Every twelve years or so, Jupiter returns to the sign and degree it occupied when you were born. For obvious reasons, that represents a time of intensified Jupiter energy for anyone who experiences it – and we all do, pretty much like clockwork when we turn twelve years old, or twenty-four, or thirty-six, or forty-eight, and so on.

Naturally, seeing a peak in Jupiter energy, all the fortune-telling astrologers jump for joy. They’ll tell us that it’s time to buy a lottery ticket or ask the boss for a raise. And it is! When “dumb luck” knocks on your door, there is a good chance that Juptier is knocking too. We evolutionary astrologers recognize that fact – but we also recognize Jupiter’s darker potentials. The familiar cliche, “all that glitters is not gold,” pretty much summarizes them. To that cautionary note, I always like to add a happy rider: but gold glitters! Any Jupiter time is an excellent opportunity to add some of that glitter to your life.

As ever, with Jupiter the real questions are always how have you been underestimating yourself? How have you been settling for too little? It’s time for a victory – or at least some significant improvement in your life. And because of the laws of synchronicity, when Jupiter steps into the spotlight the opportunities for those improvements are all in place. It’s your job to recognize them – and meanwhile, to be wary of the kinds of fool’s gold opportunities that merely glitter, but will never feed your soul.

All that I’ve just written applies to any kind of Jupiter event. To those of you who have been studying evolutionary astrology for a while, it’s all familiar territory. In this essay, I want to explore one dimension of our understanding of Jupiter returns, specifically – one that applies to everyone, rarely fails, and generally does not appear in the astrological literature.

By the way, Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun takes 11.86 years, so calling it “twelve years” isn’t exactly spot-on. And of course, like the rest of the planets, Jupiter turns retrograde from time to time, and so putting a date on your personal returns is a bit complicated. Your first Jupiter return might not occur when you are exactly 11.86 years old. Because of retrograde motion, it might also involve three hits on the exact conjunction rather than just a single hit. As always, to nail the precise timing, you need to turn on the computer or open up the ephemeris.

For our purposes here, let’s keep it simple and say we all have Jupitier returns like clockwork every dozen years. That means that they are part of what we call the biopsychic script in the FCEA – that subset of transits and progressions that hit everybody at the same age. Because of that universality, they are woven into human culture, generally stripped of their obvious astrological signatures. In other words, you’ll see plenty of “common knowledge” in what we are about to explore.

What I want to reflect on here is how each subsequent Jupiter return is unique, with its own signature set of issues and opportunities. They always represent a chance to “estimate yourself” more positively, but in each case the breakthrough they offer is different. The delightful heart of the matter is the way each of these Jupiter returns is mirrored in that fabled archetype that underlies every cycle that impacts everything that comes into existence: the astrological houses.

The key here is to start with the first Jupiter return and relate it to the first house. I missed this whole connection for a long time by thinking that birth should be the first house, with the first Jupiter return then being relegated to the second house, and so on around the circle. That might make a kind of logical sense, but as you’ll soon see, it doesn’t work that way.

THE FIRST RETURN: AGE TWELVE

The first house is about autonomy and freedom. It’s about making our own choices – and dealing with the consequences. As we turn twelve, we are beginning to “grow up.” Civilized behavior is expected of us. We’re now  expected to know the difference between right and wrong. We are also starting to operate outside the protective context of family – and beyond its watchful eye. We start to feel touchy about our independence. Sexual energy begins to impact us, drawing our attention to the wider world. We start to become conscious – and probably self-conscious – about our appearance: another classic dimension of the first house and how we “dawn on people.” We start to feel motivated to find our own “style.” We no longer assume that we will automatically be loved or remembered. We have to earn it.

Claiming Jupiter’s Gift: Step out confidently into the wider world with all its dangers and possibilities.

THE SECOND RETURN: AGE TWENTY-FOUR

Traditionally, the second house refers to money – and there are obvious connections with financial matters at this crossroads. Individual stories vary, but around this age there is a general assumption that we will begin to be self-supporting – or that we should be. Failure in that regard tends to feed back negatively into our self-image. In classic second house fashion, it is time that we begin to “prove ourselves.” Who are we and what’s going to be our place in the eternal pecking order? The hungry drive – and the attendant personal insecurity – of just “starting out” dominate our lives. The dramas of rejection and acceptance around mate selection accentuate second house questions of self-worth and confidence. Marriage and the birth of the first child are common around now, further raising questions around our ability to “provide.”

Claiming Jupiter’s Gift: Trust and value yourself and have faith in the future that you are starting to create.

THE THIRD RETURN: AGE THIRTY-SIX

The third house is related to speech and around this time two developments are happening in that communications arena. First, we are simply finding our adult voice. Second, what we have to say is beginning to be taken more seriously by people of all ages. When we express an opinion, we’re not seen as “the kid” anymore. We have reached an age where we can speak with a kind of authority which people older than ourselves find plausible, natural, and legitimate. The third house is also about sheer, frantic busyness and the general buzz of life, which are typically reaching a crescendo around this time. How many balls can we juggle?

