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 Aries, 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 confident (even when what I am doing may be dangerous). I will act (even when waiting would be wise). I will be free (even when obeying others represents a valuable learning experience). I will be assertive, even aggressive (when gentleness may be much more effective). I will argue (when there is no real point).

Your Sun is in the 9th house. The hips and thighs are an energetic focal point in your body. Walking, stretching and flexing the muscles of this area are likely to be part of your daily routine. Your awareness expands as you move. You learn to see and sense anything fresh and new in your environment. You learn to perceive the spiritual source of whatever you encounter. The spiritual path may take many turnings as you gather the meaningful part of each teacher's lessons to your heart. You can be a powerful teacher if you choose, and you are a teacher for anyone you spend time with. You may find that you focus on spiritual values more than your friends do. Your mental focus is on the nature of life in a more philosophical way, so that you are often looking for the higher meaning in events that others brush off as inconsequential. Values that are particularly important to your spiritual path include: boldness, loyalty, generosity, and will power. You have the capacity to draw upon many and varied spiritual disciplines in your development. You will probably try a number of different approaches, but it is through a return to the transcendent values of your Sun sign that you find your strength. Then the soul becomes a mediator between your ordinary material life and creative expression on the spiritual level. As you become the light of your Sun sign, you will retain valuable information and skills from the disciplines you have studied, and you will feel the balance between personal physical urges and creative soul expression.

Aspects of the Sun

You are aware of the apparent differences between spirit and soul as they are expressed in your daily life. You often struggle to decide what activities are the best for you personally, and you may even try to make this decision for other people from time to time. A companion on the spiritual path can be very helpful. You identify with the fearlessness in yourself and others when actions are motivated by Spirit. Even physical desire, when inspired by devotion to the partner, can become a profound expression of your spirituality. You find that spiritual discipline is as much a container for your being as it is the expression of your inner desire. Your perception of duty is to develop the endurance needed to weather emotional and material storms. 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 are able to cut through the delusion of the material world to the heart of your spiritual power. You comprehend the continuity of your psychic states as you move between spiritual planes, and even between lives. You gain recognition through others, and self-confidence through spiritual endeavors as well as public events.

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 Capricorn, your secondary mental style is primarily the Sensation type. There is a practical side to your nature that comes from deep within. On the surface you are not focused on the material side of life, but your inner voice is always presenting some grounded argument that guides your actions. Thus, no matter what you are involved in, there is a considered quality to your actions that generally brings solid results. Your psychic senses run to the physical. You may be able to dowse for lost objects or water, for example. Or you may find that you sense oncoming illness in yourself and others. To develop this capacity further, you may want to record your psychic sensations and track them. Anytime you have communication with your less conscious side, it is important to acknowledge it in some way - to show respect for its power. You don't have to act in every instance, but you can acknowledge that you have received the information. If you don't the signal may become more distressing, or the voice may sink into silence.

You aspire to more ambitious goals than many of your family members. This includes the spiritual path. You apply a very practical measurement to beliefs. If they work, don't change them; if they don't work, replace them. Now.

Aspects of the Moon

You are aware of the apparent differences between spirit and soul as they are expressed in your daily life. You often struggle to decide what activities are the best for you personally, and you may even try to make this decision for other people from time to time. A companion on the spiritual path can be very helpful. You are happy to consider new ideas, and you are also happy to end situations that no longer work for you. You can become embroiled in spiritual or religious conflicts if you do not resolve them first within yourself. You are deeply sensitive to the energies around you, and often know how others feel before they show any sign. Your spiritual gift is to be subtle in your interactions. Be compassionate, but not gushy, and use your imagination to facilitate creative change in others, and within yourself.

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 Libra on the Fourth House cusp. Your core beliefs center on the principal of balance. More than most people, you understand the illusion of duality. For you most paradoxes resolve into continua of scales ranging from quality A to quality B, rather than being perceived as opposites. As the scales tip back and forth you center yourself ever more firmly at the fulcrum point, observing the shifts around you, but no longer participating in the wild swings.

You are not immune to desire. However, at the core you believe that balance is preferable to satisfying the extremes of desire. This belief can be detrimental in interpersonal relations, where most people expect you to express your own desires, and to work with them to satisfy theirs. This is especially true where your sexual nature is involved. Rather than avoiding sexual acts, and having no experience at all, it may become essential for you to indulge the extremes of sexual desire in order to have experiences to consider.

