Читать книгу Material Girl, Mystical World: The Now-Age Guide for Chic Seekers and Modern Mystics - Ruby Warrington, Ruby Warrington - Страница 13

FIRST HOUSE: Personality, physical body, self-image, personal self-expression

SECOND HOUSE: Finances, personal possessions, talents, earning ability, values

THIRD HOUSE: Communication, learning, information, discussions, siblings, transportation

FOURTH HOUSE: Home, family, the mother, nourishment, emotions, habits

FIFTH HOUSE: Creativity, love affairs, play, pleasure seeking, entertainment, art

SIXTH HOUSE: Daily work, health and wellness, diet, medical treatment, cleanliness

SEVENTH HOUSE: Relationships, partnerships, cooperation, social awareness, justice

EIGHTH HOUSE: Transformation, power, death and rebirth, sexuality, inheritance, taxes

NINTH HOUSE: Travel, philosophy, learning, aspirations, religion, spiritual teachers

TENTH HOUSE: Career, reputation, ambition, responsibilities and duties, the father, politics

ELEVENTH HOUSE: Friends, group activities, humanitarian interests, insights, rebellion

TWELFTH HOUSE: Healing, the subconscious, ideals, meditation, spiritual development

So once you’ve dug into your own chart … it’s pretty much a given that you’ll want to start looking at the charts of all the most important people in your life. Your family members, your lover, your boss. That irritating friend you can’t help loving to death. There are specific ways to interpret how two charts interact with each other, but that gets kind of advanced to go into here. Suffice it to say that comparing the traits of, say, your Cancer Moon and your mother’s Gemini Moon will begin to give you some insight into why, when it comes to certain basic needs, it can be difficult for the two of you to relate.

Yes, this is an example from my own life, and being able to “see” this in our charts was actually the first step on what has been an incredibly healing journey for my relationship with my mum. There’d never been a lack of love between us, but I was always frustrated by what felt like a fundamental inability to communicate on a soul level. I think one of the reasons I left home so young is because I spent a lot of time feeling guilty for not being the kind of daughter I thought she wanted: a.k.a. one who wanted to share every detail of my emotional life with her.

Following a checkered path juggling various jobs to try and make ends meet, she has actually found her calling as a psychotherapist (she studied the work of Carl Jung among others, the Swiss founder of analytical psychology who, by the way, was deeply invested in astrology as a tool for analysis). Makes sense, then, that her focus has always been on airing your feelings to heal—whereas I have always been deeply private about my emotional life, preferring to keep my feelings close to my chest until it feels safe to share. That’s some not-so-friendly Gemini (her)/Cancer (me) Moon-sign friction right there.

You can add to this that her Gemini Moon is in her expressive Fifth house, while my Cancer Moon is in my secretive Eighth house! But guess what? Developing an awareness of this conflict through the lens of astrology has also helped me see the value in “her” way of doing things, and to therefore override my innate fear of sharing my emotions—a healing journey in itself.

And yes, considering all the different ways each aspect in a chart can be interpreted, an argument can be made that it’s always possible to see what you want to. But I believe this is also the point: that you see (or choose to see) what you do in a chart for a reason. This is where the intuition part comes in. So long as you are fearless in following your gut to what feels like the truest reading for any particular aspect, no matter how inconvenient or ugly, you will be gifted with rough diamonds of self-awareness to polish and allow to inform your choices and actions going forward.

By using this technique to better understand my needs and my mum’s, and the ways in which we move through the world as a result, our relationship has been transformed. For my part, developing the maturity to override my “crabby” Cancer Moon tendencies (Cancer is symbolized by a crab in its shell) and give her what she always needed from me—a real heart-to-heart—is what’s been instrumental in moving our relationship on. Not overnight, not without us airing some difficult truths about our shared history, and not without buckets of tears. But we’ve gotten to a place where I know we both feel like mother and daughter in a way we were never able to before. It’s this that’s helped me evolve and open up about my feelings in other areas of my life too.

As the AstroTwins’ Ophira puts it: “Astrology is a tool for radical forgiveness,” and it’s not like either my mum or I changed who we are. Rather, I’ve been able to see our differences from a whole more accepting perspective. She is she, I am me, these are our differing needs, and that’s okay.

So if astrology in my book (this book) is for self-reflection, with a view to deeper self-knowledge, a few more words on what I do not believe it’s for—and that’s planning every move you make, every single second, of every single day.

You’re no doubt aware of how some people act like the world must come to a standstill every time Mercury goes into retrograde (i.e., slows its path in the sky so it looks like it’s moving backward). As the planet of communication, contracts, and technology, Mercury’s roughly thrice-yearly retro phase is supposedly a time when things go haywire/backwards in these areas—and as you may well have experienced, this can definitely be the case!

But this is NOT a reason or an excuse to go hide under a rock until it resumes “forward” motion. Because guess what? All the planets are going retrograde and making all kinds of other “negative” aspects all the time, stirring trouble and rubbing one another the wrong way. If we put our lives on hold every time the cosmos was looking anything less than blue skies ahead, we’d never do anything. In fact, going back to my likening astrology to a kind of cosmic weather forecast, you don’t cancel your plans because it looks like rain out—but you do pack an umbrella.

I also like the analogy used by Dr. Chee Ming Wong, an anesthetist I interviewed once who regularly cast his own astrological divinations: “If there’s a bumpy road ahead, then it would be wise to slow down. Conversely, there will be moments that are potentially advantageous.” According to wonderful Dr. Ming Wong (scientifically trained Dr. Ming Wong): “The scientific discipline is good at measuring observable phenomena. Yet, for all that remains a mystery, perhaps the way of the ancients, which includes astrology, provides a well-trodden pathway in exploring the science of the unknown.”

Something to recite in the face of all those who will invariably treat you like a total Froot Loop for choosing to believe that the celestial bodies with which we share our place in space have any bearing on our earthly, human lives whatsoever. Along with this quote, a favorite of mine, from Parkers’ Astrology: “The Universe is not only stranger than we think, but stranger than we can think.” I rest my case, amen.