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FOR JOHN SMITH AND JANE DONE

by Brian Habit

Your Birth Chart

Now let’s take a quick look at the general layout of a birth chart by looking at yours.

Imagine that you were suspended over the solar system, looking down from directly above the earth, with a view of the Sun, Moon and other planets around it, at the exact time you were born. (Note: For simplicity’s sake, when I refer to “planets” from here on out, I’ll be referring as a group to the Sun and Moon, as well as to the eight planets other than the Earth.) The view would be something like what you see in the circle or wheel (the chart). The Earth would be where the lines cross in the middle of the chart (or “pie”).  Scattered around the inside of the chart are symbols representing the planets. For example, see the crescent-moon shape? That’s the Moon. The circle with the dot in the middle is the Sun, and so on. Another way to think of the birth chart is like this:

The horizontal line that cuts across the chart from the left side to the right represents the Earth’s horizon. Above the horizon are those planets that were visible (at least, with a good telescope) from where you were born at the exact time you were born, somewhere in the sky. Working our way down from the right side of the chart, we see that these include the Sun, Mars, Mercury, and so on. At the time and place you were born, some of the other planets were below the horizon and so hidden from view, and some were above the horizon.

For technical reasons that I won’t get into here, a birth chart is different from an ordinary map in that east and west are reversed, and north and south are reversed. This means, for example, that as the Sun rises, it moves clockwise around the chart, up the left side (the east) and above the horizon, across the visible part of the sky at the top of the chart (the south), and past the right side (the west) toward the north (the bottom) again. The same applies to the rest of the planets. You were born in the early afternoon, so the Sun is in the top half of your chart.

A chart is divided into 12 “pie slices.” Each slice (or house) represents certain parts of your life: departments such as your work, your home life, and your closest relationships, and thematic issues such as building self-confidence, becoming competent, and broadening your horizons in a search for life’s meaning. Planets represent you (one part of you or another), while the houses indicate where you develop and express yourself. If all the world’s a stage, then the houses are the sub-stages on which you act.

Now that we have some sense of the layout of your birthchart, let’s look at various parts of them and consider what they mean for you, your life, and your relating to other people. What follows matters for you both in general and in relationship to anyone with whom you might pursue an intimate, romantic relationship, including Jane. Looking at it will help set the stage for us to consider your needs and potentials in relation to those of Jane, later in this interpretation.

The Core of Your Chart

Let’s start our brief examination of your birth chart by looking at your Sun, Moon, Ascendant and Descendant. Together, these features especially distinguish you from others. They indicate the core of who you are and what you need as an individual.

The Sun represents your identity, your self-image, and the more conscious or intentional dimensions of your personality. Your Sun lies in futuristic, independent Aquarius, the sign of the Revolutionary. In a past life, you were compelled to live by someone else’s code rather than your own. Now, in order to develop a strong sense of who you are and respect yourself, you need to become an individual, someone who decides for himself how to conduct his life. Focus on inventing your own rules for how to relate to others, not following some model imposed by society or even suggested by well-meaning friends or family. Your Aquarius Sun sits in the 9th house of experiences that lie beyond your everyday routine. This indicates that you need a steady diet of horizon expanding experiences to feed your energy and really shine: travel, formal or experiential learning, philosophical or spiritual exploration, contact with people from backgrounds that are unlike your own.  

Your Sun lies close to your Midheaven in Aquarius. They are conjunct. The Midheaven is the highest point in your chart, at the top of the circle when you look at the picture of your chart. It represents the highest to which you might aspire, your most visible or high-profile pursuits, your position in society, and your reputation. With your Sun conjunct the Midheaven, you need to show your individuality to the world in very public ways, so publicly that your independence, originality and uniqueness are apparent to those who know you only by your reputation. You need to be recognized by your community or the world that surrounds you for your individuality in order to really come into your own. It’s not enough to shine or follow the beat of your own drum in private.

