Home

Home

Home

Home

The Planets in Astrology

THE SUN

The Sun's energy fuels the archetype of Identity. It expresses who we see ourselves as being. It is the pure power of Is-ness that drives us into incarnation and out into the world of humanity. Our being expresses itself first into us and then out into the world. The Sun and its position in the heavens points to how and where this spiritual expression into form takes place.

The classical descriptions of Sun Sign Astrology, like those on other pages of this site, often speak more to our aspirations than to our personalities. This is who our inner self wants us to be. Those who exhibit the traits of their sun sign joyfully, consciously and with pride can find great fulfillment in setting their inner longings into motion.

The fact that the Sun's intense energy comes from fusion reactions should not be lost on us. This is the fundamental process of manifestation from the ethereal realm of spirit into matter. This is a powerful movement and its influence is monumental.

When reading a chart, placement and aspects to the Sun tell us how we draw our sense of who we are. As it interacts with other energies in our physical universe, our identification with the largeness of our being grows in patterns which we can understand and describe. Self awareness, the purpose for such a reading, allows us to actualize more and more of who we really are.

Can you identify with that?

THE MOON

This is the realm of feeling, emotion and the deeply ingrained habitual patterns of behavior. When we are infants, our experience of life is almost totally filtered through our emotions. The intellect kicks in as we grow through childhood and into adulthood. The feelings we experience in the early years have few means with which to decide what is safe and what is not. We respond totally, with our whole being, to life's circumstances. These memories linger tenaciously into our adult lives. They lie beneath the surface of our present responses to life. They fuel our perceptions of events.

By looking carefully at the Moon's placement and aspects in a chart reading, how these early emotional experiences get processed and how they impact us today can be examined and described. Though not wholly who we are now, the Moon tells us who we feel ourselves to be. It speaks directly to self esteem. Healing the emotional scars that the Moon points out frees us to be more of who we really are. Then we can respond to its impulses proactively and with great joy.

Can you feel it?

MERCURY

Mercury's energy is that of pure thought. It is intensely hot on one side, piercing and insightful. The other side is equally intense: cold, detached and calculating. As this planet moves rapidly around the Sun, so too does our thinking nature constantly shift and search. This quixotic and extremely curious energy fuels our quest for information and self knowledge.

Mercury's placement and aspects in a chart describe how our minds work and much of how we communicate our thoughts to others. By learning more about how we gather and process our information resources, we can learn to develop them more efficiently and accurately. So many facts of modern life hinge on our ability to use our thinking skills well. The knowledge of how to do this more easily can make life more fulfilling and pleasant.

Think about it!

VENUS

Venus is the energy of relationship. It bridges the gap between ourselves and "the other." It describes how and how much we appreciate each encounter with people and things outside of ourselves. Venus' atmosphere is thick and rich with a virtual stew of widely diverse elements. Its place in our lives is much the same. In a world so fast paced and rich in variety, we engage in relating almost constantly. We seek to have our wants and needs fulfilled. Primal in these wants and needs is the experience of love, the highest form of relating that we know.

The placement and aspects to Venus in a chart show us what we most love in life and how we most often go about satisfying that desire. Armed with self knowledge from a good reading, we can focus on the ways to attract the loves we crave that are most effective. This takes some of the Willy Nilly out of the search for love and allows greater satisfaction and self acceptance.

Can you relate to that?

MARS

UGH! Mars is the action principle, the male counterpoint to Venus' power to attract. Mars goes out and captures what it wants. Mars is need driven as Venus is desire driven. Its energy is feisty, aggressive and competitive. It is direct, physical and childlike in its simplicity. Like the planet itself, its energy is red an battlescarred, but that doesn't slow it down in its rush around the Sun.

Placement and aspect to Mars in a chart show us where our get-up-and-go got up and went. A reading will describe what fires us up and how that fire comes out. Anger, aggression and the joy of play are Martian issues that can be viewed in a chart. We can learn how to maximize those parts of the Martian in us that we wish to develop and how to deal more effectively with the impulses which interfere with our happiness.

Can you get into that?

