Whoa! Look at this Pluto on the IC!

This Pluto on the IC! 

As usual when reading a chart, I look first at the angles. They are the most powerful places.  I trust the time of birth is exact and I say Whoa! This Pluto on the IC! Three degrees orb is tight. That’s a big Pluto. 

Reading charts seems like a very complex business, but the job can be enormously simplified thanks to prioritisation. We could almost read this chart by reading only one thing: Pluto on the IC. 

It feels like an abyss opening under a cradle, like the embrace of a crocodile’s jaw, a fascinating black hole. 

Confronted with this power, consciousness can’t bear it. Half of it passes out, the other half splits and turns away, focuses on the light and quickly forgets! Forget what? Who knows what it was, once it has sunk into unconsciousness… There is a shadow, somewhere, that’s all. 

This Pluto doesn’t seem to challenge the personal planets with hard squares or opposition, but Pluto is Pluto and the IC is emotional foundations. 

Black Moon Lilith in Scorpio makes Pluto more intense. 

Black Moon Lilith in the 4th house adds emphasis to the difficult energies associated with home and emotional foundations.

Pluto conjunct with the IC counts as a BIG Pluto in the 4th house, even from the 3rd house side. 

We may also notice that Black Moon Lilith opposes Chiron, the wounded healer energy. 

The interaction of these two rather painful ones won’t make things better. No need to split hairs.

Pluto being super important, and Mercury very emphasised in the chart of a Gemini, the tight Pluto-Mercury trine can be understood as an essential pillar in the architecture of this chart. 

A trine is an easy flowing aspect, it won’t make Pluto easy but Mercury is likely to be somewhat nuclearly powered. What is the word for the extreme opposite of naive? If this person was a dog, they would sniff passengers boarding planes for  the drug squad and detect the smallest amounts the trafficking guys would be hiding even under layers of fat within their own bellies. 

On the other hand, trusting is not Pluto’s natural attitude. Have a little chat with this Mercury-Pluto combination and the outcome may be that they will quickly know more or less everything about you, but you won’t have a clue about them, and you may not even know that you don’t have a clue. 

Trust issues. 

• Is it difficult to trust? It’s ok if you’re not willing to talk about it…

So with Pluto and Lilith there is something like an abyss where there should be emotional foundations, but maybe there is also a miraculous suspension bridge hanging over the void thanks to Pluto’s regenerative power,  and let’s look somewhere else now. 

The Sun, Venus and Mercury are in Gemini. What a contrast! Here comes the dancing trickster, the social butterfly, in the 11th house, a happy house resonating with the voices of friends, camarades, mates, companions, fellows, peers, we’re all in it together, all in it together, all in it together, sing with me! 

Who is in charge of the mailing list, who shall print the agenda for the next meeting, who will take notes and write reports, who will keep things clear, clean and well organised thanks to the professional attitude of a Capricorn Moon in the 6th house seeking for security and contentment in the contemplation of a well done job in a well ordered world? 

Interestingly, Saturn, ruler of this 6th house of work and daily routines takes us to the 3rd house of learning, communication and connecting with the close environment, as if being a Super Gemini wasn’t enough! And there is a trine being the Sun and Saturn. This Gemini may be more poised and grounded than average. But how do you get grounded with a black hole where there should be foundations? I bet you hold on to what you can, so far we have work and friends or community. 

What happens when blending Capricorn and Gemini? The quick and the slow, are they antithetical or can they find a way to function together? The multitasking and the long-term goal energies, can they co-exist? The curious and the serious? The quick and the serious? The ever changing and the focused? The communicator and the professional? The one with little wings at the ankles and one who is working to pay the bills ? 

I am starting to suspect that maybe this is the chart of a carrier pigeon. 

Thinking of Gemini and Capricorn, one thing that comes to my mind is “disconnection”. Gemini is famous for its tendency to be like two or many people living in the same body. One of them could be a Capricorn! 

In the Zodiac, Gemini and Capricorn are ‘inconjunct’, and in this chart, Venus in Gemini and the Moon in Capricorn are connected by an inconjunct aspect, which is a bit of an oxymoron, because inconjunct etymologically means unconnected. In ancient astrology, they considered only major aspects. The word “aspect” etymologically means looking, like in “spectacle”. Planets in inconjunct signs were understood as placed in each other blind spots. 

I am a modern astrologer, I do consider so called minor aspects like the quintile or the semi-sextile (technically the two are ‘inconjunct' in the traditional sense of the word). 

I don’t think there is a total disconnection, because, to borrow a principle of neuroscience, ‘what fires together links together’. Planets are activated by transits. When a planet passes through Aries, Libra, Virgo or Pisces, it simultaneously sends a harmonious major aspect and a tense one, one to Gemini and the other to Capricorn. 

If we consider only major aspects, each sign is connected with eight signs of the zodiac. So half of the activations of inconjunct planets happen simultaneously. 

For instance, when a planet transits over 12-13 degrees Aries, it squares the natal Moon in Capricorn and sextiles the natal Venus in Gemini. 

The result is a simultaneous activation in a bitter-sweet fashion. 

Venus and the Moon are the feminine planets, they want bonds. Sometimes they bond in their own way in their own time, but at times they realise they can’t be happy together. 

Venus in Gemini in the 11th house is likely to love having loads of friends, and possibly flirt in a light hearted way, and the Moon in Capricorn in the sixth would rather have a daily timetable with only one stable and reliable one. Try to compromise when you’re living in the same body and get regularly activated at the same time!  

Talking about disconnection, in this chart, among the five personal planets, aspects are very rare. There is only one major aspect: a wide trine between the Moon and Mars (it doesn’t appear on the chart above because of the settings). Other than that, there is the quintile between Venus and the Moon, and that’s all! 

The Moon herself is not very connected with the whole. Other than the inconjunct aspect with Venus, a trine with Chiron and a semi-square with Uranus the disruptor, all of it problematic, nothing. 

The Moon shares with the 4th house the meaning of emotional foundations and origins, and we’ve already talked about Pluto, the disintegrator. Of course, Pluto is also the energy of regeneration, of rebirth after initiatic death, let’s not forget the silver lining. 

All this makes me think of an old tale: Donkey Skin. After the death of her mother, a princess had to flee her house because her father, the King, wanted to marry her. To survive she found a job as a servant, she  worked hard like a Cap Moon in the 6th… There will be a happy end indeed, but in the meantime, we can imagine a happy-go-lucky-anyway girl, smiling to everyone, talking with the birds, Disney like (even if the original tale is from the Grim Brothers), sharing with her many friends her hopes and wishes. 

Friends, hopes and wishes are traditional interpretations of the 11th house. It’s also a house where we find help, protection and support. And it’s the house of groups and communities. Are friends and communities suitable alternatives to the 4th house?  

Note for astrology students:

I don’t know if my interpretations are correct, but for now I better not care. I could wonder anxiously: my interpretations are consistent with the chart, but is it exactly that? Maybe I’m forgetting other possible interpretations, maybe I haven’t taken important things into account….? 

Such thoughts are just paralysing. We won’t get far walking on eggshells. Better weaving some interpretation and keeping the question marks hanging. 

How do you think Sherlock Holmes was thinking, when confronted with difficult cases with only a few clues that didn’t seem to make sense? I bet he was telling many possible stories to himself, discarding only what he was sure was wrong and keeping the rest like drafts on his mental desk… 

In other words, better brainstorm than brain freeze! 

Understanding a chart is not all deduction and logic. It’s rather induction, intuition and poetry. We can’t get rid of the irrational, but we can ask the irrational for help. We can ask guidance to our subconscious mind, or to God, or to our spirit guides. We can throw our question in the air and trust we’ll be able to hear the answers. It’s divination. 

Now, we could wonder. 

What is this Mars conjunct Chiron doing in the 10th house? It would not be a good idea to wonder that. Reading a chart is prioritising, and there are much more important indicators to look at before this Mars. 

Look around! 

The evolutionary path, as shown by the nodes, is always so telling, and here, the South Node is in Aquarius, ruled by Uranus in modern astrology, and the North Node is in Leo, ruled by the Sun. What’s striking in this context is the Sun-Uranus opposition which amplifies the opposition of the nodes. Moreover, Uranus is conjunct the cusp of the 5th house, naturally associated with Leo in modern astro, and the Sun is in the 11th house naturally associated with Aquarius. 

Aquarius and Uranus represent here the energy that is familiar, innate, the default settings of the personality. Leo and the Sun represent what the person aspires to. It’s a story of a new dawn, of a new sun who dares to say something like: 

“Hey, I am who I am, I am me, enjoy my light and my warmth, or get on with it! I don’t want to be like you think I should be anymore! I want to be like life makes me!” 

Of course it’s difficult, when the habit is to behave like Uranus/Aquarius, according to ideas, in the head, relying on the social group to exist as a member. 

It must help to have Leo Rising on this path though. People with this Ascendant are often noticed. They stick out from the crowd. With an Aquarius South Node, it may be uncomfortable. 

“Hey, why are they all looking at me? I would prefer to be invisible but I can’t hide!  Well, better get used to it and hold the light now it’s on me.”

This is still happening in the 11th house, Uranus is playing rebel-weirdo in the 5th of self-expression, the Sun wants to play authentic self among others in the 11th. 

Now, it’s time to notice that Uranus also rules over the 7th house of the other, and Leo over the 1st house of Self. The nodes are also suggesting an evolution from being in a relationship to being oneself. 

“Hey partner, I can see you! I was like you in my previous life, and even when I was so young that I didn’t know better! But now, I am like the Sun, we can be together but I won’t compromise about who I am to keep the peace!” 

All this was more important than looking at Mars, and now we can think that Mars is the Sun’s ally, his job is to fight to assert what the Sun wants to express… and it’s near Chiron, wounded, having to heal. 

Mars and Chiron are in Taurus. Pluto is in Libra. They are both playing in Venus’ garden. Taurus is the sign of the flesh, bulls are rarely ethereals.  Earth is the element of the body. Other than Mars and Chiron, in the Earth element there is the Moon, tucked in the 6th, one of the difficult houses, with this semi-square with Uranus, a very mental energy that doesn’t like the reality of the flesh too much…

We may wonder…  It may be easy to be loved and surrounded by many friends, but how is it to be oneself and engage in more intimate interactions? But of course, we won’t expect an answer if we’re asking the question. Privacy is privacy.  

With a dominant Pluto, there is room for a host of anxieties, and Gemini may prefer to surf the waves than dive into the sea. 

Connection, disconnection, reconnection…  It could also evoke the story of Isis and Osiris, the latter being cut into many pieces and reassembled by the former. Collecting scattered bits and pieces… was Isis a Gemini?

The Saturn Sun trine must be of great help. Saturn brings endurance and determination in the long run. A Capricorn Moon is a determined one, and I guess its concern for down to earth reality, getting up in the morning, going to work to pay the rent like the princess who became a servant of the tale, helps keeping oneself in one piece. 

Donkey Skin will let her skills speak for herself… Of course she will get noticed. 

Another very important aspect in this chart is the Mercury-Neptune opposition. 

In this chart, Mercury is the final dispositor of everything. It’s quite remarkable, we can start from any placement, for instance Uranus in Scorpio is ruled by Pluto and Mars, both are ruled by Venus and Venus is ruled by Mercury. The Ascendant is Leo, ruled by the Sun, ruled by Mercury. 

Mercury has an essential role and that’s how we can only notice the tight Mercury-Neptune opposition. There may be fog. There may be a huge Pisces like sensitivity contrasting with the sharpness of the Gemini mind. There may be dreams and movies, imagination…  

There are two kinds of every sign. There are Gemini that are more intellectual, and Gemini more emotional. Both types are curious, quick to change, moving at high speed, and this second type may also be moved at high speed, whilst still quick to change, multi dreaming between two phases of multitasking, laughing, crying, melting and wondering who on earth they might be, but that’s precisely what they are supposed to create. 

And now, it’s time for me to be humble. Have I been a good diviner, with the help of the Great Spirit and the support of the chart? I don’t know. It’s never granted. But that’s not what matters most. What matters is that these symbols have often proved to be the best catalysts for having real conversations about what’s essential, if only with oneself, and sometimes with others. 

A Gemini is likely to agree, when we can speak about it, we can live with it. 

Jean-Marc Pierson

Astrologer, Writer, Storyteller

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Look at these glorious scales!

Every chart is a complex web of interconnections. 

To understand a chart, we need to constantly switch our attention from general architecture to particular placements and back.

We also need to keep in mind that astrology is a metaphorical language. 

Look at this chart.  I have permission to write about it. It’s someone I hardly know at the time of writing.

 The first striking thing is: the Sun is rising. It is tightly conjunct with the Ascendant. 

Imagine you are given to see a crowd of souls passing through the gates of incarnation. Some are darker, some lighter, some have soft colours, others are more contrasted, and some are shining more than others.

Every soul is a precious miracle, however some definitely stick out. They are more charged. They radiate more. Why? Karma, special training or mission, I don’t know. I’m just a storyteller trying to convey what it means to be born at the same time as the Sun. 

This person will be like a Leo in Libra style. We can imagine bright golden scales roaring. 

We can expect charisma, a strong presence and a natural tendency to attract attention. Give her a rotten stool and just by sitting on it she will turn it into a throne. She is a queen, but not the lunar kind of queen that gives heirs to the throne and does some charity work between two pregnancies.  She is a ruling queen. She is powerful. 

Libra with power yields the legendary velvet glove covering an iron fist, served with a disarming smile. 

I have to nuance what I have just said now. Reading a chart has a lot to do with mental flexibility. So far, I have been describing a Rising Sun in Libra as if nothing was getting in the way. However there is a big problem. 

The Libra Queen vibe is definitely there, but a square by Saturn says: No no no! Shut up! Not good enough! Don’t be so loud! Who do you think you are? All these things and more. 

This square is tight: four degrees orb is strong. Moreover, Saturn is very powerful: it conjuncts an angle of the chart as well.

Saturn is not as tightly conjunct to the IC as the Sun is to the Ascendant, so we can think that the Sun is more powerful. Still, there is an atmosphere of titanic fighting. 

Saturn is in Capricorn, its domicile. The Sun is in fall in Libra.  Saturn would be exalted in Libra. This weighs in favour of Saturn, however, the greater closeness of the Sun to an angle is more determinant. Let’s hope the time of birth is exact!

Translating a chart into a life story is like reading a book. Some people would like to look at a chart and understand everything instantly, but it’s much more like a one page at a time process. Information, assimilation, pause, repeat. Let’s go on. 