Claiming Jupiter’s Gift: Speak up confidently and expect that you will be taken seriously.

THE FOURTH RETURN: AGE FORTY-EIGHT

The fourth house has a strong connection with home and family and so our focus naturally shifts in that direction. Generally by this age, we’ve put down some kind of roots in both of those categories – home and family. While we may be very busy with our work in the world, there also arises a stronger sense of the importance of our primary domestic relationships. In eternal fourth house fashion, psychology calls us – whether it takes the simple form of more introspection and reflection, or some actual “crisis of meaning” in our lives. Aging parents often begin to loom large in our lives at this stage too, further emphasizing familial themes.

Claiming Jupiter’s Gift: Make your stand in the world, taking appreciative responsibility for your home, your family, and your community.

THE FIFTH RETURN: AGE SIXTY

As we come to our fifth Jupiter return, we are also experiencing our second Saturn return, so this is a particularly momentous existential turning point. The fifth house is associated with joy, creativity, and playfulness – and more importantly, with seizing the moment for the expression of those kinds of values. Most of us are still reasonably healthy and active at this age, but we are also vividly aware of getting older. There’s less satisfaction derived from imagining good things that will “come tomorrow.” Fifth house fashion, we want them right now. It’s not unusual for people to become grandparents around this time and thus we see the traditional fifth house focus on the joy that children can bring, except in this case it’s our children’s children.

Claiming Jupiter’s Gift:  Be generous with yourself. Do something big for yourself. Do it right now.

THE SIXTH RETURN: AGE SEVENTY-TWO

One traditional focus with the sixth house is health and illness. We may still be fine physically as we approach age seventy-two, but we’re generally becoming more aware of physical issues and limitations, even impending ones. Those health concerns are part of the sixth Jupiter return, but the heart of it lies in that often-forgotten dimension of the sixth house: mentoring. Much joy derives from passing on our gifts of knowledge and wisdom and having them received gratefully by younger people. We now often find ourselves “passing on the torch” in terms of our life’s work. Meeting needs that are essentially egocentric becomes less of a motivator for us. There’s humility in the sixth house – and a lot of generosity too.

Claiming Jupiter’s Gift: Take better care of your physical body starting right now – and keep your eyes open for younger people who could use some skillfully diplomatic, respectful guidance from you.

THE SEVENTH RETURN: AGE EIGHTY-FOUR

As we come to our seventh Jupiter return, we are also experiencing our Uranian return, so once again as with the fifth return it is reinforced and thus it is a particularly momentous time. The seventh house is all about relationships in general, not just marriage. Ask anyone at age eighty-four what they think is the most important value in life and there is a good chance that you will hear something about the quality of their human connections. Worldly success and glory are losing their grip on us. It’s the people we love that matter now – and with that Uranian signature in the mixture, the people we love are the ones who accept us as we are. The rest can take a long walk off a short pier.

Claiming Jupiter’s Gift: Say “I love you” to the people who deserve to hear it. Be yourself – and be grateful if anyone who doesn’t like you being who you actually are chooses to go away and leave you alone.

THE EIGHTH RETURN: AGE NINETY-SIX

For obvious reasons, only a few of us make it to the eighth Jupiter return. Traditionally, the eighth is the house of death and naturally mortality looms large and imminent at this point. We know that we don’t have much time left in this world. Younger people might find those words ominous, but never forget to add the nature of Jupiter itself. This is the planet of exuberant faith. A joyful sense of “going home” is trying to arise in the psyche now – and trying to break through the cultural walls of fear around end-of-life matters. Most of our peers – old friends, lovers, and partners – are gone now. We know that we will soon follow them. Often a sweet feeling that we will see them again begins to loom in us.

Claiming Jupiter’s Gift: Face your own passing from this world in a spirit of faith, surrender, and gratitude.

THE NINTH RETURN: AGE ONE HUNDRED EIGHT

It happens sometimes! But clearly a ninth Jupiter return is a rare event. What is the meaning of the ninth house? “Long journeys” is one – and anyone who makes it this far is contemplating the longest journey of them all. Another meaning of the ninth house is religion or philosophy. Either one of those subjects can become quite central in the mind of anyone who makes it this far. It’s time to figure out what your life has meant. What did you learn? What will you take with you?

Claiming Jupiter’s Gift: Reflect on what you have learned from your long years in this world. See if you can put it into ten words or less. That’s the essence of what you’ll bring through the gateway we call death – and out the other side.

So there it is, the cycle of Jupiter returns, each with its own unique signature.

In your astrological studies, you’ll occasionally encounter the term “mutual reception.” I don’t think I’ve ever written about it before, but I suspect it may have popped up from time to time in my videos or in one of our question-and-answer sessions. It’s not a pivotal tool in evolutionary astrology, but it’s something worth understanding.

