot get someone to like her the way she is, she’ll try something else. She may even surrender her self and her self acceptance to be liked. Or she’ll reject those who reject her in anger and confusion. She will feel fear and walk away. She will neglect her responsibilities. She will attempt to control others instead of working with them cooperatively. In the dark, Leo can be perceived as egotistical and bombastic.

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Or Leo may become so wrapped up in her own self-importance and ego that she believes others can’t do things as well as she can. Then, she becomes caught up in trying to do it all. She won’t delegate. And she becomes destructive and over-controlling in her organization.

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Leo must learn some of the lessons Aquarius knows by instinct. Leo must learn to be detached from outcomes so that rejection and social disapproval don’t wound so deeply. She must learn to control her ego inflation and practice humility. She must become more “statesmanlike” in her relationships with others and serve that which is above selfish interest. At the same time, she must hold onto to those other very positive qualities Leo is well known for: heartfulness, courage, honesty, self-expression, self-reliance, action, a light-hearted attitude about life, and her love of life.

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Source:

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Liz Greene, The Astrology of Fate

Steven Forrest, The Inner Sky

Isabel M. Hickey, Astrology: A Cosmic Science

Introduction

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For the person born with their Sun in Capricorn, their Spirit is preparing for its initiation into bondage in the name of the Father.

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The theme of Capricorn’s journey is “the sacrifice of the old king to ensure the fertility of the crops.” In the myths of the early agricultural cultures of Sumeria and Mesopotamia, the life force of the King was linked intimately to the life and fertility of the soil. This was the era in history of warrior cultures and the highest achievement was to live and die a hero. Only the strongest warrior could win and hold a kingdom, so each king must battle all challengers to win his Kingdom. Over time, rulers came to claim royal blood and an exclusive right to reign by divine right.

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Under the Law of Divine Right, the kings were accepted as the Sons of God, and any challenge to their authority was not only a personal challenge but a challenge to the God of the Kingdom. But in time, the King would grow old and must sire a son to follow him. Sons would in time, grow to compete with one another, and would attempt to kill one another and finally to assassinate their Father. Tales of patricide still come down to modern times through the Homeric poems, plays of the classic theatre, the stories of Celtic kings, and even Shakespeare’s plays. When the King sickened or was no longer strong enough to hold his Kingdom against his sons, he was killed and his blood returned to the soil. In forest rites of the Great Mother in Druidic times, the weakened king was even sacrificed and his blood renewed the Land.

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In Capricorn, the Father is a being of the Earth Itself. He is the Reality Principle that guides and sustains his Kingdom. The Son, on the other hand, is the impetuous, impatient young man who has no patience for the rules, duties and expectations that the Father abides by and expected of him.

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It is important to understand that both the Father and the Son are within each of us. We are dealing here with a duality of concepts. When one thinks of their Father, their God, any archetypal authority figure, they are defining a “concept”--not the actual Father, God, or archetype. The thought or concept is not the Father himself, God “Himself”, or the authority figure himself. The thought of the Father is thus only a thought--not the actuality the thought refers to. Likewise, when we think of “the Son”, it is the concept we are bringing up into our mind, whether the thought refers to a son of our actual Father, our Divine Father, or any Authority figure. Thus, we are dealing here with a duality of concepts that are intellectualizations of a Reality which we perceive to be outside ourselves.

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However, when we “think” of our Father, or our God, or any Authority figure, we react within our mind and emotions to the “thought” or “concept” as though our thought could touch and impact upon the Actualities. When we think “Father”, we have an emotional reaction of fear, love, resentment etc. depending upon the associations we have to our outside father.

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When we think “God”, we experience an emotional reaction of awe, fear, love, need etc depending upon the associations we have been taught to have of an “outside” God. When we are in this “mind set”, we are identifying with “the son” who sees his Father as a threat, as a fearful authority, as a son’s need for his distant and frightening father…all the associations a son might have of a supremely powerful father who was also a powerful King. As the son, we fear that our father will “kill” us and deny us our mother, who is love to us. The “son” of course is also only a concept in our mind, but it is a concept we have associations with that are opposite to those of “the Father.”

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When we look at our own children, for example, we might see them as young, inexperienced, having poor or immature judgment, having no motivation, lacking honesty, having no scruples in dealing with young people of the opposite sex, etc. We are, in short, viewing our children from the perspective of “the Father.” We judge our children as immature and not self disciplined and not ready to “be in charge.” We know that self discipline and self reliance and careful attention to decisions and relationships is demanded of the Father, the King, the Decision Maker.

