Astrology Reports & Forecasts

I hope you will find the collection of articles educational, witty, fun and entertaining.

I hope they will help inform your understanding of astrology and how it relates to your life and the world you live in.

Keep checking back as this page will regularly be updated.

For lovers and friends, we tend to be drawn to those whose Venus aspects are like our own. They share a style of relating, similar ways of expressing affection or esteem, a sense of taste, and a consensus about what is socially acceptable and what isn't. Observing people and their relationships through astrology, then, we confirm the old saying that birds of a feather flock together.

In the case of Venus-Uranus aspects, it's not just a feather but an entire feather boa. And it's not just a flock of any old bird, but of peacocks or brightly colored parrots. These aspects also run in families, so among the Venus-Uranus notables we will find Julio AND Enrique Iglesias, Princess Diana and Prince William, and Michael Jackson and his son Prince Michael Jackson. Michael's longtime friend, Liz Taylor also has the conjunction.

Uranus is the planet of friendship, while Venus is about love, and Venus-Uranus types are capable of intense but platonic relationships with all the qualities of love affairs but without overt sexual involvement. For instance, women with this aspect may have close and loving connections with gay men. An unforgettable pair of friends with Venus-Uranus aspects was Princess Diana and rock legend Elton John. They had an on-again-off-again friendship, a pattern not unheard-of with Venus-Uranus aspects, in that they were sometimes the best of friends, sometimes feuding.

In the end, Elton wrote a moving and unforgettable song to perform at Diana's funeral. It said, in part, "Your candle burned out long before your legend ever will." Elton has Venus in Aquarius trining Uranus in Gemini, with Uranus disposing of Venus. Diana's Venus in Taurus was part of a t-square with Uranus in Leo opposite her Aquarian Moon. Her Venus and his Moon were closely conjunct. Diana's older son, Prince William, is already idolized by the public in much the same way his mother was and also has a Venus-Uranus aspect. His Venus is at 25° Taurus, just a degree from Diana's own Venus, in an out-of-sign opposition to Uranus in Sagittarius. Dodie al Fayed, Diana's romantic interest who also died in the crash, had Venus trine Uranus.

What about ordinary folks with Venus-Uranus aspects? I admit I have the conjunction. It's in the 11th, so I'm not especially weird, you understand, but more than a few of my friends are. We may never have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but we're a Presence in our own circles, notorious or merely tolerated for shock value. People watch to see what we're going to do next, decry our behavior, then wait until the heat is off and copy us. When we get older, people tend to view our eccentricities with fondness than rather than disapproval, since we're now seen as harmless.

"THEY NEVER KNEW A STRANGER:" One effect of this planetary combination is the capacity for instant kinship with people of backgrounds different than their own. Typically, their friendships include a fascinating mélange of races, cultures, interests, and sexual persuasions. They collect bright, sophisticated, exotic, even quirky folks who are on the leading edge of things but too busy to get together often. Such friends bring excitement and sudden leaps in consciousness by exposing the native to avant-garde ideas. (One startling finding from the database was that there were 14 instances of UFO sightings among the conjunctions-taking cross-cultural contact to the max!)

Venus-Uranus is a Universal Brotherhood aspect, for in establishing loving ties with people of a variety of backgrounds, we learn that we humans are the same in vital respects. However, scattered among the examples in AstroDataBank were individuals who can only be described as hate mongers. Anti-feminist shock jock, Rush Limbaugh has a close quincunx; Howard Stern has the opposition, Nazi leader, Adolph Eichmann had a square; and singer Anita Bryant, who waged a heated anti-gay campaign, has the conjunction exact to the minute. It seems to be one extreme or the other with these folks, but they're never conventional or politically correct!

RUNAWAY BRIDES AND OTHER DISTANCERS: Many Venus-Uranus folks have a seemingly never-ending series of short-lived but exciting partnerships. In the introduction to this section of the book, we looked at the chart of Julia Roberts, who had the title role in the movie, Runaway Bride, and who has Venus conjunct Uranus and Pluto. The movie could have been written about her!

Many with Uranus in aspect to Venus have difficulty committing and so spend years chasing the fireworks of early courtship, leaving or otherwise creating breakups when relating to someone becomes more routine. The pattern of broken relationships can continue until they take responsibility for generating their own excitement-or meet a partner so Uranian that the fascination never stops! Many with this aspect fool themselves that they're yearning for commitment, yet repeatedly fall in love with unavailable people. This behavior is "crazy like a fox," since involvement with distancers lets them retain their independence and continue to pursue their own development.

"UNCONVENTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS:" One typical interpretation that astrologers give of people with Venus-Uranus contacts is that they're inclined to "unconventional relationships." Readers with this aspect, most likely what the astrologer is delicately trying to ask is whether you are gay. The androgynous beauty (musicians Michael Jackson and Prince) that can accompany this aspect fuels speculation. Ellen Degeneres, who has the aspect, lost her highly successful show years back after deciding that she could no longer hide her true self from world. After several years of career limbo-and a greater degree of public acceptance that her own actions played no small part in creating-she once again has a successful show and is beloved by her audience.

In your birth chart, does Venus form an angle to Pluto, or do you have Venus in Scorpio or Scorpio planets in your 7th house? What does that say about your relationships-love, family, or friendship? This isn't a light-hearted combination-no strong aspect to Pluto really is, though we all have to integrate Pluto's energies into our lives. Pluto shows our need for power and control over our lives, a need often expressed in covert ways, yet no less dominant for being hidden. Plutonians may use sexuality or gifts of money and possessions as a hook to achieve other ends in relationships. Not everyone with a Venus-Pluto aspect is a Plutonian, but they often fall in love with Plutonians and align themselves with the partner's world view and defense mechanisms.

In drawing conclusions about the effects of various astrological aspects, remember that this aspect is but a piece of the whole, and you need to take all the relationship factors of the chart into account. For a full picture, blend all the aspects to Venus with the state of the 7th, 8th, and 5th houses of the birth chart. Still, we can still learn some common Venus-Pluto patterns from the descriptions that follow.

"SMOKIN'!!" Just as you'd imagine, a great deal of passion can be generated by combining Venus with Pluto. (They don't form aspects so much as cohabit!) Among those with the conjunction, for instance, are Hollywood sex symbols like Antonio Banderas, Sean Penn, and Raquel Welch. Where the combination is strong, the urge to merge with another through sexuality can become compulsive, even to the point of addiction. For others, physical conquest or seduction is more about power over the other person.

"IT'S NOBODY'S BUSINESS IF I DO." Venus-Pluto natives may be sexually active, but these highly private folks consider it nobody else's business. In fact, secrecy enhances the passion. For some of them, sexual intrigue, such as infidelity or the office affair, exerts a lure, the payoff being getting away with it or getting even with someone.

"THE WORLD REVOLVES AROUND SEX AND MONEY." We had an old reprobate of a professor at college who adored saying that to shock us. He probably had a Venus-Pluto aspect, not to mention a fairly good grip on politics. Political savvy, combined with personal charm, grants a capacity to hobnob with the movers and shakers.

The famous people I found with Venus-Pluto aspects included many women who married well in order to do some dynasty building. Included were most of the American First Ladies from Eleanor Roosevelt onward. Almost all of them had aspects between Pluto and Venus, Pluto and Mars, or both. The pattern was so marked that I'd begun calling them the First Lady Aspects. They're also seen in the charts of other political like Maria Shriver and among the British Royals-Elizabeth II, Sarah, Duchess of York, and Sophie Rhys-Jones. Political savvy, combined with personal charm, gives these folks the capacity to hobnob with the movers and shakers. The trines like Pat Nixon and Betty Ford seem to do especially well, with an eye to position. They may not be your idea of glamour girls, but apparently know how to keep their men happy.

"YOU AND ME AGAINST THE WORLD." Many Plutonians suffer from fear of betrayal and lack of trust due to childhood traumas and losses. They're often isolated, alienated, and consumed with shame, lest others discover the family secrets. When they find someone to trust, someone who seems to understand and accept them, the relationship becomes a bulwark against unbearable isolation. Thus some of them have a terror of being abandoned and will do anything to keep the object of their love. Some Plutonians don't have relationships, they take hostages. An individual with a Venus-Pluto aspect who isn't Plutonian in all respects may nonetheless accept responsibility for making their Plutonian partner feel safe and loved, not an easy task when there has been serious wounding.

"MY LOVE WILL HEAL YOU." Especially when Neptune aspects are also strong in the person's chart, rescuing can become a strategy for avoiding abandonment. If fixing the other is the foundation of the relationship, there may be unconscious sabotage of the healing in order to bind the loved one close so that they can't leave. The "patient" can come to resent being in this unequal position, ultimately feeling powerless and even suffocated by the rescuer. In the end, the "patient" may strike out through some sort of hurtful action, even a terrible betrayal that finally ends the relationship, but it is done almost as a form of self-preservation. If you have a Venus-Pluto aspect and a painful history of betrayal in relationships, consider whether the dynamic of rescuing played a part in the patterns.