The basic idea is the soul of simplicity: we have two planets and each one lies in the sign that the other one rules. You might, for example, have Mercury in Aries and Mars in Gemini. Or maybe your Jupiter is in Cancer while the Moon is in Sagittarius. Even though every planet is  different, in the case of mutual reception, each one is wired to have a special understanding of the other one. They are working as a team.

• A common interpretive thread in the traditions around mutual reception is that these planets can help each other escape from various perils. They watch out for each other. They have each other’s backs. They can “bail each other out.” They can offer each other “escape hatches.”

Those phrases give us the basic interpretive template. Mercury in Aries and Mars in Gemini? Maybe your shoot-from-the-hip Mercury gets you into trouble – you say something injudicious and suddenly everyone is giving you dirty looks. Mars-in-Gemini to the rescue – you quickly come up with a “clarification” that gets you off the hook.

Jupiter in Cancer and the Moon in Sagittarius? Maybe you’re worried about how you’re going to pay for that fixer-upper home you just bought in Calabria, Italy? (There’s your impulsive Moon in Sagittarius.)  Right on schedule, your grandmother dies and leaves you half a million dollars. (Jupiter in Cancer to the rescue.)

Once I read that you can think of two planets in mutual reception the same way you might think of a trine aspect between them. That’s a crude analogy, but it does contain a germ of truth –. clearly the simple notion of “luck” has some relevance here. But naturally it’s possible for two planets in mutual reception to be joined by a hard aspect, so it’s a bit more complicated than thinking of them as “trine.” The classic example there would be Mars in Libra opposing Venus in Aries. Here’s another – Jupiter in Virgo in square aspect to Mercury in Sagittarius. In those cases, we’re obviously dealing with some complexity – the integrative challenges of the hard aspect are mixed with themes of alliance, mutual aid, and shared goals and understandings.

JULIANE KOEPCKE

Here’s a real life story of a woman born with Saturn in Scorpio and Mars in Capricorn – a classic example of mutual reception. She’s also on the short list for the luckiest human being ever to have lived. On Christmas Eve 1971, the plane in which she was flying with her mother in South America was struck by lightning and disintegrated in midair. Still strapped to her seat, she fell 10,000 feet and crashed into the Amazon rainforest far below, miraculously still alive. She was the sole survivor of the crash, suffering a concussion, a broken collar bone, and various lacerations.

Following creeks and rivers downstream, she wandered through the jungle for nine days before finding a camp set up by lumberjacks who finally got her to help. Two weeks later, she was strong enough to be able to help authorities locate the crash site, where she had the horrific experience of finding her own mother’s body.

Obviously, there is considerable ambiguity in calling Juliane Koepcke “lucky.” Still, there are not many human beings who can fall from a height of nearly two miles and live to tell the tale. Google her if you’d like to know the rest of her story.

Meanwhile, here’s her AA-rated chart.

There’s a clear mutual reception between Mars and Saturn, in Capricorn and Scorpio respectively. The interpretive details are truly eerie and they verge us a lot closer to fortune-telling astrology than where we usually go in our work. Keep perspective: I am sure that there are thousands of people who have “malefic”  Mars in “the house of long journeys” and who have never fallen out of airplanes – even if Mars not only rules their charts, but is also conjunct Chiron, opposing a Uranus/Jupiter conjunction, and squared by Neptune!

The astrological symbolism behind Koepcke’s spectacular accident is clearly quite literal in this case: she had a horrible accident (Mars) on a “long journey” (9th house) and miraculously (mutual reception) survived. As always, astrology works – we’re just never sure exactly how it’s going to work. And naturally in exploring this single event, while the correlations are indeed extremely striking and obvious, we are far from seeing the “only” meaning these configurations could possibly have had – or actually have had in her life. Any astrologer who looks at her chart and tries to play the “I could have told you that” game is standing on very shaky ground.

Our focus here is on understanding mutual reception in generalizable ways. How does Koepcke’s Mars interact with her 7th house Saturn in Scorpio, along with Saturn’s solid conjunction with Mercury? To really get to the heart of the matter, that’s the technical question we need to answer. Here’s a critical piece of background information – something which opens the door to understanding the cooperative interaction between her Mars and her Saturn. When she was born, Juliane Koepcke’s parents were German zoologists working at the Museum of Natural History in Lima, Peru. When Juliane was fourteen, they left Lima to create a research facility deep in the Amazon rainforest, where she learned jungle survival skills. Without those skills, it is doubtful that she would have gotten through her rainforest trek alive.

When we think of survival, what astrological symbolism comes to mind? Scorpio resonates with the presence of death. Mars resonates with the fierce desire to fight to remain alive. Saturn resonates with sheer determination in the face of daunting difficulties.

And Mercury resonates with knowledge.

In those last few sentences, we see the stew of astrological energies that kept Juliane Koepcke alive. She needed the sheer grit of Mars and Saturn, but without her technical “Mercury” knowledge about survival skills specific to the perils of the Amazon basin, she wouldn’t have made it through in one piece.

