*This article was previously published in the 2013 June/July edition of The Mountain Astrologer and has been republished with permission.

 

Astrologer: Pluto is creeping toward your 7^th house cusp.

Client: Is that ... bad?

Astrologer: Well, let’s just say that the God of Hell is entering your House of Marriage.

Client: What can I do ...?

Astrologer: Let me recommend an attorney and a psychiatrist.

The dialogue above is exaggerated, I hope. But maybe not. I know that I have dealt with its apparent aftermath in the counseling room many times. What is the impact upon a client of such a bleak prognosis? After hearing such dispiriting words, he or she may cringe before Pluto as if frozen in place before an oncoming train. An astrologer speaking this way might unwittingly poison a decent relationship with fear or suspicion — and do so right at a time when what is really needed is emotional courage.

Let’s insert a second imaginary dialogue, substituting Jupiter for Pluto. Here, the same fatalistic astrologer might paint a rosier picture. There is a new sweetheart on your horizon, one who resembles all the romantic films currently playing in your psychic Cineplex. A star! An angel! Generous — and probably wealthy enough to put a little muscle behind that generosity.

But here’s what actually happens. You meet an egomaniac, given to windy pontification supported by long bouts of drinking, punctuated with pronouncements made ex cathedra... and death to the Unbeliever.

A few years later, after you have fired your astrologer, along comes Pluto again, this time conjoining your Venus. And you meet someone wonderful — someone to whom you can say anything at all, no matter how emotionally charged. One who can keep your secrets and hold them sacred. One whose very presence makes your ovaries incandescent or your testicles purr like a jaguar.  

There’s the profile of the higher Plutonian types. They exist, too. So, what is actually going to happen? Whom will we meet? Can we even know? Should we even try?

The astrology of relationship mirrors the human reality of relationship. It is unpredictable, in other words. Every configuration represents a spectrum of possibilities. We can never be certain, based purely on technical analysis, which of those possibilities will manifest itself.

A better way to say it is that every transit, progression, or solar arc represents a set of evolutionary questions. As with all true questions, these have a variety of different possible answers — and let’s add that some answers are smarter than others. The astrologer’s task is not to predict which answer you will give. The astrologer’s task is to assist you in understanding what you are trying to learn and to point you, within the limits of his or her wisdom, in the direction of the higher ground.

My intention in this article is to help you to do that for yourself or your clients. We will focus on what happens when transits, progressions, or solar arcs contact areas of the chart that are connected to human intimacy and partnership.

At one level, a fortuneteller has a simple task: He or she must only write the next chapter of the story. An astrologer who takes free will seriously faces a vastly trickier task. He or she must compose an image of the future based on a variety of if/then propositions. If you are wise, then this will happen. If you aren’t wise, then that will happen.

Relationships are even more complex because there is a second, independent set of variables: the other person. You may be sane and self-aware, but what if the person who comes along and whom that transit represents has made a long string of idiot choices? You are human, so you might not figure that out right away. What if this person is damaged goods? It is famously hard to soar like an eagle when you are working with turkeys.

We can add a further layer of complication. This transit, progression, or solar arc often correlates with more than one person appearing on your radar screen. As there are many possibilities within you, so, too, are there many people out there in the world. Each one resonates with a different level of your consciousness. For example, a woman whose father was an active alcoholic experiences transiting Neptune aspecting her Venus. Perhaps she meets an affable drunkard. Perhaps she reports herself feeling “inexplicably at ease” with him, “as if she had known him all her life.”

Well, in a sense, she has! He is the psychic clone of her father.

But here is the real tragedy. Standing unnoticed in the wings is another Neptunian man. This one is a poet with a deep spiritual life and a healthy, uncomplicated relationship with alcohol. Does she even notice the poet? Does she feel anything for him? Well ... maybe. The answer depends on how hard she has worked on herself before arriving at this crossroads.

That Neptune–Venus event is of course about relationships — but that is only one part of it. Even more fundamentally, that transit is also about her own relationship with Neptunian energy. As there are many levels of possibility within her, so, too, are there many levels of possibility in the outer world. Which ones will she embrace? She chooses ... but the choice is not like choosing which bonbon to reach for in the candy box. We choose with our lives. We bring the summation of what we have learned — and where we have bled — to these intimate turning points. I am haunted by the image of this woman, the daughter of the alcoholic father, as she hangs, as uncertain as a tossed coin, between the affable drunk and the poet.

