Your Spiritual Path
for
Barack Obama
by Stephanie Clement, Ph.D.

Your Chart Data

Name:        Barack Obama
Date:          Aug 04, 1961
Time: 07:24:00 PM AHT  +10:00
Place:         Honolulu, HI       

Each of us has the potential to develop along psychic, intuitive and spiritual lines into the person who best suits our natural gifts.  There are essentially three possibilities for how that development may occur:

1. Along the lines dictated by our family, peers and social milieu:  Most of us are taught a set of rules as children.  Some of those rules prove to be very useful, and some lessons prove to be detrimental to our development, or at least not helpful.

2. Along the lines suggested by your own conscious mind:  Each of us is born with the capacity to learn. The person inside us is the life and light of the mind.

3. The inevitable path is a combination of these two possibilities.  No one can develop precisely the way someone else dictates.  And no one can develop to suit individual desires with no connection to the outer world.

When individuals develop along the lines reflected by their astrological chart, the fullest expression of natural potential is possible. The birth chart places you at the center of your world, and shows your personal relationship to the Sun, Moon and planets. This is the astrological approach to spiritual understanding.  It is not limited to one religious sect or emotional expression.  The birth chart presents the possibilities that vibrate within your soul, and indicates which will be easier or more difficult to manage.

Your goal or mission is indicated by your natal chart, but you fully understand it only if you are open to the inner spiritual voice that is always present, and is truly your devoted life companion.

The best spiritual path is one that allows you to use your natural talents and skills. Sometimes your latent abilities will require training and practice to develop into spiritual tools. In this report we will consider a number of possibilities to help you get a sense of your talents, and how to develop and use them.

The Sun is the source of all physical life as we know it. As children develop, Sun sign characteristics are colored by family circumstances, cultural values, and other environmental influences. Yet we develop according to our own individual character IN SPITE of everything. The voice within us will not be denied. It cannot be eradicated and it never gives up.  When we are on an appropriate path to our true spiritual destiny our inner voice is a gentle guide. When we stray into less productive territory, the voice becomes more forceful. When we attempt to stifle this inner voice of character, it waits patiently for the proper moment and speaks again. The Sun sign reveals your conscious attitude toward the external world. The following description of the Sun explores your natural tendencies of mental style and action.

With the Sun in Leo, you are primarily the Intuitive type. Intuitive types listen to their unconscious sources of information, eschewing normal perception. In fact, they are often largely unaware of what is around them in the material world. These people are the inventors, the artists, the forward thinkers because they can see the possibilities of an idea, often before the means of developing it are apparent. Therefore they pursue what they know the world is not yet prepared for. Intuitives jump to conclusions, yes, but not necessarily without the intermediate steps. They either go through those steps at light speed by sizing up an underlying principle or they simply recognize an inevitable match of an idea's potential with their own desires. Intuitives fit into the educational system rather well, as many high school and college courses make use of the deductive skills intuitives share with the thinking type. You may respond well to the timed testing that is prevalent today. You can master the complexities of mathematics because you can grasp the results without having to ground your learning in some physical way. Intuitives contribute through their inventiveness. You are generally willing to sacrifice the pleasure of the moment in the hope of greater future achievement. You are also restless and crave inspiration. Because you thrive in situations where getting to the answer is important, you are good at problem-solving and tasks that require ingenuity. Careers in the creative arts, religious inspiration and scientific discovery all suit the intuitive type. You can become an inspired leader or promoter. For you the game is more important than winning, the chase more interesting than the end result.

How You Express Your Will

The Sun indicates your will power and its direction.  One of the reasons we can identify Sun signs in other people is that they are often willful in their actions.  Especially in childhood they are determined, demanding and rebellious against anything that does not conform to their will.  The Children of each Sun show us the power of will.  The information about your Sun sign focuses on the potential expression (and the associated undercurrents).

I will be vain (when I could be magnanimous). I will be domineering (when I could provide dignified leadership). I will be dictatorial (when I could encourage cooperation among others). I will be stubborn (when determination will suffice). I will be snobbish (when I could invite others in, and gain devoted friends in the process) .

Your Sun is in the 6th house. You benefit from work and other activities in which you can digest and assimilate many ideas before you have to manifest output. Attention to the food you eat can parallel the creative input you receive. You become consciously aware of the path through the digestive metaphor. You "chew the cud," so to speak, of new spiritual ideas, and are not afraid to revisit important decisions when necessary. You mediate between levels of consciousness and you can be a powerful mediator in your social sphere as well. You seek to purify the spiritual process itself as you move along your path.

Aspects of the Sun

You are very sensitive to the feelings of others, and may confuse your experience with their feelings. You must discriminate between what you feel and how you judge the feeling in order to expand your psychic ability. Psychic awareness then becomes a gift in your interaction with others. Who you are, and what other people see in you are very different. You undermine your self-confidence until you set your sights on spiritual values.

Much of the pain and limitation we experience is the result of being taught so-called "truths" that are incompatible with our core beliefs.  Family and society train us, and sometimes little is done to nurture our individual realities.  It is up to you to identify and nurture the values that are meaningful to you.  When the filtering process is undertaken, you uncover a "truth" that is unique to you.

