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Marilyn Monroe
| Astrological Data Used for Marilyn Monroe: | ||
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When you watch children at play, do you ever wish you could recover all of the innocence and joy you had when you were young? Suppose you could get another chance to be a child again, reach back in time and capture the enthusiasm, imagination and the seemingly infinite possibilities that you felt when your whole life was ahead of you. Maybe you could even go back and undo, heal or reshape the experiences that weren't so happy. Then imagine the ways that you could expand your possibilities and reinvent parts of your adult self.
One of the things psychology teaches us is that a person's experience of childhood continues to have a major impact throughout life. There's even a term that describes this innocent part of the psyche. It's called your Inner Child.
Woven into this part of your personality are all the memories, feelings and experiences from your early years. The deepest impressions are usually formed early, some even before you could walk or talk. While you may not consciously recall the details of your fourth birthday, what you felt and experienced on that day is stored in your subconscious -- right down to the glow of the candles on the cake! Inevitably, we also tuck away feelings of hurt, rage and disappointment. When the right situation triggers those feelings, our Inner Child can pop out in some very emotional ways.
For all these reasons, it's essential to take the time to recall who we were and what we felt in those early years. Re-connecting with the forgotten parts of our being helps us to be more comfortable with and in control of ourselves today. With the insight of how we can heal our childhood reactions to painful situations, we're less likely to be blind sided by "out of the blue" emotional outbursts. More important, we can reclaim the childlike zest and excitement that got buried along with the pain, and give ourselves permission to seek out and enjoy happiness in our lives.
Fortunately, there's a handy way that you can sneak a peek at some of the treasure -- and trash -- that's stored deeply in your subconscious mind. You can do this by sifting through the symbolism in your astrological chart. Of course, fully digging into your depths to uncover your Inner Child isn't the simplest thing in the world! But you can make a gentle beginning by studying this report.
The pages that follow can be your road map on this journey. My hope is that they will help you to recall the very special person you were when you were young. Getting back in touch with your childhood feelings can make you more familiar with the building blocks that form your core essence. You will also see how they still reside within you now, and what they do to support you in your efforts, both at work and in all your relationships. If, somewhere along the path to adulthood, these qualities and feelings got lost in the shuffle, finding them now and integrating them more fully into your daily life can help you satisfy your needs and fulfill your desires.
As you read more about your Inner Child, you may feel a strange mixture of emotions - from jump-up-and-down joy on the one hand, to deep sadness on the other. As you go back in time, you'll come to see how your past is filled with just those kinds of paradoxical elements! After all, if your life didn't give you all those mixed messages, magical moments, disappointments, fabulous celebrations and broken dreams, it wouldn't have become the exciting journey that it is! Sometimes, the shakeups to the psyche we get in life can be just the jumpstart we need to lead us to our most powerful creative breakthroughs.
While you take this little journey back into your life as a child, think of yourself as a loving guide, supporter and protector for that precious part of you that existed all those years ago, and try to bring that wondrous little being back to life right now.
Chapter One: The Basic Framework of Your Personality
In discovering who the young Marilyn was, let's first consider her overall personality type, which is still yours today. One of the best ways to investigate this is to look at the proportions in which the ancient elements Fire, Earth, Air and Water appear in your horoscope at the moment of your birth. This depends on which zodiac signs are most emphasized in your chart.
Your Overall Inclinations
To find out which of the elements in your personality influence you the most, we tally up the signs of the Sun, Moon, planets and other important points. In your case, the Air signs (which include Gemini, Libra and Aquarius) show up with special strength. This gives you a tendency to be talkative and mentally active. Friends are exceptionally important to you, and social situations may always be an important feature in your life. Even during your early years, when sharing and cooperative play are a bit of a struggle for most children, you may have felt happier when you were playing with other children than when you were alone- even though you got to keep all your toys to yourself. At school, you got as much or more of your fun from talking to your friends than you did from getting rid of excess physical energy.
For you, the mental connections you make with your environment have always been at the forefront. You may try to rationalize things, or try to apply, at least initially, logical means to figure out everything from your emotions to a logistical problem at work. While mental stimulation is just as important now as it was when you were young, you can go into overload if you're not careful. That's one reason you may seem to have a nervous or fidgety nature - something that people also probably mentioned to you when you were a child.
You'd think that with all this airy quality in your personality, communication would have come easily to you. It's conceivable, however, that during your school years you might have felt shy about sharing your own ideas or making presentations in the classroom. If you weren't sure that what you were about to say was correct, you might have simply frozen. Even today, you hate to be proven wrong or to present the appearance of being ignorant. For this reason, some rehearsal - even if it's in front of the bathroom mirror - can work wonders toward building up your faith in your abilities.
The least influential element in your chart turns out to be Earth. With a lighter Earth influence, you might feel that you need to be more grounded. You can get in touch with Earth by touching the things that have to do with element itself, like planting a garden or landscape, making pottery or building something. To compensate for a your need build a firm foundation, you may also have to cultivate a more thorough understanding of structure. Experiencing construction- either by doing it yourself or analyzing the way different things are put together- could help. Another way that your need for Earth may have surfaced is in your conscious connection to your physical body. You may not be fully aware of your body at all, or you could have overcompensated and become obsessed with your health or your physical form.
The Earth element also affects your inclination and capacity to handle the material plane itself. This aspect of life has to do with all the everyday activities that you do to sustain your physical being on earth -- everything from health and finances to the way you take care of your possessions. Other factors in your astrological chart (like Saturn) can make these areas seem more important to you, and you may well have become quite proficient in them. However, it has probably required more effort for you than it does for people who have more Earth in their charts.
Alternatively, it's possible that you might even try too hard to make up for your need for Earth, so that on the surface you may appear quite stable and in touch with both your body and the material world. To a certain extent, the planet Saturn can give you more of a feel for Earth, and provide you with the wherewithal to deal with the practical aspects of life. Also, Venus can give a sensual appreciation of the body and physical sensations.
Even so, on an inward level you may still long for the Earthy element that you need in your chart. Your adult life may be spent seeking structures of various sorts, and you may be able to derive a sense of comfort and stability from activities and interests such as hiking, gardening and geology. Also, as you matured, you may have discovered that you're drawn to others who have the Earth element strongly emphasized. Whenever others show you Earth attributes such as carefulness, dependability, responsibility and attention to physical resources, it can help you to see how you can use this Earthy energy to feel more balanced and complete.
Besides having an affinity for one of four elements, each sign has a modality, or way of acting- Cardinal, Fixed or Mutable. These astrological modes (or action models) determine how a sign manifests its energy. In your case, there's a particular emphasis on both the Fixed and the Mutable signs. This means that at times you can be a rock of stability, while at other times you can seem like a chameleon in your attempts to accommodate and adapt.
Your Fixed qualities indicate, at least sometimes, a determination to maintain the status quo. You can be reliable and patient, and may often feel very stabilizing to others. In turn, you yourself are likely to appreciate consistency in the people that you deal with. You can sometimes feel a strong need to need finish a project before you're willing to go on to something else.
The flip side of your emphasis in Fixed signs is that once in a while you can be extremely stubborn, and can show an inflexibility, resistance and obsessive quality that can be difficult for both you and others to manage or accept.
At other times, however, your equally strong emphasis on Mutable signs enables you to be quite flexible and adaptable. While developing objectivity and cooperation can come quite easily, making final decisions or choosing sides may be really difficult. The way that you "sit on the fence" can be just as torturous for you as it is for other people! Once you make a decision, however, your Fixed qualities encourage you to stick to it. And although you prefer doing things your way whenever possible, your Mutable qualities also enable you to appreciate the benefits of teamwork.
Your Earliest Personality
Most people know about Sun signs, but during your earliest years it was mainly your Moon that reflected your needs and expressions. That's because the Moon represents the essence of feelings and pure emotion. During your infancy and early childhood the people around you, like your parents, probably saw the qualities of your Moon long before the Sun's qualities began to shine forth. Expressing the Sun requires more self-awareness, and that develops in later childhood and in the early adult years. It's your Moon that's really the soul of your Inner Child.
When you think back to your youth, many of your memories may be of sharing times with friends, enjoying their company, and inventing a whole new world of possibilities of things for you to do together. Your Moon in Aquarius hungers for a chance to innovate and to go into territory that few can reach. Whether that's a place, like space- or an ideal, like a society where human rights are given first priority - you have a need to go where no one has gone before. (So that's why you and your buddies wore such outlandish clothes and ran so many weird science experiments in school!)
