One of our more advanced students emailed me in a bit of a panic. She was about to do something she had never done before and that was to read the chart of a child. It was a paid professional session and the mother was due to sit with her later that day. What should she tell her? As an FCEA astrologer, the student was very well-grounded in theory. She felt she understood the chart. But how should she go about presenting the interpretation? Breaking it down, she faced two dilemmas. 

• First, children aren’t adults and so the language she was accustomed to using was going to need to change. What career advice do we give infants? What about any complications they’ll likely encounter in their sex lives?

• The second dilemma was that understandably most parents tend to be protective and easily rattled by anything they perceive as a threat to their child’s wellbeing. What should the astrologer say if the child is an Aries with an 8th house Pluto squaring her Moon?

Our student suddenly realized that she was stepping into a potential minefield, or at least into uncharted territory. I’m glad she reached out to me. For one thing, it gave me a fine topic for my column and a chance to write a piece that will serve double-duty.  We’ll integrate this essay into our school curriculum too.  

What follows is a longer version of what I told her.

ABOVE ALL . . .

The first point I want to put in the spotlight is very simple – we read a child’s chart in very much the same way that we read the chart of an adult. There are some differences and we’ll soon get to them, but essentially it’s the same process either way. Underlying this guideline is a salient metaphysical point: the age of the soul and the age of the physical body are unrelated. Every saint took birth as an infant. Young or old, when we look at a natal chart we are looking at the same two things: first, a symbolic representation of the soul’s karmic predicament and, second, a sense of how to get on with one’s evolution. 

The aim of evolutionary astrology is to support that soul-growth. To do that, we have to look at everyone through wiser, more conscious eyes than the world does – young or old, they’re souls on a journey. We make that philosophical approach clear to the parents right from the start. As we read the child’s chart, we’re not talking to a baby, we’re talking to a soul. Just like the mom or dad, this ancient being has now launched its boat on the stormy seas of life. As astrologers, we cannot protect anyone from that reality, but we can help them to navigate it in the most painless way possible. Meanwhile, we won’t let “baby talk” blind us to any of these deeper truths.

To make that perspective clearer, there’s a simple riff I almost always use at the beginning of a chart presentation to the parents of a youngster. (And as with all of my riffs, feel free to use it yourself without attribution or, even better, to create one of your own.) 

As usual, I am recording the reading – a fact which takes on another level of practical importance, as you’ll soon see. 

Let’s say the chart belongs to an infant rather than to an older kid. As I start the recording, I address the child directly by name, then I add, “as I say these words, you’re still in diapers and therefore little young to understand me. I still want to honor the fact that this is your chart and no one else’s. That’s why I am addressing you directly. My hope is that someday, decades down the road, you’ll find this recording and listen to it. I hope that you’ll derive some help and some spiritual encouragement from it. Until then, out of respect for you I will aim my words directly at you – but I may make a few side comments to your parents from time to time about how they can help you get off on the right foot in this life.

“That’s just a hundred words or so and it only takes a few seconds to say them, but of course even though we purport to be speaking directly to the child,” the parents are actually the ones who are listening. This little speech helps to create the right mindset in them and that’s the whole point. We’ve helped them see that this isn’t a baby we’re talking about, it’s a soul. 

And of course, whether or not it ever actually happens, we are sincere in our hopes that the child will hear the reading one day. That wasn’t a lie. Let’s just call it a convenient truth.

BUT IT’S REALLY JUST A KID  . . .

There are certain basic needs that all children have. Presumably any parent engaged enough with their son or daughter to be having a reading in the first place will be aware of them. These are obvious things, with love always topping the list. Add a reasonable sense of security, some training about safety and the social customs that govern society. Discipline of some sort is mission-critical in child rearing. We need to convey the idea that actions have consequences or that kid will be in serious trouble later on in life. 

