THE SKY WITHIN

Report for Brad Pitt
An Interpretation of Your Birth Chart
by
Steven Forrest

This sample report compliments of: Blair Gorman 123 Astrology www.123-Astrology.com

© Copyright 1985-2003 Matrix Software, Inc.

Brad Pitt
Dec 18, 1963
06:31:00 AM CST  +06:00
Shawnee, OK        
096W55'30"  35N19'38"

Planet	Sign	Position	House		House Cusps
Sun	Sagittarius	25°Sg52'	01st		01  11°Sg54'
Moon	Capricorn	22°Cp50'	02nd		02  14°Cp31'
Mercury	Capricorn	16°Cp07'	02nd		03  21°Aq21'
Venus	Capricorn	23°Cp28'	02nd		04  26°Pi59'
Mars	Capricorn	10°Cp02'	01st		05  26°Ar41'
Jupiter	Aries	09°Ar50'	04th		06  20°Ta48'
Saturn	Aquarius	19°Aq09'	02nd		07  11°Ge54'
Uranus	Virgo	10°Vi04' R	09th		08  14°Ca31'
Neptune	Scorpio	16°Sc48'	11th		09  21°Le21'
Pluto	Virgo	14°Vi14' R	09th		10  26°Vi59'
Midheaven	Virgo	26°Vi59'			11  26°Li41'
Ascendant	Sagittarius	11°Sg54'			12  20°Sc48'

THE SKY WITHIN
by Steven Forrest

Using Your Birthchart as a Spiritual Guide

A woman has a baby and is blissful about it. Another one does the same, and spends the rest of her life dreaming about how she might have been a ballerina. The same choice: having a kid. But only one smiling woman.

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

Freud divided the human mind into three compartments: ego, id, and superego. Astrologers do the same thing, except that our model of the mind differs from Freud's in two fundamental ways. 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 Sagittarius.

To the medieval astrologer, there were three kinds of Sagittarian: the gypsy, the scholar, and the philosopher.  They're all legitimate, healthy parts of the picture.  Sagittarius represents the urge to expand our horizons, to break up the routines that imprison us.  One way to do that is to escape the bonds of the culture into which we were born -- that's the gypsy.  Another is to educate ourselves, to push our intelligence beyond its customary "position papers" -- the way of the scholar.  Finally, our  intuition can stretch outward, trying to come to terms with cosmic law, attempting to grasp the meaning and purpose of life.  That's the philosopher's path.

To keep your Sagittarian energies healthy, you need to feed them an endless supply of fresh experience.  Travel.  Take classes.  Learn to scuba dive.  Amazement feeds the Archer the same way protein feeds your physical body.  Conversely, if there's a cardinal sin for Sagittarius, it is to consciously, willingly allow yourself to be bored.

With your Sun in Sagittarius, freedom is the most precious arrow in your quiver.  You thrive on experience.  Your heart beats faster at the sight of a far horizon.  Your life is a quest... for adventure, for experience, ultimately, for meaning.  The Gypsy, the Scholar, and the Philosopher all play major roles in your interior existence... and need to have major input into your existential shopping list!  There's a Gypsy-like destiny element in your life that presents you again and again with culture shock, like travel or working with people from different backgrounds.  The Scholar manifests as your lifelong desire to learn, to break up your mental routines.  And you've been a Philosopher ever since you were born -- you popped out of your mother's womb wondering, "Why am I here?"

We can take our analysis of your natal Sun a step further. When you were born, that solar light illuminated the First 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.

Stories always have two dimensions: plot and character.  But on a deeper level the concepts merge.  "Janie is shy."  How do we know?  "She walked into the room and didn't speak to anyone."  Character is defined through action; action implies character -- that is, needs, desires, and values.  In the First House, the territory you face is the plotting of your life -- and therefore the definition of your character.

First House energies "act out" a lot.  They're a visible, dramatic, well-developed part of your nature.  For that reason, this is a part of your life where people think you have a real gift for leadership.  They're right -- but it doesn't always feel that way to you.  How to get it right?  Easy -- trust your instincts.  Be yourself.  A good plot proceeds from a sound, coherent character.

