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FOR JOHN SMITH AND JANE DONE

by Brian Habit

Birth Charts in General

When it comes to pursuing an intimate relationship, we’re all different. To get at the similarities and differences between two people, we need to look at each of their birth charts, one at a time. Relationships mean different things to different people. Needs and expectations can vary a lot from one person to another. It’s pretty normal to assume that the person that I’m with wants and needs the same things, but it’s also dangerous for me to do that. Making such an assumption is normal, but doing so can cause unnecessary problems in a relationship. Before we can consider the interaction between you and Jane astrologically, then, we need to have a good understanding of you two as individuals. To do that, we look at your birth charts, one at a time.

A birth chart is a map of the sky, as it looked at the moment that a person was born, from the point of view of wherever he or she was born. Unlike most astronomers, astrologers think that the arrangement of planets in your birth chart means something for you personally. Different astrologers think it means different things.

I believe that it’s a map of the most spiritually developed, active, useful life that you could possibly live. It’s a map of your lessons. It’s a map of the orders that some higher power or spirit gave you before you came into the world. We’re going to read your orders to you—that’s what a reading is. I imagine that you and this spirit worked this out before you were born, that your higher self agreed to everything in this chart. It’s not random. Everything is purposeful; everything can be used. There’s no such thing as a good chart. There’s no such thing as a bad chart. It’s just a map of what you’re here working on. How you work on it is up to you. The hand of cards you were dealt is the hand of cards you got dealt. You can’t trade them in and get new ones, but you’ve got infinite freedom in how you play this hand.

When I interpret the symbols in a chart, I don’t try to tell you your fortune. I’m not here to describe a life pattern that’s set in stone. A chart isn’t a floppy disk that goes in your disk drive. We’re not pre-programmed computers. We have choices. We live and interact in a living, synergistic way with these symbols. We contribute at least as much to our lives as they do.

The particular brand of astrology that I practice is evolutionary astrology. Evolutionary astrology focuses on a person’s potential to travel down a positive, enlivening, consciousness-generating path. It considers a person’s life as one period in a series of lifetimes. Now, like people in general, some astrologers believe in reincarnation, and some don’t. I tend to think that reincarnation does occur, but I don’t spend a lot of time in my work trying to look at what sort of lives a person might have lived in the past. I allude to it here and there, but I focus mainly on this lifetime, on today and tomorrow.

I don’t know whether reincarnation is an idea that you’re comfortable with or not, so let me talk some about how you might make use of what I say, in relation to reincarnation. First, let’s suppose that you are comfortable with astrology. 

For many of us, once we have grown up and become adults, we take some sort of stance about what kind of lives we want for ourselves in relation to whatever we experienced as a child. If we had pleasant, satisfying experiences as children, then we probably try to continue having such experiences as adults. If we have children of our own, we might tend to provide similar experiences for them. On the other hand, if we had painful, unsatisfying experiences as children, then we might very well try to have the opposite of such experiences as adults. We might try to give provide very different sorts of experiences for our own children.

You might think of past lives similarly. To the extent that you had soul-satisfying experiences in past lives, you might seek to continue such experiences this time around. To the extent that you had experiences in past lives that were harsh or did violence to your soul, you might aim to have the opposite of such experiences this time around. If you look at the symbols in your birth chart from the perspective of reincarnation, you can figure that either or both of these rationales underlies whatever needs and motivations are indicated in it.

For example, suppose your chart emphasizes a need for solitude. It may be that you never got the solitude that you needed in past lifetimes. You were under a lot of pressure to spend time in public, to spend time with other people. You always had to be “on.” It’s also possible that you spent some of your happiest, most productive and satisfying moments in solitude, and you’re here to develop that principle further in this lifetime.

Now, let’s suppose that you aren’t comfortable with the idea of astrology. In that case, if I make references later to past lives, read that in a way that works for you. For example, if I say something like, “In a past lifetime, you experienced such-and-such” and you don’t believe that you’ve been around before, then feel free to read that as being “It’s as if you experienced such-and-such in a past lifetime.”

Looking at the example of solitude again, perhaps you didn’t get this need met as a child. Maybe you were born into a family whose culture emphasized togetherness. People who wanted to strike out on their own were considered abnormal. Your parents wanted to be with you all the time, and you felt like you were going to suffocate if you didn’t get some privacy. As you get older, your need for privacy is still crying out for attention. It still needs to be met in order for you to develop your full potential and have a satisfying existence. And if you have kids, you might bend over backwards to make sure that they don’t feel suffocated.