With Love & Trust

The process of getting to know your birth chart is invaluable for many reasons, but the most unexpected reward is that it clearly illuminates that you were made. You were created with intent and also with love, by the Universe, whatever the “Universe” means for you.

It’s pretty easy to accept the intent part of that statement, and a lot harder to accept the love. If the Universe loves you, then why were you given such challenging natal chart placements? Why were you given fallen planets, tense squares, prominent malefics? Why?

Your natal chart manifests internally, revealing the nuts and bolts of your psyche, but also externally: as real life events and other people, the forces that happen to you, and you obviously don’t have much control over that. Right?

Yet, every time I bear witness to the struggles and pain of my clients, family, and friends, I still believe we were all created with love.

I haven’t always believed that. Coming to the eventual conclusion has been a journey with many twists and turns. I’ve walked lampless into night-black caves with no clear way out; I’ve floated on the salt waters of Paradise. And I think there is truth and power in acknowledging that both are necessary. And not just in a “we must experience the gamut of human emotions in order to evolve our souls” way — more like, for some reason, it’s necessary to experience darkness, and it’s also pleasurable.

For some reason, we’re meant to have an embodied experience. We are offered a choice and, for some reason, we choose to come back.

I think Earth is the promised paradise and, whatever the process of incarnation and reincarnation may be, we keep coming back because we love it.

I also think that’s the true reason why behind the importance of Venus. Venus rules the senses, and the senses complete the trinity of mind, spirit, body.

So yes, I believe we were created with love by the Universe. But again, why?

I’m not sure we’ll ever truly know why, at least not within our present human consciousness.

It’s consciousness that creates everything, you see. Mine, yours, and the collective’s. We’re all little gods, split off from the big god, waiting to return so we can reunite with the big god; we keep coming back to this embodied experience and it’s probably because we love to create.

The next time you look at your chart, look at your “bad” placements and ask yourself: what is the gift here? If this was given to me with love, what is the best thing I can do with it?

I have an 8th house Cancer Mars, a trash astrological gift if I’ve ever seen one, and only very recently have I figured out what its gift is. The 8th house correlates to death, the unknown, deep bonds, and shared resources. Moon-ruled Cancer represents the Diving Mother, the matrix of life — put all that together and it equals my maternal ancestral lineage.

Throughout my life this placement has caused me so much grief: from destructive financial partnerships (8th house) to being so subject to my emotions it made blazing my own trail seem actually impossible (Mars in Cancer, the sign of its fall).

Now, I understand that I chose this Mars placement because it led me to the experiences that would allow me to break the pattern of ancestral trauma in my family, to deeply connect with my homeland and ancestors, especially the women, and to be the keeper of that connection for future generations.

That is the gift of it.

A friend of mine who is an extremely talented musician has Libra on the ascendant with a 4th house Capricorn stellium. She is meant to create and perform, but absolutely hates the spotlight. Yet her music reflects this: it’s introspective and nuanced, a real reflection of her inner life and process — it’s what sets her apart from other musicians. And that’s one of the many “whys” of that particular gift.

I could give a thousand examples, and, admittedly, it can be hard to see at first because often the life experiences mirroring challenging birth chart placements are usually the really bad ones.

However, I would argue that the deepest, most powerful gifts can only be unlocked through the associated suffering. If you do it right, that suffering shows you the true scope of their power, your power. It is what inures you to everything but the hot flame of potential, galvanizing your vision to unveil the terrifying capacity of this power.

Essentially, the challenges presented by your most difficult chart placements tell the tale of the hero’s journey. What’s more, once you begin to view them this way you’ll have the luxury of choice: to choose their most elevated expression, to disengage from their nastiest patterns, to spin the wheel of archetypes and point your finger at the best one.

You’ll see that, for some reason, you were made this way with love. And with trust. And it was you all along.