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In the Spiritual dimension, there is no actually becoming God. But there is a requirement that one realize this and accept that one must stand in for that Agency in his life on earth; one must, in effect, become a Divine Right King in one‘s life. One must become the Father in one’s spiritual path so that one can take responsibility as the only power who can rule on Earth in one‘s life.

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As a Divine Right King, we must obey God by choosing to follow the Law, choosing to follow our conscience in all relationships and business dealings, accepting responsibility for our selves, our choices and the consequences of our choices. We must be spiritually determinant in how we choose to live our life. As the Divine Right King of our life and our choices, we must have Faith in the only Power we bend our knee to, as we discover that no answers to our deepest questions are provided by this Universe and yet we must live our spirituality as a Divine Right King would anyway. Otherwise, we become spiritual ill, confused, indecisive and frightened of living from our own disciplined authority. Not stepping into our Fatherhood means we wait for some Divine Agency to run our life for us, to make our decisions for us, and we may become a spiritual sycophant.

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Again, this is a “conceptual Divine Right King”…a metaphorical view of life and one’s role in one‘s personal world. It means one takes responsibility for one’s life and one’s world, obeying to the best of one‘s ability, the Law and Will of God.

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In Capricorn, we spend much of our time identifying with the son, plotting how we too will climb with Mountain, become powerful, associate our selves with God and seek guidance from Divine sources. But so long as we are thinking this way, we are still identifying with the Son. As long as we are unready to step into our Fatherhood, the role of the King, we are still not willing or ready to accept responsibility for our own life. We are looking to be taken care of by our Father, our concept of God, our imagined or real “spirit guides.” We are still immature and taking orders.

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Capricorn is all about the testing and maturing of the son until he is ready to become the Father, the King, the Divine Ruler. By the long process of struggling to become mature…the struggle through life itself…which is the long hard climb up the Mountain towards our concept of God…until each of us, as “the son”, comes to realize that no one is going to solve our problems for us. No one is going to send an angel down to tell us how to live, what to do to feel safe, or what to do to feel loved.

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When we realize this, the Mountain becomes a lonely and isolated place, and we place our Father’s crown on our own head and start the long and lonely walk back down to Mountain to where other people live. The King must rule on Earth. There is really no point is living one’s life in a spiritual bliss away from Life, thinking about God constantly and how we would like to be with Him. The work on ourselves is done here.

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Now, the Divine Right King must re-enter Life in his community and behave as a King in his own life…no more looking for people or angels either to solve his problems for him, tell him the answers, or show him how to live. He has learned through his struggles as “the son” which answers can be answered and which he must find his own answers for. He has learned to live from faith alone (perhaps). He has learned to take care of his body, his home, his relationships, his children, and his responsibilities seriously, and not to lapse into irresponsible and immature judgments, not to lapse into emotionality or sentimentality when hard business choices must be made. He has learned to rely upon his own experience, his own skills, his own intuition and wisdom. He has learned that he must take responsibility and rule his kingdom and his life, and not to give his power away to others.

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One Myth we might use to illustrate this principle is the story of young Kronos and his Father, Ouranos. Another is the myth of young Zeus and his Father, Kronos. In both stories, the elder King ruled with an iron hand and lay with his Titaness wife, who symbolized the Earth. Ouranos’ wife was Gaia, who grew to hate him. Afraid of his Titan children, he would not allow Gaia to birth any of his Titan children into the world. So in her anger at her husband and her pain, she plotted with her son, Kronos, to kill her husband.

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Using a flint sickle (symbolizing the Moon) given to him by Gaia, Kronos castrated his sire one day when he lay with his wife and threw the severed genitals into the sea. Ouranos faded out into the sky from which he had come and was never heard from again. From the blood and severed flesh falling into the sea arose Aphrodite, goddess of Love, from the foam; the Erinyes, the fates who hound those guilty of patricide; the Gigantes and Meliae. The Gigantes were sons and daughters of their castrated father. They later protected Kronos’ son, Zeus, from his dangerous father while he was growing up on the island of Crete. The Meliae were nymphs of the Ash tree who bore the third Bronze Age race of mankind. This race were all killed in the Great Deluge of the Age of Zeus.