The Moon

The Moon reflects the soul. It governs fluids in your body and imagination in your mind.  It generally represents a less conscious part of your being, and reflects the quality and flexibility of your memory.  If the Sun indicates the most likely course of your spiritual path, the Moon indicates some of the qualities of the path itself.

With the Moon in Gemini, your secondary mental style is primarily the Thinking type. Your inner voice is logical - perhaps too logical - and it can have an aloof, cold quality. You may find yourself critiquing your actions in a logical way when your emotional or other response was perfectly suited to the situation. The inner voice can be used to analyze your actions, but you will want to avoid becoming obsessive about every detail of your life. Internal logic is useful in school and other learning situations, as it serves to gather and organize large quantities of material quickly and neatly. A very real advantage of this inner thinking style is that you may reach a conclusion intuitively or on the basis of feelings, and then examine its logical basis at your leisure. The ability to apply reason to your life - cognitive skills - can help you to be socially graceful while also serving your personal desires. You also develop a cap0acity for delayed gratification of sensual impulses that would not serve your best interests. If an impulse is evaluated and the logic holds up, then you can take action, knowing that you are not violating your internal intellectual.

Communication is one of the surest ways to test or evaluate your beliefs. People in your peer group help you to determine which core beliefs are truly yours - they identify patterns that suit your family in general, but don't suit you in particular.

Aspects of the Moon

The spirit within you expresses itself in the world almost without effort. Others can see the values you hold most important in your actions, hear them in your words, and therefore come to respect your opinions. Your higher values radiate from you in the form of spiritual vision. Your actions become more and more consistent with your inner values. Others sometimes feel you are depressed or that you place unrealistic limits on your own actions. Actually it is through such discipline that you allow your spirit to rise to the occasion when called by duty. Your strong intuition provides a rich source of information in your relationships with others. You may eventually be capable of seeing into the future quite clearly. Meetings with unconventional people can provide the spiritual contacts you need to make further progress. You can be a radical without being irresponsible. Intense emotions are part of all your relationships. Your challenge is to become aware of which feelings are yours and which belong to others. Your spiritual life thrives in group activities if you learn to cooperate and not coerce change. Each interaction has the potential to transform your beliefs. Relationships with women are a huge factor in your spiritual life. You sense the deep well of values within each person you meet, and seek to understand it. Pay attention to how others express their values, and be selective about which ones you adopt as your own. Women bring an emotional spotlight to your self-awareness. Among the tears and anger you find gems in the form of core beliefs that have been transformed to suit your present needs.

The Fourth House

The sign on the Fourth House cusp indicates the filter through which you view your core beliefs. It is the wellspring of all the best, most creative and most powerful ideas you will have throughout your lifetime.  It indicates the refrain that the inner voice sings to you when you are sad or filled with joy, when you are pessimistic or optimistic, when you are afraid or when you are experiencing the power of love in your life.

You have Taurus on the Fourth House cusp. The heart of Taurean core beliefs is desire. As a small child you saw objects and wanted them. You developed skills to get them. You gathered things to yourself as all children do. That is only the first expression of desire. As you have grown, you have developed aspirations - desires that can be sought in the near or distant future. These aspirations include career, family, friends, romance, anything you decide that you truly want. The key to acknowledging your core beliefs is to understand that the best actions are based on spiritual aspirations and not physical desires.

You, more than most people, recognize that you have a physical body, a vehicle for your being. Existence in the physical world requires the satisfaction of basic desires for food, clothing, and shelter. At the second level you recognize powerful desires for friendship, romance, physical love, and personal satisfaction in work, whether in the form of money, fame, or simply self-satisfaction. On a higher level you desire to be fully creative, to leave a lasting impression on the world through your children and your works. Finally, spiritual aspirations are part of your core beliefs. You believe in the power of Spirit. You can find within yourself a sense of purpose that goes beyond the ordinary and reaches to touch the sky.

Your core beliefs include an even deeper understanding of the power that is yours. After your ordinary physical resources are exhausted, after you have gotten your second wind from emotional and mental resources, when you feel you have used up every ounce of courage and will that you possess, there arises a third source of will. This source is your soul, the divine element deep within you that provides strength for the occasional struggle that is well outside the limits of your physical being. By cultivating your awareness of this deeper well of energy, you are able to teach the people around you to place their faith in the universe, in God or the Goddess, and not in themselves.

You may feel very alone as you explore your core beliefs, and even as you take action in the world. The challenge is to clarify what part of your beliefs were given to you by others, and what of those are truly congruent with your deepest beliefs. As you set aside beliefs that don't work for you, you separate yourself from family and friends to some degree. As you gain understanding, you find that you come full circle and can embrace those people again, even though their beliefs are very different from your own.

The Inner Voice

Planets in the Fourth House reflect the inner voice that accompanies you throughout your life.  They indicate the kind of people and experiences that most directly connect you to your core beliefs.

Planets in the Fourth House

Moon in 4th House:

You are centered in your beliefs and probably comfortable with them. Even if they are not a perfect fit - if some of them have been given to you and you have not examined them - you are probably able to work within their boundaries most of the time. When you contemplate them, you tend to polish the sharp edges rather than exchanging them for something altogether new and different.