Another feature of your Aquarius Moon is a need to be self-reliant and left to your own devices. Fortunately, your intuition helps you get out of the odd situations that this bold attitude toward exploration can get you into!
Developing an Ego
The spark of your ego was there when you were tiny, and it grew steadily brighter as you became more self-expressive. At the time when you started school, the true radiance of your individuality started to pour out into the world so that others could see it.
Your ego and individuality are symbolized by the Sun in your chart. Your Sun sign gives you clues about how you'd like to be seen, and shows what you need to feel motivated toward achievement. When you reflect back upon what made you feel special in the world and what you wanted other people to support, you're remembering the drive from your gently shining Sun.
Actually, you don't really "own" your Sun Sign until you become an adult, but you practiced showing it when you were a child. While the solar drive gains in power as you grow up, developing healthy ways to get in touch with and express your Sun began in childhood. If you don't think that your Sun nature was fully honored or understood when you were small, it's not too late to honor and celebrate it now.
Your Gemini Sun creates a need for plenty of distractions. As an infant, it would have been a good idea to fill your crib with toys, mobiles and rattles (which, when finally quiet, would have been the clue that you were asleep). These then could have given way to tricycles and bicycles, since being on the move was a top priority for you. In preschool years, your preference for spending time with your friends would have given you a chance to experience even more variety and to practice your communication skills. You may have talked early, and probably had a whole lot of questions for your parents, teachers and caretakers.
Your primary-school years could have been pure joy, since your Gemini Sun gives you a great enthusiasm for learning. While you might have had trouble keeping interested in any one thing for long periods of time, if you were interested in a subject, you gave it all of your attention.
As a preteen, you may have revised your roster of friends as your interests changed. But you could still cherish a good companion who understood your humor and honored your need for freethinking and engaging conversation.
Now, you still need variety, and may still be highly curious. Hopefully, you also have a platform from which to communicate your endless thoughts and opinions. You could find this in speaking, writing, sales, or other communication or activities that call on your substantial interpersonal skills.
Learning to Meet the World
The astrological sign on your Ascendant, also known as the Rising Sign, shows the way that you learn to present yourself to the world. The Ascendant is a kind of mask, an apparatus we build in order to transmit what's inside us to the world outside. Therefore the Ascendant and the whole First House of your chart represent your body and physical appearance, your mannerisms and dress. All of this determines how other people see you. While the Ascendant isn't your innermost essence, it's a necessary tool for dealing with the social realm outside.
The sign on your Ascendant shows your natural way of presenting yourself, and it constantly adapts to the feedback it gets from the outside world. The way you come on to people was shaped by what they told you about who you are and how you ought to appear. Social norms and other environmental conditioning also have had a great influence your public persona.
If you're dissatisfied with the image you present, or it doesn't seem to get you the love, respect and cooperation that you want, it may help to take a fresh look at your Rising Sign. The sign on your Ascendant (together with the planetary influences on your Ascendant we discussed in Chapter Four) can give you a better idea of the raw materials you've been given to work with. Understanding their nature and learning to respect their qualities can help you create a presence that works in your best interest when you're dealing with others.
With Leo rising, your most noticeable trademarks were likely to be personal pride and a flare for drama. It's difficult for any of us to ignore those of you who have a Leo Ascendant! As a kid, you needed a place to show off and shine - that is, when you wanted to be noticed. You could have been rather self-absorbed when you were young, and that could still be the case unless you've learned to become more aware of the others around you. Also, even as a tiny tot, you may have exhibited a loving sense of generous warmth. Now, you're probably known for your big-heartedness, with a little extra dash of showmanship thrown into the mix!
Chapter Two: What You Looked for from Your Parents
Anyone who spends time in therapy discovers that many hours are devoted to reconstructing your childhood - most especially, your relationship with your parents. And even if you aren't drawn to psychotherapy, you've probably discovered that you now see your parents differently than you did when you were a kid. After all, in early childhood, your own survival was what was most important to you, and it was natural to view everyone else simply as either contributing to or endangering your welfare. Only when children have grown up considerably are they ready to see their parents and others as people with needs and drives of their own.
Even so, throughout their lives, humans tend to project their own drives and needs onto others. Projection is a key concept in psychology. To better understand it, think of a movie projector projecting an image onto a screen. Every day, people project their own emotional state onto the screen of the outside world. When you feel happy, the world itself looks bright to you -- and when you feel low, you project your own gloom onto the world. When you do, you tend to see unhappiness wherever you go.
The concept of projection extends into your personal relationships as well, including your early relationship with your parents. When you were young, many of the urges, needs and desires that you felt were impossible for you to express at that stage of your development. Since these feelings were of primary importance to you, it was only human to seek some way to experience them. And so you found an appropriate person -- the "screen" -- on which to project the feelings, needs and drives that were actually your own. In doing so, you were able to "see" your own feelings and needs. When you projected these needs onto the parents and other people close to you, you then were able to experience a necessary part of your own being.
You may have seen things in your parents that they wouldn't recognize in themselves. For example, your mother or other primary caregiver would have been the natural projection screen for your own needs for security and nurturing. Also, you would have naturally used Mother to see your own inner feminine self -- something that's an integral part of boys as well as girls. And if you had strong feelings such as love or rage, those, too, could have been projected onto your mother and entwined with your ideas of nurturing.
But all this is relative to you. If you had brothers or sisters, they could have had a very different perception of the same parents, according to their own individual needs.
What You Looked for in Your Mother
Understanding how you perceived your Mother, Father and anyone else who filled these roles exposes what you hoped to see and needed to experience from your first caregivers. And what you needed from and experienced through these parental figures formed the basis of your own developing sense of self.
Your perception of mothering figures in your life is principally shown by the placement of the Moon in your birth chart. This is very important because, as you've probably grown to realize, the way you saw Mother provided the model for the way you now show care and mothering toward others, including any children you may have of your own.
It's even more important when you work with your Inner Child, because it determines how you will nurture and care for yourself. Before trying to become the kind of parent to yourself that you always wished you had, you need to become aware of what parenting - primarily, mothering - really means to you.
Your Moon in Aquarius suggests that one of your needs was to see your mother as a distinct individual who was able to march to the beat of her own drummer and separate herself out from the herd. You looked to her to be independent, free-spirited and innovative, and to be one of the people on the cutting edge. You also wanted her to show you how to be a friend and to deal with groups of people. You would have preferred that she be highly mental or intellectual, with strong ties to the community and the outside world. Hopefully, you were able to learn about social responsibility through watching the way she participated in community activities.
You wanted your mother to model these qualities because they're really an essential part of your own emotional nature. You looked to a female figure to teach you the best ways of expressing your own individuality within a group. If your mom was not quite as good an example as you wanted her to be, you may have looked to others as models of innovation in fashions and ideas.
Most likely, you experienced your mother as rather detached. You might have felt that she spent more time with her friends or with club work than she spent with you, and she may have seemed a bit erratic or unreliable. This wasn't so bad when you were an adolescent and wanted your parents to give you space to rebel, but it may have worked less well when you were small and needed real closeness, consistency and unconditional love. A lack of tender mothering at this stage of your development could make it harder for you to be a really warm friend, and it could undermine your confidence in your own individuality. If you felt a lack in this area, part of your inner child work may be to open up your heart and learn to give yourself and others the basic feeling of cozy security that we all need in order to thrive.
In addition, a strong Moon-Jupiter connection suggests the image of a mother who urged you to open up and grow - perhaps a bit too much. ("Now, eat everything on your plate!") This expansion also involved your sense of morality, which you most likely modeled after your mother's. You looked to your Mother when you needed to see confidence and optimism, and may have seen her as the ultimate spiritual teacher.
A problematic contact from the Moon to Saturn could add a sense of separation or alienation from your mother. This frequently occurs in the charts of first-born children whose mothers were just learning about the responsibilities and restrictions that motherhood brings. If your Mother failed to take full responsibility for her own job as a parent, you would have been extremely likely to develop a kind of resentment that could have resulted in emotional alienation. If you felt that Mother didn't provide for your basic needs, you may have sought a substitute for the nurturing quality that you felt to be lacking. You may also have felt that had to grow up too soon and take on major responsibilities earlier than your peers did.
This Moon-Saturn aspect could also indicate that you saw your mother as tremendously judgmental, and that you felt guilty when you could not meet the high standards that Mother seemed to require. You may have had the impression from her that you had to be perfectin order to be loved or accepted. Unless she made a special effort to allow you to have shortcomings as well as virtues, you may have lost your trust in this relationship.