With your Sun in the First House, there's a lot of punch to your style.  People tend to be impressed by you, to remember you.  In fact, you sometimes have to make an effort to avoid overwhelming them.  That charisma and apparent self-assurance masks the evolutionary issue you face: creating a destiny.  Because, unlike most people, you were born without one!  The "hand of fate" plays a minimal role in your life.  There's a frightening freedom built into this solar position.  It all boils down to the words of St.ÿAugustine, "Love God, and do what you will."

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 Capricorn.

Tell the truth about Capricorn and you start sounding like a voice out of the Boy Scout Handbook.  Here are the key concepts: integrity,  character,  morality,  a sense of personal honor.  Those are the Sea-Goat's evolutionary themes.  They all boil down to the capacity of will to dominate every other aspect of our natures, including emotion.

The Capricornian part of you needs to begin by asking itself one critical question: In the part of my life touched by the Sea-Goat, what is the highest truth I know?  The rest is simple... at least simple to understand.  Just live it.  Keep a stiff upper lip, and do what's right.

But be careful.  There's nothing wrong with expressing feelings as long as they're not doing your decision-making for you.  If you're tempted to do something wicked, don't be afraid to mention it.  Otherwise, half the world will think you're a saint while the other half thinks you're a pompous ass.  And neither half will get within a light-year of your human heart.

With your Moon in Capricorn, you have vivid emotions and ravenous hungers... but often you find yourself in situations where expressing them is dangerous, inapropriate, or ethically questionable. The effect is a bit like dynamite exploding in a steel room. From an evolutionary perspective, you are taking a master class in self-discipline. The plain fact is that, spiritually, you've come to a place in the journey where you need to toughen up.

To feel comfortable, you need to feel that you have embarked upon Great Works -- long-term projects that require concentration, commitment, and excellence. Paradoxically, you relax by working. Inactivity, at least more than a few hours of it, tends to make you nervous and tense.

Be wary of holding too much inside you; sometimes that's necessary, but many times it's not. The Moon is emotion and Capricorn means self-discipline: one translation is that you are learning the discipline of appropriate emotional self-expression.

Going farther, we see that your Moon lies in the Second house of your chart.

Traditionally, the Second House is the House of Money.  That's true, but the issues here are much broader.  This is the House of Resources, and resources aren't always financial.  If you're lost in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, at two in the morning, you'll probably feel pretty insecure.  If you have a thousand dollars in your pocket, that'll help; you'll feel more legitimate.  The money is a resource, and it produces the classic Second House effect: helping you feel more confident. But speaking fluent Serbo-Croatian would do the same; knowing the language is a terrific resource, even though no one will give you a nickel for it.

Your Second House energies feel awkward, as if everyone is staring at them.  Dignity and self-esteem are the issues here.  The solution isn't some "We all God's chillin'" formula for uncritical self-love.  Instead, it's a process of recognizing your deficiencies objectively and seeking to correct them: proving yourself to yourself, in other words.

With the Moon in the Second House, feeling confidence in yourself does not come automatically; you've had to work at it.  How?  A lot depends on what we just learned a few seconds ago -- the activities connected with the sign your Moon occupies play a terrific role in helping you feel worthy of the good things in life.  Add to that formula the classic lunar strategy: nurturing.  If you find something -- a person, an animal, an institution -- that's wounded in some way and you manage to bring it back from the brink of disaster, you're feeding your Moon and thereby deepening your elemental dignity.  The pitfall, of course, lies in not letting go of the thing you're healing even after it's well.  Avoid that, and you'll be fine.

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, Sagittarius was lifting over the eastern horizon of Shawnee, OK. Let's begin our analysis by considering the meaning and spiritual message of the sign of "The Gypsy".

As we saw earlier, Sagittarius is the Gypsy.  Superficially, it represents adventuresomeness, independence, and philosophical curiosity.  More deeply, it symbolizes a set of evolutionary steps leading to the realization that life is fundamentally a quest.

With Sagittarius rising, you present a bright, breezy, self-confident face to the world.  You seem to be alert and engaged with your environment, full of questions -- and the energy to pursue the answers.  You radiate a straightforward, robust spirit of independence.  What you need in order to feel centered and at ease is a sense of infinite possibility around you.  When responsibilities tie you down to routines, you get edgy.  Circumstances like that bring out the worst in you: an aloof, uncaring energy that makes people near you feel as though you don't think they're very important.  You are in the right relationship to the physical world when you're convinced that mind-expanding surprises lie just over the horizon.  So nourish yourself with travel, with adventure, with an openness to life.  Do it, and you'll feel stronger and more at ease with yourself.