All of that is pretty obvious and so there’s no pressing need for the astrologer to spend much time banging those drums. Where it gets more interesting is when we wrestle with some of the tougher questions that all parents face, especially ones that do not have clear answers. That’s where astrology – and the child’s chart – enter the equations. For example, let’s say a nine-year-old boy wants to camp overnight in a tent in the suburban backyard of his best friend. Should the parent give permission or not? On the downside, in that kind of unsupervised night time situation, a pair of nine year olds could potentially face some dangers that they were not equipped to handle. On the other hand, adventures can build character, self-confidence, and maturity. 

What’s the right parental call? Are we being too protective – or not protective enough?

Here I’ll simplify astrology like crazy just to make my core point as clearly as I can. If the boy is an Aries, go ahead and bless the backyard camping trip – that child is here on Earth to learn about courage and nobody learns much about it without facing a spot of danger. 

On the other hand, if the boy’s Sun is in Cancer, it’s quite possible that deep down he is hoping that you’ll say no – that way, he can save face with his bestie by blaming you for blocking the trip, and still be safe at home in his bed that night. 

• In that situation, in the eyes of the Aries child, granting permission for that backyard adventure might seem like an expression of faith in him and respect for his autonomy, while to the Cancer, it might feel like abandonment – or you just “not caring.”

The essential point is that each soul needs different kinds of experience in order to grow. That’s true whether you’re an infant, you’re at the height of your powers, or you’re living in a rest home. All kids need love – but not all of them need to spend a night in a tent in the backyard. 

• When it comes to reading the charts of children, it’s in these kinds of parenting gray areas – places where judgment calls need to be made – that astrology really shines. 

Here’s another example, one that brings us right into the raw heart of life. Say the parental marriage encounters a threadbare patch. Mom is feeling neglected while dad is feeling exploited and misunderstood. Maybe they’ll work it out, maybe not. Either way, because of that intimate tension there’s a bad vibe in the house. 

Just try keeping that truth from a Plutonian child! You will surely fail. 

Guaranteed, kids who are wired in that Plutonian way will sense those tense undercurrents – and there’s a good chance that they will overreact emotionally and misinterpret what’s going on, perhaps making it even worse in their minds than it actually is. Worse than that, those kids may very well bottle up their feelings. All you’ll see is a cryptic mood and a bad attitude.

In such a case, it would be far better for mom to speak honestly to the kid, “Sometimes your father drives me crazy. We’re having a hard time. Life sucks sometimes. We’re trying to work it out.” Put the truth on the table, in other words. That’s healthier for everyone, kids included – at least for those children who are born into that Scorpio/Pluto/8th house tribe.

Just as with those two boys contemplating a night in a tent in the backyard, in this situation the parents are faced with a tricky judgment call. If our marriage is on shaky ground, is it best to hide that from the children in order to avoid scaring them or to be honest about it? With questions such as any of these, beware above all of any paperback writer trying to sell you one-size-fits-all answers. A specific understanding of the children’s charts helps us know what’s ultimately best for them as evolving individuals. 

Perhaps even better, such astrological understanding can help the parents avoid the trap of “their best intentions” actually damaging a child. For example, parents could blunder by lying about the actual state of their marriage “so little Tracy doesn’t feel insecure or get frightened.” That might possibly be best if “little Tracy” is a Libra or a Taurus, but not if there’s much Scorpionic energy in the kid’s chart.

AT WHAT AGE DO WE ACTUALLY SIT WITH THE CHILD?

When kids get into their teenage years, the ethics around whether we should be doing readings for them directly or doing them for their parents begin to get murky. Confidentiality is naturally a cornerstone in all counseling work, but there’s a general consensus that, while the principle is sacrosanct with adults, it’s more flexible with children. That’s for the obvious reason that children benefit from adult protection and guidance, at least until they are ready to launch themselves into independent life.

But when are they “ready” to have a private reading with you? There is no clear answer to that question. Maybe the only thing that is actually clear is that the answer is not a specific age. It’s not a number. Everything depends on the particular child.