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After the overthrow of Ouranos, Kronos became the King of a Golden Age of Mankind, and began to begat children on the Titanness, Rhea, who also symbolized the Earth. But Kronos is warned by a prophecy by Gaia that in time, one of his own sons will rise, kill him and take his place. Therefore, anxious to avoid this fate, he insisted on swallowing each and every son and daughter Titan as it was birthed by Rhea. With Rhea, he sired the Titans Demeter, Hestia, Hera, Hades, Poseidon and Zeus, but everyone but one went down his throat where they were kept from growing up.

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Rhea finally became desperate to preserve her children and allow them into the world, so when her child Zeus was born, she brought a large rock wrapped in swaddling clothes to her husband, and he swallowed that.

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The child Zeus was then sent secretly to a cave in Crete, where he was suckled and watched over by the Melaei nymphs. Kronos however, in time discovered the deception, and sent assassins to murder him. The young Zeus was torn to pieces and killed, but he was resurrected by his Mother and continued to grow in power and experience. In time, Zeus challenged his Father and defeated him in a great battle, supported by other the other Titans, especially the Titans Prometheus and Psoidon. Finally beaten, Kronos was sent into permanent exile in Tartarus, an Earth-realm deep beneath Hades, where he was guarded to prevent him from escaping.

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Because of his great strength, Zeus took Lordship of the Universe and his brothers Hades and Psoidon became Lords of the Underworld and the Oceans. The gods moved to the top of Mount Olympus, where they looked down on the Earth and the business of Men. And the other dangerous Titans were exiled to Tartarus, deep beneath the Earth.

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Both myths express the duality and unity of both Father and Son, senex and puer. This is the theme of the lessons of the Capricornian during his life journey.

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Within the Mind of the Capricornian is the duality of the Father and the Son. He projects this duality outward, and therefore looks outward from within this duality. When he looks outward towards the Father, he identifies with the son and resents the authority and tyranny of his father, his employer, his pastor, his Divine Source or any authority figure. When he looks outward at others he views as “less than he is“, he identifies with the Father and looks at others with suspicion and misgivings. The result is an resentment of Divine or social order and authority, coupled with a contempt or fear of those who do not understand his responsibilities or the justification for his authority.

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These perspectives are experienced daily in our lives. On the job, we look resentfully up the organization chart at the people who control us and dictate our choices and options on the job. At the same time, we view those below us as impetuous, immature, threatening, clamoring for our jobs. We view the world from these same perspectives archetypal.

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The Father identity imposes discipline and order upon his identity as his impetuous Son. The Son constantly seeths in anger over his Father’s iron rule. He desires to climb the heights of the Mountain, become powerful, and throw off the seeming iron rule and discipline that his Father displays. He is libidinous, having affairs around the Kingdom, doing as he pleases, irresponsible and spoiled. His father sees him as irresponsible and dangerous.

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During the early part of his life, Capricorn feels imprisoned, limited by the restrictions imposed upon him by the values and rules of his own father, society, the Divine Father above Him. He is rebellious, arrogant, disdainful of others who seem less capable than he. He is cunning, avoiding his father’s restrictions and making his own rules.

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In myth, the Father of this Son is on Earth, Divine or not. Kronos is a Titan, a being of this Earth. And Zeus, while a sky god, was the son of Kronos and Rhea, two Titans. Therefore, Zeus, a god of Thunder and Lightning of Nomatic Peoples, was also a Titan who ascended to the Mountain of the gods.

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The Son, seeking upward as Zeus did, must return to Earth and be nailed to the Cross of Matter. He must come back down the mountain and live out his life in Matter. He does not want to do this. He wants to live on the Mountaintop--like Zeus--and look down on others from Heaven, but he discovers he is bound to the earth, his Mother, through a marriage contract.

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The Capricornian wants to climb the Mountain to the Godhead. But to get there, he must kill his Divine Father--not the Actuality, but the Concept he keeps holding in his mind--by becoming the Father himself. He must stop seeking to be taken care of, stop seeking to be above others, and take responsibility for doing on Earth what he understands his Heavenly Father would want him to do. In “killing his Father need“ the Son becomes the Father, and at this thought the Son experiences guilt and despair that he has done this, entering into a test of his faith in himself.

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The battle within the duality of the Father and Son creates a paradox of identity for the seeker. For all his life, he views the Father as the opposite of the Son. The task of the seeker is to resolve this paradox. He must discover a way to unify the Father and the Son in Life. He must discover that he is both the Father and the Son within and stop the dissension within himself caused by identifying with one but not the other. In resolving the paradox, he solves the lesson of Capricorn.