Fourth House Aspects

The spirit within you expresses itself in the world almost without effort. Others can see the values you hold most important in your actions, hear them in your words, and therefore come to respect your opinions. Your higher values radiate from you in the form of spiritual vision. Your actions become more and more consistent with your inner values. Others sometimes feel you are depressed or that you place unrealistic limits on your own actions. Actually it is through such discipline that you allow your spirit to rise to the occasion when called by duty. Your strong intuition provides a rich source of information in your relationships with others. You may eventually be capable of seeing into the future quite clearly. Meetings with unconventional people can provide the spiritual contacts you need to make further progress. You can be a radical without being irresponsible. Intense emotions are part of all your relationships. Your challenge is to become aware of which feelings are yours and which belong to others. Your spiritual life thrives in group activities if you learn to cooperate and not coerce change. Each interaction has the potential to transform your beliefs. Women bring an emotional spotlight to your self-awareness. Among the tears and anger you find gems in the form of core beliefs that have been transformed to suit your present needs.

Most of us were taught a set of "truths" in childhood and we were expected to accept them. To supplement what you have been taught by your parents, teachers, and the world at large, you need to develop a spiritual learning style that works for you.  If you then decide to teach others, you must develop communication skills that let you share these experiences clearly and meaningfully with your students.

Training Your Conscious Mind

Three factors contribute to your ability to train your conscious mind for spiritual development:

* the natural direction of your thinking

* training to take advantage of this direction

* training your nervous system, and learning to respond to it

Element of Mercury

The angel Raphael is associated with healing in the Bible. The capacity for both companionship and healing forms the essence of Mercury's expression.

With Mercury in Leo, your communication style is primarily the Intuitive type. Spiritual healing and well being develop through the conflict between the present and the future. Because healing energy is directed through intellect, you benefit from mental training that focuses on listening to intuition and feelings first, and then seeks ways to confirm that information through logical means. Healing on the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual levels occurs when conflict is accepted and examined, and then resolved.

Training the conscious mind involves reasoning on the conscious level.  Spiritual Education teaches how to engage your intuitive function. Intuition can be trained.  Mercury reflects a specific way for you to learn about intuition.  See the section on Uranus for more information on your intuitive ability.

You have a natural ability to see into the future. What is not always so easy is applying this insight to everyday life. As you apply your awareness of the future, you will develop self-confidence. Your speculations may seem reckless to others. Leadership involves the capacity to build enthusiasm for goals that remain unseen.

Your Mercury is in the 6th House. Any spiritual practice needs to be a source of knowledge for you. Thus you will want to read, study, and discuss the tenets of the practice. You tend to gain expertise in a narrowly focused specialty, even in your spiritual work. Thus you work best in team situations where each person has specific responsibilities.

Mercury Aspects

The spirit within you expresses itself in the world almost without effort. Others can see the values you hold most important in your actions, hear them in your words, and therefore come to respect your opinions. You take an intellectual approach to relationships, and thus you learn spiritual values through listening and study. Develop your ability to speak clearly so that you can learn even more. Contemplative practice may help you to focus your thoughts and become less absent-minded. You seek people with whom you can engage in serious spiritual work. Your capacity to concentrate on ideas can develop into deep philosophical understanding. You may become a teacher for others, as you recognize the effort required and can inspire it in your students. You perceive the flow of feelings around you, and you are able to influence others when you focus your own feelings and send them out. Thus it is important to learn to manage, and control your psychic intake and output. This ability may also serve you in your career, as you gain sudden insights in all areas of your life in much the same way. You can speak fluently about how you came to understand your spiritual journey. This is because you have had many conversations with your inner spiritual source, asking questions and sharing feelings.

The power of mind is unlimited, except by our own thinking.  As you proceed along the spiritual path, self-esteem grows.  Relationship with another person is a powerful force for the development of self-esteem and for spiritual growth.

Venus has been called the alter ego of the Earth.  Very close to the same size as the earth, Venus has an atmosphere inhospitable to human life.  The inner reaches of the unconscious mind were long thought to be inhospitable as well.  Modern psychology has delved into the mechanism of mind, and religious mystics have long studied the rocky terrain to be found within each of us.  The consensus is that to evolve spiritually, we must first look at ourselves.  One way to do this is through relationship with others.

Romantic, business and other relationships all offer us the opportunity to project our thoughts onto other people.  The evolutionary nature of a relationship allows us to explore our desires.  Then we can achieve spiritual connections that transcend sexual expression.

Right relationships between people provides inner awareness that helps us to mediate between personality and soul, between physical life and higher consciousness. Only through fusion of these apparently separate facets of your being can you approach true knowledge.

The Planet Venus provides indications about your best approach to spiritual partnerships.

With Venus in Cancer, your best approach to healthy partnering is through the Feeling function. You gather concrete knowledge by talking about the subjects that interest you, and then listening. You like to know the name of everything, and often just the name tells you far more than most people learn though more serious study. You use the power of your mind to direct your feeling energy to help others.

You place high value on home and family, and you may not stray far from your birthplace. You seek harmony in your life and occasionally mistake harmony for spiritual achievement. Harmony is only one aspect of the spiritual path.