In my own practice, here’s how I’ve handled it – and I wouldn’t “legislate” any of this in terms of how you or any other astrologers might practice. Basically, I’ve had “an official policy” – and I’ve also been willing to break my own rules whenever that intuitively felt like the right course. 

“Officially,” I’ve had a kind of blackout age-range in which I would not do any kind of reading for the young person. That range starts around puberty and lasts until age twenty-one. Before that, I’d gladly do the child’s reading for the parents. After that period, I’d gladly sit with the young adult. In between, I’d simply say “let’s wait.” This policy is entirely based on my utmost respect for the principle of confidentiality. 

• When I was a teenager, there were all sorts of things about me I would not have wanted my parents to know. If I respect that boundary in myself, I feel I have to respect it in others too.

What about breaking my own rules? 

I’ve known some people in their mid-teens who I sensed were advanced souls. They were already a lot more mature in every way than some folks in midlife. If they – not their parents – ask me for a reading, I am honored to do one. The key here is obviously that I have to have a personal acquaintance with the child.

THE HEART OF THE MATTER

Note that underlying all of these suggestions is a piece of practical strategy for the presentation of a child’s reading to the parents. You toggle back and forth between two linguistic orientations:

• You address the child directly “for listening down the road,” presenting essentially a normal adult chart interpretation. The parents are actually the ones listening, but by speaking directly to the child, you are compelling them to step out of the “this is our baby” paradigm. You are also actually creating a kind of “time capsule” for when the kid has crossed the line into adulthood.

• You make “side comments” to the parents about how to best support the child’s development based on the child’s unique psychological and evolutionary situation. That’s how you compensate for the otherwise-adult language of the reading.

COACHING: THE PARENT AS ROLE MODEL

Rhiannon is ten years old. She’s a Pisces with the Moon in the 12th house and Neptune on her Ascendant. You’re her mom. You sit down to meditate. Rhiannon pipes up and says she’s hungry and would like to have her lunch. You open your eyes and gently say to her, ”I promise I’ll fix your lunch soon. First I need to have a little talk with God.” You close your eyes again – not for long, just a minute or two. Then you get up and make lunch.

You’ve just normalized “having a little talk with God” and demonstrated to Rhiannon what such a process looks like. In this agitated, materialistic world, you just gave your daughter a supportive foundation for taking care of herself throughout the rest of her life.

That’s one example of how parents – especially parents informed by knowledge of their child’s chart – can demonstrate positive, helpful behaviors, and do it at the optimal time. That’s when the child is young and still learning how to be human, mostly by watching mom and dad. This is also a good example of the kinds of “side comments” I make to the parents in the course of a presentation.

Let me take this “role model” idea further with three quick personal examples. Here’s a photo of my father landing a biplane that he and a friend of his built with their own hands.

If you know your old movies, while I was growing up I thought of my dad like Errol Flynn in Dawn Patrol. I never got my own pilot’s license, but having a father like him really helped me get off on the right foot with my 4th house Aries Moon. I needed a hero and I had one. Dad had an Aquarian Mars on his Midheaven, so he played this role naturally. The universe often works that way – you have the parents you have for a reason.

I’ve got a Sun-Neptune square. One of the wisest things my mother and father did when I was growing up was occasionally to serve me a small glass of wine at dinner. It didn’t happen often – only, as I recall, when mom had made spaghetti. But they modeled social drinking for me. I’m afraid that if I had been raised by tea-totallers, when I hit college my naïveté about alcohol might have gotten me into trouble. Again, they were helpful role-models.

My third personal example is of a way my parents failed me, even though they were trying to do what they thought was best. Only one time during the entirety of my childhood did I see them have a tiff – and as tiffs go, it was practically nothing. I just remember the four of us – I have a younger sister – sitting at the dinner table and my father getting up and stomping out of the kitchen. I have no idea what happened between my parents, but obviously there was some kind of emotional disagreement. 