You needed to see that your parents were especially alert to situations that were emotionally difficult for you. For example, if there was a crisis, move or other significant change that might have threatened your sense of emotional security, Mother needed to go the extra mile to reassure you that everything was going to be okay and that you were safe and sound.
It was also crucial that your mother be aware of the manner in which she applied discipline. If her reprimands for a given misdeed were too harsh, the impact on you could have created some of the lack of self-confidence that you might still feel today.
Through your chart's frustrating connection from the Moon to Neptune, you were likely to have perceived Mother as being somewhat vague or difficult to reach. For you, Mom may have seemed to be "out in the ozone" much of the time, or she may have been interested in spiritual aspects of life that you had difficulty believing in.
This connection suggests that you needed your Mother to personify a perfect ideal. If Mother failed at this, your deep disappointment may have left you feeling betrayed. In addition, it may have been difficult for you to relate your own feminine side and to women in general, especially if Mother always seemed too distant. You probably had unrealistic expectations and perceptions of your mother, since you had a need to experience something magical, super-human and otherworldly from her.
If for any reason your mother perpetuated a false image for you, or if she was absent or emotionally unavailable, you may still have a sense that you've been abandoned in some way. Identifying with Mother can be a challenge in such a situation, and there may have been times when you did not relate to her at all. It could have even felt like instead of being taken care of by the person who brought you into the world, you were left on the doorstep of a stranger.
What you Looked for in Father
Perceptions of your father and other male figures to whom you looked for support are symbolized primarily by the placement of your Sun. The Sun is an essentially masculine archetype in astrology, and it could also help to describe your sense of who you are.
A true sense of self is very limited in a young child, who is unlikely to "own" self-determining qualities until the preteen years or later. Nevertheless, the way you eventually developed a sense of self may be strongly tied to your initial relationship with your father. Further on in your development, this could have been supplemented by interactions with other influential male figures and mentors. If you saw your father and other important males in your early life as supportive and consistent, you would have had an easier time building your own sense of identity.
The placement of the Sun in your chart shows not only your perceptions of your father, but also what you needed or hoped to see in him. It's important to ask yourself whether you felt that he and the other male figures in your life met these needs. For example, part of the frustration some children feel with their dad during their rebellious periods comes from an unconscious awareness that he didn't live up to their expectations of him.
If there are areas where you feel that Dad didn't quite make the grade, it's not too late to fill these hollow places in yourself. Looking at your birth chart can give clues about the inner masculine qualities within yourself that you might need to repair and nurture now.
With your Sun in Gemini, you tended to project qualities of intelligence, flexibility and perceptiveness onto Father, until you could develop and own these qualities for yourself. For you, the time you spent sharing your ideas with Dad would have been particularly enjoyable for you. You could still miss those rides in the car, when you seemed to talk about anything and everything with him.
Alternatively, you might have seen your father as a kind of Peter Pan - someone who was fun but who never quite grew up. While he was charming and a great pal to you, he might not have assisted you in developing the patience and consistency you needed to become an effective adult. Reluctant to make commitments, he may have not been there when you needed him, and it's possible that he could have sometimes played fast and loose with the truth.
If things went well, however, he left you with the gift of versatility and ingenuity, and a curiosity about life. Like the hero Odysseus, you may now have nimble wits that enable you to journey through your own version of the epic hero's path.
The fact that your Sun is in the Tenth House fills out the picture of what you needed from your father. It reinforces the idea that when you were a child you needed your father to have an important place in the world. You very much wanted to believe that he was worthy of admiration. Certainly, within the family he may have commanded great respect, especially from you. In order to discover your own public identity when you emerged into world as an adult, you had a special need for your father's positive leadership and guidance.
Authority Figures Then and Now
Every child needs stability, structure and safety, and you were no exception. Most children look to their parents to establish these things for them. Though you've now stepped into the world as an adult, you did not necessarily know what it would be like when you got there. You needed older people to teach you about what you could expect from the world- and what it would demand from you. Even now, you're probably acutely aware that you may have more lessons to learn about the things that await you as you continue to learn and grow.
You certainly didn't arrive on planet Earth with a clear idea about how limits might work or why we have them, and so your elders had to teach you about boundaries, consequences, and the rules of life. Saturn in your chart shows how you handle life's rules, tests, structures and hierarchies.
Many children are anything but delighted at the prospect of having to be "responsible". That's what adults are for! Especially when we are children, Saturn's energy can feel very judgmental and limiting. In spite of that, we need the discipline, structure, stability and relationship to tradition that Saturn gives us. Every child needs these things in order to become a functional adult.
Saturn's expression is something that is learned, and is an energy that you probably didn't begin to own until about age 14. Certainly, you felt Saturn's influence when you were young, but you could still rely on more responsible and experienced people to catch you should you fall from grace. It was probably mainly your parents and teachers who provided this safety net and that stabilizing influence for you. In other words, adults took on Saturn's role for you until you were capable of shouldering responsibility without relying on their help. By now, you probably can identify the willingness to take on certain obligations as one of the indications of true adulthood.
By looking at Saturn in your chart, you can see how you related to authority figures when you were young, and also where you may need to develop self-discipline in your life as an adult.
With Saturn in Scorpio, you definitely needed permission from your parents and other authorities to explore life's deeper questions without feeling that this undermined their acceptance of you. Your fascination with the inevitable changes and transformational experiences of life has always been powerful, but if you were met with fear of excessive restraint when you tried to explore such subjects as birth, death or sex, then you may still be working on ways to feel comfortable about dealing with these aspects of life.
With Saturn in your Fourth House, there's a more significant need for you to have experienced a sound home environment and a sense of family continuity. Parents who made family a priority would have helped to satisfy the need indicated by this influence. Learning the importance of family tradition and the best ways to incorporate those practices into your life increased your sense of security and continuity. However, if you learned from parents that these traditions carry guilt along with them, the result has probably been quite different. This does not mean that your parents had to be exceptionally traditional, but that you may have perceived them to be that way.
Once you can identify the roles that you projected onto your parents and authority figures when you were a child, you'll have a better appreciation of what they were trying to do for you, and how that affected you. You may have given them too much power over you, or you may have resented even their mildest attempt at getting you to toe the line. Sorting out your unfiltered perceptions from what was actually happening (including owning up to your part in it!) gives you the power to act freely and responsibly. If you have any "puppeteers" lurking behind the scenes in your psyche, being acutely aware of them makes it more difficult for them to pull your strings.
Chapter Three: Your Unfolding Mind
Learning is a lifelong process, but the way you deal with it was shaped during your childhood. The messages that you picked up about learning in those days continue to influence the way you go about developing new skills and acquiring fresh knowledge as an adult.
To better understand why you approach learning in the manner you do now, let's consider what might have been happening while you were going through your early learning experiences. This depended both on your own potential - your personal style of absorbing information - and the influence of teachers, mentors, parents, and the society in which you grew up. It also depended on the style of communication that was natural to you, and how that got to be shaped by outside influences.
Which parts of learning were easy for you, and which were not? Most authorities accept that there are at least seven types of intelligence, and that only two are measured by the usual I.Q. tests. Early intellectual development involves many factors besides the usual verbal and mathematical abilities. Children can be brilliant not just in the three R's -- but also in music, in the way they move their bodies, or in the way they visualize things in space. Or they can have special interpersonal intelligence that makes them geniuses at human relations, or intra-personal intelligence that gives exceptional inner wisdom and intuitive abilities. In addition, intellectual skills include memory, judicial thinking, decision-making, speculative thought and creativity -- and any of these things could have been either easy or hard for you. Did your teachers and mentors understand the way your mind worked, or did they try to try to shoehorn you into a mold that really didn't suit your learning style?
To explore the natural inclinations of your mind, we'll look at the Moon and the planet Mercury in your chart. Maybe you didn't get as good a start in learning as you'd have liked. If so, seeing what your chart says about your cognitive style can give you clues about how you can now refocus and reshape the way you think and learn.
The Way You Absorb Information
We've talked about the Moon as it reveals your basic emotional nature and your perception of Mom, but it also shows how you take in the impressions that the world makes on you. The Moon shows the way you store memories in the vaults of your conscious and subconscious mind. This includes not only your emotional memories, but also information and ideas. Its position in your chart shows things like whether your mind is more like a sponge that soaks up everything, or a sieve that holds on just to what it thinks is important. We can also see from your chart whether your mind is quick on the uptake, or deliberate and thorough, as well the types of things you like to think about.
