Psychological Horoscope

I. INTRODUCTION

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II. YOUR PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPE

Romantic vision and a rich imagination

You are one of life's true romantics, because your reality is the inner world of fantasy and imagination. The limitations of daily life can bore you, and you try at every available opportunity to inject into mundane situations a note of the mythic and the meaningful. However, your romanticism is constantly being challenged by another side of your personality: your fear of disruption to your material security. Although you dislike being tied to routines which seem inconsequential and stifling, life perpetually intrudes upon your dreams, forcing you into conflict between your vision and your practical limitations and needs. The great strength of your nature lies in your relationship to the creative power of the imagination, which enables you to peer into the future and envisage new possibilities which are not immediately apparent in the present. Because of this, you tend to see opportunities which others miss. You live in a world of potential, always looking toward the next project and the next enthusiasm. But there is a strong cynicism and worldliness beneath your romanticism which perpetually questions these hunches and dreams, making you feel restless and discontented whichever side of yourself you try to live.

Another strength in your character is your ability to discern subtle connections between apparently disparate facts and circumstances, and to see a story or a broader pattern which others might ignore. Thus you often grasp the essence of a situation or a person instantaneously, through a kind of "sixth sense" which is usually extremely accurate yet which you cannot logically explain. But here too you are often at war with yourself, for that small cynical voice in you begins to denigrate your intuitive perceptions and can cause you to become indecisive. You often find yourself in a typical dilemma: whether to invest your energies in a creative project which requires trust and courage because it involves untried new ideas, or whether to stay in a safe job which guarantees material stability yet which bores and frustrates you. Although you are not usually foolish with money, it is not the sole object of your efforts, and you need challenges and inspiration in your work. Yet you cannot wholly forget about your material security either, and are faced with the challenge of finding a vocation which is both creatively rewarding and materially productive. And this may take you a long time and encompass many mistakes and false starts. ⌃

The struggle against banality and mundane limits

If you attempt to live entirely in your imagination, you may run the risk of losing your connection with ordinary life - and with it, the capacity for contentment. Because of your resentment of boredom and routine, you may secretly yearn for an alternative life which is more glamourous, exciting or meaningful - without actually doing anything concrete about your craving for wider horizons. You also dislike having to select one thing to which you must apply yourself, preferring to live in a kind of provisional world - the "one day when I grow up..." syndrome, where all possibilities remain open to you. Yet if you pursue this approach to life exclusively, you will, with the passing of the years, feel increasingly unreal, as though you have somehow wasted your potentials and accomplished nothing solid in the end. Another manifestation of your conflict between the romantic, mystic realm and the hard world of facts and objects is your complex relationship with your own body, which often seems mysterious and frightening and which you may periodically neglect. You may resent having to fill your time with tasks like servicing the car and doing the monthly accounts, not to mention the dentist and the doctor; but your lack of attention to worldly and instinctual matters can result in constant irritations with mechanical objects breaking down, and also in problems with your health - not because you are intrinsically unhealthy, but because you tend to be sporadic in your care of your own body. You tend to swing between excessive and punishing diets and exercise routines to "master" the body, and times when you are not even aware that it exists.

You possess a unique and complicated nature, and you need to stand in the middle between your two extremes so that you can become a better friend to your body and your material environment while still validating and giving expression to your powerful creative imagination. This effort at better balance can be rewarding and exciting. You possess a capacity to respond to nature and to the beauty of the physical world - if you will only stop running away from it. In very personal matters such as sexual expression, your shyness about your body can also have repercussions, and here too there might be a promise of greater fulfilment if you can face more honestly the alien realm of the instincts which you sometimes fear. Your perception of physical reality may be overtly negative, and it is possible that family attitudes in your early life have contributed to your undervaluing of it. Yet you possess the potential to have the best of both worlds, and can aim very high indeed if you can learn the art of being an ordinary mortal.

The power of reason combines with the gift of fantasy

You possess unusual intellectual gifts to support and enhance your rich imagination. You may be a profound thinker, with a grasp of higher and broader concepts and an intuitive feeling for symbols and connections between systems of thought; and you could excel in spheres such as psychology, anthropology, history and artistic fields, where good powers of articulation and organisation must be combined with imagination and vision. You may also be adept at business activities where speculative abilities and planning for future trends are required, and you are often a very successful gambler with untried new ideas and untested resources. Your imagination, although powerful and constantly active, never runs wild into chaos, but is always supported by clear rational thought. Therefore, you are one of those rare people who are not only able to leap to conclusions through the uncanny irrational power of the intuition, but can also explain yourself if necessary with a logical and coherent structure of thought.