The Moon represents your instincts, your emotional nature, and the more unconscious or subjective dimensions of your personality. Your Moon lies in dramatic, present-minded Leo in a relative private place, the 4th house of physical and emotional roots. Give your 4th-house Moon, an emotional need for spontaneous, joyful experiences and warm responses from others lies at the very root of your being. It’s as if in previous incarnations you were ignored, put down or brought down emotionally by others, and you’re still working on getting beyond that. As we saw with your Sun in Aquarius, you need to stake out your individuality independently of what’s going on around you, rather than giving in to peer pressure or reflexively doing the opposite of what others want. At the same time, you also need applause in order to feel safe and sound. It may take time for another person to appreciate just how much affirmation and encouragement can feed your soul. There’s a natural tension between getting a warm response from others (your Moon) and going your own way (your Sun), between broadening your horizons (your Sun) and nesting (your Moon). Part of what you’re learning is how to integrate and balance these needs.

The Ascendant, the point that lies on the eastern horizon of your chart, symbolizes your outward style and the best way by which you can mesh or interface with the world that surrounds you. If your Sun is your light, then your Ascendant is the stained glass through which you shine your light out into the world. It gives a certain coloring or look to your inner self as you express it outwardly. Your Ascendant lies in another social, idea-oriented air sign (Gemini). In order to move through everyday life with grace, comfort and ease, you need lots of variety, mental stimulation, opportunities to communicate what’s going through your mind, and, again, freedom. It’s time to stretch beyond stifling routine ways of moving through the world and thinking about all that you encounter there. Seek out a variety of informal connections with a wide range of people. Pick up and pass on ideas like a human bulletin board.  Gemini, like Aquarius, can be pretty detached or cerebral, so others might not necessarily pick up clearly on whatever emotional tone is attached to what you say or what you do. This sign can take a chatty, scattergun approach to interacting with the world, so be sure you give others enough time to absorb one idea before you introduce another one to them.

The Descendant, the point that lies directly opposite your Ascendant, represents the kind of person to whom you are drawn, as you unconsciously go about trying to balance your most characteristic blind spots or limitations.

With Gemini rising, there’s a risk that you’ll get so caught up in life’s constant flow of details and data that you don’t consider the big picture, the overarching implications of what it all means. That’s a potential blind spot for Gemini. You could act expediently, doing whatever works in the heat of the moment, rather than following any internal compass. You could live too much in your head, considering ideas logically and discussing them, but not necessarily putting them into action.

Gemini finds its potential complement in the sign that lies opposite it (Sagittarius). With Sagittarius on your Descendant, you’re drawn in mutual attraction to individuals whose natures emphasize Sagittarian qualities. These are people who thrive on broadening their horizons. People who believe in truth and justice. Zealous, intuitive, visionary people. They’re not narrow-minded, or aloof, or timid. They believe that life means something, but they don’t act like they have all the answers. They boldly pursue a lifelong quest to understand what it’s all about. 

By coming together, you and a person with Sagittarian qualities stand to “round each other out,” to keep each other from becoming too extreme. You can keep them from living with their head in the clouds, breezing by the facts or wandering too far from what’s in their own “back yard,” looking so much at the “forest” that they miss the “trees.” In turn, they can keep you from becoming too “small” in your thinking and living. They can help you connect the dots of your experiences into some big, meaningful picture, even if it’s a kaleidoscopic picture that changes over time. You don’t have to put a lot of energy into learning to like such people. They offer a natural, unconscious appeal for you. It’s an attraction between opposites, and it’s only after you come together and get to know each other that the issue of what to do with your differences really surfaces.

To review what we’ve seen so far: Based on the barest core of your chart, we can say that you’re the Revolutionary (Aquarius Sun) wearing the mask of the Networker (Gemini Ascendant), with the soul of the Performer (Leo Moon). You might be a case of still waters that run deep, except you’re more like a raging river or a water fountain than a still pond. Your feelings run deeper than might be apparent to those who don’t get to know you well. The more you find activities that draw on your originality (Sun), your communicative abilities (Ascendant), and your entertainer’s soul (Moon), the easier it will be to integrate your conscious and subconscious drives successfully and satisfy them. You readily find something attractive, intriguing, and potentially balancing in gypsy-like, risk-taking, philosophically-oriented students of life, whether you realize it or not.

Venus and Mars: Attraction and Drive

Now let’s move beyond the core of your chart to two other features that are especially important when it comes to relating to others—the planets Venus and Mars.

