Planet		Sign		Position	House	House Cusps

Sun		Pisces		16°Pi48'	05th	01  11°Sc53'
Moon		Aries		10°Ar44'	06th 	02 11°Sg53' 
Mercury 	Aquarius 	25°Aq28' 	04th	03 11°Cp53' 
Venus 		Aries 		13°Ar15' 	06th	04 11°Aq53' 
Mars 		Capricorn 	29°Cp48' 	03rd	05 11°Pi53' 
Jupiter 	Cancer 		15°Ca12' R 	09th	06 11°Ar53' 
Saturn 		Gemini 		06°Ge25' 	07th	07 11°Ta53' 
Uranus 		Gemini 		00°Ge55' 	07th	08 11°Ge53' 
Neptune 	Libra 		01°Li05' R 	11th	09 11°Ca53' 
Pluto 		Leo 		05°Le16' R 	09th	10 11°Le53' 
Midheaven 	Leo 		20°Le47' 	10th	11 11°Vi53'
Ascendant 	Scorpio 	11°Sc53' 	01st	12 11°Li53'

Using Your Birthchart as a Spiritual Guide

Nobody has a generic formula for happiness, at least not one that does the trick for everyone. That's where astrology comes in. The birthchart, stripped to bare bones, is simply a description of the happiest, most fulfilling life that's available to you... personally. It spells out a set of strategies you can use to avoid boring routines, bad choices, and dead ends. It lists your resources. And it talks about how your life looks when you're misusing the resources and distorting the strategies -- shooting yourself in the foot, in other words.

All from a map of the sky? Hard to believe. But think for a minute... "How can the planets possibly affect us? They're millions of miles away." Astrology's critics are fond of rolling out that argument. But it doesn't hold water. Go out and gaze at the moon. What's really happening? Incomprehensible energies are plunging across a quarter million miles of void, crashing through your eyeballs and creating electrochemical changes in your brain. We call the process "seeing the moon." Certainly the planets affect us. The question is where do we draw the boundaries around those effects?

Let's go a step further. Open your eyes on a starry night. What do you see? A vast, luminous space, full of shadows and light. Now close your eyes so tight they ache. Where are you now? What do you see? Again, a vast, luminous space, full of shadows and light. Consciousness and cosmos are structured around the same laws, follow the same patterns, and even feel pretty much the same to our senses. "As above, so below." Just as the starry night awes us with its vastness, there's something infinitely deep inside you, a place you go when you close your eyes, a place that's beyond being an Aries or a Gemini or even a specific gender.

At the most profound level, a birthchart is a map back to that magical center. It describes a series of earthly experiences which, if you're brave and open enough, will trigger certain states of consciousness in you -- states that operate like powerful spiritual catalysts, vaulting you into higher levels of being. In the pages that follow, you'll tour your personal birthchart. But don't expect the usual "Scorpios are sexy" stuff. You are a mysterious being in a mysterious cosmos. You're here for just a little while, a blink of God's eye.

You face a monumental task: figuring out what's going on! In that spiritual work, astrology is your ally. How will it help? Certainly not by pigeon-holing you as a certain "type." Astrology works by reminding you who you are, by warning you about the comforting lies we all tell ourselves, and by illuminating the experiences that trigger your most explosive leaps in awareness. After that, the rest is up to you.

Your Ten Teachers

First, it's a lot more elaborate. Instead of three compartments, we have ten: Sun, Moon, and the eight planets we see from Earth. As we'll discover, each planet represents more than a "circuit" in your psyche. It also serves as a kind of "Teacher," guiding you into certain consciousness-triggering kinds of experience. The second difference between astrology and psychology is that astrology's mind-map, unlike Freud's, is rooted in nature itself, just as we are.

The primary celestial teacher is the Sun. What does it teach? Selfhood. Vitality. How to keep the life-force strong in yourself. If the Sun grew dimmer, so would all the planets -- they shine by reflecting solar light. Similarly, if you fail to stoke the furnaces of your own inner Sun, then you'll simply be "out of gas." All your other planetary functions will suffer too. How do we learn this teacher's lessons?