However, your greatest challenge in life remains the problem of relating to the mundane world, and your capacity for systematising your intuitions into a coherent plan or structure may further divorce you from the "banal" world of the body and of material objects and responsibilities. Because you place considerable value on your reasoning capacities, you may try to analyse your way out of your essential fear of ordinary life through generalised systems of ideas - preferring to believe that you are preoccupied with higher and more important things. You may also use your mental and imaginative abilities to defend yourself against the threatening world of intimate relationships, where you often find commitment to be a problem and where you can only deal with unpleasant or demanding emotional encounters through a species of mental gymnastics where you reduce your own and the other person's feelings to an intellectualised debate about abstract principles. You need to learn to form a better relationship to your feelings, so that you respond more sensitively not only to the needs of others, but also to your own. This can help you to learn which of your many potentials might really make you happy and which you need to select to give you some stability and sense of accomplishment in your ordinary life. Then you can begin to earth your marvellous imagination and vision in concrete terms without so much resentment of the time and effort required, and without so much fear of being trapped by relationships and by daily routines. Thus you can make choices with a better appreciation of what might personally fulfill you at different stages of your life.

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III. CHARACTER AND SHADOW

The spirit of eternal youth dominates the stage

Whatever your actual age, there is something in you which will never grow old. Life is a perpetual unfinished novel for you, in which anything could lie around the next corner; and even if you carry considerable worldly responsibilities, you carry them lightly, always feeling as though somehow it isn't yet the real thing, but only a practise run - while the limitless potential within you has yet to be fully actualised. Thus you tend to live a kind of provisional life, never fully contented, never fully arrived. This quality of viewing life as a series of steps toward an unknown future tends to make you restless in the best and worst senses. You will never settle into stagnant complacency dreaming of the glories of your youth, for you carry your youth whithin you and will be receptive to change and new ideas all your life. But you also have a tendency to leave behind those projects and people with which you have become bored, and are therefore inclined to walk away before the fruits of your labours are realised; for the next pasture always seems greener. As the old proverb says, it is better to travel than to arrive - at least, better in your eyes.

Idealism and vision struggle against authority of all kinds

You enjoy kicking at anything which seems to you staid, rigid or antiquated. This can sometimes make you the enemy of authority, and you no doubt have a rather chequered past full of little episodes where you fell foul of the presiding powers in some way. Although time has brought you greater self-control and tolerance, time has not lessened your belief in your right to freedom on the most basic level. You resent being treated like a child by a heavy-handed parent, even if on occasion your behaviour is downright childish. There is a progressive and visionary quality to your thinking which rejects hypocrisy, narrow-mindedness and conventional roles - particularly sexual roles. Your approach to life contains a curious combination of romanticism and cynicism; romantic because you are a perfectionist who believes that life could be better and more meaningful - which means you will never just put up with a situation for the sake of security or conventional morality; cynical because you have little faith in permanence, particularly in the realm of the heart - which means you will not risk allowing yourself to need others too much. You have a biting and ironic sense of humour, about everything except yourself; and you can be a little too proud and touchy where your own self-image is concerned. Thus, despite the liberality of your ideas, you are capable of considerable intolerance, particularly toward more conservative folk who fail to understand your beliefs and your lifestyle. You are always a little ahead of society, and the things in which you believe will no doubt become generally socially acceptable in twenty years' time - by which time you will have become bored with them and moved on to something else. You are a true visionary, with a broad and universal outlook. But you need to be careful not to imagine yourself a misunderstood genius, for you can be abrupt and impatient if your talents are not immediately acknowledged, or your creative offerings not valued in the marketplace.

The vision of life as an endless set of possibilities

Thus your considerable imaginative and intellectual gifts combine with a restless, volatile personality to produce one of life's eternally wandering spirits. This should not be taken too literally, for you need some material stability in your life as much as anyone does, and would particularly benefit from owning your own home - a place where you can retreat in privacy and express your own taste and style. But you are a wanderer in the inner sense, for you digest experiences and then move on to seek new ones, looking and looking for something - and it is some thing, not some one as you might imagine - which heralds the call of destiny, the sign from above, the recognition that you have at last arrived. The probability is that you will never arrive, for your unique gift and your unique problem are the same: You prefer the journey. Although you have a hard time with self-discipline, commitment, responsibility and authority, you will never find life boring, for you see lessons and opportunities for growth and secret signs everywhere; and the happy thing about such perceptions is that, if you can learn the art of sticking with something long enough to finish it, you can produce relevant and exciting creative products which vindicate your deep sense of your own special destiny.

