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Started reading
November 10, 2025
astrological forces present us not with answers but with questions. The answers we give are our own.
Astrology supplies the terrain. How we navigate it is our own business.
Growth. That is the key. That is what separates true astrology from simple fortune-telling. A Libran can learn to make decisions. Capricorn can learn to relax. Transformations like that are the goal of any real astrologer. To the fortune-teller, they are only embarrassments, unwelcome evidence of the cracks in his system.
Learn astrology for yourself and you will make better decisions. Share it gracefully, without preaching, and you will make a better friend, able to push your own fog out of the way long enough to help people you love see through theirs.
Astrology is just a finger pointing at reality. Like any other language, it only provides a way of ordering our perceptions. At its best it aids us in seeing ourselves more honestly. At its worst it drops a wall between us and the rawness of our own experience.
If astrology does not give the mind the sharpness of a laser and leave the heart an open nerve, then it has failed.
We are not robots. We are men and women.
*people
There is no such thing as a good birthchart or a bad one. There are no evolved charts or unevolved ones, no sane ones, no schizophrenic ones.
Astrology can help us in only three ways. It can vividly portray the happiest life available to us. It can tell us what tools we have available for the job and how best to employ them. And it can warn us in advance about how our lives will look when we are getting off the mark. From that point on, we must affirm that all choices lie in our own hands and that no planet or sign ever preordains a specific fate.
Astrology does not change people any more than psychotherapy changes people. People change themselves.
Astrology is not theological; it is direct, real, experiential. It tries only to help us get our personalities into running order. To make us happier. Clearer.
The intensification of a person’s self-awareness: in astrology, that is all that matters. In promoting that intensification, anyone who interprets a birthchart must have absolute respect for the independence and self-determination of each mind he or she touches.
The relationship between astrologer and client must be one of equality. We all face the same labyrinths and nobody has the master plan.
Astrology is hedonistic. Pleasure-seeking. It is immediate and amoral. All that matters to it is happiness. A mirror reflecting life, it observes but does not interpret. Fact: we hurt. Fact: we would like to feel better. Astrology helps us do that. How? By reminding us of who we are.
In the hands of a sensitive, skilled, articulate astrologer, the birthchart can catapult us beyond those traps. It helps us avoid becoming just another character out of central casting. In a flash, the whole pattern of creative tensions, blind spots, and aspirations that makes up our own unique personality comes to a focus. And it stands distinct from those unnatural values, heroes, and mythologies.
Glimpsing our essential self fills us with vitality. It helps us make better choices. We take care of ourselves more effectively. We learn to separate what we really want from what we feel compelled to want. And that makes us happier.
No need to talk about enlightenment or self-actualization. Happiness is enough. This, then, is the real purpose of astrology: to hold a mirror before the evolving self, to tell us what we already know deep within ourselves. Through astrology we fly far above the mass of details that constitutes our lives. We stand outside our personalities and see for a moment the cen...
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It comes down to this: astrological symbols are not nouns, they are verbs. I am not “a Capricorn.” I am Capricorning. Growth. Change. Evolution. That is the heart of astrology. Leave fatalism and rigidity to the fortune tellers. Our work is elsewhere.
In broad terms, signs are identity, while houses are the arena within which identity operates. Signs provide the psychological framework, the needs and fears, the attitudes and biases, with which we attack the houses. Houses indicate problems and issues. They represent tasks we must face.
Signs symbolize processes that take place within the mind, Each is a pattern of growth with which a person becomes intensely identified: learning to become braver, learning to become more aware of other people’s needs and worries; developing psychic sensitivity or meditation skills; weeding out the destructive effects of dependency. Houses are more concrete. They represent that which the mind observes.
Planets are the third dimension of astrological symbolism. They represent the actual structure of the mind. Each one symbolizes a particular psychological function: intellect; emotions, self-imagery, the impulse toward intimacy.
Or perhaps that assertiveness is not outwardly visible at all. Maybe it is blazing away in one of the hidden departments of life.
e.g.) Aries in 12th house
Always look first to the planet, which is the what. It lets us know which part of the mind we are considering. Then use the sign to determine exactly what that planet wants and what methods it might best use to achieve those goals – the why and the how. Finally, look at the house. It answers the where, telling us in precisely which department of life the battle is taking place.
Planets tell us which part of the mind we are looking at (the what). • Signs let us know what needs and strategies drive that planet (the why and the how). • Houses specify in exactly which of life’s arenas that planet-sign combination is developing (the where).
The element of creativity, of inspiration, of intuition, is the vital spark at the core of the system. Without it, one can never derive meaning from a birthchart.
The mind is a living creature, just like the body. All its organs interact. If we have a headache, it may affect our stomach too. And maybe if someone massages our neck and shoulders, both problems disappear. It is the same with astrology. If our Mercury hurts, then that imbalance is reflected in one of our signs and houses too. We must learn to grasp the birthchart as a whole, just as a good doctor learns to see the body as an interacting system.
Learning to interpret charts is like learning to speak French. If we are going to be in Paris for just a week, then memorizing phrases out of a Berlitz book is all we need. We will be able to locate bathrooms and avoid malnutrition. But if we are serious about communicating in the language, we pursue a different strategy. We memorize vocabulary. We learn laws of grammar. And we start putting sentences together on our own.