Start by realizing that when you were born the Sun was in Pisces. Transcendence. Mysticism. Spirituality. That's Pisces at its best. In this part of your life, you've been given an instinctive sense of mystery and vastness. Something there seems automatically to think in terms of centuries, of high purposes, of divine interventions. Reflexively, when faced with life's vicissitudes, it asks, "What will this matter in five hundred years?" That's the soul of spirituality.

It's also dangerous. Transcendence can run amuck, leaving Pisces in an uncaring, drifting mode, "transcending" while its life descends into entropy. Along that road there are some sad waystations: forgetfulness, spaciness, then escapism -- perhaps into alcohol or drugs, perhaps into food, maybe into the television set. Avoid those sorry journeys by feeding your Piscean circuitry exactly what it needs: meditative time, silence, a few minutes each day to sit in the infinite cathedral.

With your Sun in Pisces, you face an astrological paradox: the symbol of identity (the Sun) is shaped by the sign that refers to transcending the identity. There's something inside you that keeps eroding your ego, filling you with a sense of the cosmic joke -- we're all spiritual monkeys dressed in perfect human attire, really believing we're insurance salespeople, housewives, and VIPs. And people wonder why you always seem to laugh at "inappropriate" times! Take care of that spirit-spark inside you. Make certain you have a little bit of time every day to stop being yourself, to float into that vast, luminous space between your ears. Otherwise, you'll start "transcending" at awkward moments: losing the car keys, missing highway exits, losing the thread of conversations.

We can take our analysis of your natal Sun a step further. When you were born, that solar light illuminated the Fifth house. What does that signify? Start by realizing that Houses represent twelve basic arenas of life. There's a House of Marriage, for example, and a House of Career. Always, we find an element of "fate" in our House structures; the "Hand of God" continually presents us with existential and moral questions connected with our emphasized Houses.

How we react and what we learn -- or fail to learn -- is our own business. One brief technical note: Sometimes the Sun, the Moon, or a planet lies near the end of the House. We then say it's "conjunct the cusp" of the subsequent House, and interpret it as though it were a little further along... in the next House, in other words.

Pleasure -- that's Fifth House territory. It's as though God marched you off the end of the cosmic diving board with the words, "Go down there and try to have a good time!" That sounds pretty lightweight, but think about it: feeling good in this world isn't so easy! We've got global pollution, schizophrenics with AK-47s, ego-maniacs with nuclear warheads... not to mention disease, taxes, mosquitos, cars that won't start.... How do we feel real pleasure here on planet Earth? Alone, the "pleasures of the flesh" can't cut the mustard; money, alcohol, orgasms -- they help, but they're not enough... just look at the usual life-expectancy of a "purely physical relationship."

Where to turn? To the pleasures of the mind, the heart, the soul! The joy of learning. The spiritual high of athletic excellence. The bliss of meditation. And, perhaps above all, the sheer pleasure of creative self-expression. Astrological force is focused here in your birthchart. It offers joy -- and warns of the addictions that can overcome you if you miss that joy, or seek it all in one place. With the Sun in the Fifth House, you're full of charisma and creative drive. Express those qualities, cultivate them, and you'll feel right on target. You're also learning some complicated lessons about the human need for peak experiences.

Old-fashioned astrologers would say that you tend toward excesses. That can be true, but those kinds of problems -- with food, drugs, sex, whatever -- arise only when you've forgotten to fully enjoy the bliss of your enormous creative energies. The next step in our journey through your birthchart carries us to the Moon. As you might expect, Luna resonates with the magical, emotional sides of your psyche. It represents your mood, averaged over a lifetime. As the heart's teacher, it tells you how to feel comfortable, how to meet your deepest needs.

