Psychological Horoscope

I. INTRODUCTION

Shakespeare once wrote that all the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players. In a sense, your birth horoscope is a metaphor for the individual play, complete with stage set, cast of characters, and story, which lies at the core of your life journey. It might be useful for you to remember the metaphor of the theatre as you read through the various sections of your astrological portrait, because it can help you to understand the real meaning of fate as it is reflected by astrology. Fate does not lie in your being subjected to random preordained events. It lies in the cast of characters which represent the deepest needs, conflicts and aspirations which lie within you. No person can be other than himself or herself; and every life experience, whether tiny and transient or major and transformative, reflects in some way the character of the individual.

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II. YOUR PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPE

Your psychological type does not remain static and unchanging through the whole of your life. There is something within all of us - whether we call it the unconscious, the Self, or the soul - which strives toward balance and completeness, and which tries to integrate into our lives all those qualities or inner characters which have been neglected or undervalued. At certain important junctures in life, it is as though some central core, deeper and wiser than the conscious "I", draws us into conflicts which enable us to develop our weaker areas, so that we can become more complete as human beings. Thus you will find that, incorporated in the following paragraphs about your psychological type, are some suggestions about how you might facilitate this inner movement toward a more balanced perspective on life. Life does this for us, sooner or later. But sometimes it is more rewarding and less problematic if we cooperate with the process.

The gifts of compassion and realism

Your patience, realism and acceptance of human limits makes you a compassionate, reliable and practical person, with a richly sensual nature and an openness to the needs and sufferings of all with whom you come in contact. You have considerable subtlety in your nature, and you express yourself through quiet gestures and an instinctive maneuvering of emotional atmospheres which affect others powerfully, although often unnoticeably. Thus you would be especially well suited to working with people, particularly with children or those damaged souls who need the strong but unobtrusive support and tolerance which you provide. You are also likely to put a lot of time and energy into your home life, and into surrounding yourself with an environment which is beautiful, comfortable, efficient and calm; and you possess a talent for putting others at ease. ⌃

A tendency to live through others

However, despite these considerable gifts, you are more likely than many people to suffer disappointment through your personal relationships, because you sometimes place so much importance on others that you forget to develop your own strengths and talents. This means that you are inclined to live through others, devoting yourself to the well-being of your loved ones and making many sacrifices in order to keep your personal relationships secure and stable. But you may find that other people - particularly the more intellectual, artistic and elusive temperaments which you find so attractive - pull away from the constant blanket of your solicitude. You need to develop enough detachment so that you can understand that people are different and have different needs and values; and not everyone wants to be taken care of all the time. Communication of ideas and a capacity to offer space and detachment are important facets of any relationship; but you have some trouble in this sphere, because you tend to underrate your own intellectual capacities at the same time that you fear distance and loneliness. In short, your great gifts of a warm and compassionate heart, and a willingness to tend to the practical needs of others, are also your great liabilities, for you do a little too much of it, at the expense of your own and others' freedom. ⌃

The problem of learning how to play

Most of all, you need to learn to be more selfish. Love and service are at the core of all you try to achieve in life, but perhaps you neglect self-love - the child within you who needs to be irresponsible at times, and longs to play and find joy and amusement in life. The less you give expression to your own imagination, the more unconsciously resentful you are likely to become when those around you pursue their own pleasures and interests. Your great enemy is self-pity, and the only remedy for this resentful state - which is really a form of envy - is to do for yourself what you do for others. You must learn to step out into the limelight and ask for what you want, rather than trying to buy it through self-sacrifice and constant service. You have a good mind which needs feeding and stimulation, a spirit which longs to fly, and a rich imagination which needs creative outlets. Try not to be so afraid of the inner world, for although you cannot take friends and family into the realm of the imagination and the spirit, you also cannot use others to provide your life with a sense of meaning that can only be acquired from within.

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III. CHARACTER AND SHADOW

One of the most important insights gained by depth psychology has been the revelation that people are dual in nature, and contain a basic polarity of a conscious and an unconscious self. There is the individual you are familiar with - the "I" that thinks, feels and acts in accustomed ways which you identify as yourself. And there is another, hidden individual - the shadow-side - which contains the less acceptable and less developed aspects of your personality, and which fights for a valued place in your life at the same time that it disrupts the complacency of your self-image. The interplay between the conscious and unconscious sides of you is a constantly shifting dance, changing at different stages of your life and altering according to the pressures and challenges which you encounter. The tension between the primary characters in your inner drama, described in the following paragraphs, is the source of energy which provides your life with movement, purpose, conflict and growth. There are other characters inside you too - supporting players who blend and conflict with the main ones to make you the unique individual you are. Where these are strongly marked in your horoscope, we have included a description of them as well. The story thus portrayed, with its complicated interaction of light and shadow, represents what is really meant by individual destiny.

The need to be needed dominates all other motivations

Your openheartedness and strong feelings of empathy for others make you a supportive, caring and naturally self-sacrificing personality. You would do anything for those you love, and tend to forgive them almost anything; and however much you are hurt and disappointed, you do not lose your belief in the importance of kindness or in the worthiness of others. You take little pleasure in that absolute autonomy and freedom to direct your own life that many people claim they want; for your chief pleasure springs from living for and through others. You are not inclined toward cold ambition, or the need to be somebody in the world's eyes. For this reason you function at your best when working in a cooperative capacity - linking people together and smoothing over dilemmas, supervising group networks and activities, and interpreting to others the directions of more aggressive souls. You love the feeling that you have been helpful to somebody, and whether it is in your work or your personal life, you need to be needed - not for any enduring strength or dynamism, but for your fluid empathy and understanding, your imagination, and your capacity to forgive. You are not very adept at drawing boundaries and protecting yourself, for you hate the feeling of isolation which too much self-reliance produces - and you would rather love and suffer, than be unloving and unharmed.

