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Astrology is the use of our solar system and beyond as a mandala or symbolic form of our place in the Universe and can be used as a roadmap in life. The birth chart is a representation of the time we took our first breath outside the womb on this planet. It is a time when we are suddenly in a new environment, hopefully friendly rather than hostile, where we have a unique personal perspective with a unique personal sensation of everything around us. At this point in life all experience is monumental in our development and thus, the dice are cast as our personal astrological wheel starts turning. I will try and simplify this detailed and complicated subject as much a possible in this book as well as bring in some new material along with my philosophy of life.
The chart at birth is very important to understand because almost no two are exactly alike. There are four basic directions in the chart, very similar to many of the mandalas of a great many cultures including the American Indian medicine wheel. Each direction has great significance in our lives and our chart can give some pretty good clues about how we are going to receive, perceive, use these energies and elements.
What I have seen is that the center of our chart is the center of our Universe and as we are developing in the womb this point opens up like an umbrella and the four directions are cast as our foundation in this physical plane. The East is the electromagnetic field that is our basis and is seen as our complex body and aura as well as a link to past lives, especially if you move clockwise in the chart and start with the twelfth house which is not what we are going to do in this basic book. The West is the direction of gravity and this energy is what holds relationships. What would we do without the mysterious gravity? Hard to imagine. The North is at the bottom of the chart (as a map would look superimposed onto the ground) and is the strong force of life, our home, which holds our cells together and peaks at about 21 years. Then the body starts losing its developing dynamic and the weak force of the South, top of the chart, starts coming into play as erosion of self (society gains strength in opposition to self) and eventual death take us back to our center and we begin again with new form, a new umbrella. Oneness absorbs our life experience and begins another play, another story adding more contributions to our social Oneness (the collective unconscious). Each person has his, her own living mandala and co-creates the stories that history is filled with. If you move counter-clockwise from the East you can catch a glimpse into the future.
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Figure 1
The first direction is where our personal story begins, the Ascendant. It is the horizon, due east, at the exact time we took our first breath outside the womb. If we could look at the eastern horizon we would see in the sky that part of the heavens which appeared to be rising, a grouping of stars, one of twelve, that is called our rising sign. The Ascendant point at birth starts its daily counterclockwise trek through all the signs of the zodiac in a 24 hour period (earth’s rotation). This energy is packed with information of our past, present and face of the future.
Past energy can represent many things to many people of myriad belief systems. I do believe in past lives within our universe that are part of our personal string connection to All That Is. I will keep this generic because there are obviously so many religious ideas that no one personal label can or should be used. It is so important these days to look at commonalities rather than dogmatic differences. As science has proven, matter and energy cannot be destroyed but the form can change. That is what the string is all about. Form represents our multitudinous lives and energy on the spiritual string, our umbilical cord to Oneness or All That Is. I also believe that there is no such thing as nothing. Space is infinitely intelligent and can be looked at as the medium of energy transfer. Oh, the mysteries today of black space and black energy which make up most of the universe. Wait till the truth is revealed. So, it is within the realm of possibility that we have had past lives on this planet and elsewhere and we carry much of that energy forward. It is so interesting because I have seen so many physical, emotional, mental characteristics communicated by the ascendant. A person’s facial shape, types of emotions, thinking patterns are all there to a degree. Looking at this sign and degree can be the anchor of the chart and certainly is a gateway to this life’s path.
The nadir of the chart, that sign and degree at the bottom or northern direction, is much of who we are in this life within our early environment. Interactions with this part of our chart create a complex web of emotions, ways of perceiving ourselves within our immediate environment and how we operate, navigate through it. Much of this will go to form our watery emotional core, our stable and fluid crystalline base.
Our emotional body does dominate our future images, thoughts, feelings about ourselves and others and is the major container of all that has impacted our early life. Many of us spend a lifetime trying to heal from perceived and heartfelt injury to that very impressionable and sensitive emotional body. Psychiatry is based on this. Whoever has the responsibility of this early nurturing has a tremendous task and duty to create an environment of love, compassion, truth, and healthy life lessons. No one is perfect or most likely, even close, so all of us will grow up with some kind of emotional block or trauma. That is one of life’s personal challenges. What we are not aware of at a young age is that we do have personal responsibility in how we perceive and react to those possible traumas. As we grow and mature, hopefully, we can accept our part in the process and that becomes our first step in healing ourselves. Everyone has had difficult situations that can become much more powerful in our lives than they really have to be, but that is how we felt or perceived the event. That, then, becomes our personal responsibility to heal. This is our emotional growth process. We can cry and cry forever if we want or we can look objectively at our own personality, allowing the experience to be a life lesson that shows us a personal pattern of reaction we now can understand and work with. Shit happens, let’s clean it up. Talk about a bomb waiting to explode! Or, not! It becomes our choice.
The third direction in our chart is the descendant, the west. This is all about how we relate one on one with people, which is first learned within family and then projected into society. How do you look at relationships? What is your style of relating? All of this builds in body, emotions, mind, and spirit and forms our relationship dynamic. This point in the natal chart is a compilation of all past relationships, synthesized into our personal style. Here we are departing from our egocentric self and learning the alchemical process of relationship. As we grow in relationship we can see how they change us in so many ways. There is a seesaw balance between how much we want to give of ourselves and how much we will retain. When we give excessively, much of our power of self, individuality, separation, is lost to the other person and that is usually not healthy. There has to be a balance for the connection to be good for both.
The midheaven is at the top or southern part of the chart. How does our energy manifest in the business world? What is our vocation? This is where we have to sacrifice for the greater whole in order to have a place in the world that we might say is our calling. The energy here is not so much of the self but is the group, the business, society. It is much bigger than we are as individuals. As you can see the progression counterclockwise around the chart (refer to diagram) gradually goes from total self at the ascendant to minimal self as we head back to our beginning at the completion of the 12th house. Career beckons on the midheaven. Knowing the energy here is so important in understanding the type of job that will bring happiness. There are other ingredients to this vocation fulfillment such as Chiron and sixth house cusp which we will talk about later. The southern direction is represented by the fire element and that is what we need to make our mark on the world. Focus, energy, drive bring the greatest rewards in this part of the chart which can feel like an overwhelming and chaotic world at a tender age.
Elementary as this seems now, it is important to constantly be aware of what energies these angles (the four directions) bring to the structure of the chart. There are many more layers to peel back from this framework so consider these the four corner posts of the building housing your life. An individual chart has 12 houses with 12 signs and the planetary bodies located in the signs and houses. We shall start with the universal star background, the birth signs. The glyphs of these signs are located on the outside of the natural chart pictured below as Figure 2.
This chart shows the 12 houses that divide the surface of the earth within the inner wheel and are seen in a counterclockwise sequence because of the earth’s rotation. The outer circle contains the corresponding planetary rulers of the house. Outside the chart are the signs of the zodiac that divide the sky into 12 sections and are seen moving counterclockwise because of the earth’s rotation.
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Figure 2
Copyright 2007 |
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