While the Sun lets you know what kinds of experiences and relationships help you feel sane, the Moon is concerned with another piece of the puzzle: feeling happy. When you were born, the Moon was in Aries. Courage! That's what Aries is all about. Traditionally this sign is represented as the Ram -- a fierce, frightening creature. That's a pretty good description of how this energy looks from the outside.

Inside, it's different. Not the Ram, but the newborn robin, two days old, just hatched from its shell, living in a world full of creatures who think of it as breakfast. Does it cower? No -- the little bird flaps its stubby wings and squawks its head off, demanding its right to exist. That's Aries: the raw primal urge to survive. Existential courage. Courage is a funny virtue -- it has to be scared into a person.

In the evolutionary scheme of life, Aries energy has a disconcerting property: it draws stress to itself. You can choose a life of risk and adventure. Or you can choose a life of one damn thing after another. Refuse the first, you'll get the second. With your Moon in Aries, your heart is learning some hard lessons in courage. Like everyone else, you have feelings, needs, desires. Satisfying them isn't so easy.

Circumstances crystallize around you in which, unless you find the "Spiritual Warrior" inside yourself, you'll go hungry. Sometimes that means recognizing that hurting someone with the straight truth is far kinder than being "gentle" or "self-sacrificing." To feel comfortable, you require drama in your life. You need to feel the "edge" sometimes. You may get it from sailing in a hard wind. You may get it from riding a bicycle a little too fast. You may discover it in a steamy, intense, confrontive interaction with someone you love.

If you don't feed your Arian Moon the fiery experiences it needs, you tend to get temperamental, bossy, and needlessly competitive. But that's not your true nature -- just an "occupational hazard" that goes along with this volatile lunar position.

Going farther, we see that your Moon lies in the Sixth house of your chart. Craft, responsibility, the joy of competence -- that's Sixth House territory. Traditionally, it's the House of Servants. The label still works -- provided you recognize that it's not your butlers and chambermaids we're discussing here! You're the servant, and that's not nearly as bad as it sounds. There's a myth in our culture that encourages us to believe everyone is automatically depressed on Monday morning, happy on Friday afternoon, ecstatic 'til Sunday around dinner time, then crashes down into the pits again come Monday. Don't believe it! With a Teacher in the Sixth House, you've got a good shot at shattering the myth, at least for yourself. A big part of you likes to work, enjoys being good at something, prefers to be useful. The trick lies in finding the right crafts, skills, and responsibilities. Let's let the Teacher speak. With the moon in the Sixth House, you have an instinctive need to acquire concrete skills and talents, especially ones that support other people.

What skills and talents? Back up a couple of paragraphs--much depends on your Moon sign. Here's the general principle: You're happiest and most comfortable when you're busy doing something you're good at. But be careful of "workaholism." You're vulnerable to it -- extra-vulnerable when the people around you express a lot of neediness or confusion.

There's a third critical piece in your astrological puzzle -- the Ascendant, or rising sign. Along with the Sun and Moon, it completes the "primal triad." What is it? What does it mean? Simple -- the Ascendant is the sign that was coming up over the eastern horizon at the instant of your birth. It's where the sun is at dawn, in other words. In exactly the same way, the Ascendant represents how you "dawn" on people -- that is, how you present yourself. It's your "style," or your "mask."

The ascendant means more than that. It symbolizes a way you can help yourself feel centered, at ease, comfortable with who you are. If you get its message, then something wonderful happens: your style hooks you into the world of experience in a way that feeds your spirit exactly the kinds of events and relationships you need. Your soul is charged with more enthusiasm for the life you're living -- and you feel vibrant, confident, and full of animal grace.

When you took your first breath, Scorpio was lifting over the eastern horizon of Salt Lake City,UT. Let's begin our analysis by considering the meaning and spiritual message of the sign of "The Detective". The Scorpion! A spooky image for a spooky sign. There's a scary side to life. People get terrible diseases. Kids get damaged. Old people are forgotten. Everybody dies. Socially we're conditioned to avoid mentioning those things, or to mention them only in ritual contexts -- like jokes or political speeches.