Why do I view the nearly-relentless domestic harmony I experienced as a child as a failure on my parents’ part? I believe two things – first, that some degree of honest conflict is part of any deep relationship and, second, that there is a necessary skill-set for handling such negotiations productively. (I’d be the first to admit that my own Aries Moon, Mars in the 3rd house, and Scorpio Ascendant perhaps further “underscore” that need in me.) 

Because of the apparent equanimity of my parents’ marriage, I learned nothing about what healthy conflict looks like. I wish my parents had taught me a few things about it by the example of them working through their issues in front of me. I wish I had seen them angry and frustrated with each other – but still able to listen and work together toward balanced, loving answers that worked fairly for both of them. 

But they never showed me how to do that. 

Is that all just about me and my own nature? Probably. Maybe if I had seven planets in Libra and the rest of them in Taurus, it would be different. And that’s the point: each child has different needs and a different nature. An astrologer can help the parents sort out the slippery questions of child rearing in a way that’s actually supportive of that particular child’s ultimate evolutionary aspirations.

Meanwhile, always remember that many years after you sit with a newborn baby’s parents, that grown-up child will be faced with some kind of crossroads in life. Maybe they find the recording of that long-ago session. Maybe it will make a difference. Maybe they’ll smile at the subtle wisdom you displayed in actually doing an adult interpretation of their chart, all the while letting the parents think that you were talking about their little kid.

As many of you know, for about twenty years all of my high-level teaching happened in the context of my Apprenticeship Programs. They were four or five day “live” events, happening once or twice a year in the USA, Australia, China, and Europe. All together, the various groups met well over a hundred times. I feel that I grew up with those “AP” meetings, both as a teacher and as a human being. It was in those marathon teaching sessions that I found my true voice as an astrologer. I look back on them fondly.

Even though they ended in 2019, the roots of the present FCEA lie in those programs. The basic material we teach is the same, although it’s more polished, orderly, and succinct nowadays. The main difference between the FCEA and the AP is simply structure (not to mention having a fine staff of tutors so it’s not all just me talking.) As you know, our school curriculum doesn’t let you skip any steps. The AP, in all honesty, was more of a hodge-podge – the content was all there, but there was no order to the way it was presented session-to-session. The administrators and I would come up with an interesting topic, announce it, and people would sign up – or not, if the topic didn’t interest them. After they had attended any three such programs, they earned a Level One certificate. Three more, and they’d qualify for Level Two.

It worked. Many graduates of the AP have gone on to practice astrology professionally. I’m proud of them. The trouble was, depending on which programs they chose to attend, they might have missed something important – nodal analysis, solar arcs, or the composite chart, for three painful examples. 

We’ve plugged those leaks in the FCEA! Anyone who attains masters’ level in our program will be an expert “full service” evolutionary astrologer. That’s the good news.

The bad news, at least for me, is that I really miss the hugs! I miss just hanging out after a day of teaching and getting to know the students in a simple, human way. I miss the musical jam sessions, the wine, and the laughter. 

Going a little deeper, the social dimension of the Apprenticeship Programs created a lot of “real life” for us to digest as a group. There were affairs and romances, of course. Naturally, not everybody always liked everybody else. Happily, there were marriages and lifelong friendships that came out of it. We experienced some deaths too –  and little creates a sense of spiritual community as effectively as a member passing. As I think of that, my mind immediately turns to Joyce Van Horn who ran the Calistoga program for many years. She passed away a few weeks ago in Mexico. I feel a gap in my heart where we all “should have” gotten together as a community, mourned her passing and celebrated her life – but, alas, there was no more Calistoga group, so that didn’t happen.

In contemplating the creation of the FCEA back in 2018 and 2019, my main personal fear was that the online format would feel cold. I’ve honestly been surprised and delighted that I was totally wrong about that. Genuine warmth permeates our program. That I can feel closely connected emotionally to people I have never actually met “in the flesh” has been a happy surprise to me. 

But, as I mentioned, I do miss the hugs!

Speaking of hugs, last summer I presented a five-day program at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. It was a huge group – I think there were about 110 people in attendance all together. I was delighted to see that over forty of them were students in our school. Even though time was limited, it was a joy to be able to meet them all in person. Catie and Penelope were there too, along with our tutors Patty and Allison. 