The dilemma of being a separate person

You are so attuned to the emotional requirements of others that sometimes it seems that there is not really a You at all - for you become whomever you happen to be involved with at any moment. You have no real sense of separateness and aloofness from the people you care for, and no desire to experience such a state either. Your response to the sadness and pathos of life is sometimes too great, and you may forget too easily the pleasure and fun of independent existence; but for you this kind of independence is no fun at all, because it feels cold and forlorn. You recoil from selfishness, or what you consider to be selfishness - which is, in your terms, an individual acting according to his or her own needs rather than in the interests of the relationship or the group; and because you strive all the time to be selfless - for this is your definition of the manifestation of love -, you are liable to take more than your share of hurt and rejection. This is not because you have a bad fate, or are unlovable, but because you sometimes try to be a little too saintly and self-effacing; and you have a way of inadvertently making other people feel guilty and trapped because you have made them responsible for your happiness by refusing to be responsible for it yourself. And a guilty person rapidly becomes resentful, and then hurtful, toward the source of his or her guilt.

There is a wide gap between your noble and rather poignant ideal of selfless love and the actual nature of human beings, which includes yourself; and because you are reluctant to bridge this gap by behaving in a normally selfish way occasionally yourself, you set yourself up for disappointment. Another way of putting this might be to say that on a deep level you expect too much - both of yourself and of others - although in behaviour you are usually the most understanding of souls, and the most tolerant. But you do not seem to wish to learn the hard lesson of balance, for there is something terribly idealistic and other-worldly about you. It is as though you do not really value life here on earth very much, and long to transcend it through some experience of absolute love which erases all boundaries and cancels out your independent existence. You have great depths of compassion, and much subtle sensitivity. But your love is somehow above and beyond real human beings, whom you often do not acknowledge as separate and distinct personalities, and who therefore inevitably seem to let you down.

Refinement and delicacy need not mean chronic anxiety

As long as you are supported by stronger and more ruthless personalities, and protected by a reliable routine which gives your life structure and stability, you are a hard-working, generous, tolerant and helpful person; and you love to share your acute intelligence and versatile skills with others who can benefit from them. You like to teach people, and might be very good at this as a vocation, because you have a subtle and multifaceted way of expressing yourself and can bring a subject alive for others. But even if you do not pursue teaching as a profession, you are constantly doing it anyway, any time you find someone who might benefit from what you have learned. You are vulnerable because of your rather fragile and high-strung temperament; for if your cherished routines are broken up, or any unforeseen change erupts in your life, you have a way of panicking and going to pieces - often in the form of an illness of some kind - until the crisis passes. Your strengths lie in your quick and versatile mind, your flexibility, and your ingenious capacity to find practical uses for the vast array of knowledge you tend to accumulate through reading and observation. What you need is more courage to face life and take charge of your own fate, for there will not always be people around you in your personal and professional life who can look after you and cushion you from anxiety. You are tougher than you think, and need occasionally to put your strength to the test, rather than producing symptoms with the speed and ingenuity of a conjuror whenever the travelling gets a little rough.

Living for and through others needs to be balanced by self-respect

You are loving and affectionate person, and are extremely loyal in your attachments. You need so much intimacy and closeness, however, that at times you are unable to let your loved ones go; and because you are a kind person who is not usually prone to aggressive or overtly domineering behaviour, your way of binding others to you is to make sacrifices so that they feel obligated. You need to recognise that people will love you for yourself - for your sympathetic heart, your imagination, your sensitivity and your affectionate protectiveness - and that you do not need to buy them through self-immolation in order to remind them that you love them or that you are lovable. You can be strong and tenacious and clever when you need to be, and you have a much greater survival capacity than people might imagine if they only consider your overt gentleness and apparently dreamy nature.

But your chief enemy is self-pity, for when your ploys do not work, and others refuse to be bound despite your efforts to obligate them, you have a way of feeling extremely injured, rejected and sorry for yourself; and you then cast the other person in the role of an unloving villain who is selfish and oblivious to your needs, and throw rather theatrical sulks. Try to learn to let people go, for they usually come back again; and if they do not, then no amount of emotional blackmail can coerce them. You are a more powerful personality than you like people to see, although your chief power lies in your capacity to maneuvre feeling atmospheres and is therefore a very subtle form of control. The more you unconsciously try to coerce others into remaining close to you, the more you will drive them into coldness and hurtful behaviour in self-defense; but the more you can learn to appreciate yourself as you are, and trust in the relationship itself, the more likely you will be to have the kind of close and supportive circle of friends, family and colleagues that you desire so much.

The problems of possessiveness and resentment

You become deeply and intensely attached to people, and it takes you a very long time to recover from hurts, rejections and losses. You also seem to have come from a family background where a similar spirit of intense and passionate feeling was frustrated and transformed into unexpressed hurt, anger and resentment that clouded the atmosphere of your childhood; and you equate love with inevitable disappointment and sacrifice, and need with frustration, humiliation and bitterness. There is nothing in any way wrong with the intense quality of your feelings; in fact it is a rare gift, for you love with your whole soul, and often have profound insights into other people's behaviour which can be very helpful and healing for them. But you must also recognise that different people have different ways of offering affection and concern, and the fact that someone is more cerebral and self- contained in his or her manner does not mean that there is no love. Also, unfortunate circumstances can unfairly destroy love and security; and painful though this is, you need to be careful not to let one loss poison your entire vision of life.