With the Moon in an Air sign, you tend to think in a more abstract manner and to be at home with concepts like logic, mathematics and music. You also respond well to social interaction as a way of learning. Thus, you probably enjoy reading, so that memories of story time with Mom or Dad could still leave you feeling warm and comforted. As you grew, interactive communication that allowed you to gather more objective viewpoints helped you to develop your opinions, and today you seek out discussion groups so that you can stay on your toes, mentally speaking.
The speed at which the Moon was moving when you were born also says something about your learning style. During each month, the Moon varies in its speed from less than 12 to more than 15 degrees per day. On the day you were born, the Moon was moving at an average to slightly fast pace. This can give you a special eagerness for confronting life's experiences. New situations can seem like an amusing challenge, and you'd rather deal with them than be forced to confront mundane matters.
However, you may also tend to jump into unfamiliar surroundings, often spontaneously and with little preparation. As a child, the consequences of getting in over your head could have been discouraging to you. If your parents and teachers succeeded in teaching you to think before acting, you may now be less impulsive. If you still find that your impulses get you into trouble, you can make an effort to be more careful and deliberate. A conscious effort to monitor your automatic responses will help you to be more in control of your life.
For a person whose mind works the way that yours does, long programs of study or overly detailed research can get boring very quickly. You're likely to grasp new concepts with ease, but to really master anything, you need to take some time. For you, the best approach is to absorb information in small pieces. The satisfaction of mastering each new little bit will give you the motivation to go on to the next one -- and the next, and the next after that. Also, if the material you're working with doesn't interest you, you may find it hard to retain. When you have to remember something that you don't find particularly interesting, try to associate each new piece of data with something you already know.
Your Style of Communicating
As a baby, you began to explore your environment through your five senses, symbolized by the planet Mercury in your chart. Over time, your basic sensory learning became increasingly refined, and your capacity to learn and integrate information grew to encompass abstract concepts. At a crucial point in your development, you became able to deal with symbols like letters and numbers, and suddenly you had a whole new way to process and disseminate information.
The peak of Mercury's developmental cycle came between the ages of seven and thirteen, when the major connections between you and the outside world were being formed. That's when you ordinarily would spend a lot of energy mastering language and refining your communication skills. During those years, you were developing your Mercury side probably more than you've done either before or since.
While the Moon shows how you take in information, Mercury in your chart tells us how you frame concepts, manipulate them in your mind, and express them to others. With your Mercury in Gemini you tend to be quick-witted, but you're also easily distractable. Your way of thinking could be called the "butterfly mind," as it is highly curious and interested in variety. A trivia-gatherer, you've always liked learning a little bit about lots of things. As a baby, to get a better sense of something, you probably explored by using at least two senses at once. During school years, you may have had problems focusing, especially when you found a subject or situation to be boring. Keeping your hands busy would have been an excellent way to help you keep your focus. You know what they say about idle hands - and that adage was probably invented for people with Mercury in Gemini! Word games may have been one of your favorite challenges; you may use them now to keep your mind young and sharp.
In addition, you have the Sun conjunct Mercury, indicating that there's a strong tie between the ego self and the intellect. This can give a powerful boost to your mental energy. Words are likely to be expressed dramatically and with authority, and it can be a natural thing to develop powerful oratorical gifts.
Unfortunately, having the Sun conjunct Mercury can also indicate potential blocks against accepting other people's ideas. Learning how to listen effectively may have been a challenge when you were young, but working on this skill would prove to be highly beneficial. On the other hand, if someone criticizes your ideas, you can become defensive. In classroom situations, this may have created a touchy situation for your teacher unless he or she was sensitive to you and your needs. You needed to learn that ideas could be valid even when there are differences of opinion.
Mercury's location in your Tenth House stimulates your desire to be recognized for your intellectual abilities. As a result, you may have been drawn into a career that requires you to develop your communication skills and that gives you a chance to continue to learn. Even when you were young, you were more likely to be strongly opinionated than other children. In the early years, you were quick to parrot the opinions of the people you looked up to. For this reason, it was crucial that parents and teachers would take clear responsibility for their ideas and their methods of sharing them! Now, you may find that others emulate you, and this puts you in the position of having to take special care in thinking through your opinions before you express them.
Chapter Four: Emotional Drives and Needs
It's time now to go back to your early years and explore some of your emotional strengths and vulnerabilities. Hopefully, from these hints you'll recall experiences that will help you reconstruct what happened and how you felt when you were a child. In this way, you can become more aware of the emotional forces that drive you today.
Your Early Emotional Foundations
As we've already found in Chapter Two, the Moon symbolizes the psychological archetype of Mother and what you need to make you feel nurtured, comforted and secure. Mother was the model for your developing sense of how you learned to care for and nurture others-- and yourself.
Connected as it is with that very first human contact that you made, it's not surprising that the Moon is also the primary indicator of your emotional needs. The emotional qualities that your Moon imparts have influenced you from the very beginning.
You can think of the Moon as the reflective nature of your humanity. It is the absorbent subconscious mind, and it reflects the deepest needs of your soul. Even as a baby, long before you could verbalize it, you had a strong inner awareness of what was happening around you, and how you felt about it. Your feelings, impressions and emotional reactions to the people and circumstances around you were absorbed into your psyche, where they still influence you today. The Moon represents this process. It serves as your emotional warehouse. It also tells us about your habits, which are really just a function of your unconscious memory. Like the impressions you receive early in life, once a habit is learned, it exists underneath the level of your consciousness and becomes part of your automatic behavior.
As you grew, you absorbed more and more of these impressions and tucked them away into that level of your awareness that exists just below your waking consciousness. You go through your everyday activities much like you would ice skate on a frozen pond-- without much thought about the unseen depths that lie beneath you. But in reality it's the underlying foundation that allows you to operate- or skate- without them, things wouldn't work so well.
As you matured into adulthood, you might have maintained a connection with this rich inner store of impressions, either consciously or unconsciously. If you relate easily to your emotional foundations, you probably be able to access and understand your feelings without much difficulty. However, many of us lose touch with this deep store of impressions that underlies our conscious existence. This can result in a sense of emotional detachment, an insecure feeling that you're cut off from your roots and unable to take nourishment from the emotional support system you need. In order for you to feel completely comfortable and at home in the world, and to move through life with an unspoken assumption that you're safe and that the universe will always support you, you may need to reconnect with this lunar side of yourself. Exploring the meaning of the Moon in your astrological chart can help you find your way back to this sense of inner safety.
Your Aquarius Moon indicates that you've always felt a need to be different, and that you have always loved the company of friends. Maybe that's because you make friends with people who allow you to be yourself! You want to be respected for your individuality, and even when you were a small child you wanted to get acknowledgment for doing the things that set you apart from the crowd. The airy nature of Aquarius drives you to process your feelings in a logical manner, and situations that are deeply emotional can be uncomfortable for you. For this reason, you can seem a little bit detached, and your parents may have noticed this as you matured. If they observed carefully, they may have noticed that it was when your uniqueness was not being appreciated that you would become emotionally detached from others.
You're also highly inventive, and have always needed room to experiment. While you may have created some outrageous situations that are still the subject of family discussions, you've known that you're here to walk to the beat of your own drum. Your inner child may still tickle your imagination with possibilities that more dowdy types of people would scoff at. Fortunately, you're inclined to listen to your inner child. The question is whether or not you're still willing to give yourself permission to do anything about those inventive ideas of yours!
In addition, with the Moon in the Seventh House, you like social activities, since the emotional need to connect to others is very powerful. Being around people provides an important source of the feedback that is required with this placement of the Moon. Even as a child, you tended to take commitments quite seriously, and you needed a positive role model in order to learn how to make healthy choices before making or expecting promises.
Since your Moon and Mars are in a semisextile, expressing feelings can be a way for you to release tension. During infancy, when you were tense, you might have become fussy. Most people don't think of babies and young children in this way, but you still tend to carry a lot of emotional tension in your muscles. Physical exercise is almost a must for you. As you grew and began to develop your social skills, you may have been a bit clumsy as you tried to figure out when to take the lead and when to follow, and your impatience may have made it difficult to wait for anything (or anyone).
Since your Moon and Jupiter are in conjunction, the idea of limits still doesn't quite sit right with you. During your youth, your parents may have been frustrated when they tried to teach you that you could not do certain things. You were likely to feel that just because you wanted something, you could and should have it-- immediately! While this aspect does confer high levels of confidence and an optimistic attitude, it also indicates the potential for getting in over one's head, and for overindulgence. This can create problems with controlling your weight if you're not careful.