Sexuality provides a rich arena for you to integrate the male and female principles within yourself. This is a wonderful example of a continuum of variations. If you place masculine and feminine on the ends of a seesaw, the center does not represent withdrawal from sexuality. It represents balance between the two expressions.

Another core belief is that intellect can resolve all problems. You tend to seek logical conclusions for whatever situations arise, and may overlook the physical realities and the feeling component in situations. Just as sexual balance begins with diversity, so may your approach to problem-solving. Even if it is only an intellectual exercise, you may want to consider the physical and emotional realities of a problem as part of the solution.

Ultimately, you have a deep sense of spiritual values. Some of these may have been imposed on you by family and early childhood environment, and you will want to examine your spiritual beliefs from a number of perspectives, in order to identify those that are truly your own core beliefs.

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 Pisces, your communication style is primarily the Feeling type. Your healing style is well suited to the emotional distress around you. You can get into the flow of emotional energy patterns, identifying their disparate components, and guiding others toward calmer, safer modes of expression. You work to illuminate whatever emotional condition you find, not surgically removing an emotional block, but helping to bring understanding so that the block relaxes on its own.

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 are very receptive to sound. One way to develop intuition is to employ sound in your contemplative practice. This could be simply the sound of your breathing, or it could involve chanting, or bells, or other musical effects. Listening to someone read helps you to relax and focus your mind.

Your Mercury is in the 8th House. You have two weapons (or tools) for your spiritual journey - the capacity to develop practical skills, and the capacity to speak. If you use your tools to tear apart the work of others and to engage in sarcastic tongue-lashings, then you are operating from a material basis. If you are able to pursue difficult solutions through careful examination of the elements of a problem, and if you speak the truth, wrapping its potent blade with the silk of compassion, then you are well along the spiritual path. You will have extraordinary endurance, whichever way you use your tools. You function very well in formal settings. Among them are banks and other financial institutions; any location where funeral arrangements and services are held; insurance offices, and hospitals or offices where surgery is performed. Your best classroom is an arena where your students are practicing what they are learning, and not merely being taught theory. Another appropriate setting is a place where psychic activity occurs or where psychics work with their clients.

Mercury Aspects

You have the capacity for telepathic communication. One way to work with it is to listen to messages, even if you can't associate them with anything practical in the beginning. By listening, and by sharing these experiences with others, you facilitate the flow of information to you from the larger universe. You hold your own in conversation, and are a welcome guest. You are able to share your deepest thoughts and beliefs with the people around you.

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 Taurus, your best approach to healthy partnering is through the Sensation function. You love comfort. And you find you are most comfortable when your somewhat scientific perspective matches your inner sense of propriety. You seek love in your life, not just to satisfy physical urges, but also to create a space in which you can express your intelligence.

You desire to establish a steady course on the path of life, and this includes your approach to serious relationships of all kinds. You recognize the comfort and companionship, and you seek steadfast partners. You are faithful, and are therefore conservative in your choice of partners.

Your Venus is in the 10th House. You are quite capable of using your magnetic attraction in your career and public life, and you do this without confusing sexual interest with your other goals. You may find that alliances with older individuals help you early in your life, and that you later form alliances with people much younger than yourself.

Venus Aspects

Sexual passion can be refined into spiritual ecstasy, but only if you are willing to put in the time and effort to cultivate the deepest personal relationship with another person. You achieve spiritual growth in a relationship that has a sexual spark, but that also has the promise of a long-standing spiritual intertwining of minds and hearts.

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 Libra, your private, psychic style is primarily the Thinking type.

Your psychic sense is directly connected to intellect. Whether you hear, see, or even smell psychic information, mental processing reveals the meaning. It may help to share psychic insights with others, as this is the way you can identify your own projections and distinguish them from psychic energy being projected by other people.

Language is a powerful medium for your peer group. During your lifetime several profound changes in communication have occurred, including the rise of personal computers and the Internet. These allow you to communicate instantly with points around the world. This does not lessen the desirability of psychic development. Being able to reach out may actually enhance psychic ability, allowing you to confirm your thinking quickly and easily in many cases.