Saturn's complete cycle around the Sun takes 29.4 years. The hard aspects of Saturn (squares and oppositions) take place each seven years, so each 7-year period ends with a new phase of maturing and taking stock of our lives. We become true adults at about the age of 28-29, when Saturn has made a complete orbit around the Sun from where it was when we were born-a period we call the Saturn return. At 56-8 years old, we experience the second Saturn Return. These Returns are considered significant milestones in the human maturation cycle.

The seven-year phases between Saturn aspects to natal Saturn are the normal stress periods of living and growing, which psychologists call normative crises (for example, adolescent turmoil at 14, or moving out on your own at 21). We all go through these crises, but if your natal Saturn has difficult aspects, (hard aspects to the Sun, Moon, Ascendant, Pluto, or Neptune, for instance), these periods can be more difficult. Periods like your Saturn Return or other Saturn transits are opportunities to change from misuses of Saturn and to better uses. While 21 is popularly considered our coming of age, in reality it's just an entry-level position into adulthood. The person who is 28-30 has now faced most of the challenges of becoming a seasoned adult.

Saturn has to do with maturing and aging, and the positive Saturnian is mature. Saturn is a time marker, but shouldn't be devastating unless we are only marking time. For those who are growing and developing steadily through persistent effort, aging holds little regret because they're not getting older; they're getting better. In fact, in the very areas where they seemed to have been late bloomers, Saturnians often come into their own in some later phases of their Saturn cycles.

Many young Saturnians are too old for their age and not comfortable with their peers. Their comfort level improves with age, especially as they approach the age where Saturnian qualities like maturity and caution are expected due to responsibilities of a career or family. Also, they are more at ease once they find a sense of security and self-worth through their accomplishments, so that the more difficult expressions such as insecurity and self-condemnation improve.

Saturn transits force you to face up to reality... a jolt if you've been fooling yourself about the problems you face. But the positive result is that once you've finished emoting about the unfairness of it all, you can get to work on establishing more substantial and solid foundations. Foundation building may not be as much fun as drifting and dreaming on a pink cloud, but the bank doesn't take pink clouds as collateral. Saturn is the wisdom gained from experience... even if you're thickheaded and your alma mater is the School of Hard Knocks.

Many negative situations that arise under Saturn transits result from not using Saturn in a positive way in the first place. If you haven't developed self-discipline, a Saturn transit might bring the loss of something you haven't been disciplined about. Discipline imposed from the outside is meant to foster discipline from within. If you've built your house on the sand, figuratively speaking, a Saturn transit might level the house and make you go back to rebuild more solid foundations. Saturn is not punitive, but an impartial rectification of error-the Celestial Computer kicking your input back for correction because "it does not compute."

In astrology, Mars is the planet most connected with anger, but Mars in and of itself doesn't create anger. Its position in the birth chart shows the places where we're moved to protect what is important to us, including some of our illusions. Nothing makes us madder than some darned fool telling us the truth!

If we grew up in dysfunctional families, in order to survive our upbringing, we learned to be highly sensitive, reactive, and always on the alert for a threat to the status quo. Thus, we tend to be easily wounded by even the gentlest reminder of the shortcomings of ourselves, our families, or other codependent ties. We may react with rage to even the most constructive of criticisms. In order to protect our denial, we may go so far as to sever relationships with people who are unwise enough to rock the boat with the facts. (No one said we were easy to live with!)

Anger is the guard dog of denial. In some cases, the denial is so strong or the ego so vulnerable that anger is a pit bull. Do you resent people who puncture your illusions, threaten your denial about your own or loved one's addictions or destructive behaviors, or make you face up to your shortcomings? Do you respond by closing down, running away, or cutting off the relationship? If so, you short-circuit your own growth and deny yourself real intimacy with others, an intimacy based on mutual honesty.

Anger keeps the past alive. Family difficulties that created a painful childhood are often present when the outer planets are strong in the 10th, 4th, or 1st houses. In the course of our lives, we who come from dysfunctional families have had many causes for anger. Terrible things may have happened to us and to other family members because of our parents' problems. As adults, because many of us didn't know how to assert ourselves, we may play out the victim role. Our conditioned reaction patterns can leave a trail of broken relationships.