Venus symbolizes your capacity to form relations, to create, and to attract. She also indicates what you find attractive. Venus represents not only sexuality but also relatedness, the capacity to feel connected to someone or something. You have Venus in pioneering, independent Aries. In order to grow in this lifetime, you need experiences of relating that help you learn to act courageously (to act in spite of whatever fear you might be feeling) and to sharpen your will. There’s a sense that, in past lives, the ability to be intimate with others was frustrated by anger that went unexpressed and unresolved. To attract the sorts of experiences and people that you would find enjoyable, emphasize how brave and adventurous you can be. Seek out situations that allow you to compete and win. Don’t waste your time on wallflowers, people who want a safe routine or want you to be the hero all the time. You need companions who are willing to take risks in order to have fun and relate to others, those who can swing on a vine with you—but maybe on their own vines. Challenge someone to win your heart with a “Hit me with your best shot” attitude. Look for people who are independent, direct, and feisty.

Mars represents your drive, determination, and impulses to protect yourself and to go after whatever or whomever you want. He’s related to your vital energies in general, your capacity for enthusiasm, your willpower, and your libido or sex drive. With Mars in Capricorn, your modus operandi should include you’re going after whatever or whomever you want in a goal-directed, practical manner. When you’re interested in someone, give her practical, tangible reasons why it would be in her best interest to be with you. Emphasize acting honorably, with integrity, maturity, and persistence. You might tend to believe that actions speak louder than words. If you show how much you care for someone, you may feel like spending much time talking about your feelings shouldn’t be all that important. Capricorn needs a certain amount of solitude, and here solitude is linked to what keeps you fired up. Too much together time can leave you drained, so be sure to carve out time to yourself. This reinforces your Aquarian and Geminian needs for independence and freedom of movement, as well as your lunar need for time in “hermit mode” now and then.

You Venus in Aries and Mars in Capricorn combination emphasizes initiative, drive and leadership. Both Aries and Capricorn are take-charge, action-oriented cardinal signs. At the same time, Arian adventurousness and Capricornian practicality tend to clash. You can expect to have to find workable compromises between acting on impulse and acting self-disciplined in order to feel energized and content.

The Arc of Intimacy in Your Chart: Dimensions of Relating

When we look at the subject of building bonds with others in a person’s birth chart, five houses in particular help shed light on a person’s needs in that department and the sorts of issues that he can expect to encounter as he develops relationships. This “arc of intimacy” includes the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th houses. You can think of each of these houses as symbolizing a particular dimension in your process of building relationships.

The first of these houses, the 4th house, is the house of physical and emotional roots. It emphasizes the need to understand the psychological dynamics of your childhood, so that you won’t repeat them inappropriately with a partner. It’s here where we need to untangle who we are from whatever we learned from our childhood experiences of home and family.  It’s where we need to untangle who we are from whom we fear we are and whom we fantasize about being.

With your Leo Moon in the 4th house, you’re learning how to tune in to the emotional undercurrents that run through your life. You’re learning to put down strong roots in the world that will gladden your heart. From an evolutionary standpoint, you may be coming from experiences in which you felt proud of your clan and your homeland, and so now you continue to identify with them. Perhaps you had positive experiences of nesting, and you’re continuing in that vein now. Another possibility is that your past involved just the opposite: circumstances yanked you up by the roots, and now you’re trying to put down roots and develop a sense of having a safe emotional haven in the world.

In any event, you need a haven from the world’s fray, a place and time when you can withdraw, recharge, and get recentered emotionally. Otherwise, you could become pouty or crabby. For someone to become a member of your clan, she needs to be emotionally available, to have an open heart. It won’t work for you to live with people who act cold or gloomy. You need to share warm, joyful, amusing experiences with those who are part of your private life. To thrive emotionally, cultivate a sense of joy and spontaneity in connection with your emotional and physical roots in the world. It’s in that part of your life that you most need to satisfy your craving for drama. Seek out activities that encourage you to live in the moment and take delight in whatever you create: warm, festive occasions shared with family and friends…painting, dancing, or sports…maybe even entrepreneurial ventures involving real estate, since that falls within the domain of the 5th house. Such activities can provide vital nourishment for your soul. They can help you feel safe and sound, at ease in your environment, emotionally “well fed.”