I am haunted by the thought that she might come and sit with me in the counseling room at that critical intimate crossroads. I am haunted by the thought that astrology might nudge her in the poet’s direction. No astrologer should be making people’s choices for them; however, by raising a person’s consciousness about past patterns of behavior and higher possibilities within the archetypal field of Neptune, we might support that individual in making a healthier decision.

What about Existing Relationships?  
So far, we have been reflecting on the notion that we meet new people who are correlated with the arrival of planets in relationship-sensitive areas of the natal chart. That is a trustworthy astrological principle. But what about relationships that already exist? Such transits, progressions, and solar arcs can just as easily reflect developments within a long-term relationship. The husband begins meditating — or drinking like a fish — as Neptune enters his wife’s 7th house. The last child leaves the nest and the wife reenters the workforce as Saturn enters the husband’s 7th house — and does he now see his wife in more deeply respectful terms as she claims her worldly power, or does he simply feel threatened and abandoned? Both are possible responses to this Saturn transit.

The essential point is that this class of relationally-oriented astrological events can refer equally to new relationships or to developments within existing ones — or to both. I know of no truly reliable technique for sorting all that out. I recommend exploring both possibilities with the client.

One obvious point: Perhaps something fresh is on the edge of happening in an existing relationship, but in order for it to unfold successfully, we may need to be impacted by a third party. In other words, sometimes both themes — new relationship and old relationship — emerge together at the same time, interdependently.

The Bones
As we bring this more open-ended, choice-centered perspective to the analysis of stimuli to the relational symbolism in the natal chart, here are the practical bones that give structure to our approach. With any such transit, progression, or solar arc, we recognize that:

1. There is an internal lesson for our clients to learn. Through relationship, they are being offered a chance to respond more energetically, consciously, and creatively to that planetary part of themselves.

2. Through synchronicity, the client is meeting people who embody that evolutionary lesson and who personify the current condition of that dimension of his or her own psyche — and/or there are parallel developments within existing partnerships, for better or for worse. (It is not always about meeting someone new.)
3. In every case, there is a way to get the configuration right and a way to get it wrong. What actually happens reflects the evolutionary state of the client’s consciousness — an evolutionary state that is currently in active flux and potentially on the verge of breakthrough. Creating that breakthrough is what the transit is all about. Good inner work now improves the outward biographical result.
4. This identical freedom of choice applies not only to the client, but also to the people the client is meeting or with whom she or he is currently connected. Their freedom, just like that of the client, can be used negatively or positively — which is to say, a “soul mate” can show up right on schedule but could have made disastrous responses to his or her own potentials. Simultaneously, the client is also likely to be meeting people who illustrate the higher potentials and possibilities.

Relational Symbolism in the Natal Chart
We have made reference to transits, progressions, and solar arcs to the “relational symbolism in the natal chart.” What does that “relational symbolism” mean, exactly? So far, we have used only the most obvious illustrations: Venus and the 7th house. These are universally reliable. But any planet can lie in a particular individual’s 7th house, and that planet then becomes relevant to all of the issues we are exploring. Similarly, we need to be aware of the planet that is the accidental ruler of the 7th house. For example, if you have Sagittarius rising, then Gemini must lie on your 7th cusp. For you, Mercury will then take on a strong resonance with your intimate affairs. When your natal Mercury is triggered, one part of the ensuing story is likely to involve another person, no matter where Mercury lies in your natal chart.

Going further, let’s recognize that the word “relationship” should not be taken only in the narrow sense of sex and romance — although, of course, all of these issues burn a higher octane of emotional fuel when sex and romance are part of the equation. Because such erotic pairings are so charged, I will mostly focus on those kinds of examples, but these principles can be applied to all relationships.

The Moon, or any planets in the 4th house, and the planet that rules its cusp will correlate with relational issues pertinent to family. Here, we refer to “family” in the obvious sense of your parents and kinship relations, but also to any family you have created in your adult life. We should add that nowadays the old kinship networks are often supplanted by a set of deeply committed, long-term friendships. These kinds of precious modern “family” networks often appear or evolve significantly under this class of 4^th house stimulus.

Relationships in the courtship stage, or love affairs, and the dance we do with our children are all correlated with the 5th house, any planets in it, and the ruler of its cusp.

Relations with teachers and mentors, as well as with those whom we teach or simply those who work for us are reflected in the 6th house and its planetary correlates.