A hidden side that favours traditional values

In contrast to your bright, restless and rebellious conscious personality, there is another protagonist in your inner psychic drama. This hidden figure contains all those qualities which you have excluded from your values and your outer behaviour in order to retain the intellectual, emotional and physical freedom you crave. The shadow-side of your personality is considerably more conventional, conservative and traditional than you might like to admit; and if you consider honestly the sometimes disproportionately negative reactions that you display when confronted with such qualities in other people and in social institutions, you may glimpse within yourself a secret sympathy with these more old-fashioned values. The problem is that you strive to be a rebel, a forward-thinking and unique individualist; and you would have to make peace with a slightly less glossy, glamourous and stereotyped self-image if you are going to integrate your shadow. Yet upon this integration depends your capacity to produce anything really worthwhile with your vision and your talents; and, even more importantly, you need this hidden side of yourself to feel real.

Secret self-doubts and fear of failure

Your love of the provisional life, in which there are endless possibilities to explore and endless doors to open into the future, is only partly due to your restless temperament. It also springs from a deep hidden fear of failure, for you are considerably more sensitive to the opinions of others than you like them to see. You have the courage to express some rather revolutionary ideas about life and people; but at the same time you are not always honest about how much the approval of ordinary society matters to you. Probably some of this fear of failure and others' criticism springs from your early childhood, for it seems that one or both of your parents was overly critical or expected too much good behaviour from you in order to impress the family and the neighbours. Because you had a good deal of loneliness in your early life, without much support for your curious and inventive mind and imagination, you are not as self-confident as you seem, and some of your bravado is a kind of defense against the disapproval which you automatically expect from the outside world. You are prone to some rather dark moods which contradict the optimism of your youthful spirit, and these moods arise in part from your difficulty in acknowledging how much a sense of belonging matters to you. It would be better if you could show your vulnerability, especially to those close to you, rather than becoming critical yourself of a lover's or partner's occasional helplessness and emotional neediness; for you deny your own dependency upon others and therefore deny yourself the comfort and support that people can offer you. You have a tendency to perform all the time, being clever and witty and elusive and exciting; but behind this mask is a shy and insecure child who is unsure of his or her reception. Your shadow contains considerable depth and sensitivity; perhaps you should try not to be so ashamed of these qualities. They will not trap you in unwelcome relationships, but will merely allow you to be human.

The need for accepting mortal limits

Thus your eternally youthful spirit, with its vivacity, restlessness and originality, is balanced by an equally important but hidden side of you which is slower, earthier, less articulate, and considerably more traditional and ordinary. You fear displaying your shadow-side to others partly because its values are so different from yours; and partly because you are frightened of being rejected and thought boring and ordinary. Because of your unease in the face of real material challenges, you fly up into the realm of potentials, living in a kind of perennial "One day when I grow up..." dream-world. But much of this flight masks your fear of failure and incompetence in the eyes of the world. You are a gifted and far-seeing individual who can truly achieve something extraordinary. But you will need to accept some of the rules and limits of ordinary life, including your own needs; for life will not, in the end, exempt you. No matter how talented you are, and how special, you are subject to the same conflicts, fears and needs - particularly of security and belonging - as your fellows. When you are able to truly accept your own limits, you are likely to find much greater inner serenity.

Powerful emotional needs lie hidden in the shadow

There is second dimension to the darker side of your usually independent and restless emotional nature. This dimension of your personality comes into play whenever you become deeply and intimately involved with another person; and it contains all those qualities which you have excluded from your conscious values and behaviour so that you can preserve your feeling of freedom. Probably, because you tend to repress your own emotional needs, you meet them via your lovers and partners, who appear to you possessive, dependent, extremely sensitive to the least sign of rejection and indifference, and prone to using emotional blackmail to retain your constant attention. But these attributes in fact belong to your own shadow. You fear the depth and intensity of your feelings, because admission of them might leave you vulnerable to hurt and humiliation, and too much dependency might trap you so that your imagination and your high-flying spirit cannot breathe. Yet if you do not integrate this shadow, you will never be able to sustain the loving relationship you crave; and the easy replacements may not always be available to you as time goes by.