You have a tendency to feel easily hurt, rebuffed and victimised by people and by fate, and then become hostile and resentful, although you do not often show the resentment - rather, it smoulders in the unconscious while you go on being apparently loving and devoted. But such deep bitterness does not go away through suppression, and others may feel it in you and react accordingly, even if you have said or done nothing cross or angry or aggressive at all. You have a natural capacity to see deeply into other people's motives. Try to use this gift occasionally to look at your own. You have a very primitive and possessive side to your feelings which is not nearly as forgiving and self-abnegating as you seem to be; and your constant sacrifices and sufferings may often be more in the nature of manipulation - to make others feel guilty and to punish them for their neglect - than a genuine selflessness of character. You have too much emotional power, colour and intensity to be quite so passive and long-suffering. Try getting genuinely angry and walking out occasionally; it would be more honest, and do you and others far more good than a chronic display of barely concealed tragedy.

A tendency to give away the power of choice to others

You possess tact, gentleness and the ability to adjust your wishes to the prevailing needs of those around you - and to put forth your own ideas and suggestions subtly while preserving a friendly and harmonious atmosphere. You enjoy making decisions which are cooperative with others, and need support and encouragement in individual ventures. You are not a rugged adventurer who must make every choice alone. You rarely display overt anger, being too frightened of hurting others and too dependent on the security of your personal and professional relationships to risk disrupting them or invoking coldness, aggression or separation. Thus you are apparently the most agreeable of souls, always prepared to compromise, very slow to become annoyed or impatient, and always willing to consider the feelings of others before you act.

You are sometimes a little too agreeable for your own good, however, because there are times when you do become angry, yet are too fearful of displaying it, or of even recognising it; and if you stifle your anger for too long, it will leak out in subtle and indirect ways which are quite out of your hands because they are so unconscious. The deeply hurtful and insulting inference is one tool you have perfected - and you are very good at it, because you have considerable insight into others' weak spots, and can be so subtle that you can never be accused afterward of actually saying anything deliberately unpleasant or destructive. It is all in the tone, the timing and the nuance. This skill of yours can equally be used in positive ways, for you are a gifted diplomat and an understanding and wise counselor or teacher or guide, not to mention a naturally talented actor or actress. You can work extremely well with children, or with those who need gentle and sensitive handling. This is when you are at your best. It is when you use your skill to pay people back whom you believe have hurt you, but toward whom you do not have the courage to be honest, that you show the darker side of your nature - and it might be salutary for you to remember that you too have a darker side, and are not always the victim of others' bullying or coldness.

Emotional honesty and kindness are not mutually exclusive

Thus you are one of those people who seems to attract more sadness and disappointment than most in life, yet seems to deserve it least because of your natural kindness, generosity and sympathy. You are a complicated person, because you contain a difficult paradox. You are strong and intense in your emotional needs and tenacious in your desire to keep your relationships intact and your loved ones close; yet you do not like to show your strength directly, preferring to display a kind of helplessness and vulnerability which invoke compassion at best, sometimes pity, and at worst anger because people sense that you are not being totally out in the open and somehow feel manipulated by you. You tend to equate love with suffering - an equation which may not necessarily be a truth about life, but which is unquestionably your truth - as though you cannot justify your need for love unless it has been purified through self-immolation. If you wish to espouse such a philosophy of life, which may actually spring more from a deep- seated belief that you are undeserving than from true saintliness of soul, that is your right; and you are in good company, for such qualities belong to the pageant of the saints and martyrs and holy men and women of history. But do not be surprised if others do not espouse your philosophy, and try not to be quite so resentful and judgmental if they do not seem as loving as you believe you are. Perhaps they actually are - but in a different, although equally valid, way.

A powerful will to dominate lies hidden in the shadow

In contrast to your considerate and self-effacing personality, there is another protagonist in your inner psychic drama. This hidden side of you contains all those qualities which are really part of you but which you have excluded or suppressed from your conscious values and behaviour in order to preserve the relationships and the kind self-image which are so important to you. Your shadow-side is a good deal more self-centred and ruthless than you might think, and if you remain unconscious of its independent and forceful qualities then you are likely to imagine that you see these attributes in all those people by whom you are fascinated, positively or negatively - particularly individuals with whom you fall in love and who seem to embody a decisiveness, self-containment and freedom that you often lack. It is extremely important that you face this hidden side of you; for although it threatens your high ideals of love and sacrifice, it is necessary for your survival and your autonomy. It is also necessary for the psychological well-being of your children, who unlike the adults around you cannot fight back, and are likely to suffer most from covert manipulation. Without a relationship with your own strong will, you run the risk of becoming one of life's professional victims, always at the mercy of others' wishes, feelings and actions, and never able to take charge of your own life.

The secret craving to first and best

You give the impression of being the most adaptable of people, always ready to consider the other person's feelings and to do what makes him or her happy. But there is something in you which is ill-suited to this kind of compromise - a fierce spirit of dynamic energy which longs to go its own way and do exactly as it pleases. You are much more self-willed and self-preoccupied than you might like to admit, for admission would of course mean that the dreaded word "selfish" which you sometimes use a little too freely about others might also apply to you. But the selfishness of your high-spirited and energetic shadow is a healthy selfishness, and if you are able to integrate some of its fiery, impetuous and enthusiastic qualities into your life, you may find that you have much more energy, humour and optimism to bring to your experiences - as well as the ability to say no sometimes if you do not want to do something, and the courage to do it alone if no one wants to do it with you. The innate rash self-confidence of this secret side of you may seem offensive to your gentler values, for it is the "me first" spirit that puts responsibility for others back in their own hands.

There is also a highly competitive streak in your shadow-side; you don't just want your own way, you want to be first and best, and take pleasure in ruthlessly beating an opponent to the ground while appearing to smile sweetly as though butter would not melt in your mouth. All these qualities are innately healthy, and you need to express them more freely for the sake of your happiness and your psychological balance. What is unhealthy is turning your back on them and disowning them, for then you can become truly destructive without realising it. You run the risk of building up an enormous fund of anger and resentment; and then you must not be surprised if your anger comes back at you, either from others whom you have hurt, or from your own body, which will always let you know through characteristic symptoms such as headaches and high blood pressure when you are being dishonest with yourself.