Anger may be all we have left to connect us to a family member, an old lover, or a former friend. By continuing to hold on to it, we keep the relationship alive and current, at least in our own minds. We make that person or incident very important in our lives and give them enormous power. We'd like to believe we're still as important to them--not accepting that they may barely think of us at all any more.

The more energy we invest in the past in the form of anger, the less energy we have available for more intimacy and a better life today. It's like putting a militia to work guarding a cemetery, when the same labor force could have built a new road. Are you wasting energy on anger at someone or something else, when you could be building a future for yourself? Isn't that just another way to take the focus off yourself? Rehashing old war stories may even be a ruse for avoiding facing intimacy. When you're angry, it may help to ask yourself the following questions:

How do I use anger to protect my denial?
Am I willing to let go of anger about things that happened in the past so I can build a better life for myself today?
Am I willing to give up Being Right in order to be happier?

Mars is the planet of energy and of action. When we go through periods of continuous anger--days and nights when the same rageful thoughts churn over and over in our minds--this is a clear signal from the Higher Self that we need to take action. We need to DO SOMETHING about the condition that is making us uncomfortable. Anger is the body-mind's way of mobilizing against a threatening, frustrating, or adverse situation. It motivates us to change something in our lives. Often, the needed change involves the quality of our key relationships.

Anger is not unhealthy in itself, but our reactions to it often are. In troubled families, we learned to suppress it in order to survive. Many of us eat, drink, overspend, or use drugs to force it back down (Mars-Neptune aspects), or we put a great deal of energy into controlling behaviors that we think will preserve our relationships (Mars-Pluto aspects) but wind up contaminating them. Some of us redirect anger to safer, seemingly weaker targets and wreak havoc in our relationships. All too many of us turn it in on ourselves, creating depression and self-hate. Do you suppress and subvert your own anger?

At those times when anger looks like it has moved in to stay, ask yourself what action you're avoiding. Rageful thoughts that repeat like a broken record are the Higher Self's way of needling us about something that needs to be done. The first step is to bless the part of yourself that is using this signal to get your attention. Rather than judging it or pushing it down, let it help you identify what needs to be changed. Ask yourself, "What part of my life is my anger trying to mobilize me to change?" Some affirmations you could say are, "I accept my anger as a healthy, motivating force," and "I allow my anger to lead me to the truth."

Anger can be a great spur to creative problem solving. Maybe you already know what needs to be changed. The things that make you angry are all too glaringly clear, and the conditions that need to be changed stares you in the face every day but you just don't know where to begin. Think about the variety of ways to approach the situation. Use your creativity to go beyond the obvious. Mayhem is not the answer, but neither is withdrawal from people and situations that evoke anger.

If you want to use the experience of anger for your own growth, there are some steps you can take. Put aside for the moment way the hurtful comment was spoken. Even put aside the intention of the person who said it. Now ask yourself the following questions:

Is there any truth in what this person is saying?
If so, what can I learn from it that will make me a better person?
If not, what is his or her problem?

Posing this series of questions in situations when you're angry can become a spiritual discipline with great rewards for personal growth and relationships with others. If you're moved to try them, the truth shall once more set you free, this time of anger. An excellent book on using anger for growth and reconciliation is Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hahn's, Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames. (Riverhead Books, 2001)

The position of Mars in the birth chart can often represent a part of our lives where we are quick to anger and to conflict with others, but Mars is not the CAUSE of our anger. Rather it can represent an area where we have blind spots and would prefer to remain in denial. This article poses a series of questions we can ask ourselves about our own "hot spots" so that we can learn from incidents where we've gotten angry and then can grow past them.

So many astrology clients want me to tell them whether they'll ever marry or not. Having followed many clients' and friends' charts' over the past 40 years, I've come to believe that astrology isn't the best predictor of whether an individual will meet and commit to a partner. HISTORY is a better predictor, and the astrologer who doesn't get a relationship history from the client is likely to prove inaccurate. What I've observed is that there are relationship-prone people and people who are not relationship-prone.

The person who isn't relationship-prone could have transits or progressions that look ideal for love and not meet a soul, much less a soul mate. Relationship-prone people can have either the worst or the most piddling aspects for romance, and they fall head over heels and hook up with a partner. Go figure. That said, the chart does tell much about the romantic obstacles to be overcome.