In the 11th house, we encounter relationships that are less intimate: groups, teams, tribes, and crowds.

The deepest mysteries and the total uniqueness of long-term sexual bonds have a clear linkage with the 8th house, its planetary occupants, and its cuspal ruler, although developments in those kinds of partnerships are often reflected in the 4th and 7th houses as well.

Bottom line, to answer our question about the definition of the “relational symbolism in the natal chart,” we need to be clear about two things: First, what kinds of relationships are we discussing? And second, what is the exact nature of this particular natal chart? That is to say, to what kinds of relationships is this individual particularly oriented? Which of his or her planets, other than Venus, helps to carry the symbolism of intimacy?

Transits, Progressions, and Solar Arcs
All three of these “predictive” techniques are equally productive in terms of providing foresight and insight into relational developments. The distinctions among them in experiential terms are subtle and outside the scope of this article. (See my book, The Changing Sky, if you are interested in a more detailed perspective.) The counseling astrologer may use any or all of them with confidence. For our purposes here, we will toss them all into the same pot — with a few tweaks.

The rapid transits of the Moon and the Sun, along with Mercury, Venus, and Mars, are quite vividly relevant to the timing of intimate developments, but they move too quickly to correlate with the more thematic, slow-paced story of soul growth and psychological development. For that larger picture, we look to the transits of the planets beyond Mars, along with progressions and solar arcs. All solar arcs move at the same pace, going at the same speed as the progressed Sun, which is about one degree each year. With progressions, the planets beyond Mars display the opposite problem from what we see with the rapid transits: They generally go too slowly for us to be readily conscious of the changes they represent.

Even limiting our attention to the slower transits, the faster progressions, and the solar arcs, we still have quite a number of moving points with which to contend. And they can form a number of different aspects to a variety of sensitive relational points in the natal chart. It tends to get very complicated.

My aim in the remainder of these pages is therefore constrained. I want to look specifically at each of the planets as they move through the relationship symbolism of the natal chart, whether by transit, progression, or solar arc. We will consider only the moving planet itself, while (for the sake of clarity) we will ignore all of the other astrological variables, such as house, sign, and other aspects. Remember, progressed Mercury, for one example, has a defined range of meaning in terms of the lessons it represents and the kinds of people it brings into our lives. But progressed Mercury entering the 7th house is different from progressed Mercury entering the 4th house. And progressed Mercury conjoining a 5^th house Saturn has a different meaning from that of progressed Mercury conjoining a 5^th house Venus.

Using the entire birth chart to contextualize astrological events such as these is the astrologer’s high art. In what follows, I only want to provide you with a good foundation in the archetypal nature of the moving planet itself. You will have to build the rest of the structure on your own. Don’t despair, though. The foundation will be a solid one. Each planet is an archetype with a certain character. When a particular planet strikes a relational chord, there are certain psychic integrations you are trying to make, and you will feel them tugging at your inner life. Simultaneously, people will appear who embody the higher possibilities of that planet. Recognizing them and connecting with them is part of your evolutionary strategy. Lower types of people appear, too, and connecting with them can prove ... “instructive”!

Always, at the heart of it all, is a dance you are doing with yourself. You will meet these questions in the world, but don’t forget that the real alchemy is happening in your heart. In the paragraphs below, we will outline this range of possibilities.

The Sun
What you are learning
The correct and natural role of your ego in relationship. That you have the right to be yourself. That in a healthy partnership, half the time the world does in fact revolve around you and your needs. That you have the right to insist on certain standards of intimate behavior. How to shine. How to claim appreciation.

What if you get it wrong?
Depending on your nature, you use too much or too little force in relationship. Too much, and you eclipse your partner, leaving both of you lonely and frustrated. Too little, and you wind up under someone’s thumb, with no room to breathe.

Whom you meet (or what emerges in a partner)
Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually healthy: Strong-willed, charismatic people, who are direct and clear. They may seem stubborn or self-centered to you at first, but if you rise up and meet them where they are, you build a real bond. The soul-contract is that they are modeling this very direct style of solar behavior for you.

Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually wounded: Egomaniacs, petty tyrants, and prima donnas who need you to orbit them. Self-centered people who have no idea who you really are, nor any apparent interest in learning. In a healthy partnership, half the time the world does in fact revolve around you and your needs.