A computer can construct a birthchart, but it can never effectively interpret one. To accomplish that, we must react to the chart the way we react to a living person. Intellectually. Emotionally. Physically. Intuitively. We must react to wholeness. We must learn words and form sentences. Memorizing phrases does not help us.
For the detectives among you, this is your first clue to our hero’s identity; he is not a woman.
Wait what. Sounds sexist
To determine the planet’s sign, consider the notation right next to it. In our sample chart, Venus lies in the sixth house accompanied by the notation, 3°W. That tells us that Venus is in the part of the sky we call Virgo – specifically, in Virgo’s fourth degree. Knowing it is in the sixth house lets us know that at the instant of the man’s birth, Virgo had rotated below the western horizon, carrying Venus with it.
3W for West?
Is it not Virgo's 3rd degree?
Burn away all the name calling, and the difference between astrologers and astronomers boils down to this: astronomers seek to know the form of the heavens, while astrologers pursue their meaning. Astrology is the poetry of astronomy.
But astrology is not a study of the soul. It is a study of the personality. The power of the astrological language lies in its particularity, the way it addresses the uniqueness of each individual’s personal reality.
Astrology really has nothing to do with the stars themselves. It is based solely on these variations in light, or, more simply, on the seasons.
Astrologically, the vernal equinox symbolizes the birth of the element fire. This is the principle of action. Like springtime, its spirit is one of outrushing energy, charging into the cosmos, shattering all that stands in its way. Uncompromising invincibility of purpose – that is fire. Soon we will see how it comes to permeate the signs Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius.
Earth symbolizes stability and continuity. Its emphasis is on making peace with a hard, unyielding world. Practicality and resourcefulness arise here. Earth is the sustainer, the giver and maintainer of form. Embodied in Taurus, Virgo, and Capricorn, it is endlessly building, crystallizing, and perfecting.
In air, we find perceiving, reasoning, connecting – the mental functions. Its tone is one of unending curiosity, of detachment and clarity of perception. More than any other element, air is aware that beyond itself lies the unknown. The questing spirit of air animates Gemini, Libra, and Aquarius.
Water is the principle of nurturance and protection. Outwardly, its spirit is one of warmth: inwardly, of imagination and intuition. With its penetrating, sensitive quality, water’s prime function is to feel. Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces are the signs conditioned by water.
When a man or woman is born under the predominant influence of the fire signs, he or she is developing will. Courage or willpower is simply the translation of the fire principle into the language of psychology. In a similar way, a person conditioned by earth is here to learn patience and self-discipline; one shaped by air, to develop alertness and clarity of perception; one influenced mostly by water, to learn unconditional love in the face of extreme vulnerability.
No one is a pure incarnation of an element. No one finds all his or her lessons in one arena. It is when we find the airy need for detachment married to the emotional roller coaster of water or the fiery need for stimulation and change bound to the earthy structures of stability, that we begin to see in the symbolism some reflection of the poignancy of human experience.
Cardinality is the principle of initiation. Out of nothingness, something arises. It is the creative push that allows fresh life to manifest itself in a universe that may already be stable and closed.
Fixity has a spirit of solidarity and continuity. While in this mode, an entity is most recognizable. It is in its maturity. But fixity can also refer to stubbornness or unresponsiveness. It is the antithesis of change and the quintessence of strength.
Mutability has one paramount virtue: it is adaptable. It can respond to a changing environment by changing its own form. The price it pays for this capacity is that it can lose all definition, become shapeless. It can die.
Signs are avenues of expression, but they are also roads back to the source,back to the prime symbol. They offer effective descriptions of personality. They form a useful catalog of human character types. But they are also evolutionary methods,ways of growing. Read signs as a typology and we are back to square one. We are still telling fortunes. ‘’You are an Aries. That means you are brave and adventuresome.” Read them as methods of growth and everything is transformed. We add the spice of possibility, of a larger destiny. ‘’You are an Aries. You must become more courageous. You have come into
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Growth. Risk. The uncertainty of the still-unresolved battle. That is evolutionary astrology. No one is simply an Aries. That is a myth. Signs are psychological processes common to all of us. Each one of us embodies all twelve. We differ only in the degree to which they are emphasized.
Every birthchart is a circle – the same circle. In some way each sign is activated in every one of us.
Each of us is a synthesis of all twelve. To imagine a person with no Arian energy, for example, is like imagining someone with no emotions. An impossibility. People may be born without arms and legs, they are still unquestionably human. But to be born without some Taurean qualities or some Geminian ones – that would make us as otherworldly as a creature stepping out of a flying saucer. The process we call Leo may dominate someone’s personality. But the other processes are there. Cancer may lurk in the shadows, never visible. Pisces may seem completely absent – until money matters hit a snag or
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To call someone “a Leo” is about as valuable as calling him “an extrovert.” We learn something; but there is much that we do not learn.
The temptation to simplify ourselves like that is enormous. But the cost of succumbing to it is high. We may gain a kind of Cliffs Notes clarity about ourselves, but we sacrifice astrology’s real treasure – the capacity of the symbols to evoke the theater of the mind with its many ambivalent characters.