For Scorpio, the evolutionary aim is to face those shadowy places. To make the unconscious conscious. To break taboos. The Scorpio part of you is deep and penetrating. It has little patience with phoniness or hypocrisy. Trouble is, a little phoniness or hypocrisy often make life a lot easier for everyone! Be careful of becoming so "deep" that you lose perspective. In the Scorpion part of your life, you could slip into brooding and heaviness. So laugh a little! And find a few friends you can talk to. Do that, and you'll keep you balance well enough to find wisdom.

With Scorpio rising, we find something of an astrological paradox: the sign most concerned with penetrating the innermost reaches of the psyche is charged with the task of creating the exterior of the character! It's not a natural combination, but what happens is that your style tends toward intensity and probing. You make eye contact easily. A wall of energy radiates from you, carrying an unspoken message: "There will be no phoniness between us. Either tell the truth, or take a walk." Some people will choose to take the walk! But others will immediately find themselves overwhelmed with a desire to "confess" something to you. "I've never told anyone this before, but..." To feel centered, you need to experience a lot of eye-to-eye intensity. There must be drama in your life; there must be truth; and there must be passion.

What have we learned so far? Quite a lot. Astrologers use the primal triad of Sun, Moon, and Ascendant in much the same way people who know just a little astrology use Sun signs. The difference is that while there are only twelve Sun signs, there are 1728 different combinations of all three factors. So when we say that you are a Pisces with the Moon in Aries and Scorpio rising, that's a very specific statement. Here's a way to make those words come even more alive.

Traditionally, signs are connected with Bulls and Sea-Goats and Scorpions -- creatures we don't see every day. But we can translate those images into more modern archetypes. We can say you are "The Mystic", or "The Poet", or "The Dreamer". Those are just different ways of saying you have the Sun in Pisces. We can say you have the soul of "The Warrior", or "The Survivor", or "The Daredevil"... your Moon lies in Aries, in other words. We can add that you wear the mask of "The Detective", or "The Sorcerer", or "The Hypnotist". Those images capture the spirit of your Ascendant, which is Scorpio. You can combine those archetypes any way you want.

And you can go further: Once you have a feel for the three basic signs in your primal triad, you can make up your own images to go with them. Whatever words you choose, those simple statements are your fundamental astrological signature. It's your skeleton. Our next step is to begin adding flesh and hair to that skeleton by considering the planets.

Unsurprisingly, planets can gain prominence in a birthchart through association with the Sun, Moon, or Ascendant. These three are power brokers, and any linkage with them boosts a planet's influence. The lunar dimensions of your astrological signature are deepened by planetary overtones.

At the instant your independent physical life began, the planet Venus was conjunct the Moon -- aligned with it, in other words. As a result, we cannot discuss your emotions and instincts without including the notion that your Soul is charged with the spirit of Venus, as though that ancient "god" lived inside you. Our first step, of course, is to get aquainted with this new element in the puzzle. Venus is the part of your mental circuitry that's concerned with releasing tension and maintaining harmony. Its focus is always peace, inwardly and outwardly. As such, it represents your aesthetic functions -- your taste in colors, sounds, and forms. Why? Because the perception of beauty soothes the human heart. Venus is also tied to your affiliative functions -- your romantic instincts, your sense of courtesy or diplomacy, your taste in friends. Invariably, this planet has one goal: sustaining your serenity in the face of life's onslaughts.

Venus was passing through Aries. Thus, both your aesthetic sensitivity and your taste in partners is shaped by the direct, primal spirit of the Warrior. In the realm of beauty, whether natural or wrought by human hands, you have a taste for the elemental and primitive... no frilly fru-fru need apply. The same goes for friends and sexual partners -- you appreciate honesty, a willingness to roar, and a simple dedication to basics, such as loyalty and plain speech. With Venus in the Sixth House, partnership is the catalyst that triggers your most effective, enjoyable work. It's as though you're Lennon looking for McCartney or Gilbert searching for Sullivan. You are most competent -- and confident -- when you've found yourself some kind of "Venusian" profession.