With the Moon and Saturn in square aspect, it can still be difficult for you to accept emotional support from others. Early changes such as moves or alterations in family dynamics would have had a deep impact on your feelings of security. If such changes occurred and supportive parents or others did not reassure you, you may still feel that the foundation of your life is unreliable. Even now, your tendency to withdraw when you feel uncertain is a response to the lack of safety you inner child feels. To help alleviate this insecurity, nourish your inner child by taking time to enjoy the company of those you love.
Fear of abandonment could be a key issue. It's also possible that your security was undermined if you were pushed into new learning situations before you felt ready. Now, your reticence to make changes or take risks can be a reaction to this inner fear. As a mature adult, you can now evaluate such situations and reassure yourself about which fears might have real impact and which fears are merely a subconscious response to an old, deeply remembered loss or hurt.
The Moon in opposition to Neptune adds a tremendous emotional sensibility, and as a child others may have felt that you were especially delicate. When you were young, you may have been especially sensitive to your Mother's emotional moods, and the line between her feelings and your feelings could have been very fuzzy. You needed a family situation where you felt noticed and that your needs were acknowledged by others. If that didn't happen, you may have difficulty now asking for your needs to be met. Also, you may tend to be drawn into circumstances where you feel lost or victimized. Or, you can appear to be less secure than you really are, and may attract people who see you as a potential victim.
Your artistic expression and imagination may have been your haven when you were young, and today, that may still be the case. Your spirituality can also be a mainstay of your life, and devotion to higher ideals can be a healthy way to funnel your sensibilities.
When you were young, you may have reacted just as strongly to imaginary situations as real ones, and for this reason, you needed alert and concerned parents who would keep you away from harsh or horrifying images, sounds or experiences. Now that you're an adult, it's probably a good idea to limit such things, and you may even have a low tolerance for news! Establishing emotional boundaries can be a lifelong challenge for you, and as you continue your struggle to distinguish between your own and someone else's wants or feelings, you may have discovered that you need to avoid becoming co-dependent in your close relationships. Help your inner child feel comfortable when you have to say, "no," since sometimes, that's the only way to keep yourself from being hurt.
Your Growing Sense of Identity
Your sense of identity and your mission in life is symbolized by the Sun in your chart. When you really find this inner identity it's like a mythic hero who discovers who his true Father is - not the mortal who raised him, but really one of the gods. This discovery carries with it a sense of your true destiny.
The road to this discovery can be a long one, but it begins in childhood. As you grew beyond infancy, when your Moon shaped most of your behavior, you started to reach out to the world and began to establish your sense of self. When someone else allowed you to shine -- or when you first had reason to be proud of yourself - that was the moment when you began to answer to the question: "Who am I?".
This radiance at your center began to emerge at that moment, like the first few beams of the Sun at dawn. If all went well and you were able to develop a good feeling about your identity, this radiance of self began to pour forth increasingly as you grew toward adulthood. If you were lucky, you arrived at a sense of who you really are and what your true mission is in life.
For many of us, however, this process gets derailed somewhere along the way. We suddenly find ourselves in adulthood, lost in semi-darkness, with a vague feeling that we're nowhere near our center, and don't know who we are or what we're really supposed to do.
If you think that you have an unclear sense of self, taking a closer look at your Sun Sign can light your path. Your Sun sign suggests what your true nature is, and what kind of journey you were destined to embark upon. Even if you have a good sense of your identity, studying your Sun symbolism can give you greater clarity and confirmation of who you are.
Whether or not you've found your path, taking a look at your astrological Sun can give you greater clarity and confirmation of who you are. As we discussed in "Early Ego Development," your Sun in Gemini suggests what your true nature is, and what kind of journey you were born to make in your life. In "What Your Looked for in Father," you read about how your developing sense of self was affected by your childhood relationship with father figures. We're now going to take another look at the aspects to your Sun, because these can give you a more detailed picture of your identity. They can also give you an idea of what obstacles might have diverted you from your course, and hints about how you might return your true path and center
Expressing Your Feelings
As your mind and sense of self began to unfold during childhood, you also developed a style of expressing yourself. Every child needs a safe sounding board, since talking about emotional experiences with others and sharing ideas helps you to learn to trust your feelings. As you trace your memories, you may discover that the way you communicated during your childhood, and the responses that you received, have shaped your capacity to express your feelings now that you're an adult.
We've established that the planet Mercury represents how you communicate. Mercury's function in your life is to link internal processes to the external world, and one of the most significant links is sharing emotions and thoughts. Though Mercury isn't traditionally linked with the emotions, it's important to your emotional development because it enables you to verbalize your feelings, get input from others, and feel more connected to the people in your life. While talking about emotions can be used as a way to avoid dealing with them, it also can be an essential step toward gaining some necessary objectivity.
You have Mercury conjunct the Sun, which creates an intimate connection between your ego and sense of self on the one hand, and the communication of thoughts and ideas on the other. It may be hard for you to separate the two realms, with the result that you can be especially sensitive if someone criticizes or challenges your ideas. This would have been more marked during your childhood, since you were likely to take pride in feeling that others thought you to be intelligent, because in your still young mind, you were what you said and thought! In classroom situations, this could have created a problem when you made a mistake. Feeling that the intellectual error reflected badly upon you, you may have felt a diminished self-esteem.
As you learned to distinguish between your ideas and your identity, you grew to enjoy using the abundant mental energy that this aspect can give. Expressions like story telling, public speaking, debate and creative writing channel your need to have your ideas recognized. Now, you can genuinely appreciate the value of the passion and power you place in your communication. Hopefully, this has become a positive element of your self-expression, but not all that you think you are!
Loving and Self-Esteem
One of the cornerstones of psychological well-being is self-esteem. The key drive behind your sense of self-worth is Venus, which also forms the fabric of your value systems. In addition, Venus illustrates your expressions of love and artistry, which are both significant emotional outlets. Throughout life, to encourage growth on every level, including the growth of self-worth, a person needs to experience the Venusian energy of love from others. Learning to trust love begins in childhood.
While we might think that our impulse to love would always be striving to please someone else, one feature of the immature expression of Venus is selfish behavior. Most small children are selfish and have difficulty sharing. In fact, learning to share is one of the psychological milestones at the age of three or four. For the first four years of your life, Venus probably showed up mainly as your particular expression of selfish behavior.
After that time, you began to express a more outgoing quality of Venusian energy-- the desire to give something to another person. The full involvement of Venusian development occurred during your teen years, when falling in love for the first time was another major milestone.
Your own Venus is in Aries. This gives great love of life, and a passion for play and spontaneity. You can be quite a tease, and you make a sport out of flirtation. Attracted to competitive situations and people, playing games can be a delightful outlet for your competitive drive. In very early years, you tended to "burn out" or grow weary of any situations or people that began to feel too repetitive. You might stick things out a little longer now, but you still prefer it if you can keep things moving. As a child, your fun-loving nature attracted lots of friends, and you may have adapted very nicely to the myriad changes in relationships that are so common in youth. Hugs can be an easy expression, but you might also like more spirited gestures when greeting a good friend - like a "High 5". Your warm personality may still exude a kind of youthful naiveté, since in your heart, you may always feel like a mischievous little child.
A supportive sextile from Venus to Jupiter tends to give you a strong desire to relate to others, and it also adds a great need to be generous. You love in a big way, and appreciate a grand show of affection. The primary problem with this contact comes from a need to set limits, since when it comes to love, you may feel that there should not be any! However, you may also expect that everyone else will be as demonstrative as you tend to be, and that can leave you feeling dissatisfied. Your sense of adventure also plays into your expression of affection, and you may still have the same dreams you held as a child - to meet the perfect partner while on a quest for the golden prize on your travels around the globe (or the galaxy). That's a pretty tall order for most people, but not for you!
Competition and Self-Assertion
Play in childhood isn't always completely innocent. In fact, it can be a preparation for life. Through play you learn about your likes and dislikes, and about the meaning of weakness and strength in yourself and others. Play can provide the basic framework for learning to assert yourself and stand up for your own interests and needs.
The planet Mars comes out as self-assertion when it's benign, and as aggression when assertion is carried too far. However, probably the most recognizable emotional expression from Mars is anger.
Early on, during the "terrible twos," the assertive, active and fiery qualities of Mars show up in an obvious way. At that time, you began to test limits, and it was the energy of Mars that you harnessed to push your way through these boundaries! Since testing limits is a natural part of development, your parents had to deal (hopefully in healthy ways) with your emerging sense of power.
