Chapter Two

SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE

Signs, houses, and planets. Three distinct systems of symbols. Three vocabularies. Together they form astrology's holy trinity. Each serves a distinct purpose. Each answers a distinct set of questions. Without all three, astrology could not exist. Lacking one, it could have breadth and height, but no depth. It would be as thin as the paper you are holding.

Signs and houses work together. Let's understand them first, then go on to add the planets.

In broad terms, signs are identity, while houses are the arena within which identity operates. Signs provide the psychological framework, the needs and fears, the attitudes and biases, with which we attack the houses. Houses indicate problems and issues. They represent tasks we must face.

Signs symbolize processes that take place within the mind. Each is a pattern of growth with which a person becomes intensely identified: learning to become braver; learning to become more aware of other people's needs and worries; developing psychic sensitivity or meditation skills; weeding out the destructive effects of dependency.

Houses are more concrete. They represent that which the mind observes. Many of them are simply theaters of obvious, outward activity. One symbolizes our broad social or cultural environment. It raises the question of what role we play there. Another symbolizes the field of activity we call intimate relationships. A third shows our material or economic circumstances.

Some houses are less outwardly active. But they always symbolize something outside personality, something of which we must become aware. One, for example, refers to the existence of the unconscious mind.

Planets are the third dimension of astrological symbolism. They represent the actual structure of the mind. Each one symbolizes a particular psychological function: intellect; emotions; self-imagery; the impulse toward intimacy.

Put all the planets together and you have a map of the human psyche. It is like many other maps that have existed in history. Sigmund Freud, for example, divided the mind into ego, id, and superego. Astrologers use Mercury, Venus, and so on in the same way.

Like Freud's model of the mind, the planetary map is blank. It describes all the departments of the psyche, but it does not say what is in each department. Everyone has an ego. But not everyone's ego is of the same strength and nature. Similarly, Mercury (verbal ability) may be strong in one person, weak in another. They both possess the same mental function. But in each person it operates differently.

To understand how a planet operates we must see it in the context of a sign and a house. An aggressive planet might lie in a sign that refers to the process of developing courage. That is a powerful combination and it produces a distinctly assertive personality. But how does that assertiveness become visible? Where do we see it?

To answer that, we look at the house. That is where the sign-planet dynamic is released. Perhaps that assertiveness is most clearly expressed within the career. Maybe we see it in marriage and friendship. Or perhaps that assertiveness is not outwardly visible at all. Maybe it is blazing away in one of the hidden departments of life. That question can only be answered by a house. Unlocking the interactions of these three kinds of symbols—signs, planets, and houses—is the key to unlocking the secrets of the individual birthchart.

To put it all briefly, the three systems of symbols answer the questions what, how and why, and where. Always look first to the planet, which is the what. It lets us know which part of the mind we are considering. Then use the sign to determine exactly what that planet wants and what methods it might best use to achieve those goals—the why and the how. Finally, look at the house. It answers the where, telling us in precisely which department of life the battle is taking place.

Imagine, for example, that we are analyzing a birthchart with Venus in Virgo in the sixth house. How do we proceed? In chapter 8 we study that combination in detail, but let's take a quick look at it now just to focus all this abstract thought with a concrete example.

Venus is the planet, and its what is always the ability to establish personal relationships. In this case, Venus is driven by the why and how of Virgo. What does that mean? As we will learn in chapter 5, Virgo's why is the effort to attain perfection and it show involves endless analysis. Right away we know we are dealing with someone who is idealistic in relationships, but who must learn to balance that idealism against a tendency to be too critical or demanding. Responsibility in love and friendship probably comes easily, but tolerance and forgiveness must be developed intentionally. Where are these dramas likely to be enacted? In the sixth house, the arena of life we call work. In this case, working partnerships are particularly sensitive to those Venus-in-Virgo ups and downs, and it is there that the individual is most likely to encounter his pivotal developmental stresses regarding the formation of lasting emotional bonds. In other words, he tends to meet his deepest friends and life mates (Venus) through his work (sixth house) and to enter those relationships propelled by a set of Virgoan motivations and needs.

Don't worry if this analysis baffles you now. It will make much more sense after you have read the next few chapters and absorbed the basic meanings of the signs, planets, and houses. For now, it is enough to remember that planets tell us which part of the mind we are looking at (the what), signs let us know what needs and strategies drive that planet (the why and the how), and houses specify in exactly which of life's arenas that planet-sign combination is developing (the where).

Symbol Reading

The birthchart is a remarkable tool. But to use that tool you must learn a lost art. You must become a symbol reader.