That can mean something in the creative realm, or alternatively, any kind of work that involves making emotional connections with strangers. Your birthchart displays another area of heightened activity: the Ninth House. The reason for that is simple -- there's a lot of planetary activity. With Jupiter and Pluto in that area of your life, it is charged with activity, soul lessons, and opportunities for personal development. Before we even consider the planets separately, our first step is to explore this piece of existential real estate in broad terms.

The House of Long Journeys over Water -- that's one old name for this part of the birthchart. Since you have energy focused here a fortune-teller would say, "I see travel in your stars." True enough, although a deeper way of expressing the same notion is that immersing yourself in cultures outside the one into which you were born is a pivotal spiritual catalyst for you. There are other kinds of catalytic journeys. Getting a wide education, formally or informally, is one. So is anything that breaks up the normal routines of life and thought. Even learning to hang-glide.

Ultimately, in the Ninth House you weave a grand scheme of life's meaning and purpose, at least your own version of it. This is the House of Religion... provided we recognize that many major world religions have no churches or temples. Cynicism is one such religion. Existentialism, Materialism, and Science are others, not to mention Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism and so on. Take all the planets, all the meteors, moons, asteroids, and comets. Roll them up in a big ball of cosmic mush. They still wouldn't equal the mass of the "King of the Gods" -- Jupiter. Exactly that same bigness pervades the planet's astrological spirit.

Jupiter is the symbol of buoyancy and generosity, of opportunity and joy. At the deepest level, it represents faith... faith in life, that is, rather than faith in anybody's theological position papers. Jupiter stands in Cancer. This is an important piece of information -- maybe a pivotal one. Being human is tough sometimes. When you need to boost your elemental faith in life, your answer lies in following the Way of the Healer or the Fantasy-Weaver. What that means is that when you're sad you have two solid options. One is to find another being who's wounded, and then bind the wounds -- visit a sick friend, adopt a cat, water the plants. The other is to curl up in a safe, hidden place, and either read some faraway tale or close your eyes and invent one of your own.

In your chart, the "King of the Gods" reigns in the Ninth House -- traditionally the "House of Long Journeys." To maintain your faith in life, you need travel. Developing enough self-love to justify investing in yourself in that department is a spiritual lesson for you. The same goes for education, and any other experience that expands your horizons. Trust yourself, trust life, get out your VISA card if necessary, and leap in! "Life's a bitch. Then you die." Go to any boutique from coast to coast; you'll find those words on a coffee mug. Meaninglessness. Like most truly frightening ideas, we make a joke of it. That's Plutonian territory: the realm of all that terrifies us so badly we need to hide from it.

Death. Disease. Our personal shame. Sexuality, to some extent. Initially, Pluto asks us to face our own wounds, squarely and honestly. Then, if we succeed, it offers us a way to create an unshakable sense of meaning in our lives. How? Methods vary according to the Signs and Houses involved, but always they have one point in common: the high Plutonian path invariably involves accepting some trans-personal purpose in your life. One more point: Pluto moves so slowly that it remains in a given Sign for many years. As result, its Sign position in your birthchart refers not only to you but also to your generation.

The House position, however, is much more personal in its relevance. Pluto was journeying slowly through the sign Leo. Thus the shadow material you are called upon to face has to do with the dark side of the Performer archetype: an obsession with being noticed. In what part of your life or personal history have you chosen style over substance, glitz over moral excellence? (If your answer is "Nowhere!" then congratulations... you're Enlightened... or not looking hard enough.) At the moment of your birth, Pluto gleamed in the Ninth House... a part of the natal chart concerned with expansive adventures, and with philosophy. It is essential that you make contact, however brief or long term, with "foreign" cultures. Through the act of committing yourself to such a quest, a transformation occurs in your being -- and the capacity to fulfill your transpersonal mission arises.