In particular, there are differences among the outer planet aspects to Venus in their degree of willingness to commit to a partnership. Venus-Uranus types above all else want freedom and independence, and so they often engage in a seemingly endless series of short-term attractions until they find someone who can give them room to keep growing and exploring themselves and their potential.

Like most aspects involving Pluto, Venus-Pluto people can fit into one of two extremes, either totally, compulsively joined at the hip with a partner or-having been badly burned-totally turned off to the idea of having a relationship at all. Venus-Neptune types don't just want to commit, they want to merge, so they can become addicted to love and immerse themselves in one codependent relationship after another. Libra is the sign most driven to form committed relationships, but having the outer planets in Libra can present challenges in the quest for a lasting partnership.

Neptune in Libra-the sign for a generation of people born between 1942-55--is similar in its effects to a Venus-Neptune aspect. The tension for the Neptune in Libra generation has been one on one partnership versus universal oneness with everything. Their ideal of love is to experience complete oneness with the partner. The quest is very painful for them, as their paradigm for love is the 1950s Hollywood romance-we are shaped by the culture around us as we grow up, as reflected by the outer planets' signs.

The generation born with Pluto in Libra (1971-84) was the first to experience widespread fragmentation of the family. As they grew up, divorce statistics gradually reached as high as 50% in some areas of the U.S. With Libra as a keynote, many of those with Pluto prominent labored to keep peace between their warring parents. They were often caught in the middle in a bitter aftermath, suffering through stressful situations such as dual custody, their parents' serial marriages, multiple step-parents, and fathers who moved away and lost contact following the divorce. As a result, many of them are fearful of getting involved in adult partnerships.

For the Pluto in Libra generation, physical attractiveness, even perfection, is a talisman against romantic woes. Though this particular talisman works no better than most, these people can be obsessed with looks and with costly, ever-changing fashion. The incidence of anorexia and bulimia continues to rise, and breast implants are a growth industry, even among teens. From childhood on, the media has bombarded them with the message that the only way to find love and social acceptance is to be beautiful. Not all Pluto in Libra people are fashion slaves-Grunge and Goth exist in part in protest against these values.)

People with Venus-Saturn aspects are gravely reluctant to enter into a partnership for several reasons. For one, they would find it a binding agreement that entails a lifetime commitment and tremendous responsibility. Second, they are extremely conscious of roles in general and the traditional male-female roles of spouse and parent in particular, and so in committing to a partner they would also be committing to a role that they may or may not wish to fulfill. For many of them, their career represents a deeper level of soul commitment and entering into a relationship and parenthood would detract from it. Finally, Venus-Saturn individuals believe that you have to earn love by working hard at it and generally don't believe that they are inherently lovable. To avoid the rejection they anticipate, they may retreat behind walls and focus on a career.

When an individual fits into the not relationship prone category, healing work is often needed to change a decision about relationships that they have made at a very deep level. One major barrier to a relationship in this lifetime is a vow of either chastity or eternal commitment to a particular soul. Such vows may not be conscious ones, but they hold great power and need to be revoked consciously and explicitly in some form of ritual in order for a new relationship to be possible.

For instance, I often find that at a very deep level, people with Venus in Virgo or Virgo planets in the relationship houses (7th, 8th, and 5th) take their wedding vows extremely seriously and remain faithful, even long after a divorce. Doing a conscious revocation of the vows can shift the situation so that they are once again available for a commitment.

Have you ever met an astrotwin? How much alike were you? Were there eerie parallels between your lives or were you radically different? Strictly speaking, astrotwins are two people born the same day, month, year, time, and place-and thus with charts that are identical in every way. While it's rare to meet an exact astrotwin, we often encounter people who are "date twins," born the same day, month, and year, but at a different time or place.

George W. Bush and Sylvester Stallone are date twins (July 6, 1947), and so were Lincoln and Darwin (February 12, 1809). One unlikely pair is Margaret Thatcher and Lenny Bruce, both born October 13, 1925. Some other pairs my friend Karen McCauley found are Andy Griffith and Marilyn Monroe, Angela Bassett and Madonna, Newt Gingrich and Barry Manilow, Roger Ebert and Paul McCartney, Al Gore and Rhea Perlman.

In my astrology practice, I once had a client who was born the same day, month, year, and one hour earlier than Charles Manson (November 12, 1934). Manson is a notorious criminal serving a life sentence, and my client was the apparent opposite-he counseled sex offenders who were incarcerated.