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Atonement with his Father consists in the abandonment of the duality of Father-Son and recognition that in killing his Father, he himself must become King and stop identifying with only the Son. He must come down the Mountain and become King on Earth, bound by the rules and laws of society himself. At the same time, the King must be humble, for he realizes he does not know the answers to all Mysteries, he does not know God’s Will but must do the best he can and avoid arrogance and a know-it-all attitude. He must remain open to learn and revise his points of view and decisions. The King thus knows that he is always the Son, learning, making mistakes, and unsure of himself.

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In his battle with the son, the Father serves as the Son’s initiating priest. He shows the Son how he must align himself to life and be fruitful on the Earth, explains why he must adjust to others opinions and cooperate frequently rather than compete, demonstrates how his son must stand up for himself in life rather than submitting to others will constantly. He prepares his son to be King.

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Capricorn’s initiation thus occurs over and over through life. He must take the place of his Father and re-enter the world of his Mother by re-committing himself to the Reality Principle, which is the Rule of Saturn/Kronos on the Earth, submitting himself to a constant testing and reaffirmation of life contained and restricted within society’s rules and demands. The King serves his People. He is bound to the Land and his life is the life of his Land. He is not allowed the freedom to rest or remove from his shoulders his responsibilities. He must accept earthly responsibility and limitations on his freedom, bring his unruly Spirit back to ground, and submit to the bondage in Service his Father was bound by.

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One of the most difficult aspects of the Capricornian’s journey and initiation into bondage on Earth is the necessary return to participation in community life.

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The imprisonment in Matter is the Atonement of the Son for the killing of his Father. Without submission to fulfilling the role of the Father, the spirituality of the Son remains ungrounded and idealized--over spiritualized--and his faith “falls to pieces” when put to the test of challenge, conflict and failure. He is in bondage to a Father he knows only dimly yet has faith will guide him is he is humble and open to learning from others.

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The ascent of the Son to what his youthful imagination perceived as his due is doomed to failure and his failure is necessary for Capricorn’s journey, for his faith is meaningless unless it is tried against his despair. The Son’s idealism must give way to realism and the necessity that the new King be contained in his efforts to reach for power. Society is also the Father, and Capricorn must submit himself into bondage to serve that society in pragmatic and realistic ways.

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As the servant to the Father, Society, and the People, the new King becomes--like his Father or Divine Father--guilt-ridden, narrow, fearful, and paranoid. He suffers, and through suffering finds within himself learning, endurance, determination, and foresight to met out justice, mercy, forgiveness to himself as the Son, for his own sense of futility, despair, loss, and limitation. He is changed by this experience and not through any ascent to the Mountain from which he came originally.

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Saturn is the Roman name of the Greek god, Kronos, which has been interpreted as meaning “Time” and “crow.” The planet Saturn rules the sign of Capricorn. Saturn’s role is to teach man the purpose of his life as preparing to be King. Becoming King is a process of trials and endurance, so that the son is is transformed by his life experiences, to become tough, just, merciful, wise and generous to his subjects. The Capricornian is therefore put through a testing process which tempers his impetuous and immature character.

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Each person who is born with his Sun in the sign of Capricorn therefore must prepare himself to endure sorrow, delay, disappointment, limitation and privation in his life. To be king, he has to learn patience, humility, wisdom and compassion through experience rather than through schooling or an intellectual process. He must be prepared to bear the austerities of rulership in this world of Men.

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In this way, the sons and daughters of Capricorn learn persistence, self-discipline, self-confidence, dependability, resourcefulness and toughness. And the immaturity which might lead them into fearfulness, over-sensitivity, severity, miserliness, pessimism, obstructionism, or rigidity is tempered and transformed. Saturn, the Father Image, teaches his children how to be willing to wait, to look within for guidance, to bear their karma, and to face the tests of life as he or she progresses towards perfection.

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Introduction

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Introduction

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Sagittarius is a Jupiter-ruled sign with the sigil of Chiron, the Centaur (half man/half horse). Jupiter is the Roman name for the Greek god, Zeus, the God of Light who ruled all from Olympia, at the top of the tallest Mountain in Greece. Those persons who are born between November 22 and December 22 have a Sagittarian Sun Sign.

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The Myth of the Mother and Father

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While any number of myths might be used to describe the theme of the life paths of the Sagittarian, one we might choose would be the relationship between the Olympian god, Zeus--who was known by the name, Jupiter, in Rome--and the Titaness Hera, a Great Mother Goddess from the times before the Olympians came to rule on Earth. She was a Titan; in effect, the Earth herself. Their marriage symbolizes a contract between equal powers: Spirit and Matter.