What is that mission? To forcefully encourage people to consider their lives from the viewpoint of meaning and purpose. This is the Path of the Preacher; follow it, but be wary of the pitfalls of self-righteousness and certainty. Your birthchart shows still another area where planets congregate: the Seventh. By combining forces, Saturn and Uranus emphasize that department of your life almost as powerfully as the Sun or Moon would. One thing about love -- there's no way to learn much about it without some help!

The Seventh House, traditionally the House of Marriage, is the part of your birthchart where you encounter the people who'll provide your deepest insights into intimacy. But that's not a code word for sex! For that reason, "Marriage" is a misleading title for this House. You can have intimacy without erotic or romantic feelings.

There are two parts to understanding the Seventh House. The first is that whatever energies you have in this part of your birthchart represent lessons you're learning about empathy, trust, and commitment. The second is that those same planetary energies describe the people who'll provide the lessons. They may be mates or lovers. They may be best friends. They may be colleagues or business associates. They may even be "worthy opponents."

Look at a NASA photo of Saturn. The icy elegance of the planet's rings, the pale understatement of the cloud bands... both hint at the clarity and precision which characterize Saturn's astrological spirit. Part of the human psyche must be cold and calculating, cunning enough to survive in the physical world. Part of us thrives on self-discipline, seeks excellence, pays the price of devotion.

Somewhere in our lives there's a region where nothing but the best of what we are is enough to satisfy us. That's the high realm of Saturn. In its low realm, we take one glance at those challenges and our hearts turn to ice. We freeze in fear, and despair claims us. The buzzing terrain of Gemini offers a region of profound spiritual challenge for you, as Saturn was passing through that sign at your birth. You must learn to steel yourself in the face of the Twins' shadow side: chaos, and the inability to stick to a predetermined course. Will yourself toward sustained effort! And support that journey in practical, Saturnian terms by fortifying yourself with habits of mental focus. Those skills are especially pertinent in regard to Saturn's House in your birthchart.

Which House was that? The Seventh! The arena of life where we encounter our soulmates -- lovers, deep friends, and partners -- and figure out what to do with them! With Saturn here, you face some profound lessons in the intimacy department. To prepare for them, focus first on self-sufficiency, both materially and emotionally. Then seek out partners with Saturnian qualities: responsibility, sobriety, a willingness to make -- and keep -- deep vows.

If Uranus were the only planet in the sky, we'd all be so independent we'd still be Neanderthals throwing rocks at each other. There would be no language, no culture, no law. On the other hand, if Uranus did not exist, we'd all still be hauling rocks for Pharaoh. All individuality would be suppressed. This is the planet of individuation... the process whereby we separate out who we are from what everybody else wants us to be. Always it indicates an area of our lives in which, to be true to ourselves, we must "break the rules" -- that is, overcome the forces of socialization and peer pressure. In that part of our experience, what feeds our souls tends to annoy mom and dad... and all the "moms" and "dads" who lay down the law of the tribe.

With Uranus in Gemini, the process of individuation for you is tied up with the Path of the Storyteller. That is to say, you strengthen and clarify your own Uranian identity through bombarding your senses with mind-stretching new information -- and without it you're likely to clog up your head with cunning rationalizations and word-games. Consciously chosen forays into the world of wonder purify your sense of self, purging out the spurious "inner voices" you've swallowed sitting in front of the great wraparound television set of late twentieth century Industrial Culture. Those forays can be educational or experiential, but the important point is that they sate your appetite for the unexpected.

House of Marriage -- that's the old name for the Seventh House, where your Uranus lies. The issues are broader; not just marriage, but all your significant partnerships. Uranus is your Teacher here, and the lessons can be summarized this way: the only kinds of emotional bonds that are likely to last for you, at least happily, are ones in which there's plenty of room for your own freedom and self-expression. You bristle at constraint. To link with your natural soulmates, you'll often have to break taboos... hooking up with people upon whom your "tribe" looks down, or whom they feel are "inappropriate" for you somehow.