Skeptics use these examples to discredit astrology, and it puzzles those who want to believe as well. They'd speculate on my client's "shadow self," that perhaps he was sublimating his own violence by working in a prison. And it's possible that Margaret Thatcher, despite her very proper public façade, was as raunchy as Lenny Bruce in private. Maybe so -surely the same gifts and predilections can be expressed in a variety of ways.

The birth counter at www.Worldometers.info says that there have been 103,000 births around the world already and it's only 7:00 AM. No, wait-it's now 7:10 and there are almost 106,000. Each day there are some 350,000 date twins born, and among them, depending on the time and place of birth, hundreds of astrotwins. They will all have the same core elements in their chart, but obviously their life stories and opportunities to develop their potentials will diverge wildly.

So, where does astrology come into play? How do we explain why there are several hundred people out there with essentially the same birth chart as Barak Obama, but only one of them is running for president? The analogy I came up with is that the birth chart is a portrait of the soul, but it's NOT the soul. It is only one expression of the soul's infinite potentials. Only one of those souls is Barak Obama.

That's why I say that the astrology chart is a portrait of the soul. Have you ever visited an art class where the students were trying to do a picture of nude? As you wander through the room, each student has rendered the subject in a different way-anything from strictly representational to highly abstract. The colors, the techniques, the styles come in infinite varieties. They have attempted to capture the image, but they can't capture the essence.

Do you yearn to be more creative and to put your creativity into words? The trick is to discover your special gifts and make the most of them. Analyzing your astrological chart can provide hints, not only to your niche but to times when those gifts can bear fruit. The birth chart is a rich source of insight into your talents. A part of the chart that describes some of them is the fifth house-the house of self-expression and leisure activities. So, for instance, if you have Venus or Libra planets there, you probably have a desire to create beauty and romantic expression through writing. The fifth house also shows what conditions will foster your gifts, and in the case of Libra, you'd be most inspired when you write in partnership. The Sun or Leo planets there might show a flair for drama. When Virgo is featured, that well-known fine eye for detail and precision often lend craftsmanship. Cancerians' love of mementos and memories might lead you to pursue memoirs and family history.

When the third house, Gemini, or Mercury are high-focus in your chart, you doubtlessly have the gift of gab and may have writing potential. When the Moon is strong, especially in the earth signs Taurus or Virgo, you may be a gourmet cook or master gardener who writes to share your knowledge. Neptune is the planet most associated with imagination, inspiration, and mystery, so the person with Neptune or its sign Pisces strongly featured might well be a poet, musician, or dancer.
Each sign and house has its own special interests and abilities, and we don't have space to cover all the possibilities here.

As both a writer and an astrologer, I've learned to use astrology to maximize my writing output. If you are knowledgeable about astrology or can ask someone who is to help you, following the current positions of the planets can significantly boost your productivity. An ephemeris-that is, a table of the planets' daily positions-is a writing tool with even more muscle than a thesaurus!

FOLLOW THE DAILY MOON SIGNS: In general, writing should go well while the Moon is in Gemini each month or during the month or so each year that the Sun, Venus, and Mercury are in that sign (usually late May and most of June). You can follow these periods on a calendar that includes astrological information or by subscribing to an astrology magazine. The Moon or inner planets in Virgo are good windows for editing your work. If you write consistently and follow the planets as you do, you will doubtlessly discover which Moon signs and transits are most productive for you-the periods when you work most effortlessly and effectively-based on your own personal chart. Watch for those intervals, block off the time, and use it to the hilt.

CAPITALIZE ON MERCURY RETROGRADE PERIODS: Mercury represents all communication media, and Mercury retrograde has a bad press in popular astrology venues. To avoid the snafus popularly associated with Mercury retrograde, be certain to make copies of everything you write and regularly back up the disk. However, in my years as a writer, I have learned to make productive use of the three spans of time each year that Mercury is retrograde for about 20-25 days each. Capitalizing on the natural backward and forward rhythm of Mercury's movements can be useful to a writer. In the course of writing a book over a year or more, use these intervals to go over and refine what you've already written, rather than waiting until the end, when you are mentally exhausted, fed up with the subject and yearning to be finished.

The astrology clients I most enjoy working with are professional wordsmiths who want to maximize their potential. Among the many functions chart readings can serve for writers-or potential writers-is to identify their personal niche among the endless topics covered by books, articles, and other media. The chart can also provide clues to their style and the conditions most conducive to getting the writing done. For instance, a Pluto or Scorpio writing signature would show a person who needs solitude and long uninterrupted stretches to devote to their work, while someone with a strong Libra or 7th house writing signature might blossom with a collaborator.