Our next stop in the arc of intimacy is the 5th house, the house of self-expression. It emphasizes activities through which you play and renew yourself, activities such as romance. It includes those people who come and go like shooting stars in your romantic life, as well as those with whom you might maintain a spark over the years. You have both Pluto and the North Node of the Moon in your 5th house.

Pluto symbolizes how we might assert ourselves in a transpersonal way, in a way that affects many others’ lives. He’s that part of us that wants to transform ourselves or the world around us, that wants to do something “important,” something that matters in “the grand scheme of things.” With Pluto in the 5th house, you have the potential to develop your capacity for dramatization, representation, and self-expression into something powerful. You have the capacity to channel your ego energy in a way that is colorful and un-self-conscious, in a way that symbolizes the dark and represents a path through the dark for the rest of us. You have a natural fascination with those aspects of life that make us all uncomfortable or embarrassed.

When you were younger, people probably punished you or withheld their approval for it. Their message was “Don’t go there.” Such a cold reception no doubt hurt your childlike spontaneity, your urge to share yourself with others, and your ability to have fun. We saw this idea earlier with your Moon in Leo in the 4th house of physical and emotional roots. In this life, as you get older, it’s time to externalize your old pain, to express it visibly or audibly, for others to see or hear. It’s your choice whether to break through that pain, do some important healing. If you do, it can free up your creative self-expression, so that you can express it joyfully, in healthy ways.

To help this process along, seek out intense, honest people with whom you can play, in the broadest sense possible of the word. Such playmates might include your companions in recreation, romance, shared creativity, or entrepreneurial pursuits. If you find that someone is open to giving you insight into yourself, but she’s not open to receiving the same from you, that’s an indicator that you need to wrap up old spiritual business with her and move on. The bulk of your evolutionary business lies elsewhere. Those people with whom you have the most business now are those who thrive on intimate, two-way communication about taboo, “deep,” psychological intense subjects—not people who don’t really open up about themselves or who feel the need to psychoanalyze you. Dancing around difficult subjects with each other can extinguish the spark or rain on your romantic parade. Sharing passion, depth and intensity can help you fall in love with someone. It can help you keep a romantic spark going in the long run.

Besides Pluto, we also find the North Node of the Moon in your 5th house. Rather than being a planet, the North Node relates astronomically to the point at which the Moon’s orbit around the Earth crosses the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. This point represents the general future or direction to which we are drawn in your spiritual evolution. It symbolizes the newest stage of your growth. It indicates which of the qualities suggested elsewhere in the chart you’re developing through conscious effort, starting almost from scratch. If we let ourselves experience our North Node, then we leave ourselves open to newness. With newness comes both awkwardness and excitement. We feel fascinated and anxious at the same time.

For you, the North Node lies in your 5th house, in the sign Libra. When you have experiences of a Libran or 5th-house nature, they call into question your automatic assumptions about life. In other words, when situations call for you to collaborate closely with others, you might feel lost at first. The same could happen when it’s time to let your hair down and kick up your heels. When you have such experiences, you feel like you’re out of your element.  On a soul level, you’re more experienced and more comfortable with Arian and 11th-house experiences, leading people in battle or going it alone, but playing the energetic warrior either way… planning for the future, interacting with others in group situations.

The unfamiliar is scary, at least at first, but if we’re going to grow in this life, though, we have to stretch ourselves toward our North Node. That way lies both stress and fulfillment. The North Node indicates what we need to become in this lifetime. We can’t know from looking at our charts whether we will become that. The answer to that question depends on us. 

Be careful that you don’t get stuck in type-A behavior, always striving to get somewhere new or to accomplish something serious or productive. With your Mars in Capricorn, getting stuck in such a “business node” is a definite possibility. And with your Venus in Aries, there’s a part of you that enjoys the thrill of “putting out fires.” Take time to play and to “sharpen your saw,” as Steven Covey puts it in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey talks about how those people who most successfully chop down lots of “trees” in life appreciate the importance of renewing themselves by spending time on complementary activities. Trying to stay in work mode 100% of the time can be very counterproductive. Playing the warrior or revolutionary can be tiring.