You may want to record your psychic impressions in a journal. In this way you can track and confirm your impressions later. Too often we dismiss these impressions and may miss the connections. The psychic undercurrents of your life provide a rich resource for your imagination, and they reveal how your life is a fabric woven of various energies.

Neptune is in the 3rd House. Your very impressionability makes you a great story teller. In the process of reading everything you can get your hands on, you will discover avenues for your spiritual development that are quite different from traditional family values.

Neptune Aspects

You are deeply sensitive to the energies around you, and often know how others feel before they show any sign. Your spiritual gift is to be subtle in your interactions. Be compassionate, but not gushy, and use your imagination to facilitate creative change in others, and within yourself. 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 understand suffering and are well able to alleviate it for others. One spiritual outcome is that you learn to accept help when you most need it yourself, thereby helping others to develop compassion. 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 Cancer on the Twelfth House cusp. You can perceive the flow of psychic energy around you when you are in a quiet place. As the skill grows, you find that you understand your connection to the earth and to spirit more fully. The sound of water running, as in a small fountain, provides a rhythmic tone that enhances your meditation and allows you to transport yourself into a different mood, if not a different place.

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 Leo, your approach to death and transformation is primarily through the Intuitive function. Your most direct way of managing transformative events is to will yourself to envision the future. Whether this means imagining life without someone who has left you, or simply moving from one home to another, your strength lies in the ability to listen to your own intuition.

Yet you also sense the hand of the divine - however you define divinity in your life - in the unfolding of a larger plan. While in the moment of transition you may feel helpless and weak, you don't remain helpless for long because you quickly begin to evaluate clues about outcome. You gather information from your surroundings, your thoughts, your feelings, and your sense of spiritual connection to the energy around you.

You wish to rule, and so do a lot of your peers. This could lead to trouble if you all think you have to be the first and the best. Once you experience coming in second or third, you focus your sights on those areas that truly matter to you. Then you make spiritual progress along with achieving career and other successes.

Pluto Aspects

You are able to cut through the delusion of the material world to the heart of your spiritual power. You comprehend the continuity of your psychic states as you move between spiritual planes, and even between lives. At some point in your life you may feel that the gods or goddesses step in to impose changes on you. What you make of these moments determines your spiritual future. Generally, whatever effort you make will be well worth your time. You can be cruel, and thus you cause relationships to end long before their time. Balance your severe demeanor with silent activity in which you cultivate a spiritual attitude that allows compassion to show through. 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. Your vision focuses on the common destiny of large groups of people, and not on the day-to-day details of life. When you find yourself in the public eye, you may feel that your personal efforts have a limited effect. Look for the karmic links in your associations with others.

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 Aquarius on the Eighth House cusp. Your stage for transformation is set with the trappings of intellect. You like to think a process through to its logical end before you make decisions. If you don't have enough time to do this, you tend to make absolute decisions that leave no room for flexibility. Such decisions, if examined carefully, will reflect the same feeling that you had as a child when adults made decisions for you. There is a sense of being trapped in an invisible suspended cage. You may not feel out of balance, but you fear that any movement may cause you to fall from your tight wire.

While you may wish to be independent in all things, this sense of inertia is a cue to ask for help. By asking you will feel less isolated. The act of extending your hand to another person for help will get you moving again. I am reminded of a child learning to ride a bicycle. Someone has their hand on the bike to steady it, and that hand provides the confidence we need to experience the balancing technique as we pedal. Before we know it, the hand is no longer there and we are balancing just fine.

Planets in the Eighth House

Mercury in 8th House:

You have two weapons (or tools) for your spiritual journey - the capacity to develop practical skills, and the capacity to speak. If you use your tools to tear apart the work of others and to engage in sarcastic tongue-lashings, then you are operating from a material basis. If you are able to pursue difficult solutions through careful examination of the elements of a problem, and if you speak the truth, wrapping its potent blade with the silk of compassion, then you are well along the spiritual path. You will have extraordinary endurance, whichever way you use your tools. You function very well in formal settings. Among them are banks and other financial institutions; any location where funeral arrangements and services are held; insurance offices, and hospitals or offices where surgery is performed. Your best classroom is an arena where your students are practicing what they are learning, and not merely being taught theory. Another appropriate setting is a place where psychic activity occurs or where psychics work with their clients.