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 Sagittarius with the Moon in Capricorn and Sagittarius 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 Gypsy", or "The Scholar", or "The Philosopher". Those are just different ways of saying you have the Sun in Sagittarius.

We can say you have the soul of "The Authority", or "The Prime Minister", or "The Boss"... your Moon lies in Capricorn, in other words.

We can add that you wear the mask of "The Gypsy", or "The Scholar", or "The Philosopher". Those images capture the spirit of your Ascendant, which is Sagittarius.

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.

We find exactly that situation in your case. Mars lies in your First House, a part of the chart which is really just an extension of the Ascendant. Thus, Mars adds yet another tone to your "mask," modifying and deepening some of what we've already seen.

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 the War-God occupying your First House, people's first impression of you is that you're a rather daunting individual, strong-willed, and one with whom nobody trifles. There's a presence, a passion, an intensity about your "persona," perhaps more so than you know. From an evolutionary perspective, you center yourself most effectively when you willingly, actively, face your primal fears. Scared of heights? Then learn to sky-dive.

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 Capricorn. Thus, both your aesthetic sensitivity and your taste in partners is shaped by the stoic, austere spirit of the Lord of Winter. In the realm of beauty, whether natural or wrought by human hands, you have a taste for the spare and functional, for the sun-bleached purity of windblown rock. The same goes for friends and sexual partners -- you appreciate quiet individuals with character and integrity, and when you make a promise to them, you keep it... and expect the same.

With Venus in your Second House, you prove yourself to yourself in two basic ways. The first lies in trusting your creativity enough to invest in it. The second is to cultivate and refine your personal attractiveness -- but there's more to that than finding a new hair stylist! Be yourself in the most inspired way you can imagine... that's the essence of it.

There's more; also conjunct your Moon is Mercury.

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 cogitating in Capricorn. This combination links your mental functions to the orderly, winter-clear logic of the Sea-Goat. Reflexively, you make sense of information, detecting patterns, uncovering the webwork of rational principles that underlie the apparent chaos of life. You have an instinct for precision and clarity. Spiritually you are learning about the overriding necessity for mental discipline... and the grace of not imposing it upon unwilling audiences.

With the traditional "Messenger of the Gods" occupying your Second House, you prove yourself to yourself most effectively by constantly making an effort to stretch your intelligence -- and your capacity to communicate it -- to its limits. You may collect books... but make sure you read them too!

A planet can gain authority by sharing a House with the Moon. We find that situation in your chart. Saturn is bathing in moonlight, occupying the Second House along with Luna.

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 iconoclastic terrain of Aquarius 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 Water-Bearer's shadow side: phony eccentricity. There is an element of genius -- that is, radical independence of mind -- in your character. Develop it! Push it to its edges! That's how you were born to distinguish yourself, not through mere contrariness. Support that journey in practical, Saturnian terms by fortifying yourself with concrete skills and strategies -- especially ones pertinent to Saturn's House in your birthchart. Which House was that?

The Second! The arena of life where we must prove ourselves to ourselves -- or slip into crippling self-doubt. With Saturn here, you build faith in yourself brick by brick through taking on long-term, often solitary, projects that ask for everything you can do. Depending on the tone of the rest of your birthchart, that could mean anything from medical school to a solo trek across Greenland by dogsled. You weren't born with a lot of faith in yourself, but you were born with the ability to earn it.

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 Uranus 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.

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 Virgo, the process of individuation for you is tied up with the Path of the Artisan. That is to say, you strengthen and clarify your own Uranian identity through cultivating and polishing your innate hunger for the attainment of consummate skill. At what? Almost anything, so long as it requires effort, self-discipline, and practice. Without such a craft, you're likely to befuddle yourself with a love-hate, approach-avoidance attitude toward your daily responsibilities.