You may have noticed Mars opposing Saturn. A natural ally of the Sun, Mars brings energy to the fight. Here Mars rules over the seventh house: it may at times manifest as a partner challenging the inherited limitations of Saturn on the IC, possibly entering into open conflict with siblings or peers, and with whatever belittling self-talk is running in our heroine's head. 

When we are in conflict with ourselves, we meet people who take side with one half of who we are, and we fight them with the other half. The people we meet may well be in conflict with themselves as well. Only half of them will actually take side with one half of ourselves, whilst their other half will fight our other half. Outcome: it’s complicated. 

Mars in the ninth fights for an opposite philosophy of life… or goes taking action a long way away from the familiar environment of the third house. 

Mars in Cancer is like a warrior holding a baby - or like a baby warrior. Being vulnerable and fighting… The semi-square with Uranus is very tight. The unpredictable rebel is facing the Saturnian wall. Moments of hyperexcitability, not to say craziness contrasting with the steadfast obstination of Saturn, in life and within. 

I shouldn’t dwell on Mars for too long or I will forget the chart. 

This Sun-Saturn square is so emphasised by its angular position that it could give its title to the whole story. 

 How about:  “A heroic fight for balance”? 

Saturn is weight and Libra is the sign of equilibrium which etymologically means “same weight”. Let’s imagine golden scales, one pan much more heavily loaded but than the other. Saturn versus Mars again. 

The Ascendant rules over the body and the personality. This placement may, and yes this conditional is so annoying, may manifest as limping. 

Libra rules over the hips, how about the pelvic bone, which looks so much like the scales, balancing the two legs with the spine as the central axis? It doesn’t cost much to ask. If this interpretation has not been literally true at some point, it is a relevant metaphor about psychological stuff. 

How about not wanting to go where you’re supposed to go and lagging behind? Saturn is conjunct with the IC, so we can think of some oppressive authority in childhood, and it’s in the third house of learning and small journeys.  

I don’t want to go to school! I don’t want to go to church! 

Why Church? Because of the Moon in the ninth house. It’s the house of God. It’s also the house of journeys, of search for knowledge and exploration. 

Something jumped into my mind as I was looking at the chart. 

The position of Black Moon Lilith in Cancer conjunct with the MC - all conjunctions to angles matter - evokes a memory from my own childhood. When I was fourteen, a teacher had organised a trip to Germany for students. We were sleeping in dormitories. The youngest boy was twelve years old. He belonged to a Jehovah’s Witness family. The first evening, a boy exclaimed: “Look at him! Woah! He is praying!”. We all looked at him. He was kneeling on his bed with his hands joined, as he had learned, a focused expression on his face. 

It was like being at the zoo. It must have been hell for him. The MC means reputation and Black Moon Lilith can be cruel. 

A few years later, this guy would become my best friend and we would drink a lot of beer and make smoke signals together, but that’s not the moment to talk about that. In this person’s chart, Lilith afflicts the Moon through Cancer, and the Moon is in the ninth house which rules religion. It is in Gemini, a sign of communication. 

“Have you heard of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?”

This makes me see Saturn in the third house or neighbourhood in the light of knock knock, who’s there? The Jehovah’s Witnesses, performing their duty and demonstrating their rigidity of mind from door to door. Pain, shame of rejection and repressed feelings of being so ridiculous are likely.

This idea goes well with Jupiter, an energy that likes preaching, ruler of the third house in the third house - in domicile in Sagittarius, but afflicted by a semi square from Mercury, itself ruler of a problematic Ninth House Moon ruler of Black Moon Lilith. Harmonious, Jupiter knows a lot, afflicted it knows it all. 

Meanings get connected like pearls on the thread. The Jupiter-Chiron sextile is exact to the degree. Chiron brings pain and seeks for healing. Chiron is in Aquarius, ruled by Uranus in the eleventh house of (weird) communities and groups, it is the fifth house of self-expression - it’s the natural house of the Sun, this position echoes and reinforces the meaning of the Sun-Saturn square.

How to be yourself when you’re part of a formatting community? Pluto, the initiator and transformer, sits next to the North Node in the eleventh house. Look at the dark side and walk through it! 

Uranus, modern ruler of Chiron, is connected with Jupiter by a trine, and opposes Chiron. Uranus is also exacerbated by an exact semi-square from Mars, in Cancer and the ninth house as well. Mars wants individual affirmation, Uranus is trans personal. This conflict is repeated. 

I wouldn’t put money on any literal interpretation, because we are like Sherlock Holmes, trying to figure out stories in which all clues make sense, but there is a definite feel of something here. 

Have you ever opened your door to wandering preachers like those, and melted for the radiant smile of an innocent child who (still) believes the tale? But later the body may know before the head and she’ll start limping… literally or psychologically. 

I had forgotten, but after going through these interpretations, that a common friend may have mentioned the Jehovah’s Witnesses about this person, as I was talking about my experiences with them. The subconscious memory may have guided my interpretation. Still when you look at the chart, it fits well enough! 

The challenge for everyone is to find more refined ways to express the fundamental energy patterns we’re starting with in life. Being confronted with wrong answers leads to asking the right questions. The ninth house is where we seek. The Moon and Mars stress its importance and it is ruled by Mercury. 

Mercury also rules the North Node in Virgo. Mercury and Virgo show the way forward. Analysis, attention to details and practical skills. 

Things that work are loved by Virgo. What is plain and practical is good grounding. If my hypothesis about limping is literal, Virgo is also the right sign for re education. It starts with the body. 

When exploring a chart, our mind is quick to overheat and go into panic mode. 

Often, calming down, going for a walk, letting go becomes necessary. Sleep brings counsel. 

In practice, a conversation over a chart rather than blind work without feedback as we explore saves a lot of time and energy. 

Let’s enter  the chart through another door. 

Another very important area in this chart is the stellium in Scorpio and the second house. It is huge for various reasons:

• Venus is there, and Venus is the ruler of the Ascendant, aka chart ruler. Only this is hugely important. 

• In this chart, Venus also rules over the Sun. 

• Neptune and Mercury are conjunct the cusp of the second house, therefore they count as active in it. Mercury and Neptune rule over the Moon Nodes: the South Node is in Pisces and the North Node in Virgo. 

• In this chart, Mercury also rules over the Moon. 

So we have the rulers of the Sun, Moon, Ascendant and Nodes, that is of the most important indicators, all gathered in the same place.  We can also notice that Pluto, ruler of Scorpio, where all this is happening, is conjunct with the North Node, which insists on the importance of these Scorpio placements in evolutionary terms. 

Before interpreting, simply noticing the architecture is a very important step. 

The most concrete indicators are the houses. Let’s remember what the second house talks about. 

Traditionally a house of money and possessions, the second house also talks of ressources (how we can get them) and of our sense of self-worth, which is closely associated with our resourcefulness. 

A strong focus in this house suggests that acquiring is a big issue. It may mean struggling or having to work hard or having to come up with good ideas to satisfy basic needs such as food, shelter, security, and it is also likely to mean proving one’s own worth by being able to provide something of value which can be exchanged for money or acknowledgement. 

With the ruler of the Ascendant in this house, the sense of identity is at stake. The Libra Queen, half glorious like a Rising Sun, half crippled by the Dark Saturn, wants to conquer her full status and prove she is worth gold. 

I insist, this notion of being half crippled is essentially metaphorical - it may be a feeling, it could manifest as a physical problem but not necessarily. I came to it because of the Sun-Saturn square, but it’s also a Neptunian theme.

Once I was reading the chart of a child for its mother - always a delicate affair- and the ruler of the North Node which was in the second house was squared by Uranus. The mother was indeed anxious about the challenges that awaited her child. I had the idea to question her about how breastfeeding went. The child was often too excited to be properly fed. This was an early manifestation of this aspect of his evolutionary path. 

I was happy to be able to point out a real difficulty which had been dealt with as it’s much better to see the problem than being scared in the abstract by an ominous placement! 

So it would be worth asking this person if she knows how she reacted to being fed as a baby, and the relationship with food as an adult. 

If reading this chart was done as a conversation, only exposing the themes associated with the second house would probably generate a lot of feedback, especially from a Libra Sun and Rising with a Gemini Moon. I would hear Neptune, Mercury and Venus talking together and I would only have to point out the right planet in connection with the right words as they would come. 

Let’s start with Neptune. Why Neptune rather than starting with Mercury or Venus? 

• Because Neptune rules the South Node, and therefore is an energy that is familiar, integrated, possibly in excess and present from the start of the evolutionary journey.

• Also because the personal planets are pointing at Neptune. It’s not Neptune that emphasises the importance of the personal planets it touches, but the opposite.

•  Because it’s better to start talking about one planet than trying to talk about all of them at the same time, so let’s pick this one! 

How may Neptune manifest in the second house? This is an embarrassing question. As with any placement, many interpretations are possible. 

Neptune may make things disappear in the fog and in the second house, tell a story of turning away from material possessions. Such an attitude is likely to come with valuing philosophy or spiritual life over material reality. 

Knowing that Donald Trump has Neptune in the second house, we can be sure that this is not the only possible interpretation.

 With Neptune we are longing  for paradise. In the second house, we may seek bliss and universal connection through material possessions. Neptune is fantasy, and so is the “American dream”.  

Sceptics would claim that if placements can mean one thing or the opposite, anything can mean anything and astrology is gobbledygook. Sceptics shouldn’t jump to conclusions so quickly. One thing and its exact opposite have a lot in common. 

Opposites coincide: someone turns away from money and possessions, another accumulates a lot of them, both are inspired by an ideal, something of the nature of dreams. A story from the collective psyche inspires them. There is more than just plain common sense and practical considerations. 

Neptune in the second house may also mean earning money selling drinks, playing music, selling pictures or perfumes,  fishing, navigating or anything relevant to Neptune.  

The real fisherman may not be as romantic as the fishermen of numerous stories, still he incarnates a character that has been inspiring generations of poets and storytellers. The bartender may be just doing this job for a living, he will be in touch with a flow of customers, and a number of them will get drunk like Neptunians trying to escape reality. One way or another, Neptune will be around. 

Instead of trying to guess what will be the case before meeting someone for a reading, an alternative and much more comfortable question is: “What can be done with this energy?” 

Imagine souls going to the behaviour market (as if behaviours were pieces of clothing). Those with Neptune in the second house would be offered to pick up from an array of possibilities, such as those I’ve just exposed. 

We may wish we were able to know everything before talking to the client and blow their mind telling them their life story with all the details, but in theory, this would only be possible if there was no free will, if people didn’t have any choices and everything was written in advance. That’s not my philosophy. 

This approach can be fruitful. Talking about the various things someone could do can be helpful. 

The Neptune-Mercury conjunction is very meaningful, as Neptune rules over the South Node and Mercury the North Node. There is a loop effect. If you study the South Node, following Neptune, ruler of Pisces, you land on Mercury. If you study the North Node, following Mercury, ruler of Virgo, you land on Neptune. 

The evolutionary path seems to be: you’ve already worked at making Neptune and Mercury work together before, and in this life, you’ll keep working on this same issue. Acquiring money and self worth are your test, dear Libra Queen. Your Venus points to this Mercury-Neptune balancing challenge.  

Mercury is oriented towards what’s small: precisions, details and Neptune towards immensity. Could you look at the ocean and at a grain of sand in the same gaze? 

Mercury and Jupiter, the other ruler of Pisces, are connected by a challenging semi-square. How to see the big picture without losing sight of the details, how to look with a magnifying glass and from high above at the same time? Do you get confused? 

This is happening in Scorpio, next to the chart ruler; it’s a question of life or death, or at least it feels like it, for the Libra Queen. 

To be or not to be depends on your ability to walk the tightrope above the void. Immensity and precision. The gold you desperately need is on the other side but you're out on a limb, limping. Drum roll!!! 

Hundred times you fell, hundred times you tried again… 

I’ll leave this exploration there. There is enough in a chart to write a thick book. I think there is enough in these pages to show how to proceed. 

My way is not the only way by the way, but that is the way I believe in. I hope it helps! 

Jean-Marc Pierson

Astrologer, writer

Would you like to learn with me? Visit the homepage and contact me!

How to get it wrong (to read a chart as a whole)

First part: Charts have deceiving looks. 

Second part: But the way we look at them is no better

First part: Beware of optical illusions! 

1 If several indicators are very close to one another,  the chart is likely to display the symbols next to each other, and not in front of the little lines that indicate their exact position. You may see them far away from where they really are. 

Also, you may not notice which ones are very close to each other, and which ones are more distant. Orbs matter though.   

So put on your glasses, look at the little lines!

2 On Astrodienst, the default settings are 10 degrees orb for conjunctions, oppositions, trines and squares. You will see the same coloured lines for these aspects, independently of how tight they are. 

For instance, imagine  a Moon - Mars - Saturn T-square, with Saturn at the apex. The Moon is always a big player. 

 Let’s say the Moon - Saturn square is exact, and therefore really strong, but the  Moon-Mars opposition , and the Mars - Saturn square exist with a 9 degrees orb. 

Interpreting the Moon- Mars opposition without describing the Moon Saturn square first would be the equivalent of talking about a piglet in the room, whilst ignoring there is an elephant. Your interpretations won’t impress the querent. The other way round, starting with the elephant will be spot on, and then going as far as pointing out the piglet running between the elephant’s paws will come across as the cherry on top of the cake.  

4 Some aspects may be minor but they do exist! 

In the astrodienst format, minor aspects are represented by dotted lines. Semi squares or sesqui-squares are almost invisible.  However, they may be exact to the degree or almost, and therefore more powerful than a loose major aspect. Again, put your glasses on!

Check the grid under the chart, and be prepared to calculate mentally. If Pluto is at 9 degree Scorpio and Venus at 24 degree Sagittarius, how tight is this semi square? 

5 On astrodienst, if you’re using the default settings, Chiron is shown, but without aspects. I like it this way. It’s better not to have too many lines criss-crossing a chart. Sometimes people show charts with aspects to the angles, to the nodes and to a number of asteroids as well, and the result looks like a nervous breakdown. 

However, Chiron in a strong aspect to a personal planet is a meaningful and powerful indicator. Don’t forget to notice. 

6 Another way to make too much of a big deal of a piglet whilst ignoring the elephant herd is to forget that the most powerful indicators are those that move the quickest. Look at what’s going on around the angles first, then the luminaries, then the personal planets. 

If you get excited about a Jupiter Neptune trine because it is exact, and neither Jupiter or Neptune is conjunct to an angle or a luminary, or ruler of the Ascendant, and there aren’t important placements in Sagittarius or Pisces… then, this aspect may be a big piglet, but it’s not an elephant, not even a small one.  