Eighth House Aspects

You have the capacity for telepathic communication. One way to work with it is to listen to messages, even if you can't associate them with anything practical in the beginning. By listening, and by sharing these experiences with others, you facilitate the flow of information to you from the larger universe.

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 Gemini, your intuition works best through the Thinking function. Intuition needs to be thought through. You rely on intellect to resolve questions, and you like to back up your intuition with logic. You gather information intuitively, then confirm it by asking questions or doing some research. You may not be satisfied about the accuracy of your intuition without some direct confirmation.

It's about voice where intuition is concerned. You need to find a way to talk about what you know. By sharing, you stimulate greater insight and benefit from whatever you experience. Some little ritual - like thanking your source, also helps the flow.

Your Uranus is in the 11th House. You are able to discern the movements of groups and you can sometimes perceive the best path through a difficult spot by following energy patterns into the future. Because of your sensitivity, you may avoid large group events, or at least carefully choose the ones you will attend.

Uranus Aspects

You have the capacity for telepathic communication. One way to work with it is to listen to messages, even if you can't associate them with anything practical in the beginning. By listening, and by sharing these experiences with others, you facilitate the flow of information to you from the larger universe. You find yourself brushing up against dangerous situations. Spiritually you learn from each one, eventually learning how to help others without taking unnecessary risks yourself. Your best and strongest relationships emerge from chance meetings, and you tend to depend on luck to carry you through difficult times. Your strong intuition provides insight into the almost organic rhythm of your life. Your independent spirit thrives on a less restrictive spiritual practice. Your independence of mind is both the most difficult mental obstacle to overcome and the most refined mental state you can reach. This paradox occupies your thoughts and provides rich ground for spiritual development.

 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 Aries, your self-awareness and your path to self-realization are primarily through the Intuitive function.

Beneath a subconscious desire to have significant interpersonal relationships, you find the capacity to understand many different areas of study. You absorb information easily, both through individual study and cooperative group efforts. From the masses of data presented to you, you naturally categorize and store facts for future use. It is important not to confuse this kind of knowledge with practical experience, which you can develop only through contact with others.

You seek the perfection of harmony in all your dealings, and the information most available to you centers on balance and harmony in relationships. This tendency extends to how you understand yourself as well. You gather information that helps you to achieve harmonious communication with your inner self, your spiritual being and your unconscious mind. Dreams reflect the degree of balance you have achieved, and also offer more concrete information about the less defined realms of mind.

Midheaven Aspects

You tend to act from your own spiritual center, to the extent that you understand that center. Therefore it is worth your effort to examine your career, relationships, and personal motives in every area. 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. Your independence of mind is both the most difficult mental obstacle to overcome and the most refined mental state you can reach. This paradox occupies your thoughts and provides rich ground for spiritual development.

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 Leo, you experience karma and dharma primarily through the Intuitive function. Intelligent activity in your life is inspired by your vision. You live in the moment, and you place yourself there in three ways: 1. You welcome the opportunity to make wise decisions. Because of this you dislike being forced to make decisions without thinking things through carefully; 2. You are generally able to look at your past and accept as just that-the past. Yet you consider the lessons you have learned and apply them to your present life; or 3. You use your intuition to prepare for the future. You are often able to forecast future events accurately, even though it seems unlikely that you would know what is going to happen.

People experience you as being shy - you don't jump right into social situations, but sit back to see which way the energy is moving. You have one eye on the outcome of each situation, and are usually able to foresee difficulties and head them off.

Your Saturn is in the 1st House. Your lessons come from your sense of personal responsibility. You are ambitious in terms of career and material things, and your ambition extends to your spiritual life as well. As you transcend selfish ambitions, you engage instead in the pursuit of higher spiritual aspirations, which are firmly grounded in your ability to learn from all your experiences.