Your Venus is in the 5th House. You often experience strong physical attraction to other people, which could be mistaken for romantic love, but which may also be the result of pure magnetism. You can increase your knowledge very quickly through contact with any person who has this intense attraction for you.

Venus Aspects

Your receptive nature allows you to gather information from your surroundings through psychic osmosis. Study situations to get past the shallow mystical veneer. The significant relationships in your life all share a profound loving capacity. You appreciate visual expressions of spiritual values.

The spiritual path has a number of potential pitfalls. Some of the most treacherous of these lie within our own minds. Our innermost thoughts become a prison, trapping us within walls of our own making. These may be the karmic result of the past, or they may be the result of recent actions. There are several ways we cause our own difficulties:

1) Secrets - Privacy and secrets are part of the picture. Children love the feeling of independence and power that comes with a secret. Problems only arise when the secrets we keep are detrimental to ourselves or to others.

2) Doubts - When a situation causes you to doubt, it is largely because it is incongruent with what you have learned in the past. You want something new, but your unconscious is in turmoil. You feel naughty, anxious, reluctant, or undeserving. Because of what you have learned from people you trust or from what you have read, you doubt your own decision-making ability.

3) Resistance - Resistance is not all bad. If change were too easy, we would have no stability. We could be talked into all sorts of things. What we need is a way to identify resistance for what it is, and then find ways to work with it.

Where your spiritual path is concerned, Neptune reveals how you handle secrets, how doubt arises for you, and also how to resolve resistance. One strategy involves your psychic ability.

Developing Your Psychic Ability

We use our psychic senses to understand the world of the present. You can train yourself to be more aware of the nuances of psychic awareness, and Neptune indicates how you can develop this ability.  You will then connect with the earth and other people in new ways, and also confirm the significance of your spiritual values.

With Neptune in Scorpio, your private, psychic style is primarily the Feeling type.

There is always activity in the deepest recesses of your mind. You feel movement well before it emerges from the subconscious so you can examine it in the light of day. Your instincts have always been good, and you may occasionally want to kick yourself for ignoring them.

Your interest in the psychic realm can be fostered through study of different kinds of psychic work. When you find methods that resonate with you, they are easily learned and even easier to apply. Experiment with dowsing, psycho-kinesis, and telepathy. Look into astrology, Tarot, numerology or other methods of forecasting. Try several styles of meditation to see what works best for you.

The best path is to find a combination of approaches that work for you. No one teacher will be able to give you everything you need. As you develop a package of psychic skills, you find that any self-doubt recedes into the background. You will still probably question yourself from time to time, but your ability to extend your awareness into your present surroundings, as well as into the future, will serve to strengthen your self-confidence.

Neptune is in the 9th House. Single-minded purpose is necessary for you as you seek transcendent values. On the physical level you are all too sensitive to the influences around you. This sensitivity can become a mystical tool for understanding the true nature of duality. You need a heart connection to your spiritual work - you have to get past the mental work and get to the intense connection that many people find in their gurus. You may find that refining your mental processes is essential to assure focused attention to your chosen path.

Neptune Aspects

You are very sensitive to the feelings of others, and may confuse your experience with their feelings. You must discriminate between what you feel and how you judge the feeling in order to expand your psychic ability. Psychic awareness then becomes a gift in your interaction with others. You perceive the flow of feelings around you, and you are able to influence others when you focus your own feelings and send them out. Thus it is important to learn to manage, and control your psychic intake and output. This ability may also serve you in your career, as you gain sudden insights in all areas of your life in much the same way. Your receptive nature allows you to gather information from your surroundings through psychic osmosis. Study situations to get past the shallow mystical veneer. You seek the company of visionaries, as you appreciate their ability to speculate on the future and to develop something radically new and different out of something well established. You either succumb to your impressionability, and gullibility, or you learn to discern the motives that drive others and then make your own decisions. You are sensitive to the urgings of your inner voice, and you may even hear the voice within other people. You will experience visions and other forms of psychic awareness.

The Twelfth House

The sign on the Twelfth House indicates how you color issues of doubt and resistance. It also reflects your most direct approach to your psychic insights.

You have Capricorn on the Twelfth House cusp. Your practical side can be helpful in remembering, recording and analyzing your dreams.  Once you discover the rich source of information to be found there, you will wan to keep a dream journal, or at least record your most memorable dreams for future reference.  Your spiritual growth benefits from conscious attention to how you mediate between selfish material desire and effective action where others are involved.  Your dreams can act as an amplifier for your inner spiritual voice.

Planets in the Twelfth House

Planets in the Twelfth House have just risen over the horizon. They have a quality similar to the Sun in that they are casting their influence on you in a fresh, genuine expression of their energy. You accept this energy and consider it, but you may not choose to reveal your thoughts to anyone else.

Both doubts and psychic strengths are a reflection of planets in the Twelfth House that serve as guideposts along the path of self-discovery. Your private thoughts may center on the qualities these planets represent. Your teachers may exemplify the qualities of these planets to the extent that they reach your inner psychic core and help you understand your potential. In the end these planets indicate qualities that you can bring into the world to help others, as well as the feelings of compassion surrounding all your activities.