A cool and calculating mind can be strengthening rather than selfish

You appear to draw your direction in life from the needs and requirements of others, and do not seem in the least calculating or hard. This is quite true - at least it is true of your conscious personality, which rarely has an ulterior motive in mind other than someone else's good, and is genuinely generous and compassionate. But there is a tough, cynical streak which belongs to your shadow, and which is, to put it baldly, out for what it can get - and its chief goal is security and a position in the eyes of society. This shadow cares a lot about what others think of you, and contains great pride and intense vanity. If you are able to integrate this apparently tough and callous element in yourself, it can offer you many positive qualities - among them self-reliance, healthy ambition, and a self-respect which springs from the knowledge that you are in charge of your own life. Self- reliance and self-respect are extremely important, for they are the antidote to self-pity and chronic complaining - things which all too often arise in you if your efforts at binding others to you have failed in any way. The hard and cynical qualities of your shadow-side also contain the realism not to expect too much of people; and this open-eyed acceptance of the flawed nature of human love can protect you from a good deal of the hurt and disappointment that you tend to incur through expecting that someone else's unstinting devotion will redeem everything. But if you repress this stronger and more self-centred side of yourself, then it will express unconsciously as cold-blooded manipulation, reflecting your secret need to use others for your own security and status, and darkly contradicting the apparently selfless love which you usually express. Also, if you do not acknowledge this less idealistic dimension of your personality, it can form a pocket of unrecognised bitterness in you which undermines your faith in love and gives you a chronic aura of grievance and mistrust which will drive others away as surely as if you were deliberately offensive to them.

You need to face your own rocklike strength, even if it conflicts with your soft, blurred picture of goodness and means facing occasional situations of loneliness; for although your ideals are beautiful, they are not always related to real human beings, and may sometimes be more infantile than saintly. Your childhood probably contained much loneliness and disappointment, and some of your romanticised images of love and sacrifice are a kind of defense against having to feel that kind of loneliness again. But if you are not capable of standing alone, then you are not capable of genuinely loving another person; for you will then unconsciously use that individual to protect you from your own isolation, rather than valuing him or her as a separate being.

The importance of being yourself instead of a saint

Thus you are not wholly what you seem, for beneath your gentle and accommodating exterior there is considerable strength, power and self-will which could greatly enhance your life if you would take the risk of expressing more of it. It is not your horoscope which fates you with disappointment, but your own refusal to live what is in you. Because other people are so terribly important to you, you are frightened of losing them through too much directness and overt selfishness; and you tend to adapt subtler, more manipulative means of getting what you want. What you want is right and valid, most of the time; and you should have it. But although you will always place compassion and cooperation at the top of your list of priorities, no amount of self-effacement will turn you into a saint.

It might be fruitful for you to consider how much your preoccupation with being so good and loving is connected with difficult experiences in childhood. You are a complicated person with liberal doses of both lovingness and wilfulness; and this makes you deep, interesting and vital. Try to live all of yourself, rather than aspiring to canonisation; for saints have a way of becoming victims, and the victim is a role which does not really suit you - however noble it looks on the surface. You have more to offer life, others and yourself than that.

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Another pair of important characters

The characters described so far represent in their fundamental antagonism the main theme of your inner story. Besides these figures, there is another pair of conflicting figures indicated in your birth chart which are likely to be recognisable in your life. These figures are briefly described in the following paragraphs.

A deeply reflective and self-sufficient personality

Although no man or woman is an island, you do your best to be at least a peninsula. You are initially difficult to get to know, and others can spend years working in proximity to you without ever really glimpsing your true thoughts and feelings. Even those closest to you - lovers, partners, parents, children, enduring friends - often do not know many facets of you, for you are a little like Bluebeard's famous castle in the fairy tale: One room always remains locked. This is not because you do not care about others. On the contrary, you are capable of great depth of feeling and enduring loyalties. But you are a very private person, and there will always be certain inner experiences which are between you and your own soul, and not for anyone else's consumption - no matter how much you love them.

Because you do not borrow, everything that comes from you is unique and original, and this is your great strength and the quality which others admire most in you. You have courage and honesty, and you do not expect life to offer you anything free; for you are willing to work for what you want rather than depending on others to help provide it for you. It may be important, before you begin to consider where your self- sufficiency might be too extreme at times, to value the kind of nature you have, though the introverted personality is not always valued or appreciated in the outer world. Most of our advertising and our ideal social images as portrayed in magazines and on television validate the more outgoing personality. Life, if such images are to be believed, ought to be rather like a Martini advertisement, with everybody surfing and getting drunk. Unfortunately this is not your world; and you have probably been bruised first by the hostility of more gregarious people toward you in early life, and later on by your own self-doubts, which gnaw at you ceaselessly and tell you that you are in some way odd or abnormal. You will need, sooner or later, to confront your complicated and highly ambivalent feelings about others, for life will challenge you on the issue of your deep need of them. But first learn to appreciate yourself for the subtle, deep, reflective and hardy soul that you are.

Secret longings to belong

In your efforts to rely solely on your own resources for your survival and your achievements in life, you have of necessity had to exclude certain dimensions of yourself; and this other, hidden side of you is your Achilles' heel, and it concerns your secret need of and dependency upon others. No doubt there are particular individuals in your life whom you admit that you need, and to whom you can acknowledge your longing for warmth and support. But the collective - that faceless mass which you so often dread and detach yourself from - is far more important to you than perhaps you care to admit. This is the reason why you are drawn to those fields of work which force you into contact with others, and where the approval of the larger group is in some way necessary to you.