The problem of jealousy and possessiveness

Although you might hate to admit it, or even acknowledge it, you are actually an extremely jealous and possessive person. Your emotional needs are far deeper and more intense than you habitually show; and where there is such powerful attachment, there will inevitably also be possessiveness. Generally it is you who complain about a partner's jealousy, and you are prone to unconsciously setting up triangles and forcing two people into competition with each other over you, and then becoming resentful when either of them becomes angry about it. No one can own another person, you declare; and you dislike having to account for your time or having your actions curtailed by obligations to another. Yet secretly you try to possess those close to you, for you want them to be totally yours and available constantly according to your own needs. For this reason you also do not close the door on past relationships, claiming that there is no reason why you should be required to give up a friendship just because your present partner is jealous; but secretly enjoying the fantasy that you could still have that other too if you wanted him or her.

What this amounts to, on the most profound level, is that you need to have power over your loved ones, because you fear the powerlessness that comes from your own intense feelings. If a loved one were to behave with the same flirtatious inconstancy that you yourself display, or asked for the absolute freedom you demand, you are capable of quite violent emotional eruptions. You tend to protect yourself from your own depths by simply not caring all that much. After all, everything is provisional anyway. But perhaps some time you should put it to the test. Your shadow holds the key to your own deep and abiding capacity for love; and you need to be able to be more honest in expressing it. It is probable that during your early life you were deeply attached to your mother, and that she inadvertently used your devotion to further her own need for emotional comfort. You are therefore frightened of having your love of another used as a means of power, and thus turn around and unconsciously do the very same thing to the people who love you. But perhaps it is time to leave your mother behind, and to live more freely what you truly are: a dynamic and creative spirit who also possesses powerful emotional and sensual desires and a deep need for enduring and intimate relationship with a special person in your life.

A hidden dread of loneliness

You are secretly far more frightened of loneliness than you seem. You dislike being possessed, and tend to spend a lot of time finding ways to get away from the demands of lovers, partners and material obligations; yet you are only able to do this because you usually have someone there in the background waiting for you patiently, offering a love and companionship which protect you from any really deep experience of isolation. But your shadow- side longs to merge with another, and to be taken care of like a child in the embrace of an all-protective parent. Expressing this shadow is no doubt difficult for you, because it would make you too vulnerable for your comfort; and you have already experienced this kind of total dependency in your childhood, when it was probably unconsciously used by an unhappy and overly possessive mother to bind you more closely to her. Because you are unusually sensitive to the pain of others, you can be made to feel obligations very easily; but because you hate feeling obligated, you become resentful toward your loved ones for making you feel this way, rather than realising that it is your own emotional openness which puts you in such a position. Thus you mask your own hidden dependency and sensitivity by recoiling from the dependency of others. You are a deeply sympathetic person, who often tries to appear more callous than you actually are, and you are easily manipulated because you are less than honest with yourself. The gentle, dependent shadow-side of your personality can contribute much to your life, for it reflects your capacity for empathy and caring. But the more you cloak it, the bigger your blind spot becomes.

The importance of accepting the needs of the heart

Thus your hidden shadow-side tends to invade the realm of your personal relationships, and focuses itself around the issues of possessiveness, need, obligation and fear of loneliness. If you find that you are the one to leave relationships because you become trapped and stifled, or are perennially complaining to a long-term partner that you want more space and freedom, try to look at what you yourself might be unconsciously doing to generate the problem. You have a rich and complex personality which combines an unusual degree of intellectual and imaginative scope with an intense and passionate emotional nature; and since both belong to you, both deserve to be expressed and lived. Because you fear dependency so much, you tend to project your own shadow- side onto your partners and lovers and even children and work colleagues; and when you imagine that any of these people are asking for too much from you, you tend to react with a coolness and evasiveness that are extremely hurtful. Worse, such a reaction tends to draw out of others that insecure possessiveness that you profess to despise; for if you constantly keep a person unsure of your love and support, he or she will almost always become frightened, uncertain and demanding. Thus you force others to act out what you cannot face in yourself. Your needy shadow is not negative. It makes you human, and gives you a heart. If you were nothing but an eternal youth, full of bright ideals and wanderlust, you would be a callous and unfeeling creature; but fortunately, such creatures exist only in myth. There is no doubt of the power of your sparkling and creative spirit. But you are also made of flesh and blood, and need to let others see it occasionally. Not everyone is like your mother, and not everyone you love will use the knowledge against you to extract promises you cannot keep. No one can own your soul but you - a concept which you profess to understand, but which you may still need to really grasp by allowing someone close enough to try.