Jupiter in 12th House:

Traditionally you would have taken contemplative vows and sought the seclusion of monastic life. In that setting you would have had daily tasks to perform, but you would also have had many hours to focus on spirit. In the modern world you may not have the luxury of time, so you need to address your spiritual needs carefully and create a suitable space for your meditation or other spiritual pursuits. Because you are open and receptive, you may want to structure your private space so that it attracts the highest spiritual energy possible. Traditional religious or ethnic objects may help you to maintain an environment conducive to contemplation.

Saturn in 12th House:

Your karmic history is available for exploration in the quiet moments of privacy we all need. Examine your past behavior, but only for the purpose of seeking more effective action in the future.

Twelfth House Aspects

Your higher values radiate from you in the form of spiritual vision. Your actions become more and more consistent with your inner values. You take an intellectual approach to relationships, and thus you learn spiritual values through listening and study. Develop your ability to speak clearly so that you can learn even more. Contemplative practice may help you to focus your thoughts and become less absent-minded. Patience is the key ingredient to management of change in your life. You have survived many previous changes, and your spiritual future will doubtless include some more. You make progress in seclusion. You seek the company of visionaries, as you appreciate their ability to speculate on the future and to develop something radically new and different out of something well established. You either succumb to your impressionability, and gullibility, or you learn to discern the motives that drive others and then make your own decisions. Your have the capacity to become fully conscious of your spiritual values and the path you follow this lifetime. You also can become content with your progress toward self-awareness. Others sometimes feel you are depressed or that you place unrealistic limits on your own actions. Actually it is through such discipline that you allow your spirit to rise to the occasion when called by duty. You seek people with whom you can engage in serious spiritual work. Your capacity to concentrate on ideas can develop into deep philosophical understanding. You may become a teacher for others, as you recognize the effort required and can inspire it in your students. You may find that you go from one transformational situation to another, never really settling into any one thing. Yet you have the endurance necessary for the long haul. Patience is the key ingredient to management of change in your life. You have survived many previous changes, and your spiritual future will doubtless include some more. You make progress in seclusion. You have the structure within your spirit to organize and concentrate the teachings you experience. Much of this work may take place in isolation, as it is serious personal work. You have the endurance you need for your spiritual work.

Pluto, Scorpio and the Eighth House in the birth chart deal with issues of death and transformation. On the spiritual path a shaman must undergo a death-like initiation in order to come into his or her shamanic powers. In our own lives we continually experience the death of old ways of being and the birth of new possibilities. Transformative events can teach lessons concerning your spiritual growth:

* They are signposts to indicate progress.

* They allow you to modify your behavior in positive ways.

* They remind you to be gentle and kind with yourself.

* They remind you to accept yourself as you are, and to move forward.

* They remind you to support and encourage the child within yourself, just as you would encourage another person.

The Eighth House in your chart defines the mechanisms for change and self-acceptance that are most appropriate for you. By understanding them you develop a sense of self and a set of behaviors that lead more directly to your goal. You discard behaviors that no longer serve you in your journey on the spiritual path.

Scorpio is the natural sign on the Eighth House, and the associated planet is Pluto.  How appropriate that Pluto, mythological ruler of the underworld, should be the planetary ruler of the Eighth House of death and transformation.

Yet Pluto attracts the living, though it cannot hold on to them for long. So it is with life. We are attracted to one way of doing things, but we know that change is the only certainty in life. As we travel the spiritual path, we find that each ending is the source of a new beginning, and that we often benefit from even the most traumatic events. By descending into the world of darkness and pain, we borrow a bit of Pluto's power, so that on the next step along the path we are stronger and more courageous.

With Pluto in Virgo, your approach to death and transformation is primarily through the Sensation function. Potentially more mater-of-fact about issues concerning death and change, you take transitions In stride for the most part. In the occasional instance when a death or change catches you off guard, you may feel that you are unable to move out of one feeling into another. When you feel stuck, you may need to gather your will to take some action. By focusing on simple practical details, you take steps, one at a time, to lift the weight of feelings that have mired you temporarily. Generally you are able to handle the details of planning that are required when death or change occurs. You grasp the practical need for one thing to die before another may be born, for example. You also may be profoundly aware of past life events or the potential of a future lifetime, and you find practical ways to bridge the apparent gaps between.

You and many of your peers have the inquiring minds that have led to advances in medicine, the computer industry, and many other fields. You manage to get great results with relatively little. Spiritual issues demand the same level of attention, and yield the same high quality results.

Pluto Aspects

Intense emotions are part of all your relationships. Your challenge is to become aware of which feelings are yours and which belong to others. Your spiritual life thrives in group activities if you learn to cooperate and not coerce change. Each interaction has the potential to transform your beliefs. You are sensitive to the urgings of your inner voice, and you may even hear the voice within other people. You will experience visions and other forms of psychic awareness.

The Eighth House

The sign on the Eighth House cusp indicates the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual approach you take when dealing with birth, death and transformation.

You have Virgo on the Eighth House cusp. Your adult transformation process is grounded in examination of details, but in an analytical, not an emotional, way. You seek to understand a situation fully, and you may wonder why others can't see the reality you see. When a situation occurs that is outside your capacity to grasp the details, you tend to take one of two paths (or you may even try to take both paths at once). One path is to laugh it off, making light of what may be a serious problem. The other path is to engage in conversation that is designed both to elicit the information you need and to draw upon your own flexibility, and the adaptable capacity of the other person. When you do this you feel split into two parts, and later you go back to the Virgo examination of the situation in order to understand what has happened. You often need to think things through on your own before making final decisions.

