It's about time - for relationships

Taurus 2011

Indeed astrology is all about time, which is a strange thing to think about. Carrying on from my last post, which was the first in the series “What if astrology is true?” where I looked at the astrologer’s main tool the horoscope, I want to look at another area astrologers spend a lot of time discussing. Relationships, being one of life’s main preoccupations, are the reason many clients visit an astrologer. How do we approach this issue using astrological techniques? And what might these techniques imply?

There are two main tools used to look at this topic; something called synastry, and some version of a combined chart. Synastry is the art of placing one horoscope on another and seeing where points interact.

The combined chart option produces a new chart using data from the original two charts (or in some cases more than two – more on this later.)

Do my planets fancy your planets?

As I mentioned last time, a horoscope is just a picture of a moment at a particular place. So synastry is a very weird thing to do. What we are really doing is seeing how one moment of time (which could happen to be a birth moment) interacts with another one. Now I don’t want to go all Einstein on you even if I could. But I have often wondered about the concept of time and space and how it all works. I do have some sympathy with anti-astrology views here. Why would comparing two moments in this way be meaningful?

Someone like Terence McKenna, who was the pioneer of Novelty Theory (see interesting websites below), might have something interesting to say on this, but unfortunately he is no longer with us. And Novelty Theory is a whole other topic. However for whatever reason, which we may someday discover, the results of using this technique are recognisable by many people – including my clients – and I find it an extremely helpful method.

Why might synastry work?

It is like saying that areas in the sky where planets were at a particular time, such as our time of birth, are very sensitive. The snap-shot of the sky which could be called the horoscope, remains as a sort of image somewhere, perhaps in our ‘junk DNA’, and we react when something connects with those sensitive spots. We have all had the experience of taking an instant dislike to people, or maybe of love at first sight. Why? Sometimes, there is no logical explanation for this. Maybe a past life? Or a likeness to someone we know? Often, looking at synastry can give more detail. People trigger us and push our buttons in different ways. Synastry is a very good way of getting a handle on this. Let’s take an example.

Photo from www.whitehouse.gov

This example is relevant to the Osama Bin Laden story. That already iconic photo above of President Obama and entourage at the moment of Bin Laden’s death, has already done the rounds of ‘what does it mean?’ Hillary Clinton has been photo-shopped out and my favourite version was the response to this. We have good horoscopes for Obama and perhaps a good one for Clinton and there is a very telling connection between the two. (Amongst other connections.)

The Leo’s Roar

As you probably know, if you read any astrology about Obama and Hillary Clinton, Barack is a Leo (Sun in Leo) and Hillary is a Scorpio, who is incidentally married to another Leo – Bill. Interesting in itself. However Hillary has the planets Mars and Pluto together in Leo. One translation – she is attracted to sexy, powerful men who love the limelight. And she loves to be the power behind the throne. That’s perhaps her calling. Looking at her synastry with Barack Obama, he was born on the one day in the year when the Sun is exactly in the place in the sky that Mars and Pluto were at Hillary’s birth. His Sun is on her Mars-Pluto we would say. An astrologer would find this pretty impressive, but what does it mean? That depends on the consciousness of each individual, and without having the two of them in my consulting room, that’s difficult to know. However I can have a go at an interpretation as there is so much publicity about them.

Sunny side up?

The Sun shows, amongst other things, vocation and leadership style. Obama has his heart in being a leader and being in the spotlight – it is part of his calling. Not so Hillary. As a Scorpio she wants influence but her heart is not in being in the spotlight. However, she does want attention (and a lot of it) for her style or approach. She does seek recognition. Mars and Pluto together in Leo are a pretty formidable combination. I certainly wouldn’t want to pick a fight with her. This is a powerful, uncompromising style. You do it or you don’t. There is huge determination to win. To have power, to be in control. It has been heavily reported that she is the one who convinces Obama to fight and win, also in the Bin Laden case. Mars is about fighting and competition. Hillary is no wimp. Interesting that she was his main competitor for the presidential candidacy. If you see the synastry, who else could it have been? Mars, which Obama triggers in Hillary, is about competition. And her aptitude for going for things triggers Obama’s leadership. He listens to her because on some level they both understand the Leo need to be the king. She can encourage him. (Mars on a good day). She knows how to influence him, putting it mildly. He, on the other hand, can shine a light (Sun) on her approach – he gives it attention. (Just as well in this case as he has Mars in Virgo. If it wasn’t for Hillary he might still be making a list! Yes I know: Mars in Virgo is good for other things like service and detail.) So I would imagine that they work well together, albeit in a quite fiery, dramatic way sometimes. Happily, Leo is also generous and playful.