Mars also expresses itself as pure physical energy. Sports and other physical activities can be excellent outlets for this energy during childhood, and your approach to fitness was probably shaped during this time. It might be that a part of you reacts like a rebellious child when you attempt to initiate a new physical routine or change lazy habits. It's that same old Mars at work again, defiantly saying "I won't!"
The raw energy of Mars can also surface as hostility and aggression. Through Mars, a child develops willpower. When your demands are frustrated, the irritation that results can produce feelings of anger. If you came to feel that anger is healthy and normal at an early age, and you learned to use its tide of energy to defend yourself and secure what you want without harming others, then you're already ahead of the game. As you might imagine, owning and using Mars energy is something society expects males to master, but still wants women to control and maybe even suppress. Think back to a time when you had to meet a challenge head-on. Remember the point at which you started to feel confident, courageous and powerful. Each time that you can recall this feeling, you'll be able to get in closer touch with the driving energy of Mars.
Mars in Pisces heightens your sensitivity, both physically and emotionally. When you were young, you probably preferred a serene environment, and may have put a lot of energy into your imaginative undertakings to escape anything in your environment that seemed disruptive. Highly impressionable, you were the child who would respond to frightening or confrontational situations quite dramatically. For you, a movie was just as real as the chair you were sitting in, and so your reactions could have been quite involved. You're still sensitive, but may have figured out that there are certain things that others might find to be entertaining that you prefer to avoid! Expressions of anger may be uncomfortable for you, and assertiveness may require extra effort on your part. When you feel justified in your anger, you can be quite effective (and dramatic) in expressing it. However, you're also exceptionally resilient, and even if you do get into a confrontation with someone, you have the capacity to be forgiving.
With Mars in the Eighth House, you may have unusually ample energy reserves. You enjoy activities that build strength, skill and a sense of control over your body. Endurance sports and activities that require focus can be especially appealing. Emotionally, this placement of Mars indicates a desire to direct your energy toward delving into mysteries or probing questions that require persistence and passion. Included in this arena are the mysteries of life, death and human sexuality. For you, that's where the real action is!
Mars making a friendly trine with Saturn indicates that you like to feel in control of emotions, and may possess a strong capacity for self-discipline and focused effort. Handling challenges and expressing anger in a healthy way will also probably come easily to you. This combination of energies suggests an ability to build or structure things, and you can also stick to a task long enough to get the job done.
Owning Your Uniqueness
To determine how the qualities of ingenuity, rebellion and your way of claiming your individuality surfaced during your youth, we'll look at the planet Uranus in your chart. Even though this energy was present when you were young, it's the rare child who can consciously embrace and express these needs on an individual level. For the most part, Uranus-type characteristics are shared as a quality of peer-group identity. However, during teen years, Uranus awakens in a more personal manner. It's usually seen as rebellion against the status quo. Ultimately, each individual can tap into Uranus' strengths by owning what makes him or her unique. This process is part of the self-actualization that accompanies your young adult years and which may be ongoing throughout your life.
With Uranus in the Eighth House, you're likely to have a powerful connection to the inner realms. Your strong intuitive abilities and fascination with the mysteries of life may have prompted you to develop a special way to actualize your insights through your life's work. As a child, you were highly intuitive about others who were close to you, although you may have thought nothing of the fact that you had these keen sensibilities until you got into the world and discovered that everybody else didn't "think" like you do. Your curiosity about what makes things tick may have resulted in a study of nature when you were young, and even now your fascination with subjects that some find "shocking" is still one of the things that sets you apart from the crowd. Your Mom is probably glad you're grown up now so that she does not have to answer your endless questions about birth, death and sexuality!
Your age group has Uranus in Pisces. During the 20th century, Uranus was in this sign from 1919 to 1928, and it returns there from 2003 to 2011. Uranus in Pisces tends to open the way for heightened creativity, and it can mark a period when some of the boundaries between the people of Earth are erased. You and your generation appreciate a special emphasis in the arts, and respond to situations that allow you to feel more connected to one another. Music is one of the principal ways of achieving this, since its flow and vibration can so easily alter the moods and expressions of the people experiencing it. You and your peers may have a strong desire to be alike, and it may be more difficult for you to break out of "collective" experiences. These shared experiences can, however, confer an unexpected quality of power. Once you reached maturity, you may have become drawn to learning to direct your mind and consciousness and may have special abilities to connect to the realm of Spirit.
Hidden Emotional Currents
The energy of the planet Pluto may also have played a significant role in your early emotional life. Because Pluto represents your deepest reservoirs of emotional energy, its qualities and drives often aren't expressed openly by children. However, when Pluto makes aspects to important points in your chart, its profound level of emotional and transformational power will be easier to see, even when a child is young. If you have such connections in your chart, you'll find them explained in other sections of this report under the areas of your life that they most affect.
While children do display the Plutonian energy that is in the chart, it's very difficult for them to be consciously aware of it. That's because the personal self must be well developed before knowledge of this esoteric plane of consciousness can awaken. In fact, most adults have difficulty dealing with this part of themselves. It's probably a good thing that we're not directly in touch with our Pluto energy when we're still children, since it can represent deep-seated anxieties or fears that are absorbed into the psyche.
The house that Pluto occupies suggests the area of life where you may most need healing and transformational change. This can also be an area where you had to deal with some kind of power struggle. While these power issues may have been present in your childhood, their impact will be more likely to show itself now that you're an adult.
With Pluto in your Twelfth House, your connection to your inner self runs rather deep. Sometimes, your dreams can seem to be profound, and you may expend a lot of energy probing into their meaning. It's probably a good idea for you to study the workings of the psyche, including the symbols and underlying elements of your dream experiences. Your fantasies and imaginative experiences can be highly intriguing, and this position of Pluto can indicate that you may tap into images, words, music or other creative expressions that will speak to the collective consciousness. As a child, you needed to share some of your secret thoughts, but may have been fearful of the results if you didn't trust those who held your confidence. Now, in your relationships, you still require plenty of space for secrets, and ample opportunities for time alone.
Pluto, on average, takes nearly 250 years to make a complete circuit of the zodiac, and so its sign tells you as much about the transformational influence that Pluto will have on your whole generation as it says about you as an individual. With Pluto in Cancer you're part of a generation born from 1913 to 1938, who have witnessed the significance of what it means to be tied to a particular family heritage. You and your generation have lived through the challenge of hate mongers like Hitler who violated the very sanctity of human life. Women's rights, like the right to vote, were championed when you were young, and you've lived during a time when the woman's revolution reshaped the very nature of our families in western society. On a deeper level, Pluto in Cancer challenges you to uncover the power and sanctity of your foundations, while, at the same time, helping you to transform them.
Showing Your Feelings to the World
In Chapter One we talked about your rising sign or Ascendant as the window-dressing or mask of your personality. At a more fundamental level, the Ascendant is the point where your inner self meets the outer world.
To learn more about your most probable ways of expressing yourself - emotionally and otherwise - we'll look at the planets that connect to your Ascendant. The things you learned about expressing yourself during your childhood may still color the way you present your being to others.
You've spent your whole life learning how to alter your self-expression and your appearance without depending on direct feedback from your parents or teachers. While you still may seek approval and affection from other people, you've reached a point in life where you really only have to answer to your own true nature. Knowing what form of self-expression best suits you, you'll be able deal with the world with a greater sense of confidence, effectiveness and ease.
With the Sun conjunct your Ascendant, you're likely to have an appropriately "sunny" disposition! There's a tendency for you to be highly noticeable, and you may enjoy shining above the crowd. You probably have an easygoing, likeable type of personality, and an air of self-confidence..
Since your Moon is opposite to the Ascendant, you can be extra-sensitive to what others say and think about you. There can be an unusual feeling that you must protect yourself at all costs, and you can be reticent about entering into unfamiliar situations.
The Direction of Emotional Flow
Yet another factor that influences the emotional expression of your planets is whether they were traveling forward through the zodiac as they usually do, or if they appear to move backward, as planets sometimes do when they're viewed from the earth. When a planet is traveling backward or "retrograde" it usually takes on a more inward expression. While at times this effect can make it harder for you to express the planet's energy outwardly, you can develop special gifts by unleashing the planet's power on your inner processes.
Trusting inner security is a primary lesson since you were born with a retrograde Saturn. Questions about your personal safety may have caused you much anxiety, worry or fear when you had to face new situations during your formative years. Now, you may still hesitate (or at least need a good pep talk) before you step into unfamiliar territory.