Saturn Aspects

You find that spiritual discipline is as much a container for your being as it is the expression of your inner desire. Your perception of duty is to develop the endurance needed to weather emotional and material storms. Generally you feel that endings and beginnings are the pits. When you see the end coming you resist, and when you feel some new idea about to take hold, you resist. Your life of resistance prevents you from the rate of progress you deserve, and you need to lighten up. You understand suffering and are well able to alleviate it for others. One spiritual outcome is that you learn to accept help when you most need it yourself, thereby helping others to develop compassion. You can be cruel, and thus you cause relationships to end long before their time. Balance your severe demeanor with silent activity in which you cultivate a spiritual attitude that allows compassion to show through. Associations with individuals much older than yourself are the stuff of your spiritual education. Examine your inhibitions (you have some), and seek to break out of your natural desire to isolate yourself. 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 Sagittarius, your approach to and understanding of transcendant values is primarily through the Intuitive function. You feel more optimistic and more successful when your daily activities incorporate intuition in a meaningful way. Whatever your natural direction, based on your Sun and Moon elements, you can develop intuition as a spiritual guidance mechanism. You may find that you become physically sensitive in the heart area-you may feel heat in the skin on your chest or back, for example. This change in temperature can serve as an intuitive barometer. When your human energies are spiritually directed, you approach the moment when you are no longer subject to the ordinary limitations of the physical world. Your mind and heart foresee the karmic effects of your actions and you can make intelligent choices. Then you are no longer limited by the wheel of birth and rebirth, and can fully experience the life for which you are intended.

You seek inner spiritual development in everything you do. Your mind reaches far into the future, and such speculation can become its own problem if you don't ground your intuition is something more practical. Contemplative practice can include walking or working meditation that connects you to the material realm directly.

Aspects of the Jupiter

You are happy to consider new ideas, and you are also happy to end situations that no longer work for you. You can become embroiled in spiritual or religious conflicts if you do not resolve them first within yourself. Your best and strongest relationships emerge from chance meetings, and you tend to depend on luck to carry you through difficult times. Your strong intuition provides insight into the almost organic rhythm of your life. Your independent spirit thrives on a less restrictive spiritual practice. 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 Pisces on the Ninth House cusp. The first transcendent value you seek to understand is slavery. You may seek to understand the physical attachments you have to others and to ideas as slavery, whether it is imposed upon you or you impose it on yourself. The second value is detachment. As you come to understand the material or mental restrictions you experience, you can become more detached, viewing them from a less emotional perspective. The third value is death - death to the bonds that keep you from freely expressing your spirit, and death as a material and spiritual doorway to a new experience. When these values are understood, you find that service to others is no longer a trial, instead it is an expression of your will on several levels of consciousness.

Planets in the Ninth House

Sun in 9th House:

The hips and thighs are an energetic focal point in your body. Walking, stretching and flexing the muscles of this area are likely to be part of your daily routine. Your awareness expands as you move. You learn to see and sense anything fresh and new in your environment. You learn to perceive the spiritual source of whatever you encounter. The spiritual path may take many turnings as you gather the meaningful part of each teacher's lessons to your heart. You can be a powerful teacher if you choose, and you are a teacher for anyone you spend time with. You may find that you focus on spiritual values more than your friends do. Your mental focus is on the nature of life in a more philosophical way, so that you are often looking for the higher meaning in events that others brush off as inconsequential. Values that are particularly important to your spiritual path include: boldness, loyalty, generosity, and will power. You have the capacity to draw upon many and varied spiritual disciplines in your development. You will probably try a number of different approaches, but it is through a return to the transcendent values of your Sun sign that you find your strength. Then the soul becomes a mediator between your ordinary material life and creative expression on the spiritual level. As you become the light of your Sun sign, you will retain valuable information and skills from the disciplines you have studied, and you will feel the balance between personal physical urges and creative soul expression.

Ninth House Aspects

You are aware of the apparent differences between spirit and soul as they are expressed in your daily life. You often struggle to decide what activities are the best for you personally, and you may even try to make this decision for other people from time to time. A companion on the spiritual path can be very helpful. You identify with the fearlessness in yourself and others when actions are motivated by Spirit. Even physical desire, when inspired by devotion to the partner, can become a profound expression of your spirituality. You find that spiritual discipline is as much a container for your being as it is the expression of your inner desire. Your perception of duty is to develop the endurance needed to weather emotional and material storms. 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 are able to cut through the delusion of the material world to the heart of your spiritual power. You comprehend the continuity of your psychic states as you move between spiritual planes, and even between lives. You gain recognition through others, and self-confidence through spiritual endeavors as well as public events.