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Another pair of important characters

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

The need to contribute to the human family

Concepts such as "humanity" and "society", which are merely abstract terms to many people, are very meaningful to you. Humanity is not only an idea in your experience, but a living reality; and the events which touch your personal life are immediately translated into broader and more general perspectives, for you cannot conceive of yourself as a separate and detached entity divorced from the common body of humanity. You are part of a human family, and your sense of purpose and worth is derived chiefly from the feeling that you have contributed something to that family. With your strong impulse to reform people in accord with your ideals, you incline toward more revolutionary or radical views of how things ought to be in the world; and you may be frequently heard speaking about issues such as human rights, oppression of minorities, individual responsibility to society, and the evils of class structure and rampant materialism. There is little in your life that is not in some way permeated by your ideals.

The job which earns you a salary but does not contribute anything meaningful or relevant to the society is probably not for you; and if you are stuck in such a situation you are liable to become depressed, restless and unhappy. Life will eventually challenge you on the issue of the limits of human nature, and on these limits within your own nature. You may need, sooner or later, to accept - at least to some extent - the laws of the world in which you find yourself; for your ideas and opinions are inevitably twenty to forty years too premature and also far too high in their expectations for human beings to reach as rapidly as you believe. Because you are not especially interested in the emotional life of individuals, except as a reflection of the effects of social movements and historical trends, you tend to undervalue or even ignore how individual people, including yourself, really feel about things. The welfare of the group is usually more important to you. Often you can, at least in your mind, justify the means by the end, condoning on a rational level individual distress in the name of social evolution. But despite this darker face of your high ideals, you are a civilised and humanitarian soul, truly and deeply concerned with the welfare of the world you live in.

The hidden figure contrasting to this bright, restless personality is a much more conventional and conservative character. This figure has already been fairly described, and there is no need to repeat here what has already been said.

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IV. THE FAMILY BACKGROUND

Family myths and psychological inheritance

The image of the father in a woman's chart

A boy instead of a man

The subjective image of your father portrayed in your birth horoscope is a bright and exciting one. But it is also an ambivalent one, because this image embodies a quality of eternal youth. Perhaps your father was a glamourous or mythic figure to you in childhood, and from him you have inherited a sense of life's adventure and mystery. But at the same time, this is the portrait of a youth rather than of a mature man, and on some level your father was not really equipped to cope emotionally with the responsibilities which marriage and fathering placed upon him. He may have escaped into a world of dreams and fantasies, or into external activities which took him away from home - creating a feeling in you of physical or emotional absence and unreliability. Although outwardly he may have been responsible in the sense of earning his living and attending to practical duties, inwardly you perceived him as restless and dissatisfied with his life - and never really deeply committed to those he loved. ⌃

Dealing with a wandering spirit

Thus you have both positive and negative potentials inherited from your father, and these potentials reflect your own conflict between a spirit of restless youthfulness, and a need for solid commitment. Your longing for greener pastures "over the hills and far away" echoes the wandering spirit of your father, and it collides with your need for stability and permanent relationship. You may have responded to this conflict by becoming like your father - although it might not seem so on the surface - and avoiding those life situations which might tie you down too much; or you may have compensated for what you feel to be his irresponsibility, by becoming too old too young and carrying emotional or financial burdens for others who then seem not to appreciate your loyalty. Probably you do some of both.

Because the image of your father carries with it a certain amount of glamour or charisma, you may find yourself involved in relationships with people who, like him, embody the spirit of eternal youth - which means, bluntly, that they are not ready for a committed relationship with you. You are prone to a pattern of wanting what you cannot quite have and not wanting what you can have; and it might be important to look more carefully at your real feelings about your father, and at your anger toward him as well as your intense idealisation of him. Although it may look like it is your partner who has the commitment problem, there is within you the same figure of restless adventure, and it is your problem too; otherwise you would not have such a knack of finding relationships which somehow do not take proper root.

Whichever extreme you have identified with, you can free yourself from the more difficult dimension of this father-figure, and express the exciting and romantic features of your inheritance through your work and through your personal life. But you will need insight into the boy beneath the man who was your father, and likewise into the restless, imaginative, adventurous adolescent in yourself, so that you can balance this side of your nature with your earthier needs.