Also, having Saturn retrograde might have at first made it hard for you to learn Saturn's lessons of structure, direction, discipline, and setting priorities. When you were young, you may have had an innate mistrust of authority, or you may have had problems relating to the parent who provided this structure in your early years. That parent might have been inaccessible to you, perhaps because he or she was absent, constantly working, or emotionally distant. In such a case, you'd have needed to learn to go within yourself to achieve your own sense of structure, direction and personal discipline.
Affirmations that confer a sense of confidence, achievement and personal strength can be powerful tools for you. Once you overcome self-doubt, you have the potential to become remarkably self-disciplined and focused, because what you've built in this area is your own.
Chapter Five: Creativity and Spirit
When you were a child, you had a natural connection to spiritual awareness and creative expression. While you may not have realized it at the time, your sense of wonder and your joy in the daily discoveries of life brought light into the lives of those around you.
As people mature, however, this free expression of joy often gets locked away. While some people still radiate a contagious exuberance as they grow up, others have a harder time feeling the zest for life that they once had as a child. Hopefully, your natural connection to a sense of the divine was encouraged and rewarded when you were young. It's also possible, however, that when you look back on your life, you feel that this aspect of yourself was muted or stifled. Or that in dealing with "adult" concerns and the "real" world, you've managed to exhaust the rich store of joy and wonder that you once had.
As an adult, you have the strength and wisdom to restore this early aspect of yourself. When you can give yourself permission to express the love, joy and artistry that came naturally to you then, you'll find that it's still an integral part of you now. All the life-enriching qualities of your inner child are still within you, waiting for a chance to be expressed once again.
The first step you can take is to set aside a little time for wonder each day - especially at those times when your responsibilities and obligations seem to overwhelm you. As you start your morning, take time to listen to the birds sing outside your window. Taking the time to do little things to feed your soul won't interfere with your adult duties. On the contrary - it will help you to reclaim your energy. Instead of struggling to take up most of the space in your consciousness, your responsibilities and spiritual sense of balance will find new ways to form a harmonious union.
One of the best ways to stay in touch with Spirit is to learn to trust your creative flow, and open your life to the many directions where your creative impulses take you. During your childhood, you may have had hopes and dreams that were heartfelt and deeply significant, and others that you now dismiss as pure fancy. Such "frivolous" aspects of life are especially likely to get pushed aside by the pressures and responsibilities of adult life. Now, it can be worthwhile to take another look not only at your "significant" hopes and dreams, but also at the ones you don't take seriously. They may not be so irrational after all!
To get back into the creative flow, select an unfulfilled dream of yours that makes you feel happy every time you think about it. Then take one small step toward realizing it. Enroll in a class; get the supplies you need, pick up the phone and invite a friend to go along with you. Dare to do something just a little scary, and then enjoy the exhilaration you feel after you've done it. Then, you can take another little step. At each stage, savor your feelings. Along with happiness, you may feel some fear, sadness or anger. It's fine to do this, because emotions can spur your creativity, too. Like a wise parent, you can accept everything that the little child within you feels. Having these feelings is what makes us all so interesting and, indeed, human. Emotions connect us to other people, and make us realize that each creation joins us to someone else by its ability to invoke human feelings. As you keep taking these little steps, remember to immerse yourself in your feelings each time, and your connection with your creativity will continue to grow.
Yet another element of your spiritual self is connected to your capacity to honor your intuitive insights. As a child, you may have trusted your intuition without a second thought. Now, you can re-cultivate that inner knowing simply by making a conscious effort to listen to it. As you awaken, pause a little to savor your last dream. During the day, make it a habit to stop now and then and check in with your feelings. When a certain thought or situation arises, how does your body feel? Do you have tension in certain parts? Has your breathing pattern changed? These little signals are signs that you need to pay more attention to your spiritual self. When you get a message from somewhere deep inside, see whether it makes sense to take it seriously enough to act upon it. Begin to trust your intuition in small ways and see what happens. Then, when you get more confidence, you can use intuitive messages to make decisions in more important areas. As your confidence in your instincts grows, you will open yourself to a whole new world of possibilities.
The astrological factors that support your experience of spirituality and your expression of creativity include Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Neptune. While there are other factors, too, these planets will provide the main clues to re-activating your own kind of playful, artistic, jovial and imaginative self.
The Link from Your Inner Self
Mercury is usually considered just in relation to mental development. But because it serves to link ideas and concepts from your inner self to the outside world, it plays a very important role in your creative self-expression as well. The position of Mercury in your chart suggests some of the creative outlets and mediums that could have interested you when you were a child, and those can provide you with avenues for creative expression in your adult life.
When you were young, developing your Mercury-in-Gemini style of creativity grew from a need to keep your hands and your mind busy. Since your manual dexterity may have always been exceptional, you naturally would have gravitated to expressions that would give you a chance to exercise this ability. From making shadow puppets to playing with finger puppets, the idea of letting your hands do the talking was likely a big tickle when you were very young. As you matured, you may have had a penchant for advanced puppetry, or for prestidigitation (magic tricks). Juggling is another Gemini Mercury talent. In fact, you're one of those individuals who can do several things at once, and even now may delight in the fact that you can distract somebody's attention while you work on one thing and while they watch something else. In music, guitar or other stringed instruments played directly with the hands are wonderful expressions. If you always thought you wanted to learn to play an instrument, but didn't find the time, your inner child might help you out if you decide to take a few lessons and give it a try! This placement also sometimes indicates a talent for writing and is, at the least, a gift of gab.
Creative Expression and Artistry
Traditionally connected with art, the planet Venus is another very important key to your special expression of creativity. Venus represents beauty, a quality to which every child innately responds. Your expression of Venus comes straight from your heart. The things that you feel are beautiful, and the ways that you tend to express beauty, help to determine the way you'll show your feelings to the world. Venus also shows what you love and where you find pleasure. This, in turn, determines not only your tastes, but also how you transmit pleasure to others through your creativity.
Through the expression of Venus in Aries, you've almost always been spontaneous when it comes to showing how you feel and what you like. For you, beauty comes in bright colors, and it's something that excites your passions.
When you were young, you probably liked to try new and different ways to express your creativity. You could have been the kid whose impulse was to enroll in as many extracurricular or recreation classes as possible, requiring that your mom serve as an on-call taxi driver. Adults often find it harder to take creative risks, but you may still find this fairly easy to do. The child in you still needs lots of room for creative spontaneity. This could find expression in what's considered lofty and artistic, but it could also involve release of pure physical energy. Therefore dancing or playing percussion instruments could especially delight you. Even if you're not a professional in such areas, what's to stop you from getting out on the dance floor and strutting' your stuff?
As a child you may have loved stories about heroes and heroines. During your play-acting you could have been the daring rescuer - complete with the proper cape, hat and saber. Now, you may still don your trademark accessories, and personalized items may be one way you still allow your inner child to wink at the world. For fun, you might enjoy designing jewelry, hats or other accessories that allow people to express their individuality. Crafts like ceramics, metal or glasswork, and also whittling or carving, are some other reasonably sedate adult ways of indulging your Venus in Aries.
In addition, your Venus is in the Ninth House. This often comes out as a love of finely written or beautifully inspirational words. You may still recall some of the teachers who most inspired you when you were young, and your love of that inspiration can be the glue that keeps their words of wisdom alive in your heart. In its simplest form, Venus in the Ninth indicates a love of knowledge and learning, and for this reason, you may feel that you're a perpetual student. Your heart warms when you're on a quest, and the best way to keep your inner child creatively inspired is to follow at least a few of those yearnings to travel, explore, study, write or teach.
Venus-Jupiter aspects confer confidence, especially when they are harmonious and flowing. With your Venus-Jupiter sextile, you've been likely to have always felt a desire to gain attention, and you truly appreciate praise. Even when you were young, you may have shown a strong talent for writing or public speaking, and you may also love to read and travel.
It's likely that you've attracted the support of gifted teachers and may still be easily inspired by a teacher or other mentor. However, you can also be a wonderful mentor, and in many respects, mentoring others adds extra support to the more vulnerable aspects of your own inner child.
Finding Enthusiasm, Spirituality and Joy
At a certain point in your early development, you learned to move beyond purely self-centered awareness, and you started to reach out to enlarge your personal universe. This is symbolized by the expansive energy of Jupiter. Jupiter gives you your desire to grow, to broaden your horizons, and to feel a sense of adventure and joy.