So that’s a small example of synastry between two people. I hope you can see that even though we have no idea how it works without discussion, it is amazingly useful as an analytic tool. And it can also be used between any two moments. So apart from studying your relationship with your children or your pet, you can also look at your relationship to your company or a country. You can also compare two companies to see if a merger is a good idea. Or, as I have done with two companies who must work together, use it to see how best to cooperate. I use this technique when I am (often) asked; “Why am I unhappy in Holland? It is very revealing.

An even weirder technique

The other technique used by astrologers to look at relationships is combined charts. One version is to take the time and dates for two people and find the exact halfway point between them. So a simple example – if I was born in February 2009 and you in February 2011, the date we would use to make a chart would be in February 2010 at the appropriate time. We do the same thing with the place of birth, so if I am making a relationship chart (which is what this is called) with someone born in the UK, the place for the chart would be somewhere like Sri Lanka – a half-way point, since I was born in New Zealand. This is a chart for an actual day, time and place. The following example isn’t.

Although relationship charts described above are interesting, I tend to use the other combined one. This one is called a mid-point composite chart. Don’t panic – it’s easy to understand and anyway the computer makes them these days. All you do is take the mid-point of all the planets. So you take the mid-point between the two (or more if you are studying a group – like a sort of average) Suns, the two Moons, Mercurys etc., and then you get a new chart.

Both of these combined charts define a new entity, the relationship, which has a life of its own, which probably explains some things within relationships! We can even go more mad and go back to synastry and compare your chart with the relationship to find out how you get on with this relationship, but that’s getting a bit carried away. Although it might describe the role you have ended up with in the partnership or group.

They are both great and useful techniques for getting a description of a relationship, its heart, its mission, its values etc. But what does this imply? After all this really is strange. Why would adding two bits of time together and dividing them by two to get an average, produce something meaningful. Again I don’t know, but symbolically I can imagine why. And astrology, apart from being about time, is also about symbolism.

Half-way house

Being half-way between something, implies to me a place to meet. If there is a line between you and me, then the mid-point has a sort of fairness. It is the place towards you but not yours and towards me but not mine, if you get my drift. A sort of no-man’s land that is both mine and yours. A place perhaps, of compromise. Far enough away from me, but towards you. A place where we can interact fairly. There is a balance. These are all Libra type words, and Libra is the sign of relationship. So it is not symbolically crazy to use a technique that actually defines mid-points to look at relationships. If we look at people born at different times, maybe the time between them is a place to meet. It is a neutral enough time-zone. Not mine and not yours but we understand it. Like a half-way house, a kind of safe-space where we are not in jail, but also not fully in the community. That’s maybe not a great example, but I’m sure you get the idea. Perhaps we should go to a place to discuss things that is this spot – halfway between our birth places. It would be interesting to research.

And the composite chart shows that a new entity is created with our joint energies. One plus one indeed equals three! Symbolically, this seems viable to me as well.

So what does this all imply?

I think it implies that time and space are more strange and wonderful than even Einstein thought they were. It implies that there are powerful moments waiting for us from birth. If these moments produce a physical entity, like a person or a company, they may well affect us now or later in life. If they don’t produce something physical, then they may affect us some other way – more of that in the next post. Either way there are opportunities waiting, which can be clarified using these astrological tools. I think we have a long way to go before we understand both time and space.

Faye Blake-Cossar

Interesting Websites of the Month

Photo from techoccult.net

Terence McKenna died in 2000. This video from 1995 on Timewave zero is a bit hard to get your head around in terms of concepts but very interesting nonetheless.

Another one on YouTube (also about 10 minutes) has an easier explanation of his time wave in the middle of it. The first part shows his interest in hallucinogenic plants and what they offer. He is definitely off the wall (a good thing in my view!) but the theory and what he is predicting are fascinating and taken seriously by many keen minds.

Quotes of the Month

These are all quotes from Hillary Clinton.

“You show people what you’re willing to fight for when you fight your friends.”
“Probably my worst quality is that I get very passionate about what I think is right.”
“Every nation has to either be with us, or against us. Those who harbor terrorists, or who finance them, are going to pay a price.”