In the final analysis, all planets are important. Each one plays a unique role in your developmental pattern, and failure to feed any one of them results in a diminution of your life. Just because the following planets aren't "having breakfast with the President" through association with the Sun, Moon, or Ascendant doesn't mean we can ignore them. Mercury buzzes around the Sun in eighty-eight days, making it the fastest of the planets. It buzzes around your head in exactly the same way: frantically. It's the part of you that never rests -- the endless firing of your synapses as your intelligence struggles to organize a picture of the world.

Mercury represents thinking and speaking, learning and wondering. It is the great observer, always curious. It represents your senses themselves and all the raw, undigested data that pours through them. Mercury is chafing in Aquarius. This combination links your mental functions with the rebellious, authority-questioning logic of the Exile archetype. Reflexively, your intelligence rebels against conformity, against the blind stupidity of the herd. Spiritually you are learning about the electric shock of genius -- and about its loneliness.

With the traditional "Messenger of the Gods" occupying your Fourth House, your intelligence works most effectively when unraveling the riddles of human psychology. You're good at keeping secrets... but be careful you don't rob the world of your insights by hiding them. Deep down inside, we find your self-image organized around the archetype of the Storyteller. You're lying in your bed, going to sleep. Suddenly a jolt runs through your body. You just "caught yourself falling asleep." Where were you two seconds before the jolt? What were you? Astrologically, the answer lies with Neptune.

This is the planet of trance, of meditation, of dreams. It represents your doorway into the "Not-Self." Based on the sign the planet occupies, we identify a particularly critical spiritual catalyst for you... although we need to remember that Neptune remains in a Sign for an average of a little over thirteen years, so its Sign position actually describes not only you, but your whole generation. Its House position, however, is more uniquely your own. Neptune was passing through Libra. Thus, to trigger higher states of consciousness in yourself and to stimulate your psychic development, you may choose to follow the Path of the Lover... that is consciously, intentionally to seek life partners who'll hold the mirror of the soul before you.

Without the purifying, soul-bleaching effects of dialog with these soulmates, you tend to drift away from Spirit, losing yourself in the mazes of daily life. But remember: finding them usually isn't the challenge. The challenge lies in hanging in there with them, listening and learning, even when you don't like what's reflected in the "soul mirror." Neptune, planet of transcendence, occupies the Eleventh House of your birthchart, where its mystical feelings are linked to the priorities which increasingly shape and dominate your life as you mature. If you get six out of every ten existential questions right, by the time you're old you'll be living a contemplative life, full of the presence of God. Inevitably, down that road we would see you surrounded by people who draw inspiration from you. The darker path, optional unless you fail to explore the spiritual dimensions of your life now, is that by the end of life you'll be totally dedicated to keeping yourself anesthetized.

Pale red Mars suggested blood to our ancestors, and they named it the War God. That's an effective metaphor -- Mars does represent violence. But today we go further. The red planet symbolizes the power of the Will. Assertiveness. Courage. Without it, there'd be no fire in life. No spark. Where your Mars lies, you are challenged to find the Spiritual Warrior inside yourself, the part of you that's brave and clear enough to claim your own path and follow it. Mars is lurking patiently in Capricorn, content to take the long view. You have a solid instinct for strategy, for determining the practical, efficient course that wins in the end. You're at your best in the face of adversity, resistance, shortage, even "impossibility." Spiritually it's important that you learn to enjoy the battle -- and the lulls in the battle -- rather than slipping into a deadening focus on the ever-receding future. In other words, life's more than a crossword puzzle.

With Mars occupying your Third House, the War-God sits on the tip of your tongue. Your speech tends to be direct, effective, and brusque. Reflexively, you satirize, even tease. It's rare that you'll be in a logical argument that you lose -- even when you're wrong! Be careful that in your sincere search for truth, you don't put people off with overly dramatic one-liners. After all, this is your life, not an Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton outing.