Your earliest awareness of Jupiter may have come through your desire for recognition and rewards. At first, Jupiter showed up at times when you would cheer enthusiastically, and when you couldn't wait to have your wishes granted. Through Jupiter, you began to anticipate the good things you felt you deserved, and then, as you grew, it was through Jupiter that you learned to share this abundance with others. Along with the Moon, Jupiter helps you to develop trust in a benevolent universe, one that will supply you with all the things you need.
Jupiter also helps us to form our ideas about religion and philosophy. These concepts often manifest in early childhood through an endless string of questions. Jupiter also gives us a sense of wonder about universal principles and a Higher Power. Later, during elementary school and into the preteen years, you were able to develop enough cognitive skill to take this philosophical side of Jupiter even further. Jupiter helps us to develop a sense of morality, and it shows us how learning about higher principles from inspiring teachers and mentors might influence us in later life. Jupiter is a function of the higher mind - the part of your consciousness that seeks to connect with a higher Truth. Jupiter not only bestows an early potential for exploring religious teachings and developing a personal philosophy, it also helps you to develop an overview of your own destiny that will continue to evolve throughout your life.
Through Jupiter, you learned as a child to exercise your sense of hope and vision. It lifted you up on wings of enthusiasm as you began to experience true generosity. Jupiter is your primary source of inspiration, and your experiences with Jupiterian energy during your early years are still there inside you, waiting to be tapped.
Finding your inner child again involves rediscovering the joy and wonder that you felt when you were young. So touch Jupiter, and let it carry you into the realm of possibility. Children do that so well...and you can too--right now!
Jupiter's placement in your Seventh House indicates you're especially responsive to a philosophy based upon the importance of sharing love in our lives. As a child, you naturally sought opportunities to experience the value of justice and honor in human relationships. Early lessons regarding fair play may have had a special impact, and those truths are still a part of your basic philosophy of life. You've never been comfortable when you've witnessed unfair attitudes or inhumanity. Now that you're an adult, you may have a special need to do something about these human indignities. Among the more formidable lessons you've had to learn are the value of commitments and the importance of promising only what is possible. That was true when you were young, and it may still be a challenge today. Defining expectations goes a long way toward satisfying such issues.
With Jupiter in Aquarius, your ideals and approach to spirituality need to seem logical. As a child, you may have enjoyed the time you spent with your friends learning lessons of morality and ideals, and you may have been drawn to social organizations that echoed your family's philosophies. Today, you may seek ties with a spiritual family, even though you may feel most inclined to develop a spiritual path that is uniquely your own. Ideals of humanitarian outreach, inclusion and tolerance may be strong. However, you can also become fixated on overly idealistic or exclusionary philosophies if you become too detached.
Dreams and Imagination
Another significant aspect of creative and artistic expression depends upon pure imagination, which is largely influenced by Neptune. What child isn't a master of make-believe? Hopefully, you were encouraged to use your imagination and to trust your dreams. But even if those around you didn't think that your imagination was such a wonderful thing, inside your secret self, you knew differently! There was a time when you knew that a part of you was magical. Certainly learning to distinguish between real and imaginary worlds is a major part of becoming a functioning adult - but that magical part still exists within you. It's a necessary part of your being, one that balances all the useful and practical everyday things that you do with a reminder of the boundless universe that surrounds us.
Some people misuse Neptune as a short cut back to the bliss of the womb - a place where all your needs are met without any effort on your part. Neptune is therefore often decried as the source of escapism and addictions. But these are really misguided attempts to capture the benefits that Neptune can bring.
Properly used, Neptune can help you grow into a more alive and fully functioning person. That's because Neptune can soften the shell of your ego, and loosen the structure of entrenched positions that adults tend to build around themselves. It is this struggle to strengthen our egos that often stifles our spiritual growth. Neptune can give you the flexibility you need to become someone else for a time. In trying out new roles in fantasy, you can explore new options in a safe way. And then, if the role feels good, you can find a way to use it to improve your life.
In helping to break down the boundaries you build around your ego, Neptune can also open you up to others' feelings, so that you feel greater compassion. While Jupiter can bring the generosity that comes from a feeling of abundance, Neptune enables you to really to empathize with other people. This is something that requires special support and nourishment during childhood. As an adult, you reactivate this energy each time you put yourself into another's shoes and do a kindly or charitable deed. As you bring more happiness to others, you will be more fulfilled. If you can keep the pump primed, so to speak, you'll be able to dip into this well of divine compassion throughout your lifetime.
One of the ways to reactivate the life-enhancing energies of Neptune is to pay more attention to your dreams. Another is to indulge your fantasies through poetry and stories, including books, plays and, most especially, movies. This can increase your compassion for yourself, as well as for others. Yet another very powerful way to activate your Neptune is through listening to or playing any sort of music. This can transport you into a different emotional world and can bring you closer to the Divine. Neptune is an important component of artistic sensibility, the one that frees you from the bonds of everyday reality so that you can envision other worlds. Through fantasy and a bit of indulgence in your wildest imagination, you can provide a safe and sacred space where you can make friends with your most inspired and profound thoughts.
For clues about the best ways to engage your imagination, to rediscover the stuff of your dreams, and to find the areas of life where you can most easily exercise compassion toward others, we look to the house where Neptune is placed in your chart. With Neptune in the First House, it's natural for you to emanate a rather charming mystical quality. As a child, your fanciful nature would have easily translated to creative activities like acting, dancing or singing. You might also have enjoyed sports, since part of your fantasy may have been about mythical heroes or heroines. These same activities can help to awaken your spiritual essence now. You may also have a fascination for film, photography or video - or other creative expressions that allow you to create an image that exemplifies the magical side of life.
Personally, you may have always had a strong desire to help others. During your youth, and now in your adult years, you still have a special potential for giving from the heart and extending time and energy to those in need.
Neptune's sign in your chart actually speaks for your whole generation. You were born into the generation with Neptune in Leo. In the 20th Century, Neptune was in that sign from 1916 to 1929. Your generation's belief systems stem from an ideal that a Higher Power is Divine Love. High ideals were a marker of your generation, and even recently, writers and historians refer to the Neptune in Leo generation as the "Greatest Generation." Leonine qualities of pride, loyalty, and regal power helped shape your ideals when you were growing up. You were also born at a time when the movie business became an institution in Hollywood, and the popular ideal of "star quality" began from the seeds of this time. The potential power and majesty of individual creativity inspired by divine light is one of the spiritual quests of the generation with Neptune in Leo.
Where Do I Go From Here?
Reading through this report may have felt like a trip back in time, but that journey is meant to be more than a source of nostalgia. While you can't live your childhood over again, you can certainly reclaim a sense of the promise of that time. From the perspective you've gained through life's experience, you may feel inclined to rekindle certain youthful dreams and hopes with greater clarity and discover how to make them an integral part of your life today and in the future.
You may have also identified some of the roots of your personality - both the strengths and the liabilities. Perhaps by better understanding your core motivations, you can begin to encourage a more healthy relationship with that part of you that still feels like a hopeful, creative, trusting child. You can develop an inner dialog to aid you when you face guilt, anxiety or fear. And most of all, you can remind yourself that now you have the experience, knowledge and skills to help guide yourself through challenges that you couldn't have navigated alone when you were still a child.
In some respects, you're still the person you've been through each "age" of your life. A part of you is still a four-year-old filled with imagination and wonder, and another part of you remains an awkward twelve-year-old standing in front of class giving a book report. Fortunately, you don't have to remain stuck in any of these identities from the past, although emotionally you may still have indelible marks from those times.
It's not necessary that you spend all your time trying to "fix" what may have been injured, or that you regress into childish behaviors. Instead, as you pay homage to the part of you that still believes in your dreams, that loves unconditionally, that feels the unfettered joy of simply being alive - you've invited your Inner Child to be a vital part of your daily existence.
I hope that this look at your Inner Child has enlarged your understanding of the unique gifts, needs, problems and possibilities that you have brought with you into this lifetime. You might also want to examine how your life's path is still changing and evolving with Astro-To-Go's LifeQuest report. Or you might want to explore one of the many other charts that deal more specifically with topics like love, compatibility, career issues, or forecasts into the future. All of these reports are available at: astrotogo.com.
If you want a deeper understanding of any of the topics addressed in this report, you can contact me for a personal consultation through Astro-To-Go's One-on-One Readings section. And if you have any feedback on this report please send an email to innerchild@astrotogo.com.
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