Maybe you’re reading a chart with piglets only? You better check before elaborating on this Jupiter Neptune trine. 

NB:  Conjunctions are the most powerful connections. After them consider tight aspects, especially the major ones. If you have a stellium, you won’t see colourful lines across the chart, but don’t downplay it. Imagine a huge blue and red spot around it. 

Second part. About wrong and right ways to approach a chart.

Have you already played chess? 

If yes, you have probably lost at least once because you were so excited about your attack that you forgot to pay attention to your opponent’s point of view. You were moving forward like a bulldozer. You couldn’t think of anything else. You had built a fortress to protect your king, but a side door was left open. Before you knew it, you were checkmated. 

To get it wrong with an astrological chart is very similar. Imagine.  You have identified a planet as a main player. So you dig and dig, you focus on what this planet in this sign and in this house may mean, but the deeper you dig the narrower your horizon becomes and you end up unable to get out of the hole you dug for yourself! 

I am not saying not to dig at all. Not digging is the opposite way to get it wrong! Some unstable minds  jump like fleas from one placement to the next. Oh this Venus in Leo! And it’s in the ninth house! But Mars is in Scorpio, that’s tough! In the First House, woah! Moon in Aries that’s impulsive, but opposite Saturn, sometimes it’s not! …So much about the art of getting nowhere. 

So yes, when you spot a dominant energy, dig, but not too much. A chart is made of placements and bridges between them. Bridges are aspects, or rulership relations. 

For instance, if you get so fascinated by this Uranus conjunct the MC in Aries that you immediately set up to re-read the entire book by Liz Greene’s about Uranus, you’ll end up confused. In the book you get a rich tapestry of life. So much width and depth are wonderful, we need culture and intelligence, but hours later you’ll still be wondering: what does this Uranus conjunct MC in Aries mean exactly?... 

There is no exact answer to a precise question about a particular chart in a rich tapestry…  

You need to sum up all you know to “get the vibe” as clearly as possible, and move on. 

With Uranus, there is something different. Thinking outside the box, or behaving like an outsider, an outcast or a rebel. Could be an interest in science, politics, technology or an ideology. A rejection of nature and the body maybe. 

Sometimes, with Uranus you’re just different. You may not even know why and how. You’re a weirdo. There are many kinds of weirdos… 

At some level, there is a normal way, and there is breaking away from it. Difficult to be more precise. 

With Aries, it’s easy to feel that it's likely to be a tad more extreme as it would be anyway, with a leading, pioneering or competitive strike. Both Uranus and Aries want independence and have things going their own way. It feels rather uncompromising, radical. 

Keep the question marks hanging and look around. What else? 

From this Uranus in Aries, you can spot that it is ruled by Mars, in Aries as well, conjunct the Moon, and the Moon happens to be the Ascendant ruler, making it even more important. That’s a huge focus in the tenth house, and in Aries… 

There could be a lot to say about this, but again, don’t keep stuck here.

Look around. Don’t miss that Uranus is also connected with Mercury by a square. Moreover, Mercury is also conjunct with the Ascendant, so this aspect is important like a first class elephant. Even more so if you notice that the Sun is in Gemini. Mercury rules it, is dominant and squares another dominant planet! It’s huge!   

Mercury and Uranus have common grounds: the mind, the nervous system, communications of insights, weird communications… Remember that Aries rules the head. This could be a big brain. This could be a mad one. And Mercury is intense, it’s conjunct Pluto. 

Again, don’t dig a hole so deep that the horizon disappears. Look around!  Yes, Mercury is conjunct Pluto, and Pluto conjunct the Ascendant, itself ruled by the Moon, and squaring it… Great emotional intensity here, connecting the Ascendant (the guy himself) and the tenth house (his social status). With Mum playing a part in the drama, probably. Moon also rules memory and imagination, not just Mum and emotions… 

Feel the vibe, keep the question marks hanging, keep wandering through the chart, follow its roads, cross the bridges, keep moving…  Looking at the whole architecture. Think like a spider, because it’s a web.

There is much more in this example chart of course, but you see the way to proceed. 

My last recommendation is to simply be polite with your subconscious mind and with the astrological angels that only want to help. 

Ask, let the questions hang for a while and trust.  Open a book at a random page, look through the window, forget about it and come back later. 

The chart I used as an example is John Nash’s, genius, mathematician, Nobel Prize. He also struggled with schizophrenia and believed he was communicating with extraterrestrials. 

Jean-Marc Pierson

Astrologer, storyteller, writer

Would you like to learn with me? I offer one to one classes - or small groups. How about a low cost “spontaneous reading” to try and see? 

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How to read a chart as a whole: using mental imagery

Before anything else, slow down! 

I’ve seen many students, including myself, rushing. Picking a placement, randomly, elaborating out of context…  

Our own attitude is as worthy of attention as the chart itself. 

A proper interpretation is potentially as huge as a whole biography. Intensely summarised, it may boil down to a few pictures (worth a thousand words each). 

Let’s think in pictures.

Mental pictures are like cartoons. We may not “see” them as clearly as actual drawings, with all the colours and details. They may be nothing but fleeting sketches. All we need is to get the picture.  

Here is my chart. Let’s dig for images!

I usually recommend to start looking at the angles; we could begin noticing Saturn and the Moon as the likely biggest players, especially the Moon as she also rules over the Ascendant. Neptune is also powerfully emphasised by the Sun.

Let’s start with the Sun for a change. It is where and how we are called to shine. 

It says something essential about the life story. In my case it is in the Fifth House. (Houses are the most concrete indicators. For the question: “What are we doing here?” houses are relevant.)

The challenge is that every house comes with a bundle of possible meanings. Self-expression, children, romance, education, entertainment, fun and even financial speculation are crammed in the fifth. 

Traditional astrologers, when enraged against the modern approach, also mention that the fifth is the house of sex, and not the eighth.

There are so many possible pictures! We may feel paralysed and jump to another placement to avoid the embarrassment of not knowing what to choose, or we can draw several mental pictures, and decide later which ones to keep or how to modify them. 

As it’s my chart, I know I don’t have children, but in a chart with Cancer Rising and such a packed fourth house, this would make sense. There are obstacles but… one thing at a time. 

So we can sketch a radiating parent surrounded with children, with a rope in their hands.

In a speech balloon above their head are the words: “Let me show you. I make a loop. It’s a rabbit hole, and this part of the rope is a tree. The rabbit comes out of the hole, goes around the tree and back into the hole…” This is happening on the shore next to a boat; To be good sailors, the children must know how to make knots. The Sun is conjunct Neptune in my chart, so some elements of navigation are relevant.

This picture doesn’t belong to my life literally, as I told you I have no children. I am not a sailor either. But we should keep it, because there is a good deal of metaphorical truth in it: dear reader, you’re not my child, but still I’m here showing you how to do something. 

Astrology is difficult to navigate. It’s like water, it’s difficult to find firm ground. It’s a language from the psychic sea. 

Once I was reading for someone who wondered about having a packed fifth house and no children. She was a teacher. She spent her days showing kids how to read, write and count. So this is also a picture to keep in mind. 

A fifth house theme is creativity. Creativity is giving a voice to the inner child and we are in the house of children. We can picture a child with pencils, imagine a child's drawing, with a house, a tree, the sun or a rainbow…

If you prefer, a teenager with a trombone can do, or grandma learning to play drums, it’s never too late. 

The difference between mentioning “creativity” as a known key word, and making mental pictures, is that we “charge” the pictures with life. This is like inviting life stories to appear.  

In my chart you may notice the connection with the third house: in Placidus the third house cusp falls in Leo, the Sun rules it. The cusp of the fifth is in Scorpio and Pluto, its modern ruler, is in the third. Add to that the connection by sextile between the Sun and Pluto. The chart insists on this third-fifth connection. Themes common to both houses are likely to be the case. In the third there is school and learning. It’s also communication, speaking and writing, among other things. I have performed as a storyteller. It’s an art form, there are clubs and festivals with audiences entirely made of adults, yet, it’s a household word to say that people who love listening to stories have a childlike soul. 

In the context of a chart with Cancer Rising and a dominant Moon, storytelling works well as a fifth house expression, especially with Mercury conjunct Venus, in spite of the square from Saturn. (It was hard to overcome stage fright…) 

Let’s pretend it’s an unknown chart and keep digging. 

Maybe a fifth house Sun can afford to live a life of leisure and pleasure, drinking and seducing women? 

Picture a dandy sitting in a casino with a lovely half naked lady sitting on his lap, drinking champagne. Winning stock market shares show the tip of themselves out of a pocket. 

Romance doesn’t have to be shallow though. How about a troubadour playing the luth and telling a love poem to a magnificent lady falling in love from her window? But we’re in Scorpio, if we go for Romeo and Juliette, we may get the tragic ending…

Let’s keep all these sketches available in a corner of our mind, but let them go. No need to press our brain like a lemon. 

We are like Sherlock Holmes. We are looking at clues. If we find a single picture in which all clues make sense, we’re happy. We may not find the absolute synthesis though. Humans are often walking contradictions. 

Let’s look at other indicators. 

Or let’s take a break first. Let the dough rise. 

We believe in “doing” far too much, including at the mental level.  Interpreting a chart can’t boil down to a succession of operations like additions, multiplications, solving equations, writing lists and sketching diagrams. We would end up rediscovering that the meaning of life is forty two. 

We’re not counting but conjuring up mental pictures. If we feel out of our comfort zone, let’s take as many breaks as we need to keep relaxed, mentally light like dragonflies.  

Let’s breathe, go for a walk. Let’s dare doing nothing without feeling guilty. Let the dough rise. 

When the conscious mind is looking at a chart, the subconscious mind is looking as well. When the conscious mind comes up with a handful of pictures, the subconscious mind understands that pictures are wanted. The conscious mind needs to be able to shut up to get a chance to hear from the subconscious’ suggestion. It’s like fishing. You don’t spend the day beating the water. 

Let the dough rise!…

In this chart, a major placement is Saturn, and it is opposing the Ascendant. 

The Ascendant it’s me, banging into Saturn, a heavy metal door. Bam! On the other side of the door, someone (who may that be?) slams it shut. Rejection! 

This rather negative interpretation of Saturn fits the Venus-Saturn square as well. Saturn, in the seventh house, the other. Venus, in the fourth house, where it all started. We can picture a slap in the face. As usual, if it’s not literal, it’s metaphorical. 

Mercury is even more squared by Saturn than Venus. Mercury finds it difficult to get in touch. It doesn’t know what to say. It will have to work hard on its lines. As a storyteller, I was rather the kind who wrote his texts first, learned them by heart and felt reassured by this firm structure. I also felt more comfortable in well structured settings, like standing on a stage in front of an audience than in informal groups. I have learned but it took effort and time. 

The Moon rules over the Ascendant, and is in the fourth house, conjunct the IC. Sometimes, jokingly, I say I am a rat. I love my burrow. It’s a lovely picture, if you love rats. If you prefer a fox no worries. 

 Moreover, almost all the planets are hiding under the horizon. You could also imagine a guy in his house, digging in the basement. 

After a door was slammed shut in front of him, he may have thought that digging a tunnel could be a better idea. This could be a movie by Woody Allen. How to surprise the girl of your dreams: pop up unexpectedly from under the kitchen table for dinner, and open your heart before she calls the police. 

The fifth house is the house of romance, and Neptune can be as weird as Uranus in its own style. 

A fifth house emphasis in a chart which also indicates serious difficulties with relating is highly likely to mean creativity. 

And so on! 

Jean-Marc Pierson

Astrologer, writer, storyteller

You will be very welcome here, now :-)

NB Woody Allen came to my mind as I was elaborating. I looked up his chart: we share some critical placements: Saturn conjunct DC, ruler of the Ascendant conjunct IC. In his case, Saturn squares the ruler of the Ascendant. 

A powerful Mars in Pisces and the 12th.

Beware. Traditional notions need to be handled with care. 

I’m saying this because looking at this chart (see below) a student of astrology could say that Mars, chart ruler, is in Pisces and the 12th house and conclude that this is probably a very spiritual person, someone who has difficulties expressing their Mars, meaning not very assertive, not very powerful, not really aggressive. 

However the chart is Peter the Great’s. He was one of the most powerful men of his time. He changed the course of Russian history and spent many years waging wars.  

Mars in Pisces has a bad reputation, almost as bad as Mars in Cancer. For Mars, Pisces is not a sign of detriment though. But Pisces is usually considered soft, passive, lacking in strength and boundaries.

This may prove true in a number of cases, but well, not always. 

The twelve house is a cadent house, it’s traditionally considered a placement of great inefficiency. Mars in the twelfth may not find its way to expression, unless under the guise of some treacherous enemy hiding in the shadows. 

Peter the Great had all kinds of enemies, some open, some hidden, but he was anything but a weakling. 

So if you want to assess the strength of planets in a chart, look first at the aspects. Peter the Great’s Mars is connected with Pluto by an exact trine. Moreover, Pluto is exactly conjunct an angle of the chart, so it’s from an especially powerful Pluto that energy is flowing to Mars. 

Mars is also in a square aspect with the Moon. A square is an aspect of tension, yes, but this square is first of all a tight contact with a luminary. With the Moon, Mars is in the spotlight. As both Mars and the Moon are both rather emotionally reactive, we may expect a rather impulsive and excitable Mars. 

We can say something similar about the Mars Jupiter opposition. Jupiter amplifies what it touches. A tense aspect between these two planets is likely to manifest as an excess of energy. 

Mars is also conjunct with the North Node. This is similar to a North Node in Aries, Martian power is the way forward. We could wonder whether the great power in such a chart would not lead to an auto destructive implosion, and that could be a risk. But here, with Aries Rising and Mars conjunct the north node, moving powerfully forward is destiny, so to speak! 

If Mars was in Aries and the First House, but receiving the same power from other placements as it gets in Peter’s chart, it would be even more powerful, I guess. But it really doesn’t need that. 

Same text, French accent, youtube channel

Peter the Great was fascinated by navigation from a young age. He won his first great battle against the Turks thanks to ships. One of his great achievements was to give Russia access to the Baltic sea so that his country could become a great maritime power. What sign could be more fitting than Pisces? 

Also, his drinking style was a stereotypical demonstration of having balls. So much for Pisces. 

As for the twelfth house… He was swimming in the collective dimension. The life story of Peter the Great is identical to Russia’s history. As powerful as he may have been, he was a product of the institution: he was the Tzar, and he battled to reform the institutions. I am only talking about Mars for now, but you may have noticed his Sun-Uranus exact square, which can also be interpreted as a conflict between collective energies and personal expression. 