Still, the obvious question remains: what kept her alive as she fell 10,000 feet to the jungle floor far below? No amount of knowledge prepares anyone to survive such a trauma. That part is not so easy to explain – and in that we perhaps glimpse the deeper mysteries implicit in mutual reception.

It seems that guardian angels find mutual receptions attractive.

Juliane Koepcke’s example is obviously a “Perfect Ten” on the Richter Scale of drama. That’s fitting with Mars, Saturn, and Scorpio in the mixture. Let’s now turn our attention to a softer example – one that’s closer to the more psychological realities that you’ll actually encounter in the course of pursuing an astrological practice in the everyday world. Here we’ll stick nearer to home. Let’s look at the chart of the FCEA’s beloved Communications Director . . .

PENELOPE LOVE

With Penelope, we are looking at a very powerful example of mutual reception, but one that isn’t quite so chocked full of hellfire and brimstone as Koepcke’s. Penelope’s chart-ruling Venus lies in Cancer and conjunct her Sun – she’s clearly Madame Venus. Meanwhile, her Moon lies in Taurus. That provides us with a classic example of mutual reception: the Moon is in a sign that Venus rules while Venus occupies the Moon’s own sign, Cancer.

Intimate themes clearly pervade Penelope’s mutual reception. Venus is of course “the goddess of love” and it could hardly be more prominent in her chart. Being in Cancer, Venus definitely takes on the coloration of “wife” and “life-partner” –  in terms of relationship, Cancer means that we’re talking about serious commitment for the long haul. That stable, monogamous intention is further underscored by the Moon being in the Fixed sign, Taurus. More to the point, the Moon is also in the 8th house, which links directly to the idea of sexual bonding as distinct from any  examples of the broader range of human sexual expression. With Penelope’s symbols, we’re talking about the mystery of couples who pass the test of time. God bless our flings and our  adventures on either side of the bedsheets, but those kinds of amorous situations are more in the 5th house category than the 8th. Penelope’s evolutionary intention in this lifetime very definitely includes the experience of serious commitment running in both directions – to cherish and to be cherished.

Here’s the hitch: her 8th house Taurus Moon is in a conjunction with her south node, which is in turn ruled by that same Venus. In Penelope’s case, this whole mutual reception structure is pervaded by unresolved intimate karma – and note that “earthquaking” Uranus opposes both the south node and the Moon. That configuration is strongly suggestive of past life bereavement or abandonment – something that left her with a bit of PTSD in the love department as she began this incarnation.

Would that mutual reception of Venus and the Moon come to the rescue in this lifetime?

Rather than telling you Penelope’s story here, let me just refer you to her book, Wake Up In Love. In fact, you can enter it in Amazon’s search engine right now and read a few pages for free. There, you’ll see the heart of the matter in action – and I bet you’ll quickly want to buy the book too! Support your local Communications Director!

I want to begin by thanking every brave veteran of our 306 master classes. I am looking forward to our next one which begins on Monday, January 13th. Without what I’ve learned from them, I would not be able to write this little essay. This one is about “something I knew, but didn’t know I knew” – at least until I’d spent many hours helping our most advanced students expand their astrological chops.

As many of you are aware, our format in the master classes involves everyone looking at the same new chart each week. The charts are all invented – they’re not famous people. The students receive them in advance along with fictional biographies for each character. One week we’ll look at a birthchart, another week we’ll look at current transits and progressions for that same invented person. Late in the program, there’s always a synastry as we imagine two of our fictional characters falling in love. For efficiency’s sake, with the t’s & p’s and the synastry,  we stick to birthcharts we’ve already studied, so we can skip that step.

The underlying idea in the master class is that each student needs to be ready for anything with that weekly chart – just like we need to be fully prepared to talk about anything and everything if a client is coming to sit with us.

We meet on Zoom for seven sessions. Students are required to attend at least four of the seven class sessions in order to pass. The FCEA is wonderfully international, but that does create some scheduling challenges. By alternating between an early-morning and a late-afternoon US West coast starting time, we make class times as accessible as possible for different time zones. Each time, either Catie or I propose a series of questions about the chart-of-the-week. The questions could be technical or they could be something we say in human terms. What about that Jupiter square Saturn? Or how would you counsel this person in terms of career direction?

I then reach into a hat, draw the name of a class member, and that (heavily perspiring) person takes it from there. Nobody knows when the fickle finger of fate is going to point in their direction. In a typical meeting, five or six people are called to stand in the spotlight. Most of the students take ten minutes or so to do their presentations, then I make some comments and usually ask some follow-up questions.

As a system, this format has worked really well. In designing it, what we were up against was our usual enemy: the clock. Ideally, each student would present a full, integrated analysis of a chart – something that would take at least an hour and probably longer. With a dozen or so people in the class, there just wasn’t enough time for that. The math didn’t lie: seven sessions times ninety minutes is only ten hours or so. On top of it, part of the teaching is me commenting on each student’s work – that’s where the “master class” dimension comes into play. And that takes time too.

