The Inner Sky: How to Make Wiser Choices for a More Fulfilling Life

by Steven Forrest

one shaped by air, to develop alertness and clari...

one influenced mostly by water, to learn unconditional love in the face of...

The core features of any life cycle are identical. Something is born. Something exists for measurable time in some relatively distinct form. And something dies.

I would also add a decomposition (or transition) phase Birth -> Life -> Death -> Decomposition (Transition) -> ReBirth

These three archetypal phases of any life cycle constitute another essential ingredient in astrology’s symbolism: the modes.

The first mode is called cardinal. It refers to birth, the beginning of a cycle. Cardinality is the principle of initiation. Out of nothingness, something arises. It is the creative push that allows fresh life to manifest...

life cycles move into their second phase. Astrologers call this the fixed mode. 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 unresponsive...

The final mode, which astrologers call mutable reigns over the ending of lifecycles. Its spirit is one of change and adjustment, many times of utter dissolution. 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.

As modes interact with elements, the prime symbol is brought down to a tangible level.

The modes force the four elemental states into the fluxing, careening trajectory of time. Out of that marriage twelve children are born. And those children are the lifeblood of practical astrology. They are the signs.

Each element can express itself through any of ...

Four elements. Three modes. Weave them together and the twelve signs emerge. Through them, the prime symbol at last begins to function in the everyday world,

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 them as methods of growth and everything is transformed.

Signs represent what we’re here to learn moreso than who we are

Growth. Risk. The uncertainty of the still-unresolved battle. That is evolutionary astrology.

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.

Each of us is a synthesis of all twelve.

Each sign is always present, awaiting the right trigger.

sun signs are broad categories.

astrology’s real treasure – the capacity of the symbols to evoke the theater of the mind with its many ambivalent characters.

Each sign is presented as a “personality,”

only a type, a representative of some universal theme.