What does a writing signature consist of? Naturally, we would think of Mercury first, and yet a strong Mercury does not automatically make you a writer-what it makes you is a communicator. Many bright, interesting, verbal people with Mercury conjunct the Sun, Moon, or Ascendant or with a strong Gemini emphasis (Sun, Moon, Ascendant, or a stellium) are brimming with ideas, yet never sit still long enough to get those ideas down on paper. They may use up their Mercury energy in communications-oriented careers, enjoy a reputation as a gifted raconteur, or simply graft a cell phone onto their ear and annoy the rest of us by carrying on long, animated, one-sided calls while we try to relax over a gourmet meal.

Natally or by transit, a strong, well-aspected Saturn or Pluto as an element in the signature helps such individuals apply the derriere to the chair long enough to write something of substance. (If you are an astrological novice or beginning student and also an aspiring author, the following may be too technical, but a chart interpretation can be a good investment.)

In working with pros over the years, I have observed some keys to a writing signature, given here in the order of importance. Look at all aspects to Mercury, especially watching for conjunctions and other hard aspects to lend the energy and motivation to write. The urge to work through inner conflicts, as described by such aspects, is often part of what spurs an author to wrestle words and ideas to the mat. Look, also, at planets in the 3rd house and aspects to them; consider Mercury's sign and house; and bring in the sign on the cusp of the 3rd. Analyze all of the above and blend them together for a complete picture. To assess the potential for more creative types of writing like fiction, poetry, film, or music, look for Neptune in the mix. For creativity-and the conditions needed to inspire it-analyze the 5th house. I won't go through all the possible sign/house combinations in cookbook fashion, but here are a few examples so you can get the picture of how this principle works.

For the person with Mercury in Aries, Mercury/Mars aspects, Mars in the 3rd, or Aries on the 3rd, the best genres include action and adventure tales, sports reporting, war stories, how-to pieces, and romance with plenty of passion. You like to call yourself a groundbreaker and enjoy nothing better than being the first to explore and write about a particular topic. Keep your subjects-and your slant on them-fresh, for when the pack catches up with you, you tend to lose interest.

A series of short pieces-perhaps an ongoing column-on a particular area of interest can provide the immediate rewards that a Mars-Mercury type tends to need, while ultimately collecting enough material for a longer publication. Another way to maximize your output is to take an action-oriented approach in which you learn by doing-get out and interview people, go see the site where your story occurred, and participate in the actual activities you describe. Tape your notes on the fly, in the car coming and going. Lead groups who are doing the things you want to write about. A scrappy writing group with lots of male members can also provide the motivation and stimulation to keep you going-as well as the element of competition some of you like. In fact, creating something for a writing contest can also motivate you.

Health or self-improvement writing might be a fruitful field when Mercury or the 3rd house features the sign Virgo. Virgo health care practitioners tend toward the more physical forms of healing such as body work, herbalism, or nutrition, and when Mercury is in Virgo as well, they may want to share what they know in practical and yet detailed articles or books. For technical writing of many kinds, including instructional manuals, some connection between Virgo and Mercury or the 3rd house is an asset. To satisfy that relentless inner critic, Virgo authors can over-prepare, double-check all facts, and research, research, research. This is also the sign of editing. My best book and article editors have been Virgo Sun, Moon, or Ascendant, and, yes, they CAN be picky. The thing is, they are usually right, and putting your manuscript under their microscope before the public sees it can make you look great!

An element of romance in the writing would be indicated by a strong 5th or 7th house Mercury or else Venus or Libra planets in the 3rd, especially when Neptune is somehow involved. If this is you, you'd probably do your most impassioned work when you are either falling in love, falling out of love, or hopelessly enamored with someone inaccessible. Scorpio or Pluto as a top note in a writing signature could also be quite passionate, but not always about sex, whatever Plutonians' reputations might lead you to expect. They might be just as passionate about exposing and reforming corruption or about transformation and healing from traumatic experiences.

Perhaps the most crucial human function described by the Moon is mothering-the mothering you give and the mothering you received. We'll see that the two are nearly inseparable. A better word for this function is nurturing-after all, we can also get care, food, and love from our fathers and other people. As adults, many men do take care of others (friends and relatives, as well as children). This is one of the functions of the Moon in a man's chart, though it is often suppressed or disguised in Western culture.