Intuition is an ability beyond logical thinking.  Through it you can consider future outcomes. In the Buddhist tradition, intuition is a mental ability, equal to intellect that can provide direct insight. In mathematics intuition is the capacity to "guess" the answer to a problem, skipping the regular logical processes.

Intuition is more than your inner voice.  Intuition is one of the methods by which you understand the world.  It is a skill you can develop and use consciously. Intuition often surfaces during meditation. When the mind is quiet, then intuition can be heard.  Once trained, you can access intuition by stopping your normal waking process and entering the calm that you have cultivated.

The planet associated with intuition is Uranus.  With Uranus in Leo, your intuition works best through the Intuitive function. Much of your inspiration for your work comes from intuitive insight into future applications and results of your efforts. As your confidence in this ability to forecast trends, you gain the trust of the people around you. You focus your connection to the spiritual realm through attention to potential future results of today's actions. You are inspired to be your best when you can foresee a positive outcome.

Any leadership role you undertake benefits from your ability to foresee difficult stretches and plan how to manage them. You also have a talent for making your peers or employees feel that they have come up with the ideas themselves.

Your Uranus is in the 7th House. Your business or romantic partners stimulate your intuition. Alone you might ignore this information, but together with a partner you maximize your opportunities for whatever is important to the partnership.

Uranus Aspects

Your strong intuition provides a rich source of information in your relationships with others. You may eventually be capable of seeing into the future quite clearly. Meetings with unconventional people can provide the spiritual contacts you need to make further progress. You can be a radical without being irresponsible. You thrive on new situations and ideas. The desire for change may interfere with the complete assimilation of valuable spiritual lessons. You learn about change through your dreams. Self-awareness comes through dramatic, sudden events. To the extent that you can foresee them intuitively, you can avoid the harsh impact to some extent. Sudden changes in direction have dramatic effects on your personal, social and spiritual life. Harsh events can be the source of spiritual growth.

How can you use your self-awareness to access intuition, a presumably involuntary, less conscious capacity?  To take the direct, conscious path is challenging at best.  This method only works if you can consciously enter unconscious territory, and by definition, that territory is unconscious because you cannot access it directly.  You can rarely dive in intentionally.

You can wait for intuition to arise naturally without doing anything.  Or you can practice meditation. It is fairly easy to learn and requires no particular physical or mental skills, except the ability to focus the mind.

In addition, you have specific avenues, or points of focus, to aid you in the practice.  The sign on the Midheaven indicates an area of the subconscious that you can access through meditation, thereby identifying spiritual keys to your development.  By going within, you find the higher values most suited to your own path.

With the Midheaven in Scorpio, your self-awareness and your path to self-realization are primarily through the Feeling function.

Beneath the subconscious desire the establish comfort and stability in your life, you find the capacity to see the dimensions of spiritual life. You experienced limitations to your comfort in childhood, and you learned how family members expressed their desires, and in addition, how they sought to fulfill those desires. You were also able to observe how the selfish desires of one person caused pain and unhappiness for someone else. In this way you began to understand the duality of existence more objectively.

Out of this greater objectivity you learned the value of engaging your mind in thoughtful examination of situations, instead of leaping in with your naked desires. You have a profound capacity for sublimating your desires to a greater good, whether it is personal, social, or spiritual. When you seek to satisfy your physical, sexual desire alone, you feel disappointed in the result. When you instead seek a spiritual union with your partner, you discover an ecstatic state in which your souls merge, resolving and transcending the apparent duality of the physical plane.

Midheaven Aspects

Women bring an emotional spotlight to your self-awareness. Among the tears and anger you find gems in the form of core beliefs that have been transformed to suit your present needs. You can speak fluently about how you came to understand your spiritual journey. This is because you have had many conversations with your inner spiritual source, asking questions and sharing feelings. Your have the capacity to become fully conscious of your spiritual values and the path you follow this lifetime. You also can become content with your progress toward self-awareness. You have the structure within your spirit to organize and concentrate the teachings you experience. Much of this work may take place in isolation, as it is serious personal work. You have the endurance you need for your spiritual work. Self-awareness comes through dramatic, sudden events. To the extent that you can foresee them intuitively, you can avoid the harsh impact to some extent.

Perhaps no single principle of Asian religions has fascinated us more than karma and its link to reincarnation. Karma refers to the cause and effect relationship between what we do and the results we get. Our actions bring reactions, constructive and not so constructive. However, everyday feedback often comes from individuals who are no more clear about their spiritual values than we are. So, what should you take seriously?

How does karma work in your life? Will it be played out in your next incarnation, or will you experience it in the here-and-now?

Certainly you do not have to believe in karma or reincarnation to make progress along your spiritual path. However, if you do astrology can offer insight into what factors in the past may be influencing you today. The following are suggestions concerning past influences. Think of them as relating to family and childhood experience, or you can relate them to your past lives, or both.