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

Artistic and intellectual gifts

Your father possessed some very positive and likable qualities in your eyes - kindness, charm, and refinement. Even if he was not conventionally handsome, he probably seemed so to you in childhood; and many of your values in terms of personal taste and ideals spring from your image of him. He may have been artistically or intellectually gifted, or embodied a social or aesthetic ideal of some kind which means a great deal to you in adult life. He was also on some level a peacemaker, wishing for harmony at all costs, and it is in this sphere that his ambivalence lies. For it is probable that he was unable to confront major issues in his marriage and in his dealings with others, and therefore seemed to you to be in some way weak, albeit lovable. Perhaps he allowed your mother to dominate him, and simply slipped away into the abstract world of his mind with a detachment that you secretly experienced as disinterest or rejection. ⌃

Indecisiveness and passivity

You will need to look with insight into this dimension of your father, for you contain within you both the best of his qualities - his refinement and his intellectual or aesthetic or spiritual interests - and the worst - his indecisiveness and passivity in the face of emotional confrontation. You have much of his extreme idealism, and may tend to feel disappointed when life requires you to be tougher and more realistic. It is important for you to value these gentle qualities within which you have inherited from your father, while at the same time balancing them at the appropriate times with the necessary strength and aggression that life inevitably sometimes requires.

The image of the mother in a woman's chart

Cleverness and competence

The subjective image of your mother portrayed in your birth horoscope is that of a clever, versatile and articulate woman. Even if your mother was not fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to develop her mental abilities through a good education, nevertheless she probably possessed a native quickness and intelligence which impressed you in childhood. Through this dimension of your mother, you have learned to value the gifts of the mind; and if your mother was able to utilise her own abilities and pursued some kind of career in which she could express them, then you have received the best encouragement to develop your own intellectual potential.

If your mother had no outlets for her naturally inquisitive and active mind, however, and was bound to mundane routines, then you were no doubt still aware of her potentials; but you have also been subjected to her powerful unconscious need for you to live out in your own life the gifts which she could not fully develop in hers. You will need to be careful to separate your own intellectual interests from those of your mother, so that you do not underestimate your highly individual qualities of mind and do not struggle compulsively to achieve in academic or intellectual fields a success which she might have wanted, but which is perhaps not a true reflection of your own values and talents. ⌃

The frustration of unused intellectual skill

On the less attractive side, there was probably also a highly critical quality in your mother, because of the quickness of her mind; and you may have learned to fear her verbal barbs. This is particularly likely if her own mental abilities remained undeveloped and frustrated. A sharp and able mind, if given no food other than the mundane routines of daily living, can rapidly become sour and cutting out of sheer boredom. It is possible that your mother was more intellectually able than your father, even if he possessed the academic qualifications; and she may have missed a true mental companion in her marriage, to shape her ideas and stimulate her thinking. You will need to be aware of your acute sensitivity to verbal disapproval from others, for at the root of whatever difficulties you experienced through your mother's too critical tongue, there lies a fine mind which you have inherited and which you can develop in many potentially fruitful career directions in your own life.

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

A strong, independent and aloof figure

Your mother possessed a powerfully independent spirit which has left you with an unconsciuous feeling of rejection and abandonment - as though you trapped her unwillingly into motherhood. If she was able to express this dynamic spirit, which was really ahead of her time and no doubt flew in the face of social conventions about the "proper" role of a woman, then you have been the beneficiary of a tacit encouragement of your own independence and originality. But you may still have felt hurt by her apparent detachment or self-centredness. If she had no outlet for her creative drive, then you were probably exposed to her irritability, abruptness, bad temper or a general atmosphere of tension and disturbance in the household which you may need to understand better if you are to heal your deep sense of personal injury and find the courage to develop your own independent potentials. ⌃

Balancing freedom and emotional needs

Within you there lies a similar free spirit, eager to stretch its wings and resentful of restrictions, limitations and emotional demands by others. This is a positive and creative aspect of your personality, although you will need to balance it with a firm respect for your equally important craving for emotional and material security. As you come to understand your mother's complexity better, you will understand yourself better as well; for behind any disruptive and difficult manifestations in her behaviour lay a trapped spirit that, given support and the right environment, might have blossomed into a creative professional life, which would have fulfilled her and left room for her to appreciate her loved ones. If you blame her for not being a good enough mother, you may on some level be right; but you may need also to view her compassionately as a person who was perhaps not as suited to the conventional roles of wife and mother as she tried to be - any more than you yourself are.

In addition to these images, there is still another additional figure portrayed by your birth horoscope which adds further complexity to your experience of your mother.