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Zeus and Hera fought and bickered constantly. He had affairs among mortals as well as immortals. And she jealously and bitterly pursued him and punished those he loved, but she loved him…as He loved Her. His affairs symbolized his unbridled creativity. He was the Life Force which sparks the movement of energy into Substance. He was the Law which orders and sustains us. But without Hera’s womb, Substance could not take Form. Hera’s children inhabited this Earth. The images of Zeus and Hera, and their relationship, symbolized the relationship between Spirit and Matter in this Universe. But more, they symbolize the issues of our own spirituality as we seek to express our own impetuous and firey nature within the womb of Matter.

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The Lessons of the Sagittarian

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Each person born under the Sign of Sagittarius has certain lessons to learn on Earth. To understand those issues, we need to focus upon the personality and dilemma experienced by the sky god named Zeus as he struggled within his marriage to Hera.

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Those born under the sign of Sagittarius yearn to express the nature of the god of light. They want to be good, to align to the Light, to soar upward, to ascend spiritually. They are often found engaged in a ceaseless quest to improve themselves, to align with the highest of ideals, and to learn to express greater love for others. But subconsciously, they feel frustrated by their selfish, animal-like thoughts and feelings, and worry constantly about evil thoughts and being unworthy. In short, they aspire upward towards their Light nature, but feel held in bondage by their animal nature.

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The Sagittarian experienced in previous lives being born under the sign of Scorpio, where he/she descended into the Underworld of the Mind. Scorpio is the Realm of the Shadow, or subconscious mind, where the individual confronts the wounds and traumas repressed into the personal unconscious. These unconscious memories affect the individual’s view of themselves and life, and serve to create lives in which the individual experiences Fateful encounters in his outer world and trauma in his inner mind. They block, sabotage, and confront the individual in everything he attempts to do or be, with the result that he becomes dark and intense, suspicious, obsessive, angry, and resentful of others. Subconscious memories from fear and loveless childhoods often undergird these behaviors.

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Scorpio is the Realm of Pluto, which was the Roman name for the Greek god Hades. Hades was Zeus’ dark, grim brother who became the Overlord of the Greek Underworld. Hades ruled over the souls of the dead.

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Unlike Zeus, Hades was swallowed by their father, Kronos, and kept apart from his mother, Gaia. So he never received the nurturing or love he needed from his Mother. For this reason, he lacked the sense of self that was needed for normal development into adulthood. His ego never separated from his Mother, and so he was inescapably connected to his Mother’s needs.

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Hades is known as the phallas of the Great Mother…the son who is controlled by and tied to his Mother apron strings even when grown, and the son through whom she is able to experience a life and extend her power beyond her own life. Hades is inescapably tied to the Great Mother and is her projection into the world of consciousness. He rules the Unconscious Mind beside Her in the image of Penelope, who became Demeter, another Great Mother aspect symbolizing the Earth, each Spring. Her death and resurrection was celebrated every year in ancient Greece when thousands of seekers would be initiated at Eleusis, a holy Temple which served Greece for 2000 years.

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Sagittarian’s wounded selves, who are seen in dreams as the images of the wounded gods of Sky and Earth, fight to be heard and rage, express their lust, their protests, as he tries to be good, undercutting his goal to be worthy of his God of Light. He constantly finds he is unable to be “good” enough. He has to discover that his God of Light is part of Himself, as is Great Mother Earth and the Dark Lord, Hades, as well. He is all of these images and fields of thought. Like Zeus, he finds himself married to his earthy, sexual, imperfect nature, and part of himself even rules in the Abyss of wounded gods, souls and departed humans in his own subconscious mind.

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The spirit of the seeker in Sagittarius, like Zeus, feels itself married to the imperfection of Form here on Earth and yearns to be away and up into the Light. His body, like Hera, calls him back into itself in a loving embrace in Matter. The body is Hera’s realm. She and his body contain, limit and restrain him to stay here on the Earth and live lightly, accept his imperfections, his animal lusts and needs, his cruelty and selfishness, his dark moods and self denials. He discovers to his dismay that his soaring Spirit cannot escape her dark chthonic nature or his passionate animal body which holds him in its embrace.