Earlier we saw that you have the Moon in Leo. Dramatic, playful Leonine experiences help feed your soul. Your North Node lies in the 5th house, the house that’s naturally associated with Leo, so even though it might feel like a stretch to spend time on playful, creative self-expression, you stand to gain a lot emotionally by doing so. Seek out relaxing hobbies or experiences, and share them with others. Learn how to swim, ice-skate, paint, or play a musical instrument. Take time to listen to music or to dance, to meditate or practice Tai Chi or yoga, to go to art galleries or concerts. Stretch yourself toward meeting interesting new people. Swap life stories with them. Spend nights on the town with your sweetheart. Make time for romantic getaways. The more you stretch yourself in such directions, the more satisfied you’ll be in the long run. If it seems awkward, ride it out. Stick with it, and give it time. You’ll be surprised how far it can take you.

Continuing our exploration of your arc of intimacy, we next reach your 6th house, the house of responsibilities. This part of your chart focuses on issues of duty, humility and self-sacrifice—elements that are important in any relationship if you want it to develop beyond fun or the first blush of romance (the 5th house). The 6th house also represents mentoring and apprenticing, giving and getting appropriate guidance when you or someone else needs it.

You have Uranus in the 6th house. Without Uranus, we would never invent anything new. We would never go anything that their forefathers or foremothers had never done. We would all be one huge, unthinking, robotic mass. Generations would change. Individuals would be born. But they’d only be the human equivalent of endless reruns. Uranus represents how we become individuals rather than endlessly repeating only those behaviors that society has taught us. Through individuation we distinguish who we are from whom everyone else wants us to be. Uranus also indicates our unique brand of creative genius, whether it’s as an artist or athlete, an entertainer or an entrepreneur, a scientist or a social worker.

With Uranus in your 6th house, you’re motivated to express your individuality in the responsibilities that you assume and the skills that you learn. To feel like you’re your own person, you need to take a unique, self-styled or offbeat approach to providing something of benefit to others. You can count on having to break the rules in this department of your life, in order to be true to yourself. That’s where you have to be most willing to act without society’s approval. It’s also where you can expect to get some bad advice, so you’ll need to learn the art of saying, “Thanks, but no thanks” when people chime in with ideas that might work just fine for them but wouldn’t work for you.

We often channel much of our 6th-house energy into paid employment, volunteering, or learning, so maybe they try to tell you which sort of job you should take or how you should organize your work routine. Maybe they try to tell you how you should handle your health care. Committing ourselves to acting responsibly and following through on it doesn’t end when we turn off the lights at work, though. We might act responsibly toward people in our personal lives, helping friends in need or helping maintain a household, for example. Whether at work or in your personal life, you’ll need to develop a tolerance for displeasing so-called experts, authority figures, and naysayers…or settle for playing by other people’s rules, trying to act like the rest of the tribe, and feeling trapped in a world of stifling gray conventionality.

You need to depend on--and act dependably--toward people who are willing to “think out of the box” about how to handle the business of keeping an office or a relationship running. Seek out unconventional, captivating thinkers, revolutionaries, bohemian free-spirited types, and innovators to act as mentors for you. Look for people who will help you find your own voice, your own path, your own style, rather than trying to get you to mimic them. Look for those who stand apart from “the way things are done,” who question authority or “the dominant paradigm,” even if it means that they have to travel alone or others think they’ve lost their minds.

Now, on to the 7th house, the house of intimacy. This part of your chart represents the issues of trust, commitment and liking someone. It pertains to your close relationships and your inclination to identity with other people, to put yourself in their “shoes.”

You have Neptune in the 7th house. Neptune is that part of us that stands apart from our identity, the part that observes us as we go through the day-to-day dramas of our lives like a fly on the wall. He represents our development of an awareness of what we might call God and the weakening of the barrier that separates our consciousness or ego from our unconsciousness or soul. Neptune symbolizes our idealism, intuition, imagination, and compassion. Neptune also represents where we may be visionary…and where we’re most vulnerable to confusing our hopes and fears with reality.