JUPITER

With Jupiter, we begin to explore the Outer or Transpersonal Planets. Its very size suggests the vastness of the universe and the gravity of our search for our place within it. Jupiter's is the energy of expansion into a realm of infinite possibilities. It describes the optimism and generosity that that implies. It is the eternal "Tigger," frolicking and bounding through the heavens in search of the answers to the larger questions of life. Though it finds the answers to those questions less often than it likes, it searches on without hesitation or self doubt. Jupiter's energy is attracted to anything which looms large in our lives. Often, it leads us to overindulge and to overextend ourselves. In fact, most anything we tend to overdo has a touch of Jupiter in it.

Knowing where Jupiter lies in our charts and what energies it aspects shows us where and how our expansiveness of spirit gets expressed. Where do we overdo it? How does our philosophical side come out? How do we play most joyously?

SATURN

Much is made of the negative connotations of Saturn's energies. It is indeed representative of our fear structures. It enforces organization and shows us our limits. In fact it does this much like the tightly limited orbits of the millions of particles, some the size of a whole town, that make up Saturn's impressive rings. All of creation unfolds in an ordered fashion which Saturn describes. This is hardly a negative force in our lives, unless we choose to think of it thus.

Where Saturn is placed in our charts and what it interacts with there shows us much about what we fear and how we limit ourselves with our fears. It can also show us a pathway out of the traps we have built for ourselves. It offers the strength and discipline needed to walk that road. As Saturn moves through the heavens, it sets off the developmental growth stages of our lives which spur us to find and expand our limits to becoming who we really are.

URANUS

The farther out into the universe we look, the more ethereal the energies we find. Uranus bears the power of genius. It is the mad inventor of the solar system. It is the wild eyed, absent minded professor who sees the whole universe in its infinite complexity in one incredible flash, but forgets to wear his socks to work. Uranian genius is uninhibited and impossible to hold on to, ever seeking change and flow. Where Uranus is placed in the heavens, and how it interacts with other planetary energies, describes how we take in the universe in big broad strokes. It offers a glimpse at where the urge to break the bonds that Saturn has set, and push for freedom and liberation, takes place. Knowing where and how our genius is expressed affords a source of faith in our ability to solve life's problems. We can be forewarned of where the wild winds of change blow most strongly in our lives.

NEPTUNE

Neptune's energies are incredibly ethereal. Our deepest emotions and inspiration are sparked by its presence. Compared to the underwater currents of our individual ponds of emotion described by the Moon, Neptune guides us to the ocean of universal human feeling in the collective unconscious. As ego is submerged there, the awareness of pure inspiration can rise to the surface and empower our sense of unconditional love and acceptance. Its energy is the source of compassion and forgiveness and the self sacrifice needed to make cooperative interaction with the world outside of us possible. By Neptune's placement and aspects, we can discover where in our lives we are most influenced by the ineffable. How we can successfully tap into our spirituality and where we touch the realm of illusion and magic is shown by this planet. Fantasy, escape and illusion as well as our fondest dreams are under its influence. The imagination is a very real creative power. In an infinite universe, it can dream no unreal thing.

PLUTO

Being the most distant of the known planets, Pluto is the least understood. Its influence is slow to develop, working on the whole of humanity. It is opposite the power of the Sun and farthest from our identities as individuals. Its movement and energy are deeply transformative. It represents death and rebirth in its long sweeping cycles which move forward and back in apparent retrograde motions which show us the nature of power and dominion. Pluto's energies vibrate so fast that they are most often only felt at the level of our souls. Our response to them bubbles up into our awareness slowly and inexorably so that we only perceive the result of its latent power.

Where Pluto lies in our charts and how it interacts with other planets points to our deepest fears and longings. It offers a pathway to self mastery so that we can become true creators of our lives. Whatever Pluto touches holds the potential for a deep level of transformation. It tears down the old and worn structures of the soul and builds new ones based on a broader, deeper and well earned understanding of how life works.

For further information or to order a reading, please e-mail me, Tim Finley, at shaman@fundy.net.

Self Awareness Through Astrology Home

Copyright © Timothy N. Finley 1998
Website created and maintained by
HolmPage Productions
http://user.fundy.net/shaman/astrolog