Decades ago, most people had a traditional upbringing in which the biological mother filled the lunar functions, so the Moon in the chart would have been read as the mother. Given the entry of the vast majority of women into the workplace, today's children often have a variety of caretakers of greater and lesser commitment to meeting their basic needs, and so the Moon might refer to any number of significant caretakers. The Moon describes how well we take care of others and gratify their needs, and how well we accept those same needs in ourselves. Can we accept feeling dependent and work to get those needs met? And, similarly, how do we respond when others are dependent on us?

With a Moon in Cancer, for instance, dependency is often strong. These individuals may be extremely dependent on others and show it; or, conversely, they may hide their own dependency, consciously or unconsciously, by compulsively caretaking others. The catch here is that this mother-to-the-world pose can leave them drained and feeling even needier. A Moon in Aries person, on the other hand, places a high value on independence and has a very low tolerance for other people's dependency. Caretaking gets in the way of all those bright, shiny new projects they want to work on.

Psychology teaches us that our attitude toward dependency in others and ourselves comes directly from our parents, particularly our mothers. If the parent dealt with dependency in a loving but balanced way-neither over-protective nor neglectful-then we will also be able to handle dependency appropriately. People with a Moon/Saturn aspect or Moon in Capricorn may have had a mother who was dutiful but cold toward their needs and who pushed them to grow up too fast. Individuals with Moon/Neptune aspects or Moon in Pisces may have had a parent who was outwardly sympathetic to their needs but who was oddly elusive when the chips were down. Both of these Moon signs might experience the same difficulty in responding to others that their parents did.

Like it or not, we generally become the kind of parents our parents were. unless we are very conscious of these effects. If we are psychologically aware, we may vow to raise our children differently than we were raised. Nonetheless, when children actually come along, we are often dismayed to find ourselves sounding and acting just like our own parents. Why is this? The Moon represents patterns, habits, and memories from our earliest years, many of which are unconscious. We live what we learn, and one of the lessons we learn from our parents is how to be a parent. Since that learning is mainly unconscious or preverbal-that is, it happens before the infant is able to think in words-such patterns are resistant to rational control. Children who were abused, for instance, may be dismayed to find abusive urges arising when they themselves become parents or caretakers of children. If you are unhappy with the way you were raised, you can keep those patterns from repeating.

The Moon also rules our basic sense of security, which early parenting influences in crucial but unconscious ways. It comes from the way the infant is held, fed, and responded to when crying-whether all these things are done with love, with anxiety, with indifference, or even with hostility. In infancy, we are dependent on our parents for our very survival. Thus the type of parenting we get at this stage shapes our attitude toward the world we live in. Is it a safe place or a hostile one? Do we feel lovable? Do we feel wanted or barely tolerated? An analysis of the Moon in our charts will answer these questions. In the preverbal stage we either develop or fail to develop basic trust, according to the classic theories of psychoanalyst Erik Erikson. Basic trust means that we find the world and the people in it good and trustworthy. This stage has a potent effect on our ability to allow other people to be close to us and on our over-all orientation to life.

The Moon in your chart shows the conditions under which you would feel most emotionally secure-different for each of us. The house position of the Moon reveals more detail about conditions that lend a sense of security. A person with the Moon in the eleventh house would feel most secure when surrounded by friends or in some meaningful group. Someone with the Moon in the seventh usually only feels secure when involved in a long-term, intimate relationship.

The sign and house position can conflict-to have it in Aquarius means there is security in freedom and change. The Moon in Aquarius in the fourth had better invest in a mobile home, because Aquarius can feel stifled by putting down roots. Many people judge themselves harshly about the things that make them feel secure. For example, the Moon in Aquarius in the fourth person may say, "It's bad for me to be so restless." Astrology can help you recognize those needs as valid and important and can help you set out to meet them.

Generally, the Moon's sign, house, and aspects will describe your actual mother-to the extent that sometimes the child's Moon sign is the same as mother's Sun sign. What is interesting, however, is that children in the same family may have vastly different Moons. In one family, for instance, the older brother and sister both have their Moon in Aries, but the younger sister has her Moon in Scorpio. The older children were both encouraged to be independent (Aries), but at the time the younger sister was born, the mother nearly died. (Scorpio is sometimes associated with death.) For that reason, perhaps, the quality of the relation¬ship between the mother and the younger sister was very different. She was pampered, overprotected, and called "Baby Doll" up to the time she was 14. We can speculate that the mother unconsciously resented that child for bringing her so close to death, but covered up this feeling through overprotection and pampering.