Who would he have been if he was born in an ordinary family? We will never know. So, in this sense, it is possible to interpret this position of Mars in the twelfth house as a Mars that can’t find the way to exist as a free individual, away from the institution.  

But if we started to explore this chart with the idea that this Mars in Pisces and in the 12th is not very powerful we would be misguided. I recommend looking at the aspects first, starting with the tightest ones, and especially the conjunctions to angles, luminaries and nodes. 

Jean-Marc PIerson

Astrologer, storyteller. How about taking a class, coming to a retreat, learning about Magical Doors?

Visit the homepage!

More about Jupiter, to become better at reading charts as a whole.

Why do you think Sagittarius, ruled by Jupiter, planet of knowledge, is a Fire sign rather than an Air one? 

An answer is in the Bible (tongue in cheek). In the life of the patriarchs, it is often mentioned that they “knew their wife”, as a way to mean they had sexual intercourse. This has always made me smile, but it’s actually revealing: knowing is much more than the result of learning intellectually.

Real knowledge involves active participation. 

With Jupiter, knowing is living. I know London because I live in London. I know love when I love. We could argue endlessly about what love is exactly, but would lovers do that? They know. 

We, astrologers, are nerds. It’s not wrong, but like with everything, there is a right amount, half way between too much and not enough. 

Too much astrological nerdiness  and we are like theologians disputing the number of angels able to stand on the head of a pin instead of being mystics carried away in ecstasy. We’re contemplating the cosmos, for God’s sake! 

A key word for Jupiter is “enthusiasm”, which etymologically, takes us back to a Greek word meaning “being inspired or possessed by a god”. Jupiter’s glyph makes me think of a boat with wind in its sail. 

I understand, for instance Venus in Taurus square Mars in Leo when I am able to conjure up these energies and feel them sparring and sparkling within myself. Venus in Taurus is a goddess of wet clay; in her embrace the warrior gets glued to the land. Ploughing the field, he feels the sudden urge to saddle his horse, fasten his belt and go risk his life to get gold. But can he do that without breaking a heart?

Feeling the energies rather than just thinking about them, is like touching them. My way to live this makes me come up with pictures and little stories as illustrations. 

However, please don’t make me say what I didn’t: don’t bin the thinking altogether! Just don’t stay stuck in it exclusively. 

Jupiter rules over two signs: a Fire sign: Sagittarius and a Water sign: Pisces. 

Fire and Water are the life giving elements. Fire meets Water when sun rays hit the plants and photosynthesis takes place. Plants grow, feed animals etc. All life is dependent on this meeting of Fire and Water. The earth knows life. 

In the sea, deep down it is dark and cold but just under the surface, life is thriving. Plankton, algaes, corals, crabs, fish and the nets of fishermen. Sea, sex and sun. Water, Fire and Life. 

Again, Jupiter’s kind of knowledge is the opposite of a cold and dry intellectual understanding. It’s Fire and Water, it’s hot and wet. It’s a vine in the jungle, a wolf in the mountain, a mystic in contemplation. The mountaineer knows the mountain, the sailor knows the sea. 

This knowledge proceeds not by separation, but by union of the subject and the object. 

Apart from Sun and Moon, which function as a unit, all traditional planets rule over two signs, a masculine and diurnal one, and a feminine and nocturnal one. The rule of the game is duality. Life is always breathing in and breathing out in alternance. 

When Jupiter is breathing in, the “vibe” is Pisces and when it’s breathing out it’s Sagittarius. 

Here is the simplest imagery I have for Jupiter: if you practise Chi-Kung, you may hold an invisible ball of energy between your hands. You move your hands apart and the ball becomes bigger. Expansion goes simultaneously in all directions. 

When this happens in Sagittarius mode, the energy is yang. Our presence to the world expands. We embark on a journey or a quest, we become important in our social environment, our wealth increases, whatever was created by the power of the Sun and the fertility of the Moon grows. 

When this happens in Pisces mode, the inner world expands. Life gives us more to feel. Music, love, poetry, stories, compassion, praise and prayers or even a living silence give our souls the opportunity to be filled with more, as we surrender to something greater and greater… 

Sometimes, we suffer, and we don’t like it, but there is a way to salvation. 

Placed in any sign, Jupiter will bring this movement of amplification of inner and outer life expanding and knowing itself in the process. 

I know someone with Jupiter in Taurus placed on the MC, and no, she doesn’t run hedge funds, she doesn’t own much, apart from a very small house. 

With Jupiter in Taurus dominant, couldn’t we expect expansion on the material plane? Jupiter is squared by her Aquarius Sun in the chart but this square doesn’t explain everything. 

She grew up in Paris. One day she discovered a beautiful countryside in the South of France and fell in love with it. She has been living there ever since. 

Abroad, from Jupiter’s point of view, is not necessarily on the other side of our country’s border. Staying put on the same spot can be a wonderful journey, knowing that we’ve left another world behind. 

When I knew her, she was growing strawberries on a small patch of land near her tiny house. Don’t tell her that’s not wealth. 

Jean-Marc Pierson

Storyteller, Astrologer

And now, it’s time to learn more about Magical Doors, about an astrology retreat in Turkey or online classes or readings. Here is the homepage of this website. Cheers!

Coincidence of opposites and astrology

Opposites and oppositions play a game of mirrors. They are both same and reverse at the same time.

For instance:

Cancer and Capricorn are two opposite signs. Like all opposites, they have more in common than we think.

The Moon rules Cancer and symbolises the mother, the mother child relationship, home, family life, roots, emotional and physical needs, caring.....

Saturn, ruler of Capricorn, symbolises ambition, the long and difficult journey to reach the tops, (Top of social ladder in general, possibly politics or any way to get power and social recognition among society. Society can be the particular context of a specific community or subculture. A Saturnian can be the most disciplined ecologist and master reality well enough to be able to live off grid)

In Capricorn, the Cancerian softness and emotional connections are having the hard times of their lives.

However, Saturn and Capricorn are also experienced through mother.

In the beginning, we are breastfed. We literally eat mother. Nothing is more Cancerian than being fed by mother. But one day, it's finished, there is no milk anymore. We have to eat from a plate, sitting on a chair instead.

One day, mother does not want to carry us anymore. We are too heavy now, she says. As we grow up, we become more and more separated, more and more distant... Instead of being taken in charge, we become a member of the family and this is our first experience of being a member of a society....

Cancer and Capricorn are as intimately linked as the two faces of our relationship with mother. One side is physical and emotional connection - when we are dependent... and the other side is physical and emotional disconnection - when we progressively become a distinct individual.

The individuals with the greatest ambitions most often are those who have been the more emotionally deprived. They hope they will eventually deserve to get their most intimate needs satisfied when they reach the top. They bet power and control may get their needs met.

Jean-Marc Pierson

Astrologer, Storyteller , Writer

Visit the homepage to find the contact form and, without hesitating, ask for more information about classes, readings or astro counselling. See you there!

How to interpret the Moon in a chart

To interpret the Moon in signs, there are various layers. 

First layer: Like the Sun, the Moon is a luminary. If the Moon is in Taurus, Taurus is in the spotlight. So just Taurus. 

Second layer: the light of the Moon is not the same as the Sun’s. It’s an intimate light. 

Moon is mother, family, early environment. It’s the inner you. 

To the Sun you may say “ I’m so proud of you” but to the Moon you rather go like: “baby, you’re my baby”.  

There is more to it. If you look up Moon in the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols there are five or six pages. Fundamentally, the Moon reflects, and is always changing. Interpretations follow.

For now, let’s just stick to mother, family and early environment. 

If you make a new friend, for them your Taurus traits are just you. Let’s say you love nature, it’s a stereotype, it doesn’t have to always be true, but often it is. One day you invite your friend to a family gathering.  A few little chats later, they understand that your love of nature is a trait of family culture. 

Things may be a bit more subtle than in my exemple, but you get the point. Traits associated with the Moon make you belong where you belong. You’ll feel at home when you meet the same. 

Imagine that as a Taurus Moon you fall in love with a Taurus Sun. 

Sun and Moon conjunct in synastry is a match made in heaven on principle. (Unfortunately, the best connections don't cancel other conflicts that may exist between charts). 

Keeping to a standard stereotype for the sake of clarity, the Taurus Sun wants to be a farmer. This will mean more than making a living to them: this will be a question of becoming who they want to be. You’ll be naturally supportive. 

With your Taurus Moon, you’ll just feel at home on the farm. You’ll recharge your batteries joking with the donkeys. You’ll want your children to grow up there. That’s the “normal” life for you, but it’s not enough for you to be you.

Suppose you have a Gemini Sun, let’s take another stereotype, you’ll want to be a writer. This will mean the world to you.

If, by chance, your Taurus Sun partner has the Moon in Gemini, you’ll read them your papers and they’ll appreciate your style. They may love reading and writing, but that’s just like breathing to them, their success at life is not at stake. 

A third level of interpretation is that the Moon rules over Cancer, and through Cancer, over a house, maybe two, and possibly over planets placed in Cancer. Whatever happens with the Moon happens indirectly - but surely - to these houses and planets.  

In my own chart, the Moon rules over my Cancer Ascendant, is in Libra and in the fourth house. It may be more fundamental to the interpretation to consider the houses: ruler of first house in fourth house. I am a rat. I love my basement. 

My Cancer personality style must be combined with Libra. Juggling with key words always helps: Emotional balance is needed. Sensitivity in search of artistic harmony. Social needs. Feeling two sides. I am a good listener, it’s an airy way to care… I am not saying everything, just showing you how to elaborate.  

Beyond key words, feel the world of Cancer, then the world of Libra, and let the vibes interact in your inner space.

Thinking in pictures can be a funny game:  two crabs on a sea-saw, when one is up the other is down, it could be a nursery rhyme and it is a way to invite inspiration. Two crabs on a sea-saw, one wants to eat you, the other is scared by you, which one will you pick up, which one will you throw away?

A fourth level of interpretation, but it could have been the third, is to follow the ruler of the sign in which the Moon is placed. 

If you have the Moon in Sagittarius, you may carry your home like a rucksack on your back, drive a camper van or settle abroad. Wherever you live is a camp base and/or a library. Maybe it’s near a temple, not far from the city hall. It’s rather open, compared to a Cancer cocoon.  It’s the place you shoot arrows of consciousness from. 

With the Moon in Sagittarius, Jupiter says more. Let’s say it’s in Leo. No doubt, it’s a fiery Moon! Expect a combination of adventure and creativity, of exploration and let-me-show-you; her way to nurture is to take by the hand and lead beyond the familiar environment. 

Don’t worry, she says, I’ll take you back home, you’re safe with me. 

I won’t talk about the Moon in the twelve signs, sorry. 

There are enough cookbooks out there. Moon in Aries, Moon in Taurus, Moon in Gemini, Moon in Cancer, it’s nice, it’s good order. It’s boring like Saturn doing admin. My Uranus in the third house doesn't want to live like that.  

If we wanted to be systematic, then we would also need to write about Moon in Aries with Mars in Aries, then Moon in Aries with Mars in Taurus, followed by Moon in Aries with Mars in Gemini… and all the possible combinations.  

And we would have to do the same with the Sun, then going through all the possible combinations with rising signs… 

I am not going to write a crazy cookbook like that. Beyond the most elementary combinations, we’re all alone in the jungle! 

What I wish to convey is a sense of how to juggle. 

Jean-Marc Pierson

Astrologer, Storyteller and Philosopher a bit. Why don’t you have a look at my homepage?

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A little chat with the Virgin Maiden

Virgo is a beautiful maiden. In one hand she holds a sheaf of wheat, and a medicinal plant in the other.

She looks like a hippie; she’s wearing a long dress; her undulating hair is moved by the wind as she walks in the tall grasses of a meadow. She is absolutely charming.

However she looks approachable. Set eyes on Venus, you’ll know how it feels to be compared to Mars, if you’re male, or to herself, if you’re female. You need to be very confident to approach Venus. You may get a taste of divine disdain.

Nothing like that will happen with the virgin maiden. It’s easy to say hello and have a little chat.

Why is she holding a single ear of corn? Because there is no need to include the entire harvest in the picture! The ear of corn stands for the fields, the wheat, the oat, and the barley, or whatever grows in the fields, sunflowers, rapeseed, alfalfa, beans, onions and potatoes… Beware, once she trusts you’re interested, she may mention all the cultivated varieties and their uses.

The sheaf of wheat also stands for the windmill and the grinding, the flour, the kneading the dough, the sourdough, the cooking and the oven… the bread in turn stands for all kinds of food, and food, she’s telling you if you’re still listening, is the first medicine. This leads to taking proper care of the body. The list of her knowledge and skills is impressive.

She loves foraging as well. The medicinal plant in her other hand stands for every plant with medicinal properties, how to mix them, how to prepare tisanes, unguents, remedies… She is a hedge witch. 

You may ask her “And by the way, are you single?” She may answer:

-Sure I am! I am a Virgin! But don’t think I’m naive. This just means that I belong to no man. Not yet. I am almost ready. I am honing my skills. Food is medicine. I still have a few things to learn, a few things to do, look at my lists!

- It’s incredible. And you look so relaxed!

- Yes. Relaxation comes with proper organisation. Stress is not a healthy way of living. What’s essential is to take advantage of our natural rhythms. If you think Virgos are stressed by definition, you’re wrong. Virgos are stressed by the wrong rhythms.

- So when will you get married? Are you only thinking of someone?

-Listen, when I start thinking of it, I won’t be Virgo anymore, I’ll be Libra. I am an archetype, a Goddess. The thing with us, immortals, is that we don’t get to the next phase. We are the essence of a particular phase. I am almost ready, have always been, will ever be. I can cook, I can heal, I can help, I know how to make myself useful in all kinds of circumstances, I am the almost perfect wife, it will be “almost” ever after. Do you know how to repair a roof?

There are bees in the hive serving the queen and being queen is serving the hive.

We, souls, are grateful to the first of servants, the body, which we honour and care for with hygiene and medicine.

We are grateful to Virgo!

Jean-Marc Pierson, storyteller, astrologer

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Answers to criticism.

Some criticisms of modern astrology go like this: "Traditional astrology is serious, it's about fate, events and predictions. Modern astrology is just vague woo hoo about subjective feelings.." 

Science forced the Church to accept that the earth was round, spinning and not the centre of the universe. If traditional astrology had been that powerful it would have convinced both Church and Science. 

Modern or traditional, astrology is not omniscient and all powerful. Between all and nothing, there is a spectrum you know! 