Ambition and a desire to be somebody

Your mother-image contains a strongly conventional and responsible quality - the picture of a woman who is determined to be a "good" and "normal" individual in the world's eyes, irregardless of what she might really be feeling inside. Much of this image is positive, and you have inherited the potential to carve a solid place for yourself in the world because of your qualities of practicality, realism and strength of will. Moreover, there was considerable ambition in your mother, and a powerful desire to "be" somebody - which can also act inside you as a goad to high achievement. But the colder and more hurtful qualities which are also present in this strong figure are much more difficult for you, and you probably experienced some criticism, disapproval or rejection from your mother - not because she was a bad mother or because you were unlovable, but because she was probably frustrated and envious and unfulfilled, and could not live up to the figure of sainthood that her own conventional values demanded of her. ⌃

The need for collective approval

You may need to be aware of the connection between this more difficult facet of your relationship with your mother, and the insecurity which you are prone to feel whenever you are in situations where the world's eyes are focussed on you. You tend to expect disapproval or rejection from others whenever you try to express yourself spontaneously, and it may help if you can understand that this springs from your feelings of being a burden or a disappointment to your mother in early life. You need to be less sensitive to the opinions of others, and less reluctant to share your own feelings and ideas with them; but you will only achieve such confidence if you can face the hurt which belongs to your childhood, and can identify less with what you have experienced as your mother's poor opinion of you. Whatever her inner reasons for such behaviour, it is not a reflection of your worth; and you will be a freer and happier person if you can work to integrate the more positive, practical qualities which you have inherited from your mother while seeing with greater clarity the roots of your self-criticism and doubt.

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V. RELATIONSHIP PATTERNS

The attractions of a paternal partner

You have a vibrant and childlike spirit, and tend to live in the ethers rather than on the earth. You are therefore drawn to the man who can offer you security, stability, and a firm relationship with practical life. You rather like being fathered, for you often want protection from the boredom and banality of the mundane world. But having found such a partner, you have a tendency to start feeling stifled, and to begin looking about in case a knight on a white horse is anywhere within range who might rescue you from boredom and oppression. A relationship with an earthier, more serene nature can work extremely well for you, since you need someone who can contain your wandering spirit and who can help you to appreciate the sensual side of life. But you have a deep-rooted problem about commitment, and even if your man is not trying to hem you in you are likely to blame him for it anyway - because you are looking for an excuse to find things wrong with the relationship. ⌃

Learning to relinquish godhead

On a deep unconscious level you are searching for a kind of divine father-surrogate, who will provide you with unchanging, unconditional love but who will ask for nothing in return except what you feel like giving. Such people do not exist in real life. If you wish this kind of commitment from anywhere, then you need to learn to offer it yourself, and to let go of your fantasy of the perfect father-lover. You have a tendency to use sexual disappointment as a justification for dissatisfaction in your relationships, but you do not always consider that the source of the disappointment may be your own problem with letting someone else too close to you. Try to be more honest about your fears, needs and real feelings, for the kind of man you need tends to appreciate this kind of honesty. You have all the considerable gifts of your mind and imagination to offer a partner. But you need to allow your loved one, as well as yourself, to be human, and not necessarily divine.

There is more than one type of man you find yourself attracted to, for your relationship needs are not simple. In addition to the theme described above, there is another relationship pattern portrayed in your birth horoscope which is described briefly in the following paragraphs.

Attractions of a more traditional partner

Despite your strong opinions and considerable independence of character, your rather excitable and outward-looking personality is drawn to those quieter, more sensitive and often more introverted souls who prefer to dwell in the world of feeling and imagination, and who may be uninterested in political, sociological or spiritual concerns. Also, you may find yourself drawn into relationships with those who are more traditional in their views than you, because they do not wish to expend their energy in changing the world. Such a man you can help to open his eyes to the broader world around him, and to understand the importance of the ideas and movements which shift social and political structures. In turn he can help you to appreciate the value of individual self-expression and inner things.

But you need to be careful of your unfortunate tendency to try to convert people to your particular ideology. Your views are strong and well-defined and no doubt right for you, but possibly not for another person. The men who attract you are not generally aggressive or self-assertive, and you may mistake silence for weakness and be unpleasantly surprised when, after pushing such a man too hard, you meet with a brick wall or a rejection. Not everyone needs to espouse causes in order to have compassion, and not everyone needs to participate in protest marches in order to offer a contribution to others. You can offer such a man your own considerable vision, and help him to broaden his life. He in turn can help you to see that you cannot save the world single-handed; and that not all the world wants to be saved. But be careful of your opinionatedness.