That Omega program was a birthchart intensive. This coming July 28 through August 2, I’ll be returning to Omega, this time to teach an intensive about transits and progressions. I’m hoping that once again we can have a lot of FCEA people there. If you would like to learn more about that program and possibly attending it, here’s a link:

www.eomega.org/workshops/changing-sky

My plan for this Omega event will parallel last year’s approach. I’ll present some theory, then demonstrate it in practice based on a pivotal event in the chart (and life!) of a well-known person. Once we’ve done that, the rest of the program will follow the same tried-and-true formula we used for years in the old Apprenticeship Programs – I’ll reach into “the Sorting Hat” and pull the names of volunteers from the class. Their chart – and their transits, progressions, and solar arcs – will go up on the big screen, and we’re off to the races.

Toward the end of September, I will present a half-day workshop in the context of the Astro-Bash conference, right here in my hometown of Borrego Springs in the southern California desert just north of Mexico. Astro-Bash is a four-day conference with many speakers – in fact, I believe they are still signing people up to do short presentations, so maybe some of you might feel moved to apply. If so, contact Ralph McIntyre at macfuel [at] gmail.com.

This is the second year for Astro-Bash. It was a lot of fun last year. Our dark desert skies were an added treat at night. At that first one, I only presented one short talk, but this time I’ll offer a half-day workshop about how Pluto’s new Aquarian face will offer different possibilities and purposes by transit than it did while it was in Capricorn. Pluto-in-Aquarius is a beast we’ve not seen since Christmas Eve 1798 and so it’s time to renew our acquaintance with it. We astrologers need to learn to update our approach around those pivotal Plutonian events we’ll all be experiencing. 

Interested in possibly attending Astro-Bash? Here’s a link:

www.astro-bash.com

Virgo is on the cusp of my 10th house. Since Mercury is the ruler of Virgo, we can say that Mercury rules my 10th house. That’s an example of a common phrase in the technical  language of our craft. It’s also a useful concept once we get clear about how it works. 

Let’s begin by recognizing that the word “rules” can get us into a world of trouble right from the starting line. It’s not that Mercury “tells my 10th house what to do” like a mean boss or a tyrant. As ever with rulership, it’s more about friendship between a house and planet than about any issues of authority or control. There is a resonance between a planet and the house it rules, that’s all. With planets and the signs they rule, the words we use to describe one are similar to the words we would use to describe the other. When a sign falls on the cusp of a house, the planet that rules that sign influences the house – but again, it’s about affinity, connection, and similarity, not about domination.

Rulership links one part of a chart to another part. It’s like an astrological version of the circulatory system in your body.

The FCEA was born on March 6, 2019, in Pleasanton, California, at 10:00 AM-PST. That means it’s time to celebrate – we have our fifth birthday this month. When we arrive at that moment, Earth will have gone around the Sun five times and returned to its starting point – or so most people would think. The reality is a little bit more complicated than that. When the school was born, the Sun was in 15 degrees 52 minutes of Pisces. This year, it returns to that precise point a day ahead of our official birthday – at 4:13:11 PM-PST on the fifth day of March rather than on the sixth. That’s about eighteen hours early.

Why?

Let’s start by recognizing that the idea that the year is “365 days” long is a convenient fiction. Actually, it runs 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds. That’s why 2024 has a “February 29th” in it – we’re in a Leap Year, where we add a day to reconcile the calendar with reality, at least approximately. As you doubtless know, we make that adjustment every fourth year so that extra “quarter of a day” in the true solar year winds up compensated, more or less. The underlying reality is that the convenient fiction of the 365-day year is only an approximate reflection of what’s actually happening in the solar system. And that “wiggle” between reality and your calendar is the reason why your true astrological birthday – when the Sun actually returns to its starting point – often falls a day before or a day after your calendar birthday.