I’ve heard about experiments made by scientists. They asked a number of subjects to take personality tests. Then they submitted the tests and the astrological charts to famous astrologers asking them to pair charts and test results. 

Their rate of success was not higher than chance would predict. 

To me, this doesn’t mean that astrology is not valid. This may well mean that the astrologers, even though renowned in the field, were actually not magicians. Taylor Swift is great at what she does but maybe don’t ask her to sing like Esperanza Spalding and conclude that music is not real. 

To me, this experiment proves that astrology is not meant to be used that way. 

What is the relevance of personality tests to the reality of the soul? If I know what school you’re going to, does this allow me to predict your results? And if I can’t predict your results, does it mean I don’t know what school you’re going to? 

If I know it’s half past five, does this allow me to predict what you are doing? 

And if I can’t, does this mean that clocks tell fairy tales?  

If we expected physicians to diagnose and cure every illness instantly, we would quickly find plenty of evidence that medicine is pure fantasy.

We would say: People die in hospitals, If you’re sick, don’t go there!

When physicists study quantum mechanics and are confronted with utter paradoxes, they conclude that more thinking is needed. They don’t conclude that their field of study is not valid. They don’t mind telling stories like that of a cat that is somehow both dead and alive at the same time, unless you have a look at it, in which case it will instantly appear to be one or the other.  

Astrology is a language of symbols. Anthropologists, historians of religion or depth psychologists can tell you: symbols are ambiguous, multivalent, dependent on context, though still meaningful in their own blurred way. 

I am convinced there is something to it because I’ve had opportunities to be surprised by some results.  

One day, I was elaborating a story, which I presented as metaphorical, to explain the position of the South Node in her chart to a woman, and she exclaimed: “You’ve told the story of my mother!” The story I came up with was about a queen who lived locked up in a tower, with only a faithful servant to confide in, and surrounded by wealth and luxury. One day she would escape…

The mother was the wife of a white important businessman in an African country. She had no freedom, had to hold her rank - or rather to contribute to her husband holding his rank in her role of wife at official events. Wealth and lack of freedom were her lot. One day she secretly bought plane tickets and fled with her daughter… 

One day I was reading about Kant’s idea of morality. His “categorical imperative” made me say: This is so like Saturn!... I looked up Kant’s chart and there was Saturn, sitting on the MC. 

One day I was writing a blog post about Pluto. (It’s now a chapter in Magical Doors). I was thinking of the movie “Pirates” as a great illustration of the world of Pluto. I looked up Roman Polanski’s chart… and there was Pluto, sitting on the MC. As it happened, Polanski was also condemned for sleeping with a slightly too young teenage girl, which is also Pluto’s style. 

One day, I learned the exact day my mother left home to go to the hospital, when she got her blood test results. (She had leukaemia and would die two weeks later, I was seventeen months old). 

For a big thing like that, you would expect the transpersonal planets to make  heavy transits, but young as I was, they couldn’t be far away from their natal placements.

On that day there was a Mercury-Jupiter conjunction on the exact degree of my MC (27 degree Pisces) and a New Moon next to it, at 3 degree Aries, opposing my natal Moon in Libra. I expected a striking configuration when I knew the date… and there it was. 

Astrologers may not be able to master the language of the Great Mystery to the point of convincing everyone, but at times, we are amazed by striking synchronicities…

Jean-Marc Pierson, storyteller, astrologer.

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Two worlds, two minds, a fight: Mercury and Jupiter

Imagine you are a bird. You have two central preoccupations. 

One is picking berries or insects for food. You need to be precise. You can’t just pick around in a blur and hope to be lucky. You need a clear focus. Evaluation of distance, details… 

Your other central preoccupation is to be ready to escape.

Predators may attack from above, from below, from North, South, East or West. If your bird business coach has told you to “focus, focus, focus on the berries you deserve”  you’re dead. 

You need unfocused attention. You need a global perception of the world around you to notice when something moves. You may also notice other bushes with berries and make a mental note to go there next. 

Every time you focus on the berry you’re about to pick, you’re like an antelope drinking at the water hole. You may not see the lions waiting in ambush. You better be quick. You reverse to peripheral vision and unfocused attention, open to detect signs of suspicious activity, you pick another berry… you don’t want to miss the cat.  

These two modes of attention are expressions of the two cerebral hemispheres. Not only human brains have differentiated left and right cerebral hemispheres. 

I’ve been reading Ian McGilchrist’s book:  The Master and his emissary. For astrologers, this book can be renamed: “Jupiter and Mercury”. It’s a gold mine for understanding our two minds and the great divide between them.

Ian Mc Gilchrist is a neuroscientist, a psychiatrist and a philosopher. 

He starts his book saying: “Forget everything you believe you know about the right and the left brain”. 

His point is that the question of their difference is not “What are they doing?” but “How are they doing it?”

Both cerebral hemispheres are involved in whatever we do. What matters is that they are doing it in different ways. One way to look is efficient and practical: if you are a bird, it allows you to pick insects and berries; the other way allows you to know where you are and what’s going on.  

Mc Gilchrist borrows a little tale from Nietzsche to make his point and give the title to his book: there was a  wise and generous master who ruled a small but prosperous domain. His people grew in number, his domain became bigger. He couldn’t supervise everything himself anymore. He had to delegate his power and trust his emissaries.

However, the cleverest of his ministers betrayed his master’s trust. The emissary came to see himself as the master. He didn’t see the point of his master’s generosity. The domain became a tyranny, and eventually collapsed in ruins.

The emissary, according to Ian McGilchrist, is the left cerebral hemisphere, the one that has been called rational and logical. The master is the right cerebral hemisphere. This one is immersed in life as it flows. It sees the forest rather than the tree. For us, these two are Mercury and Jupiter.

Imagine. The Mercury of the bird has had enough of this habit of losing focus again and again. It could eat ten times as many berries if only it was able to increase its attention span. It despises itself for being such a dreamer. Cats are superstitions. God is a fairy tale. In this reality there are only twigs and berries. To be a winner, all you need is to be precise. Focus. Control. Never let go.  

Let’s leave birds alone. 

As humans, we have our own berries. Our science and technology make us the masters of the world. Nature is our slave. We are exhausting the earth. We abuse our own bodies. We are prisoners of our hyperactive minds. Sometimes we break down.

According to Ian McGilchrist, our modern/postmodern culture shares characteristics with schizophrenia, and schizophrenia with troubles observed when lesions in the right cerebral hemisphere gives the left cerebral hemisphere the monopoly of mental activity. 

Thanks Mercury, damned trickster. 

We can build computers but we don’t know who we are. 

Neuroscientists can’t explain consciousness.

The meaning of life is but the title of a collection of rejoicing absurdities by the Monty Pythons. 

We are lost, and we prefer not to think about it.  Keep busy.

On the astrological front, how many times have I come across students mentioning a particular placement entirely out of context and asking: “What does this mean exactly?” 

The word “exactly” is so typical of the demand of the berry picking worldview. It’s as if you were asking, “There is a slope, what does it mean exactly?” A slope doesn’t mean anything, and especially not “exactly”, out of the context of the mountain! Or maybe it’s the only slope you’ll find ten miles around?

If you’re riding a bicycle, your experience of it will be very different if you’re going uphill or downhill, and if you’re wondering whether to build your house there, it may be the same slope, but not the same life.  Every time there is a context to take into account.

With the emissary getting rid of the master, you may get excited to know that the slope is fifteen percent steep, but you have no idea whether you’re climbing a mountain, riding a bicycle downhill or choosing a terrain to build a home. 

This mental attitude is silly, but to talk about this silliness, I needed to use the slope as a metaphor, and you need your right brain to understand it. In this meaning-rich context, does it really matter if it’s fifteen percent rather than twelve? 

The Moon, the Sun, Cancer, Leo, Capricorn, the Eastern horizon… nothing means anything “exactly”.

Symbols are the ultimate way to think in pictures. They were not born from great minds like logic from Aristotle’s. They are not the result of conscious efforts to measure, classify, give clear definitions and formulate coherent theories. 

Symbolic language and analogical thinking are born from our direct experience of life. Like the fish of Pisces, we have been immersed in it for aeons. Our right brain is in touch with life as it flows, never twice the same river, but still knowable as it is. Our right brain registers a complex web of relationships evolving all around us, and within.

The psyche is a sea of images reflecting this intimate and direct knowledge.  It’s pre verbal, pre rational, pre intellectual. It’s like knowing air because we’re breathing. We may have no idea about the percentage of oxygen, but knowledge of what it does when we come back to the surface after some time swimming under the water. We have knowledge of the wind when it blows and of its power in our sails. The zodiac reflects this kind of knowledge.

To understand symbols and read charts, we need to let go of our berries, of our urges to grasp and hold, let go of our rational thinking if only for a moment, and just remember how we see and feel, when we are not thinking compulsively. 

What does the Rising Sun inspire us? How do we feel about rams, bulls or twins? What belongs to the ram family, what to the bull’s and what to the twin’s, in the world we are currently contemplating? 

Symbols have various meanings, some of them can be downright opposites. Fire may mean hell, but it may also mean love, violence, presence of God or cooking. Jupiter, the holistic mind, doesn't mind: nothing has to make sense out of a context. It’s not like 2 + 2, which is 4 in all cases and even in the absence of any case.  

Symbols are complex, seem paradoxical at times but are as familiar as being ourselves. Now, to what extent do we know ourselves?  

To understand, the way is contemplation. 

Becoming calm like the surface of a lake in the absence of wind.

Daydreaming, meditating…

Trying to walk in our ancestors’ shoes. A ram or a bull may mean more to a shepherd than to us. But we can imagine. 

Coming back to Mercury, asking questions like “Where is the ruler of the Ascendant? In what signs and houses are the luminaries? Any tight aspects to them? Any  planets conjunct angles in this chart? Where are the nodes and their rulers?...” 

Once the general architecture of a chart is seen, coming back to the Jupiterian mind. Beyond what we have learned… What images come to the surface? How do they interact in a fluid mind? It doesn’t matter if nothing is certain, letting imagination live is inviting inspiration. 

Inspiration may not come running like a dog to the word “treat”, we really need to let go of our fierce desire to control. 

 If we ask to Spirit, to invisible friends or to our own subconscious mind for help, we don’t command, we say “please”, and if we don’t forget the spirit of “thank you” for what is revealed, more may come another day. 

At the core, it’s divination. 

Jean-Marc Pierson

When I write about astrological symbols, my aim is to conjure up their spirit and inspire my readers to be able to do the same. Understanding the spirit is the deepest understanding. Cookbook definitions can only fall short of that.

When I teach, that’s what I wish students to be able to do.

To learn more, here is the way to the homepage

Thank you!

PS: you can listen to my French accent on YouTube!

Taurus Spirit.

Let's  conjure up the spirit of Taurus. 

Abracadabra, As above so below, the material world is a mirror. The things we see with our eyes are reflections of the psychic dimension. 

Some of these reflections have more evocative power than others. They are symbols. They  bridge the visible and the invisible. 

The zodiac signs are such bridges. Taurus, as grounded as it looks, is no exception. 

The picture of the bull conjures up the vision of herds of cattle and green pastures. Imagine we’re still living in a pre industrial, agricultural society. Taurus shows wealth and fertility. 

Do you see the thriving bull? The earth underneath is moist. There are worms under the grass. There is life. In the Northern Hemisphere, where astrology is from, when the Sun is in Taurus, it’s the middle of spring. There are flowers and showers. We can almost feel the etheric dimension nourishing the material plane. 

The bull is fleshy, almost juicy. Its mass is impressive. Sometimes it demonstrates his power: he charges because you walked into his territory. However, most of the time, he looks like an animal Buddha, standing still in the present moment. 

Reading this post on YouTube.

Taurus is a sign with great focus on the conditions of incarnation (a word which literally means: becoming meat). 

Meat is a metaphor we can use in various circumstances. For a musician, the meat is the repertoire. It is the quantity of music he or she is able to perform. 

For someone who likes to dress up, the meat is hanging in the wardrobe. Good taste, elegance, style are hanging in the air, to manifest on the material plane, these qualities need Taurus stuff hanging concretely in a wardrobe. 

A philosophical concept is "Substance". 

Taurus accumulates. At the beginning of life, after being born  we soon start suckling and putting on weight. Before incarnation we were as thin as spirit in the wind. Now our mother is proud of our three or four kilograms of baby. There will be more. 

Taurus wants quality. It’s ruled by Venus. However, the Great Mother Goddess knows that quantity comes first. There must be something rather than nothing, and taking it from there, the more beautiful and nice smelling the better. 

Taurus is fixed. Taurus people have a reputation for stubbornness. This is not rigidity but inertia, the power of mass. 

Let’s zoom out. There is a herd around the bull, there are pastures, fields and meadows, a little house, or a big one, more cattle, sheep, goats, horses, hens, pigs, wealth! 

You need a bull to mean wealth. 

A cow could belong to a poor family.

As a storyteller, I know that once upon a time, there was a poor widow who lived with her son, a little boy, and all they had was a cow. She would graze along the road grass that belonged to nobody. Thanks to this cow the widow could give at least some milk to her son... 

You would not have, once upon a time, a widow who would have only a bull. Gender identity confusion dissipates very quickly when you try to milk a bull. No, once upon a time, if you have a bull, you have a herd, and you own land, pastures, fields, animals, you are wealthy. You can praise the Great Goddess who appeared, accompanied by bulls, at the beginning of the Neolithic in the history of humanity. 

The time of being hunters and gatherers was over. Food was domesticated. 

Come back next year: the bull will be bigger. The herd will be bigger. There will be more gold buried under the fireplace - or money in the bank.

As you can see there is a lot Taurus can tell without the help of mythology. But I've nothing against ancient tales! 

The zodiac signs are from Babylon, and we know Greek mythology better, it doesn't matter, various streams can end up flowing into the same sea. 

Minos had a deal with Poseidon. The God sent a magnificent bull out of the sea as a sign meant to tell Minos' brothers that he, Minos, was the one who should sit on the throne. 

Had Poseidon sent an ugly cricket or a skinny toad, the brothers wouldn't have been convinced. A magnificent bull, on the other hand... If a god sends one for you, you don't need to repeat positive affirmations to boost your self-esteem anymore. You're the king. The bull means value. 

Minos loved the bull so much he couldn't part with it. He was supposed to sacrifice it back to Poseidon. That was the deal! He gave another magnificent bull from his collection instead, but this other piece wasn't as worthy as the original. The God was insulted.