Interpretation. That is the heart of astrology. Weaving together the messages of the signs, houses, and planets, interlacing them, seeing how they flavor one another, enhance one another, undercut one another—that is the astrologer's art.

And it is an art. Interpretation is not a scientific procedure, not something to be memorized. It is not mechanical. It is not a skill one acquires like learning to rebuild carburetors or to solve differential equations. The element of creativity, of inspiration, of intuition, is the vital spark at the core of the system. Without it, one can never derive meaning from a birthchart.

The mind is a living creature, just like the body. All its organs interact. If we have a headache, it may affect our stomach too. And maybe if someone massages our neck and shoulders, both problems disappear. It is the same with astrology. If our Mercury hurts, then that imbalance is reflected in one of our signs and houses too. We must learn to grasp the birth-chart as a whole, just as a good doctor learns to see the body as an interacting system.

That is the first law of interpretation: to see wholeness. We must never read a symbol in a vacuum.

But that wholeness is complex, just as minds are. A birth-chart is an intricate arrangement of multidimensional symbols. No two are alike. Many people have Mars in Aquarius or Venus in the fourth house. Those are the basic "bits" or "phrases" that go together to form the psyche, and there are relatively few of them. But their possible combinations are nearly infinite, and it is in that endlessly variable crossfire that astrology comes alive.

No book can cover all conceivable combinations of these astrological "bits." There are too many of them. To read a birthchart, we must approach the problem differently. We must learn the language. We must become familiar with all the basic vocabulary—each sign, each house, each planet. Only then can we understand their interactions.

Learning to interpret charts is like learning to speak French. If we are going to be in Paris for just a week, then memorizing phrases out of a Berlitz book is all we need. We will be able to locate bathrooms and avoid malnutrition. But if we are serious about communicating in the language, we pursue a different strategy. We memorize vocabulary. We learn laws of grammar. And we start putting sentences together on our own.

Most astrological texts are like phrase books. They contain stock interpretations of each "bit." Have Saturn in Virgo? Turn to page 39. Neptune in the fourth house? Page 122. Each configuration is described abstractly, as if it were functioning alone. And when we put those stock interpretations together we have a mishmash. We are like the phrase-book Frenchman who is suddenly confronted with a situation his book does not cover. We stutter.

Soon we will study the birthchart of an Englishman who was born with the sun in Libra and the sixth house. A traditional phrase-book astrological text would say that such a combination means that he is indecisive and subservient. Moving on, we find that his moon lies in rebellious Aquarius and his first house contains explosive, irascible Uranus. Turning to those chapters, the same text would teach us that he is arrogant, stubborn, and free-spirited. A strange juxtaposition of traits.

That kind of phrase-book astrology produces fast results. We don't have to learn a new way of thinking. All we need to do is look things up. We learn to operate like a computer, spitting out prepackaged paragraphs about each astrological configuration. But the results we get are bad. There is no life in them. They don't grow or change. And they contradict one another. Trying to practice astrology like that is like trying to reconstruct a personality from a dissected body. Here is an arm. Here is a nose, an eye, a tooth. We can even sew all the parts back together again. But we fool no one. All we have is flesh and bones.

A computer can construct a birthchart, but it can never effectively interpret one. To accomplish that, we must react to the chart the way we react to a living person. Intellectually. Emotionally. Physically. Intuitively. We must react to wholeness. We must learn words and form sentences. Memorizing phrases does not help us.

Learning the language really is not hard to do. All of us are astrologers. We just don't know the words yet. The American traveling through France with her phrase book is a competent, coherent adult. She knows what buses are. She knows all about artichokes and politics, boulevards and dark alleys. She just doesn't know what to call them. With a little instruction in the language, her natural intelligence can begin to express itself.

Like our traveler, we all have natural astrological intelligence. All of us have a Mercury function and a Pisces process. We are all built out of the same material. Our current labels may be different, but those are only words. Whatever we call those aspects of ourselves, we have been living with them, studying them, since we were born. We just need to learn some new vocabulary.

As languages go, astrology is an easy one. There are ten planets, twelve signs, and twelve houses. Only thirty-four words. Grasp them and it is as if you were off to Paris with an A in high school French. No one is going to mistake you for a native. But you will get by.

The book you are holding in your hands is not a phrase book. It is a language text. The first few chapters are vocabulary lessons. We will get acquainted with the notion of a birthchart, with each sign, each house, each planet. Then we will move on to forming sentences. By the end of the book, if you are alert, you will be doing much more than parroting lists of contradictory traits. You will be speaking a new language. An eloquent, ancient language. A precise one. One that stretches your imagination and boosts your sensitivity. One as penetrating as a dagger and as clear as a crystal held against the sun.