Your Lunar Nodes

The soul's journey

In astrology, the South Node of the Moon refers to events occurring before your birth, helping us to see what was in your eyes ten seconds after you were born... however we imagine it got in there! The Moon's North Node, always opposite the South Node, refers to your evolutionary future. It's a subtle point, but arguably the most important symbol in astrology.

The North Node represents an alien state of consciousness and an unaccustomed set of circumstances. If you open your heart and mind to them, you put maximum tension on the deadening hold of the past. As we consider the Nodes of the Moon in your birthchart, we'll be using the language of reincarnation. Whether that notion fits your own spiritual beliefs is of course your own business. If it doesn't work for you, please translate the ideas into ancestral hereditary terms. After all, it makes little practical difference whether we speak of a certain farmer weeding his beans a thousand years before the Caesars as your great, great, mega-great grandfather... or as you yourself in a previous incarnation. Either way, he's someone who lived way back there in history who sort of is you, sort of isn't, and lives on inside you--influencing but not ultimately defining you.

At your birth, the South Node of the Moon lay in Aquarius, the sign of the Exile. Anyone looking into your eyes as you took your first breath would have observed the results of lifetimes spent out of kilter with the dominant myths of whatever culture you were living in: independence, detachment, eccentricity -- and a near defensive quickness in justifying those qualities. In previous incarnations, you've had experiences in which you were sustained by little more than a stubborn indifference to public opinion -- that, or a capacity to keep strategic silence. Now, like the prodigal son, you must learn new lessons: trust, an easy bonhomie with the human family, an expectation of love.

That nascent ability to feel at ease with others is symbolized by your North Node of the Moon, which lies in Leo -- the sign of the Performer. As we saw earlier, the North Node can be seen as the most significant point in the entire birthchart. Why? Because it represents your evolutionary future... the ultimate reason you're alive. How can you accomplish this Leonine spiritual work? The "yoga" is easy to say, harder to do: you must overcome the myth of the Exiled Genius inside yourself, release your attachment to the idea that no one understands you, and begin offering your gift to the world. Help yourself by cultivating polished crowd-conscious creative talents. This is the "wrapping" which will give others enthusiasm for the unexpected, sometimes shocking, wisdom you bring.

There's another piece to the puzzle: The Moon's South Node falls in the Fourth House of your chart. This implies that previous to this lifetime you were often born into "Great Houses" -- that is, families with powerful traditions... and clear expectations regarding the destinies of their progeny. You tended to remain safely ensconced within those established patterns, learning much about love, devotion, and respect for tradition, but little about creating your own independent future. In this lifetime, with your North Node of the Moon in the Tenth House, you must act to counterbalance those old conservative tendencies... not so much because they're "bad" as because you've already learned everything you can from them. The time has come for you to express who you are, vigorously and publicly, probably through the medium of a colorful career.

And that's your birth chart. Trust it; the symbols are Spirit's message to you. In the course of a lifetime, you'll make a billion choices. Any one of them could potentially hurt you terribly, sending you down a barren road.

How can you steer a true course? The answer is so profound that it circles around and sounds trivial: listen to your heart, be true to your soul. Noble words and accurate ones, but tough to follow. The Universe, in its primal intelligence, seems to understand that difficulty. It supplies us with many external supports: Inspiring religions and philosophies. Dear friends who hold the mirror of truth before us. Omens of a thousand kinds. And, above all, the sky itself, which weaves its cryptic message above each newborn infant.

In these pages, you've experienced one reading of that celestial message as it pertains to you. There are others. You may want to consider sitting with a real astrologer ... micro-chips are fine, but a human heart can still express nuances of meaning that no computer can grasp. You may want to order other reports, ones that illuminate your current astrological "weather," or that analyze important relationships. Best of all, you may choose to learn this ancient language yourself, and begin unraveling your own message in your own words. Whatever your course, we thank you for your time and attention, and wish you grace for your journey.