That’s where our tricky method enters the picture: each student has to be ready to present a full chart analysis at any given moment – they just don’t know in advance which part of the chart they’ll be asked to discuss or even if “today is their day.”

We keep it friendly and supportive, of course – we’re the FCEA! But you can probably see why I referred to the brave veterans of our 306 classes at the beginning of this essay, not to mention their perspiration. No matter how nice we are to each other, it’s still a high pressure situation.

All in all, I’ve been delighted with the performances of our students. By the time they complete 306, they are well on their way to being graduates of our school and every one of them is worthy of that honor. They’ve mastered the technicalities. They are capable of representing the best of evolutionary astrology. They can carry the flame forward, and for that I can only thank them.

For those triumphant students, the only thing that lies ahead is practice, practice, practice. They’ve internalized the nuts and bolts of our system. Now they need to find their own  voices.

In listening to the presentations of these students, I realized that there was one consistent piece of advice that I could give most of them – something that would help their future clients to follow what they were talking about more easily. It was the “something I knew, but didn’t know I knew” that I referred to at the beginning of this little essay. More to the point, it was also something that was often missing in our students’ presentations.

That missing piece is my subject here. I am calling it planetary on-ramps.

GETTING ON THE HIGHWAY

We’ve all either been behind the wheel or riding shotgun when the time comes to join the hurtling traffic on a crowded freeway. We accelerate up the on-ramp hoping for a hole in the screaming mass of moving metal. Often it’s a nail-biter. When it comes to actual driving skills, merging with speeding traffic is a high-stakes test, something far more challenging than just cruising down the highway. That’s why we breathe a sigh of relief once we actually settle into the flow with the rest of the cars and trucks.

Cutting to the astrological counseling room . . .

There you are in the middle of a reading. You’ve done a good job of presenting an integrated view of the client’s Sun, Moon, and Sagittarian Ascendant. You’re about to scream up the on-ramp to their chart-ruling Jupiter. What are the first words out of your mouth? They better be good. You’re about to set the tone for a fresh, major chapter of your presentation.

You understand Jupiter. You’ve burned the midnight oil in your FCEA studies. Intellectually and conceptually you are prepared. Your client is intelligent and open-minded –  but pig-ignorant when it comes to what Jupiter signifies. How do you get that part of the conversation off on the right track? How do you make sure that the client’s mind is attuned to Jupiter’s wavelength? 

Where is the on-ramp? 

• Maybe you say, from the evolutionary perspective, the big questions with Jupiter are how have you been underestimating yourself? How have you sold yourself short? Where have you been settling for too little?

See what happens when you open with those familiar words? Instantly, the client’s mind is set on the right questions. Their mental radio is tuned to Jupiter’s channel. You’ve set the correct tone. With those leading sentences, you’ve established a context for everything that will follow.

For each planet, we can create similar “on-ramps.” In each case, there are many possibilities. In a moment, I’ll make a suggestion for each one of them – but, remember, these are just suggestions. You can certainly come up with others and I encourage you to do that.

Nothing that follows will sound new or surprising. It’s all stuff you’ve heard before, much of it back in the 100 courses when you were learning the astrological basics. The point is that these verbal “on-ramps,” even though they reflect astrological theory, are really about the art of astrological counseling – which is always about building and maintaining a linguistic bridge of rapport, connection, and mutual comprehension with our astrologically-naive clients. Think of these on-ramps as a way of holding your clients’ hands as you lead them into the deep dark forest of astrological symbolism.

Let me reiterate that memorizing and using the “on ramps” that follow is a good starting point, but there are many others waiting to be created – or already lurking in the various FCEA teaching materials that you’ve studied.

SAMPLE ON-RAMPS

With the Sun, you might open by saying, “Taking care of the Sun is the secret of sanity. Make a priority of the basic values we’re about to explore and you’ll feel centered, grounded, and confident that you are on the right track in life.”

With the Moon, you might open by saying, “Taking care of the Moon is the secret of happiness, well-being, and maintaining a generally good mood. Meet the needs that we are about to discuss and you’ll beat back the blues every time.”

With the Ascendant, you might open by saying, “Following the path of your Ascendant helps you align your outer life with the actual intentions of your soul. It helps you “get your act together,” in other words. It helps you become the person whom you were always actually meant to be. 

With Mercury, you might open by saying, “Mercury is the messenger of the gods. It’s about helping you find your true voice. More critically, it’s about a set of perceptions – things you need to focus on learning – in order to get there. And then there’s the Grand Prize: when you speak with your true voice, people will really listen to you.”

With Venus, you might open by saying, “For you, certain kinds of people are like triggers or catalysts for your evolution. Here’s how to recognize those people – and how to avoid the ones who’ll just waste your time, or worse.”

With Mars, you might open by saying, “Mars is the god of war – and there is one virtue that warriors esteem above all others. That’s courage – and where Mars lies, you’re going to need it! In this area of life, you’re getting a crash course in assertiveness. You can be the hunter or you can be the prey. The choice is yours.”

(We looked at Jupiter earlier in this essay.)