Hidden undercurrents beneath the surface of love

Things seem to happen to you in your personal life over which you appear to have no control, and which cause you deep unhappiness or frustration. Whether you have experienced loss or separation that has been forced upon you, or tend to become involved with men who are far more difficult and complicated than you expect, it is important that you understand the complex nature of your own needs in love; for you sometimes have an overly naive or simplistic view of relationship. Something in you craves an experience of depth and transformation through love which is not generally included in conventional definitions of the subject; and in spite of yourself you are fascinated by deep men who have had to struggle in life and who will challenge you and force you into exploring the hidden undercurrents that are at work beneath the surface of any partnership. In short, you need to become more aware of the unconscious dimension of love, which is the stuff of Russian novels and Greek tragedy, and is full of darker and more primitive emotions such as hatred, possession, envy and the desire to have power over the loved one. These more primitive facets of the human heart are not pathological; but they are certainly not part of the fairy-tale model of living happily ever after, nor part of any high-minded sociological vision which does not take the bestial dimension of human passions into account. You have great depth to your feelings, and your love is not always nice, kind, conventional or altruistic. If you cannot face and express some of these rich facets of yourself, you may unconsciously choose men who act them out for you - and who wind up causing you pain. Try to be more subtle and sophisticated both in your definitions of love and in the kind of relationships you create in your life. You will not find a model for the sort of partnership you need in a ladies' magazine or a political tract.

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VI. PATHS TOWARD INTEGRATION

The quest for meaning

You will never find fulfillment within the narrow confines of mundane life. There is something inside you that wants to travel far and wide, physically and symbolically, gathering experience and knowledge, and eventually seeking as broad and deep a philosophical understanding of life as possible. Your deepest satisfaction and sense of purpose lie in your vision of life as a quest, and no amount of material success or personal happiness will allay your restless seeking for the meaning of it all. Although you may not be conventionally religious, you are religious in the deepest sense, for this word comes from a Latin root which means "to reconnect". And that is exactly what you need to do - reconnect with a sense that there is some intelligent and beneficent power behind life, whatever name you give it and however you envision it. Whatever vocation you choose, you need to feel that you are in the service of some higher purpose and are bringing the spirit of faith and enlightenment to your little corner of the world. Thus you might enjoy fields such as teaching, publishing, writing, work involving travel and languages, and all studies concerned with human development.

Your natural appreciation of the world of aspiration and ideas, and your idealism about the nobility and worth of the human spirit, ensure that you are likely to find a suitable field of endeavour for your quest for meaning in life. You have vision that you wish to communicate, and ideas which you need to express. It may be necessary for you to travel a good deal, or even settle in a country other than that of your birth, before you find the right place and vehicle; and even when you put down material roots, your mind will always travel the unbounded world of knowledge.

The bigger the canvas on which you can paint your grand vision of life, the better off you will be. The worst mistake you could make would not be failure, but low aims and a narrow outlook that crushes your enquiring mind and spirit.

Facing the fear of misunderstanding and criticism

There is one area of your life where any effort to face and overcome your anxieties would result in a great increase in your sense of strength and self-respect. This is the sphere of communication, expression and sharing of ideas with others, and it is here that you are most awkward and sensitive to criticism and rejection. You have a deep, reflective and serious mind, but you have probably had trouble making yourself understood to others - particularly when you were younger and had to confront siblings, teachers and peers. Everyday conversation comes hard to you, and although you might excel at practical knowledge or deep understanding of a chosen field of interest, you are uncomfortable when it comes to the social niceties. The problem is that you do not expect others to like or understand you, and you fear seeming stupid and inarticulate and boring in their eyes. But the more you make the effort to meet this challenge, and express your ordinary self to others - complete with all those apparently banal feelings, attitudes and observations that may lack profundity but which are eminently human - the less isolated you will feel, and the more confidence you will have in the expression of those deeper values which matter so much to you.

Thus one of your chief fears - of being misunderstood and thought inarticulate and unintelligent in the eyes of others - can become an indestructible base on which you can build a unique and enduring personal philosophy. For in learning to formulate and express your own original ideas, you will find that you do not need to depend upon the thinking of others to define your vision of truth and meaning; and that you are fully capable, through your own mental resources, of creating a fund of knowledge which brings light to others as well as yourself.