House of Journeys -- that's the old name for the Ninth House, where your Uranus lies. The issues are broader; not just travel, but the whole process of extending our experiential frontiers. Uranus is your Teacher here and the lessons can be summarized this way: to find your true individuality, you must undertake a quest. That quest probably contains an element of travel -- the mythical journey "to seek your fortune." But it also involves a broad process of learning and stretching your philosophical views.

"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 Virgo. Thus the shadow material you are called upon to face has to do with the dark side of the Perfectionist archetype: surrendering to cynicism and defeat. In what part of your life or personal history have you chosen to take refuge in bitterness over the pain of continuing your journey? (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.

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.

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 Scorpio. Thus, to trigger higher states of consciousness in yourself and to stimulate your psychic development, you may choose to follow the Path of the Sorcerer... that is consciously, intentionally to seek access to the power aspects of the Great Mystery, perhaps through the mastery of healing techniques, or a study of shamanistic traditions, or the use of divinatory methods such as astrology or the tarot cards. Without exposure to the purifying, soul-bleaching effects of what we could broadly call "magic," you tend to drift away from Spirit, losing yourself in the mazes of daily life.

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.

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 Aries. 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 Warrior. What this means is that in dark times you need to recharge yourself by pushing toward the limits of your courage... even if that action has nothing to do directly with the problems you're facing. Take a rock-climbing class, go trekking in Nepal--feel the "edge." Mysterious, but it will always restore you.

In your chart, the "King of the Gods" reigns in the Fourth House -- traditionally the "House of the Home." To keep your faith and enthusiasm for life strong, it's essential that you invest yourself heavily in your home. That may mean parting with a week's pay for an oil painting to hang over the sofa. But it goes beyond money; you cheer yourself by putting out the energy to personalize and decorate the place you live in, making it magical. It also suggests that you may be happiest with a family, and that you need to do your best to heal and deepen the bond between you and your parents.

Here's a jolly baby. Here's a serious one. An alert one. A dull one. A wise one. Those are common nursery room observations, but they raise a fascinating question: How did that person get in there?

Most of our psychological theory, either technically or in folklore, is developmental theory... abuse a child and he'll grow up to be a child-abuser, for example. But in the eyes of the newborn infant, there is already character. How can that be? One might say it's heredity, and that's certainly at least part of the answer. A large part of the world's population would call it reincarnation -- that baby, for better or worse, represents the culmination of centuries of soul-development in many different bodies. A Fundamentalist might simply announce, "That's how God made the baby." Who's to say? But all three explanations hold one point in common: They all agree that we cannot account for what we observe in a baby's eyes without acknowledging the impact of events occurring before the child's birth.

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 Capricorn, the sign of the Great Father. Anyone looking into your eyes as you took your first breath would have observed an uncanny maturity, as though he or she were looking into the eyes of an octogenarian. For a thousand years you've found yourself again and again in positions of authority and responsibility, often in the face of daunting circumstances. As a result, resourcefulness has arisen in you, as have toughness and what the British call "a stiff upper lip." Now, like a child who grew up in a terrible street war, you must learn new lessons: spontaneity, emotional self-expression, a willingness to feel.

That nascent ability to open the heart utterly to emotion is symbolized by your North Node of the Moon, which lies in Cancer -- the sign of the Mother. 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, in other words. How can you accomplish this Cancerian spiritual work? The "yoga" is easy to say, harder to do: you must overcome the hermit inside yourself, drop your attachment to your own self-sufficiency, and reveal yourself to someone! That is, you need to intentionally place yourself in situations which encourage emotional self-expression: stable relationships with people whom you respect, trust, and view as equals.

There's another piece to the puzzle: The Moon's South Node falls in the First House of your chart. This implies that previous to this lifetime you had accumulated considerable experience as a leader. That sounds glorious, and maybe it was. But now the evolutionary issue is that you had centuries in which the buck stopped with you, and you had no one to whom you could turn. This bred self-containment, but also a terrible burden of isolation.

In this lifetime, with your North Node of the Moon in the Seventh House, you must act to counterbalance some of that focus on self-sufficiency... not because it's "wrong," but because you've already learned everything you can from it. The time has come for you to concentrate on listening and learning, accepting the alien wisdom of your soulmates, weaving it into your own wisdom. Two moves are essential: one is finding partners whom you honestly respect, and the second is letting them change you.

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.

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