Your natural sensitivity, depth and mistrust of people make it hard for you to give enough room for the shadow-side of your personality to live. You are caught in the conflict of both desiring greater interchange with others, and fearing at the same time that they will not understand you and will reject, damage or denigrate you and your emotional, intellectual and creative offerings. Your personality is a complex one, for you combine the gift of a solid sense of individuality, forged from your own resources and subjected to the test of isolation, with a bright, frivolous and joyful spirit of camaraderie. You may recognise the second of these only at the bottom of the third glass of wine. But it is an important, albeit hidden, side of your personality, and your life would be richer if you did not condemn it either in yourself or in others whom you consider shallow, superficial and empty. Not everyone must have deep thoughts about life; the gift of the extravert is the capacity to enjoy the moment in company simply because it is company. You do perhaps need more solitude than most people, but not even you like it all the time, and you sometimes impose more isolation on yourself than you truly desire.

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IV. THE FAMILY BACKGROUND

Family myths and psychological inheritance

Because your family background is an integral part of your life story, it is reflected in your birth horoscope. Astrology can offer considerable helpful insight into this realm of life, for according to how conscious you are of the interplay between your own nature and your family inheritance, you will have more or less freedom of choice in life. Your parents themselves are also reflected in your horoscope, although they appear not as real three-dimensional people, but rather as images who embody a particular theme or set of attitudes. These parental images reflect how mother and father appear to you personally, how they operate as patterns within your own psyche, and how they support or conflict with the unfoldment of your own inner drama. The power of the family background should never be underestimated, for it is not the past. It is a living present within each of us. As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote: "Never believe fate is more than the condensation of childhood."

The image of the father in a man's chart

Father is not only a real person. He is also the symbol of an inner pattern or perspective through which you relate to life. The image of your father portrayed in your birth horoscope therefore describes three things.
Firstly, it is a subjective picture of the qualities you experienced as most dominant in your relationship with your father - or whoever played the role of father in your early life.
Secondly, it is a symbol of what the masculine represents to you, for your father was the first man in your life and is therefore a powerful unconscious influence on how you express your own masculinity and how you relate to other men.
Thirdly, it is a picture of your own inner father-qualities: how you order and structure your life, how you envisage and pursue your goals, how you actualise your potentials in the world, how you express and direct your will, and how you formulate your ethical codes and ideals; and, lastly, how you father your own children.

An experience of emotional alienation

The subjective image of your father which is portrayed in your birth horoscope is a potent and ambivalent one. A feeling of alienation coloured your relationship with him - either because of a physical separation, or because you experienced his personality as too detached, intellectual, cool or unresponsive to allow you to get close to him. He probably enthusiastically encouraged your mental development while remaining aloof from your emotional and physical need of him, and you may therefore have felt rejected on a deep personal level. His high standards of achievement and perfection and his lack of regard for your ordinary human needs - especially those of affection and warmth - have exercised a powerful unconscious influence on your own values.

The compensation of high ideals

Thus your experience of your father was not very warm or supportive of your instinctual nature in early life, although in compensation you have inherited high ideals and an aspiration toward knowledge and intellectual excellence which form an enormously creative dimension of your personality. This aloof and idealistic father-image lies within you, and offers considerable vision and originality. But you will need to be careful not to identify with your father's high ideals to the point where you become ashamed of being human, of occasionally failing, or of expressing emotional needs which your father might have found uncomfortable - not because of your unworthiness, but because of his own fears. Your love of the clear, broad world of creative thought can take you far in life, and you have a unique capacity for a detached and objective observation of life and great insight into human behaviour. The creative potential of this cool, brilliant father-image within you is very great; but it needs to be contained within your own individual human values.

In addition to this dominant image, there is another figure portrayed by your birth horoscope which adds further complexity to your experience of your father.

A restrained and emotionally inhibited figure

The lack of a warm, supportive relationship with your father has left you with deep feelings of hurt and rejection. Your father may have been physically absent in your childhood; or he was too engrossed in his work life, or emotionally too withdrawn to be able to participate in an overtly affectionate relationship with you. You may have experienced a feeling of criticism or too high expectations from him which has left you somewhat uncertain about your own worth. This image of the father shown in your birth horoscope is a complicated one, for there are many positive qualities which can be developed from it; but you will need to first face the real nature of your feelings about your father, and learn to separate his character problems from your own sense of self-value. You may not be fully aware of how much this lack of an emotionally supportive relationship has hurt you - especially if your father offered encouragement of a material or intellectual kind. But no doubt you express your secret hurt by directing toward authority figures and traditional institutions in the world the anger which you feel toward your father, while at the same time seeking the approval of other persons who are equally embodiments of the father principle for you. ⌃

The development of self-reliance

The more positive dimension of your experience of your father lies in a deep sense of self-sufficiency and self-reliance, for although you have been pushed into this self-reliance unwillingly, it is a valuable quality and represents one of the most creative attributes in your birth horoscope. The father within you is like the father you experienced outside you in early life - perhaps somewhat withdrawn and undemonstrative, but able to survive life's challenges, realistic about the ways of the world and anything but naive about human limitations. You will need to learn to give value to this quality in yourself, for it will help you to avoid looking for a "good" father-surrogate outside - for no one can offer you as an adult the paternal love you did not find in childhood. But a willingness to "father" yourself may lead to the solid development of your talents as well as a deeper understanding of the person from whom you were estranged so early in life.

There is still another image portrayed by your birth horoscope, which in certain ways conflicts with your dominant experience of your father.