The Moon
What you are learning
How to nurture others and how to insist upon being nurtured. That shared vulnerability is the soul of relationship. That such vulnerability thrives only when you feel safe. That a feeling of safety arises in proportion to feelings of commitment.

What if you get it wrong?
Depending on your nature, perhaps you become whiny, dependent, or petulantly moody, as unresolved issues from your childhood emerge, whether or not you recognize them as such. Alternatively, you wind up trapped in a caregiver’s role, while receiving very little in return.

Whom you meet (or what emerges in a partner)
Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually healthy: Sensitive, heart-centered people who are not afraid of words such as “partner” or “commitment,” nor are they afraid of showing their feelings. Men and women who take family seriously. Healers. People who can cook. People who are kind to children. People whom your cat or dog likes.

Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually wounded: Needy whiners. People whose overpowering moods dominate the relationship. Hypochondriacs. Men and women who often confuse their own wishes, fears, and projections with your actual reality.

Mercury
What you are learning
How to be heard. How to verbalize your intimate needs, your ideas, and your practical intentions. How to make yourself available to your partner’s attempts at communication. How to listen well and how to connect through words. How to actively learn who another person is.

What if you get it wrong?
Depending on your nature, you may hide your heart behind a nonstop verbal barrage, or you may clam up, feeling unable to make yourself heard and understood. Words can be either a bridge — or a wall.

Whom you meet (or what emerges in a partner)
Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually healthy: Fluent, communicative people with whom conversation flows easily. People who really listen to you. Curious, open-minded men and women who love to learn. Writers and readers. Vibrant, youthful women and men.

Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually wounded: People who limit and control intimacy by talking. People who, when you ask them what they feel, tell you what they think. Immature types. Nervous, jittery men and women whose nervousness is exhausting — and contagious. Masters of rationalization and denial.

Venus
What you are learning
The arts and skills of lasting love. Diplomacy. How to convey courtesy and acceptance toward a partner, thus creating a space into which he or she can open up. How to express tenderness and bonding in sexuality. Sweetness. Trust. Confidence in yourself as a lover.

What if you get it wrong?
You “artfully” attract the wrong partner. Your bridge-building skills outstrip your ability to be clear and honest. Your need for intimacy eclipses your discrimination as you project some inner ideal onto a person unworthy of it or simply very different from it.

Whom you meet (or what emerges in a partner)
Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually healthy: Warm, graceful people adept at bonding and building relationship. Natural lovers. Genuine soul mates. Artists. People with innate courtesy. People whom you find “cute” and who inspire feelings of fondness in you. Men and women who have bought either a bouquet of flowers or a book of poetry within the past year.

Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually wounded: People who can “be anyone you want them to be.” Seducers. Con artists. Vain people. Hopeless romantics. Lazy men and women with a tendency to be dependent or with escapist issues. Sexual compulsives. People so flexible and vague that they could be with anyone.

Mars
What you are learning
The necessary art of intimate conflict resolution. Directness. How to “love, honor, and negotiate.” How to be comfortable with raw sexual passion and love’s physical realities. Dealing effectively and constructively with the inevitable failures, lapses, and frustrations inherent in any real relationship between two flawed humans.

What if you get it wrong?
Depending on your nature, you use too much or too little force. Too much, and your unresolved angers from the past inflate the present issues and sink the intimate ship. Too little, and you become “the victim,” attracting abuse. Down either road, diminished libido is the early indicator of error.

Whom you meet (or what emerges in a partner)
Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually healthy: Strong-willed, forceful men and women who readily make their needs known to you. People skilled in argument. Athletes or adventurers. Sexy people. People who might express their love via teasing. People open to your own expressions of anger.

Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually wounded: Mean or aggressive people eager to dominate you. Men and women with a compelling need to be seen as “right” or to be “number one.” Men and woman who cannot express sexual tenderness, only heat. People who hide their souls behind their passion.

Jupiter
What you are learning
Generosity of spirit toward the people you love. That it is safe to hope for more satisfaction and joy in your intimate life, even if it is already good. That simple hope and “positive thinking” are the foundation of new visions of possibility — but that old hurts can make it frightening to hope again.

What if you get it wrong?
Missed opportunities. If you do not ask, you do not receive. The status quo is maintained, even though you need something better. You sell yourself short. You settle for too little. Alternatively, you create intimate scenarios that illustrate the idea that “pride goeth before a fall.” Ego inflation leads to bad judgment, which leads to disillusionment.