With Saturn, you might open by saying, “Saturn often gets a bad rap, but it’s not really  bad – it’s just hard. And there’s a big difference. We are going to look at a place where you were born with a blockage, but that doesn’t mean you have to die with it too. The Great Work of your life lies in making a big breakthrough here. You can succeed, but it will require relentless effort and self-discipline. And it’s worth it.

With Uranus, you might open by saying, “Who would you be if you had been born with a different mother or father? More generally, think of all of the external forces that have shaped you – and maybe misshaped you. Uranus is the guardian of your true individuality – and a place where you will have to fight your way to the kind of true self-knowledge that’s the only path to real freedom. It’s also a place where you’ve probably gotten a lot of well-meaning bad advice, and that’s a problem we’ll need to straighten out.”

With Neptune, you might open by saying, “Neptune is the god of the sea. What it really means is the sea of consciousness itself – the sea into which we dive when we meditate or dream. When it comes to spirituality, everyone’s path is different. Here’s yours – here’s your doorway into the mysteries.”

With Pluto, you might open by saying, “Pluto is the lord of the underworld” – also known as, “the god of hell.” It’s a place where you’ve been hurt, maybe in a past life, maybe in the present one, maybe in both. To heal the wound, there’s a hurt place that you need to see clearly in yourself. It’s also a place where, if you get it right, you can claim your true power.”

WHY ARE THESE ON-RAMPS SO MISSION-CRITICAL?

If we open our discussion of each planet with these kinds of simple “on-ramp” statements, our clients’ attention is instantly aimed in exactly the right direction. They know precisely what we are talking about and they mentally file everything that you are about to say under the correct headings. 

You’ve successfully set the right tone and they are now ready to absorb the details of their evolutionary strategy.

Here’s a point that would be hard to deny – 100% of your past lives occurred in the past. I mean, we might go down the rabbit hole of wondering “what time itself is” . . . but in the end that line of inquiry just leaves people tongue-tied and staring into space. Maybe ultimately time is one of those “useful fictions” which allow us to communicate with each other – what the Buddhists would call a “relative truth” rather than one of the ultimate truths which always lie beyond the realm of language.

For our practical purposes in this little essay, let’s just stick to the helpful notion that the 20th century came before the 21st.

Here’s a second point that would be tough to argue against – history has often been unimaginably weird. For example:

Among the Lakota people, one’s status was increased by giving away one’s possessions rather than by accumulating them. Try explaining that to a Wall Street stockbroker.

There is some evidence that the Trobriand Islanders of New Guinea didn’t make a connection between sex and pregnancy. Imagine high school there.

In Japan until the end of the 19th century, blackened teeth were seen as a sign of female beauty. In China for centuries, the same could be said for tiny little feet – hence the (dreadful) custom of foot-binding that would render a woman effectively immobile.

The list goes on. History is a real zoo, full of surprises and head-scratchers that none of us could easily imagine as we sit here a quarter of the way into the 21st century.

Of course by the 23rd century, people will be looking back at us and marveling at how for a few decades people preferred staring at cell phone screens to actual human contact. We modern humans are no exception in the weirdness department. What kinds of south node signatures will those 23rd century astrologers be seeing when they’re faced with the unresolved karma of 21st century people who drifted into their phones instead of into each other’s eyes?

All of this leads directly to a practical dilemma that we all face as evolutionary astrologers. In creating the past-life nodal story, we are by definition framing a tale in an earlier historical context. If we don’t actually know some history, we might blunder – as, for example, did a US President talking about the good guys “taking over the airports” during the American revolutionary war. (There were of course no airports).

“There you were, a thousand years ago, way back in the Stone Age, dining on deep-fried Stegosaurus steaks straight out of the freezer.” One obvious advantage of knowing some history is that we won’t make mistakes like those. A client has no reason to assume that you, as the astrologer, should be an academic historian, but you will definitely come across more plausibly if you don’t show evidence of abject ignorance. The true disaster is that obvious historical errors might undercut the client’s capacity to take the rest of what you are saying seriously.

This goes beyond not looking dumb and losing credibility. There’s a purely positive side to knowing some history too. Its second benefit is the color, plausibility, and depth that such information adds to the story you’re telling.

Here are a couple of illustrations of what I mean:

• Maybe you see a south node in Sagittarius in the 2nd house squared by Jupiter – so you tell a story about your client once having been a Lakota who gave away everything. 

• Maybe you see a 12th house Capricorn south node conjunct Venus and squared by a 3rd house Saturn – and that leads to a story about being a Chinese woman a millennium ago hobbled by those bound feet.

As always, coming up with the nodal story – a process that is so central to therapeutic dimensions of the astrological work we do – is an act of creativity. In a sense, we are making up these stories. Ethically it’s important to make sure that the client understands that – we don’t claim to know the outward facts of anyone’s prior lifetimes. We just know their emotional effects – what they felt like, and what has been carried forward.

And we depend on a good story to get that feeling across to the client.