With Neptune in your 7th house, you have the potential to lift yourself and your life above the mundane and the petty through your closest interactions with others. At the soul level, you’re learning to form close, truly spiritual bonds with others. To do it, aim for someone who has an altruistic, mystical, or empathetic bent. That’s a good start toward being able to commit to a close relationship with her. Once you two have decided to “dance” with each other, plan to act based on spiritual values and compassion. Act on your intuition, rather than limiting yourself to acting based on what you can “prove” based on logic. You’ll need to feel your way as you go. By considering what your hunches tell you, rather than relying solely on what you learn through your five senses, you’ll be more successful in this department. This will be a challenge for logical Aquarius and Gemini and for realistic, no-nonsense Capricorn. But considering what your intuition tells you doesn’t mean throwing good judgment or reasoning out the window. The idea here is to encourage yourself to “tune the dial” of your consciousness carefully, so that you unscramble the signal of your intuition from the signals of any fears or wishful thinking that you might be carrying around.

To keep from walking off some romantic cliff in a misty-eyed fog, play the devil’s advocate with yourself in the intimacy department. If you worry that you’ll become too dependent on someone else, or that she’ll be come too dependent on you, be careful not to let your imagination get the best of you. Getting really close to someone—and letting her get really close to you—doesn’t have to be the emotional equivalent of committing sheer suicide. No, neither of you is infallible, and no, your relationship could never be idyllic, but that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t lift your life about life’s pettiest and most mundane aspects. It could become a really sweet spot in your life.

When you pursue intimacy with someone, take note of her imperfections. Reflect on practical realities before you open yourself up enough to fully trust someone and let yourself be vulnerable with her. Avoid stepping into the role of Rescuer or Victim. That way, when you have close encounters with others, there’s a sense that you are two mature adults who bring out the best of each other. You let yourself be seen for who you are, warts and all. You see the other person for who she truly is. And that reality can be enough for both of you.

Now let’s move on to the last stop in your arc of intimacy: the 8th house.

The 8th house is the house of instincts. It highlights what lies in our unconscious and sexual issues, such as “chemistry” and how to sustain it in the long run. The 8th house is also the house of deep bonding with others. It’s where we meet issues about exposing ourselves, making ourselves vulnerable by combining what’s “yours” and what’s “mine” so that we can accomplish more together than we could do alone. How do we keep ourselves safe while bonding with someone else, whether we’re merging sexually, financially or otherwise?  That’s another consideration in the 8th house.

You have Mercury in the 8th house. In mythology, Mercury is the winged messenger of the gods. In astrology, Mercury represents your intelligence; your transmission of information through speaking, writing or teaching; and your reception of information through observation, listening, reading or learning. He represents the linear and logical functions of the mind.

With mental Mercury in the introspective, research-related 8th house, you need to engage in mental activity and communication that goes the distance. To stay adequately stimulated and mentally engaged with life, emphasize looking at matters in great depth, rather than shrinking from it for fear of what you might uncover. The 8th house is associated with endings and new beginnings—the dramatic transformation of something that is failing into something that is thriving. Therefore, anything that helps you deeply transform yourself or your environment could be intellectually satisfying. Emphasize combining resources, or giving or receiving them, with people who want to get to the bottom of things, who thrive on having deep knowledge and deep mental connections with others.

If you want to form a deep bond with someone, a bond that is so instinctive and primal that it connects as deeply as two separate souls can connect, steer clear of people who are unwilling to learn new things. Stay away from folks who are rigid and don’t talk about what’s going on inside of them. Hold out for someone who’s intelligent, curious, open-minded, and communicative in order to bond deeply with her. Engaging in lighthearted small talk and dabbling in intellectual or conversational topics might work just fine for some people. For you, though, it’ll probably leave you mentally disconnected, bored, and dissatisfied. Your Mercury lies in serious, goal-directed Capricorn. You need to think and talk about “the hard stuff,” deeply and seriously. You need someone else who is up for that. 

Whew!

It’s a lot to consider, how to satisfy all these various needs and inclinations in your life. That’s true whether you’re in a relationship with someone or not. However, the more you can find ways to efficiently draw on your natural resources, as indicated by the symbols, the more you’ll be able to weave these various parts of yourself into a coherent, smoothly functioning, whole personality. And however much you accomplish this, it will really show when you add someone else to your life. For example, to whatever extent you act realistically to keep from being abused or disappointed, and yet still open your heart by showing the world your creative, playful side, it stands to benefit any close relationship that you might pursue.