A hidden need to dominate

Your father was not only more complicated than he seemed; he himself was probably not fully aware of his own dark "double", a powerful and controlling shadow-side which made him far more dominant in your experience than his behaviour might have justified. His subtle control affected you through emotional atmospheres and through a manipulative offering and withholding of love and affection. Doubtless your father would have been the first to deny such a dark and dominant face, and this omnipotent, manipulative and controlling person is very likely not the father you know; but if you look within yourself, you will find that your resentment toward male authority in the world outside springs from a very personal experience of it at home, in a form which was covert and therefore doubly powerful. ⌃

Acknowledging your own power

It would be wrong to "blame" your father for this inner image, for it is in your birth horoscope and he did not put it there. But it may be important that you understand the complex and rather split figure which represents your psychological inheritance from your father, because you yourself possess the same inner division - between a considerate and amenable outer personality and a powerful unconscious drive to dominate others. You will need to achieve in life what your father probably could not: become conscious of both dimensions of yourself, recognise that power - particularly the subtle power that feelings can wield - is not always negative if it is expressed honestly and with regard for the needs and rights of others, and live openly what you are, rather than suppressing this darker side of yourself as your father did. Your paternal inheritance contains hidden qualities of potency and magnetism that can take you far in life.

The image of the mother in a man's chart

Mother, like father, is not only a person. She is the symbol of an essential principle in life, and of an inner dynamic or perspective through which we relate to life. The image of the mother portrayed in your birth horoscope therefore describes three things. Firstly, it is a subjective description of the qualities most dominant in your relationship with your mother. Many of these will be known to you, but some might be surprising, because they reflect not only her outer behaviour, but her inner life - that side of her which was unexpressed and therefore of great power in terms of its effects on you. Secondly, the mother-image in your horoscope is a portrait of what the feminine represents to you - how you experience women, and how you relate to the emotional and instinctual dimensions of your own personality. And thirdly, it is a picture of your own "maternal" qualities - for men possess mothering capacities too - your ability to nurture and care for yourself and others, your sense of safety and trust in life's essential kindness, and your ability to flow with time and circumstances and to know instinctively when to wait and accept with wisdom the situations which life brings.

Selflessness and self-sacrifice

The subjective image of your mother portrayed in your birth horoscope is a poignant one. There is much of the mythic or archetypal Suffering Woman contained in this image, and probably your mother experienced many difficult circumstances in her life - either in her own childhood or in her marriage, or through illness or financial difficulty, or through the necessity of sacrificing her most cherished desires in order to look after others. Although your mother may have made sacrifices willingly because of her love and need of her family, nevertheless you have within you considerable guilt about her unhappiness, and a deep unconscious conviction that you are in some way responsible for redeeming her sacrifices through your own self-sacrifice. This places a great inner obligation on you, which you may carry without realising it, yet which has probably led you to choose a field of work where you have to deal with and help the pain or confusion of others. The experience of passive suffering and sacrifice which you have inherited through your relationship with your mother gives you a deep well of compassion, sensitivity and responsiveness to the emotional needs of others. This receptivity is a gift, which can be expressed either in an artistic field where sensitivity to the moods of the audience is required, or in the helping professions where it is so obviously needed. ⌃

The power of martyrdom

But the experience of sadness and disillusioned dreams embodied by your mother needs to be understood clearly, for otherwise your sense of guilt may lead you to lose a sense of your own boundaries and personal rights. You may allow others to take constant advantage of your ready sympathy, and forget that you too need nurturing. Perhaps you need to be stronger in affirming your right to be selfish, and more realistic in seeing that there is a certain manipulative dimension to the person who is consistently a passive victim of life and a certain manipulative dimension to your mother.

You may also fear deep commitment in relationship because of the threat of being drained, used up, and forced to sacrifice your own needs and potentials on behalf of another; for within you the image of your mother represents the price paid for too great dependency on others. But although you may sometimes appear independent and even hard, inwardly you are vulnerable and responsive and need the love of others just as your mother did.

The unique sensitivity and compassion which accompany this mother- image within you are rare gifts, but you will need to learn to express them while at the same time retaining a firm and realistic commitment to your own limits and boundaries. You know a great deal about pain, sacrifice, and helplessness, and also a great deal about manipulation through emotional blackmail - the darker face of this mother-image inside you. This profound instinctual wisdom is your inheritance, and if you can learn the delicate distinction between compassionate response to others and a kind of guilty bowing to emotional blackmail, then you will on the most profound level have truly redeemed whatever sacrifices your mother had to make - by being a whole person yourself, and a model to others of the fact that love and self-immolation do not necessarily go together.

There is still another image portrayed by your birth horoscope, which in certain ways conflicts with the experience of your mother described previously.

A hidden will to power

There is a covert but forceful dimension to your mother-image which she probably could not fully express but which has had a potent unconscious effect on your own ambition and will to succeed in life. Your mother had within her a spirit of considerable courage, strength and ambition, but, because of the essentially masculine flavour of these qualities, her personality or her upbringing made it difficult for her to express them. Perhaps the only sign of such a powerful inner drive was her anger, and even her anger may have been expressed only through manipulative ploys and subtle criticism. You have inherited your mother's competitiveness and her deep desire to make something important of her life; but you will need to be conscious of this hidden dimension of your mother if you are to avoid being driven by a compulsive ambition which makes you a "workaholic" without regard for your more personal needs. ⌃

The problem of envy and competition

You will also need to face your own dilemma with competitiveness and envy, for it is possible that, because of her own frustrated energies, your mother felt envious of your strengths and displayed considerable aggression toward you. If this was the case, then you will be nervous and uneasy when confronted with envy or challenge from others. And you may have learned to fear your own competitive drive and your own aggressive instincts, although these comprise a positive force which can take you far in life. Anger is another issue which is part of your inheritance from your mother, and although you possess quite a temper yourself, you may fear the expression of healthy anger because of the atmosphere of largely unarticulated anger which surrounded your mother. But in essence this dimension of your mother-image is a creative one, full of vitality, energy and courage. The more clearly you can see this unexpressed side of her, the more freely you will be able to relate to and utilise this powerful spirit within yourself.