Poseidon's revenge was to inflict on Minos' wife, Pasifae, to desire the bull as much as Minos did, and even more. We only need to blur a little bit the pictures, stop to believe that Minos and his wife are two different characters - they are just two phases of the same energy.  We all know loving something a little bit too much, alcohol, food, money, sex, attention, weed or whatever... We may get addicted. The more we give in to temptation, the more we crave. That's Neptune's revenge for missing the point. 

Let’s question family history to understand the addiction. A white bull, wasn't it the form Zeus chose to seduce and abduct Europa? 

And then they had children, Minos was one of them. 

Now, the story repeats itself, amplified to grotesque proportions. Pasifae, disguised as a cow had sex with the bull, ha ha ha, the next phase of the same energy comes as her son, the Minotaur, a monster, half human half beast, locked up and lost in a labyrinth. Relationship status: it's complicated. 

If Minos had remembered that he was Zeus' son, that he was born from the White Bull, he would have seen Poseidon's present as meaning: "Remember who you are, son of Zeus and Europa, you, fruit of the union of divine essence and mortal flesh!" 

His sin, his stupidity, his trauma response if you prefer, was to want to have the bull, as if he was not it already. Had he remembered his own nature, he would have seen Poseidon's present as a mere reflection of himself. He wouldn't have felt the need to possess this reflection, and his feminine side wouldn't have been possessed in the process. He would have sacrificed the bull effortlessly. Reflections belong to Poseidon. Neptune rules illusions. 

We are gods. To handle our own flesh, we better not forget who we are.

We don’t have to be possessed by the desire to possess. We can sing instead, the joy of being who we are, incarnated!

Jean-Marc Pierson

Thank you for your attention!

You can now visit the homepage to learn about Magical Doors (my book), various kinds of readings I offer, or contact me to start a class.

There is also an Astrology Retreat in Turkey planned for October.

Children in the birth chart

With my Mum!

When we say "children" we automatically think: "The fifth house!" and we look there.

However, the fifth house is not the house of children only, and not only the fifth house means something about children.

I'll start talking about other indicators that have to do with children. 

Jupiter is a traditional significator for children. Jupiter is exalted in the sign of Cancer, sign of fecundity, Jupiter is about expansion and growth. Families, tribes and nations grow by having children - and it is generally considered a blessing. You can see the connections. 

The thing with astrology, and with symbols in general, is that their meanings have no boundaries. You can never say something like: the Moon is your mother; the Moon says everything about your mother and is only about your mother.

Symbols work the other way round. The Moon is mother, a mother by definition has children so the Moon symbolises children and childhood as well. Children are emotional, sensitive and have a lot of needs, the Moon symbolises emotions, sensitivity and needs... Crowds are emotional entities, the Moon symbolises crowds as well and so on...

So, the Moon, between quite a few other things, symbolises children. 

 I knew a woman who had five children - which is quite exceptional nowadays in Western countries. Her Moon was very prominent, conjunct the MC in the sign of Cancer. She also had Venus, ruler of her Ascendant, in Cancer, and a very tight Cancer Moon- Taurus Mars sextile. Taurus is also a fertile sign; the Moon is exalted in Taurus. As a general rule, Water signs and Taurus are the fertile signs.

This woman had also Jupiter in the first house, and conjunct the North Node. So globally we had various placements  emphasised, which all have in common that they may mean children.

When we look at charts, placements say nothing precise, we only get clues. We are like Sherlock Holmes; we look at all these clues and if we are trying to figure out a story in which they all make sense together... 

So, for children, we can get clues from the Fifth house, which includes the sign on the cusp of the house, the placement of the ruler of the house and of course planets in the house, if there are. Along with the Fifth House, Jupiter, the Moon, the sign Cancer, and also the Fourth house, naturally associated with the Moon and meaning private life, home and family.

If someone has a strong focus in this house, home and family is likely to be a strong focus in their life. It's not a hundred percent sure, as all houses have more than one simple meaning, and not all meanings have to manifest.  

But it's very likely. So, unless this Fourth House is very challenged by difficult aspects and placements, a busy fourth house also suggests family life and therefore children. Then, more about them in the fifth.

We can also look at the Sun and the sign Leo. A reason for that is: modern astrology sees various expressions of the same archetypal energies through every planet, the sign they rule and the house naturally associated with it.

So, if the Fifth House has to do with children, Leo and the Sun must have some correlation to children as well. However, Leo is not considered a fertile sign like Cancer or Taurus. It’s the opposite, Leo, along with Virgo and Gemini, are considered sterile by tradition. Leo’s symbolic associations rather take us to showing, and children need to be shown a lot of things. A parent is likely to say often: "Look at me!" "Listen to me!". That's not being egocentric, that's education.

Leo is the sign of mid summer. In temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere, where astrology is from, it's a hot and dry time. You don't sow in Leo, but you reap. Children are fruits aren't they?

Let’s sum up: for questions about children, we look at the Fifth house, and also the Fourth, to Jupiter and the Moon, and the sign of Cancer… 

Then the particular signs, houses, aspects involved can give indications. For instance my father has Jupiter in Gemini and the ninth house. His three children have settled abroad, including me, writing and recording in a foreign language - Gemini - about knowledge and worldviews - Sagittarius.

Let's focus a little bit more on the fifth house now. 

It's the house of children. Children play. The fifth house is the house of fun and entertainment. Not only our children play and have fun in the fifth, but ourselves as well. We have a playful child within!

Children are spontaneously creative. Give them paper and colour pencils, they make drawings, they don't complain about not knowing how to draw. The fifth house is the house of creativity and self-expression.

Self-expression can be artistic, painting, playing music and so on, however, it's not limited to arts. The way we dress up, the way we talk and whatever we do because that's exciting and great fun is self-expression. Even creating a business can be. Then the business owner says "this business is my baby, I made it".

Our children are our creations, to some extent. We made them, and then we have to educate them.

The fifth house is also the house of education. I remember someone who had a stellium in the fifth house and no children. She was a teacher. She spent her days standing in front of an audience of children and showing them. The fifth house is even the house of speculation. I think this shows that speculating is a game, a gamble rather than real work.

And the fifth house is also the house of romance. When we are in love, we are like children, we don't pretend. We show who we are. A wonderful romance is the meeting of two selves free to express who they really are.

So once again, there is more to the fifth house than just children, but children are a central theme in fifth house interpretation.

If someone has children, and wonders about questions about education, no hesitation, there are valuable clues in the fifth house.

Jean-Marc

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Why is there water in Aquarius and Capricorn?

Saturn rules over Capricorn, which is an Earth sign, and over Aquarius, associated with the element Air. However these two signs have Water as part of their symbolism. How come?

The symbol for Capricorn is a Sea-Goat. The front is goat, the back is fishtail. This suggests a transition from fish to goat, from sea to mountain, from Water to Earth. It’s a story of becoming dry.

Everything is relative. The story may not be about becoming absolutely dry, but moving towards the dry end of the wet-dry spectrum.

Psychologically, this dryness is the dryness of the child growing up. In the beginning, in Cancer, the world is all emotional dependency, mother-child bond, the protection of the family. In the womb we were completely immersed in Water. When we were a baby, we were still swimming in very emotional waters… Growing up is somehow drying up! Like the goat we learn to climb our own mountain without being carried by mother and the flow. We learn to be self contained and pursue our own goals, in spite of the contrary moods…

Now, the rulership of Saturn over Aquarius, the Water Bearer, often representing Water pouring down, seems to contradict the idea of Saturn being dry, or drying. Aquarius is an Air sign.

Even without knowing Greek mythology it’s easy to connect the Air of Aquarius with the sky. In the air, the water bearers are the clouds. The ruler of the opposite sign, Leo, is the Sun - which, during daytime, can only be obscured by clouds. Uranus, the modern ruler of Aquarius, happens to be named after the God of the Sky.

Water in Air and pouring down is rain. Here, the action of Saturn is condensation. Saturn always increases density: with this energy, Water comes out of Air and Earth out of Water.

This is not modern physics! This is a language of symbols. Replace Air by “gaseous”, Water by “liquid” and Earth by “solid”, and think of Saturn as cold and pressure.

Rain is cold. Air is considered hot according to the traditional elemental qualities, this shows how relative these notions are: Air is definitely hotter than Water. Air has insulating properties. At the same temperature, we feel Water colder than Air. Air can be felt as cold, especially in Winter when it rains and winds, but by contrast with Earth and Water, Air is hot.

Air is a symbol of mental space. Fleeting thoughts and ideas are weightless and invisible like the wind. With Saturn, our mental life becomes consistent and coherent. Our ideas may become fixed or at least organised into systems - theories, plans or ideologies.

Saturn gives form, Saturn shapes: In Air, it is the wind blowing on the water, making waves, as the glyph of Aquarius represents. Waves are visible manifestations of the invisible wind’s action. Our ideas shape our realities.

The wave is a symbol of individuality. We are waves, and we are the ocean. We are made by the wind, and we are the wind (but we have forgotten).

Now you may wonder. Is Aquarius, the water bearer, a symbol of the clouds, or is it the wind that makes waves? The answer is: both.

Symbols do not obey the “either…or” demands of rational definitions of concepts. Symbols don’t separate, they unite. The wind carries clouds, clouds carry water, the context is the sky, the symbol is the whole picture.

I hope you enjoyed this Watery ballad through the lands of Saturn!

Jean-Marc Pierson

I am an astrologer, I have screenshot a few testimonies by happy people here and for contact and what’s on offer, it’s the homepage you can jump to now. Thanks for being here!

Moon in Aries

Once I saw a hen charging a dog. It was a young and  playful dog, it was three times as big as the hen. Behind the bird was a string of cute little chicken. Mother-hen doubled up in volume and charged. I was so impressed. The dog ran away.

Since I got this vivid picture as an answer to the question of what a Moon in Aries is like, I can’t see anything else. Yes, Moon is mother, but not only, and even though a mother hen charging like a ram to protect her progeny is a wonderful illustration, there must be more to an Aries Moon than the odd heroic moment…  

I know a woman with an Aries Moon. She  doesn’t look like it though. Her own mother had an Aries Moon among a few other Aries placements. The daughter must have inherited something of her primary role model. 

I don’t know her well enough to see far beyond her Pisces rising, so I am not able to dissect her privacy for the sake of astrological knowledge.  The Moon is on the private side, that’s my point.

If her Sun wasn’t conjunct the Ascendant, her Aries Moon in the first house would be much more apparent. but even an Aries Moon can’t steal the show to a Rising Sun. 

Some people wear their moon on their sleeves, others don’t. 

She told me she was embracing the Aries Mooness through her Pisces veil! f you’re curious, here she is.

Now, let’s leave her alone and let the symbols speak. 

Aries mothers aren’t constantly charging potentially dangerous individuals or animals to protect their little treasures.

There are times when they turn towards them and say things like: 

“Look in my eyes and tell me. What did you just say? I want to hear it again.” 

There is no getting away with it.

“This is not acceptable, do you understand why? Say it!”

Or

“But there is nothing to be ashamed of, child, come here, we need to talk about it!” 

Or

“Do you know how important you are, for me? You are my child. I love you.”

You don’t have to be good at guessing with Aries!

Moon is mother and more. Moon is also family and early environment: she is mother plus father (hopefully), plus siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and even neighbours, if the fences are not too high between the grasses.

There may be many opportunities to literally bang into one another with the Moon in Aries. Expect energy, running, climbing, jumping and crawling. 

Expect Can-you-do-its?  And Bet-you-I-cans! Followed by First Aid kits.

Expect the opposite of avoidance when it comes to conflicts.

The Moon describes our early environment. We are plants with roots in her soil.

Now, we must take the rulers into account to interpret planets. The sign feels the state of its ruler. If Mars is winning, Aries is winning, and the Moon in Aries benefits from a winning environment.

Is Mars, ruler of the Aries Moon, strong and healthy or banging into a wall? Does he have to fight a hard battle to break through a carapace?

We usually imagine Mars with a sword or a spear, but a shield is a weapon as well. Not all people with Aries placements appear fearless.

Is courage the victory over fear? Aries doesn’t mean victory, it means the fight. It’s not won in advance. Courage is fighting the fight, no more no less.

Mars in Aries may be a flamboyant warrior. It may also be a little sprout fighting its way between stones and clumps to appear as a new little plant, so cute, just above ground level. Hop! Grazed by a rabbit. Starting again. Beginnings are tough…

Mars in Aries may be the small boy playing with the big boys. He will look more like a stereotypical Mars in Aries when he is back with the small ones, but he would rather not.

It’s the subjective experience that matters, not what other people think.

Back to the Moon. In the beginning (of the post)  she was mother, then family,  and environment… She also means the child within us. 

There is more than one child in our inner gallery of subpersonalities. The Moon is the inner baby. It’s vulnerable,  emotional and needy. In Aries he may be loud. 

Later baby will be told to grow up. The Moon rules over instincts and emotions, they are strong in Aries. Have you got a heavy Saturnian lid weighing on your impulses? Bang bang bang! There is something powerful inside that wants to exist!

Imagination belongs to the Moon. In Aries, I let you imagine at what speed images may come and go.  

Imagination is doing mentally what children and artists do when they draw. 

With paper and pencils as a metaphor for a Moon thing comes astrological embarrassment: creativity and self expression are of the Sun, on principle.

 Reality is always playing tricks onto our labels and categories, because in reality, all the energies are always collaborating. When children and artists are drawing, the accent is on creativity, therefore the Sun rules.

 But when the process is internal, we call it imagination; the Moon rules, because the focus is now on the quality of the paper and pencils,

The Moon is receptive;  the quality of the paper is a fitting symbol.

A Pisces Moon may have a watercolour paper pad. A Libra Moon, a pastel paper pad. As for Aries… scrap paper!

Something fit to receive first sketches, rough drafts and unprocessed strokes of genius.

Drawing made of three lines, only three, but straight to the point: imagine this as a kind of imagination.

Let there be sparks! 

That’s enough. What’s next? 

Do you want me to read out loud? I’m on YouTube as well.

You can visit the homepage of this website to learn everything about what I offer as an astrologer, my book etc.

Another way to look at houses

Have you ever wondered how come the 12th house, traditionally called the “House of Hidden Things” –or of “Hidden Enemies” is found above the horizon, in broad daylight?

If, in your chart, the Sun is in the First House, which is traditionally called the House of Self and has a lot to do with how we appear… It was still dark when you were born.

As soon as the Sun crosses the Ascendant, there is daylight but we’re back in the House of hidden things. Strange inversion, don’t you think?