The bottom line is that, as astrologers, we start by burning the midnight oil in order to understand the basic methodology of nodal analysis. Then we color creatively within those lines – always making sure that every important element of the tale we weave is justified by the symbolism. 

We’re creative – but not too creative, in other words.

As we strive to pull an effective, convincing nodal tale together, a knowledge of history is like the difference between having a ton of money in the bank versus worrying about whether you can pay your electric bill this month. That’s because with this kind of knowledge you are rich in historically authentic images. They put words in your mouth – good words that amplify the impact of what you are presenting. Your stories have more punch and a few accurate, exotic details of the past enhance their verisimilitude for anyone sitting with you.

Plus you never blunder into talking about clients microwaving their Pterodactyl wings on their way to the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

HOW TO GET GOOD AT THIS

To be a skilled evolutionary astrologer is to be a skilled storyteller. At least when it comes to the lunar nodes, those stories are all set in the past. To succeed there, you certainly don’t need a degree in history. It’s not nearly so hard. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that for most of us, the process of absorbing this kind of knowledge is actually fun. Much of it comes down to reading books and watching movies. I’d be surprised if you’re not at least half way there already, just from your education – not to mention books you’ve already read and the films, documentaries, and television shows that you’ve already seen and enjoyed.

For many of us, reading an interesting tale about some juicy period in world history is no hardship. Thick, erudite academic volumes with tons of footnotes can admittedly be slow-going, but there’s no need to turn the process into such heavy lifting unless you feel like it. Such  “PhD-in-History” writing often gives you a lot more detail than what you actually need for our purposes. Popular treatments are fine.

And don’t forget about novels! If they’re any good, they contain characters with whom you can identify. That identification means that historical novels actually often make a long-ago period come alive for you more vividly than any pure “history book.” And they’re definitely more fun to read – many of them are real page-turners.

The same is true for films. Off the top of my head, I find myself thinking of that big Mel Gibson film from 1995, Braveheart. I bet many of you have seen it – and unwittingly gotten an education in late-13th century Scottish history. Admittedly, it’s a seriously flawed history – but it does give you a feeling for what it must have felt like for those poor Scottish farmers to be thrown off their land by English aristocrats.

What about Gladiator? Watch that movie and two hours later, you have enough rough  scholarship about the Roman empire in the 2nd century C.E. to tell a dozen colorful, historically-plausible nodal stories.

Titanic? Those Gilded Age days are long gone too and that well-heeled aristocracy went down with the ship – but what a wonderful set of images that film gives us for a Sagittarian south node in the 12th house squared by a 9th house Pluto!

The list of course goes on. I think of Mad Men, a television series that was popular during its 2007-2015 run. I suspect that many of you saw it. The setting is the 1960s – and (may God help me) half the people now enrolled in the FCEA might have actually had a past life during that tumultuous period! I was alive and reasonably sentient during that decade myself, but I admit that in watching Mad Men, the customs and especially the gender assumptions underlying the story made it felt like I too was remembering a past life.

Have kids? There’s a woman who was a dear friend of mine in college (just that – we were housemates) back toward the end of those Mad Men days. Her name is Mary Pope Osborne. We lost touch with each other long ago, but she’s become quite famous in the world of children’s literature, having sold 134 million books, most of them in her “Magic Treehouse” series. The “magic treehouse” she invented transports kids on time-travel adventures, some to historical periods, some to mythological ones.

If you’ve got kids in your life, reading Mary’s stories to them – or reading them yourself – will give you exactly the kind of knowledge I am talking about here. It’s fun and totally painless.

And Mary, if you ever happen to read these words, get in touch! I’m easy to find. I’ve often wondered if you and I were the only ones ever to actually make any money from our degrees in Religion – UNC-Chapel Hill, class of ‘71! 

In the name of having some creative fun, we both verged dangerously close to “scholarship” about that faraway time. I can set a nodal story there in my sleep.

Read The Rhymer and the Ravens and you can too.

A READING LIST?

Let me start by saying that trying to compile a reading list or a “must-watch” list here would be misguided. For starters, probably three-quarters of the films ever produced were made long ago enough that every single one of them is like a time-capsule. And I’m not even talking about “period pieces,” such as Gladiator or Braveheart. Every decade for the past dozen or so has yielded a crop of films that were “contemporary” – at the time.

Bogart and Bergman in Casablanca? Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire? Each one is like a living window on a decade that presently doesn’t boast many surviving representatives – but how many people living today might have lived back then too?

Books can be veins of gold in similar ways. How many historical novels have been published? How many straight history books have been written? I doubt that anyone would have enough time even to count them all, let alone read them.

Here I just want to list a few volumes that I’ve found particularly helpful. They could help you too – but maybe you prefer to help yourself.

In the list that follows, you’ll note one pattern that’s worth underscoring, and that’s an attempt at honoring cultural diversity. I suspect that most of us have occupied bodies with a variety of different “paint jobs” in our previous incarnations. For that reason, it’s good practice to make sure that your nodal stories don’t all sound like the scripts of costume dramas you might watch on the BBC.