With Saturn in Capricorn, you experience karma and dharma primarily through the Sensation function. Intelligent activity is guided by practical considerations. Your perception of things through sight, touch and other ordinary senses is your first and strongest avenue to working with the world. You are able to root out the facts from the body of writing about the past. This uncanny ability may disregard the ephemeral trends of a period and focus instead on the details of the material situation of the time. You are also able to mobilize a massive quantity of data, and to organize it to suit your purposes. You sift through data to find the gems that point directly to your point. Sometimes you have to discover the way to make your conclusions more meaningful to others who are less adept. Finally, you use information to guide your intelligence where future plans and goals are involved. You rarely make long-term decisions based on emotion. It's not that you have no feelings, because you do. It's that you know feelings will change far more easily than the material foundation on which they rest.

You are industrious in every activity you undertake. You expect effective action from yourself and from others and can be a harsh or willful manager. Through experience you move from an egocentric attitude to self-awareness. Then you advance much more quickly, both economically and spiritually.

Your Saturn is in the 12th House. Your karmic history is available for exploration in the quiet moments of privacy we all need. Examine your past behavior, but only for the purpose of seeking more effective action in the future.

Saturn Aspects

Others sometimes feel you are depressed or that you place unrealistic limits on your own actions. Actually it is through such discipline that you allow your spirit to rise to the occasion when called by duty. You seek people with whom you can engage in serious spiritual work. Your capacity to concentrate on ideas can develop into deep philosophical understanding. You may become a teacher for others, as you recognize the effort required and can inspire it in your students. You may find that you go from one transformational situation to another, never really settling into any one thing. Yet you have the endurance necessary for the long haul. Patience is the key ingredient to management of change in your life. You have survived many previous changes, and your spiritual future will doubtless include some more. You make progress in seclusion. You have the structure within your spirit to organize and concentrate the teachings you experience. Much of this work may take place in isolation, as it is serious personal work. You have the endurance you need for your spiritual work.

Behind what you know about yourself - behind all other considerations of spirituality, lie the transcendent values that are most important to you.  These are the values you have worked to discover from among all the rules you have been taught.  They are the reason you have read books, studied with teachers, privately pondered and examined the events of your life.  They are the fundamental principles that you believe will help you find fulfillment as a human being.  As such they are the source of energy behind your self-awareness, the motivation of your spiritual search, and the principles that you apply to your dharma, or life path.

With Jupiter in Aquarius, your approach to and understanding of transcendant values is primarily through the Thinking function. Regardless of your typical mental style, indicated by the element occupied by the Sun, you tend to process best through thinking, and through the skillful use of words. You aspire to more perfect expression, both within yourself and in the social realm. Mental and spiritual training benefit you by providing rigorous reasoning skills and by opening your heart to the intuitive information that flows around you. Even when you have achieved fusion of heart and mind, you find that your mental process and expression focus on intellect and the thinking process. You may come to trust your intuition deeply, but you gain this level of confidence through testing your intuitive knowledge logically and rationally. You understand that the cycle of cause and effect begins on the mental plane, descends through the emotional realm, and manifests in the physical world.

You may confuse social justice with spiritual values. They are not the same. Contemplative practice helps you to understand your inner nature, to distinguish it from your awareness of other people, and to direct your spiritual path according to your personal needs and aspirations.

Aspects of the Jupiter

Your higher values radiate from you in the form of spiritual vision. Your actions become more and more consistent with your inner values. You take an intellectual approach to relationships, and thus you learn spiritual values through listening and study. Develop your ability to speak clearly so that you can learn even more. Contemplative practice may help you to focus your thoughts and become less absent-minded. Patience is the key ingredient to management of change in your life. You have survived many previous changes, and your spiritual future will doubtless include some more. You make progress in seclusion. You seek the company of visionaries, as you appreciate their ability to speculate on the future and to develop something radically new and different out of something well established. You either succumb to your impressionability, and gullibility, or you learn to discern the motives that drive others and then make your own decisions. Your have the capacity to become fully conscious of your spiritual values and the path you follow this lifetime. You also can become content with your progress toward self-awareness.

The Ninth House

You have Scorpio on the Ninth House cusp. The first transcendent value you seek to grasp is that the path of discipleship is yours. You are on it and you need to mobilize your whole being to pursue it. The second value lies in understanding that you as an individual and the human race as a whole are at a turning point. Evolutionary processes can either go forward, leaving behind ideas of self-aggrandizement, or they can slip back into the material struggle and remain focused on physical desires. Re-orientation, however, does not demand that you give up the material to seek the spiritual. You can take your entire skill set with you on the path. The third value is to develop sensitivity to the larger plan of the universe. As you become more attuned to spiritual potential, you gain the capacity to moderate your own desires and to respond to the spiritual desires of others.

Planets in the Ninth House

Neptune in 9th House:

Single-minded purpose is necessary for you as you seek transcendent values. On the physical level you are all too sensitive to the influences around you. This sensitivity can become a mystical tool for understanding the true nature of duality. You need a heart connection to your spiritual work - you have to get past the mental work and get to the intense connection that many people find in their gurus. You may find that refining your mental processes is essential to assure focused attention to your chosen path.