All this might seem picky and irrelevant at a practical level. Mostly it is, except for its impact on one basic astrological technique: the solar return chart. That’s a chart set up for the moment the Sun returns to its natal position. For the school, that would be a chart set up for 4:13:11 PM-PST on March 5th in Pleasanton. A chart set for 10:00 AM the next day – our “birthday” – would be meaningless.

Here it is:

Solar Return charts are a staple of modern astrological practice. Our school’s birthday this month seems like a good time to introduce them. In simple terms, these “SR charts” are seen as a way of predicting the nature of your year ahead. Interested? They’re easily explored – all professional-level astrological software supports creating them.

The first thing I want to say about SR charts is that their absence from our 200-level curriculum might seem conspicuous. Why are they not part of what we teach at the school? After all, they’re the real deal. Many years ago, I used them all the time in my practice. I found them valid, but I also found that after I’d looked at a client’s transits, progressions, and solar arcs, the solar return chart didn’t actually add much that I hadn’t seen already. They were redundant, in other words, and actually less precise than our other techniques in terms of timing – everything was about “this year” rather than the way we can name actual dates with the other techniques.

As ever, all counseling astrologers face the tyranny of the one or two hour appointment versus the sheer volume of all the astrological information we have available to us. In winnowing down my own arsenal of techniques to the most impactful ones, solar return charts simply fell into disuse. As ever with the school, our guiding principle is to convey to you as efficiently as possible an approach to astrology that has been effective for me personally. That involves a lot of editing! Our overriding strategy has been to first set our students on a firm professional foundation, and only then encourage them to wander off in any directions that interest them.

For some of you, that might include learning about SR charts. If they attract you, go for it! I’d be the first to admit that casting one is an eternal birthday ritual for me. The technique is valid and sometimes illuminating. I set up mine on January 6th this year and saw my Sun in the 12th house. Nine days later I came down with the flu and was sidelined “on the mountaintop” for the next month. They work!

Location, Location, Location

I always advocate setting up a solar return chart for your birth place. There’s an astrological  cottage industry that involves sending people to exotic locations for their birthdays “so they have a great solar return chart.” It’s fun, and not a totally groundless practice, but if you’re an evolutionary astrologer, there’s a serious problem with relying solely on that technique. Remember: you have your chart for a reason and that reason is always rooted in the past. If we lose sight of that, we’ve lost sight of the metaphysical heart of astrology in the process. Let’s say your solar return this year shows the Moon’s south node in the 8th house. Some painful, wounded karma is surfacing. Now let’s say you don’t like having that kind of karma, so you decide to celebrate your birthday in Hawaii – that way, your south node will be in the much nicer 5th house.

Problem solved, right?

Obviously not. All we’ve done is to use astrology as a form of denial. Again, I don’t want to totally reject the idea of setting up your SR chart for where you actually are located on your birthday – that technique tells us something, but do be careful not to lose perspective: the SR chart set for the place of birth is the deep one.

Here’s a way of keeping perspective on these two approaches. If you move to a new home many hundreds of miles from where you were born, go ahead and set up your birthchart as if you had been born there – same time, different latitude and longitude. Your Ascendant and house placements will all look different. That relocated chart won’t replace your real one, but you’ll certainly feel its effects. That new chart acts like permanent transits in your new home – as long as you live there, you’ll feel that new emphasis in your experience.

The point is that it’s exactly the same with relocated solar return charts. You’ll definitely feel their influence – just don’t let them eclipse the birthplace version of that SR chart. That’s the deep one. That’s where you’ll find the soul of the technique.

How Do They Work?

A solar return chart reflects the tone of the year ahead. Where will your energy be focused? What kinds of events, opportunities, and challenges are likely to come surfing into your life on the waves of synchronicity? As we bring our evolutionary philosophy to bear on solar return charts, we ask ourselves questions about what our soul is learning this year and how to adapt to it. We ferret out timely warnings about any karmic pitfalls that might be looming.

• In other words, in pretty obvious ways everything you’ve been learning in our FCEA training applies to solar return charts.