If you are using whole house as your preferred system, you still have the house of hidden things in broad daylight, and at least part of your first house under the horizon.

There is another way to look at what’s going on with the houses which makes more sense.

If you have planets in the First House, what matters is that these planets are about to rise. This gives them super power. If the Sun is in your First House, it was still dark when you were born, but just wait a few minutes, two hours maximum. Your life started with a Sunrise.

If you were born just after the Sun rose, you missed the train. You’ll have to wait the whole day and night before the Sun rises for the first time in your life.

I have not found this way of explaining in astrology manuals. However you can see by yourself that astronomically what I am describing is the case, and I am going to demonstrate that this view is entirely consistent with tradition.

As I've read Deborah Houlding I know that the houses were numbered after the watches of the Egyptian astronomers: it is the order in which stars or planets placed in them become visible at the Eastern Horizon.

Planets placed in angular Houses, that is the first, tenth, seventh and fourth, and especially near the angles themselves, Ascendant, Descendant, MC or IC, are especially powerful.

At every angle, something changes. As a general principle, in life, when something changes, something powerful is happening. Remaining the same rarely makes news.

In the diurnal cycle, the most powerful change happens on the Eastern Horizon: that’s where everything and the Sun appear. Light comes from the East and light is power. The Ascendant is the place of greatest power. The Rising Sign has always been given prominence, even over the MC.

There are three kinds of houses.  In many quadrant systems, the Angular houses are placed just before the angles – from the point of view of a clockwise motion. If the houses were considered independently of how what’s in them moves, why would the first house be considered angular and not the twelfth?

The Succedent Houses come after the angular ones. Succedent mean that they follow, like in the word “succession".

 Planets and signs in the Second House for instance, will be second to rise, after whatever is placed in the First House.

  After the Succedent Houses come the Cadent Houses.

Traditional astrology says that planets in these Houses have the weakest impact. They are considered unfavourable.

The word “Cadent” comes from the Latin “Cadere” which means “Falling”. Cadent Houses are falling away from the angles. How things move is what matters.

The twelfth house is falling away from the Ascendant. Or, to be precise, what is contained in the twelfth house, is falling away from the Ascendant.

When you call a team of race horses with little men on their backs a "stable" it is a figure of speech called "metonymy". I can say that houses are moving. They are like stables.

 Cadent houses are houses where we learn according to Arroyo.  In the Ninth House, for instance, we are seeking the Truth, we are trying to see the Big Picture of Life through religious beliefs, knowledge or philosophy…It often starts with travels and explorations. It’s a really interesting house, definitely worth living, but philosophers are rarely kings.

There is more power in the 10th house, from the point of view of down to earth life, where social status is more important than epiphanies. Otherwise, why would this house, traditionally called the House of God, aka the Almighty, not be the most powerful?

We can allow a certain orb. A planet in the ninth house but conjunct the MC still benefits from MC power – I would interpret it as if in the 10th, with a 9th twist.  

 

 The houses are divisions of the day

They are about what manifests at the most immediate and concrete level.

If I ask you: what are you usually doing in the morning? You’re going to talk about your daily routine, getting up, doing some exercises, stretching or meditation, having breakfast, what kind of breakfast, going to work, how far is work… Your answer will be precise and full of details.

But if I ask you: What are you doing in autumn? You will talk about your life in much more general terms. Going for long walks and picking up mushrooms in the forest for instance. You’ll talk about a general atmosphere.

The difference between placements in houses or in signs is similar.

Houses and signs are not equivalent but there are meaningful. correspondences.

I find important to insist: words such as: succedent, cadent, ascendant, rising, descendant, culminating  are words that describe movement, not fixed placement. Moreover, houses are numbered with ordinal numbers (First, Second, Third etc. not One, Two, Three...)

An argument used by traditionalists who wants to deny correspondences between houses and signs is that the houses derive their meaning from the primary motion of the heavenly bodies from East to West, daily and clockwise, when the secondary motion of the planets through the signs goes in opposite direction, from Aries to Pisces, yearly and anticlockwise.

If you understand primary motion as the Sun going through the houses in reverse order, climbing through the twelfth, eleventh and tenth houses in the morning etc. you don't want to superimpose signs and houses, and you exclaim: "Why would the house in the middle of the sky correspond to the tenth sign! This doesn't make sense!"

Now if you understand primary motion as the content of the houses going through the sky in the order of their numeration, you see that what is in the tenth house starts on the summit, will quickly decline all the way down to the bottom of the sky (IC) before eventually rising in tenth position in the order of succession.

Sure, the meaning of the houses is partially derived from the daily motion of the Sun through the sky, especially when we consider the angles, where the Sun rises, culminates and sets.

However, this doesn’t cancel the validity of any other consideration. It can be this, and that. The meaning of the houses is derived from various point of views. In the known history of astrology, the aspects the houses form with the Ascendant also contribute to their meaning, along with the concept of derived houses and the joys of the planets.

There were more than one way to explain meaning, so why not taking into account the meaning of the words used to qualify the houses by tradition? Four houses are cadent, they fall away from the angles. Four succeed to angular houses, they are numbered as first, second, third… Why not accept to see there is a pattern of development from First to Twelfth?

Furthermore, when astrologers consider transits to a natal chart, they can’t ignore that the houses are activated in the order of their numeration.

Once you have two wheels, both made up of twelve sections, both divided into four quadrants by four angles, both expressing a basic cycle of life, the year and the day, both unfolding in the same order, from Aries to Pisces or from first to twelfth, it becomes impossible, unless we are of the mindset of worshiping old scriptures as the ultimate word about everything, not to think of a correspondence.

Isn’t the law of analogy, fundamental to esoteric thinking? Denying it is jumping out of Tradition at high speed!

Analogy is not equivalence. If there has been a confusion which ended up with people believing that the Sun in Gemini or the Sun in the third house meant the same thing, it’s because of this eternal sin against intelligence which consists of taking metaphors literally.

The third house may be an concrete expression of the spirit of Gemini, this concrete expression will have the qualities of the sign and the planets placed in the third house. The ruler of the third house will be the ruler of the sign on the cusp of the house. What’s going on with Gemini and Mercury may co-signify third house stuff in the chart, as a complement of information.

Here is a snapshot - Chris Brennan sharing, from his book about Hellenistic Astrology, in an episode of his podcast about Astrology and Hermeticism, a summary of the meaning of the Houses attributed to Hermes Trismegistus himself mentioned in Thrascillus'tablets.

Look at the 12th house: One of the meanings is "pre-ascension."

What is in the twelfth house seems to mean what it means, not as much for being above the horizon than for having ascended before the ascendant. What else could that mean?

As the saying goes: "It's always darkest before the dawn".

Thank you! 

Jean-Marc

To learn more about me as an astrologer, storyteller, writer and about a possible retreat in Turkey, visit my homepage

The Cross of Matter matters

If you were born in Kiruna, in the north of Sweden, and Cancer or Capricorn were rising, your cross of matter looks like it has been rolled over by a truck. 

As you know, Ascendant, Descendant, MC and IC are the four angles. Together they form the Cross of Matter.

However, in many charts, it doesn’t look like a proper cross, with all the right angles at the right places, unless you were born when 0 degree Aries or Libra were rising.

Let’s call the  Ascendant “East”, the Descendant “West", the MC “South” (in the Northern Hemisphere) and the IC “North”. 

This flattened cross of matter  looks very wrong. East and North, West and South never collide like that! 

The MC is not exactly South actually. The MC is where the Sun peaks in its daily course. It’s in the sky. When you’re looking South, you’re not looking upwards but towards the horizon. 

When the Sun peaks, it shows South anyway,  even in Kiruna. 

If we wanted a chart aligned with the horizon of our daily lives,  we should grab the MC-IC axis and force it,  with energy and determination, to square the Ascendant Descendant axis. (Imagine your chart is a disc made of rubber and the axis are rods of metal) 

If we did that, we would have North, South, East and West properly placed, but the zodiac would have become distorted. Some signs would appear very elongated, and others compressed, poor things.  

That’s a question of perspective. 

Diagrams often represent the plane of the ecliptic horizontal (even though horizontal should be for the horizon) and the earth, turning around the Sun in the ecliptic, tilted on its axis.

Wherever you are, your horizon is tangent to the earth and turning with you as the earth rotates on its axis…  Try to visualise this  if you can, and flatten the picture to get a chart! 

Forgive my geometry in the air. 

All this to say: to deepen our understanding of the angles, we can reflect on the symbolic meanings of the cardinal directions. 

If you were a prince of this world, you would want the front of your palace facing South.

On days of celebrations, you would appear on a balcony, facing the crowd. The Sun would shine on you, enhancing your glory, from behind the crowd. 

If your balcony was facing North, it wouldn’t work that well. The Sun would dazzle the crowd and you would look insignificant. 

The MC is a place of power, of honours and achievements, or simply the place where we are seen by many. If you are the drunk of the village, that’s the role you’re playing, as a member of society. Being drunk is what you’re showing to the crowd, from your own little South facing balcony. 

When you’re facing South, North has your back. You remember your first appearance on this balcony. You felt proud and intimidated. Your father, behind you, laid his hands on your shoulders. Or maybe it was your mother. And maybe you were a princess. Anyway, you didn’t happen out of the blue. You felt you were a product of the land, the heir of a family. 

 If you are the drunk of the village, it may have been a different story indeed, but who knows about that?

Bear with me, I’ll tell you about East and West soon, but I feel like inflicting a bit more air geometry on you first. If you can’t bear it, just skip the next paragraphs! 

The plane of the ecliptic is where the Sun seems to go round, as seen from Earth. The ecliptic is flat like a very thin pancake. 

However, we always talk about the zodiacal belt. Imagine a belt surrounding the pancake. 

Now, imagine standing on earth and extending an arm eastward at Sunrise. You have the power to extend your arm horizontally so far that the tip of your finger reaches the zodiacal belt. 

If you do that on the day of the Equinox at sunrise, the tip of your finger touches the heart of the Sun. It is exactly East.  

But if you extend your magical arm eastward at the summer solstice, the Sun rises further North on the horizon. 

The tip of your finger touches one side of the zodiacal belt. You’ll touch the other side in Capricorn. 

Now imagine that this belt is so wide that it’s actually a cylinder. In the middle of it, the pancake. The zodiac signs are like vertical stripes on the cylinder. 

That’s what happens in far Northern or Southern latitude. The Earth is round, so the closer you get to the poles, the more your horizon makes a wide angle with the ecliptic. 

As the earth is turning, your East pointing finger is going to go through some signs obliquely, almost vertically. It will take a very long time before reaching the next sign. But a bit later, your finger will move more horizontally, and move very quickly from one sign to the next. 

There would be more to visualise, but we have enough to understand why charts like the ones in Kiruna look the way they do:they respect the proportions of the Heavens, but the view of our own horizon gets distorted. 

However, it’s important to keep in mind that we live, day in day out, at the centre of this cross of matter, and that it is, indeed, a proper cross. It’s our orientation. The meaning of the angles is tied to what the four cardinal directions mean. 

East is the most fundamental of the four directions. East shows the difference between being there or not being there at all. 

The Sun appears on the Eastern horizon, and like a new Sun we appear for the first time when we are born, naked.

There is no costume for the ceremony on the South facing balcony yet. The only clothing we’re wearing is this naked body. 

If you were a princess of this world, you would want your bedroom’s window facing East. You would rise from your bed and open the curtains to salute the rising Sun. You would not try to impress the Sun, being just who you are in your pyjamas. Then you would turn to your wardrobe and decide on how you will appear today, to your loved ones and to  whoever else.

East in the chart is you. The rest is interactions. 

West is beautiful. You would want a reception room there, to hold parties starting at the end of some days, or to sit with only one significant other and watch the sunsets, until death do us part. The Western horizon means death as well, not only other people. Opposed to East, it’s where we disappear. And opposed to who we are, it’s where others come into play. Not any others, the room is not big enough for the whole world to come. Those we invite, consciously or not, those who are attracted by our vibe, mirrors, opponents, partners… 

Because it’s annoying to get death inviting itself along with other people in the reception room, we pushed it away, to the eighth house, originally “the beginning of death”. The Sun is in the eighth house in mid afternoon, a time when shadows start becoming  longer. 

There are many house systems but there is only one cross of matter. The four directions are powerful places. Whatever is found near the angles of a chart plays an essential role in our life story. 

Jean-Marc Pierson , storyteller, astrologer.

Would you like me to read your chart? Taking a one to one class? Or Join a small group for a five sessions cycle? Visit my homepage and contact me.

Jupiter in Aries: a leap of faith. Featuring Saturn in Scorpio.

I threw the Astrodice, asking: “What could I write about now?” and I got Jupiter, Aries, and the First House. 

I had been struggling with Saturn in Scorpio and feeling more and more depressed in the process. 

I was thinking of the old Latin phrase:

 “Omnes secant, ultima necat” found on ancient sundials. 

“All take something away from you, the last one kills you.” 

Every single hour does that. 

Saturn is time, and it meant also death or tombstone before Pluto grabbed all the morbidity for himself in the name of modernity. 

I was thinking of skeletons and of the pirate flag, I was thinking of replacing the skull that means “danger of death” by a scorpion on high voltage electrical transformers or bottles of chemicals…

I was thinking of the vanity of the aspiration of writers, artists or other wannabe great men to beat death with a masterpiece (if I am dead at the time of your reading this, thank you) and of the sexual tension that the scorpion’s tail evokes so well, the purpose of which being also to beat death by passing on genes and property, but also to give it, as the ultimate end of every new life. But sometimes, even Saturn finds it difficult to get hard. To have an erection, you need to relax…  

I was thinking of Saturn doing Saturn with extreme intensity, of weasels who would not let go of the throat of a prey, even whilst being bludgeoned to death by a furious farmer…

I was thinking  of someone I know who has been working so hard over the last decade that she built what might well become an empire, starting from scratch.

I was thinking of geisha mastering the art of eliciting fantasies and desire with such an iron grip on themselves, do they ever feel pleasure I wonder?... 

I didn’t find the way to put all these evocations of Saturn in Scorpio into words, even though I just did it, but before I started writing this, I had given up, thrown the astrodice wondering what to write about, and I got Jupiter, Aries, and First House.

Then, I pushed all the contents of my mind out in one go. I was talking about Saturn in Scorpio, but I was doing Jupiter in Aries. Aries is a go go go let’s go energy! 

And now,  I’m done with it! Enough of Saturn in Scorpio, there may be dots left, connect them yourself if you feel like it, or let’s move on before it becomes boring! Let’s talk about Jupiter in Aries, now! 

• Knock knock!