The Parental Marriage

The following portrait of your parents' marriage is thus meant to be understood as a subjective, and perhaps even unconscious, image of certain attitudes which you may bring into your adult relationships - and into your way of dealing with the complexities of your inner nature. It is not a judgement on your parents. It is an inclination toward a certain pattern in human relationship which, although probably enacted to some extent by your actual parents during the years of your childhood, is really a facet of your own inner drama.

Self-will versus self-sacrifice

Your parents enacted a drama which is really mythic in nature - the ancient conflict between assertion of one's own will and sacrifice in the name of relationship. Your father, as he is portrayed in your birth horoscope, embodies a quality of self- containment which may have made him sometimes seem cold, selfish or domineering; and your mother represents a figure of self- abnegation, who puts everyone else's wishes first. If you are able to stand in the middle and view these two opposing sets of values more objectively, you will see that both are valid. There are times and situations when it is essential for your self- respect and psychological equilibrium to remain loyal to your own needs and wishes, even if this means risking the anger or hurt feelings of a loved one; but equally there are times and situations where your love for and need of another person may compel you to sacrifice your own desires on behalf of the individual or the relationship. It is probable that your parents fell into conflict over this difficult issue, although the conflict may not have been overtly expressed; and that your father was cast in the role of the self-willed and unresponsive parent while your mother was cast in the role of the victimised and manipulative one. ⌃

Healthy selfishness and selfish self-sacrifice

This dilemma now lies within you, and one of the main challenges in your personal life is the dilemma of finding a balance between loyalty to self and responsiveness to others. It is likely that you have unconsciously taken sides, and this may cause you some problems. If you identify with your father, then you will feel angry and even cruel when faced with another person's perhaps perfectly legitimate emotional needs, because you will feel unconscious guilt about your apparent selfishness. But if you identify with your mother, then you may use your relationships to avoid taking sufficient responsibility for your own life, and may transform apparently loving sacrifices into a kind of weapon to manipulate others into nurturing you rather than being themselves. Selfishness and selflessness are hard to define, for these words have a way of shifting in meaning depending upon who wants what from whom. You have the potential of integrating these two poles within yourself, and of combining great strength and self- determination with a truly loving heart. Try to step out of the old parental battle and stand in the middle between these figures who are really embodiments of your own capacity to become a solid individual who still remains lovingly related to others.

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V. RELATIONSHIP PATTERNS

The following paragraphs describe your attitudes, needs, and typical patterns in close relationships. This description is written about you in terms of your dealings with the woman in your life. However, if you are involved in a close relationship with someone of your own sex, you will find that the same attitudes, needs and patterns still apply. Whatever your sexual tastes, you are yourself - and it is your inner nature which ultimately dictates the course of your love-life.

The attractions of a heroine

Because you are a warm-hearted, sympathetic person who hates hurting others, your own personal life may seem a little too full of sad episodes where your love was not appreciated and where you came away feeling hurt and forlorn - even if you did the leaving. You are rather more prone than many people to such a relationship pattern. But this is not because a bad fate sits over you. You are as capable, and as deserving, of a fulfilling and happy relationship as anyone else. Instead of feeling terribly sorry for yourself, try to see that, first of all, you are naturally attracted to strong, independent and creative personalities - even if, when you met them, they were unhappy or confused or suffering. Your ready sympathy causes you to be drawn to those who need help and support; but this is often a temporary crisis, and the real power of the woman emerges later. Such a woman is your natural complement, for you can benefit from her decisiveness and love of freedom, while she can benefit from your warmth. But you need to try to feel less bereft and useless when your partner displays confidence and independent spirit. You are not only lovable when you are helpful; you are worthy of love just because you are yourself. ⌃

The trap of emotional blackmail

Your fear of not being needed leads you to manipulate, and even to unconsciously undermine your partner's confidence in order to keep her near you; and inevitably, if this continues, she will forcibly break free, or hurt you deeply. You must learn to find your meaning in life from within yourself, and not from your role as nursemaid; for no one will thank you for what is essentially a form of emotional blackmail in order to obtain love. You are stronger than you like to think, but you sometimes try to get away with forcing your partner to make important relationship decisions - such as asking for some necessary space from each other - rather than taking the consequences of making them yourself. This is cheating. You have considerable depth and tenderness to offer a more self-reliant and emotionally restrained partner. But your partner will lose respect for you if you lose respect for yourself. Compassion for oneself is not the same as self-pity; and gentleness is not the same as passivity. Learn to distinguish the difference, and stop blaming fate, for fate and character are two different names for the same thing.

The need for conflict and challenge in love

Despite your need for harmony and good feeling in all your relationships, there is something in you which needs conflict, challenge and a good fiery battle of wills in order to feel deeply and passionately attracted to a partner. There is a kind of spark which is kindled in you only when you meet resistance or refusal to compromise in a woman as strong as you are, whom you know you cannot dominate; and equally, there is something in you which will try to dominate in any intimate relationship. Thus your ideals about love are often at odds with your actual taste in partners. The woman who "ought" to be most suitable is often not the one who turns you on; and the one who really excites and inspires you is often one whom your moral, ethical or social standards will condemn as difficult or inappropriate. In short, your emotional needs and your sexual desires have a tendency to divide themselves between two very different types of women, and you might find that your love-life runs more smoothly if you can accept that you need the occasional battle with a partner who will stand up to you rather than lying down and playing adoring doormat. It is very likely that you will project this rather primitive side of your nature onto your partner - which means that you will unconsciously push her into acting out the aggression and provocativeness which you really feel but which you hate to show in case anyone might suspect you are not as nice as you seem. If you are busy with this kind of unconscious disowning of your real nature, do not be surprised if you have a very angry partner on your hands who picks fights with you all the time; and try to remember that you may be fuelling the battle yourself in all kinds of subtle ways because combat always fires your desires. You are a good deal more primitively sensual than you are able to express most of the time. Perhaps you should try to live this out in the domain where it belongs, rather than idealising love too much, or trying to rationalise passions away, and then finding that your woman does a lot of shouting and slamming of doors - or that you keep getting powerfully attracted to people outside your marriage or long-term relationship that you do not actually like.