Whom you meet (or what emerges in a partner)
Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually healthy: Bighearted, noble-spirited, happy people. A queen among women, a king among men. People with a sense of humor. People who believe in you perhaps more than you believe in yourself. Natural coaches. Generous, magnanimous people. Women or men who encourage you to bet on yourself. Your biggest fans.

Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually wounded: Egomaniacs. Over-indulgers. People with an inflated sense of entitlement or superiority. Overbearing or pompous men and women, with suffocating opinions on every subject.

Saturn
What you are learning
That, through maturation, you have outgrown some aspect of your current style of intimacy and thus you must update your intimate behavior. That you have possibly outgrown a particular partner or friend. Realism about relationship. The discipline of commitment. Responsibility. Patience. A willingness to work on a partnership over time. How to achieve livable emotional compromise in the real world.

What if you get it wrong?
Feelings of loneliness are strong, whether or not you are in a partnership. Frustration. Resignation. Boredom. A sense of being stuck or trapped. Dullness and flatness. Sexual disinterest. “Wedlock as deadlock.”

Whom you meet (or what emerges in a partner)
Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually healthy: Grounded, mature human beings who are unafraid of commitment. People who model for you your own maturational process and support it. People of integrity. Hard workers. Logical, rational types, whose “still waters run deep.” Sometimes you meet people who are enough older than you that you notice it.

Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually wounded: Uptight, withholding, emotionally blocked men and women. Depressives. Controllers. Fearful, overly cautious types. People who appoint themselves as your parents or guardians. Critics. Men and women uncomfortable in their bodies. People with some serious limitation on their availability. People who suck the life out of a room.

Uranus
What you are learning
The right balance between loving partnership on one hand and freedom and individuality on the other. How to make space for your own separate life within your partnerships. How to go beyond social and cultural expectations and thus to craft a style of relationship that actually fits you. How to amend the contract when you have over-compromised in the past or as new self-knowledge arises.

What if you get it wrong?
Feelings of alienation and distance arise. A sense of disconnection or dissociation. Sexual or intimate impulsiveness. Dramas, “acting out.” Sudden disruptions that leave too much unsaid, unresolved, and unlearned.

Whom you meet (or what emerges in a partner)
Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually healthy: Independent types who “hear a different drummer.” Innovators. Unsung geniuses. Wild men and wild women. Eccentrics. People on the “road less traveled.” Men and women who encourage you to trust yourself and to “roll the dice,” existentially speaking. People who hold the mirror before you, showing you who you have become.

Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually wounded: Contrary, stubborn types. “Impossible” people. Rebels without a clue. Genuine weirdos. Irresponsible, amoral, even criminal men and women who are emotionally distant or disengaged. Psychopaths. Crazies.

Neptune
What you are learning
That the only kind of intimacy that matters is soul-intimacy. How to surrender more deeply. Compassion for your partner. Appropriate levels of loving self-sacrifice. How to create a shared secret world. How to share your spiritual experiences in a mutual atmosphere with little ego involvement. Psychic connection.

What if you get it wrong?
Disillusionment — and the word implies that an initial illusion arose as a result of projecting an inner fantasy spiritual lover onto some external human target. Vulnerability, feeling sorely used. Being “driven to drink” or to some other form of escape. Bad sexual judgment or decisions. Mistaking an authentic but one-dimensional spiritual connection for a practical, multidimensional marriage.

Whom you meet (or what emerges in a partner)
Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually healthy: Soulful, sensitive people with genuine spiritual lives. Creative visionaries. People who offer you magical, uplifting experiences. Men and women with whom you have at times a genuine, demonstrable extrasensory link.

Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually wounded: People who have not handled their psychic or spiritual sensitivities well, so when they show up in your life, they are dazed or lost. They generally display some form of self-numbing behavior through a dependency on alcohol or other psychoactive substances, or through an obsessive–compulsive relationship with something — the Internet, the media, food, pornography ... the list is long, but it is always ultimately about escaping from the intimacy of the present moment.

Pluto
What you are learning
Shadow Work. Facing “truth time.” That scary levels of psychological honesty are sometimes the essence of genuine intimacy. That you have come to a place in your life where, without such honesty, intimacy is a sham. That while you require such honesty from a partner, you must also expand your own ability to hear his or her truth without judging or punishing the messenger.

What if you get it wrong?
Dark, brooding feelings of frustration around intimacy arise. There is an elevated risk of interpersonal deception, coming or going. Drama and disruption. One or both people demonstrate the need for psychotherapy.

