Astrology

Astrology

I always refer to my client’s astrology chart to look for hints about their personality, tendencies, challenges, and opportunities. I also combine the natal chart with the current transits to determine possible reasons why they were inspired to call for an appointment. It is so fun when there is a solid correlation. David booked a session program with me to deal with stresses at home and at work. Everywhere in his life there were challenges, and very little space for relaxation and fun. At this “mid-life crisis” stage of his life, he was feeling trapped and hopeless. His chart revealed a T-square, with Saturn opposing Jupiter, and both squared by Mercury. To picture this in your head, imagine an old-fashioned balance scale with Mercury at the pivot point, and Saturn and Jupiter sitting in the two trays looking for balance. Mercury represents mental activity, thought patterns, analysis, reasoning, learning, and communication. And this mental processing is weighing in on Saturn (restriction, organization, control, order, conservative, grounded and practical – I think of a parent or a strict school teacher) against Jupiter (expansive, free-wheeling, spiritual, philosophical – I think of child-like wonder).

All of this was being set off by Pluto, the planet of deep transformation. I was certain there was something of significance with this configuration. I explained this to David, and he said that he didn’t resonate with those concepts as an issue. He had it under control, and wanted to focus on his daily stresses. He settled into the therapy chair, and we began our session, searching for the roots of his stress and how to resolve it. Immediately his subconscious mind pointed us in the direction of the tension in his family life. He admitted there was a lot of disconnect from his children because he felt he had to be the disciplining parent, making sure they were safe and learning to be responsible. The kids, of course, just wanted to have fun and explore, and be able to figure things out for themselves. As we dived deeper into this issue, David was very divided on how to interact with his children because of his fear that they might go outside the boundaries of safety, make mistakes, and everything would fall apart.

It didn’t take long for me to see that we had plunged right into the midst of the Saturn (discipline)-Jupiter (free-will) opposition with Mercury (his thought processes) at the helm. We explored many aspects of this challenge and how it was playing out in the family dynamic. In the end, the resolution was to bring it all back into balance. To teach the young ones responsibility and safety by letting them have more and more freedom to make their own choices and by honoring mistakes as a part of the process. He vowed to be more spontaneous and do more things like camping trips. Think back to when we each started to walk. We made many mistakes and bounced down on our little diapered butts many times. But none of these attempts were considered failures. Typically, each attempt was celebrated no matter how it ended. At what point did we switch that celebration to criticism and fear? That mistakes are not allowed and it is safer to not attempt things if there is a chance of it going wrong? In my hypnotherapy trainings, I tell my clients that I expect them to be awkward at these techniques at first. If they were able to do it right away, why would they need the training? They are instructed to go ahead and make all the mistakes in the classroom.