A devotional quality of heart

You are a truly kind person, with a quality of universality to your love that makes you sympathetic to just about everybody - particularly those who seem to be victims of life. This makes you particularly responsive in your close relationships, and you are inclined to make many sacrifices, great and small, in the name of love and because you understand all too well the needs and difficulties of your woman. You love with a rather devotional quality, and you need to make sure that you do not spread yourself on the ground like a carpet for your partner to walk on simply because you are so generous-hearted. Your woman can easily take advantage of you without meaning to; and you need to learn to say no sometimes, and to ask for what you want occasionally rather than adapting yourself so exclusively to her needs. Not only your partner but all your friends are likely to appreciate your sympathetic nature. What might not be quite so appreciated is your tendency to be so sympathetic that you get pulled into romantic and sexual entanglements out of pity and the inability to say no - entanglements which you must then lie your way out of. It is possible to be too kind and too willing to give yourself away because of momentary empathy or enchantment, with the result that you wind up doing the thing you hate the most - hurting someone else.

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VI. PATHS TOWARD INTEGRATION

As you have seen from the preceding pages, your birth horoscope offers a detailed and in-depth portrait of many aspects of your life. It is also possible to step further back from the horoscope, and to use the faculties of a telescope rather than a microscope - so that an overview of the play comes into focus. The following provide also some suggestions of ways in which conscious effort might make it possible for you to achieve greater harmony between the different components within yourself, and to strengthen that centre of the personality which psychology calls the ego, the "I". Free will may not include the possibility of becoming somebody else. But it might include the ability to stand firmly at the centre of your horoscope and feel related to the different aspects of your psyche, rather than wandering about blindly, feeling impotent and victimised by conflicting cross- currents and impulses from within yourself and from the world outside. Two people may have certain astrological configurations which are similar, but one might be buffeted by his or her inner demons like a rudderless small boat tossed on a difficult sea; while the other individual remains somehow solid and real as a person and can therefore navigate the boat intelligently through the ocean's changing currents.

A journey into the unseen world

You will never find real fulfillment by clinging to material reality and ignoring the unseen and invisible dimensions of life. You possess an innate connection with the deeper and larger ocean of the collective unconscious and all that it contains - the domain of fantasy, myth, mystical feeling and the inheritance of the past. In other words, your life can only take on meaning if you give expression to your poetic soul, which also means giving value to the creative and spiritual worlds. Many things in the past - particularly the family past - have affected you and held you in a state of confusion or apathy, although you may not be fully conscious of what goes on inside you. At some point you may need to explore this area of what might be called "family karma" - not merely to seek pathologies and negative experiences, but to understand how you are the recipient and the vessel of talents and urges which may go back for many generations but which others in your family have not been able to express. It is the inner world which holds the key to your sense of meaning and purpose in life, and it is not just your personal inner world - it is the whole rich backdrop of human mystical longing and creative aspiration, for which, in your own small but unique way, you are a medium.

In some ways your nature suits your need to serve something greater than yourself, for this is part of your vision of love. But you are more inclined to offer your devotion to another individual, rather than seeking that numinous source which stands behind all people. Try to separate your loving feelings about those close to you from the deeper and more mystical feelings which mark the path to the inner world. For if you confuse a loved one with the vast realm of the spirit, you will wind up feeling powerless, impotent and victimised; but if you can distinguish that alternative reality which is the true object of your devotion, you can find genuine meaning and fulfillment in life without having to suffer so much on a personal level.

Respecting the requirements of daily life

There is one area of life where any effort to face your fears will result in a great increase in confidence and self-respect. This is the realm of ordinary mundane reality - how you apportion your time each day, what you eat, how you adjust to the limits of your environment, how you treat your body, and how you cope with the challenge of being an ordinary mortal in a sometimes monotonous world. You fear the confines of material reality because you are unsure of your own capacity to cope with them; and thus you resent structure and the limitations which ordinary life places on you. You are fine if you are in charge; but much of life consists of small compromises, particularly with the twenty-four hours of the day and with the limits of your own physical body. And because you fear your inability to handle this side of life, you are more likely to develop a defensive superiority which exempts you from it, or a tyrannical orderliness which attempts to control it. Yet you would be immeasurably strengthened if you learned to live each day at a time, putting your emphasis on the quality of ordinary things, rather than trying to escape by flying into the upper or the inner regions, or trying to master physical reality by obsessively dominating it. You need to learn about the cycles of your own body, and the rhythms of your natural energy patterns, and the ebb and flow of the world's material state as it affects your own. If you can meet this challenge you will have created a solid relationship with ordinary things which can sustain you through any crisis or difficulty life might bring.

Thus one of your great fears - of material insecurity and practical incompetence in the eyes of others - can become the indestructible base in ordinary life from which you can launch your voyage into the unknown waters of the unconscious. For in discovering your own strengths through coping with the challenges of mundane life, you will find that you can cope with the sometimes overwhelming and chaotic sea of human longing and imagination that you find within; and you can channel the inner world into concrete forms of beauty which reflect the patience, discipline and realism that you have learned through your practical failures as well as your practical achievements.