Whom you meet (or what emerges in a partner)
Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually healthy: Intense, direct, psychologically confrontational people who believe in you and respect you even as they insist that you stand naked before them. Confidantes. Men and women with whom you can share your secrets. Psychotherapist types. The deeper kinds of counselors. People who look you right in the eye.

Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually wounded: Deceivers. Dangerous, destructive individuals. Seducers. Black magicians. People who want you to hurt in exactly the way they themselves are hurting. Men and women who can perhaps offer you genuine insights into yourself, but who can never receive such insights from you without displaying resistance and defensiveness.

Chiron
What you are learning
That your own ability to trust and love has been damaged. That along with whatever personal betrayals and hurts you have endured, our larger culture’s competitiveness, isolation, and crazed oscillation between puritanism and pornography have taken a toll on you (see my work, The Book of the Moon, for a harder look at that issue). And that with a simple acknowledgment of all of this and a change of attitude, you are halfway to healing.

What if you get it wrong?
Feelings of cynicism, impossibility, helplessness, and hopelessness arise relative to human relationship. We give behavioral expression to our woundedness, or we find ourselves attracted to people blocked by parallel wounds. We waste love.

Whom you meet (or what emerges in a partner)
Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually healthy: People who, by their natures, are wired as the perfect healers for you. Perhaps they are friends or lovers. Often, they take the form of mentors or teachers. Typically, they have paid a price for their wisdom.

Assuming that the person you encounter is psychologically and spiritually wounded: Men and women too damaged to consummate a relationship emotionally. People who reflect your own wounded condition back to you. People who have fallen far short of their innate potential.

Note that I’ve thrown Chiron into the pot here as well. Many astrologers — and many sophisticated clients nowadays — effectively count Chiron as a planet. I don’t doubt its relevance, which is why I include my own observations about it in this article. My hesitation is that, if we use Chiron, we probably ought to be using the other Centaur objects, such as Nessus, Pholus, Chariklo, and Asbolus. Most astrologers know where their Chiron is. How many can tell you the degree of their Hylonome? And this line of reasoning leads us to wonder about the trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) out in and beyond Lord Pluto’s stygian realms. I happily refer you here to the luminous work of Melanie Reinhart, Philip Sedgwick, Zane Stein, and lately Jeremy Neal. My own thoughts about this vast topic were the subject of a previous cover article for this journal, entitled “The New Solar System,” referenced below.

In Conclusion
This completes our tour of the planets as they impact the relational symbolism of the natal chart via transits, progressions, or solar arcs. I have attempted in this second half of the article to provide a kind of archetypal cookbook to draw your attention to the kinds of themes that arise, for good or for ill, as each planet makes its way around the relationship sectors of your chart. Do remember that, as we saw earlier, far greater precision can be achieved when we integrate these ideas with the specifics of the birth chart.

Above all else, remember that, in relationships as in every other part of life, consciousness itself is the critical factor. No astrologer can reliably tell you exactly what will happen between you and anyone else. Such astrologers will be correct a lot of the time, but they will be wrong a lot, too. Never let anyone reduce your faith in your own freedom, imagination, and creativity or that of those with whom you share your life. Whenever two people come together in love, a set of possibilities is arising that has never before existed in this universe, nor will it ever exist again. The process is too sacred, and too wild, to treat it as if it were a question of pistons, cylinders, and meshing gears.

Resources
Forrest, Jodie, and Steven Forrest. Skymates: Love, Sex and Evolutionary Astrology, Volume One. Seven Paws Press, 2002.

Forrest, Steven, and Jodie Forrest. Skymates II: The Composite Chart. Seven Paws Press, 2005.

Forrest, Steven. The Changing Sky: Creating Your Future with Transits, Progressions and Evolutionary Astrology. Seven Paws Press, 1986.

–––––.  “Love Handles: Practical Synastry in Action,” in The Mountain Astrologer, June/July 2000.

–––––. “The New Solar System,” in TMA, Aug./Sept. 2007.

–––––. The Book of The Moon: Discovering Astrology’s Lost Dimension. Seven Paws Press, 2010.

© 2013 Steven Forrest – all rights reserved

If you liked this article check out these talks by Steven:

Co-Creating Happy Endings

Finding Your Natural Mate

A ten-hour intensive workshop on Venus: Mysteries of Venus

 

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