• Who’s there? 

• Jupiter in Aries! Do you believe in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? 

• Oh no! Not you again! 

It takes some courage to take your Bible and your human fear of rejection to people’s homes, and to insist. 

This Jupiter in Aries is not the best it could be though. Yes, it does take action, like a good little soldier, on matters of faith, but is it good faith really? 

• It’s all written in the Book! 

Silly Jupiter, why do you believe in Mercury? 

It is written that  “In the beginning was the Word”, but which word was the Word exactly? Was it the word “Word” which was there in the beginning? 

All these stories are supposed to be inspiring, to make us feel something, to stimulate our intuition, not to be taken literally! 

• But if God is love (and it’s true, because it’s written here) do you think he would abandon us without giving us a user manual?

A user manual? Oh my God, this Jupiter has definitely been hypnotised by Mercury. And then it stumbled into Mars’ energy field, aka Aries, and couldn’t help moving forward fanatically.

Ian Mc Gilchrist, neuropsychiatrist and philosopher, makes the point that our Western culture suffers from a predominance of a left brain approach to perceive the world, to the expense of the essential, holistic, metaphorical, intuitive way of the right brain. His work is huge. As it happens, the key words and themes associated with the left brain are those astrologers assign to Mercury, and those associated with the right brain are typical of Jupiter. In his book “The Master and his Emissary” Ian Mac Gilchrist borrows the metaphorical story Niestzsche used of a master who his betrayed by his emissary. The master has no choice but trust him; the emissary takes the power but hasn’t wisdom and understanding. This book is about 500 pages and this was just a short paragraph. It is behind my saying that Jupiter has been hypnotised by Mercury in the mind of people who believe in religious texts literally, a tendency which is actually present in our whole culture. We believe in science, logic and reason beyond reason. Jupiter has become hypnotised by Mercury.

A healthy Jupiter takes a leap of faith, from common sense and reason to intuition of a higher order. In the sacred Books, Jupiter reads between the lines. It understands how words betray and reveal at the same time. Jupiter is understanding. There is an ineffable reality...

In matters of faith, someone with Jupiter in Aries will be quicker than anyone to to get it, and then is likely to act on it passionately! 

Now, everyone has Jupiter in their chart, but not everyone leaps from ordinary to mystical experience, whether at the speed of Aries or not. 

However, we all make similar leaps at all times. The left brain may have imposed its values as predominant, we can’t do without the right brain altogether. We can’t have a mental life without both Mercury and Jupiter.

As an example, let’s read a comic book. I’m French, to me the summit of the art is the adventures of Asterix and Obelix. 

Before I make the point, a quick digression: in these books we see the roman legions expanding what would later become the roman empire through military conquest. Mars in Aries is a single warrior, Jupiter in Aries brings cohorts of them. They march on in good order, under the command of their officers. 

Organisation belongs to Jupiter (and enforcement to Saturn). The Eagle, symbol of the king of the gods and of Rome stretches its wings over the Roman legions.

Jupiter in Aries could be a high ranking officer (or mean that you come across as someone who could be one, if you have it in your First House). This placement is likely to be an enthusiastic community organiser, not to say bossy.

In the comics, Asterix and Obelix win against the Romans every time they meet them, thanks to the magic potion prepared by Panoramix the Druid, but that’s not historical truth… 

Back to my point. How do Mercury and Jupiter work together when we read a comic book?

Mercury sees what is in the book, literally, that is a succession of fixed panels separated by white space. Speech balloons are hanging above the characters.

But our experience and our pleasure, as readers, is nothing like a succession of fixed panels separated by white spaces.. With Jupiter, we link them mentally. We create a mental world in which they are alive, walking, fighting, laughing. They move, they make noise. We rejoice. There is more in our mind than on the paper.

There has been a leap from the communicated material to the experience of a world. We trust we get what the authors suggest. We do that even more when we read novels. Mercury is only half of the mind. Jupiter puts everything together, and we understand what’s going on.

In everyday life, we are constantly turning the data we get from the world through our senses into our lived experience of reality.

In lectures about perception I attended at university, I learned that people born blind who have eye surgery and see for the first time don’t see a stable world with objects and people easy to identify. In the beginning, they experience something like visual chaos. The brain, or the mind, has to process all the visual input before they can see a stable world.

Our perceptions are built.

This fact is also demonstrated by asking to subjects to wear glasses that makes them see the world upside down. After some time of dizziness, they end up seeing the world right - and then, they see it upside down when they take the glasses off!

The world we see is higher knowledge to the extent that there is more to it than what our eyes meet.

The mystery of what happens when our consciousness translates nerve impulses in the brain into, for instance, the sight of vivid colours is a spiritual experience. There are no colours in our grey matter. They belong to what astrologers associate with Jupiter. It’s higher knowledge.

In practice, when we interpret Jupiter, we can say it’s our mind. It’s how we know and understand. How we integrate the world brings about how we integrate ourselves to the world. Our understanding becomes our attitudes. Liz Greene says that Jupiter can act as a surrogate Sun. In Aries, Jupiter is likely to be quick to understand, quick to embark on new explorations, assertive in matters of opinions, ideas or beliefs…

Jupiter is a civilising energy.

The story of humanity could be summarised as a series of attempts to escape the state of nature to get a better life. We take a leap of faith from nature to culture, so to speak. We seek knowledge and wisdom to temperate wild instincts. We establish the rule of law. A rock star may sing they were born to be wild, if they were wild there would be no motorcycle, no rock’n’roll and no song. 

Jupiter in Aries is likely to promote values like action, courage, daring, individualism, heroism… 

(If you’re used to thinking of values as being ruled by Venus, you’re not wrong, but Venusian values are personal, and Jupiter’s cultural)

 With Jupiter we create laws to organise society. Unlike natural or spiritual laws, we are actively creating these ones, this suits Aries well. Legislators initiate bills. If someone in your household suggests making rules about who takes the bins out on what days, check their Jupiter-Mars connections. 

Growth and faith as expressions of the same principle.

A question that has been tickling me for some time is how can I understand Jupiter as meaning growth and faith as expressions of the same principle.

The idea came to me that a clairvoyant would see the energy field of a growing leaf as the template the leaf is about to grow into.

What if our consciousness was like a young leaf, and the destiny life invites us to grow into was like the invisible energy field of the next steps we may take? 

With some free will thrown into the equation, we may accept the invitation now (or maybe later) but whatever is calling us is nothing we could have rationally and logically thought of. 

And maybe there is more than one possible path, and maybe our own will has contributed to the creation of the energy field…

 One way or another, the time always comes when the next step is a leap. 

Jean-Marc Pierson

Astrologer, storyteller.

You are on my website, the homepage is here.

Blog posts written over the years have become a book: Magical Doors.

Let me read you the introduction on youtube. Next video I’ll dress up.

Would you join me for an astrology retreat in Turkey in autumn?

How to read a chart. Where is the Earth? Why is it the Moon?

The Moon is mother, says the astrologer. 

The Earth is our mother. Traditional cultures with roots have been saying it since ancient times. In Greece she was called Gaia.

Where is the Earth in the chart? The usual answer is that it’s at the centre, half way between Ascendant and Descendant, where the horizon crosses the meridian.

 The Earth is where we are looking at the Heavens from, we can’t see it over our heads moving from sign to sign! 

Some chart types, for instance on Astrodienst, include a small circle at the centre. That’s where we are.

Here is another answer: Where is the Earth? It’s the Moon! 

This is not to be taken literally. I’m not that confused. 

Let me explain:

Traditional cultures with roots have been saying, since ancient times, that we are children of Heaven and Earth. 

There is a fundamental duality in us. We are spirit and matter, we are body and soul, we are from above and we belong below. The planets must express this fundamental duality if they are talking about us. But, of course,  the Earth is nowhere to be seen up there! 

But look. The Sun is a Sky wanderer. The Moon is close to the Earth. The Sun is Father, the Moon is Mother. They are the Yin and the Yang, they tell us about the fundamental duality. 

So, is it Sun and Moon, or Heaven and Earth? 

Such a question could be asked by someone with an overactive left-brain, and a sleepy right-brain, the one that understands metaphors. It’s both! It depends on the mood of the storyteller.

The Moon changes, she waxes and wanes, she dies and is reborn. Her phases reflect the phases of mortal life. She is our mirror. Nature, tides and plants do what she does.  She means home, influence of the environment, emotions and instincts, generation. Along with the first house, she means something about our body. Yes, she means Earth. 

The Sun looks immortal by comparison. Always round, always radiating light and warmth, it’s the most potent source of life and energy we know, and if it’s a source, it’s like God. It’s  Spirit bursting out in Heaven.

Now, when we are reading a chart, it doesn’t help to think that the Sun is a symbol of the Ultimate Source… unless we connect it with the idea that there is a divine spark within us, a creative spark that is busy creating ourselves from within. For more about the Sun, read The Sun is the Heart of the Chart.

All the efforts and aspirations to become who we want to be, our dreams and ideals, our callings belong to the Sun. This immortal part is not vulnerable. Only its creation is, that lives in the flesh, in the Moon’s realm.    

In another post, “Self or Ego, what is the Ascendant?", I used the metaphor of a submarine -a metaphor for the Ascendant - driven by a pilot - The Sun - used to explore the depth of an ocean - a metaphor for life on earth. 

Seen from the lightness and freedom of the spirit world, incarnating on Earth can be compared to getting down to the bottom of an ocean; the soul in the body can feel imprisoned, like in a submarine. 

How we appear on earth, with a body and a temperament, is shown by the Ascendant and the First House. Our goals and intentions, our life purpose and the heroic journey of becoming who we want to be is shown by the Sun.

Thus, the fundamental duality can be symbolised by the Sun versus the Ascendant, or by the Sun versus the Moon. Symbols are flexible. What if we consider the three of them together? Ascendant, Sun and Moon are the “Big three”, the most fundamental indicators in a birth chart.  

As part of a Sun-Moon-Ascendant Trio, the Moon is the soul, or psyche.

The psyche is an intermediary. She has a foot in the eternal world of Spirit, and a foot in the changing and mortal world of Nature. She is a medium. She rules over dreams, not the solar dreams of who we want to be, but the watery dreams, the messages. The Moon rejoices in the Third House. In our sleep, in our daydreams, in the flow of our thoughts and feelings, sometimes in a blurred way, sometimes clearly, we are connected with the great sea, whilst living in this body. 

Jung would talk about the function of intermediary of the Anima or Animus between the conscious ego and the collective unconscious. 

Again, the left-brains may be irritated, and ask: “So, the messenger, is it the Moon, or is it Mercury?”

They can work together! The Moon provides a flow of emotionally charged pictures, and Mercury articulates words to describe them. Thot, the Egyptian God of learning and writing, to which Hermes became assimilated in Hellenistic times, was God of the Moon. 

In this body, energies flow, or get blocked at times, causing diseases. If the Sixth House is more powerful than the First and the Moon, we may need some healing. Check also the Sun for the heart, upper spine and vitality. 

The Moon is Mother. Mothers are women, and women are witches, aren't they? They gather in a clearing in the middle of the woods to dance bare feet under the Moon when she’s full. They know the plants and they know how to bind, because they care for tribes and families.

They belong to the Earth and they extend invisible roots into the psychic dimension, where the light of the Moon reflects that of the Sun. 

Applying this to the metaphor of the submarine, the Sun is the driver, it is us, with individuality,  intention and purpose. It is the Heart. 

 The Ascendant is the submarine, with an emphasis on its outermost layer. The Ascendant says something about how we appear, with our body and face, behaviours and temperament, and how we interact with the surrounding world.  

The Moon is the flesh of the submarine and its Mama. (You know how submarines reproduce). The submarine’s Mama is outside and inside. Outside, it’s another submarine, which belongs to a whole family of submarines sharing characteristics, and it’s the environment where sustenance is found. Inside, it’s all the maintenance, health and safety systems, including the desire to have babies. 

The Moon is the psychic world that mediates the Sun-Ascendant connection. She is Earth and more…

Jean-Marc Pierson

Astrologer, Storyteller, etc.

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Modern Astrology and Fate

What are we thinking, nowadays, about fate?

I have often heard people say that “everything happens for a reason.

Sometimes people wonder whether a relationship is “meant to happen” or what they are “meant to become”.

What does “meant to happen” mean?

Was it written, from all eternity, in the book of fate? Was it the inescapable consequence of our actions, good or bad, tracing back to past lives?

Do we “always have a choice”? Do we believe that “The best way to predict the future is to create it?”

The way we practise astrology is inseparable from the answers we give to these questions.


In Hellenistic times, the philosophy of the Stoics was very influential. The Stoics had a deterministic view of life. For them, we are like a dog tied to a cart. The cart will go where it must. The dog can kick and scream, or walk along with acceptance.

If your philosophy is stoicism, you ask an astrologer what is going to happen because it will help you accept what you can’t change.

A traditional tale about fate, from Persia, tells the story of a man who persuaded King Solomon to teach him how to understand the language of the animals.

It was a bad idea. The man heard his rooster say that his donkey would soon die. The man quickly sold the donkey, who actually died a few days later in the home of his new owner. Good money saved!

The man then heard the rooster say that his slave was about to die. He quickly sold it and the slave died in his new home. Then the man heard the rooster say that he himself would soon die. He couldn’t sell himself!

In a panic, he ran and asked King Solomon what could be done about it. King Solomon told him that the loss of his donkey and his slave was the price to pay to preserve his own life, but as he didn’t paid it, there was nothing that could be done…

So what is fate, with the worldview that is implied in this ancient story?

This more complex view can be connected with the etymology of the word “redeemer” which means “to buy back” and with the Christian belief that Jesus paid the price for our sins.

Why would the son of God, assimilated to God himself by Christians, have to pay a price to wipe the slate clean? This implies a law...

The notion of karma also comes with the idea of a state of equilibrium which needs to be restored by necessity.

This worldview is symbolised by the scales and the sign Libra.

With the philosophical questions in mind, my point is: a psychological approach is relevant.

I do believe that a state of equilibrium has to be restored, or maintained, however, I am convinced that this can be done as an inner process.

What happens within has an impact on what happens without, and vice versa.

As a Westerner living today, I don’t sacrifice bulls, sheep or goats to the gods to avoid bad fortune.

I would rather watch my inner self-talk and make a sacrifice conscious attention to my painful emotions.

Astrology is an efficient way to direct our attention to what's important.

The way is within.

Jean-Marc
I read charts, teach astrology, and I write.
Now, it’s time to check the homepage!

Or maybe to learn about an astrology retreat in Turkey in October 2024…