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 Leo, your spiritual persona is expressed most fluently through the Intuitive function. You naturally consider the future while taking action in the present. You relate to the physical world via intuition, and you do the same in spiritual considerations. When you encounter a dilemma or paradox in your life, you tend to project the problem into the future to hypothesize how it will be resolved, and then you take action in the present to move toward that outcome. Your actions, while focused on the future, are always a reflection of a purification process that is usually associated with water.

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: Fairness, Sacrifice, Humility. 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 1st House. Ideally you want to use your energy to move yourself along the spiritual path. Your own evolution is plenty for you to manage, so to some extent you may disregard the needs of others in your haste to progress. At some point you begin to shift personal desires toward more spiritual aspirations. When this happens you find that movement is faster, detours fewer, and you generally feel that your spiritual life is more closely aligned with your physical activities.

Mars Aspects

You identify with the fearlessness in yourself and others when actions are motivated by Spirit. Even physical desire, when inspired by devotion to the partner, can become a profound expression of your spirituality. Sexual passion can be refined into spiritual ecstasy, but only if you are willing to put in the time and effort to cultivate the deepest personal relationship with another person. You achieve spiritual growth in a relationship that has a sexual spark, but that also has the promise of a long-standing spiritual intertwining of minds and hearts. Generally you feel that endings and beginnings are the pits. When you see the end coming you resist, and when you feel some new idea about to take hold, you resist. Your life of resistance prevents you from the rate of progress you deserve, and you need to lighten up. You find yourself brushing up against dangerous situations. Spiritually you learn from each one, eventually learning how to help others without taking unnecessary risks yourself. At some point in your life you may feel that the gods or goddesses step in to impose changes on you. What you make of these moments determines your spiritual future. Generally, whatever effort you make will be well worth your time. You may have many relationships that never get beyond the surface physical attraction. As you learn to cooperate on the mundane issues, your astral relationships will take on emotional intensity. Collaboration then occurs on many levels of consciousness. You tend to act from your own spiritual center, to the extent that you understand that center. Therefore it is worth your effort to examine your career, relationships, and personal motives in every area.

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)

The first four signs incorporated the seed of intuition, the desire for expression, the capacity for thought, and the depth of feeling and potential for reproduction. Now, with the Leo Ascendant, you experience the capacity of will. For the plant kingdom, will expresses in the ripening of the fruit. Will, for us, is the drive to creativity in the material world, and aspiration on the spiritual plane.

You only need to observe the activities of children between the ages of ten and twelve or thirteen to understand the power of will. At their best they are fully engaged in life, seeking a wide range of experiences, and creatively interacting with their peers. They are testing their wills against those of parents, teachers, and acquaintances. They are learning how to manage the force of will that drives them. There is a blending or fusion of all life's experiences for this age group that reflects the energy of Leo on the Ascendant quite well. Leo will gather information on the intuitive plane, measure it against what is perceived through the physical senses, and then mobilize the spirit behind whatever action is taken. This process results in a degree of self-consciousness that was not there previously.

The focus of physical energy is on the heart and the spine. Clear intuition often comes through the heart center, and clear effort depends on mental and emotional structure like that of the spine. The two need to work together to accomplish anything on either the physical or spiritual level. Perhaps the most powerful piece of writing I have encountered that speaks to the fusion of intuition and will is the Heart Sutra. This Buddhist text is a short poetic expression of the true nature of things. The complete text is included in the Appendix. Here I wish to include a couple of thoughts:

1. "Form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form."  This basic statement incorporates the paradox of existence in its basic form. It is possible for the Leo Ascendant to grasp the nature of the paradox and make it the spiritual guide for the Will.

2. The mantra, or spell, included in the Heart Sutra is as follows:

(Gate is pronounced gah'tay)

Gate gate  paragate     parasamgate                     bodhi svaha.

Gone gone gone beyond gone altogether beyond,   O what an awakening, all-hail!

Because the mantra is from Sanskrit, reciting the Sanskrit words may have more power (this is probably true of all spells and mantras). However, the English translation retains both the rhythm and the "g" sounds that are integral elements of the mantra. Imagine a room full of monks repeating the mantra in their deep voices. The mantra is heard, but the vibration also affects the heart directly.

Ascendant Aspects

You gain recognition through others, and self-confidence through spiritual endeavors as well as public events.

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.

 
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