SOME OF MY PERSONAL FAVORITES

Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family, 1976. A tale of the Black experience in the New World. 

Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978. The Black Plague anyone? This brilliant, scholarly volume brings you right back to the late Middle Ages in Europe. And Tuchman can write – it’s not tedious at all. 

Gary Jennings’ Aztec, 1980. This is a very sexy “pulp fiction” tour of pre-Columbian Mexican cultures. It gave me a far more nuanced understanding of the diversity and complexity of those societies than I ever got from my western-biased education.

Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, 1997. In the U.K., this brilliant, even life-changing, Pulitzer Prize winning book was subtitled “A Short History of Everybody For the Last 13,000 Years.” That about says it all. Diamond ranges over various world cultures. For nodal stories set in the distant past, this volume delivers the goods on every page.

Edward Rutherford’s Sarum, 1987. This is the story of humans in Britain right from the beginning. It’s an episodic novel in which very similar characters keep appearing in subsequent historical periods. Was he thinking of reincarnation? I don’t know – but it reads that way.

Thomas Berger’s Little Big Man, 1964. (This was also a fine 1970 film.) Either the book or the movie will give you a feeling for the Native American experience in the 19th century. My partner Michelle Kondos does historical Western painting. She has a friend named Michael Badhand who consults in Hollywood on Native authenticity issues. He’s generously helped her make sure that the Native people who appear in her historical paintings are depicted accurately. Badhand says that Little Big Man, even though it’s a comedy in many ways, gets more details right than most of them do.

Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, 2011. A Black friend gave me this book or otherwise I would have missed it. Wilkerson tells the story of the trials, tribulations, and hopes of Black people escaping the American South and heading north for jobs and freedom after the Civil War and onward through World War Two. It’s a gold mine. 

Susan Barker, The Incarnations, 2014. Chinese history is long, complex, and dauntingly alien to many of us in the Western world. Susan Barker’s book is the best introduction to that long story that I’ve ever found. Reading it, you get a very human perspective on various periods in Chinese history. Again, like Sarum, is it about reincarnation? I think so. 

I’d recommend Anne Perry’s fiction in general. She writes murder mysteries, all set in Britain, but in two different periods – the early and the late 19th century. It’s all England, but they are two very different times. Reading her work is like stepping out of a time machine and into the shoes of various characters from different levels of society during those periods.  

James A. Michener was hugely popular a couple of generations ago. Even though his star seems to be fading now, he can still transport you into another time and culture with his panoramic vision of societies developing over centuries. His opus is huge. I’d aim your attention particularly at Chesapeake and Centennial for some American history, Iberia for Spanish history, and The Source for the story of the Jewish people from their earliest roots. 

So that’s my list. It’s far from definitive. Once again, these are just books that have been personally helpful and meaningful to me. They’ve all certainly enriched my storytelling, and probably made me a better human being – and a better astrologer – in the process. 

To me, the glorious thing about books is that there are so many of them. The sad thing is that there is so little time.

Our most fundamental spiritual commitment as evolving souls is to honor human diversity. If we can’t aim to treat everyone with respect and compassion no matter how fundamental our differences are, we’ll be held back in our journeys by that attachment to separateness. 

Note that I wrote “aim to.” Getting it right every time is impossible. And the love I am talking about needs to start with ourselves. Faced with offenses against human kindness, hard, miserable feelings naturally arise. We have to forgive ourselves – and to try to forgive others. We have to get back to “aiming.”

Like many of you, I am heartbroken, angry and fearful about the recent American election. At a practical level, I don’t plan to give up. I don’t plan to cope with the hurt by taking refuge in some dissociated state of trying not to care or to feel. I’ll spend the rest of my days on earth fighting in my own way for fairness, kindness, inclusiveness, and a viable human future. 

That’s my outward commitment. Here’s my inward one.

There’s a simple saying I once heard from a Buddhist teacher. It’s helped me to keep my balance when I am faced with stormy, difficult emotions: Take what arises as the path. Whatever happens, it’s always a chance to work on yourself. It’s always the path. 

This is never about rationalization or a “flight into light.” It’s about a commitment to being vulnerable. Emphatically, it doesn’t take the hurt way. But it affirms our fundamental belief as spiritual seekers that nothing happens randomly, that the universe is an incubator of higher consciousness, and that whatever happens can be turned into an opportunity to work on ourselves.

With the recent election, I find myself pulled into a vortex of awful feelings. I’m torn between murderous fantasies and the urge to not feel anything at all. But if I try, I can still find a place of equilibrium, perspective, and even peace in myself too. That takes effort and I can’t sustain it – I can only experience it in glimpses before I am pulled back down into the hell-worlds. But I know what I am looking at: it’s the Higher Ground. 

Even misery can be used as a path to getting there. It can even accelerate the process, just because of grim necessity.

If you’re hurting, I hope these thoughts might grant you a few moments of peace before we return to our sacred work.