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From our Light nature, from Zeus, we receive the abundance of the Olympians, including justice, culture, beauty, heroism, creativity, inventiveness. From Zeus/Jupiter comes our ethics, our nobility, our forthrightness, our altruistic natures, and our high mindedness. Jupiter gives us his urge to align with greater ideals, with Truth, so that we might find a sense of meaning to our lives. Jupiter gives us his religious sense, his unshakable faith. Jupiter leads us into new learning experiences in search of wisdom and greater understanding of the principle of justice. Jupiter takes the Sagittarian into the individuation process through “deep and wise participation in and understanding of mundane experience, while simultaneously preserving his natural right to develop his own unique nature.”

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From the marriage of our inner spirit with Matter, from Hera, we receive a tempering and grounding of our spirit, our will, our soaring nature, that turns our outward yearnings into form and direction so that we don’t lose our selves in the spiritualization of life and can live our ideals here in ways that benefit our selves and others.

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So the Sagittarian must learn is to stay in the body, working practically, groundedly, to create and heal himself here on Earth, to learn these lessons. His spirit is bound, like Prometheus, to a rock in the Underworld, an Eagle tearing at his liver each day. His liver holds his anger and spite at that god of Light who would chain him here in Matter unable to progress upward into Oneness with the Godhead. His pain is the pain of separation from his inner image of the Light, when he yearns towards the heights. Promethus Bound is an immortal Titan, a Power of the Earth, chained to Matter, to his body, to this earth, and forced to live and focus here instead of in Spirit where his yearning calls him.

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The Centaur, Sigil for the Sign of Sagittarius

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The sigil of the Sagittarian is the image of the Centaur, Chiron. Chiron was also said to be sired by Zeus from a Titaness and so was a dark god of the earth. Half-animal and half-man, Chiron symbolized the Wisdom of Nature and the wisdom of the body itself. He was reputed to be a savage hunter and wisest of the Centaurs. But he was terribly wounded by his friend, Herakles, in the leg through an accident with an arrow dipped in the blood of the Gorgon.

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Sadly, Chiron was immortal and couldn’t escape the constant pain through death. So while he served others through healing and teaching heroes, he lived in agony. Chiron’s wound symbolizes the “wound of individuality”---the constant anguish of feeling separated from That Which Cannot Be Attained.

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In the end, Chiron was granted permission by Zeus to take Prometheus’ place in the Underworld, and was finally allowed to die. He took his place in the Underworld as a force for teaching us of the Wisdom of Nature and the body.

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Chiron is thus revealed as an aspect of his Father, Zeus. Chiron is the Shadow of Zeus…like all centaurs ruled by his instincts, bound in Matter and in pain because he is contained here. But he is a white Shadow as well, for he is a healer and a teacher, and when the Sagittarian seeks him, he will teach the seeker to love the body and its needs, help him heal himself of his affliction of constant seeking, and guide him through his “hero‘s journey“ into an individuated adult.

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Spirit contained by Matter is capable of growth in character and wisdom, love and all the traits which Jupiter epitomizes. Great Mother deep in her Home within the Deep Mind yearns to be us and to live in consciousness through us. Spirit is the seed of the Light, whereas Matter is the womb that nurtures the spirit’s intent (will), evolves the young god/goddess, tests, challenges, and strengthens him/her.

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Being at Home in our Bodies

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Sagittarians are not at home in their bodies. They want to escape, travel, wander. They are the gypsies of the zodiac, constantly seeking new experience, entering the Unknown. Btut like Chiron, they are in constant pain from their wound; the denial of their needs to soar, their desire to burn in the spaces above themselves. The body of the Sagittarian, the animal part of his nature here, suffers constantly, as its spirit seeks to leave and soar outward. It recognizes the Spirit’s need as his own Death Wish. To be off, running again, in form and lessons to be gained here. Another life. Another needs quest.

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Because of their firey natures, the challenge of the Sagittarian is to work on his relationships to his feminine side, his Hera within, his wife, his mothering tendencies, which stem from his body’s own requirements for life and love and tenderness to himself. His lesson, as his initiation to this stage of his journey, is to learn to be well with himself, contained though he may feel in Matter and his body. Then, his gifts may take more practical forms than unbridled spirituality.

Traditionally, Saturn is one of the most feared planets in the astrological chart. Known in earlier times as “The Old Malefic”, Saturn was thought of as the Lord of Karma, and his passage through the chart was a sign of suffering and grief to come. He was feared because he was associated with experiences of fear, suppression and repression, severity, miserliness, pessimism, sternness, rigidity, and obstruction.