Ninth House Aspects

You are very sensitive to the feelings of others, and may confuse your experience with their feelings. You must discriminate between what you feel and how you judge the feeling in order to expand your psychic ability. Psychic awareness then becomes a gift in your interaction with others. You perceive the flow of feelings around you, and you are able to influence others when you focus your own feelings and send them out. Thus it is important to learn to manage, and control your psychic intake and output. This ability may also serve you in your career, as you gain sudden insights in all areas of your life in much the same way. Your receptive nature allows you to gather information from your surroundings through psychic osmosis. Study situations to get past the shallow mystical veneer. You seek the company of visionaries, as you appreciate their ability to speculate on the future and to develop something radically new and different out of something well established. You either succumb to your impressionability, and gullibility, or you learn to discern the motives that drive others and then make your own decisions. You are sensitive to the urgings of your inner voice, and you may even hear the voice within other people. You will experience visions and other forms of psychic awareness.

Mars indicates an area of life that is vitally important to your spiritual growth. Whatever path you choose, this factor will come up again and again. Others will see how it affects you, but they are unlikely to understand the depth of its significance. You yourself may not understand the power of this influence on your life.

The Element of Mars

Mars is naturally associated with Aries, a fire sign. Traditionally Mars was also associated with Scorpio, a water sign. Thus the expression of Mars shares the nature of these two elements to some extent. The movement between water and fire involves the capacity for discriminating awareness. Mars governs the five senses-touch, taste, sight, hearing and smell. The position of Mars directly reflects your capacity to relate to the world through your senses.

With Mars in Virgo, your spiritual persona is expressed most fluently through the Sensation function. You are generally practical in your activities. If it has no hope of reaping actual, measurable results, then you just won't do it. This practical streak carries over into the spiritual realm as a desire to develop a regular practice that deepens your sense of devotion to a teacher or to a body of understanding about your true purpose. On the material level your actions are designed to help you acquire whatever you need, but also to acquire those material things that enhance your feeling of comfort and richness. On the spiritual level your devotional practice-prayer, meditation, good works-also focus on a goal. Many teachers suggest that meditation has no goal, but in our culture you are almost certainly seeking something from whatever you do, including the spiritual direction you take.

The sign placement of Mars is significant to developing your spiritual persona. The sign colors the message you receive concerning the direction your spiritual path will take. Here are three personality traits associated with Mars in your chart: Discrimination, Moral Strength, Unselfishness. If you consider each trait and consciously evoke it in your daily activities, you will find that the path becomes more fulfilling, more insightful, and easier. By actively devoting energy to the development of the traits of your Mars, you spontaneously develop several traits associated with other signs.

House Placement of Mars

Your Mars is in the 7th House. The focus of your spiritual persona is on issues of partnership. From childhood you have placed high value on close relationships. You demand a lot from an intimate partner, and you throw your energy into returning the favor. The partner is a mirror for your spiritual values, your feelings, and your expression. Your devotion to one special partner provides a path to service. Any contact with the general public is seen as a spiritual opportunity.

Mars Aspects

 You may find that you go from one transformational situation to another, never really settling into any one thing. Yet you have the endurance necessary for the long haul.

The Ascendant provides a personal anchor for understanding spiritual potential and process in the birth chart.  It shows how you express yourself in the world.  This is because the rising sign represents choice - you choose what you want to show to the world.  Ultimately, however, you come back to the Sun sign on the spiritual level.

Each person learns about the Sun sign's higher spiritual values and cultivates those values by developing the positive traits of the Ascendant.  Each sign as it rises brings to light different personality traits, different physical appearance, and a different sense of spiritual direction.  The rising sign offers a container for your experimentation with constructive, creative personal choices about how to act in the world.  Later you can take this practice back to the Sun sign and master its lessons.

Remember that the Midheaven and Ascendant depend on an accurate birth time.  If you have no idea of your birth time, the material included here may help you to focus on a spiritual persona for yourself.

Your Rising Sign (Ascendant)

You pursue your spiritual path along three distinct lines:

1. Self-serving personal aggrandizement that shifts into the service of humanity.

2. Selfish attention to material superficiality that transforms into spiritual activity to serve a divine purpose.

3. Self-conscious activity on the interpersonal level that changes to broader humanitarian awareness.

Each of these three tendencies is expressed in alternating activities, and it may be difficult to sort out what your lower and higher motivations are at any given time.

You have the capacity to think through situations. You can work with your physical desire motivations, your emotional attachments, and your mental processes to discern your typical behaviors and their motivations. As you do this, you encounter situations where your spiritual motivation is paired with a self-serving method. When this happens, you have the opportunity to change your tactics.

It is the movement that is important, not the precise content or direction. Your rising sign governs the circulation of blood through your body. Allow the metaphor of circulation to pervade your interactions with others and your communion with yourself. Permit the possibility in all your activities that your perceived goal is not the end of a process, but simply a milestone along the larger path.

Ascendant Aspects

Who you are, and what other people see in you are very different. You undermine your self-confidence until you set your sights on spiritual values. Sudden changes in direction have dramatic effects on your personal, social and spiritual life. Harsh events can be the source of spiritual growth.

This interpretation of your life path has provided a systematic look at astrological factors that together add up to a spiritually oriented map.  As you come to understand your unique map, you can move forward through life joyously and courageously, knowing that the path is appropriate to your personal beliefs, desires and needs.