Here’s an example. July 1981 changed my life. That was the month in which I got the contract to write The Inner Sky. My solar return for my birthday in January of that year shows a massive Mercury influence – that’s no surprise with an (unexpected) publishing contract in the future. Virgo is rising, so Mercury rules the chart. Gemini is on the Midheaven, linking Mercury to my career – or in FCEA terms, linking Mercury to my mission in the world. Mercury itself is on the cusp of the creative 5th house, and in a conjunction with my natal Sun. That SR chart was Mercury City, in other words – and I was soon under contract with Bantam Books to write the book that altered the direction of my life.

I should also add that I had a grand mal love affair with a woman who had both her Sun and Moon in Virgo that year – there’s the fingerprint of that “house of love affairs” Mercury again. In this case, that intimate drama was aided and abetted by a very karmic south node/Mars conjunction, also in the 5th house – all that, plus a tight Venus-Neptune conjunction in Sagittarius. Romantically, I was doomed, but professionally, things looked pretty good for me, in other words. And it was all there in the SR chart set for my birthplace. At the time, I was actually living 400 miles away in North Carolina, so the relocated chart wouldn’t have reflected reality nearly so deeply.

Here’s another example:

Taylor Swift’s time of birth has an X rating on Astrodatabank, but they favor a time of 8:36 AM on December 13, 1989, in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. Trusting a chart with a shaky birth time is risky business, but Swift is having such a big year that if the 8:36 AM birth time is accurate, her solar return chart should be reflective of her current situation.

Here’s her current (possible) solar return:

That late-Capricorn Pluto is conjunct her Aquarian Midheaven, and she has of course become  a lightning rod for right-wing projections, not to mention becoming a “plutocrat” in the sense of being the first musical star to experience a billion-dollar tour. Uranus tightly conjunct the SR  Ascendant naturally reflects the extreme and unpredictable “wild cards” that have characterized this period of her life.

More striking to me (and perhaps in the long run to her as well) is the massive reference to intimacy built into this solar return chart. Currently she is very publicly and apparently very seriously in love with NFL star, Travis Kelce. Reflecting that relationship, with Taurus rising, Venus rules the SR chart, for starters. From our evolutionary viewpoint, that Venus is further strengthened by the Libra south node, suggesting some intimate karmic chickens coming home to roost for her this year. The 8th house refers to intimate bonding – the true mysterium tremendum of human sexuality. There we find both the Sun and the Moon. Clearly, she’s having a massive 8th house year. 

Naturally betting on the longevity of sexual passion among rock stars and movie stars is shaky business, but in the case of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce I think we are looking at the real deal. With an 8th house like that one in her SR chart, her heart has probably never been opened in such a grown-up intimate way. At the very least, Taylor Swift is having a taste of what real marriage actually means – all those weird, wonderful psychic interminglings are undoubtedly happening for her and Travis. If I were sitting with her, here’s a thought I would run up the flagpole – despite the hype and fru-fru (and enormous success) of her Eras Tour, the soul-meaning of this year has more to do with Travis Kelce’s impact on her than the private jets, the public hoo-rah, and the billion dollars. I suspect that as I said that, she would nod her head and we would have a moment of sweet mutual understanding.

As a side note, given the good alignment of this solar return chart with Swift’s current existential realities, I’d be inclined to take this 8:36 AM birth time for her seriously.

What about the FCEA? How does our solar return look for the year starting on March 5?

Like Taylor Swift, we’ve got an 8th house Sun this year too, but I doubt we’re going to fall in love with Travis Kelce. In the chart of an institution such as ours, a strong 8th house does bode intense, transformative relationships. We’ll see that happening in the school in general. I suspect lots of “buttons will be pushed” emotionally as long-buried emotional material surfaces for many of us. As a school, we’ll need to have a long talk with ourselves. It’s a time of deepening. 

One classic meaning of the 8th house is “other people’s money” – Taylor Swift certainly has found a lot of that green stuff this year. The FCEA is not looking for investors, but if we were, this chart would support it. Will there be some unexpected financial developments for the school? Let’s keep our eyes open for them.

I’m struck by the double-whammy combination of Saturn conjunct our Sun and the Capricorn Moon in the 6th house. Both configurations have a hardworking vibration, for sure. There’s a nose-to-the-grindstone feeling of building, building, building, not to mention the school simply maturing – that’s Saturn again. I’m immediately drawn to think of our struggle to get our social platform, Circle, cooking. It’ll happen, honest! 

It doesn’t show in this chart format, but that Capricorn Moon is wildly Out of Bounds too – 27 degrees 47 minutes south declination. Given the 6th house focus, does that portend staff change? Unexpected developments in our support team? Circle figures in there too – it’s a tool that supports us.

Finally, you’ve got to love that Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in the 10th house – all told, this SR chart looks like a bouncy, nose-to-the-grindstone ride in the general direction of success.

Want to Learn More about Solar Returns?

One can delve more deeply into solar return charts than I have in this quick overview of the technique. Again, all of our basic evolutionary principles apply – we just have to make sure we are aiming them in the right direction, which is to focus our sense of our soul-aims for a given year.  

As I mentioned, I don’t actually use SR charts very much in my own practice and so we’ve not employed them as part of the FCEA curriculum. If you’d like to learn more, the best book I know about the technique is Cycles of Light by my dear friend, Lynn Bell. It was written in 2005 and is now happily back in print and available on Amazon and elsewhere.

On December 7, 8 and 9, 2023, I did a long online program for my Chinese students. It was  called “Working With The Invisible Planets.” The teaching went well, but it was tough going for me  – three back to back six-hour classes, running from 4:00 pm to 10:00 pm each day, starting on a Thursday. That timing corresponded to the class opening at 8:00 on Friday morning in China, so it worked well at their end, but not so well for this “morning person.”

Even though those hours were hard for me, I am glad I did it. There are many reasons for that – I love my Chinese students, for starters – but the main one is that much to my surprise I actually learned something new, fundamental, and, at least to me, rather eye-popping about Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. That kind of surprising serendipity happens sometimes – I’m going over what I think of as familiar territory, and suddenly a new understanding comes into focus. Lightning strikes and in a flash I feel the way I felt studying astrology when I was 19 years old. Back then, those lucid moments happened frequently – astrology felt like a rich, new continent where I was always tripping over unexpected nuggets of gold. Those lightning bolt experiences are less common for me now, but I’m grateful that they still happen from time to time. Fresh astrological mysteries and patterns still reveal themselves.

About my new insight into Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto – let me give you a little background first so everyone is up to speed. In the FCEA 300 courses, we go deeply into each of the planets, singly or in groups. One of those groups, which we study in FCEA 304, is about this trio. They’re very different beasts, but we link them together under the banner of “The Invisible Planets” – and what that means is simply that we can’t see them unless we use a telescope.

The “invisibility” of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto is of course a literal reality, but it also provides a fine metaphor – we can only really get to the higher potentials of these three bodies if we use “unnatural means.” Here’s what I mean. Mars might do its job well simply by instinctive reflex – we see a bear and we run away, for example. Not so with our invisible worlds. To get each of them right, we have to go beyond the natural reflexes and instincts of our “monkey bodies,” and that never happens automatically. It takes something more than our inborn instincts – something that doesn’t arise naturally or spontaneously in us.

• Uranus requires individuation – we must overcome our herd instinct and truly think for ourselves. Nobody does that on automatic pilot.

• Neptune requires an expansion of consciousness. We must overcome our instinctive sense of our separateness from everything else – that means our reflexive identification with our physical bodies and our egos, not to mention their preservation.

• Pluto requires brave inner work. We must overcome our natural defensiveness in relation to our own shadow, our wounds, and our unconscious mind. We must acknowledge the unknown and the uncontrollable. We must face psychic fear